Vacations

I'm figuring on travelling to Detroit and Cleveland this summer to take in ball games.  I know, why would somebody plan vacations to two of America's fastest dying cities.  I guess I just don't like crowds.  I figure I can go on the River Rouge factory tour while in Detroit, and maybe visit the Great Lakes Brewery in Cleveland.  Does anybody else have any recommendations for things to do in these fine Midwestern metropolii?  Here's a Cleveland tourism video.

More Blog Difficulties

Several of the posts which disappeared and then reappeared came got reposted today when I edited them to clean up the labels for the posts.  I didn't mean to do that. Sorry.

One of those tough springs

Well, so far we've planted about 140 of our 400 acres of corn, and about 50 of our 400 acres of beans.  None of those fields has been in optimal condition, and I've considered quitting what I was doing a number of times.  Probably 20% of the acres should not have been planted at all if we didn't have a ten day weather forecast showing eight days with a chance of rain.  Hopefully things work out for the best.

The one thing I have to remember is that things are a lot better here than in other places.  No matter how frustrated I get when putting in the crops, people along the Mississippi, in Japan and lots of other places have things a lot worse.  I'm doing a job I love, don't have to answer to anybody, and have to take into consideration that the last three years have been amongst the best ever.  I don't have to commute to work, deal with angry clients or get into petty struggles with co-workers (other than dad).  Plus, a little adversity once in a while builds character.  Overall, things are pretty good.

Blog Difficulties

Apparently Blogger had some difficulties and wiped out a number of posts from yesterday.  I may or may not be able to remember what I put up, and will put what I can up.  Also, I'm mudding in some crops, so I might be busy.

Update: Posts are back.

And So It Begins

Yesterday's rain dried up as it reached us, so today we're going to get started, just slightly less than a month behind schedule.  A couple of the neighbors got started yesterday, but we held off to see what the rain did.  At this point, I don't want to get in too big of a hurry, because we only have about 60 acres ready to go, and the weathermen are still calling for rain everyday.  Posting may be sporadic as I try to do a little work.

Update:  Nothing but hiccups thus far.  If I meet the designer of the valve on our starter fertilizer pump, I'm going to punch him in the neck.

Chessboxing

From PRI's The World:

Chessboxing has 11 rounds; six four-minute rounds of speed chess, alternating with five three-minute rounds of boxing. You win by either a knockout, checkmate or in the case of a draw, on points.
The loudspeaker announces Mark Hickey’s match. Hickey climbs into the ring, pumping the air with his fists. His opponent steps in soon after. Both men take their seats at the chess table. The gloves, necessarily, are off so they can grasp the pieces.
Four minutes later, the board is carefully lifted out of the ring and the gloves go on. Mark comes out swinging. But he’s swinging a bit too much, apparently. Before the first round is over, Mark is cradling his right arm. He is hurt, and the bout is all over.
Since most people here know boxing better than chess, Malcolm Peine has one of the toughest jobs of the night. Peine does a sort of play-by-play for the chess rounds, trying to make it all exciting and understandable.
“You tend to find that after they finish the boxing, the first move they play in the chess is usually awful,” Peine said. “Often, it’s a pretty bad move because the adrenaline is pumping from the chest and it’s hard to get yourself in chess mode.”

When I was in college, I participated in intramural boxing each winter.  I was terrible.  The first year, I fought one of the best boxers in the program and the fight was stopped in the second round.  That year a doctor was running a study checking mental acuity after the fights.  When we got our prefight physicals a week or two before the fight, the doctor gave us a couple of tests.  One asked us to write down as many words as we could think of in 2 or 3 minutes that began with the letter C.  The other was a sheet of random single-digit numbers, and we were to circle all of the 6's we could find in a minute.  Within 10 or 15 minutes of the end of the fight, we were tested again.  All I remember was that I was punchdrunk, and when I circled the 6's, I only got about 60% as far as at the physical, and when they told me to stop, I noticed that I had missed at least 2 or 3 of the 6's in the portion I completed.

I was concerned that they might cancel the boxing on account of my terrible performance.  Luckily, I never heard anything more about that test.  So I can understand how difficult it would be to play chess after receiving a number of blows to the head.  I have a hard enough time playing chess with a clear head.

The Workings of A Civil Engineer's Mind

Andrew Sullivan has a View From Your Window contest where readers try to guess where a picture is taken from.  It is difficult for me to generally identify the right continent, let alone get very close.  I actually got the right state this time:

How?  The post said the photo was taken on April 17, and it looked like snow, but more important were the yellow mastarms.  I'd never seen them before and googled yellow mastarms, and the first item mentioned that North Dakota's DOT specified yellow mastarms.  Snow on April 17 and yellow mastarms, I assumed it was probably Bismarck or Fargo.  Apparently, I wasn't alone:

Another:

I won't be able to guess the exact location, being sidetracked by OBL's killing, but I'll give the general location. I spent some time in the transportation industry and one thing I learned is that states usually put their own unique details on traffic control devices, so I bypassed some other clues to hone in on the traffic signals.  The yellow poles and yellow mast arms are found in North Dakota, Fargo in particular. So I say Fargo.

Another:

The VFYW contest gets me through most Saturday nights when I pull the night shift with our newborn daughter. This week was a winner. As a civil engineer, I was most caught by the yellow mast arms for the traffic lights. North Dakota DOT mandates that all mast arms be yellow, which then only left a couple cities. Then I narrowed it down to Minot and the hospital from which the photo was taken.  I can't help but think that the snow on such a late day in 2011 hopefully brought a smile to the patient or family member of the patient in that room.
Our daughter's nursery is travel themed and stocked with books of all the places we hope she'll see. A VFYW book would be a great addition!

Engineers are a different breed.  Of course, all of the VFYW winners are a different breed.

New Additions

After a couple of bugs, I now have grain quotes and a facebook link added to the site.  Maybe in the future I will customize the quotes, and add some other items.

Update:  I should say that I will probably improve the market quotes if it continues to rain, since no other work is getting done.

Facebook

I added a facebook page for Letters From a Farmer in Ohio.  Please check it out.  You can friend me at Adolphus Farmer (They wouldn't accept A as a first name).  Once I figure out how it works, I might add a Facebook like button on the site.

Reminiscing about 2010

April 20 Planting update for our farm:

2010-Corn 100% completed, Beans 0%

2011-Corn 0%, Beans 0%

I kind of miss last year.  Right now in the 10 day forcast, 6 of the 10 days feature at least a 50% chance of rain.  This will be an interesting (read, frustrating) growing season.

A Little Different

I spent a little time in town last night.  I happened to run into a couple of interesting phenomena.

First, one establishment was hosting a lingerie show and cigar event to raise money for breast cancer research.  Yes, that is correct, a cigar event to raise money for cancer research.  Actually, I think they raised a lot of money, but the irony was thick.

Second, I spoke with a person who thinks a clown in costume should not be drinking where children could see him, after performing at a parish festival, but that it is ok for parents to drink at the same event.  In other words, a clown is considered more of a role model than a parent.  I don't happen to be bothered by either, but it seemed like an odd concern to me.  Especially considering that it still rankled two years after the fact.

Both incidents made me laugh a little bit.

You've Got To Be Kidding Me

So looking at the weather forecast, after today they are calling for a 50% chance of rain or greater for 7 of the next 8 days.  Damn you, La Nina.  This is shaping up to be one long and frustrating spring.  You know, if we were looking at $3.25 corn for fall delivery, I might not get in such a big hurry.  Now we are looking at a wet spring, and I just have this gut feeling that we'll have a very dry summer. Meanwhile, the corn we've already sold could end up being a very high precentage of our fall crop, while prices skyrocket.  I'll be pulling my hair out delivering corn for $5.50 when the elevator is paying $8.50, knowing we've only got half a crop out there.  Please let me be wrong on this, as I am on most everything else.

Germans and this blog

I have come across an interesting phenomenon in my minimal blog experience.  According to the page view stats that Blogger tracks, I've received 91 page views all-time from Germany.  31 of those came the day I posted an excerpt from Michael Lewis's Vanity Fair article on the Irish bank fiasco.  58 have come in the last day when I posted on Paul Ryan's budget plan.  Actually, in the past 24 hours, more pageviews were from Germany than the United States.  This leads me to believe that a reasonable number of Germans are very interested/concerned about the world economy, and budget problems in Ireland and the United States.  My expectation is that their concern regards whether the United States and Ireland will default on debt held in Germany.  I also figure that I only have Google to thank for sending these readers in my direction.

I welcome any German readers to the site, and would be glad if you were to inform me if these suppositions are correct or not.  Please use this as a conduit to express your views on the budget mess and deficits, I am interested to hear them.  Thanks.

The Koch Bridge

I saw the headline for this, and the first thing I thought of were the Koch Brothers and privatizing infrastructure.  Damn Democrat blogs.  Anyway:

Edward I. Koch is many things to many people: larger-than-life mayor, cantankerous commentator, amateur movie critic. Now he will be a bridge.
The City Council voted 38 to 12 on Wednesday to rename the Queensboro Bridge after Mr. Koch, who led New York City from 1978 to 1989 and emerged as one of its most familiar faces. The city is expected to officially christen the bridge the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge next month.
The bridge, which serves as connective tissue between Manhattan and Queens, is a signature of the New York skyline, depicted in movies and memorialized in song. Its steel frame extends from 59th Street over the East River.
“It just makes me feel marvelous,” Mr. Koch said in a telephone interview after the vote. He said he used the bridge frequently because he liked to go to Telly’s Taverna in Astoria for Greek food. “I’m going to feel very, very comfortable on that bridge,” he said.
The Queensboro Bridge, also known as the 59th Street Bridge, opened in 1909 and helped transform Queens from a collection of rural communities into an urban center of commerce and housing.

I have a hard time imagining that in 1909, Queens was a collection of rural communities.   Things can change dramatically in a short period of time.  When I rode the bus from LaGuardia to the 7 train, I learned that these days Queens is full of people from nearly all nations on the globe.  Leaving the airport, I and some other corn-fed hick were the only people on the bus.  He was such a hick that he was wearing a "W the Convention, 2004" baseball cap, in 2008. I can't fathom how out-of-touch (or smugly conservative) somebody is to wear that in New York in 2008, although I guess it signifies that he was in New York previously for the Convention. 

Anyway, the first stop was in a Hispanic neighborhood.  The second stop was in a Haitian neighborhood, the third stop was in an Indian neighborhood, etc.  Pretty soon, the bus is full, and we are clearly the only out-of-town, Midwestern white backwater folks on the bus.  He's on the other side of the aisle from me, one row back, and we are both sitting against the window.  He gets up, walks over, and asks me how far to the Roosevelt Avenue stop, to switch to the 7 train.  Mind you, I didn't even know that the 7 train was at Roosevelt Avenue, I just assumed I would be able to tell where the 7 train was.

Of course, I had no idea when the stop was coming up.  An Indian guy behind me waved his hand and said, "Further up."  I just had to laugh that this white bread flyover hayseed felt like he couldn't ask the Hispanic guy beside him or any of the other people sitting around him where Roosevelt Avenue was.  He had to get up and ask the only other person on the bus who had never been there, where to get off of the bus, because he was white and a hick also. 

Maybe, I was wrong, and he tried to ask the guy beside him for directions, but the guy didn't speak English.  But I'll go with my gut, and say that the guy in the "W the Convention" hat didn't feel comfortable talking to brown people.  Anyway, it made my day to see that.  Once I boarded the 7 train, I stood in a part of the train that was full of Chinese immigrants reading a Chinese language newspaper.  Sarah Palin may be right about one thing, New York City is much different that Middle America, but I can't say that Middle America is any more Real American than New York City or any of the other major cities.  Once all the 2010 census data comes out, I want to expand on that idea.