Cranky-D

Here’s something that will probably land me in the loony bin. Then again, no one reads this stuff anyway.

I have, on my right knee, what look like faint surgical scars. There was even someone at the gym one time who noticed them. However, to my knowledge, I have never had knee surgery. I don’t remember when the “scars” appeared. Maybe they’re just some kind of irrelevant skin thing.

That may or may not be related to what follows.

I’ve noticed that the way I remember the past is often suspect. For instance, there was a time in which I wasn’t sure whether I had ever seen Bonnie Raitt live. Was it real or imagined? I found out, due to the fact that an old aquaintence contacted me out of the blue (and disappeared again just as quickly after my referring her to this site) thanking me for being instrumental in her seeing Stevie Ray Vaughan and Bonnie Raitt in concert.

I don’t get it myself. Are memories really that suspect? Is the mechanism of remembering that faulty?

I have a clear memory of calling a girl/woman at one time in my life and talking to her. Apparently I knew her. Apparently she was mildly interested. I remember later searching for her phone number and being unable to find it. I have no idea if the conversation every happened, or if it was a dream. I have more confidence in my searching for the number later, but even that is suspect.

I don’t know her name. I don’t know how I met her. For all I know, I made it up.

That is not as disturbing as what follows now.

This morning, I seemed to remember hearing a woman say to me (I’m paraphrasing),
“You’re the guy who almost beat that woman to death.” My mind seems to think that this happened some time after I left southern california. I have a dimly remembered event which seems to be a dream of some kind of act along this direction. Just a flash, really, nothing more. Or, to put it bluntly, I may have a vague memory of doing such a thing.

I assume it was a dream. I can assume nothing else, since I tend to not be interested in hitting anyone, and hitting someone weaker than me is something I wouldn’t consider unless the man in question wouldn’t let it go. I can’t imagine hitting a woman, ever, even if she hit me first.

I can be 95% sure (as sure as I can be about myself) that I dreamed the whole thing, both the violent act and someone referencing it. I applied logic to the whole thing and realized that it would require enormous energy and money to cover up such an event. It’s unreasonable to expect that I could somehow be re-programmed to forget what I had done and have a relatively seamless set of memories which don’t include the event.

As far as going crazy goes, I’m a bit too old for that. Schizophrenia usually shows up when people are in their early 20s. I’m 20 years older than that. I will admit to hearing things sometimes, but I don’t hear any orders to do anything weird. I assume when I do hear things that I’m hearing random background noise and my brain is trying to force some sense into it. Plus, the stuff I hear is just beyond the range of being able to make sense of it. And it only seems to happen when I’m stressed. Thus, it’s my brain making shit up.

I think paranoia is a natural state of human beings. We tend to make a lot of shit up. I think that, most likely, this is all shit my brain made up when I had too much idle time. The alternative doesn’t pass the logic test. Why would anyone be interested in covering up a crime like I may have committed? Have the brain sciences advanced so far as to be able to completely erase memories?

The answer is, no one beyond my family would be interested in covering up, and the brain sciences are not that good. If they were, we could fix all the truly crazy people so they could function a lot better.

Of course, there’s still the 5% margin. That’s enough to give you pause when you’re lying in bed in the early hours, mulling over your life. I don’t see scars on my knuckles, so I must have used a weapon. I’ve been stopped for speeding after the event must have happened, so my record as it were must have been expunged.

I probably think way too much, and analyze way too much. It’s an occupational hazard of being a “braniac,” as it’s called in the online dating circle. A circle in which my success so far is nil. Which, if I’m truly a nutcase, is probably a good thing for all concerned.

By the way, if I’m wrong and this really happened, expect me to be whisked away and a new round of programming insterted into my brain. Maybe the result will be someone who drinks less and is more productive. We can only hope.

Apparently, I don’t have much of an interest in generating any real traffic. I don’t write very much. I don’t whore for links. In fact, I think I’ve only had one link during my almost one year run. It was from Laurence Simon, referencing that I was, at the time, writing 100 words posts and posting them here. I wish I hadn’t fallen out of the habit, but I did. There were a few uninspiring topics, and the next thing you know, I failed to keep up. My fault.

My theory has been, from the start, that if I can write well enough, I’ll get traffic. I will not ask for links. I don’t use trackbacks, partially because I don’t know how to make them work, and partially because they seem a bit odd to me. I don’t trust mechanisms that require me to just push a button or fill in a field and hope for the best, and I rarely follow trackbacks on other people’s blogs, so I doubt they would help me. If I’m referencing someone else’s work, I grab a permalink and use that. I usually turn off pinging as well.

There is something called an ecosystem at The Truth Laid Bear, which measures your place in the blogging community. I put my blog in when I first started, though I never put in the code that announces my position because I’m lazy. I should be an insignificant microbe, but because Laurence has been kind enough to link me, I rate as a multicellular microorganism (#20971 right now). I was a flippery fish not all that long ago, but I think the system by which the rankings are determined has been changed recently.

Sometimes I feel a bit funny about this. It costs me $11 per month to keep this up, and I don’t do a whole lot with it. I have plenty of bandwidth and plenty of disk space and don’t use either. Lately I’ve been more interested in posting at the Christmas Site than posting here, and even that is sometimes a bit stale from my viewpoint. I have no idea if anyone reads that stuff or not. I know that the spambots outnumber the actual readers of this site, which probably number less than 5 total.

You know what’s funny? I started a post and have no idea if I was trying to say anything. At this point, I guess I wasn’t. Except that I’m zooming up on my one-year annaversary with not a whole lot to show for it.

Well, I knew this Thanksgiving was going to be a solo event, so I laid in supplies a few days ago.

I don’t know if I mentioned it before (probably not) but I replaced all the easily replaceable brake components on my car just before the weather turned bad. It had been a while since the brakes had been serviced, and I don’t like leaving stuff like that for later. Stopping is the single most important thing on a car. Next is steering, but that is okay except for a minor leak in the return side of the power steering. Nothing I can’t keep ahead of.

The problem was, I apparently made a mistake, and I was leaking a lot of brake fluid, plus the left front brake was apparently the only brake doing any real stopping. It’s way too cold here to fix it myself, so I had to take the car to a shop. Before that, I took the car to the liquor store to buy beer and whiskey for Thanksgiving. Just in case, you understand.

The repair charge came to $325, the cost of replacing both rear wheel cylinders and bleeding the entire system. I was thrilled. I’m sure that the problem was due to my own incompetence in repairing drum brakes, since the leak was in the drum brakes. I doubt both wheel cylinders would fail at the same time, so I assume I adjusted them improperly. I will never own a car with drum brakes on it again, ever, and if I do, I will replace them with disk brakes soonest.

Anyway, as I said, Thanksgiving is a solo event this year. I could have gone to a friend’s house, but that would’ve entailed a long trip and a few days away from home in a strange place. That does not work for me, though I’ve met most of the family already and I know they would’ve made me feel welcome.

Since it is a solo event, I decided to make it a party. Woohoo! I bought Jameson, Irish Cream, and Youngs double chocolate stout beer. Nummy. Tonight I stayed up to watch a Bettie Davis movie on Turner Classic Movies (”Mr. Skeffington,” and boy was she a vain bitch). I must admit I like a lot of what they show on that channel. You can see movies there that would never be made today, because people don’t have the patience to sit through a two-hour character study. I dont’ claim that movies were better then, since I’m sure they made a truckload of clunkers. I’m saying many of those movies could never be made today, since they don’t appeal to that all-important 18-35 demographic which lives on fast cuts and CGI and all that crap. Which I like as well, BTW, but I still like the old stuff.

FYI, “The Philadelphia Story” is in my top 5 movies of all time. But I have a thing for Kate. She’s my favorite actress from any era. And I will almost always watch a Cary Grant movie (”His Girl Friday” is frantic fun). Then again, “The Secret of Nimh” is my favorite animated movie and probably in my top 5 of all time as well, so I’m not a slave to era.

Well, as is typical of the UTI posts, I’ve wandered far afield. I just hope the misspellings have been kept to a minimum. Tomorrow, football fun, though I’m not a big fan of Detriot, and I hate the Cowboys with a passion. I haven’t decided if I’m going to make a different meal, or eat hamburger and pasta like I had this evening (0r last evening, depending on how you look at things. If I haven’t gone to bed, it’s still the day before).

I had a phone interview last Friday with a well-known hardware company. I thought it went fairly horribly, and I felt like an idiot when it was over. I picture myself as a drooling moron, and I’m thinking of taking up the banjo. Yup.

I was surprised when I read that, while the interview didn’t go well enough to immediately invite me out for a visit, I wasn’t compeletely eliminated from the queue. So, I guess I have a chance if everyone else they’re interviewing does worse than I did.

I am not really qualified for the job, per se, since my research work is not related to what they would need me to do. My qualifications are, simply, that I’m familiar with research, and I can code. Any C.S. grad student would be where I am. The hard part is convincing a stranger that I can, in fact, code my ass off, and code the asses off most of my fellow PhD holders. I’ve known many grad students who really didn’t code all that well, considering. For me, coding is a calling, not just something I can do.

As a fall-back position, I ordered a “teach yourself Java” book from the company run by warrior women so I can learn the language. My plan is to get myself up to speed on this stuff so I can be more employable by a hired gun type of programming firm. I can’t really continue hemmoraging money like I have been. I’ll accept a lot less money than I would’ve a year ago.

I think I’ve killed off the entire mouse family, which is good. It was my fault for letting the one stay long enough to produce more mice. Of course, there are always as many mice as the environment can support blah blah blah so I didn’t do any harm. Picking up the fourth body wasn’t as bad as the first one, but I would rather they just stayed outside.

Also, when I’m in to mood to write, I’m generally putting that energy into the Christmas site. You can see a link to it on the sidebar, under the “sites I contribute to” heading. Right now I have 3 characters going, and I’m trying to think of at least one more to do. It keeps it interesting when I have more than one to push around. Two of them are easy guesses if you read this site, but the third may not be. Or mabye I’m fooling myself and it’s obvious. Whatever.

When I got back from my trip to Chicago last Sunday afternoon, I found a mouse in one of my traps. I thought that was it for my houseguests.

Nope.

That night, I saw yet another mouse running around. I think this place is some kind of mouse rooming house or something.

So, I re-applied the peanut butter bait, to make sure it was as tasty as can be.

Some time last night, the mouse made a mistake and went for the other trap. He’s now in mouse heaven.

The traps are set and the bait freshened. Any mice foolish enough to come here are welcome to end thier little lives here.

I had trouble getting to sleep last night, since I was trying to go to bed “early” for a trip I’m taking today. However, just as I was falling asleep, I heard The Noises.

I have yet another mouse in here.

Obviously, putting off getting rid of my mouse compounded the problem. I have the feeling that I’ve raised a generation of mice, and the youngins are just now coming out to play. They’re in for a rude awakening, since the killer traps await them.

My bloodlust will not be satiated.

Please read about this case of a professor who didn’t like a PhD candidate’s politics, and as a result contacted that candidate’s advisor over the matter. I don’t know all the details beyond what I read at Jeff’s site, but I trust that Jeff G. knows what he’s talking about.

Academic freedom, and the free expression of opinions, means just that. All opinions should be aired without fear of retaliation, in any forum, as long as the opinions are expressed politely. And, if a certain site wants to be an echo chamber, that’s the duty of the site owner to enforce, and not third parties.

The Phd candidate in question is suing said Professor for libel. All he wants is an apology.

Yep, we have a genuine UTI post for you. I had a moment of calculated weakness and bought some Jameson a few days ago. Just one bottle, mind you.

I can only get away with this crap because I don’t have a job. I know that. However, I knew my friend was going to be gone for the weekend, and I felt like indulging myself a bit, so I did. If I were working, I’d have been asleep hours ago. I know how to behave when I have a job. But, since I don’t have a job, I can’t see a reason not to keep whatever hours I want to keep.

Before he left on Friday, we had a little home improvement project. We’re going to Chicago this Wednesday, and he had an opportune moment to leave work early, so we installed a lock on the front entry door to the duplex. It’s something we planned when I moved in over a year ago, bought all the parts and tools we thought were needed for the job, and never got to. I admit to laziness on my part, but I think when modifying someone’s house when one is not a professional, it’s best to have the owner of the house as a witness.

The front door had a lock which didn’t work. The house was built in 1915, I think, so it has a lot of “charm” which means that it’s damn old and quirky at times. I like it, but it’s kind of weird. Anyway, there are entry doors front and back as well as doors front and back to the two units. The front entry door did not have a working lock until a few days ago.

You can watch “This Old House” and yet not acquire through osmosis all the skills demonstrated on the show. I think I know more than the most recent host, Kevin, for instance, but not a whole lot more. Anyway, I muddled along as if I knew what I was doing, and while I did chip the wood a bit, I think the installation of the new deadbolt went pretty well. We used a jig to drill the holes in the door, and had to make up the part of placing the plate in the door jam. We glued the chips back in place after I was done mauling the wood.

The most tedious part was carving out the recesses for the plates. The striker plate and the plate in the jam required some work with a chisel. The wood is very old and dry and wanted to split. This was balanced by the fact that the chisel was new and very sharp. If you’re going to attempt this, make sure you use a very sharp chisel.

I doubt a “professional” would have done much better, but who knows? Perhaps there are tricks I don’t know about. I’m certain it could’ve been done much quicker. Maybe you can use a router somehow.

I’m from the “eyeball” school of manufacturing. For this kind of project, you measure a bit, give yourself an outline, and get to work. If you’re careful, it comes out okay.

I think it came out okay. At least, we now have a working lock on the front door, where we didn’t have one before. The security potential of the house went up a tad. I would call that progress.

After the rather drawn-out death of a mouse, as noted in my previous entry, I pulled the traps for a few days. However, yesterday I walked in the kitchen and the mouse was on my breadboard. I thought I’d be able to trap him inside the cabinet but apparently there’s a way out of them.

He pushed me a bit too far. Out the traps came.

I was pretty sure that the reason the trap didn’t kill well last time is that it moved when sprung, and partially threw the mouse away before fully springing. So, to stabilize the traps, I duct-taped them to the floor. I baited them with peanut butter from a reeses peanut butter cup, and hoped it would work better this time.

A mouse found the trap a little more than an hour later. I went in, assuming that he’d still be alive. Not this time. The trap got him cleanly just behind the eyes. Much better. There was some slight movement, but that had to be residual impulses cuz the little guy had no brain at that point. I got a paper towel, pried the trap open with a knife, and laid the mouse to rest on the paper towel. I used the same paper towel to wipe up the blood, and then carried him outside to the dumpster. Then I reset the trap.

Last night, there was no new noise, and I didn’t see any mice. I think there were only the two of them. However, the traps are still waiting for more customers.

In a way, I’ll miss them. They provided a lot of entertainment, until they started getting into the food. But I won’t miss the noises that kept me awake at night. It’s surprising how much noise a little mouse can make.

I feel terrible

The humane traps were just not working. After I discovered Squeaky liked Reese’s peanut butter cup wrappers, and I baited the traps with it, he wouldn’t go for them. I continued to wait, and continued to try to capture him and put him outside when I had him cornered.

Then, last night, after a night of beer, I apparently got my new container of peanuts down from the shelf and put it on the living room “couch” which is actually just a futon bed laid flat. And I fell asleep.

Today, I saw that the peanuts had been breached, the second container to have been breached in a week. That was the last straw. I got out the standard killer traps and baited them.

About 10 minutes ago, I heard the fatal noise of a trap being tripped. Instead of finding squeaky with his neck cleanly broken, as I assumed the trap would do, I found him still twitching and shuffling around, bleeding heavily from a wound in the nose. I moved as quickly as I could to get a glove, put him in a box, and take him outside so I could end his suffering, but he died before I found a glove and got back to the kitchen.

He probably lived less than 20 seconds after his wounding, but that is not what I thought the traps would do.

Yeah, maybe I’m too tenderhearted. I certainly don’t object to killing animals to eat them, but I think it should be quick. This wasn’t quick enough, IMO. And yes, if I had a cat, the cat would probably have let him live a long time before finishing him off. That’s different. I expect cats to be cats. I am not a cat.

Also, I have had hamsters as pets, so I find little critters to be endearing. I objected to squeaky eating my food instead of just foraging for stuff on the floor, as he did most of the time he was here.

I hope he was the only mouse in the house, but if he wasn’t, they’ll find that the traps are still out.

Update: There’s at least one more mouse in here. Crap.