I spent most of my day yesterday getting reading for my first family re-enactment of the season, the Gathering at Macktown. I needed to make some moccasins for Clone so he wouldnÂ’t have to wander around barefoot. Also there was a knife sheath I needed to make for a new belt knife I bought last month in Kalamazoo. I really like this new knife; IÂ’m going to be really upset when I lose it. (IÂ’ve lost 2 knives in the last two years.) I also had to sharpen the new knife.

The whole time I was working on this, I was drinking All Natural Cranberry juice. After I finished working on my projects, I continued to drink cranberry juice, but now I added vodka to it. When the evening was over, I ended up drinking over a gallon of Cranberry juice. Yep, a gallon. (Thank god it was sugar free).

This morning I have discovered that drinking that much Cranberry juice has a very interesting effect on the human digestive tract, the colon to be specific. I was at work, when my internal clock went off and told me “It’s time to let out the waste!” Yes, I’m so regular that I can almost set a clock by it. Every day at approximately 10:30 AM, this means that I am usually at work when my colon decides to purge itself.

Now, IÂ’m not going to go into a lot of details here. However, just keep in mind there is a lot of Fiber in cranberry juice. The consistency was, to be blunt, less than solid. I can understand that because of the fiber. What I donÂ’t understand is why it smelled like someone emptied a can of Cranberry scented air freshener into my colon.

Seriously, it smelled like someone had sprayed cranberry scented air freshener in the bathroom.

I mean, there was still the stink of the colon blow, but it was masked with a sweet and fruity scent. And I know no one sprayed the air freshener, because its vanilla scented in that bathroom. IÂ’m not saying it was pleasant, but it was definitely better than the scent of burnt motor oil.

IÂ’m going to have to try this the next time I drink a CarlyleÂ’s Scottish Ale and eat Uncle NicksÂ… see if it makes that gas smell better.

Posted by: Contagion at 01:58 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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For those that live in a five block radius of me, if you are wondering what that wonderful smell is, it's my ribs. Well not my ribs as in the ribs in my chest, but my ribs as those that I'm smoking right now.

Yea, those are the ribs right after I put them on the smoker 2.5 hours ago. They have been cooking at 225 to 250 degrees the whole time. They have marinated in a special sauce and then I rubbed them down with my special seasoning combination.

Hungry yet?

Posted by: Contagion at 02:11 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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At some time everyone has read something, gone someplace or done something that opens up a floodgate of memories of things from their past. This past weekend I had one of those experiences.

My re-enacting friend, Smokepoles, bought a ten manufacturing business and is working to get it up and running. With the purchase of the business came a computer that hasnÂ’t been made since around 1992. It was a Leading Edge WinPro 486sx/33. For those of you that are computer illiterate, a really old computer from a company that doesnÂ’t exist anymore. The kicker is that the CMOS battery was dead so if you had to reboot it, you had to setup all of the hardware each time. Fun, Fun! Now before I go any further, I knew the previous owner of the business, and he is one of the nicest guys you will ever meet. He is an older gentlemen, and from looking at the computer program, the notes that went with it and the program he was using, not very computer savvy. I'm not speaking ill of him, just acknowledging he may not have known better.

Graumagus came with me to help Smokepoles get the essential data off of this computer. What we thought would be an easy transition turned into a hellacious headache. First off we had to crack the case open to get the info for the hard drive, because we didn’t have the necessary information to set it up in CMOS. Then once we had it going it would auto start into what we dubbed “Bob’s program” because it was nothing we had ever seen before and it looks like it was written specifically for the previous owner. In which we spent some time trying to figure out. It was running MS-DOS V6. (Pre-windows, and thank god all of our DOS jockey days came flooding back to our memories.) The file organization on this computer was horrible. It looked like the thought of using directories and sub-directories never crossed anyone’s mind as a lot of programs were loaded right into the main C:\ directory.

We opened up the Autoexec file to find the .BAT was being run so we could find BobÂ’s Program. Which Grau found, but opening it up, it was about useless. It really didnÂ’t look like it was running anything. Finally we were able to find the name of file that starts BobÂ’s Program, there were two of them. Main.exe and Menu.exe. Both of them started BobÂ’s Program. Once we got in there, we tried to find the data files, but the programs just did not cooperate. We even tried to get the program to save files on a blank floppy so we could try to open it on another computer, but that wouldnÂ’t work. When we did find a text file associated with BobÂ’s Program, we couldnÂ’t find ANYTHING on the modern computers that would even open it up. Even a generic wordpad opening just produced symbols and junk.

While Grau worked on trying to find the data, I worked on trying to get the program to run on Smokepoles' new computer… with no luck. The new system, even in a dos shell, wouldn’t let the older program run properly. Even when I finally had a break through and was able to get the program to open up, the program wouldn’t open any of the data files. Which cause me to cheer out in joy when I finally got the program to run, and scream “F#CK!!!!!” when the files wouldn’t open. That wouldn’t be so funny, but Smokepoles’ in-laws were in town for the weekend for Easter. They don’t like him too much. He had asked that we be on our best behavior while there, and I had warned Grau a couple of times about it. Of course right as I screamed my expletive, was when his father in law walked into the computer room. I didn’t see the look on his in-law’s face, but according to Smokepoles the look on his face was classic.

Over all we could not get the program to run on the new computer, we could not locate the files specifically needed off of the old computer to try to read them. So we ended up printing out the data so Smokepoles could manually enter it into the new computer. This of course required getting a 17 year old bubble jet printer to work. We didnÂ’t have the proper cables to hook up a modern printer to it. Luckily, the 17 year old printer not only worked, but there was some ink in the cartridge. When that cartridge died, the local Cartridge World actually had a replacement in stock!

The only problem with printing is that BobÂ’s program either saved all the data together into one giant Word Processing style document or the previous owner never though of created separate ones for each template. The contact list was HUGE, every vendor had an entry, every person he ever sold to had an entry and organization he worked with had an entryÂ… and they were all mixed together. Needless to say Smokepoles was printing for over 3 hours.

Out of the hell of working on this computer, trying to reclaim much needed information, Grau and I kept joking around on how we felt like we were back in High School again. It was like back when I first started getting into computers. The old 2400 baud modems, and using dial-ups to get to a Bulletin Board System (BBS). How if you wanted to check your e-mail, you had to log onto the system it was sent on. Alternate means of getting data from California with out paying for it. Programs we used to use; games, word processing, file viewers, etc. Memories I had long forgotten, or suppressed in some cases, came flooding back.

Seriously, at one point I wanted to see if I could find an Â’83 Pontiac Phoenix to go cruising around in.

Posted by: Contagion at 06:25 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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1 O jeez. Knowing the former owner of said company, I guess this doesn't surprise me too much. But deep down, weren't you and Grau having a hayday?

Posted by: Petey at April 13, 2009 10:31 PM (TFKVi)

2 Kinda, yeah What really brought back memories is how stable the old Seagate hard drives used to be. That sucker was 15+ years old and didn't even have a hint of platter rattle.

Posted by: Graumagus at April 14, 2009 10:41 AM (/P4X3)

3 Was this written in English?

Posted by: T1G at April 14, 2009 07:35 PM (PCfVW)

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I haven’t talked much about my sister in the last four years of blogging. In fact most of you may not even know I have a sister. When I was younger I nick named her “Girl Schmerlie dude”, which she hated with a passion, so for the sake of this blog she will hence forth be dubbed… GSD (because I’m too lazy to type that out every time I refer to her.) GSD is four and a half years younger than me and we are NOTHING alike. Let me give you a breakdown:

She was a Cheerleader; I could care less about playing sports.
She was popular; People thought I was going to be the guy that pulled a Columbine
She was thin and considered attractive (I wouldnÂ’t know, sheÂ’s my sister); I was a big, ugly bastard. (We look nothing alike)
She struggled getting a C average in school; I wouldnÂ’t try and made the honor roll.
She thought I was favored by our parents, I thought she was favored by our parents.
She loved shopping, fashion and talking on the phone; I still hate all of those things
She hates camping, hunting, shooting; I love all of those things.
She likes NASCAR, I like Football.
She is very active with her cult Church, I donÂ’t like organized religion.
She doesnÂ’t have the common sense god gave a lemming; some people say I have too much common sense.

You get the picture. We were always at odds, and never really got along. Yet she was my sister and I was very over protective of her. IÂ’ve made ex-boyfriends of hers wet their pants and break dates. Rumor has it one of them still canÂ’t look at a natural sponge with out getting a twitch. I was so over protective that even my father wouldnÂ’t tell me things because he was afraid IÂ’d do something stupid. Such as the time an ex-boyfriend hit her, I didnÂ’t find out until months later because my Father was sure I would have ended up in jail. Actually he was more worried I wouldnÂ’t end up in jail because my friends would have given me an air tight alibi.

She went to college down state and just never came back. She lives only about two hours away, but we see/talk to each other maybe 2-4 times a year tops. We just arenÂ’t that close.

I received an e-mail from her that started with how lucky and fortunate she is to have found her place in her cult church. Right away I figured she was going to make another attempt to get me to join the local branch up here. After almost deleting it, I continued to read and found out that she is an advisor for her churchÂ’s youth group and that group is working to help underprivileged children. One of the activities they are doing this summer is going to Juarez, Mexico to build houses for the poor. ItÂ’s part of a missionÂ’s trip that her church is sponsoring.

She was looking to see if I would help sponsor her. Which of course I am going to do, because she is my sister and itÂ’s important to her. IÂ’m actually kind of proud of her for doing this. When she was in High School she was very self-centered, itÂ’s nice to see she changed. My only problem is that she is going to Juarez, Mexico. CouldnÂ’t they have found someplace her in the US to do this? I mean there are plenty of poor and needy here. Plus, it would be a bit safer here. There has been a lot of violence in that region. If anything happens to her...

I guess on the bright side, maybe more houses there will keep some from crossing illegally into the U.S.

Posted by: Contagion at 07:18 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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