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Month: June 2015

Thursday, 11 June 2015

08:36 – In a sign of the times, North Carolina education authorities are considering what to do about thousands of children who’ve flunked out of third grade. State law requires 3rd grade students to pass a reading test. Those who don’t are held back and undergo a summer reading course, after which they’re retested. But only about 100 of the 500 or so students in the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County schools who went through that course were then able to pass the test, leaving things up in the air for the 80% or so who failed the test twice. State law makes no provision for what happens next.

They can’t very well dumb-down the test any further. It already defines a third-grade reading level at what most reasonable people would consider to be a Pre-K level, “See Jack run” and so on. Of course, most of the problem pupils are ESL kids, who are illiterate not only in English but usually also in their native language, which is mostly Spanish. The obvious answer would be to export them and their families back to Mexico, but there’s not much chance of that happening.

As I sit here at my desk preparing to write huge checks for state and federal estimated taxes, I wonder how the hell it became my responsibility to pay for futile attempts to educate the ineducable children of Mexican peasants. I really have had enough, and I’m by no means alone. It’s long past time to roll things back to where they used to and should still be.

09:41 – Ooops. I just realized that my last post is what progressives would probably call a “microagression”. Or maybe a “macroagression”. I’d like to macroaggress those sons of bitches with a 12-gauge. Buckshot rounds aren’t cheap, but I wouldn’t begrudge the cost of 1,000 rounds or so. Hell, tar, feathers, and rails are cheaper still. (Note to censors: this isn’t true threat speech. I’m not saying I’ll do it, nor am I encouraging others to act. I’m merely saying that I’d like to. I wouldn’t actually do it unless I could get away with it, so this is merely free polemic speech protected by the shreds of the First Amendment.)

If you’ve ever tried to transfer bulk food like rice, flour, sugar, beans, etc. into clean 2-liter bottles, you probably already know how difficult it is to find a wide-stem funnel that fits inside the mouth of 2-liter bottles. There’s actually a company that makes such funnels specifically for filling 2-liter bottles, but their prices are outrageous. A few years ago, Barbara found the solution. It’s called The Pampered Chef Flexible Funnels. They come in a set of two nesting funnels. The small one is just a typical funnel. The larger is a wide-stem funnel that is a slip fit for the inside of the mouth of a 2-liter bottle.

Speaking of outrageous prices, though, you’ll have to check around to avoid being ripped off. Amazon has them, but for $22.19/set. I’ve seen them new on eBay for as little as $5/set. Barbara just bought two more sets as a gift for me, and thinks she paid about $8/set. They’re silicone, so they’re very flexible and nearly indestructible. This or a similar funnel is essential for filling 2-liter bottles without wasting effort or spilling food all over the place.

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Wednesday, 10 June 2015

07:33 – If you don’t already have them, you can freely download Matt Bracken’s Enemies Trilogy for Kindle today through Friday. Or you can do as I prefer to do. Download the first one as a free sample. If you like it, wait until the free offer expires and pay for the others. (H/T to OFD)

The latest in the Greek farce is that Greece and the Troika may come to an agreement that allows Greece to pretend a bit longer not to be bankrupt and in default. This agreement, if it comes to pass, won’t help Greece a bit, but of course that’s not the intention. By lending Greece enough to make payments on its existing debts for a while longer, the “institutions” can continue to carry that debt on their balance sheets as good debt rather than writing it off. That provides a political fig leaf to allow Merkel and the rest to pretend to their voters that all is well. All is anything but well.

More work on science kit stuff today.

11:03 – I’ve been doing purchase orders this morning for the stuff we’re running short of, especially stuff that is often backordered. Things like slide sets, thick cavity slides, and so on. I’m trying to keep parts inventory down as much as possible to minimize the amount of stuff we’ll need to move to West Jefferson. The only item I ordered multiple cases of was splash goggles. I ordered three cases of those because they only come 100 to a case. With what we already have on hand, 300 more should be enough to get us through the autumn rush.

Goggles are another of the items that do double duty as prepping items. I’m always surprised by how few preppers keep goggles on hand for everyone. Their use for shooting is obvious. Anyone who’s done a lot of shooting with autoloaders (let alone automatic weapons) has probably been hit in the face by an ejected case at least once. Guns that eject upwards are notorious for this, but even those that eject to the side occasionally throw an empty in your face. I even talked to a guy once who’d taken one in the face from a bottom-ejector. Then there’s always the possibility of a blown primer or split case blowing hot gas and particulates in your face. That’s why I always wear goggles rather than just shooting glasses. Goggles are also essential if it’s very cold outside or if you’re dealing with smoke and particulates from a fire or other event.

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Tuesday, 9 June 2015

07:50 – Sporadic rain with thunder from yesterday evening through the small hours this morning. During the loudest thunder at around 0300, Colin bravely jumped up on the bed and forced his way up near the head, where he curled up into a small dogball to protect Barbara and me. We ended up getting 0.62 inch total, which was badly needed.

The Greek farce continues, with all of the news outlets speculating about whether or not Greece will default and leave the euro. The reality of course, is that Greece will default. Greece has done nothing but default for most of the last 150 years. Most recently, in 2012, Greece committed the largest sovereign default in history. Greece has been bankrupt ever since it joined the euro, and is now is the position of begging additional loans to make the payments on the loans that it already has. It’s on the hook now for hundreds of billions of euros in “loans”, 60% of which are held by the IMF, EU, and ECB, AKA the taxpayers. Basically, Greeks have for decades been living far above their means, depending on other to subsidize their lifestyle. Others are no longer willing to do that, and this is all ending badly, as was predictable and predicted. Europhiles are trying to kick the can a bit farther down the road, but they’ve run out of options.

Neither the Germans nor anyone else cares about the Greeks. That ship sailed long ago. Now it’s just a question of how to get out of this mess as cleanly as possible, and the hell with the Greeks. The Greeks, meanwhile, are perfectly aware that their economy long ago flat-lined, and are determined to continue forcing the rest of the EU to subsidize their lifestyle by threatening to blow up the eurozone if the welfare payments don’t continue. Tsipras isn’t bluffing, and neither are the Troika. There’s no way this can end well.

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Monday, 8 June 2015

07:54 – I’m getting very tired of this Bruce Jenner thing. Why should anyone care, let alone waste newsprint or electrons talking about it? The morning paper had a big article with a 20-point headline to tell readers that whoever created his new hairstyle is a former Charlotte resident. Geez.

As a scientist, I understand that there’s no ambiguity about a person’s sex. If you have one X and one Y chromosome, you’re male; if you have two X chromosomes, you’re female; if you have some other combination, such as XYY, you’re a monster, in the literal rather than the pejorative sense of that word. I don’t care if Jenner cuts off his genitals and self-identifies as a kumquat. He’s a male person, period. A pretty strange male person, but a male person nonetheless. DNA defines it.

As a male person, Jenner should have all of the rights of any other person, male or female, but he should be granted no special consideration just because he believes he’s a female kumquat. The guy is clearly mentally ill and it’s appropriate to pity him, but that’s as far as it goes.

10:15 – I’ve read literally scores of non-fiction prepping books, but one prepping item I’ve never seen mentioned is useful bacteria. We store shelf-stable containers of many useful microorganisms, but as far as I’m concerned the top two (other than yeast) are Rhizobia, a soil bacteria that helps legumes fix nitrogen, and ABE bacteria, which ferment starches to a 3:6:1 mixture of acetone, n-butanol, and ethanol.

Both types can be prepared for long-term storage either by lyophilizing (freeze-drying) them or by preparing a dilute mixed suspension of the bacteria in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS), where the bacteria remain in stasis (suspended animation) until conditions are again favorable for growth. You can reactivate them simply by adding a small amount of the culture to a suitable growth medium, such as dilute chicken or beef broth with some table sugar dissolved in it.

You want the Rhizobia to use as an inoculant when you plant legumes, such as beans. The inoculant hugely increases yields, typically doubling them but sometimes by an order of magnitude. The ABE bacteria allows you to ferment starches to provide liquid fuel. Yes, you can use ordinary yeast to ferment ethanol, but pure ethanol is problematic as a gasoline replacement, not least because it sucks moisture from the air. What you really want is the 6 parts of n-butanol, which can be separated by fractional distillation and is a drop-in replacement for gasoline. Any engine that can burn gasoline can without modification burn n-butanol. And I can think of a lot of long-term emergency situations where I’d be happy to trade 10 or 15 pounds of turnips for a gallon of gas.

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Sunday, 7 June 2015

09:24 – I got email from Jen overnight. She and her husband had been talking about the idea of converting some of their paper assets to hard assets. She and her husband decided to kill a whole flock of birds with one stone. Her husband is a veterinarian who has a mixed small- and large-animal practice. Until now, he’s been reordering supplies the first of every month, keeping only a small month-to-month reserve. As of the first of June, he started boosting his inventory levels, particularly of items that are also suitable for human use in an emergency. For items that don’t expire or have very long expiration dates, like bandages, he’ll shoot for a one-year stock initially, and then continue reordering monthly to cover current usage. For drugs, he’ll adjust stocking levels according to their expiration dates because it would be unethical to use expired drugs in his practice, even if they’d been kept frozen. But it’s perfectly ethical to use drugs that are near their expiration dates, which will allow him to keep a greatly increased inventory of antibiotics and other drugs that are equally suited to human use in an emergency. If he misjudges and ends up with drugs that have expired, he’ll simply continue to store them frozen as emergency supplies. I told Jen that sounded like an excellent plan to me. In any long-term emergency, antibiotics and other essential drugs will be better than gold. And a veterinarian will be the next best thing to an MD. Humans are, after all, large animals.


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Saturday, 6 June 2015

07:24 – Happy birthday to me. I turn 3E today. Only two more years until I hit the Big Four-Oh.

Barbara has some yard stuff to do this weekend and we have the usual weekend chores, but we’ll spend most of the weekend on kit stuff and prepping.

16:08 – I didn’t mention it for obvious reasons, but our prepping work today included a trip up to West Jefferson. We left at 0821 and got back around 1510. The net mileage on Barbara’s trip odometer was about 240. That 85 miles up, 85 miles back, and about 70 miles of driving around looking at different areas. Driving time is about 100 minutes each way.

Colin rode with us and was a very good dog the whole time. He did throw up, but only after we got up to West Jefferson and let him out of the car. He rode along with us the whole time we were looking at different areas. The upshot is that it looks like we won’t have any problem finding a place we like and can afford. We both love the area, and in more than three hours of driving around it looking at neighborhoods we didn’t spot a single underclass person.

Chicken farms aren’t going to be a problem. Ashe County used to produce something like 800 trillion chickens a year, but last year the total was down to almost nothing. Like most mountain towns, or indeed most towns anywhere, the economy is not great, but neither is it even remotely moribund. Barbara found out that she can even continue getting the Winston-Salem paper delivered to our door every morning. Internet service is better there than it is here. Fiber is everywhere. Home prices seem pretty reasonable. There are many areas where nice 3,000 SF homes sell for $500,000 and up, but that usually because their property has magnificent mountain views. There are many other areas where equally nice homes sell for $200,000 and under. Neither Barbara nor I are willing to pay extra for the views.

Before we started driving around, Sherman (the agent/broker) told us not to be surprised when people waved at us. Indeed, there was a lot of that. We were driving Barbara’s car, so it couldn’t have been that people were recognizing Sherman’s. They’re just naturally friendly up there.

Some of the roads in areas we visited weren’t immediately obvious as roads. I thought a couple of them were someone’s driveway. There are a lot of very nice homes up in the hills surrounding the town itself, and many of them are on narrow, twisting roads, some of which are gravel. I mentioned to Sherman that when we spoke with Amy, his colleague, she mentioned that getting in and out could sometimes be problem, and that I’d told her that we wouldn’t need to get in or out when the weather was bad. We’d just stay home and since we’d have at least a year’s supply of food and other stuff in the basement we wouldn’t have any need of leaving home unless we wanted to. He didn’t even blink. I suspect he’s sold a lot of homes to preppers. He also said we’d fit in just fine. The culture in mountain towns is much more self-reliant.

After our first trip, I’d say that Barbara and I were about 95% sure we wanted to move to the West Jefferson area. I think today’s trip bumped that up to 100%. Now it’s just a question of getting it done.

And, to top off a good day, we got home early enough to process orders and get a couple of science kits ready to be picked up.

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Friday, 5 June 2015

07:24 – Note that what I said about Obamacare yesterday was what I think the Democrats fear will happen, not what I think is going to happen.

Most of my time this week was devoted to working on science kit stuff and the prepping book, but here’s what I did to prep this week:

  • I finished books 2 and 3 in Steven Bird’s The New Homefront series. The later books actually were worse than the first. The good guys are all more upstanding than Dudley Do-Right (and just as dim-witted; they tend to do things like forget to take their rifles when they’re headed into a fight) and the bad guys are all worse than Snidely Whiplash. The prose is painfully hackneyed and twisted. This guy simply can’t write. Don’t waste your time. If I didn’t read so fast, I wouldn’t have wasted mine. I do this crap so you won’t have to.
  • I ordered an Anker 14W dual-port portable solar panel, an Anker 10AH portable charger/external battery pack, and a SunJack USB Battery Charger. The latter is rather fragile, but it’s one of the few AA/AAA chargers that run from USB power. One alternative would have been a Goal Zero Guide 10, but that’s $50 and has some issues of its own, not least that it can’t charge batteries in pairs, let alone individually, so you need to charge four identical batteries with identical states of charge at a time. The Sunjack, despite its name and despite claims to the contrary on its website, is not recommended for charging with a solar panel as the source because varying output from the panel can cause problems. That’s not a big issue if you use an oversize panel, which the 14W Anker is. The Sunjack can charge one cell at a time and treats each one individually, so no worries about matching cell states for safe charging. The Sunjack has a 500ma charge rate for each cell, which means it will recharge a set of four typical AA/AAA cells in 5 hours or so of direct sunlight. In strong sunlight, the Anker panel produces enough power to drive two of the Sunjacks at a time. With two of them, I could recharge eight NiMH cells at a time, which should suffice for keeping our flashlights and lanterns, radios, and other emergency electronic gear powered. Rather than driving the USB charger directly, it’s also possible to use the Anker to charge a USB power pack or two, like the one I ordered, which can be charged during the day and then used to charge AA/AAA cells overnight. I’ll be trying the Anker solar panel with different things, like recharging some old, old NiMH cells to see what happens. I want to get a better idea of how this all works under real-world conditions.
  • Barbara and I repackaged 50 pounds of flour. Embarrassingly, I had only 10 clean, dry 2-liter bottles on hand, so we stuck the remainder in gallon ziplock bags until I have more 2-liter bottles ready. I have hundreds of the things. I just need to clean and dry them. I’ll worry about that after we get moved, because we’re not buying any more bulk staples while we’re still living in Winston-Salem. After the move will be soon enough to bulk up. I’ve resigned myself to making lots and lots of trips up to our new house, hauling stuff up on each trip. We’ll get movers to move the furniture and other bulky/heavy items, but there’ll be plenty we can move ourselves.

So, what precisely did you do to prepare this week? Tell me about it in the comments.

15:37 – I’d never heard of the Duggar family, but apparently it’s made up of two radical fundie parents who don’t believe in using birth control and their inevitable nearly two dozen offspring. I’m not sure how you turn that into a TV series, but apparently it is. Who the hell would watch it? So, it seems that one of those spawn is in trouble for admitting that when he was 14 or 15 a decade or more ago he felt up some of his younger sisters. Surprise, surprise. Boys that age are obsessed by sex. In a normal environment, he’d have felt up 14 or 15 year old girls whom he wasn’t related to, but I guess he did the best he could with what he had available. Two of the sisters have spoken out, saying it’s no big deal because he was, after all, just a teenage boy, but apparently the so-called media has turned this into a firestorm. Based on the family’s stated beliefs, it sounds like they should stone him to death. As well as the girls in question.

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Thursday, 4 June 2015

07:49 – Big article in the paper this morning about SCOTUS and the King v. Burwell decision. Those who support Obamacare argue that SCOTUS should rule based on the “intent of Congress” to establish subsidies in all 50 states, whether or not a state runs its own exchange. That’s ridiculous on the face of it, since no one in Congress HAD any intent. How could they, since the ACA is so large that no member of congress even had time to READ it before voting on it. The solution is easy. SCOTUS should rule that Congress needs to fix the law by changing the clear language in it that authorized subsidies for ACA buyers only in states that run their own exchanges. Congress, should it want to, can fix the wording in a few minutes. The issue, of course, is that a Republican congress won’t make that change, allowing Obamacare to go down in flames, as it should. The democrats are trembling. If SCOTUS doesn’t vote to override the clear wording of the law and extend subsidies to all 50 states, they’re screwed. And they fear that 2016 will bring a Republican president and republicans controlling both houses of congress, in which case a repeal of the ACA could slide through like a greased weasel.

Barbara and I were just discussing that all of the series we’ve been watching lately are the same. The final season of Sons of Anarchy was all about blood and guts and massacres. Vikings was all about blood and guts and massacres. Game of Thrones is all about blood and guts and massacres. And Boardwalk Empire is all about blood and guts and massacres. That gets old real fast. I propose a new series all about blood and guts and massacres, but this time with the victims all politicians and bureaucrats and spammers and phone marketers. That one I wouldn’t mind watching, particularly if the victims were real rather than actors and the blood and guts were also real. In the meantime, I’ll just watch Heartland reruns.

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Wednesday, 3 June 2015

09:01 – Colin worked like a dog yesterday to get the house cleaned up and build a new batch of chemistry kits. Just in time, too, because yesterday afternoon someone ordered the last chemistry kit we had in stock. When Barbara got home, she was pleased to see that Colin had cleaned all the science kit stuff out of the den and living room and gotten a good start on cleaning it out of the kitchen and tidying up the workroom. She gave Colin a hug, and he’s now a happy dog again. Oh, and Colin found that partial box of 96-well plates sitting on the kitchen table, so our inventory of those just jumped from the 400 that arrived this week to 427, less the ones that Colin used to make up kits yesterday.

Barbara is having dinner out with friends after work, so Colin and I are on our own. I’m planning to have a dinner made from all shelf-stable ingredients, AKA PB&J sandwiches. Colin is all in favor. He loves PB&J.

The can of Nestle Nido Fortificado dry whole milk arrived from Walmart yesterday, and I need to do some experimenting with it. Unlike most powdered milk, which is no-fat, this stuff is full-fat whole milk. The best-by date is 12 months out, but many people have told me that they’ve drunk this stuff from sealed cans that were stored at room temperature and were three, four, or five years past the best-by date and found it indistinguishable from fresh product. Frozen, this powder would certainly stay good for 30 years or more.

My Spanish isn’t good, but my Latin tells me that the product name translates as something like “Fortified Nest (or Beehive)”, so I assumed the product contains honey. That’s reinforced by a warning on the can that says the product should not be consumed by infants one year or younger. But the ingredients label does not list honey, so I’m not sure what’s going on.

The 3.52 pound (1.6 kilo) can sells for $15.38 and reconstitutes to 3.3 gallons (12.5 liters) of “whole milk”, which I assume means 3.25% butterfat. On that basis, this can would reconstitute to about 5.4 gallons of the 2% milk that Barbara drinks, at a price of about $2.68/gallon. Of course, diluted that way, it’d be lower on milk solids than store-bought 2% milk, but that’d be easy to address by adding a couple quarts worth of non-fat dry milk powder. As I said, some experimenting is needed.

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Tuesday, 2 June 2015

08:51 – The morning paper says that Blue Cross/Blue Shield has requested a rate increase of up to 26.7% for North Carolina. The fundamental problem, which no one ever talks about, is that insurers are being forced to cover people who shouldn’t qualify for any coverage at all, let alone subsidized coverage. Let’s hope that by some miracle SCOTUS actually rules according to the law rather than from political expediency and puts a stake through the heart of Obamacare. People are entitled to the best medical care they can afford without subsidies, and no more. If they can afford nothing, nothing is what they should get. And they most certainly should not have access to emergency room care.

Barbara is displeased with Colin because he’s being pretty blatant about being my dog. Last night, he refused to go out with her on his final walk of the day while I was in the kitchen cleaning up the evening’s dishes. So I took him and he went for his normal walk. I think the issue is that there’s been thunder around pretty constantly, and he can hear it even when we can’t. He’s terrified of thunder, and when he’s frightened he comes to me for protection. I told Barbara not to let it hurt her feelings. He goes to me for protection for the same reason he runs when I sneeze but ignores Barbara sneezing. He considers me the big, ferocious alpha male. It’s just a dog thing, but Barbara thinks he doesn’t trust her. Actually, he doesn’t fully trust anyone. He’s been timid ever since we first met him at 6 weeks old.

My parents brought home our first Border Collie in 1958, when I was 5 years old. We’ve had them ever since, often two or three at a time, and Colin is the first one who’s been “my” dog. The earlier ones were all my mom’s dogs, and Duncan and Malcolm were Barbara’s dogs. Oh, Colin likes Barbara well enough. He cuddles up next to her on the sofa and curls up next to her when she goes back to bed in the evening. The only thing that makes him “my” dog is that he comes to me for protection when he’s frightened. And Border Collies all have very strange personalities anyway.

More kit stuff today. My shipment of 96-well plates arrived yesterday, so I can finally finish building a bunch of kits.

12:16 – I’ve not been having much luck with UPS and FedEx lately. First, UPS bashed up a box of 1,500 bottles so badly that 413 of them were lost. They just ran a strip of packing tape over a small part of the main seam and delivered the box anyway. My bottle supplier has shipped replacements. Then I put in an order with walmart.com for 17 assorted 28-ounce cans of Bush’s Best Baked Beans, a bag of Krustez pancake mix, and a test bottle of Bertolli’s Mushroom Alfredo Sauce. The first time Walmart shipped that, FedEx damaged the box so badly that they didn’t bother to deliver it here, which is saying something. They just sent the remnants back to Walmart, which reshipped the order. That arrived today, with the 17 cans of Bush’s Best Baked Beans (12 of them with minor dents) and the bag of Krusteaz pancake mix. No bottle of Mushroom Alfredo sauce. So I just emailed Walmart to let them know. Presumably they’ll fix the problem, but the real problem is their shipping department. This shipment came in a large box with all of the items floating around loose. They’d put in some crumpled craft paper, but only about 2 sheets of newspaper worth. It needed 10 or 20 times that much to keep the canned goods secure. What they really should do is use packing popcorn or foam fill, but I guess they think all the hassles with returns cost them less than the few cents it’d cost to use the popcorn.

12:51 – Oops. The bottle of Bertolli’s Mushroom Alfredo Sauce was indeed in the box. It was wrapped very thoroughly with craft paper. Even at that, I’m surprised the glass jar survived the trip surrounded with heavy cans that were bouncing around. I found the jar as I was tearing down the box to put in recycling cart. I sent walmart an email to apologize for the false alarm and tell them they didn’t need to ship a replacement jar.

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