Absolutely beat. Had a bit of a crash this afternoon and after this it's bed/movie/milk/cookies, and alarm set to give me plenty of time to get ready for tomorrow morning. Last and thinnest crescent moon will be rising at about the time this picture was taken, just to the right of Venus which is seen on the left. It will be colder! Hope it's not windy. More pictures here.

Guess the State (2)

Actual headline:
Camera Thief Snaps His Own Mug Shot

Poll #1485014 Guess the State (ep.2)
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 10

And your choices are:

Well I would say un-fucking-believable but unfortunately it's all too. Dig... the Meade ETX-90 has a pretty shitty mount. It's one-axis, no bracing, and the click of the shutter on the camera is enough to cause enough vibration to make it kinda unusable for real sharp photography, as evidenced by the trace pattern on the right. So, I've been meaning to put together a really nice solid base for it when I had the time and opportunity. I also had the perfect base to work with, a chop saw with a burnt out motor but physically in perfect condition. Dig, solid as hell base, two degrees of freedom, locking mechanisms, and plenty of nicely machined holes for bolts etc etc. So today in anticipation of tomorrow morning's thin crescent moon rising I went to haul it out and DO. So where is it... gone of course, thrown out by my dad for no reason whatsoever other than some stupid irritation, groundless, which he no doubt fed as much as possible for again, no reason whatsoever. HAS to go! Never mind that there's a TON of old iron in the bush, never mind that it was just sitting out of the way under the steps in the barn or something, not like there isn't a hundred and one other pieces of defunct this and that kicking about. Nope, that had to go, and it didn't matter that I'd laid claim to it since he said he was going to throw it away... because of a $20 burnt out motor.

This is the same guy who has on numerous occasions threatened to throw my mom's computer away, because he doesn't like her spending time on it. He's also threatened to throw mine away because the fan noise was irritating him... and he "couldn't figure out how to turn it off." It's an electrical appliance... you hit the off switch... or you unplug the fucker, fucker. This is the same guy who gave away my only childhood toy, if you could call a top of the line Olympus microscope a toy, because I "wasn't using it anymore", never mind the fact that it's mine, and in addition to being very valuable has great sentimental value to me. Gave it to my nieces, as if two pre-teen girls with little or no interest in the sciences would appreciate it. Oh I got it back, but it took long and firm threats of hell to pay if I didn't. Beautiful isn't it, the limits of optical microscopy, you can't get better. (Two - Three) This is also the guy who gave away the arc-welder I had been using basically just to try and gain points with a neighbor or something. When I called him on it, pointing out that the first thing I did the spring I came up here was to haul all the iron out of the bush to finally do these sculptures I'd been planning before I got ill, the answer was the same... "Well you weren't using it." Um... yeah well, I was kind of in the hospital in a coma!!!

After spending 30 years or so as a junior-high shop teacher he quit... two years before retirement and took half pension... because his hips hurt (boo-fucking-hoo). Do the math and figure out how much half of his total pension amounts to over the space of 20 years. It's the difference between an ok retirement for my parents and a nice comfortable one. Call it a quarter of a million dollars over those twenty years! My mom of course didn't quit her job as a lab-tech at the senior high-school she'd worked at for almost as long... or her evening job at the Taxation Center during tax season. Had to pay the bills of course, his bills.

I've tried to think of something positive to say about him but I can't. Nothing. He's never been anything other than a loud bellowing self-centered asshole who's specialty seemed to be ruining everyone's plans on a whim and making their lives miserable.

And now to work, a lot more of it because of yet another one of his acts of mindless stupidity.

So did the second round of bidding for my 2010 vacations just now.
I have the 4-9 of March off to be in Toronto for Furnal Equinox, I have days before and the week after for What The Fur? off, sadly, I couldn't book any time off for Condition in August. I would have liked to go, but unless something magical happens, it looks like I won't be able to :(

I still have a couple of floating days off to book in the future once I know what FurFright's dates are for 2010.

Guess the State!

Priest gets beaten by a Marine for thinking he was A mugger ... a homosexual ... a terrorist

Poll #1484076 Guess The State!
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 18

This happened in...

Your answer is here!

Just take a moment.
Just one moment.
And remember.
 

For them.
For us.
 

You lose nothing.

 

Gracie deserves better than this.  Crashed at 4:30 am or so and got up at 1:00 pm (!)  Still tired I decided to lie down for a while and take Gracie out for a sunset at the flats.  Woke up just after sunset.  Shit.  Have to switch to a daytime schedule somehow.

If I'm feeling this way after only a week alone and with at least another before I have any company, it does not bode well for this winter.  When was the last time you went for two weeks without talking to anyone or having any contact at all?  Why do we do things?  For rewards of course, of one sort or another.  We all have a built-in sense of fairness which rebels against the world when we see others rewarded and ourselves not.  If we're not rewarded we have to reward ourselves with that sense of self-satisfaction of doing.  Behind that though there still is that sense that we'll be rewarded with praise when we show off our efforts.

So what happens when we're not rewarded?  We go on strike of course, like dogs refusing to do a trick when they see another dog getting more for the same trick.  Futile of course, because one cannot go on strike against the world.  I've gone my whole life without any rewards whatsoever, in every area and every situation.  I know every psychological trick in the book and use them to keep myself going but sometimes it's just not enough.  My usual answer to the question "Why bother" is "Why not?" and so with that in mind I'll get moving soon.

Rewards.  This person sells 11x16 prints for $325, with matte, 20x30's for $700.

And then there's this.

One step back and a bloody stupid delay.  Power on the sewing machine.  Dismantled foot-pedal control, all fine, has to be contact inside the machine somewhere, much larger dismantle needed there of course.  Bloody hell.  Guess I'm going to hand-sew those gloves, probably better that way anyways.
( How to photograph invisible things... )</div>

Argh!  LJ ate my post, and my draft.  Wasn't much though, just saying I'm working and that it's been insanely um, cloudy wet and cloudy for a very long time!  Finally broke, sun is out!  Me mum picked up this huge bone for Gracie, don't know where, obviously the full thigh bone of something big.  It was hilarious watching her wrestle and get all unbalanced from this thing, and there's no doubt that life is good.

Bone?  That's not a bone...
THIS is a BONE!

------

I want an External Hard Drive for Christmas, a RAM up grade, Windows 7.... and.... and.... whatever else I upgrade on my poor lil laptop! Ooh... and my own internet! ........ bah!

So...
I do my 6km walk into work.
I start logging into my stuff, and log into my scheduling application.
...
to find out I actually have the day off today.

I feel dumb.

But it IS a Monday off :P