We spotted a motion twitch outside and finally figured out what was going on:
There must be something yummy down inside that branch scar, but you gotta keep checking your six:
Where’s a hawk when you need one?
Category: Oddities
Who’d’a thunk it?
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Collet Pen Holder vs. Cheap Refills
The three collet pen holders I got a while ago came with ink cartridges:
Collet pen holder So I bought three bucks worth of a dozen pens to get pretty colors, whereupon I discovered they didn’t fit into the collet. Turns out the locating flanges aren’t in the same place along the cartridges:
The flanges on the top cartridge have been shaved down perilously close to the ink, but it now fits into the collet.
Bonus: a dozen fairly stiff springs that are sure to come in handy for something!
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It’s Flat, Jim
Aaand this front-end loader will require more than the patch kit and CO2 inflator from my bike pack before it’s back in service:
Front-end loader with flat tire The local yellow iron inventory spends most of the winter snoozing in shopping mall parking lots, waiting to clear the snowfall. It’s been a light year so far, which is fine with me.
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Cart Corral Reassembly
Apparently, cart corrals last about four years and, with this refresh, the assemblers got it right:
Improved WalMart cart corrals All the white-on-blue marker signs up on the poles seem to be top-side-up, too.
Of course, not many people bother returning their carts to the corrals, but the bewilderment factor should be lower now.
And, yes, the previous mis-assembly remained uncorrected. I can’t take credit for the replacement, even though it happened during my adminstration …
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The Patience of Trees
Spotted a slow-motion sculpture while on a walk for errands:
Tree growing through chain-link fence The fence encloses a lot next to a long-disused fuel oil (?) storage / distribution facility. The county’s historic aerial photos suggest the trees have grown since the the building inside the fence vanished in the mid-1970s.
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Jimmied Cable Box: Who You Gonna Call?
We spotted this anomalous situation halfway up Cochran Hill Road:
Cable Box – as found It looks like a Verizon FiOS cable box filled with jumpers for all the houses along the way:
Cable Box – fiberoptic jumpers You’ll note the missing lock and misplaced latch. The box face isn’t scarred, so getting in must not have required much effort.
The box carries no company identification or emergency numbers, but it does have two theft deterrents:
Cable Box – wasp nests Perhaps the deterrents worked better in warmer months.
Given how little Verizon wants to hear from its FiOS customers, I have sub-zero motivation for devoting the hours required to find out if it’s their problem. Somebody along Cochran should have enough standing for the case.
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Ice Jewelry
We spotted this assortment of jewelry gleaming along Clove Creek:
Ice jewelry – overview A closer look at a necklace:
Ice jewelry – detail 1 And the brooch:
Ice jewelry – detail 2 The water level has been dropping for several days as the air temperature went from tolerably cold to well below freezing.
It’s better in person; I couldn’t get close enough to avoid using the Pixel’s digital zoom, so the images have more gritty texture than you’d expect.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 