An inquisitive old fart with a camera
Despite some sub-optimal experiences, I remain fascinated by things such as this. The cable on the right, which just arrived in the mail from China, elegantly replaces the kluged-together mess that cluttered my desk.
And, especially in overpriced Uruguay, you’ve got to love this:
Yes, USD 2.45 and free shipping … from China.
The last day has passed. I won’t be going to Brazil to watch Uruguay play England in the 2014 World Cup. I was just so sure I was going to win this Tienda Inglesa giveaway. NOT!
When planning for a windmill, it seems a good idea to consider the height of the tower and the height of your storage tank, as well as the distance and the number of bends in the pipe between. Because, given enough resistance and a strong wind, you may end up with an outdoor shower.
This is fixable. But it’s also kind of fun.
Last year, we installed a windmill over the hand dug well at our chacra (small farm). I got an upgrade by taking a larger-than-quoted demo unit in place of a brand new one. Hey, why not, these things last a long time. They had to disassemble this unit; win-win. Almost: sometimes when you engage it, something sticks and the tail fin doesn’t go perpendicular to the rotation of the fan blades.
In other words, it does nothing. Which it did the other day.
And the something that sticks is way at the top. Where I have never ventured. But now it’s out of warranty, so up I went the wire ladder, consoling myself that it would at least make an awesome photo op.
Which it didn’t. Oh well.
The more I looked at the mechanism at the top, the less I could understand where the problem lay. Then I looked further up, and saw the tail fin perpendicular to the fan blades. In other words, the mechanism worked. But the windmill didn’t, given the unusual and complete absence of wind. Problem solved? Ya veremos. We will see.
We visited with our country neighbor, Mariana the veterinarian, who boards dogs and took in the lovely dog in the upper right, Benji, whom we rescued from a neighbor’s yard (with their permission; poor thing was on a 5-foot chain and yowling all day long in misery). Unfortunately, Benji has the people skills of a database technician (due apologies, yada yada), and during his last “interview” with an enthusiastic family with kids, walked away from them, curled up under a tree, and went to sleep.
Windmills that work, but don’t; dogs that are lovely, but aren’t. Must be a Zen thing.
And yet, I keep entering, even though I’ve never won one of their shiny red cars.
For this month, at Tienda Inglesa checkout you get a separate receipt, which you scan near the front door, at a machine that spews out coupons to fill out. I got tired of handwriting them in past drawings, so had a rubber stamp made, stamp them at home, and forget to take them the next time.
They’re giving out one trip per day, on a charter jet to Brazil to watch Uruguay play England.
Unlike certain friends, who have gone twice to Brazil and returned very disappointed, I have never been too interested in going to Brazil.
But if the lack of a shiny red car in my driveway is any indication, it’s not going to be a choice I have to make any time soon.
No, not me. The goofball who swerved into the ditch in front of our house last night and took out the end of our little-two-brick-high wall.
It actually doesn’t bother me terribly. I have materials to repair the wall, and the guy not only lost the plastic liner to his wheel well, but, by the fact that he didn’t get stuck in the ditch, must have traveling with sufficient velocity to require, at the very least, a serious alignment.
The tow truck approaching in this picture brought a jump-start to our neighbor. I half-expected it to retreat loaded with a car whose front left wheel was hanging loose.
Anyway, in case the driver remembers the incident and returns, I left the wheel well liner there for him.
Carefully cut into five pieces.
Mr. “real” Anonymous who comments here gave us a mango tree, one of two he had in a sheltered nook of his property. The other one died, not entirely surprising considering it’s a tropical plant and the Oriental Republic is not a tropical place. He and his wife have been in purge mode plant-wise after this last horrid-growing-season mucked-up-by-HAARP summer, and I agreed to take it.
I got as far as a basic structure with top and front sheathed in plastic (at times I’m not real good with math, as in buy the amount you actually need all at once). Yesterday’s strong and prolonged wind basically trashed it. Apparently the wall anchor (taco Fischer) was not adequate for the closer crosspiece. Back to the dangerous power tools.
To his credit, Mr. “real” anonymous did not claim we’d be making homemade mango chutney from our backyard a year from now, though a Uruguayan did tell me this afternoon that, though not allowed, it is quite possible to smuggle fresh mangoes in your car from Chuy, on the Brazilian border, one of the few places in Uruguay where it’s actually fun to shop, because shit is cheap … as long as you have a foreign passport to show when returning. Not for the mangos, which you’re not revealing, but the other goodies: electronics, alcoholic beverages, and such.
I saw this morning that my cheap Chinese alarm clock had died. The first battery lasted six months; its replacement more like four.
The package of five replacement batteries cost only $1.80, with free shipping from Hong Kong to Uruguay, so no big deal. I put one in the alarm clock, set about setting the time, and suddenly the thing made a strange noise and the clock face turned to gibberish.
I wanted to take a photo, but couldn’t find my camera, and realized that if I’ve lost it, I might not particularly miss it. I’ve gotten kind of tired of carrying it everywhere. I neither have nor want a smart phone.
I grabbed our older point-and-shoot camera, but it wouldn’t turn on, even though the battery was fine just a couple days ago.
Then I sat down to my desk, and the UbiRock vibration speaker which inexplicably died a few weeks ago. Oh well, I mostly use headphones anyway.
Then I remembered the indestructible Westclox Big Ben / Baby Ben windup clocks I grew up with. I wonder if they still sell wind-up clocks? Indeed they do:
When Westclox alarm clocks were made in America you couldn’t beat ’em–or sleep through their alarm! Now they’re made in China, and the Baby Bens I’ve been buying last routinely from two weeks to four months. Then they just stop ringing, and sometimes stop telling time, whether the winder is wound up all the way or just a few turns. They stop without warning & on the day they do, you sleep in–miss work, miss your appointment, miss your plane. I’ve traded them in for a new one ten or twelve times. They never last longer than four months. I’ve finally given up. Thinking of a Baby Ben? Don’t waste your money!
T
hen I wondered why I even need a bedside clock.
Then I remembered Chicago, from a time when I did need to wind the clock and set the alarm every day. Does anybody really care?
I saw two raptors ahead on the beach. They took off, and flew over me. Large, with a most unusual wing pattern: white on the inside, black on the outside. Not just the flight feathers: a clean line in the middle of the wing. Stranger still, what they dining on appears to be another of the same species. Note the beak (head is bent under).
I have looked through hundreds of birds online and found nothing resembling these, which I would have guessed to be eagles.
Then this:
I’ve seen this DTOTB before — any idea what it is?
A year ago, our neighbor in the campo’s flock of guineas was down to two, from six.
And they were both males. So they got six more, expecting similar attrition (which hasn’t happened). And they’re more sociable than ever. As I was leaning on the gate talking to the neighbor, one, then another, then two more fluttered up next to me.
Then they all followed us back to our place, where one of these days I’ll get back to making kitchen cabinets. (Found a stainless steel 20-tube 150 liter solar hot water heater the other day for USD 675 🙂
Then we got back to town, wondering if we had really left a bag of garbage on a chair with the gate open? Last time we did that wandering dogs left a mess. But no, simply several kilos of oranges left for us by another Uruguayan friend.
Nice.