Wordless Wednesday

Hypnotizing Chickens

OK, I just saw this today and it is the craziest thing…  It’s not really ‘hypnotizing’, but evidently if you put a chicken’s head under it’s wing and rock it a bit, it will play dead.

You know I’m going to try this, right? 

You only have to watch the first minute or so of the video to see how it’s done.

I’ll be sure to give a full report!

On the Road

If you’re driving on the Thruway or there are two lanes going in the same direction – don’t drive in the left lane unless you are passing cars to your right.

If you aren’t at least going the speed limit (in normal weather), don’t pull out in front of me.

Don’t speed up to pull in front of me and then slow down.

If you are afraid to pass a big rig, get behind it – don’t drive next to it and stop everyone else from passing.

No matter how smart and/or coordinated you think you are – you’re not.  Don’t talk on your cell phone while driving.

If one of your headlights is out, don’t drive with your hi-beams on to make up for it.

If I am nice enough to let you in/let you out/let you cut in front of me, would it kill you to give a courtesy wave?

Don’t come zooming up the left lane and then slow down right next to me and drive the exact same speed I am.  Not only is it annoying to me, you’re blocking up all the traffic behind you.

There’s a device built in your vehicle - usually on the steering column - that’s used to indicate your intentions to drivers around you.  It’s call a turn signal.  Use it.

Before Driving…

Take the five minutes to brush the snow off your car before getting on the road.  That includes your side view mirrors.

If you’re replacing your headlights, don’t install the super-white bulbs.  I don’t know how manufacturers think that they could possibly make the roads safer when they blind on-coming traffic.

Why?

Why do you squeeze in front of me when there is only a car length or two between me and the vehicle in front of me and noooooooooobody behind me?

Egads people.

(not you who are reading this – I’m talking about those other people out there)

Smartness

How you are wired and how you are taught make a huge difference on whether you learn something easily or not.  This I already knew.

I did not know that there were so many categories of intelligence. 

Today I learned that there are eight kinds of smartnesses:

Kinaesthetic – Body Smart
Linguistic – Word Smart
Logical – Number Smart
Interpersonal – People Smart
Intrapersonal – Myself Smart
Musical – Music Smart
Visual/Spatial – Picture Smart
Naturalistic – Nature Smart

If you go to the Birmingham Grid for Learning, you can learn more about the different kinds of intelligence and take a test to see where your strengths in learning are.

I guess I’m only four kinds of smart (and obviously not musically inclined at all, even though I played the clarinet for eight years in school  ).  I thought I would have been stronger in the Visual category, but the rest doesn’t surprise me at all…

 

 

Dish

Today I took the jump and went from cable to satellite TV.

I’ve always had cable TV, so this was a big move for me – but with Time Warner constantly raising their rates, I feel the need to give it a shot.

I am keeping Roadrunner for my internet access and decided to go with Dish Network for my TV.  If everything is as they say it will be, I will be getting more and paying less.  I had to sign up for a two-year contract and for the first year I am getting $15 off a month from their regular price.  The first year I will be saving $34.99 a month and the second year $19.99 a month (including what I will be paying Time Warner for internet) from what my cable bill was previously.  That’s as long as the lady I spoke to at Time Warner was right about what I will be charged for just Roadrunner…  I won’t trust what she told me until I actually see the bill.  Anyway, that comes out to a savings of $333.49 the first year (I deducted the $79.99 + tax I was charged for the ‘one time installation fee’) and $239.88 savings the second year - so over the two years I will be saving almost $600.  There’s a lot I can do with that kind of $$$    And from what I understand, when the contract is up, customers are offered all kinds of incentives to renew, so maybe I’ll be able to save more down the line.  We’ll see.

I haven’t had the new system in for even a day yet, but so far I’m liking it. 

Pros so far:

- $$$avings

- I now have DVR on two TV’s instead of just the one I had before

- The way the DVR is set up, I can start watching something I saved on one TV and finish watching on the other (very cool!)

- The remote they gave me works on the box and my TV… now I only have to deal with one remote instead of two!  (except if I want to use the timer)

- The DVR has almost four times the storage space that the Time Warner DVR had

- The DVR has a ‘lock’ feature so that you can prevent a saved show from being accidently deleted – that could come in handy

- I like the search feature better… it can look for shows over the week instead of just for a day

- You can set the DVR to record new episodes only of a show… this is great for not missing an episode of something if it gets moved temporarily

- The remote has a cool commercial skip feature that I really like a lot

Cons so far:

- It’s going to take me a while to get used to the different stations being on different channels… the system they have is wacked compared to what I’m used to

- The new box doesn’t have a clock on it

- I haven’t been able to get my DVD player to work with the new box yet… but I haven’t spent much time at it either…

- The new remote doesn’t have a timer on it, so I have to use the TV remote if I want to fall asleep to the TV

 

Not sure if it’s a Pro or Con yet:

- I now have a satellite dish on the front of my house

- I lost a few stations and gained a few others… neither that I have/would watch(ed) much – but a glaring omission is the absence of Canadian stations

After a few weeks I should have a better idea if I made the right move or not – here’s hoping I did!

This ‘n That Thursday

• Tonight was the second episode of the new season of Survivor – the 20th (hard to believe, isn’t it?)  .  I think that Heroes vs. Villains is going to be the best season yet.  I’ve loved Boston Rob in every season he has played in and I’m rooting for him again.  If I have to pick a runner-up to Rob, it will be Russell.  We’re not seeing a whole lot from him yet…  but I think there are going to be a lot of surprises to come.  What does it mean when I’m rooting for the Villains? 

• Not having a snowblower anymore this year, I want one of these!
  
  

  
  Who can resist a robot snowplow that eats snow and poops out snow blocks? 
  
  As a side note, I was talking with one of my neighbors who is going to set me up with a snow blade for my tractor.  Next winter should hopefully be a lot easier when it comes to snow removal over here – I’ve been doing quite a bit of shoveling… 

 

• If you and/or your family made less than $49,000 last year, you can get your taxes done for free at the University of Buffalo by IRS-certified accounting students from the School of Management.  I think I might take advantage of this.  I usually do my own taxes, so it would be interesting to see if there are any tax credits I’ve been missing out on.  Dates and details are here.

• Please Rob Me – I’m not sure if this is such a smart web site to have.  In theory it’s a good idea to raise awareness of the information that people put “out there”, but what’s going to happen when someone really does get robbed?  If it’s found that the burglars found information on the internet that helped them rob a house, regardless of whether or not it was from this site, they are still going to get blamed.  It will be interesting to see what the legal implications will be.  And they will happen.

• How cool is this?
  
   
  
  … However, this guy has waaaaaaay too much time on his hands!

 

Wordless Wednesday

Frozen

Lake Erie is frozen over for the first time in fourteen years.

 

Really?

Obviously I haven’t been paying very close attention to this over the past decade-and-a-half because I thought the lake froze over every year.

Huh.

Where Do They Come From?

So how come Google can pass out everyone’s private information, but I can’t find out why one of my blog pages is getting so many hits?

For some reason this page is very popular from other parts of the world and I have no idea why.  It would be really nice to be able to see which picture is the one that people like.  None of the pictures on that page are close to being good, much less great.  So the only thing I can surmise is that a lot of people either like beets a whole lot or they like looking at chicken butts.

When I try to follow the referring image, all I get is this:

 

Another page that I am getting a lot (‘lot’ being a relative term )of hits on is the one I wrote on my visit to the Pendleton Castles.  Some of the visitors have come through a Google search, which makes sense (evidently Google lets you see search words, but not the pictures that people used?), but a lot of the referring urls are through Facebook.  As I’ve mentioned before, I am not a heavy user of Facebook and I definitely didn’t post anything there about the castles.  When I tried to follow the link to see where it came from, I get sent to the Buffalo Powder Keg Festival page.  Weird.  I don’t mind it at all, but I would love to know how that blog page got referenced on Facebook.

Oh well – I guess that I should be grateful that my pages are being referenced somewhere

Dent - Again

I wrote previously about how annoyed I was that the Time and Temperature Building had changed their clock so that it doesn’t show the temperature in Celsius anymore.

For the past month-and-a-half (at least), it hasn’t been showing anything.

I think I find that more annoying 

My Knife

Growing up, we had a knife in our kitchen drawer that was my absolute favorite.  It’s handle felt good in my hand.  The blade had the right amount of give to it.  Everything it spread always looked good.  I used it to put peanut butter and jelly on my sandwiches, I used it to spread mayonnaise and Nutella and marshmallow fluff.  I used it to frost cupcakes and Christmas cookies…  it was a really great knife.

When I ‘grew up’ and moved out, I missed that knife.  Whenever I was in a store that sold kitchen supplies, I would poke around to see if they sold knives like my Mom’s so that I could get one of my own.  Over twenty years I’ve been looking and hadn’t been able to find one 

A few weeks ago, Stephanie of Please, Stop Bouncing fame wrote a post about odd and useless kitchen gadgets, where I happened to mention the coveted knife.

Lo and behold, she found it online!

Guess what was delivered today? 

 

And evidently my knife isn’t really a knife – it’s a spatula   

I had ordered a couple and now I feel my life is almost complete

Thanks Stephanie!

This ‘n That

• Since The New York State Golden Snowball Award site has expanded and now also brings us the Golden Snow Globe site (the snowiest city in the United States contest), things have gotten even more interesting in the world of snow…  It’s hard to believe that Baltimore, Maryland is at the top of the list with the most snowfall to date in the U.S. -  More than Buffalo or Syracuse.  More than anyplace in Colorado or Maine.  More than even Alaska   

 

• Psychologists at Cambridge’s Autism Research Center created a test to measure autistic traits in adults.  A score of 16.4 was average and eighty percent of those diagnosed with autism or a related disorder scored 32 or higher.  I scored a 15 – I guess I’m OK 

 

• What English sounds like to people from other countries. This was really interesting… (to me, anyway!)
  

 

• Which organs can I live without and how much cash can I get for them?  This might be an option to consider if the job market doesn’t improve soon   

 

• I’m guess that I’m probably the only person in the world that didn’t know that duct tape had help save the lives of the astronauts on the Apollo 13.  I was only six years old at the time, but you’d think I would have heard the story sometime during the three-plus decades that followed  .  Anyway, I guess that duct tape was standard equipment for the Apollo missions.  Check out this page to learn more about the symbiotic relationship between NASA and duct tape.  Good stuff.

Wordless Wednesday

Top Picks

No, I didn’t watch the Superbowl yesterday (I finally went to see Avatar), but I did watch the commercials today 

I know that USA Today and others have their list of the best commercials – but only one of the most popular ads made my list.  Here are my favorites:

The Clydesdale commercials always make me cry 

 

I thought this one was really clever…

 

And naturally… 

…And Then There Were Four

I think Pumpkin finally figured it out 

 

The lighter egg is from Pumpkin.  I’ve noticed that when the chickens are new to laying, the first few eggs are a lot lighter in color before they go to the nice rich brown color.

So the only two chickens that aren’t laying yet are Banana and Nugget.  I’ve read that cochins take longer to mature, so I expect that they will probably start up in the spring.

I should now be getting two dozen eggs a week, which is a lot more than my family or I can reasonable go through.  I would love to sell the extra, but I have no idea how to go about it.  I’ve seen people sell them in stands in front of their house, but to me that doesn’t seem very practical for only a couple dozen eggs.  The same goes for putting an ad in the Metro paper like I’ve seen.  I’ll have to figure something out before I get buried in eggs 

Anyway, the Ladies have become One with winter and the cold and snow don’t seem to be a big deal to them anymore.  They do like when I shovel the snow all the way down to the grass for them tho’… I guess cold, frozen grass and clover must still taste good…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For some reason, the Ladies seem to be fascinated with my shoes.  They always have to see if they are good to eat or not – they seem to forget every time they see them 

Unpleasant Pheasant

When I bought my chickens, there was a required minimum order of 25 chicks so that they could be shipped safely.  My sister and a friend of my brother-in-law went in on the order with me so that I wouldn’t end up with 25 chickens (thanks guys!) .  The company also gave us a free “Mystery Chicken”, which my sister ended up keeping.

Mystery Chicken, (as he was so aptly named ) , turned out to be a silver-spangled Hamburg rooster.  Quite frankly, I find him to be a bit scary looking – I don’t care for his coloring and his eyes look like they are too big for his head.  I don’t have a picture of the actual Mystery Chicken, but this is pretty much what he looks like:

Anyway, it turns out that he is a really nasty chicken.  I’ve heard of that happening, but I’ve never seen it before.  Neither my sister nor I can figure out why… all my chickens are very good natured (Pumpkin has a tendency to be a little bossy sometimes, but she’s not nasty) and the rest of my sister’s chickens are all nice, too.  They were all brought up together and treated the same… 

But MC will literally attack you - He waits until he thinks you aren’t looking and he will charge you.  My sister wants him gone… especially with two little kids at home.  I agree with her.

If I’m not mistaken, the plan is that he going to end up as dinner one night once the weather gets better.  I don’t eat meat, but I’m really curious to find out how much different a freshly slaughtered chicken tastes compared to what you buy in the grocery store.  I’ll be sure to post a review from my sister and brother-in-law if the event actually takes place…

So today, I came across this article of a pheasant that seems to be terrorizing a town in England, which reminded me of MC.   One lady in the story said:

‘Another day it came at me and I whacked it with my handbag. I carry an umbrella round with me now for protection because I don't want to be made a prisoner in my own home.’

It would be funny to get MC and the unpleasant pheasant together and see how much territory they could conquer together 

Wordless Wednesday