About two months ago, the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers reopened after 8 years of closure in Golden Gate Park. This was reported in the local paper, and the history of the conservatory was discussed. The paper (I believe this was the San Jose Mercury News) claimed that the conservatory was discovered packed in boxes in the barn of a wealthy man (James Lick) upon his death. This is allegedly true, but cannot be.

I imagine that when my relatives die, I will sort through their belongings. I expect to find a box filled with old photos, maybe a pile of old magazines, or a stack of manuals for computer programs from the 80’s (Sargon III, MacPublisher II, etc.) that “could be valuable some day.” And what’s this in the back of the garage– oh, why yes, it’s a conservatory! Let’s take it to San Francisco, and in 125 years, the city can spend 25 million dollars renovating it! I lift it out over the unassembled steel mill and the folded-up baseball diamond cover, and we’re off to the city!

On the other hand, James Lick did endow a high school in San Francisco by the name of Lick-Wilmerding with enough cash for it to be tuition-free for 77 years. If you’re doing things like that, maybe storing a collapsible metropolitan attraction in your barn is small potatoes.

Tonight, I was attempting to add a CD-ROM drive to one of my computers, when made a horrifying discovery. My computer, which is near the window, was no longer secure (despite running OpenBSD). I found that a large number of ants had infiltrated my home, slipped across to the desk by way of an Ethernet cable, and were making themselves comfortable between the motherboard and the bottom of the case.

I unplugged all the cables and carried the computer into the kitchen. As you can well imagine, I was worried that the pismires would escape to other regions of the house, e. g. my bed. We had an aerosol can of ant poison under the sink, so I cleared a spot on the kitchen floor and laid out a Ring of Death from which no emmet would escape.

Over the next 30 minutes, I disassembled the computer inside the Ring of Death (later expanded into the Concentric Rings of Death). When I pulled out the motherboard, there were myrmexes all over it, running around with 0603 ant eggs in their mandibles. At one point, I tilted the case forward, and eggs poured out of the firewire ports on the front panel. I triple-eeked at the 1394 eggs piled like sand in front of the case. It was revolting.

After deformicating each major component of the computer, I took the case outside and sprayed it full of poison. At this point, it was suggested to me that as runoff in the area drains to bay, it was probably not advisable to *fill* the case with poison. I washed it out with a hose, dried it off, and threw away all the rags.

I am considering surrounding my house with a 10 meter concrete apron.