Category Archives: Mr. Boy

My life as a teenage hoodlum

Posted on June 1, 2013 | Comments Off on My life as a teenage hoodlum

Mrs. Charm was so annoyed at Mr. Boy’s second-in-a-row email complaint from his sixth grade art teacher about his misbehavior in class that Mrs. C. put him to washing off the patio furniture in the back forty this morning. She was pleased that he did a credible job with only a minor amount of fussing.

When he went back to playing Wizard 101, I thought to mollify her by confessing that when I was in sixth grade I spent most of the year in the principal’s office. Well, actually, on the bench outside it. Which the secretaries called the “mourner’s bench.”

Well, said Mrs. C. who was one of those strange people who actually loved school, at least you learned your lesson. Oh, I did, I confessed, but not for quite a while. The mourner’s bench designation didn’t fit me as I wasn’t in the least repentant and, indeed, I spent a good deal of seventh grade also sitting there for things I am still loathe to confess in this public forum.

UPDATE:  Fortunately Mr. B. does not attend sixth grade in Maryland. Indeed, I’ve been realizing for some time now that things I did in school in 1956-57, which were then merely grounds for suspension, could lead to arrest and jail nowadays. The country is far less free than it was and getting less so all the time.

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Posted in Mr. Boy, Mrs. Charm

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Typical wet Memorial Day weekend

Posted on May 25, 2013 | Comments Off on Typical wet Memorial Day weekend

We got three and a half inches in an hour Friday at the rancho (raining so hard when school let out I went to pick up Mr. B) and another half inch overnight. The waterfall in the back forty was in full flow within 30 minutes.

Supposed to rain more this afternoon. None of which is really surprising. May is our wettest month, on average, and Memorial Day weekend has been rainy pretty much every year since at least the 1981 Memorial Day floods.

Which were so awful (11 inches in three hours) that I briefly reunited with my ex-wife, checking on her safety since she lived near one of the flooded creeks and I didn’t want her parents blaming me for her death. She was okay.

UPDATE:  No rain to speak of at the rancho Saturday, but San Antonio got inundated by 10 inches, sweeping a city bus off the road, and leaving two dead.

MORE:  Did get a downpour Sunday morning that almost immediately put the waterfall back in business for about 30 minutes. Probably an inch altogether.

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Posted in Mr. Boy, Rancho Roly Poly, Texana, Weather/Climate

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IRS-enforced Obamacare

Posted on May 19, 2013 | Comments Off on IRS-enforced Obamacare

Notice the hapless fellow getting directions is wearing a medical outfit? Lately, it seems every time I take Mr. B. to the doctor, for a brief illness or a required checkup for summer camp, even the nurses are bemoaning a future of expanded federal supervision.

The paperwork alone will keep them busy-busy hopping to the tune of the latest partisan Democrat in charge of counting lead pencils and rubber erasers. For instance, the IRS woman in charge of targeting the Tea Party, evangelical and pro-Israel groups for harassment audits, is the new director of enforcement for Obamacare.

The usual low-information folks who think Obamacare means free medicals will now discover that time also is a form of money and they will be spending a lot of time waiting. We’ll use the new concierge clinics as long as we can afford them. Then we’ll get in line.

UPDATE:  Meanwhile, as I said before, watch how you vote. You might not get that procedure you need approved in time to save your life.

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Posted in Mr. Boy, Obamalot, Rancho Roly Poly, The Economy

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Of private security and concealed carry

Posted on April 22, 2013 | Comments Off on Of private security and concealed carry

I don’t expect the Jihadis to show up in Texas anytime soon. I’m sure they prefer the liberal environments of New York, Massachusetts and California with wall-to-wall, unarmed sheep who will ease their planning, arming and execution of mass killings for the glory of their blood-thirsty deity.

Down here, even in liberal Austin, they’re much more likely to encounter an informed and attentive gunner. For instance, the parents of one of Mr. B.’s best friends. They both carry concealed semi-automatic pistols. He’s a diamond merchant who often has the gems on his person and she, well, I’ve never asked but I presume she just feels more secure going about with a pocket pistol similar to this Ruger LCP which is fully reviewed here.

They’re one of the few couples we know who don’t have a private security system sign in the front flower bed of their home. Obviously they don’t need one. Most of us have them, even if we also have loaded firearms in the house. We count on the fact that the average criminal is a lazy bumbler without the imagination to figure out whether the sign announces a real security system or is a sign-only one.

As Wretchard says private security will be even more of a growth industry now after the Boston massacre. If for no other reason, there are lots of refugee Chechens living in the U.S. now and who knows how many pray five times a day? Unless you see their wives covered from head to toe in black ninja suits, you wouldn’t.

Just in case, I do think I will try to find one of the signs that CNN’s resident anti-gunner Piers Morgan has on his lawn. The words “armed response security systems” are so much more threatening than what we have now.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Guns, Mr. Boy, Texana, The War

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The kolaches of West

Posted on April 19, 2013 | Comments Off on The kolaches of West

You’d expect the daily to go heavy on the fertilizer plant explosion in West, not far up the interstate from the rancho, and they have. Indeed, they even mention the famous Czech kolaches sold there. Famous because so many people buy them, often when enroute to Austin from North Texas.

Mr. B.’s grandmother usually brings us a box when she visits, having stopped in West for a snack on her way down from Fort Worth.

We never thought of West as a location for a disaster of such proportions, with estimates of “around 35” people killed and several times that number injured. Estimates because some homes and buildings were leveled, including a small apartment block across from the plant whose rubble still is being searched.

If we’d known there was a fertilizer plant in West we might have thought differently. Grain elevators can be volatile enough. Fertilizer, of course, was the chief component of McVeigh’s Oklahoma City bomb. Even country icon Willie Nelson is doing a benefit concert this weekend for West. He came up as a boy near there.

As for me and Mrs. Charm, we’re a little numb from all the recent tragedies, in Massachusetts and now closer to home. We’re just glad nothing on those scales has happened here. So we’re selfishly talking about pasteries and hoping grandma will still be able to stop off in West and bring us a box when she visits.

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Posted in Mr. Boy, Mrs. Charm, Rancho Roly Poly, Texana

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AT&T games

Posted on April 8, 2013 | Comments Off on AT&T games

Seventy-two hours into intermittent DSL Net connection via AT&T. Have talked to robots, human techs, Googled the various boxes that pop up, and the beat goes on. And off. On and off. When it does work, it’s verryy sloow.

First it was an IP address conflict. Working together Mr. B and I satisfied ourselves there was/is no conflict. The box still pops up whenever the system goes down again. Next possibility was/is defective filters between phone lines and modem causing interference. Plan to buy two new filters today and see if that helps.

Also trying to update the firmware in the Netgear WiFi router, but so far the router can’t connect with its home base on the Web to check for updates. Grrrr.

If this isn’t resolved by tomorrow night, it’s bye-bye AT&T. Hello Time-Warner. Not that I expect one big, impersonal corp to be any better than another, but at least the problems will be new. These old problems are really old.

UPDATE: Two human techs later, the DSL problems have been solved but the landline still won’t take incoming calls. Supposedly a third tech will work on the latter. I hope s/he can fix it without screwing up the DSL.

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Posted in Mr. Boy, Rancho Roly Poly, Science/Engineering, Scribbles

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Discovering the sad truth about brassieres

Posted on March 27, 2013 | Comments Off on Discovering the sad truth about brassieres

I haven’t gotten around to informing Mr. B. yet. I’m not sure that I should. He’ll find out in his own way, of course. But I do recall my own pubescent shock when I finally discovered the trick that made girls’ breasts stand up so perkily under their tops—some  aimed straight ahead like the nose cones of ICBMs.

Learning the cruel reality of the under-wired brassiere was disillusioning, to say the least. I would have been fortunate, indeed, to have had this celebrated brassiere analyst’s blog to turn to from the beginning. Revealing such details as that Victoria Secret bras don’t even fit the models. Of course the Web in general would have been a great favor in and of itself back in those dark ages of the late 1950s.

UPDATE:  This was mainly intended as a joke. (Sorry, Scott.) This is not funny at all and it explains why Mr. B. came home from his sex education class back in fifth grade thoroughly mystified as to what was under discussion and why he should care.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Mr. Boy, Science/Engineering, Scribbles

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