Sunday  29 Oct 2023           comment?

From Wikipedia, a story about Roselle, a guide dog who was with Michael Hingson on September 11, 2001:

Roselle was asleep under her owner's desk on the 78th floor in Tower 1 of the World Trade Center when the attack commenced. She was awakened by American Airlines Flight 11 ... impacting some fifteen floors above them. Roselle calmly helped Hingson to stairwell B, despite the smoke, confusion and noise surrounding her.

She led her owner and 30 other people down 1,463 steps out of the tower. After descending over half the distance, they passed the firemen who were heading up, whom Roselle stopped to greet. The descent took just over an hour. Just after they exited the tower, Tower 2 collapsed, sending debris flying. Hingson later said, "While everyone ran in panic, Roselle remained totally focused on her job, while debris fell around us, and even hit us, Roselle stayed calm." Once clear, Roselle led her owner to the safety of a subway station, where they helped a woman who had been blinded by falling debris. Once they arrived home, Roselle immediately began playing with her retired guide dog predecessor, Linnie, as if nothing important had happened.

Thursday  19 Oct 2023           comment?

Wednesday  18 Oct 2023           comment?

A few days ago, all four of the clocks in my house that run off 120VAC were two minutes fast. Two of them have synchronous motors. The other two clocks are digital but rely on utility 60Hz to keep time.

Utilities don't maintain a perfect 60Hz but they try not to let much error accumulate. In the western USA, power companies make a correction once the error reaches ±2 seconds. Two minutes of error is thus more than a little bit anomalous. Several people who work for the power company live in my neighborhood but I haven't had a chance to ask anyone what happened.

Most wall clocks nowadays have battery-powered quartz movements. My synchronous motor clocks are relics, especially the one in my workshop. Only the case and the dial in that clock are original now. I replaced the movement and hands a while back, and before that I replaced the domed glass after my table saw threw a piece of wood at it (my fault).

One of the digital clocks that was running fast was in my microwave oven. The oven stopped working a couple days later. Either it was heartbroken to find out that you can't trust utility power to keep good time—or perhaps it just wore out after 34 years.

Saturday  14 Oct 2023           comment?

Thursday  12 Oct 2023           comment?

Tuesday  10 Oct 2023           comment?

The climate control unit in my car has a quality control sticker with an endearing message. The eternal part is somewhat ironic, as this unit is notorious for having capacitors that fail with age. I recently took mine out to send it off for repair.

The message is in Japanese and English, the former translated here by my phone.

Monday  09 Oct 2023           comment?