You know, I've lived in Delaware all my life, most of it in Slower Lower. One thing about this state that can't be denied........ we have chickens. I mean everywhere. Even our state bird is a chicken. Somewhere in our past it seems cock fights were popular, and the toughest bird of all was the Blue Hen Chicken. Hence, the mascot for the University, the Fighting Blue Hen. Now, don't get me wrong. I like chicken as much as the next guy. Fried, baked, grilled, cordon bleu.

Two doors down and across the road are chicken houses. The property next door used to have chicken houses. Next to tourism, I think chicken farming is our number one industry; at least, it seems that way. And, of course, along with the benefits of rural life we sometimes have to deal with the natural by-product of raising livestock.....olfactory speaking. Okay, usually it's only bad when the wind blows in our direction. I'm all right with that, everyone has to make a living, and it's part of local color that certain... odors... have to be dealt with once in awhile. I grew up here. It's fine, really.

However, too much of a good thing is, well... too much. Today, it was warm. Short sleeve shirt warm. Gorgeous day warm. Slight breeze. So naturally, this is the time when the local farmers decide it's a good idea to spread all the aforementioned by-product that's been fermenting in the chicken houses all this time all over the fields... . all of them... everywhere. And hey, let's not stop at simply packing it up in a truck and spreading it. Let's liquefy it and spray fifty feet or more in every direction. Tonight would be a great night to open the windows and let the breeze blow across the bed. Tonight would be a great night to slumber in the yard swing. If only the stench that surrounds us wasn't so damn tangible. I swear, the air seems to have physical properties that can be touched. I've been in this county almost my entire life and I never remember it being this bad. It's like someone had a wholesale event on the stuff, and every single farmer in the county decided it was manure spreading day.

I went to WalMart tonight and bought air conditioners. Vive' la controlled environment.... and clothes pins for the nose.

Looking Back at the Future

So, when I was a kid I had this vision of the future. It was the '60's and I lived in a college town, which meant my babysitters were basically hippies. My friends and I would watch Route 66, Daktari, Gilligan's Island, Laugh-in, and if we were good we got to stay up for Star Trek. We'd go to the community pool, play in makeshift forts, write and deliver a block newspaper (only one edition as we had to hand-write each one), and look forward to the wonders of our future. We knew there would be flying cars by the time we had kids, and that there would be a button for everything. We even designed streamlined cars that looked like bubbles with wheels, some of them retractable for flight. We dreamed of three dimensional television (in color, no less), communicators and transporters, not to mention computers that talked. We also were absolutely certain space travel would be something the common man would do when we were adults.

For some time, I was disappointed throughout my twenties. No flying cars, no true three dimensional tv, no transporters or communicators... and no space flight for the common man. What happened to the future? Where did we go wrong? Now, of course, I realize it was happening all along. I'm typing this on a device smaller and at times lighter than the Trapper Keeper I used to carry around in school. I'm on the sofa, transmitting this data to the world, basically, without wires. On my hip is a flip phone, my own personal communicator, and people who don't have these are oddities around here. All I have to do is talk to it and it finds the person I want to talk with on the other end. I don't even have to push buttons. I don't have a flat screen television, but I could if I would spend the money on it. A device slightly thicker than a picture frame that I can hang on the wall and watch television programs, movies when I want to on demand, surf the world of information at my fingertips.

Earlier today, I was outside a department store waiting for my lovely to come out with less money, and I swear to you, one of the streamlined, bubbles I drew when I was a kid pulled into a parking space. The side doors slid open slowly without anyone touching them, and a family poured out and began walking toward the store. The doors to the vehicle deliberately slid closed on there own as the family happily made their way toward eliminating disposable income. At that point, my communicator buzzed me, and the device I had clipped to my ear, without wires, filled with the voice of a coworker.

Yup, the future happened while I wasn't looking. I'd like to live another 50 years, please. I bet those flying cars, transporters and regular space travel are right around the corner.

Twitter, Milk and Psycho-Fish

So I'm getting heavy into the Web 2.0 thing. Non-conformist that I claim to be, I'm such a damn follower. The latest thing I'm getting hooked on is Twitter (www.twitter.com). Listening to Leo too much, I guess. The way it works is, you just type in what your doing at that moment. Checking back from time to time you can see what others have been doing too. Sounds dumb, huh? Well, most addictive things are, I guess. But I don't care. You can see it here on the blog until I get tired of it. I've been playing around with lots of new things lately. I have Skype, as I said before, but no one else I know does. Guess that makes me an early adopter.... or just sad.

Have you ever noticed how calming milk can be? I have a self-proclaimed home-psychologist friend that will tell me I'm just reminded of suckling my mamma's teat, but then he thinks about that sort of thing all the time anyway. Think I'll discount that one. The house is in bed at the moment (except for this 46 year old geek), the TV is off, Alanis is playing in my headsets and I have a coffee mug full of milk. Seems to help soothe the abscess. And if you know that milk doesn't ease the pain of an abscess, just keep it to yourself. I enjoy self-delusional episodes. The mug itself is something my sister-in-law bought for me some years ago, and it's my favorite. It's a Bald Eagle soaring over a wetland landscape that she found at the zoo in North Carolina, and this thing has held coffee, hot chocolate, alcohol, tea, Thera-Flu, orange juice, water,,,,,,,,, and milk. I think milk is my favorite. Of course,,, this could be the Vicodin talking.

I'm house-sitting this week for some friends who are out of town. They have the absolute coolest felines. I mean it. These guys never tell on me when my friends come home. All I have to do is give them a little extra kibble and a scratch, then let the party begin. They even clean up after me. It's like I was never there. Now, the psycho-fish are a different story. These little demon-spawn appeared as though by magic one day in the fish tank. And they never die. I've never seen anything like it. When I walk past the tank, the follow me... in a school... all of them... all 12, no wait, 18,, jeez... 20 now. My friend feeds them blood worms (I think because they prefer human blood, and this is the only way to appease them) by actually squeezing them inside the tank. Not me, Jack. I sprinkle them from a height of 6 inches. The water fairly boils from the ensuing frenzy.

Tomorrow, I'm taking back-up.

Mouth Pain, Toy Anticipation and the Magical Properties of a Fish Tank

My mouth hurts. Seems I've developed an abscess in the lower right gum related to what's left of a doomed back tooth. It's ultimate demise is scheduled for 10 days from now. Meanwhile, I have some pain medication that's making me think twice about dealing with the pain. As long as I go to sleep, I'm fine, but I can forget about trying to actually function while under the influence of the evil drug. It seems to make my left leg shorter than my right, and causes the fluid in my inner ear to play whirlpool games. Think I'll stick with the Excedrin and antibiotic.

We're watching the grandbaby tonight, and I've made an amazing discovery. When the bottle doesn't work, the tv doesn't work, the annoying sing-along toy doesn't work, and pulling the puppycat's tail doesn't work,,,,,,, there are the fish. This child spent almost an hour talking to the fish tank, evidently resolving the important issues of the day. Tonal inflections indicate a very deep conversation between the finned ones and her, punctuated by the occasional pat on the glass for emphasis and camaraderie. A few jokes were shared, as evidenced by the polite giggles, and I'm pretty sure I was the butt of one or two since she looked askance in my direction once or twice with a knowing chuckle to her swimming friends. This wouldn't worry me so much if I wasn't going to be caring for some psycho-fish for friends who are out of town this weekend. I just know there's a tiny cellphone in the castle where the pleko hides.

Speaking of phones, I've decided I'm going to attempt to further decrease the long-distance bill (currently being handled with a prepaid card, but still a bill nonetheless). I've downloaded Skype and intend to teach my better half to use it to call her family three states away. Of course, first I'll need a headset. Hence, the latest excuse to purchase some geekwear. Enter the Plantronics DSP-400 Digitally-Enhanced USB Foldable Stereo Headset and Software. How's that for a mouthful. The cool part about this little transaction, other than the fact I got it for 90 bucks less than it was selling for last week... oh,, and the free shipping.... is the ability to use this dandy little toy while playing online video games. After all, with virtually free long distance she's not going to be on the skype phone all the time, right?.... RIGHT????

Stop laughing.

Farewell Astoles

Tonight, I came home to find my oldest son's cat, Astoles (pronounced Astahleez) resting peacefully in my front yard, just beside the road. He had been clipped by a car sometime earlier in the day. A phone call to my son, and he was here before I had his friend buried.

My son got Astoles from someone as a tiny furball when he was living in an apartment that was not, shall we say, pet friendly. At one point he ended up in our care while his new master found another place to live. One day, presumably in our driveway, someone ran over his tail. A trip to the vet and close to a thousand bucks later, Astoles came home neutered with a bobbed tail, and he had been here ever since. He already had the markings of a Manx, and the stub just completed the picture.

I'll forever believe this cat convinced the puppy she was a cat as well. He and the puppycat wrestled and played all the time. Just yesterday afternoon, when my son and grandkids were here, the two of them were in puppycat's crate, nipping and playing. The word "cagematch" was uttered. She's gonna miss the wannabe manx, sooner or later. The other cats just don't play like he did..... they whip her ass.

The epitome of cool, he had grown solid and was definitely Alpha in the pecking order; even if he chose not to lord it over the rest all the time. When he had enough, he let it be known. He was, however, generally very loving and very tolerant of his humans, despite our flaws and inconsistencies, and I'll never forget that. There's a hole in the family now that won't fill anytime soon.

Rest well Astoles............ and farewell

The Crud, Vista, and a new fruit

*sniffle*......

The most dominant creature on the planet is The Common Cold. There's really nothing common about it anymore. I've had this one for about two months now. Sometimes it's there, kicking my ass and evident... *sniffle*...... and sometimes it's just under the surface, like a gentle undertoe you can't see. But it's still there, all the time, never goes away. Today, obviously... *sniffle*..... it's in full effect. Coincidentally, Winter has finally decided to make an appearance over the past week. Isn't cold weather supposed to kill bugs? On with the post.

I've used Microsoft Operating Systems and compatible hardware since I started this personal computing experiment some fifteen years ago, and I've always hungered for the latest and greatest updgrade for whatever I was using. This is no different for Vista. I've got disks around here with the ISOs for RC1 and RC2 that I played with on this laptop before tiring of the debugging software giving me dialup-like response time. It was okay. I mean, it was pretty. Umm.... okay, it's not pretty enough for me to shell out $400+ for a copy of the final release, but I'll be okay if ever and whenever I get a new laptop or PC, right? Of course, now I'm hearing about all these DRM measures in place that are a result of Microsoft's cooperation (grudging?) with the megalomaniacal Hollywood corporations to pander to their paranoia over High Def digital content piracy. Oh, and let us not forget the semireliable Windows Genuine Advantage. Probably the nicest thing I can say about it is the instant search and IE7. Oh wait, you don't really need Vista for IE7. And, the best thing about IE7 is that it has finally adopted the features I like in Firefox and Opera. Still, the next PC, right?

On the hardware front I decided I wanted to move my webcam from my PC to my laptop today. That's going to be a bit of a hassle. See, when the puppycat was more of a puppy, she thought wire and conduit was very very tasty, ableit a bit deadly. So, I spent an afternoon under my desk making some sense out of the rat's nest assembled there. There's the power cord for the PC, the power cord for the monitor, the DVI cable for the monitor, the USB cable for the mouse, the one for the printer, the power cord for the printer, the connector for the keyboard, the peripheral USB cable for the digital camera, the connector for the speakers, the connector for the mic, the network cables from the router to the PC, the work laptop, this laptop, power cords for each laptop, etc, etc, etc. Anyway, now they're all bundled and wrapped and tied off and safe from the puppycat........and I'll have to undo half of that to get the webcam. And, it's dusty under there which just... *sniffle*..... compliments my cold.

Tonight, I'm looking at Macs.

Perspective

So it was one of those days. The best part was walking my puppy tonight. This is one of the rare moments I'm forced to be patient. We have a 15 foot retractable leash (pink,,, hush, I didn't pick it out), and she's only an eight pound bundle of energetic fur. Seriously, I think she's a cat trying to pass, but that's another issue entirely.

Point is, the best way to handle this little chore (the dog as well as the walking of said dog), is to stand still and let her wander, ponder or run around me. I usually do this while listening to a podcast or some random music on my iPod. Tonight, however, I turned it off and just listened to the rest of the world. The first thing I heard was my own breathing, and it slowed while I stood. This brought the rushing of blood in my ears down to a trickling stream and expanded the realm of sound, allowing me to hear the wind through the trees behind our place. Some of these old pines protested softly as they gave in and swayed, leaning closer to my neighbor's yard to eavesdrop on a very soft conversation between two of the neighbor's kids over the fence, only recognizable as voices in casual dialogue. I recall a time when these voices were very soprano and imature; a startling contrast to the deepening tones now weaving into the growing symphony. The constant whisper in the background slowly solidified into traffic on the highway a mile away, adding a wash of rhythm reminiscent of waves on a shoreline. High above spreading a canopy of distant roar in it's wake, a passenger jet is carrying it's load of human baggage, spreading they're diversity to destinations unknown. I began to think if I stood there long enough, I'd hear the solar winds racing by this planet, and I actually looked forward to it....... but then the puppycat was bouncing around my feet, whining something about how cold she was. We came back in.

Amazingly, the 23 things I dragged home from work were no longer in my house, and the person I love most in life was waiting for me. Trading 23 problems for 1 joy is a good deal, I think. Of course, now she's in bed, the TV has some inane movie playing that I've seen a dozen times (I can't turn it off,,,, it's an evil device that demands constant power), and I'm blogging while AC/DC plays Hell's Bells in my ears. I wonder what I was so stressed about earlier?

Life really is good. Thanks puppycat....... I guess you can stay.