Another early day for me, as I have to go do some shopping, and then be around for a topsoil delivery ($100 for 4 yards delivered; a pretty good deal, I thought. One might even say ‘dirt cheap’). After finally getting some info on where shit (so to speak) is in my septic system, I was able to uncover what once was apparently the distribution box (it looks like there was a box sorta thing, over which they’d placed a very light concrete cover). The cover is all but disintegrated, and the ends of the lines had pretty much filled with clay over the year. More urgently, the outflow pipe from the tank to the DB was crushed (under a rather large – and quite heavy) rock.

So, today will be filled with more tractor work and digging (and the faint, sweet aroma of urine, fecal matter, and ancient, rotting hair & soap all mixed together). Mmmm. I’d have to say that – if we can get this repaired – the tractor will have come close to paying for itself in this one project alone (I don’t know what somebody would have charged for all this, but people who work with shit son’t come ‘dirt cheap’ – and rightfully so, IMHO). Assuming you count all the free labor my friend John is providing me. He and my sister have been invaluable (and by that, I of course mean I haven’t paid them anything).

In other news of interest only to me and other Orange fans, the SU football team plays its final Big East game tonight (though the season finale is next week against former Big East and one-time annual opponent Boston College) against UConn. A win secures a second place finish (while still having the potential for a shared or even outright league championship), no worse than an 8-4 regular season finish, and the chance for revenge against the Connecticut coach – Randy Edsall, a former SU player himself – who last year (with an 11-point lead, 55 seconds on the clock, and SU having no timeouts left inside the Syracuse 30) called a pass on 4th down that went for a TD. Now, clearly, it’s up to the defense to stop that, but unless one is a huge asshole, one does not run up the score that way – especially against one’s alma mater. But Randy is one (an asshole, that is), so it would be nice if SU could win.

Fortunately, the game isn’t until 7:00, when it’ll be too dark to be doing anything outside, so I’ll be able to watch (yes, I should be going to the game in person like a good little fan, but I just don’t have the time or money these days – but, well, it’s on teevee in HD, and the seats in my living room are much more comfortable). Whether I’ll want to watch the whole game is another question. We shall see.

Sadly, Syracuse’s offense isn’t what you would call ‘good,’ so every game is a challenge (especially this late in the season, where an already light roster has been further decimated by injuries). Still, one can hope. And, really, win or lose, we’re way ahead of schedule on the whole rebuilding thing. I believe our coach will soon be elected King of Syracuse – but if you’d like to see him named Liberty Mutual Coach of the Year, please feel free to go and vote for him here. That’s Doug Marrone – Syracuse. He needs to finish in the top 15 to make it to the next round, and not only will you be doing me a favor and making me happy if he gets your vote, but, given the sorry state of SU football affairs I’ve been forced to chronicle over the past five years or so, he actually deserves it.

But, anyhow, time for coffee and to get ready to hit Home Depot by 6:00.

It’s Friday, and I took the day off, so naturally I was up and out of bed before 5 AM. And I didn’t even sleep all the way through at that). I really am turning into one of those old people who gets out of bed in the middle of the night. Very strange indeed. I probably should have gone to a midnight showing of the new Harry Potter movie or something; as I speak – not that I’m speaking, but you know what I mean – they’re interviewing two people who just got out of the 3AM show. Are these people nuts or what? It’s not like it’s Star Trek or Lord of the Rings or something. Fer chrissakes, it’s just Harry “the Gay – not that there’s anything wrong with that – Wizard” Potter.

Still, it’s nice to have the day off – though I did wake up to a covering of snow on the ground. Not a whole lot. Just enough to remind us that it’s November (damn near Thanksgiving, too; how did that one sneak up on me?) and we’d better get ready for some snow action. As I’ve probably mentioned before (yet another sign of advanced age and impending dementia – telling the same stories over and over and over again) I’m looking forward to getting out there and moving some snow with the tractor (that’ll probably stop being fun before the end of the season). That reminds me, I need to figure out where my insulated coveralls have gotten to. Did I mention it gets pretty cold out here in the country?

Even though you’re ignoring the news, you probably heard that the House of “Representatives” (half of whom are millionaires – and all getting richer every day while complaining they have to wait 30 days for their public health insurance to kick in – as if they were “common” people) soundly rejected an extension of unemployment benefits.

Why is it that “people” seem to support tax cuts for rich people because there’s a minuscule chance that they might become rich themselves one day, but they seem quite down with cutting social safety net programs because, apparently, they don’t see that it’s way more likely they’ll wind up out of a job and on the streets than it is they’ll become wealthy (especially with teabaggers running the show)?

Oh, that’s right. People are stupid.

Not dogs though. Dogs are smart – except for their apparent devotion to (and trust in) humans. They love us – they really, really love us.

Not that I’m paying attention to the news or anything, but old habits are hard to break, and I couldn’t help noticing that even Bill O’Reilly’s arch nemsis – the evil, commie (which is interesting, since he’s actually a successful capitalist, which just goes to show show you how crafty he is) liberal George Soros – is somewhat less that enchanted with the Obama administration (which is odd, since I clearly remember reading that Obama is the most radical liberal since, oh, I dunno, Eugene McCarthy or something). Speaking at a private meeting (‘private’ in this day and age means that details of what occur don’t get released until the meeting is over, instead of getting tweeted in real time), Soros told a gathering of the Democracy Alliance to donate their money to somebody who will actually do something to advance progressive causes. This is big, of course, since (as I don’t have to tell you folks) we all take our marching orders from Soros.

According to multiple sources with knowledge of his remarks, Soros told those in attendance that he is “used to fighting losing battles but doesn’t like to lose without fighting.”

“We have just lost this election, we need to draw a line,” he said, according to several Democratic sources. “And if this president can’t do what we need, it is time to start looking somewhere else.”

I have to agree there. It’s not the losing I mind so much (hell, I’ve been an SU and Jets fan all my life, so I know a little about losing), but the rolling over and playing dead thing really bugs me. Especially since I honestly believe that it was this “can’t do” attitude (you know, the, “wah, we don’t have a filibuster-proof majority,” and “wah, wah, wah, the blue dogs are a bunch of meanies,” or “wah, we thought for sure if we gave up on everything worthwhile, we’d get Olympia Snowne to vote with us,” whining we’ve heard pretty much from day one) that alienated voters and lost the House this past election.

Oh well, thank goodness there’s a royal wedding in the air, or I’d be downright suicidal.

In other news, it was very, very windy and rainy here yesterday and last night. So windy that the cable went out (again) – and this time, the Internet went with it. Fortunately, it’s back up now (well, I guess that’s somewhat obvious), which is good. Today is supposed to be fairly miserable as well – rain, snow, and, while not exactly frigid, then not exactly warm, either. This change in the weather has my creaky old bones aching this morning, and, since I decided to take tomorrow off, I’m really looking forward to getting this day over with. Unfortunately, I have to do the acupuncture thing after work, which means I’ll get home that much later.

Oh well, time for another cup-o-joe (maybe a can of ‘Four Loko‘ would be a better choice). Have a good one.

Normally, I have a morning routine. Nothing too exciting, of course. I just get up, do the shower thing, and then watch the lo-cal news while I drink coffee and try to ignore the news on the Internet. Not today, though. Today I awoke to my cable box displaying “E-13” and showing nothing on the screen except for an “initializing” page. When in doubt, turn it off and on (then unplug it, then unplug it and leave it off for a while). When none of that worked, I was forced to call support – only to find a recording saying “yeah, yeah, we know, so don’t bother us.” Well, alrighty then. They better hope I don’t get used to this, or I’ll be saving myself quite a bit of money every month.

I’m now watching – more listening than watching, actually – last night’s ‘Countdown’ on the Internets. I believe it started last night (the trouble, not Countdown; I mean, I know Countdown started last night), but I was busy watching the SU game on ESPN3.com, so I didn’t have the teevee on. So this means I also didn’t get last night’s recordings – most notably Stargate: Universe. So this really blows. I mean, not as much as shit backing up in your basement, but still.

Speaking of shit backing up, I called the County yesterday to see if I could get the plans for my septic system. I’m not having any problems at the moment, but I’d like to know where everything is at, just in case. So I talked to a guy who did a search and called me back. Normally they’d just fax it to me, but there are lots of “notes” on mine, because they had “problems” installing it, and he wants to go over it with me “at the site.” And he happens to live out my way. Very nice guy, but this doesn’t sound as if it bodes well. I see more money hemorrhaging away from my bank account in the near future. Oh great.

Looks like I picked a lousy time to quit drinking beer.

I don’t pay attention to the news anymore, of course, nor do I record Olbermann, Maddow, or anything other than entertainment shows (I think I actually still subscribe to the Countdown and Maddow podcasts or vidcasts or whatever it is you call them, but I don’t watch anymore; I stick to music at work these days – better for my soul). But I guess Keith did a “special comment” responding to Ted Koppel’s dissing of opinion people in general – and MSNBC and Keith Olbermann in particular. Far be it for me to side with a Cornell guy over a fellow SU alum, but Keith is right and Koppel is wrong. If you report two sides of a story equally – no matter how outlandish and ridiculous one “side” is – that’s not being “objective.” That’s being deliberately ignorant at best, and disingenuous at worst. To paraphrase Al Franken, the color of the sky is not in doubt, even if “some people say” otherwise, and to report the sky is blue vs. the sky is green “controversy” as anything but bullshit is, in itself, not objective. And if somebody is lying or being a hypocrite, it isn’t being “objective” not to say so. It’s being complicit in the lie. So screw you Ted, you piece of limey garbage you.

Speaking of garbage, somebody remind me to put mine out tonight. They blew me off last week, so let’s see if they actually pick it up tomorrow. If not, I’m going to tell them to take back their nice nifty garbage can. I actually go right by the garbage facility on my way in to work, and can dump off garbage for $1 a bag (and recyclables for free). If I average 1.5 bags a week, that’s $78 a year, as opposed to $68 a quarter. And by the time I get the garbage all the way to the curb (so to speak; there are no curbs out here), I might as well go the extra mile (so to speak; it’s more like 20 miles) to the dump.

So, we’ll see.

One nice thing about not being a celebrity is that you don’t have all those nasty paparazzi following you around hoping to snap a photo of you getting out of a car without your panties on. Another is that they probably won’t exhume your body 400 hundred years after your death, just to find out what you died of, and then discuss your personal hygiene habits. Unfortunately for Astronomer Tycho Brahe, that’s not the case.

On Monday, an international team of scientists opened his tomb in the Church of Our Lady Before Tyn near Prague’s Old Town Square, where Brahe has been buried since 1601. After eight hours of work, they lifted from the tomb a tin box like a child’s coffin in which Brahe’s remains were placed after the only previous exhumation, in 1901.

Brahe’s extraordinarily accurate stellar and planetary observations, which helped lay the foundations of early modern astronomy, are well documented but the circumstances surrounding his death at age 54 are murky.

It has been long thought that he died of a bladder infection: Legend said it was the result of his reluctance to breach court etiquette during a reception by leaving for a toilet.

I was unaware that holding it in could cause a bladder infection. Frankly, I thought one could only hold it so long, and then, well, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do – whether in court or not. But perhaps one develops different techniques (if not some sort of unspeakable tourniquet-like apparatus or 16th Century version of the hose clamp) on those long nights of sky gazing or something.

Speaking of ancient stars in the news, Apple says today will be a day you’ll never forget (or something), because it will start selling The Beatles’ music on iTunes. I’m pretty sure I’ll forget today rather quickly – Beatles or no Beatles. Frankly, if I want the Beatles, I’ll buy a CD and burn it. No offense to anybody, but I think you have to be nuts to buy anything from iTunes – or to even use it. But I suppose it’s “easy” (much like AOL was the easy way to get online back in the day – no matter how bad it sucked), and of course you can’t beat their marketing. And this is America, where marketing is king.

Carrying on the fine tradition of British Royal inbreeding, Prince William (not sure which one he is – the older one or the younger one) and his 12th cousin (or something) Kate Middleton have announced their impending nuptials. I know this, because CNN appears to consider it “breaking news.”

Well, gosh, maybe I will remember this day as long as I live, after all.

Yesterday was a shitty day. Literally. On the bright side, I got a pretty fair amount of practice digging with my front loader (though I’d hoped it would be continuing on trails in my woods and not digging up my front lawn). At least I now know where the cover for my septic tank is. I also am now familiar with just how full the tank can get before everything starts backing up (I also found out that it seems to be impossible to buy a square-drive cleanout cover wrench; apparently, I’ll need to be making one out of something better than the galvanized plug I wound up buying). What I don’t know (despite lots of digging) is where the damn thing drains – and why the water doesn’t appear to be draining off the top. A project for another day. Hopefully I’ve got a few months before I need to worry about it. I also need drain the washer someplace other than than the septic tank. Another project for yet another day. Good thing I just got brand new, low water-using front loaders. I only wish there was a little more warm weather left in the year.

While yesterday’s shit was literal (you really don’t wanna go down into my basement – trust me), today merely figures to be a figuratively shitty day. It’s already started early – on one of those rare days when I could’ve actually used some more sleep. If you have any pull with the universe (or the Flying Spaghetti Monster or whatever it is that’s out there calling the shots), please ask for nice, easy day for me. I could really use minimum of hassle today – and for the rest of the week, at least, if you can manage it.

Oh well, time for another cup of coffee and then get ready to get out of the house. Hopefully I can hold off on taking a crap ’til I get to work. Everything I leave there is less to wind up in the tank here.

Yesterday started off nice enough. The weather was beautiful, and, after reading about the SU basketball team’s win over the Northern Iowa Panthers (or the ‘Nips’), I got some quality seat time on the tractor, carving out some trails and clearings in the woods. Then I took the boys over to play with their cousins for a couple of hours, before coming back and suffering though a tough SU football game that Syracuse, amazingly, managed to pull out in the end. This not only assured them a winning regular season for the first time since, like 2004, but also gave them 4 road wins in the Big East for the first time. Ever. And it also makes them eligible for a bowl game (again, for the first time since ’04), and with a shot (albeit a long one) at a 10-win season for the first time since 2001. All-in-all, a good Saturday, and I fell asleep very (very) early, while reading my Kindle, listening to the post-game call in show, and eagerly awaiting today’s basketball game (and maybe even getting some tractor time in around my other Sunday chores, what with even better weather expected today). All the while, blissfully unaware of any events that may have been transpiring while I slept.

But then I got up this morning. Always a bad idea. Apparently, there were some mighty bad events transpiring indeed, and I awoke to find lights on everywhere, and little notes saying things like don’t use the toilets, everything’s overflowing, and the shop vac doesn’t work (I can only assume somebody tried using the little shop vac that I use to clean the pellet stove with to try and suck up water without first taking off the HEPA filter. I’m not sure, though, since I haven’t the nerve to look at the moment, and it’s possible that the bigger shop vac in the garage is somehow not working).

Anyhow, I can only assume that there’s something wrong with the septic tank, and as it’s too dark to really investigate at the moment (and I don’t have much experience with septic systems, having until now been a ‘sewer guy’ like my hero Ed Norton), so all I can do is sit and speculate about how much this is all going to cost me, and whether I’ll be able to take a shower (let alone a shit) any time soon.

So please forgive me if I don’t really care who the boobleheads are today.

I don’t know about you, but I get an awful lot of junk mail, free magazines and catalogs that I rarely do more than skim through but for some reason can’t resist signing up for, lengthy policy declarations and “privacy policy” notices that I don’t even bother to take out of the envelopes they come in, let alone read, and the occasional bill from some unenlightened philistine company (typically it’s from some government looking for property taxes or something; haven’t the teabaggers put an end to taxes yet?) that refuses to skip the paper and just go with e-bills. In short, other than parcel post and the occasional priority mail envelope, I could live without the USPS (besides, now my mailbox is about 360 feet from the house, so it’s a pain to check).

Fortunately, with Republicans now running the show in the House, the Senate Democrats still feckless (yes, they have no feck), and the office of the President of the United States being more or less vacant, we may soon see an end to mail delivery as we know it. The USPS lost $8.5 billion last year, and between the fact that nobody uses the mail much these days, its mandate to provide delivery everywhere in the US at the same cost, and the fact that Republicans are no doubt salivating over handing over the PO to their buddies in the private sector, I don’t see how things can stay the same. Get ready for $5 first class mail rates.

Oh well, time to get ready to get some work done around here. Have a good one.

Sad news this morning. Dino De Laurentiis, best known to baby boomers for playing the role of the family dog in “The Flintstones,” has passed away at the tender age of 91. Dino was also known for producing such classic films as Barbarella, Dune, Death Wish, Serpico, and Blue “don’t you f*cking look at me” Velvet (among many, many others). Hard to believe that Dino outlived Dennis Hopper. Oh, wait. I guess that’s not all that hard to believe after all.

So, it’s Friday. I have to admit, from this end of things, the week seems to have flown by (though while I was in the midst of it, it seemed to take forever; how’s that work?). I can’t tell you the last time I went out and did something on a Friday night (or any other night, come to think of it), but, tonight, a friend of a friend’s band is playing at a coffee house type place on my side of town (actually, in a neighboring town, but that’s pretty close out here where I live these days; the general rule of thumb is that, when somebody asks you how far it is to one place or another, the answer is “about a half hour”). So, we’re gonna meet out there, and I’ll try not to feel too terribly awkward as I hang out and not have a beer (and stay awake past eight o’clock). And then, who knows? Maybe I’ll even watch Bill Maher in “real time” (eh? Get it?). But probably not. I’ll probably just go to bed and watch it tomorrow morning at, like, 6 o’clock or something (after I watch Sanctuary).

Basketball season officially starts tonight as SU hosts the Northern Iowa Panthers. The start of hoops season is always a big deal around these parts, but it’s a pleasant surprise that it’s not coming as blessed relief from another dismal football season. While SU football isn’t exactly in the running for a National Championship, they are still in the running for a bowl game, and can finish no worse than 6-6 this year. As for the b’ball team, we have a whole bunch of new highly regarded freshmen that will hopefully live up to their potential (and – dare I dream? – bring us a little of that old Carmelo Magic. Can it be mere coincidence that one of our most highly anticipated recruits is a center by the name of Fab Melo?).

Two more fillings replaced yesterday, with one being “very deep” and causing a bit of sensitivity. Hopefully that’s gone away now (hard to tell until I fully awaken, I guess). Another $100 down the tubes (thank goodness I have insurance, or who knows how much I’d be paying).

Today is Nadia Comaneci’s birthday (again, if you’re a baby boomer, you certainly remember her). She turns 49 today, which makes her almost as old as I am. And she has apparently aged much, much better than I have (not that I’m exactly setting the bar real high).

It’s also Al Michaels’ birthday, but since he didn’t go to SU, who really cares?

Travis, here’s a joke for ya: Obama is a Socialist. :rofl2:

In yet another sign of the coming apocalypse, a local woman (well, not real local, but in Oneida, which is something like 40 miles from where I live. That makes it pretty close by our standards up here in the Great White North) was attacked – rather relentlessly – by a 2 pound monkey.

Nick Fedchenko, of Prospect Street in Oneida Castle, said his wife Amy was playing with their two-year-old son on the newly installed tire swing in the backyard when they were attacked by an escaped capuchin monkey.

“Out of nowhere a monkey ran up and was going after our son,” he said. “She intervened and the monkey attacked. It jumped on her several times and she threw it off. It bit her twice and penetrated….”

😯 Penetrated? My goodness. A sexual assault!

“She had to keep the monkey at bay…all the way to the house until she could get me,” he said. “The monkey was coming at her the whole time. When she got to me, the monkey was at our side garage door trying to get in…. I was standing in my garage shocked to see that there was a monkey wrenching at the door.”

Man. That’s one horny monkey.

Good news on the tractor front, as it seems to be back up and running (thanks to my friend John), and sporting a nice new shiny set of tire chains (that will no longer be shiny by Monday morning). I won’t say what was wrong, because then I’d have to admit that I’m stupid, but it’s nice to know that I’ll be able to plow the driveway if need be.

No need for snow plowing this weekend, though. It isn’t gonna hit 60 as previously predicted, but it will get into the 50’s and be sunny, which is AOK by me. I have much trailblazing to do before it’s time to go back to work on Monday morning.

And Monday morning will come very early indeed, because we’re doing a rather major implementation and I need to get to work by 7:00 (which means leaving the house by 6:30 because work, like most things, is about a half hour away). This is a very visible system that will impact all 6,500+ employees where I work (in particular, HR, Payroll, and all the upper mucky-mucks), and there are large parts of it that just couldn’t be adequately tested before going live. Whereas I was responsible for a major part of the server setup, my life will be quite miserable if this turns out to be a dismal failure. So Monday has the potential to really suck.

Today, though, it’s Friday, ya bastids. I’ll worry about Monday when I can’t sleep Sunday night.

To all the veterans, folks currently serving in the military, and their families, Happy Veteran’s Day. It isn’t much, and it’d be better if you, rather than a day that everybody else gets off, you got more pay and better treatment upon your return to civilian life, but it’s something I guess. As for me, I’ll be going in to work today, though I should have taken the day off, because it’s supposed to very nice and warm. But I get to start the day off with a visit to the dentist (this is going to go on for quite some time, too, as the massive number of fillings I have all need to be replaced, as do my two defective crowns. Plus he wants to replace the ones I’m missing, which I don’t think I can actually afford, but I’ll have to break that news to him later.

Jesse Jackson apparently told Soledad O’Brien that she doesn’t ‘count’ as a black teevee anchor. Soledad O’Brien is black? Not that I really care or have been paying attention, but I had no idea. I mean, I always thought she was pretty cute, but I never really gave her racial background any thought. I figured she was half Mexican, half Irish. Some day, maybe it won’t matter what flavor “news” people are, and we can judge them purely on how big of a twit they are (on a scale between, oh, I dunno, Edward R. Murrow and Matt “the rat” Lauer).

Exciting news on the toilet paper front (no, really!). Kimberly Clark is test marketing “tube free” toilet paper here in the Northeast. That’s right, with some special “winding” process, toilet paper rolls will no longer include those little tubes, reducing the amount of needless crap in the world. The bad news is you’ll need to go to Wally World (or its Big Box Brother, Sam’s Club) to get your, um, hands on it. If all goes well, you’ll be seeing tubeless paper towel rolls soon.

Well, I reckon I’d better get busy. I have to leave about a half hour early to make my dental date, so I better get going.