Read Your Rod’s Duck Farm News ….. tooo many form letter words July 17, 2007
Soldiers and Cherry Trees. George Washington chopped down cherry trees. I should have taken the hint, but I planted a cherry tree on March 18th. April 14th, a National Guard guy spun off the road – knocking down the Duck Farm sign and shearing off the cherry tree.
DISCOVERIES:
-This year we used a space heater in Leta Mae’s car to keep ice from forming on the windshield and to pre-heat the interior. January 13th was a big ice storm so there was no church January 14th. Also the first day of school was canceled January 15th. Ducks got frozen in duck ponds and had to be chipped out.
-WD-40 … What to do with the little plastic straw/nozzle that comes taped to the side of the can? One of the more innovative persons observed that the can has a curved rim and the straw can be “wrapped” into the rim like a snap-ring. Sadly, I lacked sufficient patience to benefit from the technique. So I put the little red cap/cover back on the can, accepting failure. Then I noticed a groove molded into the cap. The straw fits in the groove! There should be more frequent and intensive training on how to use spray cans.
-Pain …. ibuprofen is an NSAID (pronounced In Said). I don’t use it because, to be most effective, the correct dose at consistent intervals is required. NSAIDS reduce inflamation. Less swelling, less pain – more joy. An alternative (search Google: olive oil pain relief) is olive oil. Eric notes, “Yeah, the Olive Oil thing would do pretty good since you would be eating it with meals … a consistent amount at consistent intervals.” Olive oil is considered by some to be an all-natural pain reliever for pregnant women.
FAMILY THINGS:
-Elder son, Adam, is now an apprentice mold-maker. He is learning to make and repair plastic injection molds …. if you wanted a plastic fork or duck or tail-light lens, molten plastic is squirted into a mold.
-Younger son, Eric, will finish his first year of employment at the end of August. If you have pushed a new elevator button recently, you and Eric have a common thread. He makes elevator buttons – elevator buttons for hospitals, Disney World, etc. Eric sent in his tax forms only to discover that his employer had entered the social security number with a couple numbers transposed. By the way, if your social security card is laminated, some government agencies won’t accept it and you might have to get a replacement card.
-Grandson William’s adventure was going through the doggy door, in and out of the house at his Grandma Myers.
-Nephew, Tim, and fiancee, Shiyi, tied the knot. Now I’m part Chinese!
-Northwest Arkansas still has a drive-in movie theater. Leta Mae & Eric and I went to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean and Ratataouille. Ratatouille echoes the joys and despairs of culinary wizards I have known. Pirates of the Caribbean – drifts in and out of “reality” giving the impression of a movie based on the dream/nightmare of a pirate.
-At the Skaggs reunion, the kiddie activity was making rubber band guns. Charley Reed was head of manufacturing.
-Independence Day, 4th of July, is for celebrating freedom. I spent the early morning working on ducks and the rest of the day driving around visiting friends. I smoked a whole pack of cigarettes, drank two pots of coffee, and ate a whole box of donuts. It was like ….. doing whatever I wanted.
February 7th, I was driving Leta Mae’s car and witnessed a scene from the movie “The Matrix” – rectangular object floating in the air. It turned out to be a large barn door, about 20 feet up in the air, having just blown off a trailer. I was driving 55 mph and figured it was going to shear off the roof of the car. Fortunately we hit a “glancing blow” and mostly broke the windshield and wiper motor.
My Mother went to a big shindig at the Peabody Hotel and brought souveniours!
Duck napkins and stirring sticks. She also got me a roll of duck wrapping paper.
Leta Mae and I went to see nephew, James, at Alexander, Arkansas. James has ducks and a duck pond!
Cavin Kimbriel sent a story about a kid that accidentally killed his grandmother’s duck. He tried to keep the incident a secret and his sister used the information to blackmail him into doing her chores. Unbeknownst to him, Grandma knew what was going on and waited for him to finally confess. It is a story with a moral that when we confess, God is faithful to forgive.
My Step-Mother sent a very special duck. (You’d have to know that my nickname is Bunny.) It is a duck/rabbit. Mostly duck with a duckly quack, it also has rabbit ears.
The Mighty Ducks ( Hockey team) are no longer mighty, they are the Anaheim Ducks. The name change was prophetic. No longer was there a doubt that they MIGHT win. They WON the Stanley Cup – Quack, Quack! Sister Sharon sent me an Anaheim Ducks T-Shirt commemorating the occasion. She also sent a cute You Tube video link about a Chinese puppy and baby duck that pal around a marketplace in China.
QUALITY CONTROL:
-At one time, Cowboys & Indians was the fun game to play. Nowadays it is Chinese and Indians. The folks in China and India are the manufacturing wizards of today. It’s hard to get a square deal anyplace else … Eric wanted a gage quality combination square set. He spent $200 for a Mitutoyo (Japanese) set that needed to be reworked to be acceptable … still, it was better than the American versions from Starrett or Browne & Sharp. The Browne & Sharp technical representative was not even familiar with the concept that a square can be a hi-precision instrument. Roughly equivalent to the Mitutoyo was the $23 Made-in-China square set. What I finally discovered is that the international standard for squares is exactly the same as the taper on a lathe mandrel. In other words, a square can be “out-of-square” by the amount that other tools are intentionally “cock-eyed”.
-Eric had a similar problem with work boots. For some reason, Dr. Martens footwear has a reputation for quality. Eric got some. They immediately started coming apart. There is no warrantee. The paperwork that comes with Dr. Martens states “…. it should give good wear life, without premature failure of the outsole , upper and upper stitching ….If the footwear becomes damaged, it will not continue to give the specified level of protection and to ensure that the wearer continues to receive the maximum protection, the footwear should be immediately replaced with a new pair.”
I sewed them back together but then the problem was that the soles have no reinforcing. There is no arch support – no steel shank . Now Eric wears Harley-Davidson motorcycle boots.
These days quality is determined statistically. People measure things. The important measurements are called “metrics”. (What are the metrics for happiness? Quantity of money is one of the metrics.)
In times past, quality was this: When something is the “wrong long” or “not the right height” ……. duh …… fix it. Nowadays it doesn’t matter what the measurements are as long as they are properly documented.
-Dave Renfro discovered a fine book about the development of statistics with interesting biographies of statisticians ……. WHAT????
1. nothing is worse than a book 2. except a book about history 3. except for a book about statistics
“The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century” - by David Salsburg
(Dave makes also makes guitars similar to the Fender Stratocaster. He’s a Stratistician.)
The quality control magazine recommends a how-to/improvement website: www.lifehacker.com
COMMODITIES MARKET:
- Maybe exact measurements don’t matter. Columbia produces 600 tons of cocaine each year. On April 30, 2007 agents seized a shipment containing 20 to 25 tons. Which was it? 20 tons or 25 tons? ….. and what’s the big deal about busting some guy in Detroit with 10 pounds if they can’t tell the difference between 20 and 25 tons?
With world trade (exports) at an amount about equal to the US economy, about a dozen trillion …. drugs are only a few percent, (about 400 billion) The US only uses 1/3 of the drugs. It’s just a few billion here, a few billion there. On the other hand, wiping out the drug trade would zap the 3rd world worse than it already is.
-I was watching a documentary about the United Nations wiping out the opium trade in Afghanistan. There were pictures of tractors, large tractors, pulverizing acres of ground that had been used or might be used for the production of opium. Despite the dialogue, after I watched for a while, I realized that the video clips showed tractors plowing the fields FOR opium production. Monday, July 9, 2007, Afghanistan’s minister of anti-opium production resigned as Afghan opium production reached an all-time high. The number of acres dedicated to opium cultivation rose from 250,000 in 2005 to 400,000 in 2006. There should be T-shirts: “Shoot up for Afghanistan”????
DUCK MANIFESTO:
-Meanwhile, somebody blew up their SUV at a London airport. Now the news media is concerned that an Islamic medical doctor might use his status to gain entry to the US for nefarious purposes. Why not just go to Mexico and ride in with the coyotes? 12 million illegals, soaring health care prices, and the concern is that a doctor might sneak in.
-Other people are thinking about the war in Iraq and how long to leave troops there.
Hmmmmm….. we still have troops in Germany and Japan and Korea. (Niece, Karen, gets exercise since she joined the Army. She went to Korea instead of Iraq.)
Pat Adams echoes a comment, “When Sadaam was hanged, we won the war. What we are losing is the peace. Too often the case – win the war, lose the peace.” “And they have been fighting the Palestinians for thousands of years,” he continues.
Dave Renfro notes that since there is NO draft, all of our troops are willing & paid.
Because of the recent interest people have in the abolition of slavery, one has to note the similarity between slavery and a military draft.
And folks wonder why I like to think about ducks!!!!!!!!!!
DUCK STUFF:
The Rod’s Duck Farm Whirlygig Duck was used by Pastor Wolf as an visualization-introducktion to Acts 2:2
“…. a rushing mighty wind…” I was too busy wondering … why a Russian wind, why not Chinese or Afghan?
The duck truck operates on tacks! I thought fuel was just a blend of hydrocarbons but now I hear it is 17% tacks. At a dollar a gallon that would be 17 sense, much better than a 6th sense!
Ducks are migrant critters. Are they migrant worker or my grant workers?
Black Duck Software looks for intellectual property rights violations in software
Ed Gee commentary: To improve computer cooling, add rubber web feet to lift the front of the computer, increasing airflo. Also, for appearance sake, add "Groucho" glasses to front of computer with a bill instead of nose.
I now have a video of three episodes of a Jim Carey TV series, “Duck Factory”.
Cho Seung-Hui, the Virginia Tech Massacre guy is reported to have purchased 3 dz rubber ducks on eBay.
PBS – “CyberChase” made a Trojan Duck to enter a fort around a duck pond – The engineering included a model with eccentric wheels to cause a waddle. They revised the eccentric offset on the model to improve the waddle.
Holiday Inn ad: guy gets email message - computer quacks instead of beeps.
From the show , In Case of Emergency ... ABC, a baby sitter rips head off a toy. The homeowner exits with the words, "All you need to know is that to keep the kid from crying, just get out Freddie the Talking Duck". OOPS!!!
Aflac Duck featured a NASCAR Race commentary w/ trivia factiods. Then, at the words, "Que the Duck" the Aflac duck is superimposed on the track TV .
Dave Renfro- Aflac goat (the boss) says “nah, nah” and gets retrofitted with duck lips.
In another episode, Aflac Duck becomes Superduck, action hero
Jan 21 BBC story: Hunter in Tallahassee, FL shot a duck, put it in his refrigerator. A couple days later, kids noticed the duck moved. The Duck was taken to the Goose Creek Animal Sancutary where it recuperated.
My stress is now relieved with a foam squishy duck, Dr. Quack, from the St. Matthew University of Medicine.
Somewhere there’s a duck walking around with an arrow. He was shot but didn’t die and the vet wouldn’t remove the arrow for fear of doing further damage. (They never heard, “wring it’s neck and eat it for supper”?)
Sister Charlotte & Son Davey sent, along with Peter Cottontail, a Duck Puppet named Quackers that quacks musical tunes when you move his mouth.
An episode of the “Fairly Odd Parents” cartoon had weather “raining Ducks”.
Josh Arnoldus passed on a pair of duck prints that are now in frames.
Adam & Amanda keep an eye out for ducks such as the dancing and signing “Disco Duck” and, the greatest duck in the world – I call it “Strangle Duck”. Strangle Duck dances to the tune “Camptown Racetrack”. There is a natural tendency to pick him up by the neck at which point Strangle duck quacks loudly and flaps his wings in protest until you put him down. Then he starts his tune & dance again.
They also provided an artistic blown glass , cobalt blue duck and two ceramic ducks.
Milton Bradley continues to advertise their game, “Lucky Duck”. I have one and use the ducks as patterns for sand casting.
My Birthday was an avalanche of ducks! It started with a Daffy Duck birthday card from sister, Sharon. Duck towels & washcloths, a plush quacking duck, and a duck birthday cake migrated in from Adam & Amanda. Leta Mae & Eric discovered a Duck Unlimited hat, duck knife, and duck files (the carving kind of files).
Since then , Leta Mae has discovered all sorts of ducks:8 plush ducks, wooden cupholder duck, 5 “switchers” (transformer-like) ducks, Giggle/Jiggle duck (touch activated giggling), fuzzy brown duck, duckly wooden planter, duck from the floor at the mall, duck basket, Farmer duck, Piggybank duck, 2 Duckbill Platypus (green & purple), candy dish.
History Channel: Reverend Forsythe invented the percussion cap using mercury fulminate to aid in duck hunting.
James Allen has been thinking ducks a lot. There’s the “End of Time Duck Puzzle” (shelf full of decoy ducks – “Which are the same? Which are different?) and article about Time magazine shutting down. Then there’s an NBC news article about a Baby Duck Rescued from a Street Drain. He also sent the feature series of the Orlando Sentinel, the story of Chuck the Duck. Chuck the Duck is a Pekin duck who was raised from a duckling on the border of the Disney Wilderness Preserve, in the back yard of Frankie Grillasca. Then, two years later, the Association of Poinciana Villages decided Chuck is a farm animal and could no longer remain at Frankie’s house. (Springdale, Arkansas has a similar ordinance that homes can only have three pets. A newspaper article noted “You can have an many cockroaches as you want but only 3 goldfish.”) Anyway, they sent Chuck the Duck off to an Animal Sanctuary ….. a place called “Gatorland”. Finally a pair of families in Winter Garden, near Kissimmee, Florida adopted Chuck from Gatorland. They have two female Pekin ducks. Chuck will have quite a story to tell his grand-ducklings.
James was the first to send me a story heard round-the-world on my birthday. It was actually an Associated Press story carried by the Orlando Sentinel about Stumpy the Duck. Stumpy the Duck was hatched at the Warranwee Duck Farm, 95 miles southwest of London, England. Stumpy’s claim to fame is having 4 legs and 4 webbed feet. Just as the Duck News has tooo many form letter words, Stumpy has tooo/Two many feet.
Antiques Roadshow featured duck decoys, one valued at $1,500. The dollar store had 30-cent duck days …..dollar ducks for 30 cents. I got a candy dish, an ash tray, an egg holder, and a bell.
“Last of the Summer Wine” (British comedy) has some new episodes. One indicates why ducks are not more popular – Howard wants to go bird watching but his wife, Pearl, says the feather duster will have to suffice. She says that she will go “Tweet, Tweet” from time to time to enhance his dusting experience. When Howard complains, instead of going “Tweet, Tweet” she goes “Quack!”. The quack can be abrasive.
Barry Knight sent a .wav file of a Budweiser “Decoy” ad: Campers spot beer floating in a stream. The beer turns out to be fake rubber cans and bottles. Meanwhile ducks have stolen the real beer from the campers’ cooler and are flying off with six-packs.
Jimmy Neutron’s dad, Hugh, went to a musical called “Ducks”. The scat singer, instead of imitating a trumpet with “Ta-Ta-Ta” sounds, sang “Duck-Duck-Duck” instead.
Gail Baker continues to send unusual duck graphics.
February 11th, 2007 calendars went on sale and I got two different duck calendars.
Steve Renfro recalls a book he read as a child, “The Duck on a Truck” – when the truck’s brakes gave out the Duck got on the hood and quacked everybody to safety. Steve also discovered the Lonesome Duck amidst the Magic of Oz and a new Celebriduck edition, Wizard of Oz Ducks. ( Oz is an abbreviation for ounce … Wizard of Ounce?)
“Adventures of Piggly Winks” is a PBS series similar to “Winnie the Pooh”, but Piggly Winks has Duck friends.
Trinity Broadcasting aired a story about a baby duck that fell out of its nest. (It must have been a wood duck. That’s the only kind that nest in trees.) Trinity also has a duck skit with little kids dressed in duck costumes singing a tune called “Let’s get Quacking”.
Advertisements:
There was a “Moonsand” commercial – they make a duck from moonsand. The Sony camcorder folks have a “Kid takes bath with rubber duck in the sink” ad. IBM has an ad with a duck quack as an attention getter. A Lowe’s ad features the problem of matching paint colors with a duck. Waste Management even has a duck ad implying environmental friendliness. Argentina is advertising duck hunting opportunities. McDonald has duck advertisement/question: Does a one-legged duck swim in circles?
KidCuisine, alias KC is ConAgra's Arctic Duck icon for packaged meals. A Store at the Mall, “Arty Crafty” has a duck display.Rumors have it that Zoo Pals have a duck-shaped picnic plate. I haven’t seen one yet.
EXERCISE:
Everybody is trying to exercise these days. There’s some 80-year-old guy in New York that rides his bicycle 125 miles a day, twice a week. That’s like saying I celebrate Christmas 10 hours a day, once a year. Them Yankees have a funny way of saying things.
Sister Sharon now rides her bicycle once a week, 50 miles in 4 hours! (She allows herself an ice cream as a reward …. I think I’d want a steak and a bucket of chicken to go with the ice cream!)
My parents both agreed that a healthy diet is a good thing. My father added that “You need plenty of rest or you’ll be tired all the time.” My mother said, “You need plenty of exercise or you’ll be tired all the time.”
Which one was right? BOTH!!! Without exercise, a body gets weak and sickly. Without rest, exhaustion sets in.
That’s the way the Bible is. Some of the things it says to do are opposites. There’s a lot of Christians trying to exercise and eat while they are sleeping, just to cover all the bases. Is sitting on the couch with a bag of chips ……. eating, resting, OR failing to exercise? Is running from a bear ….. exercising OR failure to eat and rest? Is eating fried chicken … fasting from oatmeal? Hint: Don’t do any of those things 24 hours a day. If you are driving and praying, you don’t have to close your eyes and fold your hands.
You can keep a diary on the internet. It is called a Web Log (Blog). You can read the Duck News ….
type in
http://rodsduckfarm.blogspot.com (note: NO www)
Just Remember:
If people spent more time thinking about ducks,
They’d spend less time thinking about other things!!! Quack, Quack!
