The Changelog

with apologies to Jeff Foxworthy...

You might not live in the country if...

• you ever say "depending on the traffic" when estimating how long it takes to get somewhere


• you never say "but I can't come if the road is muddy" when estimating how long it takes to get somewhere


• you never say "but it'll be later if I get stuck behind a tractor" when estimating how long it takes to get somewhere


• you have known some of your neighbors for less than 20 years


• no random strangers give you a (friendly!) wave as you drive down the road


• you think "the road" is an ambiguous phrase


• mail addressed just to "Your Name, Town" might not get to you as fast as usual


• you can't remember what church someone goes to


• you'd never consider someone that lives 2 miles away to be a neighbor


• you think an auger is something unpleasant at the dentist's office


• you think "imporoving your irrigation" means buying a $2 attachment for your garden hose


• you think "your beans are weird" is probably an indecent joke


• you wouldn't be seriously insulted if someone told you "your beans are weird"


• when looking for a house, it never occured to you to avoid the highway so you don't get so many comments about whether or not your crop's rows are straight


• you have no idea where your nearest gravel supplier is


• you don't have to install anything on your roof before you can watch TV


• you think a lagoon is something from Scooby-Doo


• when driving down the road, you can't identify some of the crops alongside it


• you've never driven down a road with crops next to it


• your indoor plumbing still works when the electricity is off
  alternative test for Amish: the nearest phone is less than a mile away


• you moved to the area from out of state last week, and you haven't met any distant relatives (or at least made any distant connections) yet


• when people refer to "the Old Country", you wonder which country they mean


• families whose native language isn't English have probably lived in the United States for less than 100 years where you live


• something more than 30 years old would never be considered "new"


• you know less than 10 that can remember a time when electric service wasn't available in the area


• you've never lamented the invention of touch-tone dialing, since you don't miss getting updates on the local news from the operator


• when doing genealogy research, you start somewhere other than the church archives


• when someone suggests having dinner together, you ask "at which restaurant?" instead of "your place or mine?"


• "at which restaurant" isn't a stupid question where you live because there's more than one good choice within 20 miles


• less than half of the radio stations in your area have a noontime ag report


• your high school sports teams have winning seasons periodically


• your graduating class had more than 25 people


• you think "the fifth grade teacher" is ambiguous because there are several 5th grade teachers at the local elementary school


• you don't think traffic is heavy if there's someone ahead of you at the stop sign


• you don't think that the mere presence of stop signs is a scary indicator of urban sprawl


• as you stroll through a parking lot, there's a car you don't recognize


• fresh horse droppings on the road might cause the city to send out a street cleaning team


• you have no connections with people that can give you a discount on beef because it was alive on their farm last week

And the #1 way to tell you might not live in the country:

The waitress at a restaurant explains they're out of chicken, and you think that means something other than your fried chicken will arrive 20 minutes late, but extra juicy.

Terah has an amusing series about small-town mechanics.

In part 1, she talks to the mechanic. He doesn't know of me, or my name... until she mentions what car I drive. Then he knows exactly who I am.

In part 2, she mentions that it reminds her of a dealership... except "if I were at a dealership, I probably wouldn't have been sitting on a seat that had been pulled out of a van while listening to the mechanic sing along to the radio."

Then in part 3, we visit the other mechanic option, get a free lesson on how the history of auto alignments dates to 1915, and ponder the purpose of an old piano in the waiting room of an auto repair shop.

I'm just waiting for a part 4 to happen, in which she visits one of the people that fixes cars out of his barn in his spare time. My dad has visited those people for some time. Perhaps he'll be one when he retires.

Meanwhile, Cliff has a hilarious story about a chicken that had a very one-track mind... let's just say he didn't have very discriminating taste when it comes to, er, hens...

Oops, had an HTML error in the alarm clock review. I've fixed it and it's working now.

Some of you may remember my recent rant about alarm clocks. I finally decided to get a Sangean RCR-1 and the cheapest office-type UPS I could find for battery backup. It's $80 via J&R or Amazon. The clock is somewhat unique in that it has both a digital and a true analog display, and it keeps the analog display synchronized with the digital one. Here's my review.

First, the positives about this clock.

It has a very nice look. The "humane waking system" is also nice. When the alarm begins to ring, it starts quiet and changes the display color from blue to orange. It gradually gets louder. Very nice. If you press sleep, the display will stay orange; it will do that until you cancel the alarm. Also very nice.

The unit has two alarms. Each alarm may be set to beep or to tune to a specific radio station. There is an alarm volume control underneath the unit. Each alarm may be programmed to ring on certain days of the week only. That is very handy. I haven't had to adjust an alarm setting since we got the unit.

There is also a nap timer, that is sort of a third alarm. The nap timer takes a number of minutes, from 10 to 120, from now. It will ring the alarm that many minutes from the time you set it. Handy for... naps.

The unit does have a shortwave radio receiver to automatically synchronize with the NIST atomic clock. The initial synchronization can take some time (30-60 minutes for me), but it has been completely reliable. It's really fun to watch it synchronize the analog clock; the hands will go spinning and get to the right time in just a few seconds.

The radio is all digital and the sound quality is the best I've ever heard from an alarm clock.

The unit appears to have an internal battery backup that preserves time and settings for at least 30 minutes (that I tested). It will not ring the alarm when on battery, however.

The bad:

First, of course, not ringing the alarm when on battery. That's why I got the UPS.

Second, the manual. It is intelligible, but it is obviously an English translation, and leaves out some details. For instance, there is a toggle switch that will adjust the display between full brightness and whatever brightness level is set with the knob on the underside of the unit.

Also, I've found my old alarm with its old-fashioned red LED numbers to be easier to read than any of the backlit LCD clocks out there, including this one. The analog clock is more readable than the digital one in low-light conditions, but my old clock was still more readable. On the other hand, the old clock was ugly, huge, and gave far less information on its display.

On the whole, I'm happy with this alarm+UPS solution.

Back in 1954, Popular Mechanics ran a story about computing of the future. At that time a "home computer" was a far-off concept. Attached below is the projection of what a home computer in 2004 would look like.

I have several comments. First, what's with the steering wheel? Also, I find this especially amusing: "With teletype interface and the Fortran language, the computer will be easy to use."

Read on for more...