About a garage door and a toilet.

I continue to have lots of toilet clogs.  The Dawn dishwashing liquid "cure" only works part of the time.  The last two times I had to call a plumber, and this last time we decided that the brand of toilet was at least part of the problem, so that will be replaced.  At least I will have one that I can use a plunger with.  The toilet I have now has a weird shape in the bottom of the bowl..kind of like a loaf pan.  It's long, narrow, and rectangular.  Can't plunge it. 

When it became clear that my most recent clog would not give way to the Dawn, I made the mistake of visiting my local hardware store.  My original intent was fine--perhaps to find a really, really big plunger that would fit all the way around the "loaf pan."  They didn't have one.  So I asked if they had something I could pour down the thing, as Drano is a no-no.  They sold me a quart of a substance called Liquid Fire, which sounds like it would do something, for good or for ill.  The fine print said it was sulfuric acid, and again, that sounded like it would be effective.  Maybe effective in eating through the pipes, but would do something.
The directions said that for a toilet, pour in 8 oz. and wait 15 minutes.  Nothing happened.  I put in more and more and more.  In the end, I had poured in the entire quart.  Then, I waited.  I waited 2 days.  Nothing happened, except I had a toilet full of bad smelling sulfuric acid. 

I was talking to a fellow faculty member about this, who happens to teach chemistry.  She said that she had been told by more than one plumber that they would have nothing to do with any toilet that had been "treated" with sulfuric acid.  Ooops.  I got out my old turkey baster and emptied the acid out of the toilet bowl into old kitchen bowls as best as I could.  It filled 3 bowls.  I took each outside in 15 below weather and dumped bicarbonate of soda into them until all the acid seemed to be neutralized, they threw away the bowls and the baster, and one bathroom towel.  It was great fun.  Can't wait to do that again.  So, now the expense for the clog is $10 for the liquid fire, 3 bowls, one towel, and one baster. 

I called my plumber, confessed my sulfuric acid sins to him, and received absolution.  He then came to my house, placed his hands on the toilet, and healed it.  He was not surprised that my "liquid fire" did nothing.  Now my expense is up by $55, but at least that actually worked!  Now I need to call and make an appointment for getting a new toilet. 

You may be wondering what this has to do with my garage door.  Actually, nothing, except it broke at about the same time as the toilet got clogged this last time.  I don't know exactly what's wrong except that it no longer goes up and down straight, but crooked.  It will open, though it makes a funny clanking noise, but the only way it will close is if I push down on one side to keep it straight while it is closing.  I can do this if I am on the inside, but as there is no outside handle, I can't if I am on the outside.  So, if I want to go anywhere in my car, I must do the following:  Open the garage door, drive the car out into the driveway, turn off the car, get out of the car, lock the car, go back into the garage, hit the button to close the door, dash back down to the garage door and push on it so it will close, go back through the house and out the front door (which is on the east side of the house, lock the front door, and walk back to the rear of the house on the south side, get into the car, and be on my way.  An inconvenient process, but at least it works. 

But, I'm not spending any significant time in an unheated garage trying to figure out the problem until the weather is a little warmer!! 

Viva Senor Cruz!

I was astonished to discover that my favorite musician from my old home was scheduled to play a concert here in the frozen north!  Mr. Edgar Cruz delighted an auditorium full of us.  This gentleman is probably one of the finest living guitarists in the world.  What a treat!  I was transported back to not only the times I saw him live in my old home state, but to my childhood when my father played recordings of mariachi music and flamenco guitars. 

Boy, did I get a case of homesickness! 

Why?

The link below is to an on-line news article:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41609536/ns/world_news-mideastn_africa/?GT1=43001

It's about an "informant" that admits he lied to the US about his knowledge of UMDs.  This is really not news, as we all know the information was bad.  But buried in the article is the fact that 100,000 Iraqui civilians were killed in the war.  Why is it the news agencies don't think that's important?  Why do they never mention that?  Are Iraqui children somehow human trash, and their deaths are only a side bar? 

Why?  Why?  Why?

Lawrence Welk lives.

I had one of those head-shaking, did I really see that? experiences last night. 

A sweet, little, white-haired, 90 year old lady who I sit next to in church choir unexpectedly asked me to accompany her to supper at St. Anthony's last night.  I had never heard of St. Anthony's.  She (I'll call her Mary for the purposes of this post) said it was a club, and they were serving supper.  So, I went.

St. Anthony's is indeed a night club.  Many establishments that call themselves night clubs are not actually clubs, but this one is.  We went up some stairs and passed through a bar area that looked much like any bar, full of people drinking, smoking, and laughing, then we went back to another room where they were serving a very good buffet supper.  Mary paid the member's price for her supper and the non-member's price for mine.  She seemed to be a regular there, as I lost count of the people who said "Hello, Mary!" as we walked in. 

This night club is unusual in many respects.  First, it is named for a saint.  Second, the supper room has a big crucifix on the wall--unusual for a night club.  Third, almost every patron was over the age of 60.  The place was packed, both the bar area and the supper area.  Except for one table of 20-somethings, I believe I was the youngest person there, at the tender age of 59.  Many of them seemed to be ranchers and farmers from the surrounding area, with their wives.  I saw a lot of boots and Western hats.  When we finished our meal, we were expected to take our dirty plates to the back, and many hands rapidly folded up the tables in the middle of the room, opened up the walls between the supper area and the bar area, and sprinkled sand in the middle of the room. 

Then, two middle-aged (or older) gentlemen took the stage.  One had an electric accordian (yes, they exist!) that lit up and had a built-in sythesizer, and the other had a clarinet and a whole row of various sizes of saxaphones.  And they began to play.  They played tunes from country, old standards, big band hits, and others, but the style of all of them was identical--Lawrence Welk.  Yes, Lawrence Welk lives on in spirit.  Who knew?

As soon as the music started, the grizzled old ranchers grabbed their wives and started dancing with practiced and agile steps, with no prompting from the wives at all.  The dance floor was soon full.  I have never seen anything like it in my life.  They danced every dance.

People here seem to live extra long lives, and they stay lively for longer than most.  My friend Mary still lives alone and mows her own lawn.  The lady that checked me out at Wal Mart was remarking to another customer that her mother's family all died young - in their 70s and 80s.  Her father's family all made it past 100, which seemed more normal to her.   After what I witnessed last night, I believe there is something around here that is making long life more the norm.  Is it in the water?  Or is it hard work at 20 below zero?

Can't resist...sorry

I can't resist one more weather post.  I saw on the news about more record snow and cold in my old home state, which is about 1000 miles south of where I am now.  I envy my friends there getting off school and work for the weather.  I have not had one single "snow day" this entire school year.  Not one.  7 inches of snow is not enough to close anything here, though I have seen some events cancelled in the evening for extreme cold. 

I am enrolled in a 6 week course in watercolors that meets every Tuesday night.  Last Tuesday (the 2nd) it was 15 below when I was driving home from work at 5 pm.  I was concerned that at 8 pm, when the art class was due to be out, it would be too cold for my car to start, so I did not go.   Last night it was not that cold, so I went.  We waited and waited for the teacher, and when it seemed she wouldn't show, we decided to get out our supplies and just paint whatever we wanted to paint.  Finally, 30 minutes after class was supposed to start, the instructor called the on-duty student monitor in the art building and reported that her car just would not start, and we could paint whatever we wanted.  She didn't say it was due to the cold, but I'm sure that was a contributing factor. 

In this state, if you don't have an attached garage, you need to install a block heater in your car.  Then, when it's due to get cold, you plug it into an outlet overnight so your engine block stays reasonably warm, and the car will actually start.  Fortunately, I do have an attached garage, and my little car has always started, even without a block heater.  However, on the evening it was 15 below at 5 pm, it did grind kind of slowly!  I guess when we have electric cars, we will need 2 cords and 2 outlets. 

But, this is for cars.  For humans, cold is very subjective.  There is a faculty member in my department that grew up in the Persian Gulf area, and spent most of his adult life in Texas and Florida.  The poor guy turns blue in November and stays blue until April. 

My cousin, on the other hand, is more like me. She likes the cold! She spent most of her teenage years in Alaska.  She told me about one particular morning when she really did feel cold while standing outside waiting for the school bus.  She doesn't feel cold very often, but that morning she did.  She waited and waited for the bus, but it never came, so she went back inside.  The TV said that school had been cancelled due to extreme cold.  It was 50 below!  Makes 20 below seem balmy! 

Everything old is new again.

I started this blog to comment about computers, their use and misuse, and the joy and pain of programming them.  However, I seem to use it for commenting on everything else except computers!  Today, I would like to get back to them. And, since I am at the office on a Saturday with an enormous pile of work to do, it seems the ideal time to add a blog entry.

For the first half of my adult life, before I began teaching college, I was a computer programmer.  Today, they call them software engineers, or software developers.  It's the same thing, just a nicer title.  In my new job, I actually teach software engineering, which I had not (for no particular reason) at my old job.  In the process, of course, I must constantly bring myself up to date on the latest trends, tricks, and techniques. 

I just got through developing my software engineering lecture for Monday, and I must comment that I am delighted with many of the new trends.  These youngsters in their 30s and 40s are discovering through research the truths I knew from hard experience, but now they have fancier names and an air of legitimacy.  When I proposed them, back in the day, they were laughed at.  Now they are modern and trendy.  Cool!

One example:  the value of a program well structured. I had a boss once that delighted in the "quick and dirty" and scofffed at the idea that a program needed to be well structured.  I remember trying to maintain a one-off program he threw together, badly designed, and therefore every time we added a feature we broke an old one.  Finally, one of us threw it out and rewrote it in a more structured, sensible manner, and it was amazing how the angry calls from the user disappeared. 

Much to my delight, this process is today called "refactoring" and is a recognized step in one of the newer software engineering processes.  I love people that agree with me.  I think they are so smart!

Is it cold?

I am always amazed at different folks' appraisal of if the weather is too hot or too cold.  I know people that can do hard labor outside in 100 degree heat and be perfectly happy.  I used to mow my lawn in 100 degree heat.  "Perfectly happy" was miles away from how I felt.  I am completely opposite.  In my former home, I was totally miserable from July 1 to Sept. 15.  People would say "you'll get used to the heat."  But I lived there for 57 years.  When does the "get used to it" start to kick in?  I would get dizzy and nauseous just going to the mail box. 

Here, I am about 1000 miles further north.  Summers are balmy and beautiful, but winters have brought a whole new definition of cold.  Last Tuesday morning it was about 20 below zero when I went to work.  I have a really good pair of gloves, padded and warm, but by the time I got to my office, my hands were nonetheless hurting from the cold - even though for much of the trip I was in my car.  That's snot-freezing temperatures.  In that extreme cold, I wear 2 wool scarves, one horizontal around my neck, nose, and mouth, and one verticle across the top of my head and ears.  I look like a baby in swaddling clothes.  And this is from a hot-natured person. 

A friend from my old home town emailed me asking for some helpful tips for removing a 5 foot snow drift from the front of her car port so she could go somewhere.  I said do as I do, get a snow shovel.  I must shovel snow from my sidewalk on a regular basis so it doesn't get too deep, as we have snow about once a week here.  Kind of like mowing the lawn, only cooler. 

I must say, though, I have a good coat.  Any part of my body that is under the coat is ALWAYS warm, regardless of the temperature or the wind.  And that's saying a lot, because we can get a stiff wind here during the snow storms.  A wind chill of 40 below is not unusual. White-out conditions on the highways happen quite frequently, sometimes once a week.  But it doesn't make the news when it happens to us.

But, I still love it here!  I would much rather shovel snow at 10 below than mow the lawn at 100 above!!!!!
I was born to live here.  It just took me 57 years to figure it out!

Wikipedia puzzle

A friend of mine posted a blog item recently, commenting on a news article that pointed out that 85% (or so) of Wikipedia contributors were men.  He also had a link to a third party comment about this.  I read both with considerable interest, and it started me doing some very interesting self-examination about why it had never occured to me to contribute to Wikipedia.  Both the friend and the third party commenter are men.  I hereby offer up a purely subjective female perspective. 

Both my friend and the third party commenter looked at contributing to Wikipedia as a selfless, altruistic, service oriented kind of activity.  I don't know the 3rd party person, but I know my friend, and I totally believe him when he talks about the satisfaction of being part of something "larger".  However, I was completely surprised by this motivation.  If I had been asked a few days ago why a person would be motivated to contribute to Wikipedia, I would have said by an enormous ego...setting himself/herself up as the world's foremost authority on whatever.  Obviously, I was wrong.  That's not what is going on here. I had no idea my friend contributed to Wikipedia.  I never would have guessed that, given that he is NOT an egotistical jerk.

I do disagree with the 3rd party gentlemen about one thing.  He says women don't care about Wikipedia.  I can't speak for all women, but  I AM interested in Wikipedia.  I use it all the time, as a reader, not a writer.  I can't believe I am that unusual.  Are there any stats on the genders of Wikipedia readers? 

I do know that in general, females have less self-confidence than males.  I don't know why.  I know computers better than people.  I do know, however, that I will never, ever, write an entry for Wikipedia because I would never have the confidence to do so.  Yes, I have a Ph.D. in computer science, but that only persuades me that I know enough to teach my classes.  Not to pose as an expert on Wikipedia.  Can't go there.  Is this right or wrong?   I don't know.