Things, Stuff & Such

Okay, I wasn’t alive then but we’ve all had to learn about it in school.  My parents were only a few years old when the surrender was signed on September 2, 1945.  Today a coworker brought in a photocopy that his father had made of the surrender document.  It may be a copy of a copy or it may have been a photocopy of the original, he wasn’t sure.  The former seems more likely.  The coworker is, himself, over sixty and his father was a career Navy man. 

The paper it was copied onto was very heavy – maybe a thermal paper.  We have all seen images of the document being signed but I have never seen what the actual document looks like.  I don’t even know what an Instrument of Surrender consists of – though I’ve always thought my divorce papers were along the same lines.

Anyway – I thought it was neat so I scanned it for anyone who wishes to check it out.  It is only two pages which I found interesting.  I would have thought the surrender of a warring nation would warrant more documentation.

You can click on the image to open a higher res scan that will let you read the document and see the signatures.
Here are a couple links to more information:

Wikipedia.org

National Archives & Records Administration

It had been a while since I had seen birds or the bunnies in our back yard and I wasn’t sure why.  I thought maybe something had scared them off.  I saw that there was some seed still in the bird feeder but thought some fresh seed might bring them back.  Last week I bought a bag of bird feed and put it in the feeder – on top of what was still there – and waited.  For several days no one came around really, maybe a couple of pigeons but not what we were used to seeing.  Last weekend I was thinking that maybe the feed in the bird feeder was packed in to tightly for the birds to get it out so I went out and tried to dump what was in there on the ground.  Well, I couldn’t't get it to come out, it was really packed down tight.  I took a chop stick and pushed in through the wires to break the stuff up.  As pieces came loose I could see and smell the mold that had grown in the chunk of compressed bird seed.  It was nasty.  I broke apart what I could then took the whole thing around the house to where the hose was and pressure blasted the rest out and gave it a good rinse.  No more seed in there I guess.  At least not until after the rainy season.

For the next couple of days we put bird feed on the ground around the feeder and bird bath in the hopes of luring the birds back.  Now they are starting to return.  I saw a bluejay yesterday as well as the usual flock of pigeons.  Maybe Mr. & Mrs. cardinal will forgive us for the moldy food and return as well. 

Yesterday evening one of the bunnies came back to eat the seed and leaves.  He was there for a while,  eating and just hanging out under the bushes.  We got a pretty good rain that evening and the bunny stuck it out under the bushes right next to our lani.  It was cool to watch him.  I took some pictures and a little video.  I was amazed at how close he let me get.

I have noticed that my new roomba isn’t as quiet as I thought it was going to be.  In fact, it seems louder than my Discovery.  At least on the hard wood flooring.  On the carpet there is no doubt that the 535 is quieter than the Discovery though.  I have been reading postings on the Roomba Review forums where others are having the same issue with their 535.  The problem seems to be the brushes being to loose and banging around.  Shawn, who bought the same roomba, told me he heard of people getting 560′s as replacements for their 535′s.  That would be a sweet deal!  I would be happy though,if my current roomba were quieter on the bamboo flooring.  I’m going to contact iRobot’s CS and see what they offer.  It will probably be replacement brushes, which would be great, but a 560 upgrade would be a nice compensation for my ‘troubles’.

I have been running my new roomba 535 through it’s paces for the last couple of days.  Over all it is great and does have many improvements over my Discovery Scheduler.  I like that it slows down a bit before hitting a wall or other objects in it’s path (My Discovery would almost knock items off of a wicker end table we have when it would run into it).  It is quieter on the carpet but seems to me to actually be noiser on the hard wood floor (which is most of the house).  It is much better at finding its home base to recharge thanks to the use of RF instead of IR. 

Of course, the geekiest feature is the voice that tells you when there is a problem.  I took a video of the introduction the roomba gives which you can see below.