In the Shadow of the Great Prairie Dog

I have not been traveling much this summer.  But some family members are.  Steeling themselves for the ordeal of long distance vacation driving my son and his family headed Out West.  Somewhere generally around Phillip South Dakota, on the edge of the Bad Lands, they encountered the World's Largest Prairie Dog.  It watches over a sort of gift store.

 

Well, that's not actually one of the pictures they sent me.  I borrowed it from Roadside America.  The latter is a fun site, I've sent them a few curiosities over the years.  Here's their write up on The Ranch Store and its guardian totem. 

The picture I actually was sent was taken as the blistering sun was getting low in the sky.  Still, it was 102 degrees at 5:30 pm.  Yikes.  I think the big guy looks a bit sinister seen from this angle.....

Mooching around in the only available patch of shade are a batch of actual prairie dogs.  They live there, enjoying an indolent existence where there are no predators, but a steady stream of tourists willing to feed them for one dollar a bag of "Dog" chow.

And, ya know, they are pretty cute little buggers.  Unless you happen to know a few things about them.  Like that they have been documented to transmit several diseases to humans.  Monkey Pox would be kind of bad.  And would require a bit of explaining.  But, helpful hint of the day, prairie dogs can transmit bubonic plague!!!  Lookin' a little less cute now???

And the Seasons Change

The official starting and ending dates of seasons are just dates on a calendar.  Life has other markers for change.  For instance, when I start to hear the sounds of the high school marching band practicing, summer is drawing to a close.

Of course there are other clues.  It's been a great year for growing things, so my hops are heading for a record crop.  Maybe I'll even brew beer with them this year.

The other day it was time to sign up for fall deer hunting tags.  Over the past months we've seen the deer on our land go from pregnant does, to skinnier does with spotted fawns, and now onto various family groupings.  The bucks seem to all hang out together, wandering around in a gang.  Sure, they all look friendly now, but when they all go crazy during mating season it will be another story.

No real summer trips.  Not much fishing, and only one new species to show for it.  Lots of robot stuff.  That season never really ends.  But it does have pauses.

We just finished the summer build with middle schoolers.  They did excellent work, and most of them seem to have caught the bug.  They've all signed up for our fall "Robot School".  And evidently invited all their friends.  So now I'm trying to figure how we can accommodate 20 students when we think our capacity for good instruction is about 12.  Hmmmm.

Well, its good to be busy.  In this brief interval between things I've got projects long delayed to take on.  And potentially some really big tasks in the year ahead.

See you around.

Ketchup, Mustard and their Little Pal RoboDog

I'm not an engineer, but its funny, there are some engineering concepts that translate to the real world.  Apply a lot of force to something and it moves.  Less force, maybe not.

Over the weekend we brought two robots to an off season competition.  One was "Mustard" the robot built by the high school team over a couple of months of  work.  Complex.  Had a rough outing at its first event but was heroic in the second tournament.  At its third event - the unofficial state tourney - it flagged a bit.  And it was mostly just sitting around since then.  A couple of the high school team members who had never driven it took a couple hours to see if they could learn it.

The other robot was Ketchup.  Built by middle schoolers over the course of 6 sessions.  Rugged, single minded, it was designed to do one thing.  Pick up those white pipes and drop them into the lowest tier of the scoring platform.  They worked hard on this project.

So....how did it turn out?

 Mustard, the high school robot struggled.  It was

designed to do one thing, score those pipes on the highest

scoring point.  Alas, just as one dog year equals seven

human years, so also with robots.  One month is about

seven human years, making Ketchup an old timer.

Old timers have aches and pains, things that go amiss

We had wiring issues deep inside the mechanisms, and

several matches the darn thing just sat there.  Worst

record of all robots there in the qualifying rounds.  True,

it got a bit happier towards the end.  Pit crew and the

new drivers learned a lot.  It got picked for an 

elimination round alliance based on how it ran its last few matches.

As for Ketchup, the middle school built machine...it was designed to do one thing and to do it very well.  Pick up those pipes and get them to the lowest scoring level reliably and fast.  10 per match please.  It's lining up for the shot in this picture, with its temporary number 9996.

And it did just that.  True, it only managed a bit more than 7 per match but to be fair it was called upon to play defense a few times or it would have come close.  The event kept detailed stats, and Ketchup finished ahead of several regular season robots in the won lost column (including its big brother Mustard) and number one in those L1 scores.  Design objectives achieved.

Ironically the two robot sibs were both on the same alliance in playoffs and did very well together.  They did not quite make it to the final round, but came close.

The matches will be available on Youtube in a few days.   I'll post some links then.  We may also put together a "Making of Ketchup" video down the road a bit.  In the meantime here's a bit of entertainment from the displays out in the lobby area.  Robot Dog.  Hank would go nuts seeing this...

Baby Bullhead Ballet

Immature bullheads are pretty darn cute.  Cuter than the adult version for sure.

I have not done much fishing this summer.  Lots of family stuff.  Lots of robot stuff.  But in my relentless quest to catch new species I have been out a few times.  Always in the odd places, backwaters, ditches, etc.

In one such place I came across a school of baby bullheads doing a very elaborate Bullhead Ballet.

Middle Schoolers and their Robot

It's been a hectic six weeks.  So, how much can a group of middle schoolers accomplish in that time?  Well, here's the numbers.  Once a week sessions, 11-4 on Tuesdays.  We usually had 6 to 9 students working, with two or three adult coaches and one or two invaluable high school team members.  In that time they went from nothing....to this:

Impressive.

They'll be taking it into competition on Saturday.  If interested, the live stream should be at:  https://www.youtube.com/@frcteam8744  

I've seen a lot in 27 years of working with kids and robots.  Wonderous things.  Alarming things.  But surprising things?  Not very often of late.  But this group, this robot....surprised me.  In a good way of course.

We Watch Deer. Deer Watch Us.

Trail cam photo from a week or so back.  Since starting deer hunting five years ago our number of functional trail cams has gone from three down to one.  Temperature swings, ant infestations.  Just cheap Chinese electronics.  

We'll be up doing some hunting prep in the days ahead.  So some functional cameras would help.  I took Hank to one of "his stores", dog and guy friendly places.  He was creeped out by the giant inflatable black cat lawn decoration.  Halloween too damn early, I was creeped a bit myself.  But here he is helping me pick out a couple of low cost 'cams.  

This is about the maximum of his Brave Hunter mode.  Chipmunks frighten him and he thinks skunks want to be his friend.

"Made in Scotland, from Girders"

You'd probably had to have traveled to Scotland or the northern reaches of England to get that reference.  It is one of the many slogans of a peculiar beverage called Iron Brew.  Or if you want to be picky, Irn Bru.  The busy bodies in some agency said they had to change the name because the stuff is not technically brewed and contains only trace amounts of iron.

But it sure looks like rusty water.  And the first time I ever drank it - also the first time I'd ever eaten Scotch Eggs - rusty water was my general impression.*  And yet, it is the most popular soft drink in Scotland.  By the way, another of their slogans is "Scotland's Other National Drink".

As this time line of cans shows, the stuff has been around for a while.  Weirdly it got started in the US in the 1880s, and did not make it to Scotland until around 1900.  Sometimes peculiar American products thrive in new environs.  See Spam for instance.

In general adverts in the UK are far wittier than what we see in the US.  And for a product aimed at Scots?  Very over the top and with that delightful accent.  Here's a highlight reel of just some of the Best of Iron Brew ads.  Uh, as with anything that spans decades there is some humor that you could not get away with today.  That does not make it any less humorous.

Enjoy.

*/When I was over last May I tried it for a second time.  And...they seem to have changed the formula.  It was bad in different ways!  Some of the ads above allude to variations on the basic "Bru".  They make a diet version.  And for a while at least, an Iron Brew based Energy Drink. I'm fairly brave trying food and drink on foreign travels, but that would be too much.

America's Got Talent (probably with Flute-Girls)

My grandkids enjoy America's Got Talent.  I doubt they watch it, or in fact anything, on broadcast TV, but they sure like the YouTube videos of some of the acts.  Mostly my wife watches these with them.  I can enjoy them too, as there is considerable skill, energy and creativity on display.  But I have the sort of pesky analytical mind that wonders how many takes for each act, how scripted the apparently spontaneous banter with the judges really is, how many acts an audience is expected to sit through in a day.  That sort of thing.

And when my mind wanders thusly, etymology can never be far away.  So, what does Talent really mean?

It goes all the way back to Greek.  Specifically to Talantan which means "a balance, a pair of scales".  I've dug parts of these at Vindolanda.  Here's an example found at the "sister site" of Magna back in 2023.

You could weigh all sorts of things with these, but with the word at hand we need to concentrate on monetary matters.  A "Talent" in ancient times was a measure of silver.  Specifically, 6000 of a silver coin called drachma.  This is about 57.75 pounds of silver, assuming nobody has fiddled with the content, and would be more money than most people of that era would see in their lifetimes.  A drachma was roughly the equivalent of a Roman denarius, and each were about one day's wages.

Why, I've even found the occasional denarius

The Parable of the Talents.  Most of us remember it.  It appears in both Matthew and Luke, in versions that differ enough to suggest they did not come from the same primary source.  Essentially a Master has to take a long trip.  He gives three servants money.  One gets 10 talents, one gets 5, one gets a single talent.

As you recall, the first two servants invested the money and doubled it.  The more cautions third one buried it in a hole - about the equivalent of keeping it in a checking account - and was severely chastised for his caution.

In the middle ages the meaning of talent morphed from a big pile of money into "a gift given for one's use and improvement", then into the abilities - lets call them talents - that enable a person to make good on such an opportunity.  

I have questions.  Did this bit of metaphorical advice have anything to do with the antagonistic attitude of Christians towards Jews regards lending money for profit?  I mean, it seems like the Big Guy specifically endorses this business model.

I also wondered how much trouble a servant would have been if he hadn't even preserved the principle, but lost it all.  This happened pretty often even before cryptocurrencies came along.  One common avenue for investing was backing a trading expedition.  Ships sink.  Bandits gonna bandit.

And I was surprised to learn than an alternative version of the parable occurs in a fragmentary and apocryphal text called The Gospel of the Hebrews.  In it, one of the servants actually blows the entire sum on "prostitutes and flute-girls".  Now, I'm not sure quite what that second category actually is, but it sounds like something you'd find on America - or perhaps Judea's- got Talent!

Robots goin' Places. Robots doin' Things. Summer 2025.

There's been....a lot going on.  The high school team has been doing outreach visits.  School Board, sponsors, that sort of thing.  These are fun for the kids.  Also, work for me.  But necessary.

At most of these events we are given a specific time slot.  But we always go way over.  It's because our audience always has lots and lots of questions.  Gather engineers around robots and its hard to pry them away.

One new wrinkle to this summer's visits is that we brought along both the high school robot and the one we have middle school kids building for an upcoming off season scrimmage.  Here's the two machines side by side.

The one on the left is "Mustard" our 2025 competition robot.  Its lil' pal is "Ketchup".  Ketchup is designed to pick up the game pieces - called Coral btw - off the floor and deposit them on the low shelf of the scoring structure.  Often.  I've told the tyke's drive team I'd like to see them do ten scores in a match.  Here's how it works.....

Of course you want those game pieces to be as far away from their point of origin, and therefore close to their destination.  So we had the next year 7th, 8th and 9th grade kids practice launching the Coral as far out onto the floor as possible.  Kids this age are good at scattering things around on the floor.

Lots of fun.  With more and better ahead.

Brick Yards of Chippewa Falls - Part Three

The Laycock and Barrett brick yard probably got off to a great start.  Chippewa Falls was growing, and they had the inside track.  But times were changing.  There is a gap of several years in the on line version of local newspapers, so all I can say for certain is that sometime in the mid 1870's this partnership went away.

There were a few mentions of brick yards in the 1880's.  There was a George Robson of whom it was said: "He will probably operate his brick yard in this city the coming summer if he does not sell out before the season opens".  That was in March, 1888.  In August of the same year an I.B. Taft was supposedly intending to start a brick yard on his farm.  

But a real revival of the industry had to wait for J.B. Theriault .  As you can see from the link, we've met him before.  He caught my attention early as his are, to date, the only marked bricks from our town.

Theriault's brick yard was on the western edge of town.  From the various descriptions of earlier yards I'm assuming they were all in the same general area.  There was, still is actually, a nice vein of good clay to be had there.  But as we shall see, that's not enough.

John Theriault got his operation up a bit late in 1890 but still had a good season.  He sold all the bricks he could make, employed 20 men, and was aiming to double production the next year.  I've shown this in the linked post, but here's a view of part of his plant.  Keep in mind that brick yards are sprawling places.  Lots of kilns, drying racks, clay pits, etc.  

There were actually two brick yards working the same vein of clay by about 1900.  Below is a Birds Eye view that shows the adjacent Goulet brick yard and gives a better sense of the scale of the operation by 1907.

A reporter for the local paper visited the Theriault brick yard in 1893, and had a lot to say about it.  The clay was said to be of a quality equivalent to the highly successful brick yards in Menomonie.  The proprietor had invested $11,000 in the buildings and equipment and employed 25 men.  Some of them lived on site at a boarding house with "a first class cook". * 

The capacity of the plant was 40,000 bricks a day, although it was only doing 30,000.   It was mentioned that the new addition to St. Joseph's Hospital, as well as many buildings up in Rice Lake, had recently been completed using Theriault bricks.  But there was that recurring problem.....

Theriault was handicapped by having no rail road spur.  Efforts to obtain one came to naught.

Eventually this impediment proved fatal.  Bricks, so long as the quality is good, are all the same.  And for big projects it would only be natural to go with the lower bidder, this usually being the yard that could eliminate some contribution to the expenses.  Like that extra shipping.  

By the mid 1890's Theriault was making 1,200,000 bricks a year.  But was still only running at half capacity.  The other yard, adjacent to his, had several owners.  French Lumber Company brick yard, Goulet and Bergeron yards, and the Chippewa Brick Manufacturing Company. 

Although both brick yards dwindled in the early 20th century and seem to have been gone circa 1915, there are still traces of their presence.  It now has nice new homes on cul-de-sacs, but there are three ponds, at least some of which were clay pits where material for making bricks had been excavated.  Potentially since the late 1860s!

* The first class cook at the Theriault brick yard boarding house was Zele Fourboul.  We've met her, her unfortunate spouse and her murderous step son in a previous installment!

Brick Yards of Chippewa Falls - Part Two

 Spring of 1872 found the Winans brick yard under new management.

A contemporary account gives a bit more information.  Henry Laycock was described as being "..the leading brick layer of this section", and mentions that he had built the new Tremont hotel and other structures in town.  J.E. Barrett was described as a young man, new to town.  

Laycock was the more interesting of the two men.  He was born in Scarborough England in 1842,  He came to America in 1861, joining the Union Army shortly after Bull Run.  

He had a busy Civil War service,  at the end of which his regiment was involved in hunting down "Mosby's Raiders" in Northern Virginia.  On the night of April 14, 1865 they were summoned to Washington DC with the news that Abraham Lincoln had been shot.  Immediately on arrival they were dispatched as part of the search for the assassin.  

They almost caught up with John Wilkes Booth at the home of Dr. Mudd, who had treated his injuries.  Booth was captured hiding in a barn a few days later.  Mudd, whose guilt is debatable but likey, was arrested and sentenced to a long term.  The phrase "your name is mud" comes from this incident...

Laycock came to Chippewa Falls in 1870, moving to Eau Claire in 1877.   He had a long career as a builder, also continuing to make bricks.  

His Chippewa Falls venture does not seem to have prospered.  It faced a new challenge when the railroad came to town in 1874, namely the reality that bricks are a very expensive item to ship by wagon.  

As we shall see in Part Three, the location of the Chippewa Falls brick making enterprises was always about the same, and never got a rail spur.  

His competitors, while making equivalent products, did not have this hindrance.....

Brick Yards of Chippewa Falls, Part One

To understand the history of brick making in Chippewa Falls you have to remember the reality of a community built around a giant sawmill.  The buildings were made of wood.  They were heated with wood stoves and lit with kerosene lanterns.  There was probably scrap wood everywhere.  You can see where this is headed..

In February 1869 a fire broke out that destroyed most of the commercial district of the town.  Following this there were ordnances passed that required any structure built in the down town area to be fire proof.  That is to say, not out of wood.  Although this does not seem to have been universally adhered to it was obviously a major boost to making things out of brick.  And an entrepreneur stepped up shortly.

This is the earliest known photo of Chippewa Falls.  Undated it dates from either late 1870, sometime in '71 or early '72.  It shows substantial brick buildings as new construction.  So where did the bricks come from?

The first brick making enterprise that I know of - and bear in mind that all the local papers also went up with the fire of '69 - was started by a Captain George Winans.  Why, the embers were only just cooled off when this appeared in the Chippewa Union and Times:

It sounds like an up and coming operation by early summer of that year.  Note the location given, "about two and a half miles west of town".  This will factor in later when I try to locate this pioneer enterprise.  A "lost cow" notice in September of 1869 quotes a Martin Roch, who says his residence was "..one and a half miles from the Falls, near brick yard".  

Business seems to have been good in 1869, despite the loss of 40,000 bricks which were destroyed in the drying process by heavy rains in August of that year.

George Winans was an interesting character.  Like almost everyone else in the early days of Chippewa Falls he was in the lumber business.  Specifically he guided rafts of cut timber down rivers.  Hence the title "Captain".  He continued in this line of work far past the end of the prime timber years, actually sending rafts down the Mississippi quite late in the 19th century.  

One of the big projects for the brick yard was the building of the Tremont House in 1871.  It was a very swank place, and was actually "under the management" of George Winans!  But as it happens, brick buildings can also burn, and that's exactly what happened on a cold January night in 1874.

By that point Winans had sold the brick yard.  In fact he sold it to two men, one of whom had done the brick work for the Tremont.  We'll meet Laycock and Barrett in our next installment.

Sycamore Gap, Wisconsin

 To make any sense of what follows you need to know about this tree:

It is, or rather was, an elegant sycamore tree.  It stood in a low spot between two hills right on Hadrian's Wall.  It's just up the hill from Vindolanda where I excavate each spring.  It had become more than a bit iconic.  It turned up on logos, guidebooks, the Kevin Costner version of Robin Hood had the protagonists chatting right under its branches.  

Then there was a stormy night.  And in the morning this is what was revealed.

Under cover of darkness, the sound of their chainsaw drowned out by the winds, villains had cut down the Sycamore Gap tree.  It landed btw on Hadrian's Wall and did some minor damage.

People were angry.  Speculation ran hot and, I'm sad to say, for a while the wrong guy was suspected.  But honestly the pool of suspects could not have been large.  This was done by a professional tree cutter.  To pull this off in just a few minutes time?  Not something drunken yobs would be capable of.  Heck, they'd likely have cut off a few of their own limbs in the dark.

Eventually a couple of real prize specimens were arrested.  The trial was going on when we were over in May.  I won't give them any recognition, they don't deserve it.  Even their defense was crummy.  

My car was there?  Oh, sometimes people borrow it.  Your phone gps put you there and there was a photo on it of a gigantic slice of wood?  Oh, sometimes I loan people my phone too.  Say, didn't you used to own a plus sized commercial logging chain saw?  Where is it?  I don't remember.

Eventually each tried to blame the other.  Helpful hint, when you both try to put the other under the bus you just, well, both end up there.  The verdict was Guilty.  I'd have said Guilty and Stupid.

I'm mentioning this sordid episode only because my son and I cut down a dead tree in our side yard recently.  In case somebody gets all het up about the Chippewa Falls Crab Apple I'm prepared to say that my phone gps did show I was there.  'Cause its where I live.  That's not my (adorable little) chain saw.  And I don't know where either it or that section of wood are.  

I rest my case.

Memorium

My father in law passed away over the weekend.  He was 102, so as my Brit friends would put it "He had a good long innings".  

The family reunion I mentioned last time was from that side of the tree.  The schedule was complex, some of us had already gone home when we got the news.  But others remained.  I'm sure stories, tears and a few toasts were on order.

When you live that long your grandchildren get to know you.  And not as "grandpa", that silly mix of performance art and vague authority.  They know you as a person.

Various legacy stuff came to them when the old gent moved.  First from Indiana to Pennsylvania, then to Michigan, then to an apartment, and finally for the last few months of his life, to a nursing home.

This is Major Hoople.  It's a vintage lawn tractor that one of my sons trailered all the way back from the east coast.  When he got word of the Passing, my son took it out to the back yard and fired it up for a lap around the acreage.  It still runs, still has various warranty voiding modifications done back in the day.  It still has the dates of oil changes written inside the hood!

Major Hoople, incidentally, was a character from a comic strip called Our Boarding House.  It started in 1921 and kept going until 1984.  Not bad, but a short run indeed by the standards of my father in law.

Godspeed, George.

Reunion

Every year or so we have a reunion of the American and Canadian branches of the family.  Long story, involves a bit of draft dodging back in the 60's.  Anyway, in times past I was pretty involved in amusing small people.  Lots of games, silly treasure hunts, frog races.  That sort of thing.

Well, they are not so little these days.  They show up with their attendant devices and their chargers.  My own internet access slows to a trickle.  Seriously, I've not seen things load so slowly since the late 80's when I had a dial up modem!

But its all good fun.  The grandparent gen gets to sit back and take things easy.  The parent types just have to keep the teens from being too "teeny".  The youngest generation just gets to play.  They amuse each other pretty well.

The interactions from top generation to bottom are less now.  Less important too.  I think the most precious connections are of the "half generation" variety.

Anyway, stuff happened.  Most of it not of general interest.  There were for some reason a batch of quail.  

And potato chips.  This is part of a long running "taste test" between US and Canadian products.  Who knew that Pringles made what looks to me to be "Assassin" chips.   Actually pretty tasty.

There were additional chips in bags, all of which popped due to airline pressure changes.

And breakfast cereal.  There was supposed to be a detailed survey of these comparing the variants, but everyone stayed up too late and was groggy when they stumbled down at what might be a very late breakfast hour in their time zone, but closer to lunch here in the Midwest.

Well guess that's Mass Confusion Family Time for this year.  Back to a quieter life with 21st century internet availability.

Pointed and Pungent

This started with a crossword clue.  Wife and I do the NYT puzzles.  Maybe it keeps the ageing mind active, not sure.  But in this case the clue made me pull up a word from deep memory.  Poignard.   It's a sort of dagger, one of many sharp stabby things used indiscriminately in Medieval times.  But other than sounding vaguely French, where does the word come from?

Keep in mind that words relating to basic human activities; eating, drinking, stabbing, tend to be invented early and reused often.  

Poignard comes from 14th Century French, Poignant, a word meaning sharp or pointed.  We still use this word for emotional moments.  Think Hallmark specials where Christmas gets saved and the lady protagonist finds True Love.  It descends from the Latin Pungere, meaning to literally poke or prick, or figuratively to "vex, grieve or trouble".  Pungere is closely related to Pugnus, meaning fist.  Hence Pugnacious and Pugilist.

The French word Pointe dates to about 1200, and combines two versions of Pungere.  Essentially it means both the point of a sword or other stabby object, and the smallest dot that you could make - either on paper or an opponent's skin - with something sharp.  Now of course we refer to a data point, or to the point - often hard to identify - of a discussion.

Pungent survives today as a sharp odor.  Kind of what you'd have a few days after you stabbed somebody with a Poignard.  

Who knew that swordplay, bookkeeping and bad smells were all so closely related?

Frog Mummy

 

I was up north the other day, doing a bit of prep on the new deer hunting property.  There are two nice box stands, each about 15 feet up in the air.

Unfortunately they seem to have been built by and for a guy who we figure was 7 feet tall and preferred to stand for hours on end waiting for a deer to maybe saunter past.

As this can sometimes take a while, it's preferable to have an option to sit down.  But normal chairs, while they might give you a shot at passing flights of ducks, do not get you anywhere close to being able to sight out those ridiculously high up windows.

So I built this out of various stuff.  Free swiveling bar stool, steel milk crate, etc.  Works pretty well but we'll have to add or subtract a bit more underneath plywood to accommodate hunters of various heights.  

As I was taking this picture from the door way I looked to one side and saw something rather alarming.....

Yikes, it's a mummified tree frog!  Although it has a rather zombie like appearance I guess its just part of Nature.

Build and Rebuild. Robot Summer, 2025

The thing about school based teams is that you are always in rebuild mode.  Realistically kids are in high school for four years.  The things they need to learn to excel in say robotics, or for that matter football, etc, take years to learn.  Then they graduate.

Our FIRST robotics team has always had its foundations at the middle school level.  It evolved, or perhaps mutated, from a fun after school class where kids built small combat robots.  We've had some good years, some off years, but overall the trend line is heading up.  If we can keep the talent coming.

I have a higher than normal tolerance for middle schoolers.

This summer we are taking a batch of kids who have shown interest in robotics and are just having them build their own robot to compete in an off season event.  Obviously this is insane.  A crew of 20 with seven weeks to get it done was hard pressed last season.  Rookies who only get seven 5 hour sessions?  Aw heck, we'll get it done.

We are starting with an existing drive base.  Oh, the sides had to be replaced.  And while some of the wiring was "on board" already it all had to be checked and secured.

This frame dates back to "Howard", our successful 2023 machine.  It's pretty sturdy, also pretty heavy but since the design is fairly simple we should make weight.

The grabber device for picking up the PVC pipe game pieces.

Works pretty well.

We think we set a one day record for most parts made on our CNC.  Last year's Design Lead had a bunch of things he wanted to try on this design.  The newbies are not ready for full on design work, but learning how to secure metal for cutting, keep the cutting bits cooled, keep fingers away from spinny, sharp things.  It's all fundamental stuff.

As always, software waits for the machine to be operational.

The kids are doing well.  What we are really looking for is awareness of safety, the ability to tell the difference between shoddy and spiffy work, and of course being able to work well on a team.

So far, very good.  We'll see how things come together for that mid August mini-competition.

Hank and the Coyotes

Hank is a dog with large ears and a small brain.  So while he loves being up at the cabin he gets a bit confused.  Happily confused for the most part.  So many things to sniff at, so many things to roll in!

Sounds confuse him.  When hummingbirds come to the feeder he can hear their noisy approach but not immediately spot them.  Non specific barking ensues.

The other day my wife was playing crow noises on her ipad, in an attempt to chase away a pesky family of same.  Hank cocked his head in a bemused fashion.....more bird noises without evidence of birds.

So I decided to play him some coyote sounds.  Here's his reaction....

Hank got his name from a series of books featuring Hank the Cow Dog.  Apt, as that Hank also was a dim bulb, ever goofing up in his tireless efforts to guard the ranch from non existent threats.

In one of the books Hank went Outlaw and ran off to join a pack of coyotes.  One of the coyote gals was pretty taken with that Hank.  For this Hank, I don't see that working out for him.

Janky, Janka and Jenga

After a quarter century of building robots and related things you might imagine I'd be getting good at it.  Not really.  I lack both the patience and the base skill set.  Plus, I see building things as more of an art form.  I prefer funky and creative over cold, efficient engineering.   As a result, many of the things my hands have touched have been described as "Janky".

If the term is unfamiliar to you, well, it means roughly "slapped together, temperamental, probably made of dubious parts".  I plead guilty as charged.

I see it as a term of mild affection.

It is also a very new word, originating sometime in the 1990's, and probably as a variation on "junky".

"Junky" as in, made of junk, dates to the 1870's, while the base word, Junk is older.  Mid 14th century in fact, and supposedly derived from "junc".  This nautical term meant rope or cable, stuff that when it got old was cut up and used for caulking hulls.   A worthy form of recycling in my opinion.

Recently my eye was caught by a word that is trying very hard to be related to Janky.  Specifically, "Janka".

The Janka Scale is a way to accurately measure the hardness of wood.  Quite handy if you want to build non-janky things.  It is equivalent to the Rockwell scale for metal, and measured in much the same way.

It would be great if Janka, Janky, Junk and various other words like junk (as a ship) or junket were all related somehow.  

But, alas.  Junket derives oddly from iuncus, a Late Latin word for basket.  Junk, in the sense of a Chinese ship, comes from a Malay word jong, meaning a large ship.  Nothing to do with caulking of hulls.

And Janka was the name of the Austrian born engineer who invented the Janka test.  His surname, and that of my old pal Kim Johnke, probably derive from a variation on the name "Johan".

Oh, and when you are thinking on hard wooden objects, what about Jenga?  Sorry, Swahili this time, kugenga, meaning to build.

Word origins can be convincing mimics.

Mentioned in part because another Project approaches......

  

Fashion Dogs

Ah, Fashion Dogs.  AKA Purse Puppies.  They seem to have gone out of style these days.  In the modern era they do seem a bit gauche.  But from an etymological perspective they are pretty interesting.

The list of things I call my dog Hank is long.  I favor alliterative versions, such as "Whining Whelp".  Whelp is a marvelous word from way back, it comes from Old Saxon and goes back who knows how long.  When looking this one up I read that the more common term "puppy" supplanted it starting in the late 15th Century.  It's origins are about as clear as the family tree of Ol' Hank, but it is felt to have come from the French word poupee, meaning doll or toy.  Whether the Mademoiselles had actual little dogs they held as accessories is unclear, but in any event they treated them like small toys.  

The same word also gives us puppet, and for similar reasons.  In fact early on the two words were used interchangeably.

Having grandkids rather into bugs I wondered if pupa, an immature form of moth or butterfly, was related.  Hmm, well sort of.  It's a modern-ish creation, invented by Linneaus who in the late 1700's basically invented scientific classification of animals.  He leaned into the Latin pretty hard, and there the word  pupa, means girl, doll or puppet.  So obviously this was also the source of the later French word.

The concept of a young person also turns up in pupil, as in a student.  Oddly, pupil as in a part of your eye supposedly originated in the observation that you could see a small reflection of a person on the eye surface of the beholder!  I'd call that a bit of a reach but evidently there is a similar concept in Greek and in early English.  Reese Witherspoon sort of spoiled the effect by wearing big sunglasses most of the time.

The dog in these movies was named Bruiser.  He passed away a few years back at the venerable age of 18.  His obit is HERE.  

A Forgotten Brewery Cave - Remembered.....and Now Sealed.

Leinenkugel's brewery.  No, not the one in Chippewa Falls.  The family had lots of branches.  This establishment was run by Henry Leinenkugel and was on the banks of Half Moon Lake in Eau Claire.

A brief history of the brewery.

Like the Jacob Leinenkugel brewery up in Chippewa Falls, this one started in 1867.  It was actually run by Henry Sr. and his son, Henry Jr.  It got off to a good start, and for a time was the top producing brewery in Eau Claire.  But in 1876 Henry Jr. died, and as his father had by that point retired, the enterprise was taken over by Caroline, wife of the Departed.  Things got difficult.  Their production dropped in half, and their credit ratings were not positive.

A partnership of Frase and Lissack bought the brewery and did their best for a couple of years, but also failed.  The next owners were Carstens and Hartwig, who with additional partners ran the place until it burned down in July of 1885.  It was never rebuilt.

The newpaper article that described the fire mentions that the beer in the underground vaults was preserved.  So lets visit these "vaults".  Or actually, revisit them, as this is one of the brewery caves I have previously shown but not given a location.

While not generally known, the location did attract the usual unwelcome visitors.....

That picture was from a later visit.  The first time I crawled in it looked like a bit more of a cozy hangout for neighbors.

Yes, crawled in.  The entrance had been sealed at least twice in the past.  

Here's what the entrance looked like until recently.

Summer of 2025.

I can actually trace the history of the cave since 1885 in some detail.  I've seen a photo circa 1900 that shows the remnants of what would have been the original entrance.  It was of course a straight run out, so that beer could be hauled out and ice hauled in.  This was about the time period in which the local paper describes it as being a hideout for local delinquents who were stealing things from cabins around the lake.  

In the 20th century it was used for a time by Silver Springs, a company now known for various mustard and horseradish products, but back then they had a larger line of veggies, some of which required cold storage.  The nice cement floors and the remnants of an electrical system must date to this era.

Times more recent have been troubled.  Eau Claire has a significant problem with homelessness.  And brewery caves naturally attract people with nowhere else to be.  Both this cave and "The Cave of the Mad Poetess" have had semi permanent residents in recent years.  There have been issues.  Danger of people being hurt.  I've heard there was a sexual assault.  It's worth noting that this cave is adjacent to a public park/beach.

So the "other" Leinenkugel cave has been sealed off.  Its the right call.  Everything is still down there and now preserved, perhaps for some happy day when history is appreciated more and the troubles of the world are fewer.

After I took the last photo, Hank and I walked past the beach.  It was about 9am and a homeless guy was sleeping on the ground next to the beach house.