Category Archives: Paul

September 11, 2018 · 23:49

Punt

Shit, it happened again. Busier than god all day at my paying job, come home and spend all evening busier than god at my non-paying job. All of a sudden it’s 23:44…

Drop back ten and punt, at least in the blogging, website, “NDIAD” (Not Dead In A Ditch) sort of way. (NDIAD is how my kids learned to report home when they were travelling or staying over at a friend’s house and wanted to let me know they had gotten home safely or whatever. It’s a Willett thing.)

Oh, and I got turned down for the latest NASA Social that I had applied for. SHAZBATT!! It would have been for the Mars InSight landing, held at JPL, and would have been really, REALLY cool! Which is no doubt why a ton of folks applied and those of us who don’t have 5,000 or 25,000 followers (or those of us who have already been to five) didn’t get picked.

How did your day go?

Oh, if you’re anywhere on the US eastern seaboard, please stay safe – it’s going to be a rough couple of weeks. Check in once in a while, that sort of thing.

It occurs to me that NDIAD can also stand for Not Drowned In A Ditch…

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Filed under Castle Willett, Paul, Weather

September 5, 2018 · 23:55

On The Spectrum

In the “infinite universes” theory of reality, a different timeline is created with every quantum interaction of every particle in the universe from the beginning of time to the end. Given that there are an unbelievably huge number of particles in the universe and quantum interactions are happening every nanosecond to most of them and there’s a whole lot of time between the Big Bang and the Heat Death of the Universe, that’s a LOT of possible universes.

This means that there could be literally ANY possible alternative universes out there besides the one we see as “reality.” There’s one where an almost identical me is typing this blog while Sigourney Weaver is nibbling on my ear and begging me to come to bed, while there’s also one where an almost identical me is typing this blog on the dying battery of a cell phone in the burnt out, radioactive rubble of Los Angeles just hours after a nuclear holocaust.

The problem is figuring out where we are on that infinite spectrum between those two extremes.

Some days it feels like we’re leaning a bit more toward radioactive rubble.

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September 2, 2018 · 23:45

The Great Ketchup Debacle Of 2018

There’s a great little local restaurant where we have breakfast on most Sunday mornings before we do our weekly grocery shopping. We’re regulars there, been going for years, the seven or eight waiters and waitresses know us. I’m also boring and order the same thing about 99% of the time. My usual is a club sandwich with steak fries and a Diet Coke.

This morning our wonderful and friendly waitress Connie brought a brand new, never before opened bottle of ketchup out of some refrigerator. By the time I got around to opening it there was a sheen of condensation on it from the humidity. I wiped it dry with my napkin to get a good grip on it and twisted the top off.

Well, at least that was the plan.

This bottle top was having none of that. No joy. No motion on the twist-off cap. No ketchup.

I tried the other hand. Same results.

I wiped it off again, switched back to the first hand, concentrated, leaned into it. The ketchup reward would be mine!

Nada.

Okay, I’m serious now! Another wipe to make sure it wasn’t slipping, back to the right hand, think THROUGH the lid and VISUALIZE it coming loose…

I’m told I turned about the same color as the ketchup with my effort – but the lid never budged.

By this point Connie was back, asking if everything was okay. I gave her the ketchup bottle and politely asked for one that I could open.

She gave me a curious look, took the bottle, and twisted the top off in one motion.

People at adjoining tables guffawed and chortled.

Connie did a fist pumping victory dance in aisle.

There may have been applause from the crowd – I’m not sure and might have missed it as I was greying out in astonishment.

Of course, at that point I still had to get the ketchup out of the bottle and onto the fries, but my spirit had been crushed and my ego bruised to the point where I found no shame in sticking the knife into the bottle and pulling it out rather than turning the bottle upside down and shaking it for a half hour to get the condiment flowing.

I found a brief moment of redemption later in the day when a pickle jar needed opening for our holiday BBQ, but I go to bed tonight knowing that that ketchup jar kicked my ass and I would have had to eat my fries sans condiments if it hadn’t been for the almost nonchalant flick of Connie’s wrists.

Thus ends the Tale of the Great Ketchup Debacle of 2018!

 

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Filed under Disasters, Farce, Paul

August 31, 2018 · 22:20

No Context For You – August 31st

Given the subject matter, technique, and equipment used to make this, I’m amazed by some of the effects of the focus, shadows, and contrasts.

That’s the thing about having supercomputers in our pocket with high-quality digital cameras. If you’re conscious of actually LOOKING at the world around you and willing to spend a few seconds trying “something stupid” just to see what happens, it might just be interesting or even amazing.

Make art! You never can tell what might happen.

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Filed under Art, Paul, Photography

August 30, 2018 · 23:44

A Visual Representation Of Reality As It Currently Exists

Pretty much like this:

In other news, NaNoWriMo starts in 62 days. (If you don’t know what NaNoWriMo is, type that into the Search box in the upper right corner and wade through some of the dreck that I’ve spewed out in the past.) With the world still spinning chaotically in at least five dimensions, what could be more insane that tackling it again this year?

Oh, yeah, doing that and starting to train for a marathon again at the same time.

For when good, old fashioned, “have you been smoking those mushrooms again?!” crazy won’t do!

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Filed under Panorama, Paul, Photography

August 20, 2018 · 23:48

No Context For You – August 20th

I don’t think the cavalry is coming.

Busy Monday. New crises to deal with and I’m still ass deep in the previous crises.

Busy weekend, not getting much sleep, still currently suffering from some BAD leg cramps at night.

Busy August, watching others have fun and vacationing.

Busy 2018. Watching the world shuffle insanely toward spontaneous combustion.

But into all of that, a few rainbow sticky notes must fall.

And power squids. As bad as things get, just imagine how screwed up we would be without power squids!!

See, things aren’t that bad.

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Filed under Paul, Photography

August 15, 2018 · 23:38

No Worldcon For Us – Again

My calendar reminds me that right about now is when I was supposed to be finishing a long drive from LA to San Jose and checking into our hotel for this year’s World Science Fiction Convention (aka “Worldcon”).

That’s not happening. I’m not thrilled.

About six or seven weeks ago we cancelled our reservations and told friends that we weren’t going to be there. The Wings Over Camarillo airshow is this weekend and as the Finance Officer for the Wing it’s sort of critical that I be there. Last year I wasn’t (it was the total solar eclipse!) and for that I made the trip. And then had to work twice as hard for quite a while to get caught up. It was worth it (TOTAL FREAKIN’ SOLAR ECLIPSE!!) but as much as I love going to Worldcon, I have to do the responsible, “adulting” thing this year. There will be another one next year.

But as I saw the posts of friends from all over the country and even all over the world heading to San Jose, I got to thinking about how long it’s been since I’ve been to Worldcon. Then I got really depressed.

Nine years.

The last time we went was 2009 in Montreal. Which was great, because we had gotten to Denver in 2008. And the family got to LA in 2006. (I didn’t since I was doing my MBA program at Pepperdine and had class that entire weekend.) And we all went to Toronto in 2003 and San Jose in 2002! And from 1978 (my first con of any kind) in Phoenix through 1984 in Los Angeles I went for seven years in a row!

But since Montreal I’ve missed Melbourne, Reno, Chicago, San Antonio, London, Spokane, Kansas City, and Helsinki. Fine, London when I was unemployed for a while might have been a reasonable, responsible call. And Kansas City was fairly soon after I started my current job and I probably didn’t have any vacation time accrued yet. But what’s up with that Reno, Chicago, and San Antonio stretch? What was the excuse then?

I’m sure it was something along the lines of, “There will be another one next year.”

So next year it’s Dublin. And in 2020 it will be New Zealand. (Okay, the 2020 site selection voting is going on this weekend, but no one else has a bid, so…) And likely to be (only one current bid) Washington DC in 2021 , Chicago in 2022, and Minneapolis in 2073.

Too early to start planning my excuse/reason for missing it next year?

I’ll watch the Hugo awards and masquerade online… Wait, it just hit me. No, I won’t. They’ll be on at times when I’m tied up with my job at the air show.

Y’all have fun in San Jose. Say hello to fandom for me. I’ll be over here being adult, boring, mundane, and contemplating the similarities between a rut and a grave.

(Wow, THAT escalated quickly!)

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Filed under CAF, Fandom, Paul

August 6, 2018 · 23:55

No Context For You – August 06th

Of course, tonight at 23:55 my internet connection decides to go to hell.

Enjoy a picture of…something.

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Filed under Paul, Photography

July 29, 2018 · 23:56

No Context For You – July 29th

Busy weekend.

There are those who say it’s better than sitting around bored all weekend.

I wouldn’t know. It might be sort of nice to try, just to be able to make an informed judgement, right?

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Filed under Paul, Photography

July 21, 2018 · 23:54

Seventeen Years Ago

Two years ago, actually, I had pictures of the all new, mid-five-figure full-line replacement sewer that we had “bought for each other” as our fifteenth wedding anniversary. So much for crystal, timepieces, or red roses, we go for a week of having our yard dug up and being able to flush a live armadillo all the way to the Van Nuys sewage treatment plant at Mach Two instead!

That math means it’s now seventeen years. The sewer line is still going strong, but it belongs to someone else now and we live here instead. With that change we’re seeing others, so this year we bought each other a very nice new bedroom set for our anniversary. The pieces replaced are the ones that I got at a garage sale in 1975 when I left Annapolis, moved to Southern California, and got my first apartment prior to starting school at UC Irvine. More stuff being left behind, with things shared replacing them and new memories to add onto the old.

Here’s to the Long-Suffering Wife who for some reason still puts up with me. Here’s to the future, the next seventeen years and whatever adventures, joys, and heartaches, trials and triumphs they might bring.

Here’s to wondering what the hell we’ll get for each other for our eighteenth anniversary next year. Google says it’s “feathers” and “porcelain.”

Kinky!

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Filed under Castle Willett, Paul, Ronnie