White Lightning Axiom: Redux

Not much to report. In TSD last night, it was just me and Master Smith. So, yeah, I got some classic 1 on 1 training. In the process, he was trying to help me kick a bit higher. Part of this involved kicking the crap out of a bag. Of course, on one of my round-house kicks I managed to snap the nail on my big toe in half and peel it back. Yes, it hurt. Yes, it bled. Yes, it's been a rough week for me. So, my wobbling-hobbling gait is quite a comic sight now. Perseverance.

Technorati Tags:Karate | Injury | TSD

Labels: Banalities, Injury, Karate

About damn time ...

While continuing to play brazenly on public fears (NRDC's latest position paper has the word "Radioactive" emblazoned across the top), environmental groups have also become more circumspect in their arguments. Rather than conjuring up "silent bombs" and nuclear holocausts, they now make the following arguments:

1. Nuclear is too expensive. Investors will never go for it.

2. The money would be much better invested in conservation and solar energy.

3. Nuclear power is not carbon-free. The mining, processing and transportation of uranium consume vast amounts of energy supplied by fossil fuels.

Nuclear reactors are indeed expensive to construct. NRG is projecting $3 to $5 billion with cost overruns likely. But coal plants currently cost $1 billion and that's without the least effort at controlling carbon emissions. If "carbon sequestration" -- essentially digging a hole a few miles deep and pumping the exhaust into it -- becomes a reality, coal plants will become equally if not more expensive. (The technology is completely unproven anyway.) In any case, when did environmental groups become so frugal about protecting the environment?

Energy conservation, on the other hand, has great potential that is just being fathomed. Last May, Progress Energy of North Carolina announced it would delay the projected opening of two proposed reactors from 2016 to 2018 because of more success than anticipated in conservation efforts. Yet even the best conservation scenarios only stabilizing current consumption. (California has been able to do this.) That still leaves us producing for 50 percent of our electricity with coal -- a billion tons a year that put three billions tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. That's 40 percent of the nation's greenhouse gases and 20 percent of the world's. "When it comes to providing our baseload electricity, the only choice is between coal and nuclear," says David Crane, of NRG. "You simply can't be serious about global warming and against nuclear power."

Finally, the argument that nuclear is not completely carbon-free is puerile. Nothing is completely carbon-free, not windmills, not solar collectors, not even conservation devices. All involve capital investment that consumes energy. If the uranium enrichment plant in Portsmouth, Ohio, consumes the output of two large, polluting coal plants (a favorite environmental citation), then the solution is to replace those coal plants with nuclear reactors.

Nuff' said.

Technorati Tags:Gas | Energy

Labels: Coal, Gas, Nukes

Hmm, slow news day. Work has been interesting with little stuff trickling in between SCRUM Sprints. Working on a DSG/Cable Modem/TiVo issue with another guy. Not really a problem with the stuff I'm working with, but rather, more of a system abuse problem. Someone is trying to use our system as a hammer instead of what it was built to do. In the end, we will advise them to use the system as we had instructed them to and their problem will go away. Of course, that kind of resolution plays out only in my dreams.

TSD was ... different last night. I was sparring with a 2nd DAN black belt and got a back-kick to the nose for my trouble. Yes, the same nose that I smacked with a plumbing wrench last Sunday. Yes, it hurt but there was no crunchy reverberations though my skull or geysers of blood. Just a pride recession. It's hard moving this lump of flesh about quick enough to counter some of the combinations that thrown at me. I'll learn, I suppose. Some day (probably about 2 years), I'll be laying down the law with lesser belts as one of the 'brutal & thuggish black belt battalion'. I know, they are only trying to help me improve myself. I will be the ne plus ultra of MS TSD!

I was going to write about some noisome woman who parked in the access lane of a HP spot and when confronted, she questioned me saying that I could not POSSIBLY have any influence in the matter since I was wearing my Karate uniform. I know, the logic boggles the mind, I have to let it go.

Technorati Tags:Karate | Children | TiVo

Labels: Banalities Work, Multiple Sclerosis, Tang So Doo

Fairly little to nearly nothing has gone down over the last few days. Work, sleep, swimming, TSD. You know, the standard Haupertonian Schedule. We did do some homework with the kids on Monday. Practice the letter 'e' and such. One single thing of Note happened Monday night while I was working with the tyrannical twins of turpitude at TSD. One of the smaller micro-ninja's was doing his usual ADD-OCD Hyper-hyperactive thing when all in a single moment, he bowed his head and started to slowly dissolve into a weepy puddle. I handed off the kick-target to one of the larger Red Belt students and commended with the 'interrogation'. Apparently, after some prompting, I found that he was sad about mom abandoning him. She had dropped him off for practice and taken his sister to a Girl Scouts meeting. He did not need his mother, he just was used to having an audience. I used the boilerplate daddy panacea of picking him up and cradling him to my chest and gently speaking of how he will greet his mom when she returns. That seemed to dry up the rivulets of tears and snot fairly quickly.

Later in the evening, the Mrs and I had a brief discussion about parenting. Things have not been easy for us, but I like to believe that our decisions and the gumption to stick with them have done more good than harm. One of our most difficult and trying paths was the concerns over diet. We are TRYING to limit sugar intake knowing damn well that if Jovial Jake is anything like me as a child, just one gram of the stuff will turn him into a rampaging beast of destruction and misery. We do not deny him totally, he may have one piece of candy for desert after he finishes his dinner. Given this, Jake has refused candy on multiple occasions in favor of other 'healthy' snacks ... did not develop a yen for sweets as I had. This will certainly curtail any roguish behavior in school (which, these days, is an immediate forced prescription of Ritalin). I'm proud of my scion ... they are proving to be quite the set of bookends for a glorious litany of success.

Technorati Tags:Parenting | Karate | Children

Labels: Banalities, Children, Parenting, Tang So Doo

Sorry to leave y'all in a lurch like that. The last few weeks have been a tad interesting. A brief and entirely uninteresting synopsis:








1) TSD:The intrepid wonder twins; Attila and Ghengis, got their Sparring Gear ... much pummeling ensued. Not to be undone by her beating at her brother's hands, Attila proceeds to 'Beat the tar out of him' when doing one-steps with Josh. I was treated to my own tar-release program in the adult class.

2) ENTERTAINMENT; CHILD:Last wet-day at Sesame Place included rides on the 'big boy (and girl)' rides that required a 42' stature. The lack of lines after Labor Day proved absurdly enjoyable and well worth the price of admission.

3) ENTERTAINMENT; ADULT:Between periods of work and migraines, I attended a few social events. Mostly mundane and rather brief. I owe one of my former co-workers about 20$ for beer and munchies due to an inoperable ATM. I'll send it to him in his Christmas Update Letter (Encyclopedia Sized).

4) EMPLOYMENT:Work, as busy and all consuming as it is, consisted of training, managing, monitoring, self testing and the omni-present and highly fungible level 4 support rotation. Never have I prayed so much outside of work as I did on this rotation.

5) HAUPERTONIAN MANOR:At the manor: Tilled the garden under except for the 10,000 pumpkins, bazillion carrots and bushels of green tomatoes. I actually got the Monster Tiller repaired at a local small-engine repair shop. Well worth the $100 repair bill; started on the first pull. Also got to deal with a clogged main-line sewer blockage. Somehow, a t-shirt label had come loose and wedged itself in the pipes about 25 feet down the way. Took a bit of gumption and a few fixes (small hole in 30 year old pipe) to get everything online. Now it drains like a champ. Of course, in the process of re-assembling the utility-tub drain, I cracked myself on the bridge of the nose with a plumbers wrench. My God ... it's full of stars ... and little tweeting birdies. Thought for sure I broke my nose but the blood loss was minimal and little bruising/swelling proved me wrong. Resigned myself to planting mums and bulbs in the garden after recovering from a monster headache the next day. Gee, I wonder why my head hurt.

6) FAMILY; MRS:The expected busy period for the Mrs got nixed when the recreant and ignoble miscreants from a remote location proved that their flippant behavior was not to be tolerated. They are in the midsts of covering up misdeeds and her requests exposed their roguish cozenages. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth will soon commence.

7) FAMILY; CHILDREN: Children are loving Kindergarten. Almost as much as the Mrs and I as we sit down to go over homework assignments, practice writing letters and going over spelling lists. As God as my witness, I shall make sure they write their first epic novel before they get to 1st grade. Or at least, a story that has all 20 words that they need to learn in it.

And there you are. I still live and soldier forth with few symptoms. Granted, most of my impediments are self inflicted. I shall endeavor to update you with the salient matters (read: blatantly mundane and mostly fabricated) as the occur. HUZZAH!


Technorati Tags:Gas | Swimming | Karate | Children | Plumbing

Labels: Banalities, Bar, Beer, Children, Family, Lawn, Migraine, Parenting, Summer, Swimming, Water, Weekend

Yeah, I'm ok. Just really busy. I started to blog at least 3 times in the last week but never seemed to keep up enough steam to wrap it up. By Friday, I should have SOMETHING. Promise!

Technorati Tags:Blogging

Labels: Banalities, Blogging, Mundane

It was an eventful weekend. Indeed, I live in 'interesting times'. Way back in the "before times", it was a glorious Friday. Nearly everyone was on vacation, leaving early, or entirely uninterested in causing problems. The Friday before a legislated long weekend has got to be the nearest thing to heaven for office workers. I was allowed to spend time on the nits and motes rather then pouring it into the bottomless hole of endless refactoring. Of course, leave it to me to bumble that opportunity. That evening, I thought it would be wise of me to clean up some of the clothing I had left on the floor before turning in. After a long evening of blog writing and blog reading, I should really tidy up. The Tyrants would be returning the next day and I would have little opportunity to engage in such mundane tasks. Some socks here, a few bits of naughties there ... some shorts just out of my reach .. but I reach anyways ... and tumble. Falling, falling ... failing to catch myself since my hands had already been sent on a mission. I watch as the bed post starts to rush at my head, growing in magnitude as the velocity increases. My God, it's full of stars! No, that's the optical effect of electric discharge when you take blunt-force trauma to the temple as the force wave ripples through the grey matter. Ummm, ouch? No, no cry of pain or anything of that sort. Just a standard "DOH!". A quick check with my hand finds that the skull is marginally intact ... but slippery? Oh crap, I'm gushing blood everywhere. So, I immediately find the LEAST sanitary cloth in the house (kitchen sink cloth) and apply it to the grand canyon. I eventually locate the Mrs in sub-basement level 3F busily vacuuming up Hounds Hair. I notify her that at 2045 I had erred in my ways and we need to find some external medical care ... since I could see white at the bottom of the canyon, I assumed I would need some stitches. True to my evaluation, an hour later my epidermis was being reassembled with 7 little BLUE bits of medical fishing line. It was a short visit, I think, because I was nauseating all the other denizens of the Emergency Waiting Room. I think that asking them if they wanted to see my brains, they were afraid of wasting a good dinner. The funniest part of the evening was the admitting nurse. She was busy asking questions of me while I was inspecting her scrubs ... particularly the blouse ... low cut and all. Um, because it had a lot of tags and buttons you see. One of them had the word 'paper' on it with a big red line crossing it off. This is noteworthy because she was clenching a bit of paper with my name on it. On the back of her hand was scrawled my admitting number. Heh. They had me sign some boilerplate papers (is this a DNR!?) and then gave me a series of shots since it had been nearly 5 weeks since I had been in the ER. It was a gallon jug with a rifle barrel attached to it ... I'm certain of that. We get a TDP (tetanus,diphtheria,pertussis) shot which has the side effect of leaving you feeling as though you have been trampled by a rogue elephant. Damn immune system, getting all uppity.

Come Saturday, the vile poisons in my body have spread to every nook and cranny. All I can manage it to sit in the garden and pick beans. I was under extraordinary commination to cease any activity that may endanger my already damaged noggin. Additionally, I was to keep the newly sewn wound clean and dry for at least 24 hours. So, mucking in the mid-summer sun amongst the dirt and grime would be the perfect course of action, no? In the mid-afternoon, the Tyrants and GrandParents arrive. There are many maudlin entreaties for hugs and kisses. The Haupertonain Clan has been reunited ... time to resume world conquest plan 35-n. Here is the kicker though. We go to the early mass on Sunday ... the 0830 one. We are a bit pooped, but no matter ... we end up going to ANOTHER Seliga event. This time, it's ANOTHER child's birthday and the entertainment is outdoor laser tag. Yep ... there are pics ... take a look at my flicker tag and you'll catch some of em. So, I'm playing army with a bunch of gung-ho 35-45 year old adults and a greater horde of 5-15 year old adolescents. Guess where the injuries are laid? Sure, it was fun. But the cost ... oh, the humanity.

Mon, Tue, Wed? You ask as if you have not had children. It's all about getting ready for Kindergarten, don't you know. It's no big deal for the kids, same room, same kids, etc. It's a MAJOR deal for the parents. Word lists, supplies, lunch menus, BLEH! It certainly adds a lot of appeal to Home Schooling. I'll have to tell you more tomorrow about the Tyrant's reaction to the

Technorati Tags:Laser Tag | Injury | Karate | Children | Kindergarten

Labels: Children, Family, Grandparents, Injury, Kindergarten, Parenting, Weekend