Sad Day in America

Our pencil sharpener quit working so I decided to see if I could fix it. That is what you do when something is not working like it was intended to, right? So how hard could it be to find a replacement gear, all I have to do is open a web browser, do a Google search and order a replacement gear from the manufacturer. WRONG! Can you believe here it is almost 2010 and they don't have a web presence. I did find an office products forum post that had quite a few other people looking for the same gear on similar models of my pencil sharpener. It looks like these nylon gears become brittle with age and eventually fail. By the looks of the serial number it was most likely made in 1982 so I guess I did get my moneys worth out of it. The only thing is I think it is a good sharpener with lots of life left in the motor and not ready for the junk box. But what do I do for a replacement gear? I don't have the equipment at home to cut a new gear. I'm hoping that someone might read this blog and want to take on making a gear for me but the chances of that happening is mighty slim. My other option is trying to find a replacement gear that I might be able to adapt to work.

Let me see if I have this right

Let say you have a checkbook and it is overdrawn. You've already spent more money than you'll ever earn so chances are you will never balance your budget. Now along comes a group of people who say they need to borrow a bunch of money from you so you pull out the checkbook and right them a check. This makes the group very happy and they go off start spending the money from the check that really doesn't have any money to begin with. Now they come back to you and say that they won't need as much money as thought they would need to begin with so they give some of it back. But remember they really didn't get anything to begin with because you didn't have anything to give them in the first place. So now you can go out and spend the money that you saved because they didn't use what you never really had in the first place.

Am I making myself clear?

According to the web site (which by the way is a government sponsored site)TreasuryDirect the current total public debt as of this writing is $12,079,739,352,131.13 give or take a few pennies. So if you are this deep in debt and you "save" some money that you didn't spend do you really have money to spend on something else?
Even if you were able to figure out a way to pay back the debt at a rate of one million dollars per second it would take 38 YEARS to pay back that amount. Now this is doable if you didn't have to spend money on operating the government that you already have. The only problem is that we haven't been able to pass a balanced budget in so long that I am beginning to doubt we ever will.

I thought I should write something about riding

Fetching water
Originally uploaded by PLC.Doctor

Seeing as how I've named this blog "Riding 'bent' in Hanford" I guess I should write something that has to do with riding. Today was such a nice day that we couldn't waste it by not riding our bikes. So I hitched up the BOB trailer to my bike and rode over to our neighborhood water vendor to refill our water bottles while Joanna did some shopping at Rite Aid.

After I dropped off the water and the trailer at the house we rode over to Quiznos for a late lunch. When we rode up there were these cute Electra bikes in the rack. I guess it's true that the shopping center was made for people to walk to or ride bikes like we did. While it was a little on the cool side today the sunshine sure made up for the day. It's nice not to have to deal with the typical overcast that we have this time of year.

dressing room land mines

dressing room land mines
Originally uploaded by PLC.Doctor

Joanna wanted me to try on some new clothes today so we went to the local major retailer that is not the one you think it is. When I went into the dressing room the floor was covered with these little nasties. You wouldn't want to walk around this room without having shoes on. I spent the first couple of minutes picking up the pins you see on the bench so I could take my shoes off to try on some slacks. After I was done I took the pins to the sales clerk and told her that I found all those on the floor of the dressing room. She sounded concerned and said that they would send someone in to clean up the floor. After looking at the picture again and thinking about it I don't think they are very thorough by the looks of the bent ones and the fact that some of them were embedded in the carpet. With the fact that America is a very litigious country and getting one of these stuck in your foot they would be very careful about making sure the floor was clean. But on the other hand, why do they put so many pins in a shirt that is wrapped in a plastic bag to begin with? I for one don't equate the quality of the shirt to the number of straight pins that are stuck in it.

Riding days so far

It looks like I should not have took the summer off. I was working nights and didn't have a decent headlight. I know its a lame excuse but if you saw the road south of town you wouldn't blame me. Then around Labor Day Dinotte Lighting finally had another sale and I picked up a 200L-AA-S without the batteries or charger pretty cheap. With the headlight I didn't have an excuse to not start riding to work even if I was working nights so the number of riding days picked up again.

Roosting raptor

tower roost
Originally uploaded by PLC.Doctor

I've ridden past this tower a couple of times around sunset and have seen these birds roosting here. My digital camera does not have optical zoom so I'm really pushing it to try a pull out a decent picture. I guess I should come back with my film SLR and 200mm zoom lens to try and get a better picture. This tower is supposed to be for high-speed internet access but those antennas sure look like cellular phone service to me. I think it is interesting to see wildlife like this in an urban setting. I'm surprised to see smaller birds sharing the same roost with the raptors because I thought that they would be lunch for the birds of prey.

Mousetrap photo on Flickr

Coffee can mousetrap w/ mouse
Originally uploaded by PLC.Doctor

This is the most viewed picture that I've posted. I don't know what it is about the picture. Is it the trap or the mouse? I didn't come up with the idea for this trap on my own. I based the trap on one that someone else had posted to the web. I don't want to kill something just because it doesn't belong where it is. All creatures big and small have a place and a purpose in God's creation.

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