Science central

One of my favorite local museums is Science Central in Fort Wayne. Their website is HERE and is this weeks webness. It is a kids museum but enyoyable for adults as well. Yeah science!

visitfortwayne.com

To keep the exploring your own backyard theme or at least mine, I am including the visit Fort Wayne website. It is HERE. I noticed they had a museum passport system like DeKalb County has so it might be a thing to check out to enjoy the local museums at a lower price. Enjoy!

Noble County Fair

In keeping with the spirit of exploring you own back yard and the fact that the Noble county Fair starts this weekend, I a putting their website up as the weekly webness. It is HERE. I did not grow up in Noble County or Indiana but I did grow up in a small town/ rural area and grew up going to the county fairs. I still have not outgrown them. I hope I never do and think I there would be something wrong with that but that is my never to be humble opinion.

Benchmark in the cemetery

When I was visiting family in Michigan and we were going around to yard sales. We noticed the sign for the benchmark. Not only did we find USGS elevation benchmark but the cemetery had laso put one of their benchmarks right next to it to show the sections of the cemetery. I guess they wanted to get use of the witness sign as well. I do not blame them. Benchmarks are usually pretty easy but if they are in tall grass growth or you are not sure to look, they are hard to find. The waymark for this benchmark is HERE.

Anchor At Empire, MI

I got to enjoy Michigan over the July 4th weekend. I got to see this anchor that was sunk off the shore of Empire Micigan and was found while some people were canoeing. There is a waymark category for anchors so I waymarked it HERE.

Finiancial Recovery

I have been hearing for the last couple of days about how the credit crunch has been hurting business and especially small business. I am really now surprised. I can see this from the individual family to the state and federal government. Maybe not the federal since they have no legal limits or restraint or discipline about spending. The states are at least required to have a balanced budget. I do not think easing the credit markets will totally help since easy credit got us into this mess to begin with. The real rub about this is that I do not think the economy is going to get better until we get the debt monkey off our back and really we have dollars that we have not borrowed to spend. Borrowing money will shoot money in for the short term but will have the negative of needing to be paid back. This is aimed at everyone from the individual family to our ever so fiscally responsible federal government. ( I hope you saw the sarcasm).

Times are tough but it is time to suck it up and start paddling our way out of it, There is a light at the end of the tunnel but we need to want to get out of the darn thing. Just one person's never to be humble opinion.

Daytripping.ca

I know I have been focusing on exploring my own back yard but sometimes I like exploring a bit further from home. Thanks to my mom, I came across this paper and website that helps finds those neat places to find but this focuses on southern Ontario. Their website is HERE.

Linux Laptop

Yippee skip!!!! I am making this post from a laptop that we got new to us and made a linux box out of it. The nice thing is that we got it cheap since it was second hand and came with no OS. Ubuntu providing free the free OS saved us some money. We also took a wireless card from one of our dead laptops to get it to have Wifi capabilities. It is not perfectly set up yet. It still needs some programs to be added and some customizations. The big challenge is that it is my wife's computer and I want to play. I just got another second hand computer, a desktop, to use as a linux playground so it is not all bad. i will report in if anything neat comes in.

Grabill, Indiana

Grabill, Indiana is one of the small town in North East, Indiana and has an Amish population. Their website is this week's webness and is HERE. They give a history of the website and it goes liek this:

In the fall of 1900, surveyors came down the Ridge Road (currently St. Rd. 37) to Maysville (Harlan)
doing survey work for the Wabash Railroad. This railroad would run from Fort Wayne, Indiana to
Detroit, Michigan. The railroad would cut across both the David Sauder and Joseph grabill farms from North
to South. A station was built with the name, "West Maysville", and tickets were issued. The people in the
area protested, wanting no part of the older town. The Wabash railroad changed the name because of the
protest. Everyone wondered what the name would be.
One morning, the name "Grabill" appeared on the depot and the matter was settled. On January 1, 1902,
the first steam engine moved through Grabill, not yet a town. By February 1902, Joseph A. Grabill recorded
the original plat of the town, which laid out 23 lots. A post office was established in August of 1902. Joseph
Grabill became the first postmaster and the town was named in his honor.
The 23 lots that comprised the town of Grabill were all sold by the fall of 1902. The first buyers were
John Gerig, Joseph Witmer, Roy Shuler, Alvin Klopfenstein, J.M. Klopfenstein, Menno & Emma Sauder,
Henry B. Houts, Esther & George Waite, and Samuel Egly. These individuals, along with others invested
in a grain mill, a lumberyard, a bank, a department Store, a hardware store, several hotels, a tile mill, a
drugstore, a harness shop, a hatchery, and a print shop. A volunteer fire department was started in
1916. A dentist and doctor's office, a town hall, and a two room school house followed. The telephone
came in 1903 and electricity came in 1915.
In 1912, the town of Grabill was incorporated so that it could have it's own school and voting place.
Joseph Grabill was interested in every phase of Grabill's development. As he platted more additions
to the town, he lined the streets with tree plantings from his own woods. He served on the school board, as
Church trustee for 50 years, on the board of directors of the Grabill Bank, and on the board of directors
for the Grabill Grain Company. He lived to be 93 (1866-1959). To the end, he had real pride and concern for
his community.

SPECIAL THANKS TO KATHRYN MOORE FOR THE INFORMATION ON THIS PAGE.

This information was from this webpages HERE.