07:42 – I managed to get five kits shipped yesterday. The others will just have to wait until the USPS Click-and-Ship website will allow me to print postage labels again. I’ll keep trying throughout the day. Meanwhile, I have kits to build, solutions to make up, and thousands of labeled bottles that need to be filled.
Barbara is heading over to meet her sister and mom after work and go out to dinner. Sankie isn’t doing any better, and from what I’ve seen and heard I think the chance of any dramatic improvement is nil. Sankie is either unwilling or unable to cooperate, or both, so I suspect Barbara and Frances will have to move her over to the Homestead Hills facility sooner rather than later. They’re doing everything they can to keep her at Creekside, but they can’t do that if Sankie remains unwilling to do her part.
11:56 – I’m going to have to figure out what to do about mixing containers. The largest bottles we use in most of our kits hold 30 mL, which means a 2-liter batch is sufficient to fill 60+ bottles. Our international kits and some of our forthcoming kits will use several 100 mL bottles, which means I need a 6-liter batch to fill 60 bottles. In the past, I’d simply make up three 2-liter batches, but that’s a lot of extra work. So I think this time I’m going to make up 6-liter batches in 5-gallon (20 liter) polypropylene buckets from Home Depot.
Boy, what a whack job:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-26233909
I’m not sure who’s the whack job. One of the other news sites ran a close-up of those “million dollar” vases. They’re contemporary, and the artist simply dribbles brightly colored paint on them. My estimate of the real-world value is $10 each. And that’s probably high.
I’m not sure who’s the whack job. One of the other news sites ran a close-up of those “million dollar” vases.
Most art is that way. Highly overrated and overpriced. The art world is ripe with suckers who like to part with their money.
Out here in the ESL neighborhoods one doesn’t have to go museums. The art is all outdoors spray painted, as opposed to drip application, on both public and private property. As such, it is not for sale and curators have no role in its display.
I only know art when I see it, and I don’t see any at all, only two “artists” that deserve to starve.
Apparently Weiwei breaks them also.
They’re only worth a mil if some one pays that. Now I wonder what the insurance company will pay off on it.
If I were the insurance company, I’d pay $10 and fight it out in court.
If I were the insurance company, I’d pay $10 and fight it out in court.
$9.00 of that should be the cleanup cost.
“Art”, like religion, pretty much gets a free pass.
The Florida guy is still a vandal and whack job. Is the vase his? If so, he can break it.
I also thought the broken vase was Ming Dynasty, not a recent creation.
Well, whatever it was, that so-called “artist” destroyed any value it might have had.
Well basically it’s crap. Ai however is a dissident loved by progressives. The fellow that broke it has garnered more fame than he ever had as an artist. The million dollar value is something put out by the museum or the owners and repeated verbatim by the media. Reality may be different.
To the wall with all these poseurs and con artists! The last decent Western art was done well over a hundred years ago here, John Singer Sargent, the Hudson River School, Monet, Manet, etc. It’s been mostly crap since. Modernist poetry is pretty good sometimes but modernist art and music suck. YMMV, of course.
I sure wouldn’t be silly enough to pay $3000 for a painted vase. OK, time to get ready for church…..darn, where did I leave my Rolex watch?
Am in a VA hospital today with FIL. Wild place and incredibly busy here in south Dallas.
From what Mrs. OFD has told me, and from my own experiences, the VA system is wildly divergent in terms of quality of service, reliability, etc. Mine up here at White River Junction (actually two hours south of here on the NH state line) is relatively small but they’ve treated me like royalty since I started going there. Low-key, mostly, and naturally, almost all ex-enlisted scum like me. Some MDs are ex-officers but they don’t push it.
Hope your FIL is OK and is treated well today.
Gotta get to the church on time, Ray; and yeah, I’d pay $3k for a vase if I was positive it was ancient Greek, Roman or Egyptian and rare to the point of returning many hundreds of thousands on my little investment. I know diddly about Asian vases.
Bought a Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 in Sept. and had to send it back because the wi-fi chip failed.
Now the display has failed and the website is a bloody nightmare and times out before it will process a service request. Had I know this was going to be such a PITA I’d have never bought it.
If you are looking for a larger containers for mixing solutions and a PET container is acceptable take a look at Better Bottles. I’ve been using them to ferment cider and have found them to be preferable to a glass carboy.
FIL got a new neck brace. I just drove 70 miles through downtown Dallas to get a free neck brace. Had a moron on I35E stop in my lane so he could take exit across two lanes. Nearly got an 18 wheeler up my backside at 60 mph while I was completely stopped and blowing my horn at said moron.
You can keep Dallas and Houston and all them cities down there. Up here we are fah closer to Montreal than to Boston and one interesting tidbit was that we there for most of an afternoon and evening recently, downtown mostly, in a city of two-million, and did not see one gendarme, not one. Unless they’re all plainclothes now.
If everything blows up, will hundreds of thousands of Montreal refugees head south? Not likely; they’d be crossing many miles of flat, open, sparsely populated country and the winds and other weather would be a huge factor, along with all the rivers and streams. In winter it looks like Siberia. Our hordes of refugees are likely to come swarming up the New England and NY interstates, but it would be mostly stragglers up here and people running out of gas. Picked off easily.
Your FIL got a free neck brace; I have a free blood pressure device. Maybe I’ll get more free stuff if I survive another twenty or more years, which is doubtful.
Hey! I’ll have you know that I can belch so disgustingly that most listeners are nauseated. If that’s not artistry, then something’s wrong with your lexicon.
Although… Maybe in order to be taken seriously I have to get an NEA grant. Oh, if only I were a lesbian amputee midget belcher of color. I’d be sure to get a grant because of my increased authenticity.
Hey! I’ll have you know that I can belch so disgustingly that most listeners are nauseated.
I can do the other end. Might make a nice duet. Noisy for sure, aromatic definitely.
SteveF will have to do a runoff demo with our daughter who has deep, juicy, loud and long-winded belches that will stun and amaze, coming from a six-foot could-be-a-model chick. One of my former LEO partners, now sadly deceased long before his time, could rip one out for minutes at a crack, too. Dunno if there was some correlation…
On the other end, so to speak, I am no slouch myself. Maybe if the Bob Thompson blog vets over the years ever get together someday, maybe along with the Jerry Pournelle guys, we could have some fine upstanding entertainment.
I can do the other end. Might make a nice duet.
Check out this guy.
No sound, of course, but still, amazing to have a video from 114 years ago. Do we know the earliest video? The earliest sound recording? I believe I read somewhere recently that a recording of a woman singing was made and discovered not long ago, dating back to before our War of Northern Aggression. Also saw the earliest photograph, taken somewhere in France, 1830s or somewhere around there. Plus those photos of Revolutionary War veterans in their late 80s and 90s were amazing.
“but modernist art and music suck. YMMV, of course.”
Well, some of the 20th century music is pretty good. Glass, Reich and Riley have done some good work. And then there is quite a bit of good Jazz which is a creation of the 20th century. True that most of the current assembly line popular music is vomit inducing but that’s been manufactured for people who have never listened to music (and don’t want to). Sturgeon’s Law is applicable here as always.
We will have to agree to disagree on the merits of Glass, Reich and Riley; mos def not my cup ‘o tea. And gave up on most rock, jazz and country after circa 1975. My thing is Baroque, and English, German and French pipe organ and choral music.
And the last decent poets we had, with one or two exceptions, were the Modernists, Yeats, Eliot, Pound, et. al.
Also, A. B. (“Banjo”) Patterson.
I especially like his “In the droving days”.