I’m cleaning house.
If anyone is interested in seeing what old stuff I’m clearing out of my office these days, please check out my current eBay auctions. It’s mostly Mac stuff right now, but that’s likely to change as I continue putting stuff online.
The big bargain right now (April 22, 2007): An AirPort Extreme Base Station with built-in modem, still in its original sealed box.
Not much to talk about.
It rained today. For those readers who live in places where rain is a part of life, you might be wondering why I’ve taken the time to write about it.
But rain isn’t a part of life here in the Sonoran desert of Arizona. Rain is usual. Rain is special. Rain is something to look forward to and enjoy.
The rain came with a strange kind of storm. The day started out clear enough, after high winds last night blew the desert dust around. The dust was hanging in the air this morning when it got light. The same dust we’ve been looking at for the past few days.
It’s spring and wind is part of spring. Calm in the morning, windy in the afternoon, then calm in the evening and overnight.
But last night, the wind didn’t calm down. Our wind chimes tinkled vigorously all night long. We had the windows closed to keep the dust out, so they weren’t loud enough to keep us up.
This morning, it was still windy. But then it got calm. And then it got windy. Calm. Windy. Calm. Windy.
Make up your mind already!
At 10 AM, I left my desk and went into the kitchen to make breakfast. Although I’m usually up before 6 AM and have my coffee right away, I don’t have breakfast until midmorning. And when I reached the kitchen with its southwest-facing windows, I realized that a storm was on the way.
Windy, calm, windy, calm. What a strange day. I watched the hazy, dust-filled sky cloud over from my northeast-facing office window. At lunchtime, back in the kitchen, I saw that the storm was closer.
Oddly enough, my neighbor’s windmill was calm. So was my other neighbor’s windsock.
The calm before the storm?
I went outside and threw my MR-2’s old car cover over my Jeep. I still haven’t put the doors and windows on the darn thing and I didn’t want to get it soaked.
A while later, the wind kicked up again. Howling this time. The palm tree branches I’d cut off our little palm tree days before blew around the yard as a dust devil came through. I went outside to check the Jeep and was surprised to see that the cover was still stretched over it.
I let the dog in.
The rain started a while later. Drizzle then pouring then drizzling. Not enough volume to keep the pavement wet; certainly not enough to get the wash flooding — a good thing, since the horses were down there. The rain cycle went on like that for a while. I checked the radar images on my Radar In Motion widget. The storm was all around me, moving in from the west.
But never enough rain to really get the pavement wet.
We have a problem here in Arizona. It’s often so dry that when it rains, the rain evaporates before it hits the ground. People think I’m kidding when I say this, but I’m not. It’s called virga. Look it up.
Sometimes, even when the rain does reach the ground, it dries before more drops can join it. The drops appear on the pavement, but dry before more drops fall around it. So the pavement doesn’t get wet. That’s what was happening today. Very disappointing.
But when I poked my head outside, I smelled the rain. A nice, fresh smell. The smell of water on the creosote bushes. A smell so unique that the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix has an exhibit that simply sprays water on creosote branches so people can smell it.
I kept working. The storm passed through. It got quiet.
When the UPS man arrived, I went outside. The pavement was dry.
To the north, I could see the mountains again. The radar showed the storm had moved to the east.
The storm was past. The rain was over.
Now I’ll have to wait again for the next storm. I hope it’s better than this one was.
No. T-cakes!
A few weeks ago, I offered helicopter rides at the Big Sandy shoot, northeast of Wikieup, AZ. (I wrote about it in “The Big Sandy Shoot, Take 2.”) Among my passengers that weekend was a man and his two sons. The man, Steve, was so thrilled with his ride that he took my mailing address and promised to send me some Tennessee tea cakes.
Tea cakes? Anything that’s a cake is fine with me.
Time passed. I never really expected Steve to remember about the tea cakes. So imagine my surprise when the UPS guy rolled up with a small box from Tennessee.
I opened the box. Inside was a tin full of Tennessee T-Cakes.
T-Cakes! Not tea cakes. I’d heard the letter T as the word tea. Silly me.
How can I describe these things? They’re small cookie-like cakes that are sweet and covered with powdered sugar. They’re soft and a tiny bit chewy. Quite tasty.
The cakes came with a thank you note from Steve and a little card that reported the Legend of the Tennessee T-Cake. A nice little gift.
Thank you, Steve!
In case of emergency.
The other day, I received one of those “forward to all your friends” e-mail messages from a friend. Although I usually wind up deleting most of them, this one was worth sharing. It contained information about the “ICE: In Case of Emergency” program.
Here’s the message:
We all carry our mobile phones with hundreds of names/ numbers stored in its memory but who, other than ourselves, knows which of these numbers belong to our near and dear ones?
If we are involved in an accident or have a heart attack and the people attending us get hold of our mobile phone, they won’t know which number to call to inform our family members. Yes, there are many numbers stored but which one is the contact person in case of an emergency?
For this reason, we must have one or more telephone numbers stored under the name ICE (In case of Emergency) in our mobile phones.
Recently, the concept of “ICE” is catching up quickly. It is simple, an important method of contact during emergency situations.
As cell phones are carried by majority of the population, just store the number of a contact person or person who should be contacted at during emergency as ICE (meaning In Case of Emergency).
The idea was thought up by a paramedic who found that when he went to the scenes of accidents, there were always mobile phones with patients, but they didn’t know which number to call.
He therefore thought that it would be a good idea if there was a nationally recognized name for this purpose.
Following a disaster in London , the East Anglican Ambulance Service has launched a national “In case of Emergency (ICE)” campaign.
In an emergency situation, Emergency Service personnel and hospital staff would then be able to quickly contact your next of kin, by simply dialing the number stored as “ICE”.
Please forward this. Â It won’t take too many “forwards” before every body will know about this.
It really could save your life, or put a loved one’s mind at rest.
For more than one contact name simply enter ICE1, ICE2 and ICE3 etc. A great idea that will make a difference!
Let’s spread the concept of ICE by storing an ICE number in our mobile phones today! Please forward to your all nearest and dearest.
The ICE program does indeed exist and it seems like a pretty good idea. If you want to learn more, check out the ICE entry on Wikipedia.
Pretty stupid, it appears.
So far, three people have posted comments on my article, “How to Contact Amazon.com Customer Support by Telephone,” that appear to indicate that they think the article is part of Amazon.com. They want help and they seem to expect to get it from posting their plea on the article’s comments.
Jeez Louise!
Can’t these people see that they’re on a Web site other than Amazon’s? Don’t they realize that the article provides instructions for calling Amazon? Why the hell don’t they just follow the instructions and call Amazon for the help they need?
At first, I was stupid enough to believe that their comments were just reports they were sharing about their frustrations with Amazon.com. But now that I’ve realized what these people expect, I’m going to just delete their comments. No need to encourage more.
But it makes me wonder about the level of intelligence of some of the people out there. It’s apparently a lot lower than I thought.