Evelyn and I completed two of our bicycling
goals for the year: to ride 300 miles this
season, and to double Evelyn’s odometer of miles
riden before 2008. On our last ride, I helped a
total stranger named Ivy navigate three miles of
unfamiliar bike trails, my good deed for the
day.
We attended a geocaching meetup in our area.
Fifty cachers were there, much more than I was
expecting. I won a "German butter tin" geocache
container in a raffle. Now I just need a place
to hide it. I’ve been geocaching for six years
now, and I’ve not yet hidden a cache. Now I
have a great excuse. Here’s my concept so
far… hide it in a historic industrial site,
name it "Ironmonger" and theme the cache to
metal contents only. Hey locals, know of any
such sites in the area?
I scrounged up this modern replica of a
vintage-styled mechanical piggy bank. Someone
was going to throw it away, with a few cents
still inside it! Like its century-old novelty
predecessors, it’s made of heavy cast iron.
With the press of a lever, a dolphin leaps
forward and tosses the coin in its mouth into a
slot in crest of a tall wave. (This is really
tough to do wih a half dollar!) I was always
interested in these mechanical banks as a kid,
seeing them advertised in mail order catalogs,
and was inspired to build similar devices out of
legos. My favorite lego bank had a hand-wound
drawbridge.
Goodwill finds of late:
- a 1962 childrens’ book on submarine history,
the kind of which whet my lifelong interest in
undersea vehicles since I was nine,
- an LP of military fife and drum music from
the era of the American Revolution,
- and six more 78s including this Alma Gluck
rendition of "Bring Back My Bonnie to Me" from
1919.
The red plastic device is my new external
hard drive. My PC’s hard drive is pushing five
years old, the service life expectancy of
computer components, and so data backup had been
increasingly on my mind. I’ve been really lazy
to back up data, using the only method I had
used before which is buring files to CD. As the
backlog of unarchived files exceeded CD capacity
several times over, I became daunted by the
mushrooming enormity of the task, and have put
off the task until now. I have 40Gb of data I
want to save, and so I went shopping for the
best backup option. I gave the issue way too
much thought (a problem I have all too often),
but decided on an external hard drive. The
smallest one at MicroCenter was 160Gb! Instead
of backing up just My Documents, I was able to
backup my entire used portion of my C: drive. I
also replaced my seven-year-old-mouse. This
whole experience has taught me that my knowledge
of computers is firmly rooted in 2003.
We have discovered a delicious challah
recipe. Challah is my definition of the perfect
bread… soft, flaky, thick-textured, and great
for dipping. I can’t get enough of it.
L’shanah tovah!
Political Slogan of the Day: We
cannot afford this government.
Nifty Wikipedia Thing: Ictineo II
Movies I’ve Seen:
The Princess and the Pirate (1944) ~ corny
one-liners distract from better comedy
Duel in the Sun (1946) ~ tragic love
triangle presented magnanimously
The Searchers (1956) ~ expect no sympathy
for Indians
The Gamers: Dorkness Rising (2008) ~ same
comedy, better drama, and ninjas!
What I’m Reading:
"Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand (66.3%)
"Dave Barry Is Not Making This Up" by Dave
Barry
The Ryanarium 