Reading “Ghost Rider” by Neil Peart. He notes that the Bowen family owns 250,000 acres in Belize, and the Coca-Cola bottling rights for the whole country, and have been around for seven or eight generations. This would be interesting to investigate further some day.
All posts by rbowen
Sleeping city
At the jeep dealer at 7 this morning for some service. Oil change. Headlight. Rubber bumper on the hood mysteriously missing. And the tach and speedometer occasionally drop out for no apparent reason.
I waited until 8, then walked the half mile or so over to the Idle Hour Barber Shop, only to find it still closed. What is it with this city? Nothing opens until 9 or 10 (except coffee shops and jeep dealers, apparently) and everything is closed by 8 or 9 pm. This is particularly frustrating on Saturdays, when time is so precious, but nothing opens until 10. Of course this encourages creativity.
Rosemont Grenache/Shiraz/Mourvedre
Alec Saunders mentioned the Rosemont Grenache Shiraz Mourvèdre.. Somehow, I’ve missed that one, althoug it sounds like *exactly* the sort of thing that I would like. Thanks, Alec.
Blogshares strangeness
This seems to be taking things a little too literally, but I can play along, I suppose. Alec Saungers is paying folks (blogshares money, that is) to link to his blog and drive his share price up. Well, perhaps it will work both ways.
Employment and geocaching
So, it appears that I am now semi-actively looking for employment. Although running my company is what I really want to to be doing, training seems to be a pretty hard sell in this economy, particularly when we are so specialized. While I am deeply frustrated about this, I need to acquire an actual income, so that I can pay bills and stuff. I think I made less last year than any year since grad school. And my expenses were substantially higher. Leaving me wondering why I don’t have tens of thousands of dollars saved up from previous years.
So, before I descend any further into self-pity, I should mention that I found THREE geocaches this weekend, two of which I had looked for at least three times before with no success. Just goes to show that life really is good after all – you just have to know where to focus your attention.
Camp Nelson
I went out to visit Camp Nelson National Cemetery today. Most people that I have spoken to are vaguely aware that it is out there, but have never visited. I was completely unprepared for the impact that the experience would have on me.
There are thousands of men and women buried out there who died to procure and defend our freedom and our freedoms. And thousands of them died without anybody knowing their name. Men who died in the Spanish American war lie beside those that died in Korea, Vietnam, and World War II. Men that I don’t know, with names that clearly came from several continents, died so that I can enjoy my freedoms.
If you have not been out there, I encourage you to visit, and pay your respects to the men and women who sacrificed everything for you.
Royalty check
I got my royalty check today, which is always exciting. I get to see how many copies of my books sold, and rake in the profits.
The check was for $7.09
Hmm. Clearly I should not give up my day job just yet.
Exploding glass
The Rodent’s Burrow: Gelled colloid versus stainless steel
I’m reminded of an experience in college. I had a glass-front stereo cabinet. One day, while I happened to be looking at the cabinet, the glass door shattered. There was no impact, it just shattered. And, to make it more exciting, all the little pieces shattered afterwards. In fact, for nearly an hour, I watched while pieces spontaneously shattered into smaller pieces. Kinda like watching corn pop, only not.
I still don’t really have any clue why that happened, nor have I encountered anyone who has had a similar experience. It was very very bizarre.
UPDATE: Almost 300 comments so far, mostly from people who have experienced this same phenomenon. See especially THIS COMMENT which contains a fairly good explanation of why this happened. Please read it before posting YET ANOTHER comment about how nobody knows why this happens. Plenty of people know.
Another Update: Somehow in my passion to purge spam, I managed to delete the comments from this post. Mea culpa. Summary: glass – particularly tempered glass – sometimes builds up internal stress, and shatters.
I’ve published a static version of the page and comments, from archive.org, HERE , or you can see their version here.
Evil caches
I found a cache today that was truly devious. It took more than an hour to find it, and when I found it, I simply could not believe how evil it was. It humbles me to think of my pathetic attempt to hide caches, when people put this much time and effort into hiding caches and making it a real challenge.
No, of course, I’m not going to tell you, and ruin it for anyone. Sheesh.
In fact, I was leaving, after 45 minutesof looking, when another cacher showed up, so I decided to stick around. One feels slightly less silly wandering around when there’s someone else there wandering around too.
Yet another power outage
Just had a 20 minute power outage, for no apparent reason. And it came back on, with no apparent explanation. Calling the electric company demonstrated that there is now no way to get to speak to a real person, so all I got was that there was a crew on the way out – who never arrived. So I have no idea what that was about. Apparently it was only this building, as all our neighbors had power. This gets very tedious after a while.