Update At
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Update At While the entire experience was so much more than I can ever hope to capture via simple words and pictures, I'm going to simply highlight four things over the weekend which were so spectacularly over-the-top that I'll treasure the memories forever - and I think Jack will, too. The first was the pony ride. The group we were put into had approximately 20 boys in it (ages 9-10), and near the end of the day, we made it to the Pony Stables. Jack was selected to be in the second group of riders, and, as his group was the last group to take a ride, the ponys were rather tired. Jack, as was his wont for the weekend, tended to push towards the back of the group and let the other boys (who were far more pushy, competitive, and larger) fight it out up front. This tactic bothered me until I realized the wisdom of it - he was usually afforded some better opportunities. I just didn't see it at the time. So Jack waited his turn until the staff was ready, and they called his group. It took about a minute, and he came running back. "Daddy?" (I could tell he was tired - as was I - I had my first chance to be seated in the shade in quite some time - didn't much bother me that I was stuck in amongst the pig pen, the cow pen, and the cage for the chickens and ducks). "Yes, Jack?" "They don't have enough staff. I need to find someone to lead the pony if I want to ride. I know you're tired." Oh God. A half-mile walk with a pony, on top of the seven or so miles we'd already done running to hell and back through all the stations. "Okay." I heaved myself up, got into line with Jack - who had gone from beaten-down-tired to energized - and a little nervous - and waited. The lead person for the station was assigning boys to ponys. Given the pirate theme of the summer's camps, it wasn't too surprising that there was Hook, Tinkerbell, and Yar. One of the ponys was named Henry - and Henry stayed home. Which left Jack on Jack Sparrow. Here begins the fortuitious portion of the exercise. Jack (the pony) always goes last in line. He was a smaller horse, very nice fellow, about five or six years old, I later learned. We started off at a slow walk, with me concentrating on not stepping in the horse apples (the trail was cleared off daily - and with twenty ponys going up and down it a dozen or more times a day, it was rare to find a spot where you didn't need to concentrate on your footing). We made it down the lane, into the low meadow, and up the gentle slope to where Jack had gone Tubing last winter when we went to Polar Cubs. I needed to take a breather (we didn't have a thermometer, but it turns out our temperatures were in the low-to-mid nineties all weekend), and Jack - the horse - obliged by wanting to snack. By the end of the journey, we were accompanied by the nice lady who runs the horse barns, and she told us all about where the horses came from (careful breaders and the like), and where they were bound (the best ones, like Jack Sparrow, were headed for the Petting Zoos and other animal organizations that have children riding). That was thing one. I'd actually come up with a bunch of information on a great game of Capture The Flag we played, but you really had to be there. Let's just say that they split the eighty or so of us into "adults" and "under eighteen" and we had a ball. Yes, the adults won, but the boys weren't overly disappointed by it. The other thing is one that's so intensely personal that I hesitate to note it here - but because this will be available in the various archives of the internet for a long time into the future, I can probably justify it as "I'm leaving it for Jack when he's older, and his grandchildren". When Jack was in the pool this weekend, the kids who worked there had spent the time to rig up a stereo, blasting out the windows of the pool building. The music chosen was nearly all of "my era" - sixties beach rock by The Beach Boys, seventies and early eighties rock from groups like Alice Cooper, AC/DC, Styx, even The Ramones - which took the cake in my opinion when the lifeguards announced "Time to exit the pool" just before "Blitzkrieg Bop" started - "Ay-Oh, Let's Go!" Every time they got into the pool, the weather was just perfect. The sky was blue with only puffy clouds, the water was bright blue so bright it hurt your eyes just to look at it. And it wasn't the vision that caused my breath to catch. I realized that I was so fortunate to let Jack enjoy the experience, and he still wanted me to be here with him. He was reaching for that independence we all want for our children, and every so often (as he did with the pony ride), he'd reach back and ask for just a little help. He didn't need it in the pool, and got a little from another den leader and friend who took him under his wing into a rowboat. But sometimes, things were a bit overwhelming, and he wanted help. The stool-building stuff was fun, but a little beyond him at times (he ended up with a heavy hammer, which probably made part of the difference). However, he was one of the first done - and I'd pulled only five nails (and pounded only about three myself). And he never once got either his fingers - or mine. Other times, like at the BB gun range, archery, nature skills - he was all over it, willing to do whatever it took to figure it out.
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Update At
1: Under no circumstances may two men share an umbrella.
[Link] No, my political focus for this week's gripe is, regrettably, my home state, where the courts have seen fit for reasons I not quite but almost agree with to strike down laws pertaining to state campaign advertising that require all political commentary to include an attribution to the group paying for the ad. The courts made the determination that, in accord with the US Supreme Court, "political speech sometimes carries consequences which may not be intended" - and so anonymity is sometimes justified. Personally, I am of the considered opinion that if you lack the balls (see above) to stand behind what you said, it is purely and simply a lie, and you will never be proven truthful. Unfortunately, politicians (and please note that I do not assume all politicians to be crooks - just the vast majority) will often do whatever they can to defeat an opponent. And I expect locally that our upcoming Senate election will feature just such behavior. We have in one corner a long-time prosecutor for our most populous county facing off against a current house member and something of a question mark. Klobuchar, the DFL candidate, is already running advertisements. Kennedy, the Republican candidate, is still, so far, silent - though he's welcomed Karl Rove here a couple of times for fundraisers. It's going to be a loud and annoying fall. I can just tell.
[Link] The article mentions neither the town they were in nor the pizza joint - not even the make of car - but I think that an 81 year old man limber enough to be doing it in a car with a woman half his age should probably be given a pat on the back and a medal and left to finish. Good grief. As for the issues he's probably dealing with, I'm thinking the viagra prescription is the first place to start.
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Update At On other wholly unrelated (one hopes) topics, I suppose it helps if I move the "most recent" code link in my page to where the most recent post is - sorry about that. On home front news, we're gearing up for the oven-like heat again - upper nineties this weekend. Yes, I know, some of you fine folks are staring at temperatures that are spiking in the teens in the tripple-digit range, and for that I am truly sorry - however, we, here, do not have such a thing as a "dry" heat. We're looking at dewpoints in the upper sixties, approaching seventies. That would be equivalent to "edge of the rainforest" type heat. We've had dewpoints in the eighties - that's just nasty. For those of you unfamiliar with the use of dewpoints for a gauge of uncomfortable weather, it's useful for two things. First is that it indicates the lowest temperature you're likely to get. If you're lucky. Second, it indicates the amount of moisture in the air - the higher a dewpoint, the less likely you are to feel comfortable. High dewpoints get you things like rainforests, and jungle rot conditions, and the like. So I'm just thrilled that we'll be spending much of Saturday (when it's supposed to be 98 for a high) heading to St. Cloud to visit my parents - presently housed in two different nursing homes. How nice. C'est la vie, as the French would say. And then direct you to vie in the bottle.
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Update At 1830 With that news jarring about inside my skull, I'm then asked to perform something of a minor miracle - determine where some hundred and forty data fields will land in a database of over 40,000 fields. By, uh, well, Monday? Given the request, and the likelihood of success (somewhere between "hell, no" and "fuck, no"), I decided the next best thing was to achieve a certain amount of motivation. Rather than go upstairs, take my laptop and myself outdoors to work in the hundred-degree heat and 80-degree dewpoints (uh, no), I turned to the next best thing - music. I cranked the background speakers from low (winamp volume) / low (volume leveler volume) / low (Windows volume control) / low (external speaker volume) to about ten on each. While it's not Spinal-Tap-Levels (or even Van Halen levels, for that matter), it's enough to make things move forward. I'd apply my nose to the grindstone and my shoulder to the wheel, but in a horrible industrial accident last week I applied my nose to the wheel and my shoulder to the grindstone, and suffered an entire grindstone-and-wheel-machine in the lower posterior, leading to a recto-cranial inversion. Wasn't pretty, but industrial accidents never are. So I'll just get back to work.
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Update At 1145 Not again. I checked the laundry room where the furnace/Air Conditioner is located, and there was plenty of dampness on the floor. Note I do not say "water" because there was no standing water. It was just damp. I listened carefully at the furnace, and heard only a sort of a buzz - not a hum, but the sound like an electric motor unable to spin - but not trying too hard. I flipped the breakers on the breaker panel (nearly breaking my neck in Rhiannon's room to do so, so she'll be cleaning that today), went back, checked, and then tried turning on the breakers only for the furnace - the buzz was back. So I left the AC on, and the blower fan off, and went back to sleep. This morning, I opened up the furnace, and found water in it. Nowhere near the electrical circuits, mind you, but water and electricity doesn't mix well when you want to live. So I drilled a few very small holes in the plate separating the top unit (where there was some condensation) from the bottom blower area (where there was more water), and holes in the bottom unit (which sits up about two inches from the floor, about two feet from the floor drain) and then used paper towels and the hair dryer to dry out the inside of the furnace. I changed the filter (which was also wet) and tried turning the furnace back on. The blower perked up right away, and the temperature of the house started to drop. So while I'm nowhere near the "furnace repairman of the year" guy I wish I were (along with plumber and electrician - but those will come with time), I was able to avoid a repair call. Granted, this furnace (which appears to be original equipment) will probably need to be replaced in a year or three, but we'll have time to save for that. In the mean time, I'm on my way out to get a dehumidifier - to see if that helps with this problem.
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[Link] It's been one of those "free time topics" but I finally got it worked out today.
SELECT DISTINCT
syscolumns.id as TableID
, sysObjects.name as TableName
, syscolumns.colid as ColNum
, syscolumns.name as ColName
, systypes.name as ColType
, syscolumns.length as ColLen
, syscolumns.isnullable as ColNull
, syscolumns.[collation] as ColCollate
FROM
syscolumns
INNER JOIN systypes on syscolumns.xtype = systypes.xtype
INNER JOIN sysobjects ON syscolumns.id = sysobjects.id
ORDER BY sysobjects.name, syscolumns.colid
Now I can move forward with another project - documenting the database. Ye Gods. 800 tables, some of which have over 200 fields. Gulp. At least the fan is kicking on, and the dehumidifier seems to be helping...
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Update At 0815 Despite the addition of a dehumidifier, the furnace fan is not kicking on, and there is no cooling to be had in the house. Given that today is supposed to hit a hundred, I'm not at all looking forward to this. The Furnace God Repair Place has been called, and will be out to fix the thing - Tuesday. Ick. Just ick. Not much I can do other than that. I'm sure the repair bill will be in the $500 range, as per usual - and I'll make the usual "sell my soul" arrangements. Why is it when you build a budget and stick to it, things come up that screw it up badly? And, of course, whenever you get to a point where you think "ah, I've made it - in a month, things will be OK" some bad luck fairy comes along and shits in the middle of your budget. So it goes, I guess. Oh - no, I'm not going to explain dewpoint again - there's really very little point to it. We'll just say "stinking nasty" and move on.
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I presume we're all adults - or at least fairly mature beings - here. The opinions below are mine, wholly, and do not represent those of any organization, group, or other collective of other beings / people / things / whatchamacallits to which I belong. As such, you may then take your frustrations with those opinions out on me, and leave the rest of the world alone. If you do e-mail me, I freely reserve the right to publish your e-mail if I choose, ignore it at my peril, or, in certain cases of gross stupidity or clear evidence of serious colo-rectal inversion (that's head in your butt for those of you without bigger dictionaries), add you to my kill file. You have been warned. And Thank You for visiting.