Category Archives: Assorted Ramblings

Assorted Ramblings

Heros and Leaders

The Jaycees have quarterly writing and speaking competitions called “Write Up” and “Speak Up.” Aside from the competitive aspect, the idea behind the two programs is to give the participants the opportunity to practice their writing and public speaking skills and get feedback in an environment where the repercussions for mistakes are relatively minor (as opposed to messing up a presentation at the office).
The programs have a shared list of topics which the participants can choose from. The one I chose was “Have you ever been going about your day with the radio playing in the background and had the lyrics to a particular song really reach out to you? If so, what was the song and how did it have meaning in your life? If not, you might consider changing the station once in a while.”
I used the same topic for both competitions. What appears below is my entry for the writing competition. My entry for the speaking event was similar, though somewhat longer. (Actually, the end wound up being trimmed a little to fit into the time constraints and still went 30 seconds over.)
I didn’t win either competition, but I’m quite happy that I tried.

For the past four years, I’ve found myself associating Chad Kroeger’s song “Hero” with the Spiderman movie franchise. This probably isn’t very surprising since that’s the song playing during the closing credits. Much like the life of Peter Parker, the song isn’t completely happy (“Look what love gave us, a world full of killing, and blood spilling”), but there’s a line in the chorus I can’t help but find inspirational.
“They say that a hero can save us, I’m not gonna stand here and wait.”
For me, that line epitomizes what makes Peter Parker a hero. It’s also the epitome of what it is to be a Jaycee. That sounds like I’m claiming to be some kind of a superhero. I’m not. But it’s impossible to ignore the parallels between Peter Parker’s career as Spiderman and my career as a Jaycee.
Peter Parker didn’t set out to be a hero. His big goal at the start of the first movie was to be accepted by his peers and perhaps get up the nerve to talk to the proverbial girl next door, Mary Jane Watson. A short time later he was bitten by a spider and gained the powers that made him Spiderman.
I’ve never been all that comfortable talking with large groups of people. It used to be that if you put me in a social setting – even one where I knew everyone present – you wouldn’t find me socializing The odds were that within ten minutes I’d be the one “holding up the wall.” Ten minutes after that I’d be looking for an excuse to leave. And once I did leave, I’d wind up kicking myself for not doing a better job of socializing. To say I was lacking in self-confidence would be an understatement. But then, just like Peter Parker, a bug bit me too. But this time around it wasn’t a spider; in my case it was the Jaycee bug.
One of the things that makes Spiderman such an appealing hero is that he’s not perfect. Peter blames himself for not stopping the crook that went on to kill his uncle. As a result, he’s afraid to let anyone get close to him for fear that they’ll also be hurt. And as much as he loves being Spiderman, Peter isn’t certain he’s the right man for the job. It would be a lot easier to let the police or the National Guard deal with the bad guys.
Some Jaycee projects can be really scary. Bringing the circus to town. Running a funnel cake booth. If you’re shy and don’t know many of the people in your chapter, even chairing the Restaurant of the Month can be daunting. And that’s just the projects. Stepping up to run for a chapter office or running a state program can take you even further out of your comfort zone. There’ve been a few times when it would have easier for me to walk away and let someone else run a project.
But Peter Parker and I have something else in common. We have the support of our friends (most of whom haven’t figured out our secret identities). People who have confidence in our ability to do what needs to be done and who will forgive us when we make mistakes. Peter’s friends let him see that even when things seemed their most bleak, there were still people who needed him. They gave him the confidence to step up and be a hero. And my friends gave me the confidence to try new things. The confidence to chair some awfully big projects. The confidence to run for chapter office. The confidence to step away from the wall and be a leader.
There’s another uplifting line in that song:
“I hold on to the wings of the eagle. Watch as we all fly away.”

Assorted Ramblings

Light 'em up!

When Terry Dactyl first came into my life, I started leaving a light on for her all day because I wouldn’t be getting back until sometime in the evening. I was concerned about the cost of the electricity, and annoyed with how often the light bulbs needed to be replaced, so once compact fluorescent light-bulbs became affordable (and easy to find) I took the first opportunity to replace the bulb in the lamp next to her cage. (I think she’s been using the same bulb for four or five years now.)
Lately, I’ve been fascinated by the availability of blue-white LEDs. They use more electricity than the red or green ones, but they’re much more efficient than an incandescent or even a fluorescent bulb. Because they use so little electricity, I’ve been able to put a half-dozen or so solar-charged lights in my backyard and have them stay lit half the night. (With a conventional bulb, a solar-powered light barely stays lit long enough to be worthwhile.)
Along with the lights in the yard, I’ve also bought a flashlight that uses a single AA battery to provide the light of a conventional one that uses three D-cells and more recently, bought a kit to convert my trusty mini-maglight to use a long-life LED instead of an expensive and hard to find mini-bulb.
With the growing use of LEDs as a low-power alternative to more conventional lighting sources, I’ve been wondering for a while when they’d start selling them for use as main-stream lighting sources.
It appears that the day of the LED light-bulb isn’t very far off. A company called Lumileds has one now for about $60. That’s too expensive for me right now, but the prices are expected to drop to $20 or so over the next two years, and even cheaper after that.
This is really cool!

Assorted Ramblings, Photos, Stories

Going Bump in the Night

This was my third year helping the Frederick Jaycees with their haunted house. It’s not a haunted house in the strictest sense, the past two years it’s been the “Haunted Hayride” at Crumland Farm, the year before that it was the “panic asylum” at Harry Grove stadium, but it’s still a lot of fun.
One of the recurring bits of fun is the teen couples. They tend to come in with the guys trying to impress their girlfriends with how strong they are and perhaps hoping the girls will be scared and hold on to them. The more the guy struts, the more likely it is that he’s going to be the ones who screams. 🙂
I’d been up to help out two weeks ago, and spent the evening on a scaffold, screaming and dropping a piece of pipe onto some other pipes, making a lot of noise and watching startled people jump from one side of the hay wagon to the other. On Saturday, I was in makeup out in the cornfield, chasing people with a chainsaw racing.
It had been a while since I’d worn makeup for this event (last year was mostly spent on a scaffold screaming and dropping a dummy that looked as though he’d been hanged), so I wound up with Anna helping me with the makeup. After I’d put on the base layer of pale, she added a bruise across the right side of my face along with dark circles around my eyes and a few other black lines as accents. Then she added blood rolling down my face. It looked quite ghastly, which was the intent after all. The blood never did dry, so over the course of the evening it became increasingly realistic. I did experience a brief moment of concern when it rolled into my eye, but the only problem that caused was that my eye briefly got stuck shut. (A fine example of method acting!)
The temperatures on Saturday were a little chilly, but I was prepared and had worn layers. In all, the weather was actually perfect for haunting – clouds racing across the sky, a constant wind through the trees and the corn, and cold enough to make sure you knew it was fall. I don’t know how many people went on the Hayride that evening, but even though I was near the end of the route, quite a few of them were startled when the maniac with the chainsaw started running toward them.
After putting everything away on Saturday, the group headed out for dinner at TGIFriday’s. Having a bunch of zombies walk in always gets a few people at the bar doing double-takes, and the people sitting in the dining room usually have the most interesting expressions on their faces as the group heads to a table. I arrived a few minutes behind the first group and when I walked in, the hostess took one look at me and before I could even look for them, she told me, “oh, your group’s over here.”
When we eventually left Friday’s, I stopped off for gas. Nobody else was at the gas station, so my appearance didn’t get any attention unless the attendant happened to look out from the booth. Next, I stopped at the 7-11 to get a drink so I’d stay awake on the drive home. Nobody noticed as I pulled up and got out of the car, but as I walked up to the door, I definitely got the attention of the two guys sitting in front of the store. Likewise, the cashier and the only customer in the store also stopped in their tracks when I walked in. (Naturally, I encouraged all four of them to get up to Thurmont on Sunday for the hayride’s final night. I’m pretty sure that at least one of them did.)
When I finally got home around 12:30, Wylie was quite happy to see me and wasn’t at all bothered by the make up. I took him out for a late walk, the whole time imagining what would happen if any of the people driving around that night happened to come by when I was under a street light. Unexpectedly seeing a zombie out walking his dog would probably make you wonder if you’d somehow stepped into a scene from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 🙂
The final horror of the evening came when I stepped into the shower. The makeup was all water washable and as it went down the drain, it made for a wonderful recreation of the shower scene in Psycho.
It was a fun evening.
Happy Halloween!

Assorted Ramblings

Today's amusements

A couple of Wednesday’s news items tickled my funny bone:

Friendly competition

This one’s kinda cool. Despite the way some folks out there rail against Internet Explorer, the folks who work on that product don’t seem to be holding any grudges against the competition.
The Mozilla corporation released a new version of the Firefox web browser on Tuesday (about a week after Microsoft released a new version of Internet Explorer). To celebrate, the Internet Explorer development team sent the Firefox team a cake!!!

Boxers or Briefs?

All the fire gear I’ve ever run across gets worn over the firefighters regular clothes. I hadn’t been aware of this, but apparently firefighters in some areas strip down to their underwear before putting on their fire gear (I guess this makes sense since not all street clothes will hold up to the temperatures). Well, it seems that in Vancouver, the city has set a rule that all firefighters are to wear boxer shorts. (By way of explanation: the Vancouver fire department is one of a growing number of departments with both men and women.)

Assorted Ramblings, Rants

Human Energy

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According to the story line of The Matrix, when the machines rose to power, the human race made a last ditch attempt to stop them by blocking out the sun. The tactic worked in that the machines were no longer able to get energy from the sun. But the machines were resourceful and found another source of energy.
The machines adapted themselves to draw energy from living organisms – their former masters. Humans were raised in vats in huge farms the size of cities. And in order to keep their human livestock docile, the machines connected them all into a shared virtual reality so detailed that the humans had no idea there was anything else.
Chevron has been running a series of ads lately about their efforts to find new energy sources and to make better use of the ones we already have. The commercials all end with a tagline about how they’re going to do this by using “…the energy we have most in abundance: human energy”
I sure hope Chevron isn’t getting ideas from the movies!

Assorted Ramblings, Stories

Mudfest

The Germantown Oktoberfest took place this past weekend (October 7) and it was a rather soggy affair. The rain all day Friday continued on into Saturday morning, producing soggy ground and a few related challenges (over the weekend, we had four or five vehicles get stuck in the mud), but we pressed on. By 10:00 it looked like 70 vendors had showed up, rain or no rain, we were having a festival!
The rain did hurt attendance somewhat (2 to 3,000 people this year versus 8 to 10,000 last year), but most folks made the best of it. One woman who lived nearby came over to the festival in the early afternoon. Along with enjoying the festival in person, she also wanted to make sure everything was still in place for the evening. It turned out that she had invited 60 people over for an Oktoberfest party with plans for watching the fireworks from the backyard!
Of course, not everyone knew what to make of all the rain and mud. Perhaps the funniest moment of the festival came at the end of a conversation with Denise. As I headed off to my next destination, I took the most direct route. Denise had brought her three-year old son with her and as I walked away Parker cried out, clearly scandalized, “Mommy! He walked right through that puddle!”
There were two brief showers later in the day, but that didn’t seem to bother folks all that much. I spent part of the afternoon walking around the various booths, talking to the vendors. Everyone was in good spirits, not a single complaint.
As a safety precaution, we did cancel the German band as well as the Teen Band showcase (water and electricity aren’t a good combination), but Cops & Robbers was a hit for their third year running. We ended the festival with fireworks a little before 7:30.
It was a good day.

Assorted Ramblings, Fandom, Rants, Video

Getting out the Vote

One of the downsides to living in the DC area is that you get inundated with political ads pretty much nonstop. And during an election year, it just gets worse. The barrage of ads is bad enough, but making it worse is that the ads contain little of any substance.
I ran into Zaphod’s campaign ad last year, shortly after the Hitchhiker movie came out on DVD. The movie’s not as good as the original BBC series, but that’s OK. I figure Zaphod’s a better choice than some of the other jokers who are running for office. His campaign ad is certainly no less informative.

Assorted Ramblings, Rants, Stories

Who needs to count sheep?

There was an ad on the radio a couple days ago for a revolutionary new prescription sleep aid; the latest in a long line of sleep aids claiming to be “non-addictive and non-habit forming.” (Believe that and I’ve got some ocean-front property in Arizona you might be interested in.) At the end of the commercial came the usual list of possible side-effects that make the cure sound worse than the disease. Midway through the list was one that really caught my attention.
May cause drowsiness.
Isn’t that the entire point?

Assorted Ramblings, Stories

The Rest of the Story

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After reading yesterday’s tale of laundry day, SueP wrote to ask for “The Rest of the Story.”
I suppose the request makes sense. After all, the tale ends almost as soon as it starts. There’s a brief explanation of why water doesn’t burn, followed by the revelation of a washing machine full of clothes and water with smoke coming out of it.
Clearly the water is on fire! Given that this takes place at Blair’s house, you know there must be a story behind it. Maybe the inhabitants of Pluto, enraged at losing their status as a planet have declared war and set fire to the laundry as a first strike? Or maybe it’s something more mundane after all, but with all that setup, surely there’s at least a half-dozen fire trucks!
This is exciting! Sue was doubtless looking forward to reading the next paragraph (both my other readers probably were too), and when she scrolled down a little further, there it was: Nothing. Nothing at all.
With that lead-in, you can’t help wondering, what’s going on? How can he stop there?
It’s simple really. It’s not that I didn’t want to write more, it’s just that “the Rest of the Story” is quite anti-climatic.
My best guess is that I just overloaded the washing machine. Once I realized where the smoke was coming from, I took the sheets out and washed them along with a shirt and some towels that had been previously overlooked.
That’s pretty much it. No spaceship battles for Terry. Wylie didn’t get to fulfil his dream of riding in a fire truck. Nothing dramatic at all. I didn’t even get to write about the smoke detector going off!
Leaving it with smoke coming out was just more interesting.

Assorted Ramblings, Stories

Where there's smoke there's…Laundry?

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Water is a most interesting substance. It forms the basis of life as we know it and can be used for cooking, cleaning, swimming or dumping on your younger brother.
Aside from dumping it on my brothers, one of the properties of water which I’ve always found interesting is that it’s composed of Hydrogen and Oxygen. Combine them and they form water; but separate them and they burn – leaving water as the only residue.
Given the tendency of its constituent elements to combine in a flash of flame, water seems an unlikely choice for extinguishing a fire, and yet that’s exactly what you use in most cases. (The most common exceptions being, of course, grease and electrical fires.)
The reason it’s safe to use water on most fires is that once they’re combined, the Hydrogen and Oxygen atoms form a bond which requires a great deal of energy to break. In order for a fire to split water molecules back into individual atoms, the fire would have to be around 6,000 degrees Fahrenheit. By comparison, the water in your water heater is generally only 140 degrees or so. Nowhere near the temperature required for the gases to dissociate and burn.
Knowing all that, perhaps I’m being something of an alarmist. But I can’t help thinking it might be cause for concern when midway through a load of laundry, smoke starts coming out of the washing machine.