Three days in the saddle, you know my body hurt.. – Me and My Uncle, The Grateful Dead My motorcycle is cooling in the garage, windscreen marbled with a smorgasbord of bug guts. The summit conference I am returning from is fading away like Interstate 40 in my rearview mirror. The three aluminum cases I…
Let’s say you want to rip-cut some planks and plywood for a chicken coop and you don’t have a table saw. The Kreg Rip-Cut is a stand-alone fence that lets you make long, straight cuts with a circular saw. Yes, many saws come with a rip fence as an accessory, but these accessories usually don’t…
Yes here is yet another post in the “X ways to do X that are so simple that you must be a moron if you’re not doing them already” genre. Only these aren’t insights from your typical productivity gurus. Five of my favorite ideas for starting fresh: Opportunities multiply as they are seized. — Sun…
How did 2016 stack up here at Wild Rye? A lot of the year’s most popular posts were evergreen topics from years gone by, but the dominant theme seems to be “if you’ve got an itch you gotta scratch it.” Use Witch Hazel to Cure Posion Oak Rash – Witch Hazel acts as a mild…
Consider the picture above – several children running along a meadow path. It may not be the obvious image to illustrate organized resistance to the power structures of the world. But it illustrates clearly the reasons you might want to “fight the power.” From all appearances the next four years of politics in the United…
If your knowledge of the Allman Brothers (like mine) is limited to southern rock toppers like Midnight Rider, Ramblin’ Man or even the straight-up blues of One Way Out then you really haven’t experienced the Allman Brothers. And that’s a little like saying you haven’t experienced the color blue or the fragrance of wisteria on…
Jim Hamm is lucky that his wife, Nell, kept her head while a mountain lion had a deathlock on his. The 70 year old hiker was attacked by the lion while hiking in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. Nell tried stabbing the cat in the eye with a ballpoint pen but the pen broke. Then…
At last scientists have discovered the real face of Jesus. Broad features, dark skin and an expression that says “really? This is what you guys have spent the last five years studying?” The clincher is the hair. Leviticus says that ye shall not round the corners of your head. And the Apostle Paul says men…
Our recent trip to Colorado was…well it got off to a bumpy start. Hertz rent-a-car was short 200 cars, there was a 3 hour wait – during which time NO HERTZ EMPLOYEE ACKNOWLEDGED THE SITUATION OR SPOKE TO CUSTOMERS IN LINE, when we finally talked to an agent we discovered we had booked our reservation…
I don’t know if lumbersexual tobacco-scented hipsters are anywhere near the core of the market for the i3, but if they are BMW is ready for them with this rugged rustproof ABS squirt bucket. This plastic ash-can isn’t unique to the i3, nor are many other features such as Connected Drive and BMW Assist. But…
Lesson to be learned – one shouldn’t go from zero adventure to 8 on the strenuous meter in a single day. I’ve always wanted to hike to the top of the TopaTopa bluffs because, you know, they are there. So when Jeff put out the invite and said the trail was 10 miles (which I…
So here we are. Most of us just shelled out over $700 for Christmas presents – sure, that’s down slightly from previous years but it still means something on the order of five to 75 new objects joining the parade of crap that comes into our lives. The neat freaks among us manage to prioritize…
I loved our Roomba until the day it died. Could any other floor cleaner heal the pain? It turns out the Mint floor cleaner fills the void nicely. We have laminate flooring throughout the house. And two dogs, one of which blows out his wiry coat every few months. Unless we stay on top of…
I’ve reached a place in my life where I don’t want to learn one more stoopidly designed interface. Take the Shoretel phone system…please. (Although it’s a big improvement over Rolm phones). Former Wired editor and technology guru Kevin Kelly explains that the technology we need most is not necessarily the technology that’s available today. Instead,…
Jason Kottke calls his blog a wunderkammer, a cabinet of curiosities. Spare and minimalist in design, with only one banner ad, Kottke’s blog is populated with just a few short posts every day. Topics range from typography to children’s books, design, cooking, soccer and interesting technology. For somebody who clearly has a very strong sense…
