10:17 – Success! I finally managed to get postage/customs labels printed for the international shipment that’s been sitting here in the queue since Monday. I did it by installing the Opera browser. From now on, I’ll use Opera only for printing USPS postage labels.
Also, as it turns out, I was wrong about not being able to use PayPal Shipping to produce postage/customs labels for Priority Mail International. It didn’t offer me that option yesterday because I was shipping to US addresses. When I ship to an international address, it gives me the choice of Priority Mail International or Priority Mail Express International. Duh.
So at this point I’m comfortable using only USPS. One way or another, I can get postage labels printed, and that’s all that matters. I’m quite happy otherwise with USPS. It’s cheap, fast, and reliable.
Barbara has been quite patient, but she’s mentioned several times recently that she’d like me to get all the kit clutter cleaned up. Currently, I have kit stuff stacked up in my office and the stockroom upstairs, along with the library/living room, dining room, and kitchen. Until yesterday, there was also a lot of kit stuff in the den. In fact, only our bedroom/bathroom, the hall bathroom, and Barbara’s office are kit-free. The unfinished area downstairs, of course, has tons of kit stuff, although the finished area other than my lab is kit-free. So I told Barbara this morning that if she has time to help this weekend, I’d like to spend some serious time getting the clutter cleared away and organized. I’m sure she’s delighted.
The new neighbors, across the street and two houses down, moved in yesterday. They’re a married couple, Zakiah and Bernard. As is so often true of married couples, she is very friendly and outgoing while he is quieter and more reserved. Friendly, but not effusive. If I understood correctly, she is a mental-health counselor and he’s a substance-abuse counselor.
They have four children, ranging in age from 1 to 13. Barbara and I met the three older kids last night when we were walking Colin. The oldest is at a STEM magnet school. He wants (for now, anyway) to major in college in marine biology. Zakiah says that until recently he wanted to pursue robotics, but one way or another it sounds to me as though he’ll be a STEM major.
Glad to know about Opera. I do not want to install browsers willy-nilly, but will likely give Opera a try with my bank’s online operations, which are broken at present, with the latest Firefox upgrade.
Purdue U. for robotics. They just won the Rube Goldberg award . . . again.
He’s only 13. Some STEM kids settle early on their field, but most sample many fields before they decide.
Weird. I would not think that Opera would be any better then Chrome. FireFox has been a little … unstable … lately. I wonder if Internet Explorer would do well for you also but that would require a Windows PC.
We got my father in law back into the rehab / nursing home Tuesday. He has lost the ability to walk. He has lost the ability to get out of bed into a wheelchair. He is so weak that he cannot even turn over in bed. He has even lost about 50 lbs (he is about 250 lbs now) but all in his arms and legs so his torso still requires 48 inch pants. I suspect that he will never leave the nursing home now unless he needs more hospitalization. His mind is fine but he cannot do anything that requires strength.
My brother in law told that he is planning on retiring in two years from his Teamster job at UPS when he turns 60. However, looks like the Teamster pension fund and the PBGC are both going bankrupt this year. I am trying to decide if I should tell him about this.
http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/nation-world/nation/article/Millions-may-lose-pooled-pensions-5398367.php
looks like the Teamster pension fund and the PBGC are both going bankrupt this year
I have my own retirement funds that are fairly safe (I think). Of course that brown cretin in the white house may see red and decide that all private 401Ks are ripe for the picking to fund his social programs. After all those of us that have worked for a living should be gladly giving our money to those that did not work. Everyone should be equal including the lazy and uneducated as their being lazy and uneducated is not their fault.
decide that all private 401Ks are ripe for the picking to fund his social programs
That worked so well in Argentina and other places that it has been tried so, why not?
And BTW, Obummer will invest your 401K in a government tbill for you. And maybe your IRA also.
Harry Reid must be the dumbest fuck on the planet. Calls Bundy supporters domestic terrorists. Not a shot fired. Peaceful resistance just like MLK. The only injury was when the cops tasered his son. Oh wait, Bundy supporters are White.
http://www.infowars.com/harry-reid-calls-cliven-bundy-supporters-domestic-terrorists/
His constituents have sent him to Congress since the 1982 elections. Tell me about dumbfucks?
The Feds will do something to get back at the Bundy family, rest assured. And we note that even though it came out about Reid’s capers with the Red Chinese, nothing is being done about that, or even looked at, in the MSM; it’s gone down the infamous memory hole here in the United States of Amnesia, like Benghazi, and a host of other events.
Intelligent peeps here have stopped voting, so the ones that do, continue to elect and re-elect ass-hats, pirates, thieves, war criminals and parasites, evidently in the hope that they’ll get something out of it, free of charge, because, of course, paid for and/or created by working stiff dumbfucks. Just saw that other stat today about how close we are to actually having half the country support the other half. Totally.
This will not stand.
she is a mental-health counselor and he’s a substance-abuse counselor
Wow, what a combo! I’m not sure that the old “Mom said yes” game will work on these two.
Just saw that other stat today about how close we are to actually having half the country support the other half. Totally.
I thought we rolled over the halfway mark several years ago? And is this on a population or dollar basis?
Doesn’t matter, we are hosed. The government has its big toe stuck in every door out there. And we are totally addicted to it. My father in law is going to get his rehab care totally paid for by the VA (he is a 100% disabled vet) and Medicare (supposedly for at least 90 days). I have no idea what the cost is but I know that it is not cheap.
Food stamps, electricity subsidies, housing subsidies, heating fuel subsidies, etc, etc, etc. Medicaid is a huge expense for both the feddies and the staties. Free health care insurance now. Who knows how all these government programs will morph themselves over time and grow, grow, grow.
Boy, someone took a leak in the Peoples Republic of Portland and they’re going to ditch 140 ML of water. Don’t birds fly over that storage and animals get in there and swim in it?
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-18/portland-ditches-140-million-litres-of-water-urination-scare/5399054
“…Barbara’s office [is] kit-free.”
Sounds like you’ve been wasting perfectly good storage space for the last few years… 🙂
My father in law is going to get his rehab care totally paid for by the VA (he is a 100% disabled vet)
I have zero problems with that situation. He gave up a lot, I suspect he may be a WWII vet, to serve his country. His country now needs to support him. He earned it unlike the lazy uneducated asses that do nothing but sit on their butts and watch Oprah and bitch about life being unfair because they can’t get a job at a high pay rate where they do nothing.
I am a Viet Nam vet and I get a small disability payment each month from the government. I have no problems receiving that money because of the hell I went through for a country that did not appreciate the effort and that sleazy, vindictive, self-serving egotistical dumb ass from Texas that got us further into that mess.
So they’re ditching 140 million liters of water because they know about less than a liter of human urine in it. Whatever happened to the concept of the dose makes the poison? Or the idea of adding a little bit of chlorine to kill anything undesirable from the urine?
They have plenty of water there. Although I do think they should charge the kid’s parents for the water at the regular rate.
Yes, anything present in the urine is now in that treated water (or was, before they dumped it). So what? We’re talking levels of ppb to ppt for any given chemical. Even with the most sensitive instruments the difference would not be discernible.
It’s really just ignorance on the part of the water company customers. They don’t want to drink water that has urine in it. If only they realized what’s in the water anyway they might not be so picky.
Wasn’t it W. C. Fields who refused to drink water because “fish fuck in it”?
Dumping the water is basically free, retreating the water will cost the taxpayers thousands. Dumb.
My father in law is a Korean war and later vet. He was an x-ray tech and posted in Japan in Camp Zama, where my wife was born. They had several quad and paraplegic guys in there from the Korean action. He was the only x-ray tech and managed to break his back while moving these guys from their gurneys to the x-ray table by himself. He took medical retirement in 1970 from the Army and has held several jobs since then.
As with most state-run/human endeavors, I bet a lot of the vets that really need and deserve decent care don’t get it and a bunch of skaters and REMFs do get it. The VA Med Center up here has treated me like royalty when I’ve been there so no complaints on that score; as for disability payments, it would take more years at their current rate for them to evaluate/re-evaluate my status and it ain’t worth the hassle to me. Mrs. OFD keeps giving me anecdotal stories about other vets who finally get all their money retroactive and so on, but the piddling amount I’d get ain’t worth it to me, not after seeing guys coming back with limbs missing, burns, and severe mental distress. I was treated for PTSD and accompanying decades of substance abuse and have come out of it OK, and if anything, am willing to help other vets insofar as I can, with whatever, but I won’t spend untold hours with paperwork to beg for a few more dollars a month from a country that couldn’t give a shit anyway for us. The VA has its hands full right now just attempting to care for the people coming back from the Sandbox and The Suck; they’re hoping us remaining Korean and Indochina war vets die off, the sooner the better. As it is they’re not gonna be able to sustain the expense.
In a healthy person, urine is sterile, although high in urea content. Nevertheless, topical urea is one of the best moisturizers for the skin. So what is the big deal?
A former prime minister of India used to drink his own pee every day. As Chuck, in a healthy person it’s sterile (after the first few seconds).