Giggity-gat! Can't Let the Terrorists Win (Again)

Yesterday I had the day from hell at work. Up against a deadline to get testing done against our 64 bit Oracle database, I had to do all of this in one day:

1. Resolve three separate technical issues in coordination with the system's vendor (not Oracle) by 3 PM to get a "go" decision at the "go-no go" decison point
2. Update the MS Project Plan governing the project
3. Update "Command Center" document (don't ask)
4. Meet twice with my upper management
5. Determine permission levels needed on two servers to be used in the production go-live
6. Go to Albemarle High School to get a form to allow my kids to attend Albemarle County Schools the coming up year

Everything got done, but I was left feeling drained by the end of it all. I ended up taking off from work at 4:30. There wasn't enough time to get anything else started or done, and I was really in no mood to try in any event.

I drove home, to Barboursville, and then immediately got changed into jeans, a t-shirt, and my fidel cap, gathered my SKS, loaded three 20 round clips, and then walked down to my brother's cottage to do some shooting.

He brought his AR-15 with two clips, and his .45 callibre Glock with two clips. We set up some targets against a hillside and proceeded to plunk away at them. God, to those who don't shoot, let me tell you something: There's nothing quite like shooting a powerful rifle repeatedly to drain away the day's stresses. Hippies can go ahead and insert phallic substitution joke here.

Whatever - it's really one of those subjects you can't intelligently comment on until you've tried it. Like parenthood or the military, you can read as much as you want about guns, gun ownership, and civil liberties but you can't truly know the subject until you yourself have done it. No ammount of reading will truly prepare you for parenthood or joining the military. In this case, you have to have owned a gun and shot it. Especially with rural gun ownership, there really is no debate in my mind about the nature of the civil liberty aspects or the essential goodness of it.

In short - suck it, hippies.

I'm also planning another expedition to the Rapidan Wildlife Management Area, this time on the weekend of 9-11. Possible attendees include me, my sister's boyfriend, a friend of his, my brother, and one to two friends of mine. In all likelihood we'll have to split up to not put too much pressure on the brook trout in any one stream.

Since the weekend is 9-11, I was thinking of getting a t-shirt custom made by my buddy Andy who runs the Black Cat Skate Shop in Charlottesville. They do custom t-shirts there. I was thinking of getting a Jack Kennedy graphic on the front, like this:

On the back of the shirt, it would say:

"Hey, terrorists! I banged all 72 of your 'virgins'...
Have fun with your Heavenly sloppy seconds."

Haha - because, you see - JFK is dead up there in Heaven with all of the virgins the martyrs are promised... ahhh, and ole Jack had a rep for being a ladies' man...

I think it's friggin' hi-larious.

Bacchanal & Milk of Human Kindness

Bow, once more, to the gods of modern rock-n-roll...

Bacchanal by Clutch

Temptation of indulgence
Divides and conquers my mind
An elegy for fading youth
Welcome to mankind

If you provide the spleen
Then I'll provide the ideal
If I provide a puppet
Will you provide the strings?

Revel in the glory
Of a coming of age
Decades of suppression
Released in a rage
Have mercy

How can I seize the day when it is dusk?
You provide the pull, and I'll provide the thrust
Romance is nothing but a sack of lies
But it is truth which I have come to despise

Bacchanal

If I provide the scene
Will you provide the ordeal?
If I provide a crown
Will you provide a queen?

Milk of Human Kindness by Clutch

Fine swine, wish you were mine bite the apple of my eye
This little piggy never made it home
Helter skelter, run for shelter, can't escape the boiling swelter
Beat you like the dog that you are

Oh, I could kill you if I wanted
Kill you with my own two hands
Oh, I'm so happy I could kill you
Kill you like a sacrificial lamb

Because you, you are nothing but an animal
Panting, lying on your back
A sight so obscene, a sight so absurd
So many ways to skin a cat

Everything tastes better now
My hands, these tools, the fatted cow
The swine, the wine, the coming feast
Your Jesus Christ has canine teeth

Fine swine, wish you were mine bite the apple of my eye
This little piggy never made it home
Helter skelter, run for shelter, can't escape the boiling swelter
Beat you like the dog that you are

Because you, you are nothing but an animal
Panting, lying on your back
A sight so obscene, a sight so absurd
So many ways to skin a cat

Everything tastes better now
My hands, these tools, the fatted cow
The swine, the wine, the coming feast
Your Jesus Christ has canine teeth

Catch Up Ball and the Divorce

I haven't posted in a while. Haha - like anyone has noticed! That's okay... I write here to purge and get things straight in my own mind as much as anything else.

Well, without going into any of the gory details, I've become separated from my wife. Irreconcilable differences, I guess. I don't think either of us really wanted it deep down, but we just couldn't overcome a couple of problems.

So, I've moved back in with my folks out in Barboursville. My two oldest kids (from my first marriage) are moving with me. During the summer they stay with their Mom and visit me on the weekends. This weekend will be the first where they get to see their new digs.

I'm actually kind of excited. I think I'm realizing that, much like Papa, I'm a rolling stone. I enjoy change on some level no matter what kind of change it is. It's the same here. There's a lot of pain, of course, but most things painful also cause you to grow. "Look at the bright side whenever possible" is becoming my new motto.

One of the things in the "plus" column is the room in which my kids will be staying. It's my sister's old room and is easily the coolest room in the house. It's huge with a loft and the sweetest walk-in closet a girl could ever want under that loft. My daughter (11) will be getting the closet except for one rack so my son (14) can have some hanger space. He has a nice big dresser out in the room for his stuff.

Another thing in the "plus" column is the lake on my folks' property. It needs to be stocked, but it does have a small and very fiesty largemouth bass population. I've been fishing twice since I moved in on Saturday and these ferocious fish have given me many needed hours of peace and relaxation.

Four years ago there was a drought which just about drained our little 3/4 acre pond. The opportunity was taken to completely drain the lake and rebuild our aging dock. The pond was never restocked.

In steps Mother Nature... the pond seems to have been naturally restocked with largemouth bass. From what I've been told and what I've read this is likely to have been done by geese. We have a family of geese which visits our pond each year in their migrations. Evidently these geese will eat fish eggs if they stumble upon a nest. Some get digested and some just pass right through. They ate some eggs at another pond along their route and then pooped them out in our lake. Either that or their legs brushed some eggs which stuck and then upon landing in our lake the eggs were deposited.

Either way, natural bass stocking! Our bass are suffering from a lack of their normal food sources - usually bluegill or some other form of sunfish. Evidently these geese ate no bluegill eggs. The bass in our lake were surviving off of tadpoles for a while and now seem to have switched to surface feeding on bugs since the tadpoles matured. Tuesday night I was out at the lake at around 6:30 or so and witnessed a number of surface strikes, including an eating of a post-coital dragonfly who flew too close to the surface after his mid-air whoopie was done.

The end product are bass that simply stay hungry - surface feeding on bugs is a much more energy-intensive venture for less food in return for their effort than bass are used to. I'm telling you these bass bite at about anything. From what I've caught, there seems to be five or six bass with most of them being in the 8-10 inch range and one down at around seven inches or so. I think their diet is limiting how much they can grow.

So I've done some research on stocking the pond. For less than $150 I'll be able to get 10 more largemouth (at 5 inches), 10 catfish (at 10 inches), and 90 bluegill (at 3 inches). This should keep the proper ratio of predator to prey in the bass/bluegill equation. Some sources say the ratio should be five bluegill to each bass, some say seven to one. I split the difference and said six to one (5 native bass + 10 stocked = 15 bass times 6 = 90 bluegill). These numbers are a quarter less than the numbers the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries suggests for a warmwater pond an acre in size.

As long as I harvest bluegill at a five or six to one ratio to the bass, the poulation should be fairly self-regulating after one season. I may even look into some minnows. That bears some more research, though.