Waiting for the UPS guy again

I have a whole bunch of peripheral devices connected to my desktop computer with USB plugs – so many that I need a couple of USB hubs to keep everything hooked up.

But I’ve discovered over the years that USB connections can be iffy and some ports on hubs can go dead for no apparent reason. Or they can go wonky, like the one that lives on my keyboard tray that stops talking to my wireless mouse dongle when I plug in my iPhone to sync it.

It happened once too often earlier this week, so I poked around on Amazon.com and found this seven-port USB hub that has excellent reviews and only costs $17.95 (shipping is free since I have Amazon Prime).

The UPS tracking site says it’s out for delivery, so I’m sitting at my desk and waiting for the big brown truck to show up.

The UPS guy is a familiar face around here since we make lots of online purchases.

He was here yesterday, delivering a Canon Office Products MAXIFY MB2320 Wireless Home Office Inkjet Printer with Scanner, Copier and Fax that the Amazon Vine Program sent me to use and review.

It’s still in the box, sitting on the upstairs office floor while I try to figure out where to put it.

I’m probably going to have to drag an old printer stand up from the garage, which means shuffling stuff sitting on it around a bit.

It’s cold (53°F) and blustery today and the air is full of falling, flying leaves.

Maria went off to work without her iPhone this morning. She decided she needed it about 8:30 a.m., which gave me a chance to see how the Gerbings heated jacket liner and German Polizei jacket work in seriously brisk weather.

They work very well.

I ranged from toasty warm to maybe a little too warm. My gauntleted Olympia Kevlar gloves were a different story, but once I put my glove liners on under them, my hands were reasonably comfortable. I had the heated handgrips and heated seat on and off and remain convinced that heated handgrips are of very little value. Ditto the heated seat.

They seem like nice amenities, but they only put warmth in the palms of your hands and the seat of your pants. When you’re riding in cold weather, your attention is naturally drawn to the coldest, most uncomfortable places on your body and the grips and seat can’t overcome that.

I have a pair of heated gloves that plug into the sleeves of the jacket liner, but they’re so bulky and clunky that I save them for the most severe conditions when I’m riding long distances on the interstate.

Happy 44th birthday, Steve!

My son Steve drew his first breath at 6:36 a.m. on Halloween morning of 1970 in Coleman Hospital in Indianapolis.

He has grown into a supremely good musician, husband, and father and he makes me prouder than he could ever imagine.

I don't know what to make of this

Can We Auto-Correct Humanity?

Hats!

The hall closet by the back door is where the non-motorcycling jackets and hats live at our house.

I’ve been looking for a particular Buff for several days and this morning pulled everything out of the two upper shelves in the closet. I didn’t find the Buff, but I did come to the startling realization that I was way more caps and hats than I thought.

Thirty-seven of them, to be precise, although I think there are more in boxes somewhere.

This means I could wear a different hat every day from now through Dec. 5 without repeating.

Eight of them are BMW motorcycle-related, four are from our favorite gas stop at Boomland, three from Breckenridge, Colo. (including a Gore-Tex Ski Patrol cap), two from Nepenthe in Big Sur, a couple of Duck Commander camo caps, three from breweries – Beck’s, Spaten and Flying Dog (before they moved from Aspen to Maryland), a fisherman’s cap that Sean brought me from his Alaska adventures, an Irish tweed hat that my dad wore, and a red Nike “swoosh” cap that my mom bought me, just because she liked the look of it.

The unbearable uniqueness of Olioscourge

I coined the word “olioscourge” in May, 2004 when I needed to create a unique URL for this blog.

It derives from my unofficial title of The Scourge of Olio, earned years before when I wiped the town of Olio off of the Indiana roadmap. Details are here.

I did a Google search this morning to see if olioscourge shows up anywhere no connected with me and was surprised to see a few of my images have been purloined without my permission.

Like for instance, this one on a site listing “tips you can learn from your dad:”

Yep, that’s me looking geeky and my dad looking dapper on a vacation to Niagara Falls and New England around 1957. I guess I’m flattered that someone liked it enough to steal it.

And here’s a photo I shot for the local newspaper (which shall remain nameless) and was picked up by the NBC TV affiliate in Chicago. To their credit, they asked my permission to use it:

I can’t complain when my blog images get pirated. I do it all the time.

The President

The “President” tree is the name of a giant sequoia in the Giant Forest of Sequoia National Park, east of Visalia, California. The tree is believed to be at least 3,200 years old. It is not the tallest giant sequoia tree in the world with a height of about 247 feet (75 m), nor the widest at about 27 ft (8.2 m) in diameter at the base, but it is the second largest tree in the world, measured by volume of trunk.

It predates the Trojan War, the beginning of rice cultivation in ancient Japan, and the beginning of the Iron Age. It was 1,180 years old when Jesus was born.

That is, this tree is so big you can scarcely look at it all. A team from National Geographic with scientists from Sequoia National Park recently took the challenge to take a global picture of this Giant. After 32 days and 126 different acrobatic pictures merged as a mosaic, here is the stunning result.

Language barrier

After seven years in Arkansas, I’ve come to terms with most of the cultural differences from my native Indiana.

But there are some pronunciations that still set me off.

The local TV weatherman refers to the Missouri Boot Heel as the Boothill and pronounces “hail” as if it were “hell.” (A forecast that includes a “hellstorm” is a real attention-getter.)

Maria once told me she was in the break room at the local newspaper when a coworker remarked about the Big Deal Pickle in a vending machine.

“What’s special about it?” Maria asked, only to discover it was a big dill pickle.

And there are commercials on radio and TV that pronounce “sale” as if it were “sell.” I’m waiting to hear someone say, “sellboat.”

Chicago Activists Unchained, Destroy Black Leadership

I ended up with the real thing

Sometime around 1957, my parents took me on a vacation to Niagara Falls and Canada where I picked up what I took to be a hunting knife with a fleur-de-lis insignia in the grip.
I thought it was cool – something about it resonated with me. My mother felt otherwise and somehow made it disappear after a few weeks at home. I searched the house diligently over the years, as late as 2001 after her death, but never found it. I guess she put it into the trash.
Fast forward a few decades when I discovered that my knife was actually a Hitler Youth knife, made after World War II from leftover parts with the fleur-de-lis substituted for the diamond-shaped Hitler Youth insignia.

The original Hitler Jugend Fahrtenmesser (hiking knife) bore the motto “Blut und Ehre!” (Blood and Honor!) on the blade. HJ knives produced after 1938 omitted the motto.
My postwar parts knife is long gone, but I do own a nice pre-war HJ Fahrtenmesser (not the one pictured – I was too lazy to photograph my HJ knife, so I found a suitable image on the Internet, although the pictured knife may be a repro). Kids being kids, they treated the knives roughly, so HJ knives in good shape are rare.
I found a photo of the postwar example online the other day, which triggered this blog entry.

Coming January 8

Maria spent several months collaborating with Ben Bizzle, the IT director at the Jonesboro Public Library, on a landmark book on the future of library marketing and outreach.

It will be published Jan. 8, 2015.

I was delighted to find it listed on Amazon.com this morning.

Jack Bruce died today

Jack Bruce died today of liver disease in Suffolk, England. He was 71.

His publicist Claire Singers said: "He died today at his home in Suffolk surrounded by his family.”

That’s Jack on the left in the deerskin jacket along with bandmates Ginger Baker and Eric Clapton in the dressing room of Clowes Hall in Indianapolis, following a performance by Cream the evening of March 22, 1968.

Bob Basler and I were there. Bob did the words and I did the photography for The Indianapolis News.

Friday stuff

I rode down to the St. Bernards Health & Wellness Center this morning for a stroll on the treadmill.

I chose the K1200GT. I’m always particular about where I park the GT because it’s loaded with valuable stuff like my Garmin Zumo 550 GPS and its SiriusXM satellite radio receiver, along with my tank bag full of useful touring items.

I picked a space next to an extended cab pickup truck that had a friendly looking old (gray muzzle) black Labrador retriever in the back seat, staring out the window.

He was very friendly and let me pet him, so I doubt if he would do much to stop someone from stealing my stuff, but I liked the idea of him watching over it anyway.

You may recall that I went to the main offices of Centennial Bank on Monday to see about getting a new debit card. I was told that, since Maria’s and my card numbers had been compromised in a hack of The Home Depot’s customer database, new cards were mailed to us on Oct. 15.

As of this morning’s mail, they still have not arrived.

Also, the vexing vibration in the Subaru’s steering is still there.

But I was in no mood to remonstrate with the bank and Gateway Tire today, so I’ll let it rest over the weekend and take these matters up on Monday.

In the meantime, the new season of Grimm starts at 8 o’clock tonight on NBC.

Robert Capa "In Love and War" - The greatest photojournalist of the 20th century

Citizenship 101

I’m not ordinarily an advocate of early voting because there could be late developments in election campaigns that would affect a voter’s decision. If you vote early and your candidate is revealed to be a dirtbag, you have no recourse.

That said, I’m convinced that there is nothing that could make me want to vote for nearly any of the Democrats on the Arkansas ballot, so I went with Maria to the courthouse annex and cast my ballot to retire Sen. Mark Pryor, retain Congressman Rick Crawford, and put Republicans in the governor and lieutenant governor’s offices.

While I was in line waiting to vote, I got a call from one of our tenants reporting that their sewer line is backing up. Again. They serve people sentenced to community service time and I suspect one of their clients is flushing inappropriate stuff down their toilet.

I called our fix-it guy and he pledged to have someone there by 3 p.m.

The joys of being a landlord. Happily, they pay their rent on time and are good tenants.

Shhhhhhh!

It’s been more than 20 years since I first saw a “Loud Pipes Save Lives” sticker on a helmet at Daytona Beach Bike Week. I marveled at the idiocy of that statement, almost as much as I am baffled by the stupidity of people who argue that motorcycle helmets cause accidents and injuries.

The sound of really loud pipes triggers the “fight” part of my “fight or flight” response. Loud exhaust creates a negative impression about motorcyclists in the minds of non-riders and makes us all look like inconsiderate Neanderthals.

Edgar G. Ulmer - King of the B Movie Directors

Here's the entire 1:10 movie for your viewing pleasure.

Good stuff

This stuff is dangerously smooth and tasty.

I picked up a bottle while we were at Mr. T’s Riverside yesterday afternoon looking for deals on inexpensive wine.

Very smooth and painless. Oh, did I mention it’s smooth?

Fun

How can you not like a raccoon with a weapon?

We finally got around to seeing Guardians of the Galaxy on Saturday night and ended up liking it more than we expected.

The 1970s soundtrack and the talking raccoon (Rocket) and tree (Groot) help take this space adventure to an unexpected level of engagement and entertainment.

I haven’t bought a movie on DVD or BluRay for a year or two, but I can see owning a copy of this one.

There is a hint or a sequel at the end. We’ll be waiting.

Compromised!

My bank debit card is worn out. It developed a crack that makes if difficult to use with card readers and, besides, it was issued by Liberty Bank before it became Centennial Bank.

So I dropped by the bank this morning to get a new card, preferably with the same number since it’s on record with a few businesses where I have an online account.

But it turns out that my card number, as well as Maria’s, is on a list of compromised debit card numbers from a recent hack of The Home Depot’s database.

The young man at the bank said new cards were mailed to us on Oct. 15 and should appear in our mailbox today or tomorrow.

And since the numbers were compromised, we have new debit card numbers, which will necessitate some extra work online to get accounts updated.

Thanks for being negligent, Home Depot.

Cool packaging

I don’t care if it is made in France, I almost bought it just for the reusable aluminum flask.

Selling fabric on Ebay

Maria has decided to part with some of her high-end quilting fabric, so we have 16 patterns in varying quantities listed on Ebay.

Proceeds will, of course, be used to buy more fabric.

Someone is conspicuously absent

The Subaru report

Our 2002 Subaru Forester developed a worrisome noise in the left front wheel last spring which I supposed was a disintegrating CV (constant velocity) joint.

It came at a time when major automotive surgery wasn’t in our budget, so we parked the Subaru and Maria took over the Lexus while I celebrated late spring, summer and early fall on BMW motorcycles.

Good riding weather won’t last forever, so I decided on Thursday it was time to get the Subaru back in shape for winter.

I drove down to Gateway Tire where it was discovered that the left front wheel hub and bearings were shot. Also, the fuel line was leaking. If we continued to drive the car as it was it was just a matter of time before the wheel fell off or it caught on fire.

So I left the car at Gateway overnight and they made the repairs, plus an oil change and lube in time for me to pick it up after lunch yesterday.

I was a happy camper until I noticed a rather violent vibration in the steering wheel when I got up to 60 mph on the way home.

I took the car back this morning and it was determined that the right side tires were out of round, probably as a consequence of sitting in the same spot for more than three months. We knew the car needed new tires more than a year ago, so I green-lighted a set of tires at $100 a pop.

And the car was filthy, so I treated it to a car wash before I left town.

New rubber notwithstanding, the vibration reappeared on the drive home. I phoned Gateway as I turned onto our road and arranged to bring it back first thing Monday morning.

My nomination for the stupidest product of 2014

“The KOHLER touchless toilet is the no-touch flush for your home. Just hold your hand over the tank sensor to activate the flush. No handle to touch means fewer germs to pick up or leave behind.”

The flush handle is probably the cleanest thing you’ll touch on a toilet. What about (if you’re a guy who is socially responsible) using your bare hand to raise and lower the seat? Where’s the power assist for that process?

And, of course, there’s the potentially problematic business with the toilet paper.

This is on a par with 2010’s moronic Lysol No-Touch Hand Soap System that dispensed a squirt of soap when you waved your hand under the spout.

Why does it matter if there are germs on the conventional pump, since they’re about to be washed off of your hands anyway? And people who wash/sanitize their hands frequently probably have fewer bacteria on their hands to begin with, making the conventional pump marginally cleaner than most surfaces you touch during the day – like money or door handles.

No wonder people in the Third World think we’re insane when it comes to germs.

Snickers

I rarely laugh out loud at cartoons, but this one had me howling when I found it on Facebook this morning.

Success

We have double sinks in our master bathroom. Each sink has a 2 handle Delta faucet and my faucet has a very slow drip.

It’s so slow as to be practically unnoticeable, by me at least.

But Maria claims it’s been going on for months and it’s become a source of great irritation for her.

I watched a how-to video on YouTube and tried tightening a couple of nuts, but the drip continued.

Mind you, this is a drip so slow that left to my own devices, I would be happy to ignore it for years. Unfortunately, I can’t ignore my wife for years.

So I watched another how-to video on YouTube this morning, disassembled the hot and cold water controls, extracted the cartridges and their spring valves, put one set into a Zip Lock sandwich bag, and rode the K75S down to a plumbing supply shop in Jonesboro.

The counterman opined that I didn’t need to replace the entire cartridge assembly – just the springs and rubber gaskets. The cost? A mere $3.97, tax included.

I came home, reassembled the faucet assembly with the new parts and voila! No drip. Now, five hours later, the sink stopper where the drip used to land is bone dry.

And peace has been restored.

BMW Motorcycle Rally Pin of the Day

Why? Because I’ve blogged all of the other motorcycle or trip-related pins in my collection at one time or another, so why stop now?

This is an accumulation of pins that started in 1986 at the BMW MOA Rally at Laguna Seca Raceway near Monterey, Calif. – 28 years in the making.

It includes pins from the 22 BMW MOA rallies I’ve attended plus 10 more other BMW MOA rally pins that I picked up over the years. There are 5 Return to Shilo rally pins, seven Falling Leaf Rally pins, and seven from the Iowa Rally.

Also represented are pins from Wilkerson Pass in Colorado, the Little Big Horn Battlefield, the Experimental Aircraft Association Museum in Oshkosh, Wisc., Indianapolis MotoGP (3), Route 66, Hoosier Beemers Rally (3), Mt. Evans, Colo., the AMA Life Member pin, Patriot Guard Riders, three of the four Daytona Beach Bike Weeks I’ve attended, the Nebraska Huskerally, the European Riders Rally in Burkesville, Ky., the Mother Cabrini Shrine in Golden, Colo., and on and on…

In the meantime, the 10-year-old Galyan’s Special Edition Eureka tent that I packed wet yesterday morning is draped over the lawn tractor and generator in the garage trying to dry out even though the humidity is about 100 percent, due to a passing line of storms.

Weather be damned, I made it to the Falling Leaf Rally

Theresia Shearer, Jonathan Fishburn, Archey Shearer and I passed a pleasant hour or so Saturday night playing euchre in the Lion’s Den at the 39th annual Falling Leaf Rally.
We, plus Lina Rafai, represented the Indianapolis BMW Club at the rally – the most sparsely attended Falling Leaf of the seven I’ve attended since 1993.
I arrived about 10:30 a.m. on Saturday and was stunned to see the campground mostly empty. I was the 260th person to register and the final attendance count was only 299. The host BMW club, the Gateway Riders, promised rally pins to the first 600 registrants, which means they had 301 pins left over.
I was told they needed 300 registrants, at $22 a head, to break even, so the cold rainy weather dealt their budget a severe blow.
I was in rain off and on from Poplar Bluff to Farmington with temperatures in the low 50s, forcing me to put the liners into my gloves and switch on the handgrip and seat heat.
The sun was out by the time I hit Potosi, but as luck would have it, I arrived during the parade for an invitational high school marching band competition, which forced a detour over back streets before I could get to the rally on the west side of town.
I set up my tent and $5.99 folding chair and kept an eye out for Indy folks until I noticed Theresia and Archey.
The low turnout meant improved odds for winning door prizes, but the five of us came up empty-handed anyway.
Saturday night dinner was chicken and “dumblings” for $7.
Shortly after I arrived, I was dismayed to see my iPhone display a “No Service” notification where the cell signal strength indicator normally is. I managed to get a Facebook message to Maria, advising her that I had no cell signal, using the free Wifi at McDonald’s.
I supposed that the problem was with Sprint until Jonathan Fishburn showed me that his Android Sprint phone was working fine. I fiddled with the iPhone settings, shutting the phone off, and every other trick I could think of but never got a Sprint signal at the rally even though I had good cell reception there on previous years.
I left for home about 9:20 a.m. today – abandoning my cheap chair because it’s a hassle to pack - and stopped at the Frederickstown, Mo. McDonald’s for a parfait and coffee. Once again, I got a “No Service” indication, but was able to get a message out on Wifi on Facebook.
I figured my phone had developed some glitch that would require wiping it clean and reinstalling all of my stuff.
I was in light rain and drizzle most of the way from Frederickstown to the Arkansas line where it began to rain in earnest, making for an unpleasant final hour on the road.
When I got home, I was surprised to see my phone had regained a Sprint signal and seemed to be back to normal.
I felt almost guilty that I only had a three-hour ride to and from the rally, compared with more than five hours for my Indianapolis friends.
Almost.

Going for it

It’s a few minutes before sunrise and a light rain is falling.

I’m packed and ready to head out for the Falling Leaf Rally, but not in the dark in the rain.

The weather radar suggests I may have dry pavement from north of Paragould all the way to Potosi if a second band of showers doesn’t catch me somewhere in southern Missouri.

I must be off.

No rally today

I gassed the Lexus at Sam’s Club this morning with $2.95/gallon regular – the best price in town.

I drove Maria to work so I could have the use of the car to run errands on a rainy day, which brings me to the matter of riding to the Falling Leaf Rally in Potosi, Mo.

There is a swath of rain from Muncie, Ind. all the way to Salida, Colo. and I have no interest in spending the entire day – including trying to pitch a tent and keep my stuff dry – in a downpour.

Tomorrow, however, may be a different story. I’m not ruling out a Saturday ride to Potosi if the weather system breaks up.

+++++++++++++++

Down to $2.89 by 5 p.m.

The roof is fixed

The roofers showed up about 2:30 p.m. today and repaired the minor storm damage to shingles over the bathroom and bedroom closet.

They got a little confused with the directions to our house and repaired a similar problem on a neighbor’s house before their boss got them to our place.

Lucky day for our neighbor.

A similar thing happened about a year ago when exterminators mistakenly treated the yard of another neighbor thinking they were doing our yard.

The guy on the roof also did a walkaround and made sure there were no other spots that needed attention.

Good eye, Morgan

Morgan has an uncanny ability to notice defects like, for instance, this shingle that has come loose on our garage roof.

She apparently glanced up and saw it as she was getting into her car to go to work this morning. She called me and I’ll probably call our fixit guy today.

Crap

I’m watching my weekend rally plans slip away as the forecast for Potosi, Mo. continues to deteriorate.

I remain hopeful, but realistic.

Watching the forecast…

My weekend hangs in the balance.

The Weather Channel forecast is for a 60 percent chance of rain at home for Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

But the forecast for Potosi, Mo., site of the 39th annual Falling Leaf Rally, calls for a 60 percent chance of rain Friday, diminishing to 20 percent Saturday and Sunday.

I can put up with a rainy ride Friday. I just hope my friends from Indianapolis are game. I let a similar forecast keep me home two years ago and the only rain that fell on the rally was at night.

Will photograph for pork barbecue

I went to work with Maria today to help with the ribbon cutting and open house at Malcolm Family Dentistry’s office in Osceola, Ark.

A large contingent from the Chamber of Commerce turned out and we had a spectacular pork barbecue lunch from the Hog Pen BBQ.

Nancy Malcolm (in scrubs in the center) was, of course, the hostess and I’m pretty sure she had a good time.

Bite me!

Maria baked a batch of tooth cookies for tomorrow’s open house at a dental office in Osceola, Ark., where her dentist employer practices two days a week.

I think she iced them with tooth serum. Heh, heh.

Social irresponsibility in the Sam’s Club parking lot

The drivers of these two motor homes – one dragging an SUV and the other pulling a trailer – apparently thought it was ok to block one of the major parking lot lanes at Sam’s Club this morning.

For the life of me, I cannot comprehend the psychology behind this exercise in wretched excess in travel, especially when I can go three weeks living out of a set of motorcycle saddlebags and a tank bag. And I can stay in deluxe hotels for a year and still spend less than these people do in a month on the road.

The idea of spending close to $400k (the MSRP for a new Dutch Star like the one in the foreground) for a motor home, then having to spend another $450-$500 for every fill-up and endure the hassle of navigating small parking lots while pulling another vehicle strikes me a somewhere between stupid and insane.

Friday morning stuff

Sitting at the kitchen table with my morning mocha cappuccino, something hopping across the kitchen floor caught my eye.

Upon closer inspection, I discovered a little green tree frog that had somehow found its way into the house.

I was feeling compassionate, so I swept him into a dust pan and removed him to the driveway where I left him to find a tree. We hear tree frogs all the time, but this is my first up-close encounter with one. I thought he was a toad at first, then noticed his brilliant green color and somewhat un-toadlike physique.

The cold front and rain blew through about 11 p.m. yesterday and the weather this morning is bright and cool.

I’m having coffee at Panera, having just called in three prescription refills to the Sam’s Club Pharmacy where the pharmacist recognized my voice. This is, without question, the friendliest pharmacy in Arkansas. The attention I get there is so personal, I feel like I’m their only customer.

Rally thoughts

After several days of sunny, pleasant weather, we have a cold front and rain moving in from the west.
It rained a couple of times earlier today and the wind just picked up and filled the air with dead and dry oak and hickory leaves. The principal line of storms is in northwest Arkansas and will probably reach us sometime around midnight.
After the rain blows through, we’re looking forward to a spell of cool autumnal weather. It will be perfect for the 40th annual rally of the BMW Riders Association of the Mid-South in western Tennessee this weekend. If I thought any of my friends was going, I’d plan on it, but I think everyone is saving their time and energy for the Falling Leaf Rally the following weekend in Potosi, Mo.
This will be my seventh Falling Leaf Rally, the first being in 1992 when I awoke on Saturday morning to find thick frost on the seat of my BMW K100RS.
The 10-day forecast for Potosi calls for highs in the low to mid-70s and lows around 50, with only a 20 percent chance of rain – damn near perfect weather to ride and hang out with my Indianapolis BMW Club friends who usually show up in large numbers.
This will only be my second – and probably final – rally for 2014, the first being the BMW MOA Rally in St. Paul, Minn. in July. I had hoped to make the European Riders Rally in Burkesville, Ky. and the BMW RA Rally in Birmingham in the spring, but weather and other considerations kept me at home.

Guaranteed delivery?

We’ve had a couple of electric skillets since we moved here and each lasted a couple of years before they failed.

I ordered this Presto 16” electric skillet from Amazon.com on Monday with delivery promised by 8 p.m. today.

As of 11:30 a.m., Amazon still reports it as preparing to be shipped, but continues to list it as “guaranteed delivery by 8 p.m. Oct. 1.”

It will be interesting to see how they meet that commitment and what happens if they don’t.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

It showed up a day later.