ECTOPHENSIS

... is a good kid.

On Friday afternoon, I ordered two new work carts from Tacoma Screw. They're big beefy Milwaukee carts, and really make the Rubbermaid carts look like a joke. Tacoma Screw's prices are usually outlandish, but they were having a sale on these -- normally $400, marked down to $175. Rubbermaid carts are usually $175, and I was about to buy two of those, so, I figured what the hell! Splurge!

So when I rolled into work this morning, the first thing I did was walk over to Tacoma Screw. As I walked out the gate and turned right, I noticed that there was a whole bunch of debris and what looked like fire retardant had been sprayed all over the sidewalk and through the fence, kind of over to the staircase.

Must have been another fun time in Fremont this weekend.

Evidently so.

Augie is up in his crib.

Over the baby monitor I just heard Majik, meowing very, very softly.

I know EXACTLY who this is!


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Before I moved here to Seattle, this (building on the left) was the place I lived the longest in the US. This is also my brother's first residence. We lived there in 1981-1983. Not much here has changed. The apartment complex is still a dump, as I understand, but the name on the complex changed from Gran Crique to something else that I can't remember.

The thing I never knew? The road that leads to Gran Crique there is named "Chads Ford Way".

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The big building on the left is where my son was born. I seem to think that it also is where Lisa was born. Lisa and I were married a couple of blocks from here. This hospital has 703 staffed beds.


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This is where I was born. I seem to think that it is also where my mother was born. This hospital has 28 staffed beds.

Funny how that works.

I've discovered I can see remnants of my childhood with Google Earth. The next few days may see the odd bittersweet post or two. Or two dozen.

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This pic shows three things of interest to me. Or, more precisely, one thing of interest and the spot where two other things of interest used to be. The building on the right-hand side of the picture is one of the three buildings I lived in when we lived in Frankfurt the last time. The construction site is on the spot where two particular buildings stood. One was where my dad worked and the other was where Becky's aunt's ex-husband worked. Follow all that?

My family lived on the north end of that first building I mentioned, Becky's aunt and ex-uncle lived on the south end of the building. What kills me is the trail running behind that building, along the west edge of that playground. I wonder if it will ever overgrow.

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This was my brother's day care center in Germany twenty-odd years ago.

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Most people would characterize this as a hole in the ground.

I, on the other hand, would characterize this as Frankfurt American Junior High School.

Back during the last senatorial campaign in these parts, the one that pit incumbent Democrat Maria Cantwell against Republican challenger Mike McGavick, I remember seeing some wag mention that McGavick's cred as having been CEO of SafeCo wasn't much to go on, considering all he did was get the company ready to be sold.

Lo and behold!

Liberty Mutual will buy Safeco for $6.12 billion in a deal to create the country's fifth-biggest property insurer.

Liberty Mutual, a privately owned insurer based in Boston, has offered $68.25 per share for Safeco, a 51 percent premium to Tuesday's close

This is dumb.

Now get rid of your damn bike!

I swear, I've never ever seen this before, but some guy from the convention center's security staff just wrote a parking ticket for a bicycle.

Bicycles aren't licensed.

It's fair to assume that the bike owner will simply throw the citation away.

I guess I'm wondering if that guy had nothing better to do.

Clearly, there is a market for a bicycle tire boot.

...when I read in the various corners of blogdom and newsdom about Jewish cemetaries in Europe being disgraced and defaced with anti-Semitic graffitti. Likewise, it bothers me when the same sort of thing happens to Muslim cemetaries in Europe and the only place you read about it is Al-Jazeera:

Up to 148 Muslim graves in France's World War I cemetery have been desecrated in an incident that has drawn strong condemnation from the country's president.

A pig's head was hung from one of the several tombstones targeted by vandals who also wrote slogans insulting France's Muslim justice minister, officials said on Sunday.

Describing Saturday's incident, Jean-Pierre Valensi, the state prosecutor for Arras, said "the slogans directly target Islam and they gravely insult Rachida Dati, the justice minister", who is the daughter of North African immigrants.

...

Incidentally, the cemetery attack happened almost exactly a year after neo-Nazi vandals scrawled swastikas on 52 of Muslim graves at the same site.

I have considered doing something with a microcredit site -- where you give some small sum of money, that gets husbanded to a bunch of other small sums of money to make a larger small sum of money that gets loaned to someone in a third-world or fourth-world populace can use that money to grow their business and then pay back the loan. I don't think the organizations I was looking at were affiliated with Grameen Bank, but I'm wondering now if this report from France24 is reflecting a one-off or if it's industry wide.

Korshed Alom, a former debt collector, was put into early retirement for having questioned the Grameen Bank’s methods: “Their technique is to scare borrowers and insult them. We tell them to sell their clothes, that they have no other choice. I’m not proud of myself, but several times, I had even been obliged to say ‘sell your children.’”