Ned Harr

"This feline ovary is of type A, that one is of type B," he categorized.

"His royal highness is such a fatty," he said without thinking.

"The supervillain's been hiding out on a wooden platform behind your house!" he declared.

"I can't believe you used tiles instead of planks!" he said, floored.

My wife took an old flower pot and put it at the far edge of our deck, next to the bird bath. Into that flower pot she places wispy pieces of old corn husks and clumps of cat fluff (from brushing our two indoor cats) and other things of roughly that shape and mass.

The birds stop by and take whatever they need and then fly off to build their nests with it.

Probably this is unnecessary (birds have been foraging from human-less environments much longer than there's been a human-ful one), but it's a nice way for us to divert waste away from landfills, plus it makes us smile knowing that the nests of local birds will be lined with the fur of those who cackle at them from the windows.

It occurs to me this system could be expanded such that, after sweeping the floors, the entire contents of the dustpan is regularly emptied into that flower pot, or into a collection of such pots.

So in case I write this and then forget to try it, I'm hoping others will try it too.

Maybe look into building a "Russian fireplace" or a pizza oven or something, where the entire bell is covered with firebrick and cob. A Russian fireplace is similar to a RMH in design, only I think it is arranged a bit more vertically. (Sorry, I don't have more info at the moment; I am not an expert in any kind of fireplace! But hopefully this gives you a starting point in your research.)

If you plug "russian fireplace" into DuckDuckGo and look at images, many of them have stairs and other furniture built right into the side: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=russian+fireplace&atb=v439-1&ia=images&iax=images

I would still check with an expert, but at first glance it seems the Russian fireplace design would make it safe to attach a wooden structure directly to the outside and could work well for the configuration in your photo.

Kim Wills wrote:And now it's been a year! Update please!
My husband tosses the idea around. He's been repairing & renovating homes for 40 years and we know he'd be great at it because he's seen everything, and he helps customers interpret their reports and not be so scared of the long lists! We both love the worried people's reactions when he looks at the report and says, "don't worry, we'll have 3/4 of this stuff fixed in a week! Kim, get a screwdriver and start looking at those jiggly outlets, that'll be 4 things done before we leave today." It's like we're heroes, lol!

I think the hesitancy is that he barely uses the computer, and worries that he'll have to be tech savvy to do the reports.
What is involved, tech-wise, in an inspector's job?

Thanks Kim! I think for an older person who has experience in the trades, home inspecting is a great gig for exactly the reasons you note (he's seen everything, and is likely familiar with all the home's systems and how they're put together), while being a relatively "easy" job in terms of physical labor. You don't even have to move furniture if it's in your way, you just shrug and write down "not accessible".

Tech-wise, we're really talking about converting observations into a report. That means writing and (usually taking photos, though these are not legally required). Writing a home inspection report can be as simple or as complicated as you make it, provided it has some minimum information required by whatever your locale dictates is within the standard scope of practice.

I have heard of an inspector writing a hand-written report with pen on paper! However, that would not be something most customers would consider high-value, plus it would take a long time and be hard on the wrist, and you'd have to copy down a lot of required boilerplate.

So it usually comes down to software. My company issues us iPads running a cloud-based software called CloudInspect, which all in all is very easy to use. It ensures the report is thorough, most comments are pre-populated and you just select details from drop-downs, and it's easy to change things and add photos.

I have in the past written home inspection reports in a word-processor using a template of my own design, and that was a lot more arduous.

How about this: in CloudInspect I can do the whole inspection and have the report done in a couple hours; using my word processor, just writing the report takes 5 hours minimum and sometimes has taken me a week, though there was no "software" to learn, other than knowing how to format a document.

But yeah, the "handling the buyers" part of the job is great. I do often get to feel like the hero, the bringer of good news or at least the one who says "it's not as bad as you think". I think only twice so far, after well over 100 inspections, have I seen a house and thought "I would not recommend anyone live here" (of course I didn't say it).

If your husband is considering becoming a home inspector, I recommend looking up what the process is to become licensed in your state, if there is a license requirement. Based on his background he will probably have no trouble completing the training and passing the exam, if required. The real decision is whether to start his own business or join a multi-inspector firm. I found it much more worthwhile to join a firm, and I think that is probably what I'd recommend to anyone, especially if the money isn't important and they are only interested in it as a part-time gig like the way I do it. But if he really wants to start a new career out of it, and if he has experience starting companies, and has contacts in the real-estate industry, then being self-employed as a home inspector can be more lucrative (though I would say it still ranks pretty low in terms of earning potential over time and other overhead costs).

Oh yeah, it also reminds me of this:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2015/03/what-shapes-synesthesia-for-some-people-the-answer-is-fridge-magnets/

Using data from 6,588 people, the researchers worked out which colors were most commonly associated with which letters. They found that their results were consistent with previous experiments showing that English speakers often have possible spelling-based associations. For example, “G” is commonly green, while “Y” is commonly yellow—tendencies that can be found in the trends present in large collections of synesthetes.

These results were then compared to the colors of a specific fridge magnet set, a Fisher-Price set that was produced between 1971 and 1990.

We all had synesthesia as newborns, as I understand it. It takes something like a few months or even up to about a year for the senses to become un-jumbled from the time of birth in humans. (I can't remember exactly how long and I'm not looking it up now!) So at least it's something we basically all have experience with. My wife and I used to joke about that with all our kids when they were brand new: "aww, she probably loves the smell of that music" "I wonder if he finds the look of that wall scratchy" etc.

I've also heard of adults getting it with the aid of certain imbibations--true synesthesia, not just "this song reminds me of bright orange flashes on a dark background like in Fantasia, if I close my eyes and think about it"--and I suppose yeah it makes sense some might even get it "naturally" due to some quirk of their neurology. That's interesting.

The mild/false version (the kind I gave an example of above, between the em-dashes) does seem common among artists. If you're going to convey things through objects or images or sounds in a way that moves people in a deep way, it helps to be able to transpose more experience into those media than just what the senses what "normally" absorb back out at the end. My musician friends and I often talk about the "textures" and "colors" of music. Painters & photographers, and architects, talk about the "rhythm" of images and building facades, respectively. I don't think in most cases it's because of true synesthesia, but rather a kind of trained sensitivity/perceptivity. Still cool tho.

It was around the mid 2010s. At the time, my twin brother lived in NYC while I lived in Oh Hah. One funny thing about him is the kinda flowery archaic pseudo-posh-British way he writes, as if he's constantly impersonating an Edwardian English novelist or something.

In that same flowery archaic manner, I wrote him a long letter pretending to be the head of a local amateur swim team in New York. I figured this premise alone was ridiculous enough to give a clue that it was a joke. I told him I'd randomly spotted him leaving his apartment on a rainy day, and the way he stepped through the rain told me he'd be a great swimmer, and would he like to join my organization. (Again, thinking for sure by that point in the letter he'd catch on.) I said we meet at such and such a natatorium at such and such a time each week (I looked up a swimming pool near where he lived) and I think he'd be a star on the team, just could he please bring $75 to help cover our lane rental. (That part I almost died laughing while I wrote it, thinking for sure it would tip him off that it was a prank). I explained that I'd found his name and address by coming back later and digging through his trash. I filled up two pages with this sort of gobbledygook, then put that letter inside a sealed stamped envelope with a return address that was in between two real addresses somewhere else in NYC (I looked that up too), then put that in an envelope and mailed it to a friend of mine who also lived in New York and was in on the joke. My friend put the letter to my brother in the mail so that he received it on April 1.

My brother ended up receiving this letter exactly on time (apparently not noticing the date he'd received it)---and then I heard nothing for a week or two. Until he posted the letter to Facebook along with a companion letter he'd sent to the local FBI office in NYC, making them aware of this apparent scam that he was being targeted for! His letter to the FBI was just as long, and read just like the fake letter I'd written him, which took my prank and escalated it to a whole new level of hilarity. I called him up and debriefed him, and we both had a good laugh.

He got me back the next year with a prank that was much more elaborate but not quite as funny. (He very realistically forged an overcharge on my cell phone bill and sent it to me, complete with a fake toll-free customer service number that rang to a friend of his who was in on it and who strung me along with increasingly ridiculous questions for maybe 20 minutes until I finally "got it".) Since then we've occasionally pranked each other on April 1st, and even established a sort of "rules of engagement" to ensure it doesn't end with anyone calling the cops, losing property/money, or having a heart attack, but the first AF prank I described above was the iconic timeless one that set the bar and cemented April 1 as an official family holiday, at least as far as my brother and I are concerned.

Just wanted to note:

The noise dolphins make might be spelled out like this: e-e-e-e-e-e

The hex color code #EEEEEE is dolphin gray.

I can't remember how I discovered this, but it seems like proof of the beautiful harmony of the universe to me.

Stephen B. Thomas wrote:I've noticed that pour-over is a popular coffee style for several of the Permies folks I've visited recently. I'm curious to know what makes it the apparent go-to method for so many. If you're a pour-over-er, please share your thoughts.

Foremost I liked the simple elegance of it: no moving parts (and only 2 parts at that!), cleaning involves just a quick rinse of the carafe and cone, etc.

And it's not just having control over each part of the coffee equation, since by various means you can control those in other brewing methods, but with a pour-over that control is very straightforward and direct.

Plus as I mentioned, there's a nice little ceremony in unfolding the fresh paper filter, placing it in the cone, spooning in the coffee, heating the water, doing the pours, watching the angle of the shadow change on the beautiful foamy surface as it descends...very meditative.

BTW the image in the OP reminded me, coffee has a most interesting history--it has not always been universal and instead was very much tied to various places and times! Wikipedia's summary is good; I learned what I know from an episode of In Our Time, one of my favorites: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000c4x1