Your leaking thatched hut during the restoration of a pre-Enlightenment state.

 

Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



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   no normal consumer would ever attempt
Tuesday, June 10 2003

Not that you care, but my hands are covered with blisters from beating on the concrete slab out front with the mattock.

I went to investigate a woman's iMac troubles today and concluded she needed a new computer. There is nothing I hate quite as much as serving as the Grim Reaper. Interestingly, this was the first time I'd ever brought such bad tidings.
While I was out and about I bought a small electric air compressor so I can pump up the huge twelve foot inflatable pool that has been killing a large spot on the lawn for several weeks now.
I returned home and immediately blew a fuse on my truck's cigarette lighter trying to run the damn air compressor - which can only be powered by a twelve volt source. As usual, I managed to get it to work by using techniques no normal consumer would ever attempt. I'm curious how "normal consumers" are able to achieve anything more than the supersizing of a meal.
This afternoon I heard the writer Meghan Daum being interviewed on WAMC, the local public radio station. Among other things, she was talking about something she called "the margin of error." It's the slop in the workings of society that allows us to succeed and be happy despite our bad luck, poor choices, and foolish excesses. After struggling with the new air compressor, I could see that in my life my margin of error stretched fairly wide in places where troubles could be solved by McGyver solutions. In places where troubles could be solved by phone calls, on the other hand, my margin of error is vanishingly small.
In the end, I managed to pump air into the walls of the pool and then fill its center with many gallons of water. Gretchen and I had been taking turns mowing the lawn for the first time since our wedding (the grass was a couple feet tall), and it had made her hot and sweaty. But the water in the pool was freshly-pumped from fifty degree (F) rocks and painfully cold, even when only a couple inches deep.

For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?030610

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