Ice, mostly

Last Night

This Morning

Our Fubsy Dog

Sugarland Run Creek

You know, she was right!

That's what went through my mind the moment the Volvo got stuck in the snow drift at the end of the driveway.

Aimee had successfully navigated 8 hours of snow induced DC madness in the ChevOldsmoBuiac, thereby proving the value of a good snow tires, front wheel drive, and most importantly, having a clue. She suggested that I take the same vehicle to work today, given the unplowed street.

Knowing that the main road was clear, I elected to take the fuming stench monster Volvo, as I like heated seats and shifting gears. Boy was I pleased to sit in that heated seat, shift in to reverse, and utterly fail to get the car out of the driveway and into the unplowed street. That was totally fun.

The next 1/2 hour was spent digging lots and wishing I had taken her sage advice. The neighbor came over and helped push while I worked the clutch. We got some dirty looks from a garbage truck as we blocked the street. (woops) The car finally came free, and I spun tires all the way up the driveway back to the parking spot. Thereby proving the worthlessness of rear wheel drive, summer tires, heated seats, and complacency.

I waited until the postman came by, then took the ChevOldsmoBuiac to work.

Black Grey White Black Grey White Black

The colors my dog cycles through in a snowstorm.


And suddenly!

There is a lot of snow out there.

Not the most ever.

The winter of 2006 in colorado and the winter of 2007 in New Hampshire were the worst. In 2007, I was having serious fantasies about dumping gasoline in the yard and lighting it to see if the ground was still there.

So, this is just a little pile of white stuff.

I watched a tree break and fall over in the back yard, and the entire bamboo stand appears to be leaning against the house. There are some flashes in the night sky from fizzottled transformers.

I plugged in the christmas lights to make it seem festive.

Snow has a different effect on people here than it does in other places i've lived. A snowstorm is some kind of meteorological codeword that spurs mass hystaria and lowers the average IQ to levels befitting people who drink methyl mercury for fun. Given this is a car-culture, you can imagine the show.

I came home to find my nieghbor doing donuts around the cul-de-sac in his pickup. By the time I walked the dog, there were rice rockets poking out of the ditch.

I have been getting regular calls and texts from The Girly. Apparently traffic moves at 0.5 km/hr in DC when stuff like this happens, thus it took her 3 hours to
get 6 miles. Fortunately, she has yogurt and pizza, and I assume she can figure out how to use it. In western DC, it's the second coming, and it's white and heavy. Power lines are going down and lighting things on fire. There are cars spinning out, and people are just abandoning their cars and wandering off.

What is it with people?

Certainly, I understand that it's fun to screw around and spin tires, but when an entire city decides to do it at once during rush hour, it's the trifecta of duche-baggery. My essential message to humanity: Everyone grow up and go easy on the gas.

So that whole situation ruined my scheme for a pizza and alcohol fuelled romantic evening. I'm glad I didn't bother to splurge on steaks on the way home.

I trumped around the yard and shovelled snow until my back and shoulders had enough. I took a quadrillion photos that I'll probably post in short order. The Dog and I wandered out to the main drag and offered to help people push their cars out of the ditch. I cam in side and surfed the web and paid the rent.

And, now, here I am again.

Couch Potato

I spent something like 6-8 hours trying to get my laptop (running ubuntu 10.10) to cooperate with a webcam so I could see if the dog really was sleeping on the couch.

It seemed so simple:

A) Install Zoneminder
B) Plug in web cam
C) Beer!

Instead, it went something like this:
A) Install Zoneminder
B) Plug in web cam
   b.1) Check to see if web cam works, discover that Zoneminder doesn't like it for some reason.
   b.2) Try every setting available on Zoneminder, to no avail
   b.3) Apply some "fixes" to Zoneminder perl. Camera now works with green and black garbage images.
   b.4) Crash Zoneminder several times
   b.5) Read a bunch on Zoneminder wiki and forum.
   b.6) Work through crashes to test every combination of settings, to no avail
   b.7) Read enough to piece together that something new has crept into the code that hates the camera/driver combination
   b.7) sudo apt-get remove zoneminder
C) Install Motion
D) Beer!

The deep irony is, of course, that The Girly walked in from work, and there was the dog, sleeping on the couch.

Garage

An old garage downtown

This dog bit my dog

Ghosties in January

Surreal

The check I wrote for the reality must have bounced. The reality company cut off service again.

The Dog has suddenly decided to stop eating, and appears to be napping on furniture when we are not home. I found the couch dishevelled and the same pile of dog food that I left this morning.

I was confronted by and endless series of deja vu incidents at work. Even just sitting in my office staring at my writing, it happened. It happened walking the dog. It happened driving.

I went to the lab and was surprised to find it full of people. I thought it was 1500. It was 1300.

The girly's computer went on the fritz.

The rules are all backwards again.

How annoying.
 

Volvo Dork

I had originally worried that the Volvo would be a pain in the ass for city driving. It is a 4500 lb gutless 5 speed station wagon. The thing wreaks of middle class helicopter mom insecurity at it's finest. However, i have discovered that a) the speed limit is <45 mph all the way to work and b) i really like working through the gears, even if it is in rush hour traffic.

Besides, it'll be warm in a few weeks and I'll be back on the bike.

I put 300lbs of cinder blocks in the back to weigh it down in the snow. My father and I had long discussion about how much was enough. He contended that I needed much more weight, while I held that the ChevOldsMobuiac changed candor with every 50 lb lump that gets added.

This morning was test time. I gave the throttle a sprighly jab after i backed out of the driveway and onto the snowy street. The engine rev'ed and the car surged before the wheels spun. I may need more mass, but at least i am near the desired effect... having the rear bumper chase the front is chimera.

I have been searching for the perfect denigrating nickname. I was going to keep calling it The Brick, but that's not all encompassing. It has more personality. I am particularly taken with it's amazing ability to generate faint burning smells, particularly right after it is shut off and you are walking away. Burning oil, rubber, electronics, barbique, brakes, and leaves... this car likes to smell like burning. Yet, there are never scortch marks.

The CD player is a blessing. I can re-live my angsty youth listening to well scratched Greenday CDs. The heated seats and the cd player are amazing. I roll to work in luxury.

On my way home, fleeing an exciting day of science-dork heroism that involved sitting at a desk and carefully re-writing a document that I have re-writen a thousand times, I was cut off by the umpteenth-moron driving a car made this century. I considered that Volvo station wagons are not very sexy compared to Mercedes, Farraris, and BMWs. That is, of course, until you want a car that you can actually have sex in... Good luck in that Z3. I guess rich people wait until they get back to the mansion. Perhaps that's where Volvo gets the reputation as a family car.

Musings from the Angel of Death

The little black organic capsules started showing up in the basement shortly after I found them rolling around under the recycling bin. The calling card of tiny, nominally cute woodland rodents seeking respite and victuals in my glorious hovel.

Our glorious hovel, I might add.

Home Despot has an impressive array of devices that despatch vermin at remarkably affordable prices. While I was tempted by a battery powered device that detects and electrocutes unsuspecting stow-aways, and a compact live/starvation trap appealed to my inner animal lover, I ultimately settled on the time tested, spring loaded, mouse trap that has been in mass production since before grandfather was a boy (or 1894, whichever came first... I loose track so easily).


(Honestly, if trap is going use electrocution as a method of dispatchment, it had better a) supply enough current to vaporize the target b) connect to my home wireless network and post statistics conveniently on a webpage for my perusal. At least vaporize. It's 2011 and vaporization is not part of everyday life. What is wrong with us?)

I set the traps around the basement, including on shelves (Small quantities of poop everywhere, just like in kindergarden and the asylum). I took care to personalize them so that the any mice that might possibly pause to read them would find them enticing, then I turned out the lights and hoped for the best.

I had to hope for a long time, as we left for the holidays without successfully catching any mice, or with the traps having been obviously disturbed.

A week later, I returned to find mice and one trap set, sans bait.

Thus, I began to meditate on the trigger mechanism and it's connection to the bait. The trigger on spring traps has a curl of metal with teeth and holes in it. This serves to provide a surface for the bait to adhere, and also, more subtly, means that there is more surface that must be licked/nudged, thus increasing the chances that the trap will be triggered.

My original bait was creamy peanut butter. My dog can lick creamy peanut butter off a knife with out pushing on it very hard. Maybe a small creature could do the same, I wondered? Maybe I could improve the trap by improving the bait?

I decided to try to leverage the rodent hoarding instinct by baiting the traps with dog food glued to the trap with peanut butter. I reasoned that removing the kibble from the trigger would be enough force to trigger the trap. I imagined finding mice with big bits of dog food en-maw, so to speak.

This morning, I discovered two traps that were free of both kibble and peanut butter, and unsprung, and two traps with mangled small furry creatures that -did not- appear to be dispatched in a greedy attempt to pilfer kibble, to the contrary, the traps triggers were quite clean... the perps were nailed when they got too greedy and went after the peanut butter in the curl of the trigger. The kibble was safely inside the deceased.

Tagging and bagging the evenings catch, I wondered if a) there were any more critters, and b) if I was taking the wrong approach with the bait. Instead of focusing on hoarding, maybe I should be focusing on how long the mouse is fiddling with the trigger. Like Russian Roulette (or President for Life), the best way to loose is to play more often. I took a dollop of peanut butter, and mixed oatmeal, steal cut oats, and cornmeal in until it was much more thick and textured, and again, set the traps.

I gave the left over grain-goo-bait-slop to The Dog, as a sort of lick test. It takes him a long time to clean a plate covered in it.

We'll see what the morning brings.

I'm brilliant

I was wondering what the pen fifteen club was.

I stupidly decided to google "pen fifteen".

I violated the one of the cardinal rules of using the internet:

Don't question anything.