Archive for the ‘frustration’ Tag
As you all know I love gardening. That doesn’t change the fact that at times it’s as frustrating as hell. Last year my garden problems concerned a number of God’s annoying little critters that insisted on attacking my garden. Since I’m a problem solver I installed a fence around certain portions of the garden that they like to eat. Problem solved, right? No way. The following photos were some of the items harvested so far this year in spite of the critters.
The culprit from last years fiasco has since disappeared and we haven’t had one of his nightly visits this year. Unfortunately he has friends that were apparently given detailed directions to find us. This year for the first time in eight years we were visited by a big fat groundhog. He was sitting right in the middle of the yard watching the house when I spotted him the first time. He ran into a culvert to hide and I immediately dropped a couple of fire crackers in after him. If it didn’t scare him, it certainly deafened him. Problem solved, right! Not hardly.
A week later he was back sitting in the same spot and it appeared he may have been taunting me a little. I couldn’t see all that clearly but I think he might have been giving me the finger as well. It was time for the big guns. With my handy pistol in hand I gave chase and took a shot at him. He was one helluva lot faster than he looked and escaped with his life. Problem solved, Right! No effing way.
A few day later I discovered that someone had been eating my kale plants that were of course, not inside the damn fence. It’s man against the critters once again. I’ve never won any battles against them before but maybe this time I’ll have more luck.
THERE ARE TIMES WHEN I HATE MOTHER NATURE
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I’m a little late in posting today due in part to visiting family from Maryland. All of us have been kept rather busy for a few days which makes posting this blog more difficult. Things remain much of the same around here. I take care of the garden, cut what grass that hasn’t been burned away by the heat and lack of rain, and of course . . . PRAY FOR RAIN.
I’m also in the midst of a battle with a community of squirrels (both gray and red) that have a special love for our house and our bird feeders. A couple of weeks ago I was sitting in our second floor living room doing some work on my laptop. The living room is directly adjacent to a porch that leads onto a second story deck. I had the door to the deck open so the stupid cat could lounge around outside which in hindsight was my first big mistake.
I was completely focused on the computer but noticed some movement out of the corner of my eye. I looked up and sitting in the middle of the living room was a red squirrel calmly watching me. Apparently a string of loud curse words are the perfect squirrel repellent I’ve been looking for. He made a dash for the door and onto the deck and dove straight into the nearby trees. Where was my ferocious cat? He was asleep on the chair not three feet from the damn squirrel. He barely blinked an eye as I was screaming at it. He’ll pay for his total lack of interest in the very near future.
The very next day I heard a noise on the porch and that same little red squirrel was in the process of chewing through a bag of bird seed. Again he escaped but just barely. He sat in a nearby tree chittering at me until I shot him in the ass with a B-B gun. I hate killing them but I will certainly take every opportunity to give him a bruise or two with that B-B gun.
Soooooooo! Today I was once again alone in the house working in the living room. I was really concentrating on my project and jumped nearly three feet in the air due to a loud crash on the porch. I ran over to investigate and found a big fat gray squirrel sitting next to an overturned container of bird seed. He saw me and very calmly walked out onto the deck and split. I may be a little slow on the uptake but I’m reasonably certain the word is out in the squirrel community that I have food on my porch.
Tomorrow I will begin taking steps to address these issues but I’m not optimistic. I’ve been involved in two other squirrel wars at other places I’ve lived and sadly lost them both.
I’M HOPING FOR THE BEST AND EXPECTING THE WORST
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I hate to admit this but I suspect I’m suffering from something akin to writers block. It’s a first for me and it’s puzzling. In all my years of writing reports, letters, and thousand of blog posts I’ve never had a problem thinking of ideas and putting them to paper. That’s why this current creative hiccup is so bothersome.
I can’t find any mentions of this malady anywhere so let’s just call it a "creative motivational block". I’m still having all of the creative ideas I could ever want or need but my ability to sit down and get them started has become more difficult. I have of dozens of ideas everyday that are inventive, interesting and unusual but it seems to take forever to put brush to canvas or pencil to sketch book. It’s maddening.
The second part of my problem is really not a problem at all. For the first time in my life I’m financially able to spend the necessary money to obtain the supplies needed to do these projects. In years past it was difficult at times to come up with funds which forced me to step outside the box a little and use materials I never thought possible. Maybe the best part of my projects in the past was that ability to overcome those challenges and still get the job done. I really don’t know for sure.
As always the ideas keep coming and while some of them sound good in my head they’re eventually discarded. Others are easy to do and all it requires of me is to sit down and get started. That’s the bloody rub.
I’ll be ready to start a current project when all of a sudden more bright ideas come to me and I get sidetracked by them. I’ll stop to write a few notes on the new ideas and the interest in the other begins to ebb. It’s a vicious cycle that I’m trying desperately to put a stop to with only moderate success.
I feel at times that I’m so concerned with getting my ideas exactly the way I imagined them that I’m losing the ability to adapt to changes that always seem to come along. I’m in the middle of a project now that I’ve been fiddling with for a few weeks. I’ve thought it through over and over again and visualized it to completion. It’s ninety percent complete but I’m lacking that final push.
I’ve always loved challenges but this one is a doozy.
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I always try to plan ahead for ideas for this blog but today I’m having a difficult time concentrating. I’m a lover of all new technology and make it a point to stay up to speed with new software and hardware as it comes available. Today is one of those days that computer junkies fear the most. No working internet connection.
We had a moderately heavy rainstorm last night and things were fine when I crashed into bed at 1 am. I awoke this morning and my internet connection is dead. While my in-house network is still functioning thanks to a battery backup unit, good old Time Warner’s internet feed is missing in action. Unfortunately our house is located in a semi-dead spot for internet, GPS, and telephone reception. I have range extenders for damn near everything but they also run in conjunction with the internet.
In order for me to make or receive calls today I’ll be forced to drive a few hundred yards up a nearby hill near the house to get just two bars. My alarm system is sending me text messages on the phone (3G) telling me the system is off. Damn, tell me something I don’t know.
In the past the system usually comes back on-line very quickly but not today. It’s been four hours already and still nothing. And of course their telephone lines are busy, busy, busy.
Let’s kill some time today while I wait for the internet to return by revisiting some things I truly enjoy and that’s limericks. I’ve collected many, written a few, and they always seem to lean to the naughtier side of things. Some of the best I’ve ever seen have come from Great Britain because they’ve been writing them for centuries and have some of the naughtiest and funniest. I’ll try to keep todays collection naughty but nice and I’ll skip the x-rated stuff for now. Here’s five of my fav’s.
#1
With a maiden a chap just begat
Bouncing triplets named Pat, Nat, and Tat;
Twas fun in the breeding,
But hell in the feeding;
As there wasn’t a spare tit for Tat.
#2
There once was a young lady named Hilda
Who went out with a top body-builder;
He said that he should,
That he could and he would,
And he did and it damn near killed her.
#3
A notorious harlot named Hearst
In the pleasures of men is well-versed;
Reads the sign at the head
Of her well rumpled bed;
“The customer always comes first”.
#4
There was a young fellow from Kent
Whose tool was incredibly bent;
To save himself trouble,
He put it in double,
And, instead of coming he went!
#5
As the elevator car left our floor,
Poor old Sue caught her boobs in the door;
She yelled a great deal,
But had they been real,
She’d have bellowed considerably more.
***
‘And one from an anonymous kid.’
Hopefully some time today I can get these posted but I’m at the mercy of the Time Warner road crews. Here’s one of my own limericks I wrote after living in Maine for more than ten years. No names have been used to protect the somewhat innocent.
There once was a young lady from Maine
Who ruined her dress with a stain.
She thought she was clever,
But her mother knew better,
And asked “What the hell is his name”.
It’s now been eight hours without the internet and it just came back on. “Better late than never.” should be scrawled somewhere on Time Warner’s Logo.
ENJOY YOUR DAY
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I decided to do that one big job I had scheduled for today before I blogged anything. That may have been a huge mistake. I’ve been putting off doing some repair work to my lawn tractor that still refuses to start. I knew it would be a frustration for me because I hate doing things mechanical. The only mechanical person in my entire family was my late father who maintained a large float-glass factory for PPG for more than forty years. He knew everything about machines and he taught me only enough to get me into trouble. He also over the years taught me how to really and truly cuss. I was never aware of how many cuss words could be strung together until I worked with him on a few of his projects.
Pop was a professional cusser and damn proud of it. I ‘m more like him than I care to admit and if today was any example I may be better now than he was then. This effing tractor is driving me insane. I was tempted today to just drive it out into the middle of the back yard, douse it with gasoline, and a have a freaking bonfire.
After I thought about it a while I decided that doing that would then turn into something else entirely. With my luck some A-Hole from the town might ride by, check to see if I had a burn permit, and then call the cops when they found out I didn’t. Then the cops would have appeared and issued me a citation which would have sent me right over the edge. That combined with my pissed off attitude over this tractor would have assured me of a ride to the county jail for some sort of disorderly conduct charge. I know for a fact I’d have used a lot of those good old cuss words my father taught me and then the cop would have cuffed me and dragged me away.
If all that had actually occurred it would have cost me a few hundred dollars in fines, a few hours in the jail, and a somewhat questionable relationship with the local police. Then I would have come home and the real punishment would have started. I’d have heard each and every one of my father’s favorite cuss words all over again from my petit but really loud better-half. Nothing on earth is worth sitting through that tirade.
With my common sense keeping me from a trip to the jail I ended up saving a few hundred dollars today. Now if I take that money and hire a real mechanic to fix this damn tractor I just might break even.
It’s funny how things just keep snowballing along whether we like it or not.
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I’m not at all sure when this posting will make it’s way to my blog. I’m suffering through computer hell this week. I made the decision to finally upgrade my home network with a new and much smarter router to prepare for the installation of the “My Cloud” I purchased. My plan was to do the cloud upgrade only after I was sure that everything on the network was functioning properly.
I did all of the necessary research I could to prepare myself and started the process. My network is loaded with nine devices of one sort or another and the installation instructions appeared detailed and specific. Unplug the Ethernet cables from the old router and plug them into the new one. Easy, right? I reset my system and then began resetting each of the devices to the new router’s network. It was going so well I should have known it couldn’t last. My desktop computer is located on the first floor and it recognized the new network, had excellent signal strength, but offered no internet access. So began the madness . . . .
To make a long story short all of our smart phones and IPads are working fine. The Xbox, CD player, and printer are fine and working as expected. My desktop and one laptop will not cooperate. My Surface which has always been stable and a great device decided to crash just when I needed it most to still posting my blog. I have since discovered that the hard drive on the Surface crashed and the cost to have it fixed is more than I spent to purchase it. Isn’t that just typical? . . . .
I dismantled my downstairs desktop and moved it closer to the router. I did that and after a few minutes it began working as expected or so I thought. Since it was supposedly working I then moved it back to it’s original position. As I was making the move I accidentally bumped against the door frame and broke off the wifi antenna on the rear of the console. I spent an hour repairing the damage, turned on the unit and of course it didn’t work. The BS continues . . . .
So for the last 72 hours I’ve been totally focused on getting the SOB of a network up and running. So far it’s coincidently cost me my Surface, a purchase of a wifi range extender that doesn’t work, and a broken and inoperative desktop computer. I suppose I could try to blog from my smart phone but I refuse to even try. I’ve got a few more things to attempt before I give up completely. God knows when I’ll be back on the blog with the ability to do the things that I need to do such as posting photographs.
I’ll continue this commentary as I go along. I’m at my wits end and dagerously close to scrapping the entire setup and buying all new computers. I shall return . . . .
It’s now two days later and I’ve accomplished nothing. I was blessed with an hour and a half telephone call to the tech support staff at Linksys. The girl who was assigned to my problem was nice enough but I could only understand every other word. She took over control of my computer remotely and began changing settings and working her magic. The total result was nothing. No answers, no fix, just a referral to an affiliated company for an $80.00 software fix that was good for just 90 days. I could then have a full year of coverage for just $199.99. What an effing deal, I think it could be categorized as an old fashion “Bait and Switch” scheme. I hung up abruptly before I took out my mounting frustrations on the idiot I was talking to.
Today is the day I’ve officially given up. I’m going to try and remove everything I purchased from Best Buy and return my system to the status quo of a week ago. Then a quick trip to the store for a refund which will free me up to pursue other options to correct my difficulties. I’m just guessing but I have a sneaking suspicion that after I put everything back together it still won’t function. With all of the settings changes made by their tech support I fear my entire system has been compromised and will be unusable. Maybe I can get some sort of posting done with my IPad. I’ll let you know . . . some day.
Kill me now . . . .
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Mother Nature just can’t or won’t leave us alone. The early part of today was clear and really cold but livable. I was able to have a few warm hours this morning after the sun came up and rapidly heated the house. I had a quick breakfast of tasty cinnamon buns homemade by my better-half which were excellent. She’s been fine tuning her recipe for a week and has finally found the magic. A good hot cup of coffee with warm buns heated for a few seconds in the microwave, Yum!
She was off to work early as I prepared to do a bit of electrical rewiring in the room I’m remodeling. I removed the existing ceiling insulation, drilled the appropriate holes in the joists, and replaced the box in the center of the ceiling with a reinforced box that will hold the weight of the fan slated to be installed there. This house in just over twenty years old and nothing is easy. As soon as you start any project it immediately turns into what can only be described as a huge pain in the ass. The builders seemed to have cut corners at every turn and now I have to try and fix things as they’re discovered.
The insulation was installed without a vapor barrier which is a no-no and it’s also so old that it’s easily torn. What a freaking nightmare. Before I can do much of anything else I’ll be forced to replace all of the insulation and then install a good vapor barrier which wasn’t included in my original budget for this project. I’ve just had my project extended by a few days and a few hundred dollars which makes me really unhappy but not at all surprised.
I also removed an electrical outlet in the wall near the door that appeared dead. Tracing the wires didn’t help much when after a half hour and fifteen feet later I discovered they weren’t attached to any thing. They’d been rolled up and shoved behind the insulation probably fifteen or twenty years ago. Another little tweak of my nose by this freaking house.
After five hours I called it quits, sat down and enjoyed a good hot cup of coffee. Then Mother Nature reared her ugly head once again and began to pour on the snow. It was a light snow but it lasted for almost six hours.
The better-half made it home safely from work, we had a quiet meal, and kicked back for a while. She’s scheduled early in the morning tomorrow so she headed off to bed early. I donned my winter outfit and headed outside to clear the driveway of snow before retiring. Thank God for that new snow thrower. I cleared the driveway in rather short order just after 8:00 pm so the better-half wouldn’t have issues in the morning.
Now that she’s in bed I have a few minutes to read a couple of chapters. I need to keep up with the adventures of Detective Eve Dallas, a NYC cop in the year 2056.
The construction weather report looks grim for tomorrow. I’m expecting a huge amount of aggravation, followed by a host of nicks and cuts, and the occasional moments of intense profanity and general yelling.
I love my life.
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