You know you want one

This may be the only chance you get to buy a baritone rothphone.

Pirates!

Here’s a puzzle I just came across; I think I’ve seen it before but I don’t remember the answer:
You have five pirates, ranked from 5 to 1 in descending order. The top pirate has the right to propose how 100 gold coins should be divided among them. But the others get to vote on his [...]

Memorial Day weakened

I stayed home Thursday and Friday with a cold, which seemed to be going away over the weekend, but late Saturday either it or my usual spring pollen allergy, or both, hit me with a double whammy. Sunday I was pretty much functional until evening when the congestion and coughing got bad again. Yesterday was [...]

Lower and deeper

Today we had the septic tank uncovered and pumped. Then we had the septic tank uncovered and pumped.
It’s presumably the first time this has been done. Heather’s grandfather, Marty, was of the old school of thought that a good septic tank never needs pumping. We being of a different mindset decided this should be, if [...]

Lo, I am become Madge

At a yard sale yesterday I picked up this, despite its being broken:

It was too cute not to take it, especially given the price of $2.
It looks like the battery (or the charging circuit) is shot, but if plugged in it actually boots into Windows 98.

Then it complains it can’t write to the C drive.
Anyway, [...]

You may now begin screaming

I recently downloaded a copy of Graphviz for Mac OS X and soon found myself producing this directed graph of word pairs from a certain work of pop culture.

Garden variety post

Yikes, the grass is growing fast. I mowed it again. Except the front lawn which is still littered with a gazillion pounds of diced shrubbery.
I got some climbing strings up for the hops, using a new and improved two-tripod system. Which has only fallen over once so far.
We planted a Sops of Wine apple tree [...]

Yellow and purple

Double belt graduation tonight: Kenny’s purple, my yellow. Photos here, video clips here. (Sorry one of the videos is sideways for now — I’ll look for a way to rotate it.)

The chop

This past weekend I got both lawnmowers started.
I knew I’d have to at least recharge the battery in the Deere rider, so I started with the Yard Man push mower. Changed the oil, added gas, pushed the bulb a few times, pulled the cord, and it started. I love that mower. Had it since about [...]

Ed Parker

A bit more on Ed Parker, one of my karate ancestors.
Besides the Tracys, another of Parker’s students was a guy named Elvis Presley. Al Tracy says Presley started studying karate while in the Army, continuing after his army stint with various instructors until he met Parker [not, to my knowledge, any relation to "Colonel" [...]