A Crummy Commercial

This was the input: from the side: kid sitting and soldering at a workbench, plans on wall. in front of him, posters and pennant on wall to his right, open small suitcase on floor with a skunk in it These were the results: This was the original McCloskey drawing from Homer Price: the skunk's name is Aroma, he rides up to Homer's room in that basket Anyway I got 20 Microsoft Rewards points by trying it. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm  

The new stand is working well - it was mentioned here: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2026/03/new-perch.html Then a couple things happened.  First there was the snow storm so I wasn't able to get any sap to boil.  The second was that I realized something.  I hadn't checked the calibration on the refractometer in a long time.  So I put a little distilled water (sap) on the slide and zeroed the reading. there is an adjustment screw under the round black cap above: ATC I was able to restart the boils after the ski experiment: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2026/03/red-ski-is-for-right-foot.html The last few boil results have been good (ideal brix is 66.7): boil    brix    evaporation in grams (roughly 1 percent) ----    ----    ----  29     66.5     44  30     67       47  31     67       46  32     65...

Henry Reed, Inc. is a kids book from 1958, written by Keith Robertson and illustrated by Robert McCloskey.    https://archive.org/details/henryreedinc00keit The McCloskey drawings are what make the book for me.  Mentioned him previously: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2024/06/homer-price.html I am pretty sure I read Henry Reed, Inc. in the 6th grade.  But maybe it was a similar book - I remember it because we had to do drawings with our book reports and mine was of a runaway balloon that had to be shot down like the one in Henry Reed, Inc. : It's a fun book - I noticed two items that would have passed me by in 1966-67, first sunspots: Since the book was written near the greatest sunspot peak in the radio era but I was just into radio at that point and hadn't known that.  Anyway it must have been the thing to blame everything on sunspots in the late 1950s. The second item was this: I remember hearing Jean Shepherd voice the same opinion so I don't know if it was c...

wood skis with bamboo poles !   Yes, they are two different cross country skis (wooden and from Finland, yet !) but they are the only ones I have with the old fashioned ankle-breaker bindings.  The skis I had as a kid had bindings kinda like these.  If you get them adjusted just right the ski will come off if you fall rather than mess up a leg.   The more modern cross country skis require what I think of as clown shoes with an extended sole in front.  There's a clamp on the ski that holds this extended sole down in front while letting the skier raise their heel in back - these aren't like the click in bindings and boots of downhill skis. I had dug a path through the snow to the storage building where I keep the skis so I thought I'd try getting out the skis to check on the maple sap.  I haven't been out to the trees for a week and a day.  Here's my path out there: Actually the snow drifts were highest by the house.  There were some bare patches by...

I'll admit it, somewhere along the line I started watching Rick and Morty .  It can be seen for free on the Adult Swim website.  Rick and Morty is a cartoon featuring 6 main characters, Rick Sanchez (mad scientist, wears a lab coat), Morty Smith (Rick's 14 year old grandson), Summer Smith (Rick's granddaughter, couple of years older than Morty), Jerry Smith (father of Morty and Summer), Beth Smith (daughter of Rick, mom of Morty and Summer) and Space Beth (it's a complicated story).  Anyway I finally decided to buy seasons 1 to 8 on DVD: 16 DVDs ! I've never seen this kind of DVD packaging before it has a spindle and a little button to hold them in place The Rick and Morty  show is heavily into the multiverse so this extended Smith family features Rick C137, the self proclaimed smartest being in the multiverse.  They live in a reality where the residents pronounce parmesan as par-me-zee-ann.  Rick and Morty go on adventures, usually involving crime, viole...

When I was a kid my Mom did almost all of the cooking.  Sometimes they'd grill stuff in the brief time that the Milwaukee area weather would cooperate - and my Dad would do that.  He also made pancakes on Sunday morning which eventually transitioned to waffles.  But on a Saturday night he would make the yellow box option: He would mix and raise the dough in an aluminum bowl that his Mom used.  All that extra aluminum as a kid from the Mirro products in our home - hope that wasn't bad for us !  Then using a little Crisco as the lubricant he'd spread out the raised dough onto a round pan with his hands.  The canned sauce was then applied - he'd also usually add clumps of raw hamburger.  Finally he'd finish by sprinkling the tin of Parmesan cheese over the pizza and bake.  That was my conception of pizza.  One time our family had a pizza revelation.  We went to see my Mom's friend in Pewaukee and had their pizza.  No Crisco on a round ...

Generally I am off murder shows, even old time radio ones although there are exceptions.  I was listening to this one: https://www.oldtimeradiodownloads.com/crime/casey-crime-photographer/murder-in-black-and-white-1948-03-18 One thing that stood out was the phrase: black light.  Since the 1960s this probably refers more to ultraviolet light for posters but in this case the reference was to infrared, IR.  In the olden days Kodak and others sold special infrared film.  I remember one time I tried it and the leaves on the trees came out white rather than dark as was usually the case with black and white.  Manual focus cameras also often had a red dot on the focus dial.  To take an IR photo you'd focus the camera and then move the focus ring to the red dot since IR focuses in a different plane than visible light. But you could also buy flash bulbs for infrared.    In the Casey show the plot hinges on the fact that a photographer taking an IR flash pho...

I remember this show: source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgqHZO0xIco This one has Rob Reiner and Richard Dreyfuss as guest stars.   Maybe I remember it because the Sandy Baron character was named: Chuck ?  Or possibly that one of the tenants was Miko Mayama: Or maybe my Dad just got tired of watching The FBI or Ed Sullivan ?  BTW the music was by Quincy Jones and certainly screamed the 1960s. It was a fun show but even though it was on Sunday nights after Walt Disney and before Bonanza it was dropped after 1 season. The wiki:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hey%2C_Landlord There are more full episodes on Youtube and a short interview of the creator, Garry Marshall. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm  

A while back Youtube served up this video: source:  https://youtu.be/mcuEvXeEzFU Stan Freberg was big at the end of the 1950s and early 1960s.  He had a 13 week summer radio show that took Jack Benny's time slot near the end of network radio.  He had many popular comedy records spoofing popular culture of the day including Dragnet.  But I had never seen this roughly 1 hour long "special" (commercial) for Chun King.  It is an entertaining show, anything with Sterling Holloway is worth watching.  BTW the girl in the show, Ginny Tiu, is roughly my age: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginny_Tiu So when canned Chinese food went on sale at Mann's I picked up a couple of items.  It wasn't until later that I realized that these items: I bet they put the beef in the top can with an atomizer :) why did I get sliced ?  can't wrap bacon around slices - I gotta start reading before buying :) aren't Chun King, they are La Choy.  Apparently according to this ...

For some reason I had a memory pop up of the Burny Brothers Bakery outlet store in Northlake IL, here's a video (with Chicagoland media personality of the 20th century, Fahey Flynn): source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBZxwFgWGHc BTW, when I lived in Northlake the Burny Brothers store wasn't quite as nice as it is on the video.  It was more like a convenience store without too much stock.  But the thing I remember was something like this: source:  https://www.ebay.com/itm/256334091091 The one at Burny Brothers also had a perforated metal hood around it.  The baked goods at Burny Brothers weren't super fantastic or low priced but they all came in boxes and I thought that machine was really cool because when buying more than one box of goodies the cashier would tie the boxes together. Here's a video of a more recent machine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOKgKa3fOEw And another video with a slo-mo of the tying of the knot (this was probably like the one at...

to get to the road.  There was a lull in the snow after 6 PM on Sunday night so I started shoveling.  There's got to be well over 3 feet of snow drifted near the front door.  Good thing that there probably won't be a ferry or mail today so no need to shovel ?   However the power has stayed on although internet has been up and down. The snow is kinda sparkly: Saved by the dark ! Finally, am I a punk for counting shoveling as exercise ? Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm  

I saw this part mentioned on the GQRP email list (I gotta renew my membership one of these days !): Had never heard of it before, apparently it is quiet enough for radio use.  Not super cheap but reasonable: And it should also plug in for a 78L05 (ground in the middle pinout not necessarily space wise) but not sure on how the Recom compares as far as power goes.  While it only has a 500 mA rating the 7805 needs a big heatsink to handle a full 1 A current, over 7 watts.  This might be a candidate for an emergency USB charger from a 12V source: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2025/05/charge.html The 9 volt version also looks interesting for use with transistor radios during a power outage.  No power event today but the internet was out for almost 1/2 hour - as long as the temperature stays below freezing the power should be relatively secure - it's that ice on the trees plus wind that causes problems.  Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm  

Continuing with the maple sap / syrup saga: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2026/03/dialing-it-in-part-ii.html I did start using the Ozeri scale to measure the input mass of the sap AND the output mass of the syrup.  Also I tried to account for some condensation drops inside the top of the still.  So the amount of loss to evaporation seems to be roughly 40 grams of a 4000 gram sap input or 1 percent.  The longer the boil the more the evaporation loss. In addition, instead of measuring the output volume of distilled water I'm now measuring the output mass near the end of the boil rather than when the boil was finished.  This lets me make a better decision on when to stop the boil.  I just happened to have this shelf on my bench to support a power supply.  It is the perfect height to boost the still above the Rubbermaid pitcher. Because the scale turns itself off after 2 or 5 minutes I have to wait until near the end of the boil.  Then boost up the pitcher, ...

A quick Friday the 13th, midst of a blizzard post before the power goes out ? It happened again, this was the last time: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2026/03/i-got-usps-blues.html The USPS had me waiting around all day for a parcel - finally after 3 PM I rechecked and saw this: This is baloney - the USPS is circling the drain and possibly my business along with it. Update: Friday afternoon 2026-3-13, the package showed up in the middle of a snowstorm on Friday the 13th so I shouldn't be quite so critical: I'm getting old and cranky, folks ! Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm