Oh Won't You Be My Neighbor

One of the biggest differences between our life in North Idaho and our old life in Scottsdale are the neighbors.

Sure we had neighbors in Scottsdale, the kind that came with high fences and nods. We even knew a few names but we weren't really, well, friendly. Everybody had their own lives and not much in common and the entire neighborhood was transitory.

Not so here.

Our one set of true neighbors, the only ones who live here year round anyway, introduced themselves and gave phone numbers the day we moved in. They also noticed the AR, and said we should go shooting sometime.

4 months later, and they drop in on a fairly regular basis their (grown and almost grown) kids included. They ask to borrow tools and the canoe, I get the occasional technical help with the lawnmower, that kind of stuff. We live next to some really nice, well-armed ex-canucks.

So today the entire family is in Coeur D'Alene running an errand and Chris decides we need to go to a hobby shop. He wants to introduce the kids to model rocket building and wants a pre-made kit to gauge their real interest.

Fast forward a few hours and we've got a launch pad set up on our newly mowed lawn with the kids waiting anxiously. We have our acre and a half, the acre next door that consists of the community water access, and our neighbor's acre and a half, and lake right in front of us. Plenty of drop zone for the rocket.

The contractor who is rebuilding our stairs tomorrow comes by to drop off the materials so we invite him and his son to watch.

Then I call out to the neighbor. He still has guests left over from his family reunion this weekend (4 RVs camped out on his lawn, quite a sight) so he and his grab lawn chairs to watch the action. We warn him the rocket may land on his side; he's good with that.

13 people, 6 on our lawn and 7 across the fence, watch the rocket reach an estimated apex of 1000 ft, and watch it fall. The nose lands in our yard, the body in the community lot.

And everybody is well entertained.

This is what passes for entertainment out here, and I'm glad we get to share it with such great people.

Mel

Cross-posted to We Few

Lost Another Friend I'd Never Met

On July 19th, 2010, Charles H. Sawders known widely as "Straightarrow" to the gunblogger community passed away.

Charles Sawders
65, of Doddridge, Ark., died Monday, July 19, 2010, in Vivian, La.

Mr. Sawders was born March 4, 1945, in Bakersfield, Calif. He was a pipe fitter and a Baptist.

Survivors include his wife, Cathy Williams Sawders of Doddridge; three sons, Hunter Sawders of New Jersey, Christopher Sawders of Brownswood, Texas, and Steven Turner of Doddridge; three daughters, Shelly Bowen of East Dorsett, Vt., Veronica Jenkins of Comanche, Okla., and April Doeppers of Omaha, Neb.; his mother, Fran Boon of Duncan, Okla.; one brother, Jack Boon of Florida; one sister, Cherri Quinn of Portales, N.M.; 12 grandchildren; three great-grandchildren; and a number of other relatives.

Services will be 10 a.m. Friday at Olive Branch Methodist Church, Doddridge, with the Rev. Walter Burnett officiating. Burial will be in Olive Branch Cemetery under the direction of Hanner Funeral Service.

Visitation will be 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. today at the funeral home.

One can visit the funeral homes registration book online.

I have been talking with, and participating in this community with, Straightarrow since something like 2002 or 2003. A good man. Strong opinions well argued. 

Rest in Peace Straightarrow.

Brewing some home made BBQ sauce...

Which is filling the house with the smell of tangy savory yumminess.

No Better Shanty Band...

Listening to Great Big Sea at the moment. They make me smile.

A Random Pop Culture Thought

Dawn Wells was WAY hotter than Tina Louise

A Refresher Course in History and Moral Philosophy

I was reminded of something today, which caused me to think very hard about an important experience in my life...

And I realized something...

Though I've only read it fully twice, and haven't read Robert Heinleins "Starship Troopers" in a hell of a long time; there are still to this day, entire passages that I can quite word for word from the book (and many others that I remember nearly word for word).

...but...

I had to think very hard about when the last time I read the book was. Thinking back, I realized that it was while I was in college, more than 15 years ago.

note: in my mind it's not "more than 15" it's "almost 20 years ago", but my wife says "Saying 'almost 20 years' makes you sound old... You aren't all THAT old"....

Actually I think either 16 or 17 years I don't remember the exact date, just where I was living and who I was living with at the time... which narrows it down sometimes between late '93 and early '95. 

Of course, the fact that 1993 qualifies as "almost 20 years ago" induces a certain cognitive dissonance all by itself. 

I've read and re-read many Heinlein classics since then of course (most recently re-reading "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" and  "Time Enough for Love", late last year and early this year); but for some reason I haven't read "Starship Troopers" or "Strange in a Strange Land", in almost 20 years.

 At any rate, time to correct that. I've got the complete works of Heinlein as ebooks, I'll start re-reading it tonight... It's pretty short I'll probably be through it by tomorrow. Maybe I'll re-read "The Sixth Column" another of my Heinlein favs (And a short one) that I havent read in years (though more recently than "Troopers"... I think I re-read it about 7 years ago, around the time I moved back to the U.S. from Ireland.)

Woo Hooo, I got my Hulu Plus invite

Now, to see how much of my cable/satellite bill it can offset for $10 a month...

For those of you who don't know, Hulu, is a video streaming service that includes recent episodes of most of the current shows from ABC, NBC, Fox, and Showtime, plus many movies, full season archives of many older shows, and other non network TV shows.

The difference between regular Hulu, and HuluPlus, is that you get more episodes, including full series run archives for many shows, many in HD; and you can stream them to your iphone, ipad, computer, game console, internet connected BluRay player, and internet connected TV.

Now That's a Change

So, we just received the first electric bill for this house in our name (the lease originally had our landlord receiving the bill and then billing us, but that was inconvenient, so now we're getting billed directly).

Wow what a change!

Last year our bill from SRP from June 14 to July 13 added up to $540.68. Our current bill from Avista for June 15 to July 14 is... $184.30.

Just a little bit different.

The breakdown:

Time Period	July 2009	July 2010
kWh	4451	2264
Cost	$488.87	$179.70
Cost Per kWh	$.1098	$.0794
Monthly Basic Charge	$12.00	$4.60
City Tax	$8.26	none
County and State Tax	$31.56	none
Total	$540.68	$184.30

Yeah... the cost of living is a little lower here huh...

Oh, and though we don't have air conditioning in this house, the numbers here include the cost of running the hot tub 24/7 (1500 watt heater, plus pump).

And of course, without the ever increasing AC cost through the summer, our bill should be about the same for July (actually July 15th through August 14th), through September; vs. the $700 per month we paid last July, August, and last September (yes, our June-July bill was relatively LOW last year).

The savings from one summer month alone, is enough to buy heating oil and firewood for the whole winter.

Oh and now we have an idea of how much generator we need to buy for the inevitable winter blackouts.

Cross-posted to We Few

A little bit of insight into why the Democrats are losing so badly this election cycle...

It's because they don't realize that the elements of their "turnaround plan", are what is causing them to lose in the first place:

From Mark Halperin, writing in Time:

"What has kept the easily panicked denizens of Capitol Hill from open revolt until now was a shared confidence that there was still plenty of time to turn things around, and that the White House had a strategy to do just that. (Comment on this story.)

The two-part scheme was pretty straightforward. First, Democrats planned a number of steps to head off, or at least soften, the anti-Washington, anti-incumbent, anti-Obama sentiment that cost them the Massachusetts seat. Pass health care, and other measures to demonstrate that

Democrats could get things done for the middle class; continue to foster those fabled green shoots on the economy, harvesting the positive impact of the massive economic stimulus bill passed early in the Administration; heighten the contrast between the two parties by delivering on Wall Street reform and a campaign-funding law to counteract January's controversial Supreme Court decision.

Use all of those elements to contrast the Democrats' policies under Obama with the Republicans' policies under Bush, rather than allow the midterms to be a referendum on the incumbent party. "

.... Soooo their plan is basically "Wow, it didn't work, let's do it again only HARDER".

What a work of utter fantasy and self delusion...

We call this "believing your own bullshit".

See, the Democrats really honestly think that "the middle class" is all for their program, and they just aren't executing well enough etc... That the mass of voters frustration is about their inability to get things done.

In reality, the mass of voters are CHEERING because they caren't getting things done. They don't WANT this healthcare boondoggle. They don't want more restrictions on free speech. They don't want more government control and interference in their lives and their businesses.

The far left, and the idiot youth (and yes, they are useful idiots as far as the Democractic political machine is concerned) are disappointed (At best) and riled up (at worst) by the Democrats failures, but they make up a small minority of the voting electorate (no more than 20 percent, and most years a lot less). Most of them are reporting to pollsters that they won't be voting this time around.

The Democrats don't realize, it's not their lack of execution, it's their program itself that's killing them; because "the middle class" recognizes that said program is really going to hurt them, to benefit the non-taxpaying class, and the Democratic political establishment.

"The Middle Class" recognize when someone is trying to steal from them, they don't like it, and when it comes down to protecting their wallets, THEY VOTE.  It's why whenever the left wants to pass some big social legislation, they have to lie to the people and tell them that it won't increase THEIR taxes, just those rich fat cats up the hill, and those evil corporations...

Only they've beaten that horse to death now, and the truth is obvious for anyone who wants to look. The lefts agenda will directly hurt the wallet of everyone who actually pays taxes.

The people may be apathetic about most things, and they may be uninformed and unobservant about politics... but they aren't stupid. Hit'em in the wallet, and they will hit back.

The Anger, it is MINE

Grrrrrrrrr....

Last month, my web hosting provider screwed up my billing on two of the TWENTY SIX accounts I have with them (I manage a bunch of web sites, domains, hosting accounts, mail hosting accounts etc...).

For some reason they were trying to bill to a very old credit card that expired in 2006. Now, they had been successfully billing me with the default method on file, for all my accounts, for over ten years now; and were still doing so for my 24 other accounts... I'm not exactly sure how or why this happened now, but OK, it did.

They called me up a few weeks ago, and over the phone we supposedly fixed it, so that ALL twenty six of my accounts, products, and services, were being billed in the same way.

That was the 8th of July.

Yesterday, the 18th of July, they deleted the accounts, AND THE CONTENTS OF THE SITES, without notifying me. I found out this morning when I got to a domain parking page instead of my personal web site (which up until yesterday, had been up continuously since 1993)

Apparently, they have been trying to re-bill the same old expired card, again and again, since our phone call.

It only took me over an hour on the phone for them to figure out this is what they had done. Against their own policy (which is 30 days past the first notice, which was 6/28), and somehow against the rules of the automated system.

I've been using this company for over ten years. I have spent, at this point, tens of thousands of dollars with them (both personally, and for all the websites I manage), for hundreds of different domains, hosting accounts, mail hosting accounts, certificate management, and related services.

This is NOT how you run a business. How you handle good customers, who spend lots of money with you. When someone has 24 accounts with you in good standing, and for some reason two of them are not, you find out why and you FIX IT.

After an hour on the phone with them, and their distinct lack of helpfulness, I informed them that I would be cancelling all my services with them, and that prior to the next domain renewal time for each of my 21 active domains, I would be changing registrars (it's a real pain to change registrars in the middle of the registration term, especially since I recently renewed a bunch of domains. 60 days on either side of the renewal can be considered a blackout period for a registrar change unless you want to deal with a bunch of extra crap).

So, now I need to find a new registrar and hosting company, find backups of everything, reformat everything how the new host needs it formatted, report... Then I need to change my mail hosting, and deal with the most likely several days of buggy mail transfer.

One of the sites has NO direct backup because it was built in a CMS. We'd have to rebuild the CMS elsewhere (presuming it was supported on that host) then reconfigure it to match, then import the old and incomplete exports... It just isn't going to happen, that site is lost for good.

Oh yes, this is going to be fun. Really.