09:27 – We’re working on science kits all week. We have about six dozen finished kits of all types in inventory, which’ll hold us while we build more. We’ll do a couple dozen of each type of kit, rotating through the different types. I’d rather do three or four dozen of each type at a time, but my OMGWO inventory keeping means we might suddenly run out of some component that’s shared among kits. Doing only a couple dozen of each type at a time gives us some breathing space to reorder if we do run out of something. Fortunately, Barbara has made great strides in organizing component inventories, so running out unexpectedly is much less a problem than it used to be when it was just me keeping track.
When Lori picked up our mail yesterday, she commented on how hot it was and I mentioned that there was a heat dome over most of the US for the next several days. She said she needed to get some hay down for her cattle. I assumed she meant hay for them to eat now, which I didn’t understand. This morning, I asked her, and she clarified. She meant she needed to mow some hay and get it down and drying during the warm weather. She said she’d love to “pickle” the hay by putting it in large plastic bags and letting it ferment. I asked if that wasn’t the same as silage, and she said it was. Turning it into silage increases the amount of protein and other nutrients. But she said she’d dry it rather than pickling it, because that way she could feed it to her cattle or her horses. Apparently, horses won’t or can’t eat silage. Add that to the large list of things I never knew.
I also asked Lori how she ended up owning a farm in Sparta, since she’d told me earlier that she’d grown up in the suburbs in Maryland. She did, but she also spent a lot of time summers while she was growing up at her grandfather’s farm here in Sparta. When he died, she inherited the farm, so she moved to Sparta and took over running the farm in addition to her job as a USPS carrier. I like Lori a lot. In addition to working two full time jobs as a farmer and a USPS carrier, she’s always taking different courses to learn new stuff. I wasn’t surprised when she told me that she was taking welding classes. I can see how welding would be a useful skill for a farmer. But she did surprise me when she said she was spending her vacation learning to fly an airplane.
Barbara is out weeding the garden right now. She’s started harvesting zucchini, which is flourishing. We planted only six zucchinis, one of which isn’t doing well, but the remaining five are likely to produce more zucchini than we’ll know what to do with. The other stuff we planted isn’t ready to harvest yet, but the baby plants seem to be doing well. My guess is that we’ll have more than enough tomatoes, onions, bush beans, broccoli, peppers, peas, and carrots to keep us in fresh vegetables through the autumn, with lots left to give away and plenty to save for seed. All that from roughly 0.007 acre of cultivated ground. We also have a lot of potted herbs. The basil is flourishing, but the others are gradually coming up. Most herbs are very slow to germinate and grow, but once they’re established they’re persistent.
Barbara doesn’t eat mayonnaise, and it takes me a while to get through a jar. We just finished a jar of Costco mayonnaise with a best-by date of 10 December 2014, and I couldn’t tell any difference between it and the newly opened jar we started on yesterday. It has a best-by date of 8 January 2016. The industry and USDA says an open jar of mayonnaise kept in the fridge should be discarded after 2 to 3 months. That’s ridiculous.
Over the last 45 years, I’ve routinely eaten really old canned/bottled/jar stuff, and I’ve never noticed any degradation in flavor and certainly no ill effects from eating “expired” stuff.
Me, neither. I’m not sure that mayonnaise is made of whale semen and rotten egg whites, but I’m not sure that it isn’t, either.
Doesn’t eat mayonnaise?
Hell, that’s why we have artichokes, and I don’t care what it’s made of.
Hmmm. Here’s one Russian family who doesn’t have to worry about anyone bothering them on their camping trips.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3697373/The-real-life-teddy-bear-s-picnic-Family-joined-camping-trip-giant-pet-brown-bear-eats-plays-hide-seek.html
The replacements for my failed solar panels arrived last week and I installed them on Saturday. The batteries fully charged over the next two day. Unfortunately, last week my battery monitor stopped working (Trimetric TM-2030-RV). I sent it back to the manufacturer and they are replacing it under warranty. According to their engineer a chip on the circuit board burned out. This is apparently completely unrelated to the solar panel failure. I guess I’m unlucky. It does make me wonder about the quality of the equipment available to us. It gets expensive if you have to keep two of everything.
On the lighter side of prepping:
I was having dinner with my significant other discussing the state of the world. She asked me “Who are you going to feed from your supplies if there is a disaster?”
I responded “My parents, you, your children, and any women willing to sleep with me.”
She scowled “Are you serious?”
I chuckled and said “Of course not, it would be any attractive women willing to sleep with me.”
I don’t remember the part where she actually hit me. I came out of the coma 3 days later.
To be honest the last part of the conversation only happened in my head. I’m crazy, not stoopid. Though, if I’m not mistaken, I did limn the last 200,000 years of human evolution.
“It does make me wonder about the quality of the equipment available to us. It gets expensive if you have to keep two of everything.”
Ditto. And playing around with it now is great for figuring out how it all works, but OTOH the consequences would be more severe in a SHTF scenario if we don’t have crates of spare parts all over the property.
There is a reason that military-, medical-, and aviation-grade gear is at least five times as expensive as consumer-grade gear. Yes, graft, inefficiency, and single-supplier pricing are part of it, but robustness is a big part.
I’m going on record here.
The audio on CNN’s coverage of RNC last night was so bad it HAD to be intentional.
They had the ambient feed from the floor so high you could barely hear the talking heads. The ambient was particularly harsh. The net effect was of someone shouting over the commentators. It had a buzzing hollowness that was very reminiscent of Hitler recordings.
Additionally, when a presenter was speaking and they presumably were getting a direct feed off the Mic, they had the sane very harsh edge. Again sounding like a Hitler recording.
We’ll see if it improves during the week. We won’t know for sure until we see their coverage of the DNC. if it’s just as bad I’ll apologize and blame incompetence.
Nick
Didn’t help that Giuliani was the very image of an arm waving demagogue.
I think every MSM news outlet panned the GOP con last night. Just ridiculous. Whining about plagiarism, d-list, Chris Tingles “I don’t care what she feels” about a Benghazi widow. Disgusting. The result: Cankles falls further behind in polls. The peeps hate her. I don’t see why they don’t vote Green or Libertarian.
[snip] The audio on CNN’s coverage of RNC last night was so bad it HAD to be intentional. [snip]
I didn’t see any of it, but I have to play devil’s advocate: Is it possible that the acoustics of the hall is so poor that it affected the TV (& I assume radio) coverage? Say what you will about the Grateful Dead, but they were a bunch of audio perfectionists who refused to play some location because the sound quality was so bad.
Dunno. I’ve seen nothing resembling honest polls.* As for the people I talk to or just overhear, I do hear lots of complaints and disparagement regarding Crooked Hillary, but that’s hardly a meaningful sample.
One strong but not sure indicator is that the Dem-leaning pollsters feel the need to grossly oversample “likely Democrat voters” in their surveys, compared with the number of registered Democrats in the population. (And even more oversampled compared with the number of regular Democrat voters.) And even so, they’re barely able to contort the numbers to show Clinton with a lead.
* Which makes the opinion polls a good measure of the electoral polls, most likely. Is anyone foolish enough to think there won’t be massive fraud in November?
Nothing but good. And I will bite anyone with anything but good to say about them. In fact, I’m even willing to go out and get rabies three days before biting people.
Barbara doesn’t eat mayonnaise
I like it on turkey sandwiches and my special – peanut butter and mayo sandwiches.
“After three million years of evolution.
We’ve lost only the hair…”
http://theflyingtortoise.blogspot.com/2015/09/after-three-million-years-of-evolution.html
Real mayonnaise, with cooked or even raw eggs?
Or “salad dressing” like Miracle Whip?
Of course, it’s all about minimally interrupted
refrigeration, anyway, and dipping only clean
utensils into it — which should be a major prep
hang-up, I figure.
Middle-class Venezuelans drain savings to stock up on food so they don’t…
Fox News Latino Staff
For canned foods, and other packages, I try to squint at the
“expiration” date and write it large somewhere on the package,
along with a note like “beans” or “weird and wonderful okra
and tomatoes with corn” or other content info…
I guess this is easier for boxed case quantities, and of course
it would be insane to repackage without such labeling.
Along with (imperfect) sorting on the shelves, this means
that I can often grab the oldest package of something to
consume now, making “expiration” dates merely a FIFO gimmick.
So middle class Venezuelans are going to Colombia and spending their savings to stock up on food. Wouldn’t it make more sense to sell everything and move to Colombia.
to sell everything
Who is buying and with what money? Does you no good to get worthless paper for hard assets.
Flip side is that there are opportunities during hard times IF you have money. Mangy people got rich during the last great depression buying distressed properties.
Nick
I read about a couple who went from Venezuela to Colombia to buy food and went back home to Venezuela. What I meant was I thought they should have bugged out to Colombia instead, and sold anything they couldn’t take with them for a little extra almost worthless currency…
But can they? The article I read said armed check point. I don’t think Columbia wants an influx of refugees……
Nick
You are probably correct.
Wrt sound, it’s possible their tech staff simply sucks. For the broadcast audio, there is no reason to hear any of the ambient. Ditto with the feed directly from the podium Mic. Someone made choices.
Nick
I once opened a swelled can of C-ration apricots.
This had to have been around 1962.
Botulin or not, I’m glad I managed to miss my
face with the spray!
I was once eating my favorite C-rat, Ham and Eggs, and found a pickled black spider in it. I ate most of it’s legs. I didn’t hurl, but the guy next to me almost did.
For hurl, pick a raisin or nut out of your serving of cake,
and examine it closely while sorta hiding it from your
dining companions… Go “Eww, a bug!” and pause a bit
and then pop it in your mouth!
My wife and I are both mayonnaise haters. Funny enough, I do like it in tuna salad. That’s probably the only exception. Outside of that my nose usually detects it hidden in foods before my tongue ever gets to it. My life would be so much easier if I liked mayonnaise as it, or some flavored variant of it, is included on just about every restaurant sandwich in the world and is the base of most pasta and potato salads. Aioli is just mayonnaise made with olive oil and garlic. If it’s a $5 sandwich the menu will say it has mayonnaise. If it’s a $12 sandwich the menu will say it has aioli. It makes little difference to me as they are both just oil and egg yolk concoctions.
I’m also about the only person I know that cannot stand Ranch dressing.
If it’s stopped moving, I’ll eat it. If it’s moving slowly, I’ll eat it.
Yep. The people who get sick at the thought of eating a bug have never been hungry. Even moreso for the people who throw food away because they don’t like it or because it’s “too old” or because “I don’t like leftovers”.
Food aversions fade quickly with hunger. Do I find a bug appetizing after I just ate lunch? No. Do I find a bug appetizing when I haven’t eaten in two weeks? Probably.
Wrt sound, it’s possible their tech staff simply sucks.
I had the same complaint. Had to turn if off because I could not understand anyone. I personally think it was entirely intentional although I don’t know why the egomaniac commentary people would want their voices drowned out. I would wager the democratic convention has much better sound. It will make a difference to some voters as they will perceive the republicans as being clueless.
I remember a gathering of area BBS sysops back around 1990. The guy hosting the get-together sent out a message saying that he was making a big pot of his road-kill chili. All the wives except Barbara thought he was kidding. She knew he was a quad-specialist Green Beret, and had no doubt he was serious. She even ate it, as did most of the other women. One of them asked afterward what was really in it. Jim told them two sqirrels, a rabbit, and a possum. He said the possum was particularly fresh, as he’d found it on the road in front of their house just that morning and it hadn’t been there the night before. The women finally realized he was serious. One or two of them hurled.
Possum it’s supposed be one of the nastiest things you could eat. My recipe book says to keep it alive and feed it on milk and white bread for two days before cooking.Nick
I don’t care for mayonnaise, mostly because it just makes things messy to eat.
Yeah, I mainly ignore use-by dates, although I get a bit skeptical of milk when it’s two weeks past, or yogurt when it’s two months past.
My sister recently threw out some left over Chinese takeaway because it had been sitting at room temperature for an hour. I’ll routinely each same if it’s been at room temperature for up to 12 hours.
Okay you guys, you have prompted another of Dad’s Navy Boot Camp sea stories.
When we cleaned the barracks for field day (which seemed to be every day) you could literally eat off the floor and that extends to the commodes. We had no shortage of practical jokers, but one was particularly creative. When Seaman “Joker” (the nickname he got) was assigned to clean the commodes he took some chunky peanut butter that he had stashed and put a generous lump under the rim of the last commode. During inspection everyone stands by their area of responsibility as Chief Plock does his very thorough inspection. As he approached the last commode, everyone braced for what we all knew Chief Plock was about to find. Chief Plock booms out: “WHAT THE H-double-hockeysticks IS THIS IN THE TOILET” (Chief Plock did not like to swear). Seaman “Joker” responds: “Sir it’s shit sir, sir shit sir”. Chief Plock: “WELL GET IT CLEANED UP NOW”. Seaman “Joker”: responds, “sir, yes sir, now sir”. “Joker” then takes his index finger, wipes up the “shit” and eats it. Chief Plock then hurls all over the stall, does an about-face and yells at “Joker” to clean up that mess. We didn’t see Chief Plock for the rest of the afternoon.
I’ve never eaten moose, but I smelled someone cooking it once. It smelled like musk, ass, shit and sweat all in one. It had to taste OK with a smell like that.
Dad’s Navy Boot Camp sea stories
Heard that same story in the USAF but never saw it so assumed it was rumor.
What say about cleanliness is spot on. That center aisle and the latrine were spotless and probably cleaner than the mess hall.
One that amazed me was the parade field. You were strictly forbidden from ever walking on that field without permission. Yet every couple of days there was the “elbows and assholes” routine where a bunch of us crawled the field picking up cigarette butts. Each time we found butts on a field that no one was supposed to be using. Makes you wonder.
RNC coverage on whatever dumb-ass tee-vee channel: Don’t know, don’t care, but I will simply assume the tech stuff was effed up deliberately; the MSM is now blatant about chit like this. For those who watch tee-vee, I am gonna just guess that the DNC coverage will be glitch-less, cutting-edge high-tech, and in breathtaking sound and video production. Cankles will look like the young Marilyn Monroe and Larry Klinton will look like Michaelangelo’s “David.” Jesus, the desert bat-cave demon Allah, and Buddha will all be looking down from a cloud while Cankles is escorted to the stage by the resurrected Abraham Lincoln and Gloria Steinem, who now looks like the young Raquel Welch.
Mayonnaise: I like it, esp. homemade, easy to do. But Hellman’s or Cain’s is good. I sometimes slather it on fresh tomato slices. Plus tuner, chicken, turkey, and egg salads. And potato salad.
OFD is 77 in base 8 today, you frigging numbers geeks and math geniuses. Took a long afternoon drive around most of Lake Champlain, esp. the Vampire State side, through part of the Adirondacks National Park and alongshore much of the way. Gorgeous day couldn’t have been any nicer here with blue skies and big puffy white clouds and temps in the high 60s. Lots of historical sites involving such unknown and forgotten personages as B. Franklin, Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne, B. Arnold, a Captain MacDonough (defeated British fleet at the Battle of Plattsburgh), and various stone and brick houses and log cabins of lesser celebs from that era.
Stopped in Essex, NY for fish and chips, which were outstanding, and then wound our way back up the Vermont side, getting stuck in road expansion via eminent domain horror on Route 7 a few miles south of Charlotte and Ferrisburgh. Traffic stopped for fifteen minutes north and south during the 5 PM rush hour on a major route up here. Which they will milk well into next year and the following fall. Bridge repairs and renovations up here take YEARS. But we noticed that even some isolated back roads on the Vampire State side with zero traffic were as smooth as a baby’s bottom, with obviously new asphalt and markings. Thanks, and a tip of the biretta to Mr. SteveF and his taxes!
For those who watch tee-vee,
Football, sir, football?
“Football, sir, football?”
NFL during the season, period. Trying to wean myself off, because it’s a sick and evil blood sport that no enlightened Murkan should watch.
Hey, don’t call me “sir,” I was only enlisted scum.
Happy birthday, Dave, and keep in mind that you’re 120 in base 7.
And 111,111,111,111,111,111,111,111,111,111,111,111,111,111,111,111,111,111,111,111,111 in Base1.
Ah, but the notation of his age is infinite in base 0.
Egg white allergy. Gotta be careful about mayonnaise, meringue, and flu shots (I’m not kidding).
Math-heads. Yikes.
Also, to note: tonight we have a full moon and a geomagnetic storm:
“Unexpectedly, a CME struck Earth’s magnetic field during the late hours of July 19th. The impact sparked a minor G1-class geomagnetic storm that could intensify in the hours ahead as Earth passes through the CME’s strongly-magnetized wake. Visit http://spaceweather.com for updates.”
And Mrs. OFD just made me a red, white and blue strawberry shortcake with blueberries, homemade whipped cream and biscuits. Life is hard sometimes.
Incidentally, I don’t share my birthday with many people but the most (in)famous of them was/is the very late Lizzie Borden, who lived in Fall River, MA, just across the wotta from where I was born in New Bedford. Her house is now a popular B&B, but OFD would never set foot in it.
Sam Colt.
“Sam Colt.”
Hot dang!!! I did not know that! Now I gotta buy some kinda Colt firearm, ’cause I don’t have any! Wow! I should also buy an axe, come to think of it.
On our drive today we listened to the Sirius XM Outlaw Country channel and got a kick outta Hayes Carll and Mojo Nixon, who was being the DJ. We also dig Canadian Corb Lund.
I share a birthday with Molière, Marie Lafarge, Saud bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, and Vince Foster. Not exactly good omens.
Less direly, famous cryptographer and security consultant Bruce Schneier was born on the same date and year as I. I respect his work and have corresponded with him (and found him to be kind of a jerk), but the topic of age and birthdays had never come up. Didn’t know about it until I went through the Wikipedia date page.
“Not exactly good omens.”
Yikes. I thought I had everybody beat with Ms. Borden.
“I respect his work…”
Ditto. Sorry to hear about the personality thing; lotsa peeps that I think are pretty smart and/or do good work are likewise. And of course some rotten bastards are actually pretty personable and likeable. From almost all accounts, Larry Klinton is a real charmer and Stalin could turn it on when he wanted.
Very weird coincidence that this week I’m surrounded by people with ties to New Bedford, Fall River, Tiberton….
Nick
Nick
FWIW sound design on fox is better than CNN but still has some of the annoying ambient mixed in.
Nick
Fort Marcy Park…
And Mrs. OFD just made me a red, white and blue strawberry shortcake with blueberries, homemade whipped cream and biscuits.
100+ for Mrs OFD.
I prefer the biscuit style as does my mom. Wife prefers those sponge cake types the grocer sells. Daughter buys Sara Lee pound cake to please her boy friend.
I usually have to be the one to make the biscuit ones if I want them. Cool whip is crap but they buy it and I eat it if that’s what there is. Real cream in a can is better. Fresh is best. Dad gets no respect.
HB to OFD
“Very weird coincidence that this week I’m surrounded by people with ties to New Bedford, Fall River, Tiberton….”
That would be “Tiverton.” In Road-Eye-Lun. (say it fast). How about Fairhaven? My maternal grandparents and mom were from there; New Beffa for my paternals. And what about the Islands? (Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket).
“Dad gets no respect.”
Wife gave me the choice of those sponge jobs or the biscuits, and we both prefer the latter. She will not countenance Cool Whip or frozen whipped cream and does it herself.
But now my day is over and I’ll be back to being lower than whale chit, and ain’t nuttin’ lower than whale chit.
How about a snake’s belly in a wagon rut? For us landlubbers.
[snip] Possum it’s supposed be one of the nastiest things you could eat. [snip]
Possum is particularly greasy, but it is significantly better than a diet of stone soup and wish sandwiches. There is a small town near here that has an annual possum festival, remembering hard times when possum was one of the few options outside of famine.
WRT Full Moon and Sun activity: was driving back from the middle of Oregon, was just outside Bremerton and saw a bright streak and flash of a meteor in the clear dark sky (about 10:10pm PDT).
Managed to get home before the aliens arrived. Hunkering down, just in case.
The “analysis” of Trump’s primary campaign victory is continuing. His supporters are overwhelmingly male, white, and uneducated. Most are not well off.
Of course, if you look at the weasel words in the denigration, by definition most people are not “well off”. Similarly, any victorious national candidate in the US almost certainly has overwhelmingly white supporters as a simple matter of demographics.
As for “uneducated”, I can’t be the first to suggest that a degree in grievance studies, social “sciences”, or comparative literature should be counted as negative. Assume a baseline of a high school diploma. Getting a STEM BS counts +4. Getting a Sociology BS counts -4. I’d love to see a breakdown of adjusted education level for various candidates, various political parties, and various ballot propositions. I was to guess, I’d guess that the “educated elite” Democrat supporters would come out with an adjusted elementary school education.
I’ve always been of the opinion that a BS should be awarded only for completing the course of study in a rigorous, scientific discipline, where the correct answer is not a matter of opinion. All other bachelor of * degrees, to the extent they’re even necessary, should be BA degrees in subjects where the correct answer is a matter of opinion.
A BS from a real institution should carry a lot of weight. A BA in any subject from any institution should carry no weight at all.
Fairhaven too.
The black CNN commentor is especially shifty. He responded to some part of a speech and completely ignored the vast majority of it that was hillarity’s failure at Benghazi.
I thought Ben Carson was a great speaker, and Trumps son has spent some time in front of a mic. He’s a skilled presenter.
nick
“A BA in any subject from any institution should carry no weight at all.”
And rest assured, mine hasn’t, except long ago when it was used to gain entrance to graduate degree programs in the same subject. But I paid for it all myself.
The MSM and libturds in general are mocking the RNC as much as possible over everything. It’s pathetic to watch. It’s not funny. When the reverse happens for the DNC (it will) the MSM and libturds will be shocked at the conservative asshats. How dare they mock the party of the people (and slavery)!
I’ve always been of the opinion that a BS should be awarded only for completing the course of study in a rigorous, scientific discipline, where the correct answer is not a matter of opinion.
Such as Global Warming ?
Getting a Sociology BS counts -4.
Please tell me that a Sociology degree is a BA, not a BS.
No “discipline” that makes up its “data” counts as science.
Sociology is a social science. Science is right in the name. Just ask them. Of course the degree would be a BS.
The fact that sociology is BS right from the word Go is sheer coincidence.
Nope. BS is as common as BA in sociology, but then the BS is also common in psychology, anthropology, and other non-rigorous “disciplines”. AFAIK, the major difference is that BS programs require using advanced mathematics like addition and subtraction, while BA programs require only counting on your fingers, if that.
Why, RBT, it’s almost like you’re cynical or something.
If anyone wants some real fun, spend time with a group of EdDs. “Fun” might not be quite the right word. A real bunch of highly competent geniuses they are. “Highly competent” and “geniuses” might not be quite the right words.
Yeah, it pisses me off when people who have “doctorates” in non-rigorous subjects call themselves doctors or append Ph.D. to their names. My mail-order Ph.D. is worth a lot more, but I’d never dream of claiming the honor.
But the original doctorates were in non-rigorous subjects. Hard science doctorates are fairly recent.
The thing that really bugs me isn’t people with PhDs in anthropology or history using the title “Dr”, it’s the people with honourary degrees using the title.
Before I took the contract at NYS Education Dept, my dad warned me what a bunch of useless shits “Doctors” of education are. If anything he understated the case. So far as I know every single one insisted on being called Doctor and many spun themselves up into temper tantrums if they weren’t given the respect they’d earned.* In terms of practical skills like using a web application without deleting your own data**, either possession of an EdD destroys your brain or a destroyed brain is a prerequisite to getting the degree.
Yes, I was very glad to leave at the end of my contract there.
* In their view. In my view, giving them the respect they’d earned would involve repeated kicks in the crotch.
** One genius EdD and her assistant, a woman with only a Masters in something, pitched a screaming temper tantrum at me in the middle of the hall one day. They’d spent two days entering data and then it all disappeared. Because of my crap program. Investigation of the extensive logs the application kept revealed that they’d deleted the data themselves, clicking right through a series of “Are you really, really sure?” dialog boxes. They refused to accept any responsibility and screamed at me about how it would take the two of them at least eight hours to reenter the data and they were too busy already and how was I going to fix it? I ended up getting pissed off and entering the data myself in … about 20 minutes.
My wife and I are both mayonnaise haters. Funny enough, I do like it in tuna salad.
Mayo was originally a condiment for fish.