From about 9 pm my time last Saturday night to around 9 am today (Monday) Typepad, my blogging service, was offline due to scheduled maintenance that had problems. Typepad has undone the changes, but some images and the name of this blog still aren't showing up. Hopefully things will be completely back to normal soon.
Bloggers like me have to choose our subjects to write about with care.
Until noon today, I was pondering between a $300 million Salem bond measure, advice on who to vote for in the midterms, and the increased risk of nuclear war due to Putin's Ukraine threats.
But after Tim Paquin of Precision Garage Door Service diagnosed what had caused our garage door opener to stop working, I realized that this was my chance to contribute to the accumulated store of knowledge regarding garage door opener repairs.
In short, consider that a stink bug is the culprit. Here's what Paquin found after taking a look inside the opener in a quest to learn why it had no electrical power.
That stink bug must have really had a grudge against my wife and me, because the repair guy said that the bug managed to fry itself on the part of the circuit board that controls the power supply.
At first I thought this was funny.
When I learned how much this damn stink bug was going to cost me, the hilarity of the moment was considerably reduced: $75 service call + $304 Linear circuit board + $99 operator service and programming - $48 senior discount = $430.
Sadly, there was no discount for a stink bug committing suicide on the very worst part of the circuit board to die on (from my perspective; maybe the stink bug had a glorious final exit).
Stink bugs have been an annoying part of our life here in rural south Salem, Oregon for quite a few years. It seems like forever, but a Wikipedia article says that they reached Oregon only in 2009. Mostly they cluster on our windows on warm days in late summer or early fall.
Some get inside. We've found that the BugZooka bug catcher, a wonderful invention that lets us suck stink bugs up with ease (unlike flies, they are easy to sneak up on) is the best way to deal with them. A BugZooka is kept handy in a corner of our house.
Stink bugs are adept at getting inside a house or garage. My wife had gotten rid of lots of them in our garage, but obviously we missed the one that cost us $430.
I guess I could ask our State Farm agent if they offer insurance for stink bugs that cause fatal damage to a circuit board, but I suspect their underwriting department doesn't have enough data to calculate the minute odds of this happening.
My wife, Laurel, like lots of non-sports fans, can't understand the appeal of watching football games.
Or any games, for that matter, aside from the Puppy Bowl that's held every Super Bowl day for those who are more interested in watching young dogs run around on a playing field than grown men.
What I try to convey to Laurel, with decidedly mixed success, is that sports becomes as fascinating as a engrossing novel, movie, or TV show if you follow a team closely enough to know what a game means, and who the main characters in the drama are.
Drama is precisely the right word to describe yesterday's Oregon State University vs. Stanford football game held in Palo Alto. OSU was favored, but looked out of sorts for most of the game, while Stanford was playing great.
When the score was 24-10 at the beginning of the fourth quarter, I figured that the only reason I should keep watching was to see how bad the final score would be. However, OSU made a good comeback, trailing only 27-22 with 58 seconds left.
So now I thought that I'd watch OSU come up just short, which would have felt worse to me than losing badly. I was tempted to stop watching the game and turn to the evening Portland news, but decided to stick it out until the very end.
Good decision. Because this happened. (The highlights video starts with the crucial pass play.)
An Oregonian story describes the amazing catch by Tre’Shaun Harrison.
With the Beavers down by five points with just seconds remaining, quarterback Ben Gulbranson fired a pass toward the right sideline, looking for receiver Tre’Shaun Harrison.
As Harrison tried to haul in the pass, he snared it off of Cardinal defender Ethan Bonner’s helmet. Bonner and Stanford safety Patrick Fields, who was also covering on the play, seemed momentarily stunned that Harrison had made the catch, and by the time they started after him, Harrison was racing to the end zone for a 56-yard touchdown.
Here's a blurry screenshot from the video of the catch. Harrison is way up there in the air, grabbing the football off of the helmet of #13 Stanford defender Bonner.
A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post that mentioned sports writer John Canzano saying that Oregon State snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in their disappointing game against USC.
And yesterday OSU snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. Same team. Way different outcome. In each case, all because of a single play.
I felt amazingly good as soon as Harrison ran untouched into the end zone. Moments like this one are what make sports a great reflection of life, which obviously isn't all that surprising, since sports are part of life.
A back-up quarterback, Ben Gulbranson, was playing for OSU. The ESPN announcers said when he took over with 58 seconds to go that this was Gulbranson's chance to go down in Oregon State history as staging one of the great all-time comebacks for the football team.
When I heard that, I thought, yeah, right, not much chance of that happening.
Yet it did. Which goes to show that just when things are darkest, it's possible that light will dawn. But the flip side is that just when things are brightest, it's possible that darkness will fall. In other words, we just can't tell what the future will bring.
For most of the game, ESPN showed shots of really happy Stanford fans. After Harrison's touchdown, their demeanor changed markedly.
I felt sorry for them. A little bit. Mostly I felt joy that the team I wanted to have win, did, in such an astounding fashion with 13 seconds left to go in the game.
But there's always another game. Next time us OSU fans could be the ones with sad faces. That's the attraction of watching sports for me. You just never know. Just like life.
If you're looking for humor in all the wrong places -- I sure am -- rejoice!
For the 2022 edition of the highly entertaining Silvertongue Apple-peal has hit the streets of Silverton with a satirical nuclear bomb (tactical warfare variety, to avoid complete devastation of the populace due to excessive funny bone tickling).
Fortunately for those of us who aren't anywhere near a Silverton street, the Apple-peal is available for download on the newsletter's web site. Or by clicking on this ever-so-handy PDF file. Download Apple-peal 2022
To whet your appetite for the Apple-peal, here's a screenshot of the front page headline story.
Gus Frederick is the creative genius behind this satire, though I didn't see him on the staff directory.
Legally, the Apple-peal may be covered by this disclaimer. With an emphasis on may.
This being an election year, there's some hard-hitting campaign ads in the Apple-Peal.
Since Nike co-founder Phil Knight recently gave $2 million to Betsy Johnson in support of her hopefully ill-fated quest to be Governor of Oregon (Tina Kotek is the person to vote for), I hesitate to say about downloading and reading the 2022 Apple-peal, just do it.
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