Sorry, I got nothing this morning. Been spending too much time writing my novel, which I’ll have to serialize online when I get enough written. Until then, have a good day.

Only one guest today on Press the Meat. Some Muslim terrorist guy named Osama or Obama or something like that. He’s married to Angela Davis, I think.

Over on Faze the Nation, Bush buddy Bobby Schieffer has Chuck Hagel and Jack Reed (not that you can tell by their website).

On Fux News Sunday, Weaselface Wallace has McCain lackey John “the goon” Thune, on to tell us how Obama’s trip to Europe and the Middle East was a disgrace, while John McCain’s stirring speech to dozens of people at the Ashtabula Rotary Club stole Obama’s thunder. Plus there’s Claire McCaskill, the still un-indicted Karl Rove, the usual Fuxheads, and this week’s “Power Player,” Ben “Bueller?” Stein.

Over at the Goebbels Network, George Snufalufagus will give grandpa McCain yet another chance to get his story – any story – straight. Then former Bush lackey and current ABC political “expert” Matthew Dowd joins a reunited axis of drivel as he huddles around the roundtable with Sam :omg: Donaldson, Cokie “the hag” Roberts and George :jerk: Will join George.

CNN’s Late Emission has both Obama and Grandpa McCain(and an extra special show on “the next president” at 7:00 Eastern tonight, for those of you who just can’t get enough of that Wolf.

Later, on 60 Minutes, it’s some mafia hitman, a story about sending people back to the moon, and Scott Pelley interviews The Boss.

Have a good Sunday. Oh, by the way, if birds have been eating your garden, this could be the solution.

Seems to work for me….

Well, nobody’s volunteered to write today’s opening screed, so I reckon you’re stuck with a “not much to say today” one. Oh well, nobody reads these on the weekends anymore anyway. Have a good one.

Finally, this week is over. It’s been a long one. There’s been a dark cloud following me around for about three weeks now. No horrible tragedies – just stuff to make my pain in the ass life a bigger pain in the ass. I think I need to take a week and just go off by myself somewhere. Maybe hang out in woods and camp someplace or something. Not today, though. Have a good one.

DirecTV 11 is up and running. Not putting out video yet, but it has 14 conus (national) transponders putting out nice strong signals. At up to 5 channels per transponder, that’s a potential for 70 national HD channels. Plus there’s a full contingent of “spotbeam” transponders aboard, meaning I’ll hopefully get local channels in HD in time for football season. You should see all the excitement over at dbstalk, where geeks from all over the country are sending in their signal readings.

Hey, what can I say? I have no life.

In big news for geeks, the DirecTV satellite moved to its final orbit (give or take a little minor tweaking) yesterday. Speculation is we may start to see new HD channels by the end of the month – and hopefully I’ll get my locals in HD before too long.

In other news, the Mega Millions jackpot is up to $125 million today. If you don’t hear from me tomorrow, you’ll know what happened.

You know, I’m the first to admit I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed. But I had pretty good public school education at a pretty well-respected public school here in Upstate New York (no ‘Intelligent Design,’ but they learned up pretty good). So why do I insist on calling it a ‘hot water heater?’ I really do know better.

Oh well. Mission accomplished on the heater replacement. I wanted to go tankless (just so could say it was a ‘tankless job’), but they were triple the cost, and given my fairly short life expectancy (and having to worry if there would be a problem using a common vent with the furnace – the install manual said not to do that, and that you should use stainless pipe; I doubt it would have mattered, but I didn’t have time to research it properly), and at $1,000+ vs. $369, I figured I’d go with the tank. If I’m still alive and living where I am now when this one goes (tried this; too many hoops to jump through, and none of the final results appealed to me), I’ll think it over.

Of course, while it’s a simple job on paper, it turned out to be a pain in the ass (and other locations). First, since I hurt my arm a couple weeks ago, doing anything that requires gripping and/or twisting hurts like hell. If you’ve ever twisted wrenches for a living (or for fun), you know how much fun it was to cut copper, clean fittings, and twist pipe wrenches all day with a crippled arm (in a the type of confined space that’s typical whenever doing a happy homeowner plumbing job).

And since it’s just the two of us here now, I went for a smaller tank, which meant a fair amount of replumbing (nothing too major – just enough to be a pain in the ass) of the water and gas lines (and the goddamn vent, too). It took me forever at the store to get the fittings I needed (it’s not like I needed anything out of the ordinary; back when I did this type of shit for a living, I had a much better parts collection), and a line of severe thunderstorms went through in the middle of things, so I had the dogs up my ass and quivering in fear while I was trying to solder without setting the house on fire.

I couldn’t get all the water out of the pipe for my final joint, so I wound up having to shut down all the water and drain the house (and pulling apart my half-soldered joint and cleaning it up again) to get it. Not a huge deal in the scheme of things but, as I said, annoying.

Only one leak when I filled the tank (and on a fitting that I bench soldered, so I’m pretty disappointed in myself for that one; at least it was easily fixed), and of course I added unions where there were none, and added a ball valve past the gate valve that required a pipe wrench to shut off. When you need to shut shit off in a hurry, you can’t beat a ball valve.

So, anyway, while my arm is aching and nearly unusable (typing this more or less one handed), I’m just glad I didn’t have to pay somebody to do it (on a Sunday, no less). I sure could use another day off, though.

An oddity today on Press the Meat – something actually worth watching – as Tom Brokaw welcomes President Al Gore, on to talk about how refreshing it would have been to have had an intelligent Nobel Prize winner in the White House. Oh, and David Gregory and Chuck Todd will be on too, for whatever it is they do.

Faze the Nation’s website advises us to watch “Sunday, June 29 at 10:30 a.m. ET on CBS.” You know, if they don’t give a shit what’s on their show, I sure as hell don’t. ut rumor has it Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson will be on to praise the Bush economy.

On Fux News Sunday, Joe Liebermann will try to out-weasel Weaselface Wallace, and there’ll also be appearances by Evan “buh” Bayh, Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the usual fuxheads.

Thanks to the British Open, there will be no “This Weak” this week on the Goebbels network. Too bad they can’t play every week.

CNN’s Late Emission mit Wolf Blitzer includes an encore appearance by Heny Paulson, Lizard Queen Condi Rice, Botox Queen Nancy Pelosi, and Missouri Moron Roy Blunt.

As for us, well, our hot water heater blew last night, so today we’ll be running out to buy a new one and installing it. The old one was 14 years old, so it isn’t a surprise, and I feel quite lucky that it happened when it did. The damn things have gotten pretty expensive, but at least it’s something that I can replace myself. I’d hate to be at the mercy of a plumber.

Y’all have a good Sunday.

Junior is off to visit his kinfolk in Minnesota today. That means leaving from either Rochester or Buffalo (Buffalo, I think; flights from Syracuse are ridiculously expensive), so Granny got up in the middle of the night to pick him up and take him there. So I reckon that means I have most of the day to myself, since even when she gets back, I suppose she’ll probably want to take a nap. So I guess I should probably get some quality time with the XBox.

In other news, for some reason I started wondering if Monty Hall is still alive. Happily, he is. And so is Carol Merrill (I think they both look pretty damn good, too; they’re not exactly spring chickens, though Monty’s about 20 years older than Carol, so I give him the “best preserved” award).

Sadly, Jay Stewart passed away in 1989. A sad story, that. His daughter committed suicide in 1981, and apparently Jay – despite finding Jesus and getting tight with Pat Robertson – never got over it. He hit the bottle pretty hard, and wound up shooting himself in his car park. 🙁 You folks of a certain age will know who I mean. You younger folks, I envy. I wish I was too young to know who Jay Stewart was.

Have a good day.

Today marks the start of this year’s Syracuse Nationals, which is the largest Hot Rod and Vintage car show on this side of the continent (this side of the Rockies, I think). Not only does that mean 7,000 tricked-out cars and trucks and some 80,000 visitors will be in town, but this year you can go out and meet the Fonz and Shirley Feeney (that’d be Henry Winkler and Cindy Williams, for you younger folks)!

I don’t generally go to the show, but, for the next few days, our streets will be filled with some of the coolest looking vehicles you’ll ever get a chance to see. A lot of the folks stay at the Econo-Lodge a block down the road, and the street behind my house (which was once the Erie Canal, but is now Erie Boulevard) is a divided six lane road where the cars traditionally love to strut their stuff (with enough nice straight stretches in between traffic lights to do a little drag racing, which of course is discouraged by the local Carabinieri).

Oh, I know. Cars burning gas and dumping CO₂ into the atmosphere is bad for the planet and contributes to global warming and all that, but, well, these cars are pretty cool, and a lot of fun to watch. So, screw it. It’s gonna be in the 90’s today anyway; might as well go for 100.

Have a good ‘un.