dalesql

Just heard on the news that another US Pacific Fleet ship has suffered a collision at sea with an oil tanker. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!?!?!?!!? You had one just a couple months ago. Where was the bridge crew and CIC crew? Their first job is to keep track of every other ship, submarine and aircraft in the vicinity!


I wonder if this is a result of the ongoing reduction in ship crew sizes. If there are fewer crew to stand the watches, problems with information overload, and exhaustion should now be front and fscking center on the investigation, and not at all limited to just this one single ship. But I fear that it will be confined to just the ship and crew. To avoid bringing into question the wisdom and selfpercieved infallibility of high ranking admirals and their ongoing policy of reducing ship crew sizes.

Another july, another birthday. I didn't even realize it was my birthday until I was filling in the date on a purchase request at work. So I took off from work a couple hours early, bought a carrot cake and had some of it with mom after supper. Then to keep me from eating the rest of the cake, I went and gave the remainder to the hotel staff.


Monday I took mom to the dermatologist for MOHS surgery for the skin cancer on her nose. This is where they take a chunk under local anesthetic, send it off to lab to see if there is cancer there. if yes, take a slightly deeper chunk and repeat until the sample removed is cancer free. Each cycle takes about an hour. So that was finished around 2pm. Stopped at MickyDs for a late lunch and late into work that day. Burning more paid time off.

Still waiting for the bank to come through with the actual loan. arrrgh. lawyers make everythi8ng more complicated. Bank lawyer sent us a confusing contract that assigns control of the construction contract to the bank if we are late with loan payments. But the 90 days in arrears is more than enough time for the construction company to finish the job, mooting the entire contract. So the contract is essentially meaningless, but it caused us another couple weeks delay while we found our own lawyer to translate contractese into plain english.

The contractor contimues to use our job as a fill in job with subcontractors, so progress continues as our debt mounts up. Kitchen cabinets and countertop complete. Plumbing is all complete. We have working sinks and toilets! Painting of interior is happening now. After that, floors installed, sanded and finished. Then finish up electrical work, install appliances, punch list and occupancy permit. Then move back in. Hopefully around beginning of september.

August I'll be working the folk festival in Bangor maine. My brother will be coming in from seattle to take care of mom while I'm in Maine. He's bringing one or two of his daughters so they can have a chance to meet their grandmom. Hoping that he can wash up some of the smoke stained furniture we saved and put it into the house while he is here.

Life goes on.

So, on Sunday evening, in the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island, the last ever performance of The Greatest Show on Earth, The Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus happened. I watched in on youtube, slightly delayed, since when the show actually started, I was loading a truck behind the Schubert Theater in Boston. I turned it on after I got back to the hotel and watched it.

The show was, as I expected, a tour de force of amazing acts of physical skills, acting, music, storytelling, and animal training. With more than honorable mention to the props, costume, lighting and sound crews. Truly it was the greatest show on earth.

There were no elephants. The extremist animal rights people had already driven them out of the show, and they were going after all the other trained animal acts in the circus, and all the other circuses. Totally ignoring, in their fanatic quest to remove all animals from human endeavors, that those animals are treated better in nearly every respect than the human performers. Live longer and better quality lives than they ever would in the wild.

It was carefully not mentioned that it was the fanatic animal rightists that drove the circus into bankruptcy. Their endless lawsuits that cost enormous quantities of money. Their assorted protests and acts of trespass, theft and vandalism forced the circus to expend even more money on security to protect the people, animals and equipment of the circus. They took a page from the antinukers, who couldn't win on the merits of their argument, but they did win by making the whole industry uneconomically viable through their endless harassment. The animal rights fanatics are doing the exact same thing to circuses and zoos, and are taking aim at the entire institution of livestock growing and family pet ownership.

I am sad that they murdered an american icon. This makes me even more reluctant to give them anything more, no matter how reasonable it sounds. They will not be content until there are no more animals under the control of the human race, and all the humans have turned vegetarian. They can burn in hell for all eternity for the damage they have already done, I will work hard to block anything more they want.

I've setup my dreamwidth account, and imported all my entries from LJ. Will crosspost for a while, then will be deleting my LJ account. The recent terrible TOS is just soo obnoxious.

Goodbye LiveJournal. I've enjoyed my time, but since you got taken over by some terrible russian people, not worth my time or effort.

House is now empty of all our stuff. Removal of the plaster and old furnace in the basement is complete. Still trying to get the power turned on to the new power panel, but eversource is being a butthead about it. Did find out that my generator uses up a 20 pound tank of propane in about eight hours of running the lights and radio. So I now know how many tanks of propane I want to have on hand down the road for power failures.

I should get some pictures of the various stages of rehab.

So, it's been a busy time since I last posted.
Dealing with dad's passing, the funeral, memorial service, and the endless paperwork mom and I are filling out to officially notify all the financial entities he was involved in. I haven't even begun to think about doing his taxes.

We had the funeral just for family. It was a cold and windy day, I was worried mom would get hypothermia when we were at the graveside portion. The memorial service was at church, unfortunately we got that day the first significant snowstorm of the season that day, and it was kinda blizzardy. So attendance was low. Mom is, unsurprisingly, depressed.

Then came Arisia. I attended, and it probably will be my last arisia. The main reason I was there at all was to see Ursula Vernon as GoH, who is one of my favorite people. Arisia is becoming increasingly intolerant in it's desire to be open and accepting and a Safe Place for everyone, no matter how many hot buttons they have. As an older white male, I am feeling less and less welcome in their ever-increasing drive for political correctness.

In sadder news, I bought my usual stack of books from Larry Smith in the dealers room. We chatted about this and that and I said I would see him at Boskone. Unfortunately, that is not going to happen. Larry died three days later. Goodbye Larry. I'll see you next time.

The weekend after arisia was Anthro New England. It was it's usual nice fuzzy three ring circus, hampered by outgrowing it's hotel, and the hotel's severe shortage of parking. I hope that they move to a better hotel. Ideally, the westin waterfront where Arisia and Boskone already are. If that happens, and the hotel is amenable, logistics for all three would be eased by allowing materials to be stored at the hotel for all three cons. Lots of maybes there, but it's a hope.

Monday after arisia, we had a grand open house at ALPS. Turned the warehouse into a vendor showcase and demo zone, with food and adult beverages. It was a lot of work, and my area got crammed full of everyone elses stuff, since my area was the only place that was not open for visitors. I'm still finding things that belong to other parts of the company. I finally unpacked the last gaylord of my stuff from the move. (A gaylord is one of those pallet sized cardboard boxes. eight layer corrugated board. Strong stuff) So big step completed with that.

Now that I can actually see everything I have, I can now sort out things and put them on their proper shelves and boxes. Since I lost some of the storage space promised to me, I have to figure out what I don't need very often and pack them into a storage bin to go up on a high warehouse shelf. I'm thinking of constructing a storage unit that folds up into a pallet shaped box for storage, but unfolds into a set of shelves and bins for access when needed.

We signed the repair contract on the house finally. It's only been ten months since the fire. Unfortunately mother nature beat us to the punch and they can't fill in the driveway washout while the gravel is frozen and the gullies are filled with snow and ice. Delays, delays, delays. Repair estimate is six to nine months. ugh. But it's progress.

Boskone is this weekend. I'm running the con suite again. I've been shopping and preparing for a couple weeks already. Last night I hard boiled 75 dozen eggs for the con suite. They are now in the back of my van enjoying mother nature's refrigerated storage locker.

today I was able to finish the cleaning and repair of my seltzer tap setup. It's full of chlorinated water now to sanitize it before I put it into service. So it will be at Boskone, providing infinite seltzer to the masses. After it is done at Boskone, bringing it into work so I can have infinite seltzer to drink, which is way lower in calories and price than what I get from the coke machine.

Edit, post-boskone: The seltzer setup still had an off taste of the smoke from the fire, so I dumped it back out and took it out of service. So now I think I need to replace all the plastic parts, and give the stainless steel parts another, more thorough, scrubbing. Replacing all the gaskets also.

Boskone was, as usual exhausting, but overall successful, and the con suite came off well. Attendance was up by a couple hundred, leading to more rapid depletion of supplies, but I haven't heard an official number.

Now that you have had a nice temper tantrum over your preferred presidential candidate losing the election, please stop now. Blow your nose, wash your face, pull up your big boy or big girl pants and come on back from planet denial. Its a democracy. That means that sometimes someone else's candidate wins. Its not the end of the world. You mocked the black helicopter conspiricy people. Well guess what, the lbgtq death squads and concentration camps some of you are going on about is just as rediculous.

Time to grow up, get a grip on reality, accept that sometimes you will lose and get on with your life. You will have another chance to run your candidate next time around. Its not the end of the world, its just another damned election.

SO my dad's health continues to deteriorate. He doesn't speak understandably anymore, and can hardly even sit up. He's largely stopped eating. So, it's time. Mom signed the DNR orders for him, and then we all had a good cry. Even though it's just paperwork, and we have been expecting it, the impact was huge. I still haven't really processed it.


Then election day. Work told me I was driving to NJ tuesday. I was told the truck was ready with a full fuel tank. Set the alarm for 230 in the morning, which was the first suck of the day. Went to work and found that my heavy coat wasn't in my car, so all I had to protect me from the frost was a windbreaker and hoodie. Which wasn't a problem once the heat started working.

Whoops, only half a tank of fuel. So drive to Ryder to fuel up. Except the fuel guy wasn't there that night. Poked the mechanics and they came out and fueled me up, and wasted more time trying to record it on the computer. So another hour wasted. But, on the road finally.

Meanwhile, my stomach and bowels were starting to let me know that they were unhappy with something I ate. I stopped at every rest stop on the mass pike to use the bathroom. After that, there was nothing more, even though I felt like I had to go for the next several hours. More time lost.

I hit the morning drive traffic in New Haven, and then the serious traffic jam started on I95, 20 miles before the NY border. It didn't help that my GPS kept suggesting alternate routes that I couldn't take a truck through. Frustrating. Had a couple miles of clear sailing once I got on the thruway, but hit the traffic jam again around CO-OP City. Then it was stop and go traffic from there all the way to the George Washington bridge. Three hours on the cross bronx expressway is a pretty close approximation of hell.

Finally got to 4WALL about ten minutes before their lunchtime. Got the stuff. Went to the ryder depot to fuel up, then stopped at the local Quick Chek for a bathroom stop and to rest up for the drive back. I'm in the bathroom and suddenly my unhappy stomach finally said enough is enough. Vomited and made a bit of a mess of the bathroom, even though most of it went into the toilet. So change of plans, lunch consisted of a couple of bottles of water. Sat there for a bit, just in case, then headed back.

The drive back through NYC was surprisingly easy. Only stopped a couple of times for traffic jams. Got to the first rest stop in Connecticut and stopped there. Was feeling better, but tired. Ate about half a fish sammich from McDs before tummy said to stop. Took a 20 minute nap sitting in one of the booths. Didn't really sleep, but just sitting there with my eyes closed and relaxing helped enormously. Got a coke for the caffeine on the way back out. Hit a few traffic jams on the way back, but mostly just drove along.

So, start work at 330AM, got back to the shop at 630PM. Fifteen hour work day. Ugh. I drove myself back to hotel and crawled into bed. I decided that I was not safe to drive home to vote and then back.

Woke up this morning to hear President Elect Trump on the radio. So, I am glad that Hillary lost. I'm not happy that Trump won. I hope that my prediction that Trump will get bored with the job and resign after a year or two holds true. But on the other hand, Italy survived Berlesconi I'm sure the USA will survive Trump.

So it seems Hillary's defense of rapists by discrediting the rape victim was something she had been doing for decades. It's sad that this is being published in a british paper, I guess the american news apparatchiks don't want to break ranks in their support of Hillary.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3729466/Child-rape-victim-comes-forward-time-40-years-call-Hillary-Clinton-liar-defended-rapist-smearing-blocking-evidence-callously-laughing-knew-guilty.html

Six months ago, about this time of day, I was being allowed back into my house to pick up some clothes and our valuables after the fire. Mom and I are still living in a hotel, Dad is in a different nursing home, and the insurance company is still stalling. *insert rant about insurance company abuse of claimants*

I got the CPAP machine for my sleep apnea earlier this week. Slowly getting used to going to sleep with a mask strapped over my mouth and a tube over to the machine. Waking up early in the morning and pulling the mask off for some normal sleep before I wake up. I suppose I'll get used to it. I'm going to have to. But it's a work in progress.

Work is in the process of moving to the new building. We've been packing up stuff and sorting and tossing away stuff for the past couple of weeks. But we are now four weeks out from having to be fully moved over to the new building and more or less operational. and to add more joy to my life, I got told this week that I have to be totally packed up and ready to be moved out a week before everyone else, because I'm being tasked to work for another department the whole week of the move. Meanwhile, everyone is finding old broken stuff as they pack up and bringing it back to me to be repaired. Our regular customers are still having shows and preps and so on, we don't have the luxury of just telling them all that we are going to be closed for a week while moving.

I've asked for the friday before halloween for vacation so I can go to Furpocalypse, but they said they won't approve it until we are fully moved to the new building. so my plans for the con are all jumbled up due to that. *sighs* More stress and frustration.

I hope that the rest of the year is better.