Read in 2024

I usually try to hit 1,000 pages a month, but didn't meet that goal this year. Still, more than 500 pages a month isn't shabby.

Some rereads, of course, but a lot of new material this year. I really liked "The Book Thief," by Markus Zusack. World War II fiction is dicey territory, but he hits the tone and subject just right, and I thought it was wonderful.

I was surprised how much I liked "Captain Bonneville's County," by Edith Haroldsen Lovell. Up until I read this book, I've found Idaho history to be generally a pretty dry subject, but Lovell really told her stories with a lot of color and verve that had me looking forward to going back to reading when I had to put the book down.

Here's what I read this year:

92 Stories, by James Thurber. 522 pages.

A Rat's Tale, by Tor Seidler. 187 pages.

Blue Lotus, The, by Herge. 62 pages.

Book Thief, The; by Markus Zusack. 571 pages.

Born Standing Up, by Steve Martin. 209 pages.

Captain Bonneville's County, by Edith Haroldsen Lovell. 286 pages.

Case of the Condemned Cat, The; by E. W. Hildick. 138 pages.

Catch You Later, Traitor, by Avi. 296 pages.

Diary of A Wimpy Kid: Big Shot, by Jeff Kinney. 217 pages.

Edward R. Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast Journalism, by Bob Edwards. 174 pages.

Exploring Idaho's Past, by Jennie Rawlins. 166 pages.

Forgotten 500, The; by Gregory A. Freeman. 313 pages.

I Must Say: My Life as A Humble Comedy Legend, by Martin Short and David Kamp; 321 pages.

Joachim a des Ennuis, by J.J. Sempe and Rene Goscinny, 192 pages.

Le petit Nicolas et des Copains, by J.J. Sempe and Rene Goscinny, 192 pages.

Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America's Race to the Moon, by Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton; 383 pages.

Number Go Up, by Zeke Faux. 280 pages.

Peanuts by the Decade: The 1960s, by Charles Schulz. 530 pages.

Red Rackham's Treasure, by Herge. 62 pages.

Secret of the Unicorn, The; by Herge. 62 pages.

Sonderberg Case, The; by Elie Wiesel. 178 pages.

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, by David Sedaris. 159 pages.

Stranger, The; by Albert Camus. 155 pages.

Tintin in Tibet, by Herge. 62 pages.

Truckers, by Terry Pratchett. 271 pages.

Vacances du petit Nicolas, Les; by J.J. Sempe and Rene Goscinny, 192 pages.

World According to Mister Rogers, The; by Fred Rogers. 197 pages.

Ze Page Total: 6,381.

Making Holes in the Wall

Spent part of the day making holes in the wall.

Like this:

This particular hole is a leftover from a previous attempt to conceal cables going to some old-school speakers we no longer have.

There's another hole in the wall behind the cabinet, made in error as I put in some boxes to help run cables from the TV, Xbox and sound bar behind the wall, thus:

Not a real big deal to conceal the cables, but it does look tidier, and tidy in any little corner of the house I can get it in is a good thing.

The error came as I didn't account for needing much longer cables given the way I had set up the concealment boxes. I went to a local thrift store to see if I could find longer cables, but was out of luck. I also thought of going to get new longer cables, but it hit me if I moved the lower box higher on the wall, I wouldn't need the extra length. I could still wish one of the cables had a little more slack in it, but it works. I'll keep looking for longer cables, but buy them at a better time when we're not recovering from Christmas.

The House Dad Built

Dad built the house we grew up in. We have a lot of memories of that house on Hitt Road. Earlier this year, the house and a few others nearby were torn down to make way for a wider road.

Our brother Albert Davidson salvaged some bricks from the house, cleaned them up, and gave them to us today on what would have been Dad's 96th birthday.

The mini brick on top was part of a full brick he cut and put in his rock tumbler.

At the party we also watched a bunch of home movies, including one that shows my very young bare bottom. That one will never be seen again.

The movies included glimpses of the old home, growing bigger year to year, images of all of us much younger than we are now, long-lost pets, a few classic cars including Dad's Oldsmobile Delta 88 and his Dodge pickup, trees a lot smaller than I remember them, and a whole lot of love that showed through good times and bad.

Thank you to Al and Serena DeGiulio Davidson , Christine Davidson Harrop , Stuart Harrop , Brad Nielsen , Michelle Davidson , Maaike Davidson , and Randy Davidson for a fun party. We missed Teani-Jeff Davidson and Sherri Davidson , who were not able to attend, and Marina Nielsen who is with Mom and Dad on the other side, watching as we continue our journeys home. 

Great A/V Combobulation

The Great A/V Combobulation has begun.

We have a new TV downstairs that happily cooperates with our sound bar.

The old TV is being relocated in the dining room so:

1. Isaac has a place to put the Xbox so he can play games and not interfere with TV watching

2. We can watch Jackie Gleason as we eat.

There are, of course, complications.

The new TV doesn't work with the old DVD player. Luckily, the old Xbox can play DVDs in the interim until we get that figured out.

Upstairs, I removed a defunct switch and thermostat for an air handler that's no longer here. I covered the boxes with plates. They're white. Now I have to replace three nearby switches and also install a white plate.

Bonus: I have an Atari emulator I can hook up to the "gaming TV" on a semipermanent basis, so Isaac can watch me play my dinosaur games with a real joystick, not one of those Xbox things.

I Did It

I hit my blogging goal for the year: 20 posts a month, on average. It was an arbitrary goal, but one I wanted to hit nonetheless.

I'm pretty sure I'm about the only one who reads this blog, but that's okay. It's not there for the masses; mainly for me.

I spent way too much time putting this bargraph together. Certainly an explosion of activity in the late Aughts, followed by a long tail of mediocrity. It's nice to see an uptick again. I don't know if I'll ever see a 2010 year again, but maybe. (Graph made here.)

A Problem with Fandoms

Facebook - and the rest of the Internet, truthfully - is rife with fandoms.

I've joined a few. I've joined a few and then left a few. While there's generally a fun mix of trivia, actors or writers from the intellectual property and other bonuses, then come the pedants, the complainers, the nitpickers and other unpleasant souls who generally make some fandoms, as Ralphie says of Warren G. Harding Elementary School, "a veritable hell."

I bring up Ralphie because I'm on the edge of leaving a Facebook fan page of the film "A Christmas Story." I love the film. The fandom, not so much.

Two recent posts to compare:

Guess which one I'd rather read in bulk quantity?

Sure, watching commercials during the TBS or TNT "A Christmas Story" marathon can be a pain, and having to watch three commercials in a row for the same advertiser could indeed be tiring, but the complaint doesn't need to be in the fandom, for a few reasons:

1. Not related to the movie at all.

2. Only ancillarily-related to the movie.

3. Not really included in the movie.

I'm sure the second post was a reaction to the first, using a line from the movie. Nobody likes commercials, but as a poster on the first pointed out, this particular advertiser paid so the complainer could have the opportunity to watch the movie for 24 hours straight (why they're not watching with a DVD is beyond me, but maybe they're either old or too busy streaming and bereft of physical media).

The mods come on to chastise those who mock the complainers, which is fair.

Deleting the complainers' posts would also be fair, if I were a mod. But I'm not.

Still, don't need to see it. And a constant flood of such posts makes being part of the fandom not so much fun. Maybe this particular fandom will settle after the holiday. Maybe they're just all grouchy now. Anyway, we'll see.

"That's What Christmas is All About, Charlie Brown."

 

A Little Scouting Closure

Hoping for some closure tonight as I go to an Eagle Scout board of review for the last founding member of Troop 1010 in Idaho Falls.

She'll be the fourth of five original members to earn her Eagle rank, and the last eligible to do so (the fifth aged out of the program as a Life Scout). This should have happened in June, but with family complications and then her heading off to college in the next state, the board of review has been delayed until now.

I hope things go well. They should, but I'm always a nervous nellie who sees the cloud in the silver lining. I'm just ready for it all to be done. I don't like loose ends, and this particular end has been lose for a very long time.

Scouting life is coming to a close for me. We're letting the Venture crew we've been with for a long time fold, as we only have two active members, one of whom is joining the US Army and will be unavailable. My family still does Scout Camp all summer, and that's fine. But I'm finally seeing that exit coming up and I'm taking it. Getting this board of review done is kind of my last goal, so it's good to see it finally happening.

Update: She passed her board and is an Eagle Scout. So happy.

The Rickover Effect

Earlier this year, I helped write a document that would be used in the dismantling of the submarine and aircraft carrier nuclear propulsion prototypes at the Idaho National Laboratory.

At about the same time, I happened across a copy of Theodore Rockwell's "The Rickover Effect" at a local thrift store, Despite the $5 price -- pretty high for this thrift store -- I bought it without question. I just started reading it a week or so ago, and so far, I've enjoyed it.

Rickover, for good and bad, was a singular force in the US Navy, working against a lot of inertia and resistance in the Navy and in the US Atomic Energy Commission to get work started in earnest on nuclear-powered submarines. He may also be one of the founding fathers of the military-industrial complex and all that entails. Pretty interesting stuff in this book.

One of the reasons Navy nuclear propulsion succeeded is that Rickover insisted that the prototypes be built not to fit a warehouse, but to fit submarine conditions, so the prototpyes were built inside ship hulls that were in turn surrounded by water, making full-scale environmental mockups. Similar attempts for nuclear propulsion for jets failed in part because they were built for warehouses, and then had to be heavily modified to even begin squeezing into an airplane.

I haven't gotten to the point the project hits Idaho, but it's impressive to see how focused Rickover was on getting the project going despite a lot of obstacles in the way.

He was also a serious control freak, wanting even to see drafts of papers that had barely come out of an engineer's head. I'm not sure I could handle that kind of supervision.

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.