scary foam

scary foam
Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

While tramping around Lincoln woods, I noticed that a number of trees had a little pile of foam down at the bottom of their trunks. The lump of foam in this photo was about the size of my fist. I noticed some foam seemed to be running down the tree bark, in a thin layer, as well. It literally looks like soap foam. You might speculate that someone went through the woods tossing soap on the trees, after all, people do the craziest things... However, here are my top ideas for what produced the foam:

1) It's something produced by the tree itself, possibly in defense against an insect.
2) It's produced by a tree frog.
3) It's produced by some insect.
4) It's produced by alien invaders, and we'll all soon be assimilated. Or get our brains eaten.

In any case, this requires further investigation! BTW, I did not poke, prod, or otherwise disturb the foam. I know that if I did so, the alien would leap out of the foam and eat through my abdomen in a heartbeat.

[Close, but no cigar. Turns out the most likely candidate is slime flux, also known as wetwood.]

Lincoln woods

Lincoln woods
Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

Yesterday was a big driving day. I spent 7 hours in the car in order to attend a family get-together. The get-together was fun. The driving - not so much.

As if the universe were colluding against me, it rained pretty much all day long today. I am not averse to hiking in the rain, but I felt worn out from yesterday's drive. So I only did about 1.5 hours in Lincoln Woods. This is a nice view of the trail running off into the mist, near the DeCordova Museum.

Tank sixty-one

Total miles: 22647. Trip miles: 465.8. Gallons: 7.996. Price per gallon: $3.499.

Screen mileage: 57.8 mpg. Tank mileage: 58.3 mpg.

Mostly highway miles.

A review of "Walden"

Walden

by Henry David Thoreau

Thoreau’s Walden is a classic, no doubt about it, and worth reading twice. The best chapters are the first and last, “Economy” and the “Conclusion”, in which he exhorts us to spend as much time as we can doing what we want, and not what others expect of us. If life is too costly, just stop spending money and go live in the woods, he says. And that’s what he did.

However, he did cheat a little in doing this himself. He went to live on a friend’s land. Back in the 1800’s, how many poor people had friends who would let them squat on their property? How many people today could do this? I think it’s easier said than done.

Further, he completely ignores the fact that many people have health issues which are quite costly to treat. He himself suffered from tuberculosis, and died at the early age of 44. Would he have lived longer if he had had more money to spend on treatment? Perhaps money was not an issue for him, since a successful treatment for tuberculosis had not been developed in his lifetime. But it was for many others with treatable diseases, and continues to be today.

These are the main flaws that I see in Thoreau’s arguments to live simply – they are unrealistic in some respects. I give the book four stars because of these problems, and also because it’s overly lengthy and could have used a strong editorial hand in trimming some of the last chapters, which got rather boring. Despite all that, I still find his views very appealing. And now that I live close to Walden Pond, the book is made richer than it was for me originally, because I can “put a face to the name” of local features like Lincoln Woods and Flint’s Pond, and towns like Fitchburg.

See more about Walden

A story about "Walden"

Walden

by Henry David Thoreau

Thoreau on the energy crisis (p.270):

It is remarkable what a value is still put upon wood even in this age and in this new country, a value more permanent and universal than that of gold…. In this town the price of wood rises almost steadily, and the only question is, how much higher it is to be this year than it was the last.

I’m still slogging through Walden; the last few chapters strike me as downright dull!

See more about Walden

snake

snake
Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

I was lucky to notice this small snake along the trail. It kept very still, and I might have easily missed it. It was very small, taking up no more space than my outspread hand.

I have not been able to identify it. My best guess is that it is a juvenile something. Possibly a juvenile northern water snake or a juvenile black racer.

milkweed

milkweed
Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

I did about 11 miles on the Midstate Trail today, covering the region from Sampson's Pebble to Paxton Road roundtrip in about 4 hours, for a pace of about 2.7 mph.

I don't much like this section of trail because the trails are wide and converge with trails that seem intended for motorized vehicles. Today, however, I didn't run into that kind of traffic. And there are some nice views. The area around Browning Pond is beautiful.

I saw this milkweed plant closer to Paxton Road.

duck herding

duck herding
Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

For me, the high point of the Garlic and Arts festival was the duck herding demo. One of the little runner ducks in this photo wound up missing some tail feathers when the collie became overenthusiastic. Poor duckie!

pulled pork

pulled pork
Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

This is some of the good food that I sampled at the Garlic and Arts festival. Delicious pulled pork sandwich with BBQ sauce, garlic baked beans, and homemade rootbeer. Incredibly good!

capoeira

capoeira
Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

There were some fun demos at the North Quabbin Garlic and Arts festival. I like watching capoeira dancers, and these people were pretty good! (Seeing them reminded me that I've made no progress towards my goal of doing a headstand - even a handstand would be something!)

red russian garlic

red russian garlic
Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

I went to the North Quabbin Garlic and Arts festival, today. I had no idea there were so many kinds of garlic...

the circuit board

click photo to enlarge 
This is a very blurry photo of the circut board. Counting from the left, there are four circular copper-colored dots. The on/off switch is, I believe, the little rectangular doohickey to the right of the fourth dot. It may be connected to the fourth dot in some way.

Having gotten this far, it was discouraging to abandon the cause, but that's what I did. With nothing obvious to try, I just left the monitor in a corner, and went out to get a new one.

On the one hand, I was loathe to buy a new Dell monitor because of my bad experience with this one. However, I do really like the look of the Dell monitors. And I hoped that if I bought a Dell, I'd be able to afix it to the Dell swivel stand that came with my old one. I really like the swivel stand.

I found a relatively cheap Dell (about $220) at Best Buy. It's a widescreen 19-inch flatscreen monitor, and so far it is satisfactory.

I do not like widescreen monitors, and would have bought a regular monitor, but I couldn't find any other kind at Best Buy! I find widescreens are only an advantage when viewing tv shows or movies online, and for any other computer use they are disadvantageous, since you get less vertical real estate for viewing email, web pages, text files, and general coding purposes. Oh well, I can deal with it.

Meanwhile, I have to figure out what to do with my old monitor. I hate to junk it, since it's relatively new. In fact, it may have been still under warantee, but I couldn't find my papers for it (this is what happens when you move). I tried to find an authorized Dell repair shop in my area, but so far I can't even figure out how to find any authorized Dell repair shop. So my monitor is in limbo.

Do I really need to say the legal stuff again? Perhaps. Kids, if you try this at home, it's your own responsibility. If anything like mayhem, death, or broken fingernails result, it is not my fault!

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7

the buttons

click photo to enlarge 
Once the screws were removed, I could finally free the plastic lip from the monitor casing. Here you see the buttons. All of the buttons look the same, except for the on/off button. The on/off button is empty; the others have a small slightly raised bar down the middle.

At this point, I was stymied, unfortunately. It appears to me that the difference between the on/off and the other buttons is deliberate. It doesn't look like anything broke off the on/off button; there is nothing clearly missing.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7

detaching the circuit board

click photo to enlarge 
Finally, I reached the area of the lip just around the row of control buttons, with the on/off button nearest the corner. Here I found that it was impossible to fully remove the lip.

As shown in this photo, the buttons are covered by a small circuit board, and the circuit board is connected to the monitor with a small ribbon. At this stage in the disassembly, I did my best not to disturb the ribbon, but it was difficult because the ribbon was the only thing connecting the lip to the monitor body.

I was stuck. The circuit board was fastened to the lip with a set of 5 teeny tiny Phillips (crosshead) screws, and I didn't have a set of teeny tiny screwdrivers. So I gave up for the evening.

The following evening, I stopped off at RadioShack. RadioShack used to be much more geek friendly, but I think they may have decided there's a broader market in the general public, and that it would make sense to devote more shelf space to standard appliances like cell phones and televisions. At least, this place didn't have the huge variety of technical tools that I was hoping to find. (I looked for a real spudger, but couldn't find one. Where does one get a spudger?) However, they did have several sets of teeny tiny screwdrivers. I bought a nifty set of six miniature Phillips-head screwdrivers, ranging from 1.4 mm to 3.5 mm, and hoped one would do the trick.

As you can see, one was just right - the 2.0 mm size did the trick. Removing the screws was surprisingly easy. I'm pretty bad with removing screws and have a habit of stripping them, but had no such problem here.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7

popping the fasteners with a spudger

click photo to enlarge 
Here you can see that I'm halfway done with removing the lip of the monitor. Popping the fasteners got much easier once I moved around the first corner.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7

removing the lip

click photo to enlarge 
Here's another blurry photo, as I make my way around the lip with my letter opener.
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7

attacking the front

click photo to enlarge 
I searched the internet for information about getting into a Dell flatscreen monitor, but there was precious little info. I finally found a page at Fixya that described how it can be done. Delli Llama wrote:

...After UNPLUGGING the monitor and removing the stand and the 4 obvious screws in the back, turn the monitor onto its back and placing your palms against one side of the monitor, and using your FINGER TIPS, gently pull back the plastic lip away from the LCD screen. Move along the lip, doing this a little bit at a time...

This gave me the idea of attacking from the front.

I tried just using my fingertips as suggested, but you must have fingertips of steel for that to work. Eventually I resorted to my letter opener, which serves as a makeshift spudger.

This somewhat blurry photo illustrates where to insert the spudger. I was surprised that it worked, since the seal looked incredibly tight.

Oh and obviously, the monitor was unplugged while doing this. I am not so stupid as to attempt disassembling electronic equipment while it is plugged in. In fact this monitor had been unplugged for a couple of days. I recall that CRT monitors should be left unplugged for some time before attempting to work on them, and I'm not sure if the same caution applies for these new flatscreen things.
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7

disassembling a Dell 1907FPc flatscreen monitor

click photo to enlarge 
I've heard you should never ever use your monitor's on/off button, because they fail easily. However, I never got around to setting up a powerstrip for the monitor, and I don't like seeing the little glowing button wasting energy. So I've turned monitor on and off day in and day out for over two years now.

Last Saturday, when I hit that button, nothing happened. Hitting the button didn't feel right (no nice clicking feeling), so I thought it might be a simple task to rig something up to fix the button, if that were the problem.

However, getting into the monitor was no easy task. Looking at the thing, it was hard to decide where to begin - everything was sealed together so tightly. I decided to start with the back, since there were four obvious screws there. I removed them, but was then stymied since there seemed to be no further angle of attack.
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7

Tank sixty

Total miles: 22181. Trip miles: 384.2. Gallons: 7.860. Price per gallon: $3.499.

Screen mileage: 57.8 mpg. Tank mileage: 48.9 mpg.

Worst difference in these two mileages that I've seen in a while!

Sampson's Pebble

Sampson's Pebble
Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

This is a large glacial erratic. My backpack to the right gives some sense of scale.

newts

newts
Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

I've come across a lot of newts along the Midstate Trail this year, presumably due to all the precipitation we've had. These two were hanging out together, until I tried to photograph them using my cell phone camera (hence the blur), at which point they raced away as fast as they could (which was not fast at all).

The rain yesterday produced some flooding along the trail. I could manage in most cases, but there was one spot where a stream had flooded the trail and I decided it was safest to remove my hiking boots and cross barefoot. This was actually quite fun!

midpoint

midpoint
Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

My trek today took me past the midpoint of the Midstate Trail. I've done over half the trail this summer, but I don't expect to finish it this year.

Long Pond

Long Pond
Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

I hiked the Midstate Trail from Hwy 122 to Sampson's Pebble and back today. That's 9.36 miles in 3.5 h for a pace of 2.7 mph! Soon after passing the shelter and pipe spring, you come to this peaceful view of Long Pond.

This would be a very nice trail section if it weren't for the numerous dirt roads intersecting the trail. It puts you too close to motorized traffic, which I dislike. I crossed paths with an ATV and a dirt bike rider. I planned on a longer hike, but I finally turned back because the dirt bike rider was constantly riding up and down the area where I was hiking, making my hike turn into an unpleasant experience.

view of lime rock

Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

I hiked a section of the Mohawk Trail on Labor Day (last Monday). I started at Ford Hill Rd and went to Rt 7, a total of 7.1 miles in 3 h 50 min, for a somewhat pathetic pace of 1.9 mph.

Most of the hike was pretty mild, but going up to the summit of Lookout Point was a little brutal since I didn't bring enough water. There's a nice view at the top. That's Lime Rock race track in the distance. I could hear the roar of the racing cars in the distance.

This section of the Mohawk has some very beautiful views, including a pretty waterfall at Dean Ravine. Unfortunately, I forgot my digital camera and only had my cell phone to take photos!

Today, I went hiking as well, but only for about two hours. I didn't bring my camera since rain was predicted. It was a gloomy, dark day, and it did start to rain a bit after I had been out for about an hour. Fortunately I didn't get completely soaked.

politics as usual

Jon Stewart nails it again - this is hilarious!

Tank fifty-nine

Total miles: 21797. Trip miles: 356.3. Gallons: 5.559. Price per gallon: $3.799.

Screen mileage: 56.4 mpg. Tank mileage: 64.1 mpg.

Lots of driving this Labor Day weekend. That tank mileage is insane. It always seems to come out higher when the tank is less empty - strange!