Some Blog Site

I just finished reading a compilation of short stories by a certain author who is listed as O. Henry. No, actually, The Gift of the Magi was not one of the 68 stories in this particular compilation.

I found I liked his writing style better than I had anticipated. I had to break up reading the book over a couple weeks though, because reading too many short stories in one sitting got tedious.

Here are my favorites in this collection (simply called “Selected Stories” and compiled by Guy Davenport, but with O. Henry listed as the author of course):

There were some other good stories too, but those are they that stood out.

He had three main settings that he liked to use: New York City, Texas, and the South. A nice variety. And for some reason he seemed fond of Ann Arbor, Michigan – he mentioned it in more than one story.

He wrote his stories shortly after the time when Little House on the Prairie was set, but his stories seem more modern. Probably because they included more cities and trains and even cars.

Also interesting to note is that O. Henry to the Civil war is like us to the Vietnam war – about 40 years after. But everyone was familiar with it and everyone knew someone who had been in the war as a lot of them were still alive. So he wrote about slaves somewhat. Of course they were now freed, but their roles in his stories reflected how their lives were back then – still mostly servant-type roles. And he used several different terms to describe them, some of which are quaint and others of which would not go over well today.

O. Henry seemed sympathetic to the working-class girls and unfavorable toward the factory owners who paid them so little. And he really did not like national bank examiners.

A number of his stories focused on children finding their long-lost parents or vice-versa, so that got a little formulaic after a while – well of course this lady is going to be his daughter he thought died years ago.

But for the most part the stories were engaging enough that they were interesting to read even though you know how they’ll turn out.

Having recently observed a local spelling bee, I’m wondering why the other subjects get left out of bees. We’ve also had a geography bee at our school. Why not a math bee? Why not history?

My favorite though would be the grammar bee. There’s just enough ambiguity and regionalisms to make it difficult.

They could even kill two birds with one stone, if that’s still allowed these days, by having the kids have to spell the word that is the answer to the grammar question. A spelling grammar bee, or grammar spelling bee.

Or would it be a cee, because it’s a step after a bee?

Subtitle: in which I improve the government’s records

Allow me to introduce to you the 2017 SFS List of Baby Names that Combine Similar Pronunciations. That baby name list is the place to go in case you are wondering what are the most popular baby names in 2017 regardless of how they are spelled. The Social Security baby name list does not adjust the rankings based on alternate spellings (like Catherine/Katherine), but SFS does.

It was just Mother’s Day, so the SSA released the name rankings for 2017. Last year’s champion, Jackson is again the most popular boy’s name in the US. And it is widening the gap over Aiden – Jackson’s count is going up and Aiden’s count is going down. So much so, in fact, that Liam has jumped above Aiden.

No controversy for the girls – it’s Sophia again.

Some Stats

• The top 4 names for the boys are the same, in mostly the same order except for Liam jumped up to #2.
• The top 5 names for the girls are the same as 2016, it’s just Ava and Isabella swapped spots at 4 and 5.
• Liam has taken the title of the highest-ranked boy’s name that has no spelling variations, at number 2. Noah previously held the record
• Emma is the highest-ranked girl’s name that has no spelling variations, at number 3.
• Girl names still have more spelling variations than boy names (275/1000 vs. 190/1000 alternates)
• Kason once again took the prize for the most spelling variations for the boys at 8. And only Aiden had 7 variations.
• For the girls, Adaline once again claimed the title of most variations – still at 7.
• Sophia is still the runaway favorite for the girls, but the gap is closing. Sophia is on the decline.

2017 Improved Baby Name List

Click on the link above and peruse to your heart’s content!

In the last month or three, we had the announcement of the 2018 NFL schedule. Now that we know who will play whom and when, we can start predicting wins and losses.

I keep my predictions over at Some Fun Site. View results of previous football seasons.

2017 Summary

Last year, I predicted that

• Detroit Lions = 9-7
• Miami Dolphins = 6-10
• New York Jets = 5-11

How they actually did was

• Detroit Lions = 10-6
• Miami Dolphins = 11-5
• New York Jets = 3-13

Other than Miami, the predictions were close.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the translation, for those of you who can’t read first-grader:

• do not like
• It is too hard
• It takes a long time to do it
• It is boring

I’m sure his teacher enjoyed that delightful take on homework.

I was looking at fire pit designs. There’s no shortage of ideas out there in internetland if you want examples.

But the examples fall into one of two categories: designed to look good (impressive/sleek/rustic/etc.) or DIY for cheap.

The examples that make it into the blogs or websites with the title of “42 Awesome Fire Pit Ideas” (or similar) are not designed to function well.

Caveat: this applies to fire pits meant to burn wood. Gas-burning fire pits are a different matter.

The common theme I noticed with the vast majority of the fire pits is that their designs are bad for combustion. Good combustion requires fresh air. The designs I saw had no fresh air inlet.

“But it’s outside – there’s fresh air all around! You don’t need an air inlet,” you may object.

I’d agree if the fire pit were wide enough. But most of these fancy-looking designs are smallish boxes that don’t leave much room around the outside for new air to filter in.

Think of the fire pit as a very short chimney. What would happen to a normal fireplace if it was closed except for at the top of the chimney? Something like that is happening on these fire pits with solid walls and floor. The hot air is going out the top. The only way for replacement air to get in is to fight against the exhaust air by coming down the sides of the fire pit.

For best results (better fire, less smoke, more complete combustion), a fire pit needs to have a way for fresh air to get at the bottom of the fire.

My suggestion is to space some holes in the fire pit walls near the bottom and to have the logs up on a grate.

In case you are wondering, all our fires so far have just been logs on the ground – no grate, but no walls either.

We had spring once. It was about 70 degrees and sunny for a day or two.

That was last week.

Now we have ice and snow. Not sure how the plants are going to like it, but this is how they look.

Some tulips:

These should be daffodils soon.

Well, they’re daffodils now, just not quite blooming yet. I meant they should be blooming soon.

And a Japanese maple tree.

I think this one is my favorite, for the coated-in-ice photos.