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Here are some things that are like magic to me, in that I can see them happening but they don’t make sense. You can explain and I can follow the explanation but it still is a mystery.

• How a knot makes a rope weaker. You have a rope. It can hold so much weight. You tie a knot in the rope. Now it can hold only half the weight. But the rope is still all there.
• How British people sound American when they sing. I have heard some new song by some new singer and not thought much about it. Sounded fine. Sounded normal. Then later I heard an interview with this person and realized at that point they were British or Australian or whatever. Only rarely (e.g. “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” by The Proclaimers) do singers have such thick accents that it comes through in their singing.
• Where dirt from a pothole goes. I have a dirt driveway. It gets potholes. I want to fill in the potholes. Ideally the dirt that came out of the pothole should go back in the pothole, but there is no pile of dirt anywhere. Matter has been destroyed.
• How a grain bag stitch holds. Grab a bushel bag of grain from a feed store. Pick it up and toss it in your car’s trunk (or pickup bed). Take it out and toss it in your wheelbarrow. Do just about anything normal with it and it stays together. Then pull the string and the whole end unravels and opens up and you can dump the grain out. It’s like the Prince Rupert’s Drop of bulk storage.
• How a baby starts to breathe. This one I’ve seen in person a few times. Baby is surrounded by fluid. Lungs not using air. Baby is born and then the lungs just start working. It’s even more amazing if you can see a video of an en caul birth.

The Refrigeration Cycle was going to be on this list, but I found an explanation that made sense to me. For those interested in that, here it is. Phase change is not affected by only temperature, but also pressure. If you have a fluid in a closed system, you can make the phase change by adding or removing heat. If you add or remove heat, you’re also affecting the pressure as the fluid expands or contracts. The Refrigeration Cycle is just that equation but from the other direction, like in math you can flip the equation around and it still works (because energy must be conserved). So the cycle works by adding or removing pressure to a fluid to change the phase and that has the result of adding or removing heat. Because if it didn’t add or remove heat then energy would not be conserved.

I’ve written about the game Fluxx before. I decided it needs an update.

I decided that after hearing the news these last few weeks, specifically around what is coming out of the White House, and even more specifically the record number of executive orders that Trump is making.

I’m not going to weigh in on the pros and cons of said executive orders, my only personal opinion on the topic is that I am disappointed he has not issued an executive order reinstating Pluto as a planet.

Anyway, the number of executive orders and the effect they’re having on people and businesses got my attention and reminded me of the game Fluxx, where the rules and the goals keep changing.

I took it upon myself to start making an Executive Order Fluxx game. The Rule cards and Action cards can really stay the same, as the game flow works fine that way. The main change is to the Goal and Keeper cards. The only thing I would add to the Action cards is the Filibuster card.

Here is my initial set of XO Fluxx cards. Print them off and play to your heart’s content. I could have come up with more Goals and Keepers, but with more news being generated every day I had to cut it off at some point.

This is not that interesting of a story, but I’m putting it on the internet in case someone else has a similar problem and can’t find the answer on the internet like I couldn’t. But now they can, because the answer is here.

Little backstory: the power went out in our barn. Said barn has its own electric meter. I checked all the circuit breakers, even the main, and went so far as to put a voltmeter on the main connection before the breaker box, so straight from the meter, and it showed no power.

So I was fairly sure the problem was from the power company. I looked at the meter and the meter was displaying things (a few things in rotation), but mostly zeroes and then this cryptic phrase: “con off”, or more correctly “COn OFF”

Not quite sure what that meant, I tried to look up the user manual for the meter, a type C2SOD smart power meter. I found some information but nothing that described the things it was displaying.

I went to the house to compare the barn meter to the house meter, since the house had power. The house meter was not displaying “con off”. So I concluded something is wrong with the barn meter (or power line).

I called the power company to report a problem. They are too fancy for their own good, and when I pressed the number to indicate I had a power outage, they matched my number to an address and said “thank you, your power outage has been reported for this address” and then the call was over.

I then got a text a few minutes later confirming my outage report. Then, more than a few minutes but less than a few hours later, I got a text saying they ran their diagnostics and my address has power so they have closed the ticket.

I was thinking “If you just let me talk to someone in the first place, it would save us both time”. Because then I had to click the link that said “I still have a problem” and then it let me enter a comment.

I took that opportunity to let them know I checked the voltage and that the meter was saying “con off”. Whoever got that note knew enough to check something else, maybe they ran the advanced diagnostics on the line not just the standard diagnostics, and a little while later I got a text that they agreed there was a problem.

And then shortly afterwards (still the same day) I got a text saying power was restored and the issue was “equipment failure”. I never saw anyone come to the barn. I wasn’t there the whole time either, but the meter didn’t look brand new after it was fixed so my guess is they just remotely reset the smart meter. Just like any other computer – turn it off and turn it on and it works again.

Anyway, if you have a power outage and your meter reads “COn OFF” then the problem is with your meter so go ahead and tell the electric company it’s their issue.

This one is for all you quilters out there. You may recognize the title, as “tumbling blocks” is a standard quilting pattern.

For those of you not in the quilting world, here is the tumbling blocks pattern:

For those of us who grew up playing video games in the ’80s, that pattern evokes memories quite different from quilts.

Behold, Qbert!

I was going to propose that Q*bert would be a good quilt to make, but then I decided to make sure it wasn’t already on the internet.

Of course, it was already on the internet. Go visit the Quiltbert site to see an actual example of a Qbert quilt.

So there went my idea for a blog post.