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Tripwander

Apr 15th, 2017
by Jeff Duntemann.
8 comments

Colorado Springs blizzard 04-2017

How do you spell “relief?” O..N..E….H..O..U..S..E.

Yes indeedy. Carol and I now own only one house, and we live in it. We bought our Arizona house in the summer of 2015, and since then have been bouncing back and forth, getting this house livable, which was more work than we expected (especially since it’s only two-thirds the size of our Colorado house) and getting the other house cleaned up, placed on the market, and sold.

It’s done, sold, closed, nailed, finis.

We are not real estate people. We are homebodies. And when you have two homes, it gets awkward remembering which home is real home, and which home is a burden that you worry too much about. For us, the home you worry about is the home you’re not in, and when you have two homes there’s always one that you’re not in.

I go on at some length about this because having two houses was making us nuts. So when we finally (after the house was most of a year on the market) got and accepted an offer, the potential relief was palpable. I say “potential,” because we couldn’t just FedEx papers around, as we had done a time or two in the past. Our Colorado house still contained some furniture and other oddments that had to be either gotten rid of or brought back. So we loaded the Pack in the hold, roared north, and got to work.

First discovery: It’s illegal to sell used beds in Colorado, and (for all I know) most other places. It was either find friends who could use a nice wireless cal-king Sleep Number bed, or trash it. Luck was with us: We had friends who were moving to a larger house, with a spare bedroom in need of equipment. Pulling the thing apart was interesting; I took photos at every stage and put them on a thumb drive, so that David and Terry would have some chance of putting it back together again. (They did.)

Second discovery: Large houses are subject to crannyism, which means that they have so many places that you forget some of those places are not yet empty. We made a couple of unplanned trips to Goodwill, and when the time came to fill a U-Haul trailer for the trip home, we found it much fuller than we had planned. How did we manage to miss a beach bag full of snorkels and flippers when we packed the place? How? How? And two suitcases plus a duffel? Kites? 8′ lengths of aluminum strap? An entire Craftsman tool chest? What about about our 1975 Encyclopedia Britannica?

That was a close one: The buyers wanted it. Whew.

The good Stickley furniture all sold for real money. The old and so-so furniture went to the Rescued Hearts thrift store. The ratty stuff went out on the curb. (A lot of Aleve went down the hatch from all that shlepping.) A few odd items (including my 1937 Zenith cathedral radio) went to friends. It was a great deal of work for a couple of sixtysomethings who mostly wanted it to be over so they could go home and jump in their pool.

Oh, and then Colorado Springs gave us a going-away present: an April blizzard. Close to a foot of very dense, wet snow fell one night at our rental house, and the cracks and bumps we heard circa 0300 were branches breaking loose of the large trees everywhere in the neighborhood and thumping down on roofs. The fact that it was 30 degrees that night was an underappreciated blessing: Another ten or fifteen degrees colder and we would have been up to our necks. The city made itself abundantly clear: Don’t let the snow shovels hit you on the way out.

Not to worry, Colorado Springs.

We stayed a few extra days for the Tarry-All dog show in Denver, where we were grooming a blinding-white dog in a roofed but otherwise open cattle pen with floors made of gritty brown stuff that may or may not have been dirt. The second day we were coping with 50 MPH wind gusts, and ran into several mini-haboobs on the way home.

The drive from the Springs back to Phoenix was uneventful, beyond the feeling of the wind trying to turn your high-profile trailer on its side. Carol is as good as company gets, and the dogs had enough sense to chill out in their kennels and not make me any crazier than I already was.

We’re still unpacking boxes and trying to figure out where everything goes. However, I think it’s significant that when I took my blood pressure today, it was lower than I had seen it in years. The back of my head finally allowed itself to relax, and for good reason:

There is now only one Home, and we are in it. All the rest will fall into place.

A Grand Ride North, and a New Grand Champion

Apr 12th, 2016
by Jeff Duntemann.
2 comments

Dash Jeff Carol Tarryall 2016-cropped-500w.jpg

We’re back in Colorado Springs, and sooner than we thought, too. A day came early last week when we realized that we had pretty much gotten everything done that we expected to while wintering over. Furthermore, there was a big dog show in Denver on April 9-10. Dash’s coat was in pretty good shape. The weather forecast looked marvelous throughout the West. (Sorry about the East Coast, guys.) So we looked at each other, nodded, and started throwing things into the Durango.

It’s 835 miles, all of it Interstate, and we’ve done it many times by now. We did well enough to stop for an afternoon in Albuquerque, to visit with a friend of ours who has Dash’s brother, Charlie. As we had all four of the Pack with us, and Sherry has two Bichons of her own (both boys) it turned into a backyard Bichon party very quickly. There was much running around and squirting-of-things, which is all any (male) Bichon would ask of a party. Everybody slept really well that night, not least of whom were the two of us.

We got into the Springs Thursday night, turned on the water, and got a decent night’s sleep. We dropped everybody but Dash off at Gramdma Jimi’s the next morning, and headed up to Denver for the show. Most of our Bichon Club friends were there, and nine Bichons were entered. Dash won Best of Breed for the Owner Handled category both days. This meant that he would represent the breed in the Group competition. As its name implies, the Non-Sporting Group is a kind of none-of-the-above category containing breeds including the Poodle, Shiba Inu, Dalmatian, Boston Terrier, Keeshond, and others that aren’t good fits in any of the other groups. I’ve often wondered why the Dalmatian isn’t in the Working Group, and why the Boston Terrier–sheesh–isn’t in the Terrier Group. Doubtless there are historical issues, all of which have long been forgotten.

No matter. Dash looked about as good as he ever does, thanks to a foot bath and a great deal of fussing by Carol. On Saturday he took Third Place in the Non-Sporting Group for owner/handled dogs, and on Sunday he took Second Place, ditto. We took home two very fancy ribbons, and–more important–a large number of points. Dash won 45 owner-handled points at the show, which gives him 225 owner-handled points overall. This makes him the #2 owner-handled Bichon in the country right now. Given that the #1 Bichon has only 350 owner-handled points, it’s actually a contest. (The photo above is by Patrina Walters Odette, and used with permission. Thanks, Patrina!)

But more than that, the additional points make Dash a Grand Champion. Championships in dog showing are a little like dans in karate: There is an ascending hierarchy of championships, based on an entirely different tally of Grand Championship points. Dash made Champion a couple of years ago. The Phoenix Project slowed us down; there wasn’t a lot of showing going on in 2015. However, Dash has done so well in the few shows we’ve entered that he accumulated 25 Grand Championship points and took Grand Champion this past weekend. The next step is Bronze Grand Championship, which requires 100 Grand Championship Points. This is four times what Dash has now, but we may give it a shot. Beyond that are Silver Grand Championship (200 points), Gold Grand Championship (400 points) and Platinum Grand Championship (800 points.) Whew. That’s a whole lotta brushing, on both Dash’s and Carol’s ends of the brush. Let’s see how life unfolds for the next couple of years.

And unfolding it is. We now have the task of getting the Colorado house ready to sell. This means sifting, sorting, selling and/or giving away a lot of stuff, and shipping the rest down to Phoenix. It was necessary (if maybe a little unnerving) to dump two boxes of my books into the recycle bin. I have a couple of pristine copies of Degunking Your PC and Degunking Your Email, Spam, and Viruses…do I need a whole publisher’s box of both? It’s going to be harder with my assembly book and my Wi-Fi book, but downsizing means…cutting down the size of your stuff. As people who have been here know, we have a lot of stuff.

So the downsizing continues. More as it happens. Anybody want some plywood?

Dash Gets Best (Almost) In Show

Feb 8th, 2016
by Jeff Duntemann.
1 comment

Dash Reserve 2-2016.jpg

Earlier today, Dash won his biggest dog show prize yet: Reserve Best in Show for the Owner/Handler category at the Heart of the Desert Classic here in Phoenix. I was filming the final judging on my Galaxy Note 4, and when the judge pointed to Carol and Dash for Reserve, I said something awkward and almost dropped the camera.

Dash has done well in dog showing for the past few years. He’s already a champion, and is now within four points of becoming a Grand Champion. After that there are Silver, Gold, and Platinum Grand Champion. He’s still headstrong and sometimes defiant, and loves to play with kids and other dogs so much that he simply won’t stand still in the presence of either.

A quick note on jargon here: “Owner/Handler” is a category defined by the dog’s owner (in this case, Carol) being the handler at the show, which simply means running the dog around the ring and presenting it to the judge. Not everyone presents his or her own dogs in shows, for many reasons including lack of time, poor health, or simply a disinclination to run around the country winning ribbons. There are specially trained people who take other people’s dogs to shows for a fee. These are called professional handlers. It’s possible for owner/handlers to compete against professional handlers (which we have done, and won from time to time) but professional handlers cannot compete in the Owner/Handler category.

The notion of “reserve winner” is harder to explain. It’s insurance against the possibility that an award cannot be given because the winning dog is shown to be ineligible for some reason. Another dog got Best in Show for Owner/Handler, but before the award is logged in the AKC’s books, the organization checks the winner’s eligibility. It’s unlikely, but if an irregularity is found, the award goes to a sort of runner-up called the reserve winner. It’s pointedly not second place. There is only one “best in show,” but in Dash’s case, he will inherit the award if the winning dog is disqualified.

It’s a really really big deal, especially at a dog show as big as the annual 4-day Heart of the Desert Classic in Phoenix.

As you might imagine, Carol is glowing in the dark. We all had a Cane’s Chicken Fingers feast this evening, and everybody got some chicken. We’re all dog-tired, and I’m going to shut this thing down now and get some Zs. As will Carol. And, as I strongly suspect, will Dash.

Odd Lots

Jan 6th, 2016
by Jeff Duntemann.
15 comments

Carol and Dash Get Back to the Show Circuit

Apr 15th, 2015
by Jeff Duntemann.
2 comments

Carol Dash Seated - 500 Wide.jpg

It’s been a tough three years for Carol. Her mom’s final year and passing, and then three foot surgeries that took literally a year to fully recover from; well, things like that would slow me down too. So it was with some celebration and a little apprehension that we took off for something we haven’t done in almost three years: a dog show.

We rolled into the Terry-All Kennel Club Dog Show up in Brighton, Colorado on Friday afternoon. Dog shows require a sort of “home base” where you can set up a grooming table and get the contestants in shape for the show ring. Grooming space can be either paid or unpaid. At the Adams County fairgrounds, the difference between paid and free grooming space is whether or not you have walls. Unpaid grooming space is in the cattle pens, which are just that: A roofed area divided into pens by pipe railings. Paid grooming space gets you walls, in an arena building used for showing and auctioning cattle.

What you don’t get either way is a floor. This is cattle country. You get good Colorado brown dirt, liberally mixed with grass and hay preprocessed by various large animals. Eat your lunch carefully: The Five-Second Rule does not apply.

Carol paid for grooming space in the arena building, and we were right by one of the building’s six doors. The light was good; power was available. Alas, we had a howling wind most of the weekend that was not named Mariah (maybe Manure-ah?) which blew in through the rear doors, picked up brown dust as it went, and deposited it upon all and sundry before exiting out the front doors. Breathing second-hand smoke in my youth was bad enough. Meditate for a moment on breathing second-hand cattle feed.

Oh, and we have blinding-white dogs. The challenge should be obvious.

Carol met that challenge in high style, granted that all of us came home crunching dust between our teeth. Dash never set foot in the dirt, nor did the rest of the Pack, all of whom were with us and three of whom were entered.

QBit Judge and Jeff - 500 Wide.jpg

Friday night was an AKC-sanctioned B match for Bichons, which our club organized. (Many thanks to Tammy Singer for doing most of the legwork!) A “B match” is a sort of practice match for dog handlers, basically identical to a real AKC show ring (including an AKC registered judge) except that points are not awarded. In a B match, dogs older than 7 years may be entered in the Veterans class whether they’re neutered or not. QBit, now ten, and Jack, now eight, were both elegible. Carol got their coats in shape, and QBit took first in the class. Jack has a much better coat and looked quite sharp, but QBit (above) has the confident personality preferred by judges, which Jack simply lacks.

Saturday and Sunday were the real show, in which only Dash may compete. (He still has the family jewels, irrespective of regular threats from both Carol and myself.) This was a biggish show for Bichons, with 16 entered, though several did not show and at most I counted 13 Bichons at one time.

Some of them were spectacular, like Lorrie Carlton‘s Flynn, who pretty much swept the field on Saturday and went on to take first place in the Non-Sporting Group. It was a good weekend for Bichons: The breed won Best in Group for both Saturday and Sunday.

Group 3 O-H Winners - 500 Wide.jpg

Where Dash beat all Bichon comers was in the Owner / Handler class, which means dogs presented in the ring (“handled”) by their registered owners. Dog showing is a competitive business, and there are a fair number of dogs shown by professional handlers who are paid to take dogs around the country on the show circuit to gather wins. Flynn is one of these. To keep professional handlers from sweeping all awards, there is a separate class for people (like us) who do their own handling. Dash won best in the Owner / Handler class on Sunday, which means Carol could show him against other Best of Breeds in the Non-Sporting Group also shown by their owners. After a little touch-up by the formidable Bichon groomer / handler Ellen Perry, Dash went around the ring and landed third place in the Non-Sporting Group. This was the biggest win Carol and I have ever nailed in showing our Bichons, and made the whole windy, dusty, exhausting outing worthwhile.

Posing with Group 3 Ribbon - 500 Wide.jpg

I was in my grubbies in the photo above (taken by Patrina Walters Odette) because I was not doing any handling on Sunday, and schlepping equipment around at this particular show is always a pretty dusty business.

Dust notwithstanding, it was great time and we had a chance to catch up with members of the club we don’t see very often. We also got to meet a couple of new puppy contenders worth watching in coming years. Our next show is in Longmont in mid-May, but we’re likely to leave most of the Pack with Jimi. There will be no B match, and QBit, Aero, and Jack will not be competing. So it will be a simpler project in many ways, as well as a cleaner one.

It took us all day to wash the dust out of everything…except the dogs. That’s another day entirely. Maybe two.

Shirts, Dogs, and Dogs in Shirts

Oct 12th, 2014
by Jeff Duntemann.
4 comments

The Front Range Bichon Frise Club held its (now expected to be) annual halloween party this past Saturday. Picture a dozen bichons in funny outfits tearing around club president Lindsay Van Keuren’s back yard on what could well be the last nice day this year. Carol cut a Party City grass skirt in half, and wrapped half around QBit and half around Aero. She did the same with a Party City lei and both again got half. It was a pretty effective costume, because QBit and Aero are aces at dancing on their hind legs waving their front paws in the air. The video I posted on Facebook prompted Dennis Harris to declare them the Duntemann Hula Hounds, which in turn reminded me that Marty Robbins had a song called “Lovely Hula Hands” back in the time that even time forgot. So could I write “Lovely Hula Hounds?” Sure. Will I? Maybe. I have to finish my filk of “YMCA” first. Sub in “bichon frise” for “YMCA” and you’ll see where I’m going with it.

Dash doesn’t dance on his hind legs, and in fact what he mostly does is get in trouble. So Carol bought a very appropriate costume for him that was basically a Depression-style prisoner outfit, complete with number, printed on a little T-shirt, plus a black and white hat to match. He got the award for “Scariest Costume,” which is itself a little scary.

Green Long Sleeve - 350 wide.jpgSpeaking of shirts…I discovered a wonderful source of everyday shirts a year or so ago: the US military. I bought a couple of used Army dress green shirts on eBay, and later found a couple of Air Force dress blue shirts, one of which I was wearing in the photos above. I found a few more at Glenn’s Army Surplus here in the Springs, and my friend Lt. Col. Powl Smith gave me a few more when he retired from the Army recently. The shirts have two pockets, which is a requirement for my everyday attire. They’re rugged, and can be had in both long-sleeve and short-sleeve designs. Best of all, you can toss them in the wash, put them in the dryer for ten minutes, and they’ll hang up without a wrinkle. Yeah, they’re polyester blends. For me this is a feature, not a bug. I paid $15 each for the new ones, and about $5 for the used ones. So far, no regrets.

I’ve been quiet recently in part because I’ve been studying. The desktop database development world has a shed a few skins since I learned it, and I’m going to have to learn it mostly all over again. But if I do that, I might as well take notes, so I can teach it to everybody else. Lazarus Database Development From Square One, anybody?

Could happen. Stay tuned.

Odd Lots

Jun 17th, 2014
by Jeff Duntemann.
7 comments

Ohm’s Law Is a Bitch

Jul 10th, 2013
by Jeff Duntemann.
8 comments

Jimi Henton, the local breeder from whom we got Aero, Jack, and Dash, brought me her dog grooming dryer some time back to see if I could figure out what was wrong with it. Carol has the exact same dryer, a Chris Christensen Kool Dry. It’s basically an SCR-controlled variable-speed fan in a box, putting out 114 CFM through a hose.

Jimi said it wasn’t blowing as much air as it used to, even after she cleaned the filter and made sure nothing else was gummed up with dog hair. It still blew, and the pot still varied the fan speed, but it wasn’t as loud and clearly didn’t have its out-of-the-box oomph. Worse, she’d had a new motor installed last year. The first one had gone for eleven years before dying; this seemed kind of premature.

I wanted to compare the two dryers to get a sense for how much air was being lost in Jimi’s. I have no way to measure airflow here, but sitting on the laundry room floor I noticed Jack’s little soccer ball, much reduced from its original size, but still round enough for my purposes. With only a little skill I managed to get the ball levitating over the nozzle, as any kid who’s bright enough to put a vacuum cleaner in reverse has done. On Carol’s dryer, the ball wobbled between 18″ and 24″ above the nozzle. On Jimi’s, it was maybe 4″.

So there was work to do, somewhere. Upon opening the dryer up, at least one problem was obvious: The 1,025 watt AC motor was wired to the speed control with #24 telephone wire, and too much of it. (You know, the stuff with the two-color, bands-on-solid insulation.) Close inspection showed two cold solder joints, coincidentally (heh) where the #24 wire hit the speed control pot. The plastic insulation on the phone wire was blackened with heat. The dryer slowly was cooking itself from the resistance of all that skinny wire. No need for a fork; it was done.

Jimi had ordered the motor from the manufacturer and then had somebody local put it into the dryer. She called him an amateur. No. I’m an amateur, with a callsign to prove it. I do electronics because I love it. Whoever installed this motor was…an idiot.

All fixed now, using some #14 stranded wire and soldering skills I learned when I was eleven. Both dryers now loft the soccer ball two feet hgh. Ohm’s Law is a bitch, dude. Please go back to sharpening scissors.

Summer Doldrums

Jul 9th, 2013
by Jeff Duntemann.
1 comment

Yes, I’ve been gone for awhile, and for any number of reasons found it inconvenient to put anything together until this evening. I’ve been having some trouble with that old book-hauling injury in my left arm, spent ten days in Chicago, fixed some stuff (including an interesting repair on a dog grooming hair dryer) and learned some new things that I didn’t expect to learn, including a few that I probably didn’t need to learn.

In short, I’ve had nothing much to report, and in the summer heat just felt better reading books and taking it easy in the cause of getting my whiny supinator to shut the hell up. The gruel here is on the thin side, but that’s summer.

My younger niancee, Justine, made me aware of something called Prancercise by demonstrating it in front of the whole family. Damn. I thought she was kidding. Then I watched the video. Wow. It has nothing on the Invisible Horse Dance, but it could be the next craze at weddings. Or maybe not.

Weddings. We did attend a terrific wedding, of the daughter of my oldest friend Art. At her reception I saw something called the Casper Slide–not to be confused with the skateboarding stunt of the same name. And if you are confused, you’re not alone. I think this is why the real name of the dance is the Cha-Cha Slide, developed by a Chicago DJ named Casper. I watched the dance, and apart from some stomping, it looked a lot like the Electric Slide. But hey, what do I know about cultural tropes?

Another bit of knowledge that was true but unwelcome is that Barnes & Noble comtinues to come apart at the seams. Their CEO quit the other day over the failure of the Nook tablets to capture any significant part of the tablet market. The Nook division is for sale, and Microsoft is making slobbering noises. The Nook guys have been on my you-know-what list for some time, for pushing down updates that freeze in mid-install and can’t be removed. (I don’t use AMV, but I wonder if it works at all after the installer gets stuck.) Leonard Riggio wants to take back the retail division. A lot of stores are closing, and half the remaining stores have leases that expire in 2016. And everybody’s wondering what happens after all this happens. Especially publishers.

I learned that the Chicago Tribune has a page dedicated to documenting every single homicide that happens in Chicago. That this would be a big, frequently updated page is bad enough. That is exists at all is worse. I guess Chicago is a terrific place to be from.

There’s a video on domesticated fox, pointed out to me by Pete Albrecht. I mentioned the Russian research on Siberian fox years ago, but this is the first time I’ve seen videos of the animals themselves. It’s sad in a way; the poor things are stuck somewhere between fox and dogs, and are at best unreliably tame. It’s pretty clear to me, however, that this was the same process our ancestors used to turn wolves into dogs. And it didn’t take thousands of years.

I learned that the backlight behind the controls of my new car stereo changes color continuously.

Ok, ok, I can see eyes glazing over. That’s it for tonight. I hope to get back on my usual schedule shortly.

The Lost Hobby of Microscopy

Mar 23rd, 2013
by Jeff Duntemann.
5 comments

Carol found some very small insects crawling around on Dash’s neck yesterday while she was brushing him. She dropped several of them into a pill bottle followed by some alcohol. These were tiny bugs; I’m guessing the biggest one wasn’t quite two millimeters long, and most were at best a millimeter. We squinted and used the magnifying glass that I keep in my desk drawer, and the best we could say is, Yeah, that’s a bug.

I knew what I had to do next, and it took me way back. For Christmas when I was eight (the end of 1960), my father bought me a microscope. It was small and lacked a fine focus knob, but it had an iron frame and decent optics. For the next two years until I discovered electronics, looking at very small things was one of my main hobbies.

My father helped me get the hang of it. He had had a simple microscope himself in the early 1930s, and I still have it somewhere: A black crinkle-finish tube about five inches high, with an eyepiece at the top, a slot for inserting slides, and a tilting mirror in a large milled cutout toward the bottom. He bought me a book called Hunting with the Microscope, by Gaylord Johnson and Maurice Bleifield (1956) and I spent a couple of years hunting for all the microscopic things the authors had painstakingly drawn on its pages.

Many of the drawn microorganisms were said to be found in rivers and ponds, and my friends and I haunted the banks of the Chicago and Des Plaines rivers in the summer with mayonnaise jars in hand, scooping up slimy water and the even slimier mud on the riverbottom beneath it. Holding up the jars against bright light showed them to be absolutely crawling with minuscule thingies in constant motion. I had a well slide and managed to corral some of the little monsters in it, but they didn’t slow down long enough for me to identify them. None followed the corkscrew path that paramecia were said to exhibit. We saw no volvoxes nor stentors, cool as that would have been. Water bears too were AWOL. Most heartbreakingly, we never cornered an amoeba, which we longed to see eat something by engulfing it, which would be akin to watching The Blob in miniature–always a draw for ten-year-olds.

No, most of the critters that moved slowly enough to identify were microscopic worms. When my mother heard us talking about worms from the corner of the family room when my friends and I were gazing into my microscope, she made us dump the mayonnaise jars into the toilet and wash our hands. My mother was an RN, and although we didn’t learn it first-hand until we were 13 (another story entirely, though a good one) both rivers were flood relief for Chicago’s and suburban sewers. After even a modest rain, runoff would cascade from overflowing sewer mains right into the rivers, carrying raw sewage with it. So these weren’t exactly earthworms we were watching.

I’m honestly not sure what became of my little microscope. The good news is that Carol received a much better one she when was fourteen (a Tasco 951 with a fine focus knob) and earlier today, I pulled her microscope down off the high shelf and set it up on the kitchen island where the light was good. I looked at a few of the pickled-in-alcohol bugs, but they had been picked off Dash with a tweezers and were not in good shape. We cornered Dash and hunted until we spotted a live one. I carefully snipped the little tuft of hair to which the bug was clinging, and with some prodding managed to tack the bug to the sticky strip on a white Post-It. (Gaylord Johnson would have been proud.) Under the microscope, it was unmistakable: Linognathus setosus, the dog louse. The tacky Post-It strip kept it from walking around, and we were able to see how it clung to a strand of dog hair with its hooked legs.

Dash got a prompt treatment with the usual doggie bug meds, and in a day or two whatever lice remain will be gone. In the meantime, I have to wonder what happened to the microscopy hobby. Astronomy and electronics are both big business, but beyond some Web sites (like this one) I don’t see much to indicate that anybody is digging through river mud looking for water fleas anymore. The instruments are cheap compared to good test equipment or telescopes. You can get used stereo microscopes on eBay for $250 or less, and used student microscopes like Carol’s for under $50. Rivers are a whole lot cleaner than they were fifty years ago, and I’m thinking that if I sampled the Chicago River today I might score a stentor or two, and maybe even an amoeba. Granting that Google is a much better way to identify the stuff you’re looking at, I might order a copy of Hunting with the Microscope, just for fun. No, I don’t really need another hobby, but I want to be ready the next time something really small comes calling, and I need to know what it is.

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