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  • Crow Journal, day 2

    ByJohn Brown

    The deer came through this morning and ate the peanuts and cheese.

    The good news is it appears the crows actually heard the weird call mix yesterday and had been scoping the place out for some time. My oldest saw them on the east. I saw them on the west. Then yesterday evening after writing the last post the pair of crows returned and did some acrobatics down the hill maybe 50 yards from the house.

    Today I found some calls from the Crow Busters site. I created a new playlist using the Rally, Attention, and Look Here calls. I set out a pie tin, a bit further from the house with a few Sun Chips and a handful of large bird seed (dried corn, sunflower, etc.) in it. Then I played the calls for about 20 minutes.

    Results: Nellie said she wanted to throw herself off the balcony. I’m telling you, these birds would not get the golden ticket on Avian Idol.

    Some people must think I’m nuts. It appears crows can cause quite a bit of damage and have in other parts of the country. The folks at Crow Busters have listed their litany of reasons for hunting the birds. But they’re scarce where I live, so I’m not too worried.

    Results of today’s efforts: nothing.

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    Testicles and the Zing Life

    ByJohn Brown

    Diana Rowland of MagicDistrict.wordpress.com invited me to guest blog. I was happy to provide “Testicles and the Zing Life.”

    Testicles do not taste like chicken.

    I know this thing. At least the ones taken from cattle don’t. But this Nobel prize-winning discovery is not what’s important. What’s important is why I know this. Read more.

    Enjoy!

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  • The Face of Mechanical Genius

    ByJohn Brown

    This is Warren Ellis.

    I heat my house with radiant heating. When we built this place, Nellie, I, and the girls laid down yards and yards of tubing. Then the mudmen came in and covered it all up with concrete. We run hot water through that tubing. That water it heated by a boiler, which also heats the water for sinks and showers.

    About two and a half weeks ago our boiler quit working. We called the guy who sold it to us. It worked again for one week and went out again. Then again. And again. Now if we lived in the valley and it was summer it wouldn’t be an issue. But we live at 6,000 feet, in the mountains, and it’s winter. We just got four inches of snow two days ago. Needless to say, heat is important.

    Well, four technician visits, $600, and many hours later, we still have problems. The blasted boiler conked out again tonight just as Nellie and I were about to take showers to go to a dance for adults our church was putting on.

    So we brought in the big guns. We called Warren. Now Warren fixes cars. He fixed our fridge. He’s worked on everything from computers to furnaces. So Warren arrives. In less than 10 minutes the @#!$ boiler was working again. And we now know exactly what the problem is so the Lochinvar boiler rep can’t tell us to look for something else and that it’s an installation error (yes it’s a Lochinvar Knight boiler–remember that boiler buyers). Genius. Absolute genius.

    I offered to give Warren a big old kiss–hey, hot water’s important, almost as important as a wife who doesn’t have to take a cold shower in the morning. Warren refused. 

    So here’s a wet one for ya, Warren. You’ve done your work to further world peace.

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    “How It All Came Crashing Down” by Peter B. Gardner

    ByJohn Brown

    Everybody knows that we got into this recession because banks began lending money to people who had terrible credit ratings, right? People who didn’t have to prove they even had a job. I mean, how long are you going to stay in business when you keep handing out dough to people you never hear from again?

    But is that all there is to it? And was it really just the fault of congress because they told Freddie Mac and Fannie May (the organizations that purchased loans) that they had to start purchasing these highly risky things? Or was it all those greedy Wall Streeters?

    In this must-read article, “How it All Came Crashing Down,” BYU econ professors explain how we got into this mess—and what we can learn from it.

    But that’s not the end of the story. Ira Glass and the folks at This American Life uncover deeper causes of the problem in their must-listen show “The Watchmen” (no, not the movie). I mean, come on, we were told these high-risk loans were as dangerous as milkshakes. Shouldn’t SOMEBODY have seen it?

    President Obama keeps saying that the root of the problem was that there wasn’t enough government oversight. Sounds good, doesn’t it?  We’ll get disinterested Uncle Sam to protect us from all these investment bullies. But if we dig a bit deeper, it appears that Uncle Sam was one of the major players at the root of the mess.

    Ouch.

    Read. Listen. They are two fabulous pieces.

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