Category: Uncategorized

The penalty that good men pay for not being interested in politics is to be governed by men worse than themselves.

-Plato, philosopher (427-347 BCE)

Tonight for dinner, we had … potatoes. With turkey gravy, which was good. And then, on the side: potatoes. Yes. Potatoes with a side of potatoes. Wheee!

And just before that, from when I woke up until supper (four or five hours, I guess) I was climbing around in (and next to, on an unstable ladder) an apple tree, pruning it. Which, since I have an irrational fear of heights/falling, is a terrifying thing to do. But, it needs to be done, whether I’m terrified or not. When I got to the point where I was shaking so much I wasn’t confident I could stay up there, I took breaks, and when I couldn’t stop shaking and I couldn’t quite breathe, I quit for the day.

I’ll have more to do tomorrow.

My father and grandparents will be out of town most of the day tomorrow, and then bible study tomorrow night. And if dad doesn’t get back in time, I have to navigate to Heath’s bible study at the church, then to pick up ‘Randy’, then to our bible study, out past Star Valley. Somewhere. Yeah, I’ll probably be able to figure it out if I have to, but … I don’t know, I’ve never seen any of these places in daylight… or much paid attention to how to find them. We’ll see how it goes.

I spent an hour or four tonight putting together a page for Modern Evil which shows all the BitPass-exclusive content on Modern Evil. I need to cut back on this coding, but … Well, admittedly I have trouble doing anything creative (ie: painting except by already-created diagrams, writing anything new) while other people are around. I work best individually. But with coding I seem to be able to get it done whether people are around or not. I can code and watch TV and have conversation with Heath and chat online, all at once. If I try to … say, write original poetry or short stories, or to come up with ideas for paintings, while Heath is even so much as awake and in the next room or outside with the possibility of coming in, and definitely if he (or anyone else) is in the room, I can’t even start. I’m completely blocked. I can’t get the first word out. My brain is frozen. And it continues for hours after I’m alone and assured of non-interruption. Heath went to bed over an hour ago, and my hands are just beginning to loosen up for writing, even here.

But instead of wanting to write, I want to go get some “real” work done. I want to go downstairs and … sand. I want to do something that at least resembles something that might make money. I want to drill out the hole I forgot to re-drill on my floorlamp. I want to throw away the chunk of wood I was planning on using for a leg on the coffee table I’m working on, since it’s a piece of crap (I got a little extra fed-up with it last night), and find a new one to work on. I want to sand and sand and sand and finish a third leg’s sanding, getting me that much closer to ‘done’.

But that’s not going to happen. I’m going to shower and I’m going to go to bed. And hopefully I’ll get up in the morning, and tomorrow I may get something accomplished.

As soon as these pain killers kick in, I’m going to head downstairs and work on sanding for a couple/few hours. I didn’t wake up today until around 3:30PM, but … I didn’t get to sleep this morning until after 6AM again. I was working on the code that allows people to select/deselect each area of Modern Evil to appear in the version of the main page that they see. Like most anything else these days, I did it because it was something I wanted.

I’d noticed lately that my own site was … well, boring to me. Post after post after post, dozens of comments, and I didn’t care about most of it. For a while it was tolerable, but Pretty Pistol just … I don’t know, it got on my nerves. That’s a very popular style of blog. There are a lot of blogs that have almost exactly the same style of posts and the same demeanor and I don’t read or want to read any of them, either. Alison, this isn’t anything against you as a person, but … that style of blog just isn’t for me. And now I don’t see it at all.

Sorry about FYTH. It’s uhh… special. Due to an … anomaly in the way I originally coded the current aggregator, FYTH cannot be turned off by the method used to filter the others. I’ll look at making it more universal in a future version of the aggregator. You know, the version I write that can detect and read RSS 1.0, 2.0, and perhaps Atom, without requiring any custom fields, and to which can easily be added ANY blog or site with a feed? Yeah. That’s down the road.

But seriously, I shouldn’t be doing all this coding. I should be writing. This time is Focus On: Writing, not Focus On: Coding. In fact, I don’t even have a Focus On: Coding scheduled. Maybe after another year or more. Can you imagine what would come out if I spent four months Coding? Man. If I did a little planning ahead of time, a bit of brainstorming and forward-thinking, I could probably write an OS better than windows in that time. Hah! But really, who couldn’t? What does it take to be “better than windows”? I kid. But imagine my website. After four months of intensive coding, It might be able to read your mind!

Anyway, off to work…

This afternoon, almost right after I managed to get out of bed, I drove down to Payson. (In case you didn’t read that one, I got to bed around 7AM after working late, posting, and then being interrupted by a broken power rod.) I stopped by the ACE Hardware store to look at some epoxy (which reminds me to look the pruduct up on-line tonight), then headed over to the High School to pick up Heath. I had about 10 minutes, so I went around the dial and managed to find 6 stations that weren’t playing country, gospel, or in spanish, so I programmed them into part of the radio’s memory.

Then Heath and I drove over to the local movie theatre and watched Hidalgo. That was pretty good. Obviously, Hidalgo comes through in the end after it looks like he will fail, in a split-second finish. Could it be any other way? Is the story any less if you know that going in? Is it possible for you to know what the story is without knowing that? I don’t know.

We exited the theatre to find that the rear left tire was flat. I called my dad to be sure he didn’t have some alternate plan, then began the tire-changing process. Heath ran across the street to see if the Big O Tire was still open while I took the flat one off, but alas, they were closed. So I put the donut on and soon we were on our way. I could see, as soon as I took the tire off, that I had a screw buried in it. Could have been picked up as early as ACE Hardware; I mean, they sell screws there, right? But I knew better, so I left the screw in the tire. My father will take a look at it tomorrow.

I had a little more shopping to do (abrasives, light bulbs, marshmallows), so we stopped into the WalMart on the way home. The two-lane road between Payson and Pine was extra-fun, since I wouldn’t drive faster than 50 on the donut, and tried to stay around 45. And mostly, there isn’t passing on that road. The first place I was able to let people by (the Flowing Springs turnoff, I believe), six cars passed me. The next time (the passing zone near the Natural Bridge), it was only four. I tried to be polite as possible, considering the circumstances, giving everyone room to pass whenever I could.

Anyway, that’s my first flat tire. It was a little stressful, but more in regards to potentially having to pay to replace the tire than anything else. I can afford $4 for a movie, but tires aren’t in my budget right now. Is this why I never picked up driving? Incidental expenses? We’ll see how things go. I can get my lamps in a store tomorrow morning. They’re done, and now I have bulbs for them. Maybe they’ll make me some money.

This morning, just after I laid down to sleep, my brother was doing his morning workout on the Bowflex and …

He broke a power-rod.

Wow.

Luckily, the power-rods are covered by an “unlimited” warranty. I called and in under 13 minutes they’d updated my account info (address, phone number) and set up the order to send me a replacement power rod.

At first she wanted to set up an RMA, and have me ship the broken rod in before they’d send out a replacement. I had no problem with that, but asked if she was going to send a call tag or shipping label; the power rods aren’t light or small, so I don’t know how much shipping would be. She asked he supervisor and then said she’d just send me the replacement rod.

So. That’s something.

After I get the replacement rod and get it switched in, I’ll dis-assemble and photograph the broken rod, and put it online. It’s interesting. it broke in two places.