Snip, snip, snippets

I think this is about as long as I've ever gone without blogging since I started last summer. These are just snippets of things on my mind in the last week.

They made three or four small, barely visible incisions. That's all. I'm gonna guess they used one for a laparoscope, another for a clamping tool and another for a working tool of some sort. Maybe another for irrigation (clean and wash away the blood, etc.). My mother went in to remove her gall bladder Thursday morning, they operated about 1pm and she left around 6:30pm. She's now well enough to drive and walk about a bit. Truly amazing.

I like to scare my mother by telling her I'm thinking of going back to school to become an M.D. Someone asked me the other day what kind of doctor I would be if I could. Probably some sort of surgeon. I'm squeamish about blood and needles, though. I wonder if they can train that out of you.

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My sister's car--the one that gave me so much trouble--appears to be fixed. After swapping components I found the distributor was intermittently flaking out--weak or no spark. I took it apart, checked the wiring and coils (for angular position and triggering as well as the ignition coil) and put it back together. No problems since. Amazing. And it only took a week....

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My computer--the one with the bad hard drive--is fixed. I won't complain too much here (but see here) about why it took so long except to say this. Microsoft and other vendors, by insisting on flawed and unworkable copy protection and DRM (digital rights management) schemes are teaching Joe User how to become sophisticated pirates out of necessity. I am running a legit license which I paid for, mind you, but I had to do some sketchy things to get it going. What's the solution? A combination of technological and legal tools, probably. I certainly have some ideas on the legal side of things.

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Barbecued Sunday afternoon. It was cold. I was sleepy. Folks were unnecessarily uncouth. It wasn't one of our best barbeques.

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My friend said her boyfriend has a sister who can "find you a woman" in a couple weeks, easy. My friend tells me the sister's a member of some big church out here so I laugh and say sure, go for it. "Oh, but wait, find out what church it is first." It was the Los Angeles Church of Christ. I've had some experience with these folks and I believe they trend toward being sort of a cult.

...which got me thinking and reading more about my own church. Now that I've been there a few months I'm reevaluating and thinking about whether it's the best place for me. Not sure yet. There are some things about the leadership structure and the way folks hold in too high esteem some of the leaders that bother me. Less Chuck Smith, please. The guy's just plain wrong on some doctrinal stuff, as I understand scripture, anyway. Is it major enough to matter? Not now. Besides, the church is too big to develop a sense of community. I only attend the singles group regularly at this point. This group and the pastor are right-on, though.

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I finally fixed my fix-it ticket. All in all it only took $85 to replace the windshield and $25 in administrative fees. Someone has to pay the wages of our hard-working state employees.

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Kickin' back

Men and women are different and one might argue those differences tend to lend themselves to gender roles. Whatever your take on the issue--and I'm not laying out my own views on this just now--what I've seen at my local supermarket just ain't cool.

Ok, so it's not particularly controversial to say that, generally speaking, there lingers a certain machismo in a lot of Hispanic-type cultures. After all, the etymology of the word points south of the border. That said, let me take you to the parking lot of the Food 4 Less supermarket at Lakewood and Rosecrans where the clientele is hugely Hispanic. I pull into a parking stall as usual, but this time I pause for a second and look around. All around me in the parking lot are these guys just sitting in their cars. Nothing weird about that, except that there were so many guys kicking back in their cars. I thought about it for a second and then I realized they'd all sent their women into the store to do the shopping while they leaned back in their seats and listened to the radio.

Stuff like that just bugs the heck out of me, probably for a couple reasons. First, it's been my experience that ya, there does seem to be a tad of chauvinism among some Hispanic men. Second, and more importantly, it bugs me because it's just plain rude, disrespectful, unfair and unkind. If you serve and help those whom you love then what do you call it when you shirk even this most basic opportunity to help?

...ahhh, but haven't we all missed an opportunity to help those we love. Another topic for another day.

My stuff is sick

None of the following is terribly interesting or important, I suppose, but it's occupied a great portion of the last few days of my life.

My hard drive crashed and I lost a lot of stuff. It turns out I did have a few things on CDs. I recovered all but the last year of photos and some music, but that's about all. The picture at the left shows my very sick laptop hard drive connected to a desktop computer. Yes, that's a stethoscope. I was listening to the spindle spin up and the read heads whiz about in the cyclical click-click pattern that is the hallmark of a dead drive. I've given up all hope on this one and I haven't spent much more time on it.

That's not so with my sister's car. One of the pictures I lost as a result of the hard drive crash was a nice one of her car's engine and transmission hanging from my engine hoist. A couple weeks ago I yanked the whole thing and changed the clutch and timing belt. I put it all together and the thing wouldn't start. It took me two days(!) to find and fix a faulty ground. Ran like a charm for a week. Then Monday I get a call from my sister. She's stranded with a dead car. I've spent four days now testing every single sensor, connector and harness for a fault, but everything looks fine. The thing runs, but it will intermittently develop rough idling, loss of power and the engine won't stay on.

These electrical and engine control problems can be very tough to diagnose without the right equipment. And guess what? I don't have the right equipment. I'm left with three alternatives. First, rare as it may be, I may have a bad tank of gas since the problem developed right after my sister filled up. I'm going to drain the tank just to see. Two, my folks happen to have another model car, same make, with the exact same engine. I'm going to swap out sensors, fuel injectors and throttle bodies until I find the component that failed. Three, take in to a shop. I've never, ever taken a car into a shop and I don't want to start now. I wouldn't even know where to start since I would need someone to give me a confident and reliable diagnosis without actually fixing the problem. Truth is, I think most mechanics take an educated guess at it, but don't really know what the problem is until they try a likely fix and see what happens.

Pretty please

Back in high school we briefly hung out at this pizza joint where a barefoot Romanian dude who didn't speak English made you a pizza pie that gave you the runs for cheap. We were cheap. One day FriendA, FriendB and I were sitting down to something resembling a pizza when we spy an attractive girl walking toward our table. FriendA and I look at each other and then turn to FriendB and make him promise he won't give her a slice. "Psha, just 'cause she's a cute girl? No way!" Thirty seconds later FriendA and I have our heads lowered and our palms to our foreheads in shame. Says FriendB, "What? Like you wouldn't have done the same!"

Fast forward to a few days ago when I spy an attractive woman dressed to allure in the parking lot as I walk to the entrance of Costco. I walk past her and turn back after I hear, "Excuse me sir, would you take this cart back with you since you're walking that way anyway?" It was petty far, a pretty big cart and a pretty big favor to ask a stranger I thought. Pretty presumptuous. I love to help ("everyone's Superman," according to a friend), but I have a chip on my shoulder about being used. So I flagrantly smirk at her as if to say, "Lady, I just bet you're pretty used to having guys do things for you just because you bat an eyelash!" I mean, I'm really about to say that out loud, but my manners compelled restraint. So I compromised and just stared and smirked in such a way that any other person would have taken the hint and said "That's ok; I'll do it myself." And she just smiles back. She knows that I know exactly what she's doing and she's enjoying the power trip. I want to say something nasty, but it's just not in me to be that way.

Thirty seconds later I'm walking behind a cart I have no intention of using. I smile at the ludicrousness of the little episode that just transpired. I caved, but won in my own little way because I maintained a gracious attitude, at least outwardly. Still, I couldn't stop thinking about it for the rest of the day. Boo to selfish manipulators--a trait that gets under my skin probably more than any other. Scratch that. It's one of a handful.

Sloppy wet kisses

I've sometimes thought I wasn't very good with kids.

...but I've always known I wasn't the best judge of my own strengths and weaknesses. One of the sisters at church had a party and get-together at her place today. It was good. I had some great conversation, met some nice folks and fended off two of the cutest little girls you'll ever see. I had to fend them off because they were stuck to me like bubble gum all night! Climbing and wrestling and counting toes--I had her convinced she had seven on each foot!--and just goofing around the way little kids do. And at the end of the night they each came up with a spontaneous sloppy wet kiss and hug. (Similar experience at the end of this post.)

My gosh, those little girls melted my heart. I can't begin to tell you how blessed I felt today. Thank God.

Now, if I could only just figure out exactly where kids come from.... (!)

Blind call

"So my friend thought it was a good idea for me to try a blind date on account of how I look. I show up--she was blind!" [rimshot] I like to think Mr. Dangerfield would have made a joke like that.

A friend of a coworker of a friend of my sister's (who is also my friend) came across my Myspace profile and thought...neat, he should call me. Of course no one could tell me anything about her, but her seven digits made their way to my inbox with an invitation to give her a ring without my having asked for them. The friends are definitely pulling some strings behind the scenes. That's perfectly fine by me. In fact, they know me pretty well, so they're a great resource when it comes to this sort of thing. Usually, though, I like to know something about the person first--faith and family are fundamental for me.

I did something like a blind date once before. It wasn't so much a date as it was meeting for coffee after speaking on the phone a bit after a similar string of friends-of-friends got us talking. It wasn't a match, but it was tons of fun, I thought.

So no expectations, just another chance to talk about myself and broaden my circle of friends. Hee hee, goodness knows I write about myself enough!

Springtime Ennui

Note to self: remember not to try to talk to your guy friends about that "spring fever"/"urge to merge" in terms of the little birds gathering twigs for their nests and doing their little mating dances. After rebuffing a few Brokeback epithets, I gave up trying to articulate that thing, whatever it is, and saved face by passing it off as some joke. (not really, but kinda)

See, the way I figure, we're not so very far removed from the animals in some respects and this is one of them. I suspect that for us single guys--for me, in any event--this thing is cyclical. Maybe not just for the single guys either, but I don't know. I'll get busy with some project or another and go months without giving it much thought. Then, all of a sudden...well, what can I say---you start to see the no-knee birds* picking up twigs and bits of fluff and all bets are off!

And it's not exactly a sexual thing either. That's why I called it a thing. It's bigger than that. It's a feeling of unrest, uneasiness, can't sit still-ness. I think the French have a good word for it--ennui. So it's not about sex, but I have to admit it's inseparable from it too. I just chalk it up to that God-given instinct to join up with someone and populate the world! No doubt about it, it's an instinct. Here's an irony, though: it's a vague, difficult to articulate feeling, sometimes cyclical and subtle, yet as an instinct it's as persistent and even urgent as some of the other functions we associate with that word.

OK, so that's spring fever in the abstract. How does it apply to me? What am I doing about it? After all, I did say it could be urgent at times. Well...I'm exercising one of those things that does separate us from the animals--patience and self-control. Mind you, I haven't always been a paragon of virtue in this respect, but I've managed. And I'll continue to manage. It's really not so bad. It's just that while I'm quite content to be single for a season, neither can I ignore what I'll euphemistically call springtime ennui. It's there in the background, where I try to keep it.

* "No-knee" birds are those common little brown finches you see all over this country. They were given this moniker by my sister because they hop along on the ground without bending their knees as if they had none.

Life just got a little suckier--again.

Oh my gosh. I sat down at my laptop to post something tonight when my hard drive made a clicking noise and the computer froze. I rebooted, it kinda worked, symptoms got worse and now I can't boot, my drive clicks away and...NONE OF MY DATA IS BACKED UP. I was just complaing to a friend of mine that with such large hard drives these days, the only practical way of backing up is to copy files to another hard drive. I have an old 10G drive in the garage I was going to set up for this purpose too. I just hadn't gotten around to it.

Anyway, here's the deal: I think I just lost EVERYTHING. Some time back I merely lost my class notes. This time I think I've lost all my music, including some I'd composed myself and all my pictures for the last six years or so.

Any sympathy would be most welcome.

I can fix almost anything if I put my mind and the right tools to it. This one may be beyond me, though. I did open up the sealed case that holds the platters (which they assemble in a clean room with full-on bunny suits!), but there's not much to see in there and I'm afraid of contaminating the platters. Here's my only hope I think: the click is so loud that I'm thinking maybe the mechanical locking mechanism that holds the heads in their off-platter "parked" position might not be disengaging properly.

It's 2:30am, I've been beating my head over this one all night. It's time to get some sleep.

Will I ever learn?! I'm so sad.