Spring Work and Other Miscellany

yard work

The maples have all dumped their helicopters down on everyone's lawns. I have cleaned up some of them on my lawn, but not all, or even most. I have to be content to mow down and to pull up any trees that germinate. Most of the lawn bags I filled so far are maple seeds.

Speaking of mowing, I have decided to buy a Fiskars push-reel lawn mower from the Lowe's in Marion. I was in luck: The store had only one left. I bought it because the newer of my lawn mowers was becoming both dull and unsharpenable. (The oldest one still works well.) Both mowers cannot cut thick grass, and cannot cut twigs. The Fiskars mower can do both. And the lawn was impressive in the way it cut the grass, even the thick grass in the west side of my yard.

Before that I mowed Madre's yard, then helped her plant some lilac seedlings next to the shed.

convalescent cat

Madre's cat Sugarpuss, who is my cat Thyme's sole remaining littermate, was injured a few days ago. The wound became infected, and the big boy became very ill. The wound was under one of his legs, so we could not see it at first. But the vet found it on Monday, by which time it had become so swollen as to be obvious. The wound was operated on, and the big boy is convalescing. Regretably some infected muscle had to be removed, so the big boy will be limping for the rest of his days.

After the big boy returned from the vet, he is in a rented cage until later this week. Despite his having to wear a cone around his neck (to keep from biting at his sutures), I am sure the big boy will recover. He is such a loveable cat, even if he does drool all over you.

moveable appointment

I had to change my doctor's appointment in May to mid-April due to my lab works, whose results were not good as far as blood sugar and fat go. But then, even before the lab work, I had already forced myself to eat salads and to consume less bread. That has dropped my blood sugar below 10 for the past fortnight. I hope to keep it that way over the next month: I have had to change my appointment back to the original date after learning that my doctor whould be out for two weeks from the new appointment date.

1940 census

The data on the 1940 census came out on the third. I combed through it looking for Madre's family, the Dennisons. I looked at LaRue, Ohio, but they were not there. So I visited the northwest Marion County, Ohio area. That is a lot of stuff (20 sheets), so I downloaded it.

In one of the images I found Madre's family in a hamlet called Decliff in Montgomery Township of Marion County, Ohio. Decliff itself is not listed in the census table. It is a couple of streets (Chataque and North) off an intersection of county roads where a railroad once passed (the track bed is now a hiking trail). Only later (after World War II) did Madre and family move to nearby LaRue.

In 1940, Franklin Roosevelt was still president, getting ready to run for an unheard-off third term. The Great Depression was still in progress and World War II (for the USA) was not for another two years.

The census record reports that grandpa Oscar worked as a welder (and a damn good one, acc. to Madre) who earned $1200 that year. That does not sound like much: The average salary was $1900/year then, and he had six mouths to feed. Yet, back then bread was 8¢ a loaf, milk was 34¢ a gallon (delivered every morning by truck), gasoline was around 11¢ a gallon (but cars and trucks in those days burned it fast).

simcity revived

A new version of SimCity will be coming next year. I don't know whether I should care or not anymore. As far as I am concerned, SimCity 4 is still the last game in the series for reasons I have gone over here. A new version would be a good thing, if not for the news that the only way to play it would be to log on to some online tentacularium called Origin, which is supposed to be EA's answer to Windows Games. And I really want nothing to do with EA.

work

At work, the end of the semester approaches, and the printers are getting their usual workout. I have to swap one or two printers a week, sometime more, due to hardware failures; and I have had to clear queues of print jobs due to bad print jobs bring the printers to a halt.

I had hoped to create a version of the University Libraries Toolbar for Safari. I wanted to expand on the Toolbar's use beyond Firefox and Internet Explorer. But the instructions from Apple for developing extensions on Safari were obtuse; the way they treat toolbars as miniature Web pages does not help me, as dropdown menus do not work that way. I tried the demo for Addon Builder IDE, the only Safari extension development software. It works very well, but the demo cannot create a deployable toolbar, and the price of the standard version cannot be justified for just one use. So I am at a dead end.

However, I have an almost functional Toolbar created as a Web site. (The CardCat dropdown does not work yet.) Visit it here.

the death of best buy?

Best Buy announced that it will close fifty of its 1450 stores next year. Its target list was not announced, but it would not surprise me if it closed either some of its Indy stores or its store in Muncie. They cannot compete with Fry's in Indianapolis: In fact Best Buy itself cannot compete with anyone, anywhere, given how dysfunctional its store culture is.

Best Buy also hinted that it will change its sales emphasis to mobile devices. But Fry's sells those, too, as does Apple, AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Radio Shack and a host of other stores. The mobile device marketplace is a shark tank, and given the quote above, Best Buy is a steak.

Best Buy's decline is not a surprise. Search bestbuy on Slashdot, and read postings on how Best Buy overcharges, steals porn from customers' computers in repair, squatting on the word geek to protect its Geek Squad trademark (and dilute the word's meaning in the process), even overcharge so outrageously as to make it a figure of fun. Then there is the incident where Best Buy fired one of its employees for posting an Xtra Normal video mocking its customers' stupid obsession with the iPhone. (Best Buy offered his job back, but the fellow decided not to bother.) Best Buy's absurdities are seemingly without end, but it looks like the absurdities will indeed end.

I brought this up again because Cringley has looked upon Best Buy from a different aspect — its information technology department (or lack of one, as most of its IT is contracted out) and has come to the same conclusion: Bust Buy is doomed.