between work and work

highlights of my time at home:

1) The gunfight on the far side of the Ant Farm. Thank you Massachusetts M.G.L. 40b, for requiring 10% of all new housing in middle-class towns to be set aside for low-income housing. 30 shots were fired in 2 minutes. 30. I counted, while I was collecting my wife and kid and getting them away from the windows.

2). Coming back to work a day early to get my mate home before the next snowstorm. Which is going to start in about 3 hours.

3). I applied Preparation H for the first time. On someone else. Well, on my mother's dog. And that is the last time I will ever speak about that subject.

4). Having reread #3, I don't think I can top that one.

Eff Off!

Las Vegas scumbags, er, political representatives, complain about president's comments


Now, I am NOT a fan of the current president. Fine. Still, the guy's getting toasted by the media for saying what every single fucking middle class person in the world says every day. It's not correct, acceptable, or right, for a family to spend their children's education money or on a vacation to Las Vegas, and there's no difference between that and a bank that accepted bailout money sending execs to 'conventions' there. This is a time to save and wait, period.

Anyhow, Nevada is america's place to go off and die in a puddle of your own fluids when you don't want to sit around in Florida all comfortable-like for your last 30 years, surrounded by friends.

Score one for the Prez. After just over a year in office, he finally said something I agreed with.

Of course, I agreed with elderly comedian Bill Cosby, when he said that black parents should be ashamed when they spend $200 on their kids' shoes, but won't spend $10 on a book. He got all kinds of shit for that too.

Common sense has no place in politics.

I really, really need to buy a house. There's no workshop here at the Ant Farm (I live in a townhouse-style complex. Blech!), and there's no room at the 'rents house anymore, where once upon a time I had a 2-car garage that was my personal boat shed. There's a 1970 Oldsmobile Cutlass 442 sitting smack in the middle there now. Grrr.

Anyhow, I've been thinking about building another one of these little beauties:


I used to build boats when I was bored.

I'm bored now. Ergo, I would like to build a boat.

Not the most straightforward justification for spending a couple hundred g's, but there you go. I need a garage for a couple of weekends, so I ought to think about buying a house.


PS. Anyone want to commission a new boat for themselves? One of these rowboats for $999, finished in varnish or the color of your choice. Weighs out at 135lbs at 9-foot 9 inches- fits nicely in the back of a pickup.

pax

I'm home, things are finestkind, and all is well. I'll be ready to return to work in another week.

rambling, insults, and prognostication...

On Sunday morning, there was a nasty oil spill (11,000 barrels of crude oil) in the Sabine Neches river in Texas, in the Beaumont/Port Awful, er... Port Arthur area.

How to put this nicely? Port Awful, as I call it, is to Texas what the Paris sewers are to Paris. How's that?

That being said, one thing I like about Texas, aside from the people (the only truly good thing about the place- nice folks as a rule), is the can-do attitude of government there regarding resource extraction. Generally speaking, the attitude there is that people come first. Given that the principal value of the 2nd largest state in the US is the liquid that lies in salt-domes under the soil, one could argue that environmental policy in Texas is partially to blame for the blighted appearance of the place...
...But one would be wrong. Coastal Texas is not so attractive, for the most part... Flat and sere, which, to a person from New England is the antithesis of natural beauty. Not to say that it doesn't have its' attractions. I just haven't seen any of them, and I come from a green, somewhat hilly place. Flat alkali land just doesn't float my boat.

Anyhow, had this spill occurred in Washington state, California, Massachusetts or Delaware, the captain of the ship would be in Guantanamo bay by now, and the tug-and-barge unit operator would be undergoing therapeutic crucifixion while awaiting trial.

Texas is all about the oil, and, as such, is accommodating to a point regarding the odd oops. That being said, I've witnessed firsthand a governmental representative chewing a new ass into a ships' representative after an avoidable accident, too... deep in the heart of Houston (which, incidentally, also smells and looks like a midden heap, but is the critical port for American oil import. Trade-offs.),

No, my true point is that reality seems to rule in Texas. And this is where I make my prediction for what's to come:


My alter ego, Nostradumbass, predicts that this ugly and major oil spill will be handled in a businesslike fashion, and that no one will be going to jail for a year or two to await the potential future passing of some sort of law which they can then be charged with breaking retroactively.
Someone is going to get it in the seat, however; I predict that the odds of the responsible party, or most culpable contributing party getting the smack down (at some level) to approach 100%.

All jokes about the ugliness aside, the people involved in this mess stand a better chance of receiving fair treatment in Texas than in anywhere else in the US, and that's shameful to say.

...and then, if history serves as a guide, after all that, the US coast guard's administrative law pogrom... er, I mean, PROGRAM, has to find someone to throw under the bus.

Chapter The Next: In Which Our Hero Ponders The Loss of Technology

So while I was sleeping, the work computer died... or, more precisely, the screen of the work computer died.

My first reaction was, of course, a mild "Oh Nooooo..."






"Hey! Y'all remembered my name!"

In all reality, this is a minor bump in the road. I have my personal laptop, or as my wife likes to call it "Chour Tree Tousand Dolla Pono Matchine," which is neither here nor there, but keeps me connected to the world.
In the meanwhile, however, I'm forced to do loading calculations by hand, by which I mean using a calculator which is in my hand... all fine. Some extra steps, and some extra reading and writing, but OK, in the course of two cargo discharges and maybe one more load (the computer died after we started loading the cargo which I'm currently sitting on), I can handle it.
Still, this makes me mindful of how reliant I am upon technology to make my job more convenient and safe. I am performing calculations in series- nothing dramatic, but calculations built off one another. And I will be more prone to error than my computer, which means making a list and checking it twice... more work.
So here we sit, awaiting inspiration. In the meanwhile, that which I can't handle with a pen and paper, I can handle with phone calls. And such hubris, where I can be annoyed that I have to dial 11 numbers to have all my questions answered, but there it is. The pleasant insulation between myself and the office folk is worn thin, at least in a temporary fashion.
At least I like the office folk. There's that.

the schmooze

Well, when I go home next week (!) I have a good-looking agenda. One, find out the status of my CCW permit with the local constabulary. Two, meet up with old friends and former professors and be rowdy and un-adultlike at our old college bar, and three, meet up with a dutch grad student and introduce him to lobstermen, scientists, retailers and wholesalers and policymakers in the lobster industry... old acquaintences, in other words, as I have friends and associates in all these places.
Maybe it pays to know people in so many levels of an industry, but it doesn't pay ME. At least not in cash. Still, I can pretend to know something about something for a bit, and that's nice for the ol' ego.
Also in the news is that I've been given a green flag by the Mrs. to go and visit my home-away-from-home, Eastport, Maine, come March. This is significant in that I normally don't want to be away from my family in my scant time off, but also my family doesn't want to freeze their buns off in Maine during mud season, either. So, I'm going to my old stomping grounds for a few days, and I'm excited, even if I have to go alone...

Finally, I've been given cargo orders that are going to make some poor tug operator completely bonkers. I'm taking on four cargoes from three refiners, destined for four ships, and the only way to make this work will require me to either list my unit over like a clubfooted drunk, and at one point put her down at the head significantly for a 10-mile steam between two anchorages.

Should be fun. Hell, I'm not driving.