The Pipes are Freezing, Danny Boy

Struggling with an upper respiratory infection made last week difficult, yet the cold weather has been just as frustrating. Today’s fun was finding the hot water lines frozen, the fan used to duct air from the basement into the crawlspace broken, and a window mysteriously out allowing wind directly in.

How that window came to be lying outside is baffling, for there is no way the wind could have sucked it outside, frame and all. We’ve had the opposite problem with windows blown in before which makes sense. I’m wondering if a varmint came in through the cat door and couldn’t figure its way back out. That’s a longshot, a Twilight Zone kind of improbable, due to the location having nothing to climb up to the window in question.

With the temperature at 10 degrees F (-9 C) and a wind chill of –1 F (-18 C), it will take a long time to thaw the pipes. In fact, the thermometer is dropping with the sun setting so it is going to be very cold tonight with wind chills of up to – 20 F possible. Hard to believe it is the middle of November.

I may have to make an emergency run for a fan tonight if things don’t improve within the next couple of hours. If this is what autumn is going to be like, I don’t look forward to winter.

Snow and Other Discomforts

A short guide to configuring a LG 27MP33HQ monitor for a better picture follows after an account of how I ended up having to do so. Not what I was planning to write, but what else is new?

Yesterday morning greeted the residents of rural Yucatan with a small accumulation of snow. As I type this, more of the white stuff is falling leaving the yard a patchwork of green and white. Winter has shown up early in Southeastern Minnesota and shows no signs of letting go in the immediate future if the forecasts are to be believed.

That wasn’t the only sight to rudely greet me yesterday. Turning on my computer monitor revealed waves of green rolling through the right side of the screen. Having seen this before, I knew it was hardware failure. Still, doing all the right things to eliminate software driver and cable issues were undertaken to no avail. In fact, the not terribly old Asus VH236H decided to get worse by the minute.

Beautiful Pictures

Sorry, there will be no photographs in this post. However, the title is appropriate as will be revealed.

The last couple of weeks have been physically taxing, hence my failure to keep updates on what has been going on. I was lucky to get even one Halloween themed review up this year. Between a short notice visit, election night precinct results madness, a cold, and a lengthy day at Gundersen’s East Building, it has been a tiring pace for a CFS sufferer.

Ah, I should explain the post title. It comes from that day at the clinic when Dad was put through the PET scanner to see if cancer had come back. Going in the tube involves a long process starting with imbibing the tracing dye, waiting for it to go through the system, and then the scan itself.

Even after that ordeal, we had time to kill before seeing Dad’s doctor. Suffice it to say that my Nook HD’s battery has rarely ended up as depleted that Thursday afternoon. Too many crossword puzzles took its toll on it and me.

Eventually we got to see the good doctor and when she walked in she couldn’t wait to show Dad his “beautiful pictures.” That will probably be the first and last time that phrase will be used about pictures of him. Although, I have heard him described as a cute old man.

Don’t tell him that.

Of course this meant good news. No tumors were visible and the blood tests showed no signs of cancer. Officially, my father is in remission.

That is a ray of light in what has been a dismal year, not just for us but for other people I know. For some reason, 2014 has had a brutal character about it. May it improve for others too is my fervent hope.

Stephen King’s IT (1990) Review

A strong cast competes against shaky material in this ground breaking television adaptation. Based on the famous horror novelist’s decades spanning story about a group of friends battling a mysterious entity in a small town. When murders resembling those from thirty years before begin, the group must reassemble to face what appears to be a killer clown. However, nothing is what it appears to be… But I  do promise a cameo by Godzilla.

Even a miniseries isn’t enough to cram in everything from a Stephen King novel and his 1985 novel IT manages to be even more daunting thanks to excessive metaphysical noodling contained within. Still, the story had the benefit of a young group of adolescents like King’s Stand By Me along with the striking visual of a clown for the villain. So it is no surprise that ABC television network got the rights to adapt the tome for a big event. Put together with great care by director Tommy Lee Wallace, the show was a hit featuring some memorable images.

But was IT any good?

Part 1 starts off the whole affair off with ominous music accompanying pages from a photo album showing seven kids from the late 1950s or early ‘60s before shifting to the current time. Well, “current” being the late ‘80s (1990 to be specific) which of course is almost a quarter of a century ago now. Inadvertently a double period piece for modern viewers, IT does show IT’s age. There will be both pompadours and big hair for you to decide which is the more frightening.

Time of Eve Blu-ray Going to a Wider Release

Awhile back, as in over a year ago, I posted about the Kickstarter campaign to fund a Blu-ray release of Time of Eve: The Movie. By the time it closed, they had garnered far more money than projected and easily passed stretch goals added along the way.

This turned the project into something much bigger and complicated with the promised product only delivered last month. It was worth the extra wait, but in the process they went $10,000 over budget mainly due to horrendous shipping costs to Europe. Although always meant as a work of love, they have enough remaining sets put together from production overruns to recoup that money. They need and deserve help.

So if you didn’t get in on the Kickstarter, here’s your chance to get the deluxe package at their webstore. The Blu-ray is glorious, as are the insert materials and the included soundtrack CD. I cannot stress just how special the anime is enough and if you haven’t seen it, it is worth the blind buy – I can promise that without a doubt.

Also now available is something that fell together after the Kickstarter ended, which is the English version of the associated novel, Time of Eve: Another Act. I preordered that just before writing this post.

Meanwhile, preorders for the standard and deluxe editions of the movie are now up at RightStuf.com.

Again, I can’t praise this film enough. Eventually I hope to review the set and movie, but it will be a major undertaking compared to most of my reviews. It would be best done in multiple posts due to the massive amount of content and extras.

Buy it, you will not regret it.

Autumn Is Called Fall for Good Reason

Seeing the best Fall colors in years has driven me slightly crazy this month. In trying to get back into photography, the lure of brightly colored leaves been a source of frustration thanks to uncooperative lighting and trees refusing to synchronize with each other. Then there are the winds making sure that I remember autumn is called Fall because of the leaves dropping from trees.

In the midst of this pursuit for the elusive perfect autumnal picture life has gone on.

RIP Jazz

To describe 2014 as a bad year would be a gross understatement. About a month ago, my father and I noticed one of our cats was having health problems again. Jazz was afflicted with periodic bouts of upper respiratory infections since his birth and usually managed to shake them off. This time he lost a lot of weight before getting over the bug, but he’d always been a very strong animal.

The weight loss continued in dramatic fashion and we took him to the vet two weeks ago. From the symptoms and sky high calcium in the blood, it was surmised he had a tumor hidden somewhere in his stomach. Such irony, given my father’s lymphoma in the same location.

Refusal to eat followed and he began to decline rapidly. What’s amazing is that he held on to the point of being in absolute misery. With no other choice, I had to put Jazz down today.