If I Had A Good Title It Would Be Right Here

Last night's dream: A rather large, but Dr Seuss looking, cactus was growing on top of my commercial building downtown. I should clarify that the cactus looked like something Dr Seuss would have drawn, not the good doctor himself. It was a difficult repair job. I even get tired in my dreams.

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I thought I heard my iPhone ringing in a distant room aNd actuaLLy got off my couch and walked two steps before I realized that it was the non-ringing device in my hands that I was playing HyperSudoku. There should be a name for this .... ... .. . besides eXhaustion from a 1,000 miles of driving.

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You must try HyperSudoku if you like Sudoku. It has 4 more defined 3x3 grids within the normal 9 grid gameplay.

http://www.puzzlemadness.co.uk/

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I should not have to wait until after someone passes away to find out they have a college degree in chemistry. If you are a chemist like me please let me know.

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(Sept 1st)

A day of many strange dreams. Dream number 2 involved aLL non-Indians mysteriously disappearing from South Dakota. Then everything of modern origin disappeared, eXcept highways. If non-Indians tried to enter they disappeared immediately after crossing the border. North Dakota wasn't affected. Perhaps it was the buffalo burger from Fuddrucker's that caused my dream....

I was so distraught when I woke up, thinking, "I can't ever go back to South Dakota!!!!"

Dream number 1 was a long conversation with my maternal grandfather, a South Dakotan. He has been gone a long time. He was the grandfather that I was close to from infancy.

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(While on the road to Ft Worth)

I sneezed just now in a fairly crowded convenience store. About 20 people were simultaneously trying to be louder than their neighbor in saying "Bless You!!!" to me not quite in unison, and when they realized it they started laughing. I sneeze, people laugh.

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My favorite lawyer wrote to me: Couldn't help but think of you at 5:30 am. Went out to my car and there were two praying mantises on it.

I responded: I put them there at 5:15

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Today's Dumb Joke - A Triple!

Q: What do cannibals use when they want to cook a boxer?

A: A George Foreman Grill

Q: What do cannibals use when they are really hungry?

A: A George Four Man Grill

Q: What do cannibals use for pit barbecue?

A: A Gorge Four Man Grill

Weigh Two Funny

I wrote: I haven't seen many people do the "scalding hot water challenge" for ALS yet.

My friend Tony asked: Many or any????

I replied: Anyone or Manyone. Polar bears do the cold water thing aLL the time, and I routinely boil chicken that has been frozen.

My favorite lawyer commented: I guess technically zero isn't many...

Then Tony asked: When you boil the chicken that has been frozen, is it a challenge, or has it been challenged, or is it just challenging?

My reply to my favorite lawyer: TechnicaLLy, speaking of temperature, 0 degrees Celcius is many degrees above Absolute Zero, 0 degrees Kelvin, 273.15 degrees. 0 degrees Fahrenheit is many degrees above Absolute Zero, 0 degrees Rankine, 459.67 on the R/F sized degree. 

So zero can be many in many ways.

Reply to friend Tony: Boiling chicken is neVer a challenge for me. I remember watching my grandmother kiLL a chicken once, and once was aLL I needed, so that would be a bit of a challenge.

My friend Tony replied: My Grandmother would take strips of cloth and tie the chickens legs to the clothes line. She would have four or five chickens hanging upside down. Then down the line she would go with her trusty butcher knife.

Reply to friend Tony: THaNKs for the visual, I wAs trYing to eAt somethIng, but now ....

My second reply to my favorite lawyer: You can tare an electronic balance so that it displays zero, but isn't, and then zero is many in several weighs, but stays the same amount of many. If you don't believe me, just ask you gram-ma. Oh, that was weigh two funny.

FinaLLy Tony asked: Are you loosing weight?

Reply to friend Tony: I am pretty sure that when people are not actuaLLy eating or drinking something they are constantly losing weight due to metabolic and respiratory processes. So I only spend a few seconds of any day actually increasing my weight in the process of eating or drinking, so the vast majority of the time I am losing weight. Its a calc-you-less problem.

Goodbye Mork

You spent decades making me laugh.

When I first saw you I knew you would be around for a long time.

You are the funniest person who ever lived, or will ever live.

My attempts at humor are just baby steps compared to your gigantic now empty shoes.

Now you are gone.

Today you made me cry.

Goodbye Robin

Battling Worms

If you like to cookie eXperiment, try putting peanut butter on a cookie, thin layer. Mmmm.... My choice is Cashew Sandies.

Cooper approves.

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Currently reading Craig Ferguson's memoir on becoming an American citizen. Enjoying, caution: has several choice words

American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot

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AMC is having a Breaking Bad 'binge', playing aLL the episodes in a row on Sundays with about 6 episodes per week. Today it starts at 4 PM Central Time.

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My wife is a bad person. I am sitting on edge of the kitchen eating a snack wanting to have a conversation. She is making soup but forgets to turn on the eXhaust fan. Suddenly I am overwhelmed by the toxic fumes of the jalapeño peppers on high flame of the back burner. I quickly decided I didn't need a conversation.

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I decided to take a break from Facebook for awhile. I left a status of simply the number zero: 0

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Just battling worms in my organic vineyard. Some grapes are getting edible!!! I brought in my first bunch of white seedless for my wife to try.

His Middle Name Is Love

Training a preying mantis in the vineyard yesterday.

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"Dad? Are you awake?", comes a quietly loud whisper as the bedroom door opens.

"Yes", I respond maintaining some sense of awakeness in my pain racked body under my blankie, two pillows low underhead with a third girding my belly while propping up my left elbow, my main enemy.

"Can I get the gas card? Also, mom wants a drink, do you need anything?"

I say, "I am in so much pain that I don't know what I want,"

He responds with one of his favorite questions, "Do you want a pony?"

I randomly pick a non-zero non-one single digit answer of, "Yes, actuaLLy I would like to have 3 ponies."

He suddenly laughes and says, "OH!!! I have to show you this video." So he spends several seconds finding the interview of Vermin Love Supreme during the Lesser Known Democratic Candidates Forum, at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics in which he talks about his platform of dental health care, zombies, and ponies for every American citizen while wearing a giant rubber boot for a hat. I laughed during most of the 5 minute long YouTube video.

I felt better for about 5 minutes then pain ramped drifted off to a blissful comatose state.

Evil Elves, Escobar Hippos and Ebola Dreams

A good place to cry
Is in the shower, 'cause your
Tears have company

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July 5th: Today was nothing but the kitchen sink.

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You know how some homes have cuckoo clocks that announce the hour change throughout the day? In my house the distant teleBision is tuned into an NCIS marathon, so it is the opening theme song.

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I go online to study electric motors at Fasco.com, and I try to download their brochure called "Fasco Facts". But I get a 404 error for all 3 language choices, which indicates they most likely have a misconfigured web page.

So I try to be helpful and send them a message through their website, and I get an automatic reply:

"This submission has been marked as spam. Please try again."

I am thinking, ...um..., "No !!!"

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I hate it when elves are stupid.

The Keebler Elves changed the packaging on my Cashew Sandies. This means they paid somebody, most likely another elf, to redesign a perfectly good package and increase the cost of my cookies. They didn't change the cookie, and they let me know that on both the top and side. Notice the font is twice as large for the first line as compared to the second in the notification. AND ... I most likely would not even noticed the change IF they hadn't told me because my old empty package is long gone bye-bye. SO ... the only real new thing I notice is the
NoN - Notification of Newness

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Advice: Do not study about the Ebola virus right before going to sleep. May affect dream(s) and / or waking up process.

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Funny Headline: Pablo Escobar [a dead drug kingpin, in case you have forgot] Keeps Hurting Colombia - With His Hippos

His Story of Iris History Is This

I have a rare talent. I just recognized Iris Dement's singing voice in the closing song in some movie credits.

After Fargo the tv show I started watching the Billy Bob Thornton movies on Netflix. The movie was "Daddy and Them" from 2001, so it was from 13 years ago that I didn't immediately recognize one of my favorite actors from [tv show] 'Justified', named Walton Goggins who plays Boyd Crowder.

I don't routinely listen to Iris Dement. I was first mesmerized after hearing her during the final song performed for the last episode of the tv show Northern Exposure titled 'Our Town' on July 26th, 1995. She has a veRy distinct voice, and wrote that song after passing through a small town in Oklahoma.

The only time I have been to Missouri was a day hunting for Iris. I had gone to Topeka KS to see Itzhak Perlman in concert, so I decided to wander through a piece of Missouri. I was unsuccessful at finding her; I was hoping for an autograph. I did get Itzhak's signature on my CD cover for my favorite album of his, which contained the same Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in D Major that was performed. I think I was the last fan in line to get to see him that evening. He was sweaty and appeared exhausted.

The new thing I discovered in Missouri that day was deep fried turkey legs available as fast food. I did not actuaLLy get one. By 'discovered' that means I saw it on a sign out a few restaurants while driving by.

There Be Dragon(flie)s

I just realized I am not much of a man. I was just startled INdoors by a dragonfly. WeLL, considering it looked like a flying scorpion and after my scorpion battle this week AND it was a good sized dragonfly ....

... and it did sneak up behind me, right side.

Don't worry, I didn't kiLL it.

Break is over, back to mopping .... it is early Tuesday morning.

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I did the math and realized I have lived slightly longer than Hitler.

... and I am slightly older than Prince!!! I just discovered that ...

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Sandwich Idea:

Use 1/2 of a Schwan's Chicken Kiev, with a slice of pepper jack cheese on a burger bun with Miracle Whip. Tasty! Great for leftovers...

I recently found Miracle Whip with Olive Oil in a handy squeeze dispensor bottle.

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I am in crisis mood. I finished making my anchovy paste oyster sauce chicken chicken noodle soup only to discover that I am crackerless.

I survived, just barely, in parrot request distress, Ernie-wanna-cracker. In the end the soup tasted great and my younger son had provided me with my first ever "Vanilla Float" flavored Dr Pepper. The reason why there are two chickens in the soup description is because I used some left-over fried chicken middles and Cooper got the chicken piece outsides.

We were displeased to find out that Vanilla Float Dr Pepper is only going to be around for a short while. I suggested (to my son) the obtainment of a bottle of vanilla flavoring. But he told me it wouldn't be the same or maybe it was he had tried that already or some combination of those two [failures - ha]. I neXt suggested adding 40 parts per million milk to try getting the "float" part of the recipe figured out. 

Float Hopes.

The Goebbels Mistake

I was watching a documentary from readings of Joseph Goebbels diaries called The Goebbels Experiment today on Netflix. There were words across the screen for July 15, 1935 Saturday, and so I paused the screen to see if I could calculate that day of the week to confirm it was Saturday in my head. It took me a couple minutes (I am not a savant) but I was disturbed that I didn't get Saturday, but Monday. I even did the work twice.

So I asked Google and it confirmed it was a Monday.

Hmmm, I thought it was odd that someone keeping a diary would record the wrong day of the week. 

Maybe someone mistranslated the diary for the film, afterall, what I saw wasn't the actual diary, just the English words in a film. I didn't noticed any other references to days of the week in the movie.

I noticed that they used a font that looked "old", I think it is Courier, monospaced lettering, but I only have an iPad with me at the moment, so I will have to investigate it later.

Update: I was able to use a drawing app and select Courier.

I think the words on the screen match this Courier print I was able to do with my iPad drawing app:

Even though Courier is old, it was invented in 1955, ten years after Goebbels death.

Two Posts, One Day (I Might Be Dead Tomorrow)

From cryptogramcorner.org :

"I believe a little incompatibility is the spice of life, particularly if he has income and she is pattable." - Ogden Nash

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Ouch.

Now why couldn'T I have gone The resT of my nice lil' peaceful life withouT geTT ing biT by a scorpion? Sucker goT me in The left fourTh Toe, but I goT him compleTely with a rubber malleT.

There was a red solo cup involved as a TransporT device To The eXecuTion chamber.

Scorpi-on, Scorpi-off.

So if I am sTiLL alive a few hours from now, I won.

I checked out the first aid treatment, I think I am okay. I am alternating an ice pack on it every ten minutes.

I caLLed my mommy to come kiss my boo-boo, but she is busy grocery shopping. -sigh-

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I am on day one of trying to go a month without playing Sudoku. So I am studying physics instead.

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On Tuesday I went to Wells Fargo to use my security box. I guess I hadn't used it in at least three years because before I could get in the box to get the item that wasn't even there, I found out the bill hadn't been paid in 3 years because the payments weren't setup that way. (?).

But the amount was higher than 3x55=165. THEN I found out they had been accumulating a late fee for non-payment that I knew nothing about. Wells Fargo sends me e-mails all the time! Why not this? So they can manage to charge me late fees but can't figure out how to just take the annual fee out of our account.

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Dumb Joke of The Day

Upon seeing my wife's empty box of cookies in the trash can, I ask her, "Do you know what they caLL the odors on the inside of your cookie box? ...pause... Nilla Vapors." She laughed slightly, so she either got the joke or she recognized that it was supposed to be a joke.

When I repeated the punchline I tried to slightly transform the p of vapors into the f of wafers.

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I see on teleBision some words under someone talking, "Breakthrough Discovery in Heart Disease". The volume is turned off. I am probably not interested because it most likely means they want me to stop eating something.

In more important news I look out my window at the tree branches moving slightly in the wind. After last night I am just glad to have a few branches left. I see a strange looking branch. Moments later it moves downward. It is a veRy large cat about 15 feet off the ground.

I Am The Weigh, The Truth, and I'm Not Lively

I just thought of two words with a similar meaning to 'thesaurus': asaurus and ansaurus

I was in definite surprise that they are not listed in my thesaurus.

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If you don't see me for awhile its because I am yam busy playing with our new oven. Nomnomn0mnomnornnOmnom ...

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United Supermarket in Borger has a great cookie from their bakery:
Macadamia Heaven Cookies

The best part is that my wife doesn't like them! More fer me 'n Cooper.

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Today my son just told me that yesterday he saw the movie 'Edge of Tomorrow'. Much better than 'Groundhog Day'. Much more violence. Lets see Bill Murray try to stop abuncha aliens. (His opinions)

I just now thought, Bill Murray did a pretty good job in 'Ghost Busters', so he might be a good candidate for alien control.

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I noticed that one of my grape vines has a built-in self-pruning feature. A new growth had wrapped around an old growth from last year, then in the process of being blown about by the wind the old brown branch had become detached yet still entangled ensnarled defeated by the next green generation. I left it hanging there mid-air to see what happens next.

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I wiLL soon be able to weigh tiny things and tinier things. I already have a balance that weighs objects upto 100 gm and receiving a 650 gm machine tomorrow. So if you are curious about your tiny and tinier things, I can help.

My Alternate Ending for Fargo

I think my second biggest fear is that my wife finds out that I'm reaLLy a robot.

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This is one of my younger son's favorite things to say about me to his mother in my presence: "I always had a feeling you didn't like good things, and now I know." He usuaLLy says it when I mention a new combination of foods and or sauces to eat together.

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I am having pain in my left elbow. My wife told me that it is probably arthritis. I told her its because she is making me work too much. Ouch-wife-is

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I thought they said it was going to be hot today. It's only 103 and they said it was going to be 104.

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Listening to the old men at the diner at breakfast today. One of them said, "When I first got married my wife was so young that on my way to work each morning I would drop her off at the day care center."

His voice carries and everyone in the room, the open area near the front of the diner, died laughing. I don't know who his wife is but I happen to have known his brother's wife and her sister for about twenty and thirty years but I have only known him for about a year.

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The nice thing about my wife getting a new iPad is that now I have a spare iPad.

I am hoping for an iPad soon that is iainmbanks-like, that hovers, is nuclear powered and has a weapons system.

The iPad Scare

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I heard the words "Chicken Fried Lobster" on teleBision and died laughing. It may be good, not sure, but it stiLL made me laugh.

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Spoiler Alert for Fargo the FX TV Series

Here is my ending for the season one of Fargo, which still has two episodes to go at this moment.

Gina Hess has Lester's baby without him knowing about it. One day in the distant future Lester, who has become more LorneMalvo-esque and an expert at insurance fraud, sees his son being tormented by his older Hess half-brothers (who know that Lester is the father) and rescues him by killing the Hess boys.

I Could Have Sworn That Was Your Wife

I just saw my wife fixing to sneeze. In a slightly louder commanding voice with my left index finger pointed at her, I proclaimed, "Sneeze!"

She was obedient.

It was a beautiful thing.

One of us laughed.

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Can you spell s-t-u-p-i-d? The national spelling bee declared two winners as a tie for first place because they ran out of words. Really? They really ran out of words on some official list. Like, um, maybe they didn't have time to find more words? Yes, that's probably it.

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Why did my dog come into the kitchen to complain just now? Because I had not quite made it into the livingroom to sit down beside him to drink my coffee so I could be there to watch him tackle his brand new chewbone.

There are priorities.

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I get a call from my favorite auto mechanic.

"The blower on your wife's car needs to be replaced."

I respond, "What? I didn't know anything about it."

He responds, "Is this Ernie?" (He has known me for at least twenty years.)

I respond yes, and then I ask what make of vehicle; I have a Mountaineer, black.

He responds, "No, this is a different car. I could have sworn that was your wife. Maybe it was a different 'Ernie'."

I ask him, "Do I still have to pay for the repair?" teasing him with a serious voice.

He responds with a no, and I hope he thought I was teasing him and I laughed, so maybe ....

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Spring is getting better. My grape vines appear to be going to give us some grapes this year. It has warmed up enough so the pineapple plantation can move outside. We are finally getting some rain, but way behind for a typical year.

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Just as I was falling asleep I get a strange question pop into my head: Is today Joseph Conrad's birthday?

Today is June 1st and Joseph Conrad's birthday was December 3rd, 1857. That is almost half a year off, I couldn't have been much more wrong than that.

Maybe I was thinking of a different Joseph Conrad.

Yes, I ActuaLLy Was Glad To Get This For My Birthday

My mother gave me a present for my birthday while we were both at Darrouzett the other day for her party. She told me to wait til I got home to open it. Just as soon as I saw the size of the plastic bag that it was in, I started hoping that it was a certain item that I thought one of my brothers had stolen from me. It turns out that my mother had merely misplaced it, I guess. Or she may have forced my brother to give it back, I'm not exactly sure. 

Anyway, I guessed correctly:

An 11 inch tall ceramic turtle made by Hazel Thompson of Rapid City SD, possibly 40-50 years ago.

This turtle is special because it involves a combination of a nightmare about driving a combine harvestor while I was around seventeen years old while listening to Elton John's 'Mad Man Across The Water' album on an eight-track tape player while wearing headphones.

I fell asleep in the dark listening to my new album with headphones on. In my dream I lose the headlights to my combine harvestor and the front part of the machine starts digging into the dirt of field. (In actual life I was just learning to use this piece of equipment.)

In the commotion of my dream I somehow ripped the headphone plug out of its jack, causing the audio to go out the regular speaker system.

My parents bedroom is just a few feet away.

My father wakes up to Elton John music blasting out the speakers and someone (me) cussing up a storm about his combine in the neXt room.

He goes in the hallway and switches on the light. What he sees next totally cracks him up laughing.

I am sitting on the floor with the headphones still on and talking (!!!) combine gibberish loudly AND the ceramic turtle is between my hands as a steering wheel.

I am not sure which song was playing.

I am glad my turtle is finally safely at my house. I noticed there is writing on the bottom of the turtle where my mother had stated that this turtle was given (?) to me in the year 1997 at Thanksgiving.

I just remember asking for it a few years ago.

Just To Prove That I Am The Best Child

Just to prove that I am the best child, I called my mother yesterday (the Saturday before) to wish her Happy Mother's Day. I checked the time in Australia and it was two minutes after midnight in Sydney, so it was already Sunday there. We laughed and talked in Aussie accents and made up goofy lines like, "Good day, mate! Happy Mate-er's Day!

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When I discover that people are or want to be like me, I teLL them, "Ah, its a CURSE." And when they ask for more details, I say, "see, yoU aRe aS E." where E is Ernest.

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I am busy writing lyrics for "Where Are You Rainstorm?" to the tune "Where Are You Christmas?" from the movie 'How The Grinch Stole Christmas'. But my screenplay is titled 'How The Grinch Stole Spring'.

Meanwhile, about a fourth of Fritch TX burns down from a wildfire about a dozen miles west of me.

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Silliness reigns.

I get a call from my wife.

"Can you come and get me?"

(Me): "Where are you at?" (Confused)

"At work."

"I am at work, too." (Same building, well, almost the same building)

"Oh!"

Laughter on her end of the communication channel.

Oh, the semi-elderly.

I hang up and start singing our friend Angela's song, "Gonna Make Me Lose My Mind"

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I post this in Facebook: I think I am getting new socks today. Yea!

After posting this status two of my young female friends who work at our building argue in the comments about which one of them gets to deliver the package to my office. Several interesting comments comparing their beauty and intelligence. They are sisters. In the end I let each of them deliver the package while the other one isn't there.

It greatly delays me actually getting to wear the socks, but I have plenty of toe socks for my Vibrams.

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Your refrigerator can appear magical at 3:40 AM.

I open the door and when I look down there appears to be a yogurt container floating in mid-air.

Then I realize it is on a clear glass plate that is really a lid for a casserole dish upside down.

The lid is sticking way out over the shelf front more than halfway. It is being held in place cantilevered by a container of uncooked hashbrown potatoes.

At this point I stop investigating The Magic Phenomenon and close the door and I supress the thought of wondering how aLL those things got in those positions.

All this was possible because I open a disturbing e-mail at 2:00 AM letting me know how incompetent the Epson people are at handling shipments, now multiple instances of "overnight" deliveries taking a week or not even arriving at aLL, and now my story with Epson warranty service gets longer and stranger. I am thinking my next printer will be a Canon, but a "cannon" would be nice about now, too.

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I want an IGNORE ALL GAME INVITATIONS option in Facebook.

A Dead Russian Spy Stuck On My телевидение

There is a dead woman stuck on my teleBision.

I woke up at 1 AM on Thursday in my livingroom after watching TV. I had been watching Fargo for the third time (its a Tuesday show repeated) after seeing The Americans twice (Wednesday's show) but then I noticed that The Americans was playing for the third time (natural sequence of events on FX). But it was strange waking up to a TV screen that wasn't moving. The woman had left her bathroom after being suspicious and got her hidden 45 pistol from between the towels and was being sneaky in the hallway. She will be killed soon.

Only now its 5 hours later at 6 AM and she is in the same position. I am wondering, "Is there nobody working at FX to make sure their broadcast is functioning? Is their player just stuck on Pause?"

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I think our greatest threat to national security is understanding why that piece of breakfast burrito mysteriously fell (jumped???) off my fork and onto the floor. When too much food starts fleeing, the terrorists have won. My current thought is dynamic remotely initiated center of gravity shifting of the food particle once it has begun the on-my-fork transport phase incorporating a proper time delay.

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The new digital cable box is like having a TiVo without the ability to record anything.

The Up and Down buttons for the channel change do not have the ability to handle scrolling through the channels if you hold down on the button. I think practically aLL teleBision remotes have done that for a long time.

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I figured out a new way to annoy my wife using my dog without even trying or knowing.

I let my dog Cooper outside in our backyard while I went next door to check on the neighbor's dog.

While I was gone Tamie let Cooper back inside. Cooper has a sense of humor and knows that sometimes I play Hide 'N Seek when she lets him back inside. He is looking aLL over the house for me and making whining complaints while Tamie is trying to teLL him that I am not here, that I am neXt door. But he doesn't believe her. Would you?

A Roland Failure

I have CorelDRAW X6 running on a Windows 8 PC and a Roland GX-24 cutting machine. It is supposed to be easy to move files from CorelDRAW to Roland's cutting software CutStudio with a simple software plug-in. But my attempts at installing it have failed.

I finally got a human tech support person from Roland to log into my computer with remote access but he was also unsuccessful.

If there is anyone out there who has had a similar problem and has a solution, I would appreciate some help.

For The Whole Trailer Park

It is bad enough that I was too busy lately to get by digital convertor box before the signal went dead on my cable TV, but I when I show up at the cable office I am only the third person in line at a company that can be slower than the DMV.

I think, maybe I won't starve to death before I get my boxes. Wrong.

The first person is taking a really long time talking about his TiVo box problems and he finally gets a different remote.

I think, ah, soon.

BUT I discover that the lady in front of me is there to get digital convertors for an ENTIRE trailer park. YES! I kid you not, the ENTIRE trailer park. But she isn't the owner. She becomes agitated because things start to go south for her when another rep suddenly appears and lets her know that the 37 devices are going to be sent to the owner and it appears she has driven from Pampa (30 minutes away) for nothing, not even "her" devices.

She begins to make a claim that she didn't realize she was going to lose her service if she didn't get her boxes. I am thinking, No, I think the cable company has been terribly clear they were going to cut us off on the 29th, and I say so. I think this got me points with the cable teleBision lady behind the counter and I was getting my boxes veRy soon after.

Fargo should be crystal clear tonight.

I Am Off To Slaughter A Wooly Mammoth

Pure happiness is discovering you had a gallon jug of SunnyD Orange Strawberry that you didn't know about. If the 6.75 oz, 11.3 oz and the 16 oz are known as their "Go Sizes", then a gallon must be their "Stop".

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Immediately after waking up and seeing the word 'catastrophically' I just realized that the word catastrophy has "cat as trophy" but then realized that catastrophy is reaLLy speLLed catastrophe. Somedays are just like that and you just have to ask yourself, "Y?".

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I saw that it was the 20th anniversary of Nixon's death, so I read his wikipedia article, quite fascinating. You tend to forget about aLL the wonderful things he gave us like OSHA and the EPA.

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I should invent the clothes dryer that will start itself. "Hmmm, let's see, the human put wet clothes in me, closed the door, AND I detect he/she also started my sudsling Mr Washer just now, so I should just go ahead and 'push' Start for him/her". General Electric? Slave Electric.

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I rarely watch teleBision. It is on as I walk through the livingroom but the sound is muted and closed captioning displays, "Jaws theme intensifies" and of course there is no Jaws movie playing. I told myself, "I rarely see those three words together in that order with nothing else." I wiLL have to bring them up in conversation more often, especiaLLy in response to Brandon's "Terry Bradshaw" monologues. If none of this makes sense then I have succeeded.

The only person I know in Delaware asks me if I am getting Cooper a treat for Easter.

I respond:  I am going to go back in time, slaughter a wooly mammoth, bury it in permafrost, come back to the present (time), and then go dig up the WooMam as a present (gift) to Cooper. I know it sounds like alot of trouble, but I am already here in northern Alaska digging. This is actuaLLy a good thing (as Martha S would say) because Tamie just came home from Wal-Mart without getting him a new chew bone. Tamie asked me just now, "Did you tell him I was getting him one? (a chew bone)" and I said no. She said he was bothering her wanting something, and I spelled out "n-i-n-e" and she realized it was almost cheese time. WeLL, I had better finish digging this mammoth out of the permafrost in order to get to the diner on time, it is Saturday evening and people are expecting me. Oh, I must also find the remote.

A Far Isms

Here are some of my modifications of some common aphorisms.

Beauty is only skin deep.

Beauty is only as deep as the first few layers of skin cells, and they are dead.

Beauty is dead

Or maybe:

Beauty is depth.

Or:

Beauty is dead depth.

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Better the devil you know than the devil you don't.

If you are an atheist and didn't believe that The Devil existed, omitting him would yield concisely:

Better you know than you don't.

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Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.

Build a better door and all the mice in the world will be unable to get in. It won't stop them from accumulating on your path, though.

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Cast your bread upon the water, and it will be returned a hundred-fold.

Cast your bread upon the water, and it will be food for a hundred fish, depending on how much bread it was, and how well the fish take turns and share.

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Don't burn the candle at both ends.

AND

Don't burn your bridges behind you.

Install proper lighting on bridges, probably by not using candles.

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Don't speak ill of the dead.

Don't speak of the dead to the ill. Sick people don't need to be reminded that it could get worse for them soon.

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Eat to live, don't live to eat.

AND

Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.

So I created:
Don't forget to eat, drink and be merry, to really live it up, for tomorrow we diet.

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Faith will move mountains.

Bulldozers can also move mountains, so bulldozer = faith. I wonder if this means that religious people should buy stock in Caterpillar Inc, symbol CAT on the NYSE and component of the DJIA.

Cat worship?

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Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Even a broken clock is right four times a day if it is facing a mirror and there are just simple common symbols to indicate each hour to yield a symmetrical scheme through an axis of rotation.

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For want of a nail, a kingdom was lost.

This would be reaLLy true if you owned a whole bunch of beauty salons that specialized in manicures and pedicures, and then suddenly everyone decided to stop caring for their nails and you went bankrupt.

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Give him an inch and he'll take a mile.

Now, at first this sounds terrible, but it is not quite as bad as it first appears. You have already made arrangements to give 1 inch but then someone takes (12x5280) 63,360 inches. You thought you were losing 63,360 inches, but it is reaLLy only an eXtra 63,359 inches.

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If wishes were fishes then no man would starve.

AND

If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.

Combined: If wishes were sea horses, then hungry beggars could have neat aquariums.

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Ignoriance of the law is no excuse for breaking it.

You are really ignoriant if you spell ignoriance with two i's.

-----

It'll all come out in the wash.

This not completely true. My clothes washing machine may remove dirt and grime, but the clothes dryer is the device that collects the lint.

-----

Lightning never strikes twice in the same place.

This means that lightning will eventuaLLy stop happening once it has struck everywhere.

-----

Many hands make light work.

An electrician makes lights work.

There is a high probabilty that light bulbs are made by robots, not hands.

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You can't fit a round peg in a square hole.

It doesn't take much imagination to see that this is wrong. The diameter of the peg just has to be equal to or less than the side of the square hole.

I do not know how this applies to Winnipeg, Manitoba,  Canada. I have never been there although I have been within a few hundred miles and farther north in Canada.

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When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

This would be more interesting as:

When in Rome, do as the Romans did.

Because then you could start conquering other countries and forming an empire.

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Revenge is a dish best served cold.

I think it should be a little more visual. I like:

Revenge is a dish best served with ketchup.

(That way it simulates blood - additional scary element - plus most of the time ketchup is served cold)

Heartbleed: Did Obama Know?

Because my wife and I share the same account info for iCloud and probably things I don't understand about iPhones, our phones automagically stay sync'd with notes and directories.

So instead of iPhones we have wePhones.

-----

Saturday afternoon at 5 PM: Wow, in the 90's right now and it is s'pposed to SNOW on Monday! In TEXAS in APRIL ....mid April ...

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So ... the NSA knew about Heartbleed for two years and used it to their advantage. What bizarre selfish behavior. This is something that needed to be fixed as soon as it was discovered for the better good of all society. I think the NSA has forgotten who they ultimately work for.

Now I am interested in knowing how far up the chain of command that people knew about this at the NSA. Did Obama know?!?!?

-----

I went to the notes on my iPhone to order my supper meal at the diner, and I noticed that the most recent note said cryptically, "Fix any problem [at the original salon address]" and I was puzzled by what had I wrote, then realized that iOS had auto corrected "ant" to "any", and of course it did it again as I was typing this. It is okay to have computer bugs but obviously not ants. Oh, it now appears that ants is okay BUT ant is not unless you have recently corrected iOS. Okay, enough, I am going to sleep in 10 minutes.

My lawyer friend asked if my orders for meals are really that complex. I told her that it is easy for me just pull up Diner Meal 1, 2 or 3 and just hand my iPhone to the waitress and they take my iMenu back to the kitchen.

They stiLL manage to put butter on my "dry lightly toasted wheat bread" about half the time AND it isn't always wheat but white. But I stiLL adore them greatly.

Three For The Road

For part of today there was a strange brief three minute period on Interstate 40 for three things I had never observed before.

I was driving the speed limit going west in eastern Amarillo but still managed to slowly pass a small demi-dented damaged car in the middle lane. It had no rear glass yet there were several things piled across the flat area behind the headrest where the window would have could have should have been. They looked like possibly groceries, the one closest to me looked like a bag of potato chips defying the laws of physics and aerodynamics.

I thought that might be the wildest thing I saw all day.

Nope.

A little ways farther down the road on the north side was a billboard in a foreign language but not Spanish, and I laughed and thought, "Dang! I must have taken the wrong exit and took the road to Da Nang!" - I am not fluent in Vietnamese but I can pick out a few words on a menu, but not eXpecting to see a Vietnamese billboard. I will have to check how many Vietnamese live in Amarillo. [Answer: 3.1 percent Asian, so roughly 6 thousand would be about the maximum for 2010 census data.]

I thought well that might finally be the wildest thing I saw all day. I will have to get the message of the billboard translated to see what is being advertised on probably relatively expensive ad space. Perhaps it is meant to attract out of town Vietnamese passing through, as I-40 is a busy transnational passage.


Wildest thing of the day ... ?
Nope, not yet.

When I got to the intersection of I-40 and Ross-Osage on the access road there was a cattle truck, 18 wheeler, in front of me, my lane, that appeared to be fixing to make a U-turn under the overpass. I thought, hmm, this going to be interesting, one of those square peg round hole maybe scenarios.

I think semi trailer rigs are about 13 ft 6 inches tall and there should be plenty of room to go under a 14 ft 4 in passageway, BUT, ... in this case it was interesting because right in front of me I saw the left rear tires go up onto the curb that had to have raised the left side at least 6 more inches and stay there as rig started under the bridge. I never heard any thing scrape or pieces go flying but I was cringing a bit hoping no cattle were scared in the cock-eyed cow container, a group form of cow tipping.

The rest of my day has been rather boring since.

A Few Miles West

After watching part of the movie In Cold Blood and starting a study of Truman Capote yesterday, I just now discovered that the scene of the Clutter family November 1959 quadruple murder is just a little ways west of a piece of highway 83 that I have drove on many times in my life north and south.

I only watched part of the movie because I fell asleep in the early morning. But now I am veRy confused because I thought I had watched it on Netflix but now it is not there or maybe never was ... hmm ... so maybe I was watching teleBision but it just seems I was watching it on my iPad but in my confusion it could be that I am getting this mixed up with my online studying of the movie, book and Capote while I was watching the movie. But I haven't been able to find the movie playing on any teleBision channels.

I did not know that Truman was childhood friends with author Harper Lee of 'To Kill A Mockingbird', and that she had assisted Truman during his journey to Kansas with the Clutter case. They each appear as a character in a book that the other one wrote about childhood. Truman was Dill in TKaM and Harper Lee was Idabel Thompkins in Capote's 'Other Voices, Other Rooms'.

I wiLL get a photograph of the Clutter home on my neXt trip to South Dakota.

Obama's Cry Me of Passion

At 4:12 AM I am asking my wife, "Would you run to Taco Bell for me?"

She immediately responds, "They are not open!"

I laugh.

She smiles.

Slight pause

She asks me what I am doing.

I reply, "Bothering you."

I laugh.

She smiles and shakes head.

I think she may have wanted coffee but I left the room before she had a chance to formulate her needs, desires, and then eXpress them. But now I have a desire to have cup of coffee but that would require me making two cups of coffee plus getting my left ear cold. But my throat is saying, "I'm dry."

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Crimea plus Sevastopol have a population of around 3 million people. The entire world's population is in eXcess of 7 BILLion people. This means that the current political hot potato that President Obama is spending so much time and energy involving himself half way around the world where he has no legal jurisdiction, no one votes for him, contains less than half of one tenth of one percent of the world's population. I think he has his priorities askew.

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I was going to try to be at work at 11 AM but now I think I wiLL need to adjust for the wind 'still' factor, and to a smaLLer degree the relative humidity, visibility, and just plain ole 'do I have to?'-ness.

Oh Siblings, Are We Irish? Are We Poets?

While studying poet-writer Samuel Beckett, I noticed that he was a Saoi.

Saoi (Irish pronunciation: [sˠiː]) (pl. saoithe; lit. "wise one"; hist. head of poetic school; master) is the highest honour that members of Aosdána, an association of people in Ireland who have achieved distinction in the arts, can bestow upon a fellow member. No more than seven living members can be so honoured at one time.

The title of Saoi is conferred by the President of Ireland (following election from among the membership of Aosdána) and held for life. A torc (a twist/spiral of gold, worn around the neck) is presented to each Saoi by the President and/or Administrator.

I realized that because there can be 7 Saoi at any one time then it is theoretically just possible (but eXremely unlikely) that all 7 of the siblings in my family could be Saoi at the same time. Then we could be known as a Saoi been family instead of a Boston Baked Bean family.

Hahahahahaha

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U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon met Friday in Kiev with acting President Oleksandr Turchynov, then told reporters he was "very deeply concerned" by the tensions in parts of Ukraine and between Kiev and Moscow. "These are some of the most traumatic and difficult times in the history of Ukraine," he said.

After I read this I thought, " 'most traumatic ... difficult' (?) Ummm, no, I would just bet World War II was worse."

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I am eXtremely tired and I suddenly remembered that earlier this evening, or maybe today, I caLLed my wife (Breaking Bad reference to Aaron Paul's character) 'Jessica Pinkwoman', but now I have forgot the details for why. I think we might have been in a kitchen but not the one in our house, the other one. (We have an insane number of refrigerators AND clothes washer-dryer combos due to our kind of businesses and locations. Oh, and sinks, I just now realized we have a huge number of sinks.)

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I think that it is sad that Fred Phelps Sr. of the Westboro Baptist Church, Topeka Kansas, the activist who was in charge of picketing military funerals, has died just recently at age 91. I was hoping that he would have died a long time ago ....

Putin On The Blitz Krieg

I saw this paragraph at CNN:

The Pentagon plans to keep an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean longer than planned as a military presence to reassure NATO allies following Russia’s intervention in Crimea, CNN has learned.

I was wondering what good that does to the situation. I have thought of a few things I am going to do myself. First, I am going to move a pillow from my bed to my livingroom couch. Second, I am going to rearrange the knives, forks, and spoons in my kitchen drawer so the sharp edges are facing towards Russia. Third, I am moving my jug of milk from the right to the left side of my refrigerator.

That wiLL teach Putin to mess with Crimea.

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ActuaLLy I am returning to work today after being sick & trapped at my house for about five days. Even if I would have wanted to leave the house yesterday and wind was so bad and so much dirt was being moved through the air that I am not even sure I am stiLL in Texas, there was no way I was getting out in that mess. The weather service even issued warnings to seek shelter and against driving in it.

But I am eXcited to get back to the printing business as I have alot of things to produce, and plus I got a brand new broom and mop combination tool for doing my janitorial work. Yes - they are both on the same pad, you flip it over to switch between sweeping and mopping. I tried it briefly before I got sick and it seems to work nicely for my business environment (cosmetology shop). Anything that speeds up the cleaning process is welcome as long as my renters are happy.

Link: Flip Mop

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Please check out the drawings of my fellow blogger Rob Z Tobor at The Drawings of Rob Z Tobor

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I wonder who writes teleBision commercials. I see one for Atlantis resorts where they first say "Atlantis, where its always summer", and then it starts talking about their Spring special that's good through March 17th, but then I realize that means its still Winter time, technicaLLy, and Spring starts about 4 days after their special ends.

Then a few days after I first noticed this they changed their date to March 31st.

Accidentally Mashed Potatoes

I can teLL I have not had enough coffee yet. I was fiLLing out a form online for some information and in the first box for email address I mindlessly wrote, "email", then laughed at myself. There is something seriously wrong upstairs ....

That first paragraph was my Facebook status early Sunday morning.

I went to copy the text of that (Facebook) status in order to copy it over to this blog and noticed that my iPad gave me the choice of either copying it to the clipboard OR speaking the text. So I let a robotic female voice speak my words to me. I think I sound better than that, but I am not sure. If you try this feature and find out the Apple robot sounds better than me, please do not teLL me, it can be your little secret. So just lie to me and say, "Yes, Ernie, you sound better than a female Apple robot."

I took the eXperience one step farther by having the robot speak the second status that I wrote about her speaking. She pronounces "teLL" funny.

I would prefer a robotic voice that sounded like a young Shirley Temple.

- - - - -

I was reminded today that we have less than 8,000 years before we need to switch to 5 digit years. Y10K programmers get busy ...

- - - - -

Someone has sinned greatly in our home. There is no worcestershire sauce. My wife blames me.

- - - - -

Our printing business is suddenly getting much busier, so that is nice, with larger individual orders. That wiLL keep the wife in a happier mood, knowing that I am slaving away. But more importantly it means more money to help pay for medical insurance.

- - - - -

I walk in the kitchen to a meal that I wasn't scheduled to be part of because I routinely go to the diner on Saturday evenings. I look down at a large bowl and the only thing in the bowl is a stick of margarine. After 30 years of eXperience in this household I immediately knew that my wife was making mashed potatoes.

I look over on the stove and the left rear burner has what appears to be a finished pot of cooked potatoes.

But I look at the kitchen bar where my wife and son are eating and it appears they are finished with their meals and just chatting.

I ask, "Are you making mashed potatoes?"

My wife responds, "Well, I wasn't planning on making mashed potatoes, but I got busy making supper and accidentally started them."

My son and I crack up laughing, thinking, how can you go through the process of accidentally peeling a pot of potatoes, washing them, putting in the water, put them on the stove, get out the mixing bowl, put in the margarine ....

She actually posed for a picture holding up the bowl with just the margarine, but I didn't have a camera.

The potatoes were discarded the neXt day, a tiny piece of Idaho wasted.

My Son Is Singing "something something something"

So on the way home from the vet in Spearman an 18 wheeler starts to go off the road while he is just at that exact distance and time frame where I have no time to react and he begins to OVERcorrect and starts to get in my lane. That was about as close to a head on collision as I have had in quite awhile. I laughed because the first thought that went through my brain was, "that sure would have been a waste of $209.18 for a veterinarian services we just completed a few minutes ago."

AND then as I was getting back to Borger a highway patrolman passes me way above the speed limit right before the circle at Lorene's, and proceeds to drive 55 mph south down Cedar Street in a 40 zone, no lights flashing to indicate any special need. He stops at the light at 10th street where I catch up to him then its more zooming on south out of town switching lanes as he/she passes people doing the speed limit. License tag 04960.

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I get earthquake reports for the state of Oklahoma automaticaLLy. A recent report listed an earthquake 0 miles east of Stillwater. So I laughed and thought, um, "Doesn't that just mean 'Stillwater'?"

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I started watching Mad Men on Feb 23rd. I am in season 4 now. I think season 7 starts in a few weeks. But now I am suddenly bored by it ...

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At a restaurant on the road I mentioned that I reaLLy like the wheat toast at Cracker Barrel. My wife responds, "It's probably the bread."

An A Maze Zing Day badly dimly darkly

Sunday, a sin day for some people.

It was not an amazing day, but a terrible maze mess of a day. We had to let someone go (a renter) who was discovered to be stealing from our business. The person telephoned to ask for money but my wife told the person that we couldn't help them today because we had to use all our funds to pay a tax bill tomorrow and that we would help her just as soon as we got some money in on Tuesday, the neXt day. My son heard the telephone conversation and immediately told his mother that he was not comfortable with the situation at the store and he turned off the burners to the food he was cooking at our house and immediately went to our business, five minutes away. He had been downtown studying all morning and had just returned to cook our lunch. So he surprised the renter who was in our cash register and had a wad of bills in her hand. She started making up eXcuses and lies and crying. Up to this point I knew absolutely nothing had gone on until I heard my wife screaming madly at someone unknown to me (the renter) at that moment over the telephone from the other end of the house.

So ... it has been a difficult day. The person would never admit they were stealing even though they were caught red handed. We live in a relatively small town of about 14,000 people where practically all the cosmetologists know one another so I have no idea how she thinks she will be able to work in this town anymore. And we have poured hundreds of hours of training time and money into this person because they essentially can't seem to get people educated locally at the junior college cosmetology department. So it is just a grand disappointment in trust shattered and time wasted.

I don't think I have ever "fired" anyone before. It wasn't a good feeling at the moment by any stretch of the imagination but I had no hesitations, just a clear cut agenda, boom. On the way home I laughed because of the sheer utter stupidity of the person to do such a stupid thing as this to us after this entire year of development. She was getting good at her craft finally, people enjoyed her. Later in the day we got a message on the answering machine that a piece of glass of hers in a picture frame had been broken that either my son or wife had packed and delivered to her house, accusing us of breaking it on purpose. 

WHAT?!?!? She calls about a two-bit piece of glass which we most assuredly did not break on purpose or for that matter, how could you even prove something like that, anyway, such a trivial matter.

Later in the afternoon we pieced together the timeline of events and calls and figured out that she was most likely casing our business in the morning waiting for our son to leave before entering, not expecting him to have returned so suddenly.

So I am looking forward to hearing the rumor mill in the coming days. 

It is a good thing I enjoy mopping, and my other cosmetology renters would rather have me doing it anyway instead of her. I think I will get a new larger mop.

(I am not a cosmetologist, just a business owner with a wife who is a cosmetologist. I am originally a chemist and computer scientist, but now spend my time mainly in the printing business.)

My Wife Discovers Me Sleeping With An Elephant And I Hadn't Even Noticed

Actually it was two elephants but it was dark and she didn't have her eyeglasses.

A few weeks ago before Thanksgiving I noticed that my wife's bedroom dresser was dustier than normal so I wiped it down while also vacuuming. I don't normally dust in my house but we have been terribly busy at our business so she has been doing less around the house.

I decided that I would make it my secondary minor main mission in life to always keep her dresser dust-free but never let her know about it, and see if she ever noticed. Then I would conjure up something to eXplain it.

About a week later she smiled at me asked if I had dusted her dresser. I insisted that I had not. I told her that I had warned the dust while I was vacuuming that they were neXt, but when I came back they had mysteriously left. She looked puzzled and I repeated my story adding a few more details but then she finally caught on and laughed while shaking her head.

So I dusted again yesterday.

I woke early this morning to noises in my bedroom of my wife leaving the room at 3 AM. I decided to have a cup of coffee and I asked my wife how she was doing on my way to the kitchen.

She asked me, "Why is the elephant in the bed?"

Of course I think that maybe she is asleep talking, insane or both.

I asked her what she meant, giggling.

She said she found the elephant figurine (which normally lives on the top side middle of the dresser) in the bed near my feet.

Not wishing to tell her that I had dusted yesterday, I responded, "The dust must have carried the elephants over there when they left yesterday." Now I have a mental picture of the dust as Hannibal's army crossing the Alps with their military elephants with the dresser as Carthage and my bed as Rome and the carpet as the Mediterranean Sea. Then I realize that would be backwards north and south.

She now thinks I am the one who is insane but I repeat my story leaving out the whole interesting Hannibalian military dust adventure but only make it about halfway when I tell her that, yes, I moved the elephants while dusting. But she is still groggy and doesn't understand this either or maybe I confused her with the elephants plural, so I have to repeat myself.

The second elephant is a baby about 40 percent as tall blended into and under the larger elephant. So luckily it didn't get broke during the dust exodus-t.

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I just wrote this holiday joke:

Santa Claus and The Easter Bunny were talking one day. The Easter Bunny said, "Does it ever bother you that most people get to have a middle name but we don't?"

Santa looks confused and tells him, "I thought 'Easter' was your middle name, The."

Misplaced Moose Ears, McRib Poem and More

I am printing some moose art for someone. The ears don't quite look right,  so I googled "moose head" and noticed several ears drawn improperly.

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If you are too chilly, just remember:

Its almost summer!

(In Chile)

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My wife was not amused by my answers to her question, "What should I wear to jury duty?"

I immediately responded with, "A tuxedo."

After negative feedback, my second try was a pair of overalls with suspenders, straw hat, and a corncob pipe, oh, yes, and sandals."

More negative feedback.

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We have a strange house activity. NCIS can be playing nearly aLL day, sometimes on both teleBisions, sometimes both muted, and I reaLLy don't watch it much any more. I wake to gunfire too often.

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A Yummy Sandwich:

Cold Turkey

Cold Oyster Dressing

Sauer Kraut

Freshly Sauteéd Onions Chopped

American Cheese

on Mrs Baird's Honey Wheat Bread with Miracle Whip and Mustard

-----

I just looked in a trash can 

And there see our eyes be?

An empty food container

Imprinted M-c-R-i-b

The drought is over ....

-----

While shopping on Black Friday:

"Ernie, I just saved 214 dollars!"

"That's okay, as long as it ends up in my pocket."

-----

The Otter Box (brand) protective cover for my iPhone is starting to deteriorate. I guess I should get an Outer Box for my Otter Box.

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I am talking to my wife about our Epson 4900 printer and she remarks, "That is the smartest thing you ever did was get that." I told her, "I thought the smartest decision I ever made to get something was to get you (?)" - she laughed, and said, "Yeah, that too!"

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The strange thing that happened to me on November 19th: Someone drove to my house, parked illegally in front of it, the driver got out and while looking straight at me, he threw his lit cigarette onto my winter brown dry lawn and proceeded to stomp twist extinguish it with his foot. I found this to be rather rude behavior.

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I tell Tamie that I hurt reaLLy bad, entire body, ache.

She asks me, "Have you taken some ibuprofen?"

I say, "I need heroine"

"You aren't taking heroin!"

(Notice my speLLing)

Dec Line Decline

If you would like to try a new form of relaxation, try drawing parallel lines free-hand. I enjoy it veRy much. I use an ordinary ball point ink pen. 

I use ordinary 8 1/2 x 11 copy machine paper.

I am working on duplicating the bar code from a bag of sugar. I wiLL let you know if it scans properly.

Try several pen-to-hand orientations and stroke direction, distance, pressure, and speed to see what works best for drawing your straightest lines.

Update: Try connecting sections together and measure the sections to try for a uniform spacing, repeatibility from design to design. Sometimes I make the ties between segments be a 2-to-1 ratio to give a sense of depth.

Update: Try Circles!!!

Update: Find your favorite gap! Mine appears to be close to 1/16 of an inch. I measured this eXample with 6.5 gaps per 3/8 of an inch which comes to 17 1/3 gaps per inch.

I also started working left handed. Not quite as pretty but it's coming along nicely.

So I think I wiLL work on trying to be repeatable at 1/16th of an inch