Time Will Tell

The presidential debate is on. I watched it for 5 minutes. I saw a lot of squabbling between Trump and the moderator, Chris Wallace of Fox News. So I turned off the TV. I’m not watching it. If you don’t know who you want to vote for after our four years of Trump’s presidency, I don’t think 90 minutes of debate will help you.

Besides, Trump has already predicted the November election will be "the most corrupt election in the history of our country," while spreading false claims and inaccurate statements about widespread voter fraud. If Trump loses the election, I don’t think he plans to leave the White House. I don’t think he will concede the election. He has already said, when asked if he will leave if he loses, that he would have to “look at it.”

This is the first time in history that a U.S. president has said that if he loses an election he might remain in the White House. In previous discussions, Trump’s threat to remain in the White House has been countered with the argument that if he does refuse to leave, U.S. Marshalls will escort him from the White House. Really? The man who is commander-in-chief of the Army and the Marines is going to be escorted out of the White House by U.S. Marshalls? What’s wrong with that picture?

Time will tell, and it won’t be long.

Fortune and Fame

Some of us weren’t born to be stars, and that’s okay. We have our own constellation of talents, and maybe they don’t fit what the majority of the people want to see and hear, but they’re our unique talents, our unique abilities. They can be very important to some of us, even if fortune and fame do not follow.

Gregor Mendel performed experiments on over 10,000 pea plants, a science project that lasted eight years, and he discovered the Laws of Heredity. But their importance was not recognized in his lifetime. It wasn’t until after his death, when his Laws were rediscovered, that the importance of his work was recognized. The world has benefited from the work he started. The fact that he never saw the result of what he started does not lessen its value.

Would you rather have the fortune and fame of a rock star, or would you rather have antibiotics in the world? Alexander Fleming is not a rock star, but he did discover penicillin, a discovery that has saved countless lives.

Many of us don’t earn the fame of a rock star or the respect of a famous scientist, but we do things that are equally important. We raise and support our families, we protect our communities, we give up our time, energy, and money for others without expecting or asking for repayment. In some part of our mind, a voice tells us this is the right thing to do.

Even though most of us will not be fireworks in the night sky, we can be sparklers. We can let our own small light sparkle brightly. Do the thing you feel drawn to do. You don’t know who it will touch or how it will affect them. Be yourself and know that it made a difference that you were here.

Weight Game

As the years pass, my weight gets farther from where I want it to be. So I tabulated my calories on Saturday, curious to see why my weight is high. My total calories were 1505 and I wasn’t hungry when I went to bed. Here’s the breakdown:

	Calories	Protein (g)	Carb (g)	Fat (g)
Breakfast	330	8	22	24
Lunch	515	29	27	55
Dinner	330	21	50	5
Snack	330	16	27	17
Totals	1505	74	126	101

I know three of those meals look suspicious. Breakfast, Dinner, and Snack were each 330 calories, as if I just made up the numbers. But they really were 330 each. Lunch was where my calories blew up. I had a tuna salad sandwich for lunch (240 cal) but then I ate 2 cinnamon toasts (275 cal). And the reason the cinnamon toast calories were so high was the butter (140 cal).

Even so, 1505 calories for the day isn’t terribly high. But how many calories should I be consuming? I went to the UK’s National Health Service website, where they have an interactive BMI calculator. I filled in the form with my height, weight, age, sex, ethnic group, and activity level, and it told me the amount of daily calories I should have. It says I need to lose 1 – 2 pounds a week and to do that I need to reduce my calorie consumption to 1716 – 2206 per day.

In other words, in order to lose weight I need to eat more calories than I am currently eating.

See, I have a problem with that. I don’t think that eating more food will help me lose weight.

So we come to Sunday. I skipped breakfast. For lunch I ate a tuna salad sandwich and a 4 oz serving of pineapple. I haven’t drunk any liquids today. At 6PM I’m still at 201 on the scales. I’m not hungry. I’m now drinking my first mug of water. But then along comes dinnertime.

My freezer holds two “Hungry Man” dinners. One is Salisbury Steak (essentially 2 ground beef patties with some veggies) and the other is Country Fried Chicken (breaded chicken with veggies). Both come with dessert. They’re probably great tasting and good for physically active people. But the Salisbury dinner has 590 calories and the Chicken dinner has 530 calories. What was I thinking when I bought these dinners? I obviously wasn’t thinking.

So I heated the Salisbury dinner. It wasn’t bad at all: Salisbury steak with mashed potatoes and brown gravy plus green beans. And a chocolate brownie. Afterward, I took 2 slices of bread and spooned the remaining brown gravy onto them. On the way to midnight I got hungry and ate two bowls of raisin bran. Tasty. And at bedtime, I ate two tablespoons of peanut butter because—why not?

	Calories (g)	Protein (g)	Carb (g)	Fat (g)
Breakfast	0	0	0	0
Lunch	320	22	41	21
Dinner	710	21	46	33
Snack	530	17	78	21
Totals	1560	60	165	75

Sunday’s food consumption chart is a bit low on protein and high on carbs. Almost half the calories are from fat, which isn’t good. I told myself I will do better, knowing as I did that I was whistling in the wind. But on the upside, my calorie count for the day was still in the 1500s. Yay for me.

Maybe I need to be doing more of the dreaded E-word. (As if that’s going to happen.)

The 205 Factor

I have a bathroom scale which, despite its name, lives in my bedroom. It’s a digital scale that has no springs. Instead, it uses a strain gauge to measure weight placed on it. Over the long term, it will retain its accuracy better than spring scales. So they say.

Apparently I have a masochistic streak, because there are days when I stand on the scale and check my weight. Lately, it has been reading 205 every time I check it. But I haven’t gone to the grocery store recently, and I’ve been subsisting on odds and ends. The fridge is nearly empty except for a few condiments, but you can’t live on ketchup and mayonnaise. Or can you?

As a result of this diminishing food supply, I’ve been eating less and my weight has decreased. I got on the scale this morning and it read 201. I thought, “I need to pee, and I bet that will make it hit 200.” So I walked to the bathroom and took care of business. I walked back to the bedroom and stepped on the scale. The scale did not read 200 as I had hoped. It read 202. So much for strain gauges.

But I’m still on my un-diet. I skipped breakfast this morning, despite the almost irresistible temptation posed by the possibility of eating cold cereal. Then for a late lunch I ate a Power Bowls frozen entrée: Spicy Beef Teriyaki. I think Healthy Choice and I must have different definitions for the word “spicy.” It was a low-carb meal, but that isn’t why I bought it. Actually, I didn’t know it was low-carb at the time. But it turned out to have 170 calories. I quickly decided that for breakfast and lunch in one meal, I’m going to need a little more in the way of calories.

I turned to good old, reliable, cinnamon toast. It tastes great and it’s so easy to make. Get a couple slices of bread and spread butter on them, sprinkle with sugar, and then add cinnamon. It doesn’t take much sugar. A single sugar packet is enough for two slices. Pop the bread under the oven broiler. (A toaster oven is ideal for this.) Watch carefully because it will be ready quickly.

If you don’t agree that cinnamon toast is the best sweet thing to ever hit your taste buds, I will happily refund all the money you paid for this recipe.

Now I have to worry about dinner. My mainstays, hot dogs and hamburgers, are gone. My hotdog buns and hamburger buns have gone the way of cinnamon toast. Hmm. A quick review of the pantry shows that I have plenty of comestibles. I have fixings for a tuna salad sandwich, and I have Beanie Weenies, and I have flounder fillet in the freezer. Plus I have 3 more frozen entrees. And I have cold cereal, and oatmeal, and grits and butter. And Brunswick stew. And a few tins of sardines and herring fillets. And sausage biscuits. And a sausage, egg, and cheese croissant. And a loaf of bread. And a half jar of peanut butter. Real peanut butter—ingredients: peanuts and salt.

You know what I don’t have? Anything green. Can you guess from my diet that there is no woman in my life?

One final note about cinnamon toast. You don’t have to make it on sliced bread. Hamburger buns work well, too. But I suggest you stay away from hotdog buns. From an engineering standpoint, hotdog buns don’t have the correct form factor for good cinnamon buns. I prefer a well-engineered bun (round or square) because it has better structural integrity. (Cinnamon buns should not be not be confused with cinnamon rolls
<—
because we all know that cinnamon rolls are a whole other thing. And I want one right now.)

So at the end of the day, I checked my scale and it no longer reads 205. Yay!

Now it reads 206. Sigh.

Blogging With Videos

In my previous article I wrote about putting images into my blog. Now I want to go one step further and write about putting video into my blog. Many of my blog posts contain video. In fact, I have a sub-genre called Song of the Day, in which I post music videos. Posting videos is a bit more complicated than posting images, so I wrote a program to assist me with that. The program is called “SOTD Writer” (naturally) and it’s a time saver for generating the HTML for this kind of blog post.

(Note: If you try to play any of the Song of the Day videos, don’t be surprised if some of them have broken links or “video removed” or otherwise will not display. I used to fix these broken links, but they happen randomly and I long ago quit trying to keep up with them. My readers know how to use YouTube, and they know how to look for an artist or song, so go for it.)

These music videos are not hosted on my blog. Rather, they are hosted on YouTube and my blog only contains links to the YouTube videos. Despite the fact that the video may appear to be playing on my blog, it’s not really there. Your web browser is streaming it from YouTube. How cool is that! If you want to see it on YouTube, simply click the word YouTube in the video window.

So, what does this software—SOTD Writer—actually do? If you navigate my blog to the article posted on 12/31/2019, you will find a post that is titled “Home Free.” Your browser reads it and formats it for display. But what does that post really look like before your browser sees it? What did I have to write in order for you to see it in your browser? Let’s look under the hood, so to speak.

The last paragraph of that post displays in your browser thusly:

The song of the day is Auld Lang Syne performed by a cappella group Home Free. (A version sung by Lea Michelle can be found here.)

But that text is not what I wrote and uploaded to Blogger.

Here (below) is the actual text that I put into my blog in order to display that last paragraph as you see it in your browser:

In order to show you that bit of markup, I had to create an image of it and then put the image into this article. Otherwise, your browser would simply have interpreted it and displayed it just as you see it on my blog. That actual text is what I have to write and upload to Blogger so that your browser can display the text and links as you see them. Now you know why I took the time to create my “SOTD Writer” software. I still have to enter the data into the software but when I click on “Generate” it generates the correct HTML. Then I click “Copy” and it’s on my clipboard. Then I paste it into my blog article’s HTML source.

Now I have 1,513 posts and some of them are good—and that is a totally unbiased opinion. Notice I said “some.” I’m a realist.

Blogging With Pictures

One of my readers commented, “I love the embedded pictures — how do you do that?”

That’s a good question. I like to embed pictures when I can. It gives the blog more visual appeal and sometimes clarifies what I’m talking about.

I started blogging using a blogging tool called Windows Live Writer, but then Microsoft dropped support for it. When Blogger upgraded their authentication protocol from OAuth 1.0 to OAuth 2.0, Windows Live Writer was not similarly upgraded and it would no longer connect with Blogger. Windows Live Writer was sunk!

At that point I switched from Blogger to Wordpress, but I had so many articles on Blogger that I wanted to continue using that platform for my blog posts. One day I discovered an open-source blogging tool called Open Live Writer, and it was based on Windows Live Writer. I began using it to post articles to Blogger, and it worked well—for a while. Then Blogger (or more likely Google, which owns Blogger) changed their method of posting pictures to Blogger. After that, when I tried to publish a blog post with images, nothing happened. From my end, it appeared to publish with no problems. But in reality, it did nothing. Nada. Disappointingly, the people that created Open Live Writer did not release a new version to deal with this issue.

I was dismayed by this development. I could always use Blogger’s default interface, but I like using Open Live Writer. Why? Mainly because when I am writing an article on Open Live Writer, I can see what it will look like as I write it. I see the correct font, font size, colors, page width, etc., whereas with Blogger’s interface I have to “preview” the page in order to see how it will look. I prefer to see a “live” preview as I create the page, so that I can properly position elements on the page as I create them.

But I had just two options. I could quit using Open Live Writer and use Blogger’s interface. Or I could continue using Open Live Writer but without using pictures. I didn’t like either option, but I decided to continue using Open Live Writer.

But the problem of getting pictures to my blog remained. I solved that with a work-around. I go to Blogger’s interface and create a new, unnamed blog post, and I upload an image to it. Then I copy the image URL. At that point I can delete the temporary post and return to Open Live Writer. Using Open Live Writer, I insert an image “from the web” rather than “from my computer” and I paste in the URL I just obtained from Blogger. The image appears in my blog post. I can then resize it, reposition it, adjust the margins of the picture, and so on. When I publish the article, it has the picture or pictures embedded exactly where I want them to be and looking like I want them to look—more or less. The world isn’t perfect.

And that is how I put pictures into my blog. It’s simple—and quicker to do than to explain!

Sleep Banking

I don’t know why, but of late I have taken to walking in my sleep and doing things around the house in my sleep. Usually I know this only after I awaken and find new bruises and cuts on my body. Sometimes I awaken to find blood on my sheets and t-shirt. What happened during the night? I don’t know. I have no memory of it.

I’ve done things as complicated as changing the time on all my clocks, as documented in this blog post: Losing My Mind. But a few days ago, I did something even scarier. I logged into my bank’s bill pay service and I paid a bill. Then I went back to bed. I remembered none of it.

However, a day or two later I discovered the payment. The problem is, I didn’t pay the correct payee—the company to which I owed money. I had sent a payment for 350 gallons of heating oil to my Internet provider. I now have a credit at my ISP and my Internet is fully paid for the next eight months. I would never have done that had I been fully conscious. I think I did okay, considering I was asleep. After all, I did manage to login to my bank and navigate to the bill pay web page while asleep, and I did send a payment, even if it was to the wrong company.

But I’m a little concerned about what I might do next while I’m asleep. So I thought about what preventive measures I might take. I even considered handcuffing myself to my bed before I go to sleep, but if I do that, I would probably simply awaken the next morning to find the headboard in the shower with me. That would not be good. Plus, I have no handcuffs anyway. I’ll just have to muddle on and see what happens.

Mind Power

The last time I was at the grocery store, I bought a box of Jimmy Dean sausage, egg, and cheese croissants. I recall thinking, as I grabbed the box out of the store’s freezer, “Too bad they don’t sell these without cheese. I’d really prefer a sausage and egg croissant. No cheese.”

This morning I opened the box and removed a croissant from the box. I placed the croissant inside the microwave oven for heating. Then I removed the top bun in order to sprinkle salt and pepper on the egg, and that’s when I noticed there was no cheese. Wow, the folks at Jimmy Dean have read my mind. That’s impressive!

I pulled the box out of the fridge again and examined the remaining croissants. Each croissant was sealed in a plastic wrapper, but I could easily see that each croissant was equipped with a slice of cheese.

I think what happened was that the intensity of my mind as I wished for a croissant without cheese, actually warped reality and gave me a croissant without cheese. It’s called mind power. Don’t laugh yet.

Mind power is something I’ve studied. I started many years ago when I bought a book called Secrets of Mind Power by Harry Lorayne.

This article in Wikipedia describes Harry Lorayne as a magician and a memory-training specialist and writer who was called "The Yoda of Memory Training" and "The World's Foremost Memory-Training Specialist" by Time magazine. At this date, Lorayne is still alive and is 94 years old.

Keep in mind that I read this book many years ago. I’ve forgotten most of its secrets. But I’ll tell you a story that might explain by example just how effective these secrets can be.

At the time I was reading the book, my mother was working at the business office of a local utility company. The company was planning a contest for its employees. Each employee was asked to memorize a list of 25 reasons for using natural gas for home heating. The next day, each employee would be asked to jot down those 25 reasons from memory. The employee who was able to remember the most reasons for natural gas heat would win a small prize.

My mother wanted to win the prize, but her memory was no better than the average person’s memory. Did she have a chance, she wondered. I had just finished reading Lorayne’s book. So I told her, “Come with me,” and we walked to the “den”—a small room on the end of the house. We sat down and I taught her some of the memory techniques I learned from the book. We reviewed the 25 reasons for using natural gas and I gave her a memory tip for each reason. The next day, the office held its contest and my mother won. She remembered 24 of the 25 reasons. She was so proud!

I said Lorayne’s book was where it started for me. You can’t change the contents of a croissant by reading a book. But the frozen croissant offers an example of what might happen if you follow that path. Mind power is hard to control. You must be heedful that it’s there and be careful what you wish for. A simple, transient thought might change your reality.

Now you may feel free to laugh or scoff. But if you do, I’ll know about it. That’s right—I will know. I will know! Bwa-hahahaha!

Uh, sorry. Sometimes that mind power goes to my head.

Late Night

I called my bank’s Customer Service number tonight. A robotic voice asked me a some questions, as one would expect. What is my social, what is my account number, etc. It tried to help me but, alas, my question was over its robotic head. So it told me it was going to connect me with a human who could help me. Then I got a new robotic voice. This, apparently, was the “real” Customer Service. It said Customer Service was closed and I should call back during the next business day. Sigh.

Then I decided I wanted to eat some turnip greens. Not that I particularly like turnip greens, but I was out of salad and I wanted some kind of greens to go with my supper of microwaved chicken nuggets with Buffalo sauce. The can of greens boasted a pull-ring to open the lid. I pulled the pull-ring and it broke off the can. Of course, because bad designs break.

I tried to open the can with a can-opener but the can had a strange lid design (probably to allow stacking) and the can-opener would not open it. So I held a screwdriver at the point on the lid that the pull-ring should have pierced, and I whacked the handle of the screwdriver with my other hand. Presto, I knocked the lid off the can. Next, I took a serving of greens out of the can, heated them in the microwave oven, dosed the greens with a shot of balsamic vinegar of Modena, and voilà: turnip greens that are fit to eat. I followed up the nuggets and turnip greens with a cinnamon hotdog bun. It’s just like cinnamon toast, except you use a … wait, do I really need to explain this? I think not.

This is my third article today, but I’ll wait until after midnight to post it. That will make it tomorrow’s article. At least, it will in some parts of the world, depending on which time zone you live in. For the rest of you, I will be publishing it yesterday, because tomorrow is today where I live.

Home Cooking

The outside temperature last night dipped to about 45°F. I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t know the temperature in the house, but it was too cool. I was determined not to turn on the central heat so early in the heating season, so I put a small electric heater in my bedroom and closed the door. Periodically, I looked at my clock. The last time I looked it read 5 AM.

I skipped breakfast and decided to eat a hamburger for lunch. I warmed a pre-cooked Ball Park hamburger patty in the microwave oven (60 seconds). Then I warmed a slice of pre-cooked Food Lion bacon (22 seconds). I put mayo and a little ketchup on the bun. I placed the patty on the bun, a little salt, then the bacon and a slice of onion, and finally the top half of the bun. I nuked the assembled burger for 15 seconds to warm and soften the bun. Then I ate it. Best burger ever. It was the bacon that put the burger over the top.

<—This is the goodness that put the burger over the top. Everything tastes better with bacon on it. Oh you vegetarians, you think you’ll live longer and healthier lives than us carnivores. But even if you do, they’ll be wretched, miserable lives without the goodness of bacon. Bacon rules!

You can ruin a good hamburger by putting too many extras on it. Lettuce, tomato, onion, cheese, pickles—where does it end? Your taste buds will be very confused. I can hear them screaming, “What the hell is all this?” Suppose you had a plate of French fries. Would you drench them with mayo, ketchup, melted cheese, pickle slices, and other assorted glop? No. Then why do it to a hamburger? There is a lot to be said for simplicity.

I finished the meal with a small salad. It’s Poppyseed, made by Fresh Express. Lest you think that everything I eat is made by some anonymous company in China, I want to inform you that I added the croutons. That’s right: me, personally. That was my idea. The cabbage, lettuce, carrots, green onions, Greek Yogurt Poppyseed dressing, dried cranberries, and pumpkin seeds came in the bag, but the croutons were entirely my doing. And people say I don’t cook meals.

Here is what the salad kit looks like. —>
There’s enough salad in the kit for three servings, if you don’t hog out. And it’s very tasty. The Poppyseed dressing is sweet. The salad above looks like a small amount of salad for a serving, but the bowl measures 8.5 inches (21.6 cm) across the top, so it’s more salad than it appears to be. A single crouton measures 1 inch per side (2.54 cm). (I’m an engineer; I measured it.)

I bought all these ingredients at Food Lion. You may have noticed I seem to buy a lot of food items at Food Lion. I’ve been grocery shopping at Food Lion and Publix ever since the “potato incident” at Walmart, which used to be my go-to grocery store. If you’ve forgotten or never read about the potato incident, you can find the whole sordid story here. -–> Walmart Fail.

1:44 AM

It’s 1:44AM and the Internet is down. Damn you, Comcast! Damn you to Hell, you damn dirty corporate entity!

It’s 1:46AM and the Internet is up again. Nice going, Comcast! I knew there was a reason I do business with you.

Remember that scene in Planet of the Apes in which the apes are chasing Charlton Heston with rolling pins? O-r-r-r…possibly they were clubs, now that I think about it. Either way, it was funny. I mean, Planet of the Apes was a comedy, wasn’t it? It had talking monkeys—ok, apes—and…oh, I was just informed it was a drama. (But a comedy-drama, right?)

Actually, Comcast has been quite reliable lately. But there was a time when there were sufficient outages to induce me to create a little program that will inform me when the Internet is UP (as opposed to DOWN). It gives me one of two messages.

or the very unwelcome…

When the Internet goes down, I run my Internet status program and it puts a window on the screen that shows the status is DOWN. When the Internet comes back, the status display changes to UP and that is accompanied by a loud, 3-second sound of a bell. B-a-w-n-n-n-n-g-g-g-g

And I go “Yay, the Internet is back!” and I walk to my PC and I sit down and close the Internet Status app and get back to what I was doing. Happiness reigns once again at VERBAGE.

The Shrubbery Botheration

I was going to trim back the shrubs around my house this week, and last week, and the week before, but I made clever use of one excuse after another. It’s too hot. It’s too cold. It’s too sunny. It’s too rainy. I have to go to the grocery store. I have to mow the yard. I have to visit a friend. I have to pick up my medicines at the pharmacy. I have to take a nap. I have to do my laundry. I have to clean the bathtub. I have to chat with a friend on Skype. I have to chat with a friend on Zoom. I have to chat with a friend on WhatsApp. I have to write a post for my blog.

Now it’s 11 PM, and the shrubs are silently growing ever larger. I can’t trim them tomorrow because the forecast is for showers. I can’t trim them the day after tomorrow because the forecast is for showers. I could probably trim them this weekend; the forecast is for partly sunny. But my electric hedge trimmer runs on AC and it requires a very long heavy-duty extension cord which is a pain in the ass. The cord inevitably gets cut into two pieces and then I have to stop and splice it back together. Or it gets nicked and one of the wires gets cut but other two wires are intact so the cord doesn’t come apart. If I’m lucky, the safety ground wire gets cut and the trimmer keeps running. That has happened. Though now that I ponder it, I’m not sure if that is good luck or bad luck.

And if I buy a battery-powered hedge trimmer, which is what I want, what voltage should I get? 20-volt? 24-Volt? 40-volt? 60-volt? 80-Volt? I have a couple of Kobalt cordless tools and they have 40-volt lithium batteries. A 40-volt lithium battery alone costs $99. How much does an 80-volt lithium battery cost? Doesn’t matter; an 80-volt battery is overkill. The choice is between 20-volt and 40-volt.

Lowe’s has 54 different hedge trimmers, and Home Depot has 170 different hedge trimmers. By the time I review all these trimmers and make a decision, spring will probably be here. Oh wait, I have a solution! I’ll sell this house and buy a house without shrubs. Voila! The solution was staring me in the face all along.

Covid-19 Update

The anniversary of 9/11 has just passed. And Donald Trump says the US is “rounding the corner” of the coronavirus pandemic. So I went to the Johns Hopkins University Covid-19 data and examined the data for cumulative Covid-19 cases in the US. Through 9/11/2020, the chart for cumulative cases looks like this:

Hmm. Trump says we’re “rounding the corner” and he can’t be wrong, because he’s the president, and the president wouldn’t lie to us. Right? But whatever he sees in the data is, in my opinion, just a whisper of rounding the corner. In late April and early May, it looked like we were rounding the corner, but then we let our guard down and the curve bent sharply upward. That can happen again, especially as flu season approaches and some people will be getting Covid-19 and influenza at the same time.

Here’s another chart:  cumulative deaths. There’s no “rounding the corner” yet when it comes to dying. When this chart begins bending downward, I might agree that we’re rounding the corner. We won’t be out of the danger zone—we’ll still be on thin ice—but we’ll be “rounding the corner” as long as we don’t let down our guard too soon.

 

Even more worrisome: Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, agrees with me (though he doesn’t know it).

Let’s look at this whole thing from another perspective. We’re all just dandelions standing in the fading daylight. All it will take is one gusty autumn breeze and a lot of us will be gone. One day that wind will come. My clock is ticking and so is yours. Let’s make the most of the time that’s left to us, but let’s also make sure we don’t hurt anyone else while we’re doing it.

(Wow, that’s a lot of metaphors.)

A Visit To KSC

I was a young engineer working in North Carolina and my boss asked me to fly down to Kennedy Space Center, then go to our company’s Launch Center (I don’t remember its official name but Launch Center sounds good), and assemble some test equipment that was shipped to them in pieces. Okay, boss, I’ll visit the Travel Department and get a plane ticket and some cash and I’ll be on my way.

The company I worked for had a division called Defense Activities, and one of its jobs was to manufacture missile guidance equipment. We also operated the ground equipment at Kennedy that guided the missile into orbit. I worked in the department that was responsible for the design of the guidance system. The site in Florida was run by a different department but they used the guidance systems that we built, and they had additional equipment like radar and ground-based guidance equipment.

When I arrived, one of their engineers gave me a tour of Kennedy. I got to stand beside a Saturn 5 moon rocket’s first stage (it was lying horizontal on the ground). I got to see the “crawler” that transported the Saturn 5 rocket to the launch site at 1 mph. I got to see a Redstone rocket like the one that lofted the first American into sub-orbital spaceflight in 1961. The escape rocket on the Apollo capsule was more powerful than the Redstone, I was told. (More thrust, but I’m sure the duration of that thrust was much shorter than that of the Redstone.)

I got a little tour of our company facility. I saw the 150 kilowatt diesel generator that supplied backup power in the event that electric power went off during a launch. And finally, I got my first look at the equipment that I had come to assemble, test, and debug if necessary.

I set up the equipment and cabled it all together. I powered it up and ran through some tests. It worked, except for one problem. There was a relay inside one of the units and its spring had weakened with age. The relay wouldn’t operate when it was supposed to—the spring was just too weak. What to do, what to do? I needed to get this thing working long enough to show them it works. Then I could go home.

I had an inspiration. I got a paper clip and sprung it apart, then squeezed it and inserted it into the spring inside the relay. When I let it go, the paper clip returned to its sprung position and boosted the relay spring enough to close the relay. The equipment worked.

“Okay guys, I’ve connected all the units and it’s working” I announced. My job was done and I left Kennedy and flew back to North Carolina. I never knew if they used the equipment, nor did I learn for how long that paper clip continued to work. But I never heard any complaints from the guys at Kennedy.

Breakfast

On Sunday, I published an article in which, among other topics, I mentioned my breakfast: 3 eggs, 3 pork sausage links, and grits with butter. The main comment I received was, “You ate three eggs? Seriously?”

What is wrong with eating three eggs? I don’t do it every day, but I’m sure some people do. People used to avoid eggs because they are high in cholesterol. But it turned out that eating cholesterol doesn’t have much effect on your body’s cholesterol level. Eating saturated fat is what drives up your cholesterol numbers.

One day I went into a diner and sat at the bar. I was going to order breakfast, and a man sitting two seats from me ordered first. He ordered a dozen fried eggs and a dozen slices of bacon. The waitress, who apparently knew him, asked him, “You aren’t hungry today?” And the man said, “No, I just ate a large pizza.” And indeed, they served him the eggs on two plates and a heaping pile of bacon on another. And in case you’re wondering: no, he wasn’t fat.

Breakfast is supposed to be the main meal of the day. There’s an old adage that says, “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” There’s another adage, “Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.” And one of my favorite writers, Robert Heinlein, said, “One should not attend even the end of the world without a good breakfast.”

Anyhow, I was frying my eggs in my ceramic frying pan. The pan’s ceramic nonstick coating is white. Suddenly a black spot appeared in the pan. I looked closely and saw a tiny black bug had landed on a drop of molten butter. I could see it’s legs moving as it tried to crawl or swim around. After a number of seconds, it ceased moving, and I wiped it out with a bit of paper towel. I am sure that bug was greatly surprised to land in tasty, but deadly hot, butter—assuming tiny bugs are capable of surprise. I don’t know how many neurons are required to feel emotion, but it’s likely to be more than the couple hundred neurons in that tiny bug.

I had eggs and sausage again this morning, and I plan on having it again tomorrow. When I run out of eggs and sausage, I’ll fall back to raisin bran cereal with almond milk for a while. Now there’s a meal where people should ask the question, “Cereal with almond milk? Seriously?”

Marriage

A new report finds that 20 percent of U.S. adults over 25 have never been married. That number is higher now than it has ever been. About 90 percent of people marry by age 50, but then 50 percent of those marriages end in divorce. The divorce rate for subsequent marriages is even higher. The percentage of Americans over the age of 18 who are single is 45 percent. These Americans are generally healthier than their married counterparts.

Even so, the divorce rate should be higher than it is. Many married couples struggle in their marriage long after the marriage is dead. They never talk to each other and they may sleep in separate bedrooms. Often their only reason for staying together is “for the kids.” Meanwhile, the kids are miserable living in an unhappy home. Even worse than living in a home where the parents don’t talk to one another is living in a home where the parents quarrel constantly. They are not doing their kids a favor by staying together.

When I lived in Roanoke in southwest Virginia, I had a friend who had a married uncle living in Roanoke. The man’s wife lived near Washington, DC. They had found a way to make their marriage work. On a weekend, the man might drive to Washington to spend two days with his wife. The rest of the week the couple were apart, which limited their ability to quarrel. On a weekend when they got together, it was probably more like “friends with benefits” than a marriage.

I think the ideal house for a married couple is a duplex with a common room. The man lives in one half of the duplex, the woman lives in the other half. Sometimes they’ll meet in the common room for talking or sleeping or intimacy. But for most of the day, they don’t have to put up with bumping into one another. If the couple has children, that might complicate matters but I’m confident that intelligent people can work out a compromise.

And for those readers who live in happy marriages, I would advise you to count your blessings, because I’m sure you’re in a minority.

Sunday Morning Report

After a month of high temperatures in the 90s with the heat index above 100°, it was nice to have a high of 80°F yesterday. And the temperature this morning was … well, let’s allow the National Weather Service to speak for themselves:

Of course, the temperature will climb during the day but, according to the NWS, it’s only going to get to 83°F.

Even the little icon for the today’s weather looks inviting. In fact, the rest of the week is going to be in the mid-80s. Labor Day (tomorrow) is supposed to be nice with a few clouds. Then Tuesday through at least Thursday we will have a chance for showers and thunderstorms. We can’t have too many sunny days. This is central Virginia, not southern California. I’ve thought about moving to LA a few times in my younger years, but that whole San Andreas fault thing is kind of a put-off. They call the coming quake “the Big One” for a reason and it’s gonna be huge. But really, I never made the move because in Virginia I had a job I loved, friendships I enjoyed, bars where I liked to hang out and where I knew all the bartenders and the wait staff and the regulars, and they all knew me. No, I wasn’t an alcoholic; I mostly drank iced tea or coffee, but sometimes a couple of tall ones would make everything better.

Maybe I’ll trim some shrubs today. But now, at 8:18 on a Sunday morning, I’m going to fix something to eat. Three eggs, scrambled, three pork sausage links, and grits with butter and salt. That should hold me until noon. Blogging takes a lot of energy. You wouldn’t think blogging would be so energy intensive, but when things don’t go right I have to jump out of my chair and run around the room screaming and pulling my hair out. Then I calmly sit down and continue. My blogging tool is so old it no longer allows me to insert images into my blog. So you might ask, how did these images get into my blog? I use subterfuge and trickery. Honest.

By the way, this is article number 1501 for this blog. One thousand, five hundred and one articles, written and published. Damn, no wonder I’m tired.

Saturday Report

Nothing unusual to report. No sleepwalking last night, I think. But the thing about sleepwalking is, unless you hurt yourself or break something, you don’t know if you’ve been sleepwalking. Last night the bedroom was warm enough that I didn’t need a top sheet. I kicked it off the bed and turned off the lamp. I awoke in darkness some hours later and realized that I had a top sheet covering me. Apparently, I got up while I was asleep and grabbed the top sheet and spread it over the bed. I have no memory of doing that.

I used the string trimmer yesterday afternoon, until it quit working. At first it was working great, then it wasn’t working so well, so I let go of the trigger and looked at the trimmer head. There was only one string and there should have been two. I pulled the hub off and removed the spool. One half of monofilament was good, but the other half had gotten kinked up. I had to spend at least 30 minutes stripping off the remaining monofilament and rewinding it and getting it just so, so that the string would fit through the holes in the hub and it’s a pain in the butt to do that. The one thing I hate about string trimmers is when the string doesn’t unwind off the internal spool properly, you know you’re in for a 30-minute session of frustration. If I had a time machine I would go back in time and find the guy who invented it and I would tell him, “Nuh-uh. That isn’t going to work worth a damn. Start over.”

I mowed the yard this morning and then did some more weed-eating. In the afternoon as the day was cooling down, I went out and finished the weed-eating. The yard is now good to go—for a few days. Next yard job: trimming back the shrubs. That’s a killer job. Usually I pay a guy to do the shrubs, but every year his price goes up. The last time he trimmed the shrubs, he charged $125 for a 90 minute job with power tools. That’s $83 an hour. He’s a yard guy, not a psychiatrist. I’m thinking about doing it myself, as I used to do when I was a bit younger. Maybe tackle one or two shrubs one day, one or two the next day, and so on.

In 90 minutes it will be Sunday, the day before Labor Day. I think I spent about 6 hours this evening on a video chat with a friend in Central America. I ate supper hours ago—if you can call a hotdog supper. Now I’m hungry again. I would like to eat actual food, but I’m pretty certain I don’t have actual food in the kitchen. I have faux food, the kinds that come in little cans and you know it’s bad for you because it’s mostly saturated fat.

I guess I could eat a PBJ sandwich. I dunno. I’ll hit the Publish button and brush my teeth and go to bed and see what happens. I might get up during the night and go to my fridge and eat raw eggs. Sleepwalkers have been known to do that—and worse. Goodnight, all.

The Jeep

Yesterday morning I was up early and I just happened to remember that I didn’t get my car inspected this summer. It was due in July, but now it’s September, so I thought, “Better drive to Tuffy and get an inspection.” So at 9AM I did that.

My 25 year old Jeep Grand Cherokee passed with flying colors, and the man who inspected it told me he liked my Jeep. I told him I did too, which is why I’ve owned it for 22 years, and it’s why I plan to own it until I’m dead, and then I’m going to be buried in it.

My Jeep has a 5.2 liter V-8 220 hp engine, which isn’t overly powerful, but it scoots across a highway in first gear. And it’s full time 4WD, so if it’s raining and the road is wet, no problem. I’m trying to cross a busy highway, and when I see a momentary gap in traffic, I can stomp the accelerator pedal and the Jeep just goes. The wheels don’t slip, the vehicle doesn’t hesitate, all four wheels grab the pavement and it jumps across the highway. I love it.

I baby it now because, after all, it’s an old Jeep. It has an old driver, so we’re a perfect match. But I know that when I need it, the Jeep’s engine and 4-speed transmission are there for me. From a standing start, it will roar off to a 2nd gear speed in a couple of seconds. I would never race it; it’s not built for that. It’s built to get you where you where you want to go. The V-8 engine guzzles gas, but these days I don’t put a lot of miles on it, so that’s not a problem. Sometimes in heavy traffic, I will put my life in danger and I depend on the Jeep’s power and 4WD to save my life. It has never failed me.

Why would I get rid of it? That would be like dissing an old friend for being old, when you yourself are old. Makes no sense at all. In my head I know it’s just machinery, but it feels like a living thing that always does my bidding. All it needs is food (gasoline) and water and a little TLC and it’s happy. And if it’s happy, then I’m happy.

New Locator Idea

I was talking with a friend in Texas about this Covid19 tracking app situation, and I had a great idea. It’s an app for getting laid. If you’re a man, you fill in your physical characteristics and what you’re looking for in a woman. If you’re a woman, you fill in your physical characteristics and what you’re looking for in a man.

Physical characteristics would be age, height, weight, skin color, hair color, eye color—you get the idea. When two people pass each other, the phones swap information by Bluetooth and if there’s a match the phones alert you. There could even be a swap of photos and phone numbers or email addresses. The advantage here is you wouldn’t have to guess if the other person is available and willing; your phones will tell you.

It would be a lot more useful and fun than a swap of Covid19 information. Think of the joy it would bring to millions of people. My brain is constantly working on ways to improve the human condition, and I think this sex partner locator app will be a winner. I might have to learn to write code for phones if no one else runs with this idea. Assuming, of course, that I can get it past those prudes guarding the app stores.