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.

I slept in half the morning (’til 6AM), so I don’t have much time. Fortunately, there isn’t much going on anyway. That I know of, at least. So please feel free to talk amongst yourselves.

If you haven’t seen it yet, Keith Olbermann has issued a message to “Countdown Viewers.” Here it is:

Statement To The Viewers Of Countdown

I want to sincerely thank you for the honor of your extraordinary and ground-rattling support.

Your efforts have been integral to the remedying of these recent events, and the results should remind us of the power of individuals spontaneously acting together to correct injustices great or small.

I also wish to apologize to you viewers for having precipitated such anxiety and unnecessary drama. You should know that I mistakenly violated an inconsistently applied rule – which I previously knew nothing about — that pertains to the process by which such political contributions are approved by NBC.

Certainly this mistake merited a form of public acknowledgment and/or internal warning, and an on-air discussion about the merits of limitations on such campaign contributions by all employees of news organizations.

Instead, after my representative was assured that no suspension was contemplated, I was suspended without a hearing, and learned of that suspension through the media.

You should also know that I did not attempt to keep any of these political contributions secret; I knew they would be known to you and the rest of the public. I did not make them through a relative, friend, corporation, PAC, or any other intermediary, and I did not blame them on some kind of convenient ‘mistake’ by their recipients.

When a website contacted NBC about one of the donations, I immediately volunteered that there were in fact three of them; and contrary to much of the subsequent reporting, I immediately volunteered to explain all this, on-air and off, in the fashion MSNBC desired.

I genuinely look forward to rejoining you on Countdown on Tuesday, to begin the repayment of your latest display of support and loyalty – support and loyalty that is truly mutual.

So, that sounds about right to me. I would agree that it merited discussion, but certainly not suspension. Anyhow, I’m glad Olbermann will be back on the air (or, on the cable, I guess is more like it) tonight.

In other news, yesterday was a little like Christmas. I put in for an upgrade for my work Blackberry, and decided to try for something that wasn’t a free upgrade. Instead, I went for the Torch, which is a nifty little 3G touchscreen model that has WiFi and a slides open to reveal a hardware keyboard. While I would probably have preferred a Droid out of general principles, this thing is pretty nifty, fits in my old Curve holster, and is way better than my old one. Would have been great while I was waiting for my Internet to get installed, but, well, better late than never.

So now I better go and try to figure out how to use it.

Oh, golly, I suppose it doesn’t need to be said, but the weekends are just too damn short. Yesterday was chilly but clear, so it was good for getting the chainsaw out and trying to make my woods walkable (lots more work to do there), and this week is supposed to get progressively warmer (too bad sunset is now about ten minutes before I get out of work). Good news about Olbermann, I guess. I don’t know what the “rules” at MSNBC are if they get applied consistently or not. If he was a straight “news” guy, then I could understand his company insisting that he disclose his political contributions – just to monitor his reporting and prevent him from showing any bias (or at least having him disclose that he contributed to the campaign if he did any stories on those folks he contributed to. As an opinion guy, though, that makes things a bit murkier.

Olbermann certainly isn’t hiding his liberal bent, so anyone watching should be able to take that into account. But a lot of ‘Countdown’ certainly gets presented as news stories (with comment by Keith and his guests). Not that Konservatives would believe Olbermann if he reported that the sky is blue, so again I don’t know. But what if two candidates were vying for, say, the Democratic nomination somewhere? Should Keith’s audience be made aware that he’s a supporter of one candidate if he happens to do a story on the campaign? I don’t know. I’m just saying maybe it isn’t quite as simple as “Olbermann good – MSNBC baaaaad.”

Maybe that’s ‘cuz I’m just one of those wishy-washy liberal types that sees shades of gray in everything.

One thing is clear, however. And that is that I have to get ready for work.

See ya

In keeping with my news boycott, I won’t be looking at who the talking heads are today. And, as I feared yesterday, there is now a sports boycott in effect. I guess the only things left are the weather, and tractors. As for the weather, if was kind of cold yesterday. Not horrible, but a high not much more than 40, and kind of damp and snowy/sleety. It’s supposed to get up into the 60’s this coming week (which would be great if I didn’t have to work), but you can definitely feel winter in the air around here, and it’s nice to know that when the snow really starts to fly, I’ll be able to plow the driveway with my Kubota. Or so I thought.

Yesterday, however, was a bad day for all things orange, and the Kubota was no exception. When I went to put a load of fence posts in the shed for winter, the damn thing wouldn’t start (the Kubota, that is – not the shed; if I could start up the shed and drive it around, that would be really cool). It seemed like there was a safety that wasn’t made and, as I have been known to forget to put it in neutral or disengage the PTO or whatever (while mastering the “I did that on purpose” look, just in case anybody happens to be watching), I figured I was just doing something stupid (or, perhaps more accurately, stupidly not doing something). Fortunately, my friend John was around, and he took a look. Sadly, it wouldn’t start for him, either.

To make a long story short, we looked at all the switches we could find, but since I’m existing in two places (where, if I need shit at one place, it’s all but guaranteed to be at the other one), I didn’t have access to my meter (I actually have a couple of them, neither of which are over here), battery charger/jumper, and assortment of wire and cable – except Cat 5 and coax; I don’t leave home without that. Since it was getting neigh on dark, we stopped short of gutting the wiring completely, and opted to regroup again in the morning.

A bit later, I had a look at the owners manual (not a huge help; I guess I need to shell out the bucks for a service manual for this thing), and sat on the tractor, wiggling levers and looking at the pictures describing what position everything should be in when starting the thing up (mind you, while I’m not genius, I have started this goddamn thing once or twice before), and, whatever it was I did, it started for me.

Not wanting to shut it down just yet, and determining that succumbing to diesel fumes wouldn’t be a good idea (not on Saturday night; Monday morning maybe), I opened the garage door. And then I figured I might as well go dump the posts off by the shed (which, as it was quite dark by this point, gave me the opportunity to use the headlights for the first time. Very nice). So, I did that, and then, not knowing what else to do, decided I’d better go park it in the garage again before I shut it off.

So, that’s where things are at this point. Hopefully it was all just the culmination of a bad day, and all will be well from here on out. At least until I’m out in the middle of the woods one day and it won’t start for me.

Damn inscrutable Japanese tractor.

Oh well, lots-o-laundry to do, furniture to move, and shopping to, um, shop, so I’ll need to hitch up the wagon and and go all the way in to Pixley today (normally, I’d just go Drucker’s in Hooterville, but for the big stuff, I have to go to the Piggly-Wiggly).

Have a good Sunday, and don’t forget – unless you’re in Arizona or Hawaii or something – it may not be as late as you think out there.