Neanderpundit

Chucky was a dear friend and a brilliant programmer. This was a old school lathe programmer who started out spinning hand wheels and ended up writing code for some of the most sophisticated lathes in the business.

Chucky had lived a hard life. Mostly of his own doing; he was an alcoholic and had no particular interest in not being an alcoholic. When I worked with him on a job I could count on him to show up around 10:00, already fully in the bag.

Chucky had a thing for neat vodka, not rotgut but also not top shelf. Absolut or at bare minimum stoli.

I covered for Chucky a lot, partially because I loved the man, but partially because I knew he was going to do in four or five hours what it would take anybody else eight to knock out. He was mostly self-educated barely graduated high school taught himself how to program NC back when it was still NC.

He wrote tight code because of the machines he learned on didn’t have a lot of memory. He carried around strips of punched tape in his bag because there were some routines that he had saved from a generation earlier.

Every time I work with him I knew the job would get done in time under budget and his code would still be running in those machines years hence.

A couple of reasons that he and I got along so well we’re before crapblogging even existed this man was a king. Between the type of work he had done all of his life and the alcoholism and God knows what other things he had gotten into the man had roids like Bunches of grapes. He was fond of describing to me sometimes how the cross-sectional representation of his turds would be octagonal or hexagonal or have some other strange shape. Once he took a crap that he swore to God was in the profile of a Scottie dog. He made me look at that one. I don’t know that I saw a Scottie dog but it wouldn’t take much imagination to see it there.

The man’s backside was like a Play-Doh fun factory for any of you old enough to remember what the hell that was.

He had liver failure and was sanguine about it. He said I did this to myself let me die. Turns out they had a liver that was a match and nobody else to give it to so he got another year and some.

He faithfully stayed off the sauce that entire time. But his body had already been damaged beyond its ability to repair itself anymore.

On the first anniversary of his transplant I brought in a couple big trays of rumaki. Everybody else thought it was gross but he laughed and made me promise that I would always do that on the anniversary whether he was around or not.

I haven’t always been true to that but every time I have the opportunity to order some in a restaurant I will, and I will think of Chucky.

Hail and farewell My friend. The world was a better place with you in it. For all of your flaws, I miss you still.

the Thursday on the week before Thanksgiving the wife lost her balance while untangling the dog in the front yard and shattered her upper left arm. She took a bunch of concrete to the face as well which made it look like I have been tuning her up. I wasn’t even in town at the time.

anyway it has been a crazy several weeks. With all of the testing necessary and the surgery she has had to go through (total shoulder replacement) and now two weeks of immobile arm until she is released by the doctor for physical therapy. Hopefully that will happen Tuesday – Christmas Eve – and then she can start to move a little more freely. In the interim she needs a good deal of help doing almost anything and this has taken up a great deal of my time.

also in the interim, and also because she has no use of her left arm I have purchased a Toto washlet, one of the higher end ones with heated seat and heated spray and adjustable everything. This is less of a luxury than one might think. My employers use these and all over Africa and the Middle East I have been around bum guns – essentially a kitchen sprayer located near your toilet.

now for the revival of a classic old Og tradition of crap blogging. Those of you who have not experienced this you might want to avert your eyes.

I myself have not been a huge participant in the very expensive backyard cleaning equipment because years of being fat and lifting and carrying things that were beyond my ability – such as putting the engine in my escort by myself without a winch, my rectal area is less an innie and more of an outie, especially when I’m parked on the John. So while it is not quite prehensile it is sort of a periscope and it aims a bit to the left. Not much of a big deal unless you have gluey poop in which case it’s sort of tries to attach itself to the inside of my left ass cheek. So it involves a combination of wiping and washing which is fine.

to be perfectly honest if I’m at home I will still hop in the shower after I take a dump because I’d really rather not aid and abet the appearance of Klingons.

those of you unused to this might check underneath the sink in the bathroom for the brain bleach.

armpit deep in alligators as usual. Busted a chunk out of a filling on Tuesday so I got a nice icy sensation every time I open my mouth. Then went on to load salt into a friend’s water softener and did something really ugly to my right bicep, bad enough that it’s still black and blue. Fell off a ladder but at least it was on to a pile of busted up wood. Then the wife fell and broke her arm. Kids are coming out this weekend with the grandkids and nobody bothered to plan for extra sleeping arrangements so I guess I’ll take care of that too. No rest for the wicked I guess