Vermont Winter
Crazy driving
Power outages
No water? No problem with all the snow
Out of this world
Pretty decent breakfast view
Not all trees can take it 
All this untainted snow to play in
Do you want to build a snowmaaaaaaan?
Yup, same one
Not just majestic; Maple majestic
Can't catch a fucking break from all the buying.
Marketing: lining your pockets while contributing nothing to the world. A weird mix of hedonism and nihilism.
Setting stuff on fire
bringing humans together since 1,600,000 B.C.
Chicken coop moved to our land
First the snow, then the mud, then we’re building a house. The chicken coop needed to be moved before all this. It’s weird to see it there.
It took only 1:30 hours to move it 6 miles, flatbed trailers and good friends are awesome.
Cemetery
Ever since I saw it on the survey map, I’ve been curious to find this cemetery. It’s not on our land but right next to it.
It’s tricky to find as it doesn’t stand out much from the rest of the forest. Lots of graves from the early 1800s, cool stuff!
The marketing dickweeds in action
Making every effort to not lie while leaving enough ambiguity for your brain to read what it wants to read. But maybe what irritates me more is their implying that healthy food doesn’t taste delicious initially.
DID YOU KNOW? When combined with actual healthy food, Skippy can help it not taste like shit while associating itself with its health benefits.
Words English speakers confuse frequently
You’re your
Than then
duel dual
Their They’re There
course coarse
affect effect
bare bear
principal principle
capital capitol
hanger hangar
complement compliment
advice advise
waste waist
allusive elusive
sight site
roll role
peddle pedal
will grow as I find more…
Summer in VT is pretty crazy
weird noises, lightning bugs, thunderstorms and giant moths.
Hey pssssssssst! Let me in! I want to snuggle. 
Why yes Amazon
I wish to share my buying with all of facebook, twitter and email.
GUESS WHAT GUYS? I just bought a ‘PS2 Keyboard to USB Adapter’! That’s right! I bet you’re jonesing all the crap I buy.
In all fairness I did just blog about it.
A liability of inheriting books from religious family members
The cognitive dissonance is so strong with that one it took my brain minutes to accept what was going on. Trying to find every other possible explanations between the moment of surprise and the moment of acceptance.
The classic replacing “trillions” by “thousands”.
White-out can fix Satan’s science (no copyright, feel free to use this in your next advertisement campaign).
Homo Erectus is getting a free upgrade & a skirt!
Censorship: a tool that is always on the right side of history.
Safe sex, beaconning through the night
Hard to see but 2 condom vending machines are blinking away their presence on the side of a wall in the middle of the night.
[flv:http://ben.akrin.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/IMG_0503.MOV.flv 640 426]
Welcome to France!!!
A massive 4-sided display of nothing but cheese. This is how it’s done.
A website to make the meal math easier on the parents
List of current features:
- It uses the USDA National Nutrient Database as the basis for all the foods you can search (your tax dollars at work).
- You can add your own recipes, ingredients whatever else is not in the base database. We find that we add all the foods we use even if it’s just bread because a bread with a label is always more accurate than the generic/average bread as defined in the USDA database. It’s also nice for adding your family specials once and for all and never have to do the math again.
- What you add is not shared amongst users and it only visible to you.
- It tries to learn which foods come back to help pick them later on.
- It remembers which amounts you last used
- Calculates insulin dose on the fly
- Very simple & streamlined navigation for the least work for the parents
This is still very much a work in progress but has made our meals a lot more agreeable already.
Generic English (U.S.) words and their sexual uses
One phenomenon that is extremely confusing for non-native English speakers is how the most generic words can be used to mean something sexual. Whenever I speak I’m a a state of second guessing what I’m saying.
- Do
As in “I did her”. Do you have any idea how prevalent “do” is? It took me years to master it; getting all of its nuances is a true test of English mastery. The last thing it needs is a sexual meaning that is so easy to let out in the most benign conversations.
- Have
As in “I’ll have her”. This one is actually hard to confuse with other uses of “have” as you rarely talk about a person belonging to another in any other context. But that’s a crazy common word.
- Sleep with
As in “I slept with her”. Did you have sex or did you just sleep in the same bed? Better not sleep in the same room as family or the conversation will be filled with incestuous innuendos.
- Come
“Ben, we’re leaving!” “I’m coming!” Does this mean I’m arriving now or later? God only knows.
- Cock/Caulk
If you are a gun enthusiast handyman raising poultry, don’t even try, find synonyms. These guys are pretty context specific but there are multiples of which they fit and as a result, they tend to show up a lot.
Now to be fair, the only other language I’m intimate with (French) has some of the same sexual meanings associated with generic words, but they are fewer and formulated in a way that removes any ambiguity.
Did I miss any?