A: baby squirrels blown out of their nest. We’ve got two here that were brought to us yesterday. They’re just now opening their eyes, so they are probably 5 or 6 weeks old. I know squirrels are tree rats. I know they aren’t threatened or endangered. I know that there are a host of animals that could use the extra protein. But let’s face it. Baby squirrels are adorable. Pictures later.
I think I need a whole new blog category for water troubles. The pH neutralizer arrived today, along with 150# of premium chalk and 25 pounds of “clean gravel. I guess I know what I’ll be doing tomorrow – first stop Lowe’s, then home to install it. Fortunately, it doesn’t look too bad.
Since we’re on the subject of water (again), had yet another fun experience. Earlier this week, K noticed a couple of inches of water in the pan under our hot water heater. Yep, it seems to be leaking. This is the water heater that I installed one year ago. It was a replacement for a water heater installed 4 years before by the previous owner. The tendency of our appliances to rust, particularly the water heaters led me to test the pH. Ideally, it should be between 7.0 and 8.0 (or just neutral to slightly basic). Ours was around 5.5 or somewhat acidic. This is a reasonably common problem for people with well water and it causes all of the symptoms we’ve seen (including the degredation of all brass plumbing fittings). ...
We had a batch of thunder showers come through last night. We got about 2, maybe 3, inches here. Sometime during the evening, K and I ask each other, “what’s that noise? Turns out we had a leak in the roof that was dripping down (and through) the second story wall, onto one of the logs making up the first story and into the breakfast room. From there it was splashing onto the door to the deck and making the noise we heard. ...
Back when I was a grad student and just about to finish up, the school of engineering turned a class of 60 freshman over to me to teach intro to numerical methods for engineers. I tried to liven things up by emailing the occassional engineering funny to my students who even reciprocated. The following is a brief excerpt from an engineer identification test that was sent to me by a student. ...
I have a small request to make of the NC-DOT, if there are accidents on the interstate at I-40 and I-540 which backs traffic up 10 miles to NC-751, can we please, please make use of the expensive electronic information signs on the interstate to warn people? There’s a difference between a small traffic slowdown that you will soon get past and one that means you’ll be driving 5-10 miles at an average speed of 10-15 mph.
Took the day off and spent most of it working on the snake terrarium. Watching him pace (hmm, that doesn’t seem like the right word for a snake) his cage today made me particularly sad and motivated me to get about 95% finished. He could actually move in now – the only things missing are the decorative frames around the side vents. Overall, I’m pretty happy with the terrarium. There are a number of things that I would do differently next time, but some things will definitely stay the same. For example, I used plexiglass for the front which made the whole thing significantly lighter. The plexiglass was about $20 more expensive but definitely worth it. And here’s the (near) finished terrarium. Next time I post about this, we’ll be completely done and have the snake moved in. ...
To the left hand: It is clear that you no longer know what the right hand is doing. This weekend’s “accidental dremeling was eerily similar to the wood carving incident in grade school where a supposed “art project resulted in losing a chunk of left index finger. Combined with the great butcher knife massacre where we almost lost left thumb’s nail when it “supposedly looked like a carrot, we have a pattern that can not be ignored. ...
Just so you don’t think that I’m just a computer and photography geek, I wanted to update folks on another project. As I’ve said before, my wife does wildlife rehabilitation and managed to get conned talked into taking home a boa constrictor. Since they’re not native, he couldn’t be released once he was patched up. For the past eight months, he’s been living in a smallish (75 gallon?) aquarium. Okay, that’s not really small unless you’re a 6.5′ snake whose looking to get to be 8’+. This presented a great chance to do some woodworking. For the past couple of weekends, I’ve been building a 5.5′ x 2′ x 3′ terrarium for the snake. I’ve got the main walls, floor and top cut, stained and coated with many layers of polyurethane. Today, I put the cabinet together, caulked it (the caulk is still fresh, it will dry clear) and started working on the door. ...
There’s an interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (sorry, the link is behind the subscription firewall), about a mechanical engineering graduate student at Ohio University. After being invited to stay on after his masters and persue a Ph.D., he started having difficulty with his advisor. To help resolve his difficulties, he went to speak with the university ombudsman who advised him to examine disertations in the university library so that he might see where he was going wrong and what his advisor might want. ...