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Cleared a bunch of photos off my phone today. Here are a few that I took simply because I was puzzled by something or otherwise found it noteworthy.

( Three photos behind the cut. )

A few years ago - well, actually, quite a number of years ago now - the middle school I attended was decommissioned and its fixtures sold off. My mother, knowing my fondness for both timepieces and relics, bought one of the wall clocks. It's been sitting quietly in storage, packed away in a shipping carton, since then. I noticed it in the corner when I was down at Dad's hunting through the storage shed a while back; he dug it out the other day and brought it to me this lunchtime.

( Photo behind the cut. )

I had planned to put it up in the living room, but upon examining it, I've noticed a problem.

Obviously, when it was used in my old school, this clock was slaved to a master clock in the school office. I knew it had a regular power connector on it, and had always assumed that there'd be some kind of manual backup for setting the time without the aid of the master clock... but there isn't. It's a sealed unit, the only thing coming out of it is the electrical cord. There isn't even another wire for the control signals - it's apparently got a radio receiver in it, based on the label on the back. And... vacuum tubes?!

This afternoon I called the manufacturer, hoping they'd have some technical information about it kicking around. I knew this was a long shot, since it's quite an old clock (note the handwritten date on the label - April 14, 1977 - I'm assuming that's when it was made), but I figured, these things are often in place for long periods of time, so maybe they'd still have some docs. But, alas, no. I spoke to a very helpful fellow in their Westminster, MA office, who told me that I hadn't got hold of tech support but he'd do what he could. We worked out that the "804-004" in the upper right corner of the label is in the right format for a Simplex part number, but he didn't have any information in his intranet database about it.

I'm not completely out of options - I have the number for SimplexGrinnell's office in Maine, from where they presumably still service the clocks in the town's remaining schools, and I might give them a try tomorrow. The fellow at the Westminster office told me that if I can find out what model master clock they used at the old middle school (which is unlikely, but there may be some old staffers around who know), he might be able to dig up info on the compatible wall clock models from that.

(I suppose, if all else fails, I could hang it up, but wait to plug it in until 1:01...)

Here's an even longer shot: Anybody got an old Simplex master clock you want to get rid of cheap? :)

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Tags: dc comics, fanfic
Current Mood: amused

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Tags: fanfic
Current Mood: amused

It's a sad thing that we live in a world today where Tiger Balm has to come with a little slip of paper assuring the purchaser that no, despite its name, the product does not have any parts of actual tigers in it. It's a metaphor for the ferocious way it goes after pain! (And apparently it was the name of the son of the guy who invented it.) A cruel blow to those people who have been using it all these years thinking it had to be good for body pains because it was made from tiger fat. Oh well! Good thing it's just a stonking good product.

Today was Injectable Science #26; it's been half a year. I can't say whether it's really doing anything, because that's kind of the nature of the thing. I can say that the side effects were supposed to subside after three months, and some weeks they have, and some weeks they really haven't, and that's irritating.

Later this month, I've got another round of blood tests (to make sure it's not wrecking my liver) and fresh brain MRIs, after which there'll be another consult with my Further Away Neurologist in February. Eight months from the initial diagnosis is kind of a long curve for getting a second opinion, but then, Wobbly Gryphon Syndrome isn't really what you'd call a disorder that involves a great deal of time pressure. Except when it is (cf. September 2007), but that was a different thing. We think.

In unrelated and probably uninteresting health news, the knee I messed up a bit last Tuesday remains messed up a bit. It doesn't seem to be getting any worse, but I haven't really noticed it getting better either. I don't remember how long it took to come all the way back the last time I did this exact same thing to it (December 2006), so I don't actually know whether that's worth going to the doctor for. My gut instinct is that they'd just send me for X-rays and then say "Well, keep doin' what you're doin'."

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Tags: anime
Current Mood: amused

I noticed this a while back (as you can see by the date stamps), but forgot to post about it. I just appreciated the juxtapositioning:



I have nothing to add to this offering from CNN's headline brain trust:

Since my mother's a teacher, I myself was a victim of public schooling, and I worked in the local press for a number of years, I've had a lot of contact with the ever-thorny matter of education, and one of the things that constantly comes up is the whole matter of assessment. For nearly ten years now, the State of Maine has been struggling under a mass of federal and self-inflicted red tape regarding testing and the standards applied to testing. Until very recently, Maine's schoolchildren were routinely subjected to a battery of immense tedium called the Maine Educational Assessment, which had standards that seemed to have been determined arbitrarily with reference to some kind of tide table, and toward which teachers were expected to gear the entire year's curriculum. (The MEA has since been replaced by a national standardized test which is even more arbitrary and lacks even the MEA's vestigial regional relevance.) And, of course, there was the recent revamp of the ever-popular Scholastic Aptitude Test so that it takes even longer than before and has essay questions.

Well, apparently the national educational system faces a similar sort of problem in the UK, and in remarking upon it on Have I Got News For You, Ian Hislop uttered the finest, most accurate remark I have ever encountered about what's wrong with the constant-standardized-testing model of educational assessment:

"You don't fatten a pig by weighing it all the time."

Current Mood: right on, brother