All's well

That ends badly.

I'd like to apologize to all my fans for not writing more often. A couple years back, I could look at any situation and see something blogworthy. Now, I look at every situation and see something mundane.

CherkyB has lost his edge.

It's not really my edge that I've lost. It's my pain.

Oh wait. Here's MaxieC. My pain is found.

[Brief interlude of playing PS2 games with him.]

A few days back, my wife asked me why I didn't become, "One of those famous humor bloggers." I guess she was talking about Frank J, cuz I'm not really aware of any other famous humor bloggers. Funny people, by and large, don't need to immerse themselves in the internet as an outlet for their humor. No, funny people just go around being funny, and then they have to beat the pu$$y off with a stick.

With a stick.

Speaking of which, I told a slow motion joke last week. Damned if I can remember what it was (it was more of a humorous topical reference than a funny joke, per se), but it traveled in a wave at about 1 ft per second. I was sitting at a lunch table with three other guys, and then I put the fish in the water. The guy diagonally across from me said, "I don't get the reference," and then stared, confusedly. Then a couple seconds later, the guy across from me went, "Oh, yeah. Heh."
Then the guy next to me got it. Finally, the guy on the diagonal figured it out. It was really something to behold - how often do you actually get to see humor propagate as sub-sonic speed? It's like one of those videos of polar bears humping.

Or something.

Many Things

First, I'd like to say that I was on edge all day over the special election in Massachusetts. I even had to watch the results live on TV. In the end, Good triumphed over Evil, which quite honestly was kind of a shocker for me, as I figured the Devil has our future all wrapped up in her handbasket already, and only a large stockpile of guns and ammo would pry it loose.

Shows what I know.

Which brings me to an old joke that I haven't been able to get out of my head for weeks now:

Q: How can you tell when Obama is lying?

A: His lips are moving.

But it's not a political blog. I risk alienating one or two of my readers with that above joke. So, you know, it's just a joke. His lips don't actually have to be moving.

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As you weather fans know, I promised you a review of The Hangover. It was good. I recommend seeing it. It wasn't anywhere near Superbad good, though. It has been claimed that this is the best comedy ever set in Vegas, but I must say I can't personally name any other comedies set in Vegas. A lot of Smokin' Aces was set in Tahoe (or, more accurately, Stateline, NV), and it wasn't technically a comedy either. If it had been a comedy set in Vegas, it would have been better than The Hangover.

I almost got to create a Something Not to Do episode from the movie, when after it ended The Mrs. was bitching about something or other (I tune it out now, after so many years), and I told her she should consider which of the movie's characters she is most like.

Once you see the movie, you'll understand that.

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I'm thinking of going to Napa. I've always liked wine country.

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The clincher, I think, happened when I realized how I've been using only blower levels 1 and 4 on the HVAC system in my Dodge for a couple months now, and how 4 is too high, and 1 is too low. It'd be nice if there were some levels in between 1 and 4. Say, 2 and 3. But where 2 and 3 should be, there are instead two levels where all you hear is the fan rattling around on worn-out bearings.

And my truck is from 2003, a time when Chrysler Corp. quality was supposed to be at its peak.

My guess is that Fiat hasn't added a whole lot of quality to the situation.

Time to give Ford another shot.

You don't know the half of it

I was sitting in the back at 4H tonight when the fellow two seats over from me leaned over to his wife, who was seated next to me, and whispered to her, "Boy, Hannah must be a handful at home."

I'm normally quite decisive

But it seems that picking out a new vehicle is one of those things that always takes forever. In general, I think this is because they cost so much more than I want to spend, and then they promptly lose their value. I know, I know, I should buy used. But I've never had particularly good luck with used cars, even in cases where I know that the car was impeccably maintained because I bought it from, say, my parents.

I'm also a very clever person. Not just clever in a "CherkyB brings new life to weather reporting" kind of way. Clever in a "that boy is too clever for his own good" kind of way. You see, a while back I had this grand plan to trick The Mrs. into letting me buy a new truck. It went like this:

Me, CherkyB: "I put the back up higher on HannahC's booster seat."

The Mrs.: "Good. She's been complaining that it was too low."

Me, CherkyB: "Yeah. It's all the way up now."

The Mrs.: "Well, when she grows some more, we can take the back off and just use the seat part, right?"

Me, CherkyB: "Yes. [sigh] But there's a small problem with that."

The Mrs.: "What's that?"

Me, CherkyB: "Well, it'll work fine in the van. My my truck is so old that it doesn't have headrests in the back seat. So when we take the back off the booster seat, her head will be right in front of the back window. If we get in a crash, her head will go through the back window, and it'll shoot glass into her brain stem and kill her."

[Note: this is actually a pretty common way to die in a pickup truck. It's not something I made up. Though, more often, you just get a horrible concussion from smashing the back of your head into glass instead of a headrest.]

The Mrs.: "Oh. You should probably get a new truck."

Me, CherkyB: "Well, if you think so."

So now it's almost bonus time at The Company, and this was not too bad year for us, as we're not as dependent upon the US economy as a lot of companies are. Most of the rest of the world is exiting the recession reasonably rapidly, whereas we are at best holding steady and more likely heading deeper because of the reckless and amateurish economic policy of Mr. Hopenchange.

I have about four weeks until all the bonuses roll in (and I find out the size of them this week, in theory), so I'll need to be striking while the iron is hot. Problem is, I still haven't figured out what to get.

I've narrowed it down to two choices: Ford F-150, and Ram 1500. You may note that it is no longer "Dodge Ram 1500", as Fiat decided to spin off the truck division from Dodge under the Ram label. So you can now buy something called a "Ram Dakota", which would be very similar to my current ride - a Dodge Dakota - except it'd be newer and better in nearly every way. And it'd also be one of the worst-selling pickups on the market, outselling only the badge-engineered Chevy Colorado sold as a GMC Canyon and the same vehicle rebadged and slightly modified sold as a Hummer H3T (and possibly the Ford Ranger rebadged as a Mazda and the Toyota Tacoma rebadged as a Suzuki - trucks I didn't bother to look up the sales figures for).

I guess the good news is that I've eliminated Chevy/GMC, Toyota, and Nissan from the running, each for different reasons. Not coincidentally, I get an affiliates discount from both Ford and Chrysler through The Company which gives them a price advantage over the competition, though this is not a deciding factor (especially since, right now, it looks like the Ram "preferred pricing" is a whopping $250 discount - but they have thousands of dollars of incentives and rebates available to all that makes them largely comparable to the Ford with the affiliate discount).

I would summarize the pro's/con's of the two this way:

• Everything I actually do with my pickup, the Ram is better at than the Ford. But Ram is owned by Fiat.
  
• All those things I wish I did but never actually do, the Ford is better.

For instance, if I were towing a 7000lbs. trailer, the Ford would be better (though, honestly, one should be looking at 3/4 ton class trucks for that kind of weight). I don't actually own any trailer. The only things I might consider buying that I would tow would be a fishing boat, which would have a towing weight of somewhere around 2000lbs., or a pop-up camper, which would be even less.

The ride with a 1000lbs. payload is much better in the Ford than in the Ram, though the opposite is true when unloaded. This is my daily driver vehicle. Guess how often I have 1000lbs. in the bed. Six times a year. 3 loads of shredded redwood bark for the mulch beds, and three loads of compost for the garden. Sure, I move some furniture around on occasion, and our trips to Sam's Clubs are legendary in their volume, if not their weight. But, gosh, it feels like I should optimize for unloaded, no-trailer.

There is really no question that for me, the Ram is the better truck. My Dakota has been quite reliable (as good as our Honda minivan - and quite possibly better), and after 6 years and 60k miles, with half of those miles sitting idle in traffic in San Schmose, there's nothing at all wrong with it that a new set of shocks wouldn't fix (except for a lack of headrests in the back seat). But, gosh, Ram is owned by Fiat. What are the chances it'll exist 6 years from now?

I dunno.

Don't worry. It happens to all guys...

...as they get older.

Just words, they were. Yeah yeah, all guys but me.

But it happened to me.

Yep. I mixed a drink, took a sip, and I said to myself, "Self, that drink is a little too strong."

God have mercy on my soul.

Vocabulary Corner

I learned a new word today: "fatocalypse." I was reading this wonderful article called "The Misandry Bubble" that is a rather longish article about, among other things, the changing nature of the marriage "contract" in Western society, particularly in the US, and how these types of changes have in all past societies that have implemented similar systems proven unsustainable and have led to the disappearance of that culture, and all of a sudden I came across a new word.

Here it is, in context:

We earlier discussed why marriage was created, but equally important were the factors that sustained the institution and kept it true to its objectives. The reasons that marriage 'worked' not too long ago were :

1) People married at the age of 20, and usually died by the age of 50. People were virgins at marriage, and women spent their 20s tending to 3 or more children. The wife retained her beauty 15 years into the marriage, and the lack of processed junk food kept her slim even after that. This is an entirely different psychological foundation than the present urban feminist norm of a woman marrying at the age of 34 after having had 10 or more prior sexual relationships, who then promptly emerges from her trim chrysalis in an event that can best be described as a fatocalypse.

I suggest you read the whole thing.

Project #1

Stupid Saturation Coverage

Is it just me, or every time you hear "White Christmas" do you think of Tiger Woods?

...and may all your mistresses be whiiiiite.

The Trepidation

Tomorrow is the big day. The day we've prepared for for weeks, working our fingers to the bone. Yes, tomorrow is when the in-laws arrive for their Christmas visit.

Not just any in-laws, mind you. Of course, Grandmother Moo and Ellie are cherished, but they've been here before and therefore are No Big Deal. The Big Deal is Ellie's new husband. He's never been here before, and thus he doesn't know what slobs we are. Apparently, we want to keep this a big secret, as we've been cleaning and cleaning and cleaning. I even had to put up a bunch of towel bars in some of the bathrooms so that there wouldn't be any draping of towels over shower doors to dry.

Plus, we bought all new towels. And a new toilet seat for the basement bathroom (which is where the guest room is). I even splurged and bought a full tank of gas for the truck.

I'm sure he'll be completely fooled.

Movie Review - Inglorious Basterds

Meh.

Bubble Boy

Something Not to Do 21

Tonight was an odd night, as I ate dinner out with one of my old cohorts from Santa Clarabelle who was here to take my job away from me (don't fret - it's a crap job, and I have much better jobs lined up to replace it. As far as you know), plus, The Mrs. had a migraine today. It ended up that all of us had eaten before HannahC got out of gymnastics, but I sat with her while she ate dinner cuz I like to do that.

But it went badly.

HannahC: "Dah, this is something that Momma is going to talk to you about. But, well..."

Me, CherkyB: "Yeah?"

HannahC: "You see, Miss Mickey has this tarantula that she doesn't want anymore, and..."

Me, CherkyB: "No!"

HannahC: "But..."

Me, CherkyB: "Oh, Jesus Christ."

At this point, HannahC burst into tears. That, dear readers, is Something Not to Do.

Update: It has come to my attention that it is not clear to some of my readers what the "something not to do" was in this episode. It was actually a two-fer. First, as a parent, even if you are not particularly religious, you are not supposed to blaspheme in front of your childrens. Second, you're also supposed to be more gentle and not cause your childrens to burst into tears.

Though I suspect that females use the tears thing as a technique for manipulation more than as an expression of emotion.

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Saving the fishies

During the cold snap we've been having this past week, the front koi pond decided to freeze. That has never happened before, as the combination of the pump running and the floating heater has always kept it going just fine. But during our multi-day sub-zero spell, the pipe from the pump to the waterfall froze, blocking water circulation. Then, we got a nice layer of ice across most of the pond except right around the heater.



Today it finally warmed up (much of the day over 40), so I set about trying to figure out how to get the pond running again. First thing I did was inspect the pump too see WTF.

Well, the old pump inlet was quite clogged with leaves. Plus a 3" crayfish (who perished as a result, sadly). So, I'm guessing that the flow of water was pretty severely restricted, and this was enough to allow a pipe to freeze. I may need to upgrade the pumps to what they call "sewage pumps". Those are designed to pump water that has crap in it, which they just grind up as it passes through. The pumps I have now are water pumps, and they sieve out any foreign matter in the water and thus clog with leaves all the damn time. I don't know how the leaves get in there - the box is covered and there is both a skimmer net and a 1" thick nylon mesh filter that everything has to pass through to get to the pump, yet the pumps clogs a lot.

I got to use my early-Christmas present from moother-in-law insulated waterproof gloves to screw around with the pump. My fingers stayed nice and dry and warm. I can put my hand in boiling water for up to 20 seconds and handle dry ice with these gloves, too. I'll let you know if that comes up.

Restoring the flow on the pump, though, didn't restore flow to the waterfall. Something was definitely frozen downstream. So I dumped a 5-gallon bucket of hot water into the waterfall box. This softened up the filter screens in there enough so that I could remove them, but the water stayed in the box. That box is higher than the pump, so normally if the pump is off, water will flow out of the box back through the pump. Nothing doing.

Next, I got another bucket of hot water and poured it over the ultraviolet sterilizer. It's about a 2-foot long PVC tube with a UV lightbulb down the center. I figured it might freeze given it's not really buried (cuz you have to change the bulb every year), but just has some rocks piled up on it. Still, the water stayed in the waterfall box.

I went inside to refill the 5ga bucket with hot water. When I returned, I noticed that the water level in the waterfall box was suspiciously lower than it had been earlier. Could it be? It couldn't be this easy. Could it?

I poured the hot water into the waterfall box, and I watched the level slowly go down. Sure enough, I could see the water flowing back out of the pump box at the other end of the pond. When it had emptied itself out, I turned on the pump. Voila! Waterfall.

A picture is worth 1000 words

But a picture really doesn't capture the real art of a weather report.

Something Not to Do 20

Facebook, in my opinion, is pure evil. Now that I've figured that out, I've decided to start blogging again.

Lucky you.

Anyways, having been almost 9 months since the last installment of "Something Not to Do", I believe that we are due for an update. And do I ever have a gem for you today.

See, yesterday I was unloading the dishwasher so that I could load it with the dinner dishes. Nearing the end of the unload, The Mrs. (who had been making an annoyance out of herself all day long - she gets overly worked up around the holidays) swooped in and grabbed a couple Rubbermaid containers (the new ones where the lids snap onto the bottom for easy nesting - cool as hell, really) to put away. These go into a lazy-susan corner cabinet right next to the dishwasher that can't really be opened if the dishwasher door is open. So, The Mrs. shut the dishwasher that I was in the middle of unloading, opened the corner cabinet, and bent down to fiddle with all the storage containers. I stood there, watching, waiting.

The Mrs.: "Don't you have anything better to do than to stand there watching me?"

Me, CherkyB: "Well, I was unloading the dishwasher, but I can't get to it anymore because there is this enormous ass in between it and me."

The Mrs.: "I am tired of you telling me I'm fat all the time!"

Me, CherkyB: "Huh? I wasn't talking about your weight."

That, gentle readers, is Something Not to Do.

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A long day ahead

HannahC made it to the state gymnastics championship this year, and it's today. We have a nice seat in the bleachers near the door so that when MaxieC gets bored, we can split for a break.

There's a Mardi Gras theme. I don't know why.

I'm trying a new blogger android app called "blogaway". I have no idea where it will put the photo.

Update:

So, apparently I need to activate a picassa web account for my blogger account before I can post pictjures from the phone. But you can't activate it from the phone. Humgub.

Meet is halfway through. HannahC is doing ok, but she's not going to win.

Battery is at only 30%. I am plugged in to an outlet in the cafeteria between events.

Ah, Womens

As the old saying goes: you can't live with them, you can't.

Today was my last day of my Thanksgiving vacation. I used 4 vacation days, and I got 10 days off in a row. Yeah, I know. But The Mrs. likes when I'm home so that I can "see what her life is like."

From what I can tell, her life consists of making hand-crafted Christmas gifts, yelling at The Childrens, and going from store to store spending money without a care in the world as to where it came from, occasionally broken up by cooking microwave taquitos for dinner or making a ham and swiss sandwich. Yes, it's time for me to return to work where I am sheltered from this and can concentrate on keeping that free-flow of money running.

Today being Monday, The Childrens were in their one-day-a-week school for homeschoolers, so we had to spend the entire time shopping. The Mrs. wrote out a list of six stores to go to, plus the library and out to lunch. Oddly, none of the stores involved buying groceries because we apparently plan to have nothing but turkey and turkey byproducts for the next week and a half.

Anyways, as I was performing my required chauffeur duties (I made the mistake of having The Mrs. drive somewhere once during my vacation, and she threw quite a hissy fit about not being mentally prepared to drive her own minivan in the middle of the day - she really pours on the fake dependency when I'm around), she was consulting her Google calendar on her Motorola Droid.

The Mrs.: "Oh shoot."

Me, CherkyB: "What?"

The Mrs.: "I was going to call Coldstone to find out what time they opened on Wednesday."

Me, CherkyB: "So call them."

The Mrs.: "I didn't write down their number. When we stop, I think I have a phonebook in the back."

Me, CherkyB: "Why do you need a phonebook?"

The Mrs.: "I don't have their number."

Me, CherkyB: "But you have the internet on your phone. You have a web browser. You have a Google Maps app that you can just type in 'Coldstone', and it will show you the nearest location. You can click on it on the map, and it'll give you the phone number. It'll probably even give you the hours."

The Mrs.: "No. The hours aren't on the internet. I checked when we were at home."

So much for America's most extensive 3G coverage.

Success

Over the years, I've had a lot of trouble with the old HO train set. In particular, it has been very difficult to get the track all laid out nice and straight and even, and it seems like there is always some joint that is opening up or has a bump that throws the trains off. This problem is particularly acute when trying to set the train up under the Christmas tree.

Last year, I made a wonderful base for it that I thought would cure the problems. It helped, but not enough. It was still tough to get a train around the track more than a few times without a derailment. So this year, I bit the bullet and bought Atlas Super-Flex track. It comes in three foot sections rather than the 9" sections I had been using - so 1/4 as many joints are needed. I did the whole layout (with more track than last year) with just 10 pieces of it. And because it is bendy, you can make more gentle curves than you can with the sectional track. It took me a bit of time to get the hand of how to trim it and how to attach the couplers (which I had to google), but once I got it down, it went quite quickly. So far the only derailments we're getting are when a very light car goes over a switch. I need to add some weight to some of the cars.

Haven't tried any very long trains, yet. It got dark as I was finishing laying the track, and I didn't get to hooking up all the electrical accessories (whistles, lights, switches) so I haven't gotten all the cars out yet as they'd just get in the way.

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Thanksgiving Live Blogging

The thing with a live blogging is that you have to update the same post again and again with new information as it happens "live." I don't actually plan to update every couple minutes. Sorry. You'll have to enjoy Thanksgiving with your own fambilies.

First, I'd like to open up with a reflection upon what I am personally thankful for this year. Yes, that's right, The CherkyB is capable of being serious on special occasions. As you all know, the last year has been a tough one around here with a lot of seemingly unnecessary and gratuitous stress that had driven me to a state of quiet desperation and, quiet honestly, way too many liquor store owners and bar wait staff knew me by name. Which, on the surface, would seem like a good thing but turns out not to be.

However, all that has changed. So this year, for Thanksgiving, I would like to say that I am thankful that the daemon who has haunted me for so long, driving me to the brink of destruction, is gone, and I'm back to my cheery old self that you may remember from my childhood.

Unfortunately, she just ran out to Safeway to pick up a couple onions for the stuffing, so she'll be back in about 20 minutes.

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Morning in the Cherky household means a hearty breakfast prepared by The Mrs. This morning, it was a can of mandarin oranges for MaxieC and two cheese danishes from Sam's Club for Me, CherkyB. We might be eating lightly due to the feast later.


MaxieC then did his post-breakfast chores. Just because it's a holiday doesn't mean that the house is going to clean itself, after all.


HannahC cheerfully greeted everyone and wished them "Happy Thanksgiving!" in her own special way.


Later, after non-stop bickering between The Childrens, I forbade them from speaking to one another. MaxieC then said, "OK. Sooo....Hannah, what are you up to today?"

Here is MaxieC staring at the countdown timer on the bar microwave waiting for his time in Naughty Corner to expire.


I need to clean the bar. Luckily, we never, ever have company.

The Mrs. got right down to her daily routine, which involves spending about 10% of her time cooking, cleaning, and hollering at everyone and the remaining 90% of her time talking to her mother on the phone. If she can squeeze it in.

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For the first time ever, we got all the outside Christmas lights up before Thanksgiving. We didn't turn them on like many of our neighbors did, though. I replaced a bunch of the older lights with LEDs - I do a little every year. In this case, it was 9 boxes of C9-sized LEDs for the front fence and 4 boxes of "normal" mini-light LEDs for one of the pine trees.

As The Mrs. was removing the first set of mini-lights from the box and taking off all the twist ties that the poor Chinese child laborers had put on, she announced,"

The Mrs.: "Oh. This box already has two sets strung together."

Me, CherkyB: "No. It's one set. It's just plugged in ummm..."

I couldn't for the life of me remember the phrase I was looking for. So I used this:

Me, CherkyB: "...ass-to-mouth."

Yeah, that wasn't it. Turns out either "head-to-tail" or "end-to-end" would have been acceptable phrases. But we did have quite a conversation trying to decide which end of the lights was the ass end and which was the mouth end, and how "head-to-tail" syntactically translates to about the same thing, but has a completely different meaning.

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I've used this joke before on the blarg, so I'm gonna let it slide without comment.


One of our Thanksgiving traditions is to make stuffed mushrooms. There used to be a bar in Barfalo named that where they had lots of "battle of the bands" events, but it's apparently long gone. MaxieC snagged on of the mushrooms prior to stuffage.


HannahC made the traditional alive and pickle tray. I think this tradition started because they had a great olive bar at Cosentino's.


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It's good to know that a couple hours into this, not a single person has read this so far. You may be the first. That's good, because it means you may all have lives.

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We just walked the dog. I would have taken pictures, but I forgot.

It's my job to baste the turkey, cuz I'm the master baster in the fambily.

This despite me never having even taken a single womyns studies course.


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Ellie and The Locksmith just got Motorola Droids. I guess The Mrs. and Me, CherkyB aren't so special anymore. I still can't believe there's no Blogger app for android and that the WYSIWYG "compose" window doesn't work in the android browser, either. I mean, WTF?, they're booth Google. You can only use the "Edit HTML" function, which is fahbulous if you like to blog in HTML from a goddamned phone keyboard.

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The Mrs. wants me to say that she didn't forget the onions, and that the story about her going to Safeway was merely a plot device and not literal truth, as only an idiot would forget the onions.

The rest of the story she does not dispute.

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Oh. Only The Locksmith has a Droid. Ellie has the lowly Droid Eris. I say at most a week before she realizes what a huge mistake that was.

A Worlde of Paine

Today is Lego Robotics day. HannahC is on a team that will likely not win. My job is to watch Max. Apparently, I do it very poorly, as The Mrs. is constantly directing me to do it differently.

There needs to be a blogger app for Android. I don't get why there isn't, given they're both Google products. This is a pain.

[Update: Their robot came in 19th out of 48, but overall scores were not yet published. The team won the coveted "Most Professional Courtesy" Award. Which is bizarre. Both the award and that any team containing HannahC could win it.]