Clyde responded, "Well, I'll tell you what happened. I had just loaded my favorite mule, Bessie, into the..."

"I didn't ask for any details", the lawyer interrupted. "Just answer the question? Did you not say, at the scene of the accident, 'I'm fine!'?

Clyde said, "Well, I had just got Bessie into the trailer and I was driving down the road...."

The lawyer interrupted again and said, "Judge, I am trying to establish the fact that, at the scene of the accident, this man told the Highway Patrolman on the scene that he was just fine. Now several weeks after the accident he is trying to sue my client. I believe he is a fraud. Please tell him to simply answer the question."

By this time, the Judge was fairly interested in Clyde's answer and said to the lawyer, "I'd like to hear what he has to say about his favorite mule, Bessie."

Clyde thanked the Judge and proceeded, "Well as I was saying, I had just loaded Bessie, my favorite mule, into the trailer and was driving her
down the highway when this huge semi-truck and trailer ran the stop sign and smacked my truck right in the side. I was thrown into one ditch and
Bessie was thrown into the other. I was hurting, real bad and didn't want to move. However, I could hear ole Bessie moaning and groaning. I knew she was in terrible shape just by her groans. Shortly after the accident a Highway Patrolman came on the scene. He could hear Bessie moaning and
groaning so he went over to her. After he looked at her, he took out his gun and shot her between the eyes. Then the Patrolman came across the road, gun in hand, looked at me, and said 'How are you feeling?'"

"Now what the hell would you say?"

Jeanie had also been interested in Connie and Carla (I can't remember which name goes first, and I'm on an airplane at the moment), which definitely wasn't one I would have picked...

Lucky for me that I have Jeanie to pick movies to rent - it was marvelous!

It was written by, and starred, the same person who wrote / starred in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding." I never did get around to seeing that, but given how much I enjoyed this movie, I'll have to add that to my future rental list.

I don't remember seeing the original, but I might just have to rent it one day just to compare.

Jeanie and I thoroughly enjoyed the movie.

The acting was top notch - of course in Jeanie's book, Denzel Washington could just sit there and talk about the weather and she'd still be thrilled.

The plot had enough twists and turns to keep our interest fully engaged for the two plus hours it consumed.

Sure, you had to engage in a little "willful suspension of disbelief" regarding some of "what and how" (I don't want to give anything away, so I'm being vague), but, as much as I hate to say it, I didn't have to do much suspension of disbelief regarding the effect that big money has on politics, or on our soldiers for that matter.

The world would be so much nicer a place if people weren't so lustful for power and money (is that redundant?). Now, don't think I'm not all in favor of our capitalist, democratic system - I am. It's not the system that is broken - it's some (many?) of the people that run it. I mean, seriously, at some point, enough is enough. I don't know what that is in terms of money - I guess it varies greatly depending on perspective, but there surely is some absolute limit. To a starving person, that limit might be $100, to a homeless person, maybe $1000. To the average middle-class person, maybe it's a million dollars, or ten million. But at some point, enough is enough. Really, how many homes / automobiles / islands / blah / blah / blah does any one person - or even family - really need?

And when looking at power, why does it seem that so often, rather than seeking the greater good, the most powerful seek only to enhance their personal station in life?

Oh well, I guess I shouldn't cast stones - I could do much more personally to help those less fortunate than myself. While there are many in the world who have much more, the vast majority have much less, and I'll be the first to admit that I like my stuff, and want more of it. But, I would hope that were I smarter / luckier / whatever... that at some reasonable point, I would say "enough," and focus my energies on utilizing my talents / luck / whatever to do some lasting good.

Anyway, if you're in the mood to see a good movie - The Manchurian Candidate is worthy of your time and money.

At least it appears to be fixed now.

Although sendmail appeared to be starting correctly, mail wasn't working. When I checked the maillog, I saw that I was getting a number of strange errors including:

Aug 29 15:10:02 eclectic2 fetchmail[1323]: SMTP connect to localhost failed

Aug 29 20:10:22 eclectic2 sendmail[1733]: NOQUEUE: SYSERR(root): drop_privileges
: setuid(0) succeeded (when it should not): Operation not permitted Aug 29 20:10:22 eclectic2 sendmail[1746]: starting daemon (8.11.6): SMTP+queuein
g@01:00:00 Aug 29 20:10:22 eclectic2 sendmail[1746]: NOQUEUE: SYSERR(root): opendaemonsocke
t: daemon MTA: cannot bind: Permission denied Aug 29 20:10:22 eclectic2 sendmail[1746]: daemon MTA: problem creating SMTP sock
et

I tried rebuilding my sendmail.cf file - no luck.

Finally, I found this posting which provided the fix:

> The drop_priviliges: setuid(0) happens (as a case and point)
> when I run /usr/lib/sendmail -bi (a.k.a newaliases) as root

Changing settings from

> -r-s------ mailnull mailnull /usr/lib/sendmail

to

> -r-x------ 1 root mailnull /usr/lib/sendmail

Made the error with /usr/lib/sendmail -bi go away

I have no idea how the permissions on the file changed (which is a bit concerning) but, at least mail is working again.

The Home Warranty company, having completed its inspections, processes, etc., finally informed us that they would in fact fix our bulging foundation.

Hopefully, their work will be complete in a week or so.

As soon as this work is complete, the floor in the kitchen will be replaced.

And once the new floor is installed, the painters can finish painting downstairs.

Then, we can finally get the house on the market!

Yea!

Then again, no one may have noticed at all.

Or, maybe the only "one" who noticed was some $%*@! comment spammer who couldn't spam me for a few days. If so, good!

But, if you did notice, and the loss of a daily dose of David brought a cloud into an otherwise sunny day - sorry.

The good news is that at least the outage wasn't due to a system failure. In preparation for having the study painted, and due to an unanticipated business trip, I had to take the server down before I left so it could be safely moved while I was away.

The good news is that while I had the server down and disconnected, I finally got around to replacing the CD read-only drive with a CD-RW drive, and installing Mondo, so I can now back up the server to CD rather than to a disk drive on another server on the network. And, I can do a bare-metal restore, rather than having to rebuild the server manually in the event of a catastrophic failure.

The last few times, I ended up going by myself, which while not an undue hardship or epic tragedy, is less fun than going with.

So, it was with great delight that when I went to donate this week, it was with a new blood buddy - Jeanie!

Aside from being my best friend in general, as a blood buddy, Jeanie has the advantage of being available to adjust her schedule to suit mine, since my donations now tend to be spur of the moment sometime fifty-six days after after my last donation.

Jeanie did really well. I thought she was a "newbie," but she reminded me (and the American Red Cross remembered) that she had actually donated before - two pints autologously in preparation for a surgery almost ten years ago. Since ARC policy prevents autologous donations from being used by others - even if not needed by the donor - I guess in one sense, she was a first time donor. I still think that particular policy is a shame, but I am sure there are good reasons why it exists.

I must say, the ARC gives a much nicer goodie bag to newbies that they did when I first donated. My goodie bag was, if memory serves, a sincere thank you. Jeanie received a refrigerator magnet, and a donor pin, and a can coozie. Not that goodies should be the primary motivation for donating... but it is nice to see that the Red Cross continues to seek ways to demonstrate their appreciation for blood donors.

One of the things that I find interesting about donating blood is that each pint is, in a way, a double donation. Not only does it benefit the ultimate recipient, but it benefits the Red Cross financially, as they actually generate a net profit on each pint donated. This profit helps fund other ARC programs. ... Not many other ways that you can make a double charitable contribution - all while lying down!

The first flood occurred at the end of May. Both Jeanie and I were out of town. When Jeanie returned home, the kitchen floor was covered in water. Jeanie mopped up the water, and turned off the water to the ice maker, which appeared to be the source of the leak. Unfortunately, the leaking continued. The problem turned out to be a rather obscure problem with the ice maker feed line, coupled with a faulty water supply valve.

Unfortunately, while we were away, the damage was already done. The water had soaked through the hardwoods, through the sub-floor, and into the insulation underneath the house.

Jeanie called our wonderful insurance agent who arranged for an appraiser to come out and assess the damage. The appraiser advised us that we needed to have the hardwoods ripped out and the insulation removed, so that the subfloor and joists could dry out. We needed to have this done to prevent further damage, as well as prevent the growth of mold and mildew. The appraiser suggested we engage Cary Restoration to handle removing the wet stuff and drying out the subfloor. Two workers were dispatched to the house to rip out the hardwoods and remove the insulation. They also set up two industrial (read LOUD) fans - one in the kitchen and one under the house - and an industrial dehumidifier that had a drain hose which was run over to the sink, so we wouldn't have to periodically empty a drain basin.

After a week, the subfloor finally dried out.

Unfortunately, the replacement of the kitchen floor hasn't gone as quickly.

But, hopefully, we'll have the floor replaced in a week or two.

The second flood occurred in the laundry room. The drain hose disconnected from the washing machine, and an entire cycle's worth of water was deposited onto the laundry room floor. Fortunately, we have both an upright carpet cleaner, and a wet-dry shop vac, so we were able to suck up the water both from the vinyl floor in the laundry room, as well as the carpet in the back room and the study. After setting up a couple of fans to finish drying out the carpet, we thought we were done...

Not so fast, it turned out...

As the carpet dried out, a nasty looking stain started appearing.

It seemed strange to add more water to an already wet carpet, but fortunately, the carpet cleaning solution was able to remove the stain.

It also occurred to me that some water might have gone down the HVAC duct in the floor. Turns out I was right. An under house inspection revealed that the flexible duct was full of water. My first thought was to remove the flexible duct, but that turned out to be beyond my abilities. I resorted to poking holes in the bottom of the duct sags. Once the duct dries out, I will tape up the holes with - what else - duct tape.

Well, as is most often the case, Jeanie's movie prescience was on-target.

As usual, I will dispense with a review. For lots of opinions, Rotten Tomatoes is a pretty good place to look.

Jeanie and I both enjoyed the movie. While not quite as laugh out loud funny as some of the Farrelly brother's other films, it still had its humorous moments, and it was very sweet.

Watching Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear perform "joined at the hip" (well, at the side if you want to get technical) was fascinating. The DVD extra on how they were "joined" was also very interesting.

While it might not go down in history as a "great" film, it was worth the time and money to watch / rent it.

GREAT TRUTHS ABOUT LIFE, THAT LITTLE CHILDREN HAVE LEARNED:
1) No matter how hard you try, you can't baptize cats.
2) When your Mom is mad at your Dad, don't let her brush your hair.
3) If your sister hits you, don't hit her back. They always catch the second person.
4) Never ask your 3-year old brother to hold a tomato.
5) You can't trust dogs to watch your food.
6) Don't sneeze when someone is cutting your hair.
7) Never hold a Dust-Buster and a cat at the same time.
8) You can't hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of milk.
9) Don't wear polka-dot underwear under white shorts.
10) The best place to be when you're sad is Grandpa's lap.

GREAT TRUTHS ABOUT LIFE THAT ADULTS HAVE LEARNED:
1) Raising teenagers is like nailing Jell-O to a tree.
2) Wrinkles don't hurt.
3) Families are like fudge . . .mostly sweet, with a few nuts.
4) Today's mighty oak is just yesterday's nut that held its ground.
5) Laughing is good exercise. It's like jogging on the inside.
6) Middle age is when you choose your cereal for the fiber, not the toy.

GREAT TRUTHS ABOUT GROWING OLD:
1) Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.
2) Forget the health food. I need all the preservatives I can get.
3) When you fall down, you wonder what else you can do while you're down there.
4) You're getting old when you get the same sensation from a rocking chair that you once got from a roller coaster.
5) It's frustrating when you know all the answers, but nobody bothers to ask you the questions.
6) Time may be a great healer, but it's a lousy beautician.
7) Wisdom comes with age, but sometimes age comes alone.

THE FOUR STAGES OF LIFE:
1) You believe in Santa Claus.
2) You don't believe in Santa Claus.
3) You are Santa Claus.
4) You look like Santa Claus.

SUCCESS:
At age 4 success is . . .. not peeing in your pants.
At age 12 success is . . . having friends.
At age 16 success is . . . having a drivers license.
At age 20 success is . . . having sex.
At age 35 success is . . . having money.
At age 50 success is . . . having money.
At age 60 success is . . . having sex.
At age 70 success is . . . having a drivers license.
At age 75 success is . . . having friends.
At age 80 success is . . . not peeing in your pants.

We decided to do some more snorkeling for our last day, so we headed out to Coki beach.

I guess the fact that there were four cruise ships in harbor contributed to the significant crowding at Coki beach. It was absolutely packed with fat ugly Americans. Yes, I realize that everyone that lives on the island is an American, and yes, I realize that I was just another fat ugly American among the mass of pasty, jiggling, overflowing flesh, but, nonetheless (or maybe because), it was a pretty sickening sight.

The snorkeling might have been okay, if there hadn't been masses of morons kicking up clouds of silt and standing on the coral.

The one real treat was seeing a school of reef squid. Squid are fascinating animals to me, and I really enjoyed just floating on the water watching them glide in and through their weightless truly three dimensional world.

Coki beach was by far the most commercialized beach we visited on St. Thomas. There were numerous stands selling food and drinks at the edge of the beach, with waiters who wandered the beach hawking their offerings. There were also stands renting snorkeling equipment, beach chairs, and umbrellas. While not nearly as obnoxious as the beaches at Antigua, it was definitely reminiscent of that experience.

Apparently, I am also too much of a loner when it comes to snorkeling, as Jeanie made a point of chastising me for constantly "wandering off" and causing agita with the rest of the group having to spend too much time looking for me. I didn't realize that I needed "watching." Its not like I have been swimming since almost before I could walk, or started SCUBA diving when I was ten.

Needless to say, the mid-day at Coki beach was not the highlight of my vacation.

Around 2:00 PM, we decided to pack it up and return to the condo to shower and change.

The water around St. Thomas seems unusually salty to me, so it felt good to shower off the sand and salt and change into some dry clothes.

After all of us were showed and changed, we drove in to Havensight to drop off the movie at Blockbuster and to pick up a ring Bob had purchased the previous day.

We decided that we wanted to try some place new for dinner. Fortunately, Bob has an incredibly good sense of direction, and he was able to use it to great effect to find the way to the Elysian Beach Resort at Cowpet Bay, where we dined on the water at the casually elegant Robert's American Grille.

Robert's turned out to be a great find. We arrived just in time for the start of Happy Hour, and Blair the bartender was more than eager to mix up a different tasty cocktail for each of us. The two for one Happy Hour special made our round of cocktails by far the most reasonable of the entire trip - $12 for all four!

Unlike our other restaurant experiences, the service at Robert's was exceptional. Jeanie had a cup of she-crap soup which was to die for. I had a bowl of black bean soup which was wonderful, with just the right amount of island spice kick to make it interesting. For our main course, Wendy had a petit filet mignon which was cooked just right, Bob had a delicious seafood pasta in a marinara creme sauce, Jeanie had a delightful chicken in a cherry creme sauce which we shared along with the scrumptious lobster crab cake appetizer I had ordered as my entrée. The total bill for dinner came to $75 for the four of us, which seemed quite reasonable given the location, service, and quality.

We decided we were too full for desert at Robert's so we didn't even bother to look at the desert menu.

On the drive back, we passed through Red Hook, and even though I was stuffed, I had a hankering for another Cold Stone, so I convinced Bob to make a detour. I guess I was a bad influence, as we all ended up getting ice cream, and all felt like we would burst after eating it, although at least for me, I would have popped happy.

Upon our return to the condo, it was time to clean up in preparation for our impending departure. Since the condo has all tile floors and throw rugs, cleanup was a fairly simple matter of shaking the rugs and sweeping, then wiping down the counter tops and cleaning the bathrooms. After we finished cleaning, we packed our bags and loaded as many as would could into the car in preparation for our 6:00 AM drive to the airport.

Between the snorkeling, sun, cleaning, and large meal, I was more than ready to hit the hay and call it a day.

Hope you caught the musical reference there and forgive the poetic license...

Yesterday, we spent the bulk of the day on St. John.

As we did last visit, we took the car ferry at Red Hook for the short (20 minute) hop over to St. John.

St. John is a much smaller island, with correspondingly less to do. The main "city" which hosts the ferry dock, is Cruz Bay.

Since I had been up since six, and the rest of the crew hadn't eaten breakfast, our first order of business was food. We ended up at JJ's Texas Coast Grill, where the food was fine, the prices were relatively reasonable, and the portions were huge. Even though the service was (once again) slow, at least this waitress was friendly, and obviously trying hard. I guess during the summer (which is the off-season) the restaurants must significantly cut back on staff.

After lunch, we drove to Caneel bay, which is just a short drive from "downtown." Other than "because it's there," the motivation for going to Caneel bay was that Wendy was looking to purchase a specific design of drinking glass which is sold in the gift shop there. Caneel bay seems to be a nice quiet ritzy sort of island resort. We didn't get to walk around much, as there were signs restricting much of the grounds to "guests only."

We then headed back to Cruz Bay for a quick walk through the shops at Mongoose Junction, then hopped the ferry back to St. Thomas so we'd have time to return to the shops at Havensight so Jeanie could pick up a cookbook to add to her collection.

While in Havensight, we couldn't resist the urge to check out the shops at "Al Cohen's," which turned out to have some of the best prices we had seen on the island - surprising given their proximity to the cruise ship docks.

On the way back to the condo, we swung by Blockbuster to return The Butterfly Effect, and to swap out the Against The Ropes DVD which we had mistakenly picked up instead of a VCR tape.

We then drove to Tutu mall to look for a restaurant to "take out." I sighted an interesting looking Caribbean Bar-b-cue, but after checking it out, I was the only one interested, so I got an order of ribs, then we headed over to Red Hook so the rest of the group could find more appealing take-out fare.

After securing vittles for the rest of us, we headed back to the condo to watch the movie while we munched.

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