decisions, thoughtful tuesday

Thoughtful Tuesday

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Last week I had to tell an organization that I could not accept their leadership position. It was not an easy decision, especially because it is an organization I have been involved with for years and believe in. I just didn’t have the resources to commit to the task. And yet it still bothers me that I had to say no. I think it bothers me more than anything that I *know* I could help them meet their needs and goals.

Just so you can understand, the organization is the Boy Scouts. In yet another re-organization of territories, they have created a new district out here that includes much of eastern Colorado and parts of the panhandle of Nebraska. I was asked to become the District Chairman for the new district, a volunteer position comparable to president or director. I admit I thought long and hard about it. I have served for years on a local troop committee. L has driven the canoe trailer to many an event and even spent tropical deluges camping with the troop. I was a Boy Scout in the same local troop (albeit 40+ years ago) whose committee I now serve on. The Son was Boy Scout in the same troop. All these things conspired to made it really hard for me to say no.

In the end I just had to say no because I am unable to commit to the demands of the position at the current time. So my points after all the meandering around are:
     Have you ever had to turn down something similar?
     Did it bother you that you had to say no?

Time to get ready for the city council meeting.

misc, Molly, pvr, software

Sunday Meanderings for the Terminally Insane

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It must be Sunday – it seems that every Sunday the blogger interface drops the top menu bar and reverts to a font calculated to make me blinder than I already am. But I am fooling the gremlins of software! I can type blind just as badly as the next person.

Today was one of those days that the thermometer says one thing, but the body says another. The thermometer said 40, but the wind chill said 10. Needless to say, walking into the breeze during the stroll Molly, L, and I took in the park early in the afternoon was a biting experience. According to the friendly (but seldom correct) weather people, the next week is supposed to be cool to cold out here on the plains. In a rarity, it is supposed to be cooler out here that in the foothills and Denver. Sometimes we get all the luck. Still no snow or other moisture out here either.

After our walk, I played car repairman on L’s vehicle. Her windshield washer had stopped spraying. Given that she is up in the mountains with all the snow up there, it is important that the washer work. Colorado uses magnesium chloride in place of salt as a deicer on the roads, which is ecologically friendly, but leaves a slush that is about like light crude oil in color and viscosity. Thus, whenever a truck runs by, you need to have working washers or be prepared to drive blind. Back to the topic at hand, taking the molding plastic off and un-kinking the hose fixed it all. Evidently it got kinked when they removed and replaced it to put in the new windshield this summer and it had finally closed off under the heat-cold cycle of winter. Routed it through the groves in the molding as designed and all should now work fine. I will undoubtedly hear about it if it doesn’t.

Other than that, I have been battling a sinus headache all day. That alone makes me think that the aforementioned weather people might have it right. Big changes in air pressure and I can almost guarantee my sinuses are going to hurt. There must be somewhere where the air pressure is constant year round.

(I must have gotten to them with all my typos – the blogger interface just popped back to normal and the font is big enough for me to actually see. Just goes to show that even software programs can only take so much!)

I got a chance to test some of my home-brew software in the thrown together PVR today. You remember it was my current obsession as discussed here . So I used it to record the play-off games today with my automatic ad removal engine in running in real time. It only crashed and burned a couple of times, so it is getting closer to being usable. Still needs a lot of code cleaning and optimizing since it can pull a machine with dual 3GHz processors right down to it’s knees, utilizing both CPU cores to 100% for periods. (Are you bored enough with this techno babble yet?) Here’s a picture of the system in operation as I compose this post with the game playback marked in red.

L got headed off back to the mountains earlier in the evening, so Molly is lying in her bed moping. Molly will mope for about 16 hours, then return to her normal bouncy self. The only hope of early recovery is the sighting of a squirrel in the yard. It’s amazing how dogs are observant enough to sense when one they love is getting ready to leave. Within an hour or so of L’s planned departure, Molly starts laying on the floor at L’s feet and watching L with sadness in her eyes. Then she gravitates to the garage door and watches as the people go back and forth. Then, when L leaves, she immediately heads to her bed and lays there, looking like the world has come to an end. So I leave you with this picture of Molly moping in her laundry room bed.

stupid saturday

Stupid Saturday

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Today is a special day here at The Art of Panic. It is our inaugural Stupid Saturday, where in we hope to illustrate that there is hope for those on the wrong side of the Darwinian curve after all. That is, they might make an appearance here on the way to extinction and thus serve as a lesson to all.

First up is this gentleman who seems to be lacking some essential clues about mating:

THOMAS TOWNSHIP, Mich. – Police say a Michigan man has been arrested after “receiving sexual favors from a vacuum” at a car wash.

The Saginaw News reports the 29-year-old Swan Creek Township man was arrested Thursday in Saginaw County’s Thomas Township, about 90 miles northwest of Detroit.

Police Sgt. Gary Breidinger says a resident called to report suspicious activity at the car wash about 6:45 a.m. An officer approached on foot and caught the man in the act.

The suspect, whose name wasn’t immediately released, is being held in the Saginaw County Jail.

Next is the enterprising woman who accidentally got rid of her husband in an unexpected manner:

ST PETERSBURG – A Russian woman in St Petersburg killed her drunk husband with a folding couch, Russian media reported on Wednesday.

St Petersburg’s Channel Five said the man’s wife, upset with her husband for being drunk and refusing to get up, kicked a handle after an argument, activating a mechanism that folds the couch up against a wall.

The couch, which doubles as a bed, folds up automatically in order to save space. The man fell between the mattress and the back of the couch, Channel Five quoted emergency workers as saying.

The woman then walked out of the room and returned three hours later to check on what she thought was an unusually quiet sleeping husband.

…

Video on the television channel’s website showed emergency workers sawing away the side panels of a couch to remove a man in his underwear lying headfirst between the cushions.

Emergency workers said the man died instantly.

Next up, we consider the “be careful where you put it” line of reasoning as exposed in the Orlando Sentinel :

A 27-year-old Deltona woman told authorities she bit her husband’s penis because she didn’t want to have sex with him.

Charris Bowers was arrested Saturday by a Volusia County sheriff’s deputy, accused of misdemeanor battery. A judge set her free Sunday without requiring her to post bail.

Her husband, Delou Bowers, today would not comment.

According to a sheriff’s office report, the Bowerses had been to a bar Friday night. Delou Bowers told authorities that when they got home, his wife began to perform oral sex on him but then began to bite his penis.

He tried to stop her, he told a deputy, but she kept at it. He then began to punch her in the head and pushed her to the floor, and she let go, according to the arrest report.

Charris Bowers gave the officer two versions of what happened. She first said she was sitting on the couch when her husband walked over and put his penis in her mouth, according to the report.

“She then bit it to get him away from her,” the report said.

She later said her husband walked over with his penis exposed, and she bit it.

Either way, the deputy saw the injury, photographed it then arrested Mrs. Bowers.

Finally, we come to the close of this issue with a simple “don’t try this at home” picture:

It might keep the dust out, but it might also lead to an appearance here.

money, rant

Money ad nauseum

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I saw that the topic of the day over at One-Minute Writer was: “Can money buy happiness?” I want to consider the obverse: “Can lack of money cause unhappiness?” That is because I firmly believe that money cannot buy happiness, but I almost as firmly believe that lack of money can cause unhappiness. So how do I support my feeling that lack of money can cause unhappiness?

The prime example supporting the thesis can be found every day in the world around us. People (adults and children) are condemned to death simply because there is no money to pay for the drugs or the operation or the food or … that would keep them alive. The failure to prevent senseless deaths for want of as little as $15 per year per person seems to be a real indictment of humanity. But the issue as far as the thesis here can be reduced to the question of whether death can be equated to unhappiness in some way.

I know that some would argue that death is not unhappiness. The Christian far right and religions with a tradition of belief in martyrdom would argue that death and the subsequent journey to heaven is the opposite of unhappiness.  After all, consider the rapture of conservative Christianity and the martyrdom of conservative Islam and other such teachings of other religions. I don’t have any unique insight as to whether the victims themselves are unhappy, but I would argue that even if the victim was not unhappy, the circle of friends and family connected to the victim certainly are. It is the rare parent indeed that is not unhappy to see their child die. It is even rarer for any person not to have emotional ties to other people such that those people are not unhappy to see them die.

So I’ll leave it open to the theologians and moralists for a “politically correct” answer. But my personal answer has to be that a lack of money can indeed cause unhappiness. Being a logical sort, you’ll note I immediately pushed the argument right to the wall in equating death to unhappiness. That is because illuminating a question in black and white can make the shiftiness of shades of gray less entrapping. No matter whether you want to push it to the edge or not, you probably have an opinion on the question. So – Can lack of money cause unhappiness?

[ As and aside: I have to say that the ammo for Stupid Saturday is growing by leaps and bounds. While I really want to thank the universe for stepping up and making tomorrow’s post easy, I am at the same time very concerned for the survival of the world as we know it. It is probably good that intelligence is not a required trait for species survival. More tomorrow. ]

Things Done Right