Too Much
KidneyBean is dead. Tuesday it didn't want to boot initially. After poking around in its guts a little, xilin tightened my video card, unplugged my harddrives and tried a series of booting attempts, all of which got further than my initial "Hey wake up. Time to do stuff." First with no hard drives, then primary, then slave, then both and it booted fully and worked fine for the rest of the day.
Wednsday it did the same thing, except the same fix attempt failed. From there xilin continued the diagnosis and finally got it down to either the motherboard or CPU. Considering that the CPU is a Pentium and the motherboard is an ECS with an onboard soundcard that went out only a few weeks ago, we figured the problem was the mobo. The one I got to replace my Asus that fried a mere 18 months ago. It was just under $50.
Let this be a lesson that I learned the hard way for the rest of you: look for deals, but when you get a motherboard, don't skimp with cheap ass hardware from China.
Naturally as soon as we figured I needed a new motherboard and I decided to go ahead and buy a replacement, the internet went out. It came back just in time for Clayton to pick me up for work but apparently went down again about an hour later. Thanks to this and long work days for both me and xilin, my new parts didn't get ordered until Friday morning. (I have to get new RAM, since that was the only component that wouldn't fit with the new board, but I'm looking at it as an upgrade since I had 2gigs and will now have 4.)
My RAM might arrive today, but TigerDirect says my motherboard won't arrive until this Friday. That's okay. There won't be any time to install it before then anyway. There's really just too much going on for me to be upset about the computer (which will probably now become LimaBean, since the new motherboard is green).
I'm typing now from work between batches of deer tags. I hate the deer tags so much, but I am grateful to have them. Otherwise I'd be sitting here, waiting for the phone to maybe ring, trying to figure out how to keep busy or goof off without getting into trouble.
About the same time that all this is going down, Thursday I think, mom got a call from grandma. She was worried that grandpa has Alzheimer's.
Mom started to take off that day to go see them, late. Like around six or seven when the drive to Loomis is easily four hours. She stopped in Salinas for some groceries to take with her, couldn't reach grandpa and grandma from her cell and came back home thinking she might go the next day.
All morning Friday we asked if she had made a decision, if she was going to go. She said she hadn't called yet and this was still the case when xilin, poth and I went for our semi-weekly Pinnacles hike. Naturally we were all worried when we got back from our hike and dad got home from work and mom wasn't home with no message indicating when she had left.
Thankfully she called that evening indicating she had arrived safe and sound but had no news.
She called again the next night with what she was up to ("Mad Chess" with the boyos) but no indication on grandpa's health or when she might be home.
Finally today I got an email (sent yesterday but I had left work by then) with:
"Things are not as bad with Grandpa as I had feared. Maybe Grandma was exaggerating to get me to come visit. They are both moving slowly, but managing pretty well. "
Honestly, if that was grandma's motive I wouldn't blame her. The rest of that side of the family is all within an hour's drive except for Erika, off in Wyoming, and mom is always reluctant to visit thinking it puts extra strain on grandpa and grandma.
They miss her.
She's planning on staying a few more days but isn't sure exactly how long.
I mentioned Clayton picking me up. We have a new site that we've just been approved to sample from. Problem is that we can only trap at the military's pleasure and require an escort.
Fortunately our escort is Jim, who we know from when we work the check station for the hunts, and he's been very accomidating including finding several potential trapping sites for us and not teasing Clayton too much after it turned out he forgot to put the Sherman traps in the bed of the pickup. (I would've forgot something critical like that too. We've never had to have ALL of our equipment, for birds AND mammals, at the same time before.)
We put a bunch of miles on the truck in driving back to the office for the traps and back down to the site, a drive that's easily one and a half hours one way. We got back at pretty much the perfect time to set the traps too. The day was finally cooling (it was in the 90s that day, the day before: 102F), the sun was low, but there was enough light to see what we were doing which is exactly when we're supposed to set the Shermans anyway.
That night I drove the truck back to my house. Driving up 101 at about 9pm I saw flashing lights headed southbound. A patrol car and an ambulance it looked like. I thought little of it, wondered if maybe there had just been an accident behind me. Then it got weird, when more patrol cars went south.
I got home, ate hastily, and tried to get as much sleep as possible. Thursday I got up at 3:30am, dressed, ate, texted Clayton but accidentally sent it to Andy, fixed that, and drove back down to King City to pick up Clayton to go process our traps. We set our mist nets and went around picking up the Shermans. We ended up with 12 mammals, mostly P. boylii and P. maniculatus but also one CA spiny pocketmouse and a dusky-footed woodrat. Not as many as we've come to expect but a decent haul.
We also met the woman in charge of the MAPS netting project which was great because she hadn't been returning our calls/emails on trying to set up a meeting with her. We caught 4 birds and received net setting tips from her and her small crew.
We're going back next Wednsday for more birds and mammals since thats what worked for our escorts. This week we'll be at another site. We've stepped up our trapping frequency since Andy wondered why we were only trapping 1 day a week. Our reason had to do with distributing hours so we didn't use them up too fast but I guess the goal now is to get through the sites as fast as possible.
This is where I shrug and go with it, rather than throwing up my hands and getting exasperated. My job is flexible and unpredictable. But I get to go outside and work with animals up close.
(I'm just worried about ticks. I must be missing them. Everybody else was flicking off ticks left and right both days and I only found one single solitary one crawling on my pants leg. Every itch or tingling sensation, every uneven spot on my skin is now suspect.)
The part about the flashing lights in the section above was not just a random observation. It was the Soledad police department responding to assist a call in King City.
Wednsday night around 8pm there was a shooting.
A shooting a mere block away from my best friend Paula's house.
A shooting that injured three and killed two of her brother's friends.
Toño was a mere 10 minutes away from BEING THERE. He decided to wait for his grandmother to come home so he wouldn't accidentally lock her out of her house before going over to meet up with his friends to play videogames in the garage.
They've played videogames in Paula's family's garage too. It could have been their house.
Apparently Serge, Paula's friend, was on the scene soon after the shooting took place. According to him it took the cops 15 minutes to respond.
For the record, King City is FUCKING SMALL. I can drive from one end to the other and back in less than 15 minutes.
Apparently they didn't check for pulses either, just kicked the legs of the victims. And had to call in help from Soledad, 30 minutes away.
The account in the Herald was one of those short articles that give you only the bare bones. Their map was not a map of King City. I couldn't remember off the top of my head which street Beech Street was. It took me a long time to remember that it's the one you pass just before you turn down Maples to get to Paula's house. I would've called her much sooner if I'd known that.
The map was one showing you where King City is for all those people in Pebble and PG who never come out from behind the lettuce curtain.
...I had to step away just now and come back, I had a feeling I was making less and less sense as my anger and outrage grew as I typed.
Here we are as a country, fighting wars on the other side of the globe while there's a war going in my own backyard. I keep reading letters to the editor (almost always from Carmel and Pacific Grove and other peninsula cities that might as well be hundreds of miles away) saying that law enforcement is the solution and that it's got to play a bigger role.
But law enforcement is already stretched thin. The leadership for these gangs is already in prison but they're able to continue to give direction to those on the streets. Meanwhile the anti-gang taskforces and the non-profits and the after-school programs and community efforts to keep kids in school and off the street and away from gang influences continue to have their funding cut and cut and cut and cut again.
I was trying to find the current count of gang related murders in Salinas in 2009 alone but the latest I can find is early March when there were 9. I know it's grown into the double digits already. And those are just deaths, not wounded or even shootings in general.
I didn't know them, or at least I don't think I did. The names are so, so familiar but maybe it's just because Paula's talked of them before. Maybe I never met them, though I could've gone to high school with the two 22-year-olds. The others were younger. Abel was 18. Alex was 13. Jesus is 14, still in critical condition.
R.I.P. Alex Cortez and Abel Silva.
Clearly I'm angry. Thursday afternoon and Friday evening I felt overwhelmed with all that was going on. I was supposed to work at a hunt Friday through Sunday, long long hours without coming home but the military scheduled training for that weekend and thankfully it was canceled. I could have done it, but not with the stress associated with worrying about grandpa and mom's travel. Not with the shooting.
Thursday morning, Friday afternoon involved more focus. Working and hiking. Movement and purpose help clear my head. By Saturday I wasn't feeling as fragile. Over the weekend poth and I finished transplanting almost everything, all that remains are my peach tomatoes and tomatillos that need to get a bit bigger yet. I've been painting too, and experiment with my new watercolors and the frisket I got months ago and hadn't used yet.
poth has stepped up heroically to take over dinner preperation. She made delicious enchiladas on Saturday (more picante than I prefer but that was my bad, I couldn't find the milder sauce, and it was good, I just ate slowly and drank a lot of milk).
Sunday she made a dish we call "Michael's Favourite" and it was very good. I'm a little ashamed to say I didn't help at all, beyond helping her find a larger pot and things like that. I sat and played "Braid" on the 360 instead. (Simultaneously interesting and frustrating. Also: crazy.) ...I don't think there was much I could've helped with, though. It's a one pot deal. She added left over red bell-peppers to the recipie, a move I would've hesitated on because I am wary of deviating from recipies, but it was very good. Definately worth considering adding to the recipie.
And I did do the major grocery shopping Monday afternoon.
Monday she made chicken divan, a dish I was able to help with a little more since it involved some chopping and then I made the rice. (I need to write down the order of steps before I forget again. Yeah, I'm so bad I don't know how to cook rice.)
Tonight poth is free of cooking duties since it's her busy day with school and raiding. Dad is making jambalaya and I need to remember to pick up bread on the way home.
We have dinners planned out through Saturday, though we need to find another meal so we can bump the tri-tip to Sunday.
Tomorrow I go trapping again and then I'm off till Sunday. I'm taking poth to the DMV on Thursday to take the permit test, AmyDragon is probably coming over for the latest WoW patch, and I need to call Paula again, see if she wants me more moral support when she goes to the city council meeting to ask why it takes the cops 15 minutes to respond in King City.
Otherwise I forsee more experimentation with my painting, more reading ("Dracula" was next on my To Read stack. I wish I'd read it sooner, before I saw and read so many different interpretations), maybe more gaming, and hopefully a working computer by Saturday.
And hanging in there. Lots of that.