Lawncare

It's been a bumper crop of dandelions this spring, and many houses would appear to be in competition for the award on who can grow the most.  But we have a clear winner, and it's a lawn a few houses east of us.  The sign you might not be able to make out in the picture below is from PureLawn Organic Lawncare.  We have know way of knowing how old that sign might be, but we're hoping it's in the last few days.  If so, this is a really bad way to advertise, and it might have been wiser to wait until the weeds at least began to die before planting the sign.  

Day Of The Week

For whatever it's worth...

I grew up (that's debatable) in an age without a computer (I'm old) in my pocket or within shouting distance, so I learned ways to solve problems in my head.  I still do that for things I want to calculate without a computer's aid.  One common question that I have a quick in-my-head solution is what day of the week a future event will occur.  For this example, I'll use the question "What day of the week is October 8 (i.e., my birthday)?"

I solved that quickly using two numbers:

1. Which day of the week is the current month's 7th, 14th, 21st, 28th (which I remember)?
2. The number of days in each month (which I know by heart)
• 31 for Jan, Mar, May, Jul, Aug, Oct, Dec
• 30 for Apr, Jun, Sep, Nov
• 28 or 29 for Feb

May 2025's 7-14-21-28 dates fall on Wednesday, so

• Since May has 31 days, June's 7-14-21-28 will fall on Saturday (+3)
• Since June has 30 days, July's 7-14-21-28 will fall on Monday (+2)
• Since July has 31 days, August's 7-14-21-28 will fall on Thursday (+3)
• Since August has 31 days, September's 7-14-21-28 will fall on Sunday (+3)
• Since September has 30 days, October's 7-14-21-28 will fall on Tuesday (+2)
• Knowing October 7 is a Tuesday, my birthday will fall on a Wednesday

The reason for using 7-14-21-28 is that I know that sequence by heart, but with any other, I have to do the addition, but the solution will work for whatever sequence you want to use.

Scrape The Shoe

In high school, I would run on the pavement at Deweese Parkway in North Dayton, a few blocks from my childhood home.  It was common for me to run at a 5:05-minute pace, which is middle-of-the-pack on a high school track team.  I also ran very quietly, not sure why, but if I was coming up on you from behind, I could very easily scare the living crap out of you.  It's difficult to yell a warning when you're pushing your limits, so I developed the "scrape the shoe" method as a warning, starting about 20 yards away and continuing until the person would turn around to find out what the noise was and see me coming.

Recently, I employed the same method, but I was walking towards a woman who was walking their dog with her face buried in her smartphone.  I wouldn't have really cared all that much if I startled her, but you never know what a dog will do when approached.  A couple of scrapes, she looked up, got her dog next to her, and let us by.  I'm glad there were no smartphones back when I was running Deweese Parkway.  I probably would be the cause of many broken phones.

Mainframe Computers

When I began pursuing a Computer Science degree at Wright State University way back in 1974, there wasn't an Internet, personal computers, or smartphones.  In the basement of their library, there was an IBM 360-65 mainframe computer like the one in the picture below and rows of dishwasher-sized removable disk drives and reel-to-reel tape drives.  Starting my sophomore year, I worked for the computer center as a student programmer, and unlike most students on campus, I was able to go into the computer room and see all the hardware that ran our class-project programs.  After my junior year, I took the open junior systems programmer job and really began to sink my teeth into the layers of technical details involved in these "Big Iron" computing beauties.  The YouTube video at the link below is a tour of Clemson University's Computer Center in 1970 and explains a lot about mainframes.  

Big shout-out to my buddy Nick for this blog idea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnSmme5s8Zc

Halved Baked Potato

Here is a simple way to make a perfect baked potato.  Cutting the potato in half lengthwise reduces the baking time.  Placing them face down on a cookie sheet allows the skin to get crispy.  Just rub them in oil with a little salt and pepper and use parchment paper to make cleanup a breeze.  All the details and thoughts on jazzing up your potatoes can be found at the link below.

https://www.chelseasmessyapron.com/baked-potato

Bad Wrap Job

While stopped at an intersection a few weeks ago, we noticed the incredibly bad wrap job on the van you see below.  The "Premier Health" at the top had the left side too low, and the "Infusion Therapy" in the middle had the left side too high.  I can't fathom a reason why they accepted such a bad job and didn't have them correct it.  This is the kind of bad marketing that leads you to wonder how good they are at their day jobs.