My response below to the following question in a Scout forum I follow on Facebook:

We are in Scouting because we want to help the kids and enjoy doing what we're doing. We are not in Scouting to solve everyone else's "I need a volunteer" problem.

"Help me out for once" doesn't negate the other work (volunteer or paid) you're doing in or out of Scouting. As has been noted earlier, it's a knee-jerk statement meant to get a yes as a result of emotional manipulation.

No means no.

If they persist, this is what I'd say (putting my details into the scenario):

I work a full-time job and have a part-time teaching gig. I'm advancement chair for a troop and am involved in weekly scout meetings. I have a yard and household to take care of while my wife is away all summer working as a climbing director at scout camp. I teach every other week at my church. Which of these do you want me to give up so I can help you out?

If they have the audacity to pick one (and they probably would), I'd tell them I've already made commitments to the above and cannot take on any more obligations at this time.

In other words, no with embellishments.

The 100 Hats of Officer Jones

Spotted this in an episode of Barney Miller, and by this I mean the brochure, "The 100 Hats of Officer Jones" pinned to the bulletin board behind Fish:

Because I like to look up esoteric information I spot in the background of TV shows and movies, I looked this up.

Apparently, I'm very late to the Officer Jones party.

IMDB.com spotted it and talks about it.

The New York Times and The Gothamist will, of course, tell me about it for a fee or if I sign up for their website, which I ain't gonna do.

Even Goodreads has heard of it.

It came of a 1974 campaign to show the public (and police) how many different roles police had at the time, or things they could do to help the public. Interesting.

Last of the Fly of Despair

Today's last mad dash to get Michelle and company to camp for the summer:

First, get the jeep out of the trailer, get the battery installed and see if the whole things works again. I asked the boys to get it out of the trailer last night, but that didn't happen. I did get it out, got the battery installed (added a twig to the little bag of tools needed to install the battery) and it runs. Michelle had to start it -- I don't drive the thing so I don't know how -- and then Isaac tested it and it seems to be running fine, which is a relief.

Second, shopping. That wasn't on my list of things to do, but it was on Michelle's so I tagged along. Good thing I did as we ended up filling two carts of groceries for her COPE and climbing crew's training week.

She had more shopping to do, but plans on doing it on her own.

Third, the trailer the jeep was in needed new tires last year, so we took it to Big O for new tires. I stayed there while the boys took Isaac's truck to Kevin for another look at the transmission. He and Michelle were hauling the camper up to camp Wednesday night and made it as far as St. Anthony before he discovered his transmission was really hot and leaking. So we'll have to see what's going on with that.

Tires done, we took the trailer home, loaded the jeep, and then got some of Michelle's food for the week packed up along with some other gear, and Isaac is off to camp for the weekend, while Michelle finishes up a short work day and then will head up tonight. Isaac took the jeep trailer, making that two trips for the 21-year-old Honda Pilot up north for the week.

I hope all goes well. I hope they settle in and have an enjoyable summer. I hope all I hear is good news. I hope a lot.

Nailed It

Tom Holt, nailing the width and breadth of male relationships in two meaty paragraphs 

From his novel "The Portable Door."

The text:

In a way, it felt though all his adult life -- ever since he'd realised that girls weren't irrelevant alien creatures who only cared about inane trifles like hair-toggles and glittery nail varnish (instead of vitally important things, such as making balsa-wood aeroplanes and painting 1/72 scale model soldiers) but were in fact beautiful, terrifying creatures who never seemed to notice he was there -- all his life, he'd been pulling and heaving at a door that led into an enchanted garden, and quite suddenly he'd noticed that in face it opened inwards and all he had to do was push gently with the tips of his fingers.

That said, he hadn't got a clue what he was supposed to do next. Presumably at some point he was going to have to say something toe-curlingly embarrassing, and if that went okay there'd be kissing, and, well, stuff like that. Obviously he was all for that, just as he'd always really fancied owning a big yacht and sailing it single-handed to New Zealand. Now that he was at least part of the way along, he had the unpleasant feeling that his yacht was an open boat, and he was adrift in it in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. On the other hand, he assured himself -- after all, it couldn't be too difficult, could it? He considered his relatives; Uncle Trevor and Cousin Darren and Cousin Lorna's husband Eric, men with the personal charm of dustbins and just enough intelligence between the three of them to power a traffic light, and yet they'd all contrived to attract, woo, bed, and marry females, often not in that order. If they could do it, so could a lawnmower or an answering machine or a tin-opener or a small rock, and so, by implication, could he. In theory.

PLEASE! FIX MY HOUSE!

I'm a little tired of fixing things.

But I have to fix this -- replace it, really: the tee to one of our Camp Chef stoves. We have two, and neither one works. This one got boogered up in storage, with the bare nipple's threads getting pretty stripped. So I have to figure out how to replace it.

Looking online for spare parts is a dead end, as Camp Chef the company seems more intent on selling new units than letting owners of older units maintain or repair them.

Then there's the main floor toilet -- yes, another toilet problem.

The flusher handle rusted through, so I have to buy and install a new one. Not a huge task, mind you, but I'm a little weary of having to fix things. And I haven't even turned the lawn sprinklers on for the year.

UPDATE: The toilet is fixed.

GET THE ARK

I mentioned earlier we've gotten a bit of rain today as I struggle to get the camper ready before Michelle takes it to camp next week.

The 1.29 inches of rain that have fallen today have certainly given the roof a test, and as far as I can tell, no leaks.

When it rains like this, parts of the neighborhood flood. This video shows Matchpoint drive just a block or two south from where we live. We usually get floods on just one side of the road, but we've had enough rain today that the two puddles joined, overwhelmed the sidewalks and started creeping up the driveways of a few of the houses. It's kind of a mess.

Update: 1.39 inches of rain.

Success. Maybe.

That's the sound of a camper water pump pumping.

What I don't see or hear is any leaking. I'm hopeful.

I won't be able to be sure until it stops raining buckets outside. But I do know the camper roof doesn't leak.

Damned Camper Leak

So this might be part of why the camper is leaking.

This morning I spotted some moisture along a bead in the threaded bit at the top, which connects to the fresh water tank. I hoped that was the source of the leak I spotted last week, but, alas, it was not.

Still it looked corroded enough to be replaced, and when I got it out and realized it was galvanized steel and rather corroded on the inside, it was clear it was only a matter of time before this part failed, so I opted to replace it, but with brass fittings less prone to corrosion.

Next up is refilling the filler neck and air pipe, which I could see were leaking when I filled the tank again. That, and the fact that at a certain water level in the tank the leaks stopped lead me to believe I've finally got the problem identified. Ran out of light today to get things done today because I had to go to Home Depot twice for parts because the first time I eyeballed it and got it wrong. That was dumb, but I've got the proper parts now.

Hoping tomorrow brings better news and a dry camper. Later this year I'll have to do something about the drain cock, as I think it's bunged up because it wants to drain into the camper now. That's not good.

Update: Stan Confirmed in Bloom County

Here's Stan getting his pencil sharpened, in the storyline where Trump buys the strip and fires everyone and we follow Steve Dallas trying to find a new comic strip job.

Ol' brain's still got it.

Hallucinations Continue

Help me take artificial intelligence more seriously, because as far as I'm concerned, the hallucinations are continuing.

For reasons, today I needed to verify my memory that the phrase "Let me sharpen your pencil, Stan," appeared in a Bloom County comic strip.

I know Berke Breathed, like many artists, is strict about keeping his comics off the Internet, but I knew there had to be somebody out there at least discussing this particular strip, because this is the Internet and everyone is there talking about everything, as Clay Shirky has led me to believe.

Of course the first thing that pops up on any search nowadays is an AI summary. This one I found to be comical.

Google's AI, shown below, denies any connection between the phrase and Bloom County, but pastes the comic use of the phrase on Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury, particularly on his character Joanie Caucus.

So wrong.

Also included, textual proof I had not mandela effected myself and that the phrase was indeed used in Bloom County.

But I thought I'd give AI the benefit of the doubt. I don't know my Doonesbury as well as my Bloom County. But searching for the link brought up bupkis, and, interestingly, denials from the same AI that the phrase has any connection to Doonesbury at all.

If I am in fact wrong and the phrase is used in the comic, I stand corrected. But this is clear proof to me that AI as far as searches go is still pretty much making things up as it goes along.

Including, maybe, character names. While I know of Joanie Caucus, internet searches for a Doonesbury character called Stan Mills come up empty.

This is definitely a low-stakes search. But how much hallucination is going on in searches with more substance?

Clearly, everything AI says ought to be taken with skepticism. And trying to verify information just leads you into another rabbit hole.