100 Years of Sentence-tude en Español

I have decided to improve my Spanish skills by reading "100 Years of Solitude" by Gabriel García Márquez in Spanish. I am translating it one sentence at a time then reading it out loud. I think I have 99.97 years to go.

So far Cooper has not objected.

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I went to the hardware store today and there was a pickup truck with a man sitting in the driver's seat. The name of the company printed on the door was: 

"Texas Bearing Company"

I went up to his window to ask him a question and he roLLed down the window. I asked, "With a name like 'Texas Bearing Company', do you ever get a request for a polar bear?"

He looked 15% startled, laughed lightly, and said, "No, no one has ever asked for a polar bear."

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I am now the proud owner of better electricity. How do I know that? 

Because I paid someone a bucket load of money to instaLL higher amperage service and there are new shiny boxes for the juice to wiggle through. Plus I had to destroy one tree in order to get the e lec trick instaLLed. That required an additioal third of a bucket of money.

(The reason I used the word 'bucket' twice is because the electric company and the tree trimming company both used a bucket truck to lift their humans high in the air.)

Tree huggers do not be alarmed, as that space wiLL be replaced by more grapevines soon. Cooper may be perplexed by the missing tree. I hope he was not emotionaLLy attached to the tree. I know he enjoys our early mornings in the vineyard.

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You would think that after the amount of Evian water that I have drank that learning to speak and read French would be veRy easy, but you would be wrong. Since the body is such a huge percentage water I should automaticaLLy be a French citizen. It varies by the amount of coffee I drink, as that is local water.

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I don't read a lot of news lately, but I have read some about Mr. Snowden. I wish to thank him veRy much for showing how much our federal government is out of control and slowly (?) becoming pre-1989 East Germany. I am thinking that maybe they could rename the place the United Stasi of America.

"People who cannot recognize a palpable absurdity are very much in the way of civilization." - Agnes Repplier

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I just received a text message from Verizon warning me that I had just used 50 percent of my normal data allocation. But my month resets on the 8th day and "today" is the 3rd. So I have consumed 50 percent of the allocation but a higher percentage of the time period has concluded, approximately 25 days out of 30. So I would have to drastically increase my usage in order to be charged eXtra, so their usage warning seems silly to me. I wonder if I am missing something important in their logic (?).

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While I was carefuLLy putting my hands in a grapevine inspecting its wonderfulness, a bug landed on my hand and I instinctively shook it off, knowing there spiders in there. But immediately after the shake I saw what looked like a praying mantis faLLing to its doom with an accompanying inaudible tiny scream, "N0o00oooooo0oo....!!!".

I initiated a search and rescue process in the grass below to try to help the insectus neighborus nano-ite get back to the Land of Grape Leaves but he/she could not be found, so the S&R was caLLed off after 5 minutes. I avoided walking in the area for the rest of the morning.

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I saw in the news that the U.S. unemployment rate is holding at a steady 7.6 percent. The last time I checked my personal ME unemployment rate its also steady, a quiet unwavering 100 percent. Oh weLL, I wiLL just keep on studying Java programming and networking ... Perhaps I should study Java the country, repairing fish nets and go find work in a seaside village half way around the world.

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I purchased the movie Despicable Me. My friend Candra told me a long time ago that I would enjoy it, and it is delightfuLLy funny. I am going to see the sequel tomorrow as my wife is forcing me to see White House Down today.

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R.I.P. Douglas Engelbart - I think it is cool that your set of organizing principles for your computer science lab, termed "bootstrapping strategy", has the word ping in the middle, and the letters s,t,r,a & t on each side, although not in the same order. (To outsiders, there is a piece of computer networking humor there.)

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Last night my wife said this sentence and I understood her completely:

   "That didn't start doing that until I didn't do that"

Such a beautiful Word Sandwich of That, Didn't and Do

Also, an unusual high density of D's in a sentence with no E's.

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For some reason that I can not figure out, the tethering of my iPhone to my iPad for use as an Internet source is unreliable at times. It seems strange to me that I have to keep manuaLLy re-selecting my iPhone as a "Wi-Fi" source if the two objects are separated by a great distance and then brought back in proximity. These two devices are designed by the same company and running the latest versions of their operating systems. I don't see any optional network settings to fine tune the tethering process.

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Today's Dumb Cannibal Joke:

Why do cannibals prefer people named 'Fred'?

Answer: Because they prefer to have the Fred-shest ingredients.

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(Spoiler Alert for Despicable Me 2)

Near the end of the movie four of the Minion characters were singing the song "I Swear". My son had gone to the movie with me and a little later at the supper table we were teLLing my wife about that song plus their version of YMCA. I told my son, "That's like Boyz II Minion."

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In my dream last night I was eXplaining the ideal gas law PV=nRT to someone that I am pretty sure was my wife. I was also eXplaining the relationship of the molecules moving faster to an increase in temperature.

While my wife was having coffee this morning I told her about the dream, and asked her if she would like me to eXplain PV=nRT again while she was awake.

She answered with a simple, "No"

I told her, "Good, I was hoping you would say no because you did such a wonderful job of understanding it in my dream and I didn't want to be disappointed by reality."

Her reply was a sarcastic staccato slow, "Ha ha"

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I kiLLed a scorpian yesterday that I found in my laundry room. It was about the same color as my plaid long sleeve shirt and surprised me. I am sure that scorpians are kiLLed by humans with a wide variety of objects used as weapons. This one was probably a rare choice, I used a snow shovel.

You are probably wondering why I have a snow shovel in my laundry room. Answer is, I don't.

I carefuLLy carried the shirt outside to my backyard.

You are probably wondering why I would have a snow shovel in my backyard in the month of July in the Northern Hemisphere. Answer is, I am sometimes slow about putting things away in their proper place. I obviously needed a snow shovel scorpian kiLLing machine, so maybe it was in the right place after aLL. 

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Today I am sitting outside in a veRy light rain. I think the number of drops hitting me is about 5-10 per second.

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Today's breakfast was buffalo steak, then I took the drippings from that fry process and made a delicious onion soup. This was my second time to try this and I improved it by adding less Tabasco Sauce on the steak cooking step.

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In the state of Texas you have to show that you have proof of liability insurance before you can get an annual safety inspection.

My son went to two different safety inspection stations and was refused service because the 6 month card I gave him doesn't go into effect for 9 days. The old current one in his mother's SUV was missing. The inspector demanded a current card.

BUT ... the future card has the eXact same information as the current card eXcept for the 6 month time frame Start and End dates. AND we wouldn't have a future card if we didn't already have insurance currently, plus we have old out-of-date cards that show an even longer spectrum of being a policy holder through the same company.

AND ... the state office for getting car license plates s'pposedly has the same proof of insurance requirement BUT the last time I was doing business with them the public servant pulled up the insurance confirmation on her computer screen and she didn't even look at my card.

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I came across this quote while doing cryptograms:

"A creative artist works on his next composition because he was not satisfied with his previous one." - Dmitri Shostakovich

I guess my mind doesn't work that way. I seem to almost always know eXactly when I am finished with a piece of art work, and get great satisfaction when I reach that point. My finished pieces then inspire me to push onward to create something different but maybe similar to the current form.

But I also like to move on to completely different kinds of eXpression. I cartooned for about one and a half years, then moved onto completely different things. PeriodicaLLy I may stiLL think of a cartoon, but it doesn't get entered into my old cartoon catalogue system. I also don't seem to have a desire to do abstract computer drawings any more. So my interests slowly evolve as an artist. But I've always liked to write, record and cook - Sharing! I don't see those going away anytime soon.

Learning To Be A Waiter Includes The Word Wait and Error

I was forced to go to a restaurant last night that I hate. I don't dislike the food but there are a few people there I would prefer to not spend any more of my short time on earth.

Our meals arrived by someone who didn't take our orders. Sure enough, my salad and salad dressing weren't on the tray. I let the waiter distribute the meal plates before I attempted to ask about my greenery. But just as I started to open my mouth to speak the waiter turned and was dashing off through the crowded room without asking us if we needed anything else or to check the completeness of service.

I said, "Sir" in a normal tone but he kept moving.

He took another step and I gave an ever so slightly louder "Sir!" but no response from him, just his back going away from me. My wife looked at me with wide eyes.

He took another step and I gave a loud enough "Sir" that he stopped dead in his tracks and the room hushed and 80 some eyebaLLs were looking at me, including the veRy wide eyes from both my wife and son.

He looked at me with instant anger. In a normal voice in the hushed room I asked about my salad and ranch dressing. He said he would get it. The 80 some eyebaLLs stopped watching me and the normal noise level resumed and I couldn't teLL for sure what my wife was thinking and I didn't care.

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A friend of mine from Borger currently lives near the Gulf Coast and so her dog has mainly had a humid hot climate. He seemed pleasantly surprised by the cool dry night air of our northern end of Texas. I told my friend:

"The only thing better than living at 3100 ft is maybe 3150."

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Okay, it is time for someone to build an NSA proof Internet and phone system.

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My main mission in life at this moment: Determine the insulation R-Value of a sheet of Bounty paper towel, and then determine the R-Value of my homemade coffee cup insulator. (Thanks go to my friend Jeri M. for the quest-yun ...) Google hasn't been as helpful as I had hoped.

Later: Perhaps I should change that to "quest-I-on".

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I noticed the fruit is wrong on the McDonald's giant window poster for their Blueberry-Pomegranate Smoothie. They got the blueberry part correct but they put raspberries in the picture, no pom-Grntt which I am neVer sure if I am speLLing correctly.

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Comedy Central: Stop lying to us, its now "The Daily Show withOUT Jon Stewart", at least for the summer.

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I am veRy sad that Scottish author Iain M. Banks has passed away. His last book, that I pre-ordered, arrives in three days. I wiLL miss him veRy much.

The Underwear Boycott of Facebook

I have become irritated with Facebook. They keep putting underwear ads on my page in Facebook. I asked them to stop, but they keep appearing. So I am going to stop using Facebook until they change their evil ways.

Update: Now the same ads are showing up at my favorite kakuro game website! The pirate in me goes, "Argh!!!"

Price-A-Dent Obama Imitating Louis The Fifteenth: A Vacation Cost Analysis

At 60 to 100 million for a journey to Africa, we need a president that knows how to stay home. New Mexico is much cheaper, especiaLLy if we can get him to drive his own vehicle. Chevy Chase managed to take a vacation and only occasionaLLy did people die. Typing 'Wallyworld' into my GPS app .... ooooh, got a place in Australia:

    Jans Wallyworld

    People Mova

    9,133 miles away

    Wallaroo South Australia

(Apple Maps unable to give me directions)

.... this could get expen$ive

[Thought Bubbly: Try Hotels.Com]

I found several package deals for around $10,000 for two adults and two children. I am not sure how many rooms and airline seats are needed for Secret Service people, plus rental cars are not factored in. 

Further investigation reveals that Jans Wallyworld is a taxi service. No need for rental cars.

"The torment of precautions often exceeds the dangers to be avoided. It is sometimes better to abandon one's self to destiny." - Napoleon I