Day: May 7, 2024

Tues. May 6 (or 7), 2024 – hopefully the rain has passed, for a bit anyway…

Warmish, still damp, and possibly clearing to a nice day. Yesterday was a mixed bag, but I didn’t get any more rain during the day. Some other places might have.

As I was driving around I did see that the local bayous are at higher than normal levels. I crossed the San Jac river in the middle of the bridge and couldn’t see down to see what it looked like though. Google gave me flood warnings when I navigated to my auction pickup in Kingwood (north and east, where all the flooding starts to show up as you head out of Houston proper.) I didn’t see many signs of flooding though.

One of my auctioneers did show me a picture of his car flooded to the door handles in Porter.

I did my two pickups, and headed home.

Before and after that I did a bit of stuff around the house. Some more poking at the All in One PC. I ordered more RAM because it was a cheap upgrade and it should be usable for basic tasks. It’s less responsive now that windows had a chance to update, win10 has a LOT of bloat over the years, but it’s still very usable for web and normal tasks. If it had a touch screen it would be perfect for a media center/ music steaming GUI in the garage or dockhouse. Or I might put it on the shelf with the 3D printers to manage those machines, if they need a handy computer nearby…or I could plug my SDR radio dongle into it and have that running in my office. I could still clone the drive to an SSD to get better performance too. That is probably the single best and cheapest way to extend the life of an old machine that is feeling slow.

There is a lot of life left in old, cheap machines. And I like the idea of one machine per task.

Today I’ve got a couple more pickups to do. Kid has an ortho appointment in the morning, and that will get me out and about, while disrupting my routine at the same time. Other kid doesn’t have sports team practice this week, so I’m on deck to do an early pickup for her. Lots of poking at things around the house to do too. Even if the weather is nice, I bet I don’t get out in it much.

On the plus side, my back and neck have been better this week and last. Small mercies.

Oh, almost forgot. Data point. Dinner last night included boxed potatoes (betty crocker au gratin in various flavors) with a best by of 2021 and 2022. I had to open 8 boxes to find two that didn’t have little black bugs INSIDE the sealed plastic bag with the potato slices. Those bugs must have been there the whole time, but only get numerous enough to see in a few years?? The two I made that were “sans bugs” were still tasty and the powdered cheese in the foil pouch was still good. Wife and kids both commented that they liked the potato casserole dish (I did add a few tablespoons of bacon crumbles). Main meat was a sirloin cap roast (picanha roast) from 2021 or ’22. Even a two pounder is thin enough to defrost quickly and cook in less than an hour. That gave me time to cook the potatoes and some instant ‘tube’ biscuits too.

My storage conditions are the suxx, and I expect the ‘breakage’. I’m actually surprised I don’t lose more stored food.

Which is where the stacking comes in. You never really know when you’ll be stuck with what you’ve got. I’d rather have too much, than too little and I’m willing to lose a bit to ensure that. You may feel differently- preferring a more precise FIFO plan, with an exact amount of stored food, and a strict rotation to keep it fresh. That’s cool if it works for you. Whatever you do, stack SOMETHING.. and keep stacking as you use it.

nick

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