Dave says...

A bit of a timewarp

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 20:20:14 -0400

This blog thingy is a new feature. Even though the entries date back to April 8, 2008, EVERYTHING was just added today. So be sure to look at all of the “old” entries!

Ripe for the selling

Thu, 9 Apr 2009 02:37:48 -0400

Tonight I was shopping at Big Bird. I see this all the time; tonight I got a picture of it. Yes, it is a cell phone photo, so the quality isn’t great, but I assure you the colors are pretty accurate. And those bananas are most certainly NOT “golden”.

Happy Pi Day!

Sat, 14 Mar 2009 18:46:01 -0400

This is the cherry π that I took to a gaming party in Cincinnati, in honor of ∏ Day, 3.14.2009. It’s unusual in a couple of interesting ways. Most obviously the filling is made with three kinds of (canned) cherries, including standard tart pie cherries, but also a can of Bing cherries and a can of Queen Anne cherries. That makes for a very tasty, unusually sweet combination. Second, my π crust recipe is an old one, apparently copied from a can of Spry and then handed down in the family. It is shortening, milk, salt, flour...and BOILING water. I actually go ahead and melt the shortening, resulting in a wonderfully flaky hot-oil crust.

I'm not a gambler anyway.

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 18:25:30 -0500

This casino sits at the foot of Canal St. in New Orleans. I had an extra day to explore the city on foot and by streetcar before the ASTM committee meeting. I’m not a gambler, so I didn’t enter the casino. But as I approached the building I noticed that I would not have been welcome anyway. A sign next to the door said, “MUST BE 21”. I haven’t been 21 in about 18 years.
I thought the usual casino rules about 21 were that the dealer had to hit on 16 and stand on 17.

Parking in Simi Valley (pt. 1)

Sat, 20 Dec 2008 02:13:26 -0500

The night I landed in Simi Valley to visit my parents for Christmas, we had dinner at a local steak house. It took a few minutes for us to determine that, yes, we COULD legally park on the street. Dad’s Cadillac is only about five feet tall. I wonder if the height restriction includes the radio antenna.

Who buys this stuff?

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 01:57:24 -0400

I was in one of my local *mart stores (actually, it was Meijer. I realize their name does not contain the string “mart” but it’s the right kind of store) when I came across this display. Big deal, it’s a shelf full of bottled water. Americans throw away billions of dollars every year buying and drinking this stuff. One of my favorite bottled water stories was the emergency management official who was driving around Houston, TX before Hurricane Rita made landfall, complaining on the radio to an NPR reporter that she couldn’t find any bottled water. I wondered why she didn’t start filling coolers, since the municipal water supply was still perfectly fine.
Anyway this is just a shelf full of bottled water, and initially I didn’t think much of it. Then I looked a little closer.
This is no ordinary bottled water. This is a whole line of fortified, flavored, bottled water for dogs.
I thought most dogs were perfectly happy to drink right out of the toilet; i never thought they would need a line of designer bottled water!

Where can I buy a season pass?

Sun, 25 May 2008 02:24:52 -0400

This is the interior of the gift shop inconveniently located at the exit from the Kentucky Rumbler roller coaster at Beech Bend Park, Bowling Green, KY. See that sign on the wall? What building is this, again?

Do things in order.

Mon, 12 May 2008 01:42:02 -0400

Pictured here is a box containing a replacement lamp for an InFocus LP-820 video/data projector. Much of my job revolves around the care and feeding of these projectors, and that includes replacing the lamps every 2,000 operating hours, or when they fail catastrophically, whichever comes first.
Today, a lamp failed catastrophically, so I took down the projector, and I pulled a spare out of the closet. I got out my knife to slice open the seal on the box, and I noticed the instructions prominently displayed on the label: “Break Seal Only Before Installing.”

Ummm...okay.

Just because I don’t like being told to follow ridiculous instructions, and in the spirit of my grandfather who always put stamps on his utility bills just to the left of the box marked, “PLACE STAMP HERE”, next time I want to figure out how to leave the box sealed until after I install the lamp.

I knew times were tough...

Sun, 4 May 2008 01:35:31 -0400

I stopped at Home Depot to pick up some basic hardware, and on my way in, I noticed this. I know Home Depot’s profits are down, but I had no idea just how bad it was. In fact, I believe this is the first time I’ve ever seen a store respond to challenging economic times by laying off a third of their shopping carts!

What sauce was that?

Wed, 9 Apr 2008 01:18:19 -0400

Got a pizza from Pizza Hut for dinner tonight. Talk about a company that has changed a LOT in my lifetime; I remember when Pizza Hut was a distinctive looking restaurant. Now my local location is a take-out counter in a tiny storefront. Anyway, I saw this ad on the counter for their new pasta product. Sorry it is such a lousy photo.
Anyway, it got my attention because you can get this new product in two varieties: Creamy Chicken Alfredo, or Meaty Marinara.
Meaty Marinara? That sent me to Wikipedia, which sent me to wisegeek.com, where I found a fairly comprehensive definition, which says in part, that marinara sauce originated as, “a meatless sauce extensively used on sailing ships before modern refrigeration techniques were invented.”
So which is it? Meaty? Or Marinara?

The Swiss Army Knife

Tue, 8 Apr 2008 00:51:24 -0400

I misplaced my pocketknife at work today.
This was, of course, a complete disaster. I have been carrying a pocket knife since I was seven years old. One year for Christmas, my grandmother gave me a genuine Victorinox Swiss Army Knife just like the one pictured here. Victorinox calls it the “Spartan,” I call it one of the most useful tools I own. I mean, using just that one tool, I can field-strip a VHS VCR in under ten minutes. It’s just the right size and weight, and it has just the right combination of tools to be useful several times a day. Cut, scrape, strip and bend wire, turn flathead and #2 Philips screws, punch holes, open almost any bottle or can, the uses are almost endless. So after misplacing my knife, I actually stopped at a *mart and bought a replacement before I even went home.
Every other knife I have bought has cost a lot more than this one did. Advances in manufacturing, packaging and marketing have reduced costs and made it possible to buy these things in a lot more places. But there has been a cost. The knife my grandmother gave me came wrapped in tissue paper, sitting on a cushion of cotton cloth, packed in a tiny cardboard box with a paperboard sleeve.
The knife I just bought came, with a free tiny little knife, packed in a hermetically sealed, practically indestructible plastic blister pack.
My question is, how am I supposed to get the thing out of the package? Normally, it would be easy...I would whip out my trusty Swiss Army Knife and slice right through the plastic. But if I knew where my knife was, I wouldn’t need this.....