All posts by djones

battle, cleaning, oven

The Battle of the Flaming Oven

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I finally broke down and cleaned the oven today. Well, to be honest I sort of had to.  And to be more honest, it was closer to genocide than cleaning. It was a long story …

On Wednesday I almost lost the battle with the keeper of the oven door. He demanded the password before he would let me fully open the door. Unfortunately, they had changed the password since the last time I had used the oven. I was ready to give up and forgo making my casserole, but …

Along came this nice fellow and blabbed the new password. Then they had to let me in to bake my casserole. (I think he knew that my casserole was going to bubble over and leave the oven floor covered in all sorts of new detritus.)

Unfortunately, after a day or so, the detritus on the oven floor started to grow and breed some pretty funky creatures. They started chanting and demanding food in loud voices. They were even keeping Molly the dog and I awake at night.


This was the local gang leader. He seemed to exercise a deep and dark control over the rest of the mutants inhabiting the oven floor. Note the natural camouflage. He blended right in with spillage coating the oven floor. He (or maybe she) never communicated directly with me, but instead sent his/her lawyer/mouthpiece to yell at me.

This was his mouthpiece.  One of the better arguments in favor of adaptive evolution and lawyers.

Yesterday I finally demanded to be taken to their leader. I really didn’t have a choice. When I opened the oven door, I found a group of the mutant beasties dancing round a large fire on the oven floor. It’s really hard to cook a pizza over an open flame like that. Besides, it smelled really bad.

This handsome fellow took me by the ear and pulled my head to the back of the oven to talk to the queen of the mutants. She informed me that my repeated attempts to destroy her little kingdom by turning on the heat in the oven had to stop or it was going to be all out war.

The queen and I discussed the situation for a bit. She was adamant that I quit turning on the heat and wanted guaranteed delivery of new food supplies. I stuck to my demands to allow the cooking of  my pizza pie. I was saving my demand to cut the chanting off at midnight for the final phase of negotiations. We were at a stand still. It looked like the only hope of peaceful coexistence was to call in an outside negotiator. So I asked Molly the dog to step in and suggest a solution. Molly was unable to achieve a breakthrough. Molly started barking and running in circles and the queen declared war on me.

I felt fully justified in pulling up the door shields and locking the oven door. Then I set the timers and left for a few hours. When I returned, all that was left was a fine coating of gray ash. Thus ended the battle of the flaming oven. Sometimes mass genocide is the only way.

It seems lonely today without the background chanting. Even Molly looks quizzically at the oven from time to time. Maybe she is seeing ghosts.

promo, unknown, what is it

What Is It???

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Today we have before us an item from a goodie bag I received. I have puzzled over what this is and what possible utility it may have. Do you have a clue? Can you enlighten me?


On the right you see it in the closed position. The wire clip on the back looks to be a belt clip or …

Here it is opened. The black interior is a hard(ish) rubber pad.


Here is another view of it open with the pad more exposed. The piece at the bottom is the latch to hold it closed and when pushed lets it open.


And finally here it is closed again.

It was given out to a diverse audience and is used as a promo piece for a university, so I believe it must:

  • be desirable to prospective students
  • have a  use or function for a general audience

It has no electrical parts or function. What you see is what you get. The best guess I have been able to come up with is a belt cable clamp, but given that there is no widespread use or demand for such a thing, I am pretty sure that is not correct.

So what is it? All guesses encouraged.

energy, turbine, weather, wind

Wind

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Either the National Weather Service (NWS) has a new found desire to scare warn the population or it is going to be really windy out here on the plains today. For the first time in my memory, the NWS activated the early warning system to issue a high wind warning for the area.  The warning extends from 5am MST to 6pm MST, so it sounds like a windy day.

On the plus side:

  • I will have an excuse to stay indoors
  • I won’t have to rake that last batch of falling leaves
  • I might collect another metal snow shovel (see below)

On the negative side:

  • Internet access will slow to a crawl as the wires sing
  • The wind driven ionization will impart that edgy feeling all day long
  • The windows will rattle and the chimneys howl
  • The patio furniture is still out and will likely fly and move about
  • It will feel colder than it is

I wonder if it will be as windy as it was early in the spring? Then it was windy enough that I gained a new (heavy) metal snow shovel when the wind blew it into the back yard. Of course, I also lost a patio table when the wind sent it tumbling across the yard broke its cast iron legs.

It will be interesting to see if the wind energy facility will have to stop production. Wind turbines depend on a steady wind that does not exceed 40+ mph. The area around here is host to one of the largest wind energy facilities in the world (the ranking depends on whose figures you use). This article in Wikipedia is a bit out of date as the facility is/has been expanded beyond the original size of 267 turbines to 450 turbines and will be expanding even more in the next year. So we see a number of these in the area.

Just to give you a sense of scale, each tower is 237 feet tall and has a 170 foot diameter blade on it. The full assemblage is more than 160 tons. If the blades turn too fast (i.e. the wind is to brisk and the turbine is left in operation), the tips of the rotors go supersonic and the turbulence kills the power generation. Not to mention disturbs everything from wildlife to people with the sonic boom.

Enough boring you to death, on with battening down the hatches.

dentist, funeral, tooth

Return of the Tooth and Other Oddities

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Today was supposed to be the day I went to the dentist about my broken tooth as described here and here . Unfortunately, it was not to be since I had to attend a funeral instead. So now the dental visit is set for next week. One nice thing about a small community – they understand when you have to re-schedule for such events.

Attending funerals is not one of my favorite activities. I understand on an intellectual level how important the rite is for the grieving and recovery process. But that doesn’t mean I like it on an emotional level. In preference to most formal funerals, I would much rather see a moment of silent remembrance of the times we shared. When I die, I want my funeral to be a celebration, a party in honor of the good times we have shared together. No matter what your belief system, you can glory in the shared remembrances of good times past. So when I daydream and think about such things and plan my  prototype for a good last rite,  I have the following criteria:

  • Length – Keep it short, no more than 20 minutes of formal ceremony.
  • Music – Play the music I loved and we shared.
  • Remembrances – Remember the good times that we shared.
  • Afterwards – Have a party with food and conversation and music. Share the support and comradeship of those who were part of my journey.

With those things in mind,  I want the service music to be Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven and the Grateful Dead’s Truckin. I like love those songs and think they are a mighty fine send off. Besides, I once had a minister and golf partner (hello T.L.) who threatened to return just to make me listen to him play Stairway to Heaven on acoustic guitar. He temporarily dropped the threat when the rest of the foursome threatened to attend church and  sit in the front pew holding golf clubs just to see how long he could keep a straight face in the pulpit.

I know it won’t make one heck of a difference what I want. As my minister friend explained, funerals are for the living, not the dead. They are a rite designed to accelerate the grieving process and begin the healing process. A party in that circumstance looks a bit like avoidance. So call me an avoiding fool coward.
This post will probably be a test of your age. If you are below a certain 20/30 something age, you probably haven’t even thought about any of this.  If you are beyond a a certain 70/80 something age, you probably already have it planned down to the minute. And then there are the rest of us. Where do you sit/stand?
election, politics, president

We Have a Winner

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I just saw that McCain has conceded to Obama and they are awaiting Obama’s speech. I can’t say that I am surprised – I felt that Obama expressed a vision (and had the better oratorical skills) whereas McCain merely reacted. People in crisis are always more in favor of visionaries than those who merely react.

One thing I liked was that McCain’s concession speech was classy, complementary, and heartfelt. It was one of the best speeches I have ever heard him make. I hope that Obama and McCain can work well with each other in the coming years. It might help heal some rifts.

Obama’s victory speech reminded me a bit of some of Martin Luther King’s speeches. It wasn’t his best speech, but it was a good speech none the less. The problem with victory speeches is that you have to thank so many people – the loser doesn’t have quite the same onus to thank the troops.

And best of all? The blasted telephone calls  and negative tv ads will stop!