Bucher-Tractor Race

Chicago Mike bought a fixer-upper in Grand Rapids:

The new house is a very solid comfortable shithole. I disassembled the return ducts and vacuumed 50 years of dust out (and reassembled), added a furnace based humidifier, replaced the hot water heater, and me and the cats like there like barely domesticated barn animals. I have a bed, TV, shower, but no internet, microwave or actual refrigerator (I moved it to the garage and hosed it out). It does have a working dishwasher.

I need to replace some soffit and fascia and add a gutter to the upper story, but there has been no water incursion, and it is less disgusting each week.

I need to fire up the fireplaces to see if I can use them to dispose of the kitchen cabinets.

Now he has bought an old Gravely tractor to cut brush and deal with the snow. He sent me a link to a video of a Gravely in action, and you know you can never have too much cowbell, so here's some more. I think this might be from Romania.

Fred Thompson speech about the economy

Sarcasm can be hard to convey by writing. It's a little more obvious in this video. I hope no one will miss the sarcasm and take this little speech at face value.

Via "The Freeholder" and Tam.

Guns N' Roses

I’d prefer to live in a world with puppies and unicorns where no violence is done to others for good or evil reasons. I don’t live in that world and neither do you.

Just something to keep in mind. Found on "The Ten Ring". Via Tam.

Feeling Alright

I had not been feeling too good the last few days. Tired, sleeping a lot, not getting much of anything done. Getting a little pain in my sinuses, but no other symptoms. No runny nose, no congestion, no cough, no aches and pains. Just tired, and my mind was pretty worthless as well. All I did over the weekend was play stupid computer games (Spider Solitaire, Minesweeper, Mahjongg, and "Wei-Hwa's Series of Tubes"). Because this seems to happen to me for a couple of days every couple of months, I thought I would plot my activity level and see if anything showed up. So I counted the number of posts I had made on this blog each day for the last two months, put the data in a Google spreadsheet, and then fed the data to the chart maker. For my first attempt I used the line graph style, but it really didn't seem to reveal anything.

So then I tried a bar chart. I think this illustrates the data much better.

Note that the date order is backwards, just like a blog. Latest date is on the left, earliest is on the right. I think it is pretty obvious that I was much more energetic last month than this.

Yesterday I went to see my allergist and he says: "You have an acute ear infection. Here, eat these antibiotics." Today I am feeling much better, whether it is because the pills are already having an effect, or because I now have identified the culprit, it is hard to say.

Joe Cocker - Feelin Alright
Update June 2014: The video clip disappeared from YouTube so I replaced it. This one has no video, just a single still image, but it sounds alright.
Update September 2015: The video disappeared again, so I replaced it again.
Update December 2016 replaced missing graphs.

Zimbabwe

A story from the Associated Press: Zimbabwe faces water cuts amid cholera crisis

I just don't get it. Mugabe has been in power for 28 years, the economy is in ruins, cholera has shown up, famine is not far away, and still no one shot him. All I can think is that loyalty trumps smarts. Of course if someone did kill Mugabe, would it trigger a civil war? And if it did, would it make the situation better, or worse?

High Praise Indeed

"In 1974, I blacksmithed the now famous klunker from scavenged objects. Then I started to hear that high form of recognition: 'You can't do that,' and, 'It won't work.' I knew I was onto something big."

-- Gary Fisher, pioneer mountain-bike builder

via Andy.

The Great Boom

I never heard anyone put it quite like this:

The working assumption of the "Great Boom" is – or was – that we live in a benign era where most societies are converging towards some form of market liberalism; where trade and capital flows are unrestricted; where governments have enough legitimacy to keep order by light touch; where a major war is unthinkable.

I especially like the line about "legitimacy" and "light touch". From England, via Tam.