Category: Uncategorized

Today I went to the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City. They had one building where they had different “villain” creatures from movies and listed which movies they had starred in. So they had piranha, tarantulas (actually a bird-eating spider, which does not typically eat birds despite its name), and bats. But the bats weren’t in a cage, they were hanging from a tree inside the building. These bats were pretty big, but they were fruit bats, so they don’t suck blood or anything. The ones on the outside of the clump stay awake and watch for trouble while the ones in the middle snooze. In this picture it looks like they are all asleep, but they were actually moving around and opening their mouths some while we watched.

I just got back from Zion National Park. We drove there Thursday from Bryce Canyon and came through the East entrance, a winding road with a mile-long tunnel (though it also has 4 “galleries” which are like windows into the canyon, but we weren’t allowed to stop). That road is under construction so they have it down to one lane traffic in several places, including the tunnel. Therefore we were escorted through. It is impressive, but since a lot of the road was torn up, it was also pretty rough.

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The day after I got to Salt Lake City we drove about 4 hours down to Bryce Canyon National Park. This park is famous for its “hoodoos” which are spires of eroded rock sitting in rows, most famously in the “amphitheater” area. We stayed near the old lodge in the park (inside the park they have the lodge, cabins (single or duplex), and two “motels,” so the motel was all they had left by the time I made reservations and we were probably lucky to get that because the town outside the park is pretty junky) which was just a short walk from the amphitheater.

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Last year, I wound up in an eBay dispute with a seller who was eventually banned (read it here). This time I was looking for some heavy duty leads for my voltmeter (really a Digital Multimeter or DMM). The problem is I was getting bad readings of amps on my voltage meter while measuring the current draw of a flashlight. After comparing the result to a friend’s DMM, I knew mine was off. His meter had thick leads and the wire said 18AWG on them. If I used his leads on my meter, I got more reasonable results. The leads on my other DMM (which doesn’t measure current) say 26AWG and look similar to the ones on the DMM that measures amps. 18 gauge wire is 1.024mm thick while 26 gauge wire is only 0.405mm thick. But the area of the 18 gauge wire is 6 times greater. Therefore the resistance in the skinnier wire is 6 times more than in the thicker wire and that is what was messing up the readings.

So I went looking for leads. After doing some searching I found two sources: eBay and DealExtreme (the place I buy a lot of flashlights). Both sets looked identical, with gray probes described as 10 Amp leads.

Continue reading “eBay Dispute Avoided”

I think Carol told me that some dogs like green beans. Austin has been eating grass lately, so I figured maybe some green vegetables would do him good. I was at the grocery store and they had Green Giant green beans on sale.They had “kitchen sliced” (1/2 inch cut) green beans, french style (kind of shredded, those French really know how to get the most of their canned green beans!), and eventually I found the regular old cut green beans. They are all the same vegetable! They are just cut differently. Why are so many types of green beans necessary? Then they also had low sodium green beans, but I’m thinking Austin would appreciate the salt.

It turns out Austin isn’t crazy about green beans and Katie, of course, will have nothing to do with them. Austin still has a couple of favorite patches of crab grass that he will graze on during walks.