Net.Curmudgeon's Journal

From Harpers some time in the early 2000s:

[Malediction] HOW’M I DOIN’? From a letter sent last August by school-board official Rochell Moore to Francis Slay, mayor of St. Louis. Moore, who was elected in April 2001, is unhappy with the board’s decision, on the advice of a private management firm, to close sixteen schools and eliminate 1 ,400 jobs. When questioned about the letter, Moore denied wishing the mayor harm, claiming, “I didn’t say it, God said it.” Open Letter to Francis Slay, Mayor of the City of St. Louis. Because of the position you have taken against St. Louis Public Schools, you are cursed with a curse. Thus saith the LORD of hosts, I will even send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings: yea, I have cursed Francis Slay and all those whom help him already. Cursed shalt thou be in the city, and cursed shalt thou be in the field. Cursed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy land, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep. Cursed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and cursed shalt thou be when thou goest out. The LORD shall send upon Francis Slay and anyone who helps him cursing, vexation, and rebuke, in all that thou settest thine hand unto for to do, until thou be destroyed, and until thou perish quickly; because of the wickedness of thy doings. The LORD shall make the pestilence cleave unto Francis Slay and anyone who helps him, until he have consumed thee from off the land, whither thou goest to possess it. The LORD shall smite Francis Slay and anyone who helps him with a consumption, and with a fever, and with an inflammation, and with an extreme burning, and with the sword, and with blasting, and with mildew. And the angel of the LORD shall pursue Francis Slay until he perishes. The LORD shall make the rain of thy land powder and dust: from heaven shall it come down upon thee, until thou be destroyed. The LORD shall cause Francis Slay and all those whom help him to be smitten before thine enemies: You shalt go out one way against them, and flee seven ways before them: and shalt be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth. Consume Francis Slay and all those whom help him in wrath. Consume them, that they may not be: and let them know that God ruleth in Jacob unto the ends of the earth. Selah. So it is and so shall it be.

Or you may wind up being presented with a chart like this (done a couple of months ago to underscore to a coworker why HP computers really just leave me cold).

---

Desktop, Laptop and Tablet Computers I have owned or worked with

		Opinion				Score
	Vendor	Loved	OK	Hated		Count	Points	Average

	Dell	12	7	2		21	31	1.48
	Compaq	1	2	0		3	4	1.33
	IBM	1	1	1		3	3	1.00
	HP	2	0	4		6	4	0.67
	Gateway	0	0	2		2	0	0.00
	Viewsonic	0	0	1		1	0	0.00
						36

		Point Values
		Loved = 2
		OK = 1
		Hated = 0

If Thursday was the joy of having the right tools, Friday was the agony of having the WRONG tool.

I spent the day helping my folks with a garden project -- fencing in a chunk of the garden to keep the critters out. We needed to trench 24" deep for the posts and the portion of the wire fence that would be below ground.

In planning this out, I had recommended to my mom that she rent a mini excavator from the local hardware store (yes, they have a backhoe, but there were a bunch of elements of the job that made a 360° tracked machine a better choice). Someone at the store convinced her that a trencher (picture an over-sized chainsaw on wheels) would do the job just as well, and cost half as much to rent.

So, we started digging with this trencher. Bottom line: surface was too soft, ground was too rocky. The machine got hopelessly mired on it's first pass and I had to tow it out with my pickup truck. Our second pass fared just as badly. My dad and I looked at this and said no way. Of course, by then it was nearly noon.

I hustled my butt down to the Nursery, fetched the dumptruck and trailer, ran over to my place, loaded the backhoe, and got myself back to my parents' place in an hour. I spent the rest of the day digging and setting posts...

I am working on my Dad's 1987 John Deere tractor -- fixing lights that don't work. Yesterday was a bit of a goat-screw as I started my trouble-shooting with a bad assumption about where the problem was. With electrical, always start at the edge of the system and trouble-shoot your way in. Starting in the middle (in this case the main headlight / warning light selector switch) is a bad idea ... no matter how confident you are in your assessment of the problem. Some lessons you just have to re-learn from time to time.



Today, however, has been a different story. I'm installing some new lights to replace the broken-to-pieces headlights. The new lights are going up high on the roll bar -- where they won't be blocked by the front bucket like the original hood-mounted lights were. To attach the lights I'm using the mounting holes for the canopy (which we have never had). They're 12mm coarse thread holes ... which have been out in the weather for 25 years. I started clearing one side the hard way -- squirt in WD40, run the bolt in until it get really hard to turn, back it out, clean the rust and crap off of the threads, repeat -- and then decided that I needed to get real.

A trip to Home Despot and my local hardware store later, and I had two things I really needed. A vise for my drill press -- to hold the mounting brackets while I enlarged the mounting holes to accommodate 12mm bolts instead of the supplied 3/8" bolts -- and a 12mm tap and handle. In five minutes I had the threads on both sides of the roll bar cleared. In another five minutes I had both brackets drilled -- on center, with no risk of the pieces being flung across the room. Nice. So much easier with the right tools.

The fact that I really do need to take some time off finally penetrated my thick skull a couple of weeks ago. So, I'm taking vacation this week. Of course, "taking vacation" in my family means "go somewhere else and do some other work". :-) Saturday was spent rounding up logs with my deere friend John. These are remnants of the trees we had to have taken down after The Great October Storm. My plan is to sit on them for a while, let the glut of storm wood subside, and then try to sell them to a local sawmill. NB: Large pieces of wood are amazingly heavy. The biggest log on the pile (roughly 30" in diameter and 9' long) was so heavy that I had to drag it out of the woods, and then roll it up onto the pile.

Click for larger image

Listening to the coyotes down in the valley by the reservoir. Sounds like their either having a town meeting or a rumble. Actually, given the amazingly loud braying I just heard from one of the nearby farmer's donkeys, I think that they may have tried a raid.

There's something about the sound of wild dogs howling and yipping in the night that raises the hairs on the back of my neck and makes me think where's my gun.

Today was my first day back on my feet after cold number 10,492. My reward for slogging through the day at work was to go do this. :-) GPIP is participating in the replanting of the Paul Love garden here in Glastonbury; tonight we brought in six trees ranging from small to pretty respectable. In the "respectable" category were two Okami cherry trees, which due to our early hot spell, were in full bloom. Instant flowers! All in all, a good evening's work.

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Really. Just snowed under.

The great generator project marches on. Wednesday afternoon I ran the first real test of the generator -- plugged into the house, transfer switch thrown, and live loads ON.

It went pretty well. I may need to do some re-balancing in the generator sub-panel; one leg was pulling 9.5 Amps while the other was only pulling 5. OTOH, the leg running at 5 Amps also has the furnace on it, and that was not running.

I learned something interesting. I was checking the generator out prior to putting real loads on it, and I noticed that it was producing AC at 62 Hz, not 60 Hz. Turns out that many generator manufacturers tune their generators to run at 3720 RPM (62 Hz) with no load. When you load the generator up, it should settle down to a proper 60 Hz.