After checking all the IT stuff she does, the only option was to reinstall a backup from last Friday. I don't know how all this stuff works except that I'm up and running and don't think I lost anything. At least I haven't found anything missing yet.
So, to start off your week, let me give you another short story from the annals (a concise form of historical representation which record events) of the stupid kid who survived growing up.
Story #6 - Drain Pipes.
In Fishing, Ghosts, and My Mother’s Gray Hair chapter
5 I talked about where a drain canal poured out into a lake. Here is the
paragraph: This
drain poured out into a small man made lake that eventually emptied into the
Intercoastal Waterway. I don’t recall ever fishing the lake, but I do know
there were gar fish in it and probably several other species of fish. Just
outside the lake, we fished for snook and other fish that resided in the
waterway. What I didn’t mention about this lake was how
they made it. The optimal way to create land was to use a dredge to open up a
lake by sucking the sand and shooting it up onto land creating high ground. Now
this kind of activity was just the thing to attract a young boy and his
friends. Why you ask? First and foremost it was wet, sloppy, and it stunk. It
was perfect for young boys because as we were told on more than one occasion,
boys are gross.
So, as the gross boys we were, we ran across
where they just piled wet sand until we sank up to our knees in the, well I
guess you could call it quick sand. See sand, being porous as it is, doesn’t
get solid until the water brought up during the dredging process has a chance
to drain away leaving the area mushy. It was great fun for young boys. The
thing that never crossed our minds is what if we sank beyond our knees?
Right about this same time, at the point where
the drain/canal ran under Hillsborough Boulevard, the storm drain project was
going on. Twenty-four and thirty-six inch storm concrete drain pipes were being
installed parallel to the boulevard and about five feet deep diverting water
from “wherever” and dumping into the drain/canal that flowed into the lake and
finally the Intercoastal Waterway. Cool, places for young boys to explore. We
always had a supply of candles and matches, mostly shoplifted from the local
convenience store (I never said I was good boy, just never killed anyone), to
use in our “forts” or, in the case, exploring drain pipes.
Now a twenty-four and thirty-six inch storm
concrete drain pipe doesn’t give you anywhere to turn around. It is straight in
and back out unless you make it to the place, you know the box under the man
hole cover, and then you can do an about face. But you don’t know how far away
that is when you start into the pipe. Ten feet, fifteen feet, twenty feet in
and claustrophobia starts to set in. Once it gets a good hold on you, then
panic sets in and once panic sets in the only place you want to be is not in
that concrete pipe. There is a lot of screaming, pushing, and shoving to get
out. Of course the most logical thing to happen is you drop the candle and the
flame goes out leaving you in total darkness. Then you really start to panic.
But once you get out, you’re cool again and making plans for the next siege of
the concrete tunnel. Who said young boys are smart.
Well, that'll do it for today. Fishing later in the week.
Mark
Nice story, I triple back up my photos. loosing everything in a situation like that scares me.
ReplyDeleteI'm happy to know there's one more of me out there. I know zero about computers, I can turn one on and play blogger but that's about it.
ReplyDelete