Year: 2011

The Hunting Party

Two hunters chartered a plane to fly them to Canada, to hunt moose, and they managed to bag six.

As they were loading the plane to return, the pilot said the plane could take only four moose.

The two hunters objected strongly. “Last year we shot six. The pilot let us take them all, and he had the same plane as yours.”

Reluctantly, the pilot gave in and all six were loaded.

However, even on full power, the little plane couldn’t handle the load and went down.

Somehow, surrounded by all the moose bodies, both hunters survived the crash.

After climbing out of the wreckage, one asked the other, “Any idea where we are?”

He replied, “I think we’re pretty close to where we crashed last year.”

Randomness

Here at the Valve Store(tm) we play a Safety Bingo game. Each week day a new number is “called” and the idea is that when each employee checks for the number he or she will be reminded to be safe.

Normally bingo numbers are chosen by computer or the old fashioned way by a ball dropping out of a barrel, but here, the company nurse, AKA: The Bingo Coordinator, uses a deck of cards.

I don’t know how long this has been going on, I just noticed it with the current game (only because it started on a Monday), but a random number from a particular row is always called on a particular day (on Monday it is B, Tuesday is I, Wednesday it’s an N, etc.)

So my question is, how less random is that than calling a number from all 75 at once?

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 960

AstroGnome

I’m going on a slight papercraft kick these next few days. There is a good reason and I will share it with you later, so just hold on to your britches. Here is a link to yesterday’s Darth Vader and today’s AstroGnome if you are interested.

House has jumped the shark, I can’t pinpoint exactly when, but it has a lot to do with the whole Huddy thing. Castle has also jumped the shark or should I say Nuking the Fridge and I can pinpoint when that happened. The take off for the jump was last week in Part 1 when our “heroes,” instead of solving the usual MOTW (Murder of the Week), are tasked with saving New York from a dirty bomb, complete with a big bright red digital countdown clock (probably purchased from ACME.) The jump’s landing occurred in Part 2 this week when Castle and Beckett* had not just one, but two, near death experiences where they could have professed their mutual love for one another, but didn’t.

* There really should be a cute abbreviation for this relationship, but I can’t seem to find one on the net. Maybe because when you combine their last names you come up with Caskett which is not really romantic. Well, let’s try it with first names, Rickate. Hmm, sounds like rickets. Guess maybe that is why there isn’t one…

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 958

Darth Monday

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Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 958

Dam

Donna and I piled into Joan’s car this morning and drove back to up to the Modoc Trail in McCormick County to find the one that got away last weekend. We had received an unsolicited hint from the CO after he read our DNF log. We might have just chalked this cache up to a loss and moved on, but this is the first stage of a multi with about 16 stages that takes you on a tour all around the state of South Carolina. We figure we have lived here long enough that just maybe it is time for us to explore the place a bit and see what this state has to offer.*

*Imagine this sentence rendered in the sarcasm font.

The hint turned out to be no help because it told us to look somewhere we had already looked, but we had to give it try anyway. Seeing as we drove all that way and came up empty handed we tried a couple more caches over by Thurmond Dam. The first one we looked for was listed as kid friendly, so we figured we shouldn’t have any trouble with it. Wrong, apparently it was adult un-friendly as we came up empty handed.

There was one other cache, a short three stage multi, that was also on the South Carolina side of the base of the dam. Stage 1 was easy, but at stage two you needed to get a date that was to be found on top of a stone column for the coords for Stage 3. Unfortunately there was no plaque on top, just a metal lid with a padlock covering the column. We got the north coordinates by counting the flood gates, but still needed the two digits of a day in July 1980 to add to the last three digits in the Stage 1 west coordinates to get the final stage’s west coords. Being patriotic Americans we started by plugging in the number generated by using July 4, 1980. That took us to the middle of the parking area for a boat ramp. Hmmm, no good. So I created a waypoint for the first of July and then another for the 31st. Because we had the north coordinates the cache had to lie somewhere on a line between July 1st’s waypoint and the 31st’s waypoint. Knowing that, and reading the clue, it allowed us to make the find, with Joan making the actual grab. Time constraints sent us home after this so we could up our Find/DNF ratio.

This afternoon the Emperor got a transfusion and had his socks swapped with his gloves (oils change and tire rotation.)

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 956

Summer’s Here

Tomorrow it is going to be 81° and on Monday even warmer at 83°.

Surprise, surprise, we ate breakfast at Dunkin Donuts and then did some geocaching. The real surprise was that we didn’t roll out of bed until 8 o’clock. And that made DD quite busy, but we did luck out by just missing one onslaught of customers and ended up right ahead of another. While we dined, we read in the Aiken Standard about a local nominee for the World’s Stupidest Criminal – Robbing A Bank Is Thirsty Work and the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal reviewed one of the 16 contenders for the Bogardus’s new car – Hyundai Elantra by comparing it to the new 2012 Ford Focus (which will now be added to the list replacing the previous generation’s coupe).

Started down, went up, went down, back up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 956

Spring Is On The Horizon


Sumo by PaperTom

When I was growing up in Connecticut when you saw a robin in your yard that meant spring was on its way. Here in Aiken that doesn’t work so well, I don’t think the robins ever go away here. Today I saw three signs that Punxsutawney Phil was correct in his prediction that spring is just around the corner.

The first thing I noticed that portends spring, even though we are still nearly a month from the vernal equinox, was a box of Girl Scout cookies on someones desk. Number two was the Bradford Pear tree outside the front door of the Valve Store(tm) was starting to bloom and lastly, and most troublesome, was that there was a light coating of yellow pine pollen covering the exterior of the Emperor when I parked it in the garage this evening.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 952