Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.
If you’ll take a close look at that ladder I climbed a dozen times, or more, you’ll see a person might wish to study on the design a few moments before he puts his weight on it. Luckily, I’m the luckiest man in the world and even noticing what I’d done after the fact didn’t leave me with a broken ladder, broken head, worse for the wear in any way.
Seems to me I’ve observed at one time or another that plenty of ways of a man ruining his day present themselves on a job of this sort. And almost no ways exist to come out of it feeling a lot better than he did going in.
The tree trunk was exerting a lot of social pressure on everything trying to hold it up. At the base it was unstable, something awful. I had my heart set on it not coming down and crushing my rooster containment center if I could help it.
I tried to insure against the possibility by lifting the base of the trunk with a bar and slipping in a couple of chunks of historical tree.
But even with all my precautions the trunk dropped a few feet when I finally made the last cut breaking it free of the building.
Hi readers. Thanks for the visit. I’ve got the side-panel back onto the comp and the dust is settling, so I suppose I’ve cheated computer-death once more.
I’ve neglected the redneck repairs side of blog entries for a while, so I’m offering this up for the poor, the hungry, the huddled masses without air conditioning or filtered air in their homes.
Texas is determined to find its way into my computer. I read blogs and websites offering reminders to “spring clean that comp!” and I just shake my head in wonder. Every computer I’ve owned during the past 20 years I’ve been living without air conditioning would have needed a jackhammer and backhoe to get the dirt out if I cleaned it once a year.
Probably the never, never, neverschool of 21st Century certainties will find the following inadvisable. I suggest you believe them if it resonates with you.
But if you’re a person who’s not confident buying cans of compressed air at $7 US per whack to blow dirt out of your computer presents an unacceptable level of risk, you might try this.
These are air pumps. They’re designed to take air out of the sky and blow it in a fine stream under pressure at a target of opportunity. Maybe an air mattress. Maybe a bicycle tire. Or perhaps, the inside of a computer.
Each of these was purchased from a thrift store at a cost of less than $3 US.
They have the disadvantage of allowing themselves to be used for years, repeatedly doing the same thing without going empty. They have a second disadvantage of not providing the user with a stack of empty cans to dispose of. And they have a third disadvantage of not costing $7 anytime during their lifetimes.
The people who sell compressed air for $7 per can will tell you the reason a person shouldn’t do this involves the risk of humidity, compressed in the pump, condensing on the computer parts when it decompresses, venturi-like. You should be able to test the premise by directing the nozzle of your pump onto the surface of a mirror and observing whether any moisture condenses there.
The other risk they’ve thought up involves static electricity being created by the friction of the pump damaging something inside the computer.
The people who believe them will verify for you that the reasons the the expensive canned-air bidness folks have dreamed up to justify the need for their product are valid.
If you prefer to believe them you’d be well advised to just buy air at the going price. And if you have some extra money lying around, invest in air futures. It’s already a lot higher than gasoline at the pump, and the air-manufacturing brothers-in-spirit of the folks selling you gas are learning from them.
I suppose I’m just old fashioned. I drink water out of a well, mostly, instead of buying bottled water.
Good morning readers and thanks for coming by for a read.
Hopefully by the time you read this I’ll be strutting like a peacock, wearing my Texas Hatters Manny Gammidge High Roller tilted at a jaunty angle, certain I’m a smarty-pants extraordinaire. At least that’s how I’m planning the final chapter of this monumental butt show.
But it’s 7:56 pm Monday evening, and I’m 43 % done on a 79 mb download of a modem driver. Six hours 29 minutes from now the box says, I’ll know whether this is going to work. Except I’ll be in bed six hours and 29 minutes from now, unless I pick that as one of the times I get up to pee.
But here’s the rundown on the plot thus far.
Ed’s comment reminded me I had a weirdly shaped and sized hard drive I’d yanked out of an old Vista E Machine I bought new at WalMart a few years ago and it died after about six months and $150 spent in repair shops.
So I pulled open the Dell and voil’aismimo! The drive looked more-or-less the same as the one from the E Machine, aside from some extra parts. I worked an hour-or-so getting the extra parts off the Dell drive and onto the E Machine one, installed it, reassembled everything, clenched my teeth really hard and squeezed my eyes shut and I turned that commie pig on.
She booted spang up, showed me a screen I hadn’t seen since the E Machine died. But, the fly in the ointment was that the modem still didn’t get recognized. I ran through a flurry of downloading alleged drivers from sites all over the web, putting them on a CD, loading in the E Dell Machine and having them snubbed like clerks in camera stores used to snub a person brought in a Brownie Hawkeye for a roll of film.
Meanwhile Norton Symantic was slipping me mickeys behind the scenes, popping screens up at me threatening to keep me company if I kept downloading from non-regular free driver places.
Which I’ll keep short by saying, led me to Dell and my current act of genius downloading 79 mb on a dialup with 12/2 Romax wrapped in electrical tape between me and the power pole.
So, tomorrow morning when you read this you’ll be seeing words of a man with a modem working on an E Dell Machine running Vista, is the way I want to end this chapter. Wearing a 1972 vintage Manny Gammidge Texas Hatters High Roller. A man commanding respect, admiration and quite possibly veneration. A man you want to be like. Same as before all this crap happened.
That’s the proposal for the chapter. Assuming the editors don’t think that 79 mb download wasn’t a high enough price for our guy to pay to get a damned modem working.
I’m going to schedule this tonight before I go to bed to post at 6:00 am. Just to make sure it goes to work before the editors finish breakfast.
Old Jules
6:46 am edit: Seems prudent to get other things done before I unplug the modem here and plug it into the other machine to test the driver. The world needs coffee before it begins the kind of foolishness this day might be destined to bring. It isn’t that I’m reluctant to step boldly into the future. It’s just a minor fit of hesitation on my part to contemplate the Odyssey Homer never had to deal with. Putting a computer on my shoulder and walking inland until someone asks me what it is might be the next step, dragging the Toyota 4-Runner along behind until someone asks me what that is, too, seems a lousy day to anticipate.
Morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a visit.
Now that my freezer compartment’s thawed out I was due to make a town run for necessaries. Yesterday I took Little Red in and took the back road past Habitat for Humanity thinking they’d be open, but they weren’t.
But there’s a pallet out front where they always put things that didn’t sell for anyone who wants them, free. Whether they’re open, or closed, there’s often a lot of stuff there a person with the right turn of mind might find a use for. Around the other side of the building there’s a similar area marked, DONATIONS, clearly separated from this one.
The ‘Free’ sign wasn’t out, but the pallet did have a lot of junk on it, so I pulled in and looked it over. I figured the store was just closed for the day for some reason. I picked off three ceiling fan motors and a few other possibly useful items. I’ve got a number of other ceiling fan motors I picked off that pallet here I haven’t decided what to do with yet, but copper’s got a high pricetag on it, at the very least.
But when I got back and swung by Gale’s to brag about it he shook his head. “Man, they’ve been closed since before Christmas. I’m amazed someone hadn’t picked them up.”
“Closed? Since before Christmas?” Wrinkled brow, puzzling. “Sheeze! I’ll bet somebody dropped those off as donations. Just left them in the wrong place.”
So maybe I made a haul of some discarded fan motors and maybe I temporarily stole some intended to be donations to Habitat for Humanity. I’m going to have to contact Linda, the manager, to find out whether I need to haul them back to town. And if they’re closed until after New Year I reckons I’ll have the use of them until the status is nailed down as to whether they’re stolen property or pre-emptively rescued from some other less deserving scavenger.
Things have slowed down here a bit, but exciting things are still happening.
The freezer compartment never had a natural door, so it frosts up somewhat rapidly.
You’ve probably been through this, too. Defrosting it’s a challenge. Two days so far with it turned off and the door open. Slow going because the ambient temperature’s not getting much above freezing.
Someone in south Texas cut down a Texas Ebony tree and Gale managed to lay claim to part of it. He’s itching to begin working on it, but the bearings, both on his lathe and the sawmill went out suddenly and simultaneously.
He decided it’s time to upgrade his lathe anyway, so the old one’s got to be dissassembled and moved out and the new one assembled and installed.
We’re still waiting for the sawmill bearings to arrive from China or somewhere.
Meanwhile, the wobblyhead extensions still aren’t going to do the job on the Commie Toyota starter. I think the 4-Runner’s down for the count until I can pull that engine out of there and get to it. The nut-head rounded off more every time I applied torque. I dassn’t do anything to round it off more.
Otherwise it’s business as usual here. The cats and chickens send their regards.
The folks who run it are insufferably smug, downtalking, and annoying smarty-pantses. But they evidently have a cadre of followers scouting the planet for good ideas, which they post as ‘fails’, or bad, or quaintly bad taste compared to the tastes of the higher-minded posters and readers there.
So several times every day I open an email of the latest good ideas they’ve posted, allow them time to load and study them carefully. Ignoring the source. And every few posts another lightbulb goes off in my head as a result. Someone, somewhere had a problem similar to one I share, and figured out a way to solve it in a way I might also solve mine.
I suppose the people running the place are just out after hit-counts and making as much money as they can any way they can, and the downtalking smugness, they’ve found in their statistics, appeals to more people than the alternative approaches.
But whatever the reasons, I’m grateful they do what they do, and I sincerely hope they continue doing it.
I don’t have a clue what this thing was originally intended to do.
Neither did the people running the Salvation Army Thrift Store.
I watched the value reflected in the price tag for about six weeks falling from the original $50 to $14.95.
Every time I went in there I folded it, unfolded it, stood it up this way and that way, squinted at it trying to figure out what it was for, but seeing other possible uses the people who designed it never thought of.
This thing is a tough, expensive piece of work.
It was evidently intended to lock something in, or out.
And clamp to something along one side.
Whatever it might have been, it’s about to become a part of something else. I pointed out to the manager that it’s been there at least six weeks.
He picked it up and examined it every which way, same as I’d been doing.
“What do you suppose it is?”
“I figure it’s a way to block off the wind going through the chainlink door into my chicken house. They just added a lot of extra parts.”
Possibly this one would choose something by Arthur Rimbaud,
“True, the new era is nothing if not harsh.
“For I can say that I have gained a victory; the gnashing of teeth, the hissing of hellfire, the stinking sighs subside. All my monstrous memories are fading. My last longings depart, – jealousy of beggars, bandits, friends of death, all those that the world passed by. – Damned souls, if I were to take vengance!
“One must be absolutely modern.
“Never mind hymns of thanksgiving: hold on to a step once taken. A hard night! Dried blood smokes on my face, and nothing lies behind me but that repulsive little tree!… The battle for the soul is as brutal as the battles of men; but the sight of justice is the pleasure of God alone.
“Yet this is the watch by night. Let us all accept new strength, and real tenderness. And at dawn, armed with glowing patience, we will enter the cities of glory.” From ‘Farewell’ by Arthur Rimbaud
Or Baudelaire:
“— Enjoyment fortifies desire. Desire, old tree fertilized by pleasure, While your bark grows thick and hardens, Your branches strive to get closer to the sun!
“Will you always grow, tall tree more hardy Than the cypress? — However, we have carefully Gathered a few sketches for your greedy album, Brothers who think lovely all that comes from afar!”
From ‘Flowers of Evil’, ‘The Voyage’, by Charles Baudelaire
Or Edgar Allen Poe:
The breeze—the breath of God—is still—
And the mist upon the hill,
Shadowy—shadowy—yet unbroken,
Is a symbol and a token—
How it hangs upon the trees,
A mystery of mysteries!
From ‘Spirits of the Dead’, by Edgar Allen Poe
My own saga with Oak Wilt and this particular tree is sung in these past posts:
I’d written about possibly trying to salvage some of it for sawmilling, but that’s not in the cards:
The interior of the trunk is riddled by cracks caused by the rapid shrinkage.
Oak Wilt came on it fast from the roots. By the time anything showed topside the tree was evidently already dead.
Arthur Rimbaud, Charlie Baudelaire and E.A. Poe should have put their heads together and written something immortal about how to get the rest of it down. The job has the potential for being right there in the target zone for their kind of writing. It’s going to be a booger-bear any way I cut it.
Old Jules
Everything else being equal I think I favor pines:
All that tree-stuff hanging up there leads me to think our songsters are too humanocentric about hanging trees.
Tree Numero Uno didn’t agree to my offer to let it go down without a fight. The trunk broke but the uppidy part refused to answer the demands of modern physics.
I’m not the sort of man to sit still for anything defying science and gravity.
I got my digging bar and proceeded to put forward reasoned arguments as to why that tree needed to obey the law.
The top part of the trunk moved over on the stump every time I applied pressure to the bar.
I cut the trunk at an angle so the trunk couldn’t slip back this way when it fell and get in the way of the path I was leaving to get the cut wood out. But now, by cunning Communist refusal to do what’s right there are several tons of potential energy trapped in the upper trunk. If I use the bar to pry it further this way that upper trunk’s going to snap out of there like a catapult and knock the bejesus out of everything downrange.
But if I leave it standing it’s going to pick its own time to come down. And it’s already demonstrated a lousy set of values and ideals enough create a suspicion I’ll be under it when it does.
Maybe I was actually supposed to go to Kerrville today.
Old Jules
4:04 PM edit: I got it down, but with more style and panache than I consider tasteful under the circumstances. No broken bones, no serious injuries, nothing destroyed I can’t live without. On the other hand, there’s still a lot more tree left propped up on dead branches 10-15 feet in the air, so there might be another dance left in the old dame yet. Jules
Yesterday Gale and Kay were away on another craft fair and I had access to Little Red, so I decided to trip into Harper for the farm/livestock auction.
The pickings were fairly slim because fewer people showed for it than I’ve ever seen at that auction. But things were going dirt cheap as a result.
Cheap, I should have said, by comparison with the usual fare. On a normal third Saturday someone falls in love with this sort of thing and is willing to hock the family jewels to carry it home.
But yesterday even jewels of this sort were going for a couple of bucks:
You’d think the seat and steering wheel on this would be worth someone hauling home at those prices.
A few items did draw bids a bit higher.
This compressor that might work went for around $15.
Plenty of antlers of all description but I wasn’t sure what Gale could use or I’d have stayed around to bid on some of the lots.
The poultry barn only had a few dozen birds, none I found a compelling need for. The livestock weren’t out in force. A few bighorn sheep, four starving longhorns, a few ibex, maybe a wildebeest I didn’t get a look at, and a horse headed for the dogfood factory.
I could have left after one quick swing around except for this:
It was set up for propane and water at some time, but mostly everything except the wiring and hoses were removed. That bottom-middle vent, when opened, looks directly inside through a stripped cabinet that evidently once held a sink.
This rear window would have to be removed to get anything wider than the door inside. It doesn’t open. And I couldn’t help wondering why there had been a deliberate removal of the tail lights. No evidence of a license tag ever having been on it.
Those two vents open directly into the trailer underneath the two seats at the front, which would be a problem on the road in inclement weather.
But even knowing it was going to require a lot of work, beginning with protecting that particle board, it was a possible. This winter would be a lot warmer living in there, and that’s a factor to warp judgement to a degree. And having something that would provide a mobile escape route if I need one, a lot easier than anything I’d come across thus far lent itself to a decision to bid if the competition wasn’t strong.
I figured it might go for $300, which I could cover. I decided I couldn’t go more than $500, and even that would squeeze things a bit uncomfortably. When the bidding came it went to my $475, long pause and someone bid $500. I turned to walk away, then spur of the moment raised my arm for $525. And the bidding stopped.
I’d just bought the damned thing.
I went to the office to pay for it, forked over the money and the young lady was filling out the paperwork when the older lady behind her chimed in. “He told you about not being able to get a trailer title for it didn’t he?”
“Hmmm. No.”
Her face curled into a snarl. “That SOB! He was supposed to announce that before he auctioned it. You can’t take it onto the road. You can’t get a title for the highway.”
This caused me to have to back up and try my hand at rapid thinking. Not my long suite.
After a pause, both of them staring at me, “Do you still want it?”
“Um. I guess not.”
She counted my money back to me, I handed them the keys and went back outdoors to re-organize my life.
Nothing much had changed while I went from one package of my immediate future back to the one I began the day with. The world was still waiting for Godot.
But while I went about the task of getting my mind back unshuffled I watched this dog make a statement about the whole event, laying a line of cable between me and all that potential future I’d just stuck my toe into, then pulled it back out.
74 years old, a resident of Leavenworth, KS, in an apartment located on the VA campus. Partnered with a black shorthaired cat named Mister Midnight. (1943-2020)
Since April, 2020, this blog is maintained by Jeanne Kasten (See "About" page for further information).
https://sofarfromheaven.com/2020/04/21/au-revoir-old-jules-jack-purcell/
I’m sharing it with you because there’s almost no likelihood you’ll believe it. This lunatic asylum I call my life has so many unexpected twists and turns I won’t even try to guess where it’s going. I’d suggest you try to find some laughs here. You won’t find wisdom. Good luck.
So Far From Heaven 