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Computers: Ya love ’em…

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By noon yesterday, I was feeling very smug. After dragging my heels for years, I finally forced my self to figure out how to download data for two credit union accounts, three credit cards, and a PayPal account in such a way as to make sense of the entries. Not just “make sense” to my eccentric and overheated little mind, but actually to make sense to an accountant.

Miraculously, it wasn’t near as hard as expected. I hate doing this kind of thing, because there’s always, invariably, inevitably some kind of fuck-up that will require hours of frustration to figure out, decode, and reconstruct before it’s right. But to my great surprise, it wasn’t very difficult at all. Data downloaded smoothly into Excel — backwards, of course, so I had to sort by “Date” in order to make entries run from January through October rather than, clumsily, the other way around. But that’s not difficult. The only PITA was PayPal, but PayPal is always a PITA, so…there being no surprise there, I managed to cope adequately.

So, yes, smug: No more the hours spent entering data from snail-mail statements. No more the time suck of figuring out what check no. 2489 paid for, and to whom. No more the annoyance of calling AMEX to find out who some mystery retailer might be. It’s all there in little glowing letters.

This was good. Very, very good. WonderAccountant will be pleased, and I will no longer have to rely on her reports from the inscrutable, user-hostile Quickbooks to extract the answer to this, that, or the other budgetary question. She will be even more pleased to learn that AMEX will upload data to QB, which she prefers to use because she can generate tax reports from that endlessly annoying program and because it will engross transaction data from your bank accounts.

These are features I would prefer to do without, but will allow as to how anything that saves her time saves me money.

…or ya hate ’em!

Pleased as punch — or as bourbon and water, which I find much more pleasing than punch, thank you — I went back to working on my client’s ongoing project. She has been uploading it a chunk at a time, as she writes. I’d sent her a piece in the morning, and forthwith she sent me back an afternoon piece.

So I set to work on that, and after a couple of hours come out on the other end. And I’m very pleased, yea verily, about that: a major piece of work, out of the way and in impressively short order.

Go to save the thing, and…

…oh, what do you suppose happened next?

• Angels flew into my office, gathered around the desk and began to sing?

• The dog began to speak in English, offering advice on what stocks to buy?

• Donald Trump announced he was stepping down from office to spend the next 10 years golfing in Barbados?

No. ‘Fraid not. Oh, indeed, you DO know what happened: Effing Word hung.

And hung big time. I couldn’t crash out of it. I couldn’t even switch to a different program. Ultimately the only way I could shake it loose was to SHUT DOWN THE EFFING COMPUTER.

And this, of course, causes everything I’m working on to crash.

I figure that will be a fucking annoyance but not the end of the world, because everything is saved. I know I saved all the Excel files that were still sitting open on the computer, and even if they didn’t save, I’d emailed them to WonderAccountant and so those could be retrieved from “Sent” mail.

I knew I’d saved the chapter of the current noveloid I’m working on — and was feeling extremely proud of: this day’s little inspiration having proven…well, inspired — and even if I didn’t, Wyrd is set to save every three minutes.

Wyrd is set to save every three minutes because of its propensity to generate random catastrophic crashes.

But nevertheless I’m pissed, because I know this is going to be another time suck.

And I’m right. It is another time suck.

Manage to get the system back up and find that probably the Excel files are OK.

The client’s file, thank God, saved itself in several iterations as it was diving in flames into the Pacific Ocean, one of which miraculously contained the latest changes and comments I’d made.

But my file? The one I felt so happy with because it’s the first decent creative work I’ve done in freaking WEEKS? Not so much.

The whole day’s new work is gone. Gone, gone, gone! Wyrd tells me it has autosaved nothing, no back up, please go away and stop bothering me…

Well, by now of course I’m in a screaming rage.

I search and search and bang around and whack around and try every trick I can think of. Finally, as I’m about to give up, I manage to find some autosaved files under the suspect filename. And in there what should I discover but an .asd file that was apparently was saved late in the Timeframe of Desperation.

Hm.

An .asd file is a type of Wyrd recovery file. Wyrd and the Mac, of course, had told me they hadn’t saved anything within living memory: that the latest save had failed to keep most of the day’s scribbling.

Interesting.

So I try to open this thing, but as you can imagine, Wyrd refuses to open it.

I look up “how to open an .asd” file on the Font of All Wisdom and do indeed find such a thing. Unfortunately it’s written in Techese and so is utterly incomprehensible to the likes of moi. I cannot even begin to understand what the author is trying to say, except that he’s offering some indecipherable hope that this file can be broken into.

What the fuck to do?

Finally I decide to try to hack into it using TextEdit.

And lo and behold…it WORKS.

Angels do not sing at my house. At best, they laugh. Peals of angelic laughter now erupt around the desk.

Of course, you can’t edit a TextEdit file. But…you can copy it.

Highlighted the passages that had been disappeared from the working Wyrd file, reopened said file, and pasted. And HALLELUJAH! It worked! More angelic laughter.

So I saved the creative work I’d done that afternoon, at the expense of damn near giving myself a nervous breakdown.

One of the Excel files had corrupted. There’s an easy fix for that: change the extension from .xlsb or .xlsx to .xls. Wasn’t very worried, because I knew I could retrieve the one I’d sent to WonderAccountant, but tried the trick anyway. It worked.

You realize, of course, that had I stayed true to my resolve to draft creative work with pen on ink on, you know, paper, this wouldn’t have happened…

How do I hate computers? Let me count the ways…

Charter Schools: What Could Go Wrong?

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Interested in charter schools as an alternative to traditional public education? Well, that makes sense, especially in a backwater like Arizona, where schools are shamefully underfunded and the resulting national and international academic rankings are similarly shameful.

Are charter schools The Answer? I don’t know.

Certainly here in the Wild West, where ethics run as short as water, it’s highly debatable. If you’re thinking about a charter school for the kids or the grand-kids, think carefully, and take a long look before you leap. With permission from the Grand Canyon Institute, Funny about Money is reproducing a response to a little firestorm that arose after publication of a report suggesting that over the past 20 years, more than 3/4 of Arizona charter schools have indulged in questionable uses of taxpayer money. If you’d like to read the full 90-page report, which is quite the jaw-dropper, you can download the PDF here. There’s a separate executive summary online, too.

As you can imagine, this report elicited loud squawks of protest from various quarters, some of which contain some fairly heavy hitters, especially within the present political infrastructure. If you care at all about the future of education in this country — and about the use of your taxpayer dollars therein — you need to take a look at this.

Fighting Fire With Data

No substance in critiques of charter school finances report

Oct. 5, 2017 – On Sunday, Sept. 17 the Grand Canyon Institute (GCI) released a policy report that tracks the financial practices of Arizona’s charter schools over the past 20 years. It found that 77% of charter schools use taxpayer money for questionable financial practices. Of the more than $1 billion charter schools received in public funds each year, almost half is paid to related parties – the charter holder’s own for profit business, corporate board members or relatives of either.

Last week, charter sector leaders criticized GCI’s policy report, Following the Money: Twenty Years of Charter School Financial Practices in Arizona, with no substance behind their arguments. The president of the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools (ASBCS) responded to GCI’s policy report by labeling the organization as anti-charter and claiming that charter schools are well-regulated. She was joined by the vice chairman of the Arizona Charter Schools Association, who is also the CEO of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry. He stated that charter schools are held to a high level of accountability and argues that a school’s academic performance should be the ultimate determination of its fiscal responsibility.

GCI is pro-school-choice

The Grand Canyon Institute is pro-school-choice.  The recommendations that we make in our report are to ensure that well managed, fiscally responsible charters create true school choice among all publicly-funded schools. Greater accountability will provide charters that do not engage in such activities a competitive advantage, allowing them to thrive and ultimately improve the academic performance of Arizona’s charter and public district schools.

 The misconception about the superior performance of charter schools

The claim by charter proponents that charter school students’ performance is superior to public district school students is a misconception. Comparing similar students in the two systems tells the story differently. This superior performance claim is based on comparisons of aggregate charter school and public district school scores on standardized tests. Charter schools attract proportionally more higher-performing, advantaged students and tend to “weed out” the lowest performers. Because charters rarely provide transportation, they enroll comparatively fewer students from lower-income families. They also enroll comparably lower numbers of students with special needs. The result is higher aggregate test scores.

GCI’s policy report cites the only recent studies that used student-level data to compare district and charter students of similar socio-economic and demographic backgrounds. Those studies, one from a research center affiliated with the Hoover Institution at Stanford and the other contracted by the Goldwater Institute, both found that overall Arizona district schools modestly outperform charters. Some charter schools, no doubt, do perform better than district schools, but that is not the case for most charters.

Simply put, aggregate data perpetuates the misconception that charter school students perform better than public district school students.

 Academic success does not equal fiscal responsibility

One common critique of GCI’s findings and other research that focused on charter school finances is that academic performance should be the metric indicating whether a charter school is practicing fiscal responsibility. Data that indicates related-party transactions, excessive executive compensation, and shareholder payouts despite a lack of profitability has been routinely dismissed.

GCI does not see why academic performance and financial accountability should be mutually exclusive.  Charter schools that engaged in related-party transactions that led to cost-savings were not included in the 77%. As taxpayers, why should we turn a blind eye to whether our money is being used inefficiently or unethically simply because of strong academic performance by students at a select few charter schools? Is it too much to ask that charter schools engage in both strong pedagogical practice and proper handling of taxpayer dollars?

GCI probed the prevailing economic theory referenced in the charter school marketplace. The theory is that once the state has given taxpayer money to the charter school the charter is free to spend it as they deem fit. Moving large sums of public money to a related party, a for-profit corporate entity, diverts taxpayer funding to companies that do not provide audited accounting to the state or the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools. This does not change the fact that the money came from public sources.

 Arizona’s charter schools are not well-regulated

The Grand Canyon Institute’s comprehensive financial analysis found that charter schools were rampant with related-party transactions, a practice where charter school operators did business with for-profit companies owned by the charter holder, members of the school’s corporate board, or relatives of either. While this activity is illegal for public school districts, it has been allowed for charter schools to create cost savings. However, GCI found that 77% of charter schools engaging in this practice do so in a manner that does not create costs savings for the charter entity. Therefore GCI concludes it is not in the best interests of students or the taxpayer. While charter schools are required under state law to disclose such activities, the Arizona Daily Star reported that the ASBCS does not keep track of such conflict-of-interest disclosures.

Furthermore, stringent oversight of charters at the school level is a dubious claim when the current law allows governing boards for charters as well as, when applicable, parent corporate boards that oversee multiple charters to be composed of the following related-party combinations:

  • One person, the charter holder.
  • Two people, husband and wife who also hold the charter.
  • Two charter holder couples.
  • Relatives and owners of related party businesses.
  • Charter holder serves as the board chair/president.
  • Corporate Boards that are the same for related-party businesses dealing with the non-profit charter. Salaries, bonuses and distributions from these subsidiaries are not reported on the Audits. Money moving to the subsidiaries is noted in the Related-Party section of the Audit.

In addition, 113 charters did not post notices of upcoming board meetings or meeting locations on their websites as required by law.  As a result, a complaint was made to the Arizona Attorney General for their failure to comply with Arizona Open Meeting Laws.

With no aggregate records kept of charter school financial activities, GCI researchers were forced to dive into financial documents charter-by-charter to determine how widespread the practice was. All charters from 1994 to 2015 were financially evaluated using forensic accounting. The result is a database with financial information pulled from Annual Financial Reports, audits, and IRS 990 filings from every charter school that reports to the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools. This information was collected with cooperation from the ASBCS and the Arizona Department of Education.

GCI found that charter governing and corporate boards composed with the above related-parties invite the wolf to watch the hen house. Current charter law enabled the following examples of related-party transactions:

  • Renting from a for-profit business or individual
  • Purchasing goods and services from a related for-profit business or individual
  • Leasing employees from a related party for-profit company or individual
  • Loans and notes to a related-party for-profit company or individual
  • Paying a related party for “board” services on the corporate board
  • Consulting contracts to a related party, and a host of other dealings with parties related to the owners of the charter.
  • Multiple related-parties on the payroll.

GCI also found that charter schools paid teachers on average 20% less than public school districts while paying administrators significantly more (about 50% greater than their counterparts in similar-sized public school districts). This lack of regulation has created an environment where those who control the purse-strings can enrich themselves and their families at the expense of students and teachers. For example, when a charter elects not to participate in the Arizona State Retirement System, the retirement contribution from the employer will likely be less than the ASRS 11.1%. Does that savings go to teachers as additional compensation or into the pockets of charter holders?

Next steps

Charter schools in Arizona, including the one-in-four with good business practices, face a real danger of becoming associated with corruption instead of student success.  That is not in anyone’s interest. The Grand Canyon Institute wants to work with the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools and the Arizona Charter Schools Association to create a highly competitive environment that creates high-performing charter schools.  We suggest starting with the report’s key recommendations that charter schools must:

  • Conduct public competitive bid processes similar to public district schools.
  • Ensure consistency among Annual Financial Reviews (AFRs), audits, and IRS 990 filings, including using the same accounting method, Cash, Accrual, or Modified Accrual across all reports.
  • Adopt executive salaries comparable to similarly sized public district schools.
  • Be subject to annual audits by the state Auditor General similar to public district schools.

These policies will foster high-performing, fiscally responsible charter schools, which will give Arizona what it has strived for: true school choice.

If research like this matters to you, please consider a tax deductible donation to the Grand Canyon Institute,  a  501(c) (3) nonprofit organization and an independent, nonpartisan think tank led by a bipartisan group of former state lawmakers, economists, community leaders and academicians. Donations can be sent to the Grand Canyon Institute, PO Box 1008, Phoenix, Arizona 85001-1008. Or donate online here.

And no, my little chickadees, there’s not a single paid link in this entire squib.  ♥

Effin’ Brave New World…

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Please. I want my covered wagon and my smoke signals back…  Seriously: SDXB was just over here and remarked that we live in the kind of dystopia that was science fiction and horror fiction when we were kids. We are so ensnared with our effing “conveniences” that they now dictate our lives and spy on us for any number of unknown and unknowable parties.

Anyway, I found out why, after a gangbuster spring, editorial business abruptly fell off to zero at the start of the summer. Google, it develops, arbitrarily brands various incoming messages as “spam,” whether you ask for that or not. In addition, Google has infiltrated my Apple mail, apparently picking up “trash” classifications and deeming them “spam.”

Now, here’s the problem. I have a G-mail address with my company brand. That is, it says “@mycompany.com,” not “@gmail.com” or “@mac.com” or worse yet, “@me.com.” This looks much more professional, and for several years it’s been all over my business cards, all over my stationery, all over my email, and enshrined in the “contact” pages at my business websites. A lot of people email me at that company address. In fact, I’d venture to say most people do.

Meanwhile, though, I do not care for Google’s email interface. Miraculous though it may be, I find it clumsy and annoying to work with. Also, I have other things to do than sign in, several times a day, to a G-mail account. Nor do I want to have to sign in to two accounts every day. So I have all the @mycompany.com email forwarded to my Apple email.

Yesterday, a particularly august friend (let’s call her Friend¹) emailed and asked if I had received a message (copied and pasted into her email) from someone to whom she had referred me. The potential client never heard back, and she let Friend know it.

Well. No. I hadn’t received it.

So I go over to the G-mail account, shoof around, and find this woman’s message in Spam. Along with Friend’s message. Google has decided an inquiry about my editing and indexing services is spam. And it also has decided Friend is a spammer; it decided that some time ago, because a number of her messages resided in Google’s spam folder. Come to think of it, so did messages from several friends. Including Friend², a raft of whose recent emails were sitting there unanswered.

I can’t find any lost messages from dozens and dozens of imagined would-be clients, but since there are only 80 spam messages in that account today (most of them solicitations for sex services by women with fake Russian-sounding names), I assume Google sets up the spam box to auto-delete every month or so. Indeed, the earliest message in that folder is dated September 27, so it must hold only about a week or two of back messages. Presumably, then, any messages that went in there over the Long Dry Summer are already gone.

To give you a clue what this means: the woman whose email was rescued by Friend¹ had a project worth somewhere between $1,200 and $2,000.

It appears that Google has shimmied its sticky tentacles into my Apple system. It’s not enough that this mega-monster corporation spies on you at every turn on the Web.  Somehow G-mail has gained access to Apple mail so that, in order for me to get into my MacMail account, I first have to sign into my gmail account!!!!!!!

This occurs whenever one of my Macs is turned off and rebooted. To get back into MacMail, I have to fire up the iMac, look up the complicated password, go to Gmail, paste in the password, and be online there.

I am sorry, but I DO NOT LIKE THAT ONE LITTLE FUCKING BIT!

I don’t know how this came about, but I’m pretty damn sure I didn’t ask for it because I hardly ever go to the gmail.com accounts because I’m not interested in Russian whores from Moscow. Not knowing how it came about, I can’t cancel it because I can’t find any function to make that happen. In fact, I’m pretty sure this is something that was installed unilaterally by Big Brother.

When I discovered this, I killed a couple of hours trying to convince Google that Friend¹ and Friend² are not spam artists, but in the meanwhile realized that there’s no way I can stop it from derailing messages from prospective clients. Didn’t do any good: a day later, everything I’d installed was un-installed, and it was back to intercepting and throwing out messages from the same people.

It looks like the only way I can make this stop is to delete my business’s Google account. That is NOT good, because as I’ve said, every piece of business-related correspondence and marketing has that address on it!

And the time suck! My GOD!!!!

To advise correspondents to use a different address, you have to get EVERY contact into a message’s address line. That’s not so hard — you can send an email to “All Contacts.” BUT…you can’t make Google automatically stick those ±200 addresses into the bcc line. To put all those private addresses into the bcc line, you have to cut them, a few at a time, and paste them into “bcc.” It won’t let you highlight all > cut all > paste all. Nooooo way! You have to select a few at a time to move them over.

Apple’s procedure is even more time-sucky. In MacMail, you have to put every contact in your address book into a “Group.” Then you have to sift through to delete duplications and out-of-date addresses. THEN you can send a message to tell them not to use the old address.

So I was on the phone to an Apple tech at 7:30 this morning when SDXB showed up at the front door and the dogs went screaming BATSH!T and he kept banging at them, driving them MORE batsh!t. No coffee. No breakfast. Not even a minute to clear my mind. She was trying to figure out the simplest way to get 200 Apple contacts into a single e-mail. I finally had to get off the phone to let SDXB in; she said she’d send the instructions, which I can download and try to figure out myself.

Good luck with that.

So it looks to me like the only way to disconnect Google from my private e-mail service is to go online and delete every. single. gmail. account owned now and in the past by me and my various businesses. This includes several accounts I set up for students in freshman comp courses, so there’s an eng101 account, an eng102 account, an eng104 account, an eng235 account, an eng315 account, and on and on and freaking ON. There are accounts for business enterprises that never flew and fell to the earth, stillborn in the nest, YEARS ago.

This is going to take hours. Maybe DAYS. And since Google presumably is already into my Macmail, there’s really no guarantee that deleting those accounts will take Google OUT of my MacMail. In fact, I do not know what will happen if I delete the gmail account that Google thinks I should sign into in order to have access to MacMail. It may simply block me from MacMail permanently…because, of course, you can’t sign into an account that no longer exists.

You know, I think all this stuff, taken together, defines dystopia. We are already living in Hell.

Car Keys in the Brave New World

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So SDXB’s New Girlfriend (affectionately known as NG)  has a place in beautiful Sun City and a place in Boulder. This summer she sold the big house in Boulder, built by her late husband and herself, to move into a smaller place closer to her son and family. In the process, she experienced some heart palpitations

Sensibly, she goes to a doc to have this checked out. He tells her she has atrial fibrillation, a potentially fatal ailment. So she’s now becalmed in Colorado, jumping through medical hoops.

Fast-forward a few weeks: Her son and DiL have to make a sojourn to Phoenix for some damnfool reason. They wish to borrow her car so they don’t have to rent. But…but…but she can’t remember where she put the keys to the damn car.

She can’t, can’t CAN’T remember where she put them.

So SDXB goes over to the Sun City manse and searches the joint from stem to stern. He even checks every door lock in the house to see if maybe she carelessly left her keys in the door. He performs this exploration not once, not twice, but three times. He can NOT find the keys.

He calls Larry Miller Toyota to find out if he can get a new key made.

In order to make a new Annoying Smart Key, NG herself has to show up there, with the title of the car in hand to prove she actually owns it (!!!!!!!) and with a picture ID to prove she’s who she says she is. And the car has to be at the Toyota dealership. This, as you correctly surmise, entails having to tow the damn car to the dealership!!!! The cost is many, many hundreds of dollah.

I say to SDXB…wait. Waitaminit here! Anderson Lock & Key, the pre-eminent locksmith in the Valley, told me they could copy the key to the hated Venza (the Bell Road crooks didn’t bother to give me two keys…). It would be expensive, but nothing like what Larry Miller proposes to charge.

We call Anderson.

Yes. Sure. They can make a new key. But yes, it requires the locksmith and his computer to convene at the same place where the becalmed car resides. However, they will send the guy out to Sun City, laptop in hand, to make a new key.

For a fuckin’ car key…

“The Economy”: A Context for Personal Finance

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The Economist publishes a discussion of academe’s shortcomings in the teaching of basic, introductory economy (yeah, that Econ 101 course you took for three useless credits). They — the shortcomings — are manifold. But, we’re told, someone’s working to fix it . . . and for those of us who are drawn to questions about money, the economy, and how they work, the fix is extremely interesting. It involves a free, full-length online textbook designed to approach the subject in a better, more effective, and more engaging way. Frugally enough, its authors have titled it The Economy.

Our reviewer points out that economics “accounts for more than 10% of degrees awarded at elite universities each year, . . . and many more students take an introductory course as part of their general-education requirements. . . . Economics teaches that incentives matter and trade-offs are unavoidable. It shows how naïve attempts to fix social problems, from poverty to climate change, can have unintended consequences. . . . [and] at its best, enables people to see the unstated assumptions and hidden costs behind the rosy promises of politicians and businessmen.”

In other words, if your eyes glazed over on Day 1 of Econ 101 and stayed glazed all semester, you need this book. More to the point, where the future of humanity is concerned, maybe your kids do, too.

Designed by an international team collaborating as the Curriculum Open-Access Resources in Economics, the book takes a fresh approach to its subject. “Messy complications, from environmental damage to inequality,” we’re told, “are placed firmly in the foreground. It explains cost curves, as other introductory texts do, but in the context of the Industrial Revolution, thus exposing students to debates about why industrialization kicked off when and where it did. . . . Quite early on,” we find “lessons in the weirdness in economics . . . that make the subject fascinating and useful but are skimmed over in most introductory courses.”

So cruise on over to the site that hosts this free tome. The table of contents gives you a clue — and with color-coded markers shows how chapters fit into various themes such as  history, innovation, the environment, politics and policy…among other topics key to everyone who buys, sells, invests, or votes.

Spring (re-)Sprung

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What a gorgeous morning! A beautiful spring day: October being Arizona’s answer to spring.

While I was at Home Depot buying the possibly dysfunctional hose yesterday, I also picked up packets of seeds — beets, various lettuce-like creatures — which I’ve planted in large pots strategically placed in the front courtyard’s sprinklers.

Surprisingly, the Depot’s selection of seeds was piss-poor. Actually had a hard time finding lettuce seeds. Which is crazy: winter is the time to grow lettuce here. It doesn’t freeze (nor is it likely to be at risk thereof, given the steady climate warming we’ve had: we haven’t had a hard frost in years), and it loves the mild winter temperatures of the Valley of the We-Do-Mean Sun.

The chard I planted last fall survived the summer and is still going strong. In fact, I plan to have some of it with lunch.

Other things fried over the summer, though. A new rosemary plant joined the nascent lettuce in front — I do hope it will like it there. Bought another thyme plant, which I also may put in front, where it will get plenty of sun and water. Although…thyme would probably rather have more sun and less water. And grabbed a spearmint critter, which probably will take up residence happily on the shaded west side.

And of course I couldn’t resist a six-pack of snapdragons. How could anyone?

The rose vines here on the west side, the ones that help create the Shady Bower, are looking pretty peakèd. Though they’re putting out some new growth, a few weeks ago you couldn’t have convinced me that they survived the summer’s ungodly heat. They may come back this year, but I’m pretty sure that next fall I’ll have to take them out and replace them with babes.

IF, that is, I can find anyone that still sells rose vines. May have to order them online. Not what I like to do: one prefers to see what one is getting, when it comes to plants.

The backyard is a bit of a wreck. Gerardo hasn’t been here for a month and a half — hence the $285 bill to hire a real irrigation guy to replace the watering system’s control panel, a job Gerardo would cheerfully do for twenty bucks and the cost of the panel. I don’t know whether he’s sick, harassed by Trump’s troops, or what…but if he doesn’t show up pretty quick, I’m going to have to find another lawn dude.

My neighbor Terri has a guy who does an adequate job on her yard. She shows signs of being no less tight than me, so I imagine he can be hired for a reasonable figure. Next time I see him, I’ll try to waylay him.

On the subject of said collapsible garden hose, so roundly hated by Amazon reviewers… Well. I installed it on the backyard spigot, which is equipped with an Orbit dial-type mechanical timer, renowned for its annoying habit of leaking. And here’s what happened:

  1. Fifty feet is exactly the desired length: as long as two pieces of the regular hose I had cobbled together.
  2. Unlike said regular hose, the thing is lightweight and easy to haul to the far side of the pool or to weasel in behind the thick shrubbery to the east of the pool.
  3. It does not require you to bust your buns to put it away (or, as is my habit, to just leave the damn thing laying on the pavement, hideously). With no water in it, all you have to do is pick it up, loop it around and around to coil it, and drop it in the hose pot. It’s lightweight and absurdly easy to handle.
  4. A-A-N-N-N-D….Here’s the kicker: When the thing is attached to the connection on the Orbit, IT DOES NOT LEAK.

By “it,” we mean the Orbit timer, all specimens of which leak front and back when attached to a regular garden hose. The Orbit will leak at the hose connection, and fie on your damn washers! And it also will leak up near the male connection where you attach it to the spigot. To keep from saturating the foundation of the house, I have to set a large pot under the spigot to collect the leaked water, which then gets dumped on the potted plants.

With the new allegedly flimsy hose, there’s no leaking at all!

WTF? The timer didn’t even leak after it shut the water off…which is normally when it turns into Niagara Falls.

The thing is quite lightweight, and yes, I can imagine that any manhandling whatsoever could cause it to spring a leak. It appears to be made of cloth over some sort of light plastic interior hose. If you jerked it around or ran it over the edge of a brick patio, it no doubt would easily tear or split. But…if we think of it as a girlie hose, I suspect it could be OK, at least for a season, given careful enough handling.

Back at Amazon, I found something in the same genre, although it’s not identical. This one looks like it’s made of the stuff used for pool hoses, though it apparently coils up more compactly. Some reviewers say it leaks, but most rave about its glories. As we noted in comments yesterday, too many of the reviews at Amazon are not-so-secretly paid reviews. But probably not all of 174 reviews are fake. I hope.

Decided to try it, just to see. Meanwhile, I think I’ll take a chance on another of these Goodyear hoses from the Depot, since the Amazon hose looks like it would be better suited for the front courtyard and I need another 50-foot number for the west side. In fact, I may drive back up there this very afternoon.

The new BBQ cover arrived from Amazon by overnight delivery. And interestingly, you’ve heard Amazon says it’s testing its abandonment of FedEx in California? Well, it’s doing the same here. This is the third package of late that’s been delivered by some guy obviously driving his own car. So…there’s another side gig for those of us rendered unemployable by Republican recessions and automation… 😮

The cover doesn’t fit as well as the Weber brand cover — not tailored to fit (as it were) and it has no Velcro straps to secure it. But I never used the straps anyway. And this thing does the job: it does cover the grill and will protect it from rain. I may glue on some Velcro strips or patches to keep it from blowing off in a high wind…but whatever. The price is definitely SO much righter than the one with the Weber brand slapped on it.