The Full Bobbi Breakfast

     So, still kinda sick -- I was okay at the Indy Hamfest but the sinus/chest congestion came roaring back in tha afternoon and evening -- but I'm working the early-early shift and filling in at the controls for a co-worked with an ailing spouse, so there's no resting up.

     That leaves only one alternative: the Full Bobbi.  Akin to The Full English or The Full Scottish, except on the right side of the road:
     A small "breakfast steak" consisting of a nice, thick filet mignon sliced into two slightly thicker than usual brekky steaks, and shared or one saved for later.
     A slice of applewood-smoked bacon. Oh, okay, two.
     A fried egg.
     Fried mushrooms.
     Tomato -- several grape tomatoes, sliced and sprinkled with Italian seasoning mix and let set for at least ten minutes.  Best to do these at the very start of cooking.  Basil works about as well.
     Toast -- hand-made rye today.
     Coffee and juice.

     At the very least, there should be enough additional iron, zinc and vitamin C to help me get through the day.

The Full Bobbi

You know what is The Full English Breakfast? --Here at Roseholme, we infrequently serve our own take, known as The Full Bobbi.

What's in it? It depends; this edition took two skillets (a wok and a cast-iron grilling pan [but buy one through Tam's link]), a bowl and a plate: Filet mignon (mine butterflied, Tam's not), fried egg sprinkled with curry powder under a slice of Swiss cheese, bacon, leeks and mushrooms, and a fried tomato. A little fresh-ground pepper and it's ready.

It'll fix you up for the whole day!

Various Things

     Up early again, enjoying a not-quite-Full-Bobbi breakfast[1] ahead of a ten-hour day[2]: a small steak, a couple slices of pepper bacon[3], home fries (with scallions!)[4], a fried egg, V-8 juice and coffee.  Yum!  So good, Tam had to be given her own small steak (half-filets mignon, cooked in the pepper bacon fat), just so I only had the cats to fight off during breakfast -- Huck believes his ability to stand on the floor and get an entire foreleg on the tabletop entitles him to anything within his reach. He may have lived in a 19th-Century boarding house in a prior life.  Or been a Marine, though their table manners are generally better.

      Speaking of the Marines, a poll back in July that showed Gary Johnson to be the preferred Presidential candidate of  every Service branch but one put him ahead by the widest margin among the USMC, while the Navy only preferred Johnson a bit more than the Army (though of course they really don't like the Army, but that's not what I meant).  The Army liked Mr. Trump a bit better than Mr. Johnson (and presumably way more than the Navy), and Ms. Clinton did not fare so well among serving troops.  I am heartened to learn the Marines are every bit as cross-grained as tradition says they are.
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1. It would require the addition of tomatoes and mushrooms at minimum to qualify as a Full Bobbi.  Possibly toast or such as well.

2. Holidays at my work do not Walk Away From Omelas.[PDF]  Quite the reverse. Most get the day off.  A few get the day.

3. They were out of the wonderful applewood-smoked bacon.  The pepper bacon is a good second choice.
 
4. Note that if you are completely out of hot sauce, a little horseradish, well mixed in, will do.

Breakfast Steak

     It's self-indulgent to take a nice, two-inch thick filet mignon and cut it into two thinner breakfast steaks, but it certainly is good!

     Slow-cooked, mostly covered, with fresh mushrooms and served with cherry tomatoes and a fried egg, it's very nearly (I left out the potatoes and bacon) a "full Bobbi breakfast," which is similar to a Full English Breakfast, only not exactly.

Breakfast: The Full Bobbi

          What with starting the week on a couple of early-morning shifts and very little sleep, I decided to reward myself this morning: A half-thickness filet mignon, a fried egg, fried potatoes, fresh tomato and a little bit of bacon.  Yum!

     Tam appears to be enjoying hers, if the sounds coming from that side of the room are any indication.

     No time for a photo, but you should be able to imagine it.  Tomorrow morning, breakfast will probably be penitential oatmeal. That's fine, I like oatmeal, too.

Happy Hellidays

I
     I'm not a big fan of Christmas, especially the ol' traditional family gathering.  Oh, it's fun to buy gifts for my younger relations and it's a great excuse to slip some cash to the family's underemployed adults, but the event is something of a nightmare.  My siblings are nobody you'd want to know, for "an indictment is not a conviction" values of not wanting to know, and there is a lot of mutual mistrust bordering on ill-will between us.

     Fine by me; I avoid 'em at least 363 days a year.  For my Mom's sake, I'll sit down with them on a couple of holidays.


II
     ...All contact with my Big Sister leads to trouble: The plan was to take both Rannie Wu and Mr. Meow to the vet.  The latter is my Mom's found cat, a skinny, tired, one-eyed tomcat that showed up a couple months ago and gradually moved in to the sun porch, now outfitted as a deluxe cat-bachelor pad.  So, much running around and losing/finding ('cos I am nervous about later, nervous about cat-hauling, etc. etc.), arranging to make last-minute dashes to the bank and store (with Tam's Z3 down for the count and the weather turning mean, grocery logistics are tricky), loading the present for my nephew's son in the car, stress, stress....  We get our errands done and arrive at Mom's.
     "Oh," Mother says, "The cat is missing.  Your big sister showed up to take me to church and he got out and ran off. I don't know why, he never does that. He's probably down at the neighbors, they have at least ten cats."
     There's a strange dog bouncing around in Mom's yard.  He's friendly enough and wearing a collar, but he's a good-sized dog and there's not a cat in sight.  No sidewalks in Mom's suburb and the streets are like glass, so I trudge microsteppingly around her home and two doors down to the cat-sheltering neighbors.  Lots of dog prints and not a cat in sight.  I called: no cats.  Microstepped back and admitted failure.  Big sis shows up at the door, all butter-wouldn't-melt innocence:
     "I guess I should have tried to grab him.  He just got out!"
     "Fine, sis, we still have to take Tam's cat to the vet. Mom's cat is not here, I'll just reschedule."
     Meanwhile, Tam's been moving groceries in the hatch/trunk of my car so I can get to the Big Present for my nephew-once-removed: a mini-hiwheel bike similar to mine, with a vintage-style leather seat, heavy-duty pedals and big, loud bell.  This was the subject of a lot of texting back and forth with his father, checking that it was parentally approved and something he'd actually like.  Sis keeps talking while I lug it into the living room, head down the hall to get an old sheet from the linen closet, and drape the bike so it's "wrapped."  I head for the back door, making one last check of the sun porch for the missing Mr. Meow.
     "Mom, Sis? Gotta go, I'll be back later."
     Mom asks if Tam will be with me, I say it depends and climb into the Hyundai where Tam is waiting and we're off.
     (Called the vet on the way home and cancelled one cat.  Sorry, he's a no-show.)
      As we're turning into the alleyway behind Roseholme Cottage, my phone rings, Big Sis: "The cat's come back!  Can you come get him?"
     ""Sorry, we're on a schedule.  But the vet said they're open 'til one, so if you want to put him in a carrier and meet us at their office?"
     "Sure!  I can do that!"
     I give her the address and call the vet to uncancel.


III
     ...Unhappy cat is unhappy: the plan was, I'd bring in groceries while Tam got the carrier and enticed Rannie into it.
     By the time I had the groceries in (dazed a little by stress and sunlight and insane drivers on the fifteen-minute drive from Mom's to home, several blocks of it on glaze ice at each end), Tam does have the carrier.  She's trying to lure Rannie into it with a cat treat.  It's not working.  (Has this ever worked, in the entire history of cats?)
     Tam: "Can you give me a hand?"
     "Sure."  --Okay, look, I grew up with adopted farm cats; my parents grew up in times and places when house cats were all but unheard of: cats were a self-replenishing natural resource.  Much as I love cats -- and I do -- much as I respect Rannie and Huck -- and I do -- I won't brook nonsense when things are serious.  This means I grab Rannie, aim her in the cat carrier, and apply force.
     "Be careful, it's easy to break her little feet when she hangs on like that."
     "Yes," yes, it would be, but even a panicky cat is careful of injury and will let go when there's no other choice; I'm untangling toes and unhooking claws as I keep her moving into the carrier.  The last hind foot in, I get her tightly-curled tail over the lip of the opening and close and latch the door.
     "Uuulp!  Ooooooooooooh!" Rannie Does Not Like The Carrier.
     Tam gets that remorseful motherly look as we exit the house, cat still complaining quietly.  "Oh, she hates this!"
     Utter truth.  I take the carrier and load it into the back seat while Tam icewalks around to the passenger side.  Rannie wails at being handed over and placed on the back seat: "Ooooo! Ouulllp!  Nooooooooooo!"
     "Just a few blocks, Rannie, hang on!"
     It's like four blocks total to the vet but that's far too long for Rannie, who sounds like she's either hiccoughing tears or about to be ill.  I keep talking to her in a meant-to-be reassuring tone, whatever words come to me.  "Go ahead and hork, Rannie, if that will help," elicits a horrified response from within the carrier:
     "Nooooope!  Noooo!"

     On the way, my phone buzzes, text from Big Sis:  CAT WON'T GO IN CARRIER. BUSY COOKING.  I'LL TAKE HIM NEXT WEEKEND.
     Yeah, thanks.  Good luck with that.  All contact with Big Sis makes for complications.

     At the vet, Rannie is terrified, somehow smaller than normal; Tam and I take turns standing at the exam table where it abuts the wall, making a corner that Rannie can face into.  She hardly notices having her temperature taken or her shots, and clings in scared gratitude to the tech who takes her back to have blood drawn.  She's eager to get back into the carrier for the ride home and only complains a little on the drive.
     Back home, we set the carrier on the couch in the living room and open the door, but Rannie is little inclined to exit 'til I start taking the top off the carrier; then she cautiously eels out glassy-eyed, flows over the couch, and off into a secluded corner of the living room.  Huck sniffs after her a little but even he is a bit put off by her zombie-like demeanor.
     Tam and I agree that it could have been worse and she wonders, "Did you break my cat again?"
     Geesh, I hope not.  Rannie hid out for a couple of weeks after the long drive up from Knoxville and Tam says her personality has never been the same since.


IV 
     ...Demos and Phobos are not merely moons of Mars.  Their names mean Dread and Fear; it's a good thing there is not a third moon named "Panic," otherwise I'd be there right now.  Instead, I am frantically looking for my purse.  Did I leave it in the car, unlocked and on the far side -- the OUT side -- of the closed garage door?  Did I?  Did I?    When I go to look, the answer is no, which only makes me more worried, and it's not in the garage, either.  "Bobbi!"  I put my gloves down looking "Bobbi!" and now they're missing, too and-- "Bobbi!"
     The sound of my bedroom window opening breaks my rosary of panic, scattering beads of thought.  "Bobbi!" It's Tam.  "I found your purse.  It's sitting here on your bed."
     "Oh." Geesh, when did I put it down there?  I can't even remember. "Oh, wow, thanks!"
     I gather up the rest of the presents, small items, gift cards, an old children's book Big Sister has been pawing through used-book stores for years to find (it's called The Internet.  It can be Your Friend), clomp off to my car and depart.
     Tam's staying home: her cat may be broke.  Anyway, Rannie has been zombieing around, stiff-legged and staring, sidling from from one hiding place to another, pointedly refusing to interact.  Everything about her is radiating the message, the rest of you don't exist.  I am trapped in a horrible, horrible dream and I can't wake up. It's worrying.


V
     ...There are always four entrees.  When you eat a holiday meal at Mom's, there are four different kinds of meat-and/or-whatever main dishes.  This is in part due to her efforts to ensure the family vegans and other picky eaters get something to eat.  My oldest nephew pointed it out, while musing over home-made chicken pot pie, something Italian with pasta and meat sauce, baked eggs and something potato-and-eggplant looking.  But that was later.
     When I arrived, heart rate slowed almost to normal from the earlier panic, my Mom, Big Sis and baby Brother were the only ones there.  I asked after the next generation -- all of Baby bro's kids were in another state, at his son's new house, but most of Sis's would be there (not her oldest daughter, about and inadvertently to whom she made some particularly poisonous remarks over a year ago.  Said daughter was giving birth to her first child at the time).
     I had a nickname as a child.  I didn't like it.  I don't use it. My family is very aware of that.  Guess who started using it again and ignores requests to stop?
     No, don't guess.

     Soon enough, the rest of the family arrived: my oldest nephew, his wife, their two nice kids (teen-aged daughter, tall, skinny, an avid reader: big Amazon gift card for her; her younger brother, Cub Scout, into everything: yep, he gets the high-wheel bike); next-youngest nephew, his son (18 months, going on three years: talks a little, though devastatingly: told a saleslady gushing over his cuteness "Shuddup!"), walks (disconcertingly), small and chunky and indeed cute as can be (he gets a handmade wooden car, plus some large-denomination greenbacks for Papa), then their other sister and her boyfriend, a nice couple who ferried up nephew-and-baby, sparing him driving-while-parenting (which can be as bad a risk factor as texting or excessive drinking).  Meet, greet, stow coats and eat!  (Grace first, for which having a baby brother who's an ex-preacher eliminates the usual awkwardness over who'll lead and what might they say.)
     Despite my best efforts, I end up sitting next to Big Sis, who uses [despised nickname] yet again.  And again.  And again.  After asking her to quit it twice without effect, I stop talking to her and ignore whatever she says, resolving to leave as soon as possible; just then, it'd be as soon as I can leave the table without a fuss.  But ignoring her mellows my mood and I end up drifting into the living room to watch the young ones tear into their gifts.
     The baby's the most.  He's doubtful that it's okay to rip open packages and has to be persuaded, but once they're open, he crows with delight as the bright-colored fun stuff inside, and is soon happily gnawing on the cardboard backing of a playtime video-game disc.  The Cub Scout, when he works his way to the bike, exclaims in delight and wants to go ride it.  His dad and I exchange looks across the room and he's told, "Maybe later."  Turns out there's still a microscope (!!), binoculars (!!) and see-through V8 engine model kit (!!!) for him to discover, which he does, all but overwhelmed at the coolness of his loot.  Meanwhile, the distaff youngers and elders have been quietly opening gifts and murmuring appreciation; I count myself among their number, receiving a splendid flowed teapot, a nice collection of teas, a warm robe and a goofily-delightful windup device that "walks"crazily on four sets of cartoonish feet while spitting sparks.
     I'm keeping an eye out for the plain-wrapped* book for Big Sis (marked "from Santa" but my handwriting's distinctive) and watch her unwrap it.
     "Oo!  Oooooo!  It's Honey Bunch: Just a Little Girl!  Oh, thank you, Bobbi!"
     Perhaps it's coincidence and certainly I was in full Sister: Avoid mode by then, but she didn't call me [despised nickname] again that evening.
     Eventually I escaped, largely unscathed, but that's later.


VI
     ...We look like crazy people, clearing snow from the paved drive with a rake and a hoe.  My baby brother shoveled the walks earlier, and put the old grain shovel...  "What difference does it make?  Somewhere in the garage."
     Or so he claimed.  Oldest nephew and I suspect he may've shoved it into some other dimension.  Whatever, it's unfindable and we're using what we can find to make good on our promise.  Works pretty well: the rake brakes the icy crust and hoe pushes it aside.
     First efforts show the seat is too high for our intrepid young rider; after adjustment, our rider is too intrepid.  His dad is wise, though, and after two unsuccessful attempts, the Cub Scout is ready to ask, "Tell me again how ride this?"
     I explain about scooting along with one foot on the step (rear fork, for this bike) until it's up to speed, then mounting the saddle.
     "Okay, it's like a skateboard to start!"  He scoots the thing around several times and announces he's ready to try riding.
     He succeeds, too, with me on one side and dad on the other.  He makes several single circuits on the drive.  He has trouble with turns and we have to catch him, and then suddenly it clicks, and he's leaning and turning, around and around the drive, easy as can be.
     "Go get Mom!  Mom's gotta see this!"
     She not only sees it, she records it, and is asking if they still have a bike helmet at home?  "Oh, and don't let your [maternal] grandfather see this bike or he'll want one, too!"  That's their next stop.


VII
     ...The sun's headed down and next time I look outside, outside is pitch black -- the only streetlights in Mom's suburb are the blazing-bright set at the roundabout, too far away to be useful, yet annoyingly bright through the kitchen window if you're washing dishes or making coffee.  Younger niece+BF and nephew are departing, Oldest Nephew is loading up his truck (3-D Tetris for the working dad!) and I take my haul out to my car.  It takes three trips and with the last out there, there's no reason to stay; I just start the car and head home, alone in the dark.
     Back at Roseholme, it looks like Tam's catching a quiet smoke on the porch -- yes, the The Porch.
     Rannie is curled up in a tight ball on the couch, holding her back feet with her front ones like a child hugging a doll.  When I sit down to change shoes, she raises her head and looks at me, asking, "Brrraow?"  Then she snuggles herself into an impossibly tighter curl and sighs.
     Cat's back. 
     I'm back too -- and I'm asleep under the electric blanket as soon as I can get into my nightgown, as comfy as the cat.
-30-
     The story is true.  The names have mostly been omitted, for whatever good that'll do me.
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* I wrap presents in either plain paper or the color funny pages from the newspaper.  I have done so all my adult life.  Look, it gets torn off anyway, why pay for fancy paper?  If I want nicely patterned paper, I make it, there's any number of ways, from rubber stamps to ink washes to a suspension of paint in water.  Or just draw or paint something on it, it's not like it's that difficult.

When Sinuses Attack

     Maybe it started yesterday at work -- in the afternoon, I was increasingly unsteady and unexpectedly sleepy.  Maybe it started that evening, when I was stumbling and sneezing.  At one point, I came a little too close to falling down the basement stairs, but caught myself just in time.

     Whatever.  I awoke in the night, as women past a certain age do, and once up and mission accomplished, my nose felt stuffy.  Cleared it, laid down -- and woke up fifteen minutes later from a dream about being in a shipwreck. My nose was bubbling like a percolator.  "Ah," think I, "My sinuses have cleared!"

     Yeah, no.  Did the obvious, went back to sleep and not a half-hour later, my spacesuit's got a bad rebreather valve, or at least it did until it woke me up and turned back into full sinuses.  And so it went.  After the fourth or fifth time, I gave up and stayed awake, tissues not far away.  I was kind of stumbling into doorways when I was getting up to clear my nose anyway.  That approach worked, or seemed to, until a sleepy and mildly irked Tamara appeared in my doorway to remark, "If you're going to sing, I'm going to give up on my last ten minutes of sleep and start my day."

     Had I been singing?  H'mmm.  Yes, I had.  And perhaps not softly. How does that happen?

     Survey says...  Fever!  This was confirmed fifteen minutes later, when I was making coffee and Tam was questioning the continued presence of a largish cardboard box in the kitchen.

     "Bobbi, what is even in this?  Can't we throw it out?"

     "Oh, I need to check it first."

     Tamara started to open the box.

     I warned her, "Oh, don't do that!  It's full of packing peanuts.  They get all over and you'll kill me!"  And I began to giggle.

     N.B., despite the provocation they present, Tam has never killed me or anyone over plastic packing peanuts.  I quite doubt she ever will.

    So yes, I'm unwell.  I'm going back to bed.

Change Is The Only Constant

     When I moved to Indianapolis over forty years ago, the city was a wonderful place to do electronics.  Small computer-supply stores were all over, Radio Shack was ubiquitous, and there were multiple parts suppliers serving industry and the TV repair trade.  Graham Electronics downtown; RaDisCo on the near West side; ESP (Electronic Service Parts), King Electronics and Meunier Electronic Supply all East of downtown; Broad Ripple had a Heathkit store, and a few of the nationwide suppliers like Hamilton/Avnet had offices or even stocking locations scattered around town.

     Over the years, it faded away.  Graham was the first, sometime in the late 1980s or early 90s.  The Heathkit store closed when the parent company went under.  ESP was family-owned and the next generation wasn't interested; they served mostly the repair shops and that business was fading.  They closed over twenty years ago.  King Electronics held on for a long time, selling TV antennas, tools and classic radio parts along with the full line of modern components, but things dropped off after the 2009 digital TV change over.  In 2020, Meunier Electronics, a full-line stocking distributor with a magical showroom of odds and ends closed.  Radio Shack is long gone.

     There was an electronic surplus joint in town, too.  Milo Associates, Inc. (later MAI/Prime Parts) was in an old company office off Millersville Road when I first came to Indianapolis, with a small sign and not much publicity.  My co-workers at the radio station took me there, explaining "that guy has everything!"  They did, too -- logic ICs, op-amps, metal-film resistors, monolithic-film capacitors, stacks of defunct GRiD laptop computers, a zillion different control knobs, a few shelves of ancient test gear and old ham radio equipment, and on and on, all crowded onto rows of tall shelving or stacked on the floor.  They became my "source of last resort," and often first resort, too, a place where you could go in and lay hands on the actual stuff.  They moved a few times over the years, always in search of the lowest rent, and ended up in a drafty pole barn on Michigan Road.  Business fell off; they started selling repair parts for the heating and cooling trade, mostly as a middleman, but kept the electronic stuff, selling off the existing stock.  By the time the pandemic began, they were the last electronic parts place left in town.  I was there either right before March 2020, or during an early lull later that year, and picked up some parts for work and some "just in case" stock for my hobby supplies.  I stayed away during the pandemic.

     Yesterday, I thought to stop by after a dental appointment.  Their website was still up, mostly a line card and contact information.  I've got a project at work that needs some specific connectors, and it's always interesting to wander the aisles.  There were more cars parked in front of the shabby old building than I've become used to seeing over the last decade, and I perked up.  Maybe business was picking up!

     The glass door has always had dark film on it, I pushed it open -- on a vast and mostly empty room, with a workbench at the far end and power tools scattered around.  Men were working, and a guy in a vest and hardhat near the door asked, "Can I help you, Miss?"
     "Probably not.  I was looking for the business that used to be here."
     "Oh, they left."
     I thanked him and left, too.

     Later on, I called the number on their website and a familiar voice answered,  "Prime Parts."
     "Hey, it's Bobbi, from the TV station."
     "How ya doing?"
     "I'm okay, but where are you?"
     "Oh, we're just doing the HVAC parts now.  Been out on the far East side for a couple of years."
     "No electronics?"
     "Nope."

     So that's that.

     Looks like there a smallish hobby-parts place in Indianapolis near Park 100, and if you want anything else, well, there are still plenty of suppliers who can ship it to you in a few days -- as long as you know exactly what you want.  Digi-Key and Newark, Mouser and RS-Online (formerly Allied) are still there, online and over the phone; Antique Electronic Supply has parts for the old stuff (and there's a smattering of tube-audio enthusiast suppliers, the best of whom are very good), and between McMaster-Carr and the electrical-supply wholesalers, the bigger items aren't hard to come by.  But if you want to go somewhere and comb through bins of parts, hoping for inspiration?  Better find a hamfest.  And good luck with that.

Another Day, Part 11

(GO TO BEGINNING)

(The plot thickens. -Ish).

What with one thing and another (especially the SHF control/telemetry dish that hopped a rotational stop which the remote-drone ops ignored 'til the cabling was well and genuinely axle-wrapped, in 3-D), I'd about shelved my own efforts at the puzzle of the stardrive-killed Space Marine -- let alone our H-F.d. visitor -- when I got a call from the Security director a week later. "Bobbi? I think maybe you can help me."

"Really? 'Cos, you know, 'I'm not a cop--.'"

He heaved a sigh. "And neither am I, when you get right down to it. Me and my staff are as close as we've got. But I need somebody who's already got the skinny on the situation and Dr. Poole is too recognizable."

"So what happened to, 'Leave this to the professionals?'"

"Look, Nancy Drew, he knows me and everybody I've got who I'd trust to get this right is up in passenger territory regularly, in uniform, so they're out, too. Like he's not gonna know Miss T on sight? Or Ivan, for that matter?"

"H'mmm, point. But -- 'He?' 'Get what right?'"

"Aw, geez, maybe Doc Poole would be better. This isn't a game!"

"Okay, okay. But what is it?" I was pretty sure I knew already, but I was irked about the "Nancy Drew" wisecrack -- that's the second time this week!

"It's that guy -- George Welles. The Hopkin-F preacher guy. I need someone to see what he's like when he's not being watched."

"What's he got to do killing a Space Marine?"

"Maybe nothing. Maybe— Those "Marines" aren't just soldiers, y'know; they're more like the Mounties or old-time Texas Rangers. So we've got a some kind of a preacher on Far Edge medication, plus a dead Far Edger who's as near as they get to law enforcement and just happened to board at the same stop, which just happens to be a place without a lot of passenger traffic that has a bad history that includes a surplus of self-appointed 'great leaders.' Maybe it's just me but it smells funny."

"With all that, this Welles guy is not gonna think I'm a watcher? What kinda hokey name is that, anyway?"

"I don't know about his name and I'm not asking you to do anything but get curious and keep your eyes open! Besides, how's he gonna know you're not a passenger...?" He went on to explain how his foolproof plan was foolproof. I only half-listened; I was thinking about the mess on Lyndon. Or Linden. Or Peace & Freedom. Or Sunblack II --It's all the same world and the same mess. It's history I picked up in bits and pieces - - a charity drive here, a web page six there, wild rumors and a little time on-planet. It boils down to a mess.

It was the first world the Far Edge ships found after they fled Project Hoplite, the unbuilt missile base on the Moon. And it's the first world settled, too, only not in that order. It was settled in 1946, which is why the Edgers were headed that way. It's not why they skipped out; the ringleaders had decided the Lunar base would be too destabilizing long before they launched and had made their plans and picked their crew accordingly. But what they found when they got there put matters in an entirely different light.

There are plenty of places on Earth's Moon where one might locate a missile base. Some are better than others but it was a matter of chance the three scout ships of Project Hoplite would pick the site they did. That one of the pilots of the 27 ships that followed would notice implausibly regular formations in a nearby crater was not a surprise; inattentive fliers don't last long, let along get far enough along to be where Lt. Farrelini found himself.

The mix of caution and, shall we say, "appreciation of risk" that put so talented a pilot at the controls of a barely prototyped vehicle relying on dangerously-immature technology must have guided his next move. Rather than report his sighting (see how well the conspirators had chosen their rebels?), he noted the location and bided his time. Several weeks later, in his surface assignment as a tractor driver, the Lieutenant wrangled assignment to the survey party headed that way. And proceeded to drive the geologist and surveyor with him right to what proved to be the abandoned remains of a Luftwaffe base.

Yeah.

It's not the sort of thing one would expect. Wild rumors about "The Bell" and preposterous photo-hacks purporting to show flying saucers strain too far at credulity. But there it was, dark, empty and ransacked. One stubby cylinder-shaped vehicle, half-wrecked, stripped of all usable parts [1]; meager pressurizable huts, airlocks gaping; what might have been a solar-powered boiler, engine and generator; collapsed greenhouse-like structures; a few personal possessions and, tucked behind the open inner hatch of one hut's airlock, a stack of thin metal sheets scratched full of closely-packed, tiny writing. The Deus ex machina only goes so far; none of the men could read the language but it certainly looked as German as the faded labels on the doors. Not to mention the stylized eagles clutching an infamous symbol.

That's right. Space Nazis.

There was an abortive effort to keep it hushed up but the cat was soon out of the bag. Translated, the message on the plates told a hardly-believable tale; a secret base planned as yet another "war-winning weapon" proving instead to be one more drag on the dwindling resources of the Third Reich, the warrior-explorers and a small group of "experimental subjects" marooned as the Third Reich fell to the Allies. 'Drive radiation had taken a toll on the group and it was evident Germany was lost; the survivors had reworked the vehicles and planned to flee the inhospitable Moon. Mars and Venus were ruled out after one-way scouting missions to each one resulted in a barely-survived crash followed by reports of insufficient air from Mars and an attempted landing turning to screams from the atmosphere of Venus. In desperation, they'd chosen a long leap to the nearest earthlike star. One man, proud or optimistic of eventual victory, had scribbled it all down in secret on scraps left from the salvage work and left it for those who would follow after.

For the cabal that had hijacked Project Hoplite and the crew they'd recruited, it must have seemed pure serendipity: they had the atomic-armed missiles they wanted to get out of the hands of any government on Earth, the ships, the material and supplies to build a base -- or a mobile space station, a huge ship. They were already planning to disappear and now they had a Mission. A Quest.

I'll just hit the high points: the hurried partial assembly of their vast wheel of a "mother ship" and departure from the Moon, the long, hard, tragic finishing work done in solar orbit, the seizure of one ship by disaffected group members and its disastrous attempt at returning to earth and the consequent premature FTL jump to the indicated star added up to several years. You can imagine the consternation, confusion and re-reevaluation that ensued when they arrived at to find an Earthlike planet that at first appeared uninhabited. Eventually, they found several huddles of hovels: New Germania. And over a hundred very hungry survivors. Compassion won out over caution at first, though at least half the ex-Hoplites wanted to bomb the site from orbit and keep moving. The compassionate faction landed, taking seeds and supplies; this was still when landing was a chancy proposition. It was a one-way trip. The ship, designed for a Moon landing, didn't have enough thrust for a soft landing at the limit of their 'Drive's accuracy and as luck would have, the last hop was overly low. Crunch-down knocked the CLASSIFIED out of alignment, killed both phantasmajector tubes and injured most of the crew. More bad luck followed: sickness raged among the landing party and no further physical contact was allowed. There you have it, Step One of the mess on Linden, the original jackboots-on-planet having been Step Zero. Things improved for a while once the virus had run its course but suspicion and hostility remained on all sides. The ship-bound Far Edge (they'd begun to refer to themselves as being on "the far edge of everything" by then) were settling in to their new life; planet-side, a wary truce prevailed, as the new arrivals had brought seeds, animals and additional tools and expertise. There were even the stirrings of a basic government and steady contact between the planet-bound and space-dwellers.

It was five years after the arrival of the Far Edge when the first ships of the US Space Force arrived, small scout ships streaking through the system on sputtering stardrives, popping in and out of the rational universe, taking photos and making radar sweeps on every emergence into normal space. The Far Edge gathered together and without a word to the planetary civilization, vanished into 'Drive. Call it Step Two of the Mess on Linden. Steps Three, Four, Five and Six would be the subsequent contact, establishment of a military government, settlement by colonists from Earth using newly developed re-entry techniques and the first civil war. It's been forty years since somebody threw out the first incendiary bomb and things have never really settled down; full-on war is rare but no government (or name for the place) has lasted more than five years unless you count the Farmer's Market. The only real sign of progress was when they'd renamed the main port "Star City" instead of "New Germania" and stuck with it.

That's where our "holy man" had been. If peace had spontaneously broken out in his wake, the news hadn't reached the Lupine yet.

* * *
If you're a passenger, a big starship is nearly as class-conscious as an old ocean liner; First and Second class share a dining room and some -- but not all -- of the lounges; Third Class is its own world. It's not as bad as "steerage" on a late XIXth-Century steamship, but it's as basic and crowded as minimum-allotment crew quarters. All passengers and crew have access to the commercial section, our "downtown," at the very bow of the Lupine. First and Second Class passengers make much use of the restaurants, bars [2] and gift shoppes but nearly all those who travel Third have little reason to go there other than the tiny park E&M maintains; it's free, about the only price most of them can afford.

It's quite a nice park, given the constraints of star travel. There are no tall, heavy plants, no large fountains or loose mulch and the koi pond is under glass. Three low "hills" and natural-looking rock walls covered in vines and other plants make the space seem even larger than it is and with a high blue (fake) haze and full-spectrum lighting overhead, it's the next best thing to being dirtside. If that's your thing. Me, I use it as a shortcut to get from the McMaster storefront at one end of district to Swearengen's (an electrical wholesaler based out of Kansas II that I swear stocks everything. All the time.) at the other; sometimes I dawdle or even take lunch there, if I can justify the time.

With this buildup, you know what's coming: our mysterious mystic and his band of followers(traveling Second Class) had taken to gathering in the park a couple afternoons a week and had -- quelle suprise -- started to gather an audience that included no few passengers from Third, Second and one or two from First. Mike proposed I start attending, too, minus my usual collar pin (a lot of us wear 'em; 'Drive Engineering's sigil is the "exploding gear," the lightning bolt and sector gear of Engineering on a starburst, all in gold if you've got the full certification. Not that I'm proud or anything). Of course he had to add that what I usually wear would fit right in, which is both mostly true and a bit of a put-down. Hey, it's a physical job.

It wasn't a terrible idea but I'm not all that anonymous. Plenty of the merchants know me. Security, E&PP workers of various sorts and officers are a lot more widely recognized than Engineering tekkies. Mike's answer to that was "It's unlikely. So what if you are? You're not Security, you're not an officer. Why wouldn't you be honestly curious?"

I wasn't so sure anyone would believe that but I'd've eventually gone to see what the guy was about anyway. Most of my reluctance was for Sheriff Mike's benefit. I agreed.

Nothing's ever easy; the very next afternoon, after a nasty morning, we lost the main stepdown transformer feeding the 'Drive finals, which I described earlier. That gave Mike time to convince the Chief to stick me on the earlybird day watch (gee, thanks) and take me off-call for a couple of hours after my shift on the days Mr. (Rev.?) Welles and company had their shindigs. I was startin' to have my doubts but like it or not, I was a secret agent. Or something.

* * *______________________________
1. The cylinder's just the lifesystem; the 'Drive it sits on at rest, and dangles at the end of a long cable from in FTL flight, is roughly bell-shaped. The crudity of the whole assemblage gave rise to the Far Edge slang term "glockey" for a kludge. Hilarity ensued when trade between Earth and the Edge started up and they saw their first Austrian plastic.
2. Sure, we’ve got bars, have a drink! But woe betide the crewmember that shows up for duty noticeably Under The Influence or fails a random alk test.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

Another Day, Part 6

So the inner hatch opens -- and these are the oldest type on the Lupine, slightly-modded 1950s submarine-style, with analog gauges and brute-force idiotproofing: if pressure's not equal on both sides, they won't open. So it's not like, say, a door in your apartment. Not even close. Opening (and closing) takes some effort and time, the four dogs scraping free, the bolts backed out by the gear and wheel (which is why there's a nice little "trip bar"to hook your toes under on at least the floor side of such hatches and a grab rail on the side opposite the hinge, too, or you wouldn't be able to open them in zero-g) and then a nasty "schluck" as the seals break.

Followed by Jonny Zedd, puffing like a steam engine but grinning nonetheless. "Helloo, Bobbi! Have you got it figured out?"

I gave him The Look, slightly modified on account I was glad for the help. "Well, maybe, but we're gonna have to hang a 'scope on a couple of spots on the Analog-Digital Interface board to find out -- hey, did you close up the outer hatch? -- and it's behind the Logic and Control board. It'll take three hands just to get in there..."

Jonny turns to check the hatch; over his shoulder, I can see the bolts are engaged but the dogs, not so much. So he sets them and makes a production of closing the inner hatch as well. I understand his casualness but we are at the end of a long corridor. While it is unlikely we'd end up trying to breathe vacuum, I'd still rather not have to try.

While he's finishing, I start in on the #2 'Drive Amplifier: unlatch the "door" that carries half the meters, the "Christmas tree" display and local control buttons. The door is about four inches thick and on the back of it, there's another set of latches that free up the back panel to swing away, revealing the tops of two circuit boards, each about two feet square: Logic And Control on the front-panel side and Analog-Digital Interface on the back. ADI has a nice collection of connections, fiber-optic, coax, data bus and such and up in one corner is the fiber lead for Back Heat OK and the IC that buffers it -- the hard-to-reach corner, naturally. Oh, and if you shut the door assembly with the back unlatched, it hangs up on the cabinet and takes careful finagling to open again. At least it's not surface-mount. Something to be said for conservative design! However, there would also have been something to be said for not having to have my head stuck in between two very critical PC boards, unable to see the local control panel.

Jon's done and peers over my shoulder. "Which one is bad?"

"I don't know if any of them are, yet. Should be an IC test clip stored on the 'scope cart, would you get it?"

He rummages and finds it, a gadget like a wide clothespin, studded with test points; I clip it over the IC, allowing me to hang the scope probe on the pin I want to look at. Jon takes up position on the control side and steadies the door without having to be asked, I get the ground and probe tip attached and we both look at the scope. Flatline. The signal asserts high and the amplifier's off, so that's right.

"Hit BACK HEAT, wouldja?" I ask. (Have I explained the "heater" is the glowing filament inside the phantasmajector tube? It is. Except we can't see it, since the tube is made of ceramic and metal and nestled inside the tuned cavities, so the "glowing" part is kind of a matter of faith, plus the tube would not work if it didn't).

"You got it."

No change. "Try HEATER ON."

" HEATER ON. See anything?"

For an answer I turn the 'scope a bit so Jonny can see it. Fat nil is what there is to see.

"Is the tube even gettin' heater voltage?"

Fair question, the answer to which is behind door #2, the tall door that closes the larger half of the amplifier cabinet, behind which is the phantasmajector, on a cart and wrapped in trick RF plumbing -- and behind that, there is a Plexiglas window through which can be glimpsed the various meters operating at the -36,000 Volt Beam supply, including Heater Volts. I pop the latches and we take a look: 6.4 Volts, normal for this tube. So why...?

Sometimes dumb wins. Why ask why when you can just turn it up? I have Jon drop us back to BACK HEAT, take the screwdriver from my back pocket, and run up the Back Heat voltage (counterclockwise, I have to remind myself, which is not the usual direction of "up"). I see the 'scope trace wiggle, turn into a series of square-wave pulses and then steady at about five volts, just as Jon calls out, "Back Heat light just went green!"

"Drop to STANDBY and we'll get unconnected."

He does, we do, and in a trice -- for a certain large value of "trice" -- the IC clip is off, the halves of the control door are back together, the door's shut and we're in BACK HEAT once more. I punch HEATER ON and half a minute later, the FULL HEAT led goes green, too. Hey-la! And then it flickers. I say a bad word and inch the Full Heat voltage up a bit, too. "Five minutes, Jon, then we can hit the go-button and find out. Could be loud."

"Loud? You don't know from loud. Why, I remember the time Vanderhooven cut through a 208 line up here and about threw his cutters through the bulkhead...."

It's an old, familiar story but we've got five minutes to waste while the beast warms up. Might as well hear it again.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

Procrastinated Drain

     Ever put off an onerous task for so long that it seems as if you'll never do it?

     Yeah, me, too.  Eventually there's no avoiding it.

     The kitchen drain here at at Roseholme Cottage has been slow for quite some time.  An embarrassingly long time.  When Tam was out of town for work last winter, I managed to get it pretty clear with drain cleaner, hot water and vinegar (yes, the first on the list neutralizes the last.  You don't use them both at once).  It was still slow.  A little mini-plunger action seemed to keep it running acceptably, though the dishwasher did tend to back up into the sink.  That's not good.

     It was long past time for action when, Saturday evening, the drain decided to try for Dead Slow.  Got there, too.  I promised Tam that fixing it would be at the top of the list, only Sunday I had a lot of laundry and the writer's critique group, so how about Monday?

     Monday it was, and a firm date, too.

     So last night, I got home in fairly good order with a deli-counter baked chicken, plus a container of green and black olives and little blocks of feta cheese.  I added some Mezzetta Sweet Cherry Peppers* to mine, because they're spicy-sweet and it goes with the chicken and sides like polka and an acccordion.

     Dinner out of the way, it was time to get to work.  I changed into weekend clothes, put on thin nitrile gloves with heavy, long dishwashing gloves over them,† grabbed a nutdriver, a wire coat hanger and a couple of pairs of pliers and set to work.

     The kitchen drain passes above my ham radio setup and across nearly the width of the house on a diagonal.  Nearly the entire run is modern PVC pipe, glued together; there's a 90 at the wall and a pair of 45s to zigzag around the stairs before it meets up with old iron pipe, where a pair of 45s that lead into the waste stack.  There's a hose-clamped rubber coupler at that point, the only place you can open the drain after the sink trap.  Everything else on the ground floor feeds into the stack with short, direct runs, and they have all been working okay.

     So I started taking the coupler apart.  Nasty-smelling water started to drip.  I got a buckt under it and wiggling the pipes a little farther apart, at which point flow increased to the point where it seems like a good idea to just let it run before proceeding.  I warned Tam I'd be asking for her help pretty soon and watched the gray water run.

     And run.  And run.  It slowed and I moved the pipes farther apart, which sped it back up, but finally, it was slow enough that I yelled to Tam to "glove up, get a good flashlight and come on down."  (The waste stack goes up inside one wall of the office we share, so she was only about ten feet away.)

     When she arrived, I handed her a smaller bucket and had her hold it directly under the pipe connection.  Took the pipe connection all the way apart with some effort, and got even more water out.  I picked up the bright flashlight Tam had brought and looked into the stack connection.  It was blocked with...rocks?

     Nope.  Sludge: hard-water accretions combined with grease dish soap hadn't quite grabbed, accumulated tiny food particles, bacteria and...ew.  It looked gritty, like sandstone, only black.  The unfolded coat hanger helped rake out chunks of it into the bucket Tam was holding to catch the remaining water from the drainpipe and needle-nose pliers helped me fish out most of  the remainder. I was contemplating bending the end of the coat hanger into a more useful shape when Tam spoke up:

     "Hey, Bobbi?  This bucket is getting heavy.  And you might want to look into the end of the pipe, too."

     "You'd better take that bucket upstairs and pour it out in a far corner of the back yard."

     "I was planning on it."

     While she was on that and the pipe was dripping (still!) into the larger bucket I had on the floor, I moved around to look into the pipe.  More blockage, the same kind.

     It was starting to look bad.  How far back did this extend?  I bent a better crook into the end of coathanger and proceeded to slide it up the pipe, turn it and pull back out, bringing big lumps of the stuff with it.  After the first splashes, I waited until Tam came back down to hold the smaller bucket at the end of the pipe.  It took what seemed like forever -- probably five minutes or less -- until the pipe started to clear and the unfolded coathanger wasn't finding any obstructions even at full length.  I asked Tam to dump the bucket and fetch some blue shop "rags" (heavy paper towel) from the garage, which I had forgotten.

     I cleaned off the pipe and coupler and we put the back together, a fussy job, and I cleaned up the floor while Tam went to the kitchen to run water down the sink drain.

     So far, so good: the coupler's not leaking and the drain seems to be running well.  Tonight, we'll run the dishwasher when we're both home to deal with any leaks or backups.  Here's hoping!

     Cleaned up and cleaned up and cleaned up, floor and pipes and buckets.  Scrubbed the pliers, WD-40ed them, and washed and washed my hands, arms and face.  Disgusting.  But it had to be done.
_____________________________________
* My weakness for pickled vegetables (and raw, finger-food ones) goes back as far as I can remember; possibly farther, as my Mom used to tell of my three or four year old self begging a sip of cider vinegar and being given a taste, with the thought that it would cure me of asking for that stuff.  Instead, I gulped down a teaspoon-full and asked for more!

† There's a reason for this besides the "Ew!" factor of wanting a better barrier.  During clean-up, there's a point where you need to get rid of the filthy outer gloves but having something between you and ick-covered tools is still a good idea.  Start with two pairs of gloves and you're ready for it without fiddling around.

"So, Aunt Bobbi, What's A Newspaper?"

Our (formerly) local paper, the Indianapolis Star, continues to staff-slash its way to profitable irrelevance acceptable loss/service ratio inevitable, unstaffed collapse.

The newsroom was already a ghost town five years ago, the last time I saw the place. It's only gotten worse. Earlier this week, the Thing Formerly Known As "The Paper" (previously, "The Morning Paper") announced 81 positions were eliminated, pow, 62 by layoff and the remainder by not filling open slots -- and most of them were not "assistant janitor" or even "junior copyboy."

Y'know those "layers of editorial oversight" that sometimes fall down pretty badly on things techy and/or gunny? You're about to find out what errors they were catching; the Star's eliminated copy editors. --And still the sneering continues from the deck of the sinking ship: money quote, from a purported newspaperperson in comments: "'...copy editors' (that last line of defense which separates us from the animals in the blogosphere)." Um, dood? Your bosses don't care.

Long-time local print media veteran Ruth Halliday* has more and more. And -- aw, just go there and scroll back; it's fascinating and horrible in a kind of slow-motion train wreck way.

Over at Retrotechnologist, on the sidebar I bemoan visiting the newspaper building when they were hacking out the old presses and carting them away as scrap. They'd built a nice, modern, high-speed, full-color printing plant up across the city/county line, ditched a lot of the older pressmen and the building was never, ever going to rumble and shake to the sound of NEWS! It was going to be gleaming, up-to-the-minute and clean. ...And sterile and dull.

They (or, more correctly, their corporate owners) ripped their own heart out; they stepped way, way back from their product and never embraced the new forms (old-media websites almost uniformly suck and newspaper websites tend to suck worst of all); and what did they have left? How could they compete? Sure, taking the presses far, far away was just a symptom (and what the Star was running were, frankly, relics); but I think the same spirit that would've kept 'em close, no matter how awkward, would've worked to keep the paper afloat by coming up with product people would want to read, instead of subscribing out of habit and to have something to wrap garbage in.

They called me after I let the newspaper subscription here at Roseholme lapse and wanted to know why. "My cat died," I told them.

"How's that?"

"See, she would only pee on newsprint, and your paper was cheaper than buying it at the art-supply store--"

"But-- Culture! Sports! Weather! Current events! ...The funny pages. Er, page!"

"Mister, did you ever hear of a thing called the World Wide Web?"

I wish we had a paper that offered in-depth reporting and interesting editorials, that sent reporters and photographers to places no one else would or could go; even near the last, they ran a good series on Indiana's abuses of Asset Forfeiture that was worth reading. But those days are gone, Gannetted quietly to death--. Oh, it's "garroted," isn't it? I keep getting those two confused.

They only had one unique product to offer, in-depth, dependable local news and info, and they're giving up on it.

Will the last newsroom employee out please unplug the coffeepot and turn off the lights? And -- oh, yeah -- us animals would like to welcome you to our jungle.
________________________________________
*Lookie here, Ruth's politics and mine diverge sharply on a number of issues and we're probably both too sentimental about oldstream media; but she's an honest, old-school reporter and strings words together better'n most. And you'll note what her response was, when jettisioned by a panicking media dinosaur: she got herself a blog.

Another Day, Part 4

Starboard Stores and Cargo is a bustling place - think "Post Office," "UPS" and a touch of "You-Store-It." Portside S&C is more cargo-oriented, with admin offices, central control for their remote container-movers and so on, with just a small "post office" area; there's a smaller S&C office up and forward in passenger/commercial territory. But Starboard's where the action is and today was no exception. It's a happenin' joint, by starship standards. There were a handful of people in line at the service window; others were picking up inter-ship mail (there's a bit of it) at banks of mailboxes that wouldn't have looked out of place in any U. S. Post Office about 1960 and a few were at the gate for large parcels, picking or dropping off. Past the counter, I could see a couple of S&C guys - stocky, fit, young - and my friend from Security, working on one of the goofy overhead doors on the small storage areas for secure items.* She looked over, saw me and waved, then turned back to confer with the S&C techs. I didn't see anyone else I knew; so much for scoping things out!

The deck shimmied sideways, then rose and fell under my feet, or so it felt. A couple of the people in line staggered, one fell and everyone reached for the nearest handhold. "That's not a good sign," I muttered to myself.

The usual hubbub started up - "What happened," "You okay?" "Whoo!" and so on.

My friend turned and gave me the eye, walked to the parcel gate. "Hey! Bobbi, what just happened?"

When six feet of Security officer ask, you answer; besides, she's good folks. "I know as much as you, right now. Um, if I had to guess, the 'Drives fluttered and the ion engines compensated—" And then my pager went off, what a su-prise.

RX, NEED YOU AT DRIVE ROOM ASAP, CALL WHEN YOU ARE MOVING. And the Chief's initials. Uh-oh. "Gotta git, T. Duty calls."

* * *
The Chief didn't have a lot to add to his page and what I'd felt; the #2 Phantasmajector had glitched off, hard, and wouldn't come back up. The 'Drives were idling; we'd dropped subliminal our last short superluminal hop on approach was a few days ago and they were only working enough to aid the ion reaction drive in making our inbound trajectory. But losing a third of the output suddenly is a bit much for the automatic systems to handle. They'll damp the lurch down enough to keep the ship in one piece, is all.

When I reached the 'Drive Room (in the goofy little electric car, after a quick jog - rest - jog across a mile of slidewalk and sundry utility corridors), it didn't smell right. Too much ozone and fried phenolic. But nary an overload showin' on the Christmas Trees (red/green fault/normal indicators on each big phantasmajector amplifier). #2 was sitting in BACK HEAT; I punched the LOCAL button on the panel, then STANDBY. Drive Amp Cooling came up, fine, and...

And nothin'. Next step should be green lights for FULL HEAT, DRIVER POWER, and after five minutes, HEATER DELAY and READY. Should. Didn't. If it wasn't so loud I had to wear earplugs, I'd probably be hearing' crickets.

Greeeeeeeat. Time to open 'er up and that's not a one-tech job; there are too many ways to A) harm yourself and B) more importantly, damage the 'Drive. Called the Chief: "It's not an easy one, Boss; I'll need another pair of hands. Maybe Dave."

"Yeah? I need him here, we lost half the MUXes in that lurch. I've got Johnny Zed on his way."

Double great. But the surest way to get on the Chief's bad side is to whine; he's fond of pointing out that we're in the results business, not the excuse business. Besides, how dead could I get? "That'll be fine, Boss! Lookin' forward to it."

(TO BE CONTINUED)
___________________________
* There's quite a complicated little arrangement of springs, latches and weights to switch these overhead doors between zero-G and normal, 1-G acceleration function. It breaks frequently. I'm startin' to develop a theory about the real reason why HAL was so weird about the pod bay doors.

Better -- And Worse: The Plumber Is Merry

     Yesterday afternoon, I was feeling sufficiently better to head to the basement and find a fresh nightgown and robe.  There was a trickle of water on the floor -- well, the temperature had climbed way up and it's been raining.  I wasn't as much better as I thought and the activity ended with my fleeing back upstairs.

     Later, early evening, I was definitely better.  So, what about that water--

     What about it?  I went back downstairs to check. There was a lot more of water, a tricking rille from the furnace (which is up on blocks in a low-ish spot) over to the floor drain.  But the usual wall-to-furnace path was dry.

     It was dry because the water was coming from a wall a ninety degrees to the usual source, a higher patch of floor where I keep clothes on racks and hanger-rods mounted to the floor joists overhead.  I had to fold up the ironing board, move a defunct analog television* and relocate a few empty boxes before I found the source: the shut-off valve for city water was leaking.  Not around the valve stem, either, but a steady drip, drip, drip from underneath.

     Reaching down to touch the packing nut made the drip rate increase.

     This is the very first valve for the plumbing inside the house.  There's one in a (buried) valve pit out at the street but it takes a special wrench, which is how The Water Company keeps deadbeats from turning their own water back on after it has been shut off for nonpayment.  (Yes, of course there's a brisk, unofficial trade in the special wrenches if you know where to look.)

     I called a plumber around eight p.m.  I kinda ended up getting a little weepy -- hey, I was sick for three days!  Plumber (from Hope Plumbing, our local Zen philosopher-king plumbers; they took over the "fine, antique plumbing" work when Steck's shut down, and bless 'em for that) showed up ten-ish, took a look, tried the valve -- leaks like mad when you start to close it, which is typical -- looked at the meter base or setter, looked at the plumbing, and admitted he didn't have what he needed on the truck and wasn't going to be able to have it until Tuesday.  The meter base is of a type no longer allowed and will have to be replaced. (I haven't seen one like it, and I've lived n older homes most of my adult life.)  It's looking like $700 in parts and labor.  The meter base and inside shut-off valve appear to date from 1924, when my house was built, though they could be as late as 1940s. The leak is actually from a little venting widget, a part of the valve that is made in a way that dates to not later than WW II.

     The plumber looked for the curbside shut-off in the dark but it's nowhere to be found.  They tend to sink into the dirt -- actually, the dirt on the strip between sidewalk and curb slowly builds up and buries them, but the result is the same, you have to have The Water Co. come out and find the thing.  And they're closed for Christmas, too.

     So there's a little plastic shoebox under the leaking valve (it's too close the the floor for a bucket), and there's a steady one-per-second drip into it.  In about three hours, the box is as full as you'd want and ready to be emptied.

     On Tuesday -- if I am lucky! -- I'll spend the big bucks getting this fixed.

     It could be worse; there are plenty of people on this Earth for whom sufficient clean water to let the stuff drip out and pour down a drain would be insane wealth.  This is America, where even bad plumbing is a reminder of relative luxury, and we toss out working TV sets because they're in the way.

     Merry Christmas, Bobbi.
_____________________________
* A big, bulging-screen RCA easily twenty years old -- I wrestled it up the stairs (!) and it's on the patio under a big trash bag pending proper disposal.  Does it still work?  Probably.  Is it worth keeping?  No.  I said "big," but by present standards the screen is small though the device is large and heavy.

It's Late Night With Bobbi!

     Early morning, actually. I started early Saturday. The Data Viking visited and we walked through the Tri-State Gun Show, out at Stout Field National Guard Armory.  It was unusually crowded; it's generally more of a collector/hunter show but this one had a considerable number of what Tamara Keel calls "gen. pop.," the gun-owning Everyman.  This may be due to recent White House mentions -- or it may have simply been that the weather was unseasonably pleasant, upper 40s to low 50s and sunny, and people were motivated to get out.  We saw any number of interesting things and many familiar faces.

     One of the more interesting things at the show was a Spanish .32-20, a relatively close copy of a Colt that was made in Eibar;* another was a lovely nickle or chrome-plated High-Standard "Sentinel Deluxe" .22 revolver.  Fit and finish was unusually good and the (factory) plating was both bright and warm, which is why I'm not quite sure what metal it was.  The Deluxe versions look to run about $300; this was marked a dollar less.  I own three non-Deluxe Sentinels and it's a long time between paydays, or I would have been tempted -- this is still a "sleeper" among .22 revolvers, with very good stocks, light weight, smooth double-action and modern, large sights.  Other than the Deluxe, prices range around $200 - $250.  They shoot as nicely as any .22 revolver from Colt, Smith & Wesson or H&R and you'll have plenty left over to buy enough ammunition to get good with it.

     We ran a few errands and I was running out of steam; he left, I went to bed early and managed to get a full eight hours before my early shift.  Perhaps I won't have to fight quite as hard to stay awake.
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* Eibar was a major center of gun-making activity in Spain.  It's also in just about the center of Basque country, which has enjoyed at least a degree of autonomy in Spain since 1979.  Make of that what you will.

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.

"As I Was Travelling To Saint Ives...."

     Tam was out of town for work (and vacation) during nearly all of October.  The first week she was away, I cut the tip of my left ring finger at work as the result of gesturing carelessly near a ventilation fan with a coarse blade guard.

     The wound was small but fairly deep, right across from side to side, and it wouldn't stop bleeding.  After an hour or more of bandaids, pressure and ice, I went to the company's Official Doc In A Box...which also happens to be a pay-for-plasma center, which I prefer to avoid.  Official policy calls for a manager to accompany the injured employee, so off we went and the doctor superglued the cut in my finger.  Fixed just about as quickly as it can be described, all better!

     There's just one caveat: you're not supposed to get it wet.

     Waterproof bandaids do the trick most of the time.  There's one exception.

     The curtain rises on our stage almost a month later.  My fingertip has healed.  It's Tam's first morning home, after having arrived sometime in the night and fallen asleep on the couch.  I'm in the office writing, having already awakened, made breakfast and coffee, and left a couple slices of bacon in the oven.  She's barely up, and has shuffled into the kitchen, poured herself a cup of coffee and retrieved the plate of bacon.  She turned to get a sheet of paper toweling, and came to a full stop.  The silence was thick for fifteen seconds or more, then she called to me,

     "Bobbi?"
     "Yes?"
     "Why's there a rubber glove next to the sink with three fingers cut off?"
     I was a little distracted.  "Oh, that.  Yes."
     "No, why?"
     "Dog condoms?"
     "Ew, no."
     "An experiment?"
     "What?"
     "Um, for SCIENCE!"
     "No, come on, can't we just throw this out?"
     "Okay.  I cut my finger while you were out of town and I using a glove finger and a rubber band to keep it from getting wet when I wash my hair in the shower.  But they're not 100% water tight and they're hard to dry, so...."
     "I am throwing this thing away!"

     Heh. I guess it was a little disconcerting, at that.

Felony Stupid, At Best

     At worst, another loser hoping to get famous.  It's been all over the news -- a young man showed up at a Springfield, Missouri Walmart, videoing himself, carrying an AR-15 and wearing some kind of vest or plate carrier, hung with pouches.  He is reported to have been carrying "a hundred rounds of ammunition" (probably meaning three full 30-round magazines) and a handgun.

     Unsurprisingly, people in the store reacted with fear; even without the recent horrific attacks, the man was wearing what amounts to the "uniform" of mass killers as described in news reports.

     He does not appear to have made any kind of aggressive move with either gun and eventually another person, described as an "off-duty firefighter" (in other words, an ordinary citizen) drew his own concealed handgun and held the young fool until police arrived.

     Was he planning something terrible?  Was he just a nitwit with a grudge over Walmart's 21-and older limit on ammunition sales?  We don't know.  If he gets a good lawyer, we may never know for sure. 

     At the very least, his behavior was "felony stupid."  In most states, it's legal to open-carry a long gun; some states may require a permit and a few prohibit it.  It is, however, rarely a wise choice unless you're hunting, target shooting, or the like.  --Yes, in Miss Bobbi's Libertopia Wonderland, no one would bat an eye, but that's not where we live.  "Don't scare the average citizen" is a good approach to life; it was even before "Get Clean For Gene," but that's probably the best example.

     In 1968, both the incumbent mainstream Democrats and challenging Republicans were in favor of the War in Vietnam.  Democrat Senator Eugene McCarthy got into the race as an anti-war candidate, and all the hippies (well, most of them) were for him.  It was a candidate's dream, a ready-made pool of enthusiastic door-knockers and envelope-stuffers.  There was just one problem: Mr. and (especially) Mrs. Average American were not about the open their door to a dirty, long-haired hippie, even if they were registered voters of the proper party to support the Senator's primary bid, even if they had doubts about the war: hippies scared them up close and personal, while Washington D.C. and Vietnam were far away.

     The answer, of course, was a shave, a haircut and a clean white shirt.  Even a bath, if necessary.  "Get Clean For Gene" was a success.  The McCarthy campaign ultimately failed, impaled on the candidate's gaffes and loss of momentum when Robert Kennedy entered the race -- but not because his campaign workers "scared the normal people."

     It's a good guideline.  Push boundaries a little at a time, if you want to see something different in the world.  Don't commit "felony stupid."

     (P. S., the U.S. eventually left Vietnam.  Did those scrubbed-up hippies help "move the Overton window" on debate about that war?  Probably.)

Take A Class, Learn Some Stuff,

     ...Find out you might not be terrible at this "writing" thing.  The Indiana Writers Center, of which I am again a member (oops!  My membership had quietly expired and I had to renew) offers verious weekend classes and one that turns up every few months is "Flash Fiction," which is what I knew as "short-short stories," except now they have grown up to 750 words or less and have become High Art.

     This, for me, requires a kind of willing suspension of something, perhaps modesty or good sense, as I don't aspire to much past Competent Craft: stories people don't fall asleep or wander off during, with a healthy side of Having Not Abused Grammar Beyond Reason.  Then there's the whole Room Full Of Strangers thing, but heckers, I can out-strange eight (seven if you live in a really big or very small city) of the next ten people you meet, so--

     So I went.  The instructor was both pleasant and pleasantly competent, one of those cross-disciplinary folks who see with both eyes what most of us peer at through a monocle. In her case, a career in Art History (paintings, that is, and how nice to listen to someone who knows who Magrite was and uses a Degas painting to illustrate a story arc) coupled with an insatiable itch to write.  Not to mention enough skill at it to be published and reprinted widely.

     She spent a lot of time describing and even more time showing examples.  We read aloud.  (One student demurred.  And I think I'm shy?)  We talked about the essential images in the stories, about using and having effects without being gimmicky, and by and by it was time for the part "we rarely have enough time for."  Writing.  From prompts.

     "Prompts?"  It's a germ; more how you will tell the story than what it is about.  Nothing specific.  For example:

     A. "Describe following someone: where, when.  Describe who you are following and the process of following.  Indicate your feelings.  Last of all -- why are you following them?"  And  Leatherstocking, Sherlock, Sam Spade?  You've got a whole 750 words in which to work.   

     B. "You're taking a journey  How do you feel about it?  What do you think will happen when you arrive?  Do you arrive?  What actually happens?"  You've got to tease a whole story from this, not just a vignette.  It's got to have a beginning, a middle and a satisfying end.  You're not supposed to ditch the reader on a train unless you can convince them that's how it was supposed to happen.

     C. "Describe two people in a relationship with emotional strain between them; then describe them in earlier times, in a romantic moment."  The instructor remarked that her students never wrote from that prompt.  Oh, lady: challenge accepted.

     I had my used Surface Pro* out already; I'd been working on something else when we took a break halfway through the three-hour class.  The other writers had pen and paper; I guess I'm just not romantic.  My handwriting is either legible or fast and thoughts are only too fast, so for me, keyboard beats pen.†

     Okay, I was cheating.  I already had my people; we last met them on the Hidden Frontier, watching a meteor shower and listening to the evensong of the trap-door weasel in the outback of Kansas II.

     300 words later (call it one double-spaced typewritten page or just over), I looked up.  "It's too short."
     The instructor shook her head.  "No such thing.  Is it a complete story?"
     "I'm pretty sure."
     "Then it's long enough."
     We had fifteen minutes left.  I spent it tightening things up, replacing a too-specific reference with a generic one and catching at least half the typos.

     Come reading-aloud time, one of the other students led.  She had a nice start, but it turned out to be a "Why I can't write this assignment" piece.  Disappointing, as she clearly could have -- if she'd felt she could.  Writing is an act of immense hubris -- no, really, it is -- and sometimes you daren't look down.
     Another student had an image-rich "journey" story; I won't crib his work here but it was nicely jarring.  He hadn't quite got an ending but you could see it through the fog.
     Yet another had picked up "following," and borrowed noir tropes only to subtly subvert them.  Good stuff.  Alas, he was not sure about how to end his, either.  --Hey, you try writing narrative haiku and see how far you get. The shorter, the more difficult.
      I lucked out: I knew my people.  I knew their situation.  I wrote 'em.  When my turn came, the story was well-received.  Even the instructor had only a little (well-founded) criticism -- and she does fiction-as-art, and gets paid actual money for it, too.  Okay, the typical pittance short fiction gets,‡ but in lit'ry circles, what you usually get paid in are extra copies of the book or magazine and the occasional coup-counting scalp.  Good enough to get paid for it means when she talks, I listen.

     I'm going to polish this thing and shop it around.  Why not?  And I'll file off the serial numbers and use it as the basis for a bridge piece in the Hidden Frontier "Stardrive Engineer Bobbi" arc.  There's nothing at all science-fictional in it but I can crib from my own work and I've got nearly 450 words for world-building and miscellaneous background.
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* Surfacii (Surfacea? Surfectants?) are crazy-expensive new, at least looking from my pocketbook.  Vendors on Amazon offer used ones, clean-slate and checked out, for a third or less the price.
 
† Which means, of course, that keyboard >> sword.  It's all fun and games until some literal-minded type lumbers by and clonks you over the head with a plowshare.

‡ A recent survey set the average writer's income from short fiction at $7500 a year.  Pretty sure Steven King responded to the survey, so unless you're him, you might want to keep your day job.  Black Mask is gone; The Saturday Evening Post is gone in all but name.  New Yorker does one short per issue, the SF mags are still around, and all of their slushpiles are immense.  Past that, you'll be getting the price of cheese sandwich or less, if you get published at all.  (You can still read Black Mask online.)

Another Day, Part 8

(GO TO BEGINNING)

Maybe I should have said, "Not that complicated to misdiagnose?" One of the two; while anticipating the Chief's wrath, I went back to put the cover over the Isolated Supplies board and looked directly above it to see a pair of fat filter capacitors, screw-terminal ones, with the screws, well, gee: a bit unscrewed. Hanging at angles, the lugs that should be held down are instead supported by the wires that connect to them and looking a little burned. It's not all that obvious if you're looking in from the outside but from less than a foot away, how did I miss it earlier? And how long has it been this way?

"Hey, Jon, I think I've found something -- hand me that Philips, willya?" Sure enough, the screws are wobbly-loose and for no good reason. We haven't changed out the components or the subassembly they're a part of since this PA was installed, five years ago. Whatever, those caps are across the heater supply and the connections should be tight.

So I proceed to torque them down and Jon and I button up the cabinet, set everything back to normal and power it up with no signal applied. Whoa! Heater voltage is way up there, much higher than it had been. A good sign but we had to shut down, open the back and change to a lower voltage range. Fine, twenty minutes of my life I didn't need anyway.

On the next go-round, things are looking up: voltage in the right range, though we still have to run it a little high to make the control logic happy, and the no-signal Phantasmajector current is So Fine. I trip the Buffer Amp breakers back on, applying signal, and start inching up the power control, 10 percent, 20, 30...all the way up full idle, 50 percent, with the other two PAs throttling back automagically to Almost Nil. It holds. It's happy. Phantasmajector collector current is right on the money. You know what this means? It means the Chief is probably not gonna put a lot of effort into his, "This could have been done a lot faster and more directly" lecture, is what; also we're now that much less likely to find ourselves as-good-as marooned between very distant here and even more distant there, the avoidance of which is what we in the starship biz like to think of as a Plus.

It's a funny feeling, a combination of relief, wonderment and the sincere awareness that this is something I should've caught weeks earlier.

But there's no time to bask in it; Jon looks at his watch and proclaims, "Hup! I should've been gone half an hour ago!" And he's gone in the time it takes to work the hatches. From the sounds of his egress, I'll find the outer hatch undogged.

I reduced the number 2 final back to nominal power and turned to number 3, which hadn't been getting near 100 percent. 80's the rated gotta-fix-it level; I pushed it to 50% with front-panel controls while the other two throttled back, then reached for the intercom handset and punched for Drive Control. "Gary...Oh, Eric? Get ready for a little glitch, I'm gonna drop the signal to two and one so I can run three up a bit more. Can you give me a fifty, no forty-percent duty cycle on the 'Drive waveform?"

"Okay, that's pre seven, isn't it? Yeah, there it is. Standing by."

"On my mark....mark," as I reached out and flipped the IPA breakers for 1 and then 2. Number 3 power came up but stopped at 75%. It felt as if the deck wavered ever so slightly underfoot and I heard Eric mutter, "...c'mon," then he spoke up, "Pre six. Fifty percent."

"Thanks, Eric, sorry 'bout that. Hold on just a sec--" I took the tweaker screwdriver from my pocket and turned up RF LIMIT adjustment on #3, watching the output rise past 80...90...95. "There. I'll turn it down and you can go back to normal once I get the other two back on, ready?" as the power fell low enough to get the other two finals online and Eric replied, "Whenever."

"Okay, on go: three, two, one, go." He must have hit the switch while I was flipping circuit breakers; there was hardly a glitch as we came back to three finals online and nominal idle signal to the CLASSIFIED. I took another couple of minutes getting the outputs balanced.

With all three stardrive PAs back to normal, I pull a set of readings (nice little vampire software looks at the remote control data and grabs it right into the utility portable), add notes on the problem and the solution and readings from the five meters that don't have telemetry outputs, the ones in the High Voltage section we read through a transparent window (heater voltage of course among 'em), enter that in TASKER, forward a copy to the Engineering redundant docserver, print it out (hard drives crash; active storage gets EMPed or bit-flipped by stray cosmic rays) and add it to the Maintenance Log clipboard. Might as well give the next tekkie -- or me, if I'm sleepy enough -- a head start. Plus there's still the Triennial Inspection. Never know exactly what logs and such they'll want to see.
#
Securing the drive compartment takes awhile. All the tools, books, materials and supplies have to go back in their clips or cubbies. I do a quick walk-through, including checking the side compartment where the RF driver for the aft octet of ion maneuvering engines resides and on back along the pressurized sections of the CLASSIFIED and their connections to the huge power dividers and waveguides that feed power to the 'Drive projector array. It all looks nominal and I've just time to take the official Engineering electric car crawling back down the service passageway and bop up to the Engineering Shop to sign out. The main room's empty. According to TASKER, Handsome Dave finished his day in the portside squirt-booster bay, initializing some new escape pods (coolness!) but bedarned if I know where the rest of the guys are off to. I hear a chair creak from the Chief's miniature office and walk back to the open hatch. He looks up from his monitor and almost smiles, "Nice catch on the Number Two HPA, Bobbi."

Yowza. Caught me off guard. "I don't know why I didn't find it sooner, Boss."

I hear footsteps and voices behind me and the Chief harrumphs, turning back to his paperwork with a louder, "See that you do in the future!" as Conan the Objectivist and his usual shift mate enter the shop, hauling some blamed bit of dusty, malfunctioning electronics.

Hmmmmm.

That's 8-on for me, a sweep through Drive Control to trade an inquiring look for a reassuring nod with Eric on my way out of the Tech Core and onto slidewalks, five miles back aft to my apartment.

Where I lay awake and wonder about the mystery Sheriff Mike told me to ignore. Who wanders into the hot stuff unaware? It's posted in five languages and simple cartoons, repeatedly, way before you're in any danger. And it's not something that could be done to the victim; she had to get there under her own power.

(TO BE CONTINUED)