BARLEY SERVICES: no ordinary plumber

I’m happy to report that, after about fifteen hours of labor and many trips to and fro, I completed the repainting of the flooded ceiling from last week. It was the most difficult painting I’ve ever done: large room (400 sq. ft.) with gobs of stuff in it and against the walls. It was hard to make the entire surface smooth so that looking at the ceiling from an acute angle didn’t reveal irregularities in the texture of the paint.

Plumbing is easier. If something doesn’t cooperate, you can slam it upside the head with a hammer or pipe wrench. If it looks ugly, you can cover it with drywall or bury it underground or hide it in a cabinet.

But if an attic gets flooded, you can’t hide it, bury it, or beat it into submission. It holds the high ground and you’re at its mercy.

I just read the Associated Press report about the Cassini spacecraft’s cavortings around Saturn’s rings. It’s amazing, just like they say. The engineers who pulled this off are some of the most amazing people on the planet.

One quote from the story really got my attention. The writer said “Saturn and its rings resemble the early solar system, when the sun was surrounded by a disk of dust and gas that eventually formed the planets and turned into scientists and engineers.”

Well, I added that last part. The original quotation stopped at the word “planets.” I just added the last part because it is precisely what atheistic evolutionists teach in college classrooms, although they’re careful not to make it quite that clear. :laugh:

Today’s my birthday. On May 25th I wrote about my spiritual birth in 1969 when God gave me a new heart via faith in Christ. But today is my physical birthday.

I was adopted as a newborn by Evan and Juanita Barley. As I heard the story, the arrangements were made before my birth. Presumably some girl in Houston was carrying an unwanted fetus. At that time, it was illegal for women to hire abortionists to kill their children. I have no idea whether or not my natural mother would have done such a thing if it had been an option. Certainly a “girl in trouble” would experience many conflicting emotions, including fear, and could at least feel a strong temptation to do whatever was necessary to address the situation. This is especially true if older counselors assure her that the baby is not a baby and the beating heart is not beating and that little Kevan would be better off dead–if he were alive, but he really isn’t, so it’s okay to kill him, uh, it. But, I thank God, that’s not how it was in those days, before the slaughter of the forty million began in 1973.

My adoptive parents are both deceased now. They were somewhat older than the average couple that has babies. On the other hand, I assume that my natural mother was somewhat younger than average–perhaps seventeen. That would put her in her mid-to-late sixties now.

I’ve never felt a desire to “connect” with my natural parents. My adoptive parents are my parents, and they’re all the parents I’ll ever need. But I’ve sometimes felt sorry for my natural mother. If she’s still living, this is the 49th time she’s looked out the window, or off into the sky, or maybe back toward downtown Houston, and remembered the Friday night when she passed through the valley of the shadow of death in order to bring me into the world, and wondered what her boy is doing on his birthday. She doesn’t know that he looks just like his “father,” has an IQ in the genius range, earned two masters degrees and a Ph.D., works in six languages, has played in a symphony orchestra, acted in plays, sung in choirs, pastored churches, and repaired toilets. She wonders about his wife and kids. She wonders if it turned out okay.

All she knows is that she’s glad, too, that she gave me life instead of death. She hopes that I know that she’s never missed my birthday. She hopes I understand why she gave me up.

And she probably sings a quiet little “Happy Birthday dear Kevan” when nobody is around.

Thanks, Mom.

Yesterday my plumbing finally passed inspection at that house I’ve been rehabbing–the one with the borrowed water meter. Today the meter gets pulled and tonight, under cover of darkness, it goes back to its original home.

My customer (the investor) is from Viet Nam and, being unfamiliar with bureaucracies, asked me why everyone at the water department was so stupid. On the telephone he was transferred to eight or ten different people, none of whom knew anything about how to solve his dilemma. Someone even transferred him to the meter shop, which is just the guys in work clothes who have absolutely nothing to do with setting up a new account and typing it into the computer and sending the bill and such. He asked “Is there no instructions for them, what to do if A or B or C, and then A1 or A2 or A3, etc.?” He’s an engineer and thinks in linear terms.

My answer was that the opposite is true. In a bureaucracy, they’re smothered with instructions and regulations because everyone is trying to cover his posterior and keep his job, but nobody is concerned about the customer. What you routinely find in these government offices is people who say “I filled out the form, I followed the procedure, you can’t fire me or I’ll sue your backside. True, what I did accomplished nothing, didn’t help the customer, and, in fact, made things worse; but I’m safe and that’s all that matters.” And, of course, it’s impossible to make a rule for every situation. If smart people aren’t empowered to exercise initiative and solve the problems with “whatever it takes,” the problems don’t get solved and the bureaucracy becomes a nightmare of red tape and gridlock.

Which pretty well describes government in America. Join the revolution: check out the Constitution Party.

So far I’m not in as much trouble as I feared. The husband returned from out-of-town, saw the damage, and wasn’t too concerned about it. If I seal it and paint it, that’s good enough for him. He’s out of town again, so I have over a week to get the job done.

An Iranian newspaper has reported the controversial story of a woman who claims to have given birth to a frog.

Sounds plausible enough.

Had a little problem this past Friday.

The lady needed a new water heater. The old one up in the attic was leaking. Her husband had tried to turn off the supply to the water heater, but the valve didn’t completely work; some water was still coming into the heater. I replied “That’s okay, I can turn off the water to the whole house out at the street.”

The salient part of her information was the statement that her husband had tried to turn off the water in the attic, “but the valves just turned and turned and turned.” I happened to know that some of these valves require a whole lot of turns to accomplish anything, so that wasn’t much of a concern to me. But I took note that she had said “valves” or maybe “handles.” At any rate, it was plural.

Sure enough, when I began working, I saw five valves on various pipes. Only one of them was the correct one, but I assumed that he had fiddled with them all. (He’s a smart guy, but stays away from handyman tasks.)

Once I finished installing the new water heater, I opened all of the valves, including the one that fills the water heater. As it turns out, one of the other valves sent water through a pipe that some plumber had left completely open in another part of the attic. A large quantity of water flowed into that area before I saw it emerging from the air conditioning vents downstairs.

The ceiling is now totally defaced with water stains. It remains to be seen how much work will be necessary to restore it.

I was the only one in the house. The couple is out of town and cannot be reached. They don’t know about it yet, unless they read this blog.

I’m in big trouble. 🙁

The war continues. The Muslims decapitated their hostage Paul Johnson on Friday.

If I had to choose the method by which I’d be murdered, I wouldn’t choose having my head sawed off with a big Muslim butcher knife. Yet, as killings go, it’s probably not so painful as a gunshot to the heart or a less-than-perfect hanging.

The guillotine was invented by a doctor who wanted to provide a humane way to execute people during the communist revolution in France 1789-93. The headsman’s axe was notoriously unreliable. A bad stroke could be really unpleasant. But beheading was the uptown way to go in those days; the lower classes were burned at the stake, hanged slowly, or crushed on “the wheel.” The French Revolution wanted everybody to be equal, don’t you see? So heads were rolling in Paris to the tune of about 100 per month–rather paltry for a communist revolution, but we must allow for the fact that this was their first one and they were still perfecting their idea that you have to murder millions to make a paradise.

Some doctors dispute the guillotine’s humane quality, claiming that it could take up to thirty seconds for the decapitated to lose consciousness. Seems unlikely.

Even if it’s humane, decapitation is gruesome. The Muslims would get less propaganda mileage if they used a firing squad. But the target is just as dead either way.

Somebody else who is just as dead as Johnson is Abdulaziz al-Moqrin, the head of al-Qaida in Saudi Arabia. Saudi security forces done him in shortly after Johnson’s body was dumped. They whacked four others at the same time. Them: 1, Us: 5. Not a bad score.

Johnson was a noncombatant, one of millions of westerners who work in Saudi Arabia. For what it’s worth, he worked on Apache helicopters. Where is the enemy supposed to draw the line? They’re trying to defeat us.

They kill us; we kill them. If we retreat, the headchoppers will take over and, eventually, will come after us “infidels.” The choice is not between peace and war, it’s between fighting and “submitting.” (The word “islam” means “submission.” It’s supposed to mean submission to Allah; but the funny thing is, that always winds up meaning submission some sandal-shod bedsheet with a face like an armpit.)

The modern philosopher Rodney King posed the question “Can’t we all just get along?” The answer is no, and it would be nice if American pacifists learned that. They won’t, which is one more example of the fact that we can’t all just “get along.” Somebody’s going to be in charge and somebody else isn’t going to like it.

This world is messed up. The Kingdom of God will be a time of universal peace. We aren’t there this week, so the fight continues.

It is common for folks to think that the government is looking out for us. Sometimes it’s even true. But not always.

I’m presently being hobbled by the city water department. They won’t install a water meter at a house that I have plumbed. The house had burned, an investor bought it and is rehabbing it, and he hired me to run new plumbing in the house. I pulled a permit and did the work. But when I was ready to turn on the water and test the system, there was still no meter.

For those of you who are plumbing-illiterate, the meter is an eight-inch-or-so gizmo that goes on the water line, usually in a sunken box out near the curb in front of the house. The water from the city system runs through the meter and on through the pipe up to the house. The meter, of course, measures how much water flows by. If the meter isn’t there, there’s no connection between the city’s water and the house.

When the investor calls the city to request water, they tell him “The house was condemned and we removed our meter. Before we can set another one, we have to receive a notice from Code Enforcement.” Code Enforcement, however, doesn’t do anything but inspect my plumbing and give me a green sticker if everything is okay–and they can’t inspect it until the water department sets a meter.

This used to be called a Mexican Standoff, but the thin-skinned sissies among us probably wouldn’t appreciate it, so I’ll call it a Swedish Baptist Standoff. (You may say absolutely anything against Whites and/or Baptists.) Whatever the name, it’s your tax dollars at work.

The solution? Swipe a meter from an empty house that’s up for sale, install it at the job site, get the inspection, and quickly return the meter. Thus government turns its citizens into sneaks.

It’s time for a revolution. Check out the Constitution Party.

Flying toilet causes $6,000 worth of damage.