Sunday, 20 August 2017

09:04 – It was 61.6F (16.5C) when I took Colin out at 0645, partly cloudy. Colin vomited a couple more times yesterday, but he’s behaving normally otherwise and doesn’t appear to be in any distress. He has his usual amount of energy, which is to say a lot, and constantly wants to play, so I don’t think anything is really wrong with him. As James Herriot used to say, if he couldn’t catch his patients, he knew there was nothing very wrong with them.

Barbara is cleaning house this morning, after which we’ll go back to work on building science kits and getting the downstairs LTS food room cleaned up and organized. We got a lot done on that yesterday. Barbara proclaimed that she was pleased. I’m trying to get similar stuff shelved together. All the oils and fats in one place, all the meats together, all the pasta together, etc.

I was also pleased, because the counts confirmed that we’re in pretty good shape on everything. We have, for example, roughly 340 cans of meat of various sizes and types, totaling about 360 pounds. That’s about 3.6 ounces of meat per day for the 4.5 of us for a year, and doesn’t count what’s in the vertical freezer upstairs. In a long-term power-out emergency, we could of course pressure-can that as well.

We’re also in good shape on oils/fats. Again not counting butter and other oils in the big freezer upstairs, we have about 25 gallons of assorted oils/fats shelved downstairs. Even not counting the fats in canned meats, that’s sufficient lipids for the 4.5 of us for at least a year. We’re in similarly good shape on other categories like rice/flour/pasta, herbs/spices, cooking/baking essentials, canned powdered eggs/butter/cheese, etc. The only thing we’re short on at this point is vegetables.

The only exception I’m making to keeping like with like is our stock of #10 cans of LTS food from the LDS Home Storage Center and miscellaneous stuff from Augason Farms. There are roughly 240 cans (40 cases) of that, kept together in or near the LTS food room closet.

And I uncovered a science experiment at the back of the storage shelves. It’s a box of UHT half-and-half creamer packages that has a best-by date four years ago. When Barbara picked it up, she said, “EWWWW!” and carried it over to the trash can to discard. I rescued it and took it upstairs, because I intend to try it. If it sniff-tests okay, I’ll taste it, but my guess is that it’ll fail the sniff test.

63 Comments and discussion on "Sunday, 20 August 2017"

  1. nick flandrey says:

    My experience with UHT dairy is that the recommended times have some wiggle (~1 year depending) but they change form, smell, and taste. Pass….

    n

  2. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    These were in the little foil-top single-serving packs, with a best-by date of 8/28/13. I opened a couple of them and couldn’t detect any rancid odor. I had Barbara sniff them. Her (very sensitive) nose detected no rancidity. So I tasted one of them. It tasted like milk/cream.

    The butter fat had partially separated into little chunks/swirls of more solid material, but again it tasted normal. I couldn’t convince Barbara to taste it, but it hadn’t spoiled in any way, just de-homogenized. It would be perfectly usable.

    But we threw it out because it made Barbara cringe. In an emergency, I wouldn’t hesitate to use them for cooking and so on, or simply to add to reconstituted powdered milk to add fat and flavor.

    OTOH, we have very different storage conditions. Mine have been stored in a cool basement, so four extra years of storage for me is about equivalent to maybe three months for you in your 800-degree garage.

  3. SteveF says:

    Maybe Colin is perfectly healthy but the vomit is an editorial comment on the wall-to-wall, over-the-top eclipse coverage. He’ll be fine in a day or two, after the media have moved on to the next “ooh, shiny”.

  4. nick flandrey says:

    Yeah, for me the single serve and the 1 liter do the same thing, they get chunky like tapioca. They don’t smell spoiled, but the odor changes. I’d say ‘metallic’ for lack of a better description. The taste changes too, becoming more ‘chemical-ly’ and metallic. I would feed them to an animal if needed, but I’d have to be mad max hungry to drink one.

    n

  5. Dave Hardy says:

    From the Hate Department:

    https://developers.slashdot.org/story/17/08/18/2231248/google-and-propublica-team-up-to-build-a-national-hate-crime-database

    How could this possibly go wrong?

    And from the comments; haha, right smack into the usual religion and politics arguments. I’m just gonna go way out on a limb here and predict that “hate” will be defined by the worst haters, i.e, the usual suspects in our commie-dominated culture and society.

    Someone here says something mildly critical of musloids or LGBTXYZ or dindoo nuffins and we’ll be listed in the “Hate Index.” Sounds sorta like the evil and terribly hateful Inquisition…

  6. nick flandrey says:

    Man I’m tired of this move to criminalize ordinary behavior. There is no “hate” crime. It’s crime. Hate drives the estranged ex husband to kill his family, hate drives the attack on a neighbor. There is no “hate” speech. It’s speech. I can say the most vile things without any hate behind them and I could say that my ex was a filty waste of air with all the hate in my shriveled soul. To try to see into the mind of a person and punish based on YOUR feelings is the path to the dark side.

    People are not filled with love for their fellow man. That is the exception rather than the rule. At best, most don’t care one way or the other, until FORCED to care.

    This is another prog attempt to criminalize THOUGHT.

    n

  7. nick flandrey says:

    Currently anyway,

    It’s not illegal to be racist.
    It’s not illegal to call people names.
    It’s not illegal to upset other people or hurt their feelings.
    It’s not illegal to hate.

    Some ACTIONS based on those things are illegal. And that is what we’ve always believed, that the ACTION is what should be punished. As our forebearers wisely knew from experience, you can’t truly know another person’s thoughts or heart and to pretend otherwise is monstrous.

    n

  8. Dave Hardy says:

    DoublePlusUngoodBadThink.

  9. Ray Thompson says:

    As a photographer here is my advice for photographing the eclipse.

    Don’t

    There will be enough photographs of the event that can be downloaded. Instead enjoy the event, experience the event, rather than fussing with a camera. You don’t want to miss any part of the eclipse and dealing with a camera is a sure way to have that happen.

  10. SteveF says:

    This is another prog attempt to criminalize THOUGHT.

    Of course. Progs don’t have any thoughts in their vacuous skulls and they’re jealous of anyone able to sustain any thought.

  11. Dave Hardy says:

    I guess the big eclipse event is what, tonight, tomorrow? Whatever. I should probably stock up on Moxie and pretzels to watch all the lemmings; more excitement than the eclipse itself.

    Has there been an official antifa or BLM statement on this yet?

  12. CowboySlim says:

    I am not into hate; on the contrary, I’m into love. For example:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4glZPIaGH4

  13. Ray Thompson says:

    I guess the big eclipse event is what, tonight, tomorrow?

    Yes, in my area about 2:30 PM. There may even be protests because the moon will look black, as opposed to the normal white, and that would make it a racist event.

  14. Dave Hardy says:

    I like the Chimpmunks singing it:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmjrTcYMqBM

    “…and that would make it a racist event.”

    Hey, if milk can be rayciss…

    Not to worry; it’s all tRump’s fault.

    Now that everyone’s forgotten about the Twelve Years of Reagan-Bush. Which was really twenty years if we count Shrub’s two terms.

  15. CowboySlim says:

    “I like the Chimpmunks singing it:”

    I love ’em both!

  16. nick flandrey says:

    Or develop a persona and live your cover story to the masses…..

    nick flandrey

  17. SteveF says:

    Has there been an official antifa or BLM statement on this yet?

    But of course!

    A challenge to all who read this: Try to read that brain-devouring screed essay through to the end without falling asleep or bursting into giggles. Winners will get, oh, a poem written in their honor. (Not a massive epic poem like Beowulf or anything. More like a limerick. “There once was this guy, Miles_Teg…”)

  18. Dave Hardy says:

    I skimmed that long-ass article briefly and marveled at that person’s obsession with race and grievance whoring.

    The Atlantic magazine has, sadly, gone off the deep left end, for many years now, and its founders must be spinning. The piece was taken from here:

    http://democracyjournal.org/

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_(journal)

    And here’s young Alice Ristroph:

    http://hls.harvard.edu/faculty/directory/11653/Ristroph

    Surprise, surprise. One doesn’t get much whiter than her. It must be a horrific trial for her.

  19. Dave Hardy says:

    “The Week’s Most Curious, Spurious, and Injurious Headlines”

    http://takimag.com/article/the_week_that_perished_august_20_2017/print#axzz4qKOGRmgS

  20. paul says:

    As usual…. the local PBS station, I’m not gonna name names, but its initials are KLRU is showing something of interest for a change.

    Ah. Pledge Week.

    I should know better by now. I get suckered in every time…

    Way back when, early ’80’s, PBS was KLRN/KLRU. San Antonio and Austin. They split up and hey, cool, the freaking state capital has a crappy PBS station.

  21. Dave Hardy says:

    “Antifa Boston has let their position be known.”

    I’ve been saying for years that we’re facing genuine communists again and all I got from anybody, other than snickering, was crickets. These people are professionals and they mean business; it’s not snowflakes and pajama boyz running around anymore, except as useful idiots and dupes. They’re also several levels above the musloid terrorists in terms of raw intelligence and cleverness. The long-term aim is to disrupt the body politic and its enforcement organizations to the point that we have systemic collapse and their little team of neo-Bosheviks can step in and take control.

    How likely is that in this country? With 330 millions? Likely enough to foment a raging civil war eventually, at least. No great trick for slick operators to knock out stuff like transportation hubs (which the hadjis have been told to hit now) and parts of the Grid. And if I was either of those parties, I’d be focusing on what damage I could accomplish where the biggest defenseless crowds are on the Black Friday weekend and Xmas.

  22. SteveF says:

    Less than one day remains!!!

    Are you ready? Will you still be alive 24 hours from now?????

  23. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    I saw an article the other day that said this would be a racist eclipse because 99% of the area of totality covers land populated by white people.

  24. SteveF says:

    Yes. Ref the “But of course!” link, above.

    It would be nice to think that people wrote screeds like that as a joke, or simply because that’s what the editor or owner wants. I’m afraid this is not always the case.

  25. Dave Hardy says:

    I no sooner posted my hateful and bigoted white supremacist Nazi screed above and then saw this:

    https://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2017/08/20/a-war-of-religion/

  26. MrAtoz says:

    RIP Jerry Lewis

  27. paul says:

    I saw the racist eclipse article. Sheesh, maybe WordPress and Blogger should be banned in favor of having to write the page in NotePad. Tags and all. And then validate the HTML to at least 4.0 compliant. Methinks doing so will shut-up a lot of idiots.

    Oh, wait.

    Oh, wait…. my site is done in Notepad. 🙂 I’m cool.

  28. SteveF says:

    my site is done in Notepad. I’m cool.

    If you’re not using Emacs, you are the anti-cool.

  29. DadCooks says:

    IMHO @OFD gets the internet atta-boy for today.

    The antifa has found that there is no shortage of useful idiots. Our gooberment should be real proud of these nu-amercans.

    The last Civil War killed 500 thousand. I predict this one will kill at least 200 million. Most of them slowly.

  30. paul says:

    Tomorrow’s project is “change the oil” in the van. Because it’s a 2004 Freestar and it turned 40,000 miles yesterday.

    Mom moved here in May of ’14. The van had all of 24,000 miles. It has been to the Valley several times to get her stuff. Anyway.

    I have to go to town to mail a couple of packages. That will warm the engine enough. Then home and onto ramps. Let it all cool a bit while finding the filter wrench and the old kitty litter pan I use to catch the oil. I know where all the tools are…

    I wanted Delo 400 but Rotella 15-40 was on sale. The crazy thing is the gallon jug of Rotella was on sale and… if you need 5 quarts, there goes your savings. But I have lawnmowers and the like so the extra of the 2nd gallon will be used IF IT WOULD RAIN SO THE GRASS WILL GROW.

    Just saying. I’ve mowed the yard, a big yard, once this year. The mower doesn’t seem to use oil, what it uses seems to leak out where the dipstick assembly attaches to the block. And yes, I have siliconed and gasket sealer the tube. It’s just a poor design with a poly plastic tube pitting into a metal engine block.

    It’s annoying that I bought a new battery for the mower and ….. well, heck, charging the old battery worked just fine for the lat three years.

  31. paul says:

    I would use emacs if I were clever enough to make the effing network card actually do network stuff.

    Just saying.

    Or maybe it’s just a Ubuntu thing on an older PC a few years ago. Big lighting strike, dead on-board nic, and I could not get Ubuntu to find the new nic add-in card. XP had no problem.

  32. medium wave says:

    If you’re not using Emacs, you are the anti-cool.

    I use Emacs daily, and I’m the least cool person I know.

    Admittedly, I mostly use the GUI, but I occasionally use the CTRL and META commands when I want to feel virtuous. 😉

    ADDED: those vi/vim users, now–those guys are either saints or masochists!

  33. SteveF says:

    IF IT WOULD RAIN SO THE GRASS WILL GROW.

    You can have some of our rain, if you can come and fetch it. Middle of August and I’m still mowing the blasted lawn every six or seven days.

  34. Harold Combs says:

    There is no “hate” crime. It’s crime.

    Like 1000+

  35. nick flandrey says:

    So freakin’ hot….

    Got a couple of indoor plumbing projects knocked off. Had the parts, didn’t want to take the time. Got it done today.

    Spent some time messing around with different optics and pinholes and screens, but still don’t have a good way to view the eclipse (if it’s not raining.) Pinhole makes an image about 1/8th inch high. I remember it being bigger than that for the last eclipse I watched. School has the kids watching it on line so no one gets hurt. Meh. Even if they don’t look up, having it get dark and weird is worth experiencing. We’ll probably grab them and go outside.

    If it’s not raining.

    n

  36. lynn says:

    The last Civil War killed 500 thousand. I predict this one will kill at least 200 million. Most of them slowly.

    That is a bit much. As long as people get somewhat clean water and a little food, people will last for many months, maybe years. The real question is how many people will the cannibals kill (see OFD’s truck axle bbq spit) ? There are enough people with guns in this country that will kill the cannibals on sight (or anything that looks like a cannibal).

    I estimate 100 million people dead over a five year civil war. But, most people will be killed by the nukes being used as battlefield weapons.

    BTW, I assume that 500K killed in the civil war was civilians. Weren’t there 1.25 million soldiers killed in the Civil War on both sides ?

  37. lynn says:

    ADDED: those vi/vim users, now–those guys are either saints or masochists!

    Real programmers use vi. And Fortran. And, vi is the only editor that you can trust to be on various unix boxen.

  38. pcb_duffer says:

    [snip] If you’re not using Emacs, you are the anti-cool. [snip]

    What about TED, from CDC? Ah, those were the days!

  39. Greg Norton says:

    Real programmers use vi. And Fortran. And, vi is the only editor that you can trust to be on various unix boxen.

    One of the things that drives me crazy on the new job is how far the young’n’s will go to avoid learning anything about vi or even Emacs. The developers FTP files to Windows, edit with Notepad, and FTP the files back.

  40. Ray Thompson says:

    School has the kids watching it on line so no one gets hurt

    School here are closed to avoid liability issues. Some little cretin would stare at the sun and the school would get sued. It is impossible for a teacher to monitor 20 little rug rats.

    Booked my trip to Ely Nevada to operate a steam locomotive. Will be in the cab with a licensed engineer, fireman, wife (to take pictures) and me. You actually are put at the controls and take a 15 mile trip up the mountain and 15 miles back down. Should be fun. Crossing an item off my bucket list.

  41. nick flandrey says:

    @ray, that sounds awesome! Enjoy it!

    Love the smell and sounds of steam power.

    n

  42. lynn says:

    Real programmers use vi. And Fortran. And, vi is the only editor that you can trust to be on various unix boxen.

    One of the things that drives me crazy on the new job is how far the young’n’s will go to avoid learning anything about vi or even Emacs. The developers FTP files to Windows, edit with Notepad, and FTP the files back.

    BTW, I wrote software for two years using vi on a CRT terminal attached to a Apollo Domain box. There were three other programmers also using CRT terminals attached to the same box. We just about had fist fights when people started compiling. These were the cheapest CRT terminals found, no arrow keys, no numeric keypad.

  43. Dave Hardy says:

    When OFD was still working in big-ass IBM date centers loaded with many dozens of racks crammed with hundreds of RHEL servers, I used vi/vim. And bash, of course. Been over four years now and basically forgot all that chit. Don’t use, you lose. I do whatever CLI I have to for the Linux and BSD machines here at home, and Powershell for the two current Winblows boxes.

    WRT War Between the States casualty figures; most research I’ve seen put the total deaths of troops on both sides at around 600,000. Plus the South’s economy destroyed and a lingering and really bad feeling in this country over it all 150 years later. Impact on the civilian populations in the battle areas was severe. But virtually no impact in Northeastern states/cities WRT day-to-day life and activities, almost as if the war wasn’t really happening. Other than seeing it in the papers or seeing the coffins coming back with dead Yankees in them. MA and VT lost a lot of men in that war. You can generally find two types of soldier statues (before the commies pull them all down, that is) up here; Union soldiers or WWI doughboys. Down in some MA towns you’ll also see Minutemen.

    Congrats on your forthcoming train drive, Mr. Ray! Sounds wicked pissah, as we say in these pahts.

    I guess I don’t have a bucket list. I should probably whip one up. Top item will be turning Mordor back into a primeval swamp. Secondly, returning Manhattan to the nearest First Nations tribes. Me, personally? I wouldn’t mind taking a first-clas-level train ride across Canada and then fly back, also first-class. Also wouldn’t mind visiting Bucharest and Vienna. Maybe Prague. Within easier reach for us would be a canoe trip of several days, maybe a week, along parts of the Northern Forest Canoe Trail.

    I should also learn to ride a horse well and wife needs to get up to speed on firearms.

  44. lynn says:

    Booked my trip to Ely Nevada to operate a steam locomotive. Will be in the cab with a licensed engineer, fireman, wife (to take pictures) and me. You actually are put at the controls and take a 15 mile trip up the mountain and 15 miles back down. Should be fun. Crossing an item off my bucket list.

    Cool ! Is this like http://www.drivetanks.com ?

  45. Greg Norton says:

    BTW, I wrote software for two years using vi on a CRT terminal attached to a Apollo Domain box. There were three other programmers also using CRT terminals attached to the same box. We just about had fist fights when people started compiling. These were the cheapest CRT terminals found, no arrow keys, no numeric keypad.

    I think best in vi on an 80×25 Windows 7 command prompt window.

  46. brad says:

    Emacs vs. Vi wars?

    When I was doing a lot of intensive work on Unix workstations, many years ago, I made a point of learning emacs. Took me 6 months to train all the shortcuts and stuff into my fingers. You can do *anything* in emacs, but if you don’t use it constantly, well, I lost most of the automatic reflexes…

    Now that I just occasionally play sys-admin, I’ve gone back to Vi. For me, it’s a lot easier to remember the basic commands.

  47. IT_Pro says:

    vi is fine for today’s work with video monitors.
    But I miss the good old days when I would use TECO. TECO (text editor and corrector) was the DEC editor I used for many years on KSR-33/35 teletype terminals on the DEC PDP-10 before we had fancy pants CRT screens. You could write totally awesome macros in TECO to do any kind of editing / formatting that you could think of.

  48. Ray Thompson says:

    Cool ! Is this like http://www.drivetanks.com

    Well crap, something else I may want to place in my bucket list.

    Correction on the train experience. It is 14 miles round trip.

    We will be flying into Las Vegas and spend one night there at a hotel. Then drive to Ely with a rental car, spend the night, then train operation the next day. Spend the night in Ely and then on to Victorville CA to visit some relatives for a short time. Spend three nights there in a hotel then back to Las Vegas for two days and three nights. Will probably try and take in a couple of shows.

    Eclipse today. Will be heading out about noon, get some vittles, then sit and wait for the eclipse. Lot of hype in this area and large crowds are expected.

  49. SteveF says:

    Lot of hype

    Really? Gee, hadn’t noticed.

  50. Ray Thompson says:

    Also a lot of people panicking because they are not able to find eclipse glasses. I bought mine three months ago. Several outlets that gave out glasses, even a couple of schools, are having to recall the glasses because some Chinese manufacturer cheated.

    My biggest mistake was not buying 200 of the glasses for $1.00 each and now being able to sell them for $10.00 each. However, the liability issue was a major concern. Sell one pair of glasses, someone puts a small hole in one, and I would get sued for big bucks. Not worth the risk.

    Schools are closed. Reason stated was that everyone could see the eclipse. Real reason is liability.

  51. Miles_Teg says:

    “When I was doing a lot of intensive work on Unix workstations…”

    UNIX. The operating system with no balls. 🙂

  52. DadCooks says:

    @Ray T Said:
    “Booked my trip to Ely Nevada to operate a steam locomotive. “

    Been there, done that 3 times, back in my early teens when there were still plenty around, my Dad had “connections ;-). My brain cannot recall the exact types, but the first one was an old-time hand stoked coal 4-4-4 of the 1870s era. The other two were “modern” era oil fired. These were actual operating locomotives. I’ll never forget the heat, the smell, and the pounding of the drivers.

  53. Ray Thompson says:

    I’ll never forget the heat, the smell, and the pounding of the drivers

    Maybe a 14 mile trip will be enough. Wife will be with me in the cab to take pictures. She may pitch a fit over the environment.

    The locomotive is coal fired with a fireman to do the shoveling. I may do a little just for photographic opportunities.

  54. nick flandrey says:

    got my cereal box pinhole camera/sun observer built. I’ve got a variety of apertures so I can trade off brightness for focus. Most of the viewers online don’t give the slightest consideration to focus.

    We’ll see, but I think the wife wants to get the kids and head to the rec association for pool and viewing.

    me, I’ve got shipping and a hard drive to return….

    n

  55. SteveF says:

    I’m just pissed off that Kickstarter cancelled my campaign to raise money to build a giant magnifying glass and have it flown along the path of the eclipse. Fry the tofu-eating, crystal-wearing, “my life was changed forever” tards like ants on a sidewalk.

  56. Dave Hardy says:

    That woulda got rid of about, what, a third of the country’s population, too. We can then hope the next eclipse path will somehow slide over the eastern Megalopolis. Fry another 20-30 million.

  57. lynn says:

    I guess I don’t have a bucket list. I should probably whip one up.

    Me either. Wait, according to a British National Health study of 8,000+ people with occluded right coronary arteries, the oldest person in the study lived to be 83. I want to beat that record. And be able to crow about it.

  58. SteveF says:

    My bucket list had just one item on it: Be Awesome.

    I nailed that one forever ago.

  59. Dave Hardy says:

    Is there any superlative greater than “awesome?”

  60. SteveF says:

    “Stevelike”

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