Fish Fear Me

How To Make A Repeat Customer

With the economy what it is, you would think that retailers would be pulling out all the stops to make sure that if someone comes through the door they will walk out with a purchase. So it still surprises me that about half the time I walk into a store, I don't even get a hello let alone anyone asking me if I need help. I like to go to my local hardware store over the big home improvement places because when I walk into the local store I am almost always greeted by some knowledgeable person who then helps me find what I need, even if I didn't know I needed it. I pay a bit more, but the sales help is nearly always worth it. Today though, a guy at Harbor Freight won salesman of the week hands down.

I went up to their local store, out of my way, to look at a small electric wood chipper that I had seen on the web. I have also been looking at used gas-powered chippers on craigslist, but I've been kind of leery about buying this sort of thing by that method. I just don't trust what I'm going to get. I drove up to Harbor Freight today because an electric one they had was priced right on the website($139.99) and I wanted to see how durable it looked.

I walked in and started looking around because I had never been in there before. Right away a guy asked me if I needed help and then led me over to the chipper I wanted to look at. Good start #1. He asked if I had any questions and my first one was about the price, which was $189.99 in the store. He looked a little confused when I told him about the website price, but said he would check and be right back. While he was doing that I checked out the durability and that the blades would be easy to replace. I was thinking I would buy it for the website price, but not the floor price. I was still a little concerned about the durability, but with all of the work I need to do with it I figured if I was going to break it that would happen in the first 90 days anyway. If the guy was firm about the price though, I was going to walk.

Well, he was firm about his price alright, just not the way I thought. He not only honored the website price, he ended all doubts by throwing in a 2-year "just bring it in and we'll give you a new one off the floor" warranty. He made it such a no-brainer that I briefly got suspicious. Hahaha. 

I got it home and put it together tonight and checked it out. It seems to handle up to around 1" sticks without laboring much, as advertised. I think it's going to do just what I need it to do, so long as it holds up of course. If it does, from now on I can tell you Harbor Freight is definitely a place I'm checking out when I need new tools. 

It's A Bird...It's A Plane...

...No, it's the first Supersweet 100 tomato:

 
Not very good focus, sorry, but you can see more flowers there on the left. Things should finally get going around here now that the cold and seemingly endless rain pattern has moved on.

This isn't the greatest pic either, but you can see the second compost bin that is now in service and that I also got the drip hoses in place for each row. Less water but going right into the ground near each plant should work pretty slick.

The compost bin on the left is closed to new stuff until its current batch is done cooking. Over the next month or so the one on the right will take all of the lawn clippings and some leaves I've stored up from last year for just this purpose.  

Inside the left bin the lawn clippings and shredded leaves have settled down to about 2' deep now. I mixed everything well about two weeks ago and then left the top off so it would get good and wet from all of the rain. I gave it a little bit of a stir to make sure the moisture was even and then I put in three 2" diameter by 2' long pvc pipes that I had drilled holes into every 3" or so. That's to try to keep oxygen available through the pile.  I think it's working because a few mornings ago when it was really cool I stuck a pitchfork into it and lifted a little and a nice cloud of steam popped out. It's definitely hot and cooking. I should be able to spread that batch in the gardens by the end of next month.

I don't know how I stand all of the excitement. 

Good News...

...We're talking months, not years:

The ICC's Luis Moreno-Ocampo, who on Monday announced an arrest warrant for Gaddafi on charges of crimes against humanity, is the latest international official to say the Libyan leader would soon capitulate to a NATO-backed revolt.

"It is a matter of time ... Gaddafi will face charges," Moreno-Ocampo told reporters in The Hague, where the warrants were approved for Gaddafi, his son Saif al-Islam and Libyan intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi.

He added: "I don't think we will have to wait for long...In two or three months it is game over."

And you thought this whole Libya thing was going to drag on, didn't you?

Brutal

You know your team got its butt kicked when the other baseball team still racks up a hit after the game is over:

The 25th hit didn't appear until about 11:05 p.m., when official scorer Stew Thornley changed an error on Twins shortstop Tsuyoshi Nishioka to a hit.

That's how devastating the Dodgers offense was Monday. They kept collecting hits long after the game was over.

I thought the Twins might have broken the terrible Broadcast Curse of 2011 when they caught fire at the start of June and went 15-2. And that was with a whole bunch of guys called up from AAA to make up for injured starters. Then Joe Mauer finally came back and everything went right down the toilet again. Now they've lost six games straight and are heading back down to the cellar again.

Poor Joe. I wonder now if  $23 million is enough compensation to make up for the truly awful year he is having. And the other half of the M&M boys, Justin Morneau, is back on the DL now with a neck injury. I know, it's shocking. The good news is that it's pretty much a certainty that we won't miss him in the post-season this year.

What Could Go Wrong? (cont.)

Gee, I can hardly wait to see how this turns out:

Libya's security forces will be asked to return to their duties as soon as Moammar Gadhafi is removed from power under postconflict plans aimed at avoiding the violent chaos that swept Iraq, British officials said Tuesday.

Britain's international development secretary Andrew Mitchell said detailed plans for Libya's future have been drafted and draw heavily on mistakes made in Iraq — including the decision to disband the country's army, widely regarded as a critical factor in the nation's descent into sectarian strife following Saddam Hussein's ouster.

Sure, because if Gadhafi wasn't there the army, paramilitaries, and secret police would be able to let out their inner love and professionalism to serve the Libyan people. Anybody want to lay some money down on that being just peachy-keen?

I think the biggest lesson from Iraq has been the importance of securing the support of the tribal leadership in a tribal nation, just like Libya. We blew that in the first year after Saddam fell. The myth of disbanding the Iraqi security forces is another of those anti-Bush fantasies that obviously continues to pollute the minds of so-called international experts. 

Why is that a myth? First of all, what security forces? The military had already self-disbanded within days of Baghdad falling. Same for the Saddam's horrific secret police and paramilitary. The only security forces still remaining were largely ineffective and corrupt local police. Clearly the fanatical pro-Saddam paramilitary was not going to be brought back to life, but how about the secret police and their tactics of terror? Should we have brought them back? That too was out of the question, of course. You thought Abu Ghraib was bad in American hands? What do you think it would have been like had it been returned to Saddam's goons?

That leaves the military, which really means the Iraqi Army. A case could be made that the army should have been reconstituted just to keep young males from joining the insurgency, but I'm skeptical that it would have worked at that point. And it wasn't going to work to deploy them as security forces either. What units would have been brought back? The most effective would have been the Republican Guard divisions, something totally unacceptable to the 80% of the citizens who had suffered from their attacks. The rest of the army was a bunch of demoralized conscripts who were organized along Soviet Army doctrine and ordered about by a thoroughly corrupt officer and NCO corps. I'm sure putting guns back in their hands and putting them on the street would have worked out just swell.

There were no really good options in Iraq and there probably aren't in a post-Gadhafi Libya either. One really bad option though, would be to keep the regime thugs in place and expect them to keep order without using the brutal tactics they know so well. That's naive to an extreme. NATO is better off planning on starting with a clean slate and getting the blessings of as much of the tribal leadership as possible. Even that will probably not be enough head off some serious unrest. 

Head Scratcher

Okay, maybe somebody out there can explain this article to me:

Imagine no fuel bill at all for your car — no gas, no added cost to your electric bill.

Or how about having the ability to keep your refrigerator running through the night after the power goes out, without using a gas generator.

Sounds like a dream. But it's more real than you might think.

A solar battery under development at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg aims to supply power to homes by collecting the sun's energy and storing it in a unit a little larger than the standard electric generator for sale at home-improvement stores. As the technology further develops, it could become a significant contributor to the overall power grid.

A "solar" battery? Yeah, you need one of those because the electricity generated by solar panels is different from other kinds of electricity so a regular battery won't work, right? 

This may be the dumbest story I read all week, even though the week is young. I mean, look at this:

Solar power's inability to generate electricity at night hampers its use as a primary energy source. A battery or some other storage system for the solar energy generated during the day would help strengthen the case for building more solar projects.

Doh! Now why didn't I think of that? Well, probably because somebody already figured that out at least fifty freakin' years ago. Of course people store excess electricity in batteries, just like they have for more than a century with wind power. Batteries are more efficient now, but the concept is not even close to new. Really, what the hell is this tripe all about? 

Minnesotan Mouthy Madness

My, my, a couple of Minnesota natives have opened their yaps in rather unimpressive fashion in the last week. Let's start with Prince:

In an exclusive interview with the Guardian's Film&Music, Prince said: "It's fun being in Islamic countries, to know there's only one religion. There's order. You wear a burqa. There's no choice. People are happy with that." When asked about the fate of those unhappy with having no choice, he replied: "There are people who are unhappy with everything. There's a dark side to everything."

Well, not everyone wears a burqa. Notably, of course, men such as Prince. Perhaps the full interview will give us more context when it is released on Friday, but I'm going to bet that it won't matter. Talk about engaging your mouth before your brain.

Our second player today is one David Carr, now living in New Jersey and writing for the New York Times. You know, scrawny former crackheads say the darnedest things(video at the link):

New York Times columnist David Carr responds to Bill Maher implying Alabama and Kansas are not the "smart states." 

David Carr: "If it's Kansas, Missouri, no big deal. You know, that's the dance of the low-sloping foreheads. The middle places, right? [pause] Did I just say that aloud?"

That sort of coastal elitism pisses off a lot of people in flyover country, but really they should just point and laugh. Maher and Carr are just showing their ignorance and prejudices and it's painfully obvious to everyone except them and their fans. We should be thankful that they live on the East Coast. I mean, would you want one of those intolerant assholes as your neighbor?

Whew

Sorry for the lack of posts. It was nothing bad, just a retirement party for my dad that went off without a hitch yesterday. He retired this year from a local university after 37 years, most of that time as a professor, but also 11 years as dean of the graduate school of business. We had a great turnout of friends and colleagues and a good time was had by all. I wouldn't call the prep all-consuming, but those details did burn up the leftover oxygen last week. 

Filtered Out

Did you know that a man committed suicide on a New Hampshire courthouse's steps last week by setting himself on fire? I just heard about it this morning via Instapundit. You would think that such a dramatic action would receive some sort of attention, but as of this morning searching Google News by the man's full name yields only 5 news results, none of them a major outlet. How can that be?

Leave aside whether the guy was justified somehow or just crazy, it happened. How is that not news? How can it be that not one major national news organization, including Fox, has picked up on that story?

Wait A Minute

In the battle against copyright troll Righthaven, do we really want to extend "fair use" to this?

A federal judge ruled Monday that publishing an entire article without the rights holder’s authorization was a fair use of the work, in yet another blow to newspaper copyright troll Righthaven.

It’s not often that republishing an entire work without permission is deemed fair use. Fair use is an infringement defense when the defendant reproduced a copyrighted work for purposes such as criticism, commentary, teaching and research. The defense is analyzed on a case-by-case basis.

The guy cut and pasted all 19 paragraphs of an editorial to his site. Regardless of the other legal issues and the scumbag behavior of Righthaven, do we really want people to feel free to copy entire articles to their website? Isn't the defendant here just a little in the wrong also?

I'm all for a good laugh at Righthaven's expense, but it seems to me that we are getting into "It stops being funny when it starts being you" territory here.