Whistling Duck Morph

This duck stands out from the crowd.

Hobby Setbacks

Are hobby setbacks the same difference as actual setbacks?   Let the multitudes decide.

As many now know, Crumby's new hobby is sak collecting.  Sak is the abbreviation for Swiss army knife. Crumby presently has four saks collected or hoarded.  The first three saks Crumby collected,  or hoarded, all off  EBAY, exceeded or met Crumby's expectations.  That is, they all featured a functional hand lens, nothing was broke, and everything worked OK.

But the fourth sac, and many may remember, four is Crumby's special number, is a  miserable dud.  Oh!  It has a hand lens, all righty.  Yet the hand lens, like many of the other utensils, is hard to open.  Yes.  This particular knife features the dreaded, tools won't open hardly at all, ever, syndrome.  Mercy!

What if Crumby was in a combat situation?  Then, Crumby wasted a bunch of time figuring out which blade to open for self-defense or attack.  Then, Crumby couldn't get the blade open in a timely fashion, in the first dang place. Jeez Louise!

Crumby can not, however, merely send his 4th sak back to the sneaky, demonic vendor.  That's because Crumby was fixing the stuck utensil problem himself when he applied too much manpower to the vice.  Oops!  So now the knife can't go back to the vendor for a refund, minus shipping.  No.  It can not. Because this particular sac now now has issues with its scales, (what mere mortals call handles).  See below.

So Crumby is stuck with a defective product.  However, since Crumby, in all likelihood, shall never employ the product for any of its multitudinous intended purposes, anyway.   Do its defects really matter?

Before that question can be answered, consider this.  The particular sak we are now discussing was manufactured sometime between 1991 and 2007.  It is known as an Outdoorsman.   The Outdoorsman model, now retired, among its multitudinous tools, features a hand lens, a rudimentary or crude rule, also known as a ruler, and a saw.  Imagine what a botanist could accomplish in the field with that tool configuration.  Goodness!  But only if the particular botanist we are presently discussing could get the dern tools open by himself.

OK.  Crumby has reconciled himself to his defective sak.  He shall get along with it as part of his collection. Perhaps, it shall serve as an object lesson.  But an object lesson for what?   That even the magic Pythagorean number four, Crumby's semi-lucky number, can stick it up his dang............................  Mercy!

The keen observer may espy the crack and what looks like griddle marks on the west end of the knife scale or handle. Crumby did that employing too much manpower with the vice while the knife was wrapped only in a paper towel. But if the knife had worked right in the first place, Crumby would not have needed to do that.

A Good Hobby Should Spur the Imagination

What are all those (four) tools?  Easy that.  They are a combo metal file/saw, a combo fish scale remover/rudimentary rule, a wood saw, and an 8x magnifier.  They are, of course, miniaturized versions of larger tools that work better.  Yet an average outdoors person similar to Crumby may easily imagine himself operating these particular tools in all sorts of usual or unusual or even perilous situation, thus saving himself from aggravation, deprivation or danger.

The key, though, is imagination. Crumby is fairly unlikely to ever actually use any of these tools.  But Crumby has already imagined using them lots of times.  Plus, looking forward, Crumby hopes to continue imagining using these tools. Consider just the ruler and the magnifier.  The imaginings incorporating those simple tools into botanical adventures are limitless.

Photography is a Boon to the Memory

Ray is lucky in his life to have seen a good many vermilion flycatchers.  Not a great many, but a good many.  Yet Ray can't remember if he has ever seen one that looked similar to this one.  He remembers plenty of adult males and some females, but none of these here juvenile males.  Maybe,  because the adult males are attention grabbers, Ray just forgot about these teenager equivalents.   This juvenile appeared in Stinky Valley for one morning recently.

   

Victorinox mini screwdriver and grooved corkscrew

Now that Crumby is collecting Swiss Army knives (saks).  (He has three already).  Crumby wanted to upgrade his saks to include the mini screwdriver feature.  One of Crumby's collection already featured a mini screwdriver so Crumby needed two mini screwdrivers for the balance of his burgeoning collection. So Crumby ordered two more from an EBAY vendor.  This particular vendor offered maybe the best deal on the mini screwdriver.  But Crumby felt like he got screwed anyway.  Yet, when it comes to hobbies, cost, as we all know, may not enter in.

Crumby's twain Explorers are the saks that needed mini screwdrivers.  As noted previously, one of these twain is an older Explorer from the mid 70s that features a grooved corkscrew.  And sure enough, the mini screwdrivers fit the Explorer with the ungrooved corkscrew, but not the one with the grooved corkscrew.  

At first Crumby thought the grooved corkscrew might be afflicted with cork, preventing the mini screwdriver from going in, as is shown in the picture presented for everyone's consideration below.  But that's not so. Even after Crumby cleaned the grooved corkscrew with a tiny eye brow brush, thus getting shut of all the cork, the mini screwdrivers would not fit.  

The moral is, the mini screwdrivers don't work with at least one, four turn, grooved corkscrew.  So beware!

Another thing!  It's not like Crumby doesn't have enough to worry about, just considering the twain issues, poor health and the Cow Barn falling down around his ears. Yet what is the likelihood of a particular individual similar to Crumby removing a mini screwdriver from a corkscrew to open a bottle of wine, then forgetting to put the mini screwdriver back.  Anon, the mini screwdriver, forgotten, loses itself somewhere upon our tiny, yet wide planet, Earth, and is never seen again, alas.  Another reason to only purchase wine with screw caps. 

Return of White-Face Pig-Nose Fly

As nearly everyone knows, the rain has fallen hardly not in these sad parts (Stinky Valley) since about 2010.  So what happens the other night.  Well.  It rained a foot in one night, thus, flooding the place.  Mercy!  The roof  leaked.  Water percolated up through the slab.  Water got in the garage.  And probably unrelated, the AC fan motor chose to stop running.

Yet even so, at long last, the surviving floristic elements at the CB are blooming like crazy from the majority of the rain that didn't get in the house.   And the insect type vermin have returned in some numbers for the first nonce in many a moon.  Like for example, Ray's favorite fly, the White-Face Pig-Nose Fly.  This may be a male, due to smaller size and redder abdomen.

Can you count the hawks?

A couple of days past a good many hawks flew over the Cow Barn.  The noted ones passed mostly between 10-10:20 with stragglers until 10:30.   We may have missed (not noted) a few before 10, but maybe not.

It's fairly hard to count hawks.  Crumby thinks, typically, counts are too high, perhaps due to the excitability of the enumerator.  But if a camera is handy,  a picture can make the count easier and more accurate.  This is the third, and largest, kettle that passed over around 10:20 AM.

So What are the Many Differences?

Here are these twain Victorinox Explorers again.  What 's the difference?  Easy that.  Proceeding clockwise, from the upper right (the images may need enlargement) we observe these differences.  Which are, by the way, not same differences.

1.  Grooved (top) vs. not grooved corkscrew.
2.  Key chain ring reversed top to bottom.
3.  Silver metal vs. gray plastic tweezer top.
4.  An extra tool, the multi-purpose hook, on the bottom knife.

There are other differences too, but these are the most prominent on the back sides.  So, the moral is, Swiss Army knives may come in many iterations, like warblers or maybe sparrows, and thus,  provide the fodder for a potentially interesting hobby.

By the way,  the top knife is a much older knife, pre 1978, is in better condition, and was way cheaper to acquire on EBAY.

My Lost Tinker

The inspiration for Crumby's new hobby, Swiss Army Knife (SAK) collecting,  is his lost Tinker which probably fell out of his Walmart trousers on the Kantishna Roadhouse bus. Those particular type of trousers or pants have the shortcoming that the pockets are cut low so that when one is seated, a pocket knife may fall out as one scrunches this way or that on the bus seat fixing to get a better view out of the window, maybe.

For many moons beyond count, Crumby has toted a Tinker or a Spartan.  Sadly, Crumby has lost all of them eventually. Here is the last photograph Crumby took of his beloved Tinker.  Boo-hoo-hoo.  Also, Crumby has not yet identified the associated floristic element either.

Hobbies fer Cripples

Unable to walk at a good pace, plus, afflicted with foot pain, Crumby decided he needed a new hobby to distract him while he was recovering, maybe, from the aforementioned.  So Crumby decided  he needed to start fixing to collect Swiss Army knives.  But not just any Swiss Army knives.  No.  Crumby needed to collect only Swiss Army knives featuring magnifying glasses.  That way, Crumby could imagine walking around in nature at a good pace, employing his Swiss Army knife with magnifying glass to view micro nature.  Even though, Crumby, as a cripple, could not actually do shit.

So far, Crumby has obtained two Swiss Army knives with magnifiers off EBAY.  Both are Victorinox Explorers.   But as even a Christian might eventually figure out, these twain are different.  See how different?

They do, however, share one feature in tandem.  Which be,  a Tea Party dumbass  within 20 meters, configures the bottle opener from silver to blue.  So if you were like opening a bottle of beer or ale that like needed that, and a dumbass Republican was approaching within 20m, the bottle opener would turn blue. Mighty handy that feature.

To Walk at a Good Pace

To walk at a good pace is a big deal for the miserable elderly.  If a miserable elderly person or luckless old humanoid can't walk at a good pace, that old fart might as well get selected out.  And deservedly so.

Crumby, following his mixed reviews visit to Alaska, has been totally incapable of walking at a good pace.  That's because, on about his second day in the Booblick's largest state by areal extent, Crumby received multiple stress fractures as well as multiple ligament abominations simultaneously in and upon his right foot.  Only timely intervention by the White Goddess (WG), herself, prevented Crumby, in his vulnerable, crippled condition, from being predated upon by whatever, or maybe trampled by a moose.

Yes.  These days, afflicted with a boot cast, Crumby could scarcely flee a predator (two legged or four legged) or unfriendly ungulate in a timely fashion.  And this condition has persisted for like months (since the start of August).  Even so, Crumby limps or staggers along, yet.  Thanks to the Goddess.  The Goddess be praised.

Right off the bat, as Crumby was initially stuck in the Alaskan swamp mud, wearing naught but hip boots, and sinking out of sight toward Hades, he was rescued finally by those he had contracted with.   Precisely, those contractees were solicited  to rescue Crumby from dire or evil situations that those same contracted parties should never have allowed him to wander into in the first place.  But too late.  As Crumby was extracted from the substrate,  this or that bone and tendon snapped from the great stress or primordial forces the mud brought to bear on Crumby's wretched pedambulate orama.

Like if this bear had not eaten several elderly humanoid dumb asses already, Crumby would have been doomed then or there.  Mercy!