New Lights

I think it is a wife's job in life to adsorb any free time a man finds. That's what my wife said when I told her that I had finally finished up the task of the day and added, "Well, there goes a Saturday."

Anyhow, earlier today, as we were puttering around the yard doing a variety of things, my lovely wife decided that it was time to replace the lovely lights lining the driveway with some that actually lighted up. We bought one of those solar panel with 6 lights packs from Costco a few years ago. It worked fair for a while, though it was never very bright. Eventually, a couple of the lights got run over and the lights got dimmer and dimmer.

I thought it was a reasonable idea but this time we were gonna run real electricity from the house. I figured it wouldn't be technically difficult, but it was going to be an all afternoon job digging a trench to run and hide the wire. So we went to Lowe's, found a light kit (6 lights, a transformer and 50' of wire) that we liked and bought it. We needed to get more wire (100 ft) cause the lights were gonna be far from the house. We also bought three more lights so if someone runs over one, we can replace it.

It took all afternoon to dig the trench for the wire. I got some help from my daughter. She shoved wire into the ground as I split the dirt with a square spade. I started it one way and realized I grabbed the 50 ft wire instead of the 100 ft wire. Pull it up start over. Redid it with the longer wire and realized that the path we were taking wouldn't reach the bottom. Pull it up and start over. So I went straight across the yard. Once I got to the bottom of the driveway, where the lights go, my wife came out and helped a bit with planning and assembly. With the 100 ft wire, we had about one foot to spare. Eventually as the sun was setting, I got through just in time to start the charcoal for supper.

As it got dark, the lights came on. Well, four of the seven that we set up, came on. So I went back out and did a bit of troubleshooting. The little doodads that stick into the wire, missed on a couple because we were using a larger guage wire and had to cut off the little guide thingies. So I fixed that and wiggled the light on the other and, voila, all the lights are on and the job is done and the day is gone.

Maybe, I'll stick in a picture some day.



And there it is.

It Weren't Me !!!!

As I've mentioned before on this blog, a number of years ago I got a gmail account and, because I was early on gmail, I got a simple account name, my first initial and my last name (e.g. flastname@gmail.com). I've gotten a lot of mail from people who meant to send it to somebody else whose email was like mine except that it had a number or three after the name (e.g. flastname47@gmail.com). I usually write back and point out the mistake and usually people write back and thank me for catching it. Not today. I'll post the exchange for your amusement.

I got up this morning and saw this in my inbox from Patco Lamp:

So I'd like to know why

1. Your e mailing my wife Sherry?
2. Why does she have your phone number and why would she want to call you to say Howdy and
3. Why are you addressing my wife as "Sweet Lady"?

I'd just like to know before we meet so you can give me a good explanation.......


So I wrote back:


Hi Mr. Lamp, I don't know who you are. I don't know your wife. I haven't called your wife nor have I addressed her in any way. You have the wrong email address. This email sounds pretty threatening to me. I suggest that in the future you don't put threats in writing. It looks real bad in a courtroom.

the wrong guy


To which he replied:

Thats real funny, because your name and your e mail address are on her phone from where you e mailed her. They dont just pop up there on there own.

By now you've figured out that this guy is pissed and he doesn't know how to use an apostrophe and he doesn't know the difference between you're and your or there and they're. So I write back:

Sorry, you got the wrong guy. There are thousands of phughes's out there and I get an email for them about once a day. Usually someone forgets to add some numbers onto the email address. I get emails for Phyllis in Cary, Paul in Toronto, Patricia in Minnesota, Padma in California, Patrick and Peter in England and some hardware store in Australia sends me emails addressed to Paul whenever they have a sale. There's also that pitcher for the NY Yankees. I get a few emails meant for him too. I only know one Sherry and she's a judge. I haven't talked to her in about 7 years when she came to my 50th birthday.

When I get an email clearly intended for someone else, I usually reply because I know the intended person probably didn't get it. Most people write back and thank me for letting them know. You're the first that has answered with a tone of hostility.

Good luck with your quest. You're barking up the wrong tree.

Finally, after about three hours, I get a reply:

Sorry, I do have the wrong Phil, thanks for the info about adding a digit. Sorry for the inconvienence.

I think he spelled "inconvenience" wrong. Anyhow, I showed this to my coworkers and before we get the last email, we do a little research. It is a research lab after all. As it turns out, "Patco Lamp" isn't his name. It's the name of a "Christian" lighting store, in Fort Worth, Texas. And if you look at who runs the place, you'll find that it's run by three Patterson's (hence Patco), a man, John, and two women, one of whom is named Sherry and the other named Janet.

We were trying to think of some way to get back at whoever sent the rather threatening email. Maybe we could tell Sherry that her husband was snooping in her phone. We could call all the Philip Hughes' in the Fort Worth area and tell them that they were in trouble. Tim, imagining some right wing, religious, gun nut getting into his F150 and driving up from Texas to shoot us all, was urging that we let it drop. And then the final email came and we decided that might be a good idea.

Though I did think of asking for a lamp for my troubles.

New Post

OK, I haven't posted in quite a while and my fan base is starting to erode. In fact, there have been complaints. So I'm gonna try to start writing more and messing around less with pictures since they are the reason that I don't post so often. I feel like I need a picture to go with the blog entry and if I don't have something eye-catching, then I don't post. So no more of that.

I have two things to talk about tonight, a tribute and a rant.

Harmon Killebrew passed away today. I don't follow baseball much but this made the news. Why do I care? When I was a kid, I played little league baseball. I was terrible at it. I didn't really like it a whole lot either but there wasn't much else to do. Part of the problem was that I couldn't throw. I couldn't catch either and I was piss poor at bat to boot. One other problem that I had was that I couldn't see. It was always too bright outside for me. I could see better than anyone alive at night, but what that meant was that a bright sunny day blinded me. Still does. And it makes me sneeze too. But on a nice cloudy day when things were going right I could occasionally get a hit. The reason was that I used a Harmon Killebrew bat. No other bat felt as good to me as the Harmon Killebrew. It had the right balance of size and weight that perfectly fit my attitude. If I didn't use the Killebrew, I struck out for sure. So I've always had fond memories of the guy even though I never knew much about him. He was 74 and died of esophageal cancer. May he rest in peace.

The other thing I want to talk about has to do with computers and their peripherals. I'm the guy in the house that everybody screams at when things go wrong. We have a fairly complex setup here in the house. We have, from time to time, up to 8 computers that can connect to the internal network and also have 4 printers. The 8 computers include a computer for each person in the house plus two older ones plus an iPod touch and an iPad. Actually, my son's computer isn't usually here and the two older ones aren't usually on the network. We also have 4 printers. Why? Well, I bought one for my company that makes no money a long time ago. I keep it going even though it makes horrible noises, because it also will do faxes. We have one that I got from work when we closed down a couple of years ago and we have two wireless ones that we got for free (after the rebate) when we got my wife and my daughter's Macbook Pros. I also have a bunch of external hard disc and a small server disk that I've had for years. And it's all hooked up to a router that's hooked up to a modem that connects to the cable. So things go wrong all the time and I have to figure out what the problem is and fix it.

So here's my rant. You can do a million things to try to make things work again. You can play with the software, you can read the manual, you can change a zillion parameters, you can change the connections, you can try wireless or ethernet or USB but nothing works quite as well as unplugging something and plugging it back in. Somehow that cathartic purge does more to help recalcitrant electronics than anything else you might try.

So here's my rant. Why don't the people that make this crap just admit to it and make it easy to turn this stuff off. It's a real pain to get to the plug on a lot of this stuff. Yesterday, the internet went down. I tried a bunch of stuff. Finally I pulled out the modem, with it's 3 thick attached cables and blindly pulled out the power cord. I spent a minute trying to get that stupid cable back in. Once I did, everything worked again. This morning my daughter couldn't get the printer to work. I don't think she was aware there were 3 more on line. I switched her to another one and got her stuff printed. Anyhow, I spent 20 minutes trying to get the router to see the printer. It never happened. Finally, I reached around and pulled the plug on the printer. This one even had a little clicky thing to make it a pain to get out. After pulling the plug, I had to pull the printer away from the wall to see how to plug it back in. And when I did, Presto! the computer that had been hiding was now visible again.

I wish every piece of computer equipment that I own came with it's own ugly power switch, not those wimpy things that merely put your equipment on standby, but a real switch with exposed wires so you could be sure the electricity no longer flowed. Something like this: