Steamed Ham?

     Why not?  I bought a ham for Christmas, a big spiral-cut, largely-precooked ham, intending to bake it in the grill.  Events led me to cook it this weekend instead of waiting until Christmas and the weather was cold and blustery, so I got out my biggest stewpot, set up the rack, and started the ham cooking over a half-inch of water.

     I added a little hot honey, garlic and ginger to the glaze, figuring it was mostly going to melt off and add to the steaming liquid.  The ham was precooked -- spiral-cut ones often are -- so it only needed two and a half hours.  I added potatoes, carrots, celery and onion for the last hour, and sliced mushrooms for the last half hour, and added water as needed.

     The meat thermometer showed it had reached the necessary temperature at the end of the cooking time.  About half the slices fell right off the bone when I went to lift it out.

     It was good, flavorful and tender.  The vegetables turned out well, too, not overly sweet but touched with ham flavor.  Tam and I enjoyed it.

     Cleanup was slow: a ten-pound ham is a lot of meat.  I saved a slice for breakfast and still ended up with three gallon-sized freezer bags of meat, each enough for Hoppin' John or bean soup, plus a bag of meat and vegetables that can be reheated for supper.

     It's not a conventional way to cook a ham, but it worked out.

Touched By Time

     There was a visitor to Roseholme Cottage yesterday, someone I had not seen since before the COVID-19 pandemic, the man I refer to here as the Data Viking.  We went to High School together.

     For years, he has lived in the far north of Indiana, driving down to Indianapolis to visit and go to the big gun shows.  Most of that went by the wayside while everything was screwed up.  We kept in touch via e-mail and I was looking forward to resuming our old routine.

     It's not going to happen.  A month and a half ago, his e-mails stopped arriving.  I've been increasingly busy at work and assumed he was, too.  Instead, he had an adverse health event that necessitated an abrupt retirement and relocation halfway across the country to live near his adult son.  He's in generally good health but his vision was affected.

     Three weeks ago, I got a short, "Call me at..." e-mail from him with an unfamiliar area code and thought, "Uh-oh, my old friend's e-mail has been hacked."  I called anyway, using my employer's firewalled, computer-based phone system: they've got super-duper antivirus, after all.  But it was indeed my old friend, who explained his changed circumstances.

     A death in his ex-wife's family brought him back through Indy with his son over this weekend, and they had a few hours to spare, so he arranged to be dropped off and we spent several hours getting caught up.

     It may be the last time I see my friend.  We'll stay in touch by telephone, though neither of us is much for long phone calls.

     For my generation, there is considerably more sand in the bottom of hourglass than in the top.  There is a lot I still want to do, and no better time than the present to start doing it.

Third Time Winner

     I still think the process would go better if the light, heat, air-conditioning and water shut off in the Capitol and all the House and Senate office buildings any time the lack of a budget resulted in a fed.gov shutdown.  It would give Congress a positive incentive.

     Nevertheless, they did manage to cobble together a continuing resolution that keeps things running, while including almost none of the sparkly stuff Representatives, Senators and President-elect Trump wanted.  What was left out included plenty of items that will be fodder for opionators on both sides of the aisle, from children's cancer research funding to scrapping the debt limit.  The process exposed fracture lines in the GOP coalition, and they can be sure their pals across the aisle were taking notes.  Nevertheless, the CR received commanding majorities in both House (366 - 34 - 1, with all 34 noes from the Republicans) and Senate (85 - 11).  With 15 Republicans and 14 Democrats out in the House, Jasmine Crockett of Texas voted "present" and balanced the scales.  Likewise, the four missing or not-voting Senators were split.  The absent wouldn't have tipped the vote anyway.

     It's a hell of a way to run a railroad, but the feather-ruffling is at least evenly distributed, and they can all scamper off to holiday celebrations, secure in the knowledge that they managed to kick the can far enough down the road that the incoming Congress won't have to take it up again until springtime, at which point it will once again be a sudden and wholly unanticipated emergency, because Congress has the memory of a goldfish when it comes to the fiddlin' details of paying the piper, and they think you do, too.

Dog Catches Car

     Dog catches car, realizes he cannot drive: I don't admire Speaker Mike Johnson; he's got a tendency to smirk when he's putting the screws to political opponents that grates on me.  But I'm feeling sincerely sorry for him this morning: he put together a continuing resolution that would keep the lights on in Washington, one that didn't entirely suit him but that he -- and, he thought, his party -- could accept, and one that could even bring a few Democrats on board in the House and get through the Senate.  And then President-elect Trump and his new advisor Elon Musk pulled the rug out from under it.  Ouch!

     It's happened before -- remember the compromise deal on border issues Mr. Trump had them pull the plug on after it was all but done?  Mike Johnson soldiers on.  This time he set to work and turned out a new, slimmed-down continuing resolution he thought could still get enough votes while not displeasing the incoming administration.

     The new, slimmer CR tanked.  174 for, 235 against, 1 abstention, 5 empty seats -- and another 20 out sick, playing hooky or too hung over to show up.  38 Republicans joined 197 Democrats in voting no, in a chamber where the majority party can't give up five votes if the opposition isn't going along.  The reasons for the noes varied, but it doesn't matter: this continuing resolution is a goner and Mike Johnson has got to relight his candle and sit back down at his desk next to Bob Cratchit to put together another try.

     You can work out who's playing Scrooge yourself.  It looks like Social Security and Medicare will keep sending out checks, but if you're in the process of signing up for benefits (etc.), that could be delayed.  Air traffic controllers (and other government workers) won't get paychecks, but they're still supposed to show up for work (Uncle Sam typically makes it good later, but how would it work out for you if several paychecks in a row were held up?  Same for them).  Often the fun stuff gets shuttered -- national parks and monuments.  And, for some reason, nutritional aid programs, food for mothers with babies, has about a month to run before the larder becomes empty once the Federal government shuts down.  I guess it's real hard to hear hungry babies in the House and Senate offices, and unlike retirees, they don't vote, call or write letters.

     This was just a stopgap to keep the lights on.  Come the next Congress, the GOP's House majority will be even smaller; they'll have the Senate by a margin almost as precarious as the present Democrat (plus Independent) majority.  If they're still stuck trying to pass a continuing resolution, it's not going to be any easier.  Mr. Trump thinks he's got a mandate, winning the popular vote by less than two percent.  You can argue that one out with him, bringing in the Electoral Collage (or not) as suits you, but nobody got a mandate in Congress; they're going to have to find compromises if they want to do anything at all.

     Hey, you know who else doesn't get paid when the Feds shut down?  The Feds who work the border!  You'd think that would matter to the party that has put such an emphasis on border security.  I guess not.

Well, This

     This browser is working, so I'll stick with it for a while.

I May Have Done It

     Between having to "refresh" Firefox and my battered Android phone (a backup number) not getting notifications, I may have knocked out Blogger access on my desktop computer.

     This is not at all fun.

Did You Elect Him?

     I'm sure it wasn't me.  Try as I might, I have no recollection of Elon Musk being on my ballot this past November, so he must have been on yours.  I can't figure out what the office might be -- Grand Vizier?  Privy Councillor? -- and I wonder if the alternative choice might not have been better than the relentless self-promoter and all-around weirdo, for all that he's done a great job making space travel less expensive, electric cars zoomier and electric trucks, well, you can't win 'em all.

     Nobody elected him to run the Federal budget, not even at the Go/No-Go level.  That's up to the House to start, the Senate to finish and the President to Yea or Nay, period.  They screw up the process routinely all by themselves, which is why they have been scrambling around, trying to pass a continuing resolution to keep the bills paid and the paychecks coming before the 2024 clock runs out and the incoming Congress has to do business in the dark without even free coffee.  They didn't need any outside help in making a mess of it.

     I am not a big fan of Donald Trump, but he did, in fact, win the election, and after January 20, 2025, he and his Cabinet (and whoever else gets invited in to kibitz) will have their own chance to make their own mess.  Until then, they can wait their turn.  But remember: money stuff starts in the House, finishes in the Senate and then the President (who can indeed ask for advice) lets it stand or vetoes it.  That's the rule and they wrote it down in ink, right there in the U. S. Constitution, long, long ago.

The FCC And The PEBCAK POTUS

     The structure of the actual commission that runs the Federal Communications Commission is simple: there are five Commissioners, no more than three of whom can be from the same party, and they serve five year terms that can be informally extended to seven and a half years if they aren't replaced.  The President appoints them, the Senate confirms them (or doesn't, though it's rare), and the President gets to pick which one gets the Chairman's seat.

     For over-the-air stuff, the Commission's basic mandate is to regulate the operation of actual transmitters, those devices that fill up the limited RF spectrum with signals.  It's different for every service, from the few remaining Non-Directional Beacons and maritime services down below the end of the AM band -- remember AM radio? It's kind of still there, barely --  up through amateur radio and shortwave broadcasting, low-band communications, FM and television broadcasting, VHF and UHF comms, cell phones, terrestrial relay services (mostly digital stuff), satellite radio and TV and so on.  When it comes to broadcasting, the FCC licenses individual radio and TV stations, not networks or group owners.  Each spot on the dial in each location comes with a license -- or a big old Federal fine.

     President-elect Trump's incoming FCC Chair has big plans -- or at least big talk -- about knocking "the networks" into line, but he's got less direct power over them than his sponsor appears to believe.  The FCC can be expensive and annoying to the stations the networks own directly.  Those are relatively few, though in the biggest cities -- think New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington D.C., San Francisco, Boston and so on.  But they're not the biggest owners; that would be Hearst, E. W. Scripps Company, Sinclair (probably the largest, avowedly conservative and has the greatest number of ABC stations) and Tegna, Inc.  None of these companies own only stations affiliated with just one network; Tegna's got the biggest block of NBC stations (22), but owns ABC, CBS and Fox stations as well; each of them owns stations that carry the four largest TV networks -- so it's tricky for the entity that licenses stations to go after a network: networks are not, themselves, licensed by the FCC.  Each and every one of these very large companies (think billions, not millions) has lawyers by the barrel-full; they have all formed in the course of long strings of acquisitions, mergers and divestments.  Legal sparring with the FCC (and other regulators) isn't just a thing they do, it's a part of what they are.

     Most of these station-owning companies avoid overt politics and editorialized content, other than Sinclair, and even Sinclair is careful where they tread: they're all in the business to make money, and they will follow the money remorselessly, wherever it leads.  The FCC may be able to cost them a few bucks, if they do something the new Chairman deems worthy of reproof  -- but most of their attorneys are already on the payroll, and enjoy an opportunity to keep busy.

New Jersey Drones?

     Here's the SF writer explanation: they're time-traveling camera vehicles, here to record momentous events.

     Momentous events are rarely fun while they're happening.  If I lived in the areas with the most reports, I'd go elsewhere.

     Of course, it could just be the result of population density and a recent change in FAA rules that allows drones to operate after dark -- but there's no fun or profit in that, is there?

Saturday Dinner, Sunday Brunch

      Saturday, we watched another episode of Rogue Heroes* and enjoyed a pork roast.  A four-pound Boston Butt, in fact, which I floured, browned and simmered for more than four hours over Tom Yum Chicken Bone Broth, adding chunks of peeled Granny Smith apple early and then potatoes, parsnips, carrots, celery, white onion and Portobello mushrooms.  It was falling-apart tender -- and I have leftovers for two more meals.  The broth is an excellent match for pork with apple.  The TV series is an excellent match for anyone who enjoys well-told WW II history with a touch of informed imagination.

     This morning, another experiment: I have had a packet of microwaveable "Organic Super Grains, Smoky Southwest: sorghum, quinoa, amaranth, and pearl millet" on the shelf for some time.  With a buildup like that, it was going to either be amazing or inedible, and I am very pleased to say it is amazing.  I diced and browned a half-sized can of Spam with some chopped-up orange grape tomatoes (enjoy them while you can: "Bahama Bombs" are a Canadian import), put just a dash or McCormick's curry powder† and a little smoked paprika on it, and stirred in the just-microwaved grains.  When it was time, I pushed it all to the sides and scrambled a couple of eggs, mixing it all together and adding some cilantro (be sure you like it first!) and parsley.  This is as good a breakfast bowl as anyone could wish for, flavorful but not hot.

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* This BBC series, SAS: Rogue Heroes in the home market, tells the story of the formation and early years of the Special Air Service, which requires very little dramatic invention: the men involved were brilliant and a bit off-center, the kinds of men who flourish in wartime and ferment when idle.  Remarkably well-acted and well-cast, after we watched the first episode, I turned to Tamara and remarked, "They made a TV series for you!" The early SAS, along with the Long Range Desert Group, was one of the inspirations behind the TV series Rat Patrol -- but the reality is more incredible than any sanitized (and highly Americanized) 1960s TV program.
 
† I will point out,  as I have in the past, that "curry powder" is not, strictly speaking, an Indian condiment; it's a British or Anglo-Indian mixture of Indian-type spices, and varies widely from one brand to another.  It's good stuff, especially for those of us who don't have ready access to (or knowledge of) the full array of Indian spices, but get to know how hot/sweet/piquant your local varieties are, and understand it for what it is.  McCormick's works well with U. S. Southwestern flavors, so I was confident in using a little of it here.  One thing you will not find in most kinds of curry powder is salt -- which makes it ideal for anything that's already salty.

Saturday Breakfast

     I had a Poblano pepper left from last night's quick scratch chili* and extra mushrooms from the batch for this evening's pork roast, so I diced the pepper and three medium Portabellos, and added them to canned corned beef hash.

     Started out with a 50/50 mixture of Italian-seasoned Panko breadcrumbs and masarepa pre-cooked cornmeal in the skillet, added a little more Italian-mix seasoning and smoked paprika, spooned in the hash/Poblano/mushroom mixture with a little onion powder and dried parsley, smoothed it out, let it cook a little and broke an egg over half of it.  I let that cook under a lid until the egg was mostly done, then took the cover off and gave it almost ten minuted over gradually increasing heat.

     The end result was tasty without any hot sauce or other seasoning.  Tam takes it without egg (and with Tobasco) and it's good either way.
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* There are multiple ways to make this, depending on what your grocer has ready.  Count on a half-hour before the simmering, if you work quickly.  I used their chopped fresh onions and sliced red/orange/green bell peppers (diced), with a Poblano I diced and some nice orange cherry tomatoes.  Started with a couple of Chorizo sausages squeezed out of their casing and a pound of ground chuck, seasoned with chili powder; drained well, pushed to the sides and added the chopped onion, tomatoes and bell peppers, followed  by the Poblano, and when I was happy with it, added a snipped-up Piparra pepper, two small cans of mild chilis and a can each of crushed and cubed tomatoes.  Three bay leaves. a tiny smidge of ground cloves, a hint of Cajun seasoning and more chili powder to taste, covered and left to simmer for ten minutes, stirring at least once: chili enough for three meals, and better after it's been frozen and reheated with whatever extras I might add.  It'll cook down thicker if you simmer it longer.  You build this around as much fresh ingredients you can find ready to go -- the other market I go to often has fresh diced onion, diced mixed peppers and pico de gallo, ready to go -- and then fill it out with canned and dried stuff.

A Reminder

      It's "Move fast and break things," not "Move fast and break people."

Normalizing The Abnormal

     FBI Director -- and, incidentally, Republican -- Christopher Wray says he's resigning for the very best reasons:  "I've decided the right thing for the bureau is for me to serve until the end of the current administration in January and then step down. My goal is to keep the focus on our mission [...]."

     I'm calling BS.  President-elect Donald Trump wants his extreme loyalist Kash Patel running the FBI and Wray is ducking out before he gets splattered with the weirdness.  A lot of others in the Federal government are doing the same.  Maybe they're hoping to be around to pick up the pieces after it all goes smash; maybe they just don't want to get any of it on them.  Possibly they're hoping it's only four years, the norms and guardrails will hold, and afterward, things will go on much as they have.

     Hey, could be.  I'd be delighted if that was the outcome.  I'd even be happy if the incoming Trump administration wrought their promised land of milk and honey, though my happiness will be greatly tempered if they implement their more Draconian proposals in the doing.

     But neither one of those is the cautious bet.  Maybe trying to sit it out is workable, if you have money in the bank and a place in the country, but for us more or less average types, it's a scary ride.  I'm coming up on retirement, and while I never expected it to be a mainstay, I've counted on receiving a steady pittance from Social Security when the time comes -- a pittance the GOP wants to take an axe to, and even if they don't, their tax reductions for the hyper-rich will inevitably result in benefit reductions for Social Security recipients a few years later.  It's baked right into the law.  Oops.

     It's one thing to stick good Party members in key roles -- of course incoming Presidents do that, and there's a certain amount of quid-pro-quo for some of the sinecures.  But most of the appointees are competent, even if you or I or the person across the aisle doesn't think much of their politics, and the rest know when to shut up and let their staff do the work.  That's not the vibe I'm getting from Mr. Trump's choices; they're a grab-bag of partisan loudmouths, TV hosts, big donors, family members and hangers-on, largely without high-level experience (if any) in the divisions, departments, bureaus and embassies they're being installed to run.

     This is a recipe for chaos.  The only good side is that things are likely to be too fouled up for the new Administration to do as much deliberate harm as Mr. Trump and his sidemen have promised.  Unfortunately, the inadvertent harm will probably be at least as bad.

     I don't like making dire predictions; I'd rather wait and see, and call it out when the mess is obvious.  But a whole lot of people in a position to see further ahead are bailing out, and that's not a good sign.  Especially if you haven't got a parachute.

"[Browsername] Is Installing Updates And Will Crash In A Few Minutes"

      Any more, I approach browser software updates with trepidation.  About half the time, the improvements break or substantially change functions I have become used to.

     The one I use most often is in some kind of slow-motion war with Windows; I paralleled it with an in-ecosystem browser I don't like as well, so that I'll have something as an immediate backup, with my Macworld devices (used mostly for writing and other fun) as the reserve.

     MDM730 or Telix, it's not.

"Robin Hoodie" Was Never Going To Be A Folk Hero

     It wasn't in the cards.  The UHC CEO assassin wasn't going to be a folk hero or even a comic-book (graphic novel!) vigilante.  Sane people, good people, don't shoot another person in the back unless that person presents an imminent threat to human life.

     Americans kill one another quite often, and on little provocation.  We're doing so less these days -- but we're still doing it.  And if it seems even a little justified -- how many stats have I seen about insurance claim denial rates in the last few days, with United Health Care heading the list -- a lot of us will chime in, or at least nod, or maybe just shrug.

     The fact remains that you've got to be seriously off-axis to commit that kind of murder; in fact, being some kind of nut (not to get too technical) appears to improve the odds of success, as I have written about before when discussing political assassination attempts.

     Did the killer's actions hold up a distorting mirror to the feelings of many Americans about the health-insurance industry?  Undeniably.  Just don't confuse the myth/legend/story with the facts.

     Murder is wrong.

     Running your business in such a way that a plurality (at least) of the people who hear about your murder express positive or neutral feelings about the crime is wrong, too.  It doesn't justify the murder -- but it ought to be food for thought.

He's Doing It Again

     In a recent TV interview, his first since winning election to the Presidency, Donald Trump opined that the members of the House January 6 Committee ought to be in jail for "what they did."  When pressed, he accused them of destroying evidence.

     That would indeed be awful and potentially unlawful behavior -- if they had done so.  In fact, they did not.  You can go browse most it for yourself.

     Some things are under review and may be redacted -- in addition to the public spaces, the U. S. Capitol building is a warren of back corridors, unobvious private offices, hidey-holes, connecting tunnels and so on, including the places where members of Congress and staffers took refuge on January 6, 2021.  There are obvious security concerns with publishing specific data.  Many people still don't realize how close we came to having a Congressperson, staff member or even the Vice President beaten up or strung up that day, but there's nothing to be gained and much to be lost by providing a map for the next attempt.

     Pardoning the rioters is undeniably one of the powers of the office of the President.  I think it would be regrettable, but it wouldn't be illegal.  Going after then-members of the U. S. House of Representatives for doing something well within the powers and purview of their branch of the Federal government is a very different matter.  You may find the J6 Committee infuriating, heroic or boring, but it wasn't illegal.  They didn't kick down any doors, break any windows or take a steaming dump on a House member's desk.  None of them assaulted Capitol police.  The J6 rioters did that, at the instigation, if not the direct behest, of Donald Trump, who was at the time President of the United States of America.

     Pretending otherwise is a fool's game.

One Down, 87 To Go

     It depends on how you count them, but there were almost 90 autocratic governments on Earth yesterday, and today there's one less: Assad isn't running Syria any more.  (Present whereabouts unknown; a plane carrying him may have gone down, and no one is looking very hard.  Update: The Russians say he's been granted asylum in Moscow.  He was their boy in the Middle East for a long time, so it's not unlikely. )

     What comes next?  It's hard to say.  What newscasts are calling "Syrian rebels" is a a polyglot bunch, and the largest bloc, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, has palled around with both the "Islamic State" and al-Qaida in the past.  They haven't run with either since 2016; guessing if that was a matter of wanting less crazy or more is an exercise for pundits and intel professionals.  Junior partner is the Syrian National Army, a collection of at least twenty-eight groups;* some sources say at least twenty-one of them have received U. S. assistance in the past, against IS and related threats, but we've been known to hand out goodies to almost anyone who'd smile and promise to fight Communists, Islamic extremists and the like.†  Some of SNA's roots go back to the "Free Syrian Army," and Turkey has been one of their main sources of support, despite the occasional armed squabble.

     You can tie yourself up in knots trying to sort all this out, and by the time you have, the situation will have changed.  None of them liked Assad, or the way he was running the country, and it appears that became a strong enough motivation that they were able to work together.

     It's an open question if they'll be able to continue working together, but we can at least hope.  If you're expecting the Syrian James Madison will come running down from the hinterlands, waving a draft Constitution well-suited to the people of that nation, don't hold your breath.  They might -- and it would be good news if they can -- manage to cobble something together that will hold long enough to make serious inroads against the starvation and misery that part of the world has become famous for.

     It says something about our species that the very cradle of human civilization has become a nightmare of failed states and warlordism, with refugees as the prime regional export.  It says something about us, and it's nothing pleasant.
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* At this point, the better-informed might be wondering, "What of the Kurds?"  They're wondering that, too.  They appear to have very little presence in the SNA.  Kurds are about ten percent of Syrian population and are likely to get what they usually get: short shrift.  The French, the British, the various Allied and UN powers, the local potentates and so on all overlooked them when they drew lines on maps, and it's one more smoldering problem in a place that has an oversupply of tragedies.
 
† And that's nothing new -- go read some early 19th-Century Letters of Marque issued by Congress for examples. A proxy war is a cheap war for everyone except the proxies.

Grist For The Mill

     I'm not alone in suspecting the extinct megafauna of North America were delicious -- and that humans may have played a part in making them extinct.  There's new evidence that tends to support the notion that big critters were what's for dinner.

     Woolly mammoth, giant sloth -- you get just one of those, and you've fed the whole tribe, and probably gained enough leather to clothe half of them or make a new tent.  Lots of useful bone and sinew, too.  Those hunts may have been our first team sport and maybe that's why spending a weekend afternoon watching the Big Game is so appealing to so many people.  Almost as good as a big hunt with all your pals, and the feast afterward.  Go team mammoth-hunter!

Packrattery

     A recent article about famous (infamous)* SF writer and screenwriter Harlan Ellison included a few photos of the late author's home, "Ellison Wonderland."

     Between that, the Bradbury Center's re-creation of Ray Bradbury's workspace and few pictures I have seen of Doc Savage creator Lester Dent's Missouri "House of Gadgets" home and Theodore Sturgeon's place, I'm convinced writers are packrats, gadgeteers and book accumulators.

     And if that's a requirement, I'm well on my way.
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* Ellison was a man of prodigious gifts, stunning feuds, deep friendships and absolutely over-the-line behavior.  He had a great many fans -- and so many sincere enemies that they formed an actual club.

So, About These Picks...?

     Is it just me, or is the incoming Administration largely a government of drunken (etc.) frat boys?  The Press keeps telling me they're "loyalists," or "Trump conservatives," but the real unifying factor appears to be a willingness to drink heavily, and to disregard social norms as applied to themselves while being harsh enforcers of conventionality for everyone around them (at least until they make unwanted advances on women, at which point all notions of modesty and fidelity cease to apply).

     This is a crew that gives every sign of believing Eddie Haskell was the real hero of Leave It To Beaver.

     Look, you may find elitist technocrats and nose-in-the-air PolySci wonks offputting, but a large proportion of them are earnest strivers, who put in a full day's work, a little overtime and keep thinking about the job on their commute home and all through dinner.  They're morally consistent.  When your staff has to carry your inebriated self back to your hotel room, fending off your pawing hands all the way, you're probably not Cabinet material -- in fact, you're probably not Assistant Manager at the corner store material.

     I guess we'll find out how things work with leering, "beer o'clock," C students at the helm.  P. J. O'Rourke tried to warn us.

"Num-bah, Plea-yiz?"

     I have had occasion to use my employer's fancy in-your-computer telephone system a few times recently (instead of my own cellphone, for which they pay a nice chunk of my bill) .

     It is about as unlike using a telephone as using a telephone could be.  I grew up on rural telephones, not too far removed from party lines.  I grew up with limited bandwidth, optimized for speech; with a certain amount of whooshing white noise in the background, not to mention blips and bleep from crosstalk, sometimes even distorted speech from another call muttering quietly.  And I grew up with "sidetone," the faint sound of your own voice from the earpiece of your phone, which you don't notice until it's gone.

     Every bit of that is gone with the app they use.  You can bring up a conventional keypad on the screen to dial numbers with, but the sound from the headset is pure hi-fi.  And the connection is so quiet that if you're in a still-enough place, you can hear your own heartbeat during pauses in the conversation.  What you won't hear is your own voice.  Maybe there's an adjustment for that; I haven't looked, but if I'm going to use this thing much, I'd better, because it's distracting.

     Living in the future is okay, but I'm glad I'm not a big desk telephone user.  The modern version is making me feel like I may have time-traveled a little farther than I'm comfortable with.

Colorful Alerts?

     This morning, I went to the Indiana legislature website, to see what they're going to be up to next year.  Remember, this is the deliberative body that toyed with setting pi to three; they're something like a too-trusting elderly relative, who must be diverted from answering the door when traveling salesmen come to call, or you'll find out the driveway has been "top-coated" with used crankcase oil or the front steps have been repaired with a mixture of sand, flour and water.

     It's too soon for the 2025 litany of pork, posturing and puffery.  Looking over what they tried and sometimes pushed forward in 2024, I came across a well-meaning example of...something.

     The idea behind it has merit, but it suggests we ought to step back and take another look: the legislature's got a bill in progress to introduce a "Green Alert" for missing veterans and service members.

     You might ask, why not?  We already have Amber Alerts for missing or abducted children, Silver Alerts for missing, at-risk seniors (and it's sometimes used for other people who need care) and Blue Alerts for police (no, I am not making this up -- presumably it's for hostage situations).  Most of these are embedded in the nationwide EAS system that goes over broadcast stations and the WEA (Wireless Emergency Alert) system that communicates with cellphones.  They use three-letter "Event Codes," generally defined by Congress, like "CAE" (Child Abduction Emergency) for Amber Alerts.  CAE is the oldest code of this type, and it works; it's helped locate many missing children.  One of 26 letters in three positions means there are a lot of possible codes.  Not all are mnemonic.

     Some of the proposed codes are intended to make a point: missing people get disproportionate media attention if they're young, white and female, so "Ebony Alert" and "Feather Alert" codes have been proposed.  This can be read as government signalling to media, more than joggling your elbow: when it lights up an EAS codec, radio and TV stations have to either pass it along automatically* or actually sit down and read the thing before making a decision about sharing it, an effort that often results in a news story, and the specialized code is intended as a reminder.  How you or I -- or a news editor -- react to it is highly subjective, and this might not be an area for subjectivity: lost, at-risk individuals deserve to be found, period, and that is worth lighting up your phone for half a minute or airing a twenty-second broadcast news story, no matter who they are.

     As a practical matter, all that is needed are alerts for "lost child" and "lost adult."  Details should go in the accompanying text message, to tell you and me if we should be looking for a four-year-old Native American child or a 60 year old law enforcement officer: it's supposed to be way to help out, not an overloaded "thin blue line" flag with a special stripe for each and every sliver of the population who might be at risk.

     P.S.  There are highly-specific geocoding numbers in the systems, too, which as a practical matter are steerable down to the level of counties.  (The code gets even more localized but cellphones and EAS codecs generally do not.)  Just like weather alerts, alerts for lost and missing persons are supposed to be coded for a limited area.  This helps reduce people getting alerts that don't apply to their location.

     P.P.S.  I am reminded that the Federal guidelines for issuing this type of alert on EAS or WEA are specific and strict, so while your Mayor or local law enforcement may hold a news conference and say they're issuing a gray and yellow-striped alert, a genuine, official version with its own event code is supposed to be a rare thing that had to meet well-defined criteria before it was sent.  Will that stop state and Federal legislators from making up new ones?  I sure wouldn't want to bet money on it.
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* Remarkably few EAS event codes are required to go on the air automatically, just national-level emergencies, a system that has been used for a "live code" test or two but never in earnest.  Most of the boxes treat national-level tests the same way, but the rest of it is set up for a human to look at and decide -- if there's a human around to do so.  If your local radio station is running every darned beep-beep-beep alert that comes across, there's probably a robot at the wheel.

Sandhill Cranes

     Of course, the cranes I heard Sunday were the Sandhill Cranes that pass through every Fall.  They stop for several weeks at the Jasper-Pulaski Fish and Wildlife Area before continuing on from Wisconsin (etc.) to Florida.

     The Wildlife Area is up north of Lafayette, so the ones we see in Indianapolis have probably started the next leg of their migration.  From the posted DNR numbers, they haven't reached this year's peak population yet, so if you live around here, listen for their song when you're outdoors -- and look up!

Politicommentary

     You probably think I have something trenchant and/or pithy to say about Mr. Trump's picks or Mr. Biden's pardons, but here's the thing: it's all sideshow.

     These things don't have anything to do with the day to day running of the country right now, and even the parts that could affect it in the future are only possibilities.  I could probably start a nice helmet fire about all or part of it, but what good would that do?

     Time enough for the Senate to show me how they're going to react.  Time enough to find out who's going to pardon whom and how that's going to work out.

     Right now, the House needs to start looking under the Federal sofa cushions for spare change before the current piggy bank goes dry.  They've got to get it done before Christmas, or they're going to be sending out cards to their constituents in the dark.  I'm pretty sure the Pentagon has a back-up plan before they have to start working by candlelight, and I'm hoping the over-the-horizon radars and earth stations for the DOD spy satellites have all got fat UPSs on standby.  But you'd never know to watch the news: it's all clowns and animal acts.

Brunch Again

     Today was Brunch With Siblings day, and I'm pleased to report they are both as sibilant as ever.  We went to Good Morning Mama's, which for my money has better coffee and better service than where we'd been going, and a more interesting menu -- but I'm biased in favor of a place that serves home made corned beef hash.

     On the way home, I kept hearing what I'm pretty sure were cranes, a high-pitched, fluting, musical call, and could not spot them  Finally saw them in multiple vees and strings high, high overhead, so far up they were little more than dots.  But their song carries for miles, a marvel of the late Fall.

Historical Analysis

     An outsider's look at U. S. politics through the lens of history, and why the parties you remember aren't the parties we have now.

     I'm not saying the article is a hundred percent right -- but it's food for thought.

     I hate living in interesting times.  Make the government boring again!

The Chair

     My nice wooden office chair is nearly five years old and something has gone wrong.  It has a seat angle/leaning resistance adjustment, but the seat has picked up a slight forward tilt that cannot be corrected.  I'm going to have to flip it over and see what can be done.

     Short term, I can move the flat and lock washers on the bolts holding the front of the seat to the metal tilt and swivel gadget to between the seat and that part.  Long-term, I hate to replace it, but I will if I have to.

     The "skate wheel" casters I put on it have proven their worth.  Larger and a little more resilient than a standard office-chair wheel, they have resisted getting jammed-up with cat hair and roll well.  My other office-type chair, a more typical metal one with a padded seat and back at the desk/dressing table in my bedroom has the same kind of casters, which work as well on the rug in that room as they do on the chair mat in the office.

     Update: It's a broken weld, one that holds the collar for the top of the adjustable pneumatic vertical support to the metal cradle that does the leaning pivot.  The support's a force-fit into the collar, so this is chair-ending damage.

No Room For Pie

     It was a good Thanksgiving dinner -- even though we had it for supper.  (I slept in.)

     We have a favorite main dish and side.  A five-pound turducken roll, with a little spicy sausage inside the chicken, surrounded by duck and enveloped in turkey.  I put it on a rack in an oval roasting pan over a slow fire in the covered grill, and once it was up to temperature, added big chunks of turnip and parsnip and about a cup of chicken bone broth.  I topped the turducken roll with a sliced, peeled orange and a couple of pickled piparra peppers, and eventually added carrots, celery and a red onion.

     I did other things for an hour and a half.

     That left plenty of time to cut up some baking potatoes into medium-sized pieces (unpeeled; YMMV) and stack them on paper toweling to dry while I fried up six slices of lightly peppered applewood-smoked bacon, producing about a quarter-cup of fat.  I started microwaving the potatoes in a big Pyrex bowl.  With the bacon draining, I added a quarter-cup of flour and kept stirring while it got darker and darker.  When I thought it was ready, I added about two cups of mushroom-chicken bone broth* and kept stirring.  It got a little thicker than I wanted, so I used up the remainder of the plain chicken bone broth and kept stirring.  When I was happy with the consistency, I snipped all the bacon into it.  Made with the broth, it's a dark-brown gravy, rich and smoky.  I'd kept zapping and stirring the potatoes; I went after them with a sharp knife, added some butter, used a knife a little more, then added milk and switched to large dinner fork.  This is more work than a masher or a mixer but I like the results.  It took an entire container of UHT milk, call it one cup, to get them the way I liked.

     The turducken was nicely done by then; I brought it in and stashed it in the oven while Tam and I rounded up the cats and set up tray tables.  (We've been watching, of all things, a somewhat-debunking documentary on the Stanford Prison Experiment that may show a bit more about human nature -- and "permission structures" -- than it purports to.  Either way, it leaves rather a lot to be thankful for.)

     Potatoes, meat, vegetables and gravy: there was no room for dessert.  But it sure was good!
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* No, I have no idea how that works with mushrooms, either.  They sell the stuff in boxes.  The smallest size is just under two cups.  The chicken-mushroom version is ideal for bacon gravy.

Surprise!

     It was a surprise: a late-morning text from my boss, apologizing for having messed up the schedule this holiday week, when cut-and-pasting a month or more in advance.  (Like all the rest of us, he's doing three or four jobs these days.)

     "SO DOES THAT MEAN I'M WORKING?"  The automated holiday-and-vacation scheduler had confirmed my time off request last week, which usually means a Responsible Party has looked at it and given it the nod.

     "NO, YOU'RE OFF TODAY.  IT JUST WASN'T ON THE SCHEDULE SPREADSHEET."

     There's some reason, connected to the fixes put in place after a widely popular hours-recording app was hacked a year or two ago and down for months, why the time-off scheduler and the spreadsheet that shows upcoming hours and assignments can't be allowed to communicate.  It means extra busywork for the managers, and a degree of ambiguity in whether you're getting holidays and vacations off or working them.

     They used to scribble all this on a whiteboard.  You couldn't check it online -- but if we went back to the whiteboard, all we'd need to do to add that feature would be a webcam.

Breakfast By Expiration Date

      It is worth the extra effort to make a three-egg omelet with sliced cherry tomatoes, chopped black olives -- and the nice Provelone cheese and two kinds of salami you bought two days ago and need to use up before it expires?

     You sure bet it is!  One of the best omelets I have made.

     Our corner market occasionally puts together "sandwich packs" pairing meat and cheese, and they've usually a good combination.  If it'll work on rye bread, it'll work in an omelet.

Thankful

     It's hard not to be bitter.  I'm stumbling into my Golden Years and the first-wave Boomers are busy screwing over the economy again.  They keep doing it.  They keep finding new ways to do it.

     There are things I want to do -- write, mess with old radios, woodworking projects, gardening, and so on -- but little time to do them.  I've got to keep on scuffling, keep on working for other people to bring in money while getting less and less meaningful human contact in the doing.

     Maybe that last is for the best.  Maybe it's better to be at arm's length from everyone, where their virtues usually shine more brightly than their flaws and the surfaces hint at depths that are rarely there.

     Maybe.  What is certain is that in terms of material goods, freedom from hunger, protection from the cold, the rain, the snow, brigands, bandits and brutes, I am better off than 99.9999% of the human race has ever been.  Wealth -- real wealth, three square meals a day, a warm bed, the ability to banish darkness at the flip of a switch and hear from people halfway across the world on a whim -- is not a zero-sum game: every year, more and more people have access to it.  Things would be even better if even more of them did, and faster; but we're getting there.  Progress is lumpy and uneven.  It continues nevertheless.

     So there's reason to be thankful.  I'm personally pessimistic at present, but zoom out and, well, it's been worse in the past and there's every reason to expect it will be better in the future.

     Short-term?  Maybe not so much.  Time will tell, as it always does.

We Invented Our Way Out Of It

     Humans are clever primates.  Faced with a problem, we invent our way out.  As hunter-gatherers, we lived in small bands, with everyone a general specialist.  When we learned more things, we started figuring out some people were better at chipping flint, others at hunting, collecting edible plants, building shelter, cooking or guarding our homes through the long night.

     We befriended dogs and they befriended us.  We invented cities and agriculture not quite side-by side: many hands make light work.  Cats showed up, hunting the mice in our granaries.  We learned to preserve leather, spin thread, to knit and weave.  We developed pottery.  We started working metal: copper for tools and utensils, humble and dangerous lead, rare silver and gold,* useful bronze, brass and iron.

     And we learned about plumbing and sewers -- not once, but over and over again.  We learned about illness and epidemics, too: a bug that would wipe out a mostly-isolated hunter-gatherer band and stop, stymied by a lack of hosts, could smolder and flare in our cities, sweeping through like a wildfire.  We invented isolation, harsh and fairly effective.  We learned about cross-contamination the hard way (yet again!) and the lesson didn't stick.

     Eventually, we invented vaccines.  Vaccines are how you stuff a few hundred thousand, or a million, or millions of clever primates in a tight-packed city and avoid -- or at least control -- epidemics.  Ever since the first smallpox immunizations, some people have been skeptical.  It was gross, they cried; or it smacked of magic; or who knew what else might happen...?

     We know.  We've been running the experiment at scale, over and over, since the 19th Century.  We know what happens with communicable diseases we don't have vaccines for (epidemics), we know what happens when a sizeable segment of the population doesn't get vaccinated (outbreaks), we know the side-effects of vaccines, and they are evaluated and re-evaluated for safety and effectiveness.  Don't take my word for it, and don't follow internet memes and rumors, either -- you can go look this stuff up on Wikipedia, in the abstracts (summaries) of articles in reputable scientific journals or full articles in mass-market science magazines.  This is not a matter of debate except out at the weirdo fringe: vaccines work.  They're safe.

     Putting a "vaccine skeptic" in charge of this country's Federal health infrastructure is insane.
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* Speaking of humble and dangerous, and of gold: the ancient Egyptians apparently worked out the use of mercury and fire in refining gold, a job with such grave consequences for the people doing it that it was usually assigned to slaves taken in war.  "Mad as a hatter" (also the result of working with mercury) had nothing on an Egyptian gold-smelter.  Eventually we invented our way around that, too.

Library Work

     This evening, I worked my way backwards from Gibson though Bujold and into Brunner (including Shockwave Rider, a proto-cyberpunk future that almost happened), leaving room for the Octavia Butler books I own but have not yet shelved.  I started out with about fifteen feet of added shelf space, saved back three and now I'm down to five feet available, shelving additional books as I go.

     Along the way, I rediscovered some lost gems: Mildred Clingerman and Rosel George Brown, talented writers of SF and fantasy a bit out of the usual line.  Neither was especially prolific, but what they wrote is worth reading.

It's Their Expressions That Bug Me

     The current Congressional* tempest in a chamberpot is beneath notice and I wasn't going to notice it, until a certain U. S. Representative from South Carolina started showing up on every blamed screen, along with occasional appearances from the current and likely future Speaker of the House.  And every time, they had the smug little smiles of grade-school children who have found a context in which they can say a naughty word and get away with it.

     That bothers me.  Okay, the House is the "Junior Chamber," but I never thought it was that junior.  I have suggested in the past that we put up Congressthings in same accommodations as the military slaps together for unmarried junior officers, to spare the poor dears the worry of keeping up with the Washington social scene (and maybe teach 'em a little humility, like that's possible).  Now I'm realizing they're going to need supervised bathroom breaks while in session, with the Sergeant-at-Arms sorting them out into groups who won't get into fights with one another.

     Or not.  See, there's a new Representative from Delaware, who looks enough like her peer from the Palmetto State that I can't consistently tell them apart: low-maintenance straight brown hair, squarish reading glasses, well-practiced smile, understated politician skirt-and-jacket outfits with flag pins in the lapels.  But the Delawarian has a biography with details in common with musician Wendy Carlos, and their overlap isn't playing a keyboard synthesizer.

     The incoming House has a lot to deal with; after the 2024 election, there were 219 Republicans to 213 Democrats, with three seats still counting.  Now three Republicans have stepped down and until their seats are filled and the remaining counts finished, it's 216 - 213.  The GOP will be in the minority if four members get stuck in a card game -- or traffic.  There's a lot of unfinished business and plenty of new business -- and instead, they're fussing about which washrooms Delaware's sole Representative will be allowed to use.

     That Representative hasn't joined in the fray.  She knows something that any tourist could figure out: the U. S. Capitol building is riddled with single-occupancy washrooms, the result of efforts to make the very old and much-remodeled building ADA-compliant with the least amount of bother.  They put them in the areas the public can tour, and they put them in the parts that are normally limited to Congresscreatures, staff and people on official business.  No one is going to perish for lack of access to a washroom -- nor are they going to fade away if they don't get maximal face time on the various news networks and websites, despite what some of the incumbents appear to believe.

     House districts are entitled to the Representative they elect.  The rest of us don't get a veto and, barring truly egregious miscounduct, that's that.   Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's New York district picked her; Marjorie Taylor Greene's Georgia district selected her.  Delaware has sent Sarah McBride.  In 1870, South Carolina sent Joseph Hayne Rainey to the House, and somehow, the planet did not lurch to a stop in its tracks.  I've searched, but I can't find any mention of which washroom they made him use, or if the Representative from Delaware at that time objected and staged a series of indignant, preening news conferences about it.

     I'd suggest that some House members ought to try growing up, but I suppose I should just accept that their districts chose to send politicians in need of maturing.  I sure hope their time in the junior chamber helps.
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* Originally typoed as "Congrossional," which is about right.

Oops

     Yesterday at work about did in my legs.

     It should have been no big deal.  I've done it dozens of times: we change all the replaceable light bulbs on the tower in late Fall, breathing on the dice to shade the odds of having to send a rigger up there in the worst of winter to relamp a dead beacon.  The steady-burning sidelights are almost optional.  Each level has three of them and we don't even have to report them if they fail.  A single one out can safely be left for better weather.  But the flashing beacons are a different thing.  They're the brightest lights on the tower, each one with a pair of 640 Watt light bulbs the size of a child's head.  You can lose one of a pair and it's still okay, but if both go out, they've got to be replaced as soon as it is practical.

     So the workers go up with a big bag of new bubs and work their way down.  It takes a few minutes at each level, working in the chill wind, opening the red glass covers on the small side lights, unlatching and hinging open the big beacons, hundreds of feet in the air, careful to not drop anything, swapping the new for the old.

     The tower has an elevator, but the elevator doesn't have any controls in the car.  It's barely got a door, just a scissors gate that pulls across the open side like an old-time baby barrier.  Down at the base of the tower, in the big box that houses the 1950s relays that control the hoist, there's a narrow panel that opens to reveal a disconnect switch and three big push buttons with molded-in labels: UP, DOWN, STOP.  The crew carries radios and I get one of my own.

     Under normal circumstances, once the initial long ride to the highest light is done, I clip the radio to my belt and go on about my other work.  When it's time to move, they call me and I doubletime outside to the controls.  "Ready to move?"
     "Down!"
     "Heading down," and I push the button.
     There's a reason for all that back and forth: there aren't any second chances.  Clearance is tight, with the ladder zipping past a couple of feet from the scissors gate.  Any bit of kit sticking out, a big clip, a loop of rope, can become lethal.

     This time, the crew had three radios.  Two were charged up and ready to go.  One had a bad battery, or maybe it hadn't been seated quite right in the charger overnight.  It worked okay sitting in the charger, but it had to be in the charger or it was inert.  I needed to be within earshot of it.  Outdoors.

     The tower crew layered up before they climbed: long johns, work pants, T-shirt, a heavy shirt over it, coveralls and short jackets, knit caps, gloves.  I was dressed for the site, where the inside temperature runs 60 to 65°F, and I had a winter coat, about mid-thigh length.  My work pants are pretty good, but I haven't had nice heavy ones since Carhartt redesigned their women's double-fronts with lighter denim.  My legs got very cold and I dealt with it by ignoring it.  I was pretty creaky by the time the relamping was done.

     I wasn't in much better shape at the end of the day.  I limped through the grocery picking up stuff for supper.  Pain in my knees woke me up a couple of times overnight.

     This morning I limped my way through a quick shower and snack ahead of the online writing critique group, and had a nice brunch (a cheese, sausage and piparra pepper omelet) between it and the Zoom-session main meeting of the writer's club.  Stood up from my chair after the business meeting and ahead of the month's speaker -- and just about didn't get vertical.  I used the break to take acetaminophen.

     For the speaker, it's cameras and microphones off.  I adjourned to my bed and listened from there.  Dozed off afterwards, woke up pinned down by cats, had supper (Tam ordered in), and have not moved a whole lot.  The damp, chilly weather hasn't helped any.

     Tomorrow is supposed to be nicer.  I'll work on some projects involving motion and see if that helps.  Today, it's OTC painkillers and rest.  

Out The Door

     An important thing was supposed to arrive up at the North Campus at noon.  Then it was going to show up at eight a.m.  Now it's back to noon.  --But it doesn't matter, because I have a crew that will arrive to do some tower work between ten and eleven.

     It all adds up hello and goodbye for this morning.

All Right, That's Enough

     Most people agree that Washington, D.C. is a semi-evil clown circus, or at least the parts that the fed.gov lurks in are.  They start to disagree when you get down to details -- this Administration or that one, one party more than another, and somehow it's almost never their guy or gal, just a prime clown or three and a hand-wavy bunch of "them."

     This general notion of buffoonery, wickedness and performative showpersonship gets applied with a high degree of freakoutery when control of Congress and/or the Presidency passes from one party to the other.*  Maybe that's as it should be.  Maybe with only two parties having a chance to frob (see Usage Notes at the link) around with the levers of power, a degree of viewing-with-alarm is useful in the same way as a product-safety team trying to figure out all the ways a thing can go wrong.

     But it becomes tiresome, and never more so when speculation soars to third and fourth-order effects: If nominee W is confirmed for office X and if they proceed to remove department Y and rule Z, then....  Whoa, nelly!  One worry at a time.

     Some -- in my opinion, most -- of Mr. Trump's nominees are underqualified and overconfident, which is never a good combination.  Many of the things they might do, outlined in Agenda 47 or Project 2025, would negatively affect U. S. citizens and residents, and I'm opposed to those things.  But they have not done them yet; they have not reached a position from which they would be able to do them yet, and there is no certainty that they will.

     There are probably awful times coming.  We have never before elected a President who swore vengeance as a big part of his campaign (not that any previous holders of that office were plaster saints).  But it has not happened yet and diving too deep into they-mights and what-ifs will only get in the way.  2025's House and Senate will be even more delicately balanced than 2024's, and those contentious, deliberative bodies can be counted on to do what they do best and were intended to do: contend and deliberate.  In public.  Loudly.

     Pop some popcorn.  The first couple of months will be interesting.  Yes, things could get pretty bad, but the roller-coaster is already clicking up the hill and there's no getting out until the end of the ride.  Might as well take each climb and swoop down as they come.
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* I'd love to tell you the United States is a multiparty democracy, mentioning the Greens, Libertarians, New Whigs and so on, with a nod to the handful of fiercely independent members of Congress, but as a practical matter, it ain't.  The little-party guys essentially never make it to the center ring and the Is all pick a party to caucus with.  If you want to get anything done, you'll have to choose the party that makes you hold your nose the least, and try to coax or shove them in the direction you want to go.

A Frustrating Pair Of Eyes

     In October, I had my regular eye exam and, of course, my vision had changed.  I own three frames (four counting sunglasses) and it was time for the round ones that I really like.  I left them with the eye doctor and they told me my glasses would be ready in three or four weeks.  My lenses require a complicated, multi-prism grind.  It's never fast.*

     Three weeks later, I picked them up, put them on and looked around the store, enjoying the sharpened vision.  I thanked the tech and clipped the matching sunglasses on.  They didn't fit as well as they had, but hey, new lenses.  Went out into the sunshine, drove to work and didn't take a good look at the new glasses in a mirror until I was washing my hands a couple of hours later.  One kind of round lens, one egg-shaped lens, the frames forced around them with some buckling for the least-round side.  They looked awful.

     I called the eye doctor immediately and took the glasses back the next day, where at first they saw only the frame damage, then realized neither lens was the right shape.  They sent the glasses back to their lab -- a different one than the one that has made my lenses for over a decade; the practice was sold some time ago and the new owners have their own lab.  That was almost a month ago.

     Monday, they called me.  "Our lab says they can't fix your glasses.  We're sending them to a different lab. Those frames are so old, you know, it's hard to put lenses in them...."  My round frames are maybe five years old.  There have been no major changes to the way eyeglass lenses for into frames in my lifetime, and hardly any in the last century.

     The frames are probably ruined.  My trust certainly is.  The "one-hour" place I went to when I needed vision correction in a hurry did okay and while I like the guy who has been doing my eye exams, I won't trust his employer to make me glasses again.

     My vision was terrible when I was a child.  I successfully faked it until third grade, when my teacher figured out that I couldn't read the blackboard at all, and that I thought it was just a cruel joke that everyone got except me.  (Mom: "So that's why you sit so near the TV!")  My world looked like an Impressionist painting, seen too close, all fuzzy blobs and smears.  It matters to me to be able to see clearly.
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* After cataract surgery, I had a "one-hour eyeglasses" place make up a pair of glasses that only corrected my greatly-changed nearsightedness, while I waited for the astigmatism to settle down.  A month later, I went back to have lenses for my full prescription made and the technician told me, "Okay, come back this afternoon and..." before doing a double-take at the prescription and apologizing, "Oh.  Sorry.  This will be two or three weeks.  We can't make these here."  Yep.

Another Pair Of Eyes

     The story ended up around 5970 words.  It's usually worthwhile to cut; early drafts have excess verbiage and little dead-end bits that don't advance the plot or shed light on the theme.

     Such cuts carry their own risks.  Extra words get left in; essential words get left out.  Tense and number shift.  It is very difficult to spot on the seventh or twelfth read-through.  I see what I intended to say, not what I wrote.

     I was very glad that Tam agreed to do a last-minute reading and markup.  Sure enough, she found a half-dozen glitches -- and one misuse of the subjunctive that still feels right me.  I changed it anyway; better to color inside the lines as much as possible, so you can scribble outside of them when it's necessary.

     Will the editors like it?  I don't know.  I do know that having extra eyes on the work has bailed me out many times.  Between the members of my fiction critique group to Tam's well-informed once-over, if the end result reads smoothly and makes sense, they played large parts in getting it there.

Writing....

     At present, I'm 6,712 words into finishing a 6,000 word short story to be submitted for an anthology -- and if that sounds off, consider that I started at 7,230.

     Two or three pages of cutting left to do.

Ipse Dixie

     House Speaker Mike Johnson might need to do a little homework.  In an interview Sunday, he griped, "I wish the Senate would simply do its job of advise and consent and allow the president to put the persons in his Cabinet of his choosing." [Emphasis mine.]

     Except that's not how it works, and you don't have to take my word for it.  Ask the arch-conservative Federalist Society.

     Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 does not mean "drop hints and go along."  It obliges the U. S. Senate to behave like the deliberative body they are, to openly discuss the nominee and vote on confirming their appointment, yes or no.  Getting the job is not guaranteed simply because the Chief Executive thinks you're the right disruptor for the position.

     Yes, it's awkward and inefficient to require the President and Senate to do some give and take over his choice of office-holders.  But those offices are, per the Constitution, created by Congress.  This back-and-forth is an attempt to fix two problems: the often-abused power of the British Crown and especially Royal Governors to create and fill high offices, and the post-Revolution (but pre-Constitution) arrogation by State Legislatures of those same powers.  By splitting them up and requiring some degree of debate, the Framers hoped to moderate and democratize the process.  You can think of it as a kind of grown-up version of the childhood method to fairly divide treats: one kid slices the pie, the other chooses who gets what piece.

     A large, powerful government had damned well better be slow and inefficient when it comes to appointive office like Cabinet members, Department Chairs and Ambassadors: those boys and girls can do a whole lot of damage, blow though budgets, mess up important projects, insult allies, stumble into wars with enemies and more.  Let's take our time.  Let's give the Senate, eyes and ears of the fifty States, a chance to look 'em over and put the matter to a vote.

Out Of The Frying Pan, Into The...Frying Pan?

     That's what I did.  Over the years, I have gone though many small skillets.*  They see heavy use.  They get dropped, or scratched or plain worn out.  When the warnings about PTFE-family non-stick coatings ramped up (you really don't want to keep using them after even one tiny scratch or ding), I bought alternatives.  And every single time I have done so, the stuff is better.

     When I bought my big "Always" pan, I knew it wasn't ideal for browning.  The coating was otherwise remarkable -- genuinely non-stick, easy to clean, relatively durable (they're on version 2.0 now, and also sell an enameled cast-iron model that browns well).  Around the same time, I replaced my smaller skillet with a dimestore purchase, and it was okay -- the ceramic coating was great for browning, not extraordinarily non-stick but very good, and it took a little effort to clean.  The finish on the outside tended to wear away.

     The little five-and-dime skillet got ugly, and I picked up a new frying pan a month ago.  It was a surprise!  The state of the art has advanced.  The ceramic coating is as non-stick as the Always (still going strong, btw), but it does great for browning.  It cleans up easily.

     None of these are especially dishwasher-friendly, but not needing to be soaked and scrubbed means that's not a problem -- and immaterial for me until I replace the dishwasher.

     The pros -- and high-end amateurs -- will likely keep on using cast iron and steel pans, for a number of good reasons.  But for daily use, modern non-stick cookware is better than it has ever been, and has shown remarkable improvement over the last few years.  If you're still using "old reliable" Teflon, you might want to give the newer stuff a try.
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* A term I grew up using interchangeably with "frying pan."  They're not quite the same thing, depending on where you live, and a saute pan is yet another thing, but other than a "spider," you can use them all for the same job. Oh, a spider pan?  A classic, but very uncommon  Generally handmade these days.

The Best And The Brightest?

      I was going to do a deep-dive think piece on the incoming President's Cabinet proposals and other high-level choices, but -- really?  Do I have to?  A guy who claims not to have washed his hands in ten years because "he's never seen a germ" and he is "inoculating himself;" another who doesn't believe in vaccines or fluoridation is put up to be in charge of public health; a woman who carries water for the Russians and Red China slated to oversee our intelligence agencies; a puppy-shooter to run Homeland Security* and a widely-rumored sex pest who barely dodged a House ethics investigation for Attorney General.

     Those are just highlights.  I expected partisanship; that's not unusual.  I expected he'd insist on personal loyalty bordering on devotion.  I did not expect slap-in-the-face incompetence and unqualification.

     If it wasn't happening in my own country, it would be fascinating to watch it all come unstuck.  Which it will.  What the price tag might be, in dollars and international standing, in the loss of domestic tranquility, that remains to be seen.  I can tell you who will pay it, and it won't be anyone in the halls of power.  It will be you and me, no matter who we voted for.
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* Hey, you can shoot your own dog.  Depending on circumstances, I will think ill of your for it, but you do generally have that right.  This nation's law enforcement agencies do not, however, have a real good record for not shooting other people's dogs, even when the dog is properly restrained or kenneled.  It's a small thing, but it's indicative of the general trend.

No Leaf Work Today

     We were busy with other things and, I have to admit, I have felt pretty yucky.  Better once the sun came out, but that was late in the afternoon.

     I did housework instead.  It is, after all, the work that is always there to do.

Autumn Time, Autumn Time...

     The leaves are falling and so is the rain.  Tam and I missed our chance to mow up the dried leaves last weekend, so it looks like we'll be mowing up wet ones this weekend.  It's no fun, and the bags can't be more than about half full without getting too heavy for the city's crews to lift.  (We only have to do a dozen or so; they'll be doing thousands -- if they don't tear up their backs.)

     The good news is, dry leaves are a lot dustier, and I don't get along well with it.  So I'm going to call it a win -- an icky, slimy, heavy win.

Hacking Congress

     Political commentators and professional viewers-with-alarm have been having a field day with President-elect (and convicted felon) Donald Trump's* nominees for key jobs in his Administration, especially Fox News talking head Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense; former Representative Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence; and Representative Matt  Gaetz, Attorney General.

     All three have been subject to somewhat sniffy observations that they've got to get through Senate vetting and confirmation before assuming their posts, and the GOP has an extremely slim majority in a body that is traditionally quite protective of their power.  The Senate, we're told, will dig in their heels.  The GOP hasn't a single vote to give up in that body, and so these three have barely a chance of getting through the process.

     Not so fast.  The nominees appear to be quite confident.  Matt Gaetz even went so far as to resign from the U. S. House of Representatives.†  Mr. Trump has already posted on social media, calling for a workaround: "Any Republican Senator seeking the coveted LEADERSHIP position in the United States Senate must agree to Recess Appointments [...]."  Charlie Sykes thinks the incoming President Pro Tem might do just that, tradition and Separation of Powers be damned.  --But you see, he doesn't have to.

     Here's how it works, with everyone ducking blame: Article II, Section 2, Clause 3 of the Constitution give the President the power to make appointments when Congress is in recess, appointments which stand until the end of the next session.  And Article I, Section 5, Clause 4 requires the House and Senate to mutually consent if they adjourn for more than three days.  If they cannot agree, if one body wants to cut school for a week and the other vows stubbornly to remain on the job?  Why, under Article II, Section 3, it falls to the President: "...in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper...."  This power has never been exercised, but all it takes is the House proposing an adjournment the Senate finds unacceptable and hey, presto: Mr. Trump's got the magic wand.  The Speaker can profess innocence -- his House members just wanted to go fishing, or hear from constituents; the President Pro Tem of the Senate can thunder and fume -- how dare the House treat this weighty matter so lightly!  The House and Senate fail to agree and Mr. Trump pulls the plug, after which they can all knock off work and repair to the bar, or perhaps somebody's yacht, free and clear.  Whatever happens after that is on Mr. Trump, not them.

     That's how it can work.  Or perhaps the threat alone will be enough.  Or maybe we've all been played, and these three particularly egregious choices are no more than distractions, slipped into the deal to be discarded while other, slightly less objectionable picks sail through.

     Our Constitution is hackable.  It was written by men who thought the people applying it wouldn't be trying to pull a fast one.  They did their best to not leave any openings, but nobody -- and no document -- is perfect.
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* After some thought, I have decided to give convicted felon and adjudicated sexual assaulter Donald Trump a recognition I have accorded to only one or two other Presidents: I'm going to mention his worst behavior at least once whenever his name comes up.  Woodrow Wilson and Andrew Jackson were virulent racists; in particular, Wilson resegregated the Federal civil service, which had become a colorblind meritocracy.  In so doing, he helped set the stage for the racial unrest that followed, over a generation later.  Mr. Trump is a scofflaw -- and we're about to see just how far he will follow that particular star.
 
† Credit where credit is due!  I'd like to thank Mr. Trump for doing what the courts and his House peers were unable to do: get Matt Gaetz out of Congress.  It's something.

Ungentlemanly Gloating

     I'm hearing a lot of reports -- some of them first-hand -- of men, mostly young, saying -- often, shouting -- rudely sexist things to women, also mostly young.

     There's no point in quoting any of it.  You can easily find that information online if you're curious.  The words are intended to demean, to disempower and to anger.

     A frequent justification for this behavior is "Trump won," implying that, by extension, an extreme social conservatism won.  And hey, he did win, with a definitive electoral college victory.  But that system is designed to produce decisive results with population-weighted winner-take-all outcomes in most states.  As a whole, your fellow Americans expressed a much closer opinion: 75,551,895 for Mr. Trump and 72,372,332 for Ms. Harris, a difference of two percent.*

     So for all practical purposes, even if you read the results as every Republican voter wanting the ladies limited to church, children and kitchen, that's only half of the voters -- and the other half, Democrat voters, opted for a female candidate who (among other issues) had pledged to support women's abortion rights as established under Roe v. Wade prior to Dobbs.  We're all locked in this room together, the debate is not over, and dunking on people doesn't advance anyone's argument.

     Approximately sixty percent turnout means we don't know the opinion of  forty percent of the voting age adults, and adjusts the results to be 30% one way, 29% the other and 40% wondering if it's lunchtime yet.

     A recurring trope in the 1960s-70s science fiction I grew up reading was War Between The Sexes and from Philip Wylie to Joanna Russ and beyond, it never ended well.  It won't if we run the experiment at full scale in real life, either.
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* Professional drivers, closed course; do not attempt to hand-tally the votes in your basement.  These results are not entirely final, but they're not going to change much.

Turning Over A New Leaf Briefcase

     A problem with a light-blue collar job like mine is you need all the things: a toolbox (my employer supplies tools, but they're often in use by others and I have more than a few specialized gadgets they don't provide) and a briefcase: a screwdriver and a laptop.  (And boy, have I needed the laptop!  My employer's computers are, sensibly enough, locked down six ways from Sunday: you don't install your own software on them, and you don't connect them to strange network ports.  I often need to do those things to work on their equipment, so I have carried my own aging Surface Pro.  In the last six months, I finally scored a company laptop with admin privileges, first time since the old Kaypro II in the late 1980s.)

     I'm only on my third toolbox; the first one was tackle box sized, a retro oak box I'd originally purchased for a portable ham radio setup.*  It was too heavy and too crowded.  Replaced with a nylon-canvas "doctor's bag," which I outgrew just as it was wearing out.  The larger version I replaced it with has held up well.  The sides are lined with pockets inside and out, and it opens wide, just like the doctor's bags of old, making it easy to find and get to the tools it carries.

     Briefcases are another story.  I've gone through a lot of them -- outgrew, worn out, infested by ants (don't keep sugar in your briefcase, kids).  None have been perfect.  Unlike the toolbox, which usually gets parked in my locker at the main location or in a cabinet at the North Campus depending on where I need it most, my briefcase travels with me every day.  Less than a year before the pandemic, I bought an inexpensive brown canvas messenger bag with lots of  pockets.  I decorated it with sarcastic "merit badges" (invisibility, telepathy with plants, soldering, mind control, coffee consumption, TV color bars in a red circle with a diagonal line across them, the Raspberry Pi logo and so on).  It held the Surface, my Macbook Air, headphones with attached microphone, serial adapter, USB network adapter, pens, pencils, highlighter pens, notebooks, a few tools that I need wherever I go (#3 Phillips screwdriver, 1/8" Allen driver, Euroblock screwdriver, backup flashlight), toothbrush, toothpaste and a change of socks and undies and more.  There was even a pocket for notebooks and manuscripts for whatever fiction I was working on.  It finally started to wear out.  My Surface has gone non-support; at that point it was barely acceptable to my employer as long as I kept the wifi off, and I have an Official Laptop now.  So I pulled a slightly smaller bag from the small collection of ones I have accumulated over years of looking, and loaded it with a reduced set of supplies and widgetry.  Yesterday was its first use.  So far, so good, though I miss the pen loops and merit badges on the old one.  I think I have a solution for the first, and as for the second, I'm working on it.

     I wonder how long this one will last?
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* A Ten-Tec 555 "Scout"  transceiver with plenty of band modules, power supply, tuner, key, headphones, logbook, a spool of just-in-case wire and all the parts of a end-fed windowsill antenna except the telescopic antenna itself.  There wasn't a bit of room left over.  I tested it at the North Campus and it interfered with the fire alarm system, oops.  But, hey, that was a fluke, right?  Got to the hotel (I was traveling to take a class for work) and there, behind the check-in desk, was the panel for the exact same model of fire alarm system!  I did a lot of listening that week.

The Eleventh Day Of The Eleventh Month

     It's Veteran's Day -- and I do thank you for your service.  It was Armistice Day to begin with, the end of a war that left a scar twisting across the face of Europe.  Some of the WW I battlefield is still uninhabitable.

     Someone who was my age when the guns fell silent at the eleventh hour in 1918 would have had clear memories of the U. S. Civil war.  That includes some of the soldiers and sailors.  One officer is known to have served during both wars -- and the ones in between.  And the scars from the Civil War remain, too, not as dead or as deadly as France's Red Zones but they're still there, etched across the land, scrawled across history, written on gravestones and in family histories.  War extracts a terrible price and it falls most heavily on the young and strong.  Even in peacetime, most military service consists of long hours of hard work for low pay.

     Those people in uniform are us.  Just like you, your neighbors, the people you work with and the kids you went to school with.  They're a mixed bag -- smart, dumb, short, tall, liberals, conservatives and people who just don't care about politics.  They grew up poor, middle-class and wealthy.  They're every color and all the same color -- green or Navy blue or whatever.  What they have in common is they stepped up.  They are doing -- or they have done -- the job, often far from home, frequently in terrible weather, and, at times, with the understanding there are other people not too far away who intend to kill them.

     I try not to be too glib with, "Thank you for your service."  That service is not something you can nod at acknowledging one day a year and call it good enough.

Good News From Redmond

     My decade-old copy of Word 2010 does install in a Windows 11 machine.  It comes with the same caveats it had grown on the old computer -- you don't get the full panoply of features the latest version provides -- but it did install and run, and it looks like the things I need it for still work.

     All this thanks to Tam's saved-back DVD/CD-ROM drive.  I have one somewhere, but it's stashed in the back of one of several different desk drawers, and when she noticed me digging and asked what for, her drive was ready to hand.

     I hang well to the back of the technology curve.  This desktop computer, like its predecessor, cost a little over a hundred dollars.  Because I don't play computer games,* I don't need extreme speed or the latest graphics; most kinds of software don't need that much horsepower.
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* There's a story there.  I spent a lot of my time in college on a PLATO terminal (and the school's shared-time mainframes, a DEC-10 and a PDP-9), playing games and taking online learning modules that had little to do with my major.  I spent a lot more time at the campus radio station.  Between the two, classwork suffered.  The electronics classes weren't a problem; everything except circuit analysis was essentially review.  And first semester Applied Math For Technology was a delight.  It was when the university decided to save costs and fold that class into Calculus in the second semester that things got dicey -- especially since our working-engineer math professor was replaced by a pure-math guy who had been sent to our extension campus after getting crosswise with his department head.  It would have been a good time to buckle down and really apply myself.  19 year old Bobbi spent even more time on the PLATO terminal instead.  Pity it didn't offer a calculus course....  I did learn how to program in BASIC, which used to be handy.

Left-Handed Mouse

     Setting up a new computer always reaches an awkward phase for me, where the old computer keyboard and mouse are still where they always were, but I'm starting to use the new one.  I'm pretty good at using a mouse left-handed, ring finger doing the primary clicking, but it takes a little extra thought.

     Work required us to change to Windows 11 months ago.  Home has lagged, but my old computer was getting slower and slower, almost certainly a thermal issue compounded by an over-full hard drive.  So it was time.

     Who wants to bet my out-of-date (and non-subscription) version of Word won't install?  I'll probably buy the standalone version, since I don't like software that you never pay off.  Word lets me check my LibreOffice files for compatibility, and it does one thing I can't figure out how to get the open version to do: it lets you edit the normally-hidden formatting commands.