Monday, February 26, 2018

Battery Adapters

It seems now that I use AA batteries and AAA batteries 95% of the time.   Everything seems to use them from my computer mouse to clocks to flashlights.   When I run out of AA batteries and urgently need one I just use a battery adapter that converts the AAA battery to fit into the AA space.
They are really quite simple in construction:  two plastic halves with metal fittings on each end.   They work really good.   But I have had mine for many many years.   They started getting mild oxidation on the metal contacts on the ends.   I tried cleaning the contacts with abrasive erasers
and even sandpaper but that just didn't seem to work.   The oxidation caused an electrical resistance causing the batteries to seem as if they were run down when they actually hadn't.   It was time for some new battery adapters.   Off to Amazon to find some.   I found a site that sells a package of 8 battery adapters for $3.23.   That includes shipping and handling.
I finally received the adapters and they had been shipped by air mail from Hong Kong and delivered to my mail box.
Can you read Chinese?   Fortunately there is an English translation.
Now for the point of all this.   How can a company manufacture and ship airmail to me for $3.23 and still make a profit?   Have you tried to ship a package lately?   Try it and see what it costs.   No wonder Amazon is doing so well.   Have a great day wherever you may be.    Lew

Saturday, February 10, 2018

Tiangong-1

I need to put something exciting on this blog page.   The SpaceX Heavy Falcon rocket launch and Elon Musk's car in outer space with a space-suited mannequin sitting casually in the driver's seat seemed exciting. 

 I know, everyone wants something bigger and better.   How about a video of Starman riding along in the Tesla passing by earth?   Click on the arrow to see the video.  
No?   Tired of hearing about Starman?   Okay, I have got something really exciting.    Really, really big.  How about a space station falling out of orbit and plunging to earth in a huge fireball?   

Yeah, that got your attention.    No, not the International Space Station but rather the Tiangong-1 Chinese Space Station.   Yep, that's right folks it is spiraling down and is expected to make it's fiery plunge around the middle of March (give or take 2 weeks).   The Chinese have lost control of the space station so it is not possible to have a planned descent and burn-up.   This space station is going to come down when it wants to and will crash wherever it wants to.

The Chinese astronauts on board the Tiangong-1 space station.

You can see the current orbit of the Tiangon-1 at the website link below.   Look out Chicago there is a satellite spiraling down about to pass over you.

 
http://www.n2yo.com/?s=37820

Chicago you are safe (for the moment).   It has passed you by.   But it will be coming back again and again.

Come March keep your eyes trained to the Heavens.   I hope that this will be enough excitement for you.   It just seems like such a waste to go through all the expense of putting a space station in orbit and then just let it fall back to Earth and burn up.   I heard that Elon Musk is thinking of taking tourists to the space station.   What do you think of it?   Would you go?    Would I go?   No way!   I will keep my feet on terra firma right here in the good old USA.   I left the country once to go to the Yucatan to see the Mayan pyramids and got sick as a dog.   And so now I have an aversion to traveling out of the country.   Have great day.    Lew

Thursday, February 8, 2018

Mr. Potato Head

Nursery rhymes begin with "Once Upon a time.....".    I was working at Disney Springs in a toy store called Once Upon a Toy.   A nice play on words between the nursery rhyme and the toy store. 

What a great job.   Can you imagine what fun it is to work in a customer friendly toy store?    No?    I can tell what fun it was ad infinitum.  

I had injured my knee and was on temporary light duty and was assigned to "stocker duties" at the toy store.    I worked in the back.   When you work where the guests (customers) are it is called "onstage".   When you work in the back where the are no guests it is called "backstage".   To go backstage you pass through a portal.   The portals are not readily apparent but if you know what to look for you can spot them.  In the picture below the portal (door) is behind the large Star Wars sign.   See the woman in the blue blouse and the tan pants?   She is close to the doors.

Now you can see it better.   Doesn't look like there is much behind those doors.   But there is: a large stockroom, offices, break room for employees, etc.

My job was unwrapping the accessories (arms, legs, hats. eyes, ears......) for Mr. Potato Head.

 

These were small items and came with tissue paper very tightly wrapped around each individual piece.    I have no idea how they got the paper so tight.  I really enjoyed my work because of the great working atmosphere.   Initially it was quite difficult getting the tissue paper off but I finally mastered a technique for getting the tissue paper off easily.   In a 6 hour shift I would unwrap literally thousands of these pieces.   It was a repetitious job but my fellow cast members were always friendly and happy.   And the managers were the same, very pleasant and nice.    As a child I had a Mr. Potato Head but back then you would only get the accessories and would have to use a real potato.   But times have changed and now there is a plastic "potato".

And the variety of accessories are mind boggling.  

In the store the accessories would be placed in these long plastic tubes with a different accessory in each tube.  

 
All of them unwrapped by me.   Here is a curious aside;   one day a manager asked a fellow cast member if he would do an inventory of the store after it closed.   I asked the cast member how he was going to count all of the thousands of little accessory pieces.   He laughed and he said that they weigh all of the accessory pieces of a single kind at once, say the arms.   They knew how much each arm weighed and so they could calculate how many individual pieces there were.   A neat idea.   What would I have done?   Probably sat there and counted each piece one at a time.   LOL.    What I am coming to is, that I do a jigsaw puzzle on the internet each night and one night there was a Mr. Potato Head puzzle which I did along with a flood of memories from my days working in the toy store.   But I guess that you could say that I was the Mr. Potato Head guy because I unwrapped all of the little arms, legs, eyes, ears, lips, etc.   Below is a picture of the completed jigsaw puzzle and a link to the jigsaw puzzle.   The puzzle only has 50 pieces and so won't take hardly any time at all.

https://thejigsawpuzzles.com/Puzzle-of-the-Day/Mr-Potato-Head-jigsaw-puzzle?cutout=50classic

Have a lot of fun doing the Mr. Potato Head jigsaw puzzle.   And hopefully for those of you who had a Mr. Potato Head it might bring back some fond memories.   Did anyone have the early version where you had to provide a real potato?
Bye.   Lew