11:37 – I don’t generally read the tracking emails that USPS sends me. For each kit, I might get a dozen or more emails, one for each milestone along the way. I have a filter set up in Thunderbird that automatically moves them from the inbox to the USPS directory. I do generally read the ones for foreign shipments, just to keep on top of them. Here’s one from a kit I shipped to Canada last Friday. Everything except for the second line looks normal. (The ISC is the USPS international shipping center in Miami. Everything goes there before heading out of the country. Even if we lived in Detroit and shipped a kit to Windsor, ONT a few miles away, it’d go to Miami first.) As for the second tracking line, I’m prepared to believe that the kit made a stop in London, ONT, but not London, UK. The times are all local, so it’s (barely) possible that this kit actually did go through London, UK, but I’d be very surprised if it did.
——————————————————————————–
Shipment Activity Location Date & Time
——————————————————————————–
Departed Vancouver, CANADA December 16, 2015 8:23 pm
Departed London, UNITED KINGDOM December 16, 2015 5:47 pm
Departed Miami, UNITED STATES December 15, 2015 9:45 pm
Arrived Miami, UNITED STATES December 15, 2015 5:28 pm
Processed Through Sort Facility ISC MIAMI FL (USPS) December 14, 2015 4:07 pm
Arrived at Sort Facility ISC MIAMI FL (USPS) December 14, 2015 4:07 pm
Arrived at USPS Facility MIAMI, FL 33112 December 13, 2015 9:52 pm
Departed USPS Facility GREENSBORO, NC 27498 December 12, 2015 3:50 am
Arrived at USPS Facility GREENSBORO, NC 27498 December 11, 2015 9:39 pm
Departed Post Office SPARTA, NC 28675 December 11, 2015 4:31 pm
Picked Up SPARTA, NC 28675 December 11, 2015 3:20 pm
Pre-Shipment Info Sent to USPS December 10, 2015
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We’re busy today moving stuff around, putting up towel bars, and so on. A lot remains to be done, but things are starting to shape up. We need to get anything that’d be damaged by freezing out of the garage and into heated space. Conversely, we’ve got a lot of bulky stuff that’s not temperature-sensitive that needs to be transferred into the garage. Oddly, that category includes cases of lab thermometers, whose reason for being is to be temperature-sensitive, but they’re not damaged by temperatures within their measuring range and it’s unlikely that it will get lower than -40C or higher than +120C in our garage.
We’ve decided to leave my desk downstairs, at least until the Christmas stuff is taken down and repacked. I can check email and websites upstairs on my Kindle Fire, and that’s really all I need to do for now. When I need to do serious work, I can just come downstairs to do it. That’s better for Barbara and Colin as well, because they won’t have to tip-toe around while I’m trying to work. I may find somewhere upstairs to put the Brother 3070 Ethernet printer and a supply of paper and labels. I’ll keep the 5250DN USB printer downstairs on my desk.
We’re watching series one of Bosch on Amazon Prime streaming. It’s not as good as the books, but it’s pretty decent for a TV series. We’ve also got a lot of stuff in the on-deck circle. I was considering dropping Netflix streaming and signing up for Hulu commercial-free, but I think I’ll do all three for a while so that I can decide if we want to keep Netflix, Hulu, or both in addition to Amazon Prime.
I’m reading James Wesley, Rawles non-fiction prepping book. My main issues with it so far is that he’s drunk the Kool-Aid with regard to shelf lives of canned food and that he recommends the Big Berkey water filter. That device is defective by design. Suspect water goes in the top container and passes through the filters into the lower container, from which it’s drawn off and consumed. The problem is that the seals on those filters can (and have) leaked, allowing suspect water to contaminate the supposedly-pure water in the lower container. And it’s by no means always visually obvious that such contamination has occurred. I wouldn’t use a Berkey water filter on a bet. If you already own one, I’d strongly suggest selling it on eBay and buying a Sawyer PointZeroTwo, which is half the price of the Berkey and uses a hose from the source container to the destination container, making it obvious if suspect water is leaking into the destination container. The Sawyer also has immensely longer filter life than the Berkey, whose replacement filters are very expensive. One thing: if you buy the Sawyer, consider keeping it in its original package until you need it. The Sawyer filters aren’t affected by freezing until you run water through them. At that point, allowing the filter to freeze will destroy it.
Oddly, that category includes cases of lab thermometers, whose reason for being is to be temperature-sensitive, but they’re not damaged by temperatures within their measuring range and it’s unlikely that it will get lower than -40C or higher than +120C in our garage.
If it gets to 120 C in your garage, run! That means it is on fire.
We’re watching series one of Bosch on Amazon Prime streaming. It’s not as good as the books, but it’s pretty decent for a TV series.
Any frame dropping? If I remember correctly, you have high speed cable but being in the boonies, I wonder about the overall bandwidth.
I don’t like the Bosch books anywhere as much as the Lincoln Lawyer series. Harry Bosch is just too dark for me. Very good but very dark.
BA runs a 747 between Gatwick and Houston each day just for USPS packages and mail. It is rumored that the passengers are pure profit. I’ve been on it with less than 100 people. Me and another guy were sitting upstairs by ourselves.
“A cord cutter’s biggest challenge: The Internet”
http://blog.chron.com/techblog/2015/12/a-cord-cutters-biggest-challenge-the-internet/
I have been on DirecTV for almost 20 years now. I have two DVRs with no premium channels and the cost is $120/month. And they just got bought by AT&T which worries me. But, DirecTV is the best service out there.
My internet is AT&T Uverse DSL 25 /2 Mbps that I am paying $60/month for.
BTW, I had no idea that Speaker Paul Ryan considered himself to be Santa Claus:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/12/paul_ryan_s_first_deal_is_just_like_john_boehner_s_old_ones.html
Apparently, everything that the Democrats wanted is in there. Including $1.6 billion to build PRC (public residential complexes) for illegal aliens.
http://freebeacon.com/politics/congress-provides-1-6b-to-resettle-illegal-immigrants-arriving-at-border-through-2018/
Mr. Ryan appears to believe that this new spending bill will be passed by the Democrats and rejected by the Republican majority. Amazing.
This is why I think that the USA is on the road to dystopia. When the federal deficit hits $40 trillion or so, the financial system will fall down. I am very unsure of the repercussions of financial failure in the USA. I just know that some day, people will refuse to take green pieces of electronic paper for goods.
No frame dropping, and extremely low latency. We’re on fiber at 20 Mbps down, mainly because we don’t really need the next step up at 100 Mbps, let alone 1,000 Mbps. Internet service here is far better than TWC was providing in WS. It costs a bit more here, something like $75/month for Internet only, but I’m very pleased with it.
Do you have fiber to the new house? If so, wow! I would have never thought so given how far out of town that you are.
AT&T is converting my subdivision (Greatwood, about 4,000 homes) from copper to fiber. My HOA just got wind of the changes and is considering suing AT&T. I have no idea what the HOA idiots think that they can do to stop this but, they are being idiots. Fiber is so much better than copper. I have the highest speed AT&T DSL to my house which is 25 down / 2 up Mbps (very fast and very nice). I suspect that this is the fastest that DSL will ever run and, I am only 1/2 miles from the DSLAM.
I have two 12/1 DSL lines to the office that are merged using a peplink 30. AT&T has a major fiber line at the front edge of my property. I just got a quote from them to get a fiber T put in with a 10 / 10 mbps for $800/month. Or 10 mpbs burstable to 100 mbps for $1,000/month. I told them the max I was willing to pay was $300/month. They went away.
Thanks Ryan! We all thought Obola would destroy the country.
I sincerely hope and pray, actually, that no one here thought for a nanosecond that Ryan was going to do anything but fellate the Dems and be his usual worthless RINO self. That’s what Repubs do nowadays, put on kneepads and fellate the Dems. And once Cankles gets in, he’ll add rug-munching to his repertoire.
Back from vets group; mostly went OK, talked about a wide range of chit, including “gun control,” the hadji invasions, race relations, PTSD, the VA, the Holiday Season formerly known as Christmas, family stuff, and told rotten jokes better left out of mixed company, which we rarely see there anyway. Not a whole lot of actual fem combat vets around, or maybe they’re all avoiding us for some odd reason.
Overcast with steady drizzle, dark by 3:30 or so now, with some spectacular sunsets recently.
Started Season Two of “The Blacklist,” and having a mixed reaction so far; doesn’t seem quite as good as the first season, but I’ll keep slogging along, in between NFL games, and the To-Do List here.
New Orleans city council allows itself to be played by the SJWs: Lee Circle no more: New Orleans to remove 4 Confederate statues. My guess is that 99.9% of the members of the group supposedly offended by the statues couldn’t identify Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, or P. G. T. Beauregard if their lives depended on it.
Note that this empty, purely symbolic gesture will cost ~$175.000, money which the city can ill afford to spend.
Yeah, but it will end 150 years of hateful white racism and genocidal white supremacist violence which has racked the nay-shun since, and anyone who disagrees with that or laments the spending of this very minimal reparation money is a rayciss hisself.
O, if only Lee, Jackson, Forrest, et. al. were alive now, and armed with modern weapons for their armies, a hundred-thousand ARs with a hundred-million rounds of ammo. That would put a quick end to this malicious reverse-rayciss nonsense.
Gummint officials fellating SJWs, an epidemic nayshun-wide now.
Started Season Two of “The Blacklist,” and having a mixed reaction so far; doesn’t seem quite as good as the first season, but I’ll keep slogging along, in between NFL games, and the To-Do List here.
Yup, not as good as the first season. Neither is the third season when they are are the run together. Except when she … … … Russia … … … mother.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blacklist_%28TV_series%29
It would be nice if the Repuglicans could expel the RINOs. The RINOs all belong in the Demorat Party anyway, why not join the Santa Claus party?
My son sold an AK-74 the other day. Nice, nice, nice. Except it was chambered for a 7.62 x 51 mm (same as an AR-10).
If the South had been armed with Henry repeating rifles and Gatling guns, the war would have gone much differently. Instead, the North had them but could not get them manufactured in sufficient quantities to make a difference.
“It would be nice if the Repuglicans could expel the RINOs.”
Hard to do when that portion of that half of the War Party is in the majority and has been for decades, since I was a kid, in fact, when the Rockefeller cabal took over and sandbagged Goldwater.
“My son sold an AK-74 the other day. Nice, nice, nice.”
I’ll stick with AR15s for now but may get involved with building AR10 and AK-class stuff this next year.
“If the South had been armed with Henry repeating rifles and Gatling guns…”
And if Stonewall had lived. Jeb Stuart disappearing at Gettysburg was not much help, either. And if Booth or some people like him had also taken out Stanton and Seward. While letting sharpshooters have a go at Grant, Sherman and Sheridan.
A serious question:
Should I register my drones next week? Plead ignorance? Say I read the directive and it didn’t look like it applied to me? Wut does eye doo?
“Should I register my drones next week?”
I am not a lawyer and do not play one on tee-vee; nor am I aware of what sorta drones you got out there, but you just put it all over the global innernet that you got ’em. While also outlining a possible conspiracy here. I suggest you get some competent local advice ASAP accordingly. Best not to fool around; there was nooz recently about close-call incidents between drones and commercial and mil-spec aircraft.
I’ve been reading the faqs on faa.gov on drones. You have to reregister every 3 years for $5 (to pay a contractor to maintain the web site – probably super hackable like all gummint sites). One registration is supposed to cover all your drones. You put the number somewhere on it. You get a “certificate” emailed to you. Must show if armed FAA cops show up (can be electronic). Probably will get a mag emptied into you if you don’t have it or FAA cop “feared for his/her/it life.” I guess I will open carry when droning to return fire if approached by FAA cop. Probably a lot of fat, females of color that can’t do anything else but suck on the gummint teat.
I suggest you get some competent local advice ASAP accordingly
I suggest you fly the drone over a river and lose contact with the drone thus putting the drone in the river. Or at least announce that you have done so in this forum.
O, if only Lee, Jackson, Forrest, et. al. were alive now, and armed with modern weapons for their armies, a hundred-thousand ARs with a hundred-million rounds of ammo.:
The Guns of the South.
Drones want to be free!
Well Lynn, what did you expect from the Death Star?
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Now-Merged-ATT-and-DirecTV-Raise-TV-Rates-in-Perfect-Unison-135907
Well Lynn, what did you expect from the Death Star?
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Now-Merged-ATT-and-DirecTV-Raise-TV-Rates-in-Perfect-Unison-135907
I am not surprised. We have the Total Choice package which is all of the non-premium channels plus the SEC network, Houston Rockets, and Houston Astros. So my bill will be going up $4/month plus another 0.50 $/month for each of my two tvs.
And, I am adding a 3rd tv and genie slave in the game room which will be another $15/month. Plus a commitment of two years for the new genie slave hardware. So, my bill is going from $120/month to $140/month.
I wonder what Comcrap XXXXXX Comcast will do for me? They are already on my &$$% list.
@Lynn,
I’ve got a client in the Hockley area on ATT DSL. ATT claims he’s getting the fastest service they have in the area at 1.5-3 Mbps down, .5 up. He tests at 2.5 up and .4 down.
I’m looking at bonding options for him. I didn’t see the peplink last time I looked. Is it giving you the performance you thought it would?
nick
Added, unless I’m missing something, it looks like peplink needs a device at both ends and uses a vpn to bond and aggregate the traffic. That works for connecting to a branch office or telecommuting, but how does it help with general internet access?
Thanks for that link, Mr. medium wave; I’m not a big fan of “alternate” histories or sci-fi, for that matter, just a prickly old fart “hyper-literate” “elitist” of sorts. I just finished a mammoth bio of Stonewall; he was one very strange character but with a bit of experience, he was well on his way to decimating the Northern armies and possibly striking at Washington. Lee was catching up to his methods very quickly and signing on to them.
“Probably will get a mag emptied into you if you don’t have it or FAA cop “feared for his/her/it life.” I guess I will open carry when droning to return fire if approached by FAA cop…”
Wow, you credit them with a larger degree of accuracy with their little crunchentickers than I would. I assume they get as little training as most LEOs everywhere else in the country for the past century. Does Nevada allow OC? Hell, if they spot you OC’ing from a distance they just might call one of their own drones down on you with a Hellfire missile.
It’s funny; when I was getting my iPhone upgrade a few months ago, the kidz in the store were playing with a drone; then again a few weeks ago some other guys in a Radio Shack store. RC airplanes and choppers, looks like to me, although they hover nicely. Could be useful for security purposes when SHTF and also for spying on the nubile young college cuties in the three weeks of warm weather we have up here.
He tests at 2.5 up and .4 down.
I hope those are backwards. The Peplink 30 allows you to merge any three WAN devices together and designate them all online or standby. My two DSL lines are online and our wimax modem is standby. Incidentally, our backup wimax modem is being shutdown this month so I need an LTE modem.
http://www.amazon.com/Peplink-Balance-30-Multi-WAN-Router/dp/B0012L1QOA/
The peplink allows you to maximize WAN devices for the entire LAN. However, it does not merge the WAN devices together for a single task on a single LAN client. If the single LAN client has multiple WAN communications going on then the multiple WAN devices will be used until they are maxed out.
Added, unless I’m missing something, it looks like peplink needs a device at both ends and uses a vpn to bond and aggregate the traffic. That works for connecting to a branch office or telecommuting, but how does it help with general internet access?
The peplink is only needed at your end for general internet access. We’ve only got one of the peplinks.
Trying to move the office from 1.5Mbs T1 to fiber. No matter who I use (for street based fiber) it’s going to be AT&T on the local link. Preference right now is to upgrade with existing provider. Supposedly Comcast now offers service in the area and I keep getting emails from them but no one calls back. Dicks! (3 years ago they did call and quoted me $17000 to run about a half mile to our area.)
Only other viable choice might be a wireless service but I can’t get the salesperson to firmly commit to a block of ips (current is an eight block/five usable of which four are in use). Wireless is basically microwave from one of several towers. Can get 7Mbs service for $399. The wireless just has an install charge of about $199 and no contract. Current 1.5Mbs T1 is about $425 and 10Mbs fiber will be $722 but with an additional $40 for the gateway router that I don’t pay now. Most require a 2-3 year contract. Think I’ll try to pin wireless guy down to some hard numbers and if that fails it’s the upgrade on the existing one.
When I talked to AT&T about running fiber to my office three years ago, they wanted $20+K to put in the T and run the 1,200 ft back to my office building. Now they will do the T and run the 1,200 ft of fiber for free. But, the monthly charge of $800 for 10 / 10 mbps is just too much for me. Especially right now with the oil and gas business collapsing. I am thinking that 2016 will be very interesting for the oil and gas business in a Confucius kind of way.
Can you get a DSL line or two for your office? The DSL lines are ok and are not saturated during the day.
DSL not even offered. 7 miles from the CO. Dirty secret is most circuits are run from a fiber box less than a mile away. Large warehouse and industrial area and they are protecting their high revenue circuits (remember AT&T is the local loop).
Well our business is mostly invested in agriculture. Not that the drought is trivial out here. Still we hit the ceiling far too often now and really must have an upgrade.
@lynn, yep, been saying them backwards all day. Don’t know why…
His problem is that 2.4mbps is too slow for smooth streaming. and with 3 adults on property, he can get by with splitting between the pipes, but aggregating the pipes would be better. The up is a killer for skype or security cam monitoring.
I see that there is fixed wireless down your way, but it’s all south of I10. No choice up where he is except cellular and dsl.
Phones are a natural monopoly, but it still sucks.
nick
“America first –- or World War III: Pat Buchanan: GOP hawks shouldn’t assume President Putin is a coward”
http://www.wnd.com/2015/12/america-first-or-world-war-iii
I am so tired of these RINO war hawks.
Trump – Cruz 2016 ! Or Trump – Cuban 2016 !
So Cruz and Cuban are not chickenhawks?
And the Repub hierarchy will go ahead and nominate such a ticket?
Watch: they’ll nominate some typical RINO ticket and face a brutal revolt finally from their former voters, followed by a crushing defeat, again, at the bloody, dripping claws and fangs of Field Marshal Rodham. Then we’ll have a real hawk in the WH and World War IV, Pat needs to get up to speed on how many world wars we’ve already had.
Worth reading again:
http://westernrifleshooters.blogspot.com/2010/07/bracken-cw2-cube-mapping-meta-terrain.html
https://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2012/09/03/bracken-when-the-music-stops-how-americas-cities-may-explode-in-violence/
Here’s What A Liberal ‘Gun-Grab’ Would Look Like And Why It Would Ultimately Fail
Good article; assuming that the forces of Evil don’t just pick one or two jurisdictions and make violent examples of a few people, hoping to intimidate and scare the rest of us. I figure that probably won’t work, but some days I wonder.
Otherwise, yeah, it’s a hopeless task for the ruling class; the best/worst they can do is make our lives miserable with taxes, fees, regulations, ordinances, “executive orders” from the WH, etc., but as the author points out, they’ll likely run into massive noncompliance.
This still doesn’t rule out another civil war, however; as Bracken points out, and as others have, here and elsewhere, when the big Hurt kicks in good and hard in the densely populated urban areas, all hell is likely to break loose.
Amen!!
Pork is good for the environment and lettuce is bad.
Researchers looked at how growing, processing and transporting food, sales and service, and household storage could impact the environment.
Researcher Paul Fischbeck said eating lettuce was three times worse for greenhouse gas emission than eating bacon.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-18/eating-lettuce-three-times-worse-for-environment/7042242
Interestingly enough, that ties in with our host’s plans for his seed kit. He doesn’t include lettuce because the cost is too high relative to the calories provided. In that scenario, caloric density is of the utmost importance.
On the other hand, for daily life, a salad for lunch tends to contain fewer calories (even after adding bacon) than an equivalent sub (equivalent being the JimIsFullOMeter). The study (or the report of the study) didn’t seem to cover that scenario.
I have made an amazing discovery. I actually like spinach as long as you don’t do something awful and cook it. If I am going to eat a salad, I would prefer at least some of the lettuce be replaced with spinach.
Nobody farts like a vegetarian.
nick
I’ll take a BLT anyday.
Spinach salad with hard boiled eggs and hot bacon dressing is really good. Take spinach, sliced hard boiled eggs, croutons and lots of bacon in a bowl. Heat up grease from bacon, add balsamic vinegar and some sugar, mix and pour over salad. Toss and eat while still warm.
@dkreck, I’d eat lunch with you any day 😉
Along with farting vegetarians there has been some talk that being hangry is a real condition. Here are a couple of related links (sorry, but it seems to be the girly pages that discuss hangry):
http://www.sheknows.com/health-and-wellness/articles/1103685/hangry-explained
http://thestir.cafemom.com/healthy_living/193492/12_stages_of_hangry_from
BTW. Want to know when someone is a vegetarian. Just wait, they’ll tell you.
(same for gluten intolerance)
“Want to know when someone is a vegetarian. Just wait, they’ll tell you.”
No kidding. Our previously teenage daughter was BIG on this stuff; along with all her little pseudo-hippie, granola-head friends back in Montpeculiar, VT. New friends in college and the fact their her fascist family wasn’t about to give up on dead animal carcasses have drastically toned down her attitude; we don’t hear about it anymore.
Yeah, I’ve always liked those spinach-based chef’s salads; I usually throw in everything but the kitchen sink and the green stuff is just one of a bunch of ingredients, not the 90% main ingredient that you get in restaurants.
Hangry. Never heard that before.
Anyone with kids will tell you that hungry = grumpy. Doesn’t take science to figure that out….
nick
@Robert
The wife and I really liked Bosch, however, neither of us had read the books.
@OFD
I think The Blacklist was excellent first season, above average second, and got back to excellent in the current. Things that happened earlier are now paying off, so it’s clear that they have a long-term plan and aren’t just making it up as they go along.
Up next after Christmas: watching The Man in the High Castle, Jessica Jones, and Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD.
I have also hear good things about Netflix’s A Very Murray Christmas and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.
“The wife and I really liked Bosch, however, neither of us had read the books.”
Mrs. OFD and me read some of the books; I eventually found them tedious. Now just about finished with a trilogy about Germany in the late 1930s and just after the Good War, where the first book wasn’t that great although the story was good, and the subsequent two books are much better.
Thanks, Mr. ech for the tip about the third season of “The Blacklist;” I’ve gotten through the first three episodes of Season Three thus fah. Will watch the rest after Mrs. OFD takes off again; she’s not real big on violence in videos but evidently has no problem with it in books.
I assume “The Man in the High Castle” is based on the volume by the late Philip K. Dick.
Since I had the Roku 3 set up again so Princess could watch stuff on the tee-vee here the other night, I tried streaming stuff from this Winblows box using PlayOn, which I’d used before with no problems; now they won’t stream; they start like they’re gonna and then every one stops with an error message that something’s wrong with the file and to restart PlayOn again, but no joy so far. Roku sees all the files and tries to play them but every single one I’ve streamed fails. I’ll try it again this weekend and if it’s still crapping out I’ll post a whine on the Roku board accordingly.
I assume “The Man in the High Castle” is based on the volume by the late Philip K. Dick.
Yes. From what I understand, it’s not 100% from the book, but it’s gotten good reviews. I read the book years ago and really liked it. The trailers for the show are startling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pjs8xVaAC98
Interesting trailers and director, of course. One wonders if a courageous director will ever make a similar type of film that has the old Soviet Union in charge instead of Nazis, but I won’t hold my breath. Hell, we’re well on the way anyway. The Russians of today laugh in stunned disbelief that we’re rushing down the same road they suffered on for seventy years.