thanks for thinking of me

So anywho, today I go in to town to get a couple of medications mom says
she's got phoned in, and amazingly the out of pocket cost is only 18
cents!

I took that one Epic Fail Vista laptop to the local Libary which has
pretty darn fast free wifi. I manage to get Firefox 3.5 on it, grab Ad
Aware (I don't like their 2007 version of their software) and update it,
then manage to get Vista's update function to grab 48 updates. The
install for Net Framework 3.5 took almost an hour on its own!

I get back to find out one of my older sister's friends has stopped by
and offered to treat everyone to Grinders sandwiches. And because I'm
not there at that moment, nobody thinks to include me. Gee, thanks for
thinking of me guys!

But before I left to do all of that other stuff, my older sister is
asking about which breaker controls the overhead light in the kitchen,
and because I don't know which one, I get called an "asshole" and of
course it gets fired right back. I don't know doesn't mean I know and
I'm not telling you. Of all the breakers in the box, I know of only one
and what set of outlets it controls because the epic fail breaker keeps
popping. But to my twisted sister, she takes it whatever way she wants
and says that I'm not telling her because I want to see her get hurt.
That's not it at all, but I wouldn't mind seeing her get injured if it's
self inflicted.

The Root of the Problem

So just a few moments ago, we got into some discussion about things my
older sister wanted to change about the kitchen. It got a little
intense.

She wanted to bring some sort of "Baker's shelves" in and we don't have
the room. I wanted what we have already. Every time she shows up, we
lose things. "That's what I do." Well, you can't just do it without
asking anyone. That's the problem - you do things without asking anyone.

Then she's like "That's the autism talking." No, that isn't! It's ME.
She says she doesn't take anything I say seriously. Oh, well because I
have Asperger's, I don't have opinions and I don't mean what I say? It's
not mental retardation. I don't have mental illness. My Opinions are as
Valid as anyone else's!!

And therein lies the root of the problem. When I began to express things
I didn't want her to do, she went and directed what she was saying to
Mom, and I'm firing back with "I live here, too!"

So it's like she doesn't even want to consider what I want, how I may
feel about her actions. I told her you better figure out what it is
you're doing or else you're going to leave a lot of hard and hurt
feelings. If you're working on the ceiling then get it done and go back
to where ever else you can go. Let us get back to what we were doing.

Then she mentioned something about a dish washer and maybe taking that
moving little counter on wheels "for her own use" but _I_ use that,
she'd be taking away storage I use. Then she tried to fire back with the
cardboard boxes looking bad and being a fire hazard - and once again I
got to fire back that there's no open flames, nobody smokes, I'm not
tripping over anything. She tried to use the cockroach excuse, but we
haven't seen any.

But she's not going to install any dish washer because there's no water
softener installed.

Ignoring what I think about things, discounting my opinions, not asking
people about anything - therein lies the root of the problem.

An email sent to OMG at Dark Horse

I finally got around to sending Dark Horse an email about the Oh My
Goddess! Colors book. Overnight I got an reply I wasn't expecting but
was nice I got it. I still feel it was an imcomplete email that I sent,
but if I kept holding back on it, it would never get sent!

I'll paste them here. Things in Quote are from me originally. Things
with CH are his responses. Anything else is added for my blog unless I
say otherwise.

From: (Carl Horn)

>Dear Mr. Floyd, thank you for your letter!

"sugoi ne.. That Oh My Goddess Colors book is really stunning. A most
beautiful book from the cover. I was surprised to see the stories in
color. Not quite what I was expecting - hopefully some sort of Official
art book can be worked out at some point, I would like that - but
colorized stories and data collection (some of which has to be
embarassing for all of you at Dark Horse who work on OMG manga) was nice
to have."

CH>Not so much embarrassing as very, very, very time consuming. The
Encyclopedia section was the most complicated job of my entire
professional career. Comics in color, while normal in the U.S., remain
something of a "special treat" for Japanese readers. In fact it is
common practice to begin a new series (or story arc) with a few pages of
color, more to grab reader attention than anything else. The pages
originally in color that you refer to below were examples of such
"promo" color.

Additional from me: Well, yeah, I'm familiar with that part of Japanese
manga publishing. A new title or a new series from a popular author gets
the color treatment. A shame not more of those color pages are reprinted
here or at least gathered into a special "for the fans" volumes.

"Some notes though came to mind, comparing the original comic-book
flipped publications to now:"

"Hmm.. The first story and the first issue had considerable changes.
It's pretty obvious the original material had some pages already in
color. A couple sound effect balloons were left in this time, while some
sound effect lettering was added where none was before. Everything
relettered anew. The color was a dramatic improvement."

"Then there is the issue of Peorth suddenly gaining white leggings
(pants?) while fans of her know she wears an elaborately accessorized
bikini. Not that there's anything wrong with it, but I felt she was
given pants when she didn't need them."

CH>I went back and checked the first appearance of the "Are You Being
Served?" story (Chapter 67, published in Vol. 11 of the Japanese Oh My
Goddess! in 1994), and actually the white leggings were in the original,
too. It's true that Peorth is most associated with that bathing-suit
like outfit as you say, but it seems it took Fujishima a few chapters to
settle on a final design; for example, on her very first appearance in
Chapter 66, she's actually wearing a skirt (you can see the upper part
of the skirt on p. 150 of Colors). Since it's been established that the
Goddesses can magically alter their clothes whenever they want, I guess
he didn't worry about going back and changing it ^_^

Ah, sou desu.

"In regard to Urd's Fantastic Adventure from Trials of Morisato #2 -
ah.. an unflipped title page! This story dramatically improved visually
with color! Interesting to see which panels weren't flipped or
rearranged! Who made up this "standard" for how manga was to read in
English? Boot to the head!"

CH>It may seem odd in retrospect (and I appreciate your Frantics
reference) but it needs to be remembered that between 1994-2005, that
is, for its first eleven years, Oh My Goddess! was published in this
standard, and the title didn't get dropped, it didn't get
cancelled--people kept supporting it. So in the big picture, however it
was being adapted, it wasn't stupid. I have similar beliefs about the
cultural changes, as I explained in my intro to the Encyclopedia on p.
152. The original English adaptation needs to be judged as a whole, and
it passed the most important test for any U.S. manga series
release--survival, when so many others, including series that had been
highly successful in Japan (such as 3x3 Eyes) were cancelled due to lack
of sales. It's precisely because the flopped version lasted eleven years
that I have the opportunity to edit the unflopped version, and the
chance to go back and restore original cultural references. When I point
out the things that were changed, it was to note them, not judge them
(although you, as reader, of course, have the right to do so). I
personally, however, am not the least bit ashamed of the original
English edition--if I were, I wouldn't have retained the same translator
and letterer as the flopped edition. I may have a different editorial
approach than those who edited it previously, but that's all. 

But at least now those little niggling changes aren't going to be made
as much. I feel let down when the English edition has changes, like how
Bandai replaced the opening theme on its U.S. DVDs for Digi Charat Nyo.
I also feel annoyed that some editors feel "Oh, the fans just won't get
this, so we'll change it." or they change it for whatever excuse they
want to use.

"What I think fans would like is to see the original color manga pages
in a book, along with some of Fujishima's other artwork. Pages from OMG
stories such as:

- opening 4 pages of Urd's Intro (issue #2)
- First 3 pages of Skuld's intro (Part 2 #1)
- First 4 pages of New Year Sugoroku game (Part 2 #4) Those Kimonos in
color, please!
- First 4 pages of Part 2 #7, though only the first page of that is
necessary ^_^;;
- First 4 pages of Terrible Master Urd #4 of 8 though we did get the
image on the 2-page spread as a cover...
- Urd's "Cool Voice" swimsuit and her black dress from Queen of
Vengeance also come to mind ^_^
- Opening 4 pages of Mara Strikes Back #1, though the 2 page spread was
a past wrap-around cover
- First 2 pages of Miss Keiichi #2, though using one for the color cover
was a nice touch.

CH>One of he things we've been doing in the unflopped (that is,
post-2005 editions) of Oh My Goddess! is going back and re-doing the
early volumes (as well as continuing with new ones), and part of the
re-do is to include all color pages in color. As far as I know, that
includes all of the pages you mentioned above, and yes, the kimonos from
the Sugoroku game look really nice (you can find them on p. 28-29 of the
unflopped Vol. 3)

Sweet.

"Don't lament the decrease in the number of notes sent to your inbox.
It's bound to happen with the less visibility the title has now. The
best thing we already existing fans can do is spread the gospel and hope
more notes are sent your way."

(This was not even responded to.)
"I really hope you can convince Fujishima to let you guys go back to
You're Under Arrest! and let us English fans see all of the manga from
that series we haven't seen yet. We can always order the Japanese
originals, but I'd rather not have to do that."

"And unrelated to OMG, has Translucent #4 come out? Is that the end of
the series?"

CH>It isn't the end (it's a five-volume series), but it's been delayed.

CH>Once again, thank you very much for your letter, and for supporting
Oh My Goddess!

Sincerely yours,
Carl Horn
Dark Horse Comics

This sort of response is the reason why I keep ordering and buying Oh My
Goddess! manga from Dark Horse. I couldn't imagine anyone else handling
this title. Good thing that the cultural and other references and other
niggling changes should be fewer in number now.

Still looking to get that 'puter up to speed

Just 3 more items and I'll have it to the point where I've been wanting.

Though tonight I ran into another problem with InfraRecorder. I'll
remind people on how it doesn't like strange characters in filenames
when being run in English, and it'll either happen during the making of
the image to burn (requiring a rename or compressed into an archive
file), or it'll crash during verifying the disk after it's been made. It
also doesn't like needlessly long filenames, also known to make the
program exit during a disk verify.

I was trying to put some MP3s onto a CD as an Audio CD. Some of the
files were 6 seconds in length. InfraRecorder kept coming up with some
stupid error that the Lead In track was unable to be burned. So,
thinking maybe it's the media, I try a disk of a different brand. Still
get that same damn frustrating error! So on another guess, maybe it's
the length of the tracks. I remember the Real Networks player wouldn't
burn RealAudio files to CD that were less than 10 seconds for some
stupid reason (they'll encode but not burn? Does that make any freakin'
sense?) so I decide to set up a project without them. The Disk Burns
just fine.

OK, so try to make a project with just the short tracks in it, no dice.

(obscenities fly)

So later on, I thought wait, Windows Media Player, for all intents and
purposes, does have some CD burning functionality. Some mutated form of
Roxio Light. Through its convoluted user interface, I managed to get it
to find the MP3s I want to work with, put them in a playlist to burn to
CD, and got the CD to burn. With my short tracks and all.

The Main reason I wanted to use InfraRecorder is that it doesn't insert
an additional 2 second gap between tracks. WMP does and there doesn't
seem to be any setting to get it to stop that unless it's a registry
edit.

Got the Playstation emulator to run the first time, requiring a few more
tweaks to get things just about right. The CD burner can read game disks
fast enough to keep up.

Copied some video files onto the hard drive in anticipation of being
able to actually make a DVD with them at some point soon.

Had to turn off Hardware Acceleration of video in VLC to get it to stop
putting crap on the right side of one video it was playing. Still works
fine.

But XP still has a problem of getting ahold of an external storage
device on USB and not letting it be stopped. I've turned off indexing
for those drives anyway, so it better not be that anymore.

The Neighbors be Rednecks fo' sure

Just got done reading books 2 and 3 of WIth The Light manga, and at
12:10 am, went to answer nature's call when I hear lousy 'country' music
spewing forth from some cheap radio next door. And it's not like some
level where a few people are able to hear it, it's loud enough to
"entertain" both their and our back yards. So I let the dogs out, stand
a few moments as I see the glowing end of someone's cigarette in the
dark moving around. Ah, well that answers that. I tried looking for our
flashlight so I could at least illuminate the spot from where the sound
was coming from and at least say "could you turn that down, please?" I
also considered getting the Kodak digital camera and making a video.
Might still do that if the radio is still blasting that music.

Spouts garbage whenever she opens her mouth

I don't know what's going on with mom other than her pain pills ran out
and the doctor refused to refill them even though it's been long enough.

I make comments about stupid commercials. I hate stupid commercials. If
it's the music, then I mute it. But generally, I'll make a comment or
make an insult because of something I hate about it.

Oh but since the meltdown shouting at my older sister a couple days ago
(yesterday?), she's like on edge and has some garbage to spout if I say
anything about a commercial. Keeps telling me to shut up, and then I
just tell her to shut up right back, which just gets her all indignant
and "No! You're Not Telling Me to Shut up!" And I'm right back with "I'm
old enough, I don't need to hear you spout garbage every time you open
your mouth just because I'm commenting on a stupid commercial; it
doesn't concern you so just stop it." And this will go on for a while -
usually she doesn't catch what the hell I'm reacting to on TV, she
spouts garbage so long she misses why I'm hating the commercial.

She's been playing one of our Atari Lynxes lately, and doing exactly
with it like she would have if it were a laptop. My point expressly
demonstrated. She keeps forgetting to unplug the power supply when she's
not using it.

She's got all these cross stitch projects to do, but she's not doing
them, and she can see because she reads a lot and has been playing the
Lynx.

How am I supposed to get ready and focus on passing CompTIA
certification exams with all this s___ going on?

I just realized there are some sounds I really hate. One is based on
rattling, like a window pane because of the air conditioner or something
in the air conditioner rattles and needs smacked to make it stop.
Another sound I hate is hearing someone breathing or generally sharp
whispery-like sounds. Hate those. And mom's breathing has the qualities
that really fricking bug me. I can stand fingernails on a blackboard but
I can't stand the sound of that kind of breathing noise. Infinite amount
of rage kind of thing.

She's got some nerve...

So last night, while mom was on the throne, my older sister had some
nerve to come to me and question me about the whereabouts of some things
she was looking for.

This included things like the large woodworking clamps she had used
while making things like the cabinets we used to have in the house back
in town, some big mirror, as well as stuff we left at my grandparents'
house. Like how dare we left anything _so_ important like _her_ stuff.

I told her I hadn't seen any of those wood clamps since we moved out of
town, and some of that other stuff not since we left my grandparents'
house. I'm not sure what all we moved and what got left behind. I kind
of regret leaving anything whatever it was. I thought my brother in law
at least moved stuff out of the basement of the house in town, but I
don't know what. Lumber got left, I think. One table that we used to
have since living in East Rochester got left. Then there was stuff we
left at my grandparents' house like the exercise bike, the treadmill,
the bike that Candice bought off eBay for mom to use which she never did
by that point. Who knows what else got left? She mentioned the ladders
my grandfather had. I kinda regret leaving the snow blower.

Anywho, at some point during this accusation crap, mom came out of the
bathroom and was able to back me up on that. What got left and where,
when, why. My older sister still seemed somewhat annoyed by what got
left behind and all, but she's got no reason to shove that in our face.

It was a pretty traumatic time each time we had to move, twice in 2
years. I hated every moment of having to pack up and move things. If
there was stuff she wanted to make sure we kept, she should have said
something. Mom said it was a matter of not having the room for
everything, my sister blasted back that we had Apt. B for things! Oh but
then we couldn't have RENTED the damn thing out not once but twice to
deadbeats! Wasn't that her plan all along - fix up the place and then
make money renting out the other 2 apartments?

Then there was the stuff she TOOK FROM US. Like the desk we had like
forever, mom having stripped the pink paint off and refinished it when
we lived in the apartment above the hardware store, when we were all in
grade school. She made us get rid of the dining room bureau (whatever it
was) but I kept the dining room table, both items one of mom's friends
gave us at the time we moved in town in 1978, when she remodelled the
downstairs of the house during 7 long months in 1995. However, after we
moved out to my grandparents' house after mom lost the house in town to
foreclosure (imho after also stupidly getting a loan to pay off bills
she ran up again, a 2nd mortgage on a house she had paid off), my older
sister "got rid" of that big table without asking anyone! And yes, I'm
harping on a dead issue, but there's those suitcases and the 5 trays of
slides I wanted to convert to digital images.

Stuff from my grandparents' home that she got rid of without asking
anyone, like their nice radio. It had an excellent tape deck, Dolby
noise elimination and metal tape recording features. It was sweet. I
would have liked it. It would have made converting tapes to digital so
much easier, but it's gone...

My grandfather's extra TV sets - I don't know who got them. He had
replaced his old floor model with a Toshiba big screen, and I got that.
You better believe it. But there was one in the kitchen and one
downstairs. They had their old radio / record player thingy (huge thing
it was) in the basement, and that's gone. She sold off their upright
freezer and their old 1950s model refrigerator (my grandfather used it
for his beer and things). And all those tools - well, I think my
bro-in-law got some of that, but nobody asked me if I was interested in
any of it. I might have been!

And the "davenport" in the downstairs room. Big green thing. Where did
it go?

Maybe it's divine justice that she lost some things as well during all
that confusion. She sold the house out from under us, but the property
taxes were making us poor.

And then she wants to put this house in my name. I don't know about
that.

She does things to set me off on purpose

So my older sis is still here, and aside from the roof finally being
sealed and some old wallpaper being pulled off the kitchen walls,
there's been no further work on the ceiling.

Things were remotely OK until this afternoon. One of my nieces was over.
I got some Princess Tutu out for her to watch. She wanted lunch. I had
just got done with the 'puter. So I'm out there making stuff.

Suddenly, my older sister decides she wants peanut butter toast with
some loaf of 'bread' she has.

I do not get along with her at all. She knows this. And yet, she on
purpose began pushing my buttons. She's eating our food. Last night she
helped herself to 2 servings of some Asian Helper Chicken Lo Mein.
Didn't ask if she could have the first, and didn't ask anyone if they
wanted more. Just went out and ate it.

She helped herself to our Diet Green Tea. She thought she was going to
get into our peanut butter but I put that aside and told her I needed it
for the brownie and thing recipe I also began making along with the
macaroni and cheese for my niece's lunch. But at the same time I got out
the leftover vegatable spaghetti. So I had the lid off, and knowing how
she likes to get into things, I put a paper plate in holder on top, as
if to say "stay out of this." I mean, couldn't anyone see this? She's
got no common sense. She decides to use the plate for her toast!

That just sets me off. I slam a cupboard door shut, which ends up
breaking the 4 cup glass measuring bowl. I begin yelling about all the
annoyance.

Of course, this scared my niece. But I told them all to thank my sister
for that. I am not to be blamed if people are going to do things that
they full well KNOW are going to set me off! She was the one who pushed
for the Asperger's diagnosis, why the hell isn't she reading up on how
to deal with someone with it??

She was supposed to be done with the kitchen ceiling in a week. She's
not even half way done a week and a half later. Now she's gotta run down
to Florida to save some stuff from being stolen out from under her,
which might take 4 days.

To someone with Autism, saying one thing but doing another is like
telling a lie or breaking a promise. I had expected her to be out of our
way in a week. She lied.

I expect things to happen and being and end when people say they will.
Any deviation is not tolerated well. And since she acts like my father,
I can't tolerate her for very long.

Mom says I need to get my medical card and get back on counseling, get
some medication for the anxiety. But I'm just fine if there's no one
around to set me off.

Dell Dimension 4300 a little more up to speed and working

I finally got the Seagate Barracuda 40G drive in place, tested,
formatted, and with Windows XP installed on it. Then I applied Service
Pack 3, defragmented it, and then began getting it acquainted with my
thumbdrives and USB externals, quickly getting the installs for software
I want on the thing.

Thing is, I needed drivers for a few things. It does not have a high
speed USB 2.0 host controller, so that's a card I will have to add to
it. Hopefully onboard and a PCI card of USB ports can live together and
not need the on-board USB host disabled in the BIOS.

I did a lot of searching on the web for ATI Rage 128 Ultra drivers, and
as it turned out, Dell's support website had the drivers for the
Dimenion 4300 with XP. Even though the case has a product key for
Windows 2000 Pro SP4, there ain't no way I'm going to let it touch my
thumbdrives. If I have to ask a friend to help me get a WinXP key, I'll
do it.

I also needed the drivers for the Soundblaster Live card. Again, I used
a self-extractable program from Dell's website. I found out the
Soundblaster card (CT4780) is an OEM version of the same thing sold
retail by Creative Labs, so the only drivers that would work are those
Dell had supplied.

A problem I ran into with the audio - I thought I was going to have to
buy another sound card. When I ran the one driver install thing, the
card still did not show up in the Device Manager. So I ran the Creative
Labs' installer for my card (they surprisingly had it somewhere), and it
couldn't detect it. Hmm.. Checked BIOS setup, no not disabled. So I
thought Why Not Move it To Another Slot? I have one slot free, so let's
put it there. Booted up, and XP found my card, installed the drivers,
restarted, and I now have a volume knob and I have sound off this thing.
So either the card got knocked loose when it was pitched in the trash
where it was rescued, or that slot is bad. I'll find out when I get
around to adding that high speed USB 2.0 host controller card.

If there are other drivers, I'll get them when I need them.

I had a problem with InfraRecorder being unable to detect the active
character set. A setting in the Regional thingy where it lets you allow
programs to use other input languages had to be turned off. I wanted
Japanese language support installed, but if it causes Infrarecorder to
display odd messages like that, I'll turn it off.

So when I finally had the system to this point, I used InfraRecorder to
burn a Support CD (about 398 MB) of the stuff I pulled onto its HD to
get things set up - just to check how well the CD burner worked. It
could have had dust on the laser or anything, but the CD I made verified
OK. I had to wipe dust off the CD tray. (grr)

SO... need a DVD burner, 16G thumbdrive (maybe Sandisk or Kingston), and
a high speed USB 2.0 host controller card. Things work OK right now,
just if I want to use my USB Video capture box, it needs the higher data
speed.

OH yeah, I got the chance to check out a friend's laptop with Vista on
it. I was able to remove practically all traces of LimeWire on it after
booting into Safe Mode, as well as shutting down some services that were
causing problems. I noticed 4 items in the startup tab in the Config
utility that just screamed VIRUSES to me, so I'll have to install and
run Malwarebytes' removal tool as soon as I can. Internet Exploder had a
ton of "helper" bars installed, and I was able to go through and disable
a bunch of the really bad ones (nearly all!).

When you get idiot kids using a computer and they go and download and
install things they really shouldn't - just because their Friends say
it's cool you should try this, it doesn't make any difference if Windows
Defender or any anti-virus software is installed at all. You defeat the
purpose of it keeping the bad stuff out. These people will get a lecture
on why their computer needed my help and why They Need to Cut It OUT!
You download stuff and run it, then wonder why your computer creeps to a
crawl and you get popup ads. Gee! I wonder!

It may mean Job Security, but really if they realized what harm they
were doing, they'd wise up.

HD found for tower case, other musings

Went to Roger's flea market today and snagged a 40G Seagate Barracuda
7200.7 hard drive (pulled out of an Apple computer - must not have
gotten a lot of use (snicker)) for a mere $10!! Now, this is a good deal
if the drive works, and if it doesn't, well it was only $10 and maybe in
2 weeks I can get those guys to exchange it.

I really hope this has some life left on it. Now the case has the
potential of a viable hard drive. The guys who sold me the drive almost
handed me a Western Digital drive, but I insisted on a Seagate. Of
course, your mileage with drives may vary. People have reports of
various models of drives working for a long time or ones that die for no
reason.

The case has a Win2000 product key on it, but it's not going to get
Win2000. It has a tendency to scramble external drives plugged on the
USB, as I got to see with one friend's system. My drives are important
so I won't trust them to just any OS. I would really like to get a legit
Windows XP key though, retail version or corporate, whatever will work.
It won't see the Net at all - it'll be for the things I don't need the
Net to do, like play Playstation emulators (among others) and make DVDs
with DVD Flick.

I have a DVD burner picked out. I just need a deal on a good 16G
thumbdrive, perhaps from Kingston or SanDisk. It already has a CD burner
which is just fine for me. I could use that when burning disks for use
in the Playstation.

I found out that it has a Soundblaster Live! audio card, with extra
audio plugs on the back. Woot! Subwoofer time! And it has an ATI Rage
128 Ultra video card. Nice. I think the motherboard has a 2002
manufacture date, which means the BIOS should see the entire 40G drive.
It's a Pentium 4, but the memory is single channel. So it'll work, just
not like an AMD Athlon and 1G dual channel RAM.

I'm going to set it up to boot the Ultimate Boot CD and run some tests
on the drive, providing it does work and will spin up. The jumpers are
set to make it the Master hard drive, and plugged into the end of the
IDE cable where it should be.

After that, I'll see about installing XP if it'll take, then run SP3 on
it.

And hopefully have the right sound and video drivers on hand by then.
^_^ My Win98SE box has a Rage 128, but not an Ultra.

I think for other musings from time to time will involve episodes of
abuse as I remember them as a kid, which were dealt out by my father.

There was this one rather painful episode which involved the digging of
a garden at his 2nd house in Salem, OH. I was doing something, I don't
remember what, but part of what I was doing included not paying
attention to something my father was doing and then saying to me. I was
enlisted in helping doing some digging for a garden, among other things.
He was asking for a "spade," but as a kid at the time, I have no idea
what that is. My world at the time included the new spiffy LED watch I
had gotten as a gift some time before that summer day.

As it turned out, I had ignored my father's request for this "spade"
item, long enough to raise his anger to the point where he used the
handle of whatever garden implement he had in his hands at the time and
he swung it at me. It happened to hit me on the wrist where I was
wearing my watch. It may have struck me more than once, but the painful
blow on my wrist, the one I still distinctly remember, was strong enough
that it broke the wrist strap on the watch at one point where it
attached to the plastic body of the watch itself. I remember the injury
that resulted of that abusive use of a wooden handle, but I imagine it
would have entirely broken my wrist had it not struck the watch. My
watch saved me from serious injury, something I'm sure my father didn't
not realize he almost inflicted upon me, nor did he appear to care.

His patience was demonstrated at that moment to be non-existent with
children. And his common sense was such that had he gotten my attention
specifically and then asked for a "Shovel" which is a word I did know,
even as a kid at that time, he would have been promptly handed one.

But I'm sure I don't remember what happened after I was struck with that
wooden handle and ran into the house crying because of the pain I felt
after being hit in such a manner. It was after running inside and having
a chance to inspect the damage that I found out my watch was busted.
Well, some super glue was able to reattach the wrist strap, which began
a long string of watches repaired in this manner. I'm not saying he was
responsible for all those later watches, it just seems it started a
pattern.

I'm pretty sure today he would claim he doesn't recall something like
that happening or doing anything like that, but I am of the kind that
things like that don't go away. There were some good times, but I have
had enough of the abuse, not all of which was physical. Maybe I should
be lucky in that I don't recall any sexual abuse - which is likely
because nothing of that sort ever happened. I'm pretty sure of that.