Spotted on a walk around the neighborhood:
If only it was a sign of the times …
Category: Oddities
Who’d’a thunk it?
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Guten Tag, Deutchland!
Mostly, this blog ticks along with 400 to 500 page views per day, with 300-ish visitors looking at a page or two each.
This week, something happened:
Blog Stats – 2021-08-28 Both of those spikes came from Germany:
Blog Countries – 2021-08-28 Traffic spikes generally come from a single post getting fifteen minutes of Reddit fame, with a zillion visitors hitting a specific page.
In this case, a German “visitor” read nearly all of my 4461 posts on two days: 822 + 3561 = 4383. I’m reasonably sure no human finds my writing that interesting, so it’s likely a scraper capturing my text for the purposes of spinning it into a blog-like site with “unique content” for the purposes of SEO.
Perhaps the first traffic spike was a targeting run?
I’ll never know the rest of the story, but if you happen to stumble across a blog with an uncanny resemblance to this one, written by something with a wide vocabulary and no techie knowledge, let me know.
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Soldering Iron Spider
I noticed something out of place when I fired up the soldering iron:
Soldering Iron Spider It’s not obvious in a flat photo without depth perception, but here’s a closer look:
Soldering Iron Spider – detail A tiny spider had set up shop just over the tip cleaning port, with a delicate web linking the sponge to the iron holder.
I tried to deport her outdoors, as is our custom with helpful critters, but she jumped off the web and scurried to an unknown spot on the bench. She’ll surely rebuild in an equally productive spot.
Obviously, I’m not soldering enough electronic gadgetry …
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Tree Frog Redux
Mary found another tree frog while picking Savoy lettuce for breakfast:
Tree frog on Savoy cabbage They’re much better camouflaged in their (more or less) natural surroundings, so I didn’t spot it at first, either.
They really are cute little gadgets:
Tree frog on Savoy cabbage – detail This is only the fourth tree frog she’s seen in the last two decades, but the second one in a month. It may be the same frog as before, although the garden now has a rather husky resident snake who seems to be eating well.
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Natural Gas Meter non-Protection
Spotted on the way into a fast food joint:
Natural Gas Meter Plumbing – overview Reading the lower meter seems particularly difficult:
Natural Gas Meter Plumbing – detail Given how bollards embedded in concrete fail, they’re not providing any protection.
Did the meters get plumbed in first, with the bollards carefully fitted around them?
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Tree Frog
A myriad of tree frogs serenade us in the evenings, but we rarely see any. This fingernail-size critter was impossible to miss against a brown plastic trash can:
Tree Frog on trash can handle It sat tucked nose-up inside the handle until I loomed overhead, whereupon the edge seemed better. It eventually jumped to the ground, dozens of body lengths below, and hopped off into the leaf litter behind the cans.
We wished it well and expect to hear from it during the rest of the season.
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Power Outage Explained
Spotted in the corner gas station’s wrecked car lookaside buffer:
Rt 376 midnight crash – vehicle The white paint seemed familiar:
Rt 376 midnight crash – 2021-07-20 – C Word has it the 16 year old son was driving, with his father in the passenger seat, and managed to lose control without any of the usual causative factors. Everyone lived to tell the tale, which is a tribute to the contemporary auto tech we all take for granted.
Contrary to what we thought, they crashed around 8 pm and Central Hudson cut the power around midnight to repair the lines.
Looks they’ll need another truck; that ain’t gonna buff right out.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 