RubberDuckMuseum.com

After 7 years of constant standing in place, and even a few of those years involving squeezing and squeaking, the first duck is in serious trouble.

Yes, it seems the rubber has become hard and brittle over time to where the feet have cracked and has rendered him silent.

Frankly, I don’t have any idea as to how to preserve him.  Perhaps a bell jar display case.  But the damage has already been done.

I would take any comments and ideas on how best to keep him from further deterioration.  If you have any ideas or if you want to drop 10 cents in the donation can, feel free.  How can you not want to help this face?

One of my coworkers was up in an office in Loveland, CO and let me know that someone was just like me in that they had a plethora of rubber ducks decorating their cubicle.  It’s an epidemic!  Who knows how many ducks are out there!  I also had this occur to me yesterday (5/10/2007): 

This is in my trusty steed, the 1994 Nissan Sentra, known affectionately as “the black car”.  I looked down coming back from lunch and figured one doesn’t see that very often.  I pray for something a little more up to date, but you can’t beat the close to 40 M.P.G. I have a real heart for “back then”.  So, I commute the car until it can commute no more. 

Which has lead me to a podcast idea that I ran by Brian, and he thought it would be fun.  I don’t want to reveal anything just yet, but I think getting out on the web at least audio wise will be a trip.  We shall see, we shall see.

I received an Oliver Hardy Duck today (05.16.07) from Celebriducks, which is one of the many duck websites I will be listing on the sidebar gratis of revenue.  Celebriducks and Rubbaduck are the creators of the really high end ducks, which tells you how out of control this whole pastime of rubber duck collecting has gotten.  I do like the limited editions, and if there was one duck I would really strive to get ahold of is one of the ducks from 1991 that floated around the world due to a transport ship crashing and losing it’s cargo.  Eric Carle wrote a great childrens book about it that my kids just love. 

I also like putting stuff up roughly twice a week, as the blogging slowly becomes an addiction.  I do try to write some things in advance, but I’m having a hard time as a) it isn’t fresh and b) I just want to post and post.  Why didn’t someone tell me about this before I got into it?  Brian has a new tumblr log that I should be checking out, but haven’t had a chance to yet.  Maybe this weekend I can get a peek.  Is it just me or are we all becoming reporters?  No matter if it’s news or opinion, it seems that the whole world is running to the web.  If you are reading this, I suspect I’m telling you something you already know.  But what you may not know is the greatest story of all.  I haven’t always known it, frankly, and somewhere in here I’ll tell you how I came to know it.

…then I renewed the domain name fees!  Which means another year and a chance to show off the rest of the ducks.  I’m sure some of you are out there wondering how financially desperate I am, and that answer is after the first fruits going to God, the rest goes to the support of my beautiful family.  Hence, the whole goal number 2 which is to make this site self sustaining.  So if you like the ducks, feel free to feed them by using the Paypal donation button.  I’m considering advertising, but I’m down on things that impede load time.  It’s important that you get the fowl fresh and fast. I do have plans as we continue to load the pictures of the ducks to make pictures sized to fit cell phone screens and possibly a screensaver.  I think that would also be nice for desktop backgrounds as well.  It really is a constant state of flux.  Oh!  And I have some charts and graphs that I built which directly relates to what I do in my primary source of capital acquisition.  Yes, I somehow became a stats geek having taken only one stats class in college.  Who knew?

Ugh, I’m trying to pay for my domain name fees before the 13th, and I just created the Paypal account.  I was able to get the money to Paypal, but now it has to wait 3-4 business days.  It’s gonna be a nail biter as I got the fees in Wednesday night.  In the meantime, Brian was able to help me to install widgets on the sidebar, and now I have all sorts of cool stuff over on the right side, including my donate button.  I think that’s the last time I’m going to mention donations for this post.  Begging just puts a pall on the whole site that tinges the blues to a gray.

 In other news, I did look up on Wikipedia the rubber duck.  It’s a great article that talks about Ze Frank, which leads me to this story.  About three weeks ago I am in the office and a group of people walk by for a meeting or training or something and I hear the usual ooohs and ahhhs to the rubber ducks that sit atop my cubicle.  A lady and a gentleman about my age take a moment to stop in my cube and talk to me about the ducks.  As the gentleman takes a few pictures to send home to his wife, the lady asks me if I ever watched ZeFrank’s podcast, which I wouldn’t of even known about if I hadn’t heard about him from TWiT and http://twit.tv/itn.  I said I had heard that he was no longer podcasting daily and she singsonged me what he says about rubber ducks.  Quriky, if you ask me, but it’s fun to have a ready made conversation opener for anyone who stops by.

Hello and welcome to what none of you have been waiting for!!!  Really that’s a little self-deprecating, as I have been trying to get this website off the ground for about a year now, but have floundered in the general “what should I do and how should it be done” phase of development.  So, I thought I would go out and do what a solid majority of internet gurus have done, and start a blog posting at least once a week with a picture of a rubber duck in tow.  Currently the museum boasts 43 ducks, of which I haven’t paid for a single one.  Trust me, it’s just as weird to me as it may be to you, but God has definitely bestowed me with a gift through people (normally from work) trying to outdo each other in procuring the, let’s say “most unique”, in ducks.  In the meantime, I’m going to figure out some goals for the next year in what I’m trying to accomplish and post various other flotsam I’ve created since the first duck (pictured here) received on 1/19/01.  Thank you for your patronage and God bless you for your long suffering.