The Peristaltic Testator

Mores, eh?

Sun, 19 Jan 2025 18:01:58 GMT

A couple of years ago, I saw this cartoon. It changed my life.

I never realized that the original song the artist was playing with was so damned stupid. The lyrics of that Dean Martin tune simply didn't align with the theme. (Which admittedly might have been the point, but whatevs.)

Since then, I've been expanding the more literal repertoire. Just to get this crap out of my head (which will simply allow me to concoct more), let me dump them here.

The first follows the comic's simple formula.

When an eel in the reef
Bites your butt with its teeth

That's a Moray…

My next was going to be the singular of "mores," but that turned out to be "mos", because Latin, of course it was.

Moving on beyond a simple substitution to novel constructions with an approximate pronunciation.

Say the "love" word down South
With a Northerly mouth?

That's amor, eh?

Again…

When the Stooge pictured first
Fires a long laser burst

That's a Moe ray…

I've got about three more ideas, but reducing the concept to a couplet proves difficult.

comments

Proof in Pics!

Sun, 14 Jan 2024 00:24:40 GMT

Hey, folks! The heated feeder is a hit with the birdies! I put it up Thursday night, just before sunset. That night, it started getting cold. Really cold.

Here it is Saturday afternoon.

Embiggenation

That was not the temp when I pulled the outdoor thermometer from its housing to hold it before the camera. It got up to 29˚ before I realized my goof. I set it on a branch above the unit to get a better reading of how cold it really was:

Moar Embiggening

And the birdies love it! It was quite full two days ago; you can see from the first pic how much the level has fallen. Soon the test tube will have its bottom exposed.

In the near future, I'm going to scout out possibilities for improvement, like:

• Dyeing the interior of the tube a translucent red (for coolness sake); and
• A thermoswitch that will activate the bulb only when the temp dips into freezing territory.

As per that last one, I know some things like this exist. I was once tempted to get a pipe wrapping that only kicked on the thermo elements when it got to 33˚F. If something like that exists in a simple in-line plug form, that would be a worthy upgrade.

comments

Testing, Testing

Thu, 11 Jan 2024 23:07:29 GMT

It is finished! The heated hummer feeder! Right now, I've got it going for an hour simply to test high temperature of plain water after a continuous hour.

I know I promised pics, but… it seems we've lost the data cable for our camera (I know, we still use such things, being old). Instead of gripping graphics, I'll just summarize construction ( with words. )

comments

Feeling Projecty

Sun, 07 Jan 2024 23:11:25 GMT

I know, I know, nothing much happens in this space. That will soon change, as I have been projecty.

Last year, the year-round population of hummingbirds kept us entertained through the winter… until it got too cold. Their nectar (well, the sugar water I mixed for them) froze in the feeder.

This year, I will not let them perish with hunger and cold! Soon, I will show with pictures the

heated hummingbird feeder!

comments

Kitty End-of-Life Need

Thu, 09 Jun 2022 21:59:40 GMT

For those in the greater Seattle area, I have a desperate request.

My poor old cat——we don't know how old, but the evidence is mounting that she is very old, probably pushing 17——is dying. Slowly and painfully dying. She is all but paralyzed, unable to move more than a twitch in four days.

I thought it would be easy to call up our vet and arrange euthanasia. Not so much. They need me to make an appointment; and they are booked up for a week. Getting in earlier would mean "emergency" charges (more on that later).

I called around, did local searches. There are in-home vets that will help peacefully end your pet's life; but damn, they are expensive. (And, for some unknown reason, the one that called me back had "no availability;" I have no idea what that could mean. I suspect I sounded poor.)

And right now, due to some shit timing, this is an expense I cannot afford. In mid-March, I had an on-the-job accident; since then I have been reduced to 60% of wages until I return to work.

Last week, I had reconstructive knee surgery; I cannot walk on, let alone put pressure on my knee, let alone kneel on it to even pet our poor suffering kitty. Given the reduction in wages, my savings will be all but depleted by the time my knee should be able to let me work again… and that's without the cost of helping kitty die peacefully.

Does anyone know of affordable euthanasia (my limit right now is $200) in this blighted, cruel, God-forsaken area?

Addendum: Kitty finally rests in peace… no thanks to the veterinary community that added 6 painful days to her suffering.

comments

Fixin' Stuff

Wed, 04 May 2022 21:24:43 GMT

So, years ago, a friend gifts me an old video console, an XBox 360. It was totally unexpected, and yay!

His deck was pretty kitted out with memory and lots of controllers and remote batteries. Ah, but batteries…. These are most likely NiCads, Nickel Cadmium, cells. NiCads, like their more recent relative the Nickel metal hydrides, use a basic electrolyte, have nominal voltage of 1.2 per cell, and… tend to self-discharge. That last is to say if you don't touch them with a charge every now and again, they will get bored, lose voltage over time, and wind up flat dead.

This is not to say they are dead, per se, but that they can't be charged with a typical charger, which should not just dump volts into them without feedback, lest the battery actually be dead. If that happens, the current which doesn't flow into the bad cell will flow into the better cell; but the voltage of one cell is half the voltage of the pack of two cells.

That means the better cell will get force fed current meant for two cells.

That is not good. Not good at all.

Overcharged batteries can swell in size, heat up dramatically, even burst into flames. So good chargers will avoid shoving amps into a flat battery that still has some life in it, which means you need to jump-start that battery somehow, or kill the voltage regulation system somehow, or do something somehow to get the darned thing charged.

( So, what to do? )

***

Something else fascinates me.

Now that we as a society use videos and blog posts and other online references to fix stuff, shouldn't we take a page out of the scientific method and figure out a citation protocol?

Seriously, the first two videos I embedded above I categorized as "Unhelpful." Again, they kinda work; but I can't recommend them. Those embeds, though, give those two vids exactly the same credit as the "Slightly More Helpful" video. To do the record justice, I really should have an option to both embed and rate videos, lest the algorithm elevate the provocative but destructive repairs… just like it does the provocative but destructive social issue videos.

I guess to make any progress on our repair videos, we (again, as a society) first have to wrest control from the entities who care only to make a tidy profit on our watching habits, no matter how efficacious the advice contained therein.

comments

Phone Curious

Tue, 18 Jan 2022 04:25:27 GMT

Okay, I'm looking for advice from you folks who have experience: I need a new cell phone.

Here's the thing: I really, really can't stand to have advertising on it. If I search for something, if I download something, it can't come with any ads. Because of this, I have not used my "smart" phone (Galaxy Core Prime) for "surfing" or, really, much at all, simply because I could not figure out how to do so without adverts.

So: are there any ad-free options out there? Anything?

TIA,

—Perry

comments

Thu, 12 Nov 2020 20:32:50 GMT

Okay, I gotta vent.

I don't go to F@c#Book often. Once or twice a week, tops. And I'm usually in and out after a few snarky comments.

Why? It is overly automated. Just minutes ago, for example, I saw a notice that a former friend was "tagged", that is, mentioned by name on the site. Afterwards, the thing said "[Dude's name] was with [Name of Dude's Partner]." Just months after an event, the Dude's Partner been given photos of the event itself:

That's the Dude in question being fished out of Portage Bay by the Seattle Police, soon, no doubt, to be brought to the morgue and properly tagged, just as the FB fuckers claim. Unlike their claim, though, the Dude's partner will definitely not be "with" him.

Hey, F#c$s! When are you going to recognize that people die!?

(I don't know why DW images are so low-res. I'll try to wade into F@c#Book again and get a better copy.)

comments

This Will Only Make Sense to Fans of Discworld

Mon, 29 Jun 2020 21:21:16 GMT

In sixteenth century in the British Isle, the concept of a woman as the ultimate source of authority disquieted many religious thinkers and writers. In Scotland, John Knox, later the founder of the Presbyterian Church, famously complained about the coming "regiment" (or rule by) of Mary Stuart, soon to be Mary Queen of Scots.

The 1558 pamphlet with which he vented his spleen was titled "The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women".

The Wiki here.

That kind of explains the characters, doesn't it?

(I picked this tidbit up not from the Wiki, but from David Starkey's Elizabeth: The Struggle for the Throne (HarperCollins Publishers, 2001, pp. 110-111), where I also learned that in their personal letters Henry VIII referred to Anne Boleyn's breasts as her "pretty duckies".)

comments

How Soothing

Sun, 10 May 2020 19:55:38 GMT

From a F*c&Book entry, I just learned the Spanish word for "dildo" is "consolador" (in masculine; feminine is "consoladora", though I have no idea what would distinguish the two).

Still, what a nice word, cognate, it appears, with "console":

Comfort (someone) at a time of grief or disappointment

That's all. I just like the sentiment.

comments

Ever Feel Gung Ho?

Sun, 29 Dec 2019 21:02:22 GMT

Wonder why? Credit in part goes to Rewi Alley:

Rewi Alley could lay claim to many things——one of his biographical entries lists him as "writer, educator, social reformer, potter and Member of the Communist Party of China"——and is also undeniably the most famous New Zealander ever to have lived in China. He lived there fore sixty years, becoming a mythic figure in his own lifetime, an intimate of the Chinese Communist leaders, a man regarded by his admirers as almost godlike and by his enemies as a charlatan, a traitorous propagandist, a libertine, and a pederast.…

But in 1937, when the Japanese bombers struck targets in Shanghai and their troops overran the city, he fled. He went west, settling initially in the city of Hankou on the Yangzi. Here, the following year, in the company of Edgar Snow and his wife, Helen Foster (who was known as Peg Snow and by her nom de plume, Nym Wales), and the secretary to the British ambassador…, Rewi Alley sat down to help create a revolutionary new industry.

Since by now the Japanese either controlled or had destroyed almost all of China's major manufacturing capability, and since the Chinese military response to the mighty invading army was based on guerrilla tactics of harassment and surprise, why not organize guerrilla industry too? Why not build hundreds of factories which were light, flexible, and perhaps even mobile; which could operate in the far beyond of inland China; and which could simultaneously provide low-paid work for the locals and low-cost output for the national good? The idea——no one is entirely sure who at the meeting came up with the concept, but supporters of Rewi Alley like to say he did——was immediately and widely accepted as entirely brilliant. The Chinese government chipped in some money; international appeals were launched to ask for more; and an organization known as Indusco, or the Chinese Industrial Cooperative (CIC), was formally set up.

By happenstance the first two characters of this new organization's Chinese name were gung ho——and though there was no linguistic connection, the two words were very soon afterward adopted as a motto by a friend of Alley's in the U.S. Marines. They became the battle cry of this marine unit, and such were the unit's successes on the battlefield that the phrase——much like "Up and at 'em!" or "Banzai!"——slipped into American English lexicon.

(Simon Winchester, The Man Who Loved China, Harper Collins, 2008, pp. 111-113.)

An effort to redistribute manufacturing becomes a company whose name becomes a battle cry.

comments

Cause and Effect

Tue, 24 Sep 2019 00:58:03 GMT

So, if someone has a brainchild, was that the result of a mindfuck?

comments

The Inherent Bias of Profitability

Fri, 06 Sep 2019 01:24:45 GMT

Hey, DW. Been away a while, I know. Stuff.

Quick catch-up: I have a job. It's one of the few with an active union, in which I am also active (a bit). And something has been bugging me of late.

I you are an employee of the company and you pay your dues, you can participate in the unions doings. You don't have to be whip-smart and legally-trained. You just participate. And that means you can submit motions for consideration and all kinds of other stuff. You can affect your workplace. I've done it myself. I was personally responsible for bringing a major contract violation to the attention of the local; my grievance closed that violating practice (which allowed a lot of people to actually take the vacation they earned).

But we are not paid, we union members. It's just a thing we can do if we are so interested. Our efforts to help people improve their working lives and even help people keep their jobs is just feel-good activity on our part.

( However… )

I just makes me sad.

comments

Homeless Starts With Cashless

Thu, 28 Mar 2019 01:41:03 GMT

Years ago, a friend dragged me to a new brew pub. I was underimpressed.

The beer was okay, sure. But they didn't accept cash.

Like, at all.

Since that day, I've felt like shoving a bill in that hipster mug and have him read the fine print on it, that part that says

THIS NOTE IS LEGAL TENDER
FOR ALL DEBTS PUBLIC AND PRIVATE

(I emboldened the bold, of course.)

So today I realized my paranoia and annoyance didn't go far enough. It may not be simply about increasing "safety" (by preventing robberies) or "hygiene" ('cause cash is icky): What if the end goal is to go upscale by decreasing poor people in the stores?

Eliminating cash disproportionately hurts minorities, immigrants and senior citizens, critics say.… Around 8.4 million US households, or 6.5% of the country, were "unbanked" in 2017 — meaning they did not have a checking or savings account….

Folks on the street trying to get enough change together for a hot cuppa or a sandwich won't be holding a card reader, after all. Keeping them out instantly classes up any establishment.

Which should be freaking illegal from the get-go.

comments

Maybe I Can Ask the CDC…

Sat, 16 Mar 2019 18:23:05 GMT

Congenital Diarrhea: Is that something that runs in the family?

comments

FINALLY!!!

Sun, 24 Feb 2019 20:18:25 GMT

From the NYT, some sanity regarding the completely screwed-up tax laws that are contributing to our growing un- and underemployment problem.

We may not want to tax innovation, but there is no reason to subsidize investments that are designed merely to take away jobs. At the very least, a tax on robots would force businesses to think harder about when and where to deploy them.

This advance of technology into the work-place need not be relegated solely to the robots, as the article notes. Simply define "robot" more generally as a piece of technology that makes a job easier to do and you find that this has been a problem for decades, if not centuries. I may get deep into the weeds of this problem… later.

comments

Art Is Never Permanent

Sat, 24 Nov 2018 02:37:16 GMT

So I'm yakking with the sisters after The Obligatory Feast™, catching up with family gossip. A cousin, always notoriously flat-chested and close to the older sister, had a bit of surgical enhancement a few decades ago that recently "popped" and had to be cleaned and replaced. (I saw her recently at a family gathering; the enhancement is hardly porn-worthy.)

I realized and said, "So that means that breast enhancement surgery has a rack life?"

comments

When Does This Shit End!?

Fri, 09 Nov 2018 23:41:41 GMT

Just last night, I got a message that literally caused me to howl:

Unfortunately, Nintendo will suspend all video streaming services on Wii - including the Netflix Channel - after January 30, 2019

So now I'm going to have to find a device that not only will play Netflix streaming, but that—and this is to me the really crucial element—not suck.

I'm not gauging my suckage on buffer speed, or screen clarity, or any of that tech rot. Rather, I'm judging based on the ease of selecting shows to watch… an area that has been all but completely abandoned by all but the Wii.

Seriously, have you ever tried to search for a title using a Wii?

Point to letter––>Enter!——>Point——>Enter!——>[Repeat as necessary]

By contrast, you know what the alternative is, don't you?

downclikclikclikcliksideclikclikclikclikEnter

…And that was just for the FIRST letter! Keep going to spell out the rest of the fucking name! Say what you will about the Wii, that it's games are all for kids (true), that other game makers had a devil of a time making games (also true); its interface was a dream.

Ah, the interface. Its view into the living space was simply an IR pair sensing the position for the end of the controller pointed at it. All the other crap loaded into it——the attitude sensor and the accelerometer, stuff that allowed you to wield a kendo staff or light saber——that stuff was just fluff compared to the simple point-and-play interaction with the screen.

And they're killing it. Not just for movies, but for all online use:

The Wii Shop Channel is set to shut down at the start of the new year as well, which means there will no longer be a way to purchase Virtual Console titles nor WiiWare games there. The Virtual Console is still a feature the Nintendo Switch [The Newest and Shiniest machine they offer] is bereft of, a year after its debut, though fans are still clamoring for its inclusion.

The article notes the weird: "…given the console’s debut 12 years ago (2006)…, it’s still a household item that’s in regular use around the world."

( Which reminds me of my old roommate. )

( So, why am I whining? )

( For a raft of reasons… )

*The Shit River is large and reminds many people of poop. There is another thing bearing the same name draining the basin between the Andes and the Pacific in South America.

comments

Aldon Blethen, Jerk

Sat, 22 Sep 2018 22:55:07 GMT

There's a story central to Seattle, but one seldom told, because of some complex reasons. The story revolves around a set of bells donated to the University of Washington by Aldon J. Blethen, publisher and owner of the Seattle Times.

The Blethen Chimes, fresh from the
trip from the foundary,
being offloaded, 1912.

One of these days, I'll post that story. It's interesting.

comments

Whelk!

Fri, 31 Aug 2018 21:33:50 GMT

This would make a great sci-fi inspiration. Just sayin'.

h/t conuly.

comments

From The Guy Who Hardly Reposts Anything…

Sun, 01 Jul 2018 18:50:17 GMT

…Comes this, the most comprehensive and interesting web page news story I've ever read.

If that isn't an endorsement, nothing can be.

h/t to Conuly.

comments

A Small Victory

Tue, 19 Jun 2018 02:54:05 GMT

Almost a year ago, I did an episode on my podcast that had nothing to do with the actual theme of said 'cast. Bottom line: my wife's choir director used an archaic word as a complement; she didn't know that word and so asked me, the Obsessive Word Nerd™; and I had to go off on a tear and OWN™ that word.

The word: Perpentious. Technically, no, it's not a word (according to the dictionary); but it's close enough to other words, sharing multiple etymological similarities, that it not only could be a useful word, but probably should be.

The best part? The only Google search results I got were all wrong. For reals. Here's a screen-capture of a Google Books entry in the search:

The Problem with Column Conflation

Essentially, the optical character scanner was set to read the page as a single column, but the book was printed with multiple columns, so the side-by-side pillars of words were read as a single unit. I suspect this happened with two other search results, but I'm not willing to plunk down any cash to see for myself.

Bottom line: When folks (like yourselves!) search Google with the single word "perpentious," the only accurate results that pop up link to the various ways to access that episode of mine.

Which is, again, a small, small victory.

comments

It Should Be Remembered

Wed, 28 Feb 2018 03:23:37 GMT

From this site.

Radio advertising may have built the radio we suffer today, but it didn't happen without protest.

comments

A New DVD Feature: Unplayability!

Mon, 26 Feb 2018 00:50:55 GMT

This is weird. A few weeks ago, I got a video through that big subscription-based DVD rental program, a biopic of actor Tab Hunter. A few minutes before the end, the movie just stopped, froze mid-sentence. The player would not respond to any commands except Eject.

No problem. I sent the disc back, reported the non-playability, and got another.

The exact same thing happened. Figuring someone got lazy and just polished the disc before mailing the same one back, I reported once again that this disc would not play. Before slipping it in the mailer, though, The Wife™ wrote down the serial number.

New disc, new serial number. Same problem. Freeze frame, no play.

We slipped it into the newer player in the other room, and it played.

That was last week. This week, a new movie about independent video game designers.

This time, the movie froze once again… in both machines.

I can only assume that someone out there is using a popular video editing/formatting program to code these into DVD format that has a glitch, but a glitch that only glitches in older DVD players (we don't buy the latest and the greatest when the old machines still work just fine).

If this is the case, I see doom on the horizon, since I appreciate small, independent productions a heckovalot more than big-budget flicks.

Anyone else stub their watching on this?

comments

The Meritocracy Watch

Sun, 28 Jan 2018 20:29:49 GMT

I very recently commented on the origin of the laughable term "meritocracy," how it was coined as satire, but adopted quite seriously. Since then, just like the phenomenon of noticing a specific model of car once you buy one yourself, I keep seeing the term pop up.

So why not track that?

The book containing the word origin nugget had a lot of bad stuff to say about Google and its lack of diversity. Maybe it's the press riding the book's rising popularity, or maybe author Wachter-Boettcher (say those three words three times fast!) was on to something already on the rise; whatever the case, Google's troubles are getting more press. Concerning diversity training, stuff like this happened:

It began subtly. Coworkers peppered mailing lists and company town halls with questions: What about meritocracy? Isn’t improving diversity lowering the bar? What about viewpoint diversity? Doesn’t this exclude white men?

(I bolded the stupid.)

Perhaps that's where diversity training should begin, by pointing out the original meaning of the M Word, how it is a silly, silly notion that should be used to point out silly, silly people as they mouth that word with an evangelical seriousness, all in an attempt to mask their misgivings about their continued good fortune.

PS. About this entry's title: my neighbor until recently ran a little magazine, where he contributed a column in every issue titled "The Stupidity Watch." Unironic users of the M Word should know that.

comments