A Strawberry Festival

What would a summer in Dayton be without attending one of the many local festivals? As I am getting ready to move, I decided I couldn't leave without going to at least one. As fate would have it, Jill organized an outing to Troy's Strawberry Festival this past weekend.

As with the other festivals I have been to, this one had a collection of arts and crafts booth and several food booths, most of which were centered around the festival's theme. In this case, strawberries make an optimal food base. (I'm still a bit iffy on the Sauerkraut Festival last year, and some of the concoctions they had to offer.) Jill and Tommy did an excellent job of sampling much of the fare, while Shirley, Dusti and I were a bit more conservative. (Although the homemade chips Shirley shared kept us in the running with them!)

It was a fairly small festival, but in the end, as long as you can hold a stuffed Nerd in your hand, life must be good.

And best of all, the rain came -- just as we got on the shuttle bus to return home.

The Infamous 666

Okay, so I've been surfing some blogs this evening, and there is an amazing amount of drivel out there, er, I mean, informative things. One of the many blogs disucssing today's date -- 666 -- I came across was Bill Blahs. In his post on 666 was the following trivia/mathematical information regarding 666:

Mathematical “facts”:

The sum of the squares of the first 7 prime numbers is 666:
666 = 2² + 3² + 5² + 7² + 11² + 13² + 17²

The sum of the first 144 (= (6+6)•(6+6)) digits of pi is 666.

A good approximation to pi is 355/113 = 3.1415929.
If one part of this fraction is reversed and added to the other part, we get
553 + 113 = 666.

The Roman Numeral representation of the number 666 (DCLXVI) uses once each the Roman numeral symbols with values under 1,000, and they occur in exact reverse order of their respective values (D = 500, C = 100, L = 50, X = 10, V = 5, I = 1).

And Miscellaneous Trivia

“Well they said the beast would appear today", the tagline used by BMW who used the date of June 6, 2006 in its promotion of its M6 Sports Car in the UK

In UNIX and similar operating systems a file permission of 666 grants all users read and write permissions on the file.

The Apple I, Apple’s first computer was priced at $666.66.

666 is the sum of all the numbers on a typical roullete wheel.

Organic molecules are based on carbon-12, with 6 Protons, 6 Neutrons and surrounded by 6 Electrons.

The powerful insecticide Benzene Hexachloride's chemical formula is C6H6Cl6.

U.S. Route 666, “the Highway of the Beast”, was renumbered as U.S. Route 491 in 2003 after controversy erupts over the supposed reference to the Biblical beast, which unfortunately also made the road signs a common target for souvenir hunters.

Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia- the fear of number 666

Again, this is all from his blog, so he deserves all credit.

The Laundry Mat that Binds

I don’t specifically recall the last time I’ve been to a full blown, real laundry mat – likely 13 years ago when I first came into the Air Force. I have used ‘public’ washing machines at hotels/lodging facilities since then, but going to a real laundry mat is a unique experience unto itself.

I came here late in the day, around eight thirty or so, expecting the place to be empty. However, there were some Asian looking females in the room of machines next door. The women quickly left after I arrived, so I really didn’t have time to observe them. A larger man with a huge tattoo on his left shoulder came in to the room I was in about ten minutes after I had arrived, and checked on a comforter which was in the dryer. After looking at the timer, he made a cell phone call, presumable to his wife/significant other, to let the person know that the dryer still needed fifteen minutes. He spent his time walking about the room, and inside and out of the laundry mat, before grabbing his comforter and leaving.

Next an elderly woman, perhaps between sixty five and seventy five, came in with a load of laundry. She put her wash into the machine, and then semi-timidly approached me to ask if I would mind watching her things, as she had left a small bag at home. (I suppose I should take that as a complement – that I look trustworthy. But judging by her brighter orange t-shirt, I can’t say that I am likely to want much of her clothes.  ) I assured her I would be around, and that watching the items would be no problem. I was truly amazed by how appreciative she was, and how she seemed to be acting as though it would be such a burden to me to ensure no one took her things. And so she left, returning ten to fifteen minutes later, and again expressed her sincerest gratitude. After loading her clothes into the machine, she settled into a chair to read a magazine off the nearby rack.

In the meantime, a young woman, perhaps in her mid twenties at most, and dressed in beige capris and a blue t-shirt, came in with her loads. She is passing her time by what appears to be studying. (Ahhh, I remember those days. Studying! What a concept!) Occasionally, the cell phone will ring, and she talks cheerfully into it, as well as rather loudly.

The last of the quartet currently here is a larger black woman, dressed in a one piece blue dress with white bold stripes on the upper half. Her back is to me, and so guessing her age would be rather difficult, but if pressed, I would say early to mid thirties. She appears to be standing guard over her clothes, as she is reading a book directly over the machine into which she has placed into her laundry. With a chuckle to myself, I think that anyone who would challenge her to her clothes would be a fool.

As I sit and watch the other three cohorts, I think that it kind of makes you wonder what kind of people are these folks? Where do they come from, and where are they going? Here at the laundry mat, we might as well all be one and the same – just some random person, trying to get their laundry done.

Isn’t it funny that something as simple as doing the wash can make you feel connected to the world? That something so simple can make you think that life is okay, and we are all going to be okay.

Well, my dryer is about finished, so it must be time to go back home to my own individual reality.

$950 For a Puppy?!?

I was watching CBS Morning Show today, when they ran an article about Designing a Cutter Dog. The gist behind the story is the new trend in mixing breeds to come up with the perfect dog. Puggles, a mix of pugs and beagles, were focused on, but they discussed other new breeds as well, including minature St Bernards, Lhasa-poos, and Shitzus mixed breeds. (Think of what the resulting name would be for those dogs!)

The breeder in the article said his puggles sell for $950. However, the article also said that these engineered breeds could go for thousands.

Don't get me wrong. I love puppies, (and kittens, and just about any other animal -- well, at least mammal -- out there.) But when does someone go too far to find a pet? When does the pet stop being a pet, and become a social statement?

The article ends with a quote from the breeder, "They gotta be cute or people don't want 'em." So, what happens to the resulting puppies that aren't cute?

My advice? Go to the pound or a rescue organization. You can find just as loveable puppies there, for much cheaper. Just ask my dog, a fellow rescued greyhound.

The Logistician

Logisticians are a sad and embittered race of men who are very much in demand in war, and who sink resentfully into obscurity in peace. They deal only in facts, but must work for men who merchant in theories. They emerge during war because war is very much a fact. They disappear in peace because peace is mostly theory. The people who merchant in theories, and who employ logisticians in war and ignore them in peace, are generals.

Generals are a happily blessed race who radiate confidence and power. They feed only on ambrosia and drink only nectar. In peace, they stride confidently and can invade a world simply by sweeping their hands grandly over a map, pointing their fingers decisively up terrain corridors, and blocking defiles and obstacles with the sides of their hands. In war, they must stride more slowly because each general has a logistician riding on his back and he knows that, at any moment, the logistician may lean forward and whisper: "No, you can't do that." Generals fear logisticians in war and in peace, generals try to forget logisticians.

Romping along beside generals are strategists and tacticians. Logisticians despise strategists and tacticians. Strategists and tacticians do not know about logisticians until they grow to become generals--which they usually do.

Sometimes a logistician becomes a general. If he does, he must associate with generals whom he hates; he has a retinue of strategists and tacticians whom he despises; and, on his back, is a logistician whom he fears. This is why logisticians who become generals always have ulcers and cannot eat their ambrosia.

Author Unknown

Quoted in 2005 at both The Professor's Lecture Notes and Iraq Now . I ran across the quote when blog surfing. It's an old quote but still applicable today.

"Your Such a Strange Garanimal"

Many years ago when I attended college, one of my roomates always use to call people garanimals. At the time, I didn't think too much of it, but as they years progressed, I noticed that everyone is a garanimal in their own right. Being a garanimal is neither good nor bad -- although I would admit that some garanimals are good, while others are not. Instead, it is what you make of it. Live your eccentricities.... Revel in your differences.

In the end, all that we can do is live our own lives. And perhaps, we can hope to find the garanimal who completes us.