Yeah…never had this one happen before.

Not much has really happened since the Polar Bear post but lemme review the couple of weeks and see what went on.

Connie’s choral group the Fort Myers Mastersingers had their Christmas Deck the Halls gala concert with the Gulf Coast Symphony…Neil didn’t go because it was (a) $150 for a ticket, (b) it was more of a pops type concert with a couple of other singers besides the Mastersingers, and (c) they’re singing some of the same pieces (plus more classical vice pops music) today at the church where they practice…and this one is free (or perhaps a pass the plate $5 donation or something since it is a church).  

She also had a caroling gig at the Edison-Ford Estates for members of the estate only so he wasn’t invited to that one…but they’re singing again there this week with the public invited on Wednesday so he moved Date Nite from Tuesday to Wednesday and he’ll take her out after the caroling. Then on Friday there’s more caroling down at one of the ritzy well to do enclaves way down the south end of town in the high rent district. 

She’s also had a couple of additional rehearsals for all of those and also choir masses and cantor duties at other masses…those are mostly normal things but December is a busy time in the choral business ya know…so she’s getting a vocal workout this month.

Between all of that…ordering presents…putting up decorations and assorted other household things we’ve been pretty busy…and he keeps making her work on our summer trip to the UK as well…she needs to handle her DLETC duties to make sure that the number of days he’s got in the schedule in various places matches up with what she wants to see and the other things on the “go do this” list so that it doesn’t become a marathon vacation trip but a more leisurely Fun Stuff© trip. He’s got good reason for doing that though…the travel agent needs to get the various hotel reservations for us and where they’re visiting (after the London choral tour thing) are vacation spots for the Brits and a lot of them book up early so she needs to do her part to approve the tentative schedule for him.

We’re still waiting on getting our lanai screen repaired…but at least we have an appointment for an estimate now so I guess that’s an improvement. The HoA landscaping people also finally dug out the stump from the downed tree…so now we’ve got a 10 foot diameter dirt area instead ofd a stump/root ball thing…so again I guess that’s an improvement. Sod to cover the dirt…well, they’re supposed to “come and give us an estimate” on that…but given their not so much efficiency in stump removal mebbe they need to have a Snickers since it’s gonna be awhile.

And…that’s about it so back to that strangest thing thing…

As you know…Tuesday and Friday nights are Date Nite for Connie and Neil…she gets dressed up and he takes her out for dinner and last Friday she picked Longhorn Steakhouse for dinner. They got there about 1700 and sat at their usual places at the bar…and ordered a cocktail. A few minutes later this friendly guy named Rudy sits next to them and is waiting on his friend to arrive. He and Neil got to chatting about how you always sit at the bar because you meet a better class of bum that way as Neil says and turns out he is an engineer who does a lot of work on facilities for the Navy as a contractor and is in the area for a few months. Neil suggested a couple places for him to go eat since he’s not that familiar with the area and Rudy opined that he shoulda joined the Navy as well as he thought it would have been better for the country to serve in that fashion rather than just doing facilities. Connie had a steak and Neil a steak and shrimp combo…as per their usual they ate about half of the Caesar salads and got a box for the rest for lunch and he ate the shrimp which was what he really wanted and kept most of his steak, her leftover steak, and his potato (since the shrimp comes with this really good rice pilaf combo and a potato on top of that is just too much) to eat later. With wine, cocktails and dinner the tab was most of a hundred bucks but when he pulled out his card to pay the bartender lady said “thanks for your service to him” and that there was no bill. He did his best to weasel who paid for them out of her so he could at least get them a drink and thank them…but she declined. He asked Rudy if he had done it but he denied it…but Ima not so sure he wasn’t just admitting it. It coulda been that he thought they were old broke people since they were taking leftovers but that’s just what they do…or it coulda been that he just wanted to do a nice thing for a veteran. In any event…that’s never happened to us before and we offer our thanks to Rudy…or whoever else was kind enough to spring for our dinner.

Interesting things found on the net.

In the troubled time we have today with the snowflakes and all not wanting work, demanding to work from home and not return to the office, and generally participating in the “great resignation” as it’s called in the news…we have the story of the late Tsutomu Yamaguchi who passed away in 2010 at the age of 93. Now you’re probably wondering just who Tsutomu Yamaguchi was…and why he was so different from today’s snowflake me-me-me generation…so here goes.

According to
this…Tsutomu got up early one morning back during WWII. He was a 29 year old naval engineer on a 3 month business trip for his employer Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and he got up on the last day of his trip to return to his home, his wife Hisako, and his young son Katsutoshi. Suddenly…out the window he heard the drone of a bomber and saw it drop something on a parachute…and then the “sky erupted like a magnesium flare’ in his words. Yep…he witnessed the bomb falling over Hiroshima but headed to the shipyard to find his coworkers. They were mostly still alive and after putting out some fires he left the next morning and headed to his home. 

He arrived home and since he was injured from the explosion in Hiroshima he went to the hospital for treatment…then went home…then got up the next morning and went to work at his home shipyard. As he was describing how a single bomb destroyed the whole city of Hiroshima…to his boss and co worker’s amazement and disbelief…there was another huge explosion and bright flash in the sky…yep, he had returned home to Nagasaki just in time to be near his second nuclear weapon detonation. Again…he survived and rushed home to find that his wife and son were only slightly injured  because they had taken shelter in a tunnel when they heard the bomber because of his description of the devastation in Hiroshima. 

Despite his double dose of radiation exposure…he eventually recovered from his injuries, taught school, and then returned to his job at Mitsubishi until his retirement. He was one of 4 acknowledged survivors of both blasts at the end of WWII…there are another 160 that may have been in both but he was the only person designated by the Japanese government as a nijyuu hibakusha or twice-bombed person.

So when you think that your life is too hard because you have to go back to the office and do your job…mebbe you should instead think like Tsutomo and just do your job and quit whining about it.

Over in
India…an 8 year old boy was bitten by a cobra…so being an 8 year old boy he did the most 8 year old boy thing possible and…bit it back…twice….killing it…take that cobra. Luckily it was a dry bite (i.e., the snake didn’t inject venom…some snakes do that because it takes them a long time to produce the venom so they don’t want to waste it in defensive strikes but only for getting food strikes. As Neil would say…well, actually he does say…frequently…the only good snake is a dead snake.

Speaking of whiners…
how about this woman…she claims to be the sole breadwinner and head of household who will make…I kid you not…$350,000 for the year 2022. She says that she’s living…her words from the article…paycheck to paycheck. Then she goes on to say that she has $88K in student loans and…again I kid you not…$170K in auto loans for 2 electric vehicles and a $4,500 mortgage payment. It doesn’t say where she lives…but a quick trip via a mortgage calculator website says that’s a $1.25 to $1.5 million dollar house and since she’s got 2 car loans she’s obviously got a stay at home wife/husband/partner/whatever who isn’t working.

The thrust of the article is to get financial advice on whether she should take out a $200,000 home equity loan to pay off some of her car loans and student loans…and the financial advice lady in the article goes on to offer her some…but amazingly enough she doesn’t give her very good financial advice IMO. This woman’s problem is that she and her family are living far, far beyond their means even if she does make $350K a year…her problem is that she doesn’t need either a million dollar plus house and 2 $85K electrical vehicles at all…mebbe she and her whatever should have been a bit more frugal in their choices and/or the whatever could…I dunno…get a job maybe?

So I guess you read in the news how Elon Musk is publishing some of the internal Twitter files on whether or not to allow tweets about Hunter Biden’s laptop…and
apparently…the White House has declared that this is “unhealthy” and “a distraction”. Eventually…as you know already…the files and reports and any reporting about them was suppressed under Twitter’s hacking policy. Now I have no idea whether Hunter Biden is actually a crook or not but we do have our suspicions and there seems to be a lot of smoke about him, his drug use, his alleged selling of influence to “the big guy” (that’s what it calls somebody in the email on his laptop), and his alleged illegal possession of a gun which may or may not (depending on who you believe) have been tossed into a dumpster by his then girlfriend who just happened to be the widow of his brother. However…it sure does seem strange that the DoJ doesn’t seem to be all that interested in investigating whether or not he committed any crimes. Me…I think they should put him, Trump, and Hilary all in the same jail cell because…smoke ya know…and there’s usually a reason for that.

Speaking of smoke…did you know that it’s magic? Yep…every computer and electronic device has deep within its innards a reservoir of “magic smoke”. Now…as a former computer guy Neil could probably tellya just exactly what it does…and since Ima a bear with no technical edumacation I ain’t able to do that. However…I can tell you affirmatively that the magic smoke is *vital* I tellya to the operation of the computer. How do I know this? Well…it’s simple. If you’re looking at the computer and see the magic smoke leak out…the dang thing is broke for sure.

So…how big do ya figger the smallest inhabited island in the word is? Me…well, I never thought about it m’self but it turns out that somebody did and up in the Saint Lawrence River…right in between Heart Island and Imperial Isle (wherever they are, I didna google it) you can find this small island…it’s only 3,300 square feet. Best of all…it’s name is…wait for it…Just Room Enough Island.

Found this on the web too…tells ya how to “write good”.

And finally…a couple of math nerd ones for ya…I keep finding these…and I keep trying to figure out just why anybody would bother figuring them out because most of them serve exactly zero useful purpose.

Take the number 115132219018763992565095597973971522401…and then think for a moment and tell me what is so special about this number.

It’s a 39 digit number…and if you take each of it’s digits and raise each one to the 39th power…and then add those results up…you get the 39 digit number.

Next…consider the number 69. Now I know that some of you…particularly those that grew up during the sexual revolution in the 60s or 70s…went immediately to the gutter…but I’m not talking about *that* 69 but the actual number 69. Turns out that if you do 69 squared and then 69 cubed…then look at the results which are 4,761 and 328,509 respectively…each digit from 0 through 9 is used exactly once in the results…and this is the *only* number for which this is true.

Now what purpose either of those actually serves is left as an exercise for the student as they say…mebbe Jen can tell us.

I know I said finally already…but here’s one more for ya.

What’s the smallest ship in the Navy. Well, turns out they got a bunch of ‘em but they don’t have names…just numbers. They’re called Barrier Boats or Dozer Boats and are built by…Chuck’s Boat and Drive out in Washington state…what a great name for the company. They are pretty powerful for their size with a diesel engine and are run by a craft master and do things like move protective barriers in seaports, help submarines dock…and even move the USS Constitution up in Boston during it’s annual turn the boat around to put the other side to the pier underway evolutions. 440 horsepower and 1,800 ft-lb of torque provided by a Cummins QSM 11 diesel engine, a 10.7L turbocharged inline 6-cylinder power plant.

Dadgum thing looks like it’s below the catch and release size limit to me. Length is 16-19 feet depending on which model you buy.

Cyas.