Category: Observation

Cheating Death Again

You may consider the photo to your left to be of a  charming Autumn day in the woods.  In agreement with that assertion, it is indeed an Autumn picture taken this very day.  It is also in the woods down from my house.  However, there is NOTHING charming about this specific location.   I can count the number of times I have almost killed myself on my two hands.  In fact my ring finger represents a time where I took the full blunt force trauma of a piece of wood thrown from a table saw right to the chest.  In that particular incident I do not know who was more shocked, my Dad who was running the saw or the mental tape measure I put from the impact point on the chest to my head.

Well folks, I can add another finger to the count due to an incident today.  Continuing the saga of building our bridge, my brother Dan offered to come over and help out with the project today.  To prepare, I needed to purchase the 2x12x10’s and 8’s for the support structure.  This equated to 25 of the 10′ boards and 15 of the 8′ treated lumber that needed to be hauled home and then transferred to the job site.  The haul home was fine, but the transport to the stream posed a dilemma.  The ground was pretty wet from all the rain this past week so driving the loaded truck down the hill was out of the question.  The only other option was to haul it down with the ATV and a small 4′ trailer. Do not laugh, I have accomplished a lot of things with that cart.   I hitched the cart to the ATV and loaded up 4 2x12x8 boards along with a 4′ 6×6 post.  Thinking it might want to bounce out of the cart, I decided to put a bungee cord across the top of the boards at the back.  Perfect, now to simply drive down the hill and drop them off at the stream.  One minute later I was questioning my strategy… and I mean really questioning my strategy.  Halfway down the hill, I looked to my right and there is the cart sliding down the hill perpendicular to the ATV (and the hill).  The common sense alarms were in full squeal.  I braked the ATV to get control of the situation which caused the ATV to start sliding down the wet leaf covered ground and it too started turning perpendicular to the hill.  Crisis mode as I knew the ATV was going to flip if this kept up.  Eventually I got it stopped, but the cart was still turned 90 degrees to the ATV which was now facing mostly to the left side.  Holding the brake with my left, I transferred my weight to the uphill side so I could dive off if required.  So there I was hold the brake and standing on my left foot (upside of ATV).  I decided to reach back and pull the wood off the cart to lighten the load, but the stupid bungee was preventing me from accomplishing that.  Brian just got himself in a whole lot of oops.  All of a sudden, my left foot slips off the running boards and my legs proceed under the ATV and now I am pretty much convinced I am going to die.  Somehow my left hand stayed clasped around the break and held my weight even though I have some torn cartilage in it (and let’s just say it is worse now).  I took my right arm and grabbed the utility rack on the back and hauled my body from underneath the belly of the ATV.  Stepping back on the running boards I took a minute to reflect on how beautiful life is, reflected on the life that flashed before my eyes and took a couple of breadths to take inventory of the situation (and the health of the body parts involved).  Somehow the left shoulder held through this allowing me to once again take my right arm and attempt to offload the wood.  The bungee was still causing me problems so I simply bundled the adrenaline and ripped the wood through the bungee hooks.  It literally straightened the hook flat, but the wood was successfully discarded on the ground.  EXTREMELY relieved, I got back on the ATV and gave it enough gas to maneuver back in front of the cart and proceed safely down the hill.  This one was close boys and girls and there is absolutely only two things that allowed me survive (from my assessment).  One is pure luck and the other is physical strength.  I have always felt there was no true substitute for strength in life and found it essential in my martial arts days (all the technique in the world doesn’t matter if you can’t power through your opponent’s attack  – this includes the redirection styles – trust me I have studied those as well- or if you can’t deliver enough power to disable your attacker).  Along with that, strength can also be the means out of an error in judgment.   I’ll definitely remember this the next time I try to talk myself out of my scheduled workout.

That which doesn’t kill me only makes me stronger … and wiser – I found another way to get the lumber down the hill.

Be safe out there!

One Headache Too Many

So if you read my previous blog entry, you are aware of a recent situation we had regarding our Dodge Durango having more electrical problems.  As an update to that post, the salesman that called me after the service was completed (to sell me a new car) has never called me back regarding my request to find an Aspen.  A week or so ago, Linda decided to head out to the car lots and see what we could find.  This turned out to be a very interesting event.  First off, we went to some lots in Peoria and came to the conclusion that most of these dealerships had very little on their lots and what they did have were either vans or crap looking boxes on wheels.  Now it was a quest so we took off to Morton to check out their lots.  Same situation on the Dodge lot, little inventory or was so ugly they were not even worth getting out of the vehicle to look at and definitely nothing in the SUV category.  We then headed over to the Ford lot.  They actually had a couple of Explorers on the backside of the lot so we stopped and got out to take a look.  In a first for this trip, a salesman came out to help us who promptly told us they did not have any new Explorers left due to being wiped out by the Cash for Clunkers program.  Does this seem odd to you?  Apparently everyone was turning in their clunkers for gas guzzling SUVs which seems contrary to the supposed intent of that program.  When we asked when more would be arriving we were told possibly in 6-8 weeks while he handed us his business card and walked away.  So here we sit wanting to purchase a vehicle and a) there are no vehicles to actually buy and b) the salesman doesn’t even seem interested enough to ask us our name so he can contact us when they do arrive.  We are no longer surprised why this industry is in the toilet.  Unwilling to give up, we headed to Pekin to check out the Dodge dealer there.  As we entered the now common empty lot, we spied a Dodge Aspen (the Durango replacement) and what seemed to good to be true it had a reduced sign on it.  Jumping out of the car we quickly located a salesman to inquire about the vehicle.  Turns out, it was a 2 wheel V6.  I can’t imagine that this configuration appealed to anyone in the market for this type of vehicle.  We also learned that the Aspen was not being made anymore and Chrysler decided to completely exit the SUV market.  This was the final straw and we decided it was time to check out the imports.

A mile or so down the street, there was a Toyota dealer and as it turns out, I actually knew the owner of that dealership (we met at my neighbor’s redneck Wednesday events which consists of everyone bringing over their firearms for target practice – our constitutional right to bear arms and don’t ever try to legislate it away).  Sure enough, this lot had a number of vehicles on it and a couple of Sequoias that were right up our alley.  A helpful salesman came out, we got all our questions answered, took a test drive, negotiated a price (helps if you know the right people) and signed on the bottom line.  We are now the proud owners of a new Toyota SUV and very happy with the decision.  Oh, and before we get the flood of comments trying to criminalize large vehicles, we live in the country in the Midwest (I chuckle every time I pass a stuck Prius in the snow), raise agility dogs that require traveling to competition and still looking for verifiable FACTS on the Global Warming myth (especially ones that justify the record lows we are currently experiencing).

I thought I would give a quick comparison of Toyota experiences with our previous Durango (hit the jump to see)

Continue reading One Headache Too Many

Another Fine Example of American Car Quality

I have stopped speculating as to why American car company quality is considered inferior to the imports.  The reason for this is now I know why by example.  When I did break from tradition and purchase a foreign car last year, I received an owner’s manual that was at least 3 inches thick.  It was frankly quite a shock, but there is not a question you could think of that is not answered in that manual.  Let’s compare that to a recent experience we had with our Dodge Durango.  For what seems like the 20th time we had an electrical issue with this SUV.   These issues have ranged from an all out dashboard power failure, a strange conflict that caused the blowers to go out when a random combination of radio and lights were on to the recent issue where the interior lights would not turn off even when all the doors were closed.  Linda takes this SUV to various dog shows and uses the light wheel to shut off the interior lights so she can keep the tailgate open for the pups.  All of a sudden, that switch would not work and the lights in the tailgate would not shut off even when all the doors were closed.  Frustrated with the poor electrical systems, I headed out to see if I could remedy the problem, but as in the previous cases, no luck.   Assuming another inconvenient trip to the dealer the next day, I decided to at least pull the fuse to save the battery.

I pulled off the fuse panel to see what I was in for:

The very first thing I notice is there is NOT A FUSE PULLER in the compartment.  What does it take to verify that a .5 cent plastic tool is included as it rolls of the assembly line?  Let’s just call that quality defect #1.  My next task was to locate which fuse to remove (with my own tool!).  The most obvious place to me would be on the fuse box panel – maybe a quick two word summary of what each fuse is for like interior lights or headlights or radio.

This was a big strike out, since all the cover had was 3 extra fuses (at least those were there) and although you cannot read it from the picture, it appeared to just have the fuse numbers on it – that of course is something I can obtain from the fuse itself and therefore completely useless to me (if it says something else, please enlighten me).  For the meantime,  I am naming it defect #2.  No worries I thought, I’ll break down and get the user manual… all .25 inch of it and use the schematic in there to selectively pull the appropriate fuse. Wait for it… wait for it… (hit the page jump)

Continue reading Another Fine Example of American Car Quality

That is One Steller Jay

The WordPress update effort has put me slightly behind, but nothing a quick jump back to the Yellowstone pictures can’t fix.  While we were out there, we came across this interesting bird.  This was actually the first time I have ever seen this particular variety and it caught me off guard when I saw it walking across a picnic table.  This is not my best effort in getting tack sharp photos, but it was a struggle to get it to stand still for even a second so I could zero in on it or attempt to focus through the branches.  According the trusty Audubon guide this is a Steller’s Jay and member of the Jay and Crow family.

According to the field guide, this bird is on the brash side and mostly omnivorous.  True to the description, it was indeed scrounging for food among the various groups picnicking in the area.  From a visual perspective, it is quite stellar looking with a bright blue back offset by a black plumed head…. somewhat woodpecker looking with a different color pallet.

From this particular picture it is obvious our presence was intruding on his foraging.  Okay, I admit it, my focus hand was shaking out of fear the bird was going to stab me with its beak and rip my eyeball out.  What, you do not believe me?  Take a look at this shot smarty pants and tell me if this isn’t one pissed off bird.

Oh yeah, his meat instincts are kicking into high gear.  I decided from that point on that all further pictures would stealth shots outside its vision.  Hit the jump to see a few more shots of this quite interesting bird

Continue reading That is One Steller Jay

Slob or Pure Genius

A few weeks ago Linda and I were picking up some dinner at the KFC out on Allen Rd.  For the second (and last) time, my experience was less than satisfying.  This time I had to question the cashier whether I could get the new grilled chicken in a sandwich (couldn’t find it on the menu) and basically had to beg for an explanation of what comes on it.  I ended up getting the sandwich plain.  Well plain was the request, when I got back in the car  on our way home, I pulled it out in order to finish eating so I could run when we got home.  Turns out this sandwich is about 2.5 bites big and sure enough had a giant tomato on it which I HATE.

But I digress from my original intent of this post.  As I was standing there waiting for my disappointing dinner, a young Generation Xbox kid comes waddling up to the buffet counter.  He then proceeded to badger the cashier as to whether there was dessert on the food trough.  She ended up telling him there was bread pudding available and he was satisfied.  Grabbing his plate, he quickly turned to go past me in order to get to the dessert.   Two observations hit me within a split second of each other.  The first is he had his shirt inside out.  I remember when this was the fashion trend, but generally it was on sweatshirts and not so much just plain t-shirts.  I quickly decided it he was a trend setter and just might give it that tipping point moment.  The other visual oddity that caught my eye was the fact he had spilled food all over the front of said t-shirt.  Now at the trough, the kid was visually upset because he was having difficulty locating the pudding which means he did not understand the “bread” part of her response since he was standing right in front of it.  Then my powers of reasoning kicked in and it occurred to me I could take this experience in two ways.

  1. The kid was a slob and the strong thumbs from the video controllers were now so disproportional to the fingers that the act of shoveling food into the mouth had become a challenge …. or….
  2. This kid is a total genius and was so aware of his potential to spill food that he purposely turned his t-shirt inside out allowing him to flip it right side out to hiding the  dirty deed.

I badly wanted to stay and get resolution to this quandary, but I had to get the running shoes on before the sun started setting.  I will never know for sure, but it has made me add a micro step in my observation methodology to see if other kids are now wearing their shirts inside out or if fat kids are making the trip to the bathroom for the switch before they order.  I will keep you posted on what I learn, but free to provide your own assessments or observations for discussion.

By the way, I just noticed I used this same guy in another post… can you locate it?

In Need of a Quick Calculation

Quick Calc at Menards

My summer task for this year is to finally do some clearing on my lot in order to highlight the scenic stream that runs through the middle of the woods.  This task may just kill me (now down over 10 pounds since my Steamboat Race and a mere 3 pounds away from my college graduation weight.  Fortunately, this is the kind of thing I love to do so even though it is hard work, I am smiling the entire time.  Part of this endeavor is to build a bridge so I can actually get to the back portion of my lot without getting wet.  My oldest brother is thankfully helping out with the design which is proving to be very interesting since it is over 49 feet across and I am unable to place a support structure in the middle due to the water and rock bed.  After trying all options to get a mechanical hole digger (nothing viable under a $600 rental fee) I decided to dig the footings and pour the concrete by hand.  So with my hands, a spade, a post hole digger, a 4′ chipping bar and a significant amount of sweat, 8 four foot deep by 12″ wide holes were dug.  Thankfully the new chipping bar (best $35 ever spent) made it through the roots and hardened sandstone.

The next stage in this endeavor was pouring the footings.  This consisted of hauling 64 of the 60lb bags of concrete and 8 of the cardboard pillar forms from Menards to the construction site.  For the record, a Menards’ employee managed to help load 16 (most my truck is rated for) of them into the truck – all the rest were loaded, unloaded and hauled through the woods with an ATV (5 at a time).  On the 3rd trip to Menards, I purchased the remaining four 12″ tubes for the job.  Now these tubes are 12″ nominal with a +- of 0.5″.  You might ask why they would bother with the size variance in today’s precision machinery era.  I am not sure if this is intentional or not, but this variance allows you to insert the tubes inside each other (depending on the variance of course).  I should also point out that the next size down had an 8″ diameter.

With that background in place, we are at the heart of this post.  Two of the four tubes fit inside the third, the third and fourth were the same size and purposely both at the large end of the tolerance.  While checking out, I informed the cashier there were four tubes in total and they were all 12″ in diameter.  The cashier then proceeded to look at the two exposed tubes with some confusion.  Noting that, I informed him that there was a half inch tolerance.  Without a doubt this resulted in math fog and I could tell he did not understand how that statement resolved the two inner tubes.  Keeping my peripheral vision, I proceeded to the credit card swiper.  Sure enough, he took the two tubes out and checked their labeling to make sure they were both 12″ as I had previously informed him.

I can understand the employees need to protect the company’s assets, but two things intrigued me about this event.  The first is an employee at a home improvement store having difficulty judging a half inch tolerance, but more importantly the 8″ tubes are CHEAPER.  Why would I willingly pay more for the extra two tubes?  If they were 8’s I would have pulled them out myself in order to save a few bucks.  Maybe lifting all those concrete bags impacted my powers of reasoning, but there is definitely room there for some lightening math skills.  By the way, the book used in the image is fantastic for those who like to improve their mental calculation abilities.  I was taking the picture of the ruler and noticed the binding on my bookshelf and felt it was a good fit.

Now time to go eat something.

An Annoying Rip

Medical Shredder

I recently went along with my wife to her doctor’s appointment.  I tend to dread this event because of one key element.  Her particular doctor never holds his schedule … EVER.  This is not a 10 or 15 minute inconvenience.  If you actually see him under an hour past your schedule slot, you might as well go play the lottery because the planets are aligned.  On this particular day, it was not the schedule issue that caused my major portion of annoyance.  Instead, as Linda was checking out with the receptionist, the doctor’s accountant caught my attention.  To be honest, my life runs at a pretty hurriedly pace.  This includes my walking pace, my reading pace, my speech cadence and my inability to actually just sit down and watch a TV program.  Linda classifies this as an O/C disorder but I view it as getting the most out of each and every day.  This disorder (if you must) causes me to be more sensitive to inefficient actions of others.  This particular accountant was standing over a desk and reading pieces of paper.  Once read he would proceed to slowly rip it lengthwise into about 7 strips.  Then he would take each strip and tear it again into about 10 pieces.  Once a strip was completed, he would then gather up each of the pieces and stack them neatly on top of each other until he had a neatly organized pile of paper.  Imagine this at a pace of 10 seconds for each long strip and another 10 for the cross rips.  Once stacked he would slowly place them by hand in a garbage can and then start the whole process over again.  I watched 3 of these cycles which literally felt like fingernail scratches on a blackboard (does anyone actually know what a blackboard is anymore?).  Linda completed her business and we exited the office.  I explained to Linda what she forced me to go through (prompting the “disorder” label again) and explained how Office Max has ads about every Sunday for shredders which are a) faster and b) far more efficient especially if you get the cross cutting ones.  The bright side of this was I completely forgot about the hour delay in seeing the doctor.

While I am on the subject of annoyances I have a survey question.  Who is the more annoying marketing spokesperson?

  • Paul Sherman (from the Sherman Store)
  • The Mac Guy
  • The Progressive Lady

In case those marketing organizations are reading, I refuse to even watch, much less purchase the product, based on their condescending tone.  Guessing I must not fit their target demographic.

Robins in the Hole

There has to be something wrong with the rotation of the earth.  I know this because it is obvious I am getting shorted days in my months.  Take for instance this month.  I start my blog entries a little later than usual, but no worries, I have plenty of time to get my quota in.  Then all of a sudden I am staring at 2 days left in the month and I am sitting at only 5 posts.  Oddly enough, the tides do not appear to be affected much by the increased earth spin, but it may be the reason for all the rain we are getting and the fact I woke up to about 60 degree weather at the end of August.  Guessing Gore finds that fact an inconvenient reality.

No fear, I have plenty of content to pull from our vacation this year.  On our trip, we stayed at a Best Western in the Jackson Hole Wyoming resort area.  On a side note, that night’s stay was the most expensive place we stayed the entire trip.  I recommend finding somewhere else if you do not want to pay through the nose for a place to sleep.  As we were leaving, we passed a window looking out into the pool area.  It was too cold to actually swim outdoors, but I find it nearly impossible to pass a window without taking a look.  Besides, there just might be a blogging opportunity waiting for me to observe.  Sure enough, there it was sitting a few feet out from the window.

Nesting Robin

My guess is you are not too impressed by this particular robin, especially if they are as common in your area as they are in Illinois.  Although it was somewhat interesting that this particular bird would choose to nest so close to people (lots of people were continually passing this window but based on my analysis, very few of them were taking the time to take a peak).  So what was the tipping point that warranted taking the time to get the camera out?  … and by time I mean a lot of time trying to figure out the best way to shoot through the glass and get the focus through the numerous evergreen branches.   Hit the jump to find out

Continue reading Robins in the Hole

A Wise One Captured

I have a lot of bird pictures I really like, but to be quite honest, the next couple are definitely in my group of favorites.  It is not so much the quality, lighting, pose etc. as much as it is the amount of things that fell into place in order to actually be able to take this shot.  First off, Linda and I were heading out one morning to check out the Peoria Zoo and thus had both our good cameras with us.   It was a fairly nice sunny day so we dropped the top on the convertible which allowed me to take in the scenery as we were passing our favorite park just down the street from us.  Out of the corner of my eye I noticed that a large object was sitting in the branches of a dead tree (in a yard across the road from the park).  I had Linda slow down allowing me to make out that it was this sitting in the tree:

Owl

The best I can tell, it is a Barred Owl which according to my guide can be active into midmorning.  We always hear these birds hooting at night, but rarely have we seen one out in the morning sun.   Unfortunately, I had to crop it a little tight to block out some unappealing background.  I prefer to give my birds some room to move in the frame, but technically he is facing backwards to me so he does have room to escape out the left side.  Although this was a pretty close encounter, Linda and I have had two other experiences.  One was at our old house while walking along a trail in the woods.  We startled a huge owl that literally dive bombed us before getting enough uplift under the slowly unfurling wings enabling it to lift into the sky.  That one made our hearts skip a beat, but the other one just about killed us.  We were heading home late one night in my wife’s Wrangler.  As we came down a hill, there was a large object in the road.  Although there are conflicting reports on what actually occurred next, the consensus is my description is the accurate one.  For some reason my wife either did not see the LARGE OWL in the middle of the road or had some owl angst from a childhood experience and thus decided not to hit the brakes (she claims she was preventing a rollover due to the top heavy Wrangler). The owl unfurled its wings and began the slow process of lifting into the air.  Let’s stress the word slow in relationship to the speed we were traveling.  The next thing I see is a full window of owl feathers making an ugly smack sound.  Since the Wrangler has a flat windshield, my guess is that owl is toast.  For my own since of tranquility, I chose not to look back and just assumed the plumage cushioned the blow allowing it to survive the horrific event.  I keep reminding her of this night every chance I get and threatened to paint a silhouette of an owl on her vehicles next to the hundreds of other wildlife she has run down in their prime.

Oh, the other lucky factor is the owl gave me just enough time to get one still shot before he assessed the situation and headed off.  I did get one pretty cool flight shot but lost him in the zoom lens as he turned into the woods.

Barred Owl in Flight

Again, so many things had to come together to get these two pictures.  If I get a chance I might post another one of my favorite bird shots I submitted to the State Fair photography exhibit.  I am a little hesitant to post our best pictures on the web yet, but I am looking into some watermarking or labeling to give me a little more piece of mind.  I enjoying sharing, but I have been getting some stories from my fellow photographers that are concerning me.

Hoping to have more owls to share in the future!

Another Trek to the Buttercow

It’s August which can only mean one thing.  That’s right, it is time to go check out the buttercow at the Illinois State Fair in Springfield.  If you were born in Springfield (as I was) this is what you do every year… that and have fun with the carnies who try to get you to waste money on scam games.  By the way, if you are one of those people who think they can hit the jump shots for the big prize, take a gander at the rims from the side of the game area and dismiss any idea of putting a round ball in a ROUND hole.  Lately I have been seeing disclaimers on the backing boards indicating that the rims are not regulation, but then again, oblong has never been regulation.  Words of wisdom to hold and cherish – when in Vegas, the easier the game the less the odds are in you favor, when at the fair, the bigger the prize the more impossible it is to actually win it.  Oh, and before I forget, if you see someone walking around with the BIG prize in a plastic bag… they are being paid to walk around with it to entice you into opening your wallet.

So yesterday, I took time out of from the lot clearing and eagerly headed down to Springfield to see this:

State Fair Buttercow

I was pretty impressed with the effort this year and “thrillered” they did not even consider making it a Michael Jackboy tribute like the Iowa fair was considering.  It is obvious we continue to be cursed by those LSU fans who spent my entire Sugar Bowl vacation yelling “Tiger Bait” as I passed wearing my Illini apparel.  If you look close, his shirt says “My better is better than your better” apparently they are a football school and not an academic school.  As you can see, the display has expanded over the years and now contains extra butter figures.  I was actually able to find all of the listed items, except for a snake that was suppose to be in there.

State Fair Buttercow

The State Fair usually brings a great opportunity for observing interesting people, however, this was not the case this year.  In fact, it was a pretty weak outing for blog material.  I did capture some bullet items of things that caught my attention while walking around the grounds and on my way home.  Hit the jump to check them out Continue reading Another Trek to the Buttercow