It was a sad yet relatively productive weekend. Also really beautiful weather – warm and sunny. On Saturday, I fixed my car exhaust and it was actually nowhere near the pain in the ass that it could have been (and that I was expecting). Amazingly, nothing broke and I didn’t even have to hit it with torches. Of course it was pretty hard on my back (nothing like wriggling around on a cement floor). If you’re looking for ideas for something to get me for Christmas, this 2-post car lift would be an excellent choice. Might as well throw in the cradle pads, too. It’s so nice to be able to drive a quiet car again, and hopefully this will keep the check engine light off.

My wife took down the canopy on the pool deck, leaving just the frame looking like the bones of some long dead animal, and yesterday we closed up the pool. Very sad – summer is officially over for me now.

Then of course there was nothing left to do but sit and wait for the end of Breaking Bad. Although it had to end (I mean, you wouldn’t want it to devolve to the point where Walter is taking the family on a “business trip” to Hawaii where Flynn finds a tiki in a cave that brings everybody bad luck), I’m gonna miss that show.

Thank goodness I have today off to kind of ease my way into the week. Especially since I stayed up way too late last night. Unfortunately my wife had to go to work today, but she’s only working a couple of days, and is then off to go visit the kids in Minneapolis. Yes, she’s abandoning us here. It’s the cats I feel bad for, since I don’t know where we keep their food. I guess they’ll just have to catch mice (which they should be doing more of anyway). We’ll just have to see how they like living in the basement for a few days.

Today is government shutdown day, I guess. As CNN puts it,

“If the Democrats and Republicans don’t stop bickering and agree to how the U.S. should pay its bills, the federal government will shut down, come October 1.”

You have to love that. Yeah, it’s just those two rascally and equally culpable political parties bickering again. Not, the obstructionist Republicans and sociopathic teabaggers shutting down the government and fucking over millions of Americans to score political points with a bunch of idiots who don’t understand how the government works but mysteriously get to vote anyway.

Of course, not everything shuts down. Social Security checks keep coming and hospitals still get Medicare/Medicaid reimbursements (though if this lasts long enough, that might start to get delayed for a couple of weeks, which isn’t really good when you live on a fixed income and the landlord still wants the rent and you’re low on cat food). And don’t worry, the feds will still take taxes out of your paycheck (unless you’re like Mitt Romney or something). The Post Office will keep delivering the mail (oh goodie, no shortage of AARP spam). So it might be a while before anybody notices the government is actually closed – unless you’re waiting for a small business loan or a passport or were hoping to go to a national park or a museum or something.

But, hey, maybe the Democrats will cave. That’s what the Republicans (the ones in the House, anyway) seem to think. Supposedly their even thinking of electing Ted Cruz Speaker of the House (which seems odd, what with him being a Senator). No stranger than a moron like that being a United States Senator, I guess (I mean, it’s Texas, but still).

Oh well, there’s a lot I should probably be doing, so I should probably go do something. Or maybe have coffee.

Normally I’d be working from home today, but thanks to somebody being on vacation and me being on call this week (oh, excuse me, on “support” this week – we’re not allowed to call it “on call” because that would require them to pay us 15% more for those days when we’re doing it), I’m not only stuck going in to the office, but stuck there until five o’clock tonight. Yuck. Oh well, one more day to try and limp the car back and forth, and then I have three days to try and fix it (I’m using one of my “deficit reduction” days on Monday). Hopefully that will be enough. And hopefully I’ll also be able to shake this cold I’ve felt coming on for a few days now. It’s either a cold or it’s the result of sucking in exhaust fumes for about an hour a day. Speaking of which, I guess I better get ready for my ride in to work. Even though I’m stuck ’til five, I want to avoid the school buses if I can.

Yes, I guess I’ve been a bit quiet lately. Mostly, there’s not much to talk about unless you want to hear how the weather is (cool but pleasant once the weekend was over), though I did see this story (not in the US media, of course) where Russia says the rockets used in the chemical weapons attack in Syria weren’t sold to Syria.

…Russia’s new “evidence” about the attack includes the dates of export of the specific rockets used and – more importantly – the countries to which they were originally sold. They were apparently manufactured in the Soviet Union in 1967 and sold by Moscow to three Arab countries, Yemen, Egypt and Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya. …[I]f the information is correct – and it is believed to have come from Moscow – Russia did not sell this particular batch of chemical munitions to Syria.

Since Gaddafi’s fall in 2011, vast quantities of his abandoned Soviet-made arms have fallen into the hands of rebel groups and al-Qa’ida-affiliated insurgents.
[…]
The Syrians have long claimed that a substantial amount of Soviet-made weaponry has made its way from Libya into the hands of rebels in the country’s civil war with the help of Qatar – which supported the Libyan rebels against Gaddafi and now pays for arms shipments to Syrian insurgents.

Not that you can believe the godless Russkies, of course.

For the most part, though, I’ve been basically ignoring the news – just don’t have the heart to pay attention. This is a tough time of year for me. I just cut the checks for the school taxes, and paid the home owners insurance on the house, plus the car insurance for the three vehicles – one of which needs to be inspected, but needs a set of tires first (and then god knows what else). Just had to buy a new battery and alternator for my car, and now I’m limping around with a noisy exhaust, courtesy of a broken flex pipe.

Sadly, on my particular model, this pipe also includes one of the catalytic converters, and is too close to the 02 sensor to just cut out the bad part and replace (maybe if I was a better welder, I could manage it, but I’m not). Even worse, this car has the good old “California” emission, and they don’t make a CARB compliant aftermarket version, so it’s ungodly expensive (and from what I’ve read, even if your car passes emissions, if you’ve got the wrong numbers stamped on there, they fail you anyway). And that’s just for the parts, which I had to order from a dealer in Florida, and just picked up at my nearby FedEx office, ‘cuz they required a signature.

Everything’s rusted all to hell under the vehicle, and I know it’s going to be a miserable time trying to get the old shit out and the new shit in, so I don’t want to start it after work on a school night when I need to go to work the next day. What a pain.

This is all on top of the NY State “deficit reduction plan” kicking in with today’s paycheck. DRP is a euphemism for cutting my pay 2.5%.

No to worry, though – at least winter’s coming!

I don’t normally pay much attention to the whole Miss America thing, but apparently they had the drawing or whatever they call it last night, and I suppose it’s interesting to note that they crowned the first Indian-American woman, and she happened to be Miss NY. Oh, yeah, and she also happens to be Miss Syracuse and is the daughter of somebody who works in my building (though I don’t actually know who she is because I rarely leave my office). All of this, I only found out this morning (because, as I said, I don’t actually pay much attention to this sort of stuff). I feel obliged to note that she is actually not even the first Miss Syracuse to become Miss America – the first of course being Vanessa Williams, whose reign was slightly abbreviated. So we have both the first Indian-American and African-American Miss Americas (next I guess we’ll have to shoot for the first Native American one). So ends your Syracuse trivia lesson for today.

Do you use Gmail? If so, you’re not alone – at least according to former NSA chief Michael Hayden who said:

“Gmail is the preferred Internet service provider of terrorists worldwide,”

Sadly, Gmail isn’t actually an ISP. It’s a free e-mail service. Seems as if Hayden’s intelligence is a bit faulty.

Looks like the UN is confirming that chemical weapons were used in Syria.

“the environmental, chemical and medical samples we have collected provide clear and convincing evidence that surface-to-surface rockets containing the nerve agent sarin were used … in the Ghouta area of Damascus” on Aug. 21.

“The conclusion is that chemical weapons have been used in the ongoing conflict between the parties in the Syrian Arab Republic … against civilians including children on a relatively large scale,”

Hopefully this agreement between the US and Russia works out and they can get rid of Syria’s chemical weapons without out our having to kill any more people over there.

If you’re a Breaking Bad fan but haven’t watched last night’s show yet, let me just say: “holy shit.”

Oh well, I guess I better get back to work.

It’s Friday, and our brief reprise of summer is now over. Two days ago, on the anniversary of the day that Republicans believe was the worst attack against the United States – you know, Benghazi – which as I’ve probably said before always makes me think of Ben Gazzara – it was 94° here. Yesterday, 80. Today? We’ll struggle to get into the 60s. Oh well, time to develop that thick winter skin.

In case you haven’t heard, the Voyager 1 spacecraft, much like Elvis, has left the heliosphere, and is now in interstellar space. Coincidentally (or maybe not), Voyager was launched less than three weeks after Elvis croaked in 1977. Yes, a piece of equipment designed over 40 years ago has not only continued to function (mostly) but is something like 17 light-hours away from Earth. Considering light travels at over 186,000 miles per second, that’s quite a ways away (something like 11.4 billion miles, if I’m doing the math correctly). They plan on keeping the little bugger going and sending back at least basic info until 2035, at which point I will hopefully be both retired and still alive (and mostly functional – though if I don’t start taking better care of myself real soon, that’s kind of doubtful).

It’s kind of interesting to see a bunch of Republican chickenhawks who previously never met a way they didn’t like now suddenly turn into a bunch of doves. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ll be happy if it turns out we don’t get involved in Syria but, hey, let’s face it – they’d oppose Mother’s Day if Obama was for it. That and most of the general public isn’t buying this stuff.

It’s time to get back to threatening to shut down the government.

The devil’s in the details, of course, but it looks like President Obama needs to send Vladimir Putin a nice fruit basket or something for bailing him out of this whole Syria thing. Kind of interesting that something that started out with John Kerry going off message might turn out to bail us out of this rather stupid situation. Good thing, too, ‘cuz Obama was about to look really, really stupid. OK, he kinda already looks really stupid (and rather irrelevant), but at least he’s hopefully smart enough to take the deal, declare victory, and move on to trying to get congress to pay the bills it’s already run up without defunding Obamacare.

Hey, how ’bout that George Zimmerman?

The incident stemmed from a visit by Shellie Zimmerman, who filed for divorce last week, and her father, David Bryant Dean. They came to the house the couple used to share to pick up some of her belongings.
[…]
George Zimmerman came to the house with a friend of his and got into a heated discussion with Dean, O’Mara said.
[…]
Shellie Zimmerman called police as George Zimmerman sat in his truck with his friend. On the 911 call, Shellie Zimmerman is breathing heavily when she tells a dispatcher that Zimmerman is still at the house.

“He’s in his car and he continually has his hand on his gun, and he’s saying, ‘Step closer.’ He’s just threatening all of us with his firearm,” she says. Shellie Zimmerman also tells 911 that George Zimmerman punched her father in the nose, then smashed her iPad before getting in his truck.

“I don’t know what he’s capable of. I’m really, really scared,” she says.

Oh, I think you know exactly what he’s capable of, Shellie. Might I suggest that you and your dad arm yourselves before your next encounter and “stand you ground?”

Lots of storms rolled through here this morning, and now summer is set to return as we’re supposed to get up into the mid 90s today and tomorrow. Maybe there’s a little pool time this year after all.

If you feel a thumping in your head this morning, it might not be just because you stayed up past your bedtime drinking beer and watching Breaking Bad (about which, may I just say, “OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD!”). No, it could be that you’re feeling the drum beat of the march to war that our president has begun. Yes, it’s an all-out media blitz in order to gain support from congress (if not from We the People) for Obama’s plan to, um, well I’m not sure what the plan is. I think the plan is to just go blow shit up on general principles (those principles being that we said we’d do something so by god we’re gonna do something, lest we look as if we have no influence over any of them people over there).

Here’s an unsolicited tip to the Obama administration from me: we currently have just about zero influence on them people over there.

I’m not sure what makes the president think he can count on the Republicans in the House to have his back. I mean, I know they generally love to blow up mooslams and all, but their love for death and destruction is greatly overshadowed by their hatred for that commie librul you-know-what in the White House. Plus, We the People really aren’t up for another war at this point in time.

If I was Obama, I’d ask the Israelis to go blow up Syria for us before our congress gets to vote no and make Obama look even more ineffectual than he already does (if that’s even possible). Except I don’t think the Israelis want any of this shit, either – Assad may be a chinless fuck, but they probably figure he’s better than whoever comes out ahead between Hezbollah and Al Qaeda (which should provide years of exciting – and bloody – action as they battle it out to see who gets to keep Syria).

Should be an exciting week.

Happy Labor Day, everybody, and so long, summer (maybe not technically the end, but for all intents and purposes, this is it and things go downhill pretty quickly from here). Although autumn is may favorite season (though it’s typically way too short around here), I’m sad to see summer come to an end. Mostly because I hate it when it starts getting dark at like 4:30, and the sun doesn’t come up until like 7:30. Doesn’t allow for seeing much daylight – especially when you work in a windowless cave (I know I say that a lot and am repeating myself, but I’m old and that’s what we do). Mother Nature decided to celebrate by giving us a rather impressive light show overnight, which would have been cool if not for the terrified dog panting wetly all over me. Good thing I didn’t have to work today.

Fortunately, it’s football season now. Unfortunately, it started the way it seems to always start for me these days – with an SU loss. Despite displaying virtually no offense (with plenty of blame to go around – piss poor play calling, confused and at times clueless coaching, miscommunication between the QB and the receiving corps, and a mostly ineffective running game), they only lost by six points, and actually got the ball back (courtesy of their defense, which looked fairly OK for the most part) on their own 44 with 2:04 to go. Sadly, they wasted the opportunity with a quite pitiful series that ended with an INT to seal the deal. Hopefully things will improve, but probably not in time to win the next game – at #22 Northwestern. Could be a long season.

I got the grass cut yesterday, which was good ‘cuz it was getting pretty long. I’ve been holding off on cutting it, ‘cuz I needed to fill up my diesel cans, and that aint cheap. It’s about all I’ve accomplished, though I may put the loader on the tractor and go out in to the woods and get some dirt to fill in the trenches that the dogs have dug in the lawn. Little bastids.

Oh well, one more hot and humid day here, and then things are supposed to cool off for the rest of the week. Guess it’s time to buy winterizing chemicals for the pool.

Have a good rest of the weekend.