I’m currently suffering from a post three-day weekend hangover. Not in any way alcohol-related, of course. Just from having three warm sunny days spent, for the most part, out in the fresh air and then having to get up and come sit inside my box within a box staring at a screen attached to a box. This really blows, to be honest. But I’m actually starting to believe that winter is finally over in these parts, and I took the major step of moving my hat, gloves, snow brush, and ice scraper to the trunk of my car (that’s as far away from me as I’m willing to let them get – after all, we’ve had 8 inches of snow on Mother’s Day, so we’re not out the woods yet).

I did, however, get the mower all sharpened up, greased, and on the tractor. This is always a (literally) painful process that’s better not to do more than once a season. John Deere has a commercial for a tractor where you just drive over the mower and it attaches automajically. If that actually works, I want one. Sadly, that’s not in the budget.

Speaking of budget-busting, I spent plenty of money this weekend – and not on anything fun. The folks who lived at my house before we moved in left us a dump cart with beat tires, and I’ve been meaning to get new ones for it for about four years now. So I finally got some. The wheels were different, of course, so I had to make up spacers for them and I didn’t really have the right size stuff laying around, but I made do. I won’t be towing it on the highway anytime soon, but it’s good enough.

I also needed a drawbar in order to use it with my tractor, so that was another $40. Then the cart hitch had a smaller hole that I had pins for, so I had to go buy a hitch pin, only to find that the top hole was bigger than the bottom hole. Why? I’m certain there’s a reason, but I don’t know what it is. But it works.

Sunday was a big day, as a load of fencing showed up at 9:00 thanks to the good folks at NEMF. I asked the driver if he got to meet Paul McCartney when he was visiting with his wife, but he said he was busy working while all the dock people were slacking off with Paul that day.

He did mention, though, that his wife’s daughter goes to SU, so they’re in the areas relatively frequently. Not that I’ve ever seen them around.

But, anyway, it’s back to work today for a five-day week locked indoors. The only good part about being inside is that it’s a bit easier on my allergies, which have definitely kicked in to high gear. I guess that’s the punishment for not having a foot of snow on the ground.

We’re not feeling very well at my house, and I haven’t got much to say. But I felt obligated to put something up here before everybody thought we croaked or something. Plus we got enough snow to be tied with Worcester for the Golden Snow Globe, and I knew everybody would want to know about that.

Well I hope everybody managed to file their tax returns on time Wednesday. For several years in a row now, I’ve not only been on time, but have filed early – thank goodness for TurboTax. When I was younger, I could file the “short form” for people who didn’t make any money or have any deductions. Not that I’m old and living the American Dream®, though, things are a lot more complicated. Leading up to April 15th, they always show the tax volunteers helping the old people fill out their forms on the local news (I think they teach it in Eyewitness News 101 – along with sending a reporter and camera crew out into the same fucking blizzard we all just drove home through in order to show us that, yes, it’s snowing out, and sending the Action News Team out to the mall on the day after Thanksgiving so those of us with common sense can sit and scoff at the morons trampling each other at Wal-Mart in an effort to save 25% on shit nobody really needs so they can give it to people they don’t really like), and I never know who to feel more sorry for – the people trying to get their taxes done, or the people asking the same questions over and over again.

I don’t know how anybody manages without software (or, I suppose a “tax guy”). I’m sure I leave a lot of money (relatively speaking – it’s not like I’m a Romney or anything) on the table every year because I possess neither the patience nor the receipts required to squeeze every nickel and dime out. I just go with whatever I can look up online – mortgage interest, property taxes, and whatever I gave to the CNY SPCA. I don’t write off what I have to the Salvation Army or stuck in the Fire Fighter’s boot or gave to the Old News Boys for a paper or whatever. That way I figure if I ever get audited, I won’t need to actually bring anything with me.

Every once in a while, the IRS sends me a check for $2.34. They’ve been doing this for years now. Every time I move and file a return with the new address, they try to send it to me. No explanation, just a check for $2.34. I figure it’s a fucking trap, and I’m not falling for it. Like, I cash it and then they tell me I did something wrong on my return from 1983, and the statute of limitations is 10 years so they can’t get me – until I cash their damn check, that is. Then the clock starts again and pretty soon I’ll be breaking rocks at Leavenworth.

Of course, even with the 24 hours of overtime I was working back then, I probably made about $17,000 in 1983 and took whatever the standard deductions were, but still.

Assuming you weren’t in a coma or something this past week, I guess you got the big news that not only is Sir Edmund Hillary Clinton running for Preznit, but that she also stopped at Chipotle for some authentic simulated Mexican food. Of course, the day Hillary “announced,” the Republicans (particularly GOP Oberstgruppenführer Reince Priebus) were out with their knives attacking her.

I’m not really a huge Hillary supporter myself, but, geez, can’t they let her have one happy day before they unleash the dogs of war?

As I said, I’m not really down with Hillary, but I can’t possibly imagine how I could vote for whatever mook the Republicans will toss out there. Cruz? Puhleeeze! Marco “Polo” Rubio? I don’t think so. Rand Paul, Scott Walker, Mike “I Heart” Huckabee, Lily Lindsey Graham?

That cast of characters would all be scary to think of, if I thought any of them could actually win. But I don’t. Maybe Jeb Bush could win in the general, but I can’t see him winning the teabag primary?

You know who would scare me? Condi Rice. She ticks all the boxes – woman? Check. Black, check. Rightwing Nutjob – check and check.

Whatever the case, it’s gonna be a long annoying election season, and I’m not looking forward to it.

So, sorry if the spam thingie has been blocking your comments. I just saw a bunch and released them, for what it’s worth. This morning I updated to a new version in hopes that whatever algorithm it uses would be improved, but it promptly deactivated itself because this site was using an older version of php. In the two hours it took me to figure out what the deal was and get on a newer version, I got 8 bogus user registrations (1 the first hour, 2 the second, and 5 more in the third – at that rate, we’d have been up over 8 million users by the end of the day). They can’t actually post a comment until I approve one, but I get an e-mail for every new registration and that gets annoying pretty quickly.

So, anyway that’s why that spam filter thing is there. Now if I could only figure out why it thinks some rather harmless comments are spam, we’d be all set.

Well, time to see about this week over.

I was awakened last night by the sound of thunder. Actually, I was awakened by a terrified doggie letting me know that there were some very scary howling winds and lightning. I was in the midst of a very interesting dream, too. Sadly, all I remember about it was that it was interesting – I can’t remember what was going on.

I tried to explain to Fritzi that while the boom-booms are a little scary, all this the rain means his favorite thing in the world (his sump pond) will stay nice and full for him to play in that much longer.

But he wasn’t buying it.

Anyhow, with the first appearance of a scared, panting, drooling dog this season, I officially declare that spring has arrived in the Great White North. I may actually take the chains off the tractor tires this weekend (and move my winter hat, gloves, and ice scraper to the trunk of my car – though I don’t want to get too cocky just yet. We have, after all, had 8″ of snow on Mother’s Day, and then there was the April snow storm of 1984 (or something) that put my Chevette out of its misery once and for all.

Not that we don’t still have snow on the ground, of course. There are places in my yard where it’s still several inches deep, and there’s snow in the woods. But for the most part, I think it’s safe to say we’re done for the season. I only hope the summer doesn’t suck as much as the last couple months of winter did.

From the looks of it, I think the West Coast could use some of our cold and wet, and we could use a bit of your hot and dry.

Doesn’t look like that’s gonna happen, though as NOAA says that “There’s A 60 Percent Chance El Niño Could Last All Year.

I asked climatologist Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research what a prolonged El Niño would mean for the planet and California. He told me it “goes along with the jump” in global temperatures he has said is imminent.

California is a more complicated situation for a few reasons.
[…]
If a full-blown El Niño develops over the year, “then the prospects go up a LOT for rains in California” during the state’s traditional rainy season, late October through March, which has not been very rainy at all in the last few years.

Climate expert Professor John Abraham also noted that a full-blown El Niño “just might bring some relief from this unbelievable drought.” But he was quick to note that “an El Niño will also break more temperature records and may make 2015 the hottest year ever. It will also bring extreme weather to other parts of the planet so this El Niño is a double-edged sword.”

Oh boy.

Good thing this Climate Change shit is just a hoax.

I don’t know if you’ve heard of the Amazon “Echo” or not. It was kind of in the news for a while when it was first introduced, but we haven’t heard a lot about it lately, mostly, I think, because they haven’t really shipped a lot of them. If you don’t know, it’s a little Pringles can size unit that has microphones and a speaker and it connects to your home WiFi. The idea is you can ask it questions or tell it to play music or whatever. I think it’s somewhat smarter than Siri (not exactly a high bar) but quite a bit more limited than “OK Google.” But the idea was it would add features and better integration as time went on. Really something that, to me, sounded both stupid and like something I wanted. Of course, as is the way of things these days, you needed to “request” an “invitation” for the privilege of spending your $200 on the thing, though Prime members would get it for half price. No way would I spend $200 on it, but $100 made me at least consider it ($49.99 would be better). So I procrastinated, but then the guy I work with said he ordered one and I hate to be left out, so I went for it.

By the time I got my “invitation” (January), they were anticipating mine would ship by May, but by fiddling around with the shipping speed, I eventually got them to promise delivery by April 9th – which, you may have noticed, is today. Or course, that status of the order has remained “not yet shipped,” so I wasn’t really anticipating it to arrive today. And, truth be told, my lust for this rather stupid item has diminished greatly over the past four months, and I’ve been tempted to just cancel the damn thing. But, hey, I ordered it and for some reason I tend to feel obligated to keep my word – even if it’s to a corporate conglomerate that uses what’s close to slave labor in its distribution centers so that I can get my case of toilet paper delivered on time every month (which reminds me, I need to skip a couple deliveries – it’s only the two of use and we got a few cases backed up).

But then today I got an e-mail saying “sorry” but we aren’t shipping your goddamn talking Pringles can until like the end of June or July now, and do I still want it? You know what? No. No I don’t. I really didn’t want it anymore anyway, and Google tells me everything I need to know, whether it’s on my phone, my tablet, or in my web browser. And if I’m in need of a frustrating experience, I can always talk to my work iPhone. Plus the guy I work with said he cancelled his Echo order, too, so I don’t have to worry about hearing how great it is and then having to buy it for full price just to keep up.

So, thank you Amazon. You just saved me $100.

If your neighborhood is anything like mine, and you went out for an early morning Sunday constitutional, you were treated to the sound of…. Generators. Yeah. We were treated to an Easter power outage. I woke up at some point very early yesterday morning with the full moon shining in my eyes. I thought to myself, “golly, what a nice quiet morning.” I rolled over to see what time it was, but, alas, my Internet clock/radio was dark. I knew the radio part was off before I looked at it, because I go to sleep (to the extent that I actually sleep) listening to the Old Time Radio channel, and it had gone quiet at some point overnight. I figured I must have accidentally pulled the power cable out (I do that sometimes – the headphone cable gets wrapped around the power cables from the two – yeah, two; sucks to be old – heating pads I sleep with, and one good turn can send the whole thing crashing down). So the next thing I tried was my bedside lamp. A brief whimper of light as the LEDs used up the last bit of juice stored in the capacitor, and then darkness. Well shit.

Since I had to take a leak anyway, I got up and after taking car of business, I used my phone to check the New York State Electric and Gas website to see if this was a widespread problem or (worse) if it was just me.

While it wasn’t exactly widespread, it wasn’t just me, either – there were about 230 homes without power (including all seven of us on my street). It was 4:18 AM and they were anticipating having the power back on at 7:15. So I figured I might as well go back to bed and get under the covers and wait it out. At least I wouldn’t have to listen to the sump pumps run every five minutes.

Oh.

Shit, the sump pumps. Forgot about them. I have three sump pits in my basement (and they aren’t there for decoration, either). Now that the weather’s warmed up a bit and much of the snow has melted, the level of the underground stream below my basement has risen substantially, and at least one of those pumps is running at pretty much any given moment.

At least if there was electricity, they would be.

So I put on my headlamp and headed downstairs to see how bad things were and, much to my surprise, things weren’t too bad, as it turned out. Some water down there (a couple boxes of books that will never smell the same again), but not the total flood I’d anticipated. Not yet anyway. Still, it meant I’d need to go futz with the generator.

So I dragged the thing outside into the cold, dark, windy morning and tried to figure out how to plug the twist-lock cable in (normally not a difficult thing, but while half asleep at 4:30 in the morning – with no coffee – it seemed quite the puzzle. Try to plug it in, won’t go. Turn 90°, try again. No. Another 90, then another. No. Stare at the outlet. Stare at the plug. Try again. No.

Well, so, eventually I got it plugged in and fired up the generator, then made my way downstairs again to plug the other end of the cord into the transfer switch and, said, “let there be light!” And there was light. And heat. And sump pumps. And (most importantly) coffee. Yay! Another Easter miracle.

I of course have my cable modem and router hooked up to a generator circuit but, sadly, Time Warner wasn’t keeping up their end of the bargain. Fortunately, I was able to turn my phone’s mobile hotspot on so I could use my tablet (I never use anywhere close to my 2 GB a month anyway) while I sat and listened to the generator run.

We finally got our power back at about 8:40. Thank goodness for generators.

Well, I reckon it’s time to get back to work. Or maybe go to lunch. I’m flexible.

Yet another ridiculously short weekend is behind us. Here, as you might have guessed, it was basically wintry. Saturday was very cold, but Sunday wasn’t too bad – cold start, but sunny and actually above freezing. That’s about as good as it seems to get. Sorry to the folks in town for the NCAAs for the chilly weather. I guess there were quite a few “Syracuse sucks” tweets and whatnot. Less about the weather and more about how they just plain hate us (though Magic Johnson seemed to enjoy himself). Sorry, I guess. Wasn’t my idea to have all you fuckers here. In fact, if it was up to me, I’d have to the NCAA to go Cheney themselves and have their little tournament someplace else. Like Munnsville.

Sorry we can live up to such stellar venues as Jacksonville, Dayton, Columbus, and Omaha. Or of course the place for next weekend’s big show, Indianapolis, where they respect your right to discriminate – as long as you’re doing it for religious reasons. So if I’m an atheist, does that mean I don’t have the right to discriminate against anybody? I saw somebody on what passes for the news this morning saying it aint about the gays. He runs a t-shirt or sign shop or something, and was saying he shouldn’t have to print something that says “Satan is Great” ‘cuz it goes against his religion.

I’d have asked him if he’d have a problem printing “Allahu Akbar” on something, and if so what the “religious” objection would be.

Actually, I probably wouldn’t have asked him anything, because the handful of times I’ve been to Indiana is was only because I was on my way to somewhere else. And Notre Dame is in Indiana, so fuck them (though the KOA outside South Bend is pretty nice and so is the guy that runs it – at least, 15 years ago they were).

Well, back to work I guess.

Our little cat Trixie left the world last night to join her brother Eddie on the other side. She’s been with us since before she even born. We’ll miss her.

It’s currently about 14° here this morning, and after a night of relatively heavy snow (nothing too impressive for January, but rather depressing for the last week or so of March), it appears to be clearing up. We got, oh, I dunno, maybe 4-6 inches of snow by the time I went out with the dogs this morning. The place where I live was under one of those dreaded Lake Effect snow bands, so I reckon we got more than the official tally (which as of yesterday was up to 118.5″, just in case you’re keeping score). It’s supposed to remain “unseasonably” cold (highs around 20’ish, windchills in the single-digits at best) until Wednesday or so, when it will get to the mid-forties (I wish I could go back to my mid forties) and be windy and rainy for a couple of days and then get cold again. Welcome to Central New York all you NCAA Regional attendees!

You’re fortunate that it’s so cold out, though, because it’s too cold for me to keep my gloves off long enough to take dog pictures. OK, well, I managed to snap a few, but I’ll spare you. The other thing I’ve discovered is that my the tip of my index finger is more numb than I thought it was – I have to actually look at my hand to see what camera button I’m about to press, which would be a really easy thing to figure out if I could feel my finger. But I can’t. I’m just hoping it keeps itself to my right “trigger finger” and doesn’t spread.

Ever hear of “BlockBot?” Me neither, but apparently it’s something started by a bunch of self-righteous pricks who have developed a database to block people on social media (god, how I despise the term “social media”) that they and their “blockers” (those who submit names to them) have deemed to be offensive in some way or another.

For example, they have labelled Richard Dawkins as:

‘racist’, ‘gross’, ‘rapeapologist’, ‘childabuseapologism’, ‘transphobia’, ‘youradick’

You know, if you find somebody annoying and don’t want to hear what they have to say, then feel free to ignore, not follow, block from your “feed,” or whatever, but don’t lie about them and libel them and stick them in some database where a bunch of mindless sheep will associate them with spammers and doxers and harassers. I mean, feel free to call me a douchebag if you want, or pout, or better yet just ignore me. But don’t try and take away my ability to talk to other people.

Ah, I spoke too soon. More snow. I don’t think summer will ever get here.

Yesterday, I registered for this year’s Google IO that’s happening at the end of May. Why? I don’t know. Probably because I know there’s very little chance that I’ll get “selected” to attend, so I won’t have to shell out the $300 Academic Rate conference fee ($900 or something for regular attendees) let alone the $300-400 airfare (or maybe when I don’t go, I’ll no drive instead of not fly – it will take me longer to not fly, but it’ll be more enjoyable) or the $750+ for a hotel room (that for 2 or 3 night stay – it would seem a shame to go all that way and only stay for a couple nights). So maybe when I don’t drive out I can skip the hotel and not camp instead. Last time I was out that way (well, OK, the only time I’ve ever been out that way) I camped at Mount Tamalpais State Park (at least, I think that’s where I was – somewhere in the vicinity or Muir Woods) one night and then hiked for a few days at Point Reyes National Seashore. I think I was about 28 years old at the time (ah, to be young again).

When I looked out the window this morning at about 3:00, I thought, “damn, it sure is foggy out there.” HA! The joke was on me – it was a total white-out (the kind that the Ferguson Police Department would truly appreciate, I’m sure). And it hadn’t let up by the time I took the dogs out at 5:00. Cold and windy and snowing like a bastid. The snow plow didn’t get my mailbox, but it did manage to knock over my garbage can and dump out a couple bags. My first inclination was to ignore it. In fact, I got up the corner before I did a 360 and came back to pick up the can and toss the bags back in. I mean, it was snowing and cold and I really didn’t want the poor garbage guys to have to deal with it – after all, it wasn’t their fault (it was clearly my wife’s fault for putting the cans too close to the road).

Oh well, another hour or so of work, and then I can venture out into the great white north once again.