The Stock and Stone

Recently, some friends of ours gave Sweetness a chalk roller for her birthday. It's a great gift, one of those things that encourages both outside play and creativity. Below you will see a sketch in our driveway that made me quite proud, it was her rendition of a hand:
After I took the picture, though, I thought "I've seen this before". Sure enough, a quick search turned up this from the Lord of the Rings movie "The Two Towers":

That's right, the dreaded White Hand of Saruman. Hopefully there's no real connection here. Don't get me wrong, Saruman was a great character, just not somebody I want my daughter modeling herself after. With power only matched by vanity, Saruman was sent to do a good work, only to fall because of his pride and greed. Interestingly to me, he's one of the earliest literary characters I can think of that was used to push an environmental message. He took a hallowed land and exploited it to serve his selfish ambition, leaving a poisoned and barren waste behind him after his plan failed. It was his blinding belief in himself that lead him to neglect the same natural order he initially loved.

My recent readings in the book of Daniel (especially the first 6 chapters) provide a great case study of somebody with enormous God-given talents who seeks to serve others with his abilities and pass the credit on up the line where it belongs. Check it out.

Technical Difficulties

Bulletin:
Technical difficulties with the computer and 50 hour work weeks (let's just be glad those guys weren't using real ordnance) have interfered with my posts of late. I shall return...

The Future's So Bright...

How do you maintain a cool image when you are bald, dress primarily in overalls and singlets, are robustly chubby, and don't even have a smooth manner of speaking? Accessorize:
It doesn't hurt to hang out with a posse that knows how to party

If ZZ Top saw this abuse of cheap sunglasses, they'd be suing for royalties.

And She Only Turned 3 Years Old Today

Wifey: How many arms does an octopus have?

Sweetness: How many?

Wifey: Eight.

Sweetness: Oh, like an octagon.

She may cursed with The Knack, doomed to be an engineer

Rising Tide of Waste

This is a picture of a laundry pen manufactured by Tide. I'm sure it's very handy to be able to spot treat stains on clothing. And that's really what capitalism is about, right? Finding a consumer need, real or perceived, and filling that need in a fashion that makes profits. This is a little appalling, though. The laundry pen contained just over 1/10 of an ounce of detergent. The pen itself probably weighed an ounce or two. Then, there is the packaging. Lots of paper, lots of ink, and an amount of plastic that exceeds the pen and detergent combined. These pens could be on shelves in a small, plain cardboard box of 100, with a little sign on the front of the box that looks like what we see in the picture above. It would save an enormous amount of wasted resources in terms of manufacture, shipping, and landfill material. Alas, the individual pens would be easy to shoplift, and a simple box just doesn't draw the attention like individually packaged products dangling from a hangar. Is it any wonder Americans disgust some people?

Dorque Multiplier

Recently, Sweetness demolished me in three consecutive games of Hi Ho Cherry-O. It's a very simple board game, but I never even sniffed victory. To help myself feel a little smarter, Sweets and I took apart the decade old and no longer needed can opener. I got to show her a gear train. Here's a snippet of video where she shows me how it works:

As you can see, we have a perfectly good (if slightly noisy due to wear) electric motor, and a torque multiplier to step down the speed and give some useful umph at the output end. Since we have a newer model, the question now is: what do we use this fantastic device for? If anybody actually reads this blog, I WANT YOUR IDEAS. It could drive rigged to do almost anything: drive a clothesline, open/shut the kitchen garbage can, operate the drain plug on the sink... basically anything within the horsepower/work limits of the existing motor and gear train.

The frustrating thing for me is that this technology has been around since about the 1830's, it's still very difficult to implement them into military designs at work. While my expertise on the sparky end of things is limited, I am growing convinced that the problems lie in developing the controller, which means dumb "push the button and go" mechanisms are the way to go, even if they draw high current. It's cheaper in the long run. I'll have to see if we can tear apart any other fascinating obsolescent devices around the house.

Best Euphemism I've Heard Lately

Two words: Burp Cloth.
We all burp, but when I down a Coke Zero or Miller High Life, I have no need to reach for a napkin. Let's be honest, the burp cloth really has nothing to do with burping. Let's try to come up with a more honest but not disgusting name for this truly useful piece of fabric.
Thank you for your time.