Sure. Kick Me When I'm Down.

I know what you are thinking.  Windy day, some letters blew off, right?  No.  Here is the conversation the wife and I had shortly after seeing it.

Me: Wait.  Did you see that?
Wife: That church sign?  Yeah, that was a weird one.  Do you think they ran out of letters or something?
Me: I don't know.  It's been raining on and off all morning.  Maybe they stopped in the middle.
Wife: Maybe.

(Time passes...)

Me: Can we go back after lunch to look at that sign again to see what it says?  It's kind of bothering me now.
Wife: Ok.  Do you think they finished it? What do you think it's going to say?
Me: I don't know.  I mean, I don't really have any good guesses.  "Lift you up", maybe?  It kind of rhymes.
Wife: Well, it should say something.  Otherwise it says that Jesus should also trip you up.
Me: Like in the song "Jesus shoved me, this I know, for the bible tells me so..."
Wife: Right.

It turned out this is the first half of a message that is continued on the back of the sign.  "Make it a part of your dance," it says.  Ok... Typical Chinese-fortune-cookie stuff you see on these signs all over the place down here.  Full of wisdom if you think about it.  Even more full of wisdom if you don't think about it at all.

Not sure how someone driving down a divided four-lane road at 45MPH is supposed to put these parts together (assuming they were approaching from the front side to begin with) but I'm sure the idea looked great in someone's head.

First Snow of the Season

Calvin once told Hobbes:  "Nobody ever closed a school on account of prettiness." He obviously didn't live here.  

It generally takes half an inch of the white stuff here to shut things down and that's exactly what happened this morning.  Most businesses and schools were on a 2-hour delay.  Seems like overkill when the roads look like this, doesn't it?

It's really for the best, though.  The infrastructure here really isn't set up to deal with snow and ice and, since it happens so infrequently, the people don't really get to train up in real world situations.  They're all, like, "Do I turn gently into the skid or turn gently away from the skid?  Oh, the heck with it, I'll just flip the XM radio to the All Spike Jones channel and drive like I'm in a cartoon as usual".

Best to just stay out of their way and snap some pics like I did Tuesday morning.  Rumor has it that next Monday the snow might get as high as Mr. Minifig's sword, here, so, you know, time to loot the stores for all the milk and bread I can find...

From Fridge to Shirt

Very short post tonight.  I am fighting my way through Zazzle's unexpected image size and placement limitations to turn this into a shirt:

It really speaks to me.  I got the boy's permission to make some minor changes.  I monochromed it and centered some stuff.  Here's what I have so far:

I think it's gonna turn out just fine.  I'll post the final result if/when the shirt becomes reality.

More Fine Art

Well, it turns out my brother nailed three of the four items in the Cubist Art Puzzle, and only needed a small hint to push the ball over the goal line for the last one.  Well done.  Of course, he couldn't be bothered to post a comment, so, you know - totally doesn't count.

Not even a little.

Sad, really...

In any case, I came across this piece at an auction recently and I knew I just had to have it.

Any ideas? (You have to tell me where all five sections came from.)

A Very Old Coin

I am either super easy or super hard to buy for - it really depends on your point of view. This past birthday, for instance, I asked for “something that is at least 1,000 years old”.  Obviously I meant something that was manufactured at least a millennium ago, not something that merely existed back then, otherwise someone could have just walked out into their yard and picked me up a rock or something and said “Here ya go, buddy.  Enjoy.”

Amongst my b-day swag I found a little plastic envelope labeled “1 (ONE) premium already cleaned ancient Roman coin”.  Sweet! 

The coin is 1/2 inch in diameter, bronze, and looks like this:

It might just look like an irregular pitted disc in the pictures but there is a lot more detail evident as you turn the coin in the light (it also helps if you back away from your screen a bit).  An extremely lucky internet search led me to An Online Collection of Roman Artifacts where I found these pics:

Assuming we have a match, this coin depicts the Western Roman Emperor Honorius on the front, and three emperors standing side-by-side on the back.  It was minted in the city of Antioch sometime between the years of 406 and 408, making it over 1,600 years old.  

Nicely done, bro-and-sis-in-law, nicely done!

Just in Time

There.  It’s done.  

The wood is not sanded completely smooth, the paint is still tacky, and the front right wheel doesn't spin quite as freely as the others but it’s the best that could be done in the time allotted.  Oh, and I was told Thursday that the “car race” has been de-scoped to a “car show where the kids can just push their cars around on the table or something” because no one would loan a track to the person in charge of this event.

[Editor’s Note: The use of the term “in charge” above is not meant to imply that anyone anywhere is actually in charge.]

On the upside my kid knows a little about cutting curves with a bandsaw (from watching, of course), using a belt sander (again, from watching), the importance of drilling pilot holes (he did the drilling), and he doesn’t have to show up to the whatever-the-heck-is-going-on tonight empty-handed.

Also, I now own a food scale, so, you know… Score! 

Say... That's Familiar...

No time to write.  Behind on a project, as usual.  Let me show off my new cubist art collection instead.

They're simply gorgeous, aren't they?!  Can you tell me what each one is... and why I'm hungry all of a sudden?  Leave a comment!

Today I Heard My Father Laugh

The night before last I totally lost it. 

I. Lost. It. 

I came home from the gym to discover a little plastic bag with my son’s name on it sitting on the kitchen counter.  I asked what it was and I was told that it was for the kid’s pinewood derby race at the church this Saturday.  

This Saturday.  The announcement was made six weeks ago.  The kids are to do the work.  We get the kit four days before the event, the boy is spending Thursday evening and Friday at a friend’s house, and the event is this Saturday. 

A few of the dads that might be reading this are probably saying “Dude…” in the most commiserating tone they can muster.  Everyone else, though, is saying “What’s the big deal?”  

And you know what?  “Everyone else” is unequivocally, 100%, absolutely, on the nose correct. There is simply no argument there.  They are right.  There is no prize.  There is no penalty.  Even if there were, there isn’t even anyone to blame because it took a village - a freaking village - to make this particular cascade failure line up exactly so.

So why do I care?  I do have a wood shop, after all.  Zip, zap, you’re done. 

Because, damn it,  I want to teach my son the pains and rewards of successfully working with one’s hands in the CTRL-Z world in which we live.  Because I want him to know that working wood and making bread and casting a line and cutting metal with fire are real and lasting and good and are things to be cherished.

And now there is so little time.

This morning, still ticked, I was pulling into the parking lot at work when I suddenly flashed back to third grade.  

My father was lying on the sofa reading a crummy spy novel of some kind.  It was night.  A school night.  A project was due the next day.  I needed to explain the construction of an Iroquois dugout canoe and bring a little model of one into school.  I asked my dad to help me and I filled him in on the details.  He looked annoyed and asked when they assigned the project.  I told him about a month ago and he lost it.

He. Lost. It.

We went down into the basement and we got some scrap wood and some hand tools and he vented and fumed and raved.  And worked.  

And worked.  And worked.  

And I watched, quietly.  Solemnly.  After a while there was just silence punctuated by the scraping sound of his jackknife whittling a block of spruce into magic.

After an unknown period of time “we” had an awesome little rough-hewn pine canoe complete with authentic-looking char marks from his Zippo.  He handed it to me, clearly still angry but with a smile of… something (pride?) on his face.  I can’t remember what he said, but I thanked him and he went upstairs.  I kept that boat until I graduated high school.

And so, today, I heard the ghost of my father, laughing.  

“Payback is hell, ain’t it?”

Two-For-One Appliance Issues

Ok.  It is waayy too late to be starting a post, but the final part I needed for my dishwasher repair finally came in this evening so here we go.  It’s mostly pics so it shouldn’t be too painful.

If you are reading this it might be because the spinner arm to your Magic Chef (or Maytag or Whirlpool) dishwasher keeps coming off and falling into the upper dish rack.  Here is the most likely problem: The spinner nut (part 99001587) is probably either broken or worn.  The spinner arm (part 99001586) that the nut is holding on keeps getting pushed out when the water comes on.  

So… How to avoid having to pay $98 to get this fixed… Only $2 shy of your deductible… I mean, what are the odds, right?  I mean, the parts plus shipping cost $18 total… Of all the lousy “luck”, especially since it takes more time to read what has been written in this post so far than it does to actually do the fix yourself…

First, call Sears and get the parts. Mind you, I have never, ever, navigated a phone menu that deep since I was trying to place a complaint about a Pentium II Gateway way back in the aughts, so good luck with that.  Also, Sears ain’t gonna be around much longer, I hear…

Second, unscrew the old nut, replace with the new nut, and snap in the new spinner arm.  Done.  Here are some pics.  

Here is the worn spinner nut (part 99001587).  The inner diameter of the hole the spinner arm snaps into is well over 25 thousandths over nominal.  Sounds small, I know, but it's actually a huge difference.

The hole the spinner arm snaps into should be close to one-half inch in diameter.  It seems like an epoxied nylon washer would "mend or make do" this problem pretty quickly.  Or maybe you have a buddy who has a kid who can 3-D print something for you...

The pic says it all.

When I was done I heard a noise in the garage. The vent fan to the gas furnace was running and I knew no one had used hot water recently.  Super.  I checked and sure enough the pilot was lit but not the burner.  

Now, there are two things that could be wrong - the easily accessible switch no one ever uses is now magically bad or the sensor switch (supposed to cause the fan to come on each time the burner is active) is stuck.  Guess which it probably is.  I am not qualified to change the sensor switch, but I am more than qualified to rap it with a NON-CONDUCTIVE (don’t be an idiot) mallet.  I used a rubber one because it is NON-CONDUCTIVE.  Vent fan now off.  Done (until next time... probably tomorrow... time to call an expert).

Rapping the switch smartly with a non-conductive mallet did the trick.  You might want to get a professional to replace the switch before your motor burns out or your garage fills to the rafters with carbon monoxide.

I hope that helps.

What?  Oh… Him?  Yeah… I got him for Christmas.  For some reason he is super-eager to help with major appliance repair.  Now, if you will excuse me, my washing machine is making a weird slamming noise all of a sudden.

Good night. 

You Know, I Never Knew That...

One of the things my six-year-old loves to do is to write books (usually a few pages of stuff stapled together).  We put a date on them and store them away.  I think they will make a great wedding present for him someday.

He is in the middle of this one but he has given me permission to post the whole first chapter of his most recent work.  Enjoy!

2,000 years old?  I guess I missed that ninth beatitude: "Blessed are the velociraptors... cuz, basically, (nervous laughter) we have no choice, am I right, folks?  RUUUUNNNNNN!"

Chapter 2 is how to build a bird house.

Time and Oak Whiskey Elements

A friend of mine got me an interesting gift for Christmas this year.  I saw mention of it on Gizmodo a while back and I was very glad to hear about their enormous Kickstarter success.

Time and Oak is a company that produces, for lack of a better term, charred wooden sticks.  Now I know it is hard to accurately relay tone via text so, before you read any further, be assured that that I have nothing negative to say about the product or the company’s business model.  

Consider that last paragraph your TL;DR.  

[Editors Note: Basically I have been “comparatively taste testing” this whiskey all night so this article might just turn into a TL;DW.  Or TL;POIHOWTB (passed out in hallway on way to bathroom). Only time will tell.]

The idea behind the Time and Oak whiskey sticks (according to the company) is that charred wood imparts a golden color to bottom-shelf alcohol, gives it a multi-tonal flavor, a rich aroma, and even sucks out a couple of toxins known to cause hangovers.  Their claim is that their invention - for which they have six patents - does all this stuff in 48 hours thanks to a process they refer to as “accelerated transpiration through capillary action”.  Boy, howdy, that’s a lot of 50-cent words - but do those words add up to the $6/stick price tag or should the townsfolk just have left these on the evil traveling salesman’s wagon in Passamaquoddy?   Let’s find out.

The sticks I got (a package of two) were five inches long, 1/2-inch wide, and 1/2-inch tall.  Eighteen notches were cut into the oak and four of the six sides were charred, as were the insides of the notches.  If my math is right, the notches increase the surface area of the wood blocks by a little more than 50%.  Also, the notches are important for another reason that I will get to shortly.

The instructions say to plunk one of these in a fifth (757 mL) of whatever and wait 24-48 hours. Turn the bottle occasionally.  Ok.  Can do. What to choose, though?  

I chose Jacob’s Ghost, an affordable clear whiskey I enjoy.  I didn’t want to choose an unknown, and I wanted to choose something clear so I could gauge the color change easily.  The makers say on their site to experiment with different liquids, even beer, but I assume there is a limit there.  I mean, these things ain’t gonna turn, say, a last ditch “I’m snowed in and totally unprepared” grape Pedialyte and Vermouth mixture into a Flaming Moe.  Look, this is all just stream of consciousness writing here. Try to keep up, ok?

Where was I?  Oh, yes.  Also, I didn’t want to drop one into the 95% still full bottle of Laphroaig 10 I have in the pantry.  I think I mentioned before that drinking that stuff was like trying to drink a shot of rubbing alcohol through a burning sofa cushion.  Mainly I was afraid if I were to try and drop the piece of wood into that stuff the wood would react at least 10 times more violently than my cat does when I try to put him in the carrier to take him to the vet.   Alchemy only goes so far, you dig?  So, better to have a mid-quality whiskey I am familiar with to start.

I bought two bottles of the Jacob’s Ghost.  I left the stick in one of the bottles for nearly two days (46 hours).  Here are some pics showing the transformation:

Hour 0: The stick has just been placed in the experimental bottle.

After three hours.  A light golden color is obvious already.

After twelve hours.

After 24 hours.  The wood became waterlogged at the 18-hour mark or so, and that's when it hit me that I was going to have to fish this piece of wood out somehow...

After 10 minutes of playing "Frustrating Claw Game" using a bent piece of wire, I was finally able to snag the oak piece and pull it from the bottle.  Thank goodness for the notches...

After 46 hours.

The pictures say a lot, but how about the smell and taste? My sense of smell is pretty good, but I don’t have as sophisticated of a palate as some but here is my assessment:  

After two days, the charred wood imparted the gorgeous color you see.  The bouquet had a slight sweetness to it in the experimental bottle that was not present in the control.  Unexpectedly, there was not what I would call a “smoky” smell or taste to the whiskey but there was “something" there that added an enjoyable complexity to the beverage.  Let’s call it “woody”.  Not “oaky”… Just “woody”.  Hard to describe.  A taste equivalent of the cool smell that lingers in the garage after table-sawing a piece of pine board, I guess.

I am not sure that I would believe it if someone tried to convince me that what they were handing me was a fine scotch and not a wood-gizmo-treated bottom-tier whiskey, but that really isn’t the point, is it?  The real question is “does the charred wood noticeably change the taste of the alcohol for the better in a short period of time”.  Based on this one experiment, I would have to say “yes”.  “Is it worth the six bucks?”  Again, I would say “yes”, because the new look and taste is noticeable, interesting, and pleasant. 

Thanks for the Christmas gift, bro!  My next experiment will be with three bottles of low end vodka— one control, one with another Time and Oak stick in it, and one with an equally surface-area’d piece of untreated oak. But that won’t be for a while.  After all, I can only handle so much experimenting of this nature before I onfnwoe c nnwoeindosn dmddddddd….sdad qr .

Fans of Cutthroat

Last year we stumbled across Cutthroat Kitchen and we quickly got hooked.  We figured, though, that the types of sabotages the chefs endure, however diabolical, have gotten a little routine and need to be enhanced a bit.  Here’s what we came up with:

You have the right to replace all of one of your opponent’s proteins with a single tarantula (a shout-out to my brother-in-law who actually ate one of those last November…)

Force a competitor to do all of their cooking using their own body heat as their only heat source.

Make one of your rivals insult the food taster the entire time they are at their station, focusing on physical appearance, national origin, and manner of speech.

If you win this auction item, you may shiv one of your opponents once in a place and time of your choosing during this challenge.

Each of your opponents must retrieve all of their food from the deep fryer or stove using nothing but their elbows.

All of your opponents must remove all of their piercings, cover their tattoos, and de-mohawk their hair before they can start prepping and cooking.  As you can imagine, this will be very, very time consuming.

Every time a chef incorrectly describes him/herself as attractive during this challenge or in the cutaways, it will cost him/her $5,000.

You may force an opponent to gather their ingredients from the pantry blindfolded. 

Your opponent’s final plated item must weigh at least five pounds and be uniform in color.

 If you lose this auction, you will be tied to three very large, very friendly, very hungry dogs for the remainder of the challenge.

Not a bad set of changes.  I’m sure viewership would climb...

The six-year-old also noted that each of the chefs could easily walk out of there with $25,000 since they all have a lot of knives and Alton Brown doesn’t.  

Way to think outside the box, kiddo.  You know, I think I’ll earmark the money we have in his college fund for “bail” instead…

Quiz On Chapter One To-Day!

Quick quiz!  Can you name the three famous books described below from just the Wordle word clouds of their first chapters?

Book 1:

Book 2:

Book 3:

Leave a comment with answers.  Good Luck, firstly with the puzzle and secondly with actually successfully posting comments... I am told the comment form can be a royal PITA depending on your platform.  Thanks, Google!

Quick, Look Polish!

Many, many, MANY years ago my sister came to visit and brought with her a couple of photo albums crammed full of stuff (she is the family historian, you see).

One of the items in the album was an old letter from one of our relatives to another.  It is sloppy, in cursive, and written in Polish - a language I don’t have a clue about.  Additionally, there were almost no clear indicators where the letter began or ended and I had no real context for what the letter could possibly contain.

I was curious enough to start putting pieces and parts into Google Translate. 

It was an entertaining couple of hours to get to the level of translation I show below and it is still pretty gibberish-y.  Whenever I saw I had obvious errors, like when the translator came back with “the nose is a lake” (I’m not kidding), I went back and tweaked what I thought I could make out of the cursive - sometimes it helped. 

I also learned that it is critical with a capital “C” that one understands that the “=“ means “continued on next line”.  I won’t get into the utterly tasteless mistranslation I ran into before I figured that out other than it made me think “Yikes!  This letter has taken a horrifying turn all of a sudden…”  I try to keep things clean-ish here at The 36th Lock.

In some cases I had to throw up my hands and just leave those words untranslated (those are the words in all caps).

Here is what I can make of the Polish:

list pisany dnia 18 listopada 1950 roku odzywam sie do ciebie kochany synu

Niech będzie Pochwalony Jezus Chrystu

list od ciebie odebrać za ktory ci dziekuje from sie dowie dzieci o twoim zdrowiu i powodzeniu a ja jestem zdrowy a powodzenie

moje jak zwykle i u nas sniegu 

zimna wcale i fajny czas

dotyk czas a dalej to nie wiadomo a od nas to duzo CHTOPOKOW

wzieli do wojska ale i nas to jeszcze dobrze

celka dziękówa dostata CHTOPOKA 

w tamten niedziele byty chrzciny i chamka

MANKOWA się oczy nieca znanego domu

i bryta na weselu i dotyk czas to ludzie zarabiają choc drogo bo funt mięsa kosztu je dolara i wicej

ci NIMOM co pisae tylko cie pozdrawiam kochany synu i zone i dzieci twoja matka

And here is the English according to Google Translate

a letter written on 18 November 1950 talk to you dear son 

May Jesus Christ be praised 

receive a letter from you for who you thank you from the children finds out about your health and success and I'm healthy and successful 

Me, as usual, and with us the snow 

cold and cool all the time 

touch time and further it does not know a lot of us CHTOPOKOW 

they took the army but we are still not well 

Thanked cell is insufficiently CHTOPOKA 

in that Sunday entities baptisms and low peasant 

MANKOWA eyes less than a well-known home 

and in abundance at the wedding and feel the time is people earn though expensive because a pound of meat cost them a dollar and more 

NIMOM you what to write only greet you dear son and wife and children, your mother

————-

Meh… Not great, but I think that’s the best I can do.  I have reviewed project proposals that were less elegantly worded than this translation, though, so I’m gonna call this one a victory (my bar is set really low) and move on.

Bread

This past weekend I taught my son how to make bread.  

Oh. My. God.  

While that last statement is technically true, I make it sound like I taught him to silently track and kill wheat, corral wild yeast, and mine salt using nothing but a rain-moistened stick, and guided only by the special quality the air takes on during a gibbous moon, just like my father and his father before him.

No.  I found a simple, minimalist article online on how to make a four-ingredient rustic bread and we followed the instructions.  There is the result in the pic.  The loaf was plain but good.

During the process I explained to him what all the ingredients were for - flour is the stuff bread is made from and is food for the yeast, yeast makes it fluffier (I told him how), salt keeps the yeast from making giant holes in the bread, and everything needs water to live.  I also told him while we were hand-kneading the dough that “a man who knows how to make his own bread will never starve”.

You read that right.  I actually said “A man who knows how to make his own bread will never starve”.  I even had the nerve to say it sagely.  As soon as the words left my lips I thought to myself “[insert slow, sarcastic clap here] Bravo!  What are you, a freakin’ bumper sticker, now?”  About one-quarter of a second after I had that thought, the six-year-old laughed and said “You sounded like Yoda when you said that.”

I smiled at his “joke” and said nothing.  What could I say?  “Ok, boy, you win this one,” I thought.  

I totally deserved that.