I want one of these in the back yard.

 

 

Tried to buy a new pair of shoes: same color (brown), same model, same shoe store. They keep a record of the shoes that I buy. They were not is stock. A couple of months later they called to tell me that because of supply chain issues it would probably be three more months before they would be there. Probably moldering on a ship outside the Port of Los Angeles.

I repaired the shoes I have, thread and glue: still comfortable.

I waited.

Then came another call. Nope, production had been stopped to manufacture other shoes. I bought the same model, a half size bigger, and in black (they had none in brown), in stock (probably not a popular item in black). A half size bigger, it still fit well enough. Black does not wear well for everyday use, but alright.

The upshot is I did not own a black belt, had to buy one.

After a Long and Unproductive Saturday

Price Pfister spout o-rings - 2 ea., o-ring, metric size 128, in buna-n or viton (most any material will do in this service)

After a long and unproductive Saturday of looking for Price Pfister kitchen faucet repair parts: calling, internet searching, and driving; I called it quits. I was many miles from home. The big box stores are a wonderful place, so much to choose from; but the several I visited yielded no part. They are good generalists as an institution but lousy on the specifics. I got exceptional service from a local auto parts store trying to match to parts they had in inventory, but alas, it did not work.

What I needed were two o-rings. O-rings that sealed the swiveling spout to the rest of the fixture. I considered replacing the entire faucet, which would have been a better use of my time but as my time was free and my sense stingy clung to me, I did not. So the day was gone and I went home.

The following week I measured the o-rings when I was close to my calipers and steel rule, educated myself in the use and variety of o-rings, and went to a local industrial supply house. They had a minimum transaction charge, which was less than I might have paid had I been able to mail order, but was well above what they would charged for the parts. I made a contribution to the till and enough for a coke to cover their trouble and left happy and in less than five minutes.

The fit was fabulous. Back at the job I was finished within minutes of my arrival. On another day my advise on a paying job would have been “Buy a new faucet.”

Consciousness is an Exquisite Liar

Consciousness is an exquisite liar. “I am real, the essences and the bloom of substance, all the florid details and the concrete unchanging substance and truths of the world come universe.”, and then behind the curtain - the curtain is discovered, the curtain so pervasive, so innocuous, so dead plain, so ever present it is invisible and opaque except... can  be seen an alien world so weird, so bizarre it begs credibility. Consciousness is slyly cunning, telling us what we want to hear, reassuring our confidence, not out of malice, or greed, or consideration of our being but out of plain steely economy. But, what is the ebb and flow of the minutia out which all things are.

I know, I know.

I know there are more important things to pursue, what with the war in Syria, global warming, … But:

"Do the due diligence" has emerged out of the jungle of legal jargon to infect the language of every day business.  Where diligence would have once been more than adequate, it has become chic, linguistically muscular and maybe even heroic to replace that with ‘due diligence’ and when possible inflate that to ‘do the due diligence’.

From a recent memo:

Because of that, members of the media do their due diligence to follow the process and reach out to many people attempting to get comments.

How it might be rewritten:

Because of that, members of the media are diligent when following the process and reaching out to many people attempting to get comments.

It is a sort of linguistic brinkmanship when the ordinary is ignored and every instance is an occasion for the strongest possible terms, might as well strike the singular use of diligence from the language. We should run this, objection to the misuse, up the flag pole and see who salutes. D.C.

Seventeen Dollar Dinner

 

It was a very good dinner but in a world where a huge portion live on two dollars a day this might seem excessive.

 
 My son and I were clearing out the house, part of the estate of a relative, and I remarked; “If this had been Bangladesh there wouldn’t be enough left to haul away.” This is all going to the land fill. There are things that are being recycled: paper, fabric, clothing, and house hold goods, but what is here is one of two forty cubic yard dumpster, and these dumpster will not hold it all. There is enough to fill another. This house is a modest two bedroom house: kitchen, dining room, one bath and living room with a basement built in mid twentieth century.

My remark about Bangladesh may have in a modest way been flip, but it is remarkable how much we can afford to bury.

think of it as carbon sequestration

per capita energy used: 2 or 400, the range of energy use among societies

good times on a sinking ship (changing planet) D.C.

The Virtual Conveyor

  The Virtual Conveyor

Our lives move on: naturally, slowly, quickly. The world stands still and we are dragged by the currents. Anything that we keep, we cling to. Memory is a hazard: to remember anything that is beyond the horizon, out of sight.

two cars up on blocks in the yard, two memories...

Alcohol is poison but in small enough quantities it only kills the things we need dead.

We need hope even if it requires us to ignore the facts. D.C.