Blog on the Lillypad
Thursday, November 06, 2003
 | Bags and bags of cranberries!
Yesterday I hopped in the car at lunch time and ran down the road to the grocery store to pick up some lunch from the produce section. While there, I found some cranberries that were not marked with a price, so I figured they'd be between $2.00 - $3.00 a bag, the usual rate for a 12-ounce bag of cranberries. When I checked out at the register, the cranberries rang up as 50 cents a bag. !50 CENTS A BAG! I told the cashier to wait just a moment, and I ran back to get enough bags to make an even ten. Then after work I went back and bought the last 8 bags in the display. |
Today I went back to the store at lunch to buy as many more as had been re-stocked, but the display was empty. I think I got the week's supply. Anyway, I'll check tomorrow as well. Cranberry juice straight from the Champion Juicer is an excellent drink to help fortify a woman against menopause discomfort and her monthly cycle. But it's an expensive cure. You're supposed to drink two 8-ounce glasses per day. You get one 8-ounce glass of juice per 12-ounce bag of berries. So when the cranberries cost $2.50 a bag, that's $5.00 a day for the drink. When the bag costs 50 cents, that's only a dollar a day. Quite a difference
by the end of the week!
 | Meanwhile on the FFF
Yet again, the poster known as Dan Peters posted more nonsense about a Dave Hyles sighting. Dan Peters, if you are new to this storyline, came onto the FFF a little over a year ago and insulted several people. He focused on those who have published documentation about the gross corruption of Jack Hyles and Dave Hyles (the two preachers of the now-declining Hyles dynasty). Back then, he wanted it made clear that he was a supporter of Dave Hyles. In fact, he was obnoxious and vehement enough that many people thought he was Dave Hyles. Then when Madisonmadness and others started posting about Dave Hyles' latest awful sins, and it looked like there might even be criminal charges brought against Dave Hyles, Dan Peters changed his story. He posted that he was moving to get away from Dave, leaving town entirely, etc. This part of his story became highly elaborate, overly dramatic, and very annoying. And prolonged. He would post rambling accounts about trying to get away from Dave. His posts took on the tenor of a badly written cloak and dagger story. But, of course, everybody knew that if Dave Hyles even knew Dan Peters at all, Dave didn't care and wasn't looking for him. |
So after about two months of Dan's twaddle, I nominated him for the FFF's first Net Award for Cluelessness and got a few votes. Yesterday he posted another Dave Hyles sighting, letting us know he (Dan) was only in town on business and reminding us that he remained unseen and unnoticed by Dave Hyles. So I posted the award that you see on the left in the FFF gallery.
Two of the posters (Ryan DeBarr and Chris Connally) objected to this and reminded me that it was not of grace to do that, so I apologized on the forum. However, several days have gone by, and we have now been spared any more Dave sightings from the writer known as "Dan Peters". Chris Connally suggested that perhaps I created the trophy for strategic reasons. I let that go unanswered. If I humiliated a person who truly is feckless and merely irresponsible, I do apologize for any roughness that has caused him pain. If, on the other hand, I have eliminated a source of deliberate confusion and rumor designed to interfere with a clear and organized response to gross corruption in the pulpit, that will have to remain my business.
Wednesday, November 05, 2003
 | Milestone reached at workI turned in my two documents for the twin lyophilizers a day ago. The documents are lockout/tagout documents, which are procedures for safely shutting down equipment and applying locks to it so that people can work on it safely without somebody starting up the motors or reconnecting power. Each document was 82 steps long. But late yesterday afternoon the project lead gave them the thumbs up, and I carried them around today to start the sign-off process. |
| Carrying a document around for sign-off means that over the next month you’ll be getting it back and revising it as the different department experts point out changes that need to be made. But getting it through my own department was a major accomplishment. I have the most complex system of the new writers. But I think I’m the first one to get out the gate and start getting approvals. Now it’s time to work on PMs (Preventive Maintenance procedures) for the same machines. Today I went into the new building and sketched pipe connectors. |  |
Tuesday, November 04, 2003
 | MORE of The Best Doggone Tales from Texas
If you haven't tried Coyote's hilarious "Tales from the Temple," Click Here to go to links of the first five tales. For those who have had the pleasure of reading the first five tales about life in the corrupt, self-serving, man-centered and unaccredited Baptist College where Coyote spent several years, here are five more links to his next adventures. Bear in mind that I have to link to the Tales where they are---on the Fighting Fundamentalist Forum. So please click away to read some of Coyote's tales, but ya'll come back now, y'hear? |
 | Piping and Big Machines
Gradually, I’m getting used to working around big machinery. Now I’m brave enough to go to the new building by myself with my hard hat and safety glasses, sign in, and navigate through the hallways and occasional air lock entries to get to the lyophilizers. These large machines look like vast torpedo bays but with enormous condensers on the back and double racks of vacuum pumps, circulation pumps, and compressors. Each one also has a liquid ring pump; and of course a maze of piping (some of it scalding hot) wraps around everything. |
It took weeks of reading manuals and drawings to figure out what was going on in these enormous machines. And then weeks of tracing the drawings through the real machines themselves and asking questions to feel this much at home with them. But today I went up alone (about the third time solo) to figure out how to document the vacuum pumps for maintenance. Now that most of the construction has moved further back into the huge shell of a building, the lyophilizer room is so silent that it’s almost eerie. I am alone in there---just me, these pipes, equipment, and several gallons of pressured nitrogen as well as scalding water and pressurized steam. I have steel-toed boots to wear up there, but today I went in my walking shoes. The boots are so heavy! But as soon as I walk in, I mark the way to the door with my eyes, and I always know where I am in reference to the exit and the eye wash station.
| But the two great lyophilizers have been docile giants so far, as long as I treat them with respect. Today I climbed into the network of piping to inspect the vacuum pumps. I had to determine if we use a gas-ballast solenoid for control. And I had to check to see how many filters have been fitted onto each pump. Much to my surprise, the configuration of the pumps has changed since last I visited them. New piping has been bolted onto the inlets. But I figured things out and returned to my desk in the tech writer trailer to write it up. |  |
 | BBC Web Radio
If you have high speed connectivity (or at least a lot of RAM memory), try out BBC RADIO 7 on the internet. All drama and programming, this web radio station provides mysteries, science fiction, comedy, and literary drama, including favorites from Agatha Christie and other writers and literary figures such as Sherlock Holmes. One of my favorites, McLevy is a regionally popular detective series about a Scottish detective. The stories are a mixture of genuine mystery, street-level detection set a century ago, and strongly ironic dialogue that the actors carry off without a trace of self-conscious humor. The BBC schedule will tell you it's on from 11:00 - 11:45 am on weekdays. For US listeners, that's 6:00 - 6:45 am EST. |
Sunday, November 02, 2003
 | Doctor Who Fiction
I'm tired of arguing with dull, corrupt, unimaginative pastors and deacons. Let's switch channels to my favorite television hero, Doctor Who. Hey, maybe you didn't know this, but my Doctor Who fiction on the web gets hit about 1000 - 1500 times per month. (And it is recommended by browsing of the FFF!) The Doctor, as he is called, is a timelord who starts the series exiled to earth because he stole a time machine from his superiors. He stole it because the universe was in need of direct intervention to right some wrongs. But his superiors caught him and exiled him to earth. |
 | So while on earth he helps Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart and UNIT (a United Nations military police force) battle alien invasions and other high-tech (for the 1970's) dangers to the human race. During his stay, the Doctor ends up with three different companions who assist him, guide him, and at times scold him. He also rescues them---about once or twice in each story. But sometimes, they rescue him. The Doctor's first companion during his exile on earth is the brilliant, skeptical, and at times cuttingly sarcastic Professor Liz Shaw, followed by the perfectly ordinary, youthful and enthusiastic Jo Grant. |
 | Jo Grant: Birth of a Soul
"Poor Jo!" That's the common cry of my readers. Jo really does get it in my stories: guts pulled out, poisons injected in, not to mention all the ropes, chains, manacles, and other restraints that show up to do their duty. Finger-breaking torture, deadly virus, even seduction from a homicidal duplicate of the Doctor. It's enough to bring Mary Whitehouse back from the dead. But the truth is, Jo suffers as a part of her enlightenment. She enters the series as a giddy teeny-bopper and is greeted by the Doctor's immediate disdain. Taking my cue from the television series, I wrote short, light stories at first for Jo. In the series, the Doctor changes his opinion about Jo entirely when she stuns him by stepping in the way of an energy bolt to save his life (The Daemons). From that point on, their friendship begins, and likewise I write the last two thirds of my stories with Jo on a more serious footing. |
| I always expected Jo to grow with the Doctor. People grow by what they suffer. It was clear to me when I started writing Doctor Who as an adult that Jo would suffer in the course of the stories, and she would be rescued, and her experiences would deepen her relationship with the Doctor. I also intended that at times he would suffer, and there would be stories in which they suffer together. All the same, every story would end with them together, safe, and reaffirmed in their teacher-student relationship. So it was a big surprise to me when I learned from other fanfic writers that my stories were considered "dark" fanfic. But increasingly in my stories, Jo gains a wisdom that the Doctor eventually finds he cannot do without. |  |
Saving the universe is costly. One thing I love about the Third Doctor, in spite of his atheism, is that he completely understands that to rescue a person or a team or a planet, you have to roll up your sleeves and plunge in. If they have been bleeding, you will bleed. If the oppressed suffer whippings, you'll be whipped too. Knowing how costly it is to save those who are suffering, the Doctor still rushes in to save them.
| The Doctor has his soul in full possession. He suffers hard, lives large, loves his friends, and enjoys a roaring good time. When Jo first meets him, she's just a giddy little rich kid who wants a job with a lot of thrills. Of course he disdains her at first. But Jo grows on him, and the big change in their relationship occurs when she interposes herself between him and Azal to physically shield him from a deadly energy bolt. Thus, her soul is born. |  |
Following this event, Jo witnesses the struggle of good and evil in the universe and suffers as her part in the battle for good. These struggles, I believe, turn Jo's thoughts to more serious topics, such as God, sin, and salvation. But her education in enlightenment is influenced by the Doctor. She reaches a spiritual friendship and altruistic relationship with him because she suffers for him and with him. Jo, in fact, redeems the Doctor from his caustic bitterness. The egotistical blowhard that Liz knew gentles down under Jo's influence to a delightful hearthside cat who simply arches his back from time to time and can be soothed.
| In Blood-Dimmed Tide Jo and the Doctor and UNIT battle a creature that lives on subtle harmonics of energy produced in the human brain, an unstoppable creator of terror that uses frequencies of energy too high for human technology to duplicate or jam them. The Doctor has to become far more innovative to find the means to counter attack such a creature. He thinks he is succeeding all the way up until the moment that the creature completely takes over his more sophisticated mind and bends him to its will. The Brigadier comes into his own in this story, relying on resourcefulness and courage to find the means to at least reach a stalemate with the creature and then work on gaining victories against it. A full length novel, Blood-Dimmed Tide is the best story in my set. Jo realizes that this really is a war against evil--an evil that wants to create mayhem and catastrophe and kill human beings gradually in order to strengthen itself. Even the Doctor, warned by the alien Ootuk about his pride, misses a lot of the meaning of this story, though he bravely fights to the end and suffers cruelly from his adversary, all the way to the last battle. |  |
 | To depict Jo as a more mature companion than the giddy girl who started at UNIT, I wrote Strange Darkness and The Revengers. The first story is a brief five-episoder focused on a police mystery. Loving and devoted husbands are murdering their wives. The men are all remorseful, distraught, and immediately confess what they have done. Two of them go insane and one attempts suicide. Baffled, the police go to UNIT for help, and the Brigadier calls in the Doctor. In this story, Jo intuitively figures out the motive behind the killings but is largely ignored (though not rudely) by the Doctor and the Brig. However, she does find aid, sympathy, and information with the tenacious Detective Inspector Jules. Her relationship with him brings up hints of what is to come in later stories---a more mature Jo who can go off on her own. This time, however, the friendship is temporary. Similarly, The Revengers sets up a possible love interest for Jo, in the heart of a series of bizarre deaths from blindness and insanity. This story shows Jo's day-to-day world of her own flat, the gym she visits, local pubs and restaurants, far more than the Doctor's world of the lab and his TARDIS. It also depicts a rival nearly as intelligent as the Doctor, and it is one of the few stories where the Doctor's protectiveness of Jo gets personal. I still get the occasional e-mail about the ending of this story: Did the Doctor do it deliberately, or was it an accident? |
For Jo, the expression of goodness is in undergoing what others undergo, uniting with them in their labors and sufferings. And she learns that by the power of goodness she can unite to others. I suspect that Jo was raised in fairly conservative surroundings, so I expect that she would revert to the teachings of the Church of England and begin any spiritual journey there.
In my canon, I depict Jo and Mike Yates ultimately returning to Christianity to give it a serious investigation. As with Liz, I do not show Jo experiencing a heartfelt conversion to Christ as her Saviour. I simply show that she might. But Jo would be the sort of Christian who is able to know and be known, a person delighted by the tremendous diversity of all that God has bestowed on people. Where Liz finds meaning in the concrete doing of good works based on ethical perfection, Jo would find it in giving of herself to assist others: a deeply personal surrender.
 | Constable Magpie Answers your questions
Dear Constable Magpie, I am not popular. Sometimes I feel like I have no friends at all. Is there anything I can do? From Constable Magpie From what I have observed, humans talk too much to be popular, yet they are always suffering from loneliness. Cats, on the other hand, say very little. But we are present. I talk to humans to ask for food, or to ask to go out, or to remind them I am in the room and please don't step on me or run the vacuum cleaner. Otherwise, I simply appear and settle down with my humans when they are reading or watching television or doing homework or talking. Pretty soon, they start to talk to me. |
You should work more on being present with people, but let them speak to you first. I would also advise you to climb into a few more laps, but I understand that when humans do this unannounced it is very startling. (Odd, it always works for me.) However, even if laps are off limits, work on being present as a kind, beautiful, gracious person, and other humans will come running to you. Noisiness simply doesn't work. I've tried it a few times and somebody always throws a bucket of water on me. If you feel your friends are ignoring you, find a ball of string or some walnuts and chase them back and forth. Or better yet, bring a bug or a field mouse into the room and start chasing it. In no time, your friends will start playing wth you, and matters will be amended.
