WordPressWorld
Update: July 2008 — The most recent plugin update broke, so I’m removing it completely.
The WordPressWorld never ceases to amaze me. This diversity — which I expected, of course — has come up with so many methods to assist WordPress users that their number is uncountable. Just when I think I’ve seen everything, something new comes along that isn’t really new at all — it’s been around for a year or more, and I just haven’t seen it.
I’m talking about a “new” plugin I just discovered for placing footnotes at the bottom of a page.
Better yet, go here (link removed) to get the plugin from WordPress.
Just say no and end up unemployed
Dreamland VIII
Erin was divorced from an abusive husband. She had managed to stay in the relationship long enough for kids to arrive, but eventually she saw the light and dumped him. In her late twenties, she had already had her share of bad luck in the relationship department with her ex, but she never whined about it. She just charged forward and dealt head-on with life.
She first came on board some time during the Celia fiasco, had left, and then returned to relative calm in the store after Celia’s departure. She was a good person, easy to get to know, and had a ready smile that lit up everything around her.
The two of us would go riding together every Monday — she on her Sportster and I on my bagger. We discovered that we both had an unhealthy addiction to sushi, so I would search out the best sushi restaurants — of which there were many — and usually we’d arrange to have a quick bite to eat before she had to get home to round up the kids from school.
Erin and I had become friends and nothing more, since she was by far too young for me to have much interest in beyond friendship. At some point, Sonny must have noticed that the two of us were spending some time together. In any case, Sonny and his wife invited her for lunch on one of our riding Mondays, although I suspect that it was mainly Sonny that had invited Erin for lunch, and his wife just happened to come along because she wanted to know what the hell was going on.
Off the two of us went to meet up with Sonny and wifey for “the small family business lunch”. It was uneventful, but I suspected that Sonny was up to his old tricks, and now Erin would be in for a passel of shit from him.
I never said a word to her. That’s not my way. I figured that she could take care of herself with Sonny, having dealt with and dumped an abusive husband. After all, just because she was young didn’t mean that she wasn’t tough.
Finally, Sonny made his move on Erin by inviting her for the “it’s a small family business and we like to take our employees out for dinner” routine. She had the prescience to drive herself down the hill to the restaurant, and, once there, learned that Sonny’s wife wouldn’t be showing up.
It would be Erin and Sonny, alone.
Apparently, most of the meal went well enough, but at some point towards the end Sonny began to feign drunkenness and started running his slimy hands all over Erin, much to her disgust. Once she extricated herself from Sonny and his unwanted advances, Erin drove herself home, dismayed by what had happened.
The next day, Sonny apologized profusely for his misbehavior, and claimed that he was drunk and not himself. Erin and I had a laugh over that. I should have known better.
We had laughed too soon.
It wasn’t long before Sonny was doing his trash-talking routine to anyone who would listen about Erin’s inability to properly do her job. Mind you, if what he said was true, I fully understood why she might be feeling a little down about her job: every day she had to come in to work to face her sexual abuser.
The shop’s General Manager, ever the complicit one in Sonny’s workplace affairs, eventually fired Erin.
The continuing carburetor blues
Well, all effort to the contrary, I received the parts for a Kiehn carb today. Which is fine, because I own a Kiehn carb — but I don’t need any parts for it! Jesus.
Why is it that a business doesn’t listen to what the customer tells them? Are the morons who work there so dulled by the stupidity of RUBS that they just go and order any old thing, part numbers notwithstanding?
Are they too accustomed to selling bolt-on chrome doo-dads to stupid people who are more dense than those employed by the dealership?
Do any of these people even know what a carburetor is, and how it functions?
Perhaps they can’t spell. Let’s see now…
M-i-k-u-n-i. Oh, yes. Mi-kun’-i. That’s it. Sound it out like a public school moron.
K-i-e-h-n. Hmm. Now that’s a little more difficult. At the end of the word there’s something that’s real hard to pronounce. Like, an h and an n, real close together, like.
Like, much head-scratching over that one, I’m certain. There must have been. I got the wrong parts.
Morons, all.
Unhappily ever after
Dreamland VII
By now it was pretty obvious that Sonny wasn’t the most faithful husband in the asylum, but his next trick really took the insanity to new levels.
Some of us were standing around shooting the breeze at lunchtime, looking for something to do or somewhere to go, when in walked a teenage girl. She announced for all to hear that Sonny was going to be looking after her and her mom.
We all raised our eyebrows over that one.
Sonny? Taking care of people? That wasn’t likely to happen in his lifetime.
As it turned out, her mom was in another part of the building with her mother and father, announcing basically the same thing to anyone who would listen — and they were all listening!
The bigger question we were all asking was, who was this girl’s mother, and how did the two of them know Sonny?
Being the nosy sort that I am, I wandered over to Sonny’s office and brought him outside to tell him about the episode, and to suggest — nicely, of course — that he might want to be more discreet with his affections. He had the temerity to shrug it off by saying that the woman was a friend of his wife’s, and that he had taken her out to the lake house the day before to show it to her.
Right.
So she assumed from that quick little honeymoon that Sonny would be taking care of her and her daughter in the foreseeable future? I don’t think so. His effrontery was simply amazing.
It was obvious that another relationship had gone sour when mom and daughter discovered that Sonny hadn’t been truthful about his commitments. I wondered if she had called his bluff by suggesting that she and her daughter move into the vacant lake house.
Sonny’s wife and three children would have been real happy about that. Those weekends that they spent boating on the river would find that boat mighty crowded.
Carburetor blues
The Mikuni HSR42 is a great carburetor. I had one on my Low Rider and it never skipped a beat. I think some dealer finger trouble occurred to the enrichener circuit on this one — although that circuit should never have been touched at any time during my reman engine install back in December of 2005.
I’ve been looking — unsuccessfully, so far — for a couple of non-standard parts for the carb. There’s a piston and a spring involved, which I’ve been trying to find locally. No such luck. Unfortunately, dealers only carry jets/needles and re-build kits.
On March 5 I finally broke down and called Mikuni in Northridge. I was patched over to the voice mail of someone named Steve. I left a brief explanation, including the two part numbers that I was unable to obtain locally, followed by a request for a callback.
No response so far.
Had I been able to find an email address for Mikuni, I’d have sent them an email.
Today I emailed sudco.com asking them the same question, and in a matter of an hour I had a reply directing me to a Canadian distributor for the parts that I required.
I’ve ordered everything I need, plus a little extra. Thank you, Sudco.
Old time radio
Dreamland VI
“Get out of town or I’ll chase you out with a .45,” the voice on the other end of the phone said, and then the line went dead.
My brain went into high gear as my life turned into an old-time radio show.
Familiar voice? No.
Am I sure? Yes.
Then it’s no joke.
Who have I pissed off? Nobody I can think of.
Who hates my guts down here? Nobody.
Wait — the contractor! I had no idea of his name, what he looked like or how he sounded.
Up until that moment, this had been an entertaining experience. Now it was getting serious. I’ve stared down the barrel of a gun before, but never one owned and operated by a jealous boyfriend — a married, jealous, confused boyfriend, with no reason to be jealous of me.
I took his threat seriously.
I walked downstairs and told Sonny what had happened. When I told him that I was going to report the phone call to the police, he thought I should hold off for a couple of days. His sense was that it would all blow over in a day or two.
Yeah, right, I thought to myself.
I didn’t call the cops, but I did get the guy’s name and address for future reference, since Sonny knew all about him.
A few minutes later I walked out of the shop and called a friend and explained what had been going on. Frank didn’t seem too surprised, but he did have a solution for me. He told me to come on up, and when I got there he loaned me a nice little snub-nose .357 and a box of shells. From then on I knew I could depend on Frank.
Sonny, on the other hand, was a complete writeoff.
For five days I walked around armed. Nothing happened, of course, but better safe than sorry. Then, Sonny called me into his office to let me know that the contractor’s wife had called him at home and left a message on his voice mail, thanking him for letting her know about her husband’s affair with Celia.
He dialed his voice mail, and played the message over the phone’s speaker for me. And yup, that was definitely a woman thanking Sonny for letting her know. Sonny hemmed and hawed and then announced somewhat triumphantly that he was going to call the Sheriff’s department and report her.
Damn, but wasn’t I in a worse situation almost a week ago? Obviously Sonny had his priorities, and I wasn’t one of them, even though some asshole could barge into his store and start shooting the place up on my account. Jesus.
I got up to leave, but Sonny asked me to stay, and I was witness to his report on the woman to the police. So much for bravado when he was involved. What a little chickenshit, I thought to myself.
I walked around armed for another three days.
It all came to nothing, of course. The contractor never showed up, Sonny was able to put on a brave face, and Celia calmed down too. Christ, it was about time.
Eventually Celia got the message and she started looking around for a new job. When she found one, Sonny gave a fantastic recommendation to her new employer on the coast. The day of her departure felt as though the roof had been raised off of the building as a collective sigh of relief went through the employees.
Not to be outdone, Danny and I and some of the others started taking bets on which of the remaining women would be getting the Christmas bonus come December.
For Julia with the bear claw on her shoulder
It was back in ‘96 and I was nursing a beer on a slow, dark Wednesday night in the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar when she walked in and saddled up beside me. She told me that she had been outside on the river all day, and was exhausted from the effort. I mentioned that I had never rafted, and asked questions — probably too many. We talked easily in the dim light, trading adventures until closing time. Finally we stood up together and walked to the door, each ready to go our own way.
“Are you coming?” she asked.
* * * * *
I woke up at twilight. I watched you sleeping soundly, your shoulder uncovered in the early-morning light. I pulled the covers over your shoulder and opened the curtains so that when you woke up you would have an unobstructed view beyond the window and the sunlight streaming through.
I thought of you as I rode along the river in the early-morning mountain dawn. I’m remembering you again today.
Mail fraud
Dreamland V
Sonny must have been messing around for a while with Celia’s email courtesy of pillow talk and passwords. I mean really, how else do you find out someone’s email password to their personal accounts? You’re either watching over their shoulder, or they outright give it to you. In either case, it’s not a good idea at the best of times.
For those of you dear readers who are involved in something like this, change your passwords now. I shall leave it to you to come up with an appropriate excuse for doing so. Be assured that it will give you great piece of mind later on when the relationship falls apart.
Regardless, it looked like Sonny had logged in to her account and saw emails to and from her newest boyfriend. At worst, he probably saw emails from a couple of others too. I’m not entirely sure what Sonny did to Celia via his access to her email account, but I knew that she was talking to him about someone stealing passwords and sending copies of email from her account. After all, “it’s a small family business.” How could I not know?
I also knew it was Sonny. Who else could it be? Really, what’s more boring than another person’s email, unless you have a vested interest in knowing what’s going on in their life? Believe me, I had absolutely not one shred of interest in Celia’s little life nor in any of the lives of her pathetic boyfriends.
Why Celia never changed her password throughout this episode was beyond me. Had she been a likable person I’d have had some sympathy for her and would have suggested that she do so, but I didn’t. Besides, I was having fun watching the two of them dance. They were so wrapped up in each other’s lies and denials that they couldn’t see the obvious.
Celia’s email security issues went on for a week or ten days or so. Sonny asked me several times if I was the one doing it, but of course it wasn’t me. I figured if he wanted to put the blame on me, he could go right ahead. My shoulders were broad and I could deal with the consequences. I also enjoyed using the occasions to look him square in the eye and think to myself what a chickenshit little hypocrite he was.
Eventually I became fed up with being dragged into the stupidity going on between the two of them, so I wandered into Sonny’s office and gave him a lesson on how email works. I explained how server addresses, routing, and eventually the real sender’s address was all contained in the header information, which is part of any sent email. It took a while for it all to sink into Sonny’s thick skull. When it did I could practically see the synapses firing and the wheels turning reflected in his eyes.
He must have really put the pressure on Celia after that, because late in the afternoon of the next day the madness really began.
Highway Angel
My memory of this is a little hazy now, but back in the fall of ‘95…
I was running hard, headed west on the 10.
A couple of hours earlier I was out of Alamogordo — where the day before had been hot and dry, just like all the rest — and through Las Cruces. I had started my journey before the heat would set in for the better part of the day, and thankfully it stayed cool into the morning.
I grabbed a tankful in Deming, and that got me into Willcox at around 0800 in the morning, maybe 0830. Maybe a little later. It was still cool, but the sun was getting up and it was looking to be another scorcher. I pulled into a gas ‘n’ go, picked up some water and climbed the overpass to hit the westbound 10 one more time.
She was leaning against the steel railing at the top of the crossover. I didn’t know she was a she until I was past, of course, but in that split second of recognition I hit the binders and pulled off onto the shoulder. I figured since she had a small bag that I could strap it on the back and we’d be off post-haste.
Instead, on the walk towards her I decided that I’d take my time. She was wearing dark sunglasses, so I couldn’t see her eyes. She was bundled up against the fresh morning air in an old army parka. A scarf covered her head. She had socks and sandals on her feet. She was holding onto a mesh bag filled with what looked like mail, or letters or documents of some kind. I didn’t ask any questions about that.
I pushed my sunglasses onto the top of my head, hoping she’d do the same. No such luck. She left them on the bridge of her nose, revealing nothing.
Angel. She said her name was Angel.
I took her for a local.
She told me she was headed west for a bit, and then north to a music festival, of all things.
Well now, I thought, I could use some entertainment. And it’s Friday. Why not detour around and check out the sights and sounds?
“No problem,” I told her. “I’m going that way.”
I don’t remember the exact exit now, but I’m certain it was well before Benson, and probably by Johnson. She told me to pull off so I headed north. Eventually the road turned west again onto two-lane blacktop.
Now, I’m a gullible bastard when it comes to women, but I try to keep my eyes open. For a music festival trail, this road was remarkably free of traffic, notwithstanding its closeness to Tucson. In fact, I didn’t see any other traffic on the road at all.
I mentioned that.
Well,” she said into my ear, “maybe I got the day wrong.”
Oh, okay.
Let’s see now. I was in the middle of nowhere, having swallowed lock, stock and two smoking barrels a music festival storyline that had started to look and sound more and more like a fairy tale. The woman on the back had her days mixed up and I had no idea where I was headed or what was waiting down the road. I was adventurous, but this was starting to get a little strange.
I went on for another ten miles or so, and eventually came to a small country store, pulled in and shut down. I was somewhere, finally. The road ahead rose up into the hills, and looked to be gravel. I used that as a perfect opportunity to explain that I couldn’t take this heavy decker onto gravel. That’s not the truth, of course — I’ve ridden on plenty of gravel — but it seemed the prudent thing to do at the time.
Angel seemed happy to be there, so I said goodbye and left her to wander into the store while I backtracked on the music festival route to the 10 and on into Phoenix.
In retrospect I’m sure she wanted only to get as close to her destination as she could, and selling a story probably seemed the best way to do that. Still…
True lies
Dreamland IV
Sonny’s affections were rather fickle. You could always tell when he was drawn to a new victim by the questions he asked: “What do you think of so-and-so?” “Did you see the blonde that was here yesterday?” Or, his old stand-by, “I invited ‘insert female employee name here’ out for dinner last night with her family, but her husband was out of town.”
Sonny was big on, “We’re a small family business and I like to get to know my employees”. In truth, he wanted to get to know only the next employee that he thought he could sleep with. Consequently, the rest of the employee trash was exactly that — something to be let in in the morning and swept out at the end of the business day — an inconvenience that interrupted his desire to spread his goodwill among those he deemed worthy of his hard-on.
During the course of his affectation with Celia, he developed a yearning for one of his customers, a tall, big-boned blonde, and he took an opportunity to follow her on an overnight group ride south out of the country. Normally, he never went on these rides — unless he was chasing something or other — for the rides were beneath his dignity. Sonny didn’t like to associate with the riffraff that was his customer base unless there was something in it for him. This time his chase was short-lived and didn’t appear to go anywhere, for I had seen him skulking around the cantinas late at night, alone. The lucky woman didn’t know what she missed.
Toward the end of year two of the business reclamation project, Celia finally clued in to Sonny’s bullshit and realized that the promises he had been making to her would come to naught. Much to Sonny’s chagrin, she reached out to one of her married customers — a contractor with his own business located in the low desert — and began carrying on with him. Adding insult to injury, she bagged one of Sonny’s employees just for spite. That really knocked the wind out of Sonny’s sails, and definitely ensured that Celia wouldn’t have a future at the shop, no matter how she spread her goodwill.
After that, Sonny took matters into his own hands — not the smartest thing for him to do since he wasn’t the brightest candle in the wind. He screwed with Celia’s email, hoping that would scare her into not straying. When that didn’t work, he phoned the contractor’s wife at home from the shop and revealed her husband’s relationship with Celia to her.
Sonny never heard of call display, but the contractor’s wife certainly had.
And that’s when, through no fault of my own, I became involved.
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