News from SageWorld

Thinking more about the current divorce situation, the facts are that somebody in the wife's office was getting divorced. According to the book I'm reading, one of the most subtly destructive forces against your marriage is your social circle. According to the book, divorce is contagious. Knowing that somebody in my wife's immediate close circle is already midway through a divorce, aided and abetted by friends, doubtless others in my wife's circle have egged her on to do the same thing. Groups and cliques are the most destructive forces on this planet. There is, I repeat, there is no problem in my marriage that cannot be resolved by discussion and/or action. The satanic ritual of divorce merely means evil has triumphed over good. South Carolina has it right. The reasons for divorce are alcohol, drugs, violence, abandonment and a year's separation. Now I dispute the validity of the last point. I am not a drunk, a junkie or violent. I have not abandoned my wife either. I really do wish my wife would read "The case against divorce". Heck, I'd even buy her a copy if she'd honestly read it from cover to cover and not just skim through it.

There is a song that goes
"I never promised you a rose garden
I could sing you a tune and promise you the moon
but if that's what it takes to hold you I'd just as soon let you go"
I would give the moon to her if I could. I can only give what I have.

In fact, for those who're interested, here's a direct link to the book: ISBN 9780804106337

One of the reviewers, paraphrased, states that they wished they'd read it before their divorce and that they could have had their husband to read it too as there would not have been a divorce. The cruel thing about divorce is it takes 7 years to get over one.

Interestingly I mentioned what I'd read in the book to one of the people at work. They said they had experienced the same thing. Their boyfriend annoyed them and they would talk to their friends about him to blow off steam and they would all tell her to dump him. She recognises the problem there. I wonder whether enough repetition of dump him will eventually have the same effect. Only time will tell. I suspect very much that's what's happened here, especially since there's nothing in the divorce forms that indicate any deliberate fault on my part.

In other news, I did something I should have done a couple of months ago and dumped my attorney. I have my eye on a couple of attorneys, one of whom I met several months ago.

The stench of bat shit in the house is overwhelming. It's really making me feel quite ill. Perhaps that's the reason why I'm getting so depressed. I had a stroll outside and smelt quite a stench coming from the corner of the house. I bet Terminix missed the real cause of the stench.

In other news, one of the people I've been working with was a little opinionated and economical with information. Not just that but they did lead me down the garden path a couple of times. The result of that is that they now longer work with me. I suspect they resigned just before they would have been fired.

I ventilated the house for an hour or so today and lessened temporarily the stench. It was interesting that it was very strong outside the house. I wonder whether there's something dead inside the AC ducting.

I just read something interesting. It's in a book entitled "The case against divorce" by Diane Medved Phd. On page 123 comes a line I've heard: "We're not well matched". As the writer says, it's a load of bunk because we were matched well enough to get married and be together for years. It's cookie-cutter clones that are the problem as we need to celebrate our differences rather than try to be clones of one another. There's a lot in that book that makes sense. Why the divorce popped up still baffles me as I still have not heard a grain of truth about the reason for it.

The only thing that makes any sense is what somebody suggested. When my aunty died and left all her money to my dad, there was a little confusion as to who it was left to. The will though clearly states it was left to my dad. It seems to me that it was expected that I should receive all the money and then surrender it. Words like "rent" were used as though I were renting something though nothing in my marriage was rented.

I find it very interesting to view the level of commitment from "To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness or in health, to love and to cherish 'till death do us part". As regular readers will know, I'm in a divorce that is not of my making. I have been completely faithful and loyal. I would have stuck with my wife through thick and thin, through good times and bad but then I honoured the marriage vows and held them in high esteem. When you do that, you don't call for a divorce. There's no need - everything and I mean everything can be worked out given time. It took a while but even the IRA sat down with the British government and negotiated a truce. I just don't get how my marriage is so apparently beyond negotiation unless there is another person, or drugs or both involved. That changes the whole scope of the problem. On the other hand though, there is the whole "forsaking all others" part too. I believe that "all others" can also be extended to cover drugs. What we have therefore is a truly non-Christian event taking place. Or rather an anti-Christian event. Going further, we can safely call this divorce a Satanic ritual.

I was talking to somebody the other day. They were about to file for divorce. In their instance it sounded fully justified as the husband was due to be sentenced for domestic violence. The interesting thing though was that the wife said she was still in love with her husband.

In other news, I looked at SEO scoring my newest website. After looking at various dodgy online offerings, I settled for the free online tool at DomainTools. The results show I'm definitely on the right track:

Title Relevancy 100%
Meta Description: 96% relevant
Meta Keywords 100% relevant
SEO Score:90%

If this keeps up, I'm in with a chance of getting some business and of growing from 1 visitor a day (probably me). I might in that case transfer my other two business-oriented websites to the same host as they'll probably get trade too. Oddly enough, hosting is free!

This is in stark contrast to my SagePhotoWorld website with an SEO score of 52% (mind, how do you score photos) and my SagePCWorld website (which I might just allow to lapse since I never ever have had any calls since the wife suggested I set up a computer repair business). Mind, that has an SEO score of 84%.

Today I discovered I can get magnetic signs for my vehicle for $0.00. Now that's a price I like the sound of! Webhosting on the new host for my latest site was the same price. All I'd pay for the signs (which are quite small and hence suitable only for the back of the vehicle) would be the postage. That'd be fine though. I realised that vehicle signs on the sides of vehicles are largely ignored. When you're in a parking lot, you only see the back. When you're in a queue at the lights, you only see the back. It's only when you're walking along the street that you see the signs on the side and hardly anybody actually walks in America.

Meanwhile, the smell of bat poo is still very strong. I have to spend as much time out or in the garden as possible. Fortunately I'm used to it so it doesn't affect me too badly. It may well be many months before the stench fades, if indeed it ever does.

Thinking more about marriage and Christianity, it is such an integral part of Christianity that one has to ask whether divorce is so against Christianity that it verges on Satanism and Devil worship. One has also to ask whether the one asking for a divorce is truly a Christian at all. That raises a whole host of other thorny issues such as whether somebody who cannot be considered a Christian can swear on the bible with any veracity.

Meanwhile, the manager that got sacked has invited me out for a beer. Only one problem there... It'll have to be Kaliber or something like that as I have one rule about drinking and driving. I don't drive if I've drunk anything. I follow the old fighter pilot's motto of 8 hours between bottle and throttle. As I drive every day, that means I don't drink at all. Basically, that all started back when I was learning to drive. I had half a pint of beer and felt it affected my ability to control the vehicle and decided there and then that unlike others who would drink seemingly endless amounts of beer and still consider themselves sober to drive, I would settle on a zero policy. The legal limit at the time was quite generous and allowed the consumption of several beers. If I felt unsafe after just a half of a beer then after the legal limit I would have been absolutely legless. I would have passed all the drink tests - breath and blood but would have been deadly on the road. No thanks. I'll stay sober!

Ages ago I purchased a do-it-yourself magnetic sign kit. What a waste of time and money that was! No matter how hard I tried, the stick-on letters always looked cheap and nasty even when they were correctly aligned. Like a fool, I kept the kit even after I bought real magnetic signs. Just recently I started a new website spending the grand total of $0.00 on the site itself. I then found I was getting maybe one visitor a day, which is really poor. In the attempt to drum up more visitors and possibly get some trade (though my experience of magnetic signs generating income is very poor) I revived the old magnetic DIY sign kit, buying some new letters for it. What a waste of money. I'd forgotten just how ghastly the thing looked the first time around. This time though I have taken affirmative and positive action - I threw the rubbish into the dustbin where I should have dumped it before. That thing, over the years, has tempted me to waste money on reviving it several times. Not once more. No more, I say. Let the rubbish rot in the council rubbish dump. For anybody else considering starting a business or advertising a business, learn from my mistakes - pay for a decent sign, online they're very cheap and don't throw money away on DIY rubbish that'll have to get thrown away anyway. After all, you don't want your business to look amateurish, which is what most of the DIY business tools do - DIY websites, DIY business cards and DIY signs. Thank goodness my free website came with a design template. At least even though it was a template, it looks pretty tidy. It's as I always preach - the half-arsed approach will only ever be a half-arsed solution that you then have to spend yet more money on getting right. I'm glad I only blew $6.95 this time around on self-adhesive letters! It does make you appreciate the skill of the professional sign-writer, even though most of it is now done by machine. The inexpensive alternative is normally a sign printed on paper and stuck inside a car window. That works fine in all but cars like mine that have darkened glass. Given though that the response to my previous magnetic signs was so poor that the signs never even generated calls (other than people trying to sell stuff), it really wasn't even worth wasting the $6.95 even if it had looked decent.

In other news, I rearranged some of the furniture in the lounge so that there's now much more space and I don't fall over cables should I need to go upstairs. I can't think why I didn't do that before. The current arrangement does mean the roomba gets a freer journey around the room, which means it should work far better and get hung up a load less. That makes cleaning a load easier.

As I did a spot of dusting while the roomba was on charge, I considered the way my friend Litaurus from Lithiania had his apartment arranged. Everything was in glass-fronted cabinets so that it could be seen but in which little, if any, dust fell. That meant cleaning and particularly dusting was a whole load easier. The trick is, being methodical enough to put everything back in the cabinets after use.

So, the roomba being on charge and it being a bright day, I went outside to work on the borders a bit. After cutting down some of the large shrubs that spring up that we don't need, I pulled out the hedge trimmer. One or two minutes and it stopped dead. What a surprise! I'll have another crack at the trimming tomorrow when it's all charged.

Well, I went out to work. Only 3 hours today but when I got back, I noticed the awful smell of the anti-funk stuff that Batman used has stopped. That stuff made me feel quite queasy. Now it's been replaced by the familiar smell of bat poo. It's still as strong as it was. No sign of that abating!

Crumbs... For $9.99 it's possible to get a ready-made sign. It's even possible to get small versions for $5.00. That looks very much the way to go! I remember paying a load more for my existing car signs. I bought them locally and believe now that perhaps they were made elsewhere. Looks like I paid over the odds for my photo business signs.

The change in staff continues. Not only have several members left but one manager was sacked for apparently not doing his job. Very interesting! Needless to say there is a little gossip about this but not much. I think everybody is now wondering who will be the next to face the axe since it seems to be the night of the long knives.

Meanwhile I was contacted by my attorney for a response to the offer made at Mediation by my opponent. It was suggested by a friend that the response should be along the lines of the response given by the Editor of Private Eye in a 1971 court case. That was not the answer given though it would surely have been very satisfying to give such a response. Needless to say, I responded an hour or so before the deadline.

I note that my opponent is probably paying a lot more for her attorney without actually having a better attorney - just more expensive. I'd say she probably spent between $1,000 and $1,800 for her side of the mediation session. That $1,000 to $1,800 would pay for a lot of more sane and sensible things. But there we are. That's her choice.

One thing's for sure... if I end up going back to Britain, It could be fun to turn all this into a rip-snorting book and there's not a darned thing anybody in the US can do to prevent it. Libel and slander laws in the UK are very biased toward the writer. On the rare occasions when the prosecution wins, they get awarded about five pounds but never their costs. It's thus not worth changing names to protect the guilty.

Speaking of books, I have several in the pipeline that have stalled for one reason or another. Now that e-books have come to the fore, I might be well advised to continue my books - thus far a spy novel and a book on photography. The photography book might have to wait until e-readers are available in colour though. There's no rush to publish that one. The book about the legal affair will pretty well write itself. The appendices will be so massive that it makes sense to release it solely as an e-book. It'd be far too heavy to release as a normal book. Again, that might be better done in colour as there are so many colour photos involved (and some audio and video).

E-readers are developing rapidly. The other day, Sony's $350 e-reader was on sale for $135. I looked at that with lust but realised that there'll be something far better coming along in October and hence prices will plummet yet further. October is when the new e-readers will be out. Needless to say October and November will be the time to buy older technology e-readers. No point whatsoever in buying them before then! Not that I'm going to blow the money on one. I could buy 10 books for the price of one e-reader and I buy maybe 5 books a year!

Well, after 3 hours sleep last night I woke to a phonecall. Instead of coming in at 5pm to work until midnight, could I come in at 2pm instead. OK said I and ended up doing a 10 hour shift. That was tiring! At work, I was surprised by a question from somebody that knows both the wife and I. They asked whether we were going to reconcile. I had to answer that while negotiation attempts are continually rejected that there was about as much chance of that as a snowball fight in Hell.

Today Batman has arrived, albeit without Robin, to complete the cleanup after the bats. The place has quite an odour still, which is mostly downstairs. That's a mite odd. As the wife was due to come at 2pm to pick up her exercise bike, I put it on the trolley and took it outside in order to make it easier to move to whatever vehicle she wants to take it away in. I highly doubt that it will get much use. It never did when she was here. I remember picking it up for her some months ago. It barely fitted in my Xterra!

We had a verdict from Batman. He said the bats had been in the attic for at least a year. I very much suspect the painter that vanished of having let them in when he was preparing the wood for painting, which of course he never did. I wonder how many tons of bat guano are sitting on top of the bedroom ceilings upstairs. While he was here though, I had him plug gaps where things could get in at ground level also.

There are still a few little things that I'd like to tidy up in the garden but what with it being 98 degrees outside, I don't think I'll bother. The lawns clearly needed water so I started with the back lawn. In an hour or so I can move to another area of the back. It'll take a while but I can give all the lawns a good watering.

As far as the wife coming for the exercise bike, as she was due at 2pm and by 3:30pm had not shown up nor emailed nor called, I put it into the garage and figure she has no interest in doing anything with it.

The smell of the anti-bat scent is almost overpowering. I think I preferred the smell of bats. These chemical scents are pretty awful. It's just something else to get used to, I guess. It is giving me a slight headache. How many weeks or months it'll take for the smell to fade is anybody's guess.

Well, most of the back lawn is watered now. I'll do the front tomorrow.

I headed off to work at 7pm and returned a shade past midnight. Still no word from the wife about why she didn't pick up the exercise bike nor any proclamation that she wouldn't be able to make the date. I think we know where I stand on further appointments.

Damn! It's bloody hot today. 95f according to my thermometer and I've spent the last hour out in it, mowing the back lawn. That perishing Black and Decker corded electric mower makes things ten times as hard as it needs to be though. First there's the teeny little grass box. That will fill in about 6 paces with the mower. That has to be removed before any mowing can take place. Then the next problem is the flap that falls over the grass exit hole in the back. It doesn't just fall, blocking the exit for the grass but is pulled down by a strong spring to ensure it blocks the exit hole. The only way around that is to put a bloody great big plank across the handles and under the flap to keep it propped open. It's the most retarded design of lawnmower I have ever seen. Simply leaving the flap down causes the mower to slow and jam as soon as the compacted grass builds up behind the flap. Why does Black and Decker find it so hard to build a decent lawnmower? It is not, as they say, rocket science.

There... See what I mean about the tiny little grassbox. The whole thing isn't even a container - just the tiny little recess at the back end of the black part lying on the ground. The plank certainly helps though.

Anyway, that's the back lawn mown. All the lawns are now mown. Again, in a couple of days I'll have to blow the excess grass cuttings off the lawn into a pile somewhere to shovel up and dispose of. Next, I'll have to take a look at the borders but only after I have cooled down. It's absolute torture working out there in that heat. Needless to say, the sky is blue with no clouds. If I knew I was staying here, I'd get a petrol lawnmower and have done. That would take a fraction of the time to mow the lawn as I wouldn't spend literally half my time pulling the cable out of the way.

And there's one well-mown lawn. I'll blow the clippings off another day, when they've dried out and are light and easy to blow.

Meanwhile, the kitchen is a bit more sparkling than normal as I felt energetic having pulled a few more weeds out of the front and back borders. The one thing that looks grubby quickly is the cooktop. It seems to attract cat paw prints and cat fur like a magnet. The vines in the borders are easier to pull out than you'd imagine but I simply can't find the roots underneath all the big bushes.

In other news, I got Chenglished. Here's the Chinese original and the Chenglish version. I'd love to know what the Chinese version really says.



In further news, I noted that the Sony Touch E-Reader is now down to $135 in Staples. The rapid price drops of all the e-readers indicates to me they're clearing old stock ready for something new. I have no idea what that will be but it's clearly not a good time for anybody to buy an e-reader. My best guess is colour is on its way in.

I finally have some information. Apparently I'd been given inaccurate information about some courses in the local college. Now I have the correct information regarding duration and cost of some of the modules. Interestingly I got that from the local branch. I expected to be sent to the bigger branch but the local guys came up trumps.

Meanwhile, I took half an hour and pulled a barrow load of weeds put of the front border. There are more to come but it was too hot to do more. South Carolina in the summer is a place where you sit back, watch the weeds grow and brew moonshine, not a place to do much in the way of gardening - aside from the cannabis growers. I gather that as a relative of tobacco, cannabis grows well in this climate. It must do - there are plenty books on how to grow it in the bookshops.

The grass is recovering nicely on the lawn from the tree removal and the damage from people walking all over it. Another 6 months like this and the lawn should be completely lawn. As I sit here, the Roomba is trundling around. It seems to get into difficulties about every 5 minutes and needs to be rescued. If this is a fine example of artificial intelligence, give me a stupid machine every time. The great strength of the Roomba is its ability to get underneath furniture. Humans have to either ignore the dust underneath or move the furniture to clean under it. The grass is even beginning to cover where it was covered with soil. Ages ago when the trees were felled, some people came around to help filling in the stump holes and sprinkled the remaining soil around the grass. Unfortunately it wasn't such a smart idea as it killed the grass. That's beginning to recover now though.

Work was uneventful in general and I'm glad to be home. On the other hand it does mean I have to do some gardening tomorrow. I have a back lawn to mow and the front border to tidy. I suppose I should work on the back border too but I know for a fact that the hedge trimmer will quit after about half the front border. It is nice to have a cordless one but in this instance I believe a petrol trimmer would have been an advantage. Having said that, we didn't want to spend much when we bought it as it gets fairly light use. There's a lot to be said for petrol-powered garden tools - particularly as most of the cordless electric stuff bizarrely uses out-of-date NiCad technology. NiMh batteries would be so much better but they can't be charged by a NiCad charger.

Today I took the day off as arranged. During the arrangements made at the end of last week, I said I'd find out about doing courses in Midlands Tech. Thus, today I went down and discovered what was to be discovered. Then I went home to apply for courses online. Well, the online system is less than intuitive and I shall now have to return to Midlands Tech to get somebody to do it all for me. Once that's done I can complete my end of the bargain. I've not done so badly so far anyway.

In other news, I tried again to get the Roomba to work. It does work but the battery is on its last legs. For some unknown reason it has a NiCad battery when everybody else uses NiMh. Still, it has not lasted too badly. It doesn't seem to do so well with cat hair but then it's a sweeper rather than a vacuum cleaner. If it were a true vacuum then it would have been so much better. I reckon the upstairs guest room and hallway are now pretty dust-free. As far as the boy's bedroom goes, it's a pigsty and there's no way of cleaning it without a bulldozer so I shall not venture there.

Meanwhile, today I cooked again. I eat a lot of cold foods. It's a lot easier than cooking and costs just about the same. Cabbage, carrots, beans and mash again. My staple diet.

Today I did the 2nd part of the latest batch of garden maintainance. Here are the before and after photos of the side lawn. Cutting the monkey grass at the bottom of the bush makes the bare patch caused by ivy (which I chopped last time I mowed) seem much more apparent.

Before


After


My next task will be the back lawn. That's a job for Thursday. Then there are the triffids springing up in the front border. I hacked them down not so long ago and they have sprung up again. I think I shall have to pull them out rather than cut them down as I did last time.

I'm still baffled as to why I'm in the midst of a divorce. No attempt has been made to communicate nor any attempt to negotiate nor to resolve any issues. No attempt at marriage guidance was ever undertaken. No - I was slapped with a divorce summons and then the wife moved out. It's utterly crazy. I know what the summons stated and nothing in it seemed true or accurate. It just seemed to be "something" slapped down on the paper to fill a space. Oh well, it'll be interesting to see what the Judge makes of all that. If it wasn't so sad, it'd be laughable.

Meanwhile, it's another work day today. I'm getting used to shelving toys now. I never thought I'd be shelving toys. They're a little harder to shelve than books because it's not immediately apparent where they go. Getting them to sit right on the shelf can be a little annoying - particularly when the packages are not correctly weighted.

My new business is now open for business though it'll take a while for the first sample stock to arrive. I'm working on getting images of the stock at the moment for the website. I don't anticipate getting any internet-based trade but it's handy to have an online catalogue anyway. That way I can just give the web address and I don't have to print a catalogue - people can look it up on their smartphones. All I can say is thank God for divorce summonses as that's what gave me the idea for starting this business. There was a need out there that wasn't being met.

Today I did a 1pm - 6pm shift and then ended up being asked to come back and do an 8pm until close shift. That gave me an extra 3 hours which gave me 8 hours for the day. Not a bad haul! In between shifts I even managed to cook some mixed beans that I'd soaked overnight. That'll all go for a nice dinner tomorrow evening :)