elby

3:42 AM

Chirp

Chirp

Chirp (What *IS* that sound?)

Chirp

Chirp (Sounds like a smoke alarm, low battery sound.)

Chirp

Chirp (Maybe it will just stop.)

Chirp

Chirp (OK, OK, I'll get up.)

Chirp (I am standing, bleary-eyed, staring at this blasted life-saving device ten feet over my head. I quickly determine NOT to go to the garage to get a ladder, because standing on a chair from the dining room would be much easier and I don't want to wake up my wife.)

Chirp (Chair in place, I am exactly six inches too short.)

Chirp (I place my five year old's step stool on top of the dining room chair to get that needed boost.)

Chirp (My wife wakes up and wonders if I would like to turn on the light.)

Chirp (Turning on the light neatly blinds my wife who now is frozen in space and time, unable to navigate the room)

Chirp (I climb up the tower of terror while my wife holds the chair. I get the distinct impression she doesn't know where she is.)

Chirp (By standing on my toes I can reach the infernal noise-making machine.)

Chirp (I make twisting motions, push the little button thingie, pry at cracks with my fingernails.)

Chirp (I try harder.)

Chirp (I contemplate ripping the whole unit off the ceiling.)

Chirp (I attempt to read the writing on the cover...something about rotate.)

Chirp (I have figured out where the battery case is and fiddle around with the release mechanism, but it seems stuck.)

Chirp (My wife asks how it's going. In a desperate attempt to do something, I rotate the whole cover and it comes off from the ceiling. I come to a quick conclusion that:

1) These smoke alarms are wired into the electrical system of the house, the battery is there just for backup.
2) I am standing on a thing, on a chair, with both hands over my head, at 3:42 AM, barely alive, let alone awake.
3) I have just exposed all of the wiring.
4) I have not turned off the power.

Chirp (I decide that electrocution wouldn't be a bad way to go.)

Chirp (Fiddling with the battery release, it now rotates open. I pull out the battery and almost fall of the cartoon-like tower I am balancing on. The 9 volt battery is a "standard" non-alkaline type. I didn't think you could buy those anywhere.)

Chirp (First, I curse the contractor that saved himself 89 cents by buying a cheap battery. Second, I notice that removing the battery did nothing to stop the incessant chirping.)

Chirp (I grit my teeth, thinking about driving to WalMart in the middle of the night to buy a battery.)

Chirp (In a moment of pure inspiration, I remember that the smoke alarm in the basement is not hard wired in and it has a battery I could steal.)

Chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp (I am back with a new, well sort of new, battery.)

Chirp (I climb back up the tower. My wife is talking to someone, but I don't think it is me.)

Chirp (I fiddle with the battery enclosure, which is now locked open and won't shut.)

Chirp (I drop the battery, which barely misses my wife's head, clips the chair and bounces down the hall. Upon my exclamation of "Watch it!" my wife thinks I am falling off the chair, grabs the stool in a "I'm now very awake" deathgrip and nearly knocks me off the tower.)

Chirp (After recovering the battery and climbing back up the tower, I figure out how to unlock the battery enclosure, replace the battery and the cover and climb down.)

Silence. No chirps, no problems.

4:26 AM. My wife has now been asleep for an hour. I lay in bed, eyes wide open, unable to get back to sleep. I am designing a house for my retirement that has no smoke alarms. I'd rather go up in flames.

Chicken

Last night I was re-heating some chicken in the microwave. They were "'chicken fingers", which I think is a pretty creepy name for a snack food when you think about it. Unfortunately, too much radiation exposure made my chicken fingers turn into chicken jerky.

That made me remember some one I hadn't thought about for years....

Growing up, Bill Barney was a bachelor farmer who lived near our house. Well, "farmer" might be an overstatement. Call him an agricultural entrepreneur. He was always trying new ideas out that were going to make him rich. Each failure inspired him to try that much harder the next time. Like the time he decided to raise mule deer instead of cows.

In this particular wave of inspiration, it was "free-range" chickens. The organic and compassionate husbandry wave was upon us and he had heard that people were willing to pay twice as much per pound for a chicken that was allowed to run free as one that was caged up. This was all Bill and his younger brother Gerald needed to hear. In less than three weeks their land was crawling with little fuzzy birds chasing grasshoppers and ranging free.

The chickens seemed to do well for a while amidst the chaos of other failed inventions. There was the half built sailboat, several cars in various states of repair, a fiberglass replica of the torch from the Statue of Liberty, and inexplicably, the entrance to what looked like a mine. However, the neighborhood cats quickly discovered that a new fast food location had opened up and soon Bill was down to only about a dozen chickens.

Due to natural selection, these chickens were as close to the "Dirty Dozen" from Hollywood fame as it gets. They were mean. They were all roosters. A couple only had one eye. Pretty soon, cats started showing up with battle scars, and one dark night I actually saw a cat walk all the way around Bill's property rather than risk getting cornered by these chickens. They started acting as Bill's watchdogs. Uhhh...chickens.

All was going well until the neighborhood punk decided to cut though Bill's property one night after smoking with his buddy down by the railroad trestle. What I heard later was that he was not as injured as he was scared, but he probably should never have pulled a knife on those chickens.

One thing led to another and soon there was a worried knot of mothers approaching Bill's door, asking him to get rid of the chickens.

As with most of Bill's business plans, this one went bad when he lost his focus. He had named each of his chickens and then found he couldn't slaughter them. By the time the neighborhood watch committee showed up, and after all this time of eating grasshoppers and chasing cats, the birds were inedible. Gerald, the practical one, actually tried (after first luring the gang to the back of the property with a cat in a cage that he had trapped). They boiled the rooster for about three days and then gave it a try. From what I heard, they ceremoniously buried the drumstick in the flower garden that night with the teeth marks still visible.

Forced by society to part with his beloved chickens, but unable to actually supervise their demise, Bill struck upon a plan. Since these were raised as free-range chickens, why not just let them go? They had clearly demonstrated their ability to survive in the wild.

Feeling better each moment about his decision, and without telling Gerald, Bill caged up the chicken gang (not without almost losing his index finger on his left hand and completely shredding his overalls from the knee down).

Bill drove out of town and turned up a dirt road that headed into the desert. A full twenty miles from town, he unlocked the cage door, beat a hasty retreat back to the cab of his pickup truck and floored it.

It took a moment or two for the chickens to notice the open door, but then, like some sort of beautiful and terrible ballet, one chicken after the other launched itself into space and freedom. There was a crow, something like a Sioux Indian battle cry, then a flash of white, and then everything was dust and gravel and feathers floating on the wind.

Seeing several of his progeny stagger to their feet and head into the bush made Bill feel that he had done right by these chickens, as well as avoiding being ostracized by his neighborhood.

Nothing much more was heard of Bill's chickens for a few years. Then strange stories starting showing up at Boy Scout camps about food raids in the middle of the night, wild and strange cries heard in the desert just before dawn, a coyote that was being hunted by a pack of something, and finally, the ever-present white chicken feather found at each crime scene.

Needless to say, the neighborhood punk never rode his dirt bike south of the town. He said he like riding in the mountains better.

iTunes: sentient software or is it just possessed?

I used to own a ’75 VW bug that was possessed. Somewhere in its sordid past the car had been in a fender-bender which bent the rear bumper into a slightly crooked smile. I should have gone with my first instinct which was to not get into any mechanical device that is laughing at me.

Before I divested myself of the car that scared me (I saw a Christine-like movie on TV at a much too early age), it had played music when I didn’t turn on the radio, refused to start until I apologized for calling it a demon, honked the horn whenever it pleased, and locked me out in the rain.

What does this have to do with iTunes? Well, I have been following a thread about how some people believe that using Random Shuffle on a large iTunes library can be a meta-physical experience. At first I scoffed, it is just the people attributing meaning to randomly played lyrics. But then I tried it.

I usually stay away from Shuffle, mostly because it gives me the equivalent of musical whiplash. I have so many types of music in my library that it is possible to go to John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads”, then Mozart’s Dies Irae, then to Midnight Oil’s “Underwater”. Somebody could get hurt.

But then, when reading an article in Wired and another on Slashdot, I began wondering if my beloved G4 Powerbook was trying to speak to me like some awaking sentient being using iTunes as the medium.

So, I am listening using my full library and Shuffle. I purposely start out with Tears for Fears “Mad World” because it was playing in my head all night last night keeping me awake. I figured I could scratch that itch by listening to the real song instead of the short loop in my head. Those demons exorcised, I let it loose.

First up is U2’s “Walk On”. All the way to work I was thinking about doing some work on the side. So does that mean to “walk on”, don’t look back, this is a really bad idea or “walk on”, this is a good idea? I can't tell.

Next up, as I look at my meeting schedule today and all that needs to be done is Jars of Clay, “Flood”. It is the live version that I accidently bought on the iTunes store (I hate hearing "Wayne" in the front row singing off key with the band and yelling Yeah! Man! Wooo!) I do feel like a Flood of stuff is washing over me to get done today. Hmmmm.

Wait, now I am back to Tears for Fears. How does that happen? I have 1,764 songs. That means that the odds for repeating a song on a single album should be something like 1 in 147. Is thing really random? By the way the song is “Break it Down Again.” I will listen to my oracle and re-work my day’s task list.

Creepy, I just realized I had missed an important assignment that is due today.

“Computer being. Speak to me. If you are really in there, I need a sign.”

OK. I am going to stop this. The next song that came up was Sarah McLachlan’s “Possession” which as far as I can tell is about a stalker. But worse than that, it is about “Possession.” You know, like the car I was telling you about.

I am just walking away. Not sure if I will ever use Shuffle again.

Don't Throw that Away - Put it in a Bagel

One of the weekly rituals at work is a phenomenon called "Bagel and Doughnut Day". Each Thursday, hordes of fellow employees descend on the break room and consume free food.

Since my theme song is “If it’s Free, it’s for Me” I am not going to make fun of the developers carefully weighing each offering with their eyes to see which one has the highest total bio-matter mass, or the dieting marketing folks looking down their nose at the unwashed masses gobbling up doughnuts while they carefully lather three inches of cream cheese on their bagels - no not me.

My target today is the maker of the bagels.

Here is a typical exchange over at the bagel table.

Bill: “What kind of bagel is that?”
Jack: “Uhhhh….”
Bill: “Do think it is a Jalepeno bagel? I got one of those suckers last time and my head nearly spontaneously combusted trying to find a water fountain.”
Jack: “ I don’t know…maybe it is just a veggie bagel”
Jennifer: “I got one once that I thought was veggie, the chunks turned out to be green raisins.”
Jack: “Uhhhh….”
Bill: “Dude, I’m going with the doughnut. I’m actually a little scared.”

Some may find this example overstated. I often jokingly made comments about the “Jerky” bagel, the one with brown chunks of U.B.M (un-identified bagel material), but I wasn't serious.

Today I am here to say that my worst fears have come true. In reality, the bagel manufacturers of America are just sweeping whatever is lying around in their kitchens into these bagels.

I innocently chose a healthy bagel this morning (as opposed to the disgusting doughnuts where you have to scrape the grease off the roof of your mouth when you are done). I picked a medium sized, nicely-colored one with little chunks of stuff.

Three bites into my breakfast I realized that the little chunks of stuff were kind of big. About the size of a BB. I showed it to my elevator mate and he mentioned that they looked like peppercorns. I laughed, “Right, nobody would make a pepper bagel.”

20 seconds later the laughter was replaced by me gasping for air and choking. Not only was this a pepper bagel, I think it was a Pepper Mace bagel. I had munched down on about three peppercorns at once, enough spice to stop a charging grizzly bear.

As I gagged and gasped my way to my desk, swaying like an oxygen starved mountain climber, tears streaming down my face, I happen to have my monthly 15 seconds of “face time” with the company’s CEO, who, losing his bearings, had wandering into our wing of the building.

He kindly said good morning. I said something like “Stpitzz chuptszcha” and staggered toward the drinking fountain while Donald Trump was shouting “You’re Fired” in my mind.

After the recovery period, I considered my options. Could a lawsuit finally make me independently wealthy? A combo lawsuit, holding both the bagel maker and the company jointly liable for my almost choking death might be just enough for me to retire as a gentleman farmer. I was starting to plan my approach when the guy sitting next to me said, “Hey, did you notice that they brought in pepper bagels this time? Finally, we get a decent bagel.”

My lawsuit is doomed.

Yes, I Do My Own Stunts (or, the Crazy Black Dog)

All of this snow we are getting this winter reminds me of another snowy winter when I was about 14 years old.

My scout troop was participating in a winter camp, the kind that is done to separate the men from the boys. Due to a connection with the local manufacturer, we had several high-end fiberglass toboggans on which we hauled all of our gear to camp, about two miles away.

After we got our troop established in a cavernous white canvas Army tent, stuffed a foot deep with straw, we began making sled runs down the snow-bound dirt road that we had just hiked up. There were about six or eight of us, and the Dog.

The Dog, or Crazy Black Dog, was completely whacked.

Our scout leader, Tom, said it was a Chinese Water Hound, and that the crossed eyes and disturbing sideways way of running made him really valuable to breeders. I'm pretty sure it was just a stray black lab mongrel mix that had chased too many cars.

All day as we made our sled runs, the Dog chased down the hill, making an eerie crying sound that I suppose was his version of happy barking.

On one particularly close race down the hill with a buddy of mine, the dog got into my luge track and just stood there with his tongue lolling out and a mad look in his eye. I knew a collision was inevitable. Since I was winning, I didn't want to steer in front of my friend and risk crashing and then getting run over by a six foot sled going thirty miles an hour. The dog was not moving. So, I headed for bush country.

This hill was flanked by scrub oak. The name scrub oak makes these trees sound small and bush-like. However, what they lack in height they make up in toughness. Flying through these trees was like going through a paper shredder, very fast. They tore my coat, cut my arms, and ripped off my hat.

As I descended through the trees, I hit a bank of some sort and sailed airborne for what seemed like an hour or two. Landing, I saw another, bigger bank coming, the kind that you don't live to see the other side of. I braced for impact and then all was white and sun and black and oak trees with claws and cold and then silent.

As I struggled out of the deep powder, I came to know that this was the most spectacular wipeout I would ever experience in my life.

At first, I had difficulty locating my sled. I finally found it about 25 yards downstream, lodged five feet up in a tree. As I slowly made my way back uphill, I gathered up my lost winter paraphernalia, noticed an oak tree with a two inch trunk that I had cut down, and measured the distance of my first attempt at non-motorized flight. (Eighteen feet from lift off to touch down).

That night, after we had all gone to bed, the Fates punished the Chinese Water Hound and his master. While we had all been eating dinner and telling ghost stories, the Crazy Black Dog found a frozen carcass and had his own private Sheep's Head Delight. What he had to eat is known because at about 1:00 in the morning, cold, with that feeling that maybe he shouldn't have had that second helping, the Chinese Water Hound sought out his master and promptly threw up inside his sleeping bag.

In the morning we sledded the two miles back to the cars. Somebody ahead of me get losing what I thought was carrots, but turned out to be hotdogs, all the way down. The Chinese Water Hound, with a new found appetite, happily ate them all.

Third Box of Kleenex

After a peaceful Christmas holiday, the headcold I thought was gone struck again. I feel like the salt mill that keeps grinding and grinding because no one knew the magic word to turn it off. Last time I was willing to tough it out, but this second round sent me whimpering to the doctor for drugs.

I checked in at 2:30, which was the time of my appointment. Knowing this is a busy time I settled in for a long wait. Remarkably those who were in the lobby before me cleared out pretty quickly. However, patients kept coming in, registering, getting called in to the doctor.

Soon, everyone who was there before me had left, everyone who came after me had left, there was just me and the receptionist, who kept looking encouragingly in my direction. After a full hour in the lobby, I was called in and after another 30 minute wait in the examination room, I had my 45 seconds with the doctor to get a prescription.

While some might complain about this funny little ritual we go through to see our doctor, I was willing to do anything that stopped this drowning in my own fluids.

Visit to the doctor: 1 hour 30 minutes, $15
Prescription: $25

Sleeping without my Kleenex box tonight: Priceless.

We Got Saddam

In an attempt to put further pressure on the interrogation of Saddam Hussein, the Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise near my home has him working as a fry cook.

Thinking I might get a good picture for the website, I went inside and asked if I might see Saddam.

"What d'ya mean see Saddam?"

"I just thought it would be cool to take his picture."

"Who sent you? Who are you working for?"

"I just wanted to take a picture for my website..."

"You must be working for someone, no one knows we are holding him here for interrogation."

"But your sign, it says you got Saddam."

"Wha...? Hey, Joey, where's that kid that puts up the sign, I'm going to....."
"I'm sorry sir, I need to have you step away from the counter. Just turn around and forget what you have seen here."

"Can I get some of that popcorn chicken? Just the individual size would be fine."

"No, you have to leave now. We're closed. We have a thing. A health inspector thing. You could get sick. Just go now."

At this point some of the fry cooks... I mean I think they were fry cooks, but then why were they all wearing earpieces and sunglasses?...anyway some scary guys in greasy aprons started coming from the back kitchen so I just beat it out of there.

As I was leaving I swear I heard a man with a think accent say, "Please, I tell you everything, just no more chicken wings. I beg of you."

I will be haunted by that voice my whole life.

I Live in the Future

I am completely speechless.

I have been battling a hard drive in my laptop with some sort of chronic disease, so I finally decided to give it up for lost and get a warranty replacement. I counted on at least a week of living without my dear, beloved laptop, maybe worse.

After speaking to technical support, I convinced them that yes, my drive is really sick unto death and they should replace it. A day or two later a cool, empty, cardboard box shows up with my name on it.

After carefully following the packing instructions, I shipped off my dear, beloved laptop to places unknown in Apple repair land. Then I went to lunch. I distinctly remember this was about lunchtime on Monday.

I then settled in for the long winter's wait, hoping for the best.

Wednesday morning at 10:00 am, I get a phone call from the IT guy. With unreasonable amounts of fear and trepidation I picked up the phone. Apple should have probably received the package by now, and I was convinced they had called and said that there were no symptoms of impending doom, so they were not fixing squat.

Wonder of all wonders, the call was to tell me my laptop was back, and more importantly, enhanced with a brand new hard drive.

On the way downstairs to pick it up, I am counting the hours this whole operation took. I came up with 46 hours.

How is that possible? Are people using those transporter thingies like on Star Trek? Do they use magic?

I love this world we live in.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving dinner was at my house this year. I've never had Thanksgiving at my house, I thought it would be cool to play host to 30 people.

Tuesday. Two whole days before Thanksgiving my wife starts giving me subtle and less subtle hints about "planning a menu". I just figured, hey, the way we always planned a menu when we go camping for a week was to go to the grocery store on the way out of town and throw what seems to be the right amount of stuff in the grocery cart. That should work here, right? She washes her hands of the whole affair.

Wednesday. I took the day off from work so I could have some "prep time". This is the point where I shop, figure out what we are going to eat, and start figuring out how all the stuff I bought at the store should be cooked.

I actually cracked the Joy of Cooking cookbook to see how long a 20 lb turkey should take to cook.

This is where my first mistake occured in the production of the feast of wonders. Math was never my strong point, but the book said it would take 12 minutes per 1 lb of turkey. Figuring that out came to around four hours. A little voice inside my head was saying "why does a 20 lb turkey take four hours to cook and a 2 lb chicken take three hours?" But I didn't listen to the voice.

Thursday, 8:30 am. Right on time I popped the massive bird carcass into the oven. I figured I'd give it some extra time to "rest" after it was done before we ate at 1:00 pm. That's what the book said to do.

The Joy of Cooking said that for optimal cooking, the turkey should be turned about one hour into the cooking process. I had never heard of this operation, but was willing to follow the sage advice of my guide. I set the timer for 9:30 am.

9:30 am. The timer went off and I was deeply engrossed in some project that could not be distracted by trival turkey turnings. (Who has ever heard of turning a half-cooked turkey anyway? It sounded dangerous.) I asked my daughter to turn of that beeping noise thing for me.

11:00 am. Eleven sounded like a good time to start getting the rest of the feast of wonders going, since I had made very clear that we would begin eating at 1:00 sharp. Not 1:10 or 2:00 or 3:30 as has sometimes happened in the past, forcing the hungry men folk to make a run to 7-11 for hotdogs as an appetizer. 1:00.

11:30 am. OK, many pots of stuff boiling away on the stove, I am thinking it is time to make plans for the gravy. Of course, the only gravy worth its stuffing would be made from the drippings in the turkey pan. I take a peek in the oven to see if I have enough drippings to make gravy.

11:31 am. I am staring at a pink, slightly damp turkey, that in no way is different than the bird I put in the oven three hours ago. The oven is stone cold. My dear daughter had logically hit the "Cancel" button on the oven to stop the beeping noise thing and turned off the oven. Ah, the marvels of misguided user interface in this electronic world.

11:32 am. In a brief moment of culinary panic, I show my wife. She starts laughing so hard I am somewhat concerned for her health. I help her sit down.

11:43 am. She is still laughing.

11:44 am. I crank up the oven, giving it 50 degrees more heat than is recommended by that stupid Joy of Cooking book and get really serious about the other dishes.

12:35 am. The first guests show up. Mom and Dad. The conversation went something like this:

So, I hope you decided to cook a turkey after all, because I am really starved.

Uhhh, right, turkey.

No turkey? I thought you said you were going to do a turkey.

We are going to have turkey for dessert. After we watch a two hour movie. If we are really lucky.

The other thing that is tradition about our typical Thanksgiving dinner besides never occurring at the scheduled time is that my dad typically has three or four servings of stuff from the kitchen before it ever makes it to the dining room table.

This year for the feast of wonders, I headed that right off at the pass. I handed him a plate of chicken wings, a plate of shrimp fajita stuff, still sizzling, and pointed him to the relish tray. He had 25 minutes of snacks and I don't think ever noticed the lack of turkey.

Well, to round up this windy monologue, everyone showed up in time to eat, we had plenty of food, and around 4:00 pm I pulled the belated turkey out in time to quarter it and send it home with the departing guests in very large Ziploc bags.

After desert was served. Significantly after.

Second Box of Kleenex

Why is it that when you have a cold they say you should drink lots of liquids? I mean, it’s not like your body isn’t trying to drown you anyway. Why exactly, when you feel nearest death, does you nose decide to produce prodigious amount of liquid? What good does that do? Is it a process designed to make you feel so bad that you can’t feel your aching head?

The funny thing with a head cold is that you have to carefully think about every move you make. Especially driving.

"Gas, brake, gas, brake, lift hand, turn signal on, turning, turning, turning, straighten out."

It is amazing how much you don't think when you are healthy. A head cold is like an out-of-body experience, watching my hands and feet like they belong to someone on TV.

All I know is that I am having a second box of Kleenex for lunch.