All I Really Wanted to do

Was to fuel-up the snow blower and drive it from the backyard shed to the front of the house, so that I would be ready for the first snowstorm of the year.

Two hours later...I was done.

I started the machine with no problems, but seeing a mouse in the shed was a portent of future, like 5 minutes later, problems.

The drive mechanism was stiff and then after moving about 30 feet, it jammed completely. I inspected the housing and there was some kind of fluff sticking out of a mouse-sized port by the axle. I took off the access plate and found the whole gearbox full of some kind of fibrous material. I pulled out enough to fill a bread-bag and the machine was able to propel itself. The fluff had completely cleaned out all the accumulated grease in the gearbox but a quick spritz of WD-40 restored the unit to silky perfection.

While I was at it, I inflated the tires, which were both flat. I also changed the oil and found a loose wire responsible for the headlight not working.

This is not so bad...

Later squirrels will gnaw-off our faces.

I lost my light

These guys really are not missile scientists

And by "missile scientists" I mean smart.

We are worried about Russian tactical nuclear weapons which are believed to be increasingly deployed close to Eastern European NATO allies. So, the logical conclusion is to give away the store on strategic weapons first and then hope, what? The Russians will return the favor by giving us whatever we want on the tactical front? Maybe our people think the Russians are stupid. In which case our people most assuredly are stupid.

Administration officials say U.S. and Russian negotiators plan to turn their attention to tactical nuclear weapons, as well as larger strategic warheads that aren't actively deployed, as soon as New Start goes into force. "If we don't ratify Start, we're not going to be able to negotiate on tactical nuclear weapons," one said.

From, Russian Missiles Fuel U.S. Worries

Two big dinners in a row.

Both Thursday and Friday we had...how many? Our family of 5, in-laws 2, Brother in law's family 3, cousin and girlfriend 2, aunt's family 4. 16 in total. On Thanksgiving day an additional 4 local friends came over for dessert and drinks, making it 20 for much of the evening.

Thanksgiving was traditional fare, with two turkeys; one done on the charcoal grill and one done in the oven.

For today the theme was Latin American: Chili, pork roast and grilled beef both done in churasca style, Brazilian rice, guacamole etc.

The dishwasher has been running about three loads per day.

BTW: Did you know that if you eat enough beets, it will change the color of your urine? And not in a fun way, in a way that is really frightening if you don't expect it!

I know, tastes change...

Why would anyone take wood that looks like this:

And then stain it to look like this?

We went the other way of course! Several days of belt-sanding and the old dark wainscoting is now natural looking. My finish is only linseed oil and shellac.

It would have been difficult to get into all the parts of the built-in shelving, so I mostly left it alone, but painted some parts to relieve the dark monotony.

Slowing Traffic With Trompe l’Oeil

Picture from Discover.

I just thought of this and so my first thought was to do a web search and see if anyone else had already thought of it. Yes, they have. Well, if nobody else thought of it then I'm pretty confident it would seem stupid to anyone I tried to sell it to.

Day-off chores & errands

--Take the wife's car for inspection. While there, I had them run the numbers on getting a complete overhaul of my car's suspension: Better than two K! Yikes, but still far less than a new car.

--Got a haircut. I have two choices when I go: 1. A new place where there are televisions all over the place, all with sports on. The barbers are mostly (if not all) young single-mom types. 2. An older guy, who is semi-retired and works out of a rundown shop. I go to the second place whenever it is open, which is about half the time. Today we were having the usual banter, "Short enough for you"? "A little tighter, please". Followed by the usual, "Happy to take more off sir, I can't put it back though." I'm not sure why I responded as I did and before I said it, I did think it possible that it would come off as morbid, but I said it anyway and tried to say it with a slight hint at humor. "In Heaven, you will get the power to put hair back on" I said with a smile. I am guessing that he was touched by this since he became subtly more friendly after that. It is good to make a human connection sometimes.

--Put together a powerpoint showing that some Vibram Five Fingers shoes I ordered are counterfeit.

--Went to work. Hey isn't this a day off? Yes, but there was a tech service appreciation lunch and it would seem churlish to skip it.

--Came home and sanded more of the wainscoting in our family room. There was a black walnut stain on the pine and it sucks all the light out of the room.

Did a 7.85 mile run.

Busy day

--After getting the kids on their way to school, it was 'get stuff done time'.

1. Winterize the house: Lower the storm windows, remove the air conditioner units and vacuum all the junk out of the windows while at it. The junk consists mostly of dead moths and cob webs.

2. Went for an 11.8 mile run. I flew: For the first time since mid-Summer's Yankee Homecoming race, I was able to do more than 10 miles in less than 8:00/mile. And that was a race, while this was just a work out. In keeping with the aviation theme, the course is named after a landing strip and my pace was 7:47.

3. I had a quick mango/banana shake and then off to help-out with the Bay State Marathon. My running club, the Greater Lowell Road Runners put on the race and so all the members are expected to help-out. I handed-out race packets to a pretty steady stream of runners for four hours.

As an aside: Just the other day, I had been looking at mortality data for smokers and one of the reports had an interesting way of presenting the data. It seems that the chances of getting a large number of diseases is higher in smokers and it is higher to the extent that it is equal to the rates seen in non-smokers who are 5-10 years older than the smokers. I saw the opposite effect, at least in the appearance of runners. As part of the process of handing out race packets, we would look runners up from a list. The list also gave their age. They mostly looked 5-10 years younger than what their age actually was listed as. It's like running is the opposite of smoking. I've noticed this before.

Zipped home to work on dinner with my wife. We made rice, steak, mushrooms, green beans and a dessert of freshly fried apple cider doughnuts.

Emergency Planning

Between yesterday night and this morning I discovered something which might be useful someday.

I don't know if everyone does this, but we do not pour grease down the drain. It can clog your drains and makes a particularly nasty clog when it happens. So, you save a large glass jar and dump your grease in there. Once it is full, put the (saved) lid back on and toss it in the trash. Okay, this is all common knowledge, right?

Last night we were watching a cooking show about a place in Chicago, famous for its 72 day-old aged steaks. In one part of the show, guests were served a sea-scallop appetizer and the head waiter came out with a votive candle and dripped molten wax onto the dish! He quickly explained that the "candle" was actually bacon grease and so this was a seasoning for the scallop. Most of the "candle" looked to be quite solid and I suspect that it was actually rendered beef fat, which in my experience is more solid at room temperature than bacon grease. Also, earlier in the same show, they had talked about rendering the beef trimmings and using this, as they called it "beef love", to season their steaks.

I forgot all about that show by this morning--until I went to dump the morning's bacon grease into the jar. I had to try it. I mean, anybody who had just seen that show would try it, right? Yes. Of course they would and I would too. And did.

I put a small length of cotton string into the grease and lit-er-up. This resulted in a clear, non-smoky and (possibly) odorless flame. I only say possibly because there was already bacon smell in the air, plus just the open jar smells a little bit.

So if you have a power outage and no candles, or the outage outlasts your supply of candles; you have another way of making light.

"I have done a terrific job".

Let us see who all agrees in November.

A Validation of Common Sense

Light drinking during pregnancy: still no increased risk for socioemotional difficulties or cognitive deficits at 5 years of age?

Conclusions At age 5 years cohort members born to mothers who drank up to 1–2 drinks per week or per occasion during pregnancy were not at increased risk of clinically relevant behavioural difficulties or cognitive deficits compared with children of mothers in the not-in-pregnancy group.

J Epidemiol Community Health doi:10.1136/jech.2009.103002

Dahlia

No Flash

Flash

Lt. William C. West Jr. ALS Memorial 5 K

21 7/53 M-OPEN DAVID PECCHIA M 213 21:56 6:58

The results, here have the race called, Lt. William C. West Jr. ALS Memorial 5.15 Miler

I can see where their mistake comes from: The race is listed as a 5K, which is 3.1 Miles, but the actual course is 3.15 Miles. The race was kind of a small affair (155 finishers), no racing chips and they didn't break-down runners by the usual decade/groups. I am in the open division--18-49, so I had no prayer of winning. I may have been the top male in the 40's, but there is no way of knowing since the results don't give the runner's ages.

The start was the usual jostling and passing of slow runners and within a couple of hundred yards I saw that only maybe 5 runners were ahead of me. Then, a large group of boys passed me all together. I think they must have been a local High School CC team. I eventually caught and passed two of the adults but never was able to keep up with the CC team. Oddly, the only competition I had was with the woman who came in first among the ladies. She was 10 yards ahead of me for the first mile and then at about one and a half miles, I passed her. She re-passed me while climbing the one big hill and then I re-passed her on the down-slope. I picked-off one last runner on the flats over Nutting Lake and then made a move on the guy ahead of him. I was gaining on him but as we approached the finish he out-kicked me. He was built like a sprinter, so I didn't go all-out. He would have beat me either way and so why give him a hard time? I would have gone all-out if needed to protect my place against the people I had already passed though.

Added: My wife ran too (actually, she is the one who proposed this race) and she did well too.

Also, the winner was from our running club and was the only other runner, besides me, wearing our uniform. I saw a few familiar faces, but they were in mufti.

Here he is.

Banner Day

Two problems that had been festering have been fixed today:

The oven wasn't working and we had a guy out who fixed it by changing the igniter.

I chopped-down a dead pine tree in the front yard. Again, it was handy to have a large 4-wheel drive truck handy. The tree did not want to fall in the right direction and got hung-up on a maple tree. It was a good thing in a way since without the maple, the pine would have fallen right onto our power and phone lines.

I tied the bottom of the tree to the truck via chains, rope and tow cable and essentially pulled the carpet out from under the tree--The top of the tree is where the stump is and the trunk-end is now down by the road.

It all started-out so poorly too. I had a new chain for the saw, but it ended-up being too long (the package was stapled-shut, so maybe it is really a 22" chain) and it looks to be a pain to shorten it. Then, once I had got the old chain back on, the pull-cord broke. I was starting to get the feeling that Fate, did not want me meddling with trees, today.

Dahlia

I will see you later today!

"Facts" and Logic

In Internet as well as in regular debate, the process runs on facts and reason. The logical flaws get most of the attention, but for this post I would like to categorize the types of facts which are used to bolster an argument. First some definitions though:

--True, will have its commonplace meaning. The statement is in accord with how things actually are. For instance, car tires in the USA are normally black and made mostly of rubber.

--False, will mean things which are not true. For instance, the planet Mars is almost exactly the same size as the Earth. This is false because Mars has only around 1/10th the mass of the Earth and is around 1/2 the diameter.

Relevant/Not Relevant

Again, the common meaning is used here but is a subject all its own. Usually the level of irrelevance is not immediately apparent to all, though upon reflection it is nonetheless total in most actual cases.

So, here are the categories finally!

True AND Relevant--The side that comes up with the most of these should win.

False AND Relevant--This happens all the time, but with internet fact-checking it is a rather foolish thing to try. It kind of works when the facts are in dispute, but an argument is considerably weakened by controversial claims.

True BUT Not Relevant--These claims usually have some superficial relationship to the thing being argued, but when looked at closely, really proves nothing.

False And Not Relevant--Why bother wasting your time with people like this?

Wednesday Chores

Throw together some spaghetti sauce.

Go to the liquor store and stock-up on wine. Why stock-up? Here in Massachusetts, they do not sell wine, or beer for that matter, in grocery stores. Since I have to make a special trip to a special store, I want to have to do this as little as possible. Also, you get a big discount when you purchase large volumes.

I Guess I'm Going to be running For Another Year

Having just purchased 5 new pair of running shoes and all.

Having just purchased 5 new pair of running shoes and all.

Join With Me In Bravely Pointing-Out The Obvious

Not one, but two smart and sensible friends had the following Facebook posting yesterday:

like Being Muslim does NOT mean you are a terrorist. . . like if you agree.

Perhaps I am over-analyzing this, but I see a subtext here. What is the point of the FB entry unless they think there's a lot of Americans out there who think that every Muslim is a terrorist. Liking such a statement is not just agreeing with it, but also lending support to what I think is a pernicious assumption: That substantial numbers of their own fellow countrymen are benighted and in need of correction.

I think the opposite is true. Sure, in a country of some 300 Million people, there are bound to be plenty of wackos like the one who thinks McDonald's responsible for more murders than terrorists are. For my part, I think our country has treated Muslims in an exemplary fashion. If anything, we have been mau-maued into being too trusting. How else to explain the situation of Major Hassan? It was only after he murdered 13 and wounded many more of his fellow soldiers that anybody noticed his obvious radicalism.