09:56 – Colin voted yesterday, although he won’t tell us who he voted for or how many times he voted. Either way, Democrats were crushed, as expected. I just hope the Republicans realize that most of the people who voted for them did so not because they like Republicans but because they hate them less than they hate Democrats. Not that it’ll make a bit of difference. As The Who said, “Meet the new boss, the same as the old boss.” I’m kind of looking forward to that day when we decide and the shotgun sings the song. And I’m still campaigning for an open season on politicians, to run from 1 January through 31 December each year, with no bag limit (on bucks or does). Taxidermists would have a field day. Can you imagine how many people would love to have politicians’ heads mounted over their fireplaces?
I got another email this morning from those morons at WalMart. This one says that my order has shipped and will arrive by “Mon., Dec 1”. Shipped how? By wagon train? Oh, yeah, and the item that they don’t have and have no idea when it’ll be back in stock? That one is scheduled to arrive next Monday. Morons.
11:54 – Barbara frequently tells me I’m not funny, to which I always respond, “Then why have women been laughing at me all my life?” Which is true. I’ve consciously cultivated that, because I realized even as far back as high school that women tend to be afraid of me because of my size and general demeanor. I am also very calm, speak quietly, and move very quietly, all of which for some reason scare a lot of women.
She’ll deny it, but Barbara also thinks I’m funny. Sometimes she laughs out loud at one of my comments. This morning, for example, I was making coffee. That’s unusual for me. Barbara doesn’t drink coffee–although she’s usually the one who makes it–and I drink very little. But I was doing research for the prepping book (how much coffee can you brew from a pound?) and I couldn’t find the coffee grinder. So I called her at work to ask where it was. (Just as she answered the call, I found it next to the coffee filters, of all places.)
So Barbara was telling me where the measuring spoons are and how much to use per pot. I told her that I was going to weigh the coffee, and she started to laugh. What’s so funny about weighing coffee beans on an analytical balance, anyway? (For this test run, I ended up using 50,013 milligrams of coffee beans and 1.226 liters of water, for a ratio of about 40,794 mg/L, not counting the water absorbed and retained by the grounds.) From the research I did, the “normal” ratio is 55 to 60 g/L, but I’m working my way down to see how little coffee I can use and still have the brew taste like reasonable coffee. My guess is that it’ll be somewhere in the 20 to 25 g/L range. If so, that’ll be around 20 to 25 liters per pound, call it 16 to 20 10-cup pots per pound.
Can you imagine how many people would love to have politicians’ heads mounted over their fireplaces?
Zero would be the first number that comes to mind. Why would I want a loser, cheat, liar and all around disgusting person hanging on my wall? Getting up in the morning, walking into the living room and finding the Mooch staring at you would wilt any erection.
Some highlights from the various Ballot Measures up for a vote yesterday:
Marijuana is now also legal in Alaska and Oregon.
Neither Colorado nor North Dakota were successful in recognizing fetuses as people and asserting that life begins at conception.
Alaska, Arkansas, Illinois, Nebraska, and South Dakota increased the minimum wage.
Alabama and Missouri strengthened gun rights.
California passed a $7.12 billion bond for their water system.
In California most nonviolent crimes are now misdemeanors instead of felonies.
Hawaii and Louisiana were not able to remove or increase mandatory retirement ages for judges.
Missouri increased protection of electronic data from unreasonable searches and seizure.
Well, I’d want two, but only because we have only two fireplaces. And I wouldn’t want a national politician. I’d rather have state or local ones so that I could proudly announce that I bagged him/her/it myself.
Well, looks like the hangman is going to be busy today. Plenty of heads for the taxidermists to work on.
Oh, wait! My wife’s campaign reform never went through….
On second thought, why bother with the taxidermist.
The Royal Palace in Mordor has this nice new fence with spikes on it. Why not revive a really old tradition on what to do with the losing side’s excess heads…
“We’re Going to Make Them Squeal!”
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/11/joni-ernst-victory-speech-its-a-long-way-from-red-oak-to-washington-were-going-to-make-them-squeal-video/
I like this Lady! And she started her campaign with a video about castrating pigs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9Y24MFOfFU
My guess is that it’ll be somewhere in the 20 to 25 g/L range.
That makes ME laugh, Dr. Bob. Weak ass coffee. The Barackalypse is going to really suck if I have that to drink that.
I found my 1987 New York State handgun permit while digging out my voter registration card. Even back then, it was tough getting one. I had to get a signature from an O6 or above to be approved, prints, background check, etc. Just so I could drive to the range and practice.
Important political update in Nevada. All future ballots must now be in English, Spanish and Tagalog. That is all.
English? Why the hell do they need English?
Weak-ass coffee? I guess I’m a wimp. I’ve drunk less than half of the pot and the caffeine is making me shaky already. “Just half a pot? Don’t you like my coffee?”
“We’re Going to Make Them Squeal!”
So she’s planning to castrate all the Democrats? Not that that’d be much of a job. Most of them are already castrated, or act as though they were.
MrAtoz beat me to it… Nespresso, which is certainly set up to make the most of as little coffee as possible (but is very good stuff), uses 5-6 grams per cup. So your 200 cups would require a bit more than a kilogram of coffee. The thing is: you drink it by the cup, not by the pot.
The steriotypical American version of coffee looks like it saw a coffee bean from a nice, safe distance. My mother, totally American, but liked her coffee decently strong, used to carry around instant coffee packets. Whenever she ordered a cup of coffee in a restaurant, she would “pep it up” with a packet…
Well, I used 50 grams = 5 g/cup this morning, and it’s far too strong for me. I mean, it tastes fine, but I’m sitting here shaking from the caffeine.
I don’t remember ever drinking a cup (= 6 oz.) of anything. I drink from an insulated cup that holds about a liter, and I generally fill it with whatever I’m drinking.
Buncha dam haters and comedians.
Vermont will once again send its governor election chit to the Snake House, i.e., the Legislature, down in Montpeculiar. I was watching the results by precinct last night on the Secretary of State’s slick web site, and it was updated continuously. The challenger was ahead during the first third of precincts reporting but the Dem incumbent pulled slightly ahead to the end, always within a coupla thousand votes. So now the heavily Dem Snake House will decide, natch. I note that the Repub challenger was killing the incumbent here in Saint Albans/Franklin County, though. Good to know.
Also told Fairpoint drone (scab employee, haha) last night that if they don’t have the internet back up here by 5 PM today, we’re dropping them and finding another ISP, which is a joke, ’cause neither ComCast or DISH serve this particular ‘hood for some reason and that leaves the one local ISP, GlobalNet, which, after I submitted a query to them about their fastest service, have yet to reply or call. And the place I tried to order more firewood from has yet to return a call. And the Dallas recruiter who’s apparently set me up with a job interview on the 17th has yet to send me a description of said job or where it is, other than that it’s an “AT&T/IBM role”, despite two requests. It occurred to me, however, that screw the description; they’ve meant nothing to me so far over the years anyway; the jobs have always been *substantially* different from what was posted.
Pahtly sunny but *very* windy here since last night; crappy wireless access and ditto radio reception.
Coffee is never too strong for me. That said, the ratio of coffee to water seems to be highly nonlinear: too little and the brew comes out weak; too much never seems to cause any harm. With the typical drip coffee maker, filling the basket with coffee grounds and using about three quarters of the capacity of water seems to be just about perfect.
Caffeine doesn’t bother me nearly as much as setting my hair on fire 🙂
No, they’re shipping it by US Postal Service. Wagon train would be faster.
Well, as I’ve said, I find USPS to be fast and reliable. Priority Mail to cities with 100,000 or more population on the West Coast generally takes only two days, and quite often a kit I mail on Saturday arrives in LA, Seattle, or wherever on Monday.
Well, despite the dumbocrats best efforts, The Great State of Texas is still a deep red state. No hint of purple whatsoever.
Well, that is funny. Firefox wants me to correct dumbocrats to Democrats.
BTW, Amazon’s website is by and far the best retail website out there. Really amazingly very good with excellent speed. And the user community is excellent with very little self promotion that I have seen.
Talked to another Fairpoint scab (haha, temp worker, while they’re in their third week of the strike and neither side budging an inch) a couple of hours ago. He had a long-winded explanation of how short-handed they are and backlogged with orders and mumbled something about the “12th” and a month of free service and was apologetic all over again about the crummy service thus far and our loss of internet for over three weeks now after simply trying to change from residential to business. We shall see. No reply back from the local ISP guys yet but if they can do bettuh, then I’d be dumping Fairpoint.
We can sorta manage on the town’s intermittent and slow-ass wireless for now, I guess.
I asked twice for a description of the job the Dallas recruiter has set me for an interview with on the 17th down in Burlap and I got this today:
“Hi Dave yes your confirmed I am waiting on the conference bride line and details to send you.”
So now I don’t know if I’m going to a job interview or a wedding.
In local political nooz, our gov race was tight all last night, within 2,000 votes throughout so once again it’s going to the Snake House, i.e., Legislature down in Montpeculiar, which is controlled by the Dumbocrats, of course. However, the slick web site the Secretary of State’s office here had set up showed the breakdowns by counties, precincts, etc, in real time, continuously updated, and with an option to bust it out to an Excel spreadsheet. This county and this town went heavily for the Republicrat challenger, which is good to know. This county also has a large firearms manufacturer and importer and a good half-dozen above-ground gun shops.
So back on crummy local wireless for the foreseeable few-chah until one of these two possible ISPs can get us back up; looks like neither ComCast nor DISH serve this particular ‘hood, but Ima gon check wid our neighbors this week about what they got. Somebody has the ComCast Xfinity wireless thing going at their place…
but Ima gon check wid our neighbors this week
Maybe one of your neighbors can share a GUEST network for a while, Mr. OFD. I’d share mine with you, but don’t think it will reach. 🙂
Looks like the nearby neighbors are doing the right thang and have security-enabled WAPs going, with passwords, etc. Though Princess was on somebody’s with her iPad the last couple of times she was here; it’s a funny spot; different places in the house and yard work and others not worth a damn.
We’ll play it by ear for now with Fairpoint and the local ISP guys and I’ll also find out whether ComCast can in fact serve this ‘hood. We don’t care about the tee-vee, just the net and landline. And we want it fast and always on. Probably a joke in this neck of the woods.
Refurbished HP laptop came today, no o.s. on it, 120GB hard drive wiped and 4GB of RAM. I threw Windows 7 on it for now so I can do the Crucial/Kingston memory scan thang and I’ll probably double that and am thinking of swapping the drive out for a SSD about the same size or maybe larger. I’ll be installing AbsoluteFreeBSD on it from scratch and setting it up to do network flow analysis with the growing Cisco network here.
Remainder of week is gonna be mostly yard and porch work and getting prepped for wintuh here; it’s been a mild autumn thus fah. I need to build three or four more firewood racks and get another two or three cords here.
Thanks for the net-guest offer, MrAtoz; you’d best be tuning up the Blackhawk or Apache and fitting it out for pending operations….lemme know if you can use an old door gunner…
“Well, that is funny. Firefox wants me to correct dumbocrats to Democrats.”
It would be funnier if it were the other way around.
Hey OFD, what about a DSL line from your local telephone monopoly? I have an AT&T U-verse DSL line (18 Mbps down) at home and works fine. I have two AT&T DSL lines here at the office (12 Mbps down each) merged together using a Peplink 30 and that works fine also. Especially with some of my bandwidth hogs here in the office.
Could be worse OFD. TWC only wants $20K+ to give this guy service
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/11/one-mans-failed-quest-to-buy-wired-internet-from-twc-or-verizon/
“One Time Warner Cable representative told Walser, “It’s your decision. You’re the one who wanted to live in the country.”
“And he’s right, I did choose to live in the country,” Walser said. “But he also eats food. Farmers need to have the same ability to communicate and use it for their businesses as he does.”
Agreed with Mr. Walser; Time-Warner Cable is full of chit. They rake it in by the boxcar load; they can spring for connections to these people.
I agree with what Mr. Chuck said a while back; it’s gotten to the point in this country where a corporation isn’t just content to make a decent profit anymore; they have to gouge the fuck out of us, for every thin pfennig and make gigantic profits, even if they kill the goose laying them golden eggs. So they ship Murkan jobs overseas and then if you can believe it, they’re still whining that they can’t find competent and qualified Murkans to do all sorts of jobs, which is more utter bullshit. To top it off, they still screw H1B drones who come over here to work; some of these guys find out too late and when they complain they’re dumped over the side, of course.
Yes, it’s now at the point where if corporations could re-animate corpses and really get that zombie thing to work, they’d snap them up in a heartbeat. For now they’ll accept serfs and slaves, though.
“Hey OFD, what about a DSL line from your local telephone monopoly?”
I have no ideer; thanks for the tip; I’ll contact them and see if they can do sumthin. We have Fairpoint for net and landline but Verizon for our cell phones. No ideer if AT&T could be available, either; will have to check around now…
What don’t like our speed, our price or our caps? In the barrel bud.
http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/01/think-your-internet-blows-try-300-for-3mbps-dsl-and-a-data-cap/
Too bad for us that the VT telco mentioned in that article, VTel, only operates around the Springfield area, fah to our southeast.
“The gigabit fiber is limited to VTel’s telephone service area, about 18,000 homes and businesses, Guité said. VTel obtains capacity from Cogent Communications in Boston and New York, as well as Hurricane Electric in New York. So far, VTel is using less than 24Gbps, but usage is rising rapidly, and the company has plenty of capacity to handle that growth.”
And kind of interesting mention of Hurricane Electric, which sponsors online training and testing for IPv6 networking.
https://ipv6.he.net/certification/
So, this will be a sorta interesting exercise here; who will end up with our monthly nut for internet service? Remember, we want it fast and always on, which was the promise of moving to Fairpoint’s business plan, natch, just about exactly when their workforce went on strike. OFD times it beautifully, don’t he?
I was just over at Drudge and saw all the chortling ecstatic headlines about the total Repub blitz and takeover of the ENTIRE solar system!
What a joke. As any cretin would know, it don’t mattuh a whit who we elect; the Leviathan bureaucracy grinds on, inexorably, doing its evil chit here and around the world. In any case, as someone else here posted earlier, the Repub losers will get in and not change a thing that the Obummer bastards have done; they’ll simply add on and expand it.
In other nooz, researchers may have found a beluga whale in Lake Champlain; they’re analyzing sounds they have on tape, etc. It’s theoretically possible, but not probable, as belugas are saltwater critters and they’d have to negotiate canal locks, but again, not impossible. Others are saying, naw, y’all probably got a sturgeon, but they’re entirely different animals. Sturgeons look like they can rip ya a new one if ya ain’t careful and they’re pretty big. Belugas are cute. They look like miniature Moby Dicks and play nice with kidz.
So then the question becomes, if belugas, then why not Champ? And by the way, the Champ critter could not be mistaken for a beluga or sturgeon; a big clump of driftwood maybe but not them. I maintain, while not being a scientist, that if Champ does exist, and something sure exists in there after centuries of sightings, it’s probably some sort of plesiosaur survivor and has managed to reproduce along this latitude of the north Atlantic. But again, why no carcasses found? Or better pics? By now.
Just watched the first 40 minutes of “Children of Men” again; recommended, based on the novel by P.D. James.
Striking image: signs all over the media: “Britain Soldiers On.” What a joke. It’s one of the few countries which *isn’t* soldiering on, and has allowed all sort of mayhem to take place and to be overrun by hadji scum. Not that its own youth are any day at the beach; they make the kids in “Lord of the Flies” seem like heavenly cherubs.
Two of the songs playing near the beginning: “Hush” by Deep Purple, and “In the Court of the Crimson King” by King Crimson. Plus some Stones. Will anyone be listening to that stuff in the few-chuh? Does anyone listen to it now?
Yahd and porch work tomorrow, spiced intermittently with ISP research and locating more firewood. And maybe find out what the job is that I’m interviewing for…for all I know it’s to be CEO of an AT&T/IBM merger.
I listen to King Crimson, both the classic stuff like “In the Court of the Crimson King” and some more recent releases.
I don’t drink coffee, never have, but I fix it for my wife. I weigh the beans before grinding because I don’t know an easier way to measure them. How much to use depends on the beans. With the decaf, or the previous batch of caffeinated, it was 62 grams. With the current caffeinated I am down to 45 grams with no complaints from the consumer. This really isn’t much less coffee by volume; for some reason these beans appear to be low density.
I didn’t drink coffee when I was listening to the King Crimson record in the spring of 1971. Me and the boyz drank Budweiser, while riding in my pal Mark’s convertible, skipping skool and on our way from Framingham, MA to Boston, MA on a beautiful brisk blue-sky day. While I was pounding down the suds, I was also tripping. So I remember the song pretty well as we cruised on into Beantown.
We spent most of the day on the shore rocks in Eastie just under the Logan Airport flight path for takeoffs and landings, and drank more Buds and smoked a few bones. Our bud Tommy was there, too; ironically, both Tommy and I later became cops; and even more ironically, me in a small town in ’77 and him later on in the 90s. In the same town, but long after I’d left it.
I see that certain members of King Crimson are touring again, too, and I had a vid of Bruford done recently but lost it when I stupidly formatted my external drive, along with a hundred or so other music vids.
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/king-crimson-will-reunite-for-three-new-york-city-shows-20140602
OK, almost 1 AM here now; gotta get some sleep; I was researching putting a 6.5 Grendel upper on a mil-spec AR15 lower and I know how I’m gonna do it.
times sure do change, i remember when your entire diet was coffee cocaa cola and salems. also rememeber coffee at alfreds pouring from the wrong thermos, was the best cup i ever had until you and al pointed out i was drinking hot water. it is all in the the head
Anyone figured out what is going on with Fred (fredoneverything.net)? Seems like emails from his entire reader-base are going to the world. I’m just deleting them, no need to contribute to the chaos, but he’s losing a lot of readers who don’t have the patience to just wait out whatever has gone wrong…
Brad, try here:
http://fredoneverything.net/HackingHorror.shtml
Yeah, Al Brower did that to me first, intentionally pouring me a cup of “coffee” that was actually hot water. I sat there talking to him and drinking it until he pointed out that it was just hot water. You showed up at Al’s house not long after, so we tried it on you, too.
As to the Salems, I started smoking them when I was 20 because that’s what my girlfriend, Martha Henderson, smoked. She finally dumped me after about the fourth time she called at the dorm for me and one of my dorm mates answered, “Oh, hi Karen.”
I’m one who unsubscribed after receiving over 200 emails during the email storm from fredoneverything. My email is accessed by three different devices: smartphone (smahtphone for OFD), tablet and desktop computer, so you could imagine the noise when the emails hit each inbox.
I’m not missing out on any columns though. You can go to his website and access all his columns from there. I simply wanted the noise to stop.
I thought I was signed up for Fred’s emails but haven’t gotten any in quite a while; one of my brothers mentioned the email blizzard the other day. I see it was “operator error,” after all, which is fairly normal and the guy took the rap for it.
BTW, Amazon’s website is by and far the best retail website out there.
See my previous comments here: http://www.ttgnet.com/journal/2013/12/31/tuesday-31-december-2013/#comment-29039
“I thought I was signed up for Fred’s emails but haven’t gotten any in quite a while; one of my brothers mentioned the email blizzard the other day. I see it was “operator error,” after all, which is fairly normal and the guy took the rap for it.”
Oh, it certainly wasn’t Fred’s fault, other than picking the wrong type of software for his mailing list. It allowed people to comment, and accidentally went out to every person on the mailing list. Then people were “replying all” to that and the storm picked up steam. I just wanted the noise to stop. I’ll still read his stuff, but only if and when I remember.
I’m trying to unsubscribe from every email list I joined. It’s not always trivial to do so.
I know it wasn’t Fred’s fault; it was the IT guy who screwed up the command line. But that guy fessed up and offered to take the rap, which is cool.
I’ll continue to read Fred, and I’m only mainly on IT-related lists, but I am reminded now that I should also winnow through those and clean it all up. I get several political emails daily but they often enough have interesting info that I’ll keep them, even though I’m now in a somewhat different right-wing maniac ballpark.
Taking the rap is all fine and good, but I still ended up deleting >200 emails x 3 devices! Saying sorry doesn’t help me at all.
“Yeah, Al Brower did that to me first, intentionally pouring me a cup of “coffee” that was actually hot water. I sat there talking to him and drinking it until he pointed out that it was just hot water.”
You didn’t look at what you were drinking? I always have at least a cursory look, don’t see how anyone could not do that. I’d at least want to check that there was milk in it.
I drink coffee black, and apparently hot water, too.
In a black cup you have to look really hard.