journal features

yardworks we like your shovels

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Toronto, 2019.03.17

We use snow shovels from "Yardworks" - in the interest of product failure analysis, here are some pics of one shovel that broke. We've got a few shovels from this company; we like the solid wood handles. the adjustable secondary handles, and the durable blades. However this year we had at least two same-day record snowfalls (one each in January and February) and we had two ice storms. So it's been a lot of heavy lifting.

broken shovel from Yardworks

product sticker for broken shovel

From the last pic you get a sense of how old the shovel was when we had to retire it - the sticker's still readable.

rand()m quote

If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until you can hardly bear to look at it. A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts it will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.

—Roald Dahl