Neil Fein's Blog

All our stuff (and B&B's stuff) in the living room, hopefully about to be sold. If it sells. If the yardsale this Sunday doesn't get rained out. Rinse, repeat.

(The stuff on the table is not for the sale. We're not selling my in-law's ukelele, and my brother-in-law's Stargate DVDs. A shame, we'd probably get good money for those DVDs...)

Tags: yardsale

Received in response to a yard sale ad:

Hi,
Do u 've night stands???If yes then Plz send me
pics,final price & contact#.Plz let me know.
Thnx.

Damn. That's... subliterate, prety much.

Yard salr is this Sunday 9am to 2pm, if we don't get rained out.

Tags: yardsale

Apparently this is how fire hydrants get transported. We drove past this truck on I-95, roughly in the Baltimore area, on 04 July 2006.

Tags: pictures

Pics of old computers. Will keep adding to this, if you know of anything about these, please comment. Thanks!

Photos from the Air and Space museum in Washington, DC.

Photos from the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, 2 July 2006, on the mall in DC.

Tags: photos

Seize the Daylight
by David Prerau

"Little less than an act of madness."
The New York Times, 1909

Very readable, fun lttle book about the history of Daylight Saving Time. It does tend to repeat itself a little, written in a magazine-article sort of style. Some of the historical stories are the most fascinating, particularly those of DST adoption in Europe during the world wars, and the setting of time zones in the US by railroad companies.

Tags: books

This has been a fun long weekend in our nation's capitol... and it's not quite over. Had fun with Judith and Les (my in-laws).

We went to the Smithsonian Folk Life festival, it was great fun but hot. (Over 90°F.)

Saw Superman Returns, thought it was nearly as good as the original movie. Christopher Reeve is a big lack in the film, of course. Brandoun Routh is very good as a new interpretation of Superman. It's hard to tell how good he is at being Metropolis Clark since we don't see too much of him. (For example, he comes back to work at the Daily Planet but never files a story. What kind of reporter is he?)

My arms still hurt from my bicycle accident. I'm assured by my doctor that this recovery period is normal (a touch over two weeks, now, maybe a couple more to go). But it makes it hard to get a good night's sleep. I am back to playing guitar, though. Supposedly the muscles that bet used most will recover fastest, and my havds are indeed much more recovered than my forearms.

I finally found an excellent set of strings for Millicent, my parlor guitar. Like the Tom Petty song, I went to a store and got Black Diamond strings, a fun little guitar store we passed by in Maryland, when avoiding traffic on I-95 and I-295. These are brass strings, and a bit of an odd gauge, but they sound better than anything I've had on there so far, a nice full sound, although still a little delicate. I ordered a few more sets online.


Does anyone now anything about Ukuleles? I've been tasked to repair a uke my in-laws got years ago. It has a wooden nut, and that's what I need to replace.

Will see Carol tomorrow morning, she's flying in from LA.

Update: The order from First Quality Music came in, faster than I thought it would. I now have strings -- for both acoustic guitars -- for a while, unless I break a lot of strings.

Tags: music