Add Chopsticks to Your Toolbox

Have you ever tried to retrieve a small part from deep within a chassis? You might've wished you had a long slender pair of tongs, pliers or tweezers to reach down and grab it with. You do. That tool is a pair of chopsticks.

It helps if you know how to use chopsticks, but don't worry if don't. It's easy to fashion them into a pair of "tweezer-sticks" as shown in Figure 1, below. All you need is an elastic band (aka rubberband) and a make-shift fulcrum, such as the wrapper the chopsticks came in (rolled up into a compact wad).

I've used this tool to...

• get a pebble from out of a garbage disposal
• pick spent blossoms, a Maple tree seed or a hungry beetle from potted plants when the growth is too dense to get my fingers through
• remove part of a Pop-Tart from a toaster (Figure 2)

I have, in fact, used a pair of twigs for a crude application of this idea, such as when I picked up a dead mouse that was in a flower bed.

But if you need to remove a wedding ring from the glowing coals of a charcoal grill, be sure to soak them in water beforehand.

Hiring Boom

 I saw this at the top of the requirements section on a job description:

"...willing to design stuff that blows up other stuff and people"

Thank you for the candor, but no.

Amaze Your Friends – Send a Letter Without a Written Address!

You can have an unaddressed envelope arrive at someone’s address or Post Office Box.

I discovered this from my annual, end-of-year deluge of cards to friends and family.  I had printed all the recipient’s addresses on plain paper, and then cut them into address labels.  (My printer doesn’t accept labels as printed media.)  Then I affixed them to the envelopes with a glue stick.

The glue stick was left over from previous years.  So the first time I used it, the end of the stick was a bit dried out; the adhesion probably was poor as a result.  Thus the first label I had attached eventually fell off, but it stayed on long enough for the local post office to see it and generate the address at the very bottom in barcode form.

Apparently, once the originating post office prints that barcode, the mail item goes where it was intended.

If one could determine just how much adhesion is necessary to make this work repeatedly, a whole new product – Gag Labels – could be launched!  If I were to guess, the stickiness might’ve have compared well to a Post-It note that had been reused a few times.  Another approach would be to develop a temperature-sensitive glue that would irreversibly release after, say, 8 hours exposure at a temperature at or below, say, 10°C (50°F).  Perhaps this is the environment in which most mail finds itself during storage and transit.

This wouldn’t work for all geographic locations at all times of year.  But for a Luddite Geek located in the Northeastern part of USA, it would work from November to April, allowing him to send Season’s Greetings, Valentine’s wishes, and tax returns, not to mention write about himself in the third person.

Solid, Liquid, Gas

Liquid meals serve a pseudo-medical purpose: to provide nourishment to people who cannot tolerate solid food.  Energy drinks and gels (aka Nutrient Goo) fill a need for endurance athletes.  But in 2013, Soylent was introduced and marketed to people who are simply too busy to prepare and chew food.

As we transition from consumption of solids to liquids, I wonder how long it will be before a "Nutrient Gas " will allow people to breath in their meals. Being already in a gaseous state, will these "meals" facilitate our body's need to fart?

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Soylent on Wikipedia
Review of Soylent

Forget MAGA -- Focus on MACFA

I had planned to write another of my silly “Forget MAGA...” posts^{1, 2}. The new post would have called for a focus on MACFA, or Make All Commodes Flush Again. This was something that Trump himself promised he would do.

But when I looked for background material and sources, I came across a recent Slate article³ that reports on the great progress that was made in low flush (LF) toilets. According to the article, the newest models can flush effectively with as little as 1.28 gallons of water.

I believe it. I can flush my toilets with a two-gallon bucket half filled with water. But the bowls remain nearly empty after that, so I suppose it takes another half gallon to refill the bowl.

The article explains that the earliest LF toilets used 1.6 gallons as does my newer fixture. However, they didn’t flush away all the solid waste; Trump himself said the operator had to flush “10 times.” “Not me, of course,” reports say.

So, have we Made All Commodes Flush Again? It would seem so. But I remain skeptical. I’d expect that the gradual accumulation of crap (quite literally) and minerals would reduce the water velocity in a low-flow toilet. And flushing is all about water velocity.

I can recall how well our 1.6 gallon toilet flushed. The water would almost totally disappear the moment I pressed the handle. But now it’s just like any other old-fashioned toilet in which the water rises before anything solid goes down.

When the commode was installed, there was a bumpy patch at the bottom. Now I wonder if the toilet was used or defective and that the bumpy part was scale or corrosion that was painted over.

Earlier today, I used my improvised drain clearer (an old bent coat hanger) to scrape at the entrances to the trap and siphon jet. The toilet flushes much better now. I’ll clean the visible portions with a pumice stone later tonight.

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¹ Forget MAGA -- Focus on MATA https://ludditegeek.blogspot.com/2025/07/forget-maga-focus-on-mata.html

² Forget MAGA -- Focus on MEGA https://ludditegeek.blogspot.com/2025/07/forget-maga-focus-on-mega.html

³ https://slate.com/technology/2025/02/toilets-low-flow-trump-environment-cost-savings.html

Forget MAGA -- Focus on MATA

Have you noticed that towels don’t seem to absorb water any more?  Pick up a cold drink from the countertop and try to wipe away the ring of water.  What happens?  You smear the water across the surface.  My wife and I complain all the time about how modern towels can’t absorb water.

Bath towels that are heavy, plush and soft bother me.  These are the towels that seem to be least absorbent.  They’re so thick, I can’t get them into narrow places, such as behind my ears.  And they’re heavy so it takes effort to pick one up and move it around, so I end up working up a sweat.  Such towels are good for:

• decorating
• lining the dog bed
• gifting to people whom you don’t really like

My preference is a cheap, plain, white, 100% cotton towel that I can wash in hot water to get out all the oils that prevent absorption.  I like them because they're light weight and a bit scratchy.  And they absorb really well.

I don't use fabric softener because it coats the towel with a film that repels water.  See for yourself.  Lay a towel on a flat surface and drip water onto it.  The water will form a bead, then a puddle, indicating the towel is hydrophobic.¹

Advice abounds on the Internet about not using fabric softener on bath towels.² I see the same advice even on the bottles of fabric softener itself as shown below. (Note that most towels are made from terry cloth.³)

I’m convinced that if we just had towels that can absorb water, we will make America great again.

So, MATA -- Make Absorbent Towels Again!

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¹ https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hydrophobic
² https://duckduckgo.com/?q=why+no+fabric+softener+on+some+clothes&ia=web
³ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrycloth

Forget MAGA -- Focus on MEGA

When I was a boy, my shoes and sneakers never wore out.  Sure I would outgrow them when I was in elementary school, but by the time I was a fully-fledged teenager my feet stopped growing, and I wore the same footwear.  In fact, I still can fit into the same shoes, sneakers and boots that I wore in high school.¹  So the only things that needed replacing were the shoelaces.

Remember how shoelaces broke?  I do.  It would be a big inconvenience.  It would happen just as I was getting ready to leave the house to go somewhere important, not when I was stepping outside just to kick or throw some ball around.

These days I never have to replace the laces.  Why is that?  Are laces now made from a superior material?  Perhaps.

But perhaps not.  I think the reason is that the shoes would break before the laces did.  Right?  Have you noticed that sneakers don't have eyelets anymore?  They don't even have holes for the laces!  Instead, they have a loop of slightly elastic fabric through which to pass the laces.  What flimsy garbage!

I'm convinced that if we bring eyelets back, we will make America great again.

So, MEGA -- Make Eyelets Great Again!

¹ I have/had a pair of hiking boots that I wore every day in high school.  (I imagined that I was Aragon; in fact I almost bought a cloak.)  Thirty to forty years later I'd wear these boots occasionally.  The "have/had" arises from a recent purging my wife did of "all this old stuff on the porch."

A Change to Independence Day

It's the morning of Independence Day in USA.  As I watch bicycles cycle by, I dread tonight's inevitable displays of fireworks.  Of course they won't start until darkness pervades, when I'm ready to go to bed.  This will be at 9pm in my area.  (The sun will set here at 8:29pm ¹).  However, in the northern-most places, sunset may occur 90 minutes later ², at 10pm.  Imagine waiting until 10:30pm for fireworks!  Or worse, trying to get a good night's sleep for an early appointment the next day.

Then there's the issue of moonlight.  A full moon can detract from the intensity of a fireworks display.

Therefore I propose moving Independence Day to the day of the first New Moon in January.  Yes, let's celebrate the Fourth of July in January!

This year the New Moon occurred on January 29, and the sun set here at 5:00pm.³  So you might go to see fireworks, go out for dinner and then go to bed at the decent hour of 9:00pm!

Even in the southern-most part of the US, sunset occurred at about 6:00pm on January 29 ⁴, making a 6:30pm fireworks display a nice convenience.

The added benefit is that we'll have something to look forward to right after Christmas!

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¹ https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/springfield-ma?month=7&year=2025
² https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/@5689178?month=7&year=2025
³ https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/springfield-ma?month=1&year=2025
⁴ https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/key-west?month=1&year=2025

Buyer Beware

Don't do business with an IT firm whose website contains broken links.  It's like getting a tattoo from a guy with "no regerts" on his arm.

Just Like Hockey

I went to a fight the other day and a session of Congress broke out.

This is a take on an old joke, "I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out."

As well, it's a commentary on the scuffle that took place between Kevin McCarthy and Tim Burchett on Tuesday¹, and the spat between Sen. Markwayne Mullin and Teamsters President Sean O'Brien in a Senate hearing also on Tuesday.²

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¹https://www.npr.org/2023/11/14/1212912482/mccarthy-burchett-elbow-house-republicans

²https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/stand-butt-fistfight-nearly-breaks-senate-hearing-bernie-sanders-steps-rcna125140

A Novel Way to Gain Followers

I heard the news today that, “Neuralink, the neurotech startup co-founded by Elon Musk, announced Thursday it has received approval from the Food and Drug Administration to conduct its first in-human clinical study.”¹

This technology is meant to “help patients with severe paralysis control external technologies using only neural signals. … patients with severe degenerative diseases like ALS could eventually regain their ability to communicate ... by … typing with their minds.”

All I could think was, “He must be desperate to get new followers on Twitter!”

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¹https://news.yahoo.com/elon-musk-brain-implant-company-134631197.html

Air Conditioning

I used to get head colds and sinus infections in Winter.  But now, thanks to modern air conditioning, I can  suffer from them in Summer, too.

On the Benefits of Social Media

Today's Soup to Nutz comic strip by Rick Stromoski is definitely blog worthy...
http://www.gocomics.com/soup-to-nutz/2017/01/14

If you can't follow the link, it's simply that Babs remarks to her brother Roy-boy,

I'm so glad I live in a time when there's social media...  In the old days it took weeks, even months...  before finding out that someone was an idiot."

Naturally I posted it to Facebook.

Help Our Airlines Save Fuel

Airlines are struggling with the ever-increasing cost of fuel. They've started to charge passengers to check baggage. Let's think of other ways they can stay aloft in this turbulent economy:

1. Charge passengers a fee that's proportional to the total weight of the passenger plus all his/her baggage, both carry on and checked.


2. Offer passengers stationary bicycles and other exercise machines to prevent DVT, but secretly use the machines to drive electrical generators, which can power such non-essential systems as entertainment, lighting and navigation.


3. Offer passengers free refreshments in the terminal. Lace the refreshments with laxatives and diuretics. ^{1, 2}
   

What can you do personally? Why not leave the heavy luggage behind? Just choose baggy clothing to wear at your destination, and put it all on before you leave your home. Better yet, don't even bother bringing extra clothes. Just buy your change of clothes at your destination.

With lots of creative planning, we can yet again save our beloved airline industry.

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¹ Empty passengers are lighter.
² Whatever they leave behind can be used as bio-fuel.