A Budget
Sunday, 4 January, 2004
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A Budget Sunday, 4 January, 2004 Looking for Computer Support Help? Check Out My Resume! |
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Update At 1700 Going back a couple of months, I would get, literally, thirty or more spam a day. Less than a third of those would be identified as bulk mail. The folks at Hotmail (yeah, I know, Microsoft, whatever) did something, and it got better. Things improved quite a bit there for a while - one day I received over fifty spam, direct into the "Bulk Mail" folder. Their "false positive" count went up, a bit, unfortunately - but that's the problem with "free (as in beer) e-mail". Things slowly deteriorated as the spammers learned how to screw with the new filters. Then there was the case a few weeks ago where the fellow from Virginia was charged - I swear, my spam count on all my accounts dropped to nearly zero for a WEEK - no kidding - one account that usually gathers more than ninety a day got less than ten over the course of the next WEEK. Today, however, the spammers decided to get that year-end number up, and I had my hotmail box filled - sixty-three spam. Oy. I think I'm gonna have to look for a new e-mail provider for this site. Yeesh. If you have any recommendations for free e-mail providers that you like, keep them to yourself, please - not that I do not appreciate your recommendations - far from it - but because of my history with this site. I've used four e-mail providers for this site, and every one (with the exception of Hotmail) have gone belly-up (or worse) after I signed up and converted every stinking link on every stinking page... Which reminds me - update the copyright notice - argh, argh, argh. Say - couldn't I put a notice - "Copyright info" - into a link, and update just one stinking page? Oh, would that I had thought of this back before this site grew to 350+ pages... yeesh.
Year End Review As I look back, however, I find that while this last year has been one that I would not repeat for anything (except being forced to), it's been, for the most part, good. I've survived. As have nearly all of my friends and relatives, and those I care about. We expanded our family - this time, the kid's hairy, doesn't talk too much, eats, sleeps, and poops (just like a baby), but is just about the perfect child otherwise. Doesn't talk back, cuddles nicely on the couch, and is in all ways the perfect child. Come spring of 2005, or thereabouts, I think we'll look for a puppy to share the roost with Daisy - that way she can train a dog with us. She'll be a gentle older hand to guide the young snot through the ropes. Financially, this year's been a disaster - but then again, most years have. We've survived, and that's the important part - and this looks to be the final week of my "vacation" so I can handle that. What I'll do after that is another problem entirely. Physically, I'm older, rounder, and just about to the point where I'm going to get a hole drilled in me to drain a boatload of this crap out - or would, if it were possible and safe. So the alternative is exercise, exercise, exercise. Which is why the drill press is on one side of the garage and the lathe on the other. I'd like to prognosticate about the future, but the field I currently reside in (computers) encourages that sort of thing about as much as pro sports encourages gambling - that is, officially, it doesn't, but on the side, hoooo-boy, look out. So computer pronostication ain't my bag. I'll tell you that 365 days (plus or minus a couple) there will be fewer firms making computers, the ones that are available will be faster, bigger (in terms of storage), and cost about the same or slightly less than they did this year. Which is, if you've been in this field more than two minutes, a "well, freaking duh." On other fronts, I'll go way out on a limb and predict Bush will win a hard-fought election, because the Democratic folk will chew their own limbs off in the quest to defeat one another, and little enough will be left for them to use to defeat Bush. I'll also go on a limb and predict that at least one horrible terrorist act will succeed in this next year here in the US. Complacent, we're not, even though we're now at, what, Puce? Jade? I dunno - some color which should to us signify "uh-oh, oh no, look out". Were I worried about terrorism here, I'd be worried about the three oranges and an apple sitting on a foam plate in the median in the street next to my house. Odds are, however, it's just a knucklehead goofing off (or a "cultural thing" - I dunno). I do know that by the end of this next year I'll be older, and so will my children. I would like to think I'll be wiser, though as we all know, that's unlikely to happen. I don't think I could be any more appreciative of you folks who stop by here regularly and drop me the occasional e-mail. I don't always reply (mostly because I'm reading e-mail while being yelled at to do this, fix that, or "did you take care of..?" - um, right away dear...), but I do always read and appreciate your messages, along with your attention. I'll work harder next year not to abuse it so much - and provide more amusements like the fine folks at Archie McPhee's. No, I don't know why, but hopping lederhosen are just damned freaking weird, OK?
Update At 2100 Jackson claimed that his shoulder was dislocated in his "arrest". Right. This guy's full - and I do mean full - of shit, despite his insistence to the contrary. Look at the video - he comes out of the jail, and waves - WITH BOTH ARMS. Sure, not at the same time, but BOTH ARMS. I've got a friend who dislocated his shoulder, and is going in for surgery in a few weeks. He tells me that not only does one wish not to wave after the shoulder dislocates, one wishes not to move, or be jarred, or be banged around. Can one do things like that? Certainly. But one is not likely to wave with a shoulder fully extended - especially not with a coat on. As to Jackson's assertion that it's OK to sleep with children, gee, I wish the guy would sleep with an armed psychotic. He's just "nucking futs". And you can quote me on that one.
Weird Dream We were driving through a small town right near or along a river or valley. To the right (or east) was a hill that rose some five or six hundred feet in the air - it was tree-covered and I was admiring the light the setting sun was casting on the hill. The light turned green and I was admiring the pink/blue/purple hues in the sky when a flash beyond the top of the hill drew my eye. In an instant, the orange-gold specter of a mushroom cloud rose above the hill - though it seemed like it was on top of us, it was (or so I knew) miles away - we had a few minutes. Everyone on the street froze and looked in horror to the east. I told Ann to drive around behind an older concrete-block gas station on our left - we drove in and found ourselves behind a thick concrete wall, at the base of a rather tall hill behind. We did the "duck and cover" thing, and waited. It took about a hundred years, or so it seemed, but it was probably thirty seconds or so - the cloud rose high in the sky, and the blast of dust and crud and all the rest blew past us. The winds were probably fifty or sixty miles an hour, but didn't completely destroy the street we had been on, or the building we were behind. When the winds had gone, we backed out (yes, I know, the EMP would have blown circuits and the car wouldn't start), and the world had changed. There was a man standing in the middle of the street with a geiger counter, yelling "Thank God, it was a clean bomb". The hill was gone - as were the trees and everything else. It was if we were standing on the edge of a crater. The only thing I knew in my heart was that Green Bay had been blown up. And I'm not kidding. I suspect it might have been some sort of twisted reaction to yesterday's Viking's game - then again, I dunno. |
Update At 1700 Now Mr. Hough's site is missing - at least Phil's tells me it timed out. Argh.
Touching Story Alert... Tonight, Rhiannon is upstairs with her mother, watching TV. Jack is down here, playing old Atari games on the PS2 - yeah, one of those $4.99 games we got for the adults in the house, the kids actually seem to like them. Anyway, Jack comes over to me - "Daddy, I can't open these." He hands me two Snickers Miniatures. Mind you, the Holiday miniatures aren't a sixth of the size we used to get for "miniatures". And they're practically impossible to open. The kids know of "Mommy/Daddy Tax" - we usually take a bite or gulp of something (provided it's not going to consume an appreciable percentage of what the kids have) for the job - part of it's to encourage the little chimps to fend for themselves, of course. I rip open one, and pretend to eat it. He just smiles, and I hand it to him. He hands me the other. I can tell immediately that this was the one he had difficulty opening - after all, it was soft, no longer semi-square, and quite a mess. I told him "put that one in the fridge and get another - that one's not going to be edible for a while." He tears off, and comes back with three. I open two of them, and he says "the third one's for you." He takes off. Doesn't expect a thank you or anything else - just gives me one of his, as a thank you. I've got such good kids. Wait a minute - that little snot got three (one in the first round, two in the second) - and I distinctly heard his mother say TWO! I think I've got such good kids because their father is an idiot. |
Update At 0430 It's been more than a few years since I've bought "industrial" beef. Aside from two roasts in my freezer (which a friend picked up for us at the worst of all possible places - Sam's Club), all of our beef has come from one of three places -
Through mostly dumb luck, more than anything else, we've managed to get beef that's been range-fed, or nearly so - and that, more than anything, has eased my mind about the whole BSE scare. We don't eat meat from downer cows because none of these places would process such an animal. We're also unlikely to get hit with CJD or other variants, because the statistics show that we have one chance in a million (actually about one in 1,085,000) of getting that, or any other disease, from eating beef. Does it scare me? No, not really. Drunk drivers tonight worry me more. Lunatics who don't obey stop signs worry me. Lots of other problems are a hell of a lot higher on my worry stick than BSE.
Insomnia... Last night I went to bed around 11:30. I laid in bed with the TV on until around midnight. I started to drift off. Then Rhiannon came in and complained she didn't feel well. Then, I fell asleep - for a while. I awoke around 2:30 and had to go to the bathroom. I was up until about 9 this morning, then I laid down on the couch for a bit - I woke up around 11:15, and have been going ever since. I'm tired, but my mind is whirling a million miles a minute. This, too, shall pass. It had freaking better... |
Update At 0200 Yesterday (er, Today? Whatever) has been a long one. I did do some work on some pens today. Two of them, actually. Both aborted on the mandrel. The first blew a very large (roughly 1/3 of the entire piece) chunk out of one side of one half. Wait a minute, that doesn't make much sense... See, to make pens I start out with a block of wood that's about three-quarters of an inch square and about five inches long. Of that, I need enough wood to ... well, look around - is there a pen nearby? Good. Odds are that the pen you're looking at is thicker than my typical 8/9 mm pen size. I mill that block of wood into a whole lot of sawdust and two tubes - both glued around brass tubes. The wood is typically a millimeter or so thick. Yeah, that's a whole lot of freaking sawdust. I take the original block of wood, cut it into two pieces (one that's about 1/4" longer than the tubes, and the other is the rest of the block of wood). Then I drill out the center of each block, and glue in the brass tubes. Once the brass tubes have been glued in, I use a tool called a "pen mill" to make damned certain that the ends of the wood are square to the hole with the brass tube in it - think rod that goes in, combined with a sort of a wide drill bit on the back end to flatten everything out. Once the Pen Mill has done it's work, I mount the two blocks onto the mandrel with a couple of bushings (some serve as a guideline for thickness of the tube, others are merely to insure the blocks spin). I then fire up the lathe and grind the wood down - first, rounding it off, then reducing the diameter until it matches the bushings. Sand, polish, and then insert the pen innards (yes, mom, I use a kit for those pieces - I'm not that handy). So each pen is made from two parts of the same long block of wood. That way, the grain between the two matches. But today, I had two pens abort. On the first one, a large chunk of wood peeled away from the brass tube, so I set the other half aside. Minutes later, as I was preparing to start sanding the second pen, I noticed a dip in one spot. I turned off the lathe and was rather horrified to note that the block (drilled in the days before the drill press) had a hole for the tube which "bent" - and the "bend" was showing up as a glue-filled spot. Lovely. Rather than consider the pair a total loss, I took the two pieces and made one pen. It's not perfecty matched, but it works. A step a day, that's all... Likely there will be more later - I think. > Update At 2330 Jack got a gift card from his Birthday party - a couple weeks before Christmas. It was only $15, and Rhiannon's blown through a couple bigger ones since. But Jack was pretty patient. Today we ran to Target in Savage (Rhiannon needed to exchange slippers which were too small). So we did some shopping. Boy, did we do some shopping. Target is one of those "big box" retailers, and during Christmas the last few years they've taken to the "Generic" strategy - or so I call it. There are all these "branded" toys on the shelf - you know, Hasbro, Mattel, etc., but Target typically reserves an aisle or two for non-branded stuff. No fancy prices, either - it's typically $5, $10, or $15 - rarely more than $20. This year's "brand" was "Kool Toyz" and came (at least for boys) in blue boxes. Today, Jack was moping about, trying to figure out how to spend his $15, and was stuck between a model or some other lego-block-based toy, when we stumbled across an extraordinary thing - the Kool Toyz that were marked 30% (or more) off had been marked down to 75% off - in other words, the $15 toy he'd looked at was now all of $3.75! We had a tough time getting it all in the trunk - he came home with a space play set, a firefighter play set - both with "remote control" vehicles (they actually use wires, but hey, for $3.75 each, I'm not complaining. Both of the sets, mind you, are about 50 pieces each (oh, my aching feet). That's not all. There's the remote-control Humvee, the army guys set, the remote control truck with parts you can change - he spent about $16.25, all told, and came home with about six large boxes of toys. Rhiannon did get a doll that was, I think, $49.99 before Christmas marked down to $25, and then nearly half off of that - or about $12. Not too shabby. Other than that, it's been a fairly quiet day, for the most part. |
Update At 2445 (hey, it's my site, my rules...) For those of you (well, both of you) who stop by, note the date hasn't changed, and leave, well, there are posts above - I just forgot to change some stuff. Senility, donchaknow. Today was, mostly, recovery. Not that we've gone and done any sort of evil debauchery which would require recovery, mind you, but there is that portion of the exercise. I think we all slept pretty solidly until 11 am or thereabouts, and then wobbled up, looked around, and said "yeah, so, now what?" Which, as you might expect, included shopping. On today's agenda - Pinewood Derby prep. Yes, tomorrow (er, today - hush, tomorrow, damnit - it's not "today" until I've had some sleep) is the pinewood derby "help session" where they're actually going to "pre-register" cars. Yeah, right. Hells bells, I only got the things into basic shape tonight. Yes, I - I made the kids a deal - they could make the basic design, I would rough out the shape, and they could handle the sanding and finishing (including, perhaps, spray painting). I would be responsible for weighting, wheels, and the like. Seemed fair. They don't end up with the nickname "nine-fingers" and I don't end up with bloody tools. And their car is finished in the appropriate shade of paint, rather than, um, say, blood? So today I stopped at one store (Gander Mountain - gotta love a store with it's own indoor "pond" - basically a swimming pool for testing kayaks and canoes in) and got BBs (yes, John V., BBs - I know I could get sinker shot and much finer control over the weight - I'll save that for next year, if I need it. No point in using ALL available tricks first time out...). I stopped at a second store for powdered graphite - which got me dumb blank looks when I asked the ladies not four aisles from where it was (it was on an end stand, too - which goes to show that when you break pattern and ASK for directions there will be no one smart enough to PROVIDE directions). Off to the service counter (after trailing through most of the aisles) to ask there - the young lady known as the "Front End Supervisor" looked at me as if I was asking where they kept the sex toys or something - the young fellow who knew said "end of aisle 39". I went back, and shore enuff, there it was on the end of the aisle - not fifteen feet from where the woman was that I'd asked. I took it back and showed her. "Oh, dry lubricant, why didn't you say so?" Jeez. I figured if I'd said "Pinewood Derby" I'd have received many dumb blank looks. Instead, they have a whole freaking end-stand. Figures. The powdered graphite, by the way, is a reserve just in case the expected secret ingredient (recommended by three of you folks, thank you very much) fails to arrive in a timely fashion. Paranoid? Me? No, just thorough. After that, we wandered over to the mall to check out a few things - including a stand where the owner unfortunately wasn't there - it was going to be one of those "well, maybe I could sell some pens through him" deals. Oh well. Plan L or M, at this point... After the mall, over to Rockler to see if they had spare brass tubes (they did) for the ones I'd screwed up, and I exercised my "50% off" e-mail to buy a block of walnut - more wood for Jack's chess pieces, someday. After that, over to Menards where I purchased the paint we needed for the vehicles - and yes, I used my gift card, ma, and no, next time, I'm not buying a roll of that freaking expensive masking tape. A bin, six different things of spray and other paints, and a handful of (cheap) brushes, and the most expensive thing on there was a roll of tape. Oy vey. Then I came home, had dinner, a nap, and then we did some work on the cars. Now that it's nearly 1 am, I'm going to go to bed shortly and have, I hope, pleasant dreams. Hope you do (or did) the same. |
Update At 2230 This morning I was up about 8 am, then, finally, for good about 9 am - we got to school about 10:30 (the kids were playing playstation - figures), and found a band saw, a vice, some sandpaper, and some templates. In other words, I was better off at home. After finaggling a fourth axle for my vehicle, we stuck around for about an hour, sanding and the like, then we came back home. I set up the heater in the garage before I left (it's a very small box heater - probably less heat than you get off a 75-watt bulb), so it was almost tolerable in there despite the plummeting temps outside - we dropped out of the thirties yesterday, through the twenties (today's high occurred at midnight last night, and we're at about ten above right now). So of course, I need to paint - and it's going to be cold over the next week. Anyway, after we finished at school, I set up the garage, worked a bit, then Rhiannon had to go to a birthday party. Since it was for a friend of ours with a playmate Jack's age, we volunteered to take "T" for the night to keep him out of the way of the older girls (six ten-year-old-girls). We returned home, and shortly there after T's father and older brother abandoned the family homestead and shrieking girls to come over and work on their cars. That took about two hours, after which they were required to return home, and we had pizza and I had a nice long nap on the couch - sleeping through The Princess Bride DVD. Other than that, some things I found funny and/or useful today...
Pinewood Derby tips. |
Update At 2245 I'm also here at the end of a week - this one, unusual, in that it also marks the end of the year. And 2003 is a year which, honestly, I'm glad to be done with. For the first time since I was sixteen, I will not be receiving a W2 for the work I did - I'll be getting a 1099, which is, I am told, and expect, going to be a whole new experience in pain and suffering. I will not be surprised to hear a five-figure tax bill come April (or March, more likely). The one thing that this year has brought me (aside from another year older, many good memories with friends, and family, and a much-improved relationship with my son) is some time for quiet thinking. Desperate, quiet thinking, but thinking nonetheless. Some years ago, the United States passed NAFTA - under a Democratic president, no less - which Ross Perot said, and I agreed, would create a giant sucking sound. The problem was, and remains, one of economics. Back, when unions were formed, I am of the opinion that they at the time served a positive purpose. Many of the owners and managers of business ventures held extraordinarily high portions of the firm's income back for themselves and their associates (typically family members and others), and abuses of the hired help were rampant. Gee. I think I see a pattern here... Well, maybe not. However, when the union says "we need $80 an hour to push this bolt into that hole" well, folks, a robot will do it for damned cheaper here - and some poor fellow in northern Mexico (or southern China, for that matter) will do it for even cheaper than the robot - and in those countries, there's no behemoth of regulation bearing down upon them. I thought, some years ago, as I was "getting good" in my computer skills, that having a hands-on trade (like desktop support) would be a good thing - because mechanical things (like computers) alway fail - and computers continue to increase in complexity. Thank GOD for the Second Law of Thermodynamics - "Entropy Increases" - and with more complex systems, the problems (and support) become more necessary. But it seems that "desktop support" is no longer needed - or if it is, it's obviously not a game that people are interested in employing forty-year-olds for. Frankly, I would think that someone who KNEW WHAT THEY WERE DOING would be valuable, but apparently the extra $3 an hour it would cost them for me is better spent for more knuckleheads, on the theory that the larger the number of monkeys, the greater the odds that one will, eventually, stumble across a solution. Which is why I'm working to become self-sufficient. Pens might not be your first thought, but then again, I'm starting there. Nothing says I couldn't change and do custom cabinet knobs, for example, or something along those lines. Sure, it's a bit weird, but think about it - for most of us, our homes are our biggest investments. Which means that these boxes we live in are going to be where we stick some money for upkeep, and even upgrading. For future expansion, I'm looking towards things like custom millwork (I've even got a machine in mind) which would allow you to specify the look of the millwork - smooth, grooved, patterned, however - and I can cut and deliver piece by piece by piece - all you'd have to do is install it (no, I don't want to get into that game - then it's my fault if it doesn't work out right). But there are other potential areas I could expand to. None of them are information-related. And I think I'm going to keep it that way. There's the old saw about putting all of your eggs into one basket - problematic, certainly. I figure it's pretty much the same with job skills. I could learn to program - heck, I already do a fair amount of "smack it together and make it work" stuff to get the job done now - adding a few bells and/or whistles isn't a huge problem - I figure. So this will be an on-going, ever-expanding direction. I can tell you this much - any remodeling job we do will involve enlarging the garage, if only so I can get a car in and out without killing myself. Other than that, I have to admit as I look back on this year, it's been - other than the job situation - 51% good, 49% bad. If certain things hadn't happened - Jack being diagnosed with "Classic" ADD, Daisy's arrival, the contracting position, my friend from London arriving for my birthday - this year would have been much, much more in the "bad" category than the good. Then again, I'm doing much better than those who are now pushing up the daisys (well, under all that snow, that is). And I guess that's a positive for now. My goals for the coming year? Well, frankly, few and far between. I expect to turn out and sell at least 100 pens - and probably turn out for gifts another forty or so. I also expect to, somewhere, land a semi-permanent contract. I expect that this year is going to lead to some difficult decisions on the family front - my father is improving (thanks for asking) but still in the Nursing home. Our "misunderstandings" regarding his care have led to, believe it or not, an understanding between my father and I - for the first time in my recollection, my father said "I understand what you did, and why you did it, and I thank you for it - but I can take care of it from here." Not a resounding endorsement by any means, but it was certainly a change from "Cripes, what did you do this time?" And I'll take those sorts of changes. I suspect there will also be building projects. Jack is excited about a loft, which may or may not be built this year. It's going to have to work around the potential "Ramp II" project at my parents - forty feet of twenty-to-one rise rampworks to get Dad from the Driveway to the house. Yeah, that'll be right up there with the other seven wonders of the world when I get done with it. At least this one will be built in DECENT weather. Otherwise, we'll be working on our third garden here, our third summer, and somewhere in there I'll get my router table, radial arm saw, and other assorted tools from my father's place. I suspect the delay in my retrieval of them will probably mean I'll get more. Before you folks get worried, no, I'm going to leave them with more than enough tools to get the job done. I'll leave even the Dremel stuff - the jigsaw, the table saw, the lathe, the hand tool, the drill press - all that stuff will stay, because my mother might someday use it. Which is fine. I'll clear out the dangerous stuff - Radial arm saw, router, jigsaw, propane torch, the other bits and pieces which go with that could cause problems for them. And around here, I might even work on real decent furniture-type stuff. We're looking at plans for a futon - the hinges are about $40 for a set, and the one we have, made of aluminium tubes, is already (after not quite two years) starting to look worse for wear. I've swapped out the two tiny 1/4" metal clips for six steel bands one inch wide by eighth-inch thick - the thing is still looking pretty rough. There's also the entertainment center and cabinets I want to build, and the better bookshelves, and the new stair railing with floor-to-ceiling posts, and ... I guess what it comes down to is the fact that, despite the "angels of my better nature", I'm becoming an optimist - oh, I know, I live with a woman for who does not see the glass as either half-empty nor half-full, but halfway on it's way to making a mess on her carpet. Yes. I know that. But I've always been one of those "hope for the best, plan for the worst, and you're bound to get something in-between." After the last eighteen months of closer to worse, I'm ... I guess borderline-optimistic that things will improve around here in the coming year. Hell, yes, I'll take my share of shots across the bow (and likely into it as well), but it's getting better. And this time, I'm not going to qualify that with a weasel-like "I think". |