So, seems we dropped a boatload of Tomahawk missiles on Libya over the weekend. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 100. At something like $569,000 each (in 1999 Fiscal Year dollars), that’s a lot of money. Fortunately, we have a lot of money to throw around these days, and even if we didn’t I’m sure there are plenty of multimillionaires who would be happy to chip in a few bucks more in taxes to pay for such a noble cause.

On the news, they’re talking about “taking out” radar sites, tanks, and communications centers. No mention about the humans sitting in the tanks, tracking the radar, and manning the communications centers. Humans with wives, kids, parents…. But they’re bad humans, so they don’t really count. Not nearly as much as 15 people taking a bus home from a casino, that’s for sure.

Beautiful day yesterday. Not real warm, but sunny. And I managed to get some stuff done outside, though it’s still a little sloppy out there to do a whole lot. And boy, is there a lot to do. Of course, the weather turned to shit last night, and the forecast is for it to turn even shittier today, before things get better this afternoon and tomorrow, before turning to shit again for the rest of the week. Good thing I have to go to work.

Except, I don’t really have to go to work. Instead, I get to go to three days of training, which is way better than work and may turn out to be that most rare of work-related things: both interesting and useful. Either way, it beats working.

Congratulations to my old high school on its fourth NY State hoops championship in a row. I only wish a some other teams around here would play as well. Next up, the “federation” tournament, which is when they let the Catholic (aka, NY City) schools play. That one’s a bit more difficult.

Well, I think I just heard the coffee beeping to tell me its ready, so I guess I better go get some more. It doesn’t like to be kept waiting. Have you ever seen these “instant energy” commercials for some crap that’s basically a shot of caffeine in a little bottle? They talk about coffee being such a “hassle.”

Hassle? Hell, it’s the best part of my day.

Ho ’bout that moon? Super, eh?

The good news is that we piped the discharge of the sump pump that runs all the time out a basement window and a good 50 or so feet away from the house. The bad news is that the extra pipe and lift made it even more obvious that the check valve is a piece-o-shit. So, now it’s running a lot more frequently, ‘cuz it goes uphill as it leaves the basement, where it went downhill before. There’s probably, oh, I dunno, 80 feet of 1½” pipe draining back in. Which, if I’m doing the math correctly, would be, what, about 6 gallons? About half a pit’s worth, I’d say. Now, it leaked before, of course, but there wasn’t as much pipe involved. So now it runs, oh, every two minutes instead of every five. I tried taking the check apart, cleaned it out, made sure it moved freely, and did get it to seat. But when I put it back together, it continued to leak. In fact, at first, I just put it in and tightened it loosely to see if it would miraculously now work perfectly, and I could tighten it up and toddle off to bed. This is the kind of idea you have when it’s getting late and you’re tired.

Whereas it’s just a plastic valve with slip couplings, as soon as the pump ran, it blew apart (I really know better – honest).

By the way, in case you didn’t know it, groundwater in this area during the month of March is slightly warmer than the temperature of snow. Which is to say, it’s really freakin’ cold. And wet. Oh, and GFCI outlet? Who needs one of those?

Of course, not only did the pipe blow apart, but the O-ring went, well, I had no idea where it went, other than to suppose that since I didn’t see it anywhere, it was probably in the pit. The rapidly-filling pit that’s really just a 2x3x3 (or something) foot hole chopped out of the cement floor full of water and sand and rocks (but mostly sand – and water) now all stirred up so that one can no longer see what’s an inch from the top, let alone at the bottom, with a 3-gallon bucket for the pump to sit in.

After fishing around in there for a while (did I mention the water is really frackin’ cold?), and holding the pipe together by hand while pumping things down a few times (in between scurrying frantically back and forth across the basement as the water rose, trying to locate a replacement that I knew damn well I didn’t have), I finally came up with both the O-ring and a seriously cold hand and forearm.

Oy. This is why I should never break my rule of not starting anything after 5PM.

So now I’m waiting for 6 o’clock AM to roll around so I can go buy a new check valve from the big box store, that I know will be no better than the one that’s in there, but am hoping will work better until the one I just ordered (that is supposedly a good one – we’ll see) gets here on Monday.

Here’s hoping the pump motor and/or switch last until I get back.

Last night wasn’t all bad, though I won’t mention why, as it involves a certain basketball team that nobody wants to hear about. And I wouldn’t want you to think my whole world revolves around that (not when there’s a lacrosse game tonight, after all).

Oh well, almost time to get out there and visit my friends at Home Depot (or Lowes – tough choice as they’re all Republican scumbags, but True Value doesn’t open ’til 7:30).

Have a nice day. And stay dry.

I was looking at the searches that have brought people here, and the top five include “boob 69,” “female spanked,” and “multiple boobs” (by the way, I’m pretty sure the ‘s’ on the boobs implies multiplicity, but then, what do I know?). I have no idea what was written here that would bring up those search terms (I think I need to pay more attention to what you perverts are putting in your comments), and let me apologize to the folks who were brought here erroneously. You must have been terribly disappointed.

Yesterday was quite a day. Sunny and 61° for the first time since December 1, 2010. It was great to sit in a dark, windowless office knowing that it was so nice out. It’s still 60° out right now, but, what with it being Friday and all, temps are expected to fall throughout the day, so it can turn to crap for the weekend. Of course, crap is relative, and tomorrow’s high of 41 will be plenty good enough for me as I work to pipe my sump pump discharge out the basement and away from the house. Shouldn’t take all day, so it probably will.

Congrats to the US, who got military action sanctioned by the UN against Libya. Always good to have another war to watch on the teevee, and if we outlaw some more unions and cut NPR funding and some social programs (maybe defund the EPA), paying for it will be easy.

Things continue to worsen in Japan, it seems. I hope King Kong is OK, wherever he is.

Well, time to get this week over with.

First off, corned beef and cabbage is not Irish. The goddamn English tried to starve the Irish to death, and wouldn’t let them have any beef. If you want Irish, eat some turnips or something. Then do a shot of Jameson’s, and wash it down with a pint of stout. Otherwise, it’s supposed to be a rather beautiful day here – sunny and 60°. Sadly, I’ll be at work. A far cry from the olden days when I’d start drinking early, and keep it up all day (and all night). Those days are long gone. Oh well.

It’s hard to tell what the hell is going on in Japan, other than I’m glad I don’t live there. Back at the end of WWII, the horror of the atomic bomb was enough to (so far) prevent anybody from using another one. It would be nice if we’d learn that lesson with nuclear power, too. But we won’t. For one thing, most of us (myself included) aren’t likely to give up using electricity any time soon. Or even cut usage significantly. Hell, I’m loathe to even think about how much juice my sump pumps are using.

Oh well, time for more coffee.

Sure was nice to come home from work last night and have some daylight left. If only I didn’t have to worry about my sump pump running every 5 minutes. Doing the math, I’m guessing it’s pumping something like 3,600 gallons of water a day. Seems like an awful lot, and I’m not convinced that at least some of it isn’t short-cycling and coming back in. So, weekend project is to pipe it out the wall and as far toward the cornfield as I can get it, to see if that slows things down. At least on a temporary basis. This whole thing is about as much fun as a trip to the dentist. Speaking if which…

Yes, it’s a dental day today. He called me yesterday, and said he missed me, hasn’t seen me in a couple weeks, and what with spring coming, he’s got some boat expenses coming up. So that’s how I’ll be starting my day. First, permanent crown on on tooth, and then start to work on the other crown replacement. And then that’ll be it, damn it.

Otherwise, I’m not really missing the Macbook. I found some alternative touchpad drivers that give me 2-finger scroll (about the only thing I didn’t have), and actually some other things that the Mac didn’t do. The Dell I’m using has the same size screen but a smaller footprint. So the touchpad is a lot smaller, as is the keyboard. I;d forgotten that typing on this thing is kind of painful, but for most of what I do, that isn’t really an issue. It also doesn’t have a lighted keyboard, which I miss a bit. Otherwise, for the computer equivalent of a dinosaur, you can’t beat it. Time to give the Macbook back to work (as soon as I clean it of anything subversive, of course).

Well, only 190 gallons of water before I have to leave for the dentist, so I guess I better make a fresh pot of joe. Have a good one.

Things in Japan just keep getting worse, with a fourth nuke plant in trouble, more fires and explosions, significant radiation releases, and, despite all the assurances I heard throughout the day, conditions at one plant look to be teetering on the catastrophic, as workers who were trying to fight a meltdown by pumping in water have been told to get the hell out. Yes, things appear rather dire indeed (either that, or they’re getting better – everything I look at seems to contradict the last thing I looked at). As if that wasn’t bad enough, they’ve unleashed Diane Sawyer on the poor folks over there, to react with a kind of stunned astonishment not seen since Bill O’Reilly went to a Harlem restaurant with Al Sharpton at the Japanese patiently waiting in lines for gas and food.

Fortunately, humans are awfully resiliant (and by resiliant, I mean stupid with short memories), and this will soon be long forgotten. Before long, nuclear power will once again be touted as a safe, clean alternative energy source. Don’t believe me? Remember that oil well that spewed into the Gulf for months? If you do, you’re not a Republican, since they’re once again beating the drum for expanding offshore drilling as a way for us to lower gas prices and attain energy independence. Yep.

Well, I wound up taking yesterday off, and worked on cleaning up the basement, and re-piping one of my sump pump lines. So, 100 feet of inch and a half pipe and one new shop vac (a nice one, too – very quiet) later, that seems to be working out pretty OK. Except there’s an awful lot of water. I’m starting to wonder if the old well (they had city water put in shortly before I bought the place) isn’t leaking someplace and running under the house. Not much I can do about it right now, but this is way too much water.

Anyhow, whilst whiling away the hours working on this, I had NPR on, which I rarely spend all day listening to these days. They had a reporter fresh back from Libya who was complaining that they had no sources cultivated there, and it was like “going back to Journalism 101, talking to lots of people and checking and rechecking sources.” :omg: How horrible for her. Having to actually be a journalist. She reminded me of dubya lamenting about what a hard job being preznit was.

The rest of NPR’s day, of course, consisted of Japan talk (except for an hour with Edward Albee – that’s “All-bee, goddamn it” – on Diane Rehm, who was all giggly and awe-filled, as she so often is). For the most part, the Japan talk consisted of how this would all affect “the markets.” Of course, they were all quick to fall all over themselves insisting that the “primary” concern was for the loss of life, but….

A local retired art teacher has a project ongoing to show solidarity with the Japanese by folding a thousand paper “cranes.” Yeah, that’ll help. Maybe they can burn the goddamn things for heat as they slowly freeze to death in the dark. Or, hey, why not make them out of rice paper so they can eat them?

Well, I was just forced to give up on the Macbook, and switch to the trusty Dell Inspiron, which keeps on ticking despite being, what, must be close to six years old by now. It’s not quite as “cool” and trendy as the Macbook, but it sure seems a lot more reliable (Wi-Fi works better, too). The trackpad on the Mac is getting worse, and it appears to be a software thing, ‘cuz rebooting (oh, sorry, “resetting the PRAM” – Macs never require a reboot) fixes it temporarily. I don’t know if it’s the latest update (and what’s up with that, anyway? The damn thing seems to have an update every time I turn it on, and most of them are, like 300MB downloads, and they ALL require a restart) or what, but in the past week, I’ve rebooted the goddamn thing more than I have every other computer I’ve ever owned since Windows 95 days.

Then again, maybe it’s a hardware thing. I’ve read an awful lot about this problem (surprise, surprise – it’s not unique), and there is also some speculation as to the battery in the “unibody” swelling up, and making the trackpad go nuts. I’ve tried all the settings changes (big one is to disable dragging – ‘cuz, like, who would need that?), and they “seemed” to help, but then after a while, not so much.

Where’s that snotty Mac kid from the commercials? I’d like to punch him in the nose.

Oh well, time to get ready to get ready.

Well, things aren’t really looking any better in Japan, are they. More aftershocks, more explosions, more lost reactor cooling capacity, more dead people. Not much happy fun time. Not a lot of happy fun time in my basement, either. I went out and bought a spare submersible sump pump yesterday, along with 24 feet of flexible hose. In a pinch, I figure I can stick the hose out a window and pump things down. That won’t help me much if I’m not home, of course (or if the power goes out), but a battery backup and/or generator just aren’t in the budget right now.

And of course I awoke to find a pipe that came apart, so I have a pretty good flood down there this morning. Naturally, the decent shop vac is over at the other house (was gonna buy one yesterday, too, but cheaped out). Spent a fair amount of time trying to squeegee uphill (everything runs away from the sump, of course), but finally gave up. I guess I’ll have to buy another shop vac at lunchtime today, and hope nothing else comes apart during the day (way back when I cobbled together an alternate line to avoid dumping all this water into my septic tank, I was in a hurry and didn’t bother to glue together a bunch of the joints along the floor, because I wanted to redo all this when things dry out, and figured they weren’t really under pressure. I guess I misunderestimated there.

And of course the joints won’t come apart on command now, so I’m kind of gluing things as they blow apart. Still a couple to go, I’m afraid. Oh well, only my workshop is really in danger, and everything’s up high enough. I hope.

It’s shaping up to be another great week.

Some good news this morning, “officials” are saying that a “partial” meltdown is likely at one of Japan’s beleaguered nuke plants. And here everybody was worried about something bad. Of course, what they admit to is typically not as bad as what they revise it to later on in the week (on Friday night). For instance, the original earthquake (which wasn’t actually the first – apparently there were “pre-shocks”) has been revised up to a 9.0.

The Japanese Prime Minister says Japan is “facing the most difficult crisis since World War II.” Oh, sure. You always have to throw that whole atomic bomb thing in our face, don’t you?

Here, the owners of the nuke plants nearby – whose cooling towers and tremendous plumes (when it’s cold out) I can see clearly as I drive down the road on my way home (since we’re about 1,000 feet above their location on Lake Ontario, and less than 40 miles away) say they’re “monitoring” the situation in Japan, but not to worry, as our nuke plants were constructed with “state of the art” technology built to withstand “significant seismic events.”

Uh-huh.

The state of the art part is interesting, since I recall taking field trips to the visitors’ center there (to bask in the glow – so to speak – of the wonders of nuclear power) when I was in elementary school, so if it was ever state of the art, it was state of the art over 40 years ago (it went online in 1969, and is one of the two oldest nuclear reactors still in service in the United States; there’s nothing more comforting than having a “vintage” nuclear power plant in the neighborhood).

Over the years, I’ve also heard plenty of stories about how the mafia controlled the construction, faking the weld x-rays and the concrete tests, and pretty much driving trucks in the front and out the back to resell the materials, which is why the plant – the first one, anyway – was many (many) times over budget. And then of course there was this back in 1991 at another of the plants up there, owned by Entergy – though I’m sure it was just an isolated incident. Well, one of several isolated incidents, actually.

Oh, and we’ll kind of forget about the Zebra Mussels – an inadvertent gift from our friends in Russia that now thrive in the Great Lakes, as the horny little buggers reproduce way faster than the crayfish can eat them – that are clogging the cooling water (actually the water that cools the cooling water and supposedly doesn’t intermingle, but still gets returned to the lake a few degrees warmer than it was when it came out – the super algae and three-eyed fish love it) intake pipes. No problem there.

But, hey, what does Japan know about technology compared to us, right?

So please excuse me if I’m not particularly buoyed by the statement from your corporate spokesbitch (clearly given over the phone, ‘cuz I’m pretty sure the upper muck-mucks from Constellation Energy don’t live anywhere near here).

Nukes and hydrofracking – why don’t y’all just admit we’re in your way up here, and you just want us all dead already?

Looks like the monkeys have invented a new way of fishing (for termites), using poles. I suspect it was really all Michael Nesmith’s mother’s idea.

Much as I despise Connecticut (the university, that is, not the state, though I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive them for Joe Lieberman), I have to hand it to them for winning 5 games in 5 days to take the Big East Tournament title. Now we wait for the tournament pairings tonight. The good news for SU is that we shouldn’t have to play any Big East teams for a while.

Yesterday was the big “it’s not St. Patrick’s Day so why is there a fookin’ parade” Parade here, and my fellow micks were out in force. I no longer participate in such things, but back in the day, I’d be among the untold throngs who’d start the day off at mass at St. Patrick’s, then freeze our asses off lining the parade route before spending the rest of the day drinking as much as humanly possible.

Except I’d typically skip the mass part. And the parade.

Now that the sun is coming up a bit, it appears that all the spots that were devoid of snow when last I looked are now white once again, so I reckon we got a little snow overnight. Not much, I don’t think. Just enough to brighten things up a bit. If it was bright out there, which it isn’t yet.

That’s because it’s an hour later this morning than it was yesterday morning (well, I supposed it’s actually 24 hours – give or take – later, but you know what I mean).

I know there is a certain amount of resistance to this amongst certain people, but I personally welcome it. It won’t be any darker at four o’clock in the morning when I get up, but sunset will now be after seven in the evening – and that means I can get home and watch the sun set above the deer grazing in the corn field (16 in the herd at last count) from my home office window. That’s way better than an hour more daylight in the morning as I sit in my windowless office pondering whether or not suicide is a viable option.

Anyhow, it doesn’t matter whether you like it or not, ‘cuz nobody’s asking. Just get out those manuals and figure out how to set your clocks ahead. So far, of the ones that don’t do it on their own, I’ve got six done – two wall clocks, the coffee maker, and the three programmable thermostats. Only another half dozen or so, and then comes the big challenge – figuring out the clock in the car.

Have a good day.

Explosion at a Japanese nuke plant, with who knows how much radioactive steam spewing into the atmosphere. As I write this, they’re saying there’s a 20 km evacuation zone. This of course will be the gift that keep on giving to generations to come, and is why nukes are a bad idea (especially in a seismically unstable place like Japan). Plus, it got cold overnight, so if things weren’t bad enough for the people over there, they can now freeze their asses off in the dark. Good luck to them, and let’s hope this doesn’t deter Obama from his support of nuclear power.

Control rod problems here, too, though not from the nuke plants which are, frankly all too close to us (fifty mile by car, give or take, but about 36 miles as the crow flies – at least until the crow flies into radioactive steam and drops into one of the Colonel’s buckets). When I got home from work last night, I heard one of our three sump pumps running constantly (I’ve become rather attuned to the sound and duration of their run, even though they’re in the basement). This is a pedestal type pump with a vertical float switch, and the bracket that stabilizes the float shaft at the bottom had rusted through and broken (people bitch about plastic, but, frankly, it has its uses). So the shaft got cocked and jammed and didn’t drop to shut the switch off (which I supposed is better than not having it come on, but who knows how long it had been that way).

So, anyhow, I cobbled something together with a piece of PVC pipe and some strapping. It was hard to get the damn thing to not bind up, but it seems to be working now (worked all night, at least). I’m pretty screwed if this thing craps out, though, as we are getting a rather massive amount of water at this point, with no real end in sight.

And then SU had to go and lose to f*cking UCONN.

This is not shaping up to be a very good weekend.