Tag: humour

Leatherman Squirt P4

I carry a Leatherman Squirt P4 and once in a while, I take out of my pocket and set it on my desk. Either because it’s poking my leg or I’m using it for some reason or another. Today I had it sitting out and was concentrating on our current big project, headphones on and oblivious to my surroundings.

When I suddenly noticed two of my co-workers leaning over my cube wall, looking at me. One of them noticed the Squirt sitting on my desk and started talking about how cool it was. Then our supervisor walked over and mentioned how I was popular today. The other of my co-workers piped up with “We were just admiring his tool” and all of us got the giggles. We thought about all the various ways she could have said that…

  • “Admiring his pocket tool”
  • “Admiring his Leatherman”
  • “Admiring his Squirt”

And decided there was no way we were not going to laugh at the comment.

Though not many, there are times when I miss living in an apartment. These times usually coincide with my having to mow the lawn after letting it nearly go to seed. When we bought this house with a tiny yard, <strike>we</strike> I decided it would be best to get a Reel Mower. That way we wouldn’t have to spend money on gas or oil, plus the maintenance costs would be lower and as a last added bonus we’d get more exercise pushing it around the yard.

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Yes, yes, you can stop laughing now.

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No really, stop laughing at me.

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Bastards.

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Anyway, we got one and before winter hit we used it maybe twice and it still seemed like an excellent idea. Now that summer is here I’m really beginning to feel that added bonus. Especially when I’ve had a cold for a week. A cold that had me coughing up huge chunks of flem, keeping me from going out and mowing the lawn in bits & pieces as I meant to do this week.

Instead, I just spent several hours fighting my lawn which had patches a foot or 2 high. Those of you with powered mowers are probably thinking “so what?”. Those of you with reel mowers are (hopefully) thinking “you poor bastard.”

You see, oh users of powered mowers, when you run across patches this tall a reel mower tends to bend the grass stalks down into the rest of the grass so they pop back up after you pass by the taller bits. To mow patches like this with a reel mower, you either:

  • run at the patch, lift one side above the height of the tallest piece of grass at the last moment, and drop the spinning blade on top.
  • or you use hand shears and chop it even more manually than with the reel mower (or you cheat and just pull the tall bit out).

With only one or 2 spots like this, it is not much of a problem but when you get to half the lawn it becomes a much bigger issue. Add in upper 80°, 50-60% humidity and you’ve got yourself a long, painful evening a head of you. Or at least I did when I started around 6:30 this evening1.

Still for all my complaining, once I finally finish with the lawn I do get a real sense of accomplishment out of doing all the work. And I’m meeting more of our neighbors than Ariesna because I’m out working on the lawn every week2. So when we attend neighborhood functions, more people tend to recognize me as that idiot nice fellow who was out working on the lawn. This seems to irk her a bit, but I don’t mind. 😀

1 I finally gave up the fight around 9:30 with only 1 long patch of grass left to mow.
2 When I’m not sick. Usually. Ok, I’m out there at least every other week. Or so. *grin*

A while ago I finally broke down and started trying to recoup some of the costs from my online addictions. Which is to say, I started accepting ads on my blog. This is only relevant because this month is the first month I got paid for those ads. I’ve been wondering what to spend this vast fortune of $3.06 on when I read this post. Money sent! 😀

I’m sitting at the computer typing, when the dog bumps up against my legs. I look down, and she’s sniffing the floor around my feet intently.

“What are you doing down there?”

“I’m looking for steak!” she says, wagging her tail hopefully.

“I’m pretty certain that there’s no steak down there,” I say. “I’ve never eaten steak at the computer, and I’ve certainly never dropped any on the floor.”

“You did in some universe,” she says, still sniffing.

I sigh. “I’m going to move the quantum physics books to a higher shelf, so you can’t reach them.”

Myself, I’ve never had a physics course in my life. I do however have some interest in the various sciences and I have cracked open the occasional science textbook for classes I’ve never been in. Pretty much every time, it makes my brain leak out my ears and causes me to wonder why I bother. Then today while waiting for a rather incredibly slow server to finish running my SQL update, I hit up SEB out of boredom and found his link to the article on Uncertain Principles. The article both made sense and made me smile, which lines up nicely with my idea of good teaching. So thanks to Les for pointing out Mr. Orzel’s excellent article and double thanks to Mr. Orzel for writing it.