Cardboard Crisis Averted

Everyone can relax, the cardboard emergency at our house is over.

Just in time, too.

Cardboard was really piling up at the house. And in the garage. And in the new Slanty Shanty. I knew it was only a matter of time before something happened and I'd wished I'd kept preserves and basketballs distributed strategically around the property.

But late Thursday I finally got really desperate and made a phone call to the county, to discover they've offered cardboard recycling for years. So I stuffed the Red Herring to the gills, went to the transfer station and got rid of a lot of stuff.

Galoot v Bozo

Today, something startling from the Vox crossword:

I had never regarded galoot as a synonym for bozo. Bozo, in my mind, is a harsher epithet, while galoot carries more of an "innocent goober" vibe to it. Bozos are complete jerks and do things on purpose to annoy others. Galoots are just goofy guys tripping over their own feet.

Indigant, I raced to the Internet to find the definition for galoot and discovered thus:

This kinda vibes with what I suspected: clumsy and oafish aren't necessarily "on purpose" behaviors, while bozos are, well, bozos.

As for the word origin: I suspect, somehow, it's Dutch. I don't know exactly why I suspect that, but I do. Galoot sounds like an Englisher trying to say something they've heard a Dutch sailor say. And that's generally not a good thing.

Also, what casued the surge in the use of "galoot" in the 21st century? Or the surge in the late 19th and early 20th century, for that matter? The long tail leading into the '50s and beyond can probably be explained by Hollywood westerns, but as for the rest, I'm lost.

Probably the late surge can be explained by the Internet, and having the word counters have a lot more and a lot more easily-searched text to delve into.

In contrast, here's the same dictionary's definition of bozo:

Note the inclusion of "rude" in the definition. Rudeness, to me, is what sets a bozo apart from a galoot.

Red One: A Review

Before the movie scrolled, I made a prediction:

Skeptical kid turns into pseudo Santa-napper.

Has his own delinquent kid.

Meanwhile, Santa's right-hand man is quitting.

Prediction: Santa-napper has a Grinch-like heart attack, rescues Santa, becomes his new right-hand-man, his own kid sees the light, the crappy little elves dance around like little green idiots, I puke, the end.

Or maybe not. Time will tell.

I was, of course, proved wrong.

But if you want to talk about a movie where there's little to no discernible character arcs, then this is the one.

First: The Rock's character. I can't even remember his name. He starts off resigning his job, saying the magic is gone. He gets totallly fooled by the bad guys, buys a Monopoly game he tells another character to hold onto because they're going to need it, drives a lot of Chevys, then turns into a wuss at the end and takes his job back because -- he saw another character talking with his son. I should admit that the Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots he picks up along with the Monopoly board do appear as a plot device later in the film. And the Chevys, well, they *did* need transportation, so . . . 

Second: Jack O'Malley. Played by someone I don't know. The black hat guy who helped the Christmas Witch! track down Santa Claus' massive toy production facility at the North Pole because, well, I guess the North Pole is really big and the Christmas Witch's gnarly powers aren't gnarly enough to know where Santa is. He was a delinquent kid. He has his own delinquent kid. They get captured by the Christmas Witch's bad ju-ju magic, but figure out how to get out of it about sixty second after being caught. They reconcile, I guess, though I don't really know; they don't dwell on mushy relationships here when there are PUNCHES to be MADE.

Those are the two characters where development was expected. Development was virtually nonexistent.

It's almost like I wrote the story, it's that underdeveloped. So a good lesson for me as a writer.

Verdict: The film had its moments, but it's generally unforgettable and not one I need ever watch again. For the as-viewed blow-by-blow, go here.

One Week to Curtailment

This has the potential to be a long week.

Week before curtailment -- the traditional Idaho National Laboratory mandatory work break between Christmas and New Years -- is bound to be slow. We might have a little paperwork cleanup to perform, but there's going to be a lot of general cleanup going on this week as any starts to new projects will be put on hold and current projects will gradually begin to be understaffed as people take off early for the holidays.

My plan is this: I'll work this week, and the following Monday. That Monday will be extremely dead. Then the Thursday after New Years.

Plans for the holiday include making progress on a few home projects, including the basement bathroom, finishing the hole around the water shutoff valve, and some work on our home network, including (I hope) the installation of additional lines tied to the router with an ethernet switch.

That's going to mean tile on the floor in the bathroom, poking some holes in the walls for ethernet cable, and hopefully getting everything tied together before I have to be back to work in January.

Fixing the Hole in the Wall

The mouse in the house is no more.

And of course it decided to go into Michelle's craft room and sniff around and find her hidden chocolate and eat it and leave little poops all over the place.

We tried the old-fashoned snap traps, but he was too clever for them. Also too clever for the bucket traps Michelle used in her commissary days until she got some thin-enough wire.

The snap traps did almost catch one of the dogs, however . . .

Now the mouse is, as they kinda say in Dutch, a doya verdomde ding -- a forlorn dead thing, if Dad is to be believed, and as he was Dutch, probably the only thing off is my spelling.

Now I'm busy fixing the hole he likely came in - this open area around our water shutoff valve. I've sealed every hole I can find and added a bit more insulation, as this has always been a cold spot in the wall. Hopefully this stops the critters from getting in.

I'm going to shrink the opening here and I've ordered a little metal door from Home Depot that should arrive on Monday, so all of that should make the spot look and function a lot better than the bigger hole and the furnace vent cover over it.

Something About Polk

I'm closing in on finishing James Thurber's "92 Stories," and have found a treasure-trove of delights.

One such is a bit called "Something About Polk," focusing on the then-current (and also now-current) general ignorance of the accomplishments of James K. Polk, the 11th President of the United States.

He was impressed that a previous reader of a book on Polk was indignant enough about the author's dismissive view of Polk to write in the margin three concrete facts about the former president, showing he wasn't as "almost unknown" as the author thought.

The facts, for the curious:

1. Governor of Tennessee

2. Twice Speaker of the House of Representatives

3. The Jackson leader in the fight against the U.S. Bank.

Thurber, of course, agreed with the author -- he himself knew little of Polk, and lamented that he'd neither been shot or impeached or anything to help the common man cement an idea of Polk in their heads, unlike other presidents.

I learned the word "roorback," or a last-minute political trick, coined from such a trick played by Polk's opponents meant to convince voters that Polk was a slave-trader who branded his slaves, as reported in a fictional book by Baron Von Roorback.

But even contemporary historians and writers dismissed Polk as forgettable, with Thurber pointing out that Carl Sandburg included an anecdote about Polk's wife in his "Abaraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years," but not about Polk himself.

He concludes the best would be to make up more memorable Polk stories and share them to the point they entered the zeitgeist, and concludes thus:

"These are all that I can think of myself, and i am afraid that none of them is going to hurl our hero into immortality, but at least they are a start in the right direction. Let somebody else try it. There's no great rush."

I suspect he would have been amused by this:

Ah, Irony.

A commenter pointed out the missing apostrophe in CANT, and an awful lot of people got offended or snippy on the poster's behalf.

I'm a technical writer, so I make a living fixing things.

I also make a fair number of mistakes in published documents, so I know the sting. Nevertheless, it's important to get as much correct as we can, something I'm reminding myself as of late. What's important, of course, is to learn from our mistakes and not take offense when they're pointed out to us.

 

Verdict: Still Flickering

While we have nice, new light switches and a few new switch plates, we also still have a flickering light in the basement.

What to do?

I talked today with an electrician in our ward, and he figures the light driver is broken and the light should be replaced. I'm game to do so, but it's still a bit infuriating, as these lights aren't all that old.

A few more things I may try first:

1. Check the connections in the fixture. Might have a loose connection. Or I might still have it wired to a bit of wiring that goes to a light that is no longer serviced by that particular bit of wire.

2. Replace the breaker. I'm less sure this will do anything, but as it's less expensive than replacing the fixture, and there's a good chance I won't be able to find a fixture that'll match the twin in the same room.

A little disappointed that replacing the switches didn't work, but I'm not sad I did it -- the switches were original equipment with the house and the plastic on some of them was a bit brittle, so to have new switches in the wall is fine, and I'm only out the time spent in replacing them.

The light *is* flickering less, however. It still is flickering, though.

It's not quite this bad, but I am getting to the point I want to knock Mr. Waturi's artificial testicles off his desk.

"Let's Go, Old Man."

Got to hang out with my brothers today, first time in a very long time. Al, Randy and I drove down to Utah to see Jeff. We stopped at his house for a while, then took he and Jenia out for lunch.

Jeff is set for back surgery at the end of the month and isn't as mobile right now as he'd like, so we finished the rest of the day with just the travelers. We went to the Hill Aerospace Museum -- a first for me -- and looked at many, many planes.

Forgot -- on the way in, we stopped at Smith and Edwards, where Al was in search for flying poops. No luck on that. 

It was a good day.

*COMPETENT* Bad Guys!

 

Got a call early this morning from our daughter, concerned that she had a headlight out on her van.

A bit of a concern, yes, because she doesn't want a ticket for driving with only one headlight, and their other vehicle is off-limits at the moment as it's going to be headed to the shop.

She's in North Dakota, though, and I'm in Idaho. All I could do was suggest she find an auto parts store, buy the replacement bulb, and see if they'd replace it for her. I know they'll do that in our neck of the woods.

She discovered, however, that the folks at the auto parts store thought the job looked too hard and recommended she take it to a mechanic.

She bought the bulb anyway, drove the van home, (thinking all the time about the "incompentent bad guys" at the auto parts store) and got to tinkering. She found a screwdriver and managed to get one of the bolts out, but couldn't budge the other three. I suggested a few things.

She reported back a bit later with the photo above, showing success.

Not a big deal, maybe, but for her it was. She got it done, and that's always a good feeling.

Get Off Your Duffs, Boys

Dear Senator Cook and representatives Mickelsen and Horman:

I'm tired of reading stories like this:

For Decades, Calls for Reform to Idaho’s Troubled Coroner System Have Gone Unanswered

An Idaho Baby’s Unexplained Death Got No Autopsy and a Scant Coroner’s Investigation. State Law Says That’s Fine.

You, as my elected senator and representatives in the Idaho Legislature, ought to lead the fight to put meaningful coroner system reform in place in the state. And if that means putting money from state coffers into the coroner system to mandate better training and qualifications rather than "Hey, he or she won the election, so he or she is coroner," so be it.

It takes brave people to do things that aren't popular with the loud voices in this state. I voted for y'all to be brave and to actually do something in the legislature, rather than toe whatever line supports the status quo. The state needs to put resources at elected coroners' disposal, require training, and offer support other than the weak-sauce laws that appear to stretch back to Idaho's 1890 statehood.

Idaho and Idahoans make a lot of noise about protecting the lives of unborn children. Maybe they ought to put as much noise into figuring out why infants are dying, why Idaho's death rate from drug overdoses is magically much lower than other surrounding states, and other issues that tie in with the state's antiquated views on coroners, their duties and qualifications, and the state resources at their disposal.

Sincerely,

A dissatisfied customer,

Brian Davidson

Why Am I Doing This?

When I started this blogging year, I made it a goal to hit an average of 20 posts a month.

There's one month left in 2024, and I have thusfar made that average with a little bit of a cushion:

December brings a few expected posts, including a recap of the books I've read for the year, and a few other things that repeat year to year, so I'm fairly confident I'll meet my goal.

Why bother blogging? Partly, my blog is a journal where I record things that happen to me and my family. Partly because I've been doing it since 2008 and feel like keeping it going, even if I never hear from anyone about it. I guess I'm doing what I can to fight the dead internet theory. Also, I haven't had a year with more than 200 posts since 2012, and that feels like a lifetime ago.

Floating around in the ethers somewhere is another blog I started earlier, but lost track of somewhere along the line. And if the Wayback Machine ever gets back up and operational, there's some stuff there from me from the mid-1990s. (Looks like it *is* operational; I had heard they'd suffered some kind of massive cyberattack and were offline.) I'm an internet fossil. The stuff I did at the University of Idaho was just me dabbling with HTML. They gave us a limited amount of storage space for stuff, and I do recall getting an email from them saying I'd hit my limit, but they decided to give me more space. Not that I was producing magnificent stuff, but I did have a fair bit put up there.

STOP THE DAMN FLICKERING

On advice of electrical counsel, I'll be replacing two three-way switches in the basement to see if they will help our LED lights from randomly flickering.

We've been dealing with random flickering in our basement lights pretty much since I put them in a few years ago. For a long while, it was one fixture that would randomly flicker, then stop for a while, then flicker again. Now that one seems to behave nicely but the other one has picked up the habit, and I can't explain it. We finally asked a friend of ours who studied as an electrical engineer, and she suggested the switches might be the problem. It's possible -- the switches in the wall have been there since the house was built in the mid-80s, and I'm pretty sure I've replaced just about every electrical outlet in the house because they were just worn out. Maybe the same thing has happened to the switches. I hope that solves the problem, because it's been a real pain.

Little "Thanksgiving" Mac

You remember Little Mac.

Little Mac got into the Thanksgiving spirit, so I expect he'll help us celebrate all the other holidays. Which means we're going to have to fix his nose and the base he stands on.

Holding Power: Waning

Thanksgiving Day.

Started early for me. The dogs think every morning starts shortly before 7 am, so that's when I started. I did convince them to nap with me after their potty, which helped.

Then preparations begain. The turkey was made ready the night before. This morning, for me at least, the potatoes, carrots, and other vegetables. But before that, a mound of dishes from the pie-making the previous evening. Lots of scrubbing. But before that, emptying the dish drainer to receive newly-washed dishes.

Turkey in at 11 am. Pots of potatoes and carrots put in the fridge where the turkey had been.

No napping. A lot of diet Pepsi, but I know it won't last.

Guests come at about 3:30. Dinner and games until about 7:30. The guests leave because, like us, they are also middle-aged and also subscribe to the Ed Wynn Adage on Middle-Age: A middle-aged person is one who'd rather not have a good time than try to get over one. Food is tucked into the fridge. The younger ones have more energy and use it for things. But the older people, they find somewhere to bloat and rest and sleep with the dogs, who also started their day at 7 am and need a break because there were Strangers in the house and they needed first to be barked at and second to be begged from.

We're all exhausted.

 

A Provocative Anecdote . . .

Ammon tidbit: Youngest was southbound on Eagle Drive at the point the city just made the road southbound only and overheard part of a conversation between a county sheriff's deputy and a driver caught going the wrong way into the neighborhood. Appears Mr. Wrong Way lives in the neighborhood in question and was salty about getting caught . . .

One Beard Hair

One beard hair.

I have wavy hair on my head. But this stuff is ridiculously twirly. The little loops are at the far end, of course, and they tangle together something awful. I rarely used conditioner on my head, but with the beard it's a necessity.

A friend compared its shape to the Ebola virus. I couldn't argue.

Subvert Expectations

I'm the last to say I'm musically inclined, but I have taken a shine to Charles Cornell on YouTube deconstructing songs to see what makes them work:

I like what he says about this song setting up expectations and then subverting them in subtle but surprising ways. I need to remember to do that in my writing. And that's probably why I like listening to him. Though he's talking about music, what he has to say has applicaiton across many creative disciplines.

I need to set up some guidelines as I write, and "subvert expectations like Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley" is going to be on it.

And though I'll always hear this song in Gene Wilder's voice, I also like the Ben Vereen version:

I will admit Wilder's version lets the song take center stage, while other versions have a bit too much of the singer in them. The mild wockachas don't add much to the Ben Vereen version.

Not Your Typical Thurber

From James Thurber's "The Man on the Train":

I instantly felt as if I had stumbled into a wrong apartment in which someone was dressing. And yet I had merely glanced across the aisle of a train at a man I had never seen before, who looked back at me. I had an unreasonable feeling that there must be something I could do for him. It was almost as if he had spoken. And yet I met his gazed for only a moment or two and then we both turned away. It happened a long time ago -- four or five years -- and it is as meaningless to my life as an old forgotten telephone number; but there it is , as sharp as any memory I have of a friend. It comes up before me clear, irrelevant, and uncalled for, at unexpected hours. . .

There is something lugubrious about the expression of a man with a toothache. I think I could always pick out such a sufferer instantly: a man with a toothache looks, crazily enough, as if he were trying not to laugh. But this was not a look of physical pain. I felt, for some odd reason, as if the cause for it were on the tip of my mind; as if, by some little extra effort, I could divine the dark experience, whatever it was.

That is about a sixth or seventh of the entire short story. And we expect, as we go along, to the reveal that the man has suffered some insignificant foible for which Thurber is famed for framing as a catastrophe.

But this story, with its buildup and closing line, rivals the famed "saddest" story ever written, atrributed to Hemingway but first appearing in print when Hemingway was only seven years old.

I wonder at the story's origin. Is it typical Thurber fiction, but going in a different direction than we usually assign to Thurber, or is this a bit of reportage, something he experienced himself in reality and wrote down so as not to forget it. I don't know what the answer is.

You can listen to the whole story here. (Narration is, uh, not professional by any means.)

Clean as A Whistle, Inside and Out

So. Second colonoscopy a raving success. I'm sure many more people saw my butt than I'd rather think about, but all I know is that I was watching the guy inject the drugs into my IV and the next thing I know they were waking me up and telling me to get dressed.

Result: This time, only one polyp, which they will of course test. I don't have to have another colonoscopy for five years, barring any startling results from the lump they chopped out.

Reading the report they sent, I'm learning a few things I didn't pick up from the last time:

1. I got a perfect 9 on the Boston Bowel Preparation Scale, meaning they could see EVERYTHING.

2. The polyp they found this time was "sessile," meaning fully attached and not dangling like some uvula appendage. I suppose that's a good thing, but I'm not sure. I don't remember whether the three polyps they found 3 1/2 years ago were sessile or not. Clearly I didn't lose sleep over it.

3. My prostate appears normal. I didn't know they checked for that while they were in there, but I guess it makes sense to look around the neighborhood.

4. Gary, my hemorrhoid, which had been acting up earlier in the week, appeared quiescent, and has apparently been joined by others that don't appear to be causing any trouble as of yet.

5. Whatever it is they put in the drugs to put you to sleep is good. I was watching them attach it to the IV, thought "That's interesti . . ." and then they were waking me up saying I should get dressed and that my son was there waiting to take me home.

So in all a good experience the second time around. Worst parts:

1. The prep. That stuff remains not fun.

2. Watching the nurse struggle to get an IV needle into a vein after I told her my veins like to run away.

A Little Prediction

The long talked-about traffic pattern change in the neighborhood east of the Target shopping center is finally coming to pass.

I'm going to make a prediction: Residents of this neighborhood will realize the change brings them certain disadvantages to them and they'll either try to be sneaky (particularly on the south end of things) and use the roads as normal until they're sick of getting caught or want additional changes because what's being put in place is not the advantage they thought it would be.

The latter, of course, will be loud. The former, coming in the form of citations from the Bonneville County Sheriff's Office, will be quieter, but I'll bet it's not nonexistent, and I'll also bet the majority of them come not from people outside the neighborhood, but from within.

It'll be interesting to see how it shakes out.

 

That's a Little Embarrassing, Aithor.

Making it look easy by having a blown up image of an Aithor ad on his screen. While eating doughnuts and rocking out to music over his headphones.

This guy is SOOOOOO COOOOOOOOL.

And yeah, I know it's for an ad, and given the product, we're not exactly looking for quality here. But it's fittingly embarrassing for the product, so I like it.

HIDE ALL COMMENTS

Note 1: There are 261 comments on this post.

Note 2: I have requested that Facebook display all comments.

Note 3: Sudowrite is so embarrassed by what people are saying about their artificial intelligence novel writing service that they're suppressing every single comment on their post.

I don't know if Note 3 expresses the truth, but that's certainly what it feels like.

Again, there are no shortcuts or quick fixes.

Water, not Gasoline

Finally found a solution to get the vinyl paper off the bathroom floor without resorting to gasoline and the fumes right next to the water heater pilot light. (An expert I found online said to use gasoline, but he looked like he'd been blowed up a few times, so I was leery.)

It's just water. I let it soak into the paper for five minutes or so, then scraped it off with a metal scraper. It's even getting the adhesive, which is the thing I was most concerned about.

Ultimate goal is to strip the paper off the floor and then level it, so I can put tile down. The leveling is to stop the stupid toilet from rocking back and forth when one sits on it.

Once the floor is done, I'll move on to other work in the bathroom to get it ready to convert into a Dr. Who-themed toidy.

 

[Facebook Removes Post as if it Were Suspended on Wires]

Rest easy, friends. Today Facebook protected you from . . .

. . . my lament that a particular gravity simulator is no longer available on the internet.

They saved you from SPAM, folks. From spam.

Not from the obvious scams they allow to run rampant on their platfrom, not from the random idiot who is using my work email address to impersonate me on their platform (they won't even tell me, nor the IT department at work, who that is, by the way), but from a link that no longer goes where it was supposed to, as I pointed out in the removed post.

This is all I can say:

This arose because Facebook showed me the gravity simulator in my Facebook memories. Aww, I thought, when I saw it. That's a fun website. I 'll go play with it for awhile. But, alas, it's gone:

So, I thought I'd post about it and allow my friends to join in my lament. Alas, spam.

And seeing as about half of my memories are links to sites that are no longer there, you'd think Facebook would look and say, aw, the oldie is having trouble dealing with the internet's impermanence and the ongoing outage at the Wayback Machine, let's cut him some slack. But no.

There Are No Spiritual Shortcuts or Quick Fixes

Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve delivered a significant speech on the benefits and dangers of modern technology, including artificial intelligence, as a devotional for young adults given November 3 of this year.

A lot of my fellow online English instructors hastened to deliver its message to their students, a good thing as we deal with a trickle-to-deluge of AI-written garbage showing up in our classes.

I plan on sharing it with my students as well, but fear it won't reach those who are tinkering with the technology and "getting away with it."

Those who are leery of AI will read the message and appreicate it.

Those who are on the fence with AI will read the message and hopefully avoid the easy pitfalls AI offers.

Those who are already using AI will read the message and maybe think twice, but I suspect for most of them the intent won't reach the core.

I confess to being a lazy person. But I look at AI and think, no, that's not the solution. The solution, as Elder Bednar reiterates several times in his speech, is work, and while I'm not necessarily a fan, I recognize that's the way to go.

The full text of his speech is here.

The text of the church's guidelines on AI use, which he references, is here.

I very much appreciate Elder Bednar's message. The crux of it is here, where he cautions those using AI to not let it deprive them of their moral agency:

As you strive to learn the gospel of Jesus Christ and perform the work you have to do, I specifically exhort you to be wise in your use of contemporary technological tools. Innovations such as artificial intelligence [can] both (1) assist you in receiving magnificent blessings and (2) diminish and suffocate your moral agency. Please do not allow the supposed accuracy, speed, and ease of modern technologies to entice you to avoid or circumvent the righteous work that invites into your life the blessings you will need. My beloved brothers and sisters, there are no spiritual shortcuts or quick fixes.

He goes on to say this:

Now beware. The ease of use, perceived accuracy, and rapid response time that characterize artificial intelligence can create a potentially beguiling, addictive, and suffocating influence on the exercise of our moral agency. Because AI is cloaked in the credibility and promises of scientific progress, we might naively be seduced into surrendering our precious moral agency to a technology that can only think telestial. By so doing, we may gradually be transformed from agents who can act into objects that are only acted upon. And we may unwittingly help Lucifer to achieve in mortality what he was unable to accomplish in premortality.

Truth is knowledge of things as they really are. Artificial intelligence cannot simulate, imitate, or replace the influence of the Holy Ghost in our lives. No matter how sophisticated and elegant AI technology ultimately may become, it simply can never bear witness of the Father and the Son, reveal the truth of all things, or sanctify those who have repented and been baptized.

I remind myself that all things have a spiritual component, including what we use our brains for and the things we submit as our own in even secular settings such as school and work.

He does not dismiss AI as useless, and even suggests we should not hide from it. There are legitimate uses, but the caution is in letting something else do all the work for us. That takes away our agency, he says, and turns us into things that are acted upon, not something that acts. We should use the talents God has given us. We should develop those talents through righteous work, not through easy shortcuts.

Ladies, A Word

Trying to fathom why men do what they do?

Maybe James Thurber can help with his short story "The Private Life of Mr. Bidwell," published in The New Yorker in 1933.

The beginning:

From where she was stitting, Mrs. Bidwell could not see her husband, but she had a curious feeling of tension: she knew he was up to something.

"What are you doing, George?" she demanded, her eyes still on her book.

"Mm?"

"What's the matter with you?"

"Pahhhhh-h-h-h," said Mr. Bidwell, in a long, pleasureable exhale. "I was holding my breath."

This seems to be Mr. Bidwell's greatest sin.

He does it at home. He does it at parties. He says it's deep breathing, good exercise. But men reading it know better. He was doing it just to see how long he could hold his breath.

Ask any man, they'll tell you. They might even be familiar with this scene from the film "The Right Stuff," and wish they had the power of a John Glenn or a Scott Carpenter:

I have to spoil the ending of the story for you. The Bidwells end up divorced, with Mr. Bidwell unprepentant after many pleas from his wife to change his ways.

The ending paragraph:

George Bidwell lives along now (his wife remarried). He never goes to parties any more, and his old circle of friends rarely sees him. The last time that any of them  did see him, he was walking along a country road with the halting, uncertain gait of a blind man: he was trying to see how many steps he could take without opening his eyes.

This little story is just one of the many reasons I love James Thurber.

Welcome, Little Mac

Welcome, Little Mac.

I saw this bear buried in the bulk item yard at Deseret Industries and decided the following course of action was required:

1. Take a picture.

2. Text that picture to the family, asking if anyone needed a bear.

I didn't bother checking my phone as we continued to wander the store because I figured no one would want this bear of unusual size. You'd think, old as I am, that I should have recognized the peril in that innocent photo and jokey message, because shortly after our oldest and I left the store we were back at the store ensuring the bear had not been purchased before my wife could arrive for a close inspection.

Needless to say, and despite its flaws, the bear is now in our home, awaiting refurbishment, and startling us as we catch view of him unexpectedly in the kitchen.

Thus the unofficial nickname "Little Mac," which my wife decided to adopt for the critter when I told it to her.

The name comes from a MASH episode featuring a full-sized dummy a chopper pilot uses as a counterweight when he has to fly in only one casualty. The dummy is used in a practical joke at camp and ends up torn to bits. Hoping that doesn't happen to our Little Mac.

Google is Spun Up about Something

So, those of you in the know: What does it mean when Google tells me a handful of pages on a blog I haven't posted on in years cannot be "indexed."

Is that bad? Should I care?

Google doesn't explain in their email.

Also, their reasons for not indexing are cryptic to a noob like me:

1. "Alternate page with proper canonical tag" (4 pages)

2. "Blocked by robots.txt" (2 pages)

3. "Crawled - currently not indexed." (1 page)

I mean, I'm not losing sleep over this. But you'd think if this were a concern to Google, which also hosts the blog in question, they'd do a better job explaining why.

They also included this handy graphic to help me visualize the problem:

Which I am unable to upload right now for some reason. I'll have to try later when Google is less concerned about my "indexing."

They did let me upload. Eventually.

The Tells of AI Writing

Universities are working at the speed of, uh, universities, to help teachers counter students submitting work completed by artificial intelligence.

Students, of course -- at least those looking for shortcuts -- are on AI's bleeding edge, using all sorts of AI tricks to make their "work" easier.

But here's the thing: Detecting artificial intelligence writing is pretty easy, even without AI detectors.

I'm not going to reveal my secrets here. First because there are likely developers on the bleeding edge of AI who are already aware of AI's weaknesses, but also because in case they're not, I don't want to aid and abet. But AI writing is obvious on its face, and is mediocre writing at best.

Part of me wants to continue calling out students who use artificial intelligence to write their essays.

A growing part of me, however, is leaning toward just grading the AI writing and giving students the grades they've earned with their "writing."

Not necessarily Fs, of course, because AI isn't that bad. But it's not churning out A level work. Or even B level work. And in many cases, barely C level work. So use AI in my classes, and you're going to get the grade you deserve, whether I "detect" your use of artificial intelligence or not.

Agreed, that's not what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to fail those students, report them to the university and all. But I'm not sure that works to deter the behavior, even if they get expelled from the university. But getting mediocre grades for AI writing -- and consistently mediocre grades, time after time -- might make them think about how good AI is.

And maybe I'm fooling myself. Could be. But it's more entertaining that way.

Standard Frying the Brain Time

November now. That means going back to Standard Time. Which in our neck of the woods means pitch darkness at 6 pm and gradual darkness in the morning until there's no sun left at all and my seasonal depression kicks in.

I spent today mostly on my butt -- feeling ill. Picked up a bug from somwhere. Don't know where. It seems to be fading, but I'm certainly glad I took the day off work. Not that I want to burn through that personal leave, but I felt really blah.

All because some idiot wanted more daylight after work so he could collect bugs.

Long Trip for Two Old Men

It was a long trip, but we did it. All in one day.

Randy has moved back home and is living with Maaike. We did this trip to get the stuff he wasn't able to bring with him the first time.

The jig to the north, avoiding the interstate, was on the way there so I could stop at Pickles Place in Arco to buy some of their spices. That was the first time I'd driven along those roads. They were really quiet and Arco appeared to be the sole metroplois along the way. Lots of pretty hills, and a good view of Craters of the Moon National Monument.

The drive through Oregon was also a new one to me, and it didn't even have an oasis like Arco along the way.

Ontario remains an armpit.

This trip also confirms to me that Boise drivers are the rudest and worst in Idaho, even in the wee hours of the morning.

We did see a little snow, particularly on the way out, but it wasn't all that bad. Still glad we did the trip all in one day rather than fight the snow in the morning when it was frozen and crustier.

OLD MAN YELLS AT CAR

Gaze in wonder at this parking job in a parallel parking spot for handicapped people at the local Walmart.

Then consider I've been to this same Walmart twice this week and both times saw vehicles parked in a similar manner. The first, which I did not photograph, was a big ol' honkin' truck, protruding out much further into the lane of travel than this sedan.

I don't know what's happened -- and I'm not the only one in the family to notice this -- but traffic in town for the month of October has seemingly tripled, and the newcomers all appear to be about as dumb as a box of rocks.

When he heard my rant, our youngest son sent me this:

I have to confess he's not wrong.

Applesauce from Our Own Apples

Last night we made fourteen quarts of applesauce, from the tiniest apples we've ever worked with.

What made it worthwhile is they're apples from our own tree. That's kinda cool.

Artificial Intelligence Grandma

Albert uploaded this photo of our Grandma Speirs (Mom's mom) to Facebook today, along with this story of her roping a hawk in her backyard.

Facebook's AI wanted a chance to comment on the upload, so I had it produce the following photos:

First, of her ranching skills. Note the square cows.

Next, its version of her roping skills:

No hawk to bee seen. And AI, bless its heart, cannot do hands to save its life.

Invisible, Imperishable Good Stuff

My wife came into the study to drop off a book she'd just finished reading. I glanced at it and the first thing that caught my eye was the illustration of a sweater:

As soon as I saw that sweater, I thought "Huh, must be a book about Mr. Rogers."

I was close: "The World According to Mr. Rogers, Important things to Remember," is a collection of thoughts collected from his life.

I feel like I need Mr. Rogers in my life now much more than I did as a kid.

I need someone to remind me that if I want to accomplish my dreams, I have to do the work.

I need someone to remind me I have dreams.

We're heading into winter here, and the seasonal depression it brings with it. I might have to pull this book out every day and reread a few passages from it, just to help me get along.

I recommend this book. Read it all at once or a few pages at a time, but more importantly apply what he says. Work on your dreams. Be kind. And remember the shining moments:

In the eternal scheme of things, Shining moments are as brief as the twinkling of an eye, yet such twinklings are what eternity is made of -- moments when we human beings can say "I love you," "I'm proud of you," "I forgive you," "I'm grateful for you." That's what eternity is made of: invisible, imperishable good stuff.

I'll quote one more, which ties in with the first:

Beside my chair is a saying in French. It inspires me every day. It's a sentence from Saint-Exupery's "The Little Prince," and it reads, "L'essential est invisible pour les yeux." (What is esential is invisible to the eyes.) The closer we get to know the truth of that sentence, the closer I feel we get to wisdom.

That which has real value in life in any millennium is very simple. Vewry dep and very simple! It happens inside of us -- in the "essential invisible" part of us, and that is what allows everyone to be a potential neighbor.

Nogoodniks

When I opened Facebook Monday Morning, first thing I was was an anti-Kamala Harris screed posted on the official Pickles comic Facebook page.

Unlike the commenters on the post - aghast the comic's author would inject politics onto a page usually reserved for gentle comedy - I knew the page had been compromised and taken over by a political propagandist.

Brian Crane, former owner of the compromised Facebook page, apologized to his readers and expressed frustration that it appears he won't be able to regain control of an online community built over years. He uses the phrase "nogoodniks," which brings to mind Russian propagandists, but who knows what's going on.

If this is the kind of thing you have to stoop to to get your message out, your message, to me, is worthless. This propagandist found a way to take over a Facebook page with a big reach. The people doing this obviously have an agenda, and it's not one that favors good faith political discourse, but is propaganda pure and simple. They're bad actors, whether you agree with the "message" or not.

If you condone this type of action to spread a message you agree with, you are part of the problem. We should not nod in unison with a message we agree with when the message is put out on social media in a deceitful manner.

Which, of course, makes Facebook part of the problem. They may not condone it, but appear either powerless to stop it or, as I suspect, no longer have humans at the tiller.

I engage very little with the political end of social media, particularly with that posted by people or organizations I don't know, because my cynical nature leads me to believe the vast majority of political content on social media is propaganda put out by bad actors.

Then crap like this shows up: People trying to profit off of his creative work.

Probably Don't Include Me in Doctrinal Conversations

Our scripture reading last night brought us to the Three Nephites and their desire to not taste death before the second coming of Christ.

Part of the discussion led to me pondering their appearance as the Three Stooges as being a funny but confusing part of their timeline, and that is where my wife pulled the plug on the conversation.

I *Fully* Expected the Option to Be Able to Live on the Moon as an Adult . . .

The United States space program, 1962:

"We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too."

John F. Kennedy.

The United States space program, 2024:

That Well-Traveled Road

Just watched the MASH episode "Follies of the Living, Concerns of the Dead" from season ten.

Seen it dozens of times before, of course.

If you're not familiar with it, it focuses on the ghost - or spirit - of Private Jimmy Weston, killed in action and wandering the 4077th trying to convince others he is not dead.

The closing scene, shown in the photo, shows Weston joining a nameless soldier and others, including Chinese soldiers, civilians, and other combatants walking up a road, destination unknown.

Dad had a dream about that road. He dreamed he was on one side of a river, and saw Mom coming up the other side, struggling mightily with a walker on a rough path. She saw him and plunged headlong into the river, startling him. He called out to her, but saw her go under.

Then she came out of the water, swimming strong, and young as she was when they met. She came out if the water into his arms, and they continued their journey in the road, arm in arm.

At my sister Marina's graveside service earlier this year, I had a strong impression that Mom and Dad were there, waiting for her to come out of the water so they could journey together.

We'll all walk that road eventually. There's some comfort in knowing what lies at the end.

Voici, les Tomates

I have had an interesting week.

Got handed two rather complicated and convoluted document revision jobs at work.

Spent a lot more time than I wanted grading papers after the day job and am still behind in my teaching work.

I'll spend this evening helping to paint an enormous pile of pumpkins for a city pumpkin display that has to be ready on Saturday and has a good chance of being snowed on.

But I do have some itty-bitty tomatoes growing in my window well, so that kind of takes the curse off it.

"The Stranger," and Bugs Bunny

I've had this book on my shelf for a long time, and finally pulled it off the shelf to read this week.

The plot: (warning, spoilers)

(Bugs Bunny quote)

[Blam] . . . [blam blam blam blam]

There is no God.

I mean, there's a little more to it, I guess, but that's what I got out of it.

A senseless murder committed, the back cover says, by a man "victimized by life."

Not really. He saw a dog that was poorly treated. He saw his best friend beat up a woman. He didn't know how old his mother was when she died. But he seems a lot more autistic than victimized by anything even approaching life. I say autistic because he's a character who approaches life logicially, and seems to have a difficult time expressing emotion.

I can say I've read the book. I'm not going to say I enjoyed it.

Also, the Cat in the Hat-inspired characters on the cover never showed up.

We Don't Look Half Bad

Thanks to Maaike and Jason, we had a fun cousins party last weekend.

I'm posting two photos because it looks like some of us managed to hide behind the others.

Yes, that one's much better.