Brady’s Blog

our 4 year old, davis, has a tendency to be an early riser..
not the quietest kid in the world either..
he likes to come to our bedroom about 0 six hundred, throw the door open, slam the door shut and start screaming at us in anger about his desire for food, drink, and television..
this behavior is terribly endearing, especially to mrs. cracker.. she loves it.. lives for it..

so.. couple mornings ago, he comes upstairs, does his best chucky impersonation, crawls into bed with me and goes right back to sleep.. (mrs. cracker is already out the door running or walking or tae-boing or some other such silliness)

so.. we’re snoozin.. comfy cozy.. he’s kicking around and stuff but not bothering me - i could sleep in a blender..

and then.. he starts nose wheezing - you know.. just a faint, soft whistle.. barely audible.. but i don’t know that’s what it is.. because a barely audible sound 6 inches from your ear can sound just like a terrible, blood-chilling scream coming from far away.. so i snap to and just about kill myself getting over him and outta bed to chase the killer or burglar or international terrorist or whoever it is that’s made someone scream such an awful scream..

i realized what it was as soon as my feet hit the floor.. strange how quickly reality can shift on you like that.. one second, the adrenaline is pumping, you’re in warrior/protector mode, ready to slay the dragon, the next second you’re like “oh.. it’s just davis breathing through his little nose.. prolly not gonna need the shotgun for this one..”

i’ll save the shotgun for the next time he slams that door - maybe if i threaten her with it, i can keep mommy from killing the poor kid..

if you’re first initial is T. and your last name is Estes and your company uses first initial, last name to generate email addresses.. well.. guess what.. you’ve got a beauty of an email address..

what if your name was..
bob alls.. or
chris rotch.. or
paul ricks.. or
phil uker.. or
you get the idea..

oh yeah.. by the way.. that one up there in the title is real.. jury is out on whether or not that person gets it.. i don’t think anyone has asked him..

this is the stuff of which dreams are made.. it’s the fountain of youth, it’s cocaine, it’s heaven, it’s hell, it’s your whole world.. it’s rainblo..

i first came in contact with this mesmorizing, intoxicating, life-changing substance about 15 years ago.. i was working in harrison, arkansas loading trucks at night.. it was hard work, and sometimes you felt like a little pick-me-up.. a little somethin to keep ya goin..

now most of the guys were hard core addicted to luden’s cough drops they stole out of the crates we were loading, ( i don’t think 10% of the ludens shipped through there ever made it to the store) but cracker, being burdened by an honesty/morality streak, did not partake in this.. no.. i turned to something else.. something harder, more soul-captivatingly addictive.. rainblo..

it started with a sleeve here or there from the convenience store.. no big deal.. just some gum to chew.. ya know.. a treat.. before i knew it i was layin down $15 for a carton at the wholesale distributor.. chain-chewing night and day.. i was in deep.. and had no way out..

those who know her know that rainblo is a fickle mistress.. the heavenly thrill you get as you pop in a piece and begin to chew is soon replaced by the sore-jaw, tasteless state.. heavy users call this being “rainblown”

when a rainblo-er hits the bottom.. it hurts.. the constant headaches.. the utter lack of appetite for anything but the gum.. you start to lose weight.. you can’t smile (cuz you’re unhappy and your jaws don’t work any more).. you start to lose friends.. you run out of money.. and your family doesn’t understand.. and when you find the bottom.. you can begin to come back up..

and i did.. i walked away.. didn’t touch the stuff for years.. sometimes, i’d see some at the gas station.. and i’d get all sweaty and the pains would start all over again.. but i kept going.. and stayed straight..

and then.. it happened.. at Target..
i was minding my own business.. shopping for something else.. and there she was.. on the candy isle.. in all her beauty.. rainblo.. in big 20 oz cartons.. i bought a couple and brought em back to the office..

for a while i kept it to myself.. not wanting to spread the disease.. but they found out.. homer and gator.. and they were instantly hooked - fixed - hanging on rainblo wall like a couple of pretty pictures..

we binged pretty bad there for a while.. it was like the old days for me and i recognized all the signs as the other two fell deeper and deeper.. it was decadent, shameful, deadly.. and then it was over.. we all hit the bottom together..

our trash cans were all full of white-green blobs of spent “blo”..
our speech was constantly slurred from lack of jaw control..
we were broke.. wounded.. powerless.. and yet.. we survived..

not a day goes by now that we don’t all crave that sugary goodness.. the texture, the ritual, the bubbles.. but we resist.. we know not to shop at target.. and we choose carefully the convenience stores that we frequent.. and we just try to live one day at a time.. without her.. beyond her reach..

that’s all we can do.. and that’s what i’m going to do.. just live.. and try to enjoy life.. and not think about it.. and never, ever, look back..

and save up for this

21 POUNDS?! suh-WEET!!

i was thinking about some of the things we used to do when i was in school..

1. radiator painting - rountree elementary school where i went had radiators - big iron things that kept us all warm in the winter - we’d put crayons on those and let them melt - every single radiator in the school was covered from top to bottom with melted, multi-color crayon wax..

2. food in the pants - there were a couple of kids that constantly had plumber crack - at lunch we would throw corn and other tossable veggies into the back of their pants.. (you’d be amazed how often this was accomplished without their knowledge) i always imagined their mothers thinking “how in the world does he get so much food in his pants every day?”

3. confetti - i have no idea why we did this but we used to sit in the back of class and cut up ream after ream of paper into the tiniest confetti you’ve ever seen - then at recess or after school we’d spread it all over the place - total mess..

4. shelf paper on ms. mooney’s shoes - ms. mooney hated me - literally - she followed me from 4th to 5th grade just to show me how much she hated me.. anyway, her desk was covered with this plastic shelf paper stuff - the edges of it just kinda folded over and stuck to the underside of the desk - so.. i would sneak out of my chair, crawl up under her desk, peel little pieces of shelf paper off her desk, and stick them to her shoes - so when she stepped away from her desk she had bunches of little colored slips of plastic paper sticking up all over from her shoes.. she’d walk around like that for hours before she noticed.. pretty funny..

5. throw gum at each other - this one had some harsh consequences as it turns out - chuck faucett and i used to throw gum at each other quite a bit.. i finally nailed him in the head with a big glob - he swatted at it right as it hit his hair which made it just tangle up completely.. - coach hunter scolded us pretty good and chuck had to get a haircut.. that made me feel kinda bad for a few minutes..

6. gator torture - somebody cut the alligator off of this girls izod jacket one time and taped it up in the top of the holly tree in my yard - the principal somehow got the idea this all happened at school so he drug me in and started asking me all about it, blah blah blah.. i let him get all red-faced and worked up before i asked him “um.. did someone tell you this happened at school? cuz it didn’t.. and i don’t know a thing about it anyway.. so.. if there’s nothing else..” he hated me almost as much as ms. mooney..

7. glue seats - this has to be my all time favorite.. i think my 4th grade year was prolly the big year for this.. basically, that year, if you leaned forward in your seat for more than a few seconds, someone would sneak up behind you and put a big puddle of elmer’s glue on your chair - when you sit back, it spreads out all over your pants and then hardens.. so at recess, you can see who got nailed - which for a while was pretty much everyone - we all constantly had big, hard, dark circles on the seat of our jeans.. paid to sit in the back row..

honorable mention (all different grades) –

stapled all the pages of mr. freeman’s math instructor book together (8th)

parked my car in the drama class (12th)

got a bunch of kids to line up and chant “brubaker, brubaker” and “we hate ms. mooney” at recess (5th)

shot off bottle rockets at basketball game (9th) - not proud of this one since it forced my family to relocate..

snuck out of class and threw food and stuff all over the lunch room (6th) - a chunk of an apple i threw stayed on the wall the entire year..

i’ll post more of these as i think of them and the statute of limitations run out..

if i ever out grow the thrill and excitement of stacking rocks, i think i’ll take up penny stacking..
looks easy enough..

http://fincher.org/Misc/Pennies/index.shtml

we went camping this weekend..
i bailed out of work about 16:00 hours on thursday and we hit the road.. up to roaring river in missouri - ’bout an hour from here..

now, i know at least one guy who would say it isn’t really camping since we “camp” in the bus.. but hey.. this time we were really roughing it..

how rough was it? i’ll tell ya how rough it was.. two words: 30 amps.. that’s right children - we made it all weekend on 30 amps.. just try to run 3 a.c. units, a microwave, trash compactor, tv/dvd combo, fridge, and a blender on 30 amps..
davey crocket himself couldn’t do that..

really though, the bus does like 50 amp spots a lot more..
we went down to one of 3 a.c. units on friday while it was still pretty warm.. cooled down to pretty much perfect on saturday and sunday..

we had a great time.. found a good place for a tree swing, caught what davis termed “crab-dads” (crawdads) in the 60 degree spring-fed creek on saturday (insert george castanza joke here), played a little football, frisbee, etc.. good times..

then today, we went fishing..
now.. i’ve done quite a bit of fishing in my day, but not a lot of trout fishing..
where i come from, just because a river runs through it (whatever it is), doesn’t mean you have to go stand in that river and sling fishing line all over the place for hours at a time..

i honestly don’t know which is worse, bass fishing - where you might go so long without seeing a fish that you think they’ve all been raptured…

or trout fishing - where you can see hundreds of fish and they’re all looking at your bait right in front of their noses and laughing amongst themselves: “oh wow! a little orange ball with some kind of stinky stuff sprayed on it stuck onto a HOOK!.. yeah.. we’ve never seen that one before.. let’s go for that!!”

but.. a couple of the girls brought us some cinnamon rolls so it was ok..

i did try one new thing on this camping trip..
i built a couple of rock towers - davis models his cheesy grin next to this one

ryan made me think of doing this because he went camping recently and posted this one

mine is approximately 450% better than his.. give or take..

now.. believe it or not, al gore didn’t invent the internet and ryan didn’t invent stone balancing..
there are others that have done this..

and at least one realized: “oh.. hey.. that would sure look cool backwards..”

anyway, it was a good trip..
we’re thinking of going again next month..
we’ll prolly go to devil’s den..
where they have 50 amps..

i keep a bat in the back of my jeep..
an old bat..
hard wooden bat..
his name is justin..
justin case..

stew: “daddy, what are you doing?”
daddy: “i’m loadin the bus, buddy, we’re goin camping, remember?”
stew: “oh yeah, right.. ok.. so.. what are you looking for?”
daddy: “well, every time we get ready to go camping i look for the camp shovel i bought on ebay - but i never find it..”
stew: “ok.. well.. i’ve never seen it.. what does it look like?”
daddy: “it’s in a small black bag about this big, it folds up pretty small - so there’s no telling where i put it”
stew: (proving that the smart aleck gene is a dominant one) “well, let me put it this way — small things are hard to find, you know.. so.. i’ll help you look.. but i don’t think we’re gonna find it..”
daddy: “thanks stew, i appreciate that.. next time i’ll look for a great big handy fold-up camp shovel..”
stew: (as yet impervious to sarcasm) “yeah.. that would be easier to find..”

don’t know what made me think of this but i went back and dug it out of my email from early 2000..

this is a series of emails i got from a customer who was having trouble getting connected through our dialup service back then..

it’s really terribly long but pretty funny..

i debated editing it down but i think it works better in its entirety..
———————————————————————————————-
This is Bill Covington with new account changedtoprotect@nwark.com having problems connecting. Using the exact same equipment, I connect to arkansasusa.com consistently at 49,333. If I connect to interface at all, I get 28,800.
The attached wavefile (8-bit 8kHz PCM) of the handshake contains a curious sequence of repeatable clicks. Analyzing the click spectrum shows each one to concentrate energy consistently around 2165 to 2175 Hz. I don’t hear these clicks when connecting to arkansasusa. I have disconnected all telephone equipment from the line with no improvement. I haven’t tried my other computer on another line, but I will.

My reach number is 555-8409.
——————-
I hooked a scope, dc coupled, to the phone line and watched the clicks. The clicks appear on the line as a series of square 1 volt positive pulses lasting about 2 milliseconds. Their magnitude is at least as great as the modem signals. The 2170 Hz ringing in the WAV file must just be some resonance in the line or microphone arrangement. I didn’t see any clicks after the first few seconds of training, but it may be that the line equalization procedure is already derailed.

Bill Covington, changed@nwark.com, 555-8409, 555-2605.
——————-
Here is a much better recording of the clicks I am experiencing. This was recorded without a microphone. I have transformer coupled the phone line to the line input of my sound card. I put a 10 microfarad capacitor between the transformer and the phone line for dc isolation. If I call arkansasusa with the same equipment, there are no such pulses anywhere.

——————–

The only thing I didn’t do is to put a resistor in the line to prove that the pulses are coming into my equipment from an external source. It’s possible my modem is creating the pulses, but it hasn’t done it before.
Examining the pulse pattern shows it to be very consistent. Each pulse is 2ms long (16 PCM samples). They frequently come in pairs with a 12ms center-to-center spacing. Near the end of the training sequence, they space at 20, 60 and 50 ms pretty much exactly.
———————
I guess I couldn’t stand the suspense. I put a resistor in the line and proved that the pulses are coming into my house from an external source (telco or IFWORLD).

———————
This morning, I tried a different experiement. I clicked connect on the PC normally, but as soon as the digits were dialed, I picked up a regular telephone on the same line and unplugged the (internal) modem for 1 to 2 seconds. I then plugged it back in and dropped the regular telephone. This appeared to connect to your modem but failed to negotiate with the server.
I tried it again with the same results. I tried it a third time and it connected successfully at 49,333. I then proved the connection by browsing the internet for a few minutes, confirming that I had a good, fast connection.

This experiment proves that the line is good, but something is hosing the handshake and equalization. The purpose of temporarily pulling the plug is to delay the handshake to throw off the timing of the clicks, hopefully with postive results - indeed this is occasionally the case.

———————-

At your suggestion, I called in a trouble report on my residential line and was fairly pleased with the response. There is a pair-gain multiplexer serving the Brookbury neighborhood. At a minimum, this system creates an additional A/D/A conversion in the path between me and the Central Office (CO). The best theory on clicks so far is that the pair gain system creates the clicking phenomena. This is consistent with my observations here in that the clicks are very sharp, square and clean, implying that they are generated physically close and not at the other end of 30,000 feet of twisted copper, which would cause them to appear smeared and rounded due to the natural filtering of the line.

The remaining question is then why is arkansasusa fine and nwark a disaster?
My guess is that your equipment is transmitting a signal that is too strong and overloading the pair gain system. The experiment to perform is to call both providers and use the same setup to record the signals and critically compare the received signals at my house, particularly regarding signal level. This will confirm any differences in the signals from the two ISP’s, and there is obviously a very significant difference that will negatively impact your business in this neighborhood.

———————–

cracker: “uh.. sure dude.. um.. ok.. great then.. nice work with the 10 microfarad deal and all that.. i like what you’ve done there.. i’ll check the flux capacitor and the hemi-friction modulator.. er.. ok then.. thanks..”

http://www.theonion.com/content/redcross

i bet it’s really hard for them to raise money like this..
they should at least say:
“no, really.. we’re gonna give the money to the red cross - we’re not kidding this time, seriously.”