This Is My Tangent - Electric Companies, PCs and Basil

Good Morning,

I'm beginning to rue the day that I was attuned to the necessity of electricity. Over the number of years that I have lived in this house, I believe that there is some sort of conspiracy, one that includes a series of concentric red circles with the number 4216 emblazoned at the middle. It is a devious plot by our electric company to sway power, sorry about the pun, over me. Concurrently over the last two days there has been power spikes, or surges, or interruptions, call them what you will, that have zapped my house, all my appliances and electronic equipment. Yes and including my PC.

Over the last number of years I have lost four PCs because of the strikes. And I have the latest, supposedly, and greatest, supposedly, of all protections. (I can't think of any polite expletive at this point that may convey my frustration... so please bear with me.) And now I have to take my PC in to the PC repair shoppe on Monday morning to determine the damage. Praise be that everything is backed up. And I do have my Notebook. The spikes just never seem to faze the Notebook... (I wonder if there is a message there someplace.) And I can't believe that I pay for the privilege of electric power... Some bloody privilege!

I know I have to pay for the product... otherwise I could move to a log cabin somewhere in some hinterland and then I would be chopping wood on a regular basis. But I do NOT appreciate having to listen to and be forwarded through by 12 automated answering idiot-bots to be told to please call back during working business hours. The sexless sounding automated voice then instructed me to, by my choice of either voice or keypad, to report my problem. And of course my problem was not one of the choices... I have always hated multiple choice tests. And so I said "Yes"... to what I do not know... but that I had had an outage. Half-an-hour later a real human called me and she told me that there had been a power outage in my neighborhood. No shit! She was astounded that I asked where, when, and why? I told her that I needed the info for the surge insurance company. She was a bit shocked. (Sorry, pun.) The astounding thing is that it was her company that sold me the serge protection insurance.

My issue with my Notebook is that the arrows, the Page Up and the Page Down and the Delete keys are too, too near the Enter key. The little finger on my right hand is always accidently hitting, touching one of the neighboring keys, which of course, throws my typing in all directions. I just need to complain.

I was out this morning checking the farm with Mr. Green Jeans. Zucchini and tomato plants seem to be doing okay. There are a number of eggplants from the last planting that need to be harvested. (Boy do I sound like a farmer.) Two of the new pepper plants and some of the cilantro have wilted in the unseasonable heat. The culantro, brussel sprouts, and cauliflower appear to have found a firm grounding, and I hope the papaya tree likes the location where I planted it. The new basil, I forget the type, is doing fine, and the other basils, planted before, are still flourishing. Maybe we won't be eating a $500.00 tomato this season.

I was invited to give a talk yesterday at a mini-conference in Lutz about working on foreign documents without having to speak the actual language. It seemed to have been received well by the attendees. Feedback was good.

Well that's all for this morning, and maybe today. Gonna spend some time playing the piano. My audience this morning - six soundly snoring quadrupeds.

Jim

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This Is My Tangent - Nothing About Genealogy...

Hallowe'en is NOT a month long holiday. Period! What insipid minute brain thought up the idea? The idea that we need to extend a single day of the year into a complete month so that parents can teach children to beg, while dressed in costly costumed rags? Hallowe'en is NOT a holiday.

What lame-brain fool feels that there is a need to decorate the exterior of a house or apartment with orange or black-purple lights? For a whole damn month... All Hallows' Eve is the evening before All Hallows' Day or All Saints' Day. Period! It is NOT a bloody month!

And here's a tremendous stat... Forecasted spending on Halloween costumes in the United States in 2006 was expected to top $4.96 billion. Huh? And now we've got cash for clunkers and cash for rickety appliances. Bah, humbug starts now. Who knows what we will spend on candy and dentist bills? Just cancel Halloween! Period!!!

This year on October 31st I'm not giving out candy. Instead I'm giving out all the coupons I can collect and clip from newspapers and magazines. It's my new cash for cavities program. It's my new health care or funding for medical and insurance bills program. It will cover your costs when your child trips down the stairs because a mask obstructed his or her line of vision. Period!

Enjoy,

Jim

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This Is My Tangent - Nothing about Genealogy or Quilts or Cooking...

This morning it's nothing about genealogy or quilts or cooking. It's about me.

My ingenuity sometimes amazes me!

This early morning, at the ungodly hour of 4:30 I was immediately awaken by the sound of what I thought was distant barking. And no other creature in the house stirred. As I arose I did a head check. All four dogs, Tobi, Taylor, Bella, and Tinker were on the bed sound asleep... (Yeah, that's right, all four sleep in the bed.) Going through my head was "No, I do not... No I can not take in another dog! Period!" But then I heard it again. It really sounded like a dog barking, muffled in the distance, or is some bag somewhere. Well, I started to turn on all the lights. All the lights in the house. All the lights on the outside. I went to the garage. I checked the backyard, the patio, the front and back room closets. I couldn't find the source of the barking.

In my search I was waiting for the the flashing of the red rescue lights, just like I've seen so many other times in the years that I've lived in this house. My mind then formulated the possibility that there may be someone calling at the front door... and that has happened a number of times before, as in the case of the neighbor who set her house on fire when she was frying chicken and she came a-running to me and my house screaming "Jim, Jim, Jim, help me! My house! My baby! My chicken!" And I couldn't find anything. I couldn't find the source of the sound, the source of the muffled barking.

And then it hit me. The cause of the barking had to me. No, I do not bark in my sleep! I wasn't dreaming. I was awake when I heard it the third time. Everyone was awake. I remembered that I had had a great idea, that never worked. Obviously... sort of.

I had changed the alarm on my HP iPaq, my mobile PC phone with the hopeful intention that once if it sounded I could guarantee that I would get up. I had changed the alarm sound to the sound of a dog barking, one of my dogs barking. My idea was that the sound of a dog barking would wake the dogs, they would bark, hence I would get up. No problem! Only problem was that this early morning, none of the dogs reacted... neither did they even utter one responding bark. Just me... I got up. The alarm worked, sort of. The only issue is that I hadn't set it to go off this morning. I hadn't set the alarm to go off but for four months ago. So my question is, Who or what set off my barking alarm?

Yup, my brilliance sometimes even amazes me. It has to, cause it certainly doesn't even move the dogs.

Enjoy.

Jim

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