House of Jorob

Tomato Logic

Brandywine tomatoes need at least eight hours of full sun during their growing season, according to all the accomplished gardeners I know.

I have seven. 

Oops.

I could have sworn that I had more than eight back there, behind the house. In fact, I knew I had at least that many.

And I confirmed it when I pulled out my sunlight-chart.

Every three days I noted sunlight-lines and shadow. For a full growing season, just to be sure.

And there it was.

Clearly calculated.

Between eight and a half and nine hours, forty minutes.

Hah!

Um.

In 1996.

Funny how trees leaf out over the years.

The difference coming up short makes?

A ton of green tomatoes that stay green until the damn vines get tired and snap while snaking across the top of the cage.

Except for the beauties that are ripening NOW.

All three of them.

I have a fresh jar of mayo waiting in the fridge.

The Mailstream: Why do banks charge a fee on "insufficient funds" when they know there is not enough money?

Mailstreams are rivers, with lots of stuff floating in the depths.

I understand people like to slap filters in their streams, cleaning the screens every couple of days without a second thought.
Me, I sift the screens. There's always something interesting in there.
Like the following question.
I peeled it off the filters, hung it out to dry a bit, and tried to come up with an answer.
It was perhaps an Imponderable once, or part of an Andy Rooney or comic's stand-up routine.

Why do banks charge a fee on "insufficient funds" when they know there is not enough money?

Because they can.

In a world where banks can process your daily transactions in the manner most likely to produce overdrafts (as opposed to the way you actually may have used your checking account debit card that day), even the most meticulous check-writer has to be careful.

In an article in the Wall Street Journal written by Kelli Grant, we read that Bank of America, Chase, Citibank, PNC and Wachovia pay daily transactions in order from highest to lowest. Other banks order their payouts any way they choose. So although  your last transaction might have bounced, when the bank gets through reordering things, you might find yourself with, oh, say, four bounces.

What the hell.

They have to recover their defaulted mortgages from somewhere.

Everything That Happens: Brand New Music from David Byrne and Brian Eno

David Byrne and Brian Eno. Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. Brand new music!!

All of the songs are streaming for free right now, and the album itself is for sale in all kinds of formats--including CDs for any luddites out there. Right now, there's also an offer to download one free MP3 from the album too.

Go here and listen: http://www.everythingthathappens.com/

I tried to embed the player, 'cause they're giving away the code for it, but I kept screwing that up. It looks like its working now, but I'm leaving the link up there just in case.

It's okay, because the songs start streaming as soon as you get there.

Give a listen. And rejoice that there is good music.

 

Bookshelf: The Runes of the Earth/Fatal Revenant

The Runes of the Earth
Fatal Revenant
The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant
Stephen R. Donaldson
c. 2004
c. 2007

Kevin's Dirt.
Kevin's Dirt.
The man gave us Hile Troy, Saltheart Foamfollower, Ur-Lord, countless other memorable names and phrases through six volumes. The best he can come up with for the health-sense blindness that impacts the Land is Kevin's Dirt?

Oy.

Donaldson returns to his epic story, the story of Covenant the Unbeliever, after 20 years for several reasons, which he outlines very plainly on his website: Surprisingly, fear plays a part.

I felt the first trilogy was the best. A lot of the second trilogy felt forced to me. I felt I had to work my way through an awful lot of padding. Well-verbed padding, sure. But still padding.

So I approached the return trilogy with trepidation.

Then I found out there were four books in this series.

Oops.

Neither of these two new titles truly disappoints. Both are strong books, worth the time spent reading. As always, the conflicted characters are sometimes hard to take--there's a relationship between Linden Avery and a Haruchai that's maddening and it lasts all the way through Runes and into Revenant before finding a resolution.

If you've not read the first sets, you'll not notice that Linden spends an awful lot of time recapping what has gone before.

Me, I skimmed here and there.

The tetralogy is cheduled for completion in 2013.

Those Darn Endcaps

I do a lot of shopping at BJ's.

Good prices on bulk purchases, not too much gas burned to get to the store, the occasional amazing bargain.

Been shopping there for over six years.

So imagine my surprise when, for the first time ever, I ran into a bar-code that didn't scan like the price said it would.

July 25.

Fruit-20 and DeerPark.

Cases were stacked on the endcaps for both, with big signs.

But the prices in the aisles, where these normally are found (and still were in addition to the endcap stacks) were fifty cents higher per case on the Kraft Foods product, and a dime more on the Deer Park.

I made a note of it on the way to the register, just in case.

Good thing I did.

The cashier had trouble understanding that she needed to call over a manager to void the items, but she eventually got it. The manager seemed to know what I was talking about--she grumbled a bit about that being the second round of endcaps that didn't match the aisles that day. She says she'll take care of it, and I go on my way having paid the right price--the lower one.

That was it until it happened again this past weekend.

Same damn thing.

End caps priced half a buck cheaper than the aisle, and the register ringing the higher price.

This time I didn't want to wait while they ran back to check my honesty.

I had photos.

Good thing I'm used to people looking at me funny.

Seeing as how this weekend's manager was just as "surprised" as the last one was about the differences in the posted prices and the register, I thought I'd send BJ's customer service the link to this blog post.

Hey, I can use the traffic.

July 25's receipt (above)

August 8's receipt (above)

A Film Guide Like No Other

Manly Lawmen Shooting Guns (1957)
Martians Make Me So Mad (1953)
Ow, That Shark Bites (1975)
Biggest Ass Monkey (2005)

Great films. Strong casts. Great directors. Read all about the stars and their films in The Parallel Universe Film Guide.

Spencer Green has written one of the finest--and perhaps the only--sendup of filmdom, film buffs, and critical film review guides on the planet. What's remarkable is the depth found here--there are plot summaries, star filmographies, quoteables--they cross-reference naturally and they're all faked beautifully. Linger for a while on the Famous Quotes section for Ow, That Shark Bites or The Journey To Mount Geek: The Brotherhood of  Geeks. Green has nailed the rhythm and meter of the originals on which these parodies are based.

Get lost in The PUFG. Completely worth every second wasted on it.

The Great Firewall of China

I wish I could claim credit for that phrase.
But I can't.
"The Great Firewall of China" is a phrase coined to disparage the Chinese government's Golden Shield project.
Golden Shield is China's $800 million dollar Internet lockdown; probably the most sophisticated Internet filtering system of its kind.
Two or three sides are fighting over Internet regulation here in the United States, but in China, the battle is already lost.
(Type Falun Gong into a web browser in a Chinese Internet cafe and watch how fast the police show up after the sirens go off.)
Companies like Cisco happily sold all kinds of filtering gear to the Chinese--what, you thought they manufactured all this stuff themselves?
Hardly.
I'm all for making a buck--God knows, I need them, so I understand the rationale behind the sales.
And Cisco's shareholders would have crucified their board if they didn't make the deal.

Dollar bills don't have a conscience.

But I do.

Which might surprise some people.

Bill Xia heads up a company called Dynamic Internet Technology. He launched it six years ago, and its purpose was to assault the Great Firewall.

Bill brings uncensored Internet to Chinese end users--the citizens. About a million of them make use of his company's software, designed to get around the Great Firewall.

I'm sure any journalist reading this will want to take advantage of the toolkit before they go overseas.

Go right here to get it: The Global Internet Freedom Consortium. There's a zip file that's got 5 tools for busting through the Firewall, right in the middle of the page.