Fogbow

Ya, I'm shrinking!

My father the sailor, the Navy man, son of a Rear Admiral in the Navy, the man who taught me to sail and taught me so much more ... recently discovered, to his abject horror, that he had been tying granny knots in his shoelaces. Forever, apparently.

For those who aren't sailors, a sailor never ties a granny knot. She ties a square knot (OK, the precise term is reef knot, there is a real square knot but it's not terribly useful), and she ties it from muscle memory and would NEVER EVER EVER tie a granny knot.

But he did confess to me, and he says he worked on it and got it right today.

I checked my own shoelaces. I tie a square reef knot, and I do it every time without ever even thinking about it, and I have checked and double-checked that, because I will not tolerate any hint of me tying a granny knot any time, anywhere in my life.

And I tried just for S&G to tie my shoelaces in a granny knot and my fingers just didn't know how to do it. Which is excellent because I don't have to change my life around.

I like bowlines, too also.

The real square knot is a good bathrobe knot, attractive but not very strong.

I had no idea I was tying my shoelaces with a granny knot until a number of years ago when I saw a video of how to tie your shoelaces so that they would stay tied. Obviously they were showing you how to tie a square knot as opposed to a granny knot. I had to make a conscious effort to change that lifelong habit, but now a square knot is my habit and my shoelaces stay tied!

Yes, and a granny knot, if you really tighten it, is hard to untie. Whereas a reef knot can be tightened enormously and will still be fairly easy to untie.

In fact, that's a key factor in all of the basic sailor knots, is that they're easy to untie when the time comes.

When I was in the Y-Guides with my boys, I taught a lot of kids how to tie reef knots, bowlines, clove hitches, and others.

A couple of snow photos from yesterday morning:

The house from around the side, showing the wraparound porch and our only neigbor next door - behind me is woods and the creek.

And the river, this is about 200 meters from our front door, maybe a bit more.

Nice house, dude!!

I wanna live by a crick!

Beautiful house and yard. Looks even prettier with snow

Kriselda Gray wrote: ↑Sun Jan 23, 2022 9:14 am Nice house, dude!!

Yes, we scored.

While still in SoCal, we bought a nice house on an eighth of an acre lot, the kind of joint where you can lean out your window and shake hands with the next-door neighbor.

After 5 years, we sold it for double what we'd paid, and only spent 2/3 of that to buy this one.

Then we lost the rest of it on the flower shop.

We have .95 acres here, surrounded on three sides by woods and the creek.

HOWEVER, I do have the longest distance of any home in the entire development to take the trash bins to the street. It's good exercise.

At the house on the 1/8th acre lot, I was going to put up a swingset, having adopted two rambunctious boys.

But you need 8 feet clearance front and back, because kids jump off the swings, and there was no place in our yard with enough clearance. I cheated and put it so they'd fly into a nice soft bush.

Here, I put up a huge swingset/fort/sandbox thingy, and I could have put in 8 more of them before it got really crowded.

Nice place, and it's lovely in the snow. I love those wrap-around porches. They are very Southern, but we have a few houses in our area that have one, and I admire them every time I pass them.

IMWTK....Are you a new uncle?

Not yet, apparently the young lady is enjoying herself where she is. Mom is handling it very nicely, and ol' Wifehorn doesn't plan to go out there until late March or early April. But there's a lot of excitement about the whole thing.

My niece - her name is Katherine - and her husband bought the house her mother owned, a nice place on the very pricey Bainbridge Island. They all lived together for a while, but now her mom bought a condo almost across the street from the ferry to Seattle, and moved out to let them prep the house for a second child. She's within walking distance from her grandchildren, and from the people she knows.

So everyone is happy, including the young lady who is getting ready to emerge into a world fraught with danger.

Or as they’re called in my family: grauntie and gruncles

Congratulations on the soon to arrive great niece!

A bebbie!!!!!!!! Yay!

Foggy wrote: ↑Thu Feb 03, 2022 6:46 am

Edit: Oh yeah, and technically I think I'm gonna be a great-uncle, like I do.

Well, of course you are a GREAT uncle!

OK, now ol' Wifehorn has changed her story a little, so the babby is due any day, but the C section, if necessary, has been scheduled for NEXT FRIDAY, which means it might take that long. I don't think she had a C section for the first babby, a huge boy (her husband is about 6' 6" or 2 meters), so I imagine she'll have the baby girl sometime next week. And it will probably be a big girl, too also.

Just found an old cabaret record Foggy and I did way back when we first started our act. Remember this, Foggy Dearie? Good times!

Bing and Ethel did the movie of Anything Goes in 1936.

Bing Crosby as Billy Crocker & Ethel Merman as Reno Sweeney. Charles Ruggles as Rev. Dr. Moon, & Ida Lupino as Hope Harcourt. When Paramount sold the 1936 film to television, they retitled the movie Tops is the Limit because the 1956 film version, also from Paramount, was currently in theaters. Music & lyrics by Cole Porter but this film jettisoned so many of Porter's songs from the original show for numerous songs from different composers.

In the Charlotte Observer.
Didn’t know if had been posted


NORTH CAROLINA
Rooster named ‘Cluck Norris’ terrorized NC shelter staff. They finally got rid of him

Hmmm. Any relation?

Excellent point Reddog! No doubt SOROS was behind this Reign of Terror.





https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/ ... 43433.html

Cluck!

Set mah people roosters free!

So anyway, I'm writing this post on my new CentOS system on my laptop I boughted in 2011, but Linux will run on anything.

I was up until midnight, but never let the machines win, or we'll have Skynet, and you know what that means.

KDE desktop, did you know this is the OS that runs this website?

Moar covfefe.

orlylicious wrote: ↑Tue Feb 08, 2022 6:39 pm Excellent point Reddog! No doubt SOROS was behind this Reign of Terror.

This is why and how Coq au Vin was invented.

Foggy wrote: ↑Wed Feb 09, 2022 9:19 am Cluck!

Set mah people roosters free!

So anyway, I'm writing this post on my new CentOS system on my laptop I boughted in 2011, but Linux will run on anything.

I was up until midnight, but never let the machines win, or we'll have Skynet, and you know what that means.

KDE desktop, did you know this is the OS that runs this website?

Moar covfefe.

Ubuntu here.

Yes, I've been Ubuntu for years. I like Ubuntu.

But the server that's serving you this web page is CentOS. So I need to learn CentOS. And a good way to learn is to practice on an 11 year old laptop that I don't care about too much. With the identical system that my virtual server uses.

Meanwhile on the Left Coast, more fowl news:

Furious Turkeys Lay Siege to NASA Lab

https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/02/08/ ... cate-them/

For those of you who weren't there at the Virtual Meetup last night, you missed out AGAIN, because Tes was there, looking good and calling in from Phoenix.

And I happened to ask her if she'd seen the things I've written about how if she checked in on Fogbow I wanted to make her proud, because she was so incredibly supportive of me when I decided to take on this raucous little playpen greatest community on the internet, lo these many moons ago. She guided me in the creation of Fogbow, and is the nicest, smartest lady EVER.

So after the Meetup she searched Fogbow to see what I've been saying about her behind her back.


And when she was finished, she texted me.


And when she texted me -- of course, I can't quote her without permission and I ain't askin' -- she was so shockingly complimentary that I'm totally floored and haven't even figured out how to respond. I about fell over, and I read it to ol' Wifehorn and told her I want a whole new level of respect around this joint. No, I mean MORE respect. Sheesh.

Anyway, she thinks I've done well since the disaster that befell my previous server. So I got that goin' for me.