At the moment, I'm taking care of my two hermit crabs by cleaning their tank.  I've been experimenting around with different substrates and environments and I'm kind of sad that the last one didn't work at as well as I hoped it would.  Their last environment was a terrarium with live plants and real soil.  I skipped on the coconut bark substrate and went right to good ol' fashioned dirt.  They seemed to like it at first, but the bad thing about dirt, even the potting soil that comes in the nice clean bags at Lowe's, is that it's already home to all kinds of little bugs.  After a little while, the terrarium plants weren't looking too good and I noticed the hermit crabs had a few mites.  Nothing a little bath couldn't solve, but you'd really rather skip dealing with the problem in the first place.

Fortunately, the hermit crabs are mite-free and so are the extra shells.  I'm working on steam cleaning all of the stuff in their tank and once I'm done doing that, I'm going to go back to good ol' coconut bark.  I was going to go for sand this time, but the pet store sand is outrageously expensive.  Plus, my hermit crabs never seemed to like sand when I've used it in the past.  One day, I'd like to get an enormous tank and split it up into a bunch of different sections.  One part would be a semi-marine environment, one would be more like a terrarium, another would have a bunch of moss, etc.  Then I could put the crabs in the tank and observe where they go.  I keep hearing all kinds of ideas on what the perfect environment is, but I'd like to let the crabs decide.

Sometimes, we go about our business and we forget that we share this planet with other people.  In fact, we share this planet with an immense number of people.  They live everywhere, these people.  Africa, North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and even a few scientists in Antarctica.  Jungles, deserts, tundra... They live everywhere.  They speak so many languages that it's hard to keep up with them all.

All of these people, and we still refuse to think outside of our own neighborhoods.

What are people like in other parts of the world?  I really want to know!  I'm tired of looking outside the window and wondering.  I want to know what these people are like and I don't want to be scared of other cultures.  Look at the Russians, for example.  I've talked to a few people from Russia at the International Science and Engineering Fair and they were all really nice people.  Also, their national anthem is awesome.


Beautiful!  They also made my tuba, which hasn't failed me yet.  Hard to imagine that they were seen as the bad guys not too long ago.  Mentioning anything good about the Russians could get you in a lot of trouble.  Surely they can't be that bad?  I want to know more about these people, but I don't want to stop there.  There are so many other cultures to learn, so many people to meet.  I like where this is going!

If you know me, then you probably already know that I'm the kind of guy who will salvage broken electronics and appliances out of a dumpster.  If you don't know me, there's not much more that needs to be said.  Thomas Edison once said "To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk."  Most people I know can pull off the imagination part fairly well, but one should never forget the value of a good pile of junk.

During my college years, the end of each semester held some of the greatest opportunities for mad scientists and benevolent inventors.  You see, every year, students would realize that they had accumulated way too much stuff during the semester and instead of donating their extra appliances to Goodwill or the Salvation Army, they would simply throw them away.  Everything that they were either too lazy to donate, repair, or haul home was tossed into the dumpsters after the final exams were over.  I made it my mission to put an end to this wastefulness.

My first haul was a vacuum cleaner that I saw running for approximately $125 at Walmart in the summer of my sophomore year.  I took it back to the on-campus apartment and plugged it in.  No cigar.  It whirred for a moment or two, then died.  A little elbow grease and a little tough lovin' with a screwdriver revealed the problem.  For the duration of its life, no one had ever cleaned the filter.  That was the only problem with it.  No electrical shorts, no mechanical wear, just a dirty filter.  I scored a similar fix my senior year with a vacuum that had a chewed-up power cord.  I assume a mischievous (and now, much wiser) puppy had decided to snack on it and once it was done, the owner assumed it couldn't be fixed.  A little splicing and some electrical tape gave me yet another perfectly good vacuum!

You name it, I've probably found it in a dumpster.  Brand new Nerf Vulcan?  Check.  52" TV?*  Check.  More box fans than you can shake a stick at?  Check.  A never ending supply of radios?  You bet your sweet bippy.  If I could fix it, I'd usually polish it up and send it to Goodwill.  Well, not the Vulcan.  Oh no.  That one's mine.  If I couldn't fix it, I'd salvage the parts.  The parts I got out of the failed repairs often ended up being even better than the repaired items themselves.  They served as the raw materials for a few of my favorite personal inventions.  My own inventions aren't exactly the greatest in the world, but at least I had somewhere to start.  Those piles of junk are goldmines for ideas.

Broken typewriters.  Piles of smashed electronics.  Scrap metal.  These, my friend, these are the beginnings of life!  These are the primordial ingredients in the evolution of your inventions!  Don't throw away that broken camp chair!  You might not be able to see the possibilities in it yet, but there are at least four hinges on that thing, plus a couple of nifty cup holders.  Broken radio?  I bet you can get a good inductor out of it before you throw it out.  Are you throwing away that big steel coffee can?  Ha!  Who knows what possibilities you're throwing away?  Dig out your pipe cutter, soldering iron, and aviation snips and get to work!


*I still kick myself for not being able to repair that TV...