Atomictumor

At approximately noon today, three neighborhood children who have played with MastaG for years when we lived in the former Casatuma went into the backyard, threw a rock through a plate of my double plated back doors, put a ladder to the roof, deposited a broom and a step stool that were on the back porch up there, and flattened my garbage can with a bike.

Their ages are 9, 6, and 5.

When I got to the house to do my normal checking it out and fixing some problems thing, I noticed the glass, and went off.  There was a pool of broken glass on the back porch, and a rock wedged between the standing inside plate and the broken outside one, with several rocks scattered around in the broken glass.

What bothered me more, tho, were the implications of these little bastards getting up on my roof, falling off, and breaking their stupid necks.

No, the door bothered me more.  Stupid assed kids.

So, anyway, I was on the phone with the lady explaining the situation and about to call the local 5-0 when I walked around back again and found the dad of one of the kids, the 6 yr old, who I’ve always figured to be a good kid, with good parents, standing out there.  He explained the situation to me.  We walked over to one of the other kids house, the 5 yr old, and talked to his dad.

Apparently the kids were playing in his yard (across the street from mine), and after a while he realized they weren’t there.  He heard them back behind my house, and heard the glass break, but when he got around back they scattered.

Anyway, he and the other dad are going to pay for the door.  The mom of the kid I suspect of throwing the rock, however, has a history of never believing that her little delinquent angel commits transgressions to anybody but her.  We’ve had issues before.  I don’t expect much out of her.

I’d love to throw the police on this, but I don’t care for police, and I don’t see any reason to get these two dads in trouble when I don’t believe their kids did any more than watch this older kid break crap.  Furthermore, their dads are PISSED, and I don’t see that the police would do much more good.

Still, the whole thing is bullshit.  These kids that knew my kids for years, kids that I’ve fed, kids that I’ve had playing at my house, are breaking my damn back door for no other reason than that I’m not there.  Little bastards.

Makes me want to get a tazer

—

That reminds me… if you’re still looking for that perfect christmas gift, may I offer a small suggestion?

Earlier this morning, Bos was working on removing some molding at the base of the bathroom wall.  We recently bought a new vanity, and it needs to sit flush to the wall, so the molding had to go.

So, about an hour ago, I heard Bos jump up and yell, “turn off the water, turn off the water!” to which I replied, “I don’t know where to turn off the water!”  A call to the Water department solved that.

What happened that required the emergency shut-off of water?  The guys who installed the molding in the bathroom a few years back nailed it through a pipe.  So, when James removed the molding and the nail - voila!  there was a bubbling brook in our bathroom.

Grumble.

So, I was sitting on the back porch.

The lady was working (still is, for that matter) at the day job, the kids were fed and doing homework/playing in the bedroom, and I was pretty proud of myself.

We’ve been slowly moving my stuff into the new house (her house), and its neat watching out stuff get joined together.  Already, my big screen TV has found its way into the living room, my flat screen sweetness is the bedroom TV (like it was at the original Casatuma), and the lady’s old living room TV, after much debate, warnings, and allusions to the children, is in the kids bedroom.  Along with a computer apiece.  And all their toys.  And the bedroom furniture.

She had done a wicked awesome job putting the toys up and organizing the playroom into their now larger bedroom (minus a buncha toys that we’re giving away, unbeknownst to the kids).  They have some Transformers and Spiderman sheets hanging up on the wall to hide the toys and give Pigpen a little hidey hole (the boy loves hidey holes, its where he puts on his super hero clothes), and it looks damn fine.

Last night, I made a huge leap by connecting and setting up my audio stuff, and I have Wilco’s Sky Blue Sky playing on vinyl in the living room.  Ahh, nice.  Earlier, because its balls cold here in Tennessee, I started making a fire, after carefully opening up the chimney flue and loading the reserve wood pile in the house down with some dry sticks.

Yes.

This is what its all about.

So I stepped out on the back porch to look at the bitching view for a spell.  I started thinking “huh, I’ll write a post about how awesome this is”.

I stepped in the house, and damned if I didn’t smell smoke.  I peeked out to see if smoke was coming out the chimney, but it was too dark to tell.

I wandered over to the fireplace, and found that the chimney flue had managed to be closed.

“Son of a bitch”.

As soon as that revelation was made, the smoke detectors started wailing like Satan’s dryer buzzer.

“Son of a bitch”.

One of the dogs started panicing, on account of all the loud, so MastaG started consoling him.  The other dog, no dummy, bolted for the still open back door and hung out on the porch.

“Son of a bitch”.

I averted the crises, one by one.  Opened the chimney flue and verified it was latched.  Pulled the batteries off the smoke detectors, opened the windows, turned the fans on.  Consoled the dog.  Flipped the record.

Wrote the post.

Man, I’m riding the coffee buzz from hell.

I’m not even really sure whats up with it.  I don’t think I had more than 3 or so cups this morning.  Granted, I slept well, and had nothing to eat (yet), but damn.  Its right on top of me.  I’m buzzing like a vibra… like a broken ceiling fan.  Or something.

Or maybe like a controller from an xbox 360.  Not that I bought one of those yesterday.  Or that it looks DAMN good on my fancy TV, what with the HDMI connection, and the 1080i picture.  No, because that’d be an egregious waste of money.  Yes, egregious.  I had to look that one up.

However, the theoretical Xbox presents a theoretical problem, one that has been festering in the back end of my mind for some time, but one that demands a quick solution:

Hooking that bastard up to the home network…

Now, those of you in the know know that I had what I like to call the ATivo going on, whereas the computer can push data (usually in the form of TV shows) to either of my TVs.  I actually wrote a piece about it a while back, complete with a nice little picture, but the problem is that the whole things kinda been mothballed, because digital cable prevents the use of the RF modulator that was the key in the whole darn kitenkaboodle.

Not that the theoretical xbox has much to do with that.  I’m getting there.

Now, right now, I gots three computers, the big guy in the living room, the littler guy in MastaG’s room, and the lappy in my room.  They’re all kicking back on the mighty beams of my wifi network here, joined occasionally by my phone and whoever can break the encryption to wardrive on my little network (if they can break the 128 bitness, they’re welcome to it).

Thing is, the wifi connector for this theoretical xbox is like a hundred freakin dollars.  Bugger that.

I mean, I bought two little desktop wifi connectors for like 5 bucks apiece.  Its not like its space age technology, people.  Seriously.  100 bucks, so I can hook the dumb old thing up to the wifi.

Hell with that.

So, looks like I gotta run ethernet.  Thing is, if I’m going to get underneath the house, and run cables and crap, I might as well redo the whole darn works.

But I don’t think the coffee buzz can sustain all that.

These days, I’m just not as into home improvements in that way.  I mean, I recognize the use in doing that sorta stuff, but I can’t be arsed to do it.  Its bad enough keeping the house clean and the boys in fresh underwear, without trying to hop up in crawlspaces with wire in my teeth.  Sure, I can do it, and yes, I fully recognize the fact that I’m a lazy bastard (woot), but the needful just isn’t there as of yet.

So, I’m trying to find another solution.  However, that theoretical xbox just really wants to be able to connect to the other computers, and talk shop, and hang out, and maybe share some files.  Its all lonely in there (theoretically), and I gotta do something about it.

Just without spending a hundred freakin dollars.  Seriously, Microsoft, you suck.

Only a year or two after it started up, Oak Ridge’s online mind has melted down.

Several of the local blogs have been inactive for months or just outright shut down.  The online forums have become one sided pile-on’s, with people jumping on their favorite rants, throwing out few new ideas, or any kind of postive feedback.

Last year, I saw hope in it, that so many people in this normally fractious town are getting together on a common pedestal, disagreeing as necessary, but generally trying to get a point across.  Now I’m really just kinda seeing static.

Problem is, this reflects Oak Ridge’s mind as a whole.  The town has always been one, for the decade or so I’ve been here at least, to hunker down into camps, almost like the idiotic blue/red mentality that has hamstrung politics in this country for so long.  The same people who pile on board one topic are likely to pile on board another, unrelated one.  Is it because they just happen to keep agreeing?

Or is it the thinking that “My buddy wants this, so I’m going to want it too”?

One of the issues I see are that people are all set to leap together and work on something, whether it’s a senior center, a shopping center, a hotel, with a myopic focus on that one object, without ever working on the larger picture.  After the one object is achieved, or not, as the case may be, there’s no getting together in the aftermath to try to figure out how the victory or defeat can be parlayed into something decent for the town.

Is there no deep thinking?  Is that the problem?

Or has everybody given up, burnt out on the work done for those previous victories and defeats, taking on a ‘fuck it’ attitude in the face of the immovable positions of both of the camps.

See, thats what I was hoping the online thing would overcome.  Probably idealistic, but don’t all the good ideas sound idealistic?  A situation where class, or location, or history wouldn’t make a difference, where new ideas could pop out and take root?

Maybe the apathy wins out over idealism.