3846 It's easier to just repeat

Sunday, April 27, 2013

It's easier to just repeat what someone else tells you than to listen, learn, and draw your own conclusions.

That's happening right now to the NBA Clippers owner Donald Sterling, who's accused of racism after being heard on tape telling his girlfriend not to bring any of her black friends to his games.   He and she were arguing, and she taped the argument without his knowlege.  Now everybody is down on him, including Magic Johnson, whom Sterling had mentioned by name.  It's blowing up into a huge storm, players on the Clippers are making sort of veiled threats about letting their playing show how they feel, and even the NBA is planning to "investigate", which we know means he's already declared guilty in the media.

I don't think a single person who's yelling racism actually listened to the whole tape, or if they did I doubt they listened to the actual meaning rather than just pulling out individual words (and no, the n-word is not used once).  They are using sentences and words out of context!
They're repeating what they were told was said.

That royally pisses me off!

Isn't potentially ruining someone's life worth at least checking it out yourself?

Clippers Owner Donald Sterling to GF - Don't Bring Black People to My Games, Including Magic Johnson
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Where I'm coming from in my understanding:
My maternal grandmother was born in the nineteenth century.  She was a product of her time.  She was not simply racist - she was xenophobic.  You know, like "Those people are not like us".  She would have had a stroke if I dated someone of another race, OR a white guy whose surname ended in a vowel other than "e".  Or an Irishman.  Or a Jew ("they murdered our Lord, you know").  I'm not kidding. Absolutely.

So if I were dating someone of a different race, you can be damn sure I would hide that fact from her and everyone else in the family of her generation.  I just wouldn't want to hear anything they have to say.  And I would ask the rest of my family and friends not to mention it either. Let's not inflame anyone.

So, now, would that make ME racist?  Or am I simply avoiding having to deal with HER racism (which makes me a coward, but that's different)?

So, Sterling and the girlfriend.  She is very young, beautiful, exotic.  He's old and ugly (personal opinion - REALLY old and REALLY ugly!).  It's possible that a lot of his friends are either jealous and wouldn't be unhappy if he were hurt by her, or see her as a gold digger and want to protect him from her, or some combination, but they are unlikely to be benevolent toward the relationship.

Oh, by the way, she is of mixed race, including at least Black and Hispanic.

 He complains pretty explicitly on the tape that he's tired of his friends and people he has to deal with calling him or emailing him all the time to inform him that she's posing for photos with Black guys and posting the photos online.  In the argument, he is telling her that he doesn't care who she's friends with (he never says anything that can be construed as racist, he even expresses admiration for Magic Johnson, the most recent guy she'd been photographed with) --- but he asks her to please please be a little less public about it, more discreet.  He's tired of people poking at him about what she's up to now.  He just doesn't want to deal with it.

It sounds to me like he has a bunch of racist friends, and like me with my grandmother, he just wants them off his back.  He is forced to deal with these people.  So "do what you want, but cool it with the publicity, and for God's sake don't bring Black guys to my games."  Let's not inflame anyone, ok?

Folks without the patience to listen to the damn tape picked up on the "don't bring them to my games", and pounced on it without questioning what he meant and why.

And they are thoroughly pissing me off.
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3845 I Don't Understand "Art"

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

A few years ago a friend and I visited the art museum at Vassar College.  A lot of it was impressive.  Some was not, like the 10' x 10' sheet of what I can only describe as graph paper.  White with black vertical and horizontal lines making squares maybe 5" x 5".  Just plain old graph paper, made big.

Art?  I don't get it.

A few years ago a friend and I visited the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA).  There was a room with a bunch of large white squares of paper.  Apparently identical white squares.  Each square had a placard next to it explaining it.  I don't remember the exact descriptions, but it was something like this: The first had been exposed to sunlight for several hours.  The second had been kept in the dark for several hours.  The third had been snowed on.  Another had been exposed to a cloudy sky. One had been exposed to loud rock music, while another has been exposed to classical music.  And so on.  As if that wasn't already ridiculous enough, there were people in the room walking from piece to piece examining them carefully, stoking their VanDykes, and commenting to each other on ... something.  I don't know what they found so fascinating (yeah, the idea for the exhibit was amusing, but that doesn't need examining each canvas) and I didn't have a chance to find out what they were saying because I was giggling too loud.  I got dirty looks from the cognoscenti.

Art?  I don't get it.

I don't understand a lot of the stuff that is called art.  That guy who blocked off the canvas with black horizontal and vertical lines and then painted some of the rectangles with primary colors - Piet Mondrian.  Apparently a lot of people think/thought he's just wonderful.  Mind-blowing.

 

You can natter on all you want about "movement", and "weight" and "structure", yeah, I get all that, but, uh, no.   I see no "art" there.  I see craft only.

A woman died recently, Agnes Martin.  Her work is in major museums all over the world.  She's a "minimalist", which apparently means "paint a canvas solid blue and call it the sea", and "copy a sheet of lined notepaper".  (There's a good chance she was responsible for the graph paper at Vassar.)  This thing sold for $2,000,000.00.  Seriously.

Two million?  Why?  I see no particular skill or talent.  Go to the Google images of her work (here) and find anything there that couldn't be essentially duplicated by anyone with minimal training in technique (like, how to draw a straight line, how to color within the lines, etc.)!  

Is most of contemporary art a big joke?

I don't get it.

And then there's Cy Twombly.  Some few of his floral-looking things are interesting, but most of his output is like this:

Or this:

Check out his gallery at http://www.cytwombly.info/twombly_gallery.htm.

I think the REAL "talent" in the contemporary art world consists of showmanship, contacts, networking, salesmanship, business acumen, and a talent for convincing suggestible (rich!  famous!) people that what they are looking at is somehow special. 

Cyndi Lauper and Madonna hit the music charts at about the same time.  Madonna took off and soared while Cindi petered out.  In my opinion, Cyndi was a much better musician, but Madonna was a better manipulator.  

I guess art works the same way.

-------------------------------------------------------

I used to live near Woodstock, NY, and there are a lot of talentless people there who define themselves as artists. I guess they're right.  They can pick up a brush (or whatever) and daub paint (or whatever) on a canvas (or whatever), and that makes them a painter, by definition.   But just because you can put paint on a surface doesn't make you an artist.

Or does it?

Maybe so.  Maybe they just need to develop that other talent.

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3844 Addicted

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

I am addicted to the internet.  I browse for probably a good ten hours a day.  It's really getting out of hand.  There's just too much interesting stuff out there.  Too many links that lead me off into too many wasted hours.  Like, someone mentioned an episode of "Mama's Family" to illustrate a point the other day, and included a link to the clip on Youtube.  Three days later I had watched every 20-minute episode available.

I've been trying to limit myself, but it isn't easy.  Today I turned myself loose, and kept notes of what I did, where I went.  I learned a few things, like about methane, and about the active volcano in Antarctica, and how young men in Saudi Arabia are crazy.


Here's where I've been - one day in my addiction:

• Read some email: notice from town re water flush, some meetup notices.
• Scanned titles of offerings in my feedly feeds list.
• Watched a video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gsbPLCBa8s on youtube.
• Researched how to watch any video in slow motion.
• Read an article re obtaining methane from dairy operations, including the links in it, http://nowiknow.com/another-way-to-milk-a-cow/.
• Shopped for refrigerator magnets on Amazon.
• Watched a scary video, changing tires on a moving car, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQm5BnhTBEQ.
• Took a trip to the future of the past, 1964 World's Fair, I was there! http://mashable.com/2014/04/23/1964-new-york-worlds-fair-photos/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=rss
• Read a slew of news headlines.
• Read an article re raindrops and windshields, http://what-if.xkcd.com/93/.
• Scanned a few "Cute Overload" posts.
• Read "Field Negro" opinion piece.
• Read a few short WSJ Law Blog blurbs.
• Read article, picky eaters don't survive, http://mashable.com/2014/04/23/survive-extinction-picky-eater/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=rss
• Watched video about students abusing Adderall, http://news.discovery.com/human/videos/are-students-abusing-adderall-video-140422.htm#mkcpgn=rssnws1
• Read article re animals dining on humans, http://news.discovery.com/animals/do-some-animals-get-a-taste-for-human-blood-1402071.htm
• Read a You Suck At Craigslist entry.
• Read a blog entry from a guy who lives near the country house.
• Checked past RockyCat blog posts for more comments.
• Read latest post(s) on Cake Wrecks, New Dress a Day, Simian Idiot, Pearl Why You Little... (another cat one, so I skimmed it), Shoebox, FreeRangeKids, The Daily Coyote, Out There, QC RSS.
• Switched from Firefox to Explorer to read  four new posts on Comics I don't Understand, including the comments (the best part). Interesting discussion of the disappearance of cursive at http://comicsidontunderstand.com/wordpress/2014/04/22/of-course-we-cant-let-a-rhetorical-question-go-unanswered/#comments.
• Looked up Sutterlin font.
• Read the Wikipedia entry on origins of the QWERTY keyboard.
• Deleted without reading some 30 alerts from feedly.
• Took a break by playing a few games of 2048.
• Checked email.
• Read an article about a school bus driver bullying a disabled child.

-------------
Five hours have passed.  Food.  Bath, got dressed. 
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• Read about the spreading of the NYPD twitter fiasco. http://mashable.com/2014/04/23/mynypd-hashtag-anger-police/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=rss and http://mashable.com/2014/04/22/nypd-hashtag/
• Few more iterations of 2048 game.
• Read about a lava lake in Antarctica (never heard of that before!), http://mashable.com/2014/04/23/antarctic-lava-lake-erebus/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=rss *and* http://www.livescience.com/44892-gallery-erebus-volcano-lava-lake.html
• Looked up view of Hawaii's Kilauea caldron (supposedly one of Earth's four persistent lava lakes, because I don't remember seeing a lava lake, and yup, it doesn't LOOK like a lava lake), https://www.google.com/maps/place/Kilauea/@19.375395,-155.2770128,1464a,35y,77.53t/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x7953da0ab927343d:0xfb584cf4fd7e4451
• Read article "Why Habitable Exoplanets Might Mean Humanity Is Doomed", http://mashable.com/2014/04/23/habitable-planets-human-extinction/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=feedly&utm_reader=feedly
  

-------------
Cut open five 50-lb bags of sand, filled Nugget's new sandbox on my back patio.  Added shells and toys.  Her 3rd birthday is Saturday.  The wind was so strong I could barely stand.

Later, Daughter and Nugget visited and we had a tea party.  Nugget did an excellent job pouring iced tea from a small teapot, and serving little cuts of carrot cake.

It is now 7 pm.  Will wash yesterday's dishes, and start something for dinner, then watch Survivor at 8.  After that I'll peruse the 21 items that have already dropped into my feeds reader since I cleared it out at 5:30 (plus any additional that arrive later).
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3843 Tennessee schools enrich the learning experience

Sunday, April 20, 2014

Headline:

Laptop, liquor, pornographic videos stolen from Sullivan school warehouse

Read more: Laptop, liquor, pornographic videos stolen from Sullivan school warehouse | Kingsport Times-News http://www.timesnews.net/article/9017821/laptop-liquor-pornographic-videos-stolen-from-sullivan-school-warehouse#ixzz2zTLxIyDq

I have no comment.  I just keep blinking.

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3842 Kitchen shortcuts

Sunday, April 20, 2014

I just saw a nifty way to halve cherry tomatoes on another website.  Put the tomatoes on a dinner plate.  Put another plate upside down on top.  There should a space between the two plates.  Cut through that space.  All tomatoes are cut at one pass.

I have my own hacks that I'd never seen before:

• If you want to make nice even slices of onion or large tomato, first cut an end off so you have a flat surface.  Instead of cutting down through the onion or tomato, which puts your fingers in jeopardy and sometimes gives you uneven slices, plop the thing flat on the cut surface on the cutting board.  Cover the "top" with your flat hand.  Using a very sharp knife with a fairly flat-sided handle, lying on its side, cut parallel to the cutting board, away from you, sliding each slice out from under after it's cut.  If you need thinner slices, move the cutting board to the edge of the counter to drop the handle (depending on your board), or for thicker slices, support the knife handle with your fingertips as you pass it through.

• For uniform pie crust and pastry rolling, you'll need some pieces of wood the thickness of the dough (I've used variously chopsticks, a pair of rulers, strips of plastic Jay had cut to size for me, etc.).  When you're almost finished rolling the dough out, while it's still a little bit too thick, place the sticks on either side and roll across them.  You get uniformly thick dough.  I started doing that when I was making Welsh cookies.  They are rolled in batches, fairly thickly, and then cut into circles, and it's important that they all be the same thickness so they'll all cook evenly on the griddle.

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3841 Enforced diet?

Sunday, April 20, 2014

I don't understand saber-toothed tigers.  You always see them depicted with these enormous long teeth, right?  Well, how did they get food in their mouths with those barriers in front like that?

They could open their mouths 130 degrees.  Nice start.  But if you look at the skulls,

(photo from http://www.propsport.com/11-sabertoothed-tiger-skull-modelversion-40-p-10.html)
even with the jaws fully open, you can't fit much more than a very small rabbit in the resulting open space.  I haven't found any explanation of how they got food into their mouths anywhere out there.

Maybe once the prey had been stabbed to death they could nibble off bits with those tiny front teeth, between the sabers, or chew off small sticking-out chunks with the side molars.  The saber-teeth would not be very helpful at tearing off chunks because they were very brittle and broke easily.  It all seems very inefficient for a beasty that big.

Saber-tooth tigers (not really a tiger anyway) just don't make any sense to me.
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3840 Confession

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

I don't understand the moon.  I don't understand anything about the moon.  I mean the phases, the route it takes, the direction, nothing.  Today I read that the moon crosses the Earth's equator every two weeks!  Does that mean it stays north of the equator for two weeks and then south for two weeks, then north again?  How does that work?  Sometimes the moon is very high in the sky.  How can that happen without the moon crossing the equator, unless during parts of that time it isn't visible in the opposite hemisphere at all?  Are there periods that the Arctic or Antarctic have no moon until it crosses the equator again?  I assumed it crossed the equator on every circuit or something.

I vaguely understand that the phases (full, new, quarters, etc.) have to do with the alignment of the moon and the sun, but "vaguely" is literal.  Like, when we see a full moon here, is it full everywhere on Earth?  How does that happen?  Are there nights when we don't see any moon at all, no matter what the phase, because it appeared in our sky during the day (like it did last week)?

Over the years a few people have tried to explain it to me, but then when I start asking questions it becomes clear even to that person that they don't really understand it.  They just thought they did until they really thought about it.

You know what?  I've decided I don't care any more.  I've given up trying to understand the moon.
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3839 You're Kidding!

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

I forget which days it was exactly, maybe Friday and Saturday, but we just had two days in a row that were 85 degrees F.

This morning there's snow in the shaded spots, and a strong icy wind blowing. It's 33 degrees at 8:30 am.

You know that phrase, "It'll be a cold day in Hell before I..."?   Well, where'd I put that list.  It's time.
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3838 Treasure

Saturday, April 12, 2014

My grandmother hid savings bonds.  I don't know why.  Maybe because she lived through the Great Depression, maybe because she didn't trust Grampa not to drink or gamble it away (Grampa had some serious faults, but drink and gambling wasn't among them), maybe it was just packrat tendencies.

On several occasions in my childhood, teens, and young adulthood, she took me around her home and showed me where it was all hidden.  Most of it was in envelopes taped to the underside of drawers, in her dining room and bedroom.  There must have been tens of thousands of dolllars, especially given that most of the bonds were old, well past maturity and still gathering interest.

She impressed upon me the bonds and their locations were a secret, and that I was the only person who knew this secret.  That if anything ever happened to her, I was to swoop in and gather it all up.  I don't know what I was supposed to do with it except to make sure it wasn't lost or stolen, I guess.

Well, in my late 20s and especially my 30s I was dealing with mental and emotional issues, and not keeping in very good touch with family.  I depended on my mother to keep me posted, which I guess wasn't the best idea.  When my father died, nobody thought to inform me until long after the funeral.  Same when Grampa died.  I found out he'd died when I happened to call Gramma a few weeks after the funeral.  I went to visit her, and that's the last time I saw her.  Nobody told me when Gramma died, again not until long after the funeral.  (I've often wondered - if I hadn't been there when Mom died, would anyone have told me?)

Anyway, several years after Grampa died, Gramma, in her late 80s I guess, had to vacate her apartment, and she moved into one of those senior complexes, you know, with her own apartment and her own familiar furniture, a kitchen but also a dining hall downstairs, nurses available 24 hours, and so on.  Mom said she was very happy there, was still taking the city bus into town to shop, and so on.

I asked if Gramma had taken her bedroom set and dining room set with her, and Mom said yes, except for the dining table, that was too big.  But she sill had the buffet, server, and china cabinet.

Gramma died in her mid-90s.  As I said, no one told me until Mom called one day to complain that Mom's brother's bossy wife had cleaned out the apartment something like the day after Gramma'd died, before the funeral even, and there was nothing left of anything besides a few photo albums.

I was aghast, but for an entirely different reason from my mother!  What about the dining room set (which I had always loved)?  Oh, they threw it all out.  They had a company come in and everything in the apartment went to the dump.

Well, I never said anything to anyone about Gramma's bond stash.  I don't know if it was still there, taped to the bottoms of drawers, but it wouldn't have done anyone any good to know at that point.  There was enough bad feeling floating around.

I still wonder, though.
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3837 Grease

Thursday, April 10, 2014

With my Amazon Prime membership, I've been watching free movies, mostly "classics" I'd never seen.  Today was "Grease".  Another blogger mentioned that she was rather proud that she'd never seen "Grease", and it occurred to me I hadn't seen it either, so I watched it this afternoon.  (I fast-forwarded through all the songs.)

So, ok.  Now I've seen it.  Duh.

Can anyone explain to me why, at the end, Sandy decided to ditch "Sandra Dee", and remake herself into a Cha Cha clone?  Danny liked her a LOT exactly as she was.  I can understand why Danny ditched the leather jacket, since it was Sandy that ran away from him and he felt he needed to win her back by winning her approval.  But all she had to do was flirt a little and he'd be all grateful that she wanted him back. There was no need for her to change.  If anything, that change would just increase the chance of his doing again what had annoyed her.

So why'd she do that?

I don't understand.
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3836 Facebook knows EVERYBODY!

Friday, April 4, 2014

So, I google some name, and I get a list of hits, and some distance down the list there will be an entry for a Facebook profile for that name.  But then when I click on it, more than half the time there's no person by that name on Facebook.  It looks a lot like somebody just fills in the name in a skeleton "hit".  Piss me off.

This evening I was reading about some animal caught in Texas that the local yokels have decided is a chupacabra, but other more reasonable people think is a hairless raccoon.  Which got me wondering, is there something called a hairless raccoon?  I mean like a breed, not just a sick bald 'coon?

So I googled "hairless raccoon", hoping for something like a wikipedia entry, and got this:

Hairless Raccoon

https://www.facebook.com/public/Hairless-Raccoon‎

View the profiles of people named Hairless Raccoon on Facebook. Join Facebook to connect with Hairless Raccoon and others you may know. Facebook gives ...

Believe it or not, she is on Facebook, lives in Kentucky (why am I not surprised), and if you scroll down a bit you'll find a photo (actually, three).

Sigh.
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3835 Crack me up!

Friday, April 4, 2014

I just read this article (http://mashable.com/2014/04/04/drone-crashes-elementary-school/) about a military drone crash near Harrisburg, Pa.

The "and was then run over by a car" cracked me up.  I'm still giggling.
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3834 Public Transportation?

Friday, April 4, 2014

There's a Mensa dinner next week just south of here.  It would take me 21 minutes to drive to it.

Being a good citizen, I wondered if it would be possible to take a train or bus to it. Once it warms up around here, the highways get clogged with stop-and-go frustrating "shore traffic", so it might be a useful idea anyway to check out the buses.  So I asked Google maps.

Well, yes.  I can get there by bus.  Sort of.

First I walk a mile, and catch a bus that will take me north several miles, where I transfer to a different bus that goes back south.  Then, halfway to the restaurant, I transfer to a third bus for the remainder of the trip, then walk several blocks.  Total time, 2 hours and 20 minutes.

Or, I can walk it in 5 hours and 13 minutes.

And we wonder why everyone needs a car and drives everywhere.

Sheesh.
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3833 I want one!

April 1, 2014

Apparently these automobile accessories have been around for at least 8 years, yet I had never heard of them.  They look very handy.

There are several commercials on Youtube.  This is a ten-minute compilation:


[If that doesn't work, go to YouTube and search for "trunk monkey".]
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3832 Micro Me

Friday, March 21, 2014

There's a little thing called a microexpression.  It's a tiny expression of emotion, lasting a fraction of a second.  A give-away to what's going on inside.  It may be a flicker of an eyebrow.  Or a tensing of the muscles around the lips.  A blink or a downward glance.  A slight narrowing of the eyes.   It's very quick, a fraction of a second, but most people watching are sensitive to even the tiniest flicker, even if they are not conscious of them, and although the microexpression and what it means may be individual to each person, it will still be subliminally caught and understood.   Most people are not aware of their own microexpressions, and it's very difficult to control.

An example:

One day at work two guys came to my office with a proposal.  The one guy explained what they wanted to do, and as soon as he was done, without even a pause, he turned to the other guy and said, "I told you she wouldn't like it!"

I objected.  "I didn't say I didn't like it."  He responded, "No, but your nostrils flared.  You always flare your nostrils when you don't like something."

I laughed, and had to admit that my first reaction was negative, "But let me think about it a while."

He was right.  I do make a tiny quick nostril flare when I'm annoyed, in that instant before I take control and don't express that annoyance.  

 I have a bunch of microexpressions, but being aware of them doesn't make it easy to control them.

The Wikipedia entry on microexpressions linked above isn't very good, actually.  It tends to wander off into general facial expressions of emotion, leaving confusion.  The article says that very few people can catch and interpret microexpressions, but I don't agree with that.  Have you even spent some time with, say, a couple, and later you conclude that she is afraid of him, and you're worried for her, but if anyone asks why, you don't have an answer?  Or you know someone you instinctively don't trust, even though they've never done anything wrong?   It's because you pick up on microexpressions, and you don't even realize it.

There are a lot of people who are unpopular, socially isolated, and they don't know why.  It can be anything from poor hygiene to no social skills, any of a gazillion reasons - but one of them is likely their microexpressions.  They expect people to disappoint them, or to not meet their standards, or to otherwise piss them off, and they SHOW it.  Outwardly they are very pleasant, but their microexpressions expose their poor expectations of others, their rejection of them,

and no one likes to be judged

or rejected.
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3831 Spanks Needed

Friday, March 21, 2014

That kid who climbed the WTC "Freedom Tower"?  He's 16, he was seen entering the grounds at 4:10 am, he's from New Jersey so you know this wasn't just around the corner, and his twitter feed is full of other climbing stunts and trespassing.  I've read several reports, and in none of them did anyone ask the question I have:

Where are the kid's parents?

Where did they think he was that night, or don't they care?  Do they think this is ok?  What responsibility do they have to control the kid?  Um, let alone guide him....
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3830 Hal and I are on the map

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

A few months ago (last summer?) I happened to be stopped at an intersection when the Google Maps car went by.

If you go to https://www.google.com/maps/place/919+N+Concourse/@40.445829,-74.213752,3a,15y,318.04h,78.26t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sROo6PdNZcJUFKafqRsJglA!2e0!4m2!3m1!1s0x89c234b38a33c909:0x3f9818f443aaac80 (I hope that link works for you) you'll see a little black convertible (Hal) with a little old lady inside (me).

If the link doesn't work, go to maps.google.com, ask for 919 N. Concourse, Keyport, NJ, pick up the little man (street view) and move him to the nearest intersection, drag the screen to face him the right direction, zoom in, and with luck, we'll be there.

I'm almost sorry I wasn't doing something embarrassing.
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3829 Screaming Meemies

Monday, March 3, 2014

Last Wednesday morning I woke to the chirp of a smoke detector complaining about its battery.  I had been slightly aware of it before I woke, actually.

Every 20 seconds, chirp!

By the time I was up, piddled, pants and shoes on under my nighty-t-shirt, the chirping had stopped.

I hate when the detectors chirp.  There are six of them.  One in the downstairs hall, one in every bedroom just inside the doors, and one in the upstairs hall, and when one starts complaining, I always go crazy trying to figure out which it is.

So, nothing all day Wednesday.  Thursday morning, I again woke to the chirp.  Every 20 seconds.  This time it didn't stop.  It was the one in the downstairs hall, so it wasn't too difficult to find.

I went to my battery supply, and opened a new package of those rectangular 9-volts.  I brought the taller stepladder down from upstairs.  I climbed up and changed the battery.

It continued to chirp.  Every 20 seconds.

I got my battery tester and tested the new battery.  It's ok.

I verified the polarity and inserted it again.

It continued to chirp.  Every 20 seconds.

I looked for some kind of reset button on the unit.  The only button was the test button, so I pushed it.  All six detectors went off, including the one that yells "Fire! Fire!" in a woman's voice.  I pushed the button again and they all shut up.

But this detector continued to chirp.  Every 20 seconds.

I don't know what to do.

I've been listening to that thing chirp since Thursday morning.  Every 20 seconds.  I've been pretending it's a bird.

I'm about ready to wring that bird's neck.

----------------------------------------

Embossing on the cover says to consult the unit's documentation for operating procedures, but of course the builder never left me any documentation, and once the check cleared, the builder became incommunicado - literally, his office closed.  (I heard he got sick.)  I could look up documentation online, except that the unit does not have the manufacturer's name anywhere on it.

I recall having this same problem when I replaced the batteries on the upstairs hall unit, and discovered that pushing the test button did reset it, but that didn't work this time.  The units don't look the same.

Leaving the battery out doesn't work, either.  It chirps anyway.  Every 20 seconds.
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3828 Slammed #2

Monday, March 3, 2014

Second slam:  Back about February 18th I got a call from the fuel oil supplier for the country house saying that they couldn't get up the (300 foot uphill) driveway to deliver to the country house.  I contacted the Hairless Hunk, and he took over.

So this morning I hear from HH.  The oil guy tried to deliver late last week, but (HH just found out) was able to pump only 9 gallons when the intake pipe "overflowed".  Their conclusion is that the tank is still full from the early December delivery.

ACK!

(HH is suspicious of that because he went up and checked, and there's no evidence of overflow.)

Anyway, the country house apparently has no heat, and may not have had heat since, oh, early December, or maybe even before that.  Great.

Lots of possibilities:
The furnace is dead.
The power is out.
The fuel line is clogged.
Who knows.

I told HH there's no panic.  With the below 0 temps they've had almost all winter, if there's any damage, it's already happened.

The thermostat had been set at 50.  I had turned the well pump off, and opened the faucets in the bathtub and the kitchen sink to allow for expansion.  I THINK I had filled all the traps and toilets with antifreeze (but I'm not sure, and even so, who knows how long before it evaporates anyway).  To tell the truth, I had been slightly worried about sewer gas from the septic tank filling the house, and the damn place exploding at the first spark.

So I guess I have to go up there later this week and sort it out.  If there's any damage from frozen pipes, it will be no more than whatever water was sitting in the pipes, and fixing can wait for spring.  I can carry water for my stays.

If there's power, I can have heat while I'm there, because the otherwise defunct old heat pump has electric backup and I can run that.  Costs a fortune, but, well, ya gotta do what ya gotta do.   If the house has already been without heat so long, it won't hurt to just turn it off when I leave.  What more could happen?

If there's no power, I'll stay overnight in a local motel and then just come home.  No way I can do anything about anything until spring if it's anything more than a tripped circuit breaker.

Bad bad bad winter.  Go away.

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Note:  More evidence of my mistrust, according to the electric bill for the country house, it used 564 kwh in December and January, and the bill claims this is an actual reading.  If the furnace was off, all that's running is a dehumidifier in the basement and a refrigerator in the kitchen, and if there's been no heat, I doubt either has been running much.  But those are the same usage numbers as last year.  So either the power was on through December and January, or the electric company is inventing numbers.
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3827 Slammed, #1

Monday, March 3, 2014

I got slammed twice this past week, plus one screaming meemie.

The first slam:  I received a letter from John Hancock, the providers of my Long-Term Care policy, stating that my annual premium would be increasing.

Shortly after Jay died Daughter informed me that she hoped I had a good LTC policy, because there was no way she could do for me what I had done for Jay.  I had no policy.  I knew that the older you are when you get one, the more expensive they are, so I got me one right away, well before I turned 60.  It's pretty much the gold standard, providing for everything from housekeeping help to full home nursing care, nursing home, whatever necessary.  It includes a 5% annual increase in daily limits (the maximum offered), and lifetime benefits.  It costs me $3,384.00 annually.

I had been hearing rumors that most LTC insurers were applying for premium increases.  Their actuaries had screwed up.  They'd figured that about half of the people who signed up for LTC policies would eventually let them lapse.  Well, that didn't happen.  Most, in fact, kept them, so now the insurance companies are looking at a huge balloon they didn't expect.

Most of what I'd read said that they were looking for anywhere from 15% to 45% increase, with some sources saying an average of 40%.  John Hancock says their increases will average 25%.   (One article:  http://www.investmentnews.com/article/20131111/FREE/131119992#.)  Insurers are not allowed to raise individual premiums.  By law, they have to raise premiums across the board for a class of policies. 

The letter I got assures me that my "class" has nothing to do with my age.  They did not otherwise deign to define the class for my edification.

My premiums will increase from $3,384.00 to $6,429.60, as of May 2, 2014, the due date of my next premium.  Ack!

This is a 90% increase!!!!!

Even if 90% weren't already ridiculous (average 25%?), I carefully budget and save to make that payment.  With the increase, I am now $3,100 short of making it.  A little more than 2 months notice would have been nice.  WTF!  I can pull from investments to make it up, but what about people who just plain can't pay that much?

I think John Hancock's actuaries will get their heart's desire.  A lot of people are going to drop their policies, even though they may have been paying on them for decades.

It's a 12 page letter.  I read only the first two pages and set it aside, because every time I looked at it I felt like I was going to throw up.  All day Friday and Saturday my stomach churned.  Finally, Sunday, I read the rest of it.  They give me several options that will reduce my increase, most of which involve reducing my benefits, like going from lifetime coverage to a set number of years, or setting a longer wait time of need before benefits kick in, and so on.

Then I found the magic key.  If I reduce the inflation number for the daily max benefit from the current 5% compound to 2.7% compound, my premium increase drops to 0%.  Nothing.  Same as before.

Duh?

That leaves me wondering now, if that's all it takes on a gold-standard policy, who in the rest of my class is contributing to that 25% average?  Something smells fishy here.  It's not adding up.

I'm supposed to return a form by the end of this month requesting that it be changed.  So that's what I have to do, I guess.

You know, when I bought this policy, I thought the premiums would never go up, since it was based on age and risk and what I'd asked for, and this is what they had figured their risk was for me.  One thing I had considered was investing that money earmarked for long-term care, but after running the numbers I figured insurance would actually end up providing more.  A lot of people buy LTC insurance and end up using very little of it (they die quick, I guess), so it still averages out as a win for the insurance companies.

Now I'm going to worry constantly.  There's no assurance that next year they won't try the same thing again.

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Just to show you how little faith I have in anyone anymore - in all the articles I had read about insurance companies raising premiums on LTC policies, they all said that the companies were applying for state board permission.  In none of them was there any indication that permission had actually been granted.

So what if they are subsequently not given permission to raise rates?  Will they still hold me to the lower inflation figure?
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