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We have a corn stove to help heat the house. It’s like a pellet stove, but instead of wood pellets it uses corn.

Because of that, I need to buy a decent supply of corn. Local feed stores have it in 50 lb. bags, so I buy several of those at a time and fill up the bins in the garage. This last time I had a couple extra bags that didn’t fit in the garage, so I just left them in the Jeep.

For those unfamiliar with winter driving in the Midwest, it helps to have extra weight over the rear axle for rear-wheel-drive vehicles. My Jeep (97 ZJ, in case you’re wondering) can be shifted into 4WD, but I leave it in 2WD until I actually need 4WD.

A lot of people get extra bags of something they’ll need anyway and just leave them in the back of the vehicle all winter. Dad used to leave 40 lb. bags of softener salt in the van. I figured I’d leave the corn in the back of the Jeep all winter unless we ran low and I couldn’t get to the store, in which case I’d use that then just leave some of the next batch in the Jeep.

Fast forward a week or two. The Jeep had been sitting unused that whole time. I got in it and needed to get something out of the glovebox, and I discovered a handful of corn in there. I know I didn’t put any corn in the glovebox – it’s all supposed to be in the back of the vehicle.

I went to the back and checked. Sure enough, there’s a hole chewed in the bag of corn and some small critter had been helping himself to my generous supply of his winter food. I immediately unloaded the corn into the garage bins, finding remnants of corn underneath the back seats.

I went back to the Jeep, and drove it as I originally intended. I noted, however, that the heater wasn’t blowing right and sounded bad.

So, the next day that I had some time for it, I went out to the Jeep and got some tools and took apart the blower.

On a side note, if you need to take the blower motor off a ZJ and you got the three screws out and it’s not cooperating, it’s not clearing the relay. Take the fuse panel off, unplug the topmost relay, and then you’ll be able to get it out.

Anyway, back to the story. Once I got the blower out from under the dashboard, it was easy to see why it sounded bad.

I cleaned the mouse nest out of the fan. Funny enough, it’s a squirrel-cage type fan design. But I doubt it was a squirrel that found its way into there.

I put the fan back in place and turned it on. It still sounded wrong. Certainly better than it did before though.

I took the fan out again. I poked the screwdriver up into the ductwork to see if I could dislodge any more nesting material. I got some, but the screwdriver wasn’t the best tool for grabbing stuff. So, very carefully, I reached up into the ductwork with my hand. I was able to pull some more out, and I think I got it all. At least all that was in that area.

I put it all back together (after I shot some WD-40 into the fan assembly because that helps just about anything that moves in a vehicle – notable exceptions being brake pads/rotors and the serpentine belt) and there was a slight clicking sound once I turned it back on. I turned the fan up a notch, and the clicking got louder. I turned the fan up all the way and the clicking got even louder, then I heard a small thunk and the fan was quiet again.

I’m not going to check. Everything is working now so I’m just going to leave it.

Moral of the story: don’t leave bags of anything in your vehicle that mice consider food.

One of the memorable quotes I like is “If you are doing something for the right reason, you will probably be doing the right thing.”

That might not be an exact quote, but I think I got the concept right. The context of the quote was an experienced engineer (Lyle D. Feisel, in Lyle’s Laws) advising a younger engineer on how to know if he was doing the right thing. The setting was engineering, of course, but I think it applies to much of life.

For example: if one child is wondering whether he should tattle on another child, ask him to apply this reasoning. Why does he want to tell on him – to get him in trouble or to keep him safe? This might not work, depending on the age of the child, since kids can be devious. But if someone can be honest with himself when answering the question, it works well.

There are some people who may not be satisfied with that rule of thumb, because there is not an objective standard for “the right reason”. And in some areas that may be true. In my line of engineering, I can ask myself “Would I be able to answer the customer if they questioned this decision?” or “Would I be able to defend this action if the federal regulatory agency inquired about it?”

In my case, I have years of working with the same customer, so I can reasonably ask that question to myself. Not everyone might have that same luxury, so their role-playing questions might not be able to provide guidance.

Even outside of engineering, this rule of thumb should work well. Not everything is going to be cut and dried, of course. But if you’re wondering how to decide on what the right thing is to do, then chances are good that you’re on the right path. If you’re asking yourself how to get out of doing something, then this line of reasoning probably is not for you.

I decided to have winter/snow tires for the minivan this year. They’re like insurance – you probably won’t need them, but if you do need them you must already have them installed.

To make life easier, I wanted dedicated rims for the tires. I have no problem keeping a spare set of tires in the barn when they are not being used, and I didn’t want to pay twice a year to have winter tires swapped and unswapped off the one set of rims for the vehicle. I’d rather pay a little extra up front for another set of rims and then it’s all set.

Then I started looking at purchasing rims.

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Based on the popularity existence of last year’s article predicting bowl games in haiku form, I present to you this year’s all-haiku bowl game predictions. Still America’s only all-haiku college football bowl game predictions.

These are listed in order of date (earliest first). Some picks are whom I think will win, and some picks are whom I want to win. I’ll leave it to you, the reader, to decide which is which.
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At first, people just coughed into the air.

Then someone realized that was spreading disease to people in the area, so it became polite to cough into one’s hand.

Then someone realized that was spreading disease to people who touched things that hand touched, so it was taught to children to cough into their elbows.

Now I’ve realized that’s fine for children but bad for adults. So now when this generation of kids grows up and instinctively coughs into the elbows, it’ll still cause problems.

Why it’s a problem is that adults use their elbows more than kids. Have you ever seen an adult go very long without crossing his arms? And where are that adult’s hands when his arms are crossed? Fully in contact with his elbow, that’s where.

Picture it – someone sneezes or coughs into his own elbow. Then, just seconds later – before any germs have a chance to die – that someone puts his hand right into the thick of the most germ-intense place around. Are we as a society saying that’s an improvement?

Okay, maybe it is a little better, but it doesn’t quite solve the problem. There are two ways to solve the problem. One is to train people not to cross their arms. The other is to pick a better spot into which one may cough or sneeze.

I’d like to go with the second option. Some possibilities: the inside of one’s shirt (as my brother is wont to do – just pull your collar up and lean your head down slightly and all the germs are contained. This is not a possibility if you are wearing a necktie.), higher up on one’s arm (gives the germs a landing place but doesn’t contain them well), or a handkerchief (that no one carries anymore, but I suppose a hat would work).

Any better ideas?

I know it’s not in the best interest of the companies that send out emails, but I don’t like how unsubscribes are handled.

I think Europe has the right idea of the right-to-be-forgotten. Right now in the US, all of my unsubscribe options take me to a screen that has my email address and my settings, so I can choose how or if I want emails from them.

The problem is that still leaves my email address in their databases. I don’t want these email lists to save any of my information – I want an option to delete my information.

My wife got some scam emails recently that claimed to have hacked her email and password and instructed her to send them some bitcoins in order for them to not send out incriminating stuff to all her contacts.

We could tell that it was a scam, because we use different passwords for everything, so we knew the password they sent us was not her email password. And because of the unique passwords, we were able to figure out what happened.

The hackers got into some website where my wife had signed into once or twice, and they stole everyone’s emails that they used to sign up for the site along with the passwords for that site. Then they sent phishing emails to everyone from there, assuming that some of the people use the same password for everything and thus wouldn’t know their email really wasn’t hacked.

If people had the option to delete their information from the site, then the damage from these types of attacks could be reduced.

The action when I click “Remove me from this list” should literally remove my information from the records, not just add a note that says I don’t want emails.

On the plus side, I’ve noticed that some of the “Manage your email” pages let me not only opt out of various types of emailings, but they also let me change my email address. I think that is, while not perfect, certainly an acceptable way to remove my real address from their system. Sure, let me update my email address to someone@example.com…

Ok, last point – it should not take 10 days for your system to update my email preferences. If your back-end database really takes 10 days for settings to propagate through it, you need to fire whoever set that up. Unless it runs off magnetic tape reels that need to be manually switched – if it’s that old then you get a pass. But any email list management software worth its salt should be able to make changes instantly. Those claims of 10 days are nothing more than feet-dragging policy.

I have to wonder at Home Depot’s logic for shipping things.

I had an order I placed online, and it was under their $45 threshold for free shipping, so I added a couple of small items that I was planning on getting eventually anyway. So the total was just over $45, and it was 5 items.

Guess what they did – they put the 5 items into 4 different shipments.

I would have expected that free shipping is made profitable by running things together – bundle a bunch of packages together for economies of scale and reducing overhead.

But not for this order. They made it about as inefficient as possible, at least from my view.

And no, it’s not like they ended up arriving together. The delivery guy came to our house 4 separate times for these 4 packages for the single order I placed. It’s slightly annoying to me, it’s probably more annoying to the delivery guy, because he drove to our house 3 days in a row to deliver a fairly small package each time.

I’d have been happier if everything arrived at once. In fact, I’ve noticed that Amazon gives me that option sometimes – deliver in as few packages as possible. That’s an option I like.

My guess is that Home Depot has focused on using the efficiencies on their side, rather than the customer’s side. Maybe they shipped each items from the closest warehouse that stocks that item, and in my case that happened to be 4 different warehouse that worked out to 4 different delivery dates to me.