Pretty as ever, and we got to celebrate with ice cream cake.
(This picture is from another great day, this one in the woods in Washington state, as we worked our way up to Mount St. Helens last year.)
memories
18
Sep 12
Nuts
Today in class we discussed media literacy, and the value of reading about the world around us, as citizens and as journalists. Before that I gave the class the hardest current events quiz ever assembled. That got their attention.
This evening I went to Lowe’s, because I needed to examine door locks, but also find a few screws and nuts for tripods. This was an hour poorly spent.
I wrote about it on Twitter, and that got the Lowe’s staffer on OMG alert to ask me to write them an email. So I did:
I was in this evening trying to find some particularly sized nuts and bolts. A woman stocking shelves there did try to help me for a moment, beyond her normal role of putting boxes in particular places and kicking loose screws under the shelving.
I’m in those sliding drawers looking for the right metric sizes — hex screws I could find, the corresponding nuts were nowhere to be found. She looked with me for a moment, noting this section is hard to keep straight and organized. “People stealing,” she said. I found 106 trays for potential options of screws of varying dimensions and lengths. There were 13 trays for potential nuts, though none of the size my project needs.
This was a good half hour into the search. Not one red-vested person passed by, other than the shelf-stocking woman whom I approached.
I decided I’d buy what I need online, less aggravation, and skip the electronic door lock project I had all together. Who needs this much frustration in one trip?
I know you hear this stuff all the time, and whomever reads this can only do so much beyond empathize a little. I hope this next part you’ll keep close to heart and kick up stairs:
You’re kidding yourselves if you think this sort of experience is unique to that one store. You’re kidding yourselves if you think people don’t notice. You read these sorts of things all day, don’t you?
This was, perhaps, too on the nose, but they wrote back to say they needed my contact information to fix this. No they don’t. My mailing address won’t solve this problem. Though it would allow them to send me a little gift card, which is a thoughtful bribe, but I’d rather they try to address the problem.
I don’t know why you don’t have someone standing near the exit door, asking the people who leave empty handed why they couldn’t find what they needed. No one goes to Lowe’s or Home Depot to just look around.
They certainly wouldn’t do it more than once.
I had barbecue for dinner, though, and started a new book, so that was grand. Now I’m watching the student-journalists at The Crimson put their paper to bed. It is a fine night. It is 65 degrees outside and nice in here, but already some of them are bundling up. They don’t yet have an idea of how cold it can get in the newsroom.
One day I’ll have to tell them about the studio where I once worked that was so cold you could barely type. Or about standing outside on a cold, gray off day, trying to figure out why stomping my feet didn’t generate any warmth or feeling in my toes before watching a kid escape from a house where he was being held hostage. Or about being tear gassed on a frigid winter evening while covering a stupid protest (as in, not even a well-respected one) downtown. A coolish newsroom isn’t so bad.
I’d rather do all of those things than spend time in a big box hardware store, though.
19
Aug 12
Catching up — on national history
We’re skipping the regular Sunday feature to talk about the U.S.S. Constitution, which sailed again today.
Old Ironsides, the world’s oldest commissioned warship, cruised open water today to honor the bicentennial of the battle against the HMS Guerriere in the War of 1812.
These days she is an incredible museum ship. We were there three years ago, almost to the day.
Here are some pictures, including this replica gun:
An estimated 13 percent percent of the original vessel is still in place, all below the waterline. Including, I love this, some of Paul Revere’s nails:
This is where the sailors slept. It wasn’t this well-lit. There was obviously no fire alarm. And it didn’t smell like varnish. (We were there during the latest renovations.) The docents, sailors in the U.S. Navy who said this duty station was a great honor, said 19th century conditions aboard ship were less than ideal:
The anchor capstan was used when the order came to weigh anchor. Sailors walked in a circle, pushing long poles into those square cutouts. Anchor cables wound around the capstan, which could raise or lower anchors up to 5,443 pounds:
One of the salt boxes by the guns. A gun wad is on the left and a felt cartridge is on the right. The plaque says “The origin of the name is lost to history. Each gun was required to have a “salt box” which was to hold the felt cartridges ready for loading into the gun. Only one cartridge at a time was to be kept in the salt box.
“Cartridges were made of felt or foil or lead and were color marked for type and size. Red was close, blue was standard, white was distant. Size was indicated by numbers.”
Here she was in her mooring in 2009. It had been 12 years since she’d last set sail:
And today, for just the second time in more than a century:
Awesome.
18
Aug 12
A slow Saturday
Someone in our house couldn’t sleep last night. And, for once, it wasn’t me. I fell away to the night at around 2 a.m. — which is late enough, but sadly to normal for me — and The Yankee was up even later. She tried to keep me awake, but I have a secret weapon.
I can’t say what it is, because she’ll read this and know.
So she took a nap today, unusual for her, and I woke her up in time for a late lunch. We watched a football game from Auburn’s 2010 season, the Ole Miss game. The Tigers are 9-0 after that game. Big things could happen for this team. We’ll have to keep watching to see how they fare. But we also broke my DVD player.
I bought it probably seven years ago. I’m a late adopter on entertainment tech. Because I am cheap I was trying to not talk myself into getting one, but a colleague pointed out that it’d work for a while. And, he said, if it broke, I’d be out less than 50 bucks. Think of all the discs you could watch in the meantime!
They weren’t especially expensive even then. But I was thinking about that tonight as I took off the cover and removed the metal casing that tops the disc tray. I’d read extensively — OK, two websites — that guided me through the process of fixing your DVD player. Cheap.
After removing three screws you find yourself at the laser radiation warning. Three more screws and you’re at the center of the component. This is the most accessible technology you take for granted in your entertainment center.
First you make sure the lens apparatus is moving well. That part of the equipment sits on two rails that move it from a resting position to the reading position. Everything seemed to be in working order there. You can also clean the lens. I dug out the rubbing alcohol and dabbed at the thing with a Q-tip.
I took a whiff of the alcohol, and instantly flashed back to 8th grade biology. We had to create an insect collection, and that was the preferred method of killing the critters. Some things stick with you, like trying to center a pin into the world’s tiniest thorax, and the smell of alcohol that lingered long after the grades were handed down by the teacher.
So I cleaned, re-covered, plugged in and listened to the DVD player. Click. Click. Click. The screen said “Disc Error.” It was an incredibly cold message. What do you expect for a cheap Emerson product?
I did it all again. Click. Click. Click. No change. The websites said the next thing to do is junk it and go buy a new one. The laser is too expensive to replace, they say.
I can get a new cheap DVD player at the big blue box store for $35.
We visited the pool this evening, just to dip our toes before the rains came:
We have a neighborhood pool and it is within walking distance of our house. I’ve managed to average getting in the pool twice a year since we’ve lived here. I’m no better this year, somehow. But if I hop in every night for the next week — and if I do laps — I might sleep very well.
11
Aug 12
Pi Day
Yesterday was our Pi Day anniversary. At a Pie Day not too long after we got married, The Yankee, Brian and I figured out when our Pi Day would be. As of today we’ve been married 3.14 years.
Pie is very important. That’s how I got her to go out with me the first time.
“Want to grab a late lunch? It’s Friday. Friday’s Pie Day.”
It was something a server at Johnny Ray’s, one of the big, local barbecue chains, had said a few weeks before. It was sound logic that day — the table of people I was with all had pie. And it worked on her, too. I blurted it out and took The Yankee to Jim ‘n’ Nick’s, one of the other chains, where we have enjoyed the majority of our Pie Days over the years. Pie is very important.
(Note the sign in the background.)
Here’s to the next Pi Day, sometime in the fall of 2015.
