Misc Photos

These Traffic Signal Control Boxes Are For The Birds

We had been walking to downtown for shopping, dining and Post Office Box visits practically daily, since we moved here in the end of October, so for the life of me I can’t understand why I never noticed that the traffic signal control boxes were painted with bird themed art. Well, I’m sure I noticed them, but never thought to take a picture of one of them until mid May. There are 14 traffic signals in the downtown area and all but one is decorated. The lone undecorated one is probably the brains of the system, as it is three times as large as the rest of them.

The gallery is as if you walked west on Main Street, turned south on 4th Street, turned east on Klamath Avenue, turned north on 9th Street and then turned east again on Pine Street.

Post Office Picture Book In The Flesh

Went ahead and ordered a physical copy of the South Carolina Post Office Picture Book on the 28th of May. It’s 8″ x 11″ hard-covered 89 pages wasn’t cheap, even at the 40% sale price. Mr. Mailman delivered it to our door today and it sure is pretty.

You can still see all the photos for free by peeking in this gallery right here. The book, in contrast the gallery’s alphabetical layout, runs in chronological order, so it is kind of a history of our travels around South Carolina.

This got me thinking of a sequel trip, and the inevitable photo book, for Donna and I to visit every one of Oregon’s Post Offices. Using the information I found on the website Postal Locations I’ve determined that there are about 375 Post Offices in our new home state (South Carolina had 455.) I’ve created a spreadsheet and I’m about 2/3rds of the way through confirming their addresses on the USPS site.

Right now there are about a half dozen that we can do in a day drive, but after that, who knows when we’ll be safe enough to stay overnight in a hotel, let alone venture anywhere closer that a hundred miles of any of the big cites in the state…

Post Office Picture Book

Decades in the making!1 A book about Donna and my traveling the state of South Carolina taking pictures of every Post Office. Back in the mid 2000’s we poked our head into every nook and cranny of SC taking pictures of the Miata in front of Post Offices, the results can be seen right here on Life of Brian by going to the PO Galleries here.

I’m using my old friend Shutterfly which I used to make calendars of Miata photos and other picture books of our travels. This book will include photos of all 456 Post Offices and will be over 90 pages long when I get done with it. All my previous books were 20-25 pages and cost around $25 dollars, this baby will be right around $100. That is if I decide I want to spent that much… Or this might just end up as a really nice way to kill several days while I practice our “Stay at Home, Stay Safe” COVID-19 lock down. Right now, after 3 days, I’m about 60% done adding photos and their captions to the book. Her is a little sneak peek:

In Russia, Photo Manipulates YOU Redux

To commemorate the tenth anniversary of my discovering a website called PhotoFunia and my glee of finding it still up and running here you go:

55,000 Crappy Pallets


Like any manufacturing facility, the Valve Store brings in a lot of stuff to accomplish its mission and most of the large quantities of an item come on pallets of wood and occasionally plastic. Sometimes these pallets get damaged in some way shape or form and are no longer usable to ship our product back out the door.

That chain link fencing with the maroon slats behind that big ol’ pile is where on one side the broken ones are supposed to go and on the other the fresh new pallets get stored until needed. Almost always the broken ones just get get unceremoniously dumped next to, not in, the fenced area to await recycling. I haven’t seen the guy who comes to pick up the junk ones recently, so the pile has grown quite large. Because we are getting a visit from the President of ASCO next week, who is a stickler for neatness, somebody needs to clean up this mess just like I had to do for my desk.

Well, today Waste Management dropped off a 40-yard dumpster which the minions of shipping filled up in short order. It made a dent in the pile, but a couple hours later a truck showed up to drop off a second dumpster (and cart off the full one.) Those same people filled up the second one right after lunch. When I left at the end of today that second full dumpster was still sitting there. And scattered around outside the dumpster there looked like at least another dumpster full.

Yesterday when I pulled into the garage after work the CTBNL’s odometer read 50,002.