Netfoot

Puppy is lying on the floor beside the bed. It's late and I still have to bathe and lock up. Sweat is running down my skin. It's not really a hot night but it is very humid and no breeze is blowing. Why so humid? It hasn't been raining or anything... Listening to George Harrison's My Sweet Lord. This was Harrison's first post-Beatles single and it was well received on both sides of the pond. The "Lord" spoken of is actually Krishna, the Hindu god. I had some tiny pieces of fried chicken for dinner. This left me feeling quite hungry still so I boiled two biggish potatoes and served them with some onion and tuna cooked in the chicken oil. Not great but filling. Dropping off to sleep even as I type this. Hope this means I get some solid shut-eye tonight. I've been having trouble sleeping for a while. Only getting off when I'm exhausted. But when you fall asleep from sheer exhaustion, when you wake you don't feel rested. My book is progressing. I've not got far because I've not had much opportunity to read many pages. The amnesiac with someone else's face has apparently been made to look like a top weapons scientist who has disappeared. This, it would seem, to sow confusion amongst the kidnappers, with little apparent concern for the man whose face and sanity have been ruined by surgery and hypnosis. Only, the man who they chose to be their diversion is proving not to be the pliant clay they assumed he would be... Mo got the last of the bully beef rice today for lunch and dinner so tomorrow I will have to cook something more for him. Or he can have NutriPet chow for the next couple of days. I can boil up some bully & water to make a sweetening sauce that can be spooned over the chow to "sweeten" it a little. Sometimes I decide I want to eat the strangest things. Right now I want some dry pepper mango from that shop run by those two ladies in TrinCity Mall which is just north of the Churchill/Roosevelt highway in Trinidad. About 10 lbs. would probably be enough. There is another type of pepper mango frequently called "red mango" but I don't like that type. The pieces of red mango are much larger and thicker and are very moist. And deep red, of course, with some sort of Chinese preservative. Watched a couple TV episodes today. About a guy who buys, restores and sells classic cars. Only, he seems to lose money on each sale, so I dunno why he persists. I mean, he restored a classic Jaguar XJ-S but he chooses to restore the 3.6 liter straight-six variant, when the XJ-S was renowned for it's iconic 5.3 liter V12! Who wants to buy a classic car with the absolutely wrong engine?!?? If you want to enjoy the Jaguar straight-six engine you would be looking at the XJ-6 with the 4.2 liter motor. Or one of the older XK models. My girlfriend had an XJ-6 as a company car for a while and it was a smasher! (She also from time to time got to drive a yellow & black Rover 3.5 liter V8. Another rip-snorter!) Ok, I'm going for a shower and then lock up the house. Ninja-Mo has vanished from beside the bed but hopefully he will reappear when it's time to lock up. His Unka Rudy came to see him again today and bought him some beef, it looks like. It is defrosting overnight so I should get a better look at it in the morning. Oh, here he is now, digging a hole and making a nest in the pillows right behind me. I will snuggle with him for a while before going for that full-bore shower in the dark.

Sure. the Mountain's Keeper could in theory make up any crazy twist they want in an effort to spice up the show, but obviously, we can only speculate as to what any such twist(s) might be.

Multiple climbers can win and the remaining prize money will be equally divided between them. (Except they all carry an equal share of the remaining prize money so technically, the prize will already have been divided between them the night before at the last checkpoint.) All climbers who set out from the last checkpoint must make it to the summit or nobody will win anything. Obviously, Production will want winners to make for better television. After the final eviction at the final checkpoint the night before the ascent to the summit, you will know that all remaining climbers will make it to the top and the will each get to keep what ever prize money they are already carrying. So there will be no need to watch the final episode because the outcome will be known at the end of the penultimate episode, one week before.

I run several clocks. My computer, my phone... Some are 12-hour clocks. Some are 24-hour clocks. Some give the time in local time (23:50 Lima) and some give international time (03:50 Zulu). Ham radio operators are expected to log their contacts in 24-hour time. Satellite data is in international time (Z or UTC). I used to be active in amateur satellite communications. (First ever high altitude, satellite communications using VHF/UHF bands. 3rd April, 1993 at 21:41Z, Mode-B uplink on 435.472 MHz, Single Side-band with Bob, W9EXR, 100 miles NE of Atlanta. 5/5 sent, 5/5 received. And another 61 contacts in the next 78 minutes before AO-13 went "over the hill" a.k.a. fell behind the curvature of the earth. But three of those contacts were made by my mate Derek, using my station. And another 136 contacts the next day, 4th April, with 38 of these made by Derek. One of these days I will itemize a list of the countries contacted during those first days. But for sure, USA, Germany, Great Britain, Turkey, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Luxembourg, France, Canada, Italy, Spain, Zimbabwe, Grenada, Sweden & Switzerland. Lots of USA because they occupied the majority of the coverage circle until the bird moved towards Europe.) I once used to wear two watches. Now, I easily translate between one system and the others in my head without thinking about it too much. And I don't wear any watches at all. So when I glanced at the clock and it said 23:35 I wasn't concerned. I just thought "Pushing eight o'clock. I'll brew some tea and take Mo out on Garden Patrol." But for some reason, my automatic time translation service had failed me. It was really pushing midnight! Which it is.... now! There is no light bulb in the shower. And no shower rose either. Mo was eating grass on Patrol. When I came out of the shower there was a little puddle of puke with grass in it, on the floor. Why does he wait until I come out of the shower to present me with these little gifts? Why not before I go in to the shower? At least he didn't leave it in the bed for me to find.... Taking the sensible advice of @Spunkygal, I searched for instructions on replacing the buckle on my Toyota van. I found a video. It wasn't the exact same van as mine, but the process was identical. The bolt was even a 14mm! Alas, the advice is that to separate that connector the seat should be removed from the van entirely, or at very least unbolted and tilted right forward so the connector on the underside can be accessed. <sigh> This is a relatively straightforward task. And now the seat has to be unbolted and come out? I worked on a Jensen Interceptor once. Metallic blue. My mate did the work. I was just the gofer. To replace the spark plugs, the exhaust manifolds had to come off. To remove the manifolds you could either a) remove the wheels, brakes and front suspension struts on both sides of the car, or b) lift the entire engine (Mopar 383 cu. In. V8) completely out of the vehicle. This seatbelt buckle is starting to remind me of that job. Mind you, I don't blame Jensen, not really. Squeezing that ugly old V8 into such a small body shell, I'm surprised the motor could come out. If that V8 had been one inch uglier, they'd have had to weld the shell together around it! (Rough cast combustion chambers in the heads. Good ghodd!) Mo is sleeping on the tiles. I hope he feels better. Some say when a dog feel poorly he will cleverly eat grass to medicate himself. Or, as I can't help but think, if he stupidly eats grass, he will soon feel poorly. Who knows which is right? Mo is a sweet boy and sometimes he shows true brilliance. So maybe he is also a talented herbalist after all. In the true Bajan tradition, if he could light a fire, he would boil his own bush-tea! Which would make him an Obeah-dog. Listen to Summer Breeze by Seals & Crofts. A sweet ballad. Always loved it, despite not being a huge Seals & Crofts fan particularly. Look, I talk too much. I have a puppy here inventing games to play with my toes and I'm going to go play with him. Dunno if I will do any reading tonight. Ow! He's kicking my butt! With both feet at once!

Not yet. I will put the passenger side buckle in place on the driver's side so I can drive safely and avoid a fine for not wearing a belt. The driver's side buckle, still attached to the wire, will live under the seat until I figure out how to get it free. I am hoping I can either get it working again or find a replacement in a junk yard. But finances being as tight as they are, I don't know I could afford a 2nd-hand replacement anyway... I did it before with the old Suzuki that Buddy liked to climb on top of. And I was able to stretch the driver's side tongue over and test it in the passenger side buckle without doing any dismantling or anything. Unfortunately, the passenger side belt will inherit the problem now, but I hardly ever run a passenger other than Mo, who doesn't use the belt anyway. It's actually quite easy. The buckles are held in by a single bolt: So the right spanner (or <baarf!> an adjustable), and the buckles are off in 10 seconds. The hard part is the shrouds that cover up the mechanical gubbins around the bottom of the seat(s). They can be tricky to get off and sometimes they can be held in place with clips that just can't wait to break, forcing you to go buy replacements. I was lucky that my shrouds were held in place with a couple Phillips head screws, so they were easy to come off too. Under normal circumstances I would definitely acquire a new buckle, even if I had to go to the agent and or a new one. But things have not been normal for a few years, now...

The story would have been improved if they had shown that Secretary Willis was involved with the drug smuggling and complicit in the murder. Yes, Scola's new partner is as wooden as a cigar store "decoration". I like Jeremy Sisto. But the character of Jubal is the biggest waste of budget and airtime in the show. I'd be happy if he was gone for good, never to be seen again. He serves no useful purpose and is treated like a VIP in the FBI.

A sweet, little hand of figs! I knew a guy from Grenada who called these "bluggers", but I've never heard anyone else refer to them by that name. These are actually my favourite type of bananas. Thank you, Unka Rudy!

Went at the seatbelts again. Here are the two buckles. Passenger: And driver: (Please excuse the dirt and general rubbish which had accumulated in the bottom of the vehicle.) Notice a difference in the buckles? The driver side buckle is wired. This allows a warning light in the dash to illuminate if you don't engage the seatbelt. Here is a better look at it: The trouble is, I can't get the connector (under the seat) to disengaged. It is a small, plastic shell and I could brute-force it but I don't want to bust it. As it is, I won't have a functioning warning light, because the passenger buckle, once it becomes the driver's buckle, won't have a switch. I looked at dismantling the actual buckles (to maybe move the switch?) but they are even more sealed up than I originally thought. Anyway, I will put this back together with the passenger buckle in the driver's side, but the driver's buckle will just have to live under the seat until I can get that connector to open. Which will probably be never.

Just stumped the same toe again. When I regained consciousness I checked to see what damage had occurred. None. It only felt like I'd lost the entire foot below the knee...

After a while, a completely unrepentant Choco-Mint bandit returned to bed. He insisted on playing a particularly vigorous game of Tummy Trampoline, digging his little elbows into every soft and delicate spot he could find. I love playing games with him! I finished my book and have selected the next one in chronological order: #9, The Tightrope Men. An Englishman wakes up in a hotel room in Oslo to discover that he has completely lost his memory and that the face he sees in the mirror is not his own! Looking forward to this one, but not now.

I've said for years: you don't get to buy what you want. You have to settle for what ever junk they will sell you. Went out today to buy bouillon cubes. Can't remember when last I saw beef cubes, but that's OK because chicken is fine. Only last time I was in the shop I couldn't find any chicken. Only Vegetable cubes were available. So today, with a pot of rice in mind, I deliberately left home to go to another, better stocked store in search of Chicken cubes. They didn't have any. They didn't have any Vegetable cubes either. All they had was Garlic & Onion. At a price ⅓ higher than Chicken. It seems that more and more, simple items that I think should be widely available (because they have been for years) simply are not to be had. Like evaporated milk. Or Spam. When was the last time I saw Spam for sale? I can't remember that far back. Oh, I can get a tin of some Spam-esque stuff at an unbelievably inflated price, but what happened to legitimate Spam? It's like this every time I go shopping, no matter what I'm shopping for, from groceries to car parts. Listening to Love Games by Level 42. Of course, as I loaded Mo into the van to go buy bouillon cubes, I realized I'd never done anything about the seatbelt. So I tucked the tongue under my butt and went off to the shops. No cubes. Thought about buying a pack of dried channa but why would the packs of dried channa be $5.50 when all other types of dried peas & beans were in the $2.50 region? No channa. (Mo just jumped into bed, stole a Choco-Mint that was lying next to my pillow, and ran off!) So when I got home, I started the process of removing the seatbelt buckles from the two front seats so I could swap them over. The left side seat shroud came away easily but the drivers seat shroud incorporates a storage cubby that also covers the hand brake mechanism. I realized that to get that off I would need a bigger screwdriver. So I set off to get a larger screwdriver. The rice turned out to be pretty good. It would have been better with a couple of those little cubes in it, but what could I do? So rice, bully, pumpkin, carrots, cucumber and kernel corn. Mo was glad to eat it for lunch and again for dinner. Me too, for that matter. Watched the SpaceX StarShip #6 launch. Yes, another catch by the chopsticks would have been very cool, but if their telemetry advises then that something is not nominal, I think it makes more sense to abort the catch and go for a water landing than to risk a RUD on the OLM/Stage #0. The telemetry will allow them to improve things for the next flight, hopefully pushing the reliability up and reducing the number of catch aborts. As for StarShip itself, I know they did test (successfully) restart of the Raptor engines in space/vaccuum, but I wish they'd push the testing on stage #2 a bit. They could have extended the flight by one (or more) full orbits and taken the time to try a few other things, such as maybe some maneuvering tests, and so forth. I know they did run several tests on maneuvering fin design and heat shield tile placement. And I keep hearing about The Banana? Didn't catch on to what that and all was. Anyone know? Set off on Garden Patrol and immediately noticed the car was wide open. Just as it was when I walked away hours before, looking for a screwdriver. After Patrol, with the torch in my mouth, I got the screwdriver and removed the handbrake shroud followed by the seat shrouds. The buckles are held in by a single bolt. Quick guess: M14 14mm or thereabouts. Got my ½" drive metric sockets and a breaker bar. But at that point I decided not to proceed in the dark. So I hope to make the change-over tomorrow. Will take some photos. It looks like it will all be quite straightforward. I looked at the actual buckles. Could not see how they come apart. The plastic shell could possibly be prized off but I don't know that it would go back on again. So rather than look inside the buckle to see if there is any way to fix the issue, I will just go for a buckle swap. That may leave the passenger side belt with the problem, but Mo never uses it anyway. Got about 80 pages to go in my book. Rearden, now revealed to be a British agent all along, is in pursuit of Slade, now in Malta, being spirited away to Albania. Slade believes he is to be repatriated to Russia but in fact he is being sold to the Chinese... Feeling drowsy. Puppy has not shown his face since he pilfered my Choco-Mint. I suspect if I go out and find him, he will hang his head low until I pat him and tell him I forgive him. He will then immediately start looking for more Choco-Mints to steal...

I understand it is pretty straightforward these days. Not checked but I think it can be done here without issues. Gotta talk with Dr. Kristi and see what she says. I think that in theory at least, it would not present any problem. But then, in theory, neither would a biopsy. Yet it's been 19 months and QEH have not been able to perform one...

Mo has been a PITA all day, refusing to eat his lunch - and then the same with his dinner - but constantly telling me that he is hungry. Puppets Puppers can get too accustomed to cooked food and I think he might have had a little too much sweet rice for his own good. And I almost forgot to go on Garden Patrol with him this evening! Well, not really. I will generally brew up some tea and while it draws, we will go on Patrol. Tonight I brewed up as normal and then sat there stupidly while it was drawing and even started to drink it before I realized. So I left it and out we went. The moon, waning but near full, was hiding behind a big cloud but it was just too bright to hide properly. The reason I nearly forgot about Garden Patrol is, if I'm honest, I've been feeling sick all day. And tired, too. I have this thing about sleeping now. My tummy seems to hurt at every opportunity these days and it makes it difficult to drift off to sleep. I have to wait until I'm exhausted to fall asleep. So I've been tired and feeling sickly all day. Oh, I don't remember if I mentioned I was having issues with my eyesight? A lot of symptoms but the problematic one being that it is as if I am looking through a thin fog or mist, or I'm in a room full of smoke. Everything is whited-out. Spoke to Unka Rudy today (he passed by and brought me a hand of figs!) and mentioned it to him. Yinger, his wife, said "Cataracts!" So I looked up cataracts on Google and got a list of symptoms. Looks like she might be right. I'm experiencing most of the symptoms listed to one degree or another, including Seeing "halos" around lights Double vision in one eye Cloudy vision First two of these I've mentioned before. Mostly noticed when on Garden Patrol, all lights have a big rainbow halo around them. And especially when looking at pinpoints of light, like the stars in the sky at night, I see double-stars. Now, double vision is generally caused because your two eyes present you with two images and your brain isn't aligning them properly. But I still get the double-stars even with one eye shut! These are pretty specific symptoms. So maybe it is cataracts. Which I believe can be 100% cured. I wonder how long it would take QEH to get around to achieving that? Fat-Bottomed Girls by Queen. When Freddie Mercury went into the clinic early one evening, he paused outside to answer questions posed by reporters. He assured them that he was just going for a check-up because he had been feeling a little run down. I watched that on TV that evening. (I don't remember for sure if it was live or not, but I don't think it was.) Next day came the news of his death. If you like the band and it's music, Rami Malek's portrayal in the movie Bohemian Rhapsody can't be recommended highly enough. Mo is lying on the tiles right beside the bed. I need a shower but I really don't feel like taking one. But I still have to get up to lock up so I will prolly scrub up at the same time. No sign of my guy. I'd really like to get the job I owe him done. It preys on my mind. The faster I can clear the board as far as that job is concerned, the faster the next job might come along. YT is really getting bad. I refresh the home page and it displays a number of thumbnails of recommend videos. As I scroll down, more thumbnails appear at the bottom. Keep scrolling and you might get to see 200+ thumbnails before you get to the bottom of the page. And they are all about Post-Election meltdowns. Every single one. Now, YT generates new recommendations based on what you've been watching. But if every single recommendation is an IMD video (Idiots Melting Down), then it's a vicious cycle. They only reccomend recommend IMD, so you watch a few of the recommend IMD, which reinforces the algorithm recommending more IMD. Tomorrow I will try to think of specific subjects I want to look at (chassis design, suspension design, aerobatic slope-soaring, tilting wheel tadpole trikes...). I will search for and watch exclusively those. And see if I can force the algorithm to reset itself. I know there is a way to tell the algorithm to erase all it's historical basis for recommendations, so it has to relearn your preferences from scratch. I've done it before. I may do that if I can remember how it's done. Anyway, I will see if I can get the door locked without Mo running out and making me wait. Or maybe I just lock his ass out for the night? No, because I like him coming and curling up against my back. Once the door is locked I can grab a shower. Then a bit of reading. My tummy is starting to hurt. Book: Rearden (diamond thief) and Slade (Russian spy & villain from the last book, Running Blind) have been sprung from prison by The Scarperers gang and are now at an undisclosed location while their documents, etc, are being prepared for their final departure from Britain. You prolly know already that in British informal language, "scarper" means "run away". So the gang who (for a fee) helps prisoners run away from prison is essentially called "The Run Away-ers". Ok. Sneak out without alerting the pupper (impossible), lock the door, have a shower, return to bed, read, sleep. Gangsta's Paradise by Coolio...

I can touch it and manipulate it without any real discomfort, so long as I don't go poking around at the point where some of the nail is missing. Obviously, a solid whack (like if I stumped it again) would be double-ouch! So I'm being careful to avoid exposing it to any danger. But yes, I think it's fair to day that for all intents and purposes, it is quite better.

Late to bed. Watched Clear & Present Danger. Remember my one-breasted chicken? It had two backs. Which is unfortunate because the back is my least favourite part of the chicken and the breast is my favourite. And recommend by my favorite physician. Here's hoping the other chicken has three breasts and no back! Set out to make a grilled cheese sandwich for dinner. Don't own a grill so decided to do it in a pan. Advice: don't try to make a grilled cheese sandwich in a pan when you don't have a spatula! 😠 Can't remember if I mentioned but I finished Running Blind and have started The Freedom Trap. A gang known as The Scarperers specializes in getting long-term inmates out of prison for a heavy price. Rearden, jailed for stealing £180,000 in diamonds is liberated, along with jailed Russian double-agent..... As I've said, these books are two per volume. 16 books in 8 volumes. For the first time, two chronologically consecutive books are also consecutive in the same volume. Running Blind (#7) was the first book in this volume and The Freedom Trap (#8) is the second. This book was made into a movie called The Macintosh Man (1973) starring Paul Newman. I may acquire and watch it after I've finished the book. Mo is asleep on the tiles. He had been for a while now. He may join me later when the light goes out. He usually does. But no guarantees. And while he sometimes curls up against my back and stays there for the entire night, he more often moves around all night, from one spot to another. Listening to Child In Time by Deep Purple from their ...In Rock album. This is a top track from a must-have album. It starts mildly but by the end of it's 10 minute play-time it's pretty wild, with Gillan's notorious wide ranging, high octave/octane voice shrieking at you while Richie Blackmore makes his guitar essentially do the same. There are no bad tracks on ...In Rock but this is a standout. Tomorrow is Monday and I expect (or at least hope) that my guy comes and tells me what type of sofa feet - or what ever - he wants made. He has paid in advance and I'd like to fulfill the obligation without delay. I only hope he doesn't come and ask for something I can't do. (Which is why I really don't like advanced payment.) If he wants something with curves in it, for example, I will find it very difficult to do with the bandsaw non-functional. It's late and I will try to get some sleep now. First, I have to sweep out the bed. Earlier, I heard rain falling outside. I wandered into the bedroom to check that the window was closed. I discovered Mo standing in the middle of a damp, muddy spot in the middle of the bed... Now, the bed is full of gravel which (I'm pretty sure) came in stuck to his muddy feet. It has happened before, on many occasions. It doesn't take a very large rock under your hip/butt/spine to be quite uncomfortable.