finger nail brush

The dumbest of things.  I bought a finger nail brush today from Princess Auto.  It was 99¢, so I know it’s not of the highest quality that money can buy.  But have a look at the label.

“This product contains chemicals, including lead, known … to cause birth defects…  Wash hands after handling.”

So I have to wash my hands after washing my hands with this brush.  Plus, I have to buy another nail brush to get the damn sticky stuff off where the label was.  Or Goo-Gone.

I actually saw a packet of peanuts on an airplane once that stated, “Caution – May Contain Nuts”.  As well, on the bottom of a frozen TV dinner, it said, “Do Not Turn Up-Side-Down”.

Speaking of blowing a gasket <ahem>, the rubber seal on my coffee pot finally broke today.  Life has come to a grinding (no pun intended) halt.

2018-06-26 update:

You’ll be happy to know that the ant killer I just bought does not contain nuts!  For all those ants with peanut allergies.  …  I know, right?

Philips L3G03T radio

As payment for helping G&A with their computer, I was given a radio, the Philips L3G03T (“T303“), the latest item in my collection of old technology.

It was purchased in England in the 1960s before G&A travelled to Canada with their three kids.  It was kind of a major purchase back then for someone counting pennies (pence, actually) to immigrate to Canada.  The radio takes two type 276 9-volt batteries.  I can get them online for only … get this … $22 each! (plus $120 shipping), and All-Tra Batteries here in Lethbridge doesn’t carry them.  Too bad.  It also has a power input port, but I have no idea what voltage it would take.  The batteries are connected in series, making this an 18-VDC radio, but there is some circuitry between the batteries, so I don’t want to take any chances and blow the thing up.  So I’m guessing I won’t get to hear it play just yet.

the exciting world of new old printers

I found a new printer – at a yard sale – for twenty bucks.  Yes, I know, it’s not new.  It has the same printing mechanism as my old HP Photosmart C5150 except that it has no scanner and it has different letters – D7260.  Not sure if it’s the D or the higher value numbers that make it print in all colours, but this one does.  As Aaron would say, “How dope is that!?”  It print didn’t when I tried it at the yard sale [error – error – does not compute], but I was confident I could repair it, and I did.

What about the old one?  (A freebie from work a hundred years ago!)  Try as I might, I could not get the C5150 to print blue.  The weird thing is that there are two blues in it (actually, cyan) – a regular blue and a light blue – but neither of them printed.  If it were just one type of blue, I’d say the ink suction tube was faulty or the print head was damaged, but the two blues use different ink streams – cartridges, tubes, portions of the print head.  So what gives?  Short of replacing the print head (which I did for the HP Offiejet 7610, a wide-format printer), I can find no way of getting the blue to print.

Doesn’t matter now.  The D7260 prints nicely.   Happy happy joy joy.

Holy heck.  In writing this Ongoing Letter entry, I nodded off like three times.  If I find it lacking adequate excitement so as to fall asleep this many times, I can imagine how you might feel reading it.  I think it also has something to do with the heat.  It’s hotter than Arizona asphalt out there, and it’s making me dopey.

Kim Jung Un’s “dismantle the nukes” party and more

North Korea‘s Kim Jung Un is apparently having a ceremony marking the dismantlement of one of their nuclear weapons facilitiesUSA Today  Now there’s a reason to have a party.  He comes up with all the good ideas.  Now why didn’t I think of this.  Probably because I don’t have any nuclear weapons.  Facebook

Something else hitting the headlines is parking lines in the downtown core of Lethbridge, Alberta.  Yes, painting lines on the pavement – to assist with parking.  But not just any lines.  They’re perpendicular lines, not angled lines.  Now I know what you’re thinking – this is big.  And rightfully so.  No word on if they’ll follow civil guidelines and use white or if they’ll cheap-out and use orange like the WalMart / The Home Depot parking lot in Lethbridge.  There they used orange to separate two lanes going in the same direction.  Like a hand-painted stop sign – you just know it’s not a civil project.

They’re also adding one hundred seventy parking kiosks downtown.  No, not as big as the parking lines, but exciting just the same.

The next newsworthy article is a bit misleading. Horse owner calls for introduction of safeguards to prevent slaughtering without consent  Well, if I were in this, I’d want to have a horse’s consent, too.  To do otherwise would be unfair.

This is not something that made it into the news mainstream today.  I was riding my bike northbound on the designated bike street adjacent Mayor Magrath Drive South when a guy and his friend told me to ride on the street.  I apparently scared him.  …  He could see me coming for about a block away but told me “a guy on a bike barrelling down on me” scared him.  I said “sorry” and rode by.  Then he offered that I should ride on the street.  <sigh>  I 180ed to go talk with him (which surprised him again, I supposed).  I told him that there are signs posted all along MMDS stating no bicycles are allowed and that this, in fact, was the designated bicycle street.  In fact they’ve been there for so long that they’re faded and hard to even see anymore.  It’s always been this way.  It’s a shared-use thing.  He apologized for the misunderstanding stating that he wasn’t from around here.  I was, at that point, tongue-tied.  Too many things to say.  1) you’re in a new environment; don’t tell people how to behave or you’ll look like a damned fool; 2) if you’re new, read the signs; 3) I didn’t mean to scare you, but … I really scared you?  How old are you?  You’ve lived this long and not died of a heart attack? 4) to avoid problems, don’t stand in the center of a “sidewalk” if you see someone coming – bicycle, pedestrian, horse running away from a slaughterhouse, Kim Jung Un’s nuclear-powered trucks – anything – just move to the right of the sidewalk so as to let both oncoming parties pass.  Has the whole world gone mad?

But this did make it.