h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

An old Christmas tradition at my house, no matter in what country that house happens to find itself, is acquiring some new child's toy and fiddling with it during downtime. The exercise hones my limited motor skills and provides Elektra and the cats with hours of mindless amusement.

It started at uni, when I took up left-handed jacks one Christmas. Another year, the amusement was more homemade: a bunch of us musical and scientific types calibrated a set of cafeteria glasses - marked with nail polish - to play a scale. We serenaded the Pitt cafeteria with 'Joy to the World' and the 'Hallelujah Chorus'. After Christmas, we dutifully removed the nail polish with acetone purloined from the chemistry lab, and returned the borrowed glassware. We were nothing if not conscientious. The cafeteria workers were used to this petty pilferage and Zweckentfremdung: students 'borrowed' stacks of trays to use as sleds when it snowed.

Over the years, there have been spirograph sets, and bottles of bubble stuff, which Ariel the dog liked a lot. There have been hackysacks and toy cars and superballs and Star Trek paraphernalia and whatnot. I've even been intriguing the pets with a fidget spinner this season. But I have finally met my match.

I speak of that marvel of modern engineering, the Fairy 007(TM) by SkyKing. Billed as 'the world's smallest drone', the miniature flying marvel fits tidily inside the remote control console, which itself fits in one hand. The little quadrocopter is about an inch and a half from wingtip to diagonal wingtip. It lights up and blinks invitingly. And it flies.

Boy, does it fly. It hits the ceiling, skitters under the bed, flips over on its back, and lies there complaining. It takes off a few inches, comes straight at me for no discernible reason, then takes refuge behind the computer speakers, where it sulks. When I try to pick it up, but forget that I am also holding the console and absentmindedly wiggling the toggle, the tiny plastic propeller blades have their revenge on my ineptitude by making my fingers sting. Molly chases it, but doesn't know what to do with it when she catches it, so she studies it with wary concentration.

As a drone pilot, I suck.

I need lessons. It's a good thing my youngest great-nephew is coming over Friday night. He's eleven, and very good at mechanical things. In fact, I predict that he will be the engineer who takes us out of the solar system one day. In the meantime, he can show me how to pilot this minidrone without fatal injury. The instructions say, 'Adult supervision required.' Ha! They should read, 'Do not use unless you have a handy kid around.'

Fear not, peoples of the world. You will not be spied on by my minidrone.

I can't get it from here to the bed without pilot error.

PS My sister has threatened that if anyone, even Amazon, sends a drone over her property, said drone will become a casualty of antiaircraft fire, either rifle or trebuchet. The Hoggett farm is a no-fly zone.

I have yet to fly a drone. They are a level of technology that makes me distinctly nervous, I'm not sure why.

We also had a phase of having a board game each Christmas, although that has fallen out of fashion the last few years with the arrival of and the way Christmases are spend in rotation around different sets of parents.

I am just fascinated by the fact that these tiny propellers fly. As with the bumblebee, this appears impossible.

Board games are fun, aren't they? That's what we did when we were kids, too. The rest of my family liked jigsaw puzzles, too, although I couldn't fathom why. They'd have them out for days on every available table.

What's your favourite board game? Ours was a card-based game called 'Coup d'Etat', with a cartoon Napoleon on the box, which my mother hated because 'you have to think too much'.

The thing I remember most about Chrismases past is the annual family get-togethers at my my maternal grand parent's place and grandma's 47 course Texas style Christmas dinners.

I like quite a lot of the German-style board games, which I don't play with my parents because it makes their brains ache too much, apparently.

Current favourites include 'The Mines of Zananthor', 'Shadowrift' and an old favourite, 'Puerto Rico'.



47 course? Is that a literal number or just how many courses it *seemed* to be?

...or more. I once counted 60.

Those German games sound good.

Are those 47 courses one thing at a time, like a Romanian dinner, which lasts for hours? What do you eat?

"Drone killed by catapulted pumpkin" photos to Please!

We will try to get this scoop.

...laid out as a serve yourself smorgasbord, baked turkey, fried chicken, chicken salad, fried rabbit, baked ham with pineapple slices, pork chops, hamburger, spare ribs, venison, bear meat hamburger (grandpa was an avid hunter coming home from his brother's apple orchard with a deer and a ton of baking apples annually), apple sauce and cranberry sauce, roast beef baked with carrots, whole potatoes and onions, sausage, frankfurters, fried bass, tuna cakes, tuna salad, turkey dressing, an unboned chicken bread pudding baked on low heat unto the meat was completely cooked from the bones, which spead like butter, candied yams topped with small marshmallows, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, giblet gravy, mushroom gravy and brown gravy, mashed potato salad with mustard sauce, pickle relish, diced boiled eggs and steamed celery and onion, potato salad with 1/2" chunks of potato, crisp celery, onion, diced boiled eggs, diced dill pickles ripe black and green pimento olives, potato salad with potato chunks, steamed celery, ripe black olives and a mayonaise dressing, deviled eggs, cheese stuffed celery, black and green olives, green onions and whole dill pickles on the side, boiled cabbage, spinach, caramelized baked onions, cabbage fried with potatoes and onions, potato pancakes, cabbage rolls stuffed with rice and meat with tomato paste, stuffed bell peppers, white rice, steamed whole tomatoes, tomato aspic, pork and beans, baked beans with hickory and molasses, peas, black eyed peas, corn bread, corn bread and sweet corn fritters, sweet corn, cream style sweet corn, sweet corn with shredded coconut and black pepper, corn on the cob, hominy, rye, whole wheat and white bread, sour dough and baking powder dinner biscuits, soda crackers, macaroni salad, macararoni and cheese, tuna, sour creamand macaroni casserole, green beans, baked scalloped squash, asparagus, sauerkraut and sausage, sauerkraut, steamed carrots, potatoes, carrots, potatoes and onions baked in roast beef gravy, cole slaw (so there'd be enough to go around), cole slaw, romaine and iceberg lettuce salads with tomato and cucumber, angel food, devil's food and lemon cake, pineapple upside down cake, chocolate cake and cup cakes, fruit cake, apple, cherry, berry, mîncemeat and pumpkin pies, lemon meringue pie, coconut pie, sweet potato pie, all with whipped cream or ice cream (ice cream in vanilla, Neapolitan or coffee flavors), beverages including soft drinks, milk, apple juice, lemonade, tea, coffee (coffee and beer for family members over 16 year of age).

In later years, Grandma often added a Mexican foods bar where people could assemble their own tacos and burritos.

She usually began prparations a week or two before Thanksgiving and Christmas, with two standup refrigerators and a freezer, usually with one or two of my aunts or my Mom assisting.

The holiday feasts usually lasted 2-3 days.

The 4th of July was also on the holiday list.

This reminds me of a German who got tired of planes flying noisily over his land. This was decades ago so it might have been an Austrian or a Swiss. I can't be sure.

Anyway, he began to defend his air space by catapulting Knödels at the aircrafts.

I have no idea how the feud ended but there were no casualties as far as I remember.
Except for the Knödels, of course.
But I know quite a few people who would probably say "they had it coming" ...

LOL, after writing the above I tried to google "knödel gegen flugzeuge" - and I struck gold!

This sums up the story quite good:

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasinger_Kn%C3%B6delkrieg

But for those sceptical about our competitors here's another article:

http://www.merkur.de/lokales/muenchen/stadt-muenchen/knoedeln-gegen-kampf-jets-424319.html

I love Semmelknödel - at least, I used to before I got celiac disease - but Kartoffelknödel are only suitable for use as ammunition against the Luftwaffe.

Of course, I had to find that song. I found it in this video, which also shows the gentleman's lady wife's Knödel production. 'Der Munition ist fertig!' ('The ammunition is ready!')

Unfortunately, the dialogue is largely in Bavarian, which I happen to understand, because we lived in Munich for a year. There is also some organ music with Leslie involved:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_Ie0DFXsrc

Herr Winter richly deserved the Karl-Valentin-Preis. (Karl Valentin was a much-loved Munich comic.)

PS Pierce, you should write a guide entry about this story. Let me know if you don't want to, and I will.

ITI, that is an AMAZING menu! How did you ever survive the holidays?

...with a determined resolve to have at least a small sample of everything...

...helpful in those days I burned off the calories almost as quickly as I consumed them...

...didn't even get started on desserts other than pastries, including fruit salads, nuts and candies...

As far as I know from watching "The Good Wife", the law about drones in America is that below a certain height they are intruding on your space and you're within your rights to shoot them down. Above another height, they are in public space and you can be prosecuted for touching them. Between these two heights there's a grey area where the law is not clear.

But I don't know what the two heights are.

You made me curious, Gnomon. That's a great question! So I looked it up. Here are the drone laws for Pennsylvania:

http://www.dronethusiast.com/drone-laws-pennsylvania/

As I recall, 'The Good Wife' takes place in Illinois, so they'd have a different set of laws, except for the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration), which rules over all the air traffic in the country, and is therefore responsible for arguing with people who fly lawn chairs and such.

As I suspected, other than federal regulations, there are currently no drone laws in Pennsylvania.

I am relieved to note that I do not have to register the Fairy 007 with the federal government, as it weighs far less than 250 grams.

I wouldn't know where to put the registration sticker.

"... you should write a guide entry about this story. Let me know if you don't want to, and I will ..."

Go Ahead! You can describe it from your special "Pennsylvanian angel"

Say hi to your sister for me. After all she was the one who triggered my memory

not Pensylvanian but angle, of course

Calling all Pennsylvania angels...

He actually said 'angle'. I can't work out whether he's right, or simply being obtuse.