jmb blog

Second Effort for Bulwer-Lytton

Founded in 1982 at San Jose State University in California,
the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest challenged entrants
to compose opening sentences to the worst of all possible novels. None of my entries were published and as explained here none will ever be.
My somewhat random writing log tells me I sent this one, but it may not have been my second effort as it is titled.

Army veteran Clayton Manning dabbling in fiction hoping to hit the market as a modern Raymond Chandler adding to his Philip Marlowe series or Mickey Spillane doing another Mike Hammer book but never gets a word published and not having a Kate Becket like Richard Castle did, he decides to take his teacher’s advice, “Write what you know,” and opens his own PI agency above a deteriorating secondhand music store in a small Texas town near Dallas, but in solving his first case he uncovers a deeply covert national security issue he cannot and will not dare to expose to his prospective reading audience even as fiction or innuendo.

For reasons I cannot explain, I say, having repeated myself over and over again, I do therefore declare again: I am often random, so another post may interrupt the series I first intended to post in sequence.

Bulwer-Lytton: Effort One

Founded in 1982 at San Jose State University in California,
the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest challenged entrants
to compose opening sentences to the worst of all possible novels. None of my entries were published and as explained here none will ever be.
One I wrote is posted below.

Cranston Paul Ryley lived by the philosophy that in the end, every person must account for him, herself, or they in that all motivation for actual actions related to accountability is irrelevant to the concept that any of the species humankind is the objective of non-prejudicial termination 1Pick, Apt, and Fitting, 1980 such that verifiable positive determination of any and/or all fiscal debt one should reimburse, deserves to recompense, or is able to remunerate will not be made until the fully integrated priority program necessitates that urgent consideration be applied to the issue of intended and unintended behavior as demonstrated by a supervised and un-perjured application of the thesis in question as cited by the previously referenced authors whose work may or may not be found by scholarly research at privately funded institutions, so his novel title protagonist Bogus would live by the same set of rubrics.

Having repeated myself over and over again, I do therefore declare again: I am often random, so another post may interrupt the series.

Nam Vets Day 2026

Remember:

Many went – Many came back – None were the same
This is for all who went
Any one of us who served
Could have been one of them
And any family could be related1Echoes of Nam: Absence from war is not the same as peace of the soul by John Morris Benson

On this date, fifty-three years ago: “U.S. troops withdraw from Vietnam,” was the headline.2ref

Flip of a Coin:

I don’t remember the date or time, but it was an event in the late spring of 1958 I’ll never forget. SSG Harry Harkness took Jackie E. West and me aside, saying something like, “I need one of you to lead a team to install new equipment and update some existing equipment at the embassy in Saigon. The job will also require some activity in other places in the area. Both of you are due for separation in less than 90 days so you’ll have to extend for a year. Are you willing?”

We were both willing to be extended, so who went to Vietnam was decided by the flip of a quarter.

I fully believe it was God’s plan for the coin to land as it did. With the one-year extension, I would never have gone to Edison Tech in Seattle to take the night class where I met my future wife.
April 3, 2026 is our 67th anniversary.

Jackie E West, my counterpart, is in the history books for some of the special operations in which he was later involved. As someone said, and others often repeat, “There but for the Grace of God go I.”

PS: Like Colonel Flagg from MASH, we were not there then! The Army Security Agency I mean, but written and oral history tells us there were advisors for many activities related to North v. South issues.

Ray LePoidevin – Combat vet and Author of Alternate Route
“Let’s see what you do if you get back from Nam alive.”

The Real Sign

As I said in previous posts, here have been many signs of early spring in the Pacific Northwest. Now it is regular spring time and there of signs that tell me so.

Now the traditional signs of spring are upon us.

The weather folks have reminded us of the spring equinox, that daytime is increasing most quickly, etc. A few weeks ago, at least one of the TV talking heads said we would get more daylight when we set the clocks ahead. Every intelligent person knows we don’t get more daylight; it is just shifted by law. Of course there are the natural signs of spring, buds on trees, dandelions showing their faces, etc.

Ski resorts are lamenting about having to end the season early. Schools are on spring break and spring break venues advertise special rates, but some increase their regular rates before giving specials.

I remember when the time of spring break changed every year. It could start as early as the Saturday before March 22 and as late as the Saturday before April 25. We called Easter vacation and many schools ended at noon for Good Friday.

Lawn service has started and flyers in the mail or hooked on doorknobs are trying to convince those who do not have lawn service that they need it. Friends of a certain age talk about wishing they could hire a teenager to do their lawn mowing like when they hired out as kid.1Oh the discussions that leads to.

I’ve seen the real sign of spring.

People are pulling their trailer or RV to the driveway, washing the winter grime away, and packing to leave for their first outing of the season.

P D T to P S T

Most of you know I wonder as I wander, and wander as I wander, so here I go again on signs of spring.

Another sign of spring is springing forward to save time.

Or did we fall back to save time some time ago?

Benjamin Franklin said, “Time is money,” in 1748.1Might not be an original thought, but he printed it.

“A penny saved is a penny earned,” is also attributed to Benjamin Franklin.2Never in exactly those words, and he wasn’t the originator of the saying either.

So what are we going to do with all that time we saved since last fall? Will we get interest on the savings? If so, what percentage?

Mankind with its considerable God given skill cannot possibly capture daylight, put it in a vault, and release it for later use.

Or is there a multi-nation, both friend and foe, working on a way to slow the rotation of the earth to gain more daylight.

But wait! If I remember a little about ratios, we would also get more hours of darkness.

Mankind has, however, been given paced skill improvement and access to the raw materials to develop compensations for times of shortened daylight. i.e. Fire in the very old days to LEDs in these days.

To be accurate, daylight has never been shortened, we just adjust the time when we use the compensations.

I haven’t studied the issue well enough to know or at least have an opinion that national ‘daylight saving’ is a continuing political issue, or just something that seemed to be a good idea sometime in the past.

My grandfather said that the cows don’t know about daylight saving. They want milked at the same earth time every day. My observation was that they came in from the pasture on standard time no matter what the clock said. It also amazed me how they could find their way to the barn in the dark.

Clocks on our microwave, coffee maker, and kitchen range are not connected to the internet and require the twice annual walk-around with hopes of getting them set somewhere within a minute of the actual time as specified by regulation and time zone. We left our old car on standard time gut our new car is connected to the internet, so it auto sets to the legislated time and our ‘devices’ are auto set. That is handy for the walkaround that includes two non-digital non-connected wall clocks.

Please don’t think I’m whining about this issue. As a retired nearly nonagenarian, I have the time to set the time on all the devices not connected to Wi-Fi.

So why then did I bring up the issue? I just wanted to, so there!

I wonder if I should wander about the house and move the non connected clocks before bed tonight or in the morning.

If you’ve read this content before, thanks for remembering. If not, I hope you found it interesting.

S O S

If you read my February 4th post, you would know I am fully aware the “Signs of Spring” are upon us.

In as much, as the earlier S O Ss were weather and critter related, other signs have been foisted upon us.

In the last week or so, probably two or three weeks, notifications have been presented. Am I alone in receiving the notifications? They’ve come in email, on Instagram, Facebook, and other platforms.

SEED AND PLANT CATALOGS, lawn care flyers, newspaper articles giving the best advice for a greener and healthier lawn, and …

I wonder if my half bag of ‘weed and feed’ will be good enough or go far enough so I don’t have to buy another bag and have a new half bag left over.

Random and not necessarily relative to S O S:
Why do pre-packaged screws, bolts, nuts, etc. come in odd numbers so you have to buy two packs?
Do you also have an odd number of a size you may never find a use for?
I do.

A Time to Remember

As I said in my previous post, I wrote programs in BASIC language in 1983.

A seventh-grade student said he could make them faster and easier and he did.

I decided to be a computer user rather than a programmer.

But I decided to recover memories of that experience, found a free compiler, and entered the 181 lines I had written 43 years ago.

Each command in BASIC language has its own line, but to save space, commands here are separated by a ; .
920 Cls ; 921 GoTo 100 ; 930 Print “ENTER ; RADIUS OF CYLINDER END” ; 940 Print ” ” ; 950 Input R ; 960 GoSub 1620 ; 970 Print “ENTER HEIGHT OR LENGTH OF CYLINDER” ; 980 Print ” ” ; 990 Input H ; 1000 A = (6.28 * R * H) + (6.28 * (R ^ 2)) ; 1010 GoTo 1370
The programs that worked then, did not work now, but the compiler told me what lines had errors.

Having the time granted to a retired, near-nonagenarian, I decided to re-learn some code and processes and wrote:
799 Print “CYLINDER – 2 ENDS” ; 800 Print “CYLINDER RADIUS” ; 801 Input R ; 802 GoSub 2000 ; 803 Print “CYLINDER HEIGHT or LENGTH” ; 804 Input H ; 805 GoSub 2000 ; 806 A = (6.28 * R * H) + (6.28 * R ^ 2) ; 807 Print “CYLINDER SURFACE AREA” ; 809 Print A; U$; ” sq” ; 810 GoTo 4000
It took many hours of my granted time reduce it to 166 lines and make it work.

Back in the day, it took a single entry on the Apple II computer to start the program. After several hours of searching, I didn’t find an easy or free way to do this on my 2500 times faster computer.

My experimenting with the BASIC language is over, but if I could remember the name of that seventh grader …

Before AI and …

AI is in front of us or has it been more common than we knew.
Remember seeing old high school senior class pictures with smooth hair and straight teeth?1
Remember voice dubbing for a movie actor who could not sing? 2Marni Nixon was the ghost singer for Deborah Kerr in The King and I, Natalie Wood in West Side Story, and Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady. The results were there, but AI did not exist.

The picture in the upper left of this post was not done with AI, but I have been tempted to duplicate it with the current technology.

But what fun would that be?

I do my posts with HTML,3HyperText Markup Language but others find it easier to use another tool for making posts with WordPress. I don’t find it easier to use code,4I’m not a code expert, so I do a lot of cut and paste. I just enjoy it more.

Is using a small piece of code to change font color a form of AI?

In-as-much as technology is/seems to be changing or improving exponentially faster than during the Luddite movement, it doesn’t make sense to me to fight it.

When home computers became available, my children said, “You need to keep up, Dad.”

I wrote two what I thought to be fairly complex programs in BASIC language. A seventh-grade student looked at what I had done and said he could make them faster and easier for other students to use. He did, and I decided I would be a computer user rather than a programmer.

When the parking meter app became available for our smart phone, a granddaughter said, “You need to keep up, Gramps.” And that wasn’t the first prompt I got from grandkids.

So, I said yup again and am happy I did!

Thomas Edison invented a device to record and play back sound. But not to worry, neither will the horseless carriage catch on.

On the Edge of History

History happens and some event or posting might cause us to remember where we were when. Many of us remember the newscasts about major events in history. However, some of us were on the edge of those reported events.

Today, 10 Feb is one of those days well noted in history books. 09 Feb 1962 isn’t mentioned in Exchange of Spies.

Berlin Tunnel, Bridge, and Bockwurst on my Short Stories page tells two events of my being on the edge of history.

If you’ve read this content before, thanks for remembering. If not, I hope you found it interesting or at least not an insult to your intelligence.

Gone too Soon

At least one reliable source says the season after winter and before summer, in which vegetation begins to appear, in the northern hemisphere is called spring.

The southern WA winter is not usually like Alexandria, MN, where ice fishing is common, nor is it anywhere near Palmview, TX, where one can play golf most winter days.

It is with great sadness and concern that I announce Old Man Winter in the Pacific Northwest was or is gone too soon. Neither football nor basketball seasons are over yet and the season of “Say it ain’t so, Joe” hasn’t started so it must still be winter.

But:

The green of my iris plants has been showing for several weeks now — also true for the scattered bluebells.

My potted daffodils would normally appear in about a month, but they are nearly four inches above the potting soil. The roses would not bud until April or May, but they are now! The Rodies look like they are only weeks away from blooming too.

Yes it seems that Old Man Winter where I live is gone too soon, and for the sake of the plants thinking it is spring, I hope the old man is gone for the rest of the year.

Oh! I’ve also noticed that crows and squirrels are gathering nest materials about a month early too.