Friday, July 13, 2012

Nutty and Nutty-er

Police...a necessary evil in societies everywhere.  Latest crap off CNN...a DC police office has said he would shoot our First Lady...Michelle Obama, said while in the company of other police officers, then pulled up a picture on his smartphone of the gun he was going to use.  Brilliant cop, no?  So one of those that overheard the whole conversation told a Police Lieutenant and the gentleman is now patrolling a desk sans gun.  Nutty.  Do we not vet our police anymore?  Test their sanity, their political views, (religious one too!) before giving them weapons and the means to shoot them accurately?  Or is it simply a slip of his tongue?  Or is it a violation of his precious Freedom of Speech...or is it simply a violation of the OATH he took when given his badge?  I'm aghast..again!
Are any of us safe with Police shooting "suspects" in the BACK as has occurred now in Vallejo and Oakland, California?  "But officer, he was just taking out his wallet as you asked him too."  Wow.
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Bread baking going on as I write...big fluffy loaf of Oat Bread for Liz whom we are going to visit this afternoon.  One for us as well though not as oaty as hers will still be light and fluffy thanks to the beautiful French wheat and flour.  I have, at least for now, stopped the use of BUTTER in my day-to-day bread making exercise.  Why? Largely as I have reservations about the amount of FAT that Kelly and I ingest and less would be better for us I suppose.  So I use CANOLA (Colza...Rapeseed) oil instead.  Not a bad substitution as I detect that the bread is a bit lighter in overall consistency that it was too, not that I don't like heavy breads, far from it...but overall the lighter ones make a more digestible sandwich and toasts which we have a great liking for.  So there! Liz's loaf is out of the ancient oven and cooling for the ride to her house in a couple of hours.  Ours will be baked off in another half hour or so after it finishes it's second rise.  It too is using Canola oil and oats.
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I spent at least 3 days this week troubleshooting this damned 2 machine "network" that just wasn't working right at all.  We use a damned (and I MEAN that!) SFR Dongle 3G device for our so-called High Speed Inet connection.  HA!  No movies through this slow as molasses thing...and a 3GB "illimit" means after 3G they throttle you back to 256Kbps...yes...little "b" for BITS/sec...Grrrrrr.  We pay 40 Euros a month (that is 50 USD!) for this "servicing".  Anyway, it was a shared connection with my machine and would drop the connection regularly at 3 - 5 minutes...ker-plunk!  Then you'd have to go to the Vodophone gadget (kludge!) and reconnect time and time again.  Awful! Amateurish programming, hardware and "service"! Grrrrrr. So 3 damned days I spent struggling with this thing and even went so far as to upgrade my Vista 64 OS for Win 7 64...just in case that would help the dire situation, which it didn't.  Every time we'd reconnect I would struggle to get my machine to engage the damned shared network from her laptop.  Eventually I wised up and spent a whole day working only on her machine to sort out the dropped Vodophone problem.  I found I was sharing the wired connection too from her machine...no, no, no I told myself and removed the sharing from that one.  Then  I reinstalled the Vodophone software in it's entirety from scratch.  Then the connection stayed UP for over 5 minutes for the first time in a month...if ever!  Then I removed the damned Realtek WiFi USB gadget and deinstalled the software too.  Then I reconnected the wired connection from the laptop and l'viola!  I was online again through her damned SFR slow speed dongle!  Whoop-de-Doo!  What a way to spend a day or three.  Merde'...that's SHIT in French!

Monday, July 09, 2012

Moonday, Oh Moonday...

Decided to BBQ tonight but first I had to do a cleanup of The Kitchen of Doom and Good Things To Eat.  The mess from Saturday nights meal for D&S was still quite apparent and I had mad the usual messy disaster with onion skins everywhere and various drips and splatters as background for the occasional bone fragment.  We had the Mexican Meal I had been waiting for but I used the French version of Corn Tortillas...HA!  Really they were shaped like and somewhat the color-like an actual CORN tortilla but they were vastly different in both texture (too smooth) and flavor (too sweet, not savory at all).  If I had brought MASA with me, even the awful Instant kind, it would have been 100 X better than what these were.  The maker (French - Olde El Paso Brand) must have been thinking of Crepes when they developed this product as they even browned on the edges like a crepe.  I have nothing against crepes, no, far from it, but to substitute flour and sugar for real CORN was the error, leaving these as only a poor substitute at best.  All the Chipotle peppered Chicken and strips of bell peppers and the local HOT green pepper and my almost really GOOD Salsa Verde could not overcome the bloody sweetness of the wrapper itself.  None the less the meal was quite enjoyable and resembled semi-Mexican cuisine at least.
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Today besides the clean up of the Kitchen of Doom I was pressed to FIX the damned water leak at the sink in the Shower room.  At first a couple of weeks ago, we simultaneously discovered some kind of wet mess after we showered, Kelly thought it was coming FIRST from ME...as I wasn't shaking off...dog-like..before I stepped out of the shower facility.  I thought otherwise, but being a wiser male than MOST...said nothing so as to NOT appear defensive.  Begin the Investigation.  Days go by.  The next time I took a shower I was very careful and laid out a dry bath mat and saw it quite wet as I stepped out of the shower...so maybe the shower drain was leaking underneath the bloody shower.  So next day I pulled the shower out from the wall and after some struggle laying on my back and squeezed between the damned shower box and the wall I watched the drain as I turned on the shower.  No leak!  Ah HA!  So then I left it out so Kelly, the original leak detection device could see what I had done.  So where's the water coming from I asked myself.  Well the floors in this olde house are anything but level, so I dried them out as best I could and started looking at the next suspect the sink drain and the attached plumbing to the sink itself.  And sure enough...after about 30 seconds...drip....drip....drip.  The valve for the cold water was dripping away making a small river that made it's way through the maze of tile grout to the other side of the shower room...thoroughly wetting the bath mat in it's way.  So I tightened the fitting and watched it stop leaking.  Great! Easy fix, put tools away...cool.  Today the floor was wet again and I looked and found the same leak.  Shit, shit, shit!  So out came the tool again, I turned off the cold water at the wall and tried to remove the valve body to use teflon tape to fill the obviously screwed up gap...alas, that valve along the wall was clogged with mineral residue and wouldn't close enough.  So now I had to wait til Kelly finished washing the dishes before I could turn off the main water and attack this thing head on.  I got a bucket out as by now the seal had failed completely and it was spraying water in a good stream 2 feet from the valve. Damn!  So I waited and emptied the bucket periodically until she announced that I could turn off the Main H2O and continue to repair this thing.  I turned off the water, removed the valve body, found the destroyed fiber washer and went to the local hardware store to purchase a new one for 35 cents or such.  HA!  I had to buy the entire valve, body and all...so I replaced the valve assembly using the new washer and gently tightened it.  Done, it now does not leak...fingers crossed!
God I hate plumbing!