gotta fit all these big fat people…

Several years ago, before we got the transmitter-type meters, they would sometimes estimate our usage. We didn’t know that until after several months of estimates they came out and actually read it. Apparently, their previous estimates were all low, and suddenly we were hit with a $900+ bill to catch us back up. That sucked. I also remember meeting one of the readers who was going house to house. Our next-door-neighbor’s house is completely fenced in, so the reader would come down our driveway and read our meter, then use a pair of binoculars to read the neighbors meter from our yard.

we have what seems like about 15 mattress stores along one stretch of road, and we also have a store that sells nothing but bar stools. I’ve often thought that about those places…

My son had this incredibly bright flashlight, and one evening he shined it out into the yard and claimed that all the little sparkles we were seeing in the grass were spiders looking back at us. I disagreed and told him they were reflections from dew drops. To prove his point, we agreed on a particularly bright sparkle, and approached it keeping the light on it. Sure enough, there was a spider sitting there looking back up at us. We then proceeded to find about a dozen more. I was totally surprised that every one we honed in on turned out to be another spider.

the over and under-inflation wear isn’t as much of an issue these days as it used to be. In the old days of bias-ply tires, that was definitely the case. You could have a low tire and hardly be able to tell, because the stiff sidewalls would hardly sag. Their flex point was down the middle of the tread. Radial tire construction puts the flex point in the sidewalls, which doesn’t distort the tread as much, plus gives a much smoother ride…

it has to do with the angle between the point the tire pivots (steers) on and the point the wheel spins on. The steering point needs to be forward of the spinning point to help the car go straight down the road. Think of a shopping carts front wheels (they’re called casters), and how they’ll pivot around with the direction you’re pushing the cart. That angle can be adjusted so the car tracks properly…