43 thoughts on “January 4, 2014: Labor Cuts”

  2. Also, that tremor you felt in the Force? Yea, the Boy is on his way back to school this morning. Hopefully he does not freeze to death in route, since he left his winter coat and boots in his dorm room.

    1. Runner daughter and a friend leave for Orlando; hopefully their 5:30PM flight (by way of Chicago) isn't cancelled or unduly delayed. First time travelling "by herself"

          1. Really? What's the delay, out of curiosity? The weather is great from here to Chicago and you said she's heading to Orlando, right?

    1. Fans of the Everlys should check out the new album, Foreverly, by Billie Joe Armstrong and Norah Jones.

      httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0R_rhdglVBk

      1. They were 20 and 18, respectively, when their first hit for Cadence hit the charts, "Bye, Bye Love." [not one they wrote, however] "[Til] I Kissed You" was written by Don, and was one of their biggest self-written songs. ["When Will I Be Loved" was penned by Phil. Presumably why rowsdower played that one]

    5. Some of the stuff they did in the mid-to-late 60's was really cool, even if radio had long forgotten about them. They returned the favor of being influenced by the bands that they themselves had influenced. Here's one of my very favorite songs of theirs from 1968. (Dig that almost psychedelic lead guitar!)
      httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w70F7N_Wd5g

      1. Well now, that makes this make much more sense...
        httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfFdEZd5g_Q

        1. Ooh, nice.

          This one feels like it owes a debt to late-period Everlys, too.
          httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HydvceA1PAI

  4. Continuing a discussion from yesterday, I found a fascinating profile of Stick's idol.

    “Growing up on a farm, you just learn to make do. You couldn’t possibly make enough money to hire an electrician or a plumber,” he says.

    1. So NBBW wants a shelf installed in her maids'-room-converted-into-a-workout-room.

      I get pulled into the project as I am the keeper of the drill and drill bits, down in the man space.

      We have an older 1920's home, with plaster over lath on the walls. We bought some pop-up plastic anchors and screws at Home Depot, measured twice!, and then I set to drilling the 4 holes needed to hold up her shelf.

      Hole 1, no problemo. Hole 2, yawn. Hole 3 - there is a blood-curdling scream behind me as sparks fly out from the hole. I struck a live wire. I did not get electrocuted, thanks to the rubber on the drill.

      There was an outlet on the floor down and to the left of the to-be shelf, but no indication that there was anything else 'live' in this wall. I shut off all the breakers for that part of the house.

      After the initial weird smell of the sparks clearing, we felt confident that nothing was burning. It did not trip the breaker, a fact that all the electricians I called asked about.

      So an electrician comes to the house, cuts out a hole of the surrounding plaster, finds that somebody at one time ran a wire across the front of a stud, and my drill bit (of all the millions of places on that wall) had sunk right into the middle of the wire.

      He did all the right stuff, installed a junction box, routed the wiring correctly through the stud instead of in front of it (can we all follow Code, brothers?, hello), and charged us a reasonable fee (the evil Newington Electric was going to nail us for $250 for the first 30 minutes, natch that).

      1. I'd be most afraid of patching the plaster.
        My Dad's an electrician and aught me just enough to not be dangerous but still get shocked from time to time.
        ("Ow! Ow! So that was on a different circuit than the one I turned off!")

  5. Bless my mom. She stopped over today because she 'accidentally' made too much caramel popcorn and needed to get rid of it.

        1. I was implying it'll be danged cold tomorrow and she's better off eating the accidental second batch herself.

      1. A guy on our softball team would zing us by throwing a doozy during warmup tosses. Do the damn things really bob and weave the way they seem to, or is it just a trick of the mind used to seeing the ball acting a certain way based on a proper spin?

        1. Alan Nathan wrote about this very pitch in this year's Hardball Times Annual. Short version: yes it really bobbed and weaved. If the spin and release are just right, the acceleration from the Magnus effect rotates around the ball in the plane perpendicular to the ball's movement. The ball doesn't actually move that much, but since you're so used to it moving in a particular, normal even, way, it's especially confusing.

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