It's life, but not as we know it....

It's not redistribution, it's redressing the balance....

[thegreatduggo]

Here's a Truth for You: There are no Deities (Whichever Religious Fairy Tale) - None

Here in one sentence we have the cognitive dissonance of religion and not just Christianity, but all theocratic religions.

Tony Gonzales admits to having an affair with an aide who later took her own life. He said he'd asked god for forgiveness and god forgave him.

How fucking ridiculous is that? If we assume god exists and is able to hear Tony's prayer amongst 8 billion other people, some of whom are praying. Why 8 billion when there are actually 2.5 billion Christians? Well, there is only one god, so everyone praying must actually be praying to the same god regardless of their professed religion. Obviously, god can hear these prayers because he's omnipresent and omnipotent. But because these prayers are offered up to a false god, they are simply discarded: how dare you pray to a god that isn't me! But kind of is...kind of must be...

These prayers are discarded because the wrong prayer "handshake" was given or their minds were probed by god and found to be attached to a FAKE book!

And this is ignoring the fact that there are 46 major variations of Christianity and multiple thousands of smaller and finer denominations. Why? Because religion is man-made and when a group doesn't like something about their current group, they start a new one. It's man made.

So, god is out there sitting on a celestial throne, a white man with a flowing beard and robes, floating around with his son, who's actually part of him - even tho he was a real dude for a while - and some weird holy ghost dude? Of course not! He can't be a physical being, he's an ethereal presence, with 3 personalities or whatever...so how can man be created in god's image when he can't possibly have one? Simple: god is created in man's image, especially when you consider that homo sapiens didn't even exist until 300,000 years ago - a tiny fraction on the timescale of the universe. But the Bible doesn't believe in the big bang or evolution.

If Tony really was forgiven what is the point of asking for it in the first place? Is it just a rubber stamp exercise? Is it just an act of fealty? Pretty stupid right?

OR Tony is lying and god actually told him to go fuck himself? Why not just strike him down? Too obvious?

OR Tony had some internal dialogue with himself and forgave himself?

OR Tony doesn't give a fuck about anything, didn't even forgive himself, doesn't care about this poor young girl and will say any old shit to take the spotlight away.

I'm not saying this to offend anyone but I just can't take this shit anymore and I mean all theocratic religions - altho Hinduism does seem to have a better set of core values and is more inclusive.

And if you're offended, I'm sorry, but if you have complete faith, nothing should shake your belief or hurt you in any way.

It should be between you and your god and you should be comfortable in the fact that I will spend eternity in a fiery hell - which is a wonderful thing for any religion to include. What's a bit of eternal suffering between friends?

Take the red pill and stop propagating this nonense which does more harm than good. It's not all bad of course, but more often than not, religion is used for politcal ends or worse.

Whatever you're doing that's good with your church, you could do massively more by not wasting your time on bible classes, boring services and pontificating priests. Start up community centers and shelters in your churches instead. Focus on humaity not religious cant.

And think about this: the bible and all the other holy books were books written by ordinary men. They don't have provenance. They weren't handed down from heaven. There's not even a cover story for where it all comes from. Hell, the books aren't even that good! God is not even that nice an entity.

Tony Gonzales admits affair with aide who died by suicide

“​​I’ve asked God to forgive me, which he has,” the San Antonio Republican told a conservative radio host the day after he was forced into a

[thegreatduggo]

Insights on Elon Musk from Former Colleague Dr Philip Lowe of Neurovigil

Dr Philp Lowe (@brainking.bsky.social)

20-Feb-25

Check out this video commentary: www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJQ8N6KTfXQ

I have known Elon Musk at a deep level for 14 years, well before he was a household name. We used to text frequently. He would come to my birthday party and invite me to his parties. He would tell me everything about his women problems. As sons of highly accomplished men who married venuses, were violent and lost their fortunes, and who were bullied in high school, we had a number of things in common most people cannot relate to. We would hang out together late in Los Angeles. He would visit my San Diego lab. He invested in my company.

Elon is not a Nazi, per se.

He is something much better, or much worse, depending on how you look at it. Nazis believed that an entire race was above everyone else. Elon believes he is above everyone else. He used to think he worked on the most important problems. When I met him, he did not presume to be a technical person - he would be the first to say that he lacked the expertise to understand certain data. That happened later. Now, he acts as if he has all the solutions.

All his talk about getting to Mars to "maintain the light of consciousness" or about "free speech absolutism" is actually BS Elon knowingly feeds people manipulate them. Everything Elon does is about acquiring and consolidating power. That is why he likes far right parties, because they are easier to control. That is also why he gave himself $56 Billion which could have gone to the people actually doing the work and innovations he is taking credit for at Tesla (the reason he does not do patents is because he would not be listed as an inventor as putting a fake inventor on a patent would kill it and moreover it would reveal the superstars behind the work). His lust for power is also why he did xAl and Neuralink, to attempt to compete with OpenAl and NeuroVigil, respectively, despite being affiliated with them. Unlike Tesla and Twitter, he was unable to conquer those companies and tried to create rivals. I fired him with cause in December 2021 when he tried to undermine NV.

Elon did two Nazi salutes.

He did them for five main reasons:

1. He was concerned that the "Nazi wing" of the MAGA movement, under the influence of Steve Bannon, would drive him away from Trump, somewhere in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, rather than in the West Wing which is where he wants to be. He was already feeling raw over the fact that Trump did not follow his recommendation for Treasury Secretary and that the Senate byalso did not pick his first choice;

2. He was upset that he had had to go to Israel and Auschwitz to make up for agreeing with a Nazi sympathizer online and wanted to reclaim his "power" just like when he told advertisers to "go fuck yourself". This has nothing to do with Asperger's;

3. There are some Jews he actually hates: Sam Altman is amongst them;

4. He enjoys a good thrill and knew exactly what he was doing;

5. His narcissistic self was hoping the audience would reflect his abject gesture back to him, thereby showing complete control and dominion over it, and increasing his leverage over Trump. That did not happen.

Bottom line: Elon is not a Nazi but he did give two Nazi Salutes, which is completely unacceptable.

N.B. For the few whining about my post "sans connaissance the cause" and either trembling about my having shattered their illusions about their cult leader or thinking I am defending Elon:

I. My point is that he is transactional rather than ideological;

II. That being said, I am not defending him or his actions, just explaining them and no confirming that he did, in fact, do two Nazi Salutes if anyone had doubts or believed the doctored footage of Taylor Swift doing the same thing to normalize what Elon did;

III. At some point, it matters to few people if one is a Nazi or if one acts like one. My father was a Holocaust Survivor. 32 out of 35 of his family members were murdered by Nazis. My mother's grandparents were murdered in Auschwitz;

IV. After Elon tried to manipulate NV's stock in 2021, I fired him with cause, and he was unable to exercise his stock options. In the aftermath of the Nazi Salutes, I told both him and his wealth manager to fuck off. Any remaining friendship between us ended with the Nazi Salutes. He is blocked on my end and I am pretty sure I am blocked on his;

V. I did not share what he told me in confidence. I just happen to know him extremely well, the person, the aspirations and the Musk Mask;

VI. I know who I am, have no desire to be famous and give exceedingly few media interviews. I prefer to work in obscurity and let the work speak for itself. I am certainly not envious and would definitely not want Elon's life, including living in a bubble and having to make one outlandish claim after another and manipulate the public, elections and governments to shore up my stock and prevent the bubble from bursting. Unlike Elon, I am an actual scientist and inventor and I am not pretending to be someone I am not, like a fellow who got his BA in Econ at 26 all of a sudden pretending to be an expert in mechanical engineering, chemistry, rocket science, neuroscience and keeping the people actually doing the work hidden and paying people to play online games in his name to appear smart and feed his so-called "Supergenius" Personality Cult - the "Imperator" has no clothes, and he knows it. I am just very disappointed in what happened to someone I had a lot of deep admiration for and the first person to find out about my concerns about his behavior was always him;

VII. He is the one who betrayed a number of his friends, including Sergey, and, given his actions, many other people who believed him and believed in him. I have no sympathy for this behavior, and at some point, after having repeatedly confronted it in private, I believe the ethical thing to do is to speak out, forcefully and unapologetically, whatever the risks may be, so as to not be part of the timid flock remaining silent while evil is being done, including propping up far right governments around the world in part to deregulate his companies and become the first to deregulate his companies and become the first trillionaire and otherwise to "rule the planet" - he knows Mars won't be terraformed in his lifetime and he really wants his planet. No joke... Ethics matter. People matter. The truth matters.

I took down Descartes (through the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness) and I am definitely not afraid of a so-called inventor whose greatest invention is his image.

Note: Descartes posited that only humans are conscious. The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness purports that many non-human animals have the capacity for consciousness.

I will not be silent. You should not be either. I am a sovereign individual, and so are you. I stood up to bullies, and am stepping out of the dark to do it again.

Stop working for him and being exploited by him. Sell your Tesla and dump your Tesla stock. Nikola Tesla was a great, creative and courageous man who led with ethics and by example and he would not have wanted for his good name to have been used by him and would agree with my principled stance. Sign off of "X" which is boosting far right propaganda, and of your Starlink as well. He is a complete cunt who doesn't give a shit about you - only about power. Just ask Reid Hoffman. He only wants to control, dominate and use you - don't let him and cut him and his businesses out of your and your loved ones' lives entirely. Remember he is a total miserable self-loathing poser, and unless you are too, he will be much more afraid of you than you should ever be of him.

He will probably come after me, and I am completely fine with that. I am a self-made multi-billionaire with an armada of lawyers - literally - and most importantly, I know who I am and who I stand for, the people and their freedoms, whatever happens. He can send his dumb Proud Boys and Oath Keepers after me and they will be butchered on sight. Either way, I would rather die with honor than live as a coward.

"Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."

Elie Wiesel, Holocaust Survivor and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

[thegreatduggo]

School Days and a Lesson

Back in my school days, I was always in the top sets and one of younger pupils in each class. I got by pretty easily. I thought of myself as being relatively intelligent. It wasn't a matter of pride and I didn't think I was anything special. My parents seemed to think I was quite bright too. But in my classes, I was always in, say, the bottom third or quarter of each class. It didn't matter to me and neither was it uncomfortable. I got by just fine.

In my classes were the genuinely smart kids. They were the scholars - literally in some cases, meaning that some had been indeed won scholarships. They didn't laud it over anyone and they were decent chaps. I liked them although they were not usually my close acquaintances. We all got on fine. I enjoyed their abilities. I did have a couple of buddies who were actual scholars and we got on great. We developed our own Monty Python styled humor and had a lot of fun together. I miss all these different types and flavors of friendship.

Because I'd done my French O'level a term early, I started in a German class. My teacher was incredibly formal - a throwback to an earlier era. He was quite intimidating, very stern and always wore heavy duty, well polished brown dappled leather shoes.

On one occasion he made fun of a German translation which was "Father was strict but not stern". He thought that was ridiculous. He was saying "How can you be strict without being stern?" It was odd because he seemed strict and stern himself, but I think it hinted at a more caring person underneath who was maybe constrained by his upbringing.

We had a unique classroom configuration where three of the 20 odd desks were off to one side, in a sort of island. That meant that if Mr Clarke was addressing the whole class, the three of us sitting there were in his peripheral vision and it was a great place to be. It meant that he couldn't see what we were doing but it also meant we were less likely to be called on to contribute. We really liked that spot.

Funnily enough, Mr Clarke was a family friend and I was friendly with his son, who attended the same school. There was never any hint in class that there was any family connection. I didn't think of it that way for even a second.

So, one time, I was sitting at my desk with my mate Turnbull next to me. Clarke stops what he's saying and comes up to our little enclave and asks who's eating sweets. This absolutely verboten. There's a distinct pause and I say "Sir, I was eating mints before the lesson." He looks at me and says "Thanks for being honest." He turns away and Turnbull thanks me for bailing him out. I actually had no idea he was eating sweets, but it worked out well for him!

Clarke never laughed but he could be very dry and sarcastic. He made some sarcastic comment which got a laugh and then he started telling a story. We were confused. It was out of the blue and unlike him. We didn't know if it was an allegory or a true story.

He started talking about the importance of being honest. It even sounded somewhat humorous to begin with. A little boy had been accused of stealing another boy's pencil case. A prefect suspected the young Mr Clarke and started questioning him. He sat him down and towered above him, making him keep eye contact. He accused him and then said "You did it, don't lie" The little boy said "No Sir, I didn't do it." By this time we were all kind of shocked. We realized that this was something real.

The prefect kept saying "You did it, don't lie!" and after many minutes of grilling and intimidation, the little boy said "Yes Sir, I did it". He was then harshly beaten.

There was a long pause and then Mr Clarke said "And that little boy was me..."

We were stunned. And how shocking that a grown man, with a very tough exterior, could still be traumatized by something all those years later.

[thegreatduggo]

Dispatching from the Edge

Summer 1982, we'd upped sticks from our halcyon hangout in Topsham and shut up shop on our dog day afternoons. It was a bit of a sad goodbye as we'd had a great few months doing nothing but go to the local pubs, play darts and hang out. We were on social security and our rent was paid for, hell we even had our own housekeeper!

One time Mark looked up out our French doors onto the palatial garden and saw an old guy mowing our lawn. Chuckling and mystified, he asked who it was. We had no idea. It turned we also had our own gardener! They both got a bit ticked off about how damn lazy we were, sometimes leaving a whole week of dishes for our housekeeper.

At the end of the summer, the crew split off to our separate corners. Some went back home and others headed off elsewhere.

Me, I headed off to London to try my hand at dispatch riding in London on my trusty RD400.

Julian, kept signing on as if he was still living there and he used to go back, let himself in the front door and pick up his DHSS check. He let himself in one time and a voice came from the living room "Alan, is that you?" He picked up his check and very quietly retreated.

It was reputed that you could make a tidy sum as a dispatch rider in London, so I decided to head up to London and give it a shot. The truth was that it was not as easy as it seemed.

I was staying in the comfortable enclave of Barnes at the time - just a block away from where Marc Bolan had died after crashing his Mini into a tree.

I found a motorcycle courier firm nearby and they agreed to let me join their roster. You get paid by the job and most of the jobs go to the top riders but the company was quite fair in giving a slice of the jobs to novices like me. I wasn't making a lot of money but I felt it would get better if I stuck with it.

Navigation was by A-Z map book and I often got lost. One time I got badly lost and missed a deadline. One of the other riders found me and took the rest of my deliveries off me. She apologized but said that's just the way it goes. It was disheartening.

The only way to make it work well was to really know your way around London - akin to the black cab drivers with "The Knowledge".

I was more or less keeping afloat and I was hoping to get better at it until I was handling my jobs competently and earning trust.

However, after only 2 weeks, I was heading back to base, up Putney Hill towards Putney Heath at around 40 mph. There was 2 lanes of stopped traffic to my right and unbeknownst to me, the cars had made a gap for a car to turn right in front of me. Being a motorcycle, I'd got away from the lights ahead of the cars and this guy must have not looked and just assumed the road was clear on my side.

Before I could do anything, he was already full length broadside to me. All I could do was brake as hard as I could and then at the last instant, I decided to jump up off the pegs to help clear the car and avoid the handlebars.

I careened into the side of the car and catapulted over the roof. I felt a brutal impact as my legs got crushed into the handlebars from to the top of my thighs all the way down to my ankles. I flipped head over heels, over the top of the car and miraculously landed on my feet on the far side.

Why did I land on my feet? Well, when you've been in a major smash, you want to be able to tell yourself quickly that you're actually alright - it's basically a denial of what just happened - so in that moment, I searched for my feet and thus landed upright.

I recently saw a video of a Russian soldier being blown up inside a tank. He managed to crawl out the turret and then roll off down the side of the tank and land on his feet, before crumpling to the ground. He then proceeded to crawl away. He made it a few feet, before his legs ended up just paddling against the soil and he wasn't moving anywhere. He was probably thinking to himself "If I can just get away from here, I'll be ok" when in fact these were probably his last moments. It doesn't bear thinking about.

I stood by the side of the car and then hobbled round to the pavement and sat down. After I sat down, the pain overwhelmed me and I lay back on the pavement and gritted my teeth.

The petite girl dispatch rider who helped me out before, happened to be passing by and she stopped - a lovely little thing - and she took my deliveries. She said she'd contact HQ for me when she got to the next delivery. That's what we'd do, we'd call in from the reception of the drop-off for our next instruction.

While this was happening, a guy from across the street came over and he said he'd seen the whole thing. He gave me his name and number and said he would be a witness. He paused for a minute and then said "Don't mind me saying this, but that was very acrobatic how you flipped over the entire car and landed on your feet!"

The cops showed up and they insisted that I go to hospital. An ambulance turned up and took me down there. I got checked up and nothing was broken so they let me go.

A van driver from the Courier company came to get me and then pick up the bike.

He was a lovely fella and he was avuncular and comforting. When we got back to the bike, we manhandled it into the back of the van. I was in pain but I was able to limp my way thru it.

After we were done, he said that we should get a cup of tea. I demurred but then realized I could do with the comfort.

He took me up to Putney Heath where they had one of those hackney carriage comfort stations. These are those green shacks that you used to see round London and they have a long history.

He got me a big mug of tea and we stood outside the shack under the awning in the afternoon sun and I felt quite forlorn and lost but he really comforted me. And then on the radio, they played Margaritaville. I'd never heard it before and it seemed to sum up the moment: melancholy and poignant but a little hopeful too.

I didn't know the record and pre-internet, such things often remained mysteries and it wasn't till many years later, in the US, that I heard it again and was able to identify it. Great record with a special meaning to me.

Pete Dixon and Phil Purver's had a place in Ealing which I knew had had an accessible backyard so we dropped the bike off there and I left an explanatory note on it.

At the time, I was staying in a flop-house up the road for 35 quid a week. It was truly disgusting. I was in a room with 3 others. There was no place to lock your stuff up so it was blind faith that your stuff would not go missing.

The next day, I showed up at Phil and Pete's to explain the situation. Pete took one look at me and said "Doug, you look like shit! What's going on?"

I hadn't showered for days and I was covered in road dirt and I was staggering around like a drunkard on my battered legs. It just so happened that Phil had just gone away for 2 weeks and Pete offered me to to stay there. Oh my, was that ever a relief!

I'd spent only a few days in the flop-house and I really felt for those poor fuckers who had no other choice but to stay there - how soul destroying that must be and this was far from the worst of the worst. You see a place like this and see why people might choose the streets instead. We have to do better. The homeless situation is insane.

Without a bike, I had no obvious means of employment. I went to interview with a guy who claimed to be a diamond courier. Sounded like a fun job, right!

He interviewed me and the diamond courier option quickly receded. He tried to make out that he was an international man of mystery, but what he did do was a bit of motorcycle courier work some mini-cab work. He was a major bullshitter - one of many that I've met over the years.

He did have a Bentley and he would do chauffeured wedding work with it. He also had a Yamaha 100 which he would lend to me to do courier work. Most of my time was spent waiting for a job to come in, sitting in his living room, bored to tears.

The bike wasn't taxed or MOTed - which was nothing new to me - I would try to make sure that cop cars couldn't see the missing tax disk by staying in the blind spot.

One day, a passing cop car spotted the expired tax disk and I got pulled. I don't remember what happened about the expired tax, maybe Bob just renewed it, but the MOT didn't exist. Bob got all irate about it and said something along the lines of "I'm an upstanding businessman - how dare you suggest that my vehicles that are not fully legal!" Eventually he got a duplicate MOT - I think he knew the guy at the garage and got a forged one.

Bob was a total bullshit artist and a fraud - a Walter Mitty type who made up outrageous and far-fetched stories. He had a photo up on his wall in the living room which was his pride and joy, of him standing next to his Bentley. It was a professionally taken photo.

One day when I was waiting woefully for the next job to come in, the photographer showed up at the door. Apparently - and not all surprisingly - Bob had never paid for the photo. Soon it escalated it into a full-on shouting match, with Bob claiming that his impeccable business bon fides were being assaulted and how dare he impugn him!

The feisty little photographer managed to work his way round Bob, and into the living room where he grabbed the photo off the wall and headed out. Bob was a big guy, so it was quite brave of the little fella to hold his ground. He left Bob huffing and puffing about how outrageous the photographer had been. Lots of bluster in the aftermath.

There was another guy who working for Bob who drove a Ford Granada for Bob's car service. Let's call him Raj. We spent hours a day just hanging out waiting for work. The guy had a Kawasaki Z1000, which, aside from exotics, was the best and most powerful motorcycle generally available.

One day a dispatch job came in. Raj was bored and he said "Hey, let's do it on my bike!" I was like "Great - let's go!" So, we were riding along and the bike felt mean and powerful - champing at the bit. I kept saying "Let's give it a bit if stick!" And he was saying "Look there's no point. As soon as we speed up we'll have to slow back down again." And admittedly there was a lot of traffic around.

I had a large package under my arm and I could only hold on with one hand but once we'd delivered it, I could hold the grab rail tightly with both hands. We were heading towards Kingston Bridge and the bridge was wide and clear. I urged him again to give it some stick. There was a pause and then he decided to go for it. I leaned forward against the acceleration but as he opened it up more, I was inexorably pushed backwards, until I hit the point of no return and started to topple backwards off the bike. I was getting ready to kiss the tarmac, but as my feet came up off the pegs and got level with his elbows, i wrapped my legs round his waist and we went across the bridge with me lying horizontally - it must've looked pretty funny.

Fucker didn't slow down until we reached the other side. He made out that he hadn't noticed my legs round his waist, but he had tears running down running down his cheeks when we finally slowed down.

He was a funny guy. He claimed that he didn't slow down for roundabouts (meaning the big ones) - he would just drive onto them at 60 mph and he reckoned that because he was going faster than the traffic already on them, he could just slot in wherever he wanted.

Bob's wife was quite a cutie but he was sometimes a bully and would belittle her. He got uppity when I defended her when he'd been particularly unreasonable.

She recalled a time when he'd been trying to change a tire on the side of the road on a cold, rainy night. He wasn't very practical and as he kicked down on the tire iron, his foot slipped off, he lost his balance and fell into the puddles. She said that he looked like a hippopotamus, rolling around on his back trying to get back up. She fucking loved it and she was convulsed with laughter as she remembered it.

Eventually, I found a full set of RD400 forks on Motorcycle News including the headlight. When I went to pick them up, I couldn't help but notice that the VIN on the host motorcycle had been ground off. But it was 35 quid and I needed to get my bike fixed and get it out of Phil's garden, so I just let it go.

My bike wasn't taxed, MOTed or insured, but the cops let it go - I guess they felt sorry for me because of the accident. I took the damages up with a lawyer under legal aid and ended up getting 600 quid, which was a pretty damn good result. It wasn't a lot considering the injury but taking my circumstances into account, it was a good result. The bike had cost me 420 quid originally to give it some perspective.

My knees hurt for months afterwards. If I couldn't stretch my legs out for too long, like when sitting in the back seat of a car, I'd end up in a lot of pain. I couldn't get down on my haunches for even longer but eventually I think I more or less got completely back to normal. But I smacked up my knees numerous times thereafter so it's somewhat of an academic position as to how much was due to that accident!

[thegreatduggo]

An Honest Question...Mostly...

When I was working at Broadridge, I very rarely went to company meetings. They were pretty boring and uninformative and besides I usually had better things to do. But from time time I'd pay a visit - partly out of curiosity and partly just to recalibrate and see if it was the same old nonsense.

You had the coterie of the inner circle who would clap and laugh and toss out a few inner circle jokes. They had to show up - their absence would be noted - but, as part of the club, they were happy to be there. Then there the crusty old lifers who felt they had to show their faces but they were happy to toe the line. They were institutionalized and they bought into what they were expected to do. These are the people who buy into ludicrous management training sessions without understanding any of it, but would try to say the "right things".

There were also the younger fresh faces who were excited to be there and join the club and hang with the big cheeses.

I was none of these things but I liked to have some sense of what was on offer even if it was just to ponder how crap it was. Sometimes, I'd come in at the back and stay for 10 or 15 minutes then quietly leave.

On one occasion, the CFO did a presentation and I was stunned by how boring it was and it's really not the stuff of an all-hands meeting.

One time Rich Daly, our CEO, was coming to do an in-person presentation. Rich actually founded the original company and I'd never heard him speak, so I was curious to hear how he came across. For once, I took a seat in the thick of it, only a few rows back. I was there for the duration this time.

Rich was confident and could speak freely without notes but it wasn't exactly captivating material. I could certainly see how he had the balls and the belief to start up a successful company from the ground up.

At the time, our division was being spun off as a separate company, which was obviously big news. I'm not one to shout out questions to curry favor or to announce my presence. I'm not an arse though and if I was the senior manager in a presentation, I might throw out a couple of questions to help things along.

But in this case, I had a question that I was actually interested in. When Broadridge was spun off, Broadridge paid ADP $700 million - a very hefty sum. Considering that ADP wanted to spin Broadridge off, what was that $700 million for exactly? Given that it's their wish and we're all family at that point, why wouldn't you just break it off for nothing? If you think about it, the intellectual property essentially belongs to the division being spun off - they're the people that created it after all.

I can understand you might want to lob in a sort of service charge, maybe like a separation fee - perhaps $50 million, but $700 million seems pretty damn steep! Either way, there should be a sophisticated metric to support the amount being charged. Let's say it was for intellectual property, there should be an actual claculation to support that - perhaps based on the number of man-hours invested or maybe a year's worth of profits for that division from the prior year...but something tangible and quantifiable...however contrived.

So, I was genuinely interested in the answer. At the end of the presentation, I asked my question, something like "Broadridge paid ADP $700 million for the spin-off, how was the figure calculated?"

He paused and seemed pissed off. He said "Well, I've been sked that question before but never in quite that tone..." I wasn't bothered. It was a simple enough question after all.

Rich is a bullshitter and he's never going to be lost for words, so he launched into a lengthy non-answer. He said something like "Rest assured, this was a hard fought negotiation where every aspect was taken into consideration and believe me we made sure that we got a fair deal from ADP." He also said that it was entirely normal for the spin-off company to pay the parent. So, fundamentally he did not answer the question.

He then went on to say that the spin-off was tremendously successful and that the publicity was so good that the entire market knew about it because they'd put up a banner at some trade show.

One of the guys in my team lambasted the whole deal. When Lucent spun off from AT&T, they paid AT&T nothing and they were a much bigger company. Also Lucent took out a full page announcement in the New York Times.

Anyway, I don't much like Rich and I'm glad I pissed him off - bullshitting twat.

And my own boss, Terry, who sold Wilco to Broadridge really disliked Rich. He said "I can't stand dealing with that guy because he just doesn't fucking listen. He talks a lot but he just doesn't listen."

[thegreatduggo]

Last Bus to Tignes

I always had a problem at work with announcing my holiday plans. There was inevitably some major milestone on a project looming and I knew I'd get pushback on it. It wasn't my bosses who would object, it would be the client that I was working for - and more specifically, the client project manager who was on the hook to his own bosses.

And that made it harder to broach because the client didn't care about you as an employee - to them they were their resource who was contractually assigned to them.

Not to say that they were bastards - most were pretty decent - but they had a different view of you and your latitude to take time off. They put their project and their own personal standing first.

There would invariably be some rapidly approaching deadline and you'd be asked to delay until go-live. But in reality, any deadline beyond a couple of weeks out from when the project had essentially been completed, was almost guaranteed to be delayed.

On big projects, sometimes we had company-wide moratoriums on holiday time for anyone involved in the project until after go-live. On one particular project, I told my guys to take their time off as soon as possible because if (and when) the project got delayed, they'd be pushing back their holiday time for months and then something else would come along. My boss got really pissed at me for doing that with one of my team members. I was totally vindicated as the project didn't go live for many months after the original date.

As a consequence, I wouldn't bring up my impending travel plans until the last minute and it would inevitably be received with disbelief, then shock and horror. If I was really taking off on Friday afternoon, I'd say that I was taking off on Saturday and that I needed to leave early on Friday, when I really should have taken the Friday off to get ready in a controlled manner. Instead, I'd go into work and then work right up till the last minute - in reality, I'd push it beyond the last minute then go fucking ballistic trying rescue the situation.

On this particular occasion, I was going on a ski-trip to Tignes with a large group of friends. We were going by coach and the pickup point near Gloucester Rd tube station. Departure time was about 2pm.

I'd gone to work in the morning then come back home to Kentish Town to pick up my stuff. It was pretty chaotic and rushed but I got myself on the tube with enough time and a small margin for error.

As I stood on the tube train, I smiled to myself - enjoying the chaos and cutting it fine but all being well. Just at that moment it dawned on me that I didn't have my passport on me. Shit!

I jumped off the train at the next stop: Camden Town. Luckily, there was a train with a couple of minutes. I leapt onboard. To my horror, Chalk Farm was the next stop that came up - I'd got onto the wrong branch. I jumped off that train and exited the station to catch a cab back home. The cab got caught in so much traffic that I bailed and ran back with my big hold-all making running very awkward.

Back at home, I realized that there was no way I could get to Gloucester Rd in time by tube or taxi. The only viable option was by motorcycle. My trusty old Kawasaki Z400, which I bought from "Ironing Board" Mike Raven for 80 quid, in pieces - literally in a tea-chest. It was never legal in any respect for the year or so that I drove it round London: no MOT, tax or insurance and a bald back tire. I escaped parking tickets by parking in off-road spaces, against walls where the missing tax disk could not be seen.

Parking at Gloucester Rd out in the open for an entire week was very questionable. A ticket was highly likely but it was also a distinct possibility that it would be considered abandoned and either be impounded or stolen.

When we got back a week later, I was apprehensive. At first, I couldn't see it, but as I walked up to the space, I found it on its side. Had it just been knocked over? Who knows, but it hadn't leaked fuel and started up without any real issue. And there were no tickets!

A little side story...While we were waiting in the parking lot for the bus, Andy Cameron went off to get a pack of cigarettes, leaving his bag on the tarmac alongside all the other bags, waiting to load up. The coach opened up and we all threw our bags in and chose our seats. Andy showed up shortly after and asked if we'd loaded up his bag. We didn't pay any heed and just cracked jokes about how we'd left it behind. Andy chuckled along with us and didn't think any more or of it. The whole journey, Andy was bemoaning his sandwiches which he'd for got to take out of his bag.

When we got to the resort 24 hours later, Andy waited woefully for his bag to be revealed, until there was just Andy waiting and an empty coach luggage bay.

Andy bought a one-piece ski-suit and basically survived the whole week, wearing what he stood up in and a pair of socks that someone loaned him. So, we weren't surprised when every single morning we could hear Andy and Dave Brown arguing about how smelly each other's socks were. When we cleaned up at the end of the week, we found a rancid camembert cheese that Mike Brown had found in the fridge and placed under Dave and Andy's bunk beds on day one, lol!

[thegreatduggo]

Finally Spanked That Sumbitch Radiator!

For a while, I've been giving stink-eye to the caulk I'd put around the perimeter of the dining room radiator. It's been bubbling off because it can't handle the heat and it looks really manky. It's just another job I need to take care of....at some point...

I could easily scrape it out and replace it... but with what? I've done this job a few times on various radiators using various materials. Caulk is no good - it can't handle the heat (up to 212F/100C) - it goes tacky and eventually bubbles off.

Plaster of Paris is a great material: it's strong and hard but if the gap is too narrow, you have to use a concave joint like you do with a caulk - and it will eventually crack and split along that joint.

Construction adhesive is good, but it shrinks when used like a caulk to fill a gap, and that is greatly exacerbated by heat. It takes quite a long time - this took a good couple of winter seasons - but eventually it'll start cracking up.

These radiators are meant to be recessed into the walls and should flush or close to it, but every radiator was leaning forward out of the wall by as little as one inch and as much as three. They were also not secured in place and could be rocked back and forth by hand.

However, this was also the one radiator that I hadn't managed to secure back into the wall. It was leaning out by 1.5" at one end and 2.5" at the other - the skewedness made it look worse.

I'd done 5 others pretty successfully but this one didn't want to play ball. I'd improved it somewhat but not enough to make a big difference.

I thought "Right, if I'm going to redo the caulk, let me try one more time to get it back in the wall!" My general skills and resourcefulness are always improving and current me should be able to best me from 3 years ago.

I'd tried a few different approaches over the years. My first attempt was simply to push them back in by hand. It didn't go too well - it's tough to get any real purchase - all I could do was wear my grippiest shoes. Then you have to be able to jam shims underneath the feet before yo lose your grip. I managed to get the big radiator down from about 3 inches down to 2. But 2" is still way too much and it looks pretty crappy.

My next idea was to jack them up with a car jack. There's not enough clearance to insert a normal jack so I futzed around for a while, looking for a low profile jack. It was a dumb idea and it wouldn't have worked anyway - the rad needs to be rotated back on its axis into the recess and this would elevate the entire radiator and jam the top of it into the back of the recess. It would have to be a lift and a shove combined.

I continued to mull it over. What I needed was a way of pushing hard against the top of the radiator and holding it in place while I jammed shims under the front feet. There are only two ways to do this: screw a cross timber into the floor - which would damage the floor - or brace against an opposing wall. A cross-timber, an angled timer to push against the top of the radiator and extension timbers to make up the distance from the cross-timber to the angled thrust timber. To keep the thrust timber secure, both ends needed to be cut at angle of about 20 degrees.

This worked pretty well on the living room radiator, which was the most fucked up one and in the most noticeable location. It leaned out by 2.5" to 3" and it was very wobbly. I got it down to about 0.5" - aesthetically, that was good enough and a vast improvement. However, the same technique didn't do much at all to the dining room radiator. I did the 4 small radiators on the second floor (which are only about 3 ft wide) and I had good results with all of them.

Over the intervening years, I had a couple goes with the dining room radiator thinking: I'll just try a bit harder this time. But effort wasn't the issue and trying harder didn't help...

This time round, I decided to take a closer look and find out where the problem really was. Digging into the wall, there appeared to be a metal surround to the radiator. Maybe this hard edge was stopping the radiator from rotating up into the wall?

I wondered if I could cut the metal. I drilled into it to get a better idea of what I was dealing with, then I cut sliced into it with the all purpose "Bad Blade" on the angle-grinder. It made a hell of a mess and it was slow. I didn't fancy filling the dining room, kitchen and living room with fine dust, so I gave that up. Instead, I chipped away at the plaster with a putty chisel and found this was actually heavy metal corner section for drywall. I dug out the end of it and it felt like I might be able to rip the whole thing out, plaster and all - I gave it a good old yank and I was able to tear the whole thing out.

Having laid waste to the radiator surround and made a big mess, I really hoped that this was the reason the rad wouldn't go back into the wall.

I tuned up my timber jack system from my prior attempts. I selected a longer length for the angled timber that pushes against the top of the radiator, and calculated the angle: 22 degrees, call it 20 because it will decrease as it slides down the rad.

I didn't have the necessary timber off-cuts lying around and I didn't want to use my uncut 2 x 4s because I need the full length for my fence repairs.

The previous day, when I was scouting around for my street cat: Mini-Mum I'd seen some discarded timber on a nearby construction project. I went over there and found a piece that would do the job. Later on, I needed one more piece to reach the radiator from the far wall, so I went back and got another piece.

I put it all in place, measured the length for the extension and cut it to size. The cross piece runs across the 6 ft French door frame, so I used 3/4" shims to raise it above the quarter round, otherwise it would either damage the quarter round or jump over it.

Once everything was in place, I lined myself up and dumped all my weight onto the angled timber with my knee. I thought there might be an initial resistance, followed by a breakthrough and a good sized movement. But it barely budged - maybe an 1/8" - and it didn't feel like it would move anymore.

I tried a couple more times then gave up for the day for a rethink.

The next day, I checked that there was actually enough clearance behind the rad for it to go back into the wall. I used a rod with a 90 degree bend, rotated it behind the rad and then pulled back and forward to check the clearance - there was enough room. But the gap above the rad was still tight due to another metal corner section on the back side of the wall section. I gave it a good going over with a putty chisel and a trim bar. Then I used a pry bar and a coal chisel to widen out the gap.

The angled timber had been snagging against the radiator grills (and ripping off the paint), so I put a piece of plywood between the rad and the end of the angled timber to act as a slider - this would stop it catching on the radiator vents. I also doubled up on the support across the door frame with another 2 x 4.

I gave the angled timber some full force down-kicks and I didn't hold back. It didn't feel that much had happened, but given that I had knocked out a load of plaster, there was no longer a clear frame of reference, so I used a straight edge to check it and to my surprise, the rad had actually gone way back into the wall recess. I gave it a bit more application to make sure, and there was no more movement. I then positioned the jack at the end of the rad (which had been leaning out further) and still no more movement.

Now, I had to fix the radiator in place. I used a thick porcelain tile for the main shim shims under the front feet - it had to be a rigid material with a big enough footprint not to compress the floorboard underneath them. They couldn't be too big or they would slide over the old uneven sub-flooring. I made up the rest of the gap with heavy washers and other metal shims.

They say insanity is doing the same thing over and over and hoping to a different result - that's kind of what I do, but I do evolve my approach slightly and eventually I do win. This win took me 10 years!

[thegreatduggo]

Chemistry Class for Reprobates

Exeter University, Summer 1980. Me and my chemistry mates: Phil Perkins, Andy Kennedy, Ian Brown-Little and Nick Jeffries are finishing up on our third year projects.

We're doing some of it in our spare time. There's no lab supervision out of hours and we've found that we can pretty much come and go as we please. We make use of this to catch up on missed or unfinished practicals, but we also take advantage of it to mess around and get up to mischief - signing out various chemicals and supplies just to have fun with. Most students just worked within the official lab sessions - assumed the lab techs would challenge them out of hours, but the lab techs didn't simply care - they assumed you had permission. So, we treated the lab as our own domain.

Andy's doing a project that involves some sort of spinning electrode where the contact is made via a small bath of mercury. He's having a bit of trouble with the contact so he talks to the techs in the stores and they tell him that it might be a problem with the purity of the mercury. Turns out they have some triple distilled mercury available but it's the only mercury that pure in the whole department, so they ask him to be very careful with it.

He's working in the lab on his own and as we're in the vicinity, we drop in to see how he's getting on... and to annoy him...

It's funny, you could pretty much check out any chemical you wanted from the stores. One time, Phil had the bright idea of checking out the chemicals that were the end products of the syntheses of the practicals. Again, the lab techs didn't care and we discovered that these chemicals were simply the end products of other students' practicals! Who knows if it was even the right chemical.

It was all academic as there's no way anyone had the time or the inclination to actually check the end products. Handing in the end product at the conclusion of the practical was simply a way to try to keep the students honest - it didn't work in our case 😆.

While we're goofing around, we ask Andy how it's going and he explains the situation with the mercury. Then he shows us the vial - which was probably 4 or 5 cc worth - and hands it to Phil. Phil feels the weight of it in his hand and it feels really heavy at 13.5 times the density of water and double that of iron.

Andy was immediately on guard and cautioned us about how rare and important this stuff was to his project. Phil immediately gave me this devilish look, head bowed down, but mischievously looking up. I just nodded minimally with a smirk - Andy yelled out "Don't fuck around with it! They don't have any more in the department!"

Phil lobbed it over to me. I was confident. The vial hit the meat of my thumb but it was a little too high and as the mercury moved up the vial, it flipped it over my thumb and we gawped on helplessly as it smashed on the ground.

Andy just shook his head and looked away "You fucking idiots..." He basically just shrugged it off as of to say "I've got nobheads for friends - what else could I expect"

We spent the next hour on our hands and knees collecting mercury using paper for the bigger globules and fine teat-pipettes to pickup the smaller pieces, including from the small gaps in between the parquet floor blocks. We did a pretty good job but if we had told anyone, they would probably have shut the lab down, pumped it out and then did a more thorough cleanup.

There were never any repercussions about the loss of the mercury - for one thing there's not a lot of call for triple distilled mercury! As for Andy, I never heard any more gripes from him on the subject, so I guess he just made up his results!

On a similar theme, I was working on my own one afternoon in a room off the main lab. I was working on a spectrometer of some sort, measuring optical transmission. I left the room and when I came back, Matt was waiting behind the door and tried to chloroform me, James Bond style, lol! It didn't work but it illustrates the general mindset we operated under.

[thegreatduggo]

A Close Shave!

Circa 1990, I was riding the CBR thru South Ken and I was on a road that became Embankment further down. As I rode down the street, I saw a black cab, with his nose out from a side road - nothing obscuring line of sight - no walls, buildings or anything and he was completely stationary, but sticking out a couple of feet.

I kept watching him and he stayed put, but when I got really close, he pulled out. I jammed on the anchors and came to a stop with my front wheel almost touching his front wheel arch. My adrenalin was coursing and I threw a wobbler, smacking my fist onto his bonnet to emphasize my point.

After I was done, I rode off at a huge rate of knots. The road had a big arc to the left and opened up into 3 lanes. I pinned it thru the bend and was soon doing 90 mph, but as i followed the bend round, to my horror I saw an old hunched over lady, plodding across the road with her head down. I started braking but because I was on a curve, it was difficult to lean harder while braking.

The thing you have to think of with pedestrians, is that you don't know how they will react. If she sees me, she'll be petrified. She's unlikely to stay put - will she try to make a run for it and intercept me as I go in front of her, if I go behind, will she turn back to the other curb to find safety?

I'm braking and trying to corner hard and I seem to be drawn to her as if by a magnet.

As I get close, I'm still going quite quick but she's clearly oblivious to me. She hasn't looked up at all and I know she's not going to. Maybe she can't hear me even though my bike must be quite loud.

I can see that at her current pace, I can just squeak by in front of her without clipping the curb. I let off the anchors and sail by at some lick. 🤦‍♂️🤞😆

[thegreatduggo]

The Cat Knackerers - These Cats Are Knackering Me

For the fourth or fifth successive time, I've had a very late night trying to wrangle the cats inside so that I can lock the backdoor and go to bed. I try my best not to split them between inside and outside.

The cats had been playing nicely inside earlier on and it seemed that they might all be content now and ready to stay inside for the night and chill. But around 11 pm, they all disappeared - worse than that, I couldn't see them anywhere - inside or out. Not too worried at this point - I've got a couple of hours to resolve things before bedtime, but I don't like it when I can't at least some of them.

I do a fairly thorough house search - nothing doing. I do a recce outside with flashlight - front and back. No luck.

But around 12:30 am, I hear crunching and the cats start drifting in and snacking from their bowls. Amazing, after a few minutes, all 5 are here. Result! They also seem be quite calm - so more likely to stay put.

I can't just go up to the backdoor and close it, because they will all just scarper. What I can do is go out the front door and come back round to the backdoor, but I don't do it immediately and when I look back, they're all gone. And I can't see them anywhere.

If I can see a bunch of them, I know they're probably all around nearby, but if I can't see any of them, it's not good. Have they gone into the street, maybe ventured too far and got lost?

For the next couple of hours, I do periodic searches, looking all round the back yard, under my cars, front yard, in the neighbors' yards, out in the street, under the cars there too.

My normal night is now in jeopardy and I'm worried that I've still seen no sign of them. Later on Mini-Mum reappears with 2 kittens - that's a start. I shut the backdoor but let Mini-Mum out from time to time to do searches herself. I do repeat house searches, under furniture, under beds and I find one kitten up on the third floor - where they don't usually venture. I lead Mini-Mum up there and she seems relieved to find him. Cleaning and feeding ensue. Are the others perhaps just hiding inside?

On an earlier recce, I had spotted a skunk and got worried that maybe a kitten had got curious and got into trouble. I had followed the skunk and it had disappeared into the night, but you never know. Skunks are not particularly aggressive but they will defend themselves and they do eat meat!

So, at this point I think I have 3 kittens inside and Mini-Mum. I hope that the other 2 will return and just spend the night under the deck.

It's now about 2 am and I head up to bed, but on second thoughts, I go back down to check the backdoor yet again. I'm pretty sure (but not certain) that 1 or 2 kittens are still outside. I open the door and in jumps Zangado.

This is a problem because the relationship between him and Mini-Mum is tense. She's swatted him a few times but I'm always around to deescalate in case it goes off. If Z retaliated it could be bad, but to date he just shrugs it off and walks away, looking slightly miffed.

It's pretty unusual for Z to show up at this time, but if he does, it's normally fleeting, he snacks a bit and leaves. But this time he ambles on inside. So I chaperone him and I intend to usher him out, but he keep going and heads upstairs and I cant head him off. I don't want to start corralling him, running around and scaring him out - that might betray what trust he has and I may only end up cornering him to no benefit.

He's never willingly spent the night indoors, so this is an odd development. I escort him to make sure he doesn't engage with Mini-Mum. Bizarrely, he goes all the way up to my room and settles down by the window. He's very occasionally been up to my room, but he normally lies on the bed, never on the floor by the window.

I go back to check on Mini-Mum. She's on the third floor staircase. I pet her and she starts going a bit crazy, squirming and rolling around like mad, purring like crazy and even giving me little bites and scratches. What is going on? I've never seen her so loopy.

It's now about 3 am and Z seems to be settled in which is concerning. Will he wake up and cross paths with Mini-Mum with no way out? Will he take a dump somewhere (won't be the first time)?

I leave my bedroom door open so that at least he can get tothe litter tray - and HOPE he uses it!

I can't sleep so I put the TV on and try to doze off.

It's a restless night. Amazingly, Z sleeps until about 8:30 am. He mews at me in the morning - again, odd, because, his mews normally only mean "let me in" or "give me that food". He will take pets on the head and rub past my legs when food is coming but other than that he mostly ignores me. He might disappear upstairs during the day for a few hours but he doesn't have any desire to be around me. He just finds a nice spot and naps for a few hours, so it was really surprising when he briefly jumped up on the bed.

I give it some more minutes, but when I look up, he's gone. I go downstairs to check on him. He's made it down to the kitchen and apparently he's made it past Mini-Mum on the stairs without incident. I imagine he wants to split, so I open the backdoor. He goes out but he comes right back in. Unusual again. Then the others show up at the feeding station.

And now begins a complicated dance of trying to feed them all without them rubbing each other up the wrong way.

Z doesn't like it when the kittens come up to his food - which they always do - because they're kind of intrigued by this mysterious fellow! They spook him and it tends to put him off his food and I feel sorry for him, but sometimes he gets annoyed and swats them. I think he knows he shouldn't so he holds himself back and backs off when he'd really like clock them.

They don't pay much heed to that but there's always potential for something more aggressive, so I'm always keeping an eye on the interactions. I can move the kittens away from him quite easily because they get jittery when I get close to them.

I'm there juggling bowls and doing crowd control. Trying to get them to focus on their own bowls and keep them distracted.

Eventually, I reach some sort of equilibrium and the crowd disperses and I get some respite.

[thegreatduggo]

Get Me Breakfast!

So one morning at 81 Mount Pleasant Rd (circa 1980), Phil comes into my room to wake me up because I was about to oversleep for a lecture. It was a friendly gesture because it wasn't even a lecture Phil was attending.

But before Phil could say anything I hear him come in and immediately say "2 slices of toast and a cup of tea, if you don't mind"

It's rare to see Phil lost for words, but he was. His jaw dropped and after the cogs turned, he was clearly about to say " Fuck off!" but he changed his mind and decided to call my bluff.

And off he went to the kitchen. 5 minutes later he comes back in with a cup of tea and 2 slices of toast and marmalade, but as he opens the door the toast slips off the plate. Phil picks it back up and brings it over to me in bed.

I ask if it landed right way up. I was concerned because my carpet was always covered in grit and outdoor dirt. My other housemates tended to use my room as a break-room because they knew I could always be distracted and would never tell them to get lost. The problem was that when one left another one would turn up shortly after, so I never got any work done.

Anyway, so Phil leaves and I munch down on the toast and it seems fine. But toward the end, I started to notice an undue crunchiness and I take a closer look - the toast is covered in grit, and hairs and all kinds of crap...

Of course, it hadn't landed right way up...

[thegreatduggo]

Sometimes a Great Notion?

Every so often, I'll have a brilliant idea to break with some trivial habit.

A few spring to mind.

In my old apt, I would flip four light switches on my way to bed - the main living room light, the kitchen light and turn on the corridor light and then turn it off again at the far end. Not exactly a big deal.

The corridor is only about 12' long so I thought, why not skip the corridor light altogether? It's not like I need to see where I'm going - it's a few steps in a straight line.

I think it was only the second time I did it, I'd left the ironing board out with the iron on top. I plowed right into it. The iron crashed onto the tiled floor and the ironing board collapsed. It was about 1am, so I'm not quite sure what my downstairs neighbor made of it!

I have a similar routine in my house now. At the top of the first flight of stairs, I turn on the next stair light and then go back to turn off the lower one.

There's only about 4' between them so I decided to skip one step and turn off the lower light first and start to walk up the second flight before I flip the upper switch. So happens, I'd staged the newly emptied trash bin on the second stair earlier on. It's rectangular and has a quite sharp edge. I walked right into it and barked my shin all the way down - it bloody well hurt, lol!

Then there's the "I won't forget that" variety. After I've poured my second cup of coffee I put the karaf back on the plate. Because it's still hot it can end up crusting coffee onto the bottom of the pot. So, one time I decide to soak the pot, but rather than leave it in the sink, where it might get broken. I put it back on the plate.

The next morning after my morning brew, the karaf felt curiously heavy...let's just say that was not a great cup of coffee!

And the last one was most galling. I needed to move the step ladder to take a broom off the wall. I moved the step ladder 1' to one side where it sat right under the garage door. I knew that would be disastrous if the garage door closed but there's no way I can forget that, right? 15 seconds later I walked straight out and hit the close button. Immediately, there was a horredous cacophany of graunching and straining of metal. The door didn't even want to stop because the resistance was not enough to trigger the shutoff. It was pure chaos.

This is the worst case scenario for an obstructed garage door. If it was dead center it would activate the closing force shutoff, but at one side, it just skews the door, pops the tracks, keeps going and busts everything. It even pulled the motor arm right off the door and broke the strut welds on the top of the door.

Fortunately the track itself was not damaged and I was able to repair the door it by bolting in a reinforcing plate. The door isn't quite 100% but it's close enough. It's still bloody annoying tho !

[thegreatduggo]

Hopalong Zangado Takes a Trip to the Vet

Zangado came in with a bad foot a couple of days ago. He couldn't put any weight on it at all, so it was clearly quite serious. I'd never picked him up and having been bitten by him so hard on my wrist that it immediately swelled up and even interrupted my sleep for a couple of nights - and then took 2 months to heal - I was somewhat apprehensive about getting him to the vet! Plus it was Superbowl night and although I didin't really care much about the result, I wanted to watch it and not get trapped at the vet's. So I delayed the showdown until the next day. He'd been inside all day and was getting really restless. He desperately wanted to get outside, despite the injury and the fact that it was -8C outside, but I couldn't do that. There would no guarantee that he would show up the next day. However, I really didn't want him to take another shit on the carpet. I kept pushing the cat litter tray in front of him, to imprint it on him, but he wasn't going for it. Eventually he had a half-hearted attempt to use it, but, no shit, literally: no shit. In the end, I stayed up all night on the sofa to keep an eye on him. I fell asleep around 7am and woke up a couple of hours later. He'd finally taken a shit and thank god he'd used the litter tray - it was a particularly nasty shit. I was retching like a bastard cleaning it out of the tray. I wasn't even breathing thru my nose but I knew it was toxic because I could smell it form yards away and that was enough to set me off. After much procrastinating, I finally confronted the elephant [cat] in the room. I'd been acclimatizing him to the cat carrier for a few weeks and I could get him in there using catnip but this day he just wasn't interested in the catnip. Bollocks! Ahhh, but I had fresh turkey in the fridge. I gave him some pieces of breast meat – which he adores – and put it in the carrier. He went right in and wasn't even particularly bothered as I pushed his rump in with the door. I covered the carrier with a towel - darkness tends to calm animals. When I picked up the carrier, there was some initial bolting around but that soon subsided. He seemed to get pretty calm and remained that way even once the car started moving. The emergency care veterinary center was a really pleasant well-run facility. It was almost exclusively run by young women. They not only ran a great operation but they were really nice while doing it. I was incredibly impressed and appreciative. It's actually in the location of the old Green Man Lounge – a decent bar that I used to occasionally visit some 25 years ago! I warned the staff that Z was a bit wild and could be aggressive – they weren't fazed, but they exercised caution. They dealt with him really well and kept him under control without any issues. The vet does an initial exam and then gives him a sedative, an antibiotic and some painkiller which he takes without any complaint. He's a tough guy and the nurse says that he's just pure muscle. He's got that stray cat strut! The nurse comes back after 20 minutes or so and Z is still very active. They give him another 15 mins to let it take. But he's still very much awake after that. So they gave him another shot and another 20 mins. He still seems pretty awake. We put the carrier cover back on but the door isn't properly located. Z gets a bit lively and manages to push to door out. He tries to escape and kind of gets stuck between the door and the box. I manage to free him up and push him back in. He's still quite awake after the second shot, but they decide just to carry on and see how it goes. His initial struggling seems to quieten him down and he stops struggling – maybe the extra activity circulated the sedative all around his system. However, when the vet tries to lance his foot with a needle, he goes ballistic – clearly, it's very painful, but they keep him under tight control as he tries to claw the hell out of everyone. They take him off for an x-ray and he's well-behaved all the way through. They bring him back and we put him back in the carrier with the lid in place,

just in case. When they come back to give him the reversal, we take the lid off and he makes a break for it and leaps off the table – bad foot and sedatives be damned! The nurse grabs him before he disappears under some holding cages. He gets the reversal, I pay my billl and we head out of there. The vet says that he'll probably just want to sleep when we get back home so best keep him inside for the rest of the day. He's pretty good on the way back, but when I get him inside and let him out, he's really restless. I give him some food which he scarfs down double quick, like nothing has happened. Then he has some milk. Then he proceeds to run from the front door to the back door, shoving his nose up by the door jam trying to sniff the air and crying relentlessly. After 45 minutes of this, I call the vet and she says, if he's active and seems normal, just let him out. It wasn't particularly happy about it but that's what he wanted. It was -8C that night and yet he disappeared for over 24 hours! Being that he'd been out all day and night, I figured I could probably lock him in for the night last night and get away with it, and give him some quality recovery time. He was generally quite calm and he even went back in the carrier to snooze for a few hours, which really surprised me – I thought he'd have bad memories of it but apparently not! Of course, now he's gone again but he seemed able to put some weight on his foot now that the painkiller has worn off. Let's see if he comes back tonight.

[thegreatduggo]

The Last Game

I played 5-a-side football at Chelsea Piers with a work team, from something like 1996 to 2004.

The American format 5-a-side pitch is very different to the UK version. The pitch is much like an ice-hockey rink with an astroturf surface. It has high plexiglass sides which have curved corners. The goals are about 7' tall and 10' wide. There's no head hight rule, so the game is very different, plus the astroturf means that falls are way less dangerous than on the hardcourt surface that we have in the UK. Having said that, a good tumble will still tear up your knees by way of friction burns.

Around 2001, I began to dawn on me that something was going radically wrong with my body. I'm talking about general and widespread pain in my lower body and lower back. It did't start in 2001, in fact, it dated back much much further, but I'd been able to subsume it, ignore it and suppress it up till then.

I played 5-a-side in London at the Britannia Center in Hoxton from 1986-1984 with Dave Chantry, Dave Brown, Paul Brown, Mike Brown, Andy Cameron, Pete Newton, Dan Flowerdew, Julian James and various others over the duration. There were no substitutions and we never fielded more than 5 players but folk rotated through the team as they came and went, but the longest lived core of the team was myself, Dave Chantry, Dave Brown and Andy Cameron.

It was a tough workout but I had no problem with it, nor did the rest of the team - we were all pretty fit - but later when I turned in for the night, the pain would start buidling up. It was general and would suffuse my lower body, especially my lower back. The next day or two I would walk funny, with the lilt of a cart-horse. Sometimes people would comment on it. They'd say "Why are you limping?" and I'd get annoyed. I'd say "I'm not limping - it's just the way I am!" I wasn't limping, I was galumphing.

It would take me an hour or so just to get to sleep despite how tired I was.

So, I carried on playing football at Chelsea Piers and the pain continued.

It was around 2001 that I started wondering what was going on. I started taking my trousers off by treading on the hems and walking backwards. It kind of amused me. I made myself chuckle.

I used to run up the WTC escalator 2 steps at a time and was vaguely aware that my legs were somehow at the limit of their travel. I could still do it, but something was going on - what was it?

One time my girlfriend was chasing me and I became really aware that I couldn't lengthen my stride. It was odd.

In 1999, I took a road trip on the bike up to the finger lakes. I did 800 miles in 36 hours - the most mileage I'd ever done in suh a short period of time. By the end of it, the pain in my lower back (or so it seemed) was massive and at every stop, I'd stand up, scream, stretch my legs out and get enough relief to carry on.

I got my first x-rays in 2001 and I could not countenance the diagnosis of hip degeneration through arthritis.

So, my football playing was getting more and more painful. In 2004, our football team was starting to dissolve. We'd had a really diverse rosta of players over the years. We started off with a pretty amateurish rosta but thru the years we had some extraordinary players in our mix. Really talented players. Some were journeymen. Players who just knew the craft and played without flash. Ian Moore was a superb defender. He never ran up the field trying to take a pop on goal, but woe betide anyone who came at him in defense - he'd shut that fucker down. Think along the lines of Paul McGrath.

Fireman Steve could strike a ball harder than anyone I've ever seen and some of the teams in the league were pretty hardcore. Steve could take a shot right off the kick-off and score with a ground level rocket. I've seen players leaving the pitch after being hit by one of his shots.

So, back to the story. By 2004, we'd started to struggle to put out a full team every week. In this format, you really need a minimum of 8 players to be able to do the rotations, but most teams would have 9, 10 or 11 players in the line-up.

We scraped our way through the season. We played on a Friday, so we didn't have a problem with the 11pm fixtures and we'd still head off for a few pints after the game and as Manhattan bars were open till 4am, we had plenty of time to get a few down our necks.

Due to the Christmas break, our last match was going to be played at 11pm.... on a fucking Wednesday!

I really didn't want to play and I was going to bail out but then I felt guilty that I'd be letting the other players down. It's really tough going if you have no subs so I didn't want to let the other lads down.

I showed up tired and unenthused. Worse was to follow: we only had 3 players! For fuck's sake! I'd shown up to back up the other players and now we were the ones that needed the fucking backup!

Racing round the complex we managed to find the Piers custodian who quite often played on our team. This guy was a West Indian and was probably the best player in the entire league. Christ knows why he elected to play with us... I guess he just liked our vibe.

We were playing the bottom placed team but they had a full rosta and I knew it would be brutal. Having no subs is is bad enough but being one player down is absurd! We started off and after 5 or 10 minute, a fat bloke showed up and wanted to play. Beggars can't be choosers. He wasn't very good but he got stuck in.

By this stage, I could only run in short choppy steps. That's not too much of a problem on a short field format but every step added to my accruing pain.

I was quite good at getting in position for a cross and tap in and with our Carribean wizard carving down the middle, he set me up for a few simple goals. But when the ball came across in front of me, I couldn't step out to reach it. I had to slide in, lift my foot to steer the ball into the net.

There may have even been a few chuckles because people thought I was hamming it up.

I got a hat-trick and shambled off the pitch, utterly destroyed. We won 9-6. I can't say that I was pleased. I just wanted to get the fuck off that pitch and go home.

I did feel that it was a good swan-song though and that I'd done my duty to the team.

It was only in 2011 that I finally accepted my diagnosis of totally fucked up hips. I had them both replaced using Birmingham Hip Resurfacing in January 2012.

It was fucking miserable. Due to a surgical infection, I spent a month in hospital. I was on IV antibiotics for 7 weeks in total. Back at home I had to hook myself up to an IV bag 3 times a day an after that I was on strong antibiotics for 2 years. I lost 18 lbs in hosptial because they punctured my spinal dura which made me massively nauseous, fatigued and gave me huge inertial headaches. It also killed my appetite for 2 months.

That was just part of it, but nevertheless, after 2 months - just one day late - I showed back up at work, without crutches. So, of course, it looked to everyone like nothing untoward had happened!

[thegreatduggo]

Area Motorcycle Repairman (Neil's RD400)

I've forgotten some of the connective tissue of this story but I remember the main elements.

Neil was on one of the players in the Exter University Bar Dart's League (the Ram Bar). He was a cool looking guy, slightly effeiminate, with curiously striking eyes. It took me quite a few years to realize that he'd been wearing eye-liner. It wasn't common at the time and I didn't realize that that was the effect of eye-liner!

He looked a bit like Julian Cope of The Teardrop Explodes. I got to know him and I got on quite well with him.

I may have cozied up to him because he was a cool looking dude and I enjoyed being accepted into his orbit. Now, I look back on it, he was a genuinely nice guy but he really wasn't that interesting. I could have a decent enough conversation with him, but it's not like he cracked jokes or made me laugh or brought up unexpected topics or led the conversation. I made the conversation and kept him engaged.

Anyway, he rode an RD400, like me and at some point during the summer of 1981, he told me that his RD had seized up down in Exmouth (as it were).

I was well versed in working on the RD and I could do pretty much everything on it, not only that, but I was adept at finding used parts from breaker's yards, either directly or thru the pages of MCN - something I did on a regular basis.

I offered to fix Neil's bike for him - partly because I was proud of my skills and partly to impress him. I also knew how to tow a motorcycle with another motorcycle, having done it once before when I was working as a professional bird-scarer on a cherry orchard near Wantage off the A34. On that occasion, my mate, Tom, towed me 17 miles after I'd broken down a few days earlier. It was hell but we managed it.

I asked Phil if he would give me a lift down there and tow me on his RD400. He was up for it, so one evening we rode down to pick it up. It was a tough ride but we got it done without too many incidents.

The trick is to maintain tension on the tow rope at all times and the way to do that is for the towed bike to do as much of the braking as possible - easier said than done. The rope tends to go slack often, and then when the lead rider speeds up again the rope snaps tight and jolts both bikes, causing them to jerk off path, then the rope goes slack again until you reach a new steady state.

We got it back successfully to my place in Topsham.

At the time I was working on my own RD400 and I had the tank off to fill a dent and to respray it. So, I borrowed the tank off Neil's bike. Turned out the tank had a leak. There was a cracked weld which I managed to get a silver solder repair which appeared to do the job.

I got to work on the bike and soon found the problem. One of the balancing plugs in the crankshaft had broken free and blocked the con-rod. I decided to find a used crank on MCN. I found one pretty quickly and mail-ordered it. It took a while to arrive and when it did it was damaged. It had been wrapped in cardboard but the con-rods were poking out of the cardboard and one was bent. I managed o convince them to allow me to send it back and give me a refund.

That was a tricky situation to deal with back in those days - especially dealing with a breaker's yard! They could just tell you to fuck off and say that it wasn't their fault or whatever. But after a lot of fucking around, I returned it and got my money back. I found another one shortly thereafter. I was extremely nervous about it getting damaged or disappearing in the post. I was very relieved when it turned up in good shape!

All the while, I was giving Neil updates every time I saw him, explaining what was going on. It all sounded like a shaggy-dog story and every time I explained another delay, it sounded less believable. It was perverse because here I was feeling gulity when I was the one who was acually being inconvenienced and doing all the hard work! In fairness to Neil, he never complained but nevertheless I'd ended up in a bad position from being the good guy.

By this time we'd moved out of Topsham Rd and I was going back home to do an MSc at Bristol University.

Julian, Celia and Jacque moved into a new place in Topsham village. Somehow, I managed to shift Neil's bike to Sarah Vick's place on the hill on Mount Pleasant Rd and drop it off it in their small unkempt garden.

I used to come down from Bristol and visit Jacque in Topsham, then I would cycle into Exeter and do some work on Neil's bike.

One Saturday, I was at Sue's and Matt's place. Matt had just come back from Ireland and he had like 5 crates of home brew that had been sitting in his back yard for 6 months. It was in Grolsch bottles that he's stolen from the pub he'd worked in.

The beer was, shall we say, very lively! Meaning it was overfemented in the bottle and once opened it would cascade nothing but froth for minutes on end - it was the second time I'd experienced that phenomenon, so I reckoned we could push through it - and we did...

We drank all night and I believe it was the same occasion that the most excellent Stan was in attendance.

Stan was Al the Slug's roommate in the first year in Birks Hall. Stan was extremely bright and incredibly quirky. One could be mistaken for thinking that it was all an affectation. You might, perhaps, think he was an English Lit buff from Eton, except he was from a working class family up North.

I think Stan was entirely genuine and although he was overtly wordy, I think it was a mixture of being very good with words, and also that he liked to maintain a certain social distance by using complex and convoluted wording. Having said that he could also be extraordinarily direct and honest.

I think it was that night, that Stan asked us about "The pink 'uns" as if we should all know what it meant. It caused huge hilarity but Stan was unabashed. We never got to the actual explanation due to the laughter and interruption, but we drew the conclusion that he was talking about a sexual experience he'd had - probably his first - possibly with Bev who had been Al the Slug's girlfriend in the first year. It invloved seeing pink lights shimmering in your peripheral vision and Stan thought we would have all experienced the same thing.

As the night wore on, we all gradually ran out of steam and passed out. Stan dropped a bottle of beer onto the floor. The bottle landed upright, but sent up a spume of beer that woke him up. He though someone had thrown beer over him.

It was 6 or 7am and the night was over. I headed off up to Sarah's to work on the bike. I made my way into their garden where I collapsed into the long grass and passed out. I was discovered a few hours later by Sarah and her roommate and I was the subject of much hilarity.

Sarah's friend was a cute girl who I really liked, but she was dating some old guy (maybe 30? That would have been really old for us back then). They invited me in for tea and I managed to more or less wake up. Not sure if I got any work done on the bike or if I just headed back to Topsham.

In the next few weeks, I got Neil's bike back together and got it all up and running - it all worked fine. It was a good feeling to get it off my chest and I think that Neil and I went off for a good old session to celebrate. And that was probably the last I saw of him.

[thegreatduggo]

Fixing “Old Man” Boiler

The Old Man is 45 years old! I've come to know my hydronic furnace very well over the past 11 years as I carried out multiple repairs and fixes.

There were 2 major repairs in the first 18 months of my moving in. The first one was when the control unit crapped out. The heating shut down completely and the control unit had to be replaced. Cantankerous Bob from Hoboken did the repair for me. Not a huge deal but it cost about $700.

The boiler dates back to 1976 so it was not exactly unexpected that there would be some problems with it. 

The pump motor was anti-deluvian but it was a big solid cast iron piece and I liked it - I thought it would keep plugging away despite its antique look. We topped it up with oil and let it get on with it.

But next winter it gave up the ghost. Cantankerous Bob installed a new pump. The water circulated a lot better and the heating was much improved.

The temp/pressure gauge was broken. It is by no means essential but it is a double-check that all is well. But, as it's there, I wanted it to work. Btw, Bob takes delight in belittling my maintenance efforts, even though they have been largely successful. For example I replaced all 8 radiator bleed valves which had been painted over and were seized - I snapped one off because it was corroded - that was it!

Bob put a new gauge in but he installed it with the display back to front - it was hard enough to read anyway and having it upside down made it worse. Plus the boiler case was wonky and the viewing port was partially obscuring the gauge. To add insult to injury, after a few weeks, the plastic gauge cover started to melt away - it still worked but it was even harder to read.

A few years later, I got fed up with it and took a look at it. I removed the boiler top cover and found that Bob hadn't folded the insulation back into place under the gauge. It's certainly not the best insulation but it was probably enough to protect the gauge.

I folded the insulation back into place to stop it getting any worse and planned to get a new gauge.

Later on, I figured I could probably turn the gauge by 180 without causing a leak. I did and it worked fine.

Around the same time, I tracked down some heavy duty ceramic fiber insulation to redo the insulation on the base of the boiler. I wanted to use ceramic insulation block but it's way too expensive. This stuff was a decent price and just as effective.

I bought some double thickness aluminium foil of Amazon to cover it with to make it reflective as well as insulating. This stuff is way better than regualr foil.

I was a little worried that the much thicker insulation was too close to the burners and that the aluminium foil might melt. But aluminium doesn't melt till 1200F so that was an unrealisitc worry. Actual temperature is probably not much more than 300F.

When I fired it up this winter, I was a little apprehensive and there was an initial acrid smell that worried me. But it all looked fine and I put it down to the oil I'd put on some of the bolts, burning off.  

A few days ago, it looked like the gauge had seized - the heat was off and it seemed to be stuck at 230F which is the max it gets to.

So, I went off too see if I could source a new one. It’s quite hard to find the right spec and they typically go from $50-100 which was a bit too much for me. But after some concerted effort, I found one for a bargain $11 - it looked like it would fit. I thought about ordering a couple.

But then I go back and see that the gauge has moved and isn't actually broken - it was just the cover that was broken and it looked like it was  just a screw-on.  It's really just a dust cover. 

I'd just bought a sheet of acrylic for another job. I figured that I could cut out a circle of acrylic with the jigsaw, make it 1/4" bigger, drill holes round the periphery and use 4 small nails to keep it in place - it’s horizontal so that’s all that’s needed. The cover looked good.

Seeing as I now had the top cover off, I decided to use the remainder of my ceramic fiber to insulate the top of the boiler. And thinking about it, the top is probably the most important place to insulate well. I had almost exactly the right amount left to do the job and could also put extra insulation under the gauge to keep it cooler.

The insulation was maybe a bit thick but the cover went back on without too much trouble and the space was now tightly filled.

I'd recently had a technical chat with a Burnham Boiler customer rep who was honest with me and said that if my boiler was working fine, I should just stick with it - any increased efficiency from a new boiler would likely take decades to recoup in reduced bills. And that reconfirmed to me that I should continue with the “Old Man”.

I've done some good fixes and solid maintenance on the boiler over the years and I think it is now running better than ever.

[thegreatduggo]

Installing External Coax Cable

When I moved into 84, one of the early jobs I did was to remove hundreds of feet of coaxial cable and telephone wire that was haphazardly strewn all over the place outside and inside.

It was the legacy of at least 2 previous cable installations (Optimum and DirectTV) and a special multi-landline hookup that came in on a 12 strand feed, that could provide up to 6 lines into the house. There were 14 phone outlets in the house, haphazardly arranged and presumably the legacy of multiple installations. Several rooms had 2 outlets and one had 3!

I pulled out 300′ of coax, 120′ of telephone cable and 7 outlets.

I wired in the new FIOS cabling properly, drilling entry points through brick wall, where I wanted them to be, rather than through window frames or siding. I installed the splitters right next to where the split was needed and fastened them with plastic plugs to the wall. 

The 12 core landline wire turned out to be connected to nothing even though it was routed into the network interface box (NIC). The NIC was complete spaghetti. I wired it correctly and got all the viable outlets working: 8 in total.

One of the issues I had was getting the cable clips to attach to the brick wall. First, I found out that cable installers use Romex clips which are for use in wood only. I bought proper 1/4″ coax clips, which are smaller and come with masonry nails. Having said that, they still didn’t really want to fix to hard brick or the cement pointing. I persevered and eventually got all of them to fasten securely enough and it actually looks very neat, with the coax hidden away neatly. I did knock a few lumps out of the pointing, but not too bad. 

I’ve since realized that masonary nails aren’t really designed to be bashed directly into brick or concrete - they should be banged into pilot holes. So a couple of days ago, when I had to fasten some clips, I drilled holes with a masonty bit, put in 3/16″ plastic plugs, drilled out the clips and used #6 1″ stainless screws to fasten them to the wall. This way they can be reused and easily removed plus no cement or brick gets dinged out.