Tag: miscellaneous

HOME!

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I got back from the Rendezvous Monday afternoon, as noted previously.  I was then dispatched starting Tuesday to go start up a couple of medium-voltage drives at sites in Northeastern Arizona.  Sites – multiple.  The second one kicked my ass.  Got home this afternoon at just after 12PM.  I’m wiped. 

The guy who went with me – new hire, but someone I’ve known for years – left his personal vehicle in the parking lot of the office building where our Tucson office is.  When we got back, we discovered his car had been broken into, and all of the tools he didn’t take with us were stolen.

It was a lot of tools.

I need to get a replacement for the T-shirt I have that says “Some days it’s just not worth chewing through the restraints.”  The one I have is bleach-stained.

Maybe that’s appropriate.

Regular (if light) blogging will resume after a day or so.

Quick GBR Update

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It must be clean living, but I missed almost all of the bad weather between Las Vegas and Tucson.  After the indoor digital simulation training at MiScenarios on Sunday, I dropped Mr. Completely and KeeWee off at the Silver Legacy and headed South for Las Vegas a bit after 13:30.  I rolled into Las Vegas about 20:30, grabbed something to eat at Vamp’d (Not bad!  I’ve paid a lot more for a steak nowhere near as good – two thumbs up), and then drove on to Henderson to get a room for the night.  I got drizzled on just a tiny bit rolling into Vegas, but the clouds did look threatening.

I pulled out of Henderson this morning at 08:30 and hit Phoenix about 12:00.  The only rain I drove through was between Kingman and Wikieup, and it wasn’t that bad.  Apparently Phoenix got slammed this morning, but by the time I rolled in it was over.  I-10 West was closed West of the I-17 exchange, but I was headed East, so that wasn’t a problem.  I had to stop by my company’s main office and pick up some stuff, and I had to drop off Capitalist Pig’s and Ms. Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy’s rifles that I transported for them, rather than them having to deal with the TSA.

Tucson, in the mean time, was getting hammered.  All gone by the time I got home.  I rolled into my driveway at about 15:30.  I’m wiped out.  And I have to be on the road tomorrow at oh-my-god:30 for three to four days of onsite service work at a mine 200 miles away.

Blogging will be light for the next couple of days, but there WILL be an After-Action Report from the Rendezvous!

Quote of the Day – Robin Williams Edition

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I got this in an email this evening.  It’s other people’s words, but it was delivered by Robin Williams in his 1996 film Jack, about a boy who ages at four times the rate of other people – appearing about 40 years of age when he was 10.  It’s his college graduation speech as valedictorian of his class.  The video clip is available at YouTube, but just read the words by screenwriters James DeMonaco and Gary Nadeau that serve as perhaps the best eulogy I think I’ve ever read:

I don’t have very much time these days, so I’ll make it quick – like my life.

You know as we come to the end of this phase of our life, we find ourselves trying to remember the good times and trying to forget the bad times. We find ourselves thinking about the future. We start to worry, thinking “What am I gonna to do? Where am I gonna to be in ten years?”

But I say to you, hey, look at me. Please, don’t worry so much. Because in the end, none of us have very long on this earth. Life is fleeting. And if you’re ever distressed, cast your eyes to the summer sky when the stars are strung across the velvety night. And when a shooting star streaks through the blackness turning night into day, make a wish and think of me.

And make your life spectacular.

I know I did.

Well CRAP

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And now Robin Williams has passed:

On August 11, 2014, at approximately 11:55 a.m, Marin County Communications received a 9-1-1 telephone call reporting a male adult had been located unconscious and not breathing inside his residence in unincorporated Tiburon, CA. The Sheriff’s Office, as well as the Tiburon Fire Department and Southern Marin Fire Protection District were dispatched to the incident with emergency personnel arriving on scene at 12:00 pm. The male subject, pronounced deceased at 12:02 pm has been identified as Robin McLaurin Williams, a 63-year-old resident of unincorporated Tiburon, CA.

An investigation into the cause, manner, and circumstances of the death is currently underway by the Investigations and Coroner Division s of the Sheriff’s Office. Preliminary information developed during the investigation indicates Mr. Williams was last seen alive at his residence, where he resides with his wife, at approximately 10:00 pm on August 10, 2014. Mr. Williams was located this morning shortly before the 9-1-1 call was placed to Marin County Communications. At this time, the Sheriff’s Office Coroner Division suspects the death to be a suicide due to asphyxia, but a comprehensive investigation must be completed before a final determination is made.

Regardless of what you might think of his politics, Robin Williams is, in my opinion, the funniest man of the last 50 years. I predicted, after seeing The World According to Garp that he would eventually win an Oscar for his acting talent, and he did for his portrayal of psychologist Sean McGuire in Good Will Hunting.

I’ve never seen a faster comedian, or one better at improv. In 1990 while at Kingsboro Psychiatric Center in Brooklyn, New York on location for the film Awakenings (where Williams played a psychiatrist) director Penny Marshall appeared (along with the cast) in a video feed at the American Comedy Awards. She was congratulating her brother Garry Marshall for his winning an American Achievement Award from that organization. During her speech (with Robin just over her shoulder) she mentioned that they were on set “at a menstrual hospital.” In an INSTANT, Williams piped up: “A menstrual hospital! It’s a period piece!” Penny Marshall turned several interesting shades of red.

Here, I think, is one of the best examples of William’s brilliance – improv using a prop from the audience (Updated with a YouTube clip of the entire piece. Improv starts at about 2:22 and runs to the end of the clip.):

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGhfxKUH80M?rel=0]
The world is now a grayer place.  I hope he and Jonathan Winters are making a lot of people very, very happy right now.

Edited to add:

I think this might have been a little more real that we realized:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6s26WxsgyKE?rel=0]
I wish someone could have found him his Grail.

“He Bravely Ran Away, Away…”

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No, not Markaderpia this time.

I recently had a lengthy exchange (I know, so unusual for me) over at Quora.com with a Second Amendment Denier – one of those certain to their bones that the Second Amendment protects only a “collective right.”  I also responded to another commenter in that thread.  I received a notification that the original poster had replied to my last comment, and I clicked on that, read it, and was REALLY prepared to unleash, when I noticed I couldn’t reply.  Why?

[Contents hidden as answer has since been deleted.]

Down the Memory Hole!!

Interestingly, someone at Quora liked one of my übercomments enough to repost it, and that link survives.  It was not a reply to “Nick Malik,” the original thread poster, but someone else in that comment thread.  So, if you’re pining away for one of my überposts, go read that.  Warning, it’s just a repeat of what you’ve read here many times before, but hey, that’s pretty much true of the last dozen or so überposts.

“One Small Step for a Man…”

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I posted this a couple of years ago. I thought I’d drag it out and update it.

On this day at 02:56 UTC 45 years ago, Neil Armstrong became the first human being to leave one of these on the surface of another astronomical body. Three years and five months later, Eugene Cernan became the last man to do so, so far.

The last Space Shuttle touched down for the last time on this day three years ago.

Elon Musk of PayPal, Tesla and SpaceX fame has said that the impetus behind the development of SpaceX came when his son asked him, “is it really true that they used to fly to the moon when you were a boy?”

Now there are two-dozen or more private space ventures around the world. There is a plan to capture and retrieve an asteroid for commercial purposes. At least two companies want to mine the moon. A proposal to colonize not Mars, but Venus has been proposed, and it actually makes better sense.

If we can just hold it together for a couple more decades, humanity might get off this rock, and we might do it in my lifetime.

But it’s still not looking too good.

RIP Jim Garner

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I’ve always enjoyed the film and television work of James Garner. He passed away yesterday.

Back in 2012, I posted this:

I watched an interesting interview of actor/producer James Garner from 1999 recently, and I’ve extracted three significant pieces from that interview that I wanted some feedback on.  Please watch the short (2:50) video, and give me your thoughts.  I’m really interested.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MruAzbUve9k?rel=0]

In the comments, TheGeekWithA.45 described it thus:

My initial thought was “cognitive dissonance”. Giving it a little more consideration, I’m going to go with “the triumph of indoctrination over reason”.