wacom wacom wacom

Art, Life

Damn. I fell behind in my efforts to post an image a day to my image blog. Nobody noticed, right? It’s ok for me to play some catch up right? Anyway I granted myself a grace period and now I’m caught up. I’m even a day ahead with a new image scheduled to post at midnight. It’s amazing how busy you can be doing nothing. I’ve got a couple of jobs that are kind of hovering in maybe land, and I’ve been spending some time get all the ducks lined up in those flocks. I spent some time at Mike Reed’s studio doing some test printing on his high end printer. To my delight, he told me I could use his spare Wacom Tablet. I’ve been wanting to buy one a Wacom for years, but never felt like I could afford one. So I’ve been spending a lot of time playing with my new toy.

There seems to be some confusion about how Wacom is pronounced. I think its WAH-com but I’ve heard Wackum and also WAY-com. I actually prefer the latter because then the pun, “I always thought a Wacom tablet was a Valium,” works.

No business like snow business

Life, Rants

OK, I want to know what it is I did to piss off the snowplow driver. I had my driveway and Dean the handyman’s driveway all blown out yesterday by early afternoon. Now granted, it snowed pretty much all night, but the blowing and drifting didn’t seem to occur and there was only a couple of inches of fine powder on the driveway in the morning. But the berm that the snowplow left across the entrance to my driveway was at least three feet high!

In Minnesota you’re a fool if you don’t beseech your chosen higher power to protect and bless the plow drivers, they work crazy hours to keep the roads passable when the weather gets like this. But I’ve watched them plow and I know they have a little dealie that they trip that diverts the snow a little when they pass a driveway opening. That simple courtesy probably cuts down the incidence of heart attacks in the city by 20%. The crap that they do pile up is ten times more dense and crustier than the original snow and it’s a bitch to shovel. So when I went outside to start my snow clearing for the day, I almost cried when I saw the mountain ridge that separated me from the street.

Thank God my buddies neighbor moved to California right after he bought a big ass 7.5 horse Snapper snow blower. He sold it to me for about half price, I don’t think he’d used it more than once. If I would have had to shovel that mess it would be an all day project. And I’m still sore from yesterday’s work. But Big Red ate that mound of ice chunks up and spit it out. And I’m not feeling the least bit guilty about increasing my carbon footprint.

More Naked Truth

Weirdness

Remember when I said that the key to social media marketing was to post teasers with the word “naked” in them? I had exceptionally high number of hits when I used this technique. But the next day when I put out teasers for the post that offered that hypothesis and used the words “secret to social media marketing, the naked truth,” I even got a bigger turnout. So the real secret is to offer to divulge a secret about how to achieve social media success so you can work naked.

And while you’re here have a look at my latest Image a Day post. I think it’s a keeper.

New Friend

Life

I made a new friend on Saturday. Becky lured me to Ridgedale, a local shopping mall, with the promise of coffee. And there is an Apple Store there, which is the same as a toy store to me. I always forget that Beck’s capacity to shop and the pace she sets are much different than mine. I left her checking out a woman’s apparel store and went to Apple. I spent all the time I wanted to spend there and when I went back to check on her she was still looking at the same rack that she had been when I left.

So when she said she was going to go look for a bra, I told her I would hunker down in a chair in the common area, which was populated pretty much by men who were doing the same thing as I was. I’d been sitting for a few minutes when a Sikh gentleman about my age sat down with a girl of about four. He was wearing a suit and a bright blue turban and had his mustache trimmed with the ends pointing up, just like in the movies. Anxious to not be taken for a xenophobe, I gave him a big smile as he sat down. Not being a Minnesotan, he apparently took this for an invitation to conversation. In a very thick accent he informed me that the little girl was his granddaughter and that he was visiting from India. I never would have guessed. I asked him how he liked the weather, I think it was about five above at the time. He replied that it was indeed very cold in Minnesota, he had been visiting his son in California before he’d come to Minnesota and that the weather was OK in California, but NOT here.

We exchanged small talk, between his accent and my hearing I think I understood about a quarter of what he was saying, and I had the sense the same ratio applied to his understanding of me. I found out that he was a professor of agriculture at the University of Punjab, or a University in Punjab. Dork that I am, I told him I was very interested in India because I’ve been reading Indian authors. He’d never heard of Jhumpa Lahiri or Salman Rushdie which I guess shouldn’t have surprised me given the vastness and diversity of the sub continent, and that who knows if ag profs anywhere read much literature. I mentioned that I wanted to visit India someday and he insisted that I come to Punjab and visit him when I was there. He wrote down his name and telephone number, he seemed to be very excited about the prospect, and told me that he would show me around when I got there.

I should probably take him up on it.

Overheard at the Nursing Home

Getting Old, Health, Life

Yesterday I visited my friend and neighbor who is recuperating from surgery at a nearby rehab center. It’s the same place that I spent a week in after I broke my hip. If you have to be in a place like that, it’s a pretty good place to be. The people were really great and my therapist Kari set me on the road to an amazing recovery. I not only had a broken hip, but at the time I was minus a knee. They had to remove my first artificial one for about six weeks because of an infection. I fell while on crutches and broke my hip. At that point I wasn’t sure if I would ever walk straight again.

Visiting my neighbor was sobering, he’s in pretty bad shape. That’s another blog. I was feeling pretty down as I left him, but between his room and the front door of the center, I had an encounter that left me laughing to myself the rest of the day.

In order to get from the rehab area of the building to the exit, you have to pass through the common area of the nursing home section. As I entered two women in wheelchairs were meeting in the hallway, one was being pushed by an attendant ant the other was in a motorized chair. They looked to be well into their eighties at least. As they passed I couldn’t help overhearing their conversation. For the sake of the story I’ll call them Mabel and Alice.

Mabel, in a teasing tone, “What’s this I hear about you….”  I didn’t catch the end of the sentence.

Alice replies, loudly, “Oh that’s bullshit!”

I proceed to the elevator and press the down button, not realizing that it had a security code so the inmates couldn’t escape. Fortunately one of the nurses came along and let me out, I was beginning to think they were going to keep me. But the delay was a good thing because it resulted in my standing there long enough to hear another exchange with Alice. She had been motoring along right behind me and stopped at the nurse’s desk, where an elderly gent we’ll call George was standing, conversing with the pretty young aid who was holding down the fort. Speaking to George she cracked, “Are you paying her by the hour to sit there and listen to you talk?

“What?”

“Are you paying this poor girl by the hour to listen to your dumb stories?”

“Who put a nickel in you?”

“You did.”

George must have been at a loss for a good comeback, because as I entered the elevator, he was grumbling away in German.

The Secret of Social Media Marketing

Weirdness

Yesterday HorizontalAmbition.com received the second most hits ever, which just goes to show you that all you have to do to market yourself in the world of social networking is to post a teaser on twitter and facebook that includes the word “naked.”

Holy Moley

Life

This is another dementia check.

Last year my sister and I flew down to Pensacola to visit my brother. One thing that came up while we were down there was a family history of melanoma. I think my brother Bill first mentioned it on a previous visit, “Have you had a melanoma yet?” I didn’t think much of it, but when I found out that both of them had been diagnosed with that particularly nasty form of skin cancer, I thought it might be a good idea to get checked out. When I mentioned it to one of my doc friends, she told me I definitely should get checked because there was a strong genetic predisposition for the disease. That doesn’t mean that you necessarily have the genetic marker, but you’re more likely to, and thus more likely to have a killer mole. I’ve always had lots of moles and I have one in particular that pretty much constantly itches and it’s positioned just inside of my right shoulder blade, in the most unreachable place on my body. So I made an appointment with a dermatologist.

I made the appointment months ago, probably long enough ago for any existing melanoma to have spread and killed me already. Then about a month ago, the called me and canceled the appointment. We rescheduled. I have to tell you, things like doctor appointments end up on the bottom of one of the piles stacked up in the messy desk of my mind. So late last night when I crawled into bed my darling wife Rebecca, half asleep, asked if I had an appointment in the morning. “I don’t know, do I?”

“It’s on the calendar.”

“Yeah but I thought it was rescheduled.”

“It’s on the calendar.”

“Did I forget to move the date?”

“It’s on the calendar.”

So I got out of bed, stumbled down to my office and checked the calendar on my computer and saw it right there, Dr. Olson, 8:45, January 25. “Wow, thanks Beck, glad you reminded me.” Something I find myself saying disturbingly often. In my mind, 8:45 am is not early, I rarely sleep past 6, so I didn’t set the alarm. Naturally, I slept until 6:30, but I wasn’t concerned, that should be plenty of time. I made a pot of coffee, poured myself a cup, and went through my morning routine, skimming the sports section and checking my email, to see what advances have been made in the science of penis enlargement. No panic, even though the weather was looking bad. We were getting a light dusting of snow on top of yesterday’s thaw and rain, which makes things very slippery. I came out of my morning haze and glanced at the clock. 7:30. Knowing that I would be baring all very soon, I had to get a shower in. Now I was starting to get concerned. I told myself not to worry it was past rush hour and Highway 100 which is pretty much a straight shot to the clinic, shouldn’t be backed up.

Highway 100 was a parking lot. It was now 8:20. There was no way I was going to make it, particularly if I stayed on the highway. I don’t know if it’s the same everywhere, or just in the Twin Cities, but commuters tend to stick to their routes no matter what, so when traffic is bad on a main artery, you can often make better time on the back roads. I jumped off at the next exit, not entirely sure of the route I needed to take. B likes to say I have a lousy sense of direction. I disagree, but that’s another blog. Combining dead reckoning, hazy memory and luck, I slipped into the clinic using a backdoor route, without a single wrong turn. And I was only 15 minutes late.

Or 30 days early, depending on how you look at it. That’s right, I hadn’t moved the appointment on my calendar, and I wasn’t scheduled to show up until next month. My doc wasn’t there but the waiting room was empty, probably because all the other patients were still sitting on Hwy. 100, so they would squeeze me in with another doctor.

So they put me in a room and I stripped down to my shorts and put on the requisite ridiculous gown and waited for the doc. The doctor I was originally scheduled to see is, if I remember correctly, a very attractive woman and naturally I was just a little bit nervous about that whole I’m naked and you’re not thing. There was a knock on the door and the new doc popped in. She looked liked she was about 20. She could have been one of my daughter’s friends. Now I’m not that modest of a person, but there’s a certain awkwardness to being closely examined by a member of the opposite sex, particularly a much younger one. The awkwardness was mixed with a little bit of a smirk. Her manner was reassuring as she carefully checked out the landscape, explaining what the various irregularities on my surface were and that none of them of the dangerous variety. She had covered all the territory that wasn’t covered by my shorts.

“I’m going to look at your buttocks now, is it OK if I take a look?”

“Sure.” Down came the boxers and then almost instantly back up.

“Is there anything you want me to look at in front?”

I literally had to clench my teeth to keep the inner class clown from jumping out of my mouth. “Ummm, no.” was my snappy comeback. I’m sure she was quite relieved. It was bad enough that she had to look at my feet, the poor thing is probably scarred for life.

In the course of the examination, we talked about the itching mole and another weird protrusion, and decided, although they were harmless she would remove them by freezing them with liquid nitrogen. Now, we all know that medical personnel like to prepare you for sticks and pokes and jabs by saying things like, “This might cause some discomfort” or “This might sting a bit” So when she came right out and said, “This is going to hurt,” it got my attention. And she wasn’t lying. I asked how long it would hurt, “Just while I’m doing the procedure, it kind of burns.” She was lying. I tell people that the Year of the Knee greatly increased my capacity to ignore pain, but lets just say that I feel a new bond with animals that have experienced branding irons. Driving home it felt like the cowboy was still poking me with a red hot Lazy S. Fortunately my knee doctor has me pretty well armed in the pain killer department.

Which explains this long, rambling post.

Sports!

Recreation, Sport and Fitness

Big sports day today. Starting off with a trip down to Williams Arena to watch the women’s basketball team take on Michigan State. I’ve subleasing one season ticket for a few years now, great seat, eight row just past mid-court opposite the benches on the same side as the Gopher bench. The raised floor at Williams arena gives those seats a fabulous angle on the action. Pretty close to player eye level. It’s a great place to be sitting when the Gophers are playing a sideline trap as well.  I really enjoy watching teams that play good aggressive defense and that’s the signature of a Pam Borton coached team. I love to see it when they turn up the pressure and the other team gets those rattled looks on their faces as the shot clock runs down. Or start trying to run there offense too fast and throw it out of bounds. They like to create turnovers and score off them, they do a really nice job in transition with Kiara Buford, China Antoine and Brittany McCoy leading the way, blazingly fast, excellent ball handlers and passers. Half court offense, another story. It’s always an adventure, but it helps if the other team makes the mistake of not double teaming Ashley Ellis-Milan, which rhymes with Ashley’s always smilin’.

And then the Vikings game.

Note to self… Start a hoops category

Weak Link

Life, Rants

In my last post I promised that, in the near future, I would cogitate on planned obsolescence, or why the manufacturers of my garage door opener chose to put in a plastic drive gear that would certainly wear out long before the other components of the machine. First of all “cogitate” is not, as you might think, defined as the mental ramblings of a codger. But in this case they may be analogous.

When I was informed by Dean, the neighborhood handyman, that it was a worn out nylon gear drive that had rendered my garage door opener non-functional, my first conclusion was that this was a design flaw. It seems that this part is the weak link in the operating system of this machine. Dean knew right where to look for the problem. He said he’d already replaced them for most of the neighborhood.

What do you think would have happened if I’d called a garage door repair specialist? Would he have replaced the gear or sold me a new opener? I’m thinking new opener. Was there some design requirement that mandated the use of a nylon gear? Like functioning under specific conditions. Or did Sears specify the use of the gear so the opener would fail after 10 years instead of 20, so they could sell more units over time? Or would a more reliable (metal?) part add enough cost so that the Craftsman 1/2 hp unit couldn’t compete in the market with similar products?

You might think that I’m going to answer those questions. I’m not. I’m hoping you can. I will observe that this kind of design is part of the price we pay in the world of mass production and part of why we’ve turned into a throw away society.

What do you think?

Role Reversal

Family, Life

Saturday night we were heading out to dinner when the garage door stopped about two-thirds of the way down. Wouldn’t go down wouldn’t go up. We were a bit late getting started to make our reservations already, I went in and popped the door loose and shut it manually, intending to deal with it in the morning.

In the morning, after charging up with coffee, a banana and cheetos we set out on a DIY adventure. Our first idea was to observe the machine in action in order to diagnose the problem. In order to do that it was, of course, necessary to reconnect the door to the opener, by sliding the runner back over the bolt protruding from the rail that holds it to the moving chain. So I grabbed the handle on the release chord and pulled it forward expecting to pop it over the bolt. First time, didn’t go. Second time, fail. Third time, not the charm. So relying on the bigger hammer  theory of mechanical repair, I grabbed the door and gave it a healthy upward push. The runner popped over the bolt and beyond, breaking the translucent housing that protected the light bulb and becoming hopelessly jammed on the other side. I wanted to call a garage repair guy, Beck wanted to call Dean the handy neighbor. She prevailed, which was a good thing. I should always yield to her better judgement. As if I have a choice.

Dean is in his seventies and I would say that I hoped to be in that good shape when I get that old, except that would mean I’d have to be in better shape than I am now. After struggling for about an hour to undo the damage that I had done, he took about thirty seconds to find the problem. Apparently the drive gear, made out of nylon, had worn down to the point of failure. A common flaw, it seems, because Dean’s replaced this component for pretty much the entire neighborhood. The parts guy a Sears knew what we’d come in for as soon as he saw that we were carrying the manual for the opener. We grabbed lunch at the 50s Grill on Brooklyn Blvd. returned with the part and everything was back together in an hour. Including the service door from the garage to the house, which also broke at some point during the repair process.

I stood out in the garage and watched for a little while, but it was apparent that I was useless in that situation. Beck stayed out to watch and learn. She’s much more mechanically adept than me and I usually defer to her when it comes to fixing stuff around the house. I know, the man card is in danger again.

Thinking about the events of the day and the fact that I do most of the cooking, we decided that I make a pretty good housewife. And she loves a man in an apron.

Next post: I’m going to cogitate on the plastic part that wears out before the machine is any where near the end of it’s life. Design flaw?