12:47 – We’re still surviving here, and Barbara returns tomorrow. I’ve done everything I can to get the new batch of 30 biology kits ready. All they lack is one bottle, a 125 mL polypropylene bottle of fertilizer concentrate. I have 60 of those bottles on order, not to mention another 60 around here somewhere if I could only find them. The bottles should arrive Monday or Tuesday, at which time I’ll fill them and get biology kits ready to ship. Fortunately, we haven’t quite run out of biology kits. We’re down to exactly one in stock as of now. (I found half a dozen of them downstairs that I’d forgotten we had.) So, worst case, we may get biology kit orders today and tomorrow that won’t ship until Tuesday or Wednesday instead of Monday.
I don’t know why it always surprises me what it costs to send a kit to New England. I just shipped one this morning to Vermont, which cost $10.80 to ship (zone 5 postage). I guess I think of New England as “close”, given that I grew up in Pennsylvania. But much of New England is USPS zone 5 from here in Winston-Salem. That seems a bit high, considering that northern New England is only about 1,000 to 1,200 miles from us and many zone 8 addresses are anything from 3,000 to 6,000 miles from us. Of course, the military gets a bit of a break. That kit we shipped recently to an APO address cost $8.18 to ship (zone 4 postage). I emailed the woman who ordered it to ask where she actually was. Stuttgart, Germany.
Speaking of shipping kits long distances, I got email this morning from a man in Adelaide, South Australia asking if there was any way we could ship a chemistry kit to him. Here’s how I replied:
On Saturday 27 October 2012 12:18:15 am you wrote:
Dear Home ScientistsI am most impressed by your excellent scientific kits. I would like to very much like to obtain one of your CK01A kits for my daughter (and myself).
I understand possible regulatory issues, but is there any possibility of shipping to South Australia (obviously I would cover all transport costs).
Sincerely
Rob <redacted>Hi, Rob
Thanks for the kind words.
Alas, at this point we ship only to the US and Canada. When we first considered shipping internationally, we wanted to ship to the English-speaking world. Then we found out how much it costs to ship to Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. At 40US$ extra, Canada is bad enough. The UK costs $60 extra, and Australia $75 extra. We didn’t bother to check NZ.
The second issue is that IATA regulations for international transport of hazardous materials make it impossible for us to ship some of the chemicals. I’m attaching a PDF that details the differences between the US and Canadian versions of the kit. If we shipped kits to Australia, the changes would be the same.
Finally, there’s the problem of loss or damage in shipping. Although it’s rare (although probably more common with international shipments), we do sometimes have a package damaged in transit; a broken beaker or thermometer, and so on. The extremely high cost of shipping means our usual policy of shipping replacements no-questions-asked is impractical.
Although insurance is available, it’s costly and from what we’re told it’s just about useless. Filing a claim takes hours of work, many/most claims are denied, and even if a claim is approved, it may be for only a fraction of the true loss and the payment may take literally months to be processed.
So our only practical alternative would be to ship FOB origin. In other words, our responsibility would end when we handed the package to the US Postal Service. All risk of loss or damage would be the buyer’s responsibility. I wouldn’t be comfortable buying a kit from us on those terms, and I’m not comfortable asking a potential customer to do so.
Best regards.
Bob
15:36 – One of the things I enjoy about Heartland is that it features many Canadian musicians, most of whom are not well-known outside Canada and probably some who aren’t well known even inside Canada. One of those is Jenn Grant, whose track Dreamer is used as the opening theme music for all six seasons of the program and whose track White Horses is used in one of the first-season episodes. Of course, most people know of the many internationally-popular Canadian musicians–Neil Young, Gordon Lightfoot, Linda Rondstadt, Celine Dion, Alanis Morissette, Shania Twain, Reba McEntire, and so on–but Canada also turns out a lot of very skilled musicians who haven’t yet made it big. Heartland features quite a few of them.
17:11 – I’m beginning to think that both campaigns now believe that Obama can’t win North Carolina. Today has been the first day in recent memory that I haven’t gotten a phone call for either candidate. It appears that both Obama and Romney believe that Romney will win North Carolina, so they’re both refocusing their efforts elsewhere. I’d mentioned before that the political signs for both campaigns were present in relatively even numbers in our neighborhood four years ago, but now Romney signs far outnumber Obama signs. And I noticed that three more Romney signs have gone up in the neighborhood in the last 24 hours, while the number of Obama signs is the same. That puts Romney up in terms of sign count by about an 8:1 or 10:1 margin. From other stuff I’m reading, it appears that Obama has gone from what he perceived as a comfortable lead a month or so ago to running scared today.
Concerning the problem of misplacing boxes o’ stuff, I assume a major cause is that one brown cardboard box looks much like any other, and it’s very difficult, with limited space and manpower, to keep everything segregated and in the correct (and remembered) location all the time.
If that’s the case, would a bar code reader help? Ideally you could use a bar code that’s already on the box and just type in the contents, but printing your own on a sticky label shouldn’t be a problem. When you’re looking for a particular box among a wall of a hundred boxes, tell the reader which bar code you’re looking for and set it to beep when it’s found. I have no idea what a programmable hand-held scanner goes for these days. It was several hundred dollars over ten years ago; presumably less money and greater function now.
Nah, as I’ve said before, the real problem is that until I was 30 or 35 years old my memory was so good that I never developed any habits to supplement it. I never learned to take notes in class, write down phone numbers or addresses, and so on. It was all just there, waiting to be recalled when needed. It’s not that way any more, and without the habits that normal people have to keep track of stuff, I’m sometimes lost.
Related to that is my habit of using three-dimensional storage. I used to just remember the approximate X,Y,Z coordinates of everything in a pile of stuff. Now I don’t. Well, I still do mostly, but I’ve lost track of stuff before.
I have to laugh, with Bob, not at him; I took notes, wrote stuff down, and still do, because I also have the fast-developing CRS Syndrome, esp. for things that happened ten seconds ago or where I put stuff in certain places in order to be dead-certain where they are again, ha, ha. So to this day I carry folded-up papers in my pockets of to-do lists for work and home, also including root passwords for a bunch of systems and clusters, etc. I never got into using the PDAs or cell phones or even the PC-based software; still on the papers, pencils and pens. I have Kindle on this PC but rarely look at the hundred or so books I put on it, and still read newspapers and books and magazines the old way. Too late for me to change, homies.
And yes, Robert, Nova Anglia is so very fah on so many levels, from the Carolinas, and for that matter, the rest of the country. Things are different here, I assure you. Congrats, though, on the Vermont customer; is that your first?
I wonder if any of the people who had Obama signs in 2008 have Romney signs this year, or if they’re just keeping a low profile and the increase in Republican signs is just people who didn’t have a sign in 2008.
I’m from Adelaide, and got two chemistry kits when I was a kid – one for me, one a hand me down from my brother, who wasn’t even slightly interested. I remember disassembling one of the burners on the stove to get at the gas supply for my bunsen burner. Do you supply them or suggest their use? Anyway, I was more interested in electronics then and preferred playing with a Philips electronic component kit I was given back then. I wouldn’t even know where to go looking for such a kit at retail nowadays.
O tempora. O mores!
I’d have to check, but I’d guess it’s probably number four or five. We’re pretty close to all fifty states. The only exception I can think of off the top of my head is Hawaii. We also have maybe half a dozen of the Canadian provinces so far.
They’re extinct, other than from niche companies like ours. I got my first real chemistry set in 1964, and I’d bet there were several million other chemistry sets sold that year. Someone commented around that time that just about every house you saw that had or had had a boy living there would have a chemistry set, and that was almost literally true.
Um, Linda Rondstadt is from Tucson, Arizona, and Reba McIntire is an Okie. The rest are Canadian, though I would dearly love to be able to exclude Celine Dion.
From what I’ve seen, the kit Bob ships today is a lot more real than my Chemistry kit from the 1970s.
But I have it on good authority that both have visited Canada and both speak Canadian fluently.
I am getting really frustrated with Google. I have it set to show only hits with ALL words, yet the top returns do not have all words in them. I am looking to see if Linux drivers are available for a particular Asus laptop I am looking at (UX32VD-DH71) and when I text search the hits Google provides, the word “Linux” is not in ANY of them! This is happening more and more frequently. I do not want ANY returns if they do not have all the words in them.
“You all ain’t from around here, are ya”
http://blog.chron.com/txpotomac/2012/10/abbott-other-texas-officials-warn-international-election-observers-not-to-mess-with-texas/
We’ve got a lot of experience with carpetbaggers here in The Great State of Texas. Our voting laws also have a lot of teeth in them for a good reason. If you get within 100 feet of the entrance of a polling place, you will be arrested and charged.
Sigh. Change “you will be arrested and charged” to “you will be arrested and charged unless you are actively voting”.
BTW, I voted yesterday and noted that there are four parties on the ballot for Pres in The Great State of Texas: Republican, Democrat, Libertarian and Green. The wife voted last Tuesday and tells me that she voted for more Libertarians than Republicans this time. I’m lazy and voted a straight Republican ticket.
Also here in Texas, we vote for everything every 2 or 4 years. Every judge is voted in and even the Governor and the Lt. Governor are on separate voting. I kinda wish the USA voting was the same. I would like to see a USA Vice Presidency with some teeth in it. Of course, the Lt. Governor here controls the agenda of the State Senate which gives that position a lot of teeth.
Jerry Coyne is supposed to be debating Daniel Dennett about compatabilism right about now. All the gory details are here:
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/10/25/road-trip-with-the-boys/#comments
including pictures of the “2.3 horsemen” and some of the smallest meals I’ve seen in an American restaurant and Jerry praying to Ceiling Cat for an Obama victory next month..
Lynn wrote:
“BTW, I voted yesterday…”
Was this cutie on the ballot paper? I’d vote for her even if she was a tree hugging atheist liberal Democrat. She looks quite nice, and that lipstick… 🙂
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priscilla_Owen
Priscilla Owen is a federal judge. Appointed for life. She was tough when she was a judge here in Texas as she likes to hang them high.
Hang who high? Atheists? If so she sounds like my kinda gal… 🙂
Mrs. OFD is next off in mid-November for McAllen, TX and she has been to Texas several times for her gig; one memorable occasion was being stranded in Austin during the week of 9/11; the Texans took real good care of her and her little band from northern Vermont and it has and will not be forgotten, ever. I was there several times during the early 70s on various assignments for Uncle, so did not really appreciate things as much as I otherwise might have. Things like rattlesnakes and coral snakes out in the woods during our training, the deep chill at first light followed by the usual scorcher by noon, and the funny way they talk. I am much more mature now and would take those things in stride, but have no pressing business, really, outside of northern Vermont for the foreseeable future.
I always vote against all sitting judges. Doing my part for rotation in office and term limits.
It is tough to tell who is a sitting judge and who is not since incumbency is not listed on the ballot. And since our ballots are about 2/3 judges, one needs to be prepared and have a list. We vote for all county judges, jp courts, all state appeals and tx supreme court. I would guess that there was 30 of them on my ballot. Wrong, I just counted, 19.
Here is my sample ballot:
http://www.co.fort-bend.tx.us/upload/images/elections_administration/sample_ballots/11124135GG.pdf
I don’t mind rattlesnakes and coral snakes, it is the dadgum moccasins and copperheads that bother me. And the hogs. We’ve got a 85 mph tollway around Austin that opened last week and three cars have already hit hogs on that formerly open land.
It was a glorious 45 F this morning at 7 am but is 70 F now. Still glorious and will be awesome for my daily 2.5 mile walk in a couple of hours.
and that lipstick…
You can buy your own you know.
We’ve got a 85 mph tollway around Austin that opened last week
There used to part of the interstate (free) in Arizona where the speed limit was 80. And on the road that I take from Austin to Bryan the speed limit is 70 on a two lane road. Got to watch out for tractors.
Fastest I have ever driven was 123. It was legal and I was in Germany. I have no desire to go that fast. It is too stressful. Especially in the US. At least in Germany the drivers knew how to drive that fast, stayed to the right, and were not using cell phones or holding drinks in their hands. Had that Mercedes almost wound to the top.
I was driving 230 kph (135 mph) in northern Germany on the unregulated autobahn about 15 years ago. I was in a little Audi station wagon with a turbo diesel and a 5 speed. All of a sudden two Porsche 911s playing tag blew past me, I never saw them coming. Next thing I knew, I was on the shoulder, having been blown off the road by their air wave. They had to have been going 200 kph or more and were only about 10 feet apart.
You’ve always got to watch out for tractors on two lane roads in Texas. We feed the world. Or used to until half the USA moved here.
Yeah, water moccasins will chase you in your damn boat. Evil buggers. We have maybe a handful of timber rattlers in Vermont, and those are only in a tiny little area down around Rutland and the NY border. No venomous reptiles this fah noth. Except at the Snake House, down in the state capital of Montpeculiar.
Boat, hell. The ones down here would think nothing of fanging an aircraft carrier and then going home to tell the wife and kids about the one that got away.
Y’all can keep yer fun-lovin’ snakes; also yer dam bugz. And the heat and humidity and hurricanes and tornadoes. We will keep the ice storms, blizzards and floods. Floods can be fun, too; a couple of cemeteries not too fah from here saw a few dozen caskets get uprooted and sent downstream; imagine the surprise on somebody’s face when they land in a backyard.
Reports from NOA are telling us now that OUR high wind warnings start at 14:00 tomorrow? WTF??? We are many, many miles north of the stuff and the last radar I saw had it off the Carolinas and Virginia now. They are also telling us to expect four- to six-foot waves on the Lake. That will be interesting; I guess going out in the canoes or kayaks tomorrow is out.
The Germans maintain that Americans are incompetent to drive BMW’s, as they require extra skill to drive at speeds above 130kph (~80mph). And by golly, around here we have BMW’s driven by late teens crashing about once a month—sometimes fatal, sometimes not. Of course, we get no practice at speeds higher than 80.
I once had an Oldsmobile that did not get tight until it hit about 85. Then it was really responsive. Everybody around here expects me to be in a German car. Probably would be, if the exchange rate would ever start favoring us.
Fastest I’ve ever driven was 170 Km/h in an 80 zone, on the outskirts of Melbourne. I nearly ran in to the ack of another car at traffic lights. That was about 30 years ago, and I wouldn’t drive that fast now for any reason. I used to drive across the Hay Plain between Canberra and Adelaide at 160 Km/h for hours on end, when the speed limit was 100. There are just too many cops and speed cameras nowadays to take that risk, plus I find it really stressful. I just stick to the limit now, 100 or 110 usually in the countryside.
The fastest I’ve ever been driven was 180 Km/h. I was having a nap at the time, the guy who was driving told me later.
A British friend used to tell of his experiences being driven in Germany. 200 Km/h on the autobahn and the driver would turn half way around to look for stuff on the back seat at that speed. My friend was petrified. The Germans just do it ™.
Lynn wrote:
“You’ve always got to watch out for tractors on two lane roads in Texas. We feed the world. Or used to until half the USA moved here.”
In 1985 I was a few seconds away from a head-on crash with a semi trailer (=tractor trailer) on a two lane stretch of the Hume Highway in NSW. I was driving up a hill at 80 (the limit was 100) and as I crested it I saw one semi overtaking another, very close. I pulled half way into the dirt at the side of the road, the semis bunched up a bit, and I missed the one on my side of the road by about three inches. If I’d been hit I would have been history. You an imagine how mad I was at this, overtaking on a hill is just begging for trouble.
Speaking of Canadian musicians, John Kay formed what became Steppenwolf in Canada. He was born in East Prussia, Germany as Joachim Fritz Krauledat and fled Prussia with his mother for Hanover (where he undoubtedly learned the perfect German which is spoken there) and then moved with his family to Canada at 14 where he formed the group The Sparrows. The Sparrows all moved to LA in 1967 where they became Steppenwolf—the group most responsible for leading the way to heavy metal, IMO. Kay never became a Canadian citizen, although the rest of the group—except for the addition of LA bassist Rushton Moreve—were Canadians. Great musicians; I’m listening to Magic Carpet Ride right now.
Sigh again. Those two Porsches were probably going 300 kph, not 200 kph.
The fastest that I have been on the ground is just about 290 kph in a BMW M5? on the autobahn. I thought he was going to kill us as it was foggy and he could see maybe 100 feet. The dud was nuts.
I managed 200kph once, when I just wanted to see what my car would do. On an absolutely deserted road in the middle of New Mexico: you could see the road laid out straight for 10 miles or more, and there wasn’t a car, or anything else, in sight.
The Germans who take advantage of the lack of speed limits on the autobahn are just nuts. Lots of places (most places?), the autobahn is only two lanes on each side. You’ve got granny poking along at 100kmh, or maybe a tractor at 60, you are trying to pass at maybe 130, and some nutcase comes whizzing up at 250+, willing to run right up your tailpipe if you don’t magically teleport out of the way. The speed isn’t the problem; its the difference in speeds that makes it so dangerous.
In 1990 I hired a small, lightweight Citroen in Paris for driving around Europe. I think it was mostly aluminium. Just about got blown off the road on the French tollways by semi trailers going 30 km/h faster than me.
The fastest I have been in the US is 100 mph in my Avalon which could easily hit 150 mph. Just too fast for US roads. Might be able to do it again on the Texas road from Austin to the east of San Antonio but I suspect that road will be heavily patrolled.
My experiences in Germany driving on the Autobahn is that it is quite stressful. I drove 650 miles from Pennsylvania to Knoxville in 10 hours and was not tired. I drove two hours on the Autobahn and was exhausted. You have trucks on the right doing 100 kph, you pass them and some gonzo flies up to your bumper wanting you to move over which is difficult when there is a line of 10 trucks. Your only option is to speed up which may be beyond your comfort zone or the cars capabilities. Does not stop the gonzo from getting angry.
Then you are sometimes passing in the left lane and some idiot in a 1960 Mercedes will pull out requiring significant application of the stopping device while trying to not get smacked by the gonzo in back.
Two lanes on most of the Autobahn, and not exceptionally wide lanes either. Many zones where the speed plummets from unlimited to 120 kph with camera enforcement. Porsche drivers that consider the Autobahn their personal racetrack and all others are infringing on their space.
It was novel at the time and I could say I did it but after hitting the 132 mph I backed down to a more sane 130 KPH. But it was still exhausting driving on the Autobahn. Last trip I took the train. Faster, more comfortable and certainly less stress than the German highways. And when they have a wreck on the Autobahn it it usually major with wreckage (and body parts) scattered for a couple hundred meters.
Back in 1979, I routinely did 200 KPH or close to it on my Honda 750F superbike between Pittsburgh and Butler. I probably would have gone faster, but the bike topped out around 135 to 140 MPH. “No top end”, as one of the guys I rode with said. (He rode a 6-cylinder Honda CBX.)
Hmm. The places I have found the easiest and best to drive, are the places most others do not like to drive. I found the Autobahn a restful relief from US Interstate driving.
First, the Autobahn does not have pot-holes and patches that would literally flip you at 100mph, like the Interstates all around me have. There is one dip and patch on I-70 between Tiny Town and Indianapolis that I always seem to forget, which practically grabs my tires and tries to force me off the road.
Second, having 2 speed limits with trucks going slower is a real danger, IMO, and forces one to be constantly changing lanes to pass the slower trucks. That’s stressful!
Actually, there were very few Autobahns that I travelled which did not have at least 3 lanes, and a good many were 5 lanes. I am often critical of the US Interstates, because it never even occurs to Americans that having only 2 lanes is horribly 1950’s out-of-date—especially when truck traffic has increased so dramatically over the last several decades. Only the most remote areas of Germany had only 2-lane Autobahns. Trucks are prohibited from passing unless there are 3 lanes or more, and that relaxes me. One never has to worry about that American tandem trailer semi who suddenly turns on the signal and simultaneously pulls out to pass when I am 25 feet from his tail and doing about 15 mph faster than he is going (he’s usually going 55-60 and wants to go 65). Never happens in Germany.
And Boston was seventh heaven. Traffic keeps moving there. Nobody comes to slower than a rolling stop at stop signs. What a relief from the ‘fake-out’ that everyone plays around here. Come to a 4-way stop with more than 1 person, and everybody will stop dead, then alternately try going but stopping when 2 people at once try going. Geez. And if you don’t stop dead, some cop will be hiding around the corner and grab you for not coming to a dead stop. That is absolutely nuts. Rotaries (suddenly very popular in Indy) do not require dead stops, but coming to a 4-way stop with NOBODY else around still requires it.
At traffic lights here, when the light turns green, one person at a time goes, like a slinky. In Boston, Chicago, and most larger cities, when the light turns green, the first 5 or 10 cars all start at once. If they didn’t, it would take many turns of a light to get through—as it does here in Hoosierland.
The last thing that drives me crazy here is that everyone thinks they are driving in the Indy 500. People will pass you going 15 mph over the speed limit, SOLELY so they can be the first in line at that red stoplight just ahead. People wanna be first here, at any cost. I have never driven anywhere else that such is the case. Other people here will comment on it, but they do not realize it is a peculiar behavior to Indiana and not done anywhere else I ever lived.
Chuck wrote:
“People wanna be first here, at any cost. I have never driven anywhere else that such is the case. Other people here will comment on it, but they do not realize it is a peculiar behavior to Indiana and not done anywhere else I ever lived.”
Welcome to my nightmare. People take off from lights like a bat out of hell, the road merges to one lane, just so they can get to the next red light ahead of me. Or they get ahead and then slow right down, and in places it can be unsafe or difficult to overtake.
People hear don’t use their horns nearly as much as in Melbourne, which I’m sure is much better than Chicago, but I still get beeps for not taking off fast enough. After 18.5 years in an automatic I’m a bit slow taking off with a manual transmission, but I’m getting better.
“(He rode a 6-cylinder Honda CBX.)”
You mean you associated with people who rode “Jap bikes”? Tsk Tsk Tsk.
I know some real Harley Davidson bigots who loved to sneer at Japanese bikes and their riders. They claimed that they could fix their own bikes, unlike the Japanese models that always had to go to the dealer.
Like Japanese bike owners (I have many) couldn’t repair their own bikes?
More like they just didn’t have to, in comparison to Hardly Ablesons.
Chuck, you really need to get out of that place. I have no idea where you will be less frustrated, but the impression I get is that Tiny Town (perhaps in concert with Indianapolis) is grinding you down day by day. I understand that There Are Things You Have To Finish, but are you sure they are all worth carrying through to the degree planned? There are times that a few shortcuts and compromises are worth the price. Perhaps this is one such case?
You mean you associated with people who rode “Jap bikes”? Tsk Tsk Tsk.
As he said, he did more than associate with such folks. RBT said on my Honda 750F superbike; he was one of them.
Comparing Harleys to hot Japanese bikes is like comparing NASCAR to F1, or pickup trucks to Porsches.
Well, I know some guys who’d flog you to within an inch of your life for saying that.
The problem with Japanese bikes, or at least 20-25 years ago when I was talking to these guys, was that a lot of stuff was encased in a black box that mere mortals couldn’t open. It had to go to the dealer and be replaced for large sums of moolah. The Harleys could often be fixed at home, according to the bigots.
I knew two brothers who were Harley bigots. The elder was more laid back and could sense and laugh at Harley jokes, the younger was really up tight about any form of criticism, and couldn’t see when I was kidding him. I told the elder that American troops found an old, beat up Japanese motor cycle in the ruins of Hiroshima, and sent it back to the US where it became the prototype Harley. He just laughed and said that couldn’t be true because Harleys had been around since about 1907. When I told the same joke to the younger brother he went ballistic, said it was uninformed, bah blah blah. He didn’t see the joke. Sigh.
My niece’s husband doesn’t like Harleys either. I think he’s got a Moto Guzzi. I love rattling his chain about that. If I ever go insane and buy a motor bike it’ll probably be a BMW.
I’ve had a motor bike licence since about 1978, but have never owned one and haven’t ridden one since 1985. But I’m keeping that licence because getting it again would be a royal PITA nowadays. Same with my truck and bus licences.
I’ll be okay when I get the house in Tiny Town sold. I do need to get out of here. It’s not that it grinds me down so much as it drives me crazy.
There are a couple things that make me not in too much of a hurry. My mom’s sister and her husband were like second parents to me. I spent as much time with them and my cousin, as I did at our house. They are in Tiny Town and moving to an assisted living place in the next couple weeks. If I am alive and in the US, I feel like I ought to be around them as much as possible for the time being. They are declining pretty rapidly. We have lunch together at least twice a week. Looks like my uncle is going to have to have a knee replacement. I was here to clear out Tiny House when he had his hip replacement, and because my cousin still works fulltime, I was able to help render assistance until my uncle could drive again and get them around. My aunt has not driven since shortly after my mom passed on. Further, my aunt is hard-of-hearing, and that prevents her from being a normal conversational companion to my uncle. He really needs more communication from others to replace the growing lack of long conversations with his spouse.
I am not likely to move away from Indiana at this point. Since I am in Indy so often, relocating there would reduce 90% of my hassles. My son and his girlfriend have decided to settle in Bloomington, so I may consider locating there, if retirement from the video work seems advisable. I have had enough of long commutes, and want to end them, just like I did with airline flying.
Meanwhile, Tiny Town used Friday to shut off my water unannounced, and install an outside water meter. I was gone all day, so it did not really matter in the end, but would have if I had been home. Tiny Town is always 2 steps behind. Instead of installing the automatic reading meters like we had in Massachusetts back in the mid ‘90’s, where the meter reader just touched the prongs of his portable recording device to a set of contacts at waist level on the side of the house and it transferred the reading automatically, the Tiny Town meter reader will have to remove a heavy cover on the ground, shine a flashlight into the dark crevasse, read the sunken meter with his sharp eyes, then write it down or punch it into his portable memory device.
What I did find when I returned from work, was that my water was brackish—a reddish brown. I have avoided using any hot water while it clears, so it won’t pull the iron and cruddy stuff into the hot water tank. Cold water still looks light pee colored, but I am using the hot now, as I cannot get by without hot water forever.
At least I will not have to phone in the meter reading every month. The meter reader always comes after I have departed for work, and always leaves a notice hanging that I must call in the reading. Gosh, I’m going to lose my non-paying government job to the guy who actually gets paid for it.
I’ve owned four Honda bikes, two CB 350s, a Nighthawk 750 and a Valkyrie. I really miss the Nighthawk 750, that was a sweet bike. The Valkyrie was way over the top with six carbs, solid lifters and a radiator the same size as that of a Accord. I was crossing a bridge once on the Valkyrie, looked down and realized I was doing 95 mph and did not have a clue. Way too much power, 100 hp, 100 ftlb torque.
Boston as “seventh heaven” for driving? The people are nuts there! The only traffic law that is consistently obeyed is “the cheaper car has right-of-way”, alternatively “he with the nicer car goes last”. When I moved there, I had a beater and it wasn’t too bad. When I replaced my car…well, I should never have done that.
You’re certainly right about the rolling stops; another way of saying it is that they completely ignore stop signs. I knew one four say intersection where they didn’t even bother to install stop signs. Instead, they painted a little circle in the middle of the intersection, so that they could pretend it was a rotary. Do understand: it wasn’t enlarged, there was no way to drive in a circle, certainly not the 3-foot-diameter circle they painted. It was just a free-for-all.
On reflection, though, there is a point to such things. There was a study of intersections here in Switzerland, because we have some strange ones. In particular, there are some incredibly chaotic “intersections” where four or five roads converge, along with several tram lines, a bicycle lane or two, and (because of the trams) hordes of pedestrians. Utter chaos! It turns out that these are amongst the safest intersections in the country, because people pay attention. The intersections with perfect signage and traffic lights are more dangerous, apparently because nobody expects the unexpected.
So maybe that free-for-all Boston traffic isn’t so bad after all…
In 1979, Harleys were complete crap. Stuff literally fell off of them. And they couldn’t get out of their own way.
I had some work done on my 750F. Stock, it put out IIRC about 75 HP. By the time this guy was finished with it, it did closer to 85 HP on the dyno. At the time, I was running operations for an industrial security company. One of our sites was Pittsburgh International Dragway. It had closed down, and Ford had leased it to store new vehicles. There were literally thousands of new Broncos parked there, all of them with half a tank of gas and the keys in the ignition. Carrier trucks would arrive and depart all hours, loading up Broncos and hauling them away. The place was about a quarter mile from some housing projects, and there wasn’t any fence. So they hired our company to put armed guards and attack dogs on site 24×7.
But the dragstrip itself was kept open, so sometimes we used it. I did trials on my 750F. My best 0-60 time was 2.8 seconds, still in first gear. As someone pointed out at the time, that meant I was accelerating faster than an F-15 or F-16 fighter jet on its take-off roll.
the Tiny Town meter reader will have to remove a heavy cover on the ground, shine a flashlight into the dark crevasse, read the sunken meter with his sharp eyes, then write it down or punch it into his portable memory device.
Are you sure about that? My small town installed new meters recently. Ours were always in the ground. The new meters have RF equipment. The meter reader just drives by slowly and the unit in his truck sends a signal to the meter and the meter responds with a serial number and meter reading.
Second, having 2 speed limits with trucks going slower is a real danger,
My memory of the German Autobahn was that trucks were restricted to 100 KPH and other traffic had much higher speeds, sometimes no limits. But trucks were restricted from using the left lane unless specifically signed.
there were very few Autobahns that I travelled which did not have at least 3 lanes, and a good many were 5 lanes.
My driving on the Autobahn was largely on 2 lane roads with only a few roads expanding to 3 or more lanes. Around Frankfurt there were several 3+ lanes but only where congestion was really high or a major interchange (most of Frankfurt was congested). The rest of the time I was dealing with 2 lanes.
Particularly annoying was in construction areas where the left lane would typically narrow to 2 meters. That Mercedes I was driving was almost that wide and being next to a truck, traffic in front, traffic behind, while you have three inches on either side to spare was not pleasant.
The roads around here are in really good shape as they were out west, California excluded. The roads in the northeast basically suck big time as my trips recently to Pennsylvania, New York and Washington DC confirmed. It was a relief to get back on decent roads in the south.
Not that I want to put much effort into defending the NYS DOT and its ilk, but it’s very difficult to keep roads in good shape up here. The weather tears them apart several times faster than elsewhere in the country. There’s also the issue that many roads, and in particular the highways, have several times the traffic that they were designed for, so it’s a large political challenge to close a ten-mile section of road for two months for replacement. It’s much more expedient to just slap on another layer of blacktop.
And then there’s the question of how much mileage is state-maintained. During summer breaks in college I worked for PennDOT (and I mean, we really did WORK). At that time, Pennsylvania had, IIRC, something like 43,000 miles of state-maintained roads. There apparently weren’t many if any standards required for a road to be put under state maintenance, and we had some really bad roads to maintain.
When I moved to North Carolina in 1979/80, I was stunned at how much better the roads were here. They’ve gone downhill a lot since then, but at the time a “bad road” in North Carolina probably averaged better than a “good road” in Pennsylvania. I understood why when I looked up the mileage total of state-maintained roads in North Carolina. It’s easy to keep your roads in good shape if you don’t have many of them to maintain. Also, North Carolina had and presumably still has very strict requirements for a road to be eligible to be put under state maintenance. Roads that in Pennsylvania would have been put under state maintenance without a second thought would have to have been literally torn up and rebuilt from scratch in North Carolina before they’d be eligible.
I cannot confirm that the new water meter is not some kind of RF unit, but it sure looks exactly like the one that is in my basement, which the water company wants to remove ASAP. The former mayor said there was not enough money to move all meters outside (when my parents were kids, water was not metered; that did not start until the middle of the Great Depression); the new mayor said they will convert 6 houses a week, and they started with the street Tiny House is on—I suppose because at only 3 blocks long, it is the shortest street in Tiny Town. Houses built after 1950 already have outside meters, as that became the new standard.
I have always had a meter in the house—the ones with remote reading just ran a wire to another readout outside or to those electrical prongs I spoke of earlier. I do keep an eye on water usage, and caught a leak not long ago by doing so. I am guessing that the leak had been adding about 1 to 2 units a month to my bill; additionally, the plumbers found a second leak I did not know anything about. I am using so little water now, it is amazing. But I still pay for the minimum 3 units/mo even though I am now down to 1 unit/mo. Formerly I had crept up to 4 units/mo, sometimes 5.
I cannot confirm that the new water meter is not some kind of RF unit, but it sure looks exactly like the one that is in my basement
My new water meter has no indications that it is RF enabled. Looks identical to my old meter as far as my memory goes. My electric meter has been swapped out to an electronic remote read meter. Looks identical to the old meter except for an LCD display instead of dials. There are no visible signs that it is read by radio or perhaps even through the power lines.
I did have a device installed in the circuits for my water heater and pool pump. It can be controlled remotely and the utility will shut off the devices once a day for two hours max during times of peak usage. Something about they get charged their rates based on peak consumption and if they can lower that peak period they don’t pay as much.
In exchange I got a $75.00 credit on my electric bill and they installed at no cost. I have to remain in the program for three years. It would not take much for me to bypass the system if I wanted as I have some experience in electrical wiring. But with my luck I would get caught.
They activated the system several times this year. We hardly noticed except the pool pump stopped.
“People will pass you going 15 mph over the speed limit, SOLELY so they can be the first in line at that red stoplight just ahead. People wanna be first here, at any cost. I have never driven anywhere else that such is the case. Other people here will comment on it, but they do not realize it is a peculiar behavior to Indiana and not done anywhere else I ever lived.”
Oh, rest assured this is the case here, down in Maffachufetts and in the wonderful Gahden State. They will also risk lives and limbs, theirs and everyone else’s, to get to an exit ramp ahead of you or simply to cut in front of you, at the last possible second. Without signalling. And invariably I will arrive at the stop sign or the bottom of the exit, at most one or two vehicles behind them anyway. I want to ask them: Hey, fucktard: was it worth risking all our lives out here so you could get here first?”
I am seriously considering shooting them, simple self-defense, but I worry that they’ll then go outta control and hit someone innocent. Hmmm…maybe if I follow them and find out where they live or work and then ambush them…
…help me out here, SteveF….
I drive a minivan with a 6-cyl engine. Not a huge amount of torque, but not a wimpmobile either. Without confessing to any crimes, let’s just say that I have no moral aversion to touching bumpers if an idiot is immediately in front of me at a stop … and then shoving him into the path of an oncoming truck.
Well, first you’d need the oncoming truck, and it would have to be a monster, so as to avoid any harm coming to its operator, and what if they then go outta control and slam into someone else who had nuthin’ to do wit it. I like the idea, though, just needs some work. You’d also have to have some explanation for why your vehicle suddenly lurched forward into the idiot’s, assuming there are witnesses. Idiot would presumable have his foot on the brake so would require a good push.
Let’s work on this…
“presumably” not the tard typo I made.