Bit of a rant.

I've seen a lot of people screeching incoherently about children being ripped from nursing at their mothers' breasts, and separated and put in *gasp* concentration camps!!!

What these fucktards are conveniently forgetting is one simple thing these parents could have done to prevent this from being done to their families:

Don't.  Come.  Here.  Illegally. 

Fucking duh. 

American parents who commit crimes are ripped away from their children and sent to prison.  If there are no family members available to take custody of the children, they're put into situations worse than most can comprehend: the children get stuck in limbo, in state custody and control.  They may be put into a good foster home, or they may be put with abusers who might rape them or murder them. 

And nobody screams about that. 

No, they're just screeching like fucking psychologically disturbed brain damaged monkeys about the people who shouldn't be fucking coming here in the first place, getting their children removed from them. 

Well, dumbasses, I can see another possible solution: start shooting the human smugglers on sight.  Shoot any male who crosses the border on sight.  Turn any female around, and make sure she knows there are guns aimed at her until she's well and truly back in the country she tried to cross from.  They'll stop, or they'll die out.  Either is fine by me.

No, I'm not saying I think the situation is right.  I'm saying the situation is wrong, starting with the actions of the so-called parents putting their children in the danger that the fucking window-lickers are screeching about.

I think that, along with shooting the smugglers and adult males crossing (especially those with specific tattoos), we need to publicly prosecute any hiring manager of any company that hires illegal aliens (not immigrants--immigrants are legal), and every employee of any temp agency that deals with them.  Every hiring manager needs to be sentenced to a mandatory ten years per illegal alien hired, no parole possible, consecutive sentencing only.  We need to sentence the construction companies picking up day laborers from the Home Depot/Lowes/whatever parking lots the same way. 

Hell, I'm in favor of sentencing those pushing the DACA act with the same guidelines.  

We need to make it hurt for those attracting the parasites. 

Adventures in parenting

I found out, this week, why my son hadn't been using his Kindle Fire, in spite of adoring the silly thing: it had somehow gotten de-registered to the account, and the WiFi was switched to airplane mode.  NO clue how. 

I also have no clue how I managed to figure out how to fix it.  I am a barely competent user of MS Word, and of some aspects of Firefox.  My personal Kindle is a Paperwhite (which I dearly love, and which is very much uncomplicated).

Also, this week, the kids had day camp at their school: a 2 hr/day, 4 day class on using iPads.  And playing coding games. 

Yep.  Coding games. 

I am inclined to get the kids a netbook and make the home page Khan Academy.  I want them to learn to take care of their tech better than I've learned, and earlier. 

(there are also a few touch-typing game sites I'd be setting them up with) 

Other than that?  They've been playing outside with water pistols, watching TV, and doing normal kid summer stuff this week. 

Including complaining of being bored and pushing boundaries. 

I need to find something else to have them do--swim lessons, VBS, something.  I got them sidewalk chalk and Popsicle molds today (which have been filled and stuck in the giant upright freezer in the garage).  But they need more, especially while we've got mid-90s (or more) highs, and no lower than 60% humidity daily, with not enough wind to offset that.

I've got two more months and they go back to school. 

Love it!

So, back in January, I got m'self a new pair of headphones.  Spent more than I usually do on headphones on them, too--around $50 for the one pair.  They're wireless-capable, but also have an audio cable jack. 

Which is why I bought them in the first place. 

Previously, my headphones had failed right where the wire goes into the jack on the end that plugs into the computer, somewhere between the three and six month mark.  The headphones themselves likely would have kept working, were it not for that one spot.  Every time. 

My headphones' audio cable broke day before yesterday.  So I unplugged the audio cable, set it up to listen to music wirelessly, and put in an order for new cables from Amazon--5' cables, rather than the dinky 3' one that came with the headphones. 

These headphones are very good in sound quality: balance of treble and bass is very good, and everything is just crystal clear.  They're incredibly comfortable, too--I have, in the past, worn them all day without winding up with my ears sore from pressure.  And, if the kids are watching something utterly obnoxious (a frequent occurance), I can unplug and just wander around doing housework with the headphones blocking out the crap they like watching. 

The replacements arrived today, and the 5' length means it's easier to work at my desk.  An extra two feet of audio cable means I don't have to sit hunched forward to listen to music.  I can lean back and stretch without either taking off the headphones voluntarily or getting them yanked off when I forget how short three feet is.  Best yet?  Four cables from Amazon (at about $8) was less than a decent set of cheap headphones (at least $15, going sharply up from there) that won't last but maybe six months. 

And then, when all four of the cables have broken, I can get another set.  Because I really doubt the headphones themselves will have worn out by then. 

And when you consider that the headphones themselves are vital writing equipment?  Massively good deal, here. 

Dumb dog.

So.  Yesterday, we got up as usual on weekend mornings, and found that the kids had let the dog out (also like usual on weekend mornings).

What wasn't like usual was that either the imp or pixie had messed up.  The gate was ajar.

And the dog...got out.  And vanished.

We looked for her, ran the mower (partially because it needed it, partially because we thought it'd bring her out of hiding), looked for her again, left a message with the humane society.

Found out from the neighbor that the dog catcher had been just east of us, very early yesterday morning.  So I checked the Humane Society's page again, where they post pictures of lost pets.  Sure enough--she was there.

They're closed today.  Sad dog in doggie jail's gonna have to wait for her bail-out until tomorrow afternoon.

And then, directly following, she's getting a bath and shorn like a kid going into boot camp.

Maybe not a dumb dog...maybe she planned it?  Because the bath and haircut were on the schedule for yesterday. 

Update:  Dog has been bailed out, and is home sleeping on her patio.  She rode home in the back seat of the Subaru, alternating which child's lap she was in at any given moment.  Lots of giggles and doggie kisses.  

Pens! And Ink! And Paper!

I've been craving new pens for a while.  And new, pretty inks.  It wasn't helped by Odysseus suggesting that the next volume in the Liquid Diet Chronicles (to be written after I finish the current project of the 4th, but CLEARLY not last Modern Gods book, at this point in the writing process) should be done in a burgundy or dark crimson.

Anyhow, I resisted the temptation...and then I gave in.  Odysseus told me to go ahead and make the order I was considering from Goulet Pens, and I did.  I ordered a Platinum Preppy because I've heard a lot about the silly little $4 pens (yeah, they're cheap, and kinda ugly, but damn do they write well), a TWSBI vac mini (it posts, was a little bit less than the full sized one, and something I'd been really wanting for a while, now), a sample of Noodler's Black Swan in English Roses (gorgeous, water-resistant red burgundy), and a full bottle of their Red-Black (which looks like you wrote in blood, and it dried).

I hadn't ordered pens or ink for myself in about a year.  And Odysseus told me that this was my early (but not by a lot) anniversary present.*

I also ordered a set of Jinhao shark pens for my imp, who held his grades to all A's and B's (with the exception of his handwriting, which is still better than his daddy's).  My imp, who loves snitching my fountain pens, and requests a few inked up with his favorite colors every so often, gave me one of his set of seven pens, and gave the pixie another.  And the dumb little things are absolutely spectacularly nice writers.  The little black shark in Chinese fine (finer than European fine) is incredibly smooth.

In any case, my fingers are ink-stained a bit, I have spatters on my left shin from where I dropped an ink syringe that I was using to fill a converter from a sample vial for the pixie, and I couldn't be happier.

In other news, my local Walmart had finally restocked their smaller Pen+Gear brand smaller 5-subject notebooks.   Hadn't happened in a while, and my current favorite is that particular notebook that I'd written out the rough of Bite Sized in (I'm excited--that book has eight reviews, more than any single one of my other books, and all are 5-star), and am working through drafting Gods and Monsters in the second section.  Walmart had three left.   

Had.

I now have those notebooks in mint green (my old one), royal blue, red, and black. 

I also snagged a package of their top-spiral memo books and mini-comp-books (same size as the little spiral books)--at $0.88 cents a pack (three in the comp book pack, four in the spiral memos), it was worth a try.  I'm shocked and thrilled by how well they stand up under fountain pen ink, and am now questioning my choice to give the kids one of each out of the two packages to go with their new composition books.

Hi, my name is HH, and I'm a pen and paper nerd.  And I share the voices in my head with anyone who wants a listen.  

*I've already collected part of his Father's Day gifts, and know what I'm doing for his anniversary presents. 

So glad I'm so far down the alphabet list as an author

I don't think I'm going to be targeted any time soon by cry-bullies. 

It's a damn good thing, too--I have a strategy in mind that I can't afford to use, yet.  Maybe (probably) not for a very long time, assuming I ever get there. 

If I ever get targeted by cry-bullies, and I can afford to hire a lawyer, I'm going to sue for three things:

1. A public, written apology, published at the instigator's cost in at least four "reputable" national publications (NYT, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, and Time, for example).

2. Said apology will include a detailed retraction of the lies (i.e., what was said, what the truth was, and an analysis of the difference between the two) as well as a statement explaining their motivation (to silence someone they disagree with), and that they're a failure at life in general so feel inclined to attempt to ruin others' reputations.

3. All court costs are their responsibility. 

Honestly, I think all authors who run into this kind of terrorism should sue for something similar (not money, because they frequently don't have it). 

Woah, the stupid...it burns...

To quote Han Solo, I've got a bad feeling about this. 

Basically, several states have decided to work on legislation to hand the state's electoral votes to whoever wins the popular vote nationwide. 

This is what is known as "a very bad thing." 

What this does is ensure that whoever wins the East and West Coast votes wins the whole shebang, no matter who wins the vote in the states passing this.  It silences the voices of the state's voters. 

That's gonna end badly for absolutely everyone involved.  Really, really badly.  As in, CW2 badly. 

I don't want that.  I don't want that for my kids.  I don't want that even for the idiots who haven't the sense God gave a domesticated turkey that are pushing for this.  Because they're the ones that are going to die first, and they're going to die ugly, in ways I don't want for even child molesters. 

It would be far quicker and more humane to start enforcing the laws about sedition and treason written into the Constitution, and executing those working against the direct best interest of the nation in favor of failed political ideologies that would see the Constitution scrapped.