Wichi Dude

I NEED A POCKET RECORDER

So I can quickly leave myself notes for future ideas. I can not tell you how many times, in the past couple weeks, I've had a great idea to write about, and by the time I get the chance to sit at the computer, it's gone. Truly maddening

Dudette agrees. Almost every day this week I've said to her, "what were we talking about earlier that I said I needed to write about?"

I don't even get the shoulder shrug, with the obligitory, "I don't remember." anymore. It has progressed to "THE LOOK".

You know that LOOK. The one that says, in no uncertain terms, "ASK ME AGAIN,AND YOU'RE GOING TO EAT A SHOE!"

I think for the lack of frustration, on both side, I willl probably invest in a recorder soon. Who knows, it might improve things in my posts also.

DUCKS AND RAIN

A house a few blocks away, on the main road, has a huge pond in front. The pond isn't that deep, maybe 3 feet at most. But, it is a little larger in coverage than the house. The ducks in the area love it. They even get along with the owners dog, which is funny to watch by itself. A whole yard full of ducks and geese and this little fur ball of a dog wandering around in the middle of them. If the dog gets a little to irritating, the ducks just waddle out into the water until the dog is settled down.

Last Thursday, the dog was able to walk across the pond as the there wasn't much more than a wet patch of mud in the middle of it. Now, after what seems like forever without rain in these parts, we are getting the deluge.

It started raining late Thursday night and has been going ever since. Driving by this afternoon, I had to laugh at the happenings at this house. The rain has filled the pond to overflowing. The ducks were paddling upstream from the drainage ditch by the street towards the house. The silly things were having a good time in the water but the funny part was watching them duck under the fence along the property to get to the pond.

They reminded me of a bunch of kids splashing in the puddles during a rain.

OLD DIGITAL CLOCKS

A friend of mine at work started a conversation on "old digital clocks" today. The type of "early" digital clocks, years ago, that had "plates" with the numbers printed on them. Every hour they would click or clack as the plate flipped over and the new number came to view.

We chuckled about that for a while, and even reminded each other about the rotary dial that was used to show the seconds. And how the motor would grind away as the dial constantly turned.

He got this started by talking about a "Barbie Learn to Tell Time Clock" he bought for a neice. But that is another story.

We also discussed the issues of transitioning from even "older" analog faced watches to the true digital age. I had to agree with him that there was a perspective shift in reading digital. With the analog face, there was a round dial face and you got a "visual feel" for the time by the position of the hands. You didn't even have to read the time, you could get a reference to "when" things were in the world just by where the hands were.

The sterile display of digital gives no visual reference to the "placement" of time. The display "5:20" tells you the time, but a visual of the "minute hand" and the "hour hand" SHOWS you that there is more than half of an hour left to that hour. (Following with me so far?)

During this "walk down memory lane" one of the younger people listening in on it says, "You mean you had alarm clocks that you had to read and then calculate the time in hours and minutes?"

Does this make anyone else feel like a fossil? I felt like saying, "Yes. And my old calculator was a series of colored beads on wires, and we slid them back and forth to do the math for our time. Here's your sign!"

Kids! They just won't let you drown them anymore. Hurumph.

I'M A VISUAL MATHEMATICIAN

According to Emode found at Bogieblog.

According to "the experts" I am a Visual Mathematician.

EARWORMS

Do you have "earworms"? If you're not sure, check here.

It seems Earworms is the term for that tune that gets stuck in your head and you can't get it out. We all get it, but now there a word for it.

And I thought it was just the voices doing Karaoke.

WEIGHTS AND MEASURES

Not that I don't have enough to do, actually Dudette brought this to my attention. I may need the help of a physicist for this one.

On a bottle of water, the label says, "1 LITER (1.05 QT)". OK, got that?

On the servings information label, it says "Serv. size 8 fl oz (240 ml) Servings per container, 4"

Physicist time. 4 X 8 = 32 oz. (or 1 QT, NOT 1.05 QT) What happened to the ".05 QT"?
The same. 4 X 240 ml = 960 ml. (or < 1 Liter) What happened to the remaining 40 ml?

New math? Spacial displacement? Cosmic rays? Bad dilithium crystals in the transporter? - Fix 'em Scotty

Maybe I need Don or Floyd or Mike to help me out with this one? Any other PHYSICIST in the house want to take a stab at it? I'm at a loss and I DID pass Clac. II.

CK'S CAR COST

Turns out the alternator was shot on CK's car. While the car was in the shop, we also had the brakes checked and the windows looked at. (Windows are electric and they are sticking.)

Brakes checked out good, windows only needed clips (?) put on them, and the alternator got replaced. All to the tune of 520+ dollars, U.S. currency. WOW!

The alternator was almost $200 by itself. Nice to own a specialty car. The labor covered the rest. Now to the shops credit, I have replaced the alternator before and THAT is a real treat.

Along with the necessary wrenches, you need a shoe-horn, a five gallon bucket of elephant grease and the "Sailors Book Of Creative Swearing" to do the job. So, though I didn't like the price, it was worth it.

You just gotta take my word on that one.

BLUE COLLAR COMEDY TOUR

If you are having a truely rotten day, I have a suggestion. "The Blue Collar Comedy Tour".

The video stars Jeff Foxworthy, Bill Engvall, Larry the cable guy and Rod White doing a tour as the above name. We laughed so hard we had to stop the tape and rewind it to catch what we missed while laughing.

Definitely worth watching.

CK's CAR

At 7:30pm Ck informed us her car was acting up, again. This late on a Sunday night, at the end of a vacation, was not the time for this revelation.

She said the battery light came on in the car as she was driving home. Great. Heading out I hook up a charger to the battery and start running all the possibilities through my mind as to the cause. She came out to watch what I'm doing, and is blowing off steam about the car the whole time. During all this she proceeds to tell us that for the past couple weeks she has been watching the voltmeter drop from 14 V. to 11.7 V.

OK. The car is destined for the shop to determine the exact cause of the disfunction. Only a year ago we put in a new battery. Less than a year before that, we replaced the alternator. I'll let the shop do the diagnostic and find the problem.

So we pack up the receipts and write out the needs so we can drop the car off tonight. That way they can trip over it and get started first thing in the morning. As we're writting down the symptoms and what we need done, CK tells us that last week when a friend was replacing her tires, he mentioned she needed brakes, soon.

Back to the receipts. Yup. There it is, brakes done a year ago. How in the world can she wear stuff out so fast. Looking at the mileage on the paperwork, then on the car, she has put on over 25K miles in the past year. OK. The brakes may be in need. Have those checked while it is in the shop.

If the brakes do need to be replaced, we are going to let her friend do the job. We trust him with it and he will only charge the cost of the parts and a meal. We can afford that easily.

To CK's defense, in the past year she has been taking classes in another city and puts on quite a few miles to and from school.

The shop owner knows her car better than we do, he spends so much time in it. I'm guessing the chateau he has in the Alps is funded entirely by her car.

Give you the damages Monday.

Night.

MAYBE IT'S NOT MY STYLE

Going through the ads in the Sunday paper, Kohl's had an item that made me look twice. They had a sale on handbags/purses and one of the bags featured had a light in it. When you open the bag, the light goes on.

I don't usually use a handbag the size of a small suitcase, or any size for that matter, so I have no idea if this is a truely useful idea. I do know that even Dudette had to look at it twice and she questioned it also.

Now this MAY be useful at night, looking into the bowels of this suitcase. But I'm thinking, if this thing falls over while you're driving, the sudden light coming from where ever, could distract a person momentarily and that could be an issue. Or if you were at the movies and went for a tissue, the people next to you might get a little annoyed.

But hey, to each their own.

Aaaalrighty then.