A planned power outage. Nothing could go wrong. Except. . .

Zippy is the volunteer to stay, see everything down, then see it all back up.

As if that's not problem enough, he comes and asks me, "Do I need to shut anything down? Or should I just let the power run out on the batteries?"

As I try to repress the rage, I calmly explain the principle of staying behind to make sure systems are powered down properly in the event of a planned power outage.

I thought he understood.

BB logs in from home to watch the servers. Sure enough, full activity right up to five-thirty, then it dropped all at once. Obviously, Zippy did well.

I had logged in and shut down all the Linux servers myself, because I just didn't trust him.

The iSeries server. The backbone of the company. The one that runs everything from incoming faxes to financial systems. It can't come back up after the outage. Lost a hard drive. Actually, lost two hard drives, but the tech was able to get one of them back to functioning, which is amazing considering he was an IBM tech.

Eventually, they got it all back to functioning with a single replacement drive, but it was touch and go until sometime around 2:30 AM.

Too bad I had to miss that.

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We've got a European Queen Tribute band coming to town soon. The local news, the local radio shows, the newspapers are just being insane about it. They're treating this band as if it's the greatest thing to ever hit Sioux Falls. We've never treated any legitimate artist this way before. Elton John didn't get this kind of coverage. In fact, I didn't even know he was coming until the night he played when the radio dude casually said something about that Elton John thing going on. Why are we acting like a tribute band is going to somehow change our world forever?

I hate our local press. A bunch of dribbling morons.

BREAK

So, the popper arrived yesterday. Upon taking it out of the box, we discovered the rear-most panel on the outside of the containment area around the kettle was broken. Mrs. NFB says, "oh no, now we have to send it back." I said, "that's a fifty cent piece of plexiglass that we probably have a replacement for out in the shed. We're not sending it back for that."

She ended up saying I could do what I wanted since it's my toy. Luckily it was the plain panel that was broken and not one of the fancy slotted and holy ones they use for vents on the sides.

For a quick-fix I just taped the broken panel back to its flat position. I do have plexi the same thickness out in the shed, but it was too cold to bother going out there to cut it last night.

Then, after supper, we cleaned it and fired it up for the first time. It's overall larger than I thought it would be, but the kettle is smaller than it looks. It pops a quarter cup of kernels at a time. Which is no big deal because you can do kettle after kettle and just keep it running, but that's actually a pretty awesome size if it's just you and you just feel like a little popcorn. It pops up to be more than a microwave bag of popcorn, but not an incredibly huge amount more.

The funniest part of this whole thing is how excited the dogs got when they saw the box. They knew we were getting a new popcorn machine because they'd seen the old one break. And they knew this was it because Mrs. NFB called me right when she got home and told me the popcorn machine was there and we're having popcorn tonight. Even if they were completely brain-dead they would have heard the word popcorn and perked up. But as I took the machine out of the box they gathered around me all excited, licking my hands, whimpering with anticipation. Our pups know popcorn, and they were excited by the new popcorn machine.

As it fired up and began popping for the first time, they stood in rapt attention. It popped up the first batch quickly, and got the second batch started. I scooped out the first two as the third one started and put them into a big bowl and sprinkled some melted butter on, salted lightly, and handed some off to Mrs. NFB and the pups. Everyone seemed to agree it was good stuff. And the popper smelled really good, which makes no sense because I used the same formula I always used. But, whatever. It's good. And fairly quick at popping a batch of corn.

So, aside from the too-big vent holes that are causing some kernels to shoot through the upper part of the sides as the kettle overflows, it's a raging success at my place. Have to figure out a way to cover most of those vent holes and leave just a little space for the steam to escape.

And checking the link I see they hit a sale price thirty bucks below what we paid right after we ordered. Awesome. This is our world.

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So, going through some legal mumbo-jumbo, I see that even if you don't attempt to make money by making a cover of a song, you still owe the owner of that song 9.1 cents per copy made, whether that's digital copies or CDs or whatever. So, according to that, if I finish up my cover tune I'm working on, and eleventy-teen of you bastards listened to it, I'd owe somebody, somewhere, a dollar.

This applies to any song penned after 1922.

Copyright in this ol' country is fuckernated. Who the hell wrote a song in 1922 that's still around? Of course, they wouldn't own the song anyway. It's likely some conglomerate corporation that's wanting that money, which explains everything.

All ramblings and idiocy at this point anyway.

So, deciding against the cheap path on the violin, I decided to go mid-road like I do with my guitars. Plus, this gives me the opportunity to pick up a five instead of four string and get that low C built in, putting me on a level playing field with my guitar side. I'd like to get this one and likely from that shop as I've heard very, very nice things about them. But, once I have the money figured for it, I'll call them up and see if they've got them in stock.

In pursuit of above, I started selling shit I don't need again, which is something I should have been doing over the past few months anyway. I kind of trickle-sell. A little here, a little there. Clearing out the back room and getting moola to put towards my musical endeavors. The room isn't clearing out very fast, but the fundage comes rapidly when doing this. So, at least my collecting habit is paying me back for being a dumbass over the past few years.

Packaging is a bit of a bitch, but whatever. I'll be able to cover what I'm selling right now, and if necessary, I'll get more packaging supplies.

BREAK

OK, yesterday's fiasco on that governor sex-scam thing was pretty funny, making the straight-laced news-dude repeat a quote from a hooker where he had to say, "so dude, do you want the sex or what?" was pretty funny.

Today's was even better. Another hooker has come forward with a quote about what a good guy this governor was. Allow me to translate her statement.

"He was a perfect gentleman. He tipped well. And he didn't do anything unclean."

TRANSLATION:

"He didn't bitch about having to wear a condom. He had the cash up-front. He didn't ask me to do ass to mouth."

Mrs. NFB says, "what the hell do these girls do that they can charge five thousand an hour?"

I say, "I don't know, but it better be pretty fucking terrific for five gee an hour."

"No kidding. Nobody needs to make that kind of money."

"I need to make that kind of money."

"Shut up."

But she does have a point. It's hazy, but it's in there.

Enough. Laterz.