Along came a spider ...

photo by Bill Stankus

Boo

Happy Halloween!

borrowed from this scary place

Outside my window

Peering over the top of my computer and looking out the window ... fall is here (and so is raking leaves).

photo by Bill Stankus

Spam, proving the value of English Class

Do you ever read the spam sent to your blog but filtered out by Blogger?  Just click on the Dashboard's "Comments" and then the Spam tab.

This little gem, titled "Relationships", was obviously written by someone who slept through most all of his English classes ...

 And, no, I did not click on "see more".

Greetings Earthlings!

My name is TT&QeR8zp{*}iiX and I know you can’t pronounce it so, please, call me Bob. We have come from the stars, further away than seen by your Hubble spy camera.

We’ve been monitoring your television and radio signals for many decades and from what we’ve pieced together we decided to visit and offer our assistance to you because you seem deeply troubled.

Please, no questions until I’m finished.  See the small fellow on my far right side?  The one holding a silver stick?  His job, if you get too pushy, is to point his stick at you and you'll become a small water puddle.

There, that’s better.

From our scans we can tell your genetic code is broken and you can no longer see or detect your insanity.  We are specialists who can help.

First, let me summarize what we’ve learned from your broadcasts.

• You are happy singers but terrible dancers.
• You gorge on hamburgers with cheese and bacon.
• You diet by eating pizza and burritos.
• You drink gallons of beer and sweet drinks.
• You drive trucks.

• You don’t understand objective reality.
• You don’t understand how to use money.
• You worship charlatans, hucksters and liars.
• Banks and insurance companies are friendly, cute, joyous places.

• You take a gazillion pills.
• Six hour erections for males seem to be a common problem.
• Women do not have natural bodies.
• Males, especially the American variety, are of limited intelligence.
• Males can talk non-stop for hours and hours constantly repeating themselves.
• Women love to cook and shop for their lobotomized males.

• Your children are smarter than adults.
• You teach your children to be the same as you.
• Your old people are ignored then praised when they’re dead.
• You like killing and love crying after the bodies have fallen.

• You are vain.
• You make fun of intelligence.
• You practice Schizoaffective religions.
• You use nature as an amusement ride.
• You confuse science and technology.

Well, we're here to help.  Now, please stand in a line, all 7 billion of you ....  This won't take long.


(Shorty, are you ready?)

Getting there

I was never a tourist. At least that’s how I saw it. Chasing after freedom, maybe, but the road was all-important, a ribbon of mystery and promise.  Places offered distractions, Kodak moments, jokes with my buddy but travel was all about motion and distance.

If John was driving I talked and joked, took pictures out the open window and of other nothing important stuff - the dashboard, empty Coke bottles, my feet.  Sometimes the radio was on but mostly it wasn’t.  We told each other lies, talked about girls and a list of cool summer jobs that never materialized.

We went places during winter but mostly when it was hot.  We didn’t have much money so we scrimped on food to buy gas.  We’d use a small portable stove to warm cans of chili or Campbell’s soup, washing it down with powdered juice or plain water, nothing fancy because the road beckoned and speed was the real nourishment.

I never asked John what he was after or looking for, it wasn’t that important.  For me, speed was escape and maybe a calmer place than my home. Years later I found out his old man was a drunk, that could’ve been part of his deal. I could never explain my parents to anyone.  I still don’t like talking about that.

Jeezus, we went everywhere.  Santa Rosa, Angels Camp, LA, Provo, Bryce, Zion, Gold Beach, Reno, Tahoe, Chula Vista even La Push.  There were a variety of cars, some plain, others were bad assed fast.  We had sleeping bags, no tent, small duffles of clean t-shirts and not much else.  Stuff slowed us down, we were all about getting there. Wherever there was.

There were times when Jerry was the third person.  He was a big strong dude, fearless and nuts.  Nuts in a good way, that is.  Like he hated riding in the back seat or when he took his underwater camera to the middle of the desert.  His car was always meaner and faster and there were nights when we raced for cash.  More than I few times I closed my eyes and hoped I’d be alive in the next 60 seconds.

Despite the Kerouac stuff, despite the Two-Lane Blacktop speed, despite talking our way out of fights and tickets, nothing really bad ever happened.  I suppose the time I rolled my car might count but no one was hurt, except for the car and my savings account.  Too fast into a corner, tires on loose gravel and several rolls and us coming to a halt, upside down and dangling from our seat belts.  Funny stuff, months later, good bar stories.

Met people with more character than found in a hundred movies.  Trading stories, road warnings and campfires, we knew people for a day or two and then it was back to the road.

If I had to pick the best roads, California highways 395 and 20 were two favorites and 1 and 101 were good for getting places, both north and south.  Nevada’s 50 and 95 offered hot vistas and the feeling as if, no matter how fast you were going, the horizon was forever.

The new updated Blogger interface

Hate it.

Tragedy

Those damn plastic bags.

photo by Bill Stankus

a beautiful mind

People who claim certainty or deal in absolutes baffle me. It's as if they have a switch in their brain which, when flipped, turns subjective thought into something they think is real.

How can anyone believe with absolute certainty their views and ideas are "real world"?

How do you really know if you are processing fact, distorted wave patterns or lies?  Do we really understand the world around us or are we adaptive cameras, filtering bits and pieces from chaos and fragmentary events?  How do we learn? Is memorization a common processing method?  Are assumptions made from random sensory sensations? Why can't we use more of our brain?

Scientists have make great strides mapping the brain and understanding the electro-chemical nature of brain activity ... but there is so much more to understand before we have the skill to fully understand and unleash our potential. 

Suppose you could digest and retain 100% of what your senses detect ... and memorize everything you see.

Roof time

The trick is to have 2 or 3 days without rain so the product I'm about to apply to the roof has time to do it's job - kill the moss. For this application I will be spraying liquid Moss Out! on the entire roof.

Moss build-up is greatest at the edges of the shingles ... in some places it's about the diameter of a pencil or Sharpie pen but in bright sun a green sheen is seen just about everywhere.  No good comes from a mossy roof.

I usually spray the roof twice annually but because I shredded my Achilles tendon, had surgery then two PRP treatments followed by months of recovery, I haven't been on the roof for awhile.

Today the moss dies.

photos by Bill Stankus

Omen

they're arriving ...

joy joy


photo by Bill Stankus

12:30 PM

Fairly dark right now. Dinner was 4-1/2 hours ago. A creative mix of chopped veges and Szechuan spiciness. No dessert. Oops, forgot that handful of M&Ms.Watched a bit of football ... Seahawks nice win. Green Bay, 5 and 0, super. Did I ever mention my good times in Green Bay? Nothing to do with football just woodworking. Baraboo's up there too.

It's now 12:40 PM and I'm sitting with ear buds deep in me ears, volume's kinda loud ... I'm listening to one of the 3 hour play lists I've made, some for use when painting, some for running and others simply

truth, small "t"

Since none of you actually know me, I can say with complete certainty, in writing this blog, there's a 50/50 chance I am truthful, honest and faithful to facts.  Besides, does it matter?

Correction

In a previous blog titled, "A Simple Calculation", I made several miscalculations.

In this revision the mistakes are corrected.

I determined it’s possible to make reasonable calculations of subjective issues which are often considered outside the norm of measurable quantities.  Using some of the basic psychometric work of Schwartz and Bowlus, I extrapolated their data, keeping in mind the cutting edge theorems of McGee, Harper and Bernie made known at the 1998 Big Sur Symposium, "Human Nature and Common Variables".

Not finding suitable algorithms, I’ve drawn upon my experiences with a variety of apparati; specifically magnetometers, spectrometers, seismometers, oscilloscopes and periscopes ... and adjusting for degenerative singularities, I ascertained the following:

I've been awesomely happy for 27.25%  21.5% of my life (± .05%)
 and reasonably happy for an additional 2.15% 0.93%


I also want to thank Professor E. Gadd for noticing my calculation errors.

Apple and me

My first computer was a Macintosh SE - as seen in this tear sheet for a desk and chair I designed and built.

The first time I saw an Apple computer was at a friend's house.  He was an architect at the Chicago firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (architects of the Sears Building, Hancock Building, plus many other skyscrapers) and it took just a few minutes for me to realize the wonders of that small boxy thing.

It was expensive, the screen was small and there was the constant use of floppies - but it was fantastic, offering computer possibilities never before considered for home users.  Even better, the operating system was understandable and manageable by those of us not software engineers. I wrote my first book, several magazine articles and numerous user manuals with the SE.

Through the years I've had different Macintosh computers and other Apple products.  The following photo is the Apple Hi-Fi with an early edition iPod.  The Hi-Fi didn't stay on the market for very long ... too bad, it's a beautiful design and it's sleek and portable. Soundwise, it delivers rich tones to large rooms.  I can't imagine a better speaker system for the iPod.

Thanks Steve. You spoiled us and you set a high standard for iconic products, built with good design and friendliness for the consumer. I hope there’s continuation of your innovations and your high standards regarding design and iconic products.

to TV or not to TV

So, how much TV do you watch? And how many TVs do you have in your house?

We have one TV, a nice Sony 42” and it doesn’t get much use.

We don’t have the money pits, cable or satellite. Instead there’s a skinny antenna on the roof.  With it we receive ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox.  That’s about it except for a few channels associated with the ones mentioned and they mostly show old programs, Route 66 - Dragnet types of stuff.

However we do have Apple TV for access to Netflix and other things on my computer and we also have a Blu-ray player.  We rarely buy DVDs, Blu-rays.

Wife has become an avid Kindle reader... which is a good thing because we long ago ran out of room for bookcases. 

I mostly read hardbound books and occasionally I access something from Kindle or Apple’s iBook.  Because I tend to read biographies which are often 900 pages, I don’t immediately follow a book with another book.  TV is a good time filler.

There’s is another sort of TV in the house - my iPad.  Here’s what I do: while in bed, just before sleep I watch cancelled TV shows that interest me.  I've sequentially watched all of Numb3rs (119 episodes) and Lie To Me (48 episodes). The first season of Lie To Me was very good ... I’m sorry I didn't watched it when it was prime time.  The second season, a smart ass teenage daughter became a principle character and that's when the show tanked.  When Netflix gets around to streaming Community I most definitely will watch it.

I have a few criteria for selecting shows:

Shows get turned off if there’s a reliance on guns to move the story along, if there’s office strife with workers getting dumped on from “higher ups” and if the show gets swamped with worn out clichés. That is, love relationships trump plot, wise teenagers save the day and a short skinny female cop single handedly pounds the snot out of 3 or 4 beefy thugs.

Word clichés are probably the worst ...""OK people, listen up", "I've got your back", "This isn't good", "Stand back - give 'em some air",  "I've got a bad feeling about this", "Secure the perimeter",  "We've got company", "Go on without me" ... and so forth, ad nauseum. (Just watch a few minutes of the new show, Terra Nova ... the producers hired a huge crew of cliché writers ... it must be embarrassing for the actors.)

Huffing and puffing

not really.

But I have been considering getting a techy thing - something to accurately measure time and distance (plus a few other things) while I motivate myself around the local running track and the trail circling Lake Washington.

I've decided on the Garvin Forerunner 210.  This thing does more than a team of coaches urging me to take HGH.  Besides being a gadget, the 210 would give a ton of status while I'm shopping for new running shoes, GU or Cool-Max socks.

My only concern ... since the watch is linked with satellites and I'll be precisely located as I run-walk, hop-skip n jump ... and GPS technology IS on loan from the U.S. military ... will wearing this gizmo make it easier for the black ops helicopters to find me?

If I disappear when out for a jog you'll know what happened.  Geesh, I hope they don't put me on one of the secret prison ships that perpetually cruise the Atlantic.  I'm more of a Pacific kind of person.

Girl child

Is She the one?

Possibly. She mentally controls seven nine adults, speaks several languages, is technology savvy and she breaks out in song and dance with no provocation.  She really cares to know if you are happy, she's on excellent terms with a big black dog and she knows famous people (Dora, Mickey Mouse).

photo by Bill Stankus

Just wondering

• What ever happened to the bad samaritans? 

Have you seen this?

Interesting place we live in.

9-eyes