13 June 2008

Another Friday the 13th

Happy bad luck day everyone! Most of you probably don't know, but our little slice of Americana was ravaged by storms last evening. The fam was at a restaurant called "El Mezcal" when the tornado sirens began to blast. Making their annoying-but-attention-getting warble ring and echo through out the city. It was just after we had finished and paid and were ready to leave they began. I ran through the downpour to get the family truckster. Just as I got in, the hail hit, and hit hard. As the hail pummeled the roof of the van, I thought it sounded an awful lot like I would imagine an army of squirrels throwing acorns at the van would sound.

By the time we got home, the weather was beginning to clear, and the sirens had abated. The tornado warning was over. There was a report of one just southeast of town, near a little burg called Berryton. But we managed to remain unscathed...relatively. We had already lost a tree in our front yard in Sunday's storm - mostly anyway. It was a nice redbud tree when we moved in. But over the last 7 years, it has taken a real beating. After Sunday's damage, there were only three branches left on it. It looked anemic. So I cut them down. While I was cutting the second branch, it was so rotted the thing just fell, nearly hitting my intrepid helper, No. 2 Son. We had a good laugh at that.

Last night, however, our satellite TV went kaput. This is not unusual during heavy storms (or even light ones at that). But when it didn't come back this morning, the 5/8 called the Dish folks. Who promptly put us on the schedule...for 2 July. Yes, that is not a misprint. Three weeks sans television. We are seriously considering switching back to cable TV. The problem is, that we pay more for cable, for less. Sure, cable has the local channels in HD, which we don't get with the satellite, but then again, the satellite has the Kung Fu Movie Channel and the Monsters Channel, both in HD. Which cable doesn't offer. Not that we have watched either of those channels hardly at all. But I look at it like a V-8 engine. You probably seldom use it to its potential, but it is nice to know its there.

At any rate. A decision has to be made whether to wait out the three weeks without the idiot box, or make the switch back to Cox cable, and pay more for less. Probably, because I'm such a cheapskate, I'll just wait it out. Besides, when the TV is out, more stuff seems to get done around the house. Or, I could attempt to reset the angle and azimuth of the thing myself. It is worth a try. After all, what am I going to do; make it not work?

10 June 2008

GE: Imagine it works

image Did I mention how badly General Electric sucks? I think I did, about month and a half to two months ago. The saga with our clothes washer continues to plague us. The confounded thing has once again decided to break. The 5/8 is livid. She called GE's so-called 'Customer Relations'. And was once again told that the washer will be repaired, and not replaced. This comes after the last time (which took a month to fix) we were told if it broke again, they would replace it.

At first, the nice and generous folks at GE told us me they can have someone out to look at (note: 'look at' - not 'fix') the washer on Tuesday.

Me: "Tuesday? You mean today?"
GE Putz: "No sir, next Tuesday."
Me: "Do you mean to tell me that your products are in such a state that all of your authorized repairmen are so busy nobody can get here in less than a week?"
GE Putz: "Everyone is busy Sir, not just us.
Me: "That's not true, I can call 'ACE Plumbing' and they'd be out tomorrow."
GE Putz: "Are they an authorized repair facility? If they are you are welcome to call them."
Me: "How am I supposed to know that? Isn't that your job? To know who is and isn't authorized to repair your junk?"
GE Putz: "Well, we can use a different company than last time. Do you want me to send out 'Dynamic Appliances'?"
Me: "I don't care who you send out. Hell, you could send out my neighbor for all I care, as long as they can fix it before next week."
GE Putz: *puts me on hold again - although only about 5 minutes this time* "Ok, Dynamic Appliance can be out on Friday morning, or Thursday if they can make it."
Me: "But it could be another month before its fixed right? If they have to order parts?"
GE Putz: "That's unlikely..."
Me: "Yeah, that's what I would have thought too, until last time. What will it take to get this thing just replaced?"
GE Putz: "We won't replace it as long as it is repairable."
Me: "Umm...ok, but where is my confidence that it will stay repaired?"
GE Putz: "I don't understand."
Me: "Ok, I have had this washer for about 6 months, and I have gotten maybe 4 months of use out of it. It seems it is in a constant state of repair. After this repair, how can I have any confidence that it will not break down again next month? This washer is a lemon. It get repaired, and then breaks again right away."
GE Putz: "If it breaks again right away, you need to call the repair facility that repaired it."
Me: "It isn't the repairmen that do a bad job of repairing it. It is your crappy parts that keep breaking, how can I get better parts?"
GE Putz: "Sir, all authorized repair facilities use proper GE parts"
Me: "Yes, but those are the parts that keep breaking. Is there another manufacturer for parts for your junk that maybe has some sort of quality control that I can rest assured they parts won't break next month?"
GE Putz: "The repair facilities use the proper parts."

I new it was going nowhere. So, at the end of the week, some repair guy will come out, look at the washer. Note, he is going to 'look' at the washer, not necessarily 'fix' the washer. My guess is that he will have to order parts. And if past performance is in any way indicative of future promises, those parts will be on back order. And probably take another month to get here. If that is the case, I'm going to buy a new washer. Then I'll have one for when this piece of fecal matter breaks down again.

And believe you me, I will make damn certain it will break down as often as possible. I will wash the rankest, heaviest and nastiest crap in that washing machine I can think of. I will over-fill it on a regular basis and basically treat it like garbage so that I make them asshats come out very couple of weeks if I can. I won't care because I'll have another washer that can be used for real work.

Next time I'll ask them if GE's blurb line should read "Imagine it works" instead of "Imagination at work." Don't you just hate it when you come up with a good zinger like that just a bit too late? I've got it saved now though, and will definitely use it with the next GE Putz I have to speak with.

09 June 2008

Mmmmmm bratwurst...

image It started out as a mostly uneventful weekend over here in fly-over country. There is a church here, Sacred Heart, which has traditionally serviced the German immigrant community. Not that there are all that many German immigrants to Topeka any more. But there was a time. There was a time, when a good portion of the Oakland neighborhood we populated by people from the "old country" so to speak.

I remember gramma Sachs fondly. She wasn't really my grandmother, and I'm not 100% on why we called her 'gramma' growing up. But that is really neither here nor there. I remember the smell of her kitchen. It seems she was always make her krautstrudal. I loved that stuff. Now, when mom made it, she made more or less individual portions. She would make maybe ten or twelve smaller strudels. But gramma Sachs...gramma Sachs would make this gigantic log of strudel. I always like that better, probably because it could fit more meat in it that way.

Sacred Heart every year has their "Germanfest" fundraiser in early June. Our Lady of Guadalupe has their "Fiesta Mexicana" in July. These are the two big cultural celebrations (ok, not counting St. Paddy's Day) the Topeka has. And the last time I went to Fiesta (a couple of years ago) I was not terribly impressed. Oddly enough, the two churches, Sacred Heart and Gualdalupe, are within a mile of each other, in the same Oakland neighborhood. The neighborhood, once ripe with heavily accented German immigrants, is now populated by heavily accented Hispanic immigrants. But that didn't stop an enormous crowd from gathering at Sacred Heart's Germanfest of good food and decent beer.

All the food at the Germanfest is hand made. Even the noodles, and the breads. All made from scratch which is what makes the event so good. There isn't much for the kids. A few things, but those are mostly for the really young kids, around 5 or so. Mine were told old to have much fun there. But the food was good, and the beer, while being regular, every day America lager, still went down smoothly. And the strudel, brats, sauerkraut and sausages were divine. I don't know if the ladies of the parish actually hand-made the sausage, but it wouldn't surprise me a bit.

The Germanfest runs from Saturday evening through Sunday evening. I've discovered that Sunday is the better day to go. Mainly because they have the beer garde open. I like to give the kids a dollar, and let them go about what ever it is they like doing, while I relax in the beer garden and people watch. But Saturday, the beer garden was nowhere to be found. So I ended up sitting under a big tent listening to the Hayden High School Drumline.

Now, those kids aren't back, not bad at all. But they also don't hold a candled to the THS Drumline. The kids from THS just seem to have more...I don't...passion? yeah, for lack of a better term, I'll call it passion. The Hayden kids were very technical, but didn't have any heart. I have no doubt they hit 98% of the beats (notes?) correctly and in time. But they had the blank expressions of mannequins. They didn't smile, they hardly moved. They played, but did not put on a show.

06 June 2008

Heckvua storm

It rained last night. And I don't just mean it rained, I mean it rained, rained hard. Cats & dogs one might say. It was a regular cacophony of thunder and lightening and rain hitting the roof and windows so hard it almost sounded like the house was being bombarded with tiny little pieces of gravel.

The, the almost unthinkable happened. Something that has so rarely happened in the 7 years we've been in our house, it was nigh unfathomable. The power went out. Completely. Not just a little, but all of it. Across the street, in perfect Topeka fashion, they retained their power. Usually it is the other way around. The folks on the eastern side of the street lose their power, while our side maintains theirs.

My first thought, of course, was that we had to finish drinking what coffee had been made before it went cold because, well, I didn't want to heat a cup of coffee with a candle. The migration from beautiful, electric powered light to flashlights and candles was pretty smooth. The batteries mostly still worked, and which flash light batteries didn't work, we had spares.

So, we headed out to the front porch. We recently bought a table and chairs to put on the front porch. We put them there with the intention of being able to sit around the table and do whatever people do when sitting around a table on their front porch. I don't have much experience with that, so I don't really know. We'd bought the set a couple of weeks go, and it has sat dutifully on our front porch all that time just waiting to be used. So we sat and listened to the rain fall, and watched the lightening flash. And yelled cautioned the kids that since we really didn't need the flashlights right here, right now, they would be best to leave them off lest they run down their batteries and then, later, could not find their way to the bathroom in the dark.

I looked out across the street. I could see their lights on over there. The blue glow that can only come from a television. Their porch lights slicing through the wet darkness. All that light and electricity...glaring towards my house, which was dark, and powerless...mocking me. Now I knew. I knew what it felt like to be on 'that' side of the street. The one without power. The one which has been, in an instant, transported to time and space back to the dark ages. Well, maybe the late 19th century anyway (which was pretty dark at night, not being any electricity and all).

None of the other neighbors were out on their porches which, quite frankly, surprised me. I had fully expected them to be out. Better to sit outside in the darkness, than inside in the darkness. At least that is my point of view. We would watch the cars come roaring down the street. I keep threatening to make a giant sign and nail it to the tree near the curb. I'd make the background of the sign bright yellow. And in big black block letters, I would write "SLOW DOWN". Our street is wide. About three and a half lanes wide. Back in the day, the trolley went down our street, to the college. So even with cars parked on both sides, there is plenty of room for two cars and a motorcycle to fit across the street comfortably. All this with a 6 block stretch and no traffic control. No yield signs. No stop signs. So people tend to drive fast down our street. It is currently being restored to a brick surface. We're all hoping it has a traffic calming effect.

The cars would come barreling down the street, and slow quickly before continuing on. No. 1 Son noticed a car had stopped about 1/2 down our block, and somebody was out of the car and walking around. I went to the curb, the rain was dying down now, not much more than a light drizzle at this point, and looked. I saw two flares in the road in front of a branch. I beckoned the boys to come with me and see if we could move the big branch out of the road so nobody would hit it.

As we walked towards the branch, No. 1 Son said "Dad, I don't think we can move that branch". Indeed, it seemed the branch was grow exponentially as we neared it. Like something from some cheesy Sci-Fi channel movie. In fact, upon inspection, it was not a branch at all, but a tree. It had been hit by lightening and fell right into the street. The police had put some flares around it so people wouldn't hit it. I ran back to the house and got my camera because, with the smoke and the red flare fire, and the lights from the po-po car shining through the tree from the other side, it was all pretty cool looking. I stupidly neglected to get my tripod, so all my pictures had to be flash pictures. It would have been cool to get some extended exposure pictures of that scene.

I'll update with some pictures once I get them off the camera. But since my power was out last night, I couldn't really do it then. And since my work - as generous as they are - gives me a laptop with no card reader, I'll have to wait until I get home tonight before I can get the pictures off the camera.

After a bit, the 5/8 and Little Sister joined us. The the neighbors started trickling out of their houses. We talked about what happened "Did you see it?", "Did you hear it?" "No, but I heard the transformer blow". "Is Doc home?" "No, we don't know where he is." "Is there a car underneath the tree?" "Doesn't look like it". And other chit-chat about the tree, which then migrated to other things. All in all, I'm glad the tree fell. We were able to have some nice conversations with the neighbors. In these days, when it is either 90+ degrees, or raining, the neighbors are not out and about, sitting on their porches and what not, like they are in May or in September so we don't get to see them so much.

The 5/8 was restless though. We ended up going to bed about 9:30 last night. I mean, what the heck else you gonna do? No power. Sure, could mess on the computer for an hour or so before the battery finally declared that enough was enough - but no power = no Internet. And really, what good is a computer if you don't have it plugged in and online? I can play solitaire with real cards. The 5/8 made the comment "what did they do in the old days" to which I replied "sleep".

04 June 2008

Literary Thoughts: Honk & Holler Opening Soon

image Sometimes I run out of things to read. In those dire times, I'll usually fumble through the 5/8 selection of books to find something. Now, the 5/8 gets most of her reading material from my mother. This means, the books - at least from my view - aren't the greatest tomes. Usually rather pointless meandering stories about people from small dusty towns who have names like "Drake" and go about doing things like having babies in the Wal Mart.

"The Honk and Holler Opening Soon" is not much of an exception to that general rule. It was penned by Oklahoma native Billie Letts and follows a mish mash group of characters who don't seem to fit together well. The book it titled from the restaurant at the center of everything. It was supposed to be named "The Honk and Holler" but when Caney (the owner) ordered the sign, he was three sheets to the wind and in a drunken mistake, messed it up.

Caney is a wheelchair bound Vietnam veteran who hasn't left the diner in 12 or so years...since he opened it. His waitress is Molly O who had a big hand in raising Caney. Soon joined by people with names as unreal as Vena and Bui. See what I mean about strange names? It is almost as if these types of books want to try so hard to be more real or something, they the authors would never use a name like "Steve" for the main character. All the primary characters have names like that. Not ones you'd find very often in the real world. And of course, you have to through in some jerk guy who is bigoted and misogynistic to cause trouble for everyone involved.

The whole time I reading this book, I'm thinking, if it were a movie (it would be chick flick - natch) that Natalie Portman would have to play the role of Vena. And maybe Sigourney Weaver as Molly O. The whole thing reminded me of a movie I'd seen with the 5/8 several years ago where Natalie Portman played a girl who was homeless and pregnant, and ended up living in the Wal-Mart, where she had given birth to a baby. Then I realized, the reason for this was because that movie was based on a book by the same author. Déjà vu all over again.

It isn't that I disliked the book. It isn't that I felt it was a waste of time reading it. It just didn't grab me. This isn't a work where I was anxious to get back to reading it. Except after the half-way point, where I just wanted to get it over with and move on to something interesting. It wasn't a horrible read. It was rather quick, but just not all that interesting for me. The chicks will dig it though, I have no doubt.

02 June 2008

Movie Thoughts: Cloverfield

image I didn't know what this movie was actually about. I had seen the commercials, and the movie promo pictures. You know the ones, where the head of the Statue of Liberty is ripped from it's body, mangled steel beams jutting from it's decapitated body like some sort of metallic veins.

I knew it was a monster movie. And I knew it was created by J.J. Abrams, one of the creative minds behind what I would consider the best television show in recent history; "LOST". But other than that, it was a mystery to me.

This weekend we rented the movie. Some of the boys' friends and cousins who had seen the movie were not impressed with it. But this I learned after I had already rented it, so I was a bit leery of it, not quite knowing what to expect.

The entire movie is shot in POV (point-of-view) style much like the "Blair Witch Project" movie. It was all shot on a hand-held video camera - all shaky and erratic. In addition, no real 'name' stars are in it. Some I kind of think I've seen in something else, but not enough to really recognize. All this combined, with the dark atmosphere, and only momentary glimpses of the monster, made for a very compelling film.

I think the younger generation didn't like it probably because of the lack of gore. But it was well done, and the lack of gore and swearing, only heightened the quality of the film in my view. Any film which can keep you on the edge of your seat, and make you squirm at times, yet still be rated PG-13; that is a testament to a great film.

Maybe I've become an old fogy or something along those lines, but it seems to me that movies to often rely on the shock value to get their point across. The writers and directors are more interested in shocking the audience, than the subtlety of story telling, and dramatic sequences, angles and lighting. Then again, most of the movies the last number of years don't have much of a story to tell. As one guy at work today put it, 'this is the decades of remakes and sequels' and I think he might be right. Although, I would recommend this movie highly, if you like to be kept on the edge of your seat, without having to worry about seeing the kind of blood you might see in the latest Saw, or Hostel installment.

**** Some might consider the following a spoiler, so don't read on if you're afraid to learn the plot (but no outcomes) of the film ***

Cloverfield is, in essence, a retelling of the original Godzilla story. A strange creature come from the sea - at least, it looks like it comes form the sea. Terrorizes and mostly destroys major population area. New York City this time, instead of Tokyo. There is no man in a big rubber monster suit though, nor poorly dubbed soundtrack where people talk entire paragraphs of dialog in one breath. The CGI animation of the monster was incredible. Probably aided by the fact the whole thing takes place at night...over a time span of about eight hours or so.

The question I had to keep putting out of my mind to better enjoy the film was 'where do you get a video camera with a battery that will last that long?'. The whole thing, as stated before, is POV from the camera holder's perspective. I'm guessing the guy must have turned off the camera for long periods of time during the night, because in total, there was only a couple of hours of tape.