09:46 – Barbara’s dad is supposed to be released from the hospital this afternoon. He’s adamant that he won’t use a walker, despite the fact that everyone from his wife and daughters to the doctors, nurses, and physical therapists are telling him that he needs to. I told Barbara the solution is simple: just put the walker beside him and take away his cane. She says this latest fall really scared him, but apparently not enough. I’m afraid the next fall might kill him. And if he continues to use that cane, there will be another fall, probably sooner rather than later.
My search to find a way to prevent iodine solutions from outgassing continues. The problem is that iodine vapor really, REALLY wants to be free. The bottles aren’t leaking, but they are allowing tiny amounts of iodine vapor to escape. I’ve tried different bottles and caps. I’ve tried various types of tape, including stretched vinyl electrical tape and even Teflon tape. I’ve tried several different types of LocTite. Most of them kind of work, most of the time. But if we make up 30 or 60 bottles of iodine solution and stick them in a ziplock bag, at least one of them is almost certain to allow some iodine vapor to escape, which stains all of the labels dark brown. It’s only a cosmetic problem, but I’d like to solve it.
So I ordered a pint (473 mL) of Elmer’s original rubber cement, which is essentially pure latex rubber dissolved in n-heptane. Yesterday, I filled a 30 mL bottle with the IKI solution, brushed the bottle threads with a cotton swap dipped in the rubber cement, and screwed on the cap. So far, it appears to be working, at least for that bottle. I guess I’ll make up 30 or 60 bottles of the IKI solution with the rubber cement seal and see what happens. The bottle is LDPE and the cap is HDPE with a PP liner, none of which are severely affected by short-term exposure to n-heptane. But I do want to make sure that the solvent doesn’t weld the cap to the bottle. I should probably have gotten Obama to do this for me. Bastard.
11:31 – Nothing is ever easy. Barbara gives Colin a heartworm preventative called Interceptor. Heartworm is a horrible disease, and Colin gets a pill every month, 12 months a year. She gave him the last pill on the first of this month and asked me to order more. The problem is, Novartis has had some severe problems at the factory, starting last January, and Interceptor is no longer available and may not be available for several months.
There are alternatives, of course, but none of them are good. Except for one thing, the best alternative would be HeartGard Plus, which costs around $72 for a 12-month supply. That one thing is a showstopper, though. The active ingredient in HeartGard is ivermectin, which can kill some Border Collies as well as some other herding breeds. The problem is a mutation in the MDR1 gene. We don’t know if Colin has that mutation and, if so, whether it’s heterozygous or homozygous.
The other alternatives are much more expensive, twice to three times as much as the HeartGard. But that’s the least of the problem. The real issue is that their active ingredients are also avermectin-class drugs, albeit not ivermectin. And the multidrug sensitivity caused by the MDR1 mutation includes all of the avermectins. Fortunately, there’s a genetic test available from Washington State University. I just requested the test kit. All we have to do is get scrapings of Colin’s squamous epithelial cheek cells, send them back to WSU, and pay them $70. They’ll tell us if Colin has the MDR1 mutation and, if so, whether it’s heterozygous or homozygous.
Regarding the resistance to using a walker, or even a four-foot cane, could the objection be that “that’s what old people use”? If that’s the case, could you pimp it up a bit so it’s not an “old man” walker but something more stylish or more like something a younger person might use after an accident?
For the iodine bottles, would it work better to put them in individual ziplock bags? Put the small bags in a big bag if that’s how you organize inventory, but isolate the vapor seepage?
And as for having Obumbles help with your bottling, don’t be ridiculous. You just know the stupid SOB would spend all his time sniffing the glue.
If the only issue with the iodine bottles is the label, rather then trying to seal the bottles, why not seal the label? Tape over the label, or perhaps a liquid sealant such as Elmer’s cement you mentioned might prevent the labels from discoloring.
I suggested to Barbara that she trick out the walker. Her dad already has clamp-on cane lights, so I suggested she use a pair of those to give his walker headlights. I figured we could also rig up a horn, turn signals, and maybe a back-up beeper.
As to iodine, ziplock bags won’t stop it. Nothing stops it. I have here a 250 gram pack of iodine that I ordered some months ago. It’s a paper mailing envelope, but the iodine is contained in a heavy heat-sealed (welded shut) Mylar bag. The outside paper envelope is stained dark brown. I’m telling you, iodine vapor really REALLY wants to be free.
Covering the labels with clear tape might work for the iodine bottle, but it’d still outgas vapor that’d stain everything else it comes into contact with. Fortunately, the stains are easy to get rid of. A vitamin C tablet dissolved in a few mL of water makes the stains disappear like magic. It reduces the brown elemental iodine to colorless, soluble iodide ions.
How about pack a small gauze pad and a vitamin C tablet with the kits with a note telling customers that if their bottles are discolored they should smash the tablet, dissolve in water, and wipe everything down? Not a great solution (no pun intended), but maybe less work and less cost than the alternatives.
(And if vitamin C doesn’t go into solution in water, but only suspension, I don’t want to hear it.)
Dog preventative: We use that which our vet prescribes, Trifexis (spinosad + milbemycin oxime). (Which is not spelled exactly the same as that which you want to avoid for Colin.) The “tri” implies that it: prevents heartworm disease, kills fleas, prevents flea infestations, and the treatment and control of adult hookworm, adult roundworm and adult whipworm.
Yeah, Trifexis was one of the alternatives we were looking at, along with the topicals Revolution and Advantage Multi.
So, is it time to make your final gun and ammo purchases and bury them all in the backyard?
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/item/13586-hours-after-re-election-obama-green-lights-un-gun-grab
If Obama and the Libs want to take away our guns, now is the time to do it. What does Obama have to lose. In four years he’ll be making a million dollars a piece for his first speeches and hundreds of thousands per after that.
What’s the next step in a tyranny? Take away any possible means of the peasants defending themselves. We already have drones over us, no knock warrants, and police impunity. The Constitution has been overruled by Executive Order. Government agencies are making laws and imposing fines for everything. Say goodbye to real freedom. At least we can go to Colorado for pot. Probably $100/oz after taxes.
If you have trouble obtaining firearms or ammunition, keep in mind that a large fraction of government employees who interact with the
serfspublic go armed. Just sayin…Another step towards tyranny as Obama stops more oil shale exploration. Soon the only means to keep warm will be standing in the sun. Soon the Feds will simply say they own all land, fuck you States! Goodbye Constitution.
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/267095-interior-proposes-shielding-federal-lands-in-west-from-drilling
Oh but we were told we were being foolish and alarmist over all this stuff, weren’t we? Not to worry, we were told; Barry Soetro has no intention of doing any of these things. Quit watching Fox and reading the Bircher site, guys.
Of course little Barry is gonna run amok in his last term; that was the Plan. And if anyone thinks for a nanosecond that Mittens would have done anything different, I wanna know what they’re smoking; the only difference that I can see is that he more than likely would have green-lit an attack on Iran and gotten us into a world of shit.
What SteveF said about acquiring firearms; and….I would add to that…guys operate them drones and sit inside them tanks and planes. They gotta eat, drink, sleep and shit somewhere. Nuff said.
After a couple attempts to upgrade my laptop computing here in Tiny House, which failed for reasons from ‘out of stock’ to ‘cannot deliver that configuration’, I finally succeeded in taking delivery of a new Asus UX32VD-DH71 Ultrabook late today. Gave up on other sources and again got it from GenTech in Covina, Calif., the same place I got Asus dual core Bianca almost exactly 6 years ago. New computer is named Strato—hand-picked from a list that I will let you see if you can determine where they come from.
Actually, this is an interesting computer, and I am glad those other ones did not work out, because this one has 4 threads on a dual core Sandy bridge i7 that only consumes 17 watts peak. Wow. It is a Win8 machine at present, soon to become some form of Linux. I may just take the plunge and try CentOS first.
Designers at M$ are just too young. Too young to remember that what they are coming up with for Win8 (and Unity, too) is nothing more than the old fullscreen DOS. Weird. When you see how it works (it pretty much forces you to use everything fullscreen or go to a lot of trouble to shrink things), it is immediately reminiscent of DOS with screen shrink animation when you switch from one app to another. Finding things without menus is pretty awful. I have spent 3 hours trying to change things that would have taken no more than 20 minutes tops in XP.
Essentially, all I am trying to do is create a backup DVD of the Windows restore partition, before I abandon Windows. So far, all instructions that came with the computer are wrong. It says to go to the Asus icon and click Backup. There is no such item as Backup—or anything like it—in the Asus icon. Nothing in the Windows Control Panel either. Ugh. Asus support is free (at least I did not pay extra for it), so I suppose I should bug them and complain vociferously about their printing a user manual with totally useless instructions.
Strato is supposed to be the same size as the Mac Air. Bianca is a 15.5” screen; Strato is 13.5”. However, Strato is only 1.25” smaller width and depth. When it comes to thickness and weight, no comparison: Strato is less than 3 pounds and less than 0.75” from rubber feet to top of lid, whereas Bianca is somewhat less than 2” and about 6 pounds with no battery (battery died in Berlin and I have never replaced it). Bottom line is that the smaller screen on Strato does not look all that much smaller than Bianca’s.
Strato is going to be an experiment to find a decent portable A/V laptop. With 10gb RAM, I hope it works out. Nice size, will feed up to 3 monitors, battery lasts a long, long time (at least while doing configuration changes with screen on forced full brightness), and super-quiet—no fan noise at all. Lacks FireWire, but so does every new laptop these days. Will still have to do video transfers on Bianca for a while.
All the critical reviews are correct: trackpad gestures do not work out of the box; keyboard back-lighting leaks at the front edge of all keys shining directly in the eyes, making it 100% useless.
As soon as I get the DVD made, I open Strato up to put in the 1Tb WD A/V hard drive, and the fun begins. Actually work—need to get it going by Monday next (translation for Americans: a week from this Monday) for some serious paid video editing.
Meanwhile, the new Consumer Reports rates Fry’s at the bottom in consumer satisfaction. I agree. On Thursday, after a long day at work, I went over there to buy a new monitor before Strato’s delivery. Had not been near a toilet since noon and it was then a few minutes before 7:00pm. Surprise! Toilets backed up. They had a person on duty at the toilet entrance telling me and anyone who approached that the toilets were closed. No toilets anywhere else?
Yes, over in the installation department outside on the other side of the building. But it closes at 7:00pm and ‘you may not make it.’
I didn’t. Okay. I thought about the Consumer Reports rating for one or two seconds, then hopped in the car and drove as fast as possible over to Best Buy, where the toilets were just in time and working fine. Spent my money there, instead of Fry’s. I may start making Fry’s my last stop, instead of the first.
“…iodine vapor really, REALLY wants to be free. The bottles aren’t leaking, but they are allowing tiny amounts of iodine vapor to escape.”
How do major university chemistry departments and chemical companies do it? Can the vapor get through class? Would a glass bottle with a tight screw on glass stopper work?
Oh dear! A Catholic priest lost his job for marrying a woman! How wicked and unnatural of him. That he was campaigning against paedos in the RC church probably didn’t endear him to the hierarchy either.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-11-10/former-priest-claims-to-have-seen-child-sex-abuse-cover-ups/4364572
So, in other words, he broke his vows that he took when he became a priest and was found out and now suddenly has a whole bunch of hearsay evidence he wishes to give and claims that he tried before to do this.
Check.
Ah, for the Good Olde Days, when the RCC provided women for its priests. Of course, they were usually called “nuns” or “housekeepers”, both of whom were safe. The nuns got pregnant at about the same rate as other young women, but there were always the church steps to leave babies on. And the housekeepers, if still in their child-bearing years, were invariably married. Those too old to have children were normally issued to older priests so they’d have something to talk about while they weren’t screwing.
I like how OFD thinks nothing but the worst of his government, something he can actually do something about but chooses not to, but believes only the best of the Church.
Now that’s FAITH!
Robert clearly missed his own calling as an historian of the American Roman Catholic Church, considered in Ye Good Old Days as a “renegade church” by the Vatican hierarchy. Still time to get your PhD, Bob, and pick up where you left off on Latin. German might be a good one to learn, too; oh wait—the next Holy Father may well come from Africa.
I am pretty much guilty as charged in believing the worst of “my” government but am thankfully not alone here in that. I choose not to try to do something about it via the old tried and not-so-true methods, like voting in national charades and writing letters to media who are clearly already in the bag. But our time draweth near, never fear.
But I confess myself befuddled that I somehow ever gave anyone the impression here that I believe “the best of the Church.” The Church is a human institution, riddled, like the rest of humanity, with sin, error and gross inefficiency, not to mention occasional outright evil. No one has ever said anything different, but the times they are a’changing and this Holy Father is cleaning house, along with a rising generation of younger more conservative clergy and the fantastic growth of the Church in Africa and Asia while battling equally fantastic growth of Protestant fundamentalism in Latin America.
Younger clergy? I was under the impression that the average age of RCC priests and nuns was increasing at a rate of more than one year per year. Kind of like what had GM worried some years ago about Cadillac buyers. IIRC, the average age of nuns is somewhere up in the 70’s.
North+West versus South+East. Average age of clergy and nuns increased in North America and Europe but the opposite is occurring elsewhere. And a slow start but steadily increasing supply of young seminarians here. From what I have seen and heard of the younger priests coming up now, they are nothing like the old buzzard leftovers from the Sixties, who perverted Vatican II and got that whole thang going with the guitar masses and a bunch of lefty claptrap. I fault the Jesuits for a lot of that, a formerly outstanding and heroic order. You can see two examples of that with the young priests from that era in The Exorcist; putting Freud and Marx above Jesus.
As a observer only of the RCC, I have been hearing the rumors of the African RCC church and that the next pope may come from there. Also in the fact that the priests in the African RCC do not have a celibacy clause and many have wives. That would be good for RCC worldwide, IMHO.
I agree with OFD, I have faith in the church as a whole nowadays. All religious institutions are riddled with sinners, me being chief amongst them. Paul said that he re-crucified Christ daily, I feel that I am doing that hourly.
I do not have faith in any government anywhere. They are riddled with do-gooders on their face and do-badders behind your back. We are in this mess today partially because of the current chief do-gooder. Get off my lawn!
“…I have faith in the church as a whole nowadays. All religious institutions are riddled with sinners, me being chief amongst them. Paul said that he re-crucified Christ daily, I feel that I am doing that hourly.
Delete “religious” from that second sentence above. Fixed that for ya. And I doubt that you are chief sinner, probably way down the list. I would claim it for myself but mathematical odds among a billion people indicate that I am also down the list a ways. I am a pissant sinner, with the usual assortment of imbecilic and hurtful sins that most human beings are subject to, due partly to my animal nature, but mostly, in view of the fact that I know what I am doing and thinking and do it and think it anyway, of my own grievous fault.
As for government, I am a longtime paleoconservative with libertarian tendencies and lately inclining more toward anarchy.
Well, you two guys are half-way there. Once you realize that government and church are twin pillars of control over humanity, you realize that one is no better than the other.
Faith? That’s a dirty word. It means believing something that there’s no reason to believe. Reason, AKA science, is what lifted humanity to where it is today. Science has no need for religion, nor do rational people.
Let us strangle the last king with the guts of the last priest.
I have not much interest in long- and deservedly deceased froggie philosophes, esp. this dude, whose main contribution to humanity seems to have been pithy quotes.
“Reason, AKA science, is what lifted humanity to where it is today. Science has no need for religion, nor do rational people.”
Jump in a time machine as soon as one becomes available and question a long line of scientists from medieval times through the present day what Holy Mother Church did for them. Then ask yourself where we would be today if the Church hadn’t supported and encouraged them.
OFD, are you suggesting that if the dominant economic, political, and (allegedly) moral force in Europe hadn’t existed, then all the manifold scientific, technological, philosophical, and political advances would not have been made? That’s only step away from “you didn’t build that”.
Gah. “only one step away”.
“…all the manifold scientific, technological, philosophical, and political advances would not have been made?”
No, I am not suggesting that. But claims are made that without religion in general or the Church in particular, science would have done just fine and might have even saved all of humanity and the entire Universe! A goodly number of advances simply would not have been made at all without the encouragement and support of the Church.
Here is ‘our side’s’ (and by that I mean the traditionalist and conservative wing of the Church of which I am a part) take on the Galileo episode, for example:
http://www.catholic.com/tracts/the-galileo-controversy
The RCC has encouraged and supported science? Sure, if that involves trying its best to eradicate it. The RCC recognizes that science is its enemy and does everything possible to hinder it. The only concessions the RCC has ever made are when disputing the reality of the science would make the RCC appear ridiculous. Or perhaps I should say more ridiculous than it already appears.
It could be worse. You could be trying to ship bromine:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AL9ehxTaYRs
The Church supported philosophical, artistic, and scientific development in the sense that it often takes a concentration of wealth to support people who do not add directly to keeping people alive. This is not a role filled uniquely by the Church; the Medicis, the US federal government, and Kim Il Sung also sponsored artists and scientists, with mixed levels of success.
I’ll grant the Christian Church one possible unique role: I’ve seen it argued that widespread belief in a singular god who made the universe according to some plan and some rules encouraged medieval ur-scientists to search for those rules. I’m not sure I buy that argument because Christianity also requires belief in miracles, which are suspension of (G)od’s rules, but it’s a reasonable argument.
“…belief in miracles, which are suspension of (G)od’s rules…”
I am not clear what you mean by this; if anything, they are manifestations of His rules, such as He makes them and understands them and gets us to understand them. They may be ‘suspensions” of rules made by this or that scientist at one time or another as science changes over the centuries. We probably need to be certain of what we mean exactly by ‘rules,’ ‘miracles,’ and ‘belief.’
As a side note, there was some overlap between Medici family operations and the Holy See at the time, and probably some overlap between the Fed Leviathan and various of Kim Il Sung’s operations.
A day lasts a fixed length of time, to the accuracy of an hourglass or equivalent. A proto-scientist can calibrate an hourglass so that noon-to-noon is exactly one bowlful of sand. That works, day in and day out…
… until an incompetent general needs a little more time for a battle.
And so on.
As for my examples of Church, Medici, Kim, and US Leviathan, they were chosen with malice aforethought.
Dave, I know Catholics aren’t supposed to read the bible, but you could look up Matthew 19:10-11: “His disciples say unto him, If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry. But he said unto them, All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given.”
The RC church insists on celibacy for it’s priests and others, which it has no right to do. That practice is pure evil, and turns men who would not otherwise commit adultery or rape kids, into men who do. Sure, some of those guys would do it anyway, but it would never occur to many/most of them without the unnatural stresses associated with enforced celibacy.
Catholics are now encouraged to read the Bible, but I know what you mean from years ago when they weren’t, and to be honest, not to many of our Western Catholics even bother today, from what I can see. And the modern translations suck, IMHO, so I keep my KJV of 1611 and 1559 BCP accordingly and supplement them with the Catechism and the missals.
The day may be coming when the celibacy thing gets adjusted, to much like what the Orthodox now have, one order for priests who never become bishops and the other for those who do. Also, the practices in Africa and Asia may bring about changes along these lines. And theoretically, a cardinal to be appointed does not necessarily have to be ordained, so the See can play with that, too, if it wishes. If I was the Holy Father, perish the thought, I would appoint women cardinals from Africa and Asia forthwith and tell the Western feminist types to go pound sand, maybe the sand leaking from that medieval hourglass. I’d also be looking at setting up a dual order of clergy along the Orthodox lines, because as it is here in the West we frequently have one poor guy serving three or four parishes now and we’re importing them from Africa while the Irish import them from Poland.
Sin is in the mind of the beholder, and by kindergarten or thereabouts I rejected the idea that some fantastic power would create me but then accuse me of doing something wrong, when I was created with the ability to do it.
As our host maintains, both government and religion were created to control others. It is easy to throw off the shackles of imagination without foundation or proof that is religion. Just have nothing to do with it and stop pondering that utter fiction. Little harder to throw off the other. That probably requires guns.
No state is going to withdraw from the US union in this day and age and succeed. Africa is clearly demonstrating that, as—like it or not—the world is now joined at the hips. Nobody can go it alone. Withdrawing from the larger group is suicide; Africa has pretty generally rejected that now, and is finally moving forward.
Now if you can get the whole Confederacy to go with you, you might have something there. Not likely to happen, though.
And boy, are Republicans here not only devastated, they are pissed—probably the prime reason for the Louisiana madness. And look at the map of red states. Pretty much defines the Bible belt as it actually exists these days. Florida just became heathen moments ago.
Chuck the toddler atheist wrote:
“As our host maintains, both government and religion were created to control others.”
One of his greatest misconceptions, and yours, is that he fails to see that many failings of church, and government, are faults that are completely common to humans in general, even atheists. The desire to control is a human desire, not just a religious or government desire. As my first year anthropology lecturer said in summarizing his year long class in one sentence:
“It’s all about control.”
Nazi prison guards, Stalin’s henchman Beriya, and many others have enjoyed raping women and children. It comes with being human, if you don’t work at keeping it under control.
As to the Republicans, I have no sympathy for them at all. 30 years ago my views fitted quite nicely with Ronald Reagan, but since then I’ve drifted a bit towards the left and libertarianism and they’ve drifted to the lunatic right. Those guys like Mourdock should have fallen on their swords for the crazy stuff they said, why they didn’t is just beyond me.
Some ideas for sealing bottle tops … no idea how well any would work, however.
1) Adhesive-lined shrink tubing. It’s standard heat shrink tubing with an internal lining of hot melt glue. The heat applied to shrink the tubing also melts the glue and the result is a seal that’s impervious to moisture. (Its widely used to seal electrical connectors used outdoors and underground.) Have to be a bit careful with the heat source if you seal a plastic bottle, of course. Remove with a sharp hobby knife.
2) Meltable peel-away coating. Used to protect machine tool parts from corrosion. Available in several formulations, including solvent-free and oil-free. (For machine tools, the version containing mineral oil is often used.) Don’t know how porous the coating is to iodine vapor, however.
3) Liquid electrical tape – available in several formulations, including one that is liquid vinyl.
Thanks. I may give some or all of those a try if the Elmer’s rubber cement doesn’t work.