davintosh » Fun!

Happy Birthday, Dutch!

dave — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:55:29 +0000

Today marks the 101st anniversary of the day of Ronald Reagan’s birth. Happy Birthday, Dutch!

I get a kick out of his nickname, “Dutch”. My dad and all his brothers were given nicknames by a hired hand when they were kids; the eldest brother was “Abie”, next was “Dutch”, dad was “Swede”, and his little brother was “Runt”. They kept those names for the rest of their lives, and most of their closest friends didn’t even know their real names. Dad said the only person who called him by his real name was his own mother.

Reagan’s nickname came a little earlier than did my dad’s and his brothers’;

Ronald got the name Dutch because when he was born, his father said, he looks just like a Dutchman. He was a big baby, chubby.

I’ve known quite a few Dutchmen; don’t really get how being a chubby baby made him look like a Dutchman, but whatever. Just wanting to wish one of my favorite Presidents a happy birthday. You, sir, are missed.

edit: Interesting side note;

That was the Reagan Quote Of The Day on the Ronald Reagan website when this post first went up a year ago. Ironic, especially considering the parallels between the Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter Administrations. The Obama people keep saying we’re coming out of this recession/depression; while this part of the country hasn’t been as badly affected as others, I’m not getting the same warm fuzzies they’re trying to pass along in regard to the economy. Replacing Obama would go a long way toward instilling confidence in a lot of people though.

A Drive On The Meije

dave — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 05:17:57 +0000

That’s pronounced “my-ya” (except the second syllable in Dutch sounds different.) The Meije is the quaint little road that leads to my sister- and brother-in-law’s dairy farm near Bodegraven in The Netherlands. I became very familiar with the road during our visit there in May this year; very beautiful place.

Sorry for the soundless video; I did add a few comments along the way as I drove, but the camera’s mic didn’t pick it up very well. One of these days I’ll take the time to figure out how to add commentary and a soundtrack, but until then the visual aspect is all we get. Use your imagination!

Meije is also the name of a collection of homes, a church, a school, and a coffee shop that could maybe be called “a village” but I’d stop short of that (if you watch through to the end of the video, Meije is where I stopped recording & turned the car around.) But the road is what most people in the area think of when they hear the word. Le Meije also happens to be a peak in the French Alps, but I doubt the folks that live along the Meije in Holland hear much about that one, nor care much about it.

As roads go, the Meije is about as narrow as they get, with barely enough room for one-way traffic, but it still accommodates two-way traffic. Making matters ~~worse~~ more interesting is the fact that many of the houses have hedges & fences right up to the road, and in other places there is a drop-off one one side or the other with water at the bottom; no good-old-fashioned WPA ditches like you find in South Dakota! When another vehicle approaches from the opposite direction, both drivers have to move as far to the right as possible. Often though you’ll find yourself head-to-head with a truck or tractor, and there just isn’t room for both of you; in those cases it’s customary for the smaller of the two vehicles to back up and into a driveway to allow the other to pass by. I had it happen once, but thankfully, most cars are small and there are lots of driveways and several bump-outs along the way to make it a little easier.

This photo features het Potlood, (the Pencil) which is a water tower that services the village and the homes along the Meije. It’s a well-known landmark that can be seen from many miles distant; very unique bit of architecture!

The area is historically a farming community. Most all of the houses along the road were at one time farm houses, but the area is becoming slightly more urban, or bedroom community-ish; with the popularity of the road, many of the houses are no longer occupied by farmers. Even though the working farms are fewer these days, their presence is unmistakable, evidenced by the “dairy farm” odor… There’s no escaping the smell of cows and their, um, byproducts. It’s no wonder when you consider how many head of cattle inhabit the area and how the the farmers deal with the waste from all of them.

From what I gathered, most of the houses along the Meije were built in the early 1900′s, and display similar construction methods; brick exterior, timber roofs with either tile or reed (thatch) roofing. Many of the buildings, while quaint & charming and all that, aren’t much to write home about on the inside. The soil in the area is very soft, and as a result the foundations of many homes aren’t very stable. Dick & Michelle’s house has wall that has settled considerably, and I saw several other buildings along the road that appeared to have off-kilter walls or the whole house was slightly askew. That doesn’t seem to bother the owners though; they keep their places up as would any fastidious Dutchman. Some are definitely nicer than others, and some residents put a great deal of effort into the gardens along the road, which only adds to the enjoyment of the drive. There are few basements, for obvious reasons.

The GPS unit that we borrowed showed that the area was about three meters below sea level. About 27 percent of the Netherlands is below sea level; it’s land that has been reclaimed by the building of dikes to push & hold back the sea. The area around the Meije is part of that reclaimed land, and is about as flat as a pool table. The different properties that line the road are separated by canals rather than fences. Most of the canals I saw were about three meters wide and probably about that deep in the center.

It had been fairly dry in the months preceding our visit, so the water level was down a bit, but there was always plenty of water in the canals and plenty of waterfowl around; ducks, geese, swans and storks. One interesting thing with the canals along the road; on the north side of the road (left in the video) is a larger canal that connects to a small lake, and the water level is several feet higher than the canals on the south side of the road. I suppose the road acted as a levee separating the two. In many places the canal runs right next to the road, which required bridges to be built on many driveways to allow access. Some of the homes even sported drawbridges at the road! How cool is that?

When viewing the area from above, as on Google Maps or Google Earth, you can see that the canals run parallel to one another to form fields in the shape of long rectangles. It was surprising to me to see how many farms & homes were packed along the road; in rural parts of the US there can be pretty large distances between farm places.

The Meije is far from the coast and any sizable dikes, but one day Yvonne & I did trek northward to visit the towns where her mom & dad lived when they were younger. Her mom lived in the town of Andijk, which is pronounced “on-dike” and is very literally built right on — or inside — the dike. I was pretty amazed at the dike; it’s an earthen structure that rises a good 30 feet or more from the road’s surface at its foot, but on the other side the water is only about 10 feet below the crown of the dike.

This is two photos stitched together (rather poorly; the light was very different in the two exposures and I couldn’t get the clouds quite right!) to show the difference between the two sides. The town would be completely submerged if not for the dike. A tremendous degree of confidence in the integrity of the dike is on display in Andijk; there are two 100-plus year old churches within a stone’s throw of the dike as well as several hundred homes.

This is getting a bit long… I started writing the post a month or so after returning, but kept adding a little bit here & there, even though I didn’t intend for it to turn into a travelogue. It really was a great trip, especially our time spent touring Germany. And our day trip to the Swiss Alps… Pretty sure Heaven will look very much like what we saw there! Didn’t enjoy the language problem though; will not be returning to Europe until I know a enough German and Dutch to get by. Will have to post some more photos sometime.

Caterham 7 Academy

dave — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 18:57:38 +0000

Caterham 7 Academy,/a>

I wonder how different my life today would be if this had been around 30 years ago. My guess? Very, very different.

1.6 Ford Sigma
From £19,450
or less than £300 per month*

Learn to be a racing driver in the world’s most popular racing car

Price includes road-legal car, technical support, race licence and entry to your first season of racing

High spec 1.6 Academy car includes full roll cage

The ultimate package for the novice racer

They require you to have your own Caterham 7, and you even have to drive the crap out of it to succeed in the academy. Somehow my life seems very incomplete… I’ll get over it, but wow does that look like a great idea. Where’s that time machine?

AttackWatch.com — Really?

dave — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 18:12:47 +0000

This is a for-real play in the Barack Obama reelection campaign playbook. Gotta wonder though what exactly is considered an “attack” on the President; anything that puts him in a bad light I guess, which in most cases includes the unvarnished, un-spun truth (ie: not what comes out of the White House Briefing Room, nor what’s regurgitated by the mainstream media.) Looking through the site’s “Attack Files” shows enough spin to make a carousel operator dizzy.

Makes me wonder how many times I’ve might get ratted on. Not that I’m too worried about it, but if I end up with an IRS audit in the next couple of years, I’ll be more than just a little put out. Just to be on the safe side, I’ll break with my usual procedure and not include links to that site. wink wink

edit: I threw this post together in a matter of a few minutes soon after I first heard about AttackWatch.com, and before I had heard any commentary on it. Since then, the disdain for the idea of the website and the website itself has been pretty much universal; even the left hates it. Here’s one snide bit of funny about it; enjoy!

Tiny Ponies All Around

dave — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 04:35:03 +0000

I was Googling (ok, doing a Google search) for something Apple-related this morning, and one of the results at the top of the list caught my eye:

There is a horse in the Apple Store and no one sees it but me.

I think, “Why?” What is the villain here that blinds all of these people to this situation? Am I nuts for thinking this is exceptional? Does anyone else see this? Did I accidentally drop acid and not realize? I must take a photo. I must verify later, when I’m not potentially tripping balls.

I think, “Would they notice if it were a tiger?” Or a lamb? Or an anaconda? What would it take to shake the haze from around their eyes? A sale sign? A new iPod Touch? Would they notice a new iPod Touch?

Are they just divinely focused? Are they meditating in a retail environment? Are they distracted by something shiny? There is so much shiny in the Apple Store. Is it enough to distract everyone from the little tiny horse that is at the Genius Bar?

Frank goes on to make an excellent observation;

Since then, John and I have a term called a “tiny pony.” It is a thing that is exceptional that no one, for whatever reason, notices. Or, conversely, it is an exceptional thing that everyone notices, but quickly grows acclimated to despite the brilliance of it all.

There are so many tiny ponies in our lives today it’s not even funny. It may sound a bit cheesy, but I’ve often imagined how surreal the world would be to someone who was magically transported to now from the distant past, and how I might explain to them how some everyday things work. Those imaginings make me think about some of the things we take for granted in life… Like air conditioning. When I was a kid, A/C was a luxury that my family couldn’t afford, so I remember well the times we made it through the hot & humid summers in Sioux Falls with little more than fans and cold water and a swimming pool a ten-block walk from home. But when you think about how we can take a little bit of electricity and use it to beat back the heat and humidity… And how so few people actually understand how it works, but expect it to work on demand. That’s a tiny pony.

Or even clean water on demand in our homes. Not only do we have it running from taps, but we can adjust the temperature of that water for different uses. Another string of tiny ponies to make all that possible. Or how about cell phones, or computers, or any other bit of technology that we use and in some small or large way depend on for our daily routine. Tiny ponies every-stinkin’-where. And those tiny ponies don’t just happen; they are the result of herculean efforts made by people who have gone before us to to invent the gadget, to harness the energy, to design the system, to write the standards, to maintain the system… And most of the time we have no clue who is behind it all.

Frank closes his post with another excellent point;

When does the magic of a situation fade? When do we get acclimated to the exceptional? Is this how we get by? Would anything get done if we were constantly gobsmacked? Is this how we survive, how we stay sane? We define a pattern, no matter how exceptional, and acclimate ourselves to it?

I allow myself to get gobsmacked sometimes, and that’s probably a healthy thing.

The Star Spangled Banner — The Other Verses

dave — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 05:53:56 +0000

The Star Spangled Banner is one of the most well-known songs in the US. It is after all our National Anthem. But did you know that what we hear sung before a baseball game is actually just the first verse of a much longer song?

Verse 1:
Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Verse 2:
On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
‘Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Verse 3:
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more!
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Verse 4:
Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

The other three verses aren’t quite as, um, nice or politically correct as the first, which may be part of the reason they aren’t sung often and thus not as well known, but they hold a lot of meaning, and reflect more fully the Christian faith that was prevalent among the people in days past who first sung it. The gentleman in this video apparently hadn’t heard of the other three verses but learned verse 4, thinking it was the second of two verses. He does have a great singing voice.

I don’t remember ever hearing about the other verses until just recently. Last year I bought a pile of old books at a rummage sale, and tucked into one of them was a really old & tattered leaflet of Civil War battle songs that was assembled and printed by The Lion Coffee Company; near as I can determine from the contents of the booklet, it was printed not long after the Civil War. It was a bit torn up, had had a new cover added to it at some point so was missing some of its original content, and was held together with some string. Pretty cool stuff; lots of songs I’d heard and sung before, but some that I’d never heard of and others, like the Star Spangled Banner, that had verses that were new to me. I’ll share more of the contents of the booklet later, but couldn’t resist showing off one of the pages just a little!

Lunar Lander

dave — Tue, 31 May 2011 05:34:40 +0000

Ian and I were watching 2001: A Space Odyssey just now, and the scene where the ship lands on the Moon reminded me of the old Atari Lunar Lander game I used to play (and play and play) at the arcades. (strangely, I seem to remember playing the game in my early high school years, but according to the Wikipedia article above, it didn’t come out until 1979. Hmmm…)

But after playing the online version on Atari’s site I wonder why I have such fond memories of it; it’s not easy. And the games are over pretty quickly. Back in the day you’d be plugging a quarter in it for every play, and you only start out with enough fuel for one or two landings. Maybe I liked it because I had so much invested in it. Or maybe it’s just my memory on its way out.

Much easier to enjoy now that there’s a Flash version online that’s free to play. And there are lots of other spin-offs from it as well, like this one from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Cool stuff.

Any chance I can have my quarters back?

Robert & Amy’s Wedding Dance

dave — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 05:51:41 +0000

This is fun; just watched an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond where Ray’s brother Robert gets married. At the end, the happy couple is called out to the dance floor for the first dance; makes me wish Yvonne & I had done a wedding dance!

The Psychology Of Being Watched

dave — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 06:18:33 +0000

The pressroom manager at work — Steve — has been having trouble with some of the night & weekend shift guys getting on his computer and playing games & whatnot, and generally making a mess of his desk by getting ink on his stuff, so he came to me a couple of weeks ago for some help with an idea… He wanted to put up a dummy camera in his office pointed at his desk to deter some of the stuff that was going on. I told him he’d have better luck keeping them off his computer if he just changed his password & kept it a secret, but he was wanting to also keep them away from his desk. So I tracked one down (much easier and cheaper than I thought it would be) and installed it yesterday. The reaction thus far has been pretty amusing, and a bit surprising.

The camera arrived on the perfect day, coinciding with some employee meetings that were going on, so I did the installation while the night shift guys were in their meeting. I made a point of walking past the room where they were meeting carrying a ladder and a roll of cable. The job of installing it was completed well before the meeting was done, and it didn’t take long before they noticed the camera and its blinking red light. And reacted.

The pressroom manager got a call from one of the guys last night, mad as a hornet… “What the (insert expletive) is going on with all the (insert expletive) cameras around here?!?! We feel like we’re being watched!!!” He calmly responded that it’s one camera, and it’s not intended or being used to watch anything but his desk. Today, things were tense all over; people were upset that they were being “watched”. That the camera was evidence that they weren’t trusted. The truth of the matter is that his reaction was evidence that things were going on that shouldn’t, and he feared the camera’s presence would give him away.

The funny thing is not only that the camera is a dummy, but that for the last three years we’ve been running an iPrism web filter device that keeps tabs on every excursion to the Internet, tracking the sites everybody on the network visits and how long they spend on them. Everyone was informed of the iPrism’s presence and function when it was installed, and the pressroom people are reminded of its presence any time they try to get to the Internet from a non-authorized computer. Even if the camera was real and was really watching that one desk, their online activities are actually being “watched” and scrutinized more thoroughly by the iPrism. Yet because they see the camera and don’t see the iPrism, the camera is the problem. And that phony camera will probably keep them in line far better than the iPrism ever will.

Steve is getting a good laugh out of it the whole situation. A few people around the company know it’s a dummy, so I’m not sure how long the secret will last. I’m sure he’ll milk it for all it’s worth though.

Day-later update: God has a great sense of humor, and timing. I wrote that yesterday, then today’s devotional in Our Daily Bread had to do with the very same thing:

Someone shared with me her observation about two bosses. One is loved but not feared by his subordinates. Because they love their boss but don’t respect his authority, they don’t follow his guidelines. The other boss is both feared and loved by those who serve under him, and their good behavior shows it.

That’s pretty telling of the atmosphere at work; very relaxed, almost too relaxed at times, which leads to low productivity levels. Steve stopped by my desk this morning and said that press output jumped considerably in the last couple of days. If one dummy camera can do that, he’s wondering where he might put a second one, just for good measure. Amazing what a newfound fear of the boss can do for people.

Z’Kota — From Endangered To Extinct

dave — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 17:50:45 +0000

I missed my last opportunity to enjoy my favorite sandwich at my favorite restaurant chain; the last of the Z’Kota restaurants closed its doors over New Year’s weekend. Sad.

Z’Kota was a locally-owned chain of four restaurants; three in Sioux Falls and one in Brookings. Originally the stores were part of the Hardee’s franchise until the owner, Scott Fritz, broke off from the chain in 2002. His plan was to provide customers with a slightly more upscale fast-food experience and larger selection of menu choices that were a little out of the ordinary. I think it was a success.

For the last several years, Hardee’s had been looking to get back into the Sioux Falls market — as if Sioux Falls restaurant-goers needed yet another choice of national restaurant chains — and last year the four stores were purchased from Fritz by a Wisconsin-based Hardee’s franchisee.

On a work day I’ll often go home for lunch, but when time is short, I’ll sometimes hit a nearby McDonald’s or Burger King (and I’m a sucker for the $2.65 Pizza & Pop Combo at Sam’s Club!). If I’ve got a little more time and want to eat out, I prefer going to a locally-owned restaurant or diner, mostly to get away from the mass-produced plasticky food served by the bigger chains; the West 12th Street Z’Kota was a good place to go for me, just a quick run down I-29 away from work. Now though, I’ll have to work a little harder at that with Z’Kota gone. There is Rosie’s, Jono’s & Marlin’s, all within a ten-minute drive from work, but it seems most of the locally-owned restaurants are in the downtown area; a little too long a drive for a lunchtime outing.

The Z’Kota restaurants were a bit of a paradox; part of a chain, albeit a small one, but were put together very well and presented very professionally, more so than some of the bigger chains, yet far more polished than the average mom-n-pop local restaurant. Yet, even with the polished look, it still held something of the mom-n-pop charm that was very appealing.

The food though was where Z’Kota separated itself from the run-of-the-mill restaurant chain; fresh ingredients assembled after you placed your order, and seasoned perfectly — not too much and not too little. My favorite item on the Z’Kota menu was their Cajun Chicken Sandwich. For about $7 or so you got a char-grilled chicken breast on a bun with cajun seasoning & sauce on it, with cheese & lettuce, a helping of fries and a drink. It doesn’t sound like much, but the seasoning & sauce they used made it by far the tastiest thing on their menu, and the tastiest thing in town, fast-food-wise.

Another thing to like about Z’Kota is that on most warm Saturday evenings, the South Minnesota Avenue location hosted a loosely-organized street rodders’ car show. The boys & I would go there as often as we could to see what kind of cars were there… Because there was no organization, no entry fees and no visitor fees — pretty much a free-for-all — it was really a mixed bag of cars that would be there on any given Saturday. I’ve seen everything from brand new Ferraris to the rattiest rat rods to pro-street drag racers to restored Model T trucks to slightly modified tuner-style cars. That store converted over to Hardee’s last fall, right around the time the weather got too cold for hanging out in a parking lot all evening, so it’s unclear whether the show was exclusively a Z’Kota arrangement or if the new ownership will be as accommodating or not. It was rumored that the Z’Kota owner was a rodder himself, but I can’t say that I ever met him on a Saturday evening.

The West 12th Street store was within a quick lunch-hour drive for me, but even after that one converted to Hardee’s I would drive across town for one of their Cajun Chicken sandwiches. Mid-December was the last time I was there; the girl at the counter told me they were closing down in early January, so after the turn of the year I made the trip again. Unfortunately the only vehicles in the lot belonged to contractors working on converting the store and swapping the signage from Z’Kota to Hardees. It was a sad day for me. It’s been a while since I visited a Hardee’s restaurant; Deane says they’re not just another me-too food franchise so I’ll likely give them a try, but I’m thinking the bitterness I feel over the change will keep me away from Hardee’s restaurants for a while.

The Z’KotaGrille.com website went offline recently. Just for posterity’s sake, I pdf’ed the entire site; download it here if you like.