The Next Day...

Indy Meetupdate, 23:44:00 later, anyway:

We're doing two. One small gathering this weekend, Sunday afternoon, 3:00 pm, Broadripple Brewpub. All bloggers and blogreaders invited!

The other one will be in June on a date and time TBD.

Indy Meetup, More

How does 11 May sound? Looks like it is either that or the 4th. (There's a faint possibility I could be involved in Big Doings at the Skunk Works 4 May, but it should be am-ish if it happens at all).

Geesh, it's late.

You Go Grrl!

Barbie dolls are destroying Iran! Hoorray! Hurrah! Man, that'll pull our irons outta the fire.

...Just wait'll we start settin' up underground pork barbeque joints! An' American football games, too.

Indy Meetup

Somehow I have been declared Social Secretary of the Indy Meetup; just ask Tam.

Okay. It'll be on a Sunday afternoon or evening; the Skunk Works has me workin' Saturdays tfn.

Where?
Our choices include Broad Ripple Brewpub, Binkleys and The Aristocrat. I'm open to suggestions.

Neti, Neti, Nettttttie

Tam doesn't know it yet but, having awakened this morning to a degree of sinus blockage of which good taste bars further description, I went into the kitchen and semi-quietly used a field-expedient neti pot. (Improvised using a one-person teapot 'cos my real neti pot was packed up neatly last Fall and has not been seen or heard from since).

Guess who's going to be innocently putting that thing in the dishwasher later? --Hey, I rinsed it out with boiling water.

Heh heh heh. Having a sister my own age is way kewl.

Four Rules

There are four rules for safe gun-handling. Four. They all count, all the time.

We are all likely to violate one of them at least once. When ya do so, take yer correction and fly right. Whinging that, "It ain't loaded," does not count; even empty, it's loaded, 'cos you are no more perfect than anyone else. That goes double if someone handed it to ya an' you failed to check.

Hey, I know: let's ask the man who owns a gun store!

Remember:
1. All guns are always loaded.
2. Keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to shoot.
3. Never let the muzzle cover anything you are not willing to destroy.
4. Know your target, what's behind it, and what's next to it.

And once you've reached the point where you pick up an electric drillmotor* and your finger goes unthinkingly along the frame instead of onto the trigger? Don't relax; work harder on maintaining conscious awareness of what you are doing.

Hat tip to Say Uncle.
____________________________
* I do not care how the hoi polloi say it, "drills" are the twisty-pointy things you put in the chuck of a hand drill -- powered or not -- or a drill press or even the tailstock of a lathe. Except when they are straight-flute types, but that's another subject. "Bits" have truncated tetrahedral shanks that fit braces or hexagonal ones that fit drivers/bitholders or cylindrical D-and-notch ones that fit Yankee screwdrivers, except for some antique types that use other tricks. Really. "Drill bit" is a horrid, horrid phrase that should be left out to rust.

Words

Tam and I hit Boogie Burger as a weekend treat, then walked a quarter-mile down the Central Canal Towpath, from the start, past the turtle-threatening statue (I can't find any photos -- I shall snap one and post it, this construction cannot adequately be described), across the bowstring truss footbridge and back up Westfield boulevard to my car; a nice way to settle dinner, a chance for Tam to have a smoke and, well, it is Springtime, an encounter with small flying insects. Quite a few of them in the parking lot, and Tam dashed across to the car.

When I got in, reached over and unlocked the door, she climbed in and slammed it, saying, "I don't want any bugs to get in the car, I already inhaled some buggery!"

Long mutual what-did-I-just-hear/say look followed immediately by my "I call blog!"

Y'know, Broad Ripple's artsy and tolerant, but I really doubt there was any chance of that.

Working and Riding

Working today, thanks to some ongoing super-duper sekrit skunk-workery. Working the next several Saturdays, in fact, primary election week excluded. This is how we can know It Is Important. It's also a nice supplement to my income.

I'll still have a two-day weekend this time 'round thanks to our arcane vacation year. The "year" runs from the first of May to the last of April (something about a 500-mile race of some sort; used to be, none of us Skunk Workers could take any time off in May, ever) and I have about a day left to use up or lose, so it's, "Goodbye blue Monday!" ...After that, the six-day-week grind settles in. Oh well, every other Friday they hand me a nice chunk o'change for it.


I was able to ride every day this week, but got spooked by the forecast Wednesday and drove instead. Nice weather all day, of course. Then lit out for the department store (I was out of Lancome Dual-Finish Powder, which my skin loves) that evening on two wheels just in time to return home in a pouring rain. ...It turns out windscreens are not the best idea when it's raining solid sheets of water, by the way. Now I know!

Thank A Soldier

Thank several. Thank 'em all! Here's how. It's a simple sign gesture -- a word without sound.

As shy mumbler, this appeals to me greatly.

Thanks to Ride Fast!

Happy Birthday, Senatore Marconi

Born to wealth -- ever hear of Jameson's Irish Whiskey? The founder was his great-grandfather -- there was no particular reason for Guglielmo Marconi to ever actually do anything and as a child, he seemed headed for a life of genteel idleness; he wasn't much of a student, apart from a mild interest in physics and science generally.

That changed in 1894, when Heinrich Hertz died young. Hertz had remarked that his work with Maxwell's predicted electromagnetic radiation was "of no use whatsoever."

Young Marconi, not quite 20 years old, read the obits and was of a different opinion. In the later 1890s, it was "steamboat time" for wireless; all the components and basic notions were there for a working system, and somebody was going to be first.

He set to work in his attic and backyard and, eventually, had a working system. So much for the "idle rich!"

Marconi first approached the Italian government, patriotically feeling that the advantage such an advance in communications conferred should go to his own country. They turned him down -- quite flatly, by some accounts. He headed for Britain and the rest, as they say, is history.

There is no lack of controversy; Marconi was not an original researcher, rather a man who could discern what components of the state of the art were useful in a working system and get them to function together. Even the company he went on to found had a reputation for technological conservatism. And when Italy embraced the successful inventor of radio, his enthusiastic response included open support of the Fascists; Benny the Moose was his best man at his second marriage and designed his tomb when he died in 1937.

Still, the man who could put Maxwell's theories to work had admirable qualities as well as faults. His influence on subsequent major players in the radio business -- notably, RCA's David Sarnoff -- set the style and tone of the technology for decades to follow.

So, happy birthday, Senatore.

Yum, Flan!

Homemade, too. That is all.

Book Meme

Blame Squeaky.

The secondary terminal marked G of the transformer is connected to the grid of the first amplifying tube. The other secondary terminal marked F- is connected to the negative three-volt terminal of the "C" battery, so as to operate the tube on the steepest part of its characteristic curve as well as to conserve "B" battery. Note: The correct value of bias voltage for a particular tube is usually furnished by the manufacturer.

--George E. Sterling, The Radio Manual, second ed., 1929

A perfectly delightful book, by the way, chock-full of photos and drawings, with chapters for every phase of the radio art as it was known at the time.

Meme rules:

1. Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. No cheating!
   
2. Find page 123.
   
3. Find the first five sentences.
   
4. Post the next three sentences.
   
5. Tag five people.

Okay, the next five bloggers who read this? Consider yourself tagged. Honor system. Leave a reply (with link or URL) to keep count.