nobody asked…

My cold/flu/cough/aches/pains/allergic reaction/whatever the hell it is, has been dragging on for over a week now and I am sick and tired of it. Some of the symptoms have dwindled over the last couple of days, but the persistent dry cough and the run-down feeling keep hanging on… and on, and on, and on.  A couple of folks who have had something similar say it takes 10 days to 2 weeks to get completely over it. So if that holds, I’ve got a few more days to go. Great!

And now Roomie has it. She’s been dragging around all day, grouchy, upset about everything, and everytime I would say something to try to console her she would snap at me that she was really sick. Like I had been faking it all week and had intentionally infected her with this deadly ailment. Do I look like the neighborhood terrorist? NO — Don’t answer that…  She finally told me she really didn’t feel good and was grumpy… Duh… No shit, Sherlock…

So, we have here a couple of grown adults who are supposed to love and comfort each other, both sick beyond repair (or so it feels), both sniping and snapping at each other, and a cocker spaniel who is smart enough to go to another part of the house and stay the hell out of our way.

Ever take so much DayQuil and NyQuil and throat lozenges that your taste buds no longer work? Roomie made a big pot of soup this morning and let it simmer all day. Thought it would do us good. And maybe it will. She always makes good soup. I’ve had two bowls of it and couldn’t taste a thing. My taste buds, not her soup…

When I was a kid, my Grandma always threatened to hang an asfidity bag around my neck to ward off colds and such. It also was thought to speed recovery. I smelled asfidity only once in my life (one of my country cousins actually had a bag of it on a string around the neck) and you do not soon forget it. The French call it Merde du Diable, which in Tennessee translates to The Devil’s Shit. It is made from the resin of the root of the Asafetida plant native to central Asia from Iran to Pakistan. How the foul smelling crud ever found it’s way to the rural South in the  early 1900s is still a mystery to me. And how anyone could ever endure wearing it around their neck long enough to know that it prevents illness — go figure. Unless it was just that the strong sulphurous odor kept everybody away, healthy and ill alike.

But nothing else has worked, not even my traditional half vodka, half grapefruit juice with heavy dash of salt. So, since Grandma’s been gone for nigh on 50 years, if anybody knows where I can get some asfidity, let me know. If it doesn’t cure the crud, maybe it will at least keep Roomie at bay…

(Footnote: Asafoetida has been widely traded and used for several thousand years. Primary uses are medicinal and as a cooking spice. An excellent resource with much interesting information is here.)

Isn’t this fun? Isn’t fun the best thing to have? Don’t you wish you were me? I know I do. — Arthur

It’s hard to believe it has been 25 years since Dudley Moore charmed us with such an endearing performance in Arthur. Equally difficult to think that 14 four years have lapsed since Dudley died in 2002. He gave us many laughs, many poignant moments, and left us feeling good about ourselves. Thank you, Dudley!

It does the soul good to occasionally drop by and read a bit of Thoreau’s Journal. The entry from Septermber 25, 1851, resonates as much today as it did on the edge of Walden Pond in 1851.

Some men are excited by the smell of burning powder, but I thought in my dream last night how much saner to be excited by the smell of new bread. — Henry David Thoreau

Trudging through life, coping with the day to day challenges and turmoil, we sometimes need a reminder that we too can survive, even beyond all odds. Those little reminders come in various packages. Sometimes it’s a child with a serious affliction who is happy and smiling; other times a warm, frisky puppy that has not a care in the world except to please you; and occasionally it will be the totally unexpected. Such was the case one day last week.

Arriving back at the office in late afternoon, something caught my eye as I walked from the car to the office entrance. Pausing, it took a few seconds for it to register that I was seeing an empty styrofoam cup in the center turn lane of the the busy street out front. There was a push of air from heavy traffic  in both directions, causing the little truncated cone to roll in an arc first one way, then the other. The occasional draft of a larger vehicle would move it up and down its chosen lane a few feet. Then more rolling in arcs around its new pivot point until another large draft moved it a few feet forward or backward.

Becoming quickly mesmerized, I stood for perhaps fifteen minutes watching the struggle, the close misses, the movement to and fro. At some point I realized I was cheering the little cup onward in its quest to survive against the impossible odds of the multi-ton monsters bearing down on it from every side. And then it occurred to me how much like life that is. Wishing the arcing traveller well, I went on into the office. Half an hour later after checking email, washing up, and shutting down for the evening, I emerged to find the cup still at it. It had moved about 20 or 30 feet down the turn lane and looked to be slightly damaged, but not enough to keep it from rolling and arcing, performing its death defying dance. After watching a few more minutes, I had to leave the cup to its unique brand of madness, knowing full well that it would be flattened or completely gone come morning.

Imagine my surprise and delight to arrive back at the office the following morning to find the cup, not squashed by one of the many behemoths that passed this way during the night, but intact, resting gently on the grass a few feet from the street. It had a nick, but was otherwise alive and well. I thought of placing the cup back in the middle of the turn lane for another go, but decided it may prefer the resting place it had chosen and worked so hard to reach. Then I was tempted to take it in and leave it sitting on my credenza as a reminder. But such an adventurer needs freedom and would not fare well in captivity. So I left it where it was.

I do not have the cup, but I do have the memory of its struggles and the lesson it taught, which was the same as the message delivered so fervently by the late Jimmy Valvano:

Never Give Up!… NEVER!

This arrived in my inbox recently from a friend who is also a self-employed system and network consultant. After a good chuckle, I sobered quickly as I realized how true this actually is. Even with a couple of college degrees and 20 years of big corporate experience prior to the entrepreneuring, 17 years of rowing my own boat basically disqualifies me from every known job. Guess I’ll just have to keep on keeping on…

Some people are simply not employable. They’re called small business owners.

Cheney does not sleep. He waits..

Not since the Kylax landed at Ojivi had there been a siegzum this powerful and enduring. At first sighting, it was thought to be just another ewakr like they were accustomed to back home on Psuqma. Only when it had built in strength and endured for seven annlms did Radoor declare that this was more than just another ewakr, but a fully developed siegzum.

Since Radoor had become Deputy Usakqno of Ojivi, he had seen only one siegzum, and that was during his visit to Tozzsn. He remembered the devastation and the ensuing reconstruction. The cost was enormous, estimated by the wwqqq staff over at Edslihx, to be in excess of 4 billion archgigc, with well over 10,000 lives lost. Could the almost depleted coffers of Ibepr endure another such drain? Radoor knew there was no answer to that. All he could do was wait for the siegzum to pass and then begin the kighmp job of cleanup and assessment.

Thinking of this with a glum face, Radoor suddenly burst into a wide grin and had to restrain himself from laughing out loud at the sisicdjx that had popped into his head. He was safe here in the wbpic, and on their last stop at Ujsodul, they had taken on a full load of dijiubk, enough to party right through the siegzum and out the other side. That pleased him immensely.

You know how Blogger uses that cute little security thingy when you leave comments, requiring you type into a box the random letters you see in a graphic representation of random letters. This of course is to prevent automated robot spam comments. I’ll leave it to you Blogger users to let us know if it really works, but it seems as if it might be an effective defense.

Anyway, I started noticing that some of the random sets of characters did not seem quite so random . They could pass for Anglicized renditions of words from various non-Romance languages. Or words from one of Larry Niven’s Ringworld SciFi books. Or something I might utter in my sleep while speaking in tongues after too many grande margaritas. So, I started keeping a list of those that were interesting, hoping to pen a piece utilizing my strange collection. The nonsense above is the result. Readers’ interpretations welcomed. Please be kind…

May Radoor have murrst on your qaxywulk…

Anyone who has lost track of time when using a computer knows the propensity to dream, the urge to make dreams come true, and the tendency to miss lunch.                      – Tim Berners-Lee

Sir Timothy John “Tim” Berners-Lee, originated the World Wide Web and remains director of the WWW Consortium, which oversees the internet’s continued development.

A couple of days ago I wrote of the mysterious divergence of gasoline prices in close proximity. On the return leg of that trip I made a watering/dewatering stop in Cookeville, TN. I had not planned to buy more gasoline until I got back to the point closest to home where I had seen the $2.37 price a couple of days ago. But I could not pass up what I found at a big Exxon station just off I-40: $2.16/gallon!

Later, to my surprise, 40 miles further down the road the price was still $2.37. Arriving back in the Nashville area I found prices still hovering in the $2.60s.

All comments to the previous post are noted and appreciated. But under the circumstances, none of those really explain what’s going on here. Some of the comments from other parts of the country and planet suggest this is not a local phenomenon due to some hillbilly having not learnt good ‘rithmetic. A 20 - 25% price swing across town cannot be justified by any amount of magic and smoke and mirrors.

Aine Livia is incredulous that we might complain about our gasoline prices as she reports that on her side of the Atlantic, “Petrol is £5ish pounds a gallon.” That converts to around $9.50 US/gallon. Johnno reports Australian pricing at the pump of around $3.55 US/gallon. Let’s not get too bogged down in whose definition of a gallon is used or what the exchange rate is on a given day or whether the grades and quality of gasoline are equal. That would distract us from the issue and the real questions at hand. Almost ten dollars per gallon in the UK? I would see a bicycle or moped in my future. Or a mule…

US gasoline also seems like a bargain when we compare with a couple of other common purchases. Bottled water, which has been the rage here for a few years, costs from $.79 to $1.39 depending on brand (snob brands with French sounding names always cost more - go figure), type of store, size of bottle, and other factors. Crunching the numbers yields an average cost per ounce for … water … at about 10 cents. This comes to an outrageous $12.80/gallon. That’s the average. For the bon vivant varieties, $15 to $20 /gallon would not be unusual. Makes gasoline at $3.00 or $5.00 seem cheap.

Also consider the average on-the-go cup-o-joe. The lousy coffee served in strofoam or paper cups at convenience stores and fast-food joints costs on average about 12 cents/ounce. This puts coffee, bad coffee mind you, at over $15.00/gallon. The rich arabica blends and roasts served in better restaurants at $3 to $5 per cup (refills gratis, of course) could easily top $30.00/gallon.

Hmmm… wonder if my Subaru Outback can be tuned to run on French Roast…

The crude hand lettered sign alongside the street said Kids Sale. I did not stop to check them out since I’ve already gotten two of them grown and am too old to do it again…

Before leaving Nashville on Friday morning I noted that the prevailing price for regular gas at the majors was about $2.69. Feeling quite smug about having paid $2.54 on Thursday at a new station still on their promo pricing scheme (Hook ‘em in once and they’ll come back again…), I took off toward Knoxville, about 200 miles up I-40.

About forty or so miles up the road, around Lebanon, I made a pit stop, not for petrol, but to pee and get another coffee so I would have an excuse to make another pee stop a little further up the road. Getting out of the car, I glanced at the sign… $2.37! Holy Halliburton, Batman! Alas, my batmobile was not yet thirsty.

Cruising on toward Knoxville (also known as The Permanent Interstate Construction Zone That Would Not Go Away), the towering signs at each exit announced lower and lower prices. Finally I filled up at a large Shell station at Kingston, about 30 miles out of K’town, for the throw-away price of $2.23.

Arriving at my destination, the Hallowed Ground of College Football, prices had crept back up a bit to about $2.39. Here’s my question: How in the name of OPEC can gas prices vary so much, almost half a dollar per gallon, in the same state from the same distributors within minutes of each other? Either we’re being gouged back in Music City or the stations elsewhere in the state are taking such a loss that they’ll soon be out of business.

To complicate the picture, just this week I heard or read one report that gas prices up east and on the left coast were still at or over $3.00 per gallon. Admitted, I’m an engineer and don’t understand a lot of things. But I also have an MBA, studied Keynesian economics, understand the basics of supply and demand pricing structures, and have some knowledge of regional, national, and international trade and distribution systems. But I don’t understand this…

It’s that time of year. It’s my time of year.

I’m off to Knoxville for the annual Gator-hater love-in. The game will be televised Saturday at 8:00 EDT. Look for me … I’ll be the one wearing Orange… May blog from the Holiday Inn… May not…

If you do nothing else meaningful for the rest of the day, spend your next five minutes reading Keith Olbermann’s “tribute” to 9/11 and Bush. This is very powerful stuff! Just a quick sampler to whet your appetite, as Olbermann speaks of the hole in the ground where the World Trade Center towers once stood:

Five years later this space… is still empty.
Five years later there is no Memorial to the dead.
Five years later there is no building rising to show
with proud defiance that we would not have our
America wrung from us, by cowards and criminals.
Five years later this country’s wound is still open.
Five years… later this country’s mass grave is still unmarked.
Five years later… this is still… just a background for a photo-op.
It is beyond shameful.

 A hearty head nod to Rain for posting this where I could find it.

(Click graphic to see larger version)