Category: Uncategorized

The day after I got to Salt Lake City we drove about 4 hours down to Bryce Canyon National Park. This park is famous for its “hoodoos” which are spires of eroded rock sitting in rows, most famously in the “amphitheater” area. We stayed near the old lodge in the park (inside the park they have the lodge, cabins (single or duplex), and two “motels,” so the motel was all they had left by the time I made reservations and we were probably lucky to get that because the town outside the park is pretty junky) which was just a short walk from the amphitheater.

Continue reading “Bryce Canyon”

Last year, I wound up in an eBay dispute with a seller who was eventually banned (read it here). This time I was looking for some heavy duty leads for my voltmeter (really a Digital Multimeter or DMM). The problem is I was getting bad readings of amps on my voltage meter while measuring the current draw of a flashlight. After comparing the result to a friend’s DMM, I knew mine was off. His meter had thick leads and the wire said 18AWG on them. If I used his leads on my meter, I got more reasonable results. The leads on my other DMM (which doesn’t measure current) say 26AWG and look similar to the ones on the DMM that measures amps. 18 gauge wire is 1.024mm thick while 26 gauge wire is only 0.405mm thick. But the area of the 18 gauge wire is 6 times greater. Therefore the resistance in the skinnier wire is 6 times more than in the thicker wire and that is what was messing up the readings.

So I went looking for leads. After doing some searching I found two sources: eBay and DealExtreme (the place I buy a lot of flashlights). Both sets looked identical, with gray probes described as 10 Amp leads.

Continue reading “eBay Dispute Avoided”

I think Carol told me that some dogs like green beans. Austin has been eating grass lately, so I figured maybe some green vegetables would do him good. I was at the grocery store and they had Green Giant green beans on sale.They had “kitchen sliced” (1/2 inch cut) green beans, french style (kind of shredded, those French really know how to get the most of their canned green beans!), and eventually I found the regular old cut green beans. They are all the same vegetable! They are just cut differently. Why are so many types of green beans necessary? Then they also had low sodium green beans, but I’m thinking Austin would appreciate the salt.

It turns out Austin isn’t crazy about green beans and Katie, of course, will have nothing to do with them. Austin still has a couple of favorite patches of crab grass that he will graze on during walks.

Last year when Jeb and I went to Six Flags we were able to ride most of the rides with fairly short lines until after lunch, but we still got in everything we wanted and maybe then some. This year Bob, Andrew, and David wanted to go. Figuring that it wouldn’t be as crowded during the week, they picked Wednesday. I bought tickets online with Bob’s credit card and printed them out and then met at one of my work’s branch offices out that way so I wouldn’t have to pay parking and they wouldn’t have to come pick me up. The plan was to meet at 10:00 and we met that within a few minutes, which means Bob did a great job of getting the boys moving first thing in the morning. We got to the park and in the front gate at about 10:20, which was fine since the park wouldn’t even open officially until 10:30. As we sweltered in the sun waiting to get entrance to the rest of the park, I said “Man, it’s going to be hot today.” I eventually said this so many times that Bob had to tell me “You’re not helping.” Everybody already had sunscreen on and I had drunk a big cup of water on the way out, so our first ride we took was to the bathroom (no line!).

Continue reading “Six Flags Strikes Back”

This morning I went to the post office to get 2 stamps for my last two letters to Nicole before she leaves her site. My post office isn’t open on Saturdays (they’ve never been open on Saturdays, but I’m sure they don’t have the budget for it), so the only time I can get stamps is first thing in the morning on my way to work, though I have to be a little late to work since the post office doesn’t open until 8:30. I went in this morning and spent 15 minutes in line, stuck behind one guy with 2 packages and then a woman signing up for a P.O. box. I was still third in line and they lady was still doing the paperwork for her P.O. box when I gave up. They only had one register open, probably because of budget cuts. I have been there before when they had more than one register open. To his credit, the guy at that register is one of the nicest people ever, but they need to open more registers or provide some kind of vending machine for basic stuff like stamps. But they did away with the vending machines years ago, no doubt to cut costs. I liked the vending machines because they were open any time and I could make a big dent in my supply of spare change buying $8 worth of stamps. But the post office has now cut their budget so much that they really are no longer effective, at least in terms of having a store front. Anyway, this is the second time out of the last few visits where the time I was spending in line made no sense relative to what I was getting and I wound up leaving. So I will just e-mail until she comes back. I can get regular stamps at the grocery store and otherwise can hopefully avoid the post office.