No one will call Leslie Nielsen Shirley, anymore. The ‘Airplane!’ and ‘Naked Gun’ star died Sunday from complications from pneumonia at the age of 84.
As NPR pointed out, no one did deadpan comedy better than Nielsen. He was the funniest unfunny man around. I’ll have to have a Leslie Nielsen film festival now in celebration of his work.
We recovered the needle Rocket swallowed this morning, thanks to my father-in-law Neil’s metal detector. It was in the “batch” Rocket provided yesterday morning, so it had actually been out of him a full day.
I had checked that bag at the time he provided but thought there was nothing in it, as I had been looking for a 2 inch long needle rather than the one inch kind that it actually was. At any rate, I’m glad we’re not taking that particular “gift” home with us!
Rocket's needle
We’ve been spending the Thanksgiving weekend at Kelly’s parents’ home in Virginia. Yesterday, the kids were helping string popcorn in the kitchen. Rocket took advantage of an opportunity to eat a piece of popcorn and swallowed the needle that was threaded through it. Everyone watched helplessly as the thread disappeared down our dumb dog’s throat.
We loaded him up in the car and headed to the Swansons’ vet in Haymarket. After Rocket got an x-ray, we were told that there were two options to remove the needle: surgery or an endoscopy. Estimated cost was $3000. Ouch! We couldn’t get the endoscopy done there; it could only be done in Leesburg at The LifeCenter. So, I loaded the dog in the car, said goodbye to Kelly and Linda, and drove 30 miles to Leesburg.
The vet there gave me positive news. There was a good chance the needle would pass without surgery. If we chose to proceed with an endoscopy, it might run from $1200 to $1800. After talking it over with Kelly we decided to try the endoscopy.
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I took our dog to the emergency vet in Leesburg yesterday (the topic of another post). The vet’s office just happened to be near the building where I once signed up for the Navy. In the fall of 1987, I walked into the Navy Recruiting office that was upstairs in this building at 26 Plaza Street. It looks like the Marine Corps still has an office there, but no sign of the Navy anymore. Now it’s the home of a tattoo parlor called Insane Ink.
It made me smile to see the building again.
No sooner had I put the finishing touches on my Asterisk alarm script that it got put to use on a real break-in attempt! I stared in disbelief when an actual alarm message came in, thinking that perhaps it was a test message that had only now gotten delivered. When I saw that the alarm type wasn’t one I was using to test my script, I called RPD dispatchers. I then scrambled to find my neighbors’ phone numbers to confirm what was happening.
The break-in attempt was unsuccessful as the alarm sounded as soon as the guy pried open the window. He fled, but not before two of my neighbors caught a glimpse of him. Police arrived, searched the house, and determined that no one had been inside. They secured the window and rearmed the system. My neighbors have since offered to secure the window themselves.
The funny thing is that I was literally testing the system at 10 AM this morning. When the real alarm came in, Kelly called me right after our alarm called.
“How many times today is our house going to be broken into?,” she asked, jokingly.
“Uh, honey? That was a real alarm.”
The police have plenty of clues about the perpetrator. He’s a white guy with a similar build as me, who was riding a bike and wearing a bike helmet. He took off but I would guess that it won’t be long before he’s apprehended.
I’m glad I found out about it five seconds after it happened!
Update 27 Nov: At least six other homes in the area were broken into or attempted yesterday. At one home, the intruder actually took a moment to cook himself some waffles, topping them off with honey. I’m really not sure what that says about the burglar.
After getting another annoying 3:50 AM wakeup call from my Asterisk alarm monitoring script yesterday, I fixed my script once and for all. I customized the script first created by Uros Indihar, adding the zone assignments that were made on our system, among other things.
Now my Asterisk system only sends alerts for actual alarms and not test messages, unlike my previous script (those test calls get made at 3:50 AM on the fourth Thursday of each month). I can also parse the zone information, letting me know exactly what sensor on the system tripped.
I’ll fix my script up a little more before posting it.
My late friend Gerry was an organ donor at the time he died in a car wreck. Through the gift of his organs and tissue he gave four people he never met new life.
His wife Mandy and their families got a chance to meet one donor recipient earlier this month: the recipient of Gerry’s lungs. UNC Health Care created a profound video and story of the meeting, showing how Gerry’s gift changed the recipient’s life. Watching Gerr’y’s mom Pat as she listened to Gerry’s lungs brought tears to my eyes.
What an amazing gift of life from an amazingly generous friend.
I’ve always wondered why the news media constantly fails to cover the happenings of Raleigh’s parks department and its board. Parks is a huge city department and Raleigh’s abundant parks are enjoyed by so many citizens that it’s easy to assume that a reporter would be present at the board meetings. Such is not the case. In the two years I’ve been on the board, the only reporter I’ve seen at a meeting is the Independent Weekly’s Bob Geary, who was there when the board discussed the Honeycutt Creek greenway route.
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My ire for littering is well-known. It annoys me to no end that some smokers think the world is their ashtray. Anytime I see some careless bastard tossing a cigarette out their window, I send their license plate number to the NCDOT’s Swat-A-Litterbug page, resulting in a nastygram being mailed to them from the highway patrol. I’d venture to guess I’m one of their top litter reporters.
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I’m back from Iowa now, three hours early thanks to not taking the airline’s word about there not being any earlier flights. The baggage check employee in Cedar Rapids swore up and down that I couldn’t get into Raleigh from Chicago any earlier than I already was, so I spent almost two hours at the Cedar Rapids airport, waiting for my original flight though I could’ve easily gotten on one leaving early. When I arrived in Chicago, I saw I had a one hour gap until the next flight to Raleigh, so rather than spend three hours at O’Hare I snagged a seat on the earlier flight.
And what a difference it makes to be home. Iowa was extraordinarily windy and bitterly cold. The temperature didn’t crack 30 degrees F the whole time I was there today. Yet when I stepped off the plane at RDU this evening the temperature here was 62 degrees (down from today’s 72 degree high). What a great welcome back, North Carolina!
Time for bed and then tomorrow I return to the airport to pick up my bag, which will spend the night there tonight. More about my Iowa trip later.
