Great customer service...

Great customer service...  Last week I wrote about the maiden voyage of my sprayer, which broke almost immediately because I stupidly forgot to tighten some bolts.  I had an amazingly easy and short phone conversation with their technical support people, who promised to send me the part I needed right away.  To my surprise, even after I told them the breakage was my own fault, they said there was no charge – they'd call it a warranty part replacement.

While I was away, the package with the parts I needed arrived, exactly as promised.  But it was actually more than I needed: they sent not only the parts that I needed, but a complete second set of those same parts as well.  A little hand-written note said: “Just in case it breaks again!”

I'm going to call that extraordinary customer service, and with that I will name the company: Chapin, purchased through Amazon.  I see that the price has gone up a bit since I bought mine last month.

I have very little experience actually using the machine.  It appears to be well designed and constructed, and it worked well once I got it assembled.  Well, partially assembled – but I'll be sure to tighten those bolts this time!

Paradise in bloom...

Paradise in bloom...  Some photos of things in bloom around our home in Paradise right now:

Let the flooring commence!

Let the flooring commence!  Late last week the painters finished everything they wanted to do before the new flooring went in.  This week the wood was delivered so that it could acclimate to our home's humidity.  There are great piles of it all over the place in the house!  Tomorrow the tile gets delivered.  Today the floorers are starting the installation, first of hickory flooring in the basement, in the area that will become my office.  Some photos:

Some hickory and the guide line

Piles of wood everywhere!

A pile of hickory

A pile of oak in the dining room

Oak in every room upstairs

Closeup of the oak

Even more oak!

I hope our cats never learn how to do this!

I hope our cats never learn how to do this!

The cost of light...

The cost of light...  We live in amazing times...

Economics and war...

Economics and war...  An interesting summary of WWII.  Asymmetric warfare (e.g., terrorism) completely upends this conventional analysis...

Dolly Sods...

Dolly Sods...  Here are some other photos I took in the area, on the several short hikes I took on Monday.  The area has changed enormously from the last time I was there (in the '60s).  My overwhelming impression was of increased wealth: the area was desperately poor back then; now it looks middle-class and better, with some areas even looking like an upscale resort.  Even the wild areas, including the sods (meadows) themselves have changed dramatically.  A local expert told me that's because of two things: aggressive fire control (fires used to be allowed to burn themselves out) and the cessation of cattle grazing.  Those two events have allowed the forests to start encroaching on the sods, to the point where 45 years later they bear scant resemblance to my memories of them.  On the other hand, the azaleas and other native plants seem to be thriving.

The photos below are from a short hike in Canaan Valley State Park, another short hike near the southern end of Dolly Sods, and a longer hike along Bear Rocks trail at the northern end of Dolly Sods.  That last hike had lots of azaleas, a beautiful stream, and even some big ants' nests (three photos of them below)...