Adaptive Curmudgeon

Recently I got a call from the butcher. This was a “red alert moment”. The butcher is a man to be admired and feared. It occurs to me that folks in cities might not understand why a call from the butcher is more important than a call from the President and Joint Chief’s of Staff and maybe Bill Gates and Donald Trump and Mickey Mouse too. This is because the butcher is local and he works. Those other guys? Fuck ’em!

Pay attention kids because this is an important point:

If a person will do stuff for money, and if they do it well, and if you’re too busy to do it yourself, then they are specifically making your life better. Treat them like your biggest friend:

Always keep the butcher happy!

He’s important (at least to me) because he’s part of the last dwindling remnant of specialization of labor. In saner eras the economy was based on this thing called money. You could use money to hire skilled labor. The person you hired would solve your problems.

Generally you did this for things you didn’t want to handle yourself; like drilling a well or performing dentistry. But sometimes you did it because you were lazy. You could hand a few bucks to the neighbourhood lawn mowing kid so you could drink beer instead. (I was that kid.)

It was a superior economic model. It granted Americans two cars per household while Russia waited in line for toilet paper. It kept humanity from dying young while slumped over a plow.

I’m a freak that can’t get with the times. I still try to pay for labor with money. Alas what we think of money is nothing of the sort. We have electronic digits in accounts. They’re symbolically but not actually related to little green slips of paper. The green slips of paper were once symbolically related to things of value (like silver or labor or beer) but have since been expanded so much that they literally can’t even be printed on slips of paper. The greenback long ago violated number theories which are tied to physicality. What once was money is just debt pegged at new and utterly unimaginable levels that have never before existed in any place, in any time, for any society, since the dawn of time. Meanwhile whatever I can offer to hire labor has been outbid by sitting on the couch and watching Oprah. (Assuming Oprah is still alive? I wouldn’t know.)

So how does this lead to reverence for the butcher? Am I just a fruitcake on the internet ranting about fiat currency? No! I have proof. I know that money ‘aint money because (with the exception of the butcher) when I want to hire work done it often cannot be purchased at any price. If you can’t buy shit with money, then money is no longer money.

Globally, the walking dead are still walking. I can get on the internet, order a computer, a radio, or even a bitchin’ coffee mug with a skull on it. It’ll be FedExed to my house quickly and efficiently. I’ll pay with a debit card. Notice who didn’t a piece of the action? Nobody within a hundred miles of my house will see that money. Frankly if it weren’t for far away forces vying to get my money it’d wouldn’t be worth the paper upon which it’s no longer printed. Except for the butcher…

Before I get back to the butcher, let’s talk about gutters. I can’t hand greenbacks to someone to fix my gutters no matter how much I offer. See what I mean? When it comes to gutters, money ‘aint money.

Here’s the thing. I hate working on gutters. I’d happily pay someone else to deal with them. But it’s not rocket science and they’re not radioactive. It’s just that money can’t buy it done. Locally I could probably score hookers easier than a gutter guy. How can that be? It’s easier to find people who’ll have sex with strangers easier than it is to find a dude with a ladder? WTF!

Maybe someday I’ll hire a hooker. When she says “hey big fella’, now that I’ve got your cash I’ll do anything you want” I’ll say “here’s a ladder, fix the gutters”. From an economic standpoint it would all work out; at least until Mrs. Curmudgeon sees a whore in stilettos clearing the gutters and buries my body in a swamp.

I think its a social thing. Hell, for enough money I’ll at least consider damn near anything. Want bacon delivered to a cave in Greenland? Got radioactive lizard shit behind the fridge and want it cleaned out? At some price I could make it happen. There is some price at which I’ll dig ditches, haul your mother in law to the airport, and retrieve your cat from a tree (dead or alive?). But I’m unusual in that I want cash and will chase it… like the butcher.

Back to the topic at hand, since the butcher is the last guy shouldering some of my labor burden (for cash) I’m grateful. If he stops taking my money I’m toast. I’ll have no help in anything. I’ll buy shit via FedEx right until I die of exhaustion. It’s terrifying.

(Note: Don’t let flaky hippies or the ghost of Any Rand fool you… it’s a bitch doing everything for yourself. Self reliance, like liquor, is a heady potion best taken in moderation. In excess, it’s just another way to describe the thousand years of starvation, war, and misery that followed the fall of Rome. Some self reliance is good for the soul. Nothing but self reliance is either Mad Max or starving to death in a mud hut.)

So the butcher, who takes labor from my shoulders and is good at what he does, is a goddamn hero! When he calls I fuckin’ listen. I listened. Then I hung up the phone. It was a 30 second conversation. The butcher is a busy man. He hasn’t got time to waste with chit chat. He had given orders, I was about to follow them.

More later…

Took a day off work today.

In reference to squirrels.

I’m not much of a cook and I try to avoid hassling Mrs. Curmudgeon with dead fauna I’ve brought home. I generally avoid bringing home anything that’s not big game or filleted fish. The squirrel thing was an outlier and an excuse to exercise Grandpa’s gun. (I suppose it’s mine now but it’ll always be Grandpa’s Gun to me.)

Lucky for me Mrs. Curmudgeon stepped up to the plate, marinated the living shit outta’ the mess I’d made, and cooked them up beautifully. I hadn’t been serious about the whole “dinner” part of the affair and only bagged two. It was so good I wished I’d paid attention and gathered half a dozen or so. Live and learn.

I have a love / hate relationship with computers. They’re awesome (even essential) for certain purposes (I’m not blogging with a quill pen) but I spend a lot of time with the feeling that the NSA and marketers are crawling up my ass.

Computers are tools. I own them, not the other way around. (And don’t get me started about “smart” phones!) I want electronics to do precisely what I want and not a goddamn thing more.

The fact that Clippy existed even one day in any universe that included me is a complete explanation as to why I want to make my own computer.

So what’s a Curmudgeon to do? Be Adaptive of course! So last week I rolled the dice on a Raspberry Pi 2.

Raspberry Pi 2 Model B. A fine stocking stuffer for the mad scientist in your life.

I meant to test it, maybe see if it would somehow set it on fire (like other “experiments”), and then report my findings. Would it be too weak to use? Was it a silly toy? Or would it become sentient and start beating up the other computers in the room?

I haven’t done much with it yet but I’m happy to report that Moore’s Law has worked its magic. The cheap little box (about the size of a cigarette case) is plenty sufficient for many purposes.

So the Raspberry Pi 2 seems pretty cool and (aside from the cutsey name) poses no major flaws. There’s more but I’m too busy to write it all up just now. While I dithered in reporting the Silicon Graybeard stole my thunder by mentioning them first. (What can I say, I’m always late to the party.) You should hear his reasoned discussion; which is likely more fully informed than me just noodling around with it for a few days.

In the meantime, here are some factoids of merit.

First: Just give up and buy the kit. You can buy all the parts separately and this will save you approximately zero dollars. Here’s how I know this. I priced out the following components:

1. Raspberry Pi 2 Model B Project Board – 1GB RAM – 900 MHz Quad-Core CPU
2. Raspberry Pi B+ Power Supply (5v 2A)
3. 8GB Class 10 Micro SD Card Preloaded (NOOBS) Operating System for Raspberry Pi Model A A+ B B+ and Raspberry Pi 2 Model B
4. AmazonBasics High-Speed HDMI Cable – 3 Feet (0.9 Meter) Supports Ethernet, 3D, 4K and Audio Return
5. Wifi USB Plug – With Big Ass Antenna!

Then I bought it all in one kit because it was damn near the same price and I didn’t have to fret about whether some doohickey wasn’t compatible with the Pi’s flux capacitor. I can’t remember the price difference but shipping alone would kill any minimal savings. If you’re really into this sort of crap go ahead and buy like it’s a Chinese menu. If you’re busy or bored just buy say “screw it” and buy a CanaKit Raspberry Pi 2 Complete Starter Kit. The kit costs about $30 more than the board alone and includes the power supply, case, wifi dongle, microSD (preloaded software!), an HDMI cable, heat sinks, and instructions which are idiot proof.

It’s not rocket science to buy the parts but the kit is just as cheap.

Second: You cannot possibly be too dumb to assemble the kit. Trust me! The case that comes with the CanaKit is so simple that a chimp with brain damage can do it. (You won’t even need a screwdriver.) I assembled it in 5 minutes and then spent the next 20 minutes wondering what I’d missed because nothing should be that easy.

Third: You can get a Raspberry Pi case that’s amazingly epic and there are hundreds to choose from. The CanaKit case is actually pretty cool (it’s nicer in person than it looks on the photo) but there are cases out there that are art. (Gone are the days of Altoids tins… unless that’s what you prefer in which case go for it.) I burned way too long just window shopping at groovy cases. I will upgrade my case sometime but that day is not today. (I want to see if I’m going to change the size/specs on the Pi when I install some “needful shit”. Also “needful shit” is absolutely a technical term. What makes you ask?) For style alone I narrowed it down to either the awesomely named and totally outlandish Pi Borg Plus ($20) or a considerably less aggressive birch/plywood enclosure (sold out). (The latter is much lamer but sports a removable top.) Be warned; the Raspberry Pi and the Raspberry Pi 2 don’t have interchangeable cases.

Is that not the coolest thing you’ve ever seen? (It’s $20 and if it’s sold out before I get around to buying one I’m going to be pissed!)

A little too cutsey for me but it’s made of birch and has a removable top. (Also it’s sold out.)

Fourth: Building your own NOOBS microSD is probably not all that hard and NOOBS will solve everything for you during setup. I probably didn’t need to buy it pre-made. The NOOBS (great name!) software will install the Raspibian (Linux) OS and various other stuff with almost no effort. That said, I didn’t have a spare microSD and simply cramming the pre-made mircoSD in the Raspberry Pi had me rolling in twenty minutes (counting time for uploads).

Fifth: The Wifi Antenna that came “free” with the CanaKit is all you need. I bought a Wifi USB Plug – With Big Ass Antenna ($14). I use it where WiFi is weak. It’s slightly better thant the “free” one. (‘Cause the best antenna is a big assed one, duh! Science isn’t that hard.) However it’s overkill for most situations and the CanaKit WiFi dongle looks nicer in the case. (Incidentally if you’ve got a plug handy the Rasberry Pi is said to take to ethernet like a duck to water. I’m far too lazy to haul my monitor to the ethernet plug to test it; WiFi is enough for me.)

That’s all I’ve learned so far. I’ll report more when I whip out the soldering iron and trash it. Good luck and happy nerding.

A.C.

I could procrastinate no longer. I was time to clean my chimney (no, that’s not a euphemism for something kinky… you freak!).

Reluctantly I shuffled to and fro with tools and ladders and brushes and several of those infernal fiberglass extension rods. (They always always either cross thread or risk leaving the brush in the middle of the chimney.) Finally I ascended to begin my ritualistic tour of duty at the butterchurn of creosote.

Mindful of gravity I’d recruited the nearest kid as a safety officer. “Stay here, if I fall, call 911 before I bleed out.” There was whining. “It’s so haaaarrdd. Can’t someone else do it? This is worse than school.” If I could train my dog to do it I would have. Nobody but a kid can make breathing air while holding a cell phone sound like torture. Most teenagers need a few months working in a Kentucky coal mine to give ’em perspective.

Admittedly there was mission creep. Initially I was only counting on a pulse and someone to hold the cell phone. But things went as they do and I’d toss down a rope and shout “clip on the little canvas bag and put a screwdriver in the bag”. Infants and toddlers are intelligent, inquisitive, active, bundles of energy but by the time they hit teenagerhood either biology or school has burned that down to an ember of ennui and condition white. Since when is “put the screwdriver in the bag” a complex task? If that’s hard who’s going to manage civilization in the future. Heck, who’s going to make Big Macs in the future?

I did get assistance so I shouldn’t complain. Everything got done but at the speed of teenager. Perched from 40′ I was in something of a hurry, but teenagers in motion are sleepy turtles on qualludes slowly growing old and dumb while wandering in circles. Ugh!

Shouting “I’m on a goddamn roof, get the lead out” got things moving at the speed of rusty Yugo in mud. It was an improvement but not much. I counted to ten… about a dozen times.

Eventually the kid got with the program. There was a glimmer of intelligence. Active participation even! Buckets of ash were dumped more or less where they should have gone. Tools were picked up and not left for the lawnmower. Whining continued but progress was made. Light at the end of the tunnel!

I disassembled the fireproof vacuum and gave it a good cleaning. The cat tried to help. I disassembled the stove and gave it a good once over. The cat tried to get stuck in it. The teenager whined “it’s so dusty”. (No shit Sherlock it’s called “ash”.) Door gaskets were repaired and when I missed the cat I opened the door to let it out. Fittings were re-fit. Knuckles were scraped.

Eventually the job was done. And it was good. I apologized for my gruffness and refrained from an explanation of “get the lead out”. The kid vanished in search of a shower. At the retreating back I said “thank you”. There was a grunt of acknowledgement.

I should have been happy. The chimney was in superlative shape. The cleaning was more a safety check than mandatory maintenance. We’ve been burning cleanly and it shows. Elapsed time? Maybe an hour or two. An onerous task was done and one more bulwark against deadly winter is assured; but the whining had drilled into my brain.

—–

Squirrels. Fuck them. Climbing down the ladder I’d notice a few squirrels running around one of my tractors. The little cretins are probably eating wires or storing nuts in the tail pipe.

I decided I needed to hunt squirrels. Or rabbits. Or grouse. Or basically anything edible.

I bid farewell to the kid, who was slowly merging into the couch, and grabbed my Grandfather’s old shotgun. I’m a lousy small game hunter. Who cares? It’s all about not being in the house.

Halfway across the lawn I’d bagged a squirrel. Half an hour later I flushed a grouse. We played cats and mice all over a patch of forest until it totally outclassed me. Laughing that something with a brain the size of a grape outsmarted me I sat down to watch the show. It has been a fine fall. Leaves fell. Chickadees came by to investigate. I spooked a couple of deer. (I hate disturbing deer before the big game season but not enough to stay inside watching TV.) I hiked around for no good reason, across a swamp, around some trees I ought to have made into firewood, through some brush. Finally a second squirrel was so obvious I pretty much had to bag it. Beyond that it was just an armed walk.

Around dusk I returned with two squirrels and a smile on my face.  Kids are kids and things move at their own speed… even when you’re on the damn roof. It had been a good afternoon after all.

A.C.

P.S. I’m not the only one who needs “woods time” once in a while.

The pigs are ready for butchering. Actually it’s past due. I can always put it off one more day and that’s what I’ve been doing. The pigs like this arrangement.

(Now I’m fretting that I haven’t enough freezer space and I should have pre-sold a couple of ’em. I know; “first world problem” right? Well when the zombie apocalypse comes I’ll have  bacon with my breakfast no matter what. I’m taking appropriate action to insure this. You should too. Pigs and chickens; it’s a system dammit!)

At any rate I’m wondering if anyone is interested in trading? I’ve got pork. You know what pork is. Unquestionably, my quality is better than whatever you bought at the grocery store. Amounts and cuts can be adjusted according to offers or maybe cash can balance out uneven trades. It’s barter dammit; nothing is impossible!

I’d consider whatever you’ve got in excess for what I’ve raised in excess. It could be small and silly (a can of Billy Beer for some breakfast sausage) or large and serious (an old generator, homebrew, that kayak you never use, some tool I can’t live without, the ring of power, a Senator, the steamshovel your wife wants moved out of the yard, HAM radio junk, anything that’ll take a 6.2 Chevy engine, membership in the Illuminati, etc…).

Look at what you’ve got lying around and ask if you’d rather have ham.

If not stuff then maybe you’ve got a service to trade? (I didn’t say that kind of service! Get yer’ head out of the gutter!) I’m looking for a wooden boat repair guy and a Raspberry Pi hobbyist but I’ll consider anything. That said, if you’re a phlebotomist who speaks Latin and plays the sousaphone it’s going to be a hard sell.

If you’ve got a proposal, hit the comments. You know me by now, no idea is too goofy. The worst I can say is “no”. (If you want to communicate private information like your e-mail address drop me a line via e-mail.) We can have a quiet non-blogged parley between you, me, and the NSA.

Maybe something will work out. Maybe not. At the very least, it’s a nice idea. (Where else but on some homesteader’s blog can you could propose turning an old tractor snowplow into a mess o’ pork chops?)

As always I’ll happily deliver anywhere a Dodge can go for gas money and enough cash / trade that I’m not being an idiot. Also I travel all over. With a little advance planning I might wrap delivery into my other shenanigans. Roadtrip! Also I’ve FedExed pork and it worked flawlessly.

I’m just throwing it out there because the world is unusual and who knows what could happen? Maybe someone somewhere is wishing they could trade an old Woodmizer for a full freezer. Why shouldn’t I make their day?

A.C.

P.S. #1: I don’t actually want Billy Beer; the sudsy equivalent of the AMC Gremlin. That was just a goofy example.

P.S. #2: If you’re the salmon guy. (You know who you are.) I still owe ya’ if you want a pound of bacony joy. A Curmudgeon is always happy to repay kindness.

My last post listed some drawbacks to the movie The Martians (including Matt Damon’s rugged good looks and marketers that infect movies like barnacles on a speedboat). However, that’s overstating diddly little shit. The main point is you ought to see it (you probably already have since I’m usually the last to pick up on such things).

It occurs to me:

1. The book is probably as good as the movie.
2. Winter is coming.(1)

So, you might as well buy the book now. You know you’re going to want it. I have already ordered mine. You have two choices The Martian on kindle for $8.99 and The Martian on paperback for $9.00. (Those two prices tell me a lot about why traditional paper based publishing is toast.)

Just buy it. You know you’re going to read it sooner or later so quit pretending.

A.C.

1. Winter is the time for peacefully reading by a warm fire. Duh!

I just watched the Martian. Spoiler alert: it’s about a guy who gets stuck on Mars. But you already knew that.

This is the first time in forever I didn’t feel dirty and used after comparing a movie theater ticket price to the experience. I loved it. Here’s my short review:

“The Martian is a damn fine movie. If you haven’t watched it you should.”

See? I’m all about simplicity.

What? You want details? OK fine. Here are some pros and cons. Warning (there are a minor spoilers ahead… don’t read further if you don’t want to hear ’em):

Pros:

• A PG-13 topic was covered in a PG-13 manner.
• There were no superheroes. Thank God!
• When faced with near certain death, the main character does not indulge in navel gazing and cosmic weepery. This makes sense; despair is a luxury one can ill afford when on the knife edge. Psycotherapists and clingy freaks in drum circles lose one hit point every time The Martian is played.
• It got the science right, or at least plausible. They did not “reverse the polarity of the tri-corder” to solve everything.
• It captured the “feel” of statistical uncertainty, which is practically a public service. “Given imperfect information you must choose between mutually exclusive options with no clear winner and no guarantee of success.” It’s a concept to which Americans (indeed all human beings) need exposure.
• Mars looks beautiful… as it should.
• There was no love story pigeonholed in the script where one wasn’t needed.
• Nobody got in a fight because smart people don’t degrade into fisticuffs like juvenile fuckwits. (Can you tell I’m sick of superheroes?)
• They didn’t insert excessive tokens. Most movies assume a two minute scene waking down the street needs a gay guy, someone in a wheelchair, and two oppressed minorities striving to overcome a world full of racism. This movie told a story with actual people of reasonable depth instead of a stack of checkboxes.
• They didn’t tack on a bullshit backstory involving a puppy and how the protagonist had to persevere in order to bring flowers to Tiny Tim with leukemia back home. He worked hard to live because he didn’t want to die. Sufficient motivation.
• There was no bullshit speech about how “we should drop everything and haul ass back there to save this guy regardless of the risks because if we save one life it’s all worth it”. Politicians and Hollywood writers talk like that but people smart enough to get to Mars don’t. Everyone considered risks from every angle. Which is what smart people do.
• People who considered risk didn’t instantly pansy out. Which seems entirely reasonable to me.
• They captured the sense of scale. Scenes in space made my wife, who is afraid of heights, nearly tear my arm off.
• They captured the sense of claustrophobia whenever air supplies were in jeopardy. Did anyone in Star Trek or Star Wars ever pant for breath?

Cons (these are all minor):

• How much did NASA pay for this? Recently NASA can scarcely walk and chew gum at the same time and yet they’re space studs of Mars? I wonder what managers at SpaceX think about product placement versus knuckling down and building a damn rocket and how that compares to NASA.
• I realize our nation has a lot of illiterate losers but does a room literally filled with rocket scientists need an explanation of orbits involving a stapler? For a brief moment I felt like they were talking down to me. A clever writer could have figured out a graphic or something.
• When NASA faceplants, the story needs a second player to help. Who should arrive like a white knight with a secret awesome rocket offered by a magnanimous super wise CEO type guy who risks all in the advancement on humanitarian rescue and scientific cooperation? The Chinese. Really? The Russians can and do launch people into space all the time? SpaceX is kicking ass trying to be space truckers to the ISS. Can China do anything beyond launching a satellite? I’m not the only one to notice that America’s biggest creditor has become our awesome movie sidekick.
• Matt Damon. He did a fine job acting. I should be happy. For some reason I want to punch the guy. I don’t know why.
• This is minor but can’t we have an astronaut that’s butt ugly? An astronaut / botanist who can skip showers for a year while looking merely “rugged” and a female Chinese space government bureaucrats that was built like a supermodel makes me wonder what engineering schools I missed out on. Unlike, say Firefly which was meant to be swashbuckling, this was mean to be realistic and my “willing suspension of disbelief” was stretched.  Of course everyone was standard Hollywood handsome and maybe I can’t ask more on a commercial movie.
• Find the dipshit marketing robot that decided to shoehorn “period” music into movies and have him killed! On Mars some dude is listening to Waterloo by ABBA (1974) and in Guardians of the Galaxy some dude is listening to Cherry Bomb by the Runaways (1976).  Yes, audiences can’t help tapping our feet to shit from 1970’s but it’s not subtle and it’s demeaning? If I stand on my hind legs will you give me a dog treat too? Bad marketer! Stop it!

The Adventures Of Roberta X explains that Tammerdammerung is

“…a version of the dreadful dark end of the Norse gods and all the world in which, just as things are at their very bleakest of bleak, all is lost and it’s all headed ineluctably downhill to rack, ruin and oblivion, The Tamara shows up, scolds the whole lot of ’em for ‘grabastic faffing about’, kicks every combatant’s backside, tames the Fenris wolf with a pat on the head and nice collar and leash, tempts and soothes the world-girdling serpent with a fat mouse, grabs Loki by the ear and adjusts his attitude permanently, does the same squared to the Frost Giants and puts ’em all back to work, straightening up the mess and puttin’ the world to rights. There’s a lot of grumbling by bigawd it gets done and in jig time. Then she hauls them out to the range so’s they can start to learn instead of being whining posers. Which is exactly as things should turn out. It’s a lovely story and it otta be a warnin’ to us all.”

I for one am all for it! I’ve had about enough “grabastic faffing about”. Really haven’t we all? The Tamara has my full support and I ought to spend more time at the range anyway.