How long before they look for your body?

It took this guy's family a week to look for his body in their shed! This story has so many life lessons, it is hard to compile them all. Don't lock your keys in the shed, don't try to climb through a hole to small for you if you do. Tell your family what you're doing so if you get stuck they can help you.

This poor guy did the calculation for the price of his life and decided that he was worth less than the new lock he would have had to buy when he cut through the old one to recover his keys locked in the shed. Darwin Award anyone? From the article:

The state Medical Examiner's Office ruled Charles Whitaker's death accidental, said Jay Lynch, of the state Department of Health and Social Services.

Navarro said Whitaker had apparently locked his keys inside the 8-by-8-foot padlocked shed and climbed a stepladder to try to get in under the mesh-lined soffit extending over the sides of the building.

"He was able to get his shoulders and arms through before getting stuck," Navarro said. "It appears the victim may have suffocated after becoming lodged in the shed's rafters."

Navarro said the victim was last seen by family members June 14.

Whitaker's father, George, said he was not initially concerned about his son's whereabouts, thinking he had gone to the beach with friends as he occasionally did.

The story goes on to say that the victim lived at the same house and took care of his aging parents (George, quoted above). The shed was in the backyard of the very house they all lived in and they still didn't find him (look for him) for a week! As is usual with these stories, the smell of the body led a neighbor to discover it. There is a deeper story here we may never get to know. I also prefer the phrase "death by misadventure".

To this day my mother insists that we call her when we get home after visiting at her house. Most of the children live some distance away and who knows what could happen on the trip home (think pessimistic Italian mother thoughts). Based on that tradition, I created a measurement called the "time in the ditch factor". If you crash your car into a ditch on a deserted road, how long before somebody starts looking for your body. If you live alone or your family is used to you "going off to the beach with friends" it could be a long time. But if you follow Mom's rules, the search parties will be out momentarily. In the interest of full disclosure I should admit that I always forget to call when I get home. I hope I don't regret it someday.

(Tombstone generator, I found myself!)

tags: tombstone, Darwin Award, Delaware, death by misadventure

Bubbles by self-proclaimed professionals

Today, a nephew's birthday party afforded the opportunity for the adults to play at bubble making under the guise of entertaining the younger cousins. I graciously volunteered my services as a licensed and trained Colloid and Surfactant Scientist. The kids had the smaller bubble wands while we adult engineers improvised a giant bubble maker with a coat hanger. It was harder than you would expect.

The chief engineer on the project (not me, I was just a consultant) realized that the flatness of the ring in the bubble pan, and a slow withdraw seemed to be the key to getting a soap film out of the tray. Then a steady swing through the air to blow the bubble and you hope that the back end closes before it pops to make a bubble. I took pictures with my crappy Treo camera. We made ten times as many bubble attempts as pictures taken, and I don't have all the pictures displayed here.

The most treacherous path for the bubble was near any of the younger children. Those that escaped that fate floated off to the roofs and the sharp needles of evergreens to meet their doom. Don't bubbles sometimes remind you of your mortality?















I eventually got clever and could create bubbles, catch them back onto the hanger wand (if there was a good film) and watch the wand suck the bubble back into it. Then I waved the wand to make a bubble again. It was a good metaphor for reincarnation.



Two bubbles at one time. Perhaps a focus on quality over quantity would have been more appropriate.






Some were not as easily impressed with the giant bubbles in their midst.






Floating in circular perfection. By the way, a star shaped bubble wand doesn't result in star shaped bubbles because once the bubble leaves the wand the soap film attempts to achieve the lowest energy shape. For a single bubble, not on a wand, that's a sphere.



Dangerous head-eating attack bubble goes after child!







tags: bubbles, Colloid, surfactant

Success at the yard sale

Truck to move stuff to the yard sale: $70

Stickers for price tags: $2

Selling all of the big furniture so I don't have to move it again: Priceless

Made some money. Got rid of a lot of stuff. The key when selling the bigger furniture was not to mention that if we didn't sell it we were going to give it to Goodwill. That might have undermined my bargaining position. I do want to add the intangible value of not having to shlepp that stuff around anymore to the actual price I got for those items.

tags: yard sale, tag sale, Delaware

No ghost is too big, no fee is too big.

Ghostbuster takes a fee for a ghost well caught. The yardsale continues unabaited. Here the seller shows the correct technique - hand them the item but get the money simultaneously in case they try to run away.

tags: yard sale, tag sale, Delaware

Like selling snow to eskimos

I wish I had snow to sell! That would go like gangbusters. We are actually having customers at our yard sale in spite of the rain, heat and humidity, and our hidden locatio. All this stuff is sold!

tags: yard sale, tag sale, Delaware

Slow day at the Penn Rose Yard Sale

It is probably a bad sign that the items for sale at our table already need to be covered due to rain. Do you think the pouring torrential downpours will keep away potential customers?

Come on over to 38th and Market Street in Wilmington. Turn east into the neighborhood. That's Penn Rose. We just got our first browser and we did sell a couch. Let's see how it goes.

tags: yard sale, tag sale, Delaware

MILK4U license plate in Delaware

Perhaps this woman (it was a minivan, sue me for assuming a stereotype) supports Human Milk Banking. Not just milk for you but milk for everybody.

tags: milk, License Plates

TRYGOD and TENQGOD license plates in Delaware

I wonder just how effective proselytizing by license plate really is (see YES GOD for another example). This TRYGOD license plate invites me to do just that. I am sure the owner doesn't want me to put him down again if it doesn't work out.

Help me to interpret this one. TENQGOD. The end cue god? Thank you god? Tanka you God (broken Italian English version)? A search of the internets yields an eBayer with that handle, and that's it. They appear to be in Palmdale, California though. What good is a personalized license plate if I don't understand what you are saying to me?

tags: God, License Plates

Bookshelfalanche? Bookshlelvminos? Booktastrophe?

All those books! This picture makes me want to cry.

The bookcases in my home library are actually all attached to each other prevent just this occurrence. While I do not have aisles and stacks like the library in the picture I have a few shelves that jut out into the room that are attached to each other as well.

Some possible captions:

Oh the humanity ... ies library.

Won't somebody please think of the children ...'s books.

(via BoingBoing via Klara Kim at Flickr)

tags: books, library

Magic mouth spouts security warnings in RPG comic

Rich Burlew spoofs security systems and drug warnings in his fantastic Order of the Stick comic strip (go bookmark it now) about D&D adventurers that sometimes humorously seem to know they are in a role-playing game. In this episode a magic mouth provides all the legal warnings to the adventurers before they can advance to see the Oracle, and spews some of the legal gobblygook you get in software agreements and drug warnings.



...phrases such as: "Tests installed and maintained by QuestGuard(c), the land's leader in merit-based security. Keep nosy adventurers out of your remote geographic location with QuestGuard(c). Call today and get your privacy back." and "If you are nursing, pregnant or might be become pregnant, you shouldn't visit the Oracle. Erections lasting more than four hours..."

tags: comics, drug warnings, parody