Niagara County Fair 2011

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As is our tradition, the Nachmu family headed out from Nachmu HQ late on Friday afternoon to enjoy a fairly good county fair.  It’s comparable to the unbeatable Illinois State Fair, which I attended for many years, even though I was a resident of central Illinois for 2 and one-half years.  Comparable, I say, in delight, though not in scale.

4-H exhibits anchor the fair, especially on Friday evening, and the 4-H community is particularly strong here, especially in the agricultural emphases, but not at the expense of research and technological emphases.  The highlight of the entire agricultural year, for Nachmu at least, is the 4-H livestock auction, which has been the central feature of Friday evening for at least 20 years now.  The auction brings top-dollar to very worthy young people and to their program.  Every year, I go to bid on an animal, a lamb or a goat, but every year, the prices are far too high.  That’s a good thing, when one considers the program itself.

Here are some photos to enjoy; just click on the image to get the next one…

The Train
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Dwyers Pub Scotch Club August 2011

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It was another fabulous meeting: my seventh in eight months. I’ve made many new friends, which has been the primary benefit of the club, and I’ve learned a great deal about scotch whisky (it’s pronounced “eye-lah”), which is the primary reason I joined the club.

In a forthcoming post I will recount my first meeting of January of 2011, but for the time being, I want you, the reader, to participate in my delightful scotch-induced euphoria. Aaaaaaaaaah…

And now, some restful dreams, thanks to my participation in…

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The iPhone

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A PC man forever is Nachmu.  Windows 98SE was hack-a-licious, loads of fun for a poor, miserable grad student. Windows 7 is pure joy. BlackBerry was CrackBerry.  The BlackBerry got old, and RIM forgot to come back from holidays up North.  Finally, the trackball on my 2.4 year-old Tour petered out, and that was the last straw.  Sluggish OS I could tolerate, but hardware issues are intolerable.  So I went to the store to find…

…an Android.  It’s Google, which is PC-y, right?  But, no! An important app that I need for my business is not available on Android.  Indeed, it is available only for the BlackBerry, which is currently CrapBerry (oh! oh! Say all my CrackBerryHead friends, New Release! This Fall! I reply, It’s Broken Now!), and the iPhone.

Like the tractor beam of the Death iStar, the salesman guided me aboard Darth Jobs’ latest release, the iPhone 4.  It gleamed forebodingly.  Look! It turns around and around and upside down, and it has the power to destroy entire planets!  So Darth Jobs used his Sith iLord mind tricks to convince me to buy one.  When I told the salesman that I was sold on the iPhone, I thought I saw Darth Jobs smile upon me from the banner hung above the iDisplay.  I glanced up, and he quickly faded away into the Dark Side of the iForce.

I will never buy an iMac.  Never.  Honest. iSwear.

Staining Oak Pores

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Nachmu started this project several years ago, in fact, before much chaos descended upon my gentle home.  In short, Nachmu and Mrs. Nachmu began to occupy one of the downstairs bedroom at Nachmu HQ, making it into the Master Bedroom, and I thought it would be a good idea to upgrade all the trim.  Well into the project, unfortunately, Mrs. Nachmu thought that it would be a good idea to turn the Master Bedroom into the Office.  And so she did.

We moved into another bedroom.

Mrs. Nachmu then decided to move Nachmu the Younger into the Office. And so she did.

We moved back upstairs, moved Nachmu the Elder into the other downstairs bedroom, and turned the dining room into the Office.  Thus it has been for many moons, now, so I feel safe resuming the project, even though it be for the benefit of Nachmu the Younger instead of for me and the Mrs.

Here they are, laid out.  Allow me to describe the process:

Baseboards

The baseboards planed and laid out for the initial phase of staining.

  1. Plane the boards well, as flat and true as possible.
  2. Wash them with lacquer.  The lacquer should be cut with lacquer thinner, about a 1:1 proportion.
  3. Apply a dark stain.
  4. Plane the boards so that the stain comes off the grain, but remains in the pores.

The idea is that the stain will seep into the pores, but the lacquer will prevent the stain from seeping to deeply into the grain.  Thus when you plane the top layer, the grain and the pores stand in sharp contrast.

I’ll post more pictures as the project comes to its completion.

Hello world!

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All right, then. I tried Nucleus for a few days.  It would have been fun for me several years ago, with all the hacking and jiggering required to make it right, but, yeah, I couldn’t get basic stuff that I wanted, like Twitter feeds and whatnot, so I made the leap into WordPress.  Boy, it’s come a long way since I last used it!