Tag Archives: senior citizens

Sorry, Wrong Number.

Posted on February 12, 2012 by | 24 comments

I don’t get many phone calls here, so a few days ago when the phone rang and a male voice with an accent said something I didn’t understand about ‘technical support’ and ‘your computer’ I kept listening a moment.  But other than those two phrases I couldn’t cypher out a word he was saying.

“Excuse me.  I can’t understand what you’re saying.  What do you want?”

Another long string of words including the two phrases, unintelligible.  My hearing isn’t all that it might be.  I can’t understand what store clerks or waiters are saying half the time when I’m in town, so I nod yes, or no, as the mood strikes me and take my chances.

But this guy had something to say that might be important, and he called to say it.  Seemed prudent to me to focus my iron will and patience on the job of knowing what it was.  I tried several possibilities.

After I’d interrupted him three or four times asking him to speak more clearly, more slowly, though, he said, “Never mind.”  Spang broke the connection.

I’m reasonably certain the man was in India.  I shot a couple of phrase of Gujarati at him I remembered from Peace Corps training and he shot some back at me I couldn’t understand any better than I understood his English.

Remembering it, I recalled a story I read a while back online:

A PACKED commuter train sped hundreds of kilometres across India in the wrong direction before passengers finally realised it was pulling into an unfamiliar station.

The train left the southern town of Tirupati on Wednesday for the eastern city of Bhubaneswar, where it was due to swing north to its eventual destination of Varanasi, a city in northeastern India, The Times of India reported today.

But bewildered passengers noticed something was amiss yesterday when it chugged into Warangal – a central Indian city on an entirely different route some 980km west of its intended stop at Bhubaneswar.

The express train had managed to cross three of India’s railway divisions and travel hundreds of miles without anyone noticing it had lost its way, The Times reported.

The mistake was believed to have arisen because it was given an incorrect destination code, compounded by the fact it was a special service and many of the staff were unfamiliar with the route.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/train-travels-980kms-in-wrong-direction/story-e6frf7jx-1226132739080

By hindsight, I don’t know whether the guy thought he was talking to someone in the US, Australia, or the UK.  I can’t for the life of me form an opinion about whether he knew something about my computer it was important I know, or wanted to tell some train pilot in New Zealand he was going backwards and another one was coming at him 90 miles an hour the other way.

This brave new world’s getting a bit complex for a 20th Century man.

Old Jules

 

Today on Ask Old Jules:   Old Jules, what scripture do you use most in helping you fight your demons?

24 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, America, Communication, Current Issues, Trains, Transportation

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Clarifying the clarification

Posted on February 9, 2012 by | 9 comments

Let no fate willfully misunderstand me and snatch me away, not to return. Robert Frost

Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read.

Evidently some readers were left with the impression yesterday post was a farewell notice. It wasn’t. I’ll be posting here, but not so often, is all, until I’m where I can’t. I just won’t be spending so much time online.

Keith: I got your email, but I can’t do Facebook because of the slow connection. Check your Yahoo mailbox, amigo. I know you have computer issues, but I think that’s the only way available from this end. J

The invader cat has raised the ante here. It’s evidently a female and in heat. Walks around mewing all the time, to the disgust of the four resident felines. But I’ve begun feeding it because I’m not going to have it starving while I figure out who it belongs to.

My friend, Rich sent me a RAM upgrade for my offline computer and it arrived yesterday. Jumped me from 4 gb of RAM to 12 gb with Readyboost, and it allowed me to follow some computations I’d never been able to do before. Uplifting, satisfying day.

Gale’s fairly under the weather, but he brought down the RAM chips and we conversed a while. Seems he might have come across a tow bar for sale without recognizing it for what it is. Got me fairly excited, because the towing issues are the reason the New Truck isn’t in town being worked on, or isn’t finished, licensed, inspection stickered, lock stock and banana peel. I’m borrowing Little Red to go into town today and try to chase it down.

Maybe I shouldn’t have made the post yesterday, though I wasn’t smart enough was the reason I did. It seemed an explanation of why I’d be making fewer posts.

For those who read it rapidly I suppose it seemed I was about to take off all my clothes and run naked into the sunset.

It’s too cold still for that.

Old Jules

 

Previous posts about the transportation issue saga:

 Got me a new truck! Scouting the Escape Route Wobblehead Extensions, Crowfoots and Mayan Ruins in Georgia   The New Truck Resurrection Post-Y2K Cross-Cultural Trials, Trucks and Unwelcome Wisdom The Communist Toyota 4-Runner  

 

9 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, Senior Citizens, Solitude

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Juggling Priorities

Posted on February 8, 2012 by | 19 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

When I began posting this blog just before the end of June last year,

The Great Speckled Bird: Respecting our Betters, my life was a  somewhat different place, though it hasn’t changed much by outward appearance.  Mainly what’s changed is priorities.  Time has speeded up for me in a sense.  Things I’ve needed to be doing all along, but were on the back burner indefinitely have fought their way to the front burner and now are holding the high ground. 

The season that’s been attempting to pass itself off as a winter here seems every day to be assuming the attire of early spring.  Which is to say, I need to be doing spring-like things inside the priority mix, instead of winter things, and the spring activity demands this year will be somewhat different from last year. 

One of the ways that will manifest itself is that I’ll be posting less regularly on this blog, trying to spend more time doing higher priority activities.  A lot of the projects I had planned, or was working on during the blog months are going to be abandoned or allowed to be pushed into abstractions for some future time, except one.

So the frequent and somewhat regular posting here will change to a target-of-opportunity mode. 

Jeanne will continue posting the Ask Old Jules entries, and I’ll probably occasionally post something there also, as time allows.

I’m no good predicting the future, but my intention, within the context of what the Coincidence Coordinators will allow, is to have this shelter and the area immediately around it back mostly as it was when I arrived several years ago.  Including me being somewhere else.   Most of my priority juggling is going to try to fit itself into that as best it can.

Hopefully the ancient Mayans had all that figured out and that’s what all the hoopla about the Mayan calendar’s really about.  The cats and me experiencing another pesky reincarnation without the Universe raising any eyebrows.

Old Jules

 

19 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure

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An Addendum About My Personal View of Mormons

Posted on January 31, 2012 by | 9 comments

I didn’t say this in the post because I didn’t think it needed saying, but I think it might.

I’ve got nothing bad to say about Mormons.  I’ve never been ill-treated by them, cheated by them, lied to by them so far as I know.  The ones I’ve met have generally been solid, hard-working, honest people.  Seemingly more so compared to the impression I’ve been left with in my seven decades of experience with the remainder of the population.  Christians, Gentile, Jew, atheist, Muslim and agnostic.  Even Buddhists, Taoists, Hindu, and the herd of New Age Gurus.  Even Hopi Elders and Ambiguous Native American Shamans.

My interest in Mormons came to being with the gradual realization that the parties involved in the lost gold mine I searched for so many years were predominantly Mormons.  It was a factor left entirely out of the legend as it came out of the 19th Century and it required years of research to uncover that fact.  The cousin of one of the central characters was evidently the second wife of Brigham Young.  Family names of the lost gold mine participants also show up among people involved in Mountain Meadows.

The timing on the lost gold mine incident and that of the Mountain Meadows massacre originally drew my interest.

What Mormons believe about polygamy, same-sex marriages, almost anything at all has no bearing on my impression and generally benevolent attitude toward them as a whole.  In areas where we disagree I’m willing to forgive them for being wrongheaded, same as I try to forgive everyone else who disagrees with me.  Otherwise I’d be forever having to keep score of who was right in this world, and who is wrong.  It just ain’t worth the effort even those relatively few areas where I can’t restrain myself from having an opinion.

Old Jules

9 Comments

Posted in America, Book Reviews, History, Native American, Native Americans

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A Scene of an Ancient Massive UFO Crash

Posted on January 29, 2012 by | 19 comments

This is located almost atop the Continental Divide in the Gila Wilderness at around 8000′-9000′ above Mean Sea Level elevation.  Nobody much goes up there.  I was actually looking for something else when  two comparatively ‘small’ parallel gouges mid-picture first caught my eye.

Trench deep on our left pushes up rocks ahead
Closer view of key impact
 
 
Bad things happening to good people
 
 
Impacts and energy events stage 1
 
Stage 2 Along path breaks up and explodes
 
Impact trenches
 
Hot spots
 
Stage 2 energy events
 
  

 
Main pieces remaining
 
Interesting local geology
 
Aftermath investigation and cleanup
 
Better view of initial ground contact
 
Pilot applies full power – Dire emergency attempt at recovery
 
Meanwhile a couple of ridges away 1
 
  
 
 
Meanwhile a couple of ridges away 2
 
Mother nature anticipating and waiting – It only needed the human imagination to complete the picture
 
Skeptics probably won’t believe this is a UFO crash site.  I personally don’t. and so far as I’m aware I’m the only person who’s ever suggested it might be.  I’d surely like to get up there and have a look at it sometime, but for other reasons than the UFO story.
 
I’d like to spend about a month up there with half-dozen pack goats just nosing around the immediate area.  Some places don’t need a crashed ancient UFO to have appeal.
 
Old Jules
 
Edit:  You can have a look for yourself by going to flashearth dot com and entering the longitude/latitude coordinates in the lower right corner of each image.

19 Comments

Posted in Adventure, Nature, NM, Outdoors, Prospecting, Senior Citizens, Solitude, UFOs

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Upstream in Time to Wednesday Morning

Posted on January 25, 2012 by | 8 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by this morning.

That’s not my High Roller because I still have to migrate my Dropbox folder over to the spanking new E Dell Machine, and I’m typing this on the old one.  But I’m confident later today will find me pushing this guy aside, re-plugging my heavy lifter, and getting back to where I left off a few days ago.

Came a bull-goose mano daddy-longlegs thunderstorm here last night.  Sounded as though things were falling on other things to create the illusion the underneath stuff was being crushed, but I just crawled out of bed, turned off the computers and listened to the roof holding up as well as could be expected.

There’s something thought-provoking listening to an attack by the sky on a metal roof, provided the roof doesn’t distract things by letting it pour through onto the bed.  But I’ve shown you pics before of how I prevent that with sheets of black plastic stapled to the ceiling to move the water over to the downhill wall before releasing it.

So I did a lot of thinking about all manner of things while the night and the roof talked to one another about how frustrating that sheet of plastic makes things for them. 

One realization I came to involves having to go back and adjust times in the past when things didn’t happen, which is going to be a lot of work.  I’ve avoided allowing myself to consider that a need for this project because of the amount of labor intensive format manipulation required to get the data into something I can use.  Now the stress of not relying on a dying machine is reduced and the heavy lifter’s going to be back lifting I’ll probably be getting things prepared for that today.

Which beats the dickens out of stomping around in mud.  The other alternative.

The invader cat came in last night, was up on the porch chowing down on the cat food the regular army didn’t eat.  At least it ran off without any exchange of greetings.

Several other matters are begging to be brought up and typed, but my coffee cup’s empty, the temperature’s dropping and I sense I’m going to have to put on another layer of clothing.  Probably need to hunt down that pair of gloves with no fingers, too.

So thanks for reading, if you have, and maybe I’ll post something that makes more sense later if I’m feeling up to the task.

Old Jules

 

8 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Animals, Country Life

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Penis Enlargement Software from Norton Symantic

Posted on January 24, 2012 by | 11 comments

Got an email I haven’t opened, presumably from Norton Symantic noting I haven’t plugged the modem into the E Dell Machine to test the 79 mb downloaded driver.

At least I assume it’s from Norton Symantic, though the whatchallit ‘from’ says it’s from Best-Penis and the subject line says, Max-Gentleman Enlargement Pills.  But I’m not fooled.  Norton Symantic was popping screens up on me all manner of ways yesterday creeping in with things intended to interrupt my focus and goals for eventually getting this E Dell Machine online.

Norton most likely suspects a degree of trepidation on my part and is poking sharp sticks in my eye suggesting I need to grow a set of whatchallits and go ahead and test it.  After which they’ll sell me some penis enlargement software to make it work, which they figure at the moment it ain’t going to do.

Bastards.

Old Jules

11 Comments

Posted in Communication, Senior Citizens, Solitude, The Lone Psychiatrist

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Priorities Floating in a Syrup of Reality

Posted on January 23, 2012 by | 20 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming for a read.

Sometimes I surprise myself with how stupid I am.  Every time I get thinking I’ve plumbed the depths of human folly something comes along to prove there’s another layer down there for me to probe.  One of the ways it all manifests itself in my life has to do with sorting out priorities and shifting things around to accommodate critical paths.  When enough pressure builds behind a particular critical path stricture my focus is drawn there and I begin some new stupidity energy release intended to allow the dammed up whateverness to pass through.

At the moment the focus is computers.  The one I’m typing on is an old XP machine I bought at a garage sale a year-or-so ago for a strictly online machine for browsing and downloading data.  But gradually for the sake of speed and convenience I sneaked around and allowed myself to do other things with it project-wise.  Stupid stupid stupid stupid.

Now this machine is trying to take a hike into oblivion.  It wants to join the other two computer carcasses stacked over on the futon that once did what it does.  I bought an old XP in a thrift store for $50 to replace this one when I knew this one was going to retire, but a lot of files and settings in the one in front of me now need to be transferred to the next one.  One of those is the modem driver that allows that machine to use the external modem this one uses to go online.  It won’t recognize the modem, absolutely refuses to acknowledge there’s a modem connected to it.

Everyone tells me there’s nothing to transferring this stuff.  I’ve got a cable especially made with a CD to allow this comp to talk to that one and transfer what’s needed.  Both machines are reluctantly willing to admit they’re capable of doing it, each proclaims it’s ready and more than willing to do it.  But then, each points the finger of blame at the other, claiming the other one has something faulty causing it to drag its heels.  Neither will acknowledge a connection is live between them, thought the light on the cable says there is.

So I have a dying machine here I can’t get any of the downloaded or installed programs off of into the other machine, which is bad enough, but worse is the fact the replacement machine doesn’t even have the brainpower to recognize the phoneline modem.  So it’s not figuring on having to go online.

Meanwhile, the offline machine I use for actual heavy-lifting is off the table and residing over with the two carcasses because the power cord, the keyboard, the mouse and screen it uses are being used by the XP intended for the next online one.

A lot of the day yesterday was spent trying to get these two XPs to shake hands and talk to one another.  But today, I think this ‘new’ XP is going into the pile of carcasses where the heavy lifter is now, and the heavy lifter’s going back to work doing what it needs to be doing.

Wasted a lot of time getting there, and more time telling about it.

Stupid stupid stupid stupid.

Old Jules

20 Comments

Posted in 2012, Astronomy, Communication, Human Behavior, Internet

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Finding Non-Virtuous Pursuits: The Challenge

Posted on January 21, 2012 by | 13 comments

I’ve spent most of a lifetime avoiding virtue successfully without having to devote a lot of energy to doing it.  But it’s gotten a lot more difficult.

For instance, I predominantly eat veggies along with some rice.  If I feel the need for protein I throw in some eggs.  Sounds harmless enough.  I’ve got a rice steamer with a platform compartment in the top allows me to steam a mess of veggies and rice faster than I can tell it.  I love it, and it’s easy to clean afterward without using any water.  I run a 1.1 penny US baby-wipe wipe over it after I pour out the vittles and it’s ready to run another race.

But suddenly I’ve discovered not eating meat is at least a virtue, in some cases, a religion.  Wedges me firmly between a rock and a hard place.  I’ll eat a bit of meat sometimes when I can afford it, but honestly I feel better saving the money against the possibility of something coming up so’s I need money.

I’ve got a little sausage in the freezer I had Gale pick up for me last time he was in San Angelo, but in some sense it’s like the quarter-bottle of Y2K Jack Daniels Black Label sitting on the microwave drawing dust.   It’s just too good to use, except on special occasions.

So, for the purposes of not being virtuous, the sausage doesn’t help much more than the Jack Daniels.   I need to come up with some cheap, non-virtuous things I can do that don’t require burning any gas, borrowing a vehicle, or glutting myself more than I do when I cook up a nice Idaho potato, chop up some jalapeno, onion, half-stick of butter and smother it in yogurt or cottage cheese.

Lessee. 

pride…. heck, I’m already up to my Adam’s apple with pride.  Any more pride might be a hazard to my health.

covetousness  Maybe that’s a possibility.  Maybe I can think of something to want really badly.  Nothing much comes to mind, but this is too important to reject out of hand.

envy  … That would be pretty cool, finding someone to envy.  But I can’t recall running across anyone I thought was enviable in so long I’m not sure I ever did.

lust … Nope.  Donealready beentheredonethat with lust.  I ain’t going there again.

anger  …Took me 50-odd years to figure out I was an angry person, same as everyone claimed I was.  Big job of work getting rid of it once I figured out I was.  Anger needs to make a home in people who don’t know the tricks.  I don’t think I could hold onto anger in a way it would find palatable.

gluttony . . .   Gluttony might work. I’ve got 100 pounds of milo maize out there.  Maybe boil some up, put some butter on it, maybe some pepper and onions.  Curry.  But I’d have to drop in some sausage to keep it from metamorphosing into something virtuous.  Something to think about, anyway.

sloth …  Sheeze!  Sloth is absurd.  It’s a red herring they hang out there pretending to offer up hope in case a person can’t avoid virtue some other way.  But hells bells!  When’s a person supposed to find any time for sloth when there’s only 24 hours in a day?  Sloth is BS.  Forget it.

That milo’s looking better and better.  At least until I can think of some more respectable way to clear my conscience without bankrupting myself.

Old Jules

 

13 Comments

Posted in 2012, Human Behavior, Music, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Survival

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The Consequence of Premature Whatchallit

Posted on January 19, 2012 by | 27 comments

Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a visit.

The Toothless Soothsayer was going to be my post for today, but as I was working on it yesterday I accidently hit the ‘PUBLISH’ button and it became history.

It’s going to be a busy day here.  It’s been almost a month since I’ve been to town for provisions and I’ve got a list two-pages long of things I’ve runned out of already, or that I’m down to bare bones on.  The cats have been threatening to go on strike if I don’t get some other flavors of canned food, the chickens are fighting the cats for dry cat food, and the deer are complaining about what’s available to steal from the felines and chickens.

I thought I’d stocked up enough on the old kind of cheap lightbulbs, but the cheapo ones burn out a lot faster than a person might expect.  I’m hoping I can find a few more on the shelves to snag before lightbulb-Y2K happens. 

Most of you probably haven’t noticed what’s happened to the price of feed grains, but I expect you’ll be seeing it on the grocery shelves in the form of pricetags before long.  The price of chicken scratch is up about 25 percent from sometime a while back, and layer pellets up almost that. 

The flock is free ranging a lot further than they used to because I’ve cut down of how much I put out for them.  It’s a tightrope, making sure they have enough to supplement their forage, but keeping it down to a level so’s they don’t waste it, which they’ll do.  They’ve always been spoiled, profligate, ungrateful birds.  But now they’re being driven by necessity to range out a quarter-mile, which is the idea behind free-rangers but too good for them to allow them to appreciate it.

A while back my laser mouse with a cord went out, and digging around I found a cordless one I’d never been satisfied with from several years ago.  Out of hunger I put a couple of triple-A batteries in it and found it worked okay.  Couldn’t recall why I’d abandoned it.

Then I discovered it goes through batteries something ugly.  It’s a gas hog and I don’t think my need to have a cordless mouse is worth the price of keeping it on the road.  Probably it’s going to be me tied to the comp at the end of a fiber-optic cord again.

If you’re travelling out in the vicinity of Grants, New Mexico, and you see the cat at the top of the page, tell her Hydrox, Niaid and I said hello.  I doubt you’ll see her because she vanished in 2003 and we figured she’d joined Mehitabels #1 and #2 on permanent mouse patrol.

But you never know.

Old Jules

27 Comments

Posted in Animals, Country Life, Free-ranging-chickens, Grants, New Mexico, NM, Poultry, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Survival, Texas

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