Papa Pat Tiny Devotionals

    First, I review; then, I meditate. Preliminary: You must know that I am writing this with my fat black Manx cat SugarBelly resting in the crook of my left arm. and looking over her shoulder at the keyboard from time to time in anticipation. I believe it's because one of Montgomery's earlier books is "Manx Prize," and SugarBelly thinks it's about her; and, by extension, she thinks every book and story Laura Montgomery writes is about her. I have ceased to argue the point. I think Mark Twain had observations about men and cats which apply. The reason I pass this bit of feline intrusion along is because at some point, SugarBelly will turn around, and start attempting to use the keyboard. Therefore, any unexpected change in point of view should be regarded with suspicion. The review: Far Flung is a novella-length (53 pages) work painting the picture of a small population of adventurer-engineers who determine that libertarian principles will be better served by for...

Dearest friends in internet land, As you saw when last we met, I was able to get my beard trimmed. I DID find my Leatherman tool, and got the batteries charged on my electric drill. But, I could not disassemble the Ground Fault Tolerant plug on the air conditioner; the screws holding it together were not something designed to be removed by the consumer. Ha ha, I thought. They do not know Who They Are Dealing With. One time, I clamped a 5 inch circular saw blade on a router. It didn't turn out well, and somewhere in a neighboring county, there is a circular saw blade embedded in a rafter in the attic. But, a tool for every job, and now I have a DREMEL!!! with lots of parts. I could cut that plug in two pieces, and THEN we'll see who has a screw loose! But, I didn't do that. It seems we had an extra air conditioner window unit, which was replaced by a better-sealing window fan during the annual stink bug migration that has been a feature of the area for the past few years. So...

I need  know: How many Leatherman (or Gerber) Tool kits you need in an American household before you can find one. I know I have two, and I think there may be as many as six in the house, depending on what the boys took with them when they grew up and moved out; but so far, all I know is that it's a number greater than two. I suspect it's not just a threshold number. My guess is that there is a predictive algorithm: T f = | T o * - (.265 C y + .489 C t + .3201 C ar + .0645 C anr)| Which means Tools found equals the absolute value of Tools owned multiplied by negative values for the number of Children(young) + Children (teen)+ Children (adult, resident) + Children (adult, non-resident). There is a bit of wiggle room in these figures. You will notice that there is no factor in here for 'Spouse.' That's because whenever I ask her where my whatever is, she hasn't seen it, doesn't know what it is, and she gave it back to me the other day, remember? This is a hypo...

I've been a fan of the Atlanta Braves ever since they moved here from Milwaukee. It hasn't always been easy. I got to see some Hall of Fame players, and some that probably SHOULD have been Hall of Fame, but I also remember guys like Mike Lum, the utility infielder; Denis Menke, and of course, Felipe Alou. I got to see Eddie Mathews, Hank Aaron, and Joe Torre play, and I THINK, (but am not sure) that I also saw them homer, but not back-to-back, which they did on at least one occasion. The one game I was NEVER going to see was the one in which pitcher Tony Cloninger hit two grand slam home runs, because that was played in San Francisco, July 3, 1966, and we lived in Atlanta burbs. There were some AWFUL years. I've been to games where there were no more than four thousand people in the ball park. On one season opener, the Atlanta Hawks were in the play-offs, and between innings they put that game up on the outfield wookidat-a-tron, and the crowd booed when they switched it off...

Wow. Amazon's review system is broken. I just now read the verification of that in the Reviewer Forum. While frequently flavored by spite, calumny, contempt, and mean-spirited attack posts, the forum DOES offer some inside information to outsiders like myself. And here's what I just found out, and why it might be important. Reviewers are ranked based on the number, timeliness, helpfulness of their reviews, and whether or not they are a 'Verified Purchaser.'  That last means they purchased the product through Amazon; KU loans are excluded from that category. The higher a reviewer is  ranked, the more impact their review will have on a product. A side effect of this system is that top reviewers (the top 10,000) will often be solicited to write reviews for products, and there have been scams associated with the practice, including reviewers selling positive reviews. On or about July 26, ALL reviewer ranks were frozen. Prior to that, rankings changed daily. I had peaked at ...

I've got an idea that people of a different time would have called "the cat's meow." I don't actually know when this time would be, and I'e never heard anyone use that phrase, but I'm sure I read it in a book or perhaps a magazine article or something. The idea is for a new KIND of award for works that fall into the category of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Vampires, Zombies, Monsters and Killing Them, Military Sci Fi, and whatever else we are reading, watching, listening to because we are trapped in this awful reality and really need to escape. Now, I live in Woodstock, GA, Cultural Center of the Universe, so I'm gonna have to have the award near me, at least until it's potty trained. I briefly thought about Dragon Con, which is sort of next door, but hey: I fought that Atlanta traffic for YEARS, since 1969, and I ain't going back there without a struggle. But just a little bit farther away in the opposite direction is Chattanooga, and as we all k...

    It would bother me greatly that I am such a fan boy of certain authors (and other people), if it weren't for the fact that I think. Yes, admittedly when I was in the third grade and eight years old, I was a gooey, sick kind of fan boy of Sergeant Rock, but then, it was also 1962 and my father and millions of people who mattered were all veterans of WWII. So, I practiced throwing grenades wit my step-dads sparkplugs for the SAAB he was rebuilding in the garage. He never should have left spark plugs on the kitchen counter, anyway; they look like hand grenades. But, that was all pre-rational fan boy. I'm more than a half-century older now, and I actually THINK about the people I admire. I'm not going to go on and on about why I would admire Peter apart from his writing, because I think it would sound too much like a third-grader effusing about Sergeant Rock. Read what he has to say himself about where he's been and what he's done  and what he thinks, and decide for...