Archive for the ‘Off the Wall’ Category
October 13, 2006 – Caution! Combustible Firestarter!
Front of firestarter product.
Back of firestarter product.
Need I say more?
September 12, 2006 – Say What?
Here’s a picture of the modem cord from an IBM laptop.
A “Do Not Open” warning is on the plastic bag containing the modem cord. I guess IBM does not want me to use this cord!
An explanation may be that the “Please do not open” and “ferrite cord case” on separate lines may be meant to be one complete sentence “Please do not open ferrite core case.” But this leads to more questions – why make part of the “sentence” a larger type face? Or better yet – why not put the warning directly on the ferrite case instead of the throwaway plastic bag?
September 5, 2006 – Show Us Your Fridge
A recent post at Sugar Creek Farm’s blog showing the inside of their refrigerator has inspired me. So without further ado, here is the fridge at high hopes.
The fridge cam has so inpired me, that I hope it may someday become on the list of everyone’s useless web sites. Things that separate this fridge from other people’s fridges:
1) 2nd shelf from top – mason jar with goat milk
2) 2nd door shelf from top – opened jar of 1/4 full home canned tomatoes (waiting to meet the compost pile
3) 4th shelf from top – plastic grocery bag with grapes from farmer’s market getting pre-crushed.
I have created a secondary blog, just to record the inside of people’s fridges. Please visit www.showmeyour.blogspot.com. If a guy can make thousands of dollars by selling a pixel of his screen at a time, the sky is the limit with the fridge pics.
August 19, 2006 – Unnatural Fruit of the Garden
You’ve all seen the unnaturally shaped garden vegetables – misshapen potatoes and squash seem particularly amenable to be Rorschach Test subjects. Some are even purposely grown in uncommon shapes in special vegetable molds.
We have a tomato entry (unmodified) in the non-standard tomato shape contest.
I will let the readers jump to their own conclusions regarding the particular resemblance of this tomato to other natural forms. Suffice to say that many drug companies will no doubt want the genes from this tomato!
August 15, 2006 – State Fair Grooming
Livestock grooming is serious business at the fair. I thought this might be good for Thingamajig Thursday, but the name is written on it!
This is a blow dryer for cows! This was a common appliance down this row of calf contestants.
The handlers are spraying, blowing, and trimming this calf before the judging. If farming doesn’t work out for these lads, they could always start a salon!
After the downpour, we found ourselves in the DNR building and Linda found this new accessory.
It’s a small fox snake.
August 13, 2006 – At the Fair
Today was our day at the State Fair. I’ve got more than one day’s pictures, so I’ll spread them out over the next few days.
One of the most startling revelations was that sheep culture so closely mirrors human history. Bear with me, for this quick tour of “sheep through the ages.”
Practicing the orthodoxy of the Spanish Inquisition, these two crusaders scan the sheep barn for heresy.
The grand imperial wizard of the sheep barn, keeps an eye out for Suffolk sheep taking their place in the barn.
These laid-back California sheep have started their own sheep commune where the motto is “Ewe Don’t Give it up to the Man.”
Finally, we reach the modern era, where the pride wing of the sheep barn allows same-sex sheep to live in the same pen.
May 13, 2006 – Farm Editors Needed!
This is a copy of a page from one of Martin’s coloring books. Can you spot the inaccuracy?
In this part of the country, we use combines to harvest. I’m not sure what they do in New York, where the coloring book was from. So there is a job just for me – a farm coloring book editor!
As a part-time technical writer/editor and part-time farmer, it would be great! According to Money magazine, a technical writer is the 13th best job in America. A college professor is 2nd on the list, so Linda beats me (but not every day, as she will attest). Sadly, farmer was not on the top 50 jobs.
May 9, 2006 – Piano
Today was a day we had been putting off for some time – replacing the family piano with a new one. The piano we have was handed down from Linda’s grandmother. It was the first piece of furniture she got after being married. It had followed her from Des Moines, to Phoenix, to Minneapolis and finally back near home, some 80 or so years later.
Every time the tuner came he warned us that the tuning pegs were not holding and that it would not stay in tune very long. He was right, but we just kept getting it tuned, hoping that perhaps after years of “untuned” a few repetitions of tuning would convince it to remember to hold a tune.
Eventually, though, the cost of tuning and perpetual out-of tune notes, led us down the road to a new digital piano.
We did not just want to “throw it away” so I disassembled it.
Here is the picture of inquisitiveness as Martin becomes fascinated by discovering the linkage between striking the key and watching the hammers move.
I was surprised to see the hammer mechanism lift out in one piece.
We have some plans for the salvaged pieces. The keys are all removed, the front piece that holds the music and the keyboard cover with the logo will all be re-purposed into something new. Stay tuned to see what becomes of its new life. Our neighborhood lover of antiquities/artist has taken the rest and will repurpose the parts into new creations as well. Losing a piece of family history is somewhat lessened by keeping part of it and giving parts to others who appreciate them. Much like the bison and American Indian.
The following pictures speak for themselves. I’m struck by the intricacies of the details of the piano – the hand-penciled numbers of the keys, the texture of the felt, and the symmetry of the strings.
One of the most stirring sounds is that of the strings and soundboard, unfettered of the dampers. The sound of the resonance of the strings being struck in sequence sounded like the end of the universe – a perfect sound of all sounds of the audible music range, with the low vibrating sounds lasting longest and vibrating imperceptibly into nothingness.
March 28, 2006 – Off-Topic
Every day at High Hopes cannot be about the farm. Many news services have picked up on the story today of a Drake student who hung out in a Des Moines Wal-Mart for 41 hours without being detected over spring break.
I don’t think it’s THAT big of a story to warrant Letterman, Good Morning America, etc. For my money the story is Nathan Bush. On his “amazing” web site, Nathan documents with grainy photos and appropriate commentary the Wal-Marts, K-Marts, Pamidas, and Fareway stores of Iowa – all while he dreams of the day he becomes a supervisor at Wal-Mart. Nathan confides in us that he snuck out of town to make a pilgrimage to a new Pamida store over 50 miles away from his house without his parent’s permission!
In addition, I learned that Nathan has posted photos of himself at “www.hotornot.com” and invites readers to rate him. I’m adventurous on the web, but just cannot take that jump!
March 16, 2006 – Happy St. Urho’s Day!
Today honors the legendary patron saint of Finland, St. Urho. Not many people know that long before the last ice age, a nasty invasion of grasshoppers threatened the Finnish Grape Crop. In desperation, St. Urho shouted out those immortal words “Heinasirkka, heinaasirkka, mene taalta hiiteen” which politely translated means “Grasshopper, Grasshopper Go Away.”
Here’s a picture of one of the many statues of St Urho, this one from Menagha, Minnesota courtesy and courtesy of Tim Winker at www.sainturho.com.
This photo shows one of the vanquished grasshoppers on St Urho’s pitchfork.
Some of the cynics among you may think that this is a fabricated holiday cleverly placed the day before St. Patrick’s day. Legends have to start some time!
February 21, 2006 – On the Olympic Podium
Not many people know that I have stood on the Olympic podium!
Here I am with daughter Claire and mother-in-law Joanne in Park City, UT, which hosted the downhill, bobsled, and ski jumping for the 2002 Olympics. Our medals were stripped once it was discovered we did not train, nor did we appear in any events. Evidently our ties to the governing body were not strong enough to maintain the medals.
I did live in Park City for a very fun summer back in the 80′s when it was still a sleepy little ski town. It was at a very upscale (cough, cough) ski lodge called “Chateau Apres“. I cannot, believe it is still standing on the high-priced real estate that surrounds it. I was there for geology summer field camp and we started mapping the ground around there, starting in the Heber Valley and up to the tops of Alta and Snowbird by the end of the summer.
February 1, 2006 – Architects with a Sense of Humor
Many of you have not had the pleasure of viewing the downtown Des Moines skyline from the south at night. The EMC Insurance building looks like there is a 20 story bottle of Absolut Vodka embedded in the building. The architects claimed they never intended or anticipated the likeness. This is a bad picture, but “live” it looks very much like a bottle of Absolut Vodka.
January 31, 2006 – Firestarter
I just purchased a new package of firestarters to help get the corn stove lit. Here’s the front of the package.
When I turned the package over, there was the following warning on the package of firestarter:
Evidently there is some chance that the firestarters may actually combust as intended and start a fire!
I’m signed up to do online surveys for cash with an online survey company. Tonight I was selected for an instant survey to the State of the Union Address. So after the speech, before the commentary and Democratic response, my answers were combined with 700 or so others in the nationwide poll gauging the immediate reaction to the speech. I even got 10 bucks for watching it and responding.
January 25, 2006 – More Success and Home Spelunking
The good news today is that Linda got another $15,000 grant today for the SEA program! That makes $40,000 this week! You go Girl!
On the home front – I temporarily got the two computers networked together, sharing an internet connection, and connected one to the home stereo so I could stream Sirius, shoutcast stations, or songs stored on the PC to the home stereo. But in running the cables permanently through the house, problems began.
Claire first crawled in a crawl space to help connect the two computers via ethernet. Here she is at the back of the crawl space looking for the ethernet cable to drag out.
This is not a fun space to be in – after I put the insulation under the floor years ago, I swore I wouldn’t go back in there. Now that I have three kids of various sizes, it thought it would be good to use them! I thought Martin would be a good size to squeeze in, but Claire volunteered for the “home spelunking.”
Here she is after completing the mission. Notice the cobwebs, headlamp, flushed cheeks (and yellow cable dangling from crawl space)!
After all this, things started to fall apart – we found that the cable was damaged in pulling through and ripped open and some of the wires severed, and the cable to connect the the computer to the stereo was still not long enough! So we went from a functioning network and music server to nothing.
On top of it all, my new digital camera stopped working. Evidently, all the reviews that highly recommended it, neglected to mention the E18 error that is evidently so prevalent that a couple of law firms are considering class-action suits against Canon. I just can’t win. My Nikon digital camera (both of them) and now my Canon, both had the problem where the lens retract/extend breaks. I sent it back as it is still under warranty. I’ll have to rely on the kindness of Claire and use hers until the camera is returned/I get a new one.
