Barn: all trussed up and nowhere to go!

Barn: all trussed up and nowhere to go!  All the trusses on the sides of the barn are up, and they've started on the fascia and the boards that keep the trusses from twisting.  I'm amazed how quickly they could put all those trusses up.  It was a three man team for most of the day (four briefly), and they worked together like a choreographed dance team.  They may get to the center set of trusses as early as tomorrow.  Once those are up, it's going to look like a barn!

Some praiseworthy customer service...

Some praiseworthy customer service...  Last week I installed a lighted magnifying mirror for Debbie, in our new bathroom.  All went well until I got to the very last step: attaching the mirror to to the mounting bracket.  There should have been three teensy little machine screws to attach it, but there were only two.  Worse: the screws were an oddball metric size, and were finished to match the mirror – there's no way I'd find one in a hardware store.

Dang.

So I made the dreaded call to Zadro's customer service number.  If Zadro's was a Utah company, I wouldn't be dreading it – as getting good service here is almost a certainty.  But Zadro's is in Huntington Beach, California – so there was no telling what I'd run into.  Hence the dread.

But as you can guess from the intro, I was in for a pleasant surprise.  First, a nice young lady took my report, then said she'd get a replacement right out to me.  She took my address and promised it would go out right away.  That was this past Friday.  In this morning's mail was an envelope from Zadro's, and in it was the promised part.  The right part, too!  Five minutes later, the mirror installation was complete.  It's a very nice mirror

Kudos, Zadro's, for a fine example of the right way to do customer service...

Fun with microscopes...

Fun with microscopes...  I've long wanted a decent low-powered microscope, the kind with stereo eyepieces, a camera port, and 2x to 100x power.  I started watching out for a good deal on one, and just last week one popped up on Amazon: an AmScope trinocular model, with powers from 3.5x to 120x – almost exactly what I wanted, and at a great price.  So I got it.

Just now I was playing around with the camera option, and for your delectation I have three photos for you.  The first two are of a fly zapped by our high-voltage, thunderclap-producing fly zapper.  When I first picked this guy up, there was still a little smoke swirling up from it, and various parts are missing.  But ... he's not moving any more :)  The last photo is a sliver of oak flooring trimmed off when the flooring guys were installing our floor.  The characteristic oak pores (this is end on) look like craters on the moon...

Barn: the trusses begin...

Barn: the trusses begin...  The builders arrived bright and early this morning, and went right to work on the trusses that go on either side of our barn.  One guy put up hangers (left photo below) for the inside end of the trusses (the end closest to me when I made the right photo below, showing theses trusses).

Teak shower bench...

Teak shower bench ... with a dumb design flaw.  But it's fixed now!

We were originally planning to have a granite shower seat in one corner of our new shower.  However, after doing some reading on the challenges with granite – and its annoying habit of freezing your tushy off if you sit on it – I decided against that.  But we still wanted a seat in our shower.  I remembered a visit we once made to Ventana, on California's Big Sur coast, and how much we liked the shower there.  It was all rock, with a teak bench – so I started looking and found the one above.  Except for one little problem, I love that bench.

You can see the problem in the left-hand photo below.  The cross-members that hold the seat on exactly match two of the rows of square holes (you can see one of these: the second row of holes from the top) – and when I take a shower, they fill up with water.  That water then just sits there for hours, until it soaks into the wood.  That's not good for the long-term condition of the bench.

Upon investigating, I discovered that the edge of the cross-member, on the outside edge (top in the photos) extended just 1/10" or less past the edge of the hole.  That gave me an opportunity to drill some nearly hidden short holes at a 45° angle to provide a drain.  This proved to be very easy to do (right hand photo below), and in short order I had the problem fixed.  Yay!

Commute times...

Commute times ... by zip code, on an interactive map.  This map is full of surprises for me, but I think I figured out that most of the surprises are bedroom communities with a long commute to where the jobs are...

When I first listened to this video...

When I first listened to this video ... I thought it must be a hoax.  No way could a human vocal tract do this!  But then I did a little research, and there is considerable material out there on the phenomenon of polyphonic singing (look toward the bottom of this article, or these search results).

Speechless, I am...

Top 10 giving states...

Top 10 giving states...  This is charity as a percentage of income:

Here are the top 10 most generous states:

1. Utah: 6.6 percent giving rate
2. Mississippi: 5.0 percent
3. Alabama: 4.8 percent
4. Tennessee: 4.5 percent
5. Georgia: 4.2 percent
6. South Carolina: 4.1 percent
7. Idaho: 4.0 percent
8. Oklahoma: 3.9 percent
9. Arkansas: 3.9 percent
10. North Carolina: 3.6 percent

The original article I spotted this in doesn't mention it, but there's also a strong correlation between generosity in charity and which presidential candidate the state voted for in 2012.  Follow the first link to see that.  I'll bet you can guess how this works out :)

Some pithy posters...

Some pithy posters...  Via reader Jim M.:

Interesting political development...

Interesting political development...  In the race for the Kansas senate, an independent (Greg Orman) is substantially leading the incumbent (Pat Roberts).  Roberts is Republican in a state that hasn't elected a Democrat for senator for a long, long time – and the conventional wisdom was that he was a shoe-in for this election cycle.

What I find interesting about this is that Orman appears to be genuinely independent: a politician without any party affiliation, affection, or even influence.  He's got his own views on a wide variety of topics, and they don't fit well with either party's platform.  He's a wealthy businessman, and self-funding (so doesn't need any party money).  His positions are more in conflict with my own than in agreement, but he does appear to be more interested in solving problems than in any particular ideology. 

This strikes me as much closer to the Founding Father's ideas about “citizen government” than the party system we have today.  I'm not sure what a Senate full of a diverse group of truly independent thinkers would be like, but I'm pretty sure I'd like it better than the current mess.

But then, I guess that's a pretty low bar, isn't it?

Curiosity aids learning...

Curiosity aids learning...  At first I thought this article was just confirming the obvious: that curiosity motivates people to learn.  Well, duh!  But they're actually showing something more: that learning while curious leads to greater retention.  There's some speculation about why that should be, but it's just speculation based on blood flow observed in various sections of the brain.  That's a widely used technique, but nobody is really sure that's any more accurate or informative than phrenology...