BR60103

On flexible track I cut a little dip into the sleeper for the joiner; a bigger dip for a plastic one. On points and such I find I have to make a major fiddle for the insulated joiner as the gap is not wide enough. I also oftern have to trim the joiner shorter as the opening isn't long enough. I use an X-Acto knife with the long pointed blade. A cut going down at an angle on both sides.

I have said before that you shouldn't need a degree in plastics engineering to throw out your garbage. I'm still incredulous that I read that we should use see-through bags for our garbage so that they can check what we're throwing out. SWMBO says no way. The flags on the buildings at Disney World look like American flags but are all different in some way (wrong number of stars or stripes). A regulation flag would have to be lowered at dusk every day; the wonky ones can stay up.

We went to the vaccination site and were allowed in to see a nurse who booked us in for next Monday. Dayle was in the system but I apparently wasn't. Home again, Dayle had an eMail about her booking; I didn't. We went back. I talked to the fellow at the front. He said he'll be on duty next Monday and make sure we get in. While posting this, I received an note that I am now eligible to schedule my appaointment!

Today was house cleaning and wash day (morning). However, we were told that we could register for our jabs. So Dayle spent 1 hour and 49 minutes on the phone checking/registering -- most of it on hold. I was on for the last few minutes. She was doing all the cleaning one-handed. We still have not received anything deinite, but the clinic is across the street in the university so we plan to go over there tomorrow to try to talk to someone. One of our neighbours has been on stage with W. Shatner in the first season of the Stratford Shakespearean Festival. Our friend after that summer went back to school and became an English professor.

Bill: I've always feared that if you get one spot of the helix level across, it will fight with the bit 90 degrees around the bend.

What do you get when you pour boiling water down a rabbit hole? Hot, cross bunnies.

I think one of the great disappointments of childhood is the hollow chocolate Easter egg. One of the disgusting ones is the creme filled chocolate egg. We took two outdoor rocking chairs to the charity shop today. First person said they don't take them but a second person said they would take them if one person could lift them. We checked the box of cushions on the back deck. It hasn't been used all last year, maybe not even opened. There was some honeycomb material (I didn't see it before someone took out some contents) and one cushion looked to have been used for nesting. The deck has now lost its last wee lump of snow.

Brian W What is this tanking? Not a term used here.

I've just run the calipers along one of my two pieces of HD track and the rail seems to be around code 110. I had varying readings along the rail. Can't help with the other question as I had one point and one straight piece. The plastic on the straight piece has perished/is perishing. It was bought to go wit the mail pickup unit.

We had an interesting situation here. Someone was picking up the dog stuff in little blue bags and then leaving it under the pine trees. There was a comment on the Village website from the grounds crew.

I object to daylight saving. If the government wants me to be at work at 7:00 instaed of 8:00 it can pass legislation to that effect, rather than lying about what time it is. We managed to change most of the clocks last night except one that was dropped behind the washing machine. That was retrieved but one of the hands had bent enough to interfere with the other hand. I managed to sort that this morning. Temperatures have risen enough here that there is more grass than snow showing.

A Celebration of Jubilees?

Is that picture by Cuneo?

The Hugo Awards for science fiction use a preferential ballot. One year a group managed to stuff the nomination system. The final voting is here. http://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-history/2015-hugo-awards/ I'm not sure what the idea is behind "one person must get over 50% of the votes". I would find myself putting "none of the above" probably in third of fourth place most of the time. I do not like systems where there can be more than one body claiming to be the people's choice.

There was a note today that the under-80s could now register for the jab. So I got on and everything seemed to work until the end of SWMBO's acceptance where it said "over 80 or indigenous". I had fixed it when I started mine, but not sure if it changed or not. Phoned the people and and nice lady called back and seemed to say (I didn't talk to her) that we were all right. Now just have to wait for them to acquire some vaccine.

For those looking at an early retirement: (This is based on Canadian practice.) Check what we call OPRB -- Other Post-Retirement Benefits. Here it includes health insurance top-ups, dental insurance, life insurance. When you leave early with pension credits you can opt to start pension immediately or postpone it until "Normal Retirement Age". A common practice here is that starting your pension immediately will continue (some) OPRB. Taking deferred vested May mean that those benfits don't come. Your pension should be a bit larger, though. Your HR department should be able to give you details (unless you want to be quiet about it) and you should have a booklet with the details.

I was a Fortran programmer for my working life. It suited our pension calculations and the actuaries could follow it. I could never get Basic programs to work. COBOL looked like wriring an essay. I tried learning C but I kept getting stuck with "C can't do that; you need to write a subroutine." and that would be just something like input/output.

Douglas: The track clip was used to hold sections of track together. It took advantage of the curly sides and open end of O gauge ties/sleepers and slid over the outer sides of the end ties on two adjacent sections. I've lost mine over the last 70 years somewhere. There were little metal bits that rose from the base and went over the bent-up part of the tie and there as a handle for pulling it off. I'm not sure if Lionel made any; mine were Hornby.

I have a little tool that one of our shops was selling cheap due to its being less than perfect (I think the finish was off but I can't tell). It's a thread gauge. There are 3 rows of drilled and tapped holes. Each has an approx. 1/4" rod that has been taken down to a size to be threaded in the hole and knurled on the top. On mine the holes are Metric, National Coarse, and National Fine. I can unscrew the one part to check tapped holes/nuts or use the base to check bolts. Photo available if interested. I think it might make a useful shop project for school.

My solution is to slide a code 100 joiner halfway onto the code 100 rail and squash it with a pair of pliers. The solder the code 75 on top of it. It usually comes out pretty close. You may be hestiant about soldering to an expensive piece of specialwork.

The operation of locomotives is different on DC between 2 and 3 rail. On 2 rail, the controller selects the direction of the track, either running to the right or the left (or Clockwise / CCW on a loop). On 3 rail, the loco runs either forward or backward relative to itself. This allows head on collisions or two locomotives trying to rip their tenders apart. Brand of track: Code 100 is generally compatible (what you find in sets plus Peco) unless you buy the ones moulded on roadbed (e.g. Bachmann EZ track). Code 75 and bullhead need special consideration. Older track may not be compatible as rails were larger. Marklin is a rule unto itself.

details for the modeller Those are all the photos I took of it.

Palm oil was the subject of a newspaper article today. Someone had felt that butter was getting harder to spread at room temperature. Apparently the cows are being fed something with palm oil and the stuff is changing the composition of the butter fat. Do any of you know about jitneys? An early 20th century version of Uber. People with access to a car would travel along streetcar (tram) routes and pick up riders for a nickel (jitney) (5 cents). They tended to stay on the more popular routes. It petered out when the drivers found that they had to make repairs and sometimes their employers (at other jobs) found out what their vehicles were being used for. Can't remember if regulation also happened. (Source is a book called Fares Please.)

She smiled and called him Mr. Because he'd never Kr. And so in spite, That very night, The Mr. Kr. Sr.

I think I heard on the TV that they may get around to jabbing people as young as 80 by next month. Or was it next July? We took advantage of the relaxation yesterday and went to the book store. They seem to have had no new magazines since locking down on Boxing Day. Does anyone need a BRM from October? I took a lot of snow off the roof today. We're trying to eliminate some icicles on the eaves. It was harder to shovel from the driveway than pull from the roof.