Thursday, 6 October 2016

By on October 6th, 2016 in Brittany, Jen, prepping

10:05 – Email overnight from Jen and Brittany. For the last ten weeks, they’ve both been keeping track of how much toilet paper their families actually use, counting dead rolls each time they emptied the bathroom trash. They both thought the toilet paper they had in LTS was sufficient for at least a year. They were both optimistic by at least a factor of two.

Jen and David average 2.2 rolls/week for the two of them. Brittany and her family average 4.1 rolls/week. That sounds about right. Men average about half a roll per week. Women, particularly those of menstrual age, go through two to three times that much. Young children average somewhere in between.

So Jen and Brittany both plan to do Costco/Sam’s runs devoted to paper products. Not just toilet paper, but paper towels, napkins, and plates, all of which would be consumed at much higher than normal rates during an emergency. In fact, those things are on my Costco list for our next run as well. And I suggested to Jen and Brittany that no matter how much toilet paper they have on hand, it may eventually run out. If that happens, it’s an excellent idea to have a bunch of personal cloths on hand, as well as lots of bleach/pool shock to sterilize them.


66 Comments and discussion on "Thursday, 6 October 2016"

  1. nick flandrey says:

    I always buy the featured/onsale TP and paper towel at Costco. Whatever the limit is (usually one for the TP) Avoid the Kirkland brand though, it ‘pills’ and sticks.

    Baby wipes!! Really useful. Our kids are long out of diapers and I still buy and use them. I’ve sent them in care packages to soldiers too.

    ziplok bags- you can’t really have too many in my book. Use them to seal up waste, to waterproof, to carry water, to organize….

    nick

  2. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    Interesting. We’ve been buying Kirkland brand toilet paper at Costco for years and have never had an issue with it.

  3. Greg Norton says:

    Where exactly in Florida did the news crew film the woman lying on the shelf in Publix?

    I’m guessing Broward or Dade. My wife went to med school down there in the 90s, and if you ever wonder how the 2000 election mess happened, I suggest spending an afternoon people watching in a supermarket in or near Fort Lauderdale.

    Forget power, food, or water. If the WiFi is out for more than a day, things will get real ugly in S. Florida

  4. nick flandrey says:

    Well, when rubbed against anything, it forms little balls and rolled up ‘strings’….

    It’s enough of an issue that one of the brands advertises specifically that theirs doesn’t do this….

    TMI- it gets stuck and causes irritation….

    n

  5. Dave says:

    Interesting. We’ve been buying Kirkland brand toilet paper at Costco for years and have never had an issue with it.

    Kirkland stuff is made by someone for Costco. I would think that all Kirkland toilet paper would be made by the same company. Or that all Kirkland bacon would be made by the same company. I’ve heard enough different reviews from different people about Kirkland products here that I’m starting to wonder if products in different regions are made by different companies, or more likely different facilities owned by the same company.

  6. Denis says:

    How many sheets / leafs are on a US roll of TP?

    For a male I’d figure on 6 (2 times 3 sheets) for cleanup after a normal stool, and one leaf after micturition. Assume one BM/day, and urination every 90mins-2 hours during waking hours.

    For females – just give them a roll a day each and pray it’s enough. As far as I can tell, most of it is disposed of unrolled, but actually unused, because there is an inexplicable need to unwrap lots and lots of it.

  7. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    Let’s not get into the folding versus balling up issue, although I’m told that men skew heavily toward the former and women toward the latter.

  8. nick flandrey says:

    “inexplicable need to unwrap lots and lots of it.”

    That certainly describes my 5yo….
    n

    (and although I know it was in jest, like so much prepping, observing and recording actual use is much easier than doing the math, and more likely to be accurate…..)

  9. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    As far as Kirkland stuff, the only thing I’ve ever been displeased with was their alternative to Dawn dishwashing liquid. Their stuff was yellow rather than blue and just didn’t work.

    Barbara actually prefers a lot of the Kirkland-branded stuff to the name-brand equivalent, including bacon.

  10. Denis says:

    Well, if we can’t go into folding vs wadding, there’s always the “loose end hanging over the roll or hanging down” issue and the “sit or stand to wipe” issue. Mysteries wrapped in enigmas, all of them.

  11. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    Women.

    Barbara is sitting in her office reading my post. She announced that between us we use one roll per month. At my incredulity, she responded, “Okay. Two rolls per month.” Geez.

    So the next time we’re at Costco, when I try to add toilet paper to our cart, she’s gonna say, “We already have plenty of toilet paper.”

  12. Denis says:

    “She announced that between us we use one roll per month.”

    Were it not ineluctably destined to end in marital disharmony, I’d be inclined to put that claim to an empirical test… buy a two-pack of TP coloured differently from what you normally have, divide one roll thereof into two named ziplock baggies, and have at it for 30 days.

    Do it for science!

  13. nick flandrey says:

    According to the original patent filing, the roll should have the loose end away from the wall. This makes sense as it it easier to grasp if it is hanging free of the wall.

    It also turns out that this issue divides very clearly by household income, with lower income opting for loose end against the wall. (according to my bathroom facts book.)

    In any case, TP is like guns, you think you have enough, and then the zombies come….

    n

  14. DadCooks says:

    WRT toilet paper: at Costco we get Marathon Bathroom Tissue $22.99 48rolls/470sheets per roll. Says it is for commercial use but it is smooth, soft, absorbent, strong, and meets the requirements of the women in my house.

    I go by cost per sheet and this beats all. Occasionally Costco has it $3 or $4 off so I stock up then. Have to keep an eye out as it is not in the coupon books. Every area Costco probably has some sort of “commercial” TP. Depending on brand it may or may not be acceptable for the women, who have different criteria then us men.

    Now what the LGBTQX+++ want I have no idea (I just had to get a microaggression in).

  15. MrAtoz says:

    We’ve used Sam’s Members Mark TP for years without any complaint. With up to 5 fems in the house at a time, the big pack vanishes fast.

  16. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    Yeah, one roll per month really adds up fast.

  17. DadCooks says:

    WRT toilet paper hanging direction:

    It’s over the front for us and we currently have 9 resident cats. Never once in more than 20-years with indoor cats have we had a problem with them unrolling the TP. I have had people tell me that their cats routinely play with the TP. Upon further questioning it makes no difference over or under. It really boils down to not providing enough other distractions for the cats. Cats can be very creative with finding things to “play” with (kill).

    WRT Costco brands (Kirkland):

    According to the manager at out local Costco, different regions of the country get products made by different manufacturers. This manager has worked in several regions and laments that Costco’s quality consistency is not what customers expect. He says Costco is working on it, but slow (as with all things Costco).

  18. Greg Norton says:

    @greg, Daily Mail has pix from Hollywood, FL

    Sure, wait until today to get gas. Hollywood is ground zero for Stupid in Broward County. My wife’s apartment was there only because it was safe and (back in early 90s) cheap.

    (Living in Tampa, I always topped off the moment the cone on the map from the Navy’s hurricane center even brushed FL or the Gulf of Mexico.)

    This event will be the first real test of Florida’s anti-gouging laws, the crazy insurance market, and most of the construction codes implemented in S. FL over the last 25 years, especially the last 10. Also, a lot of the carriers writing homeowners’ policies in the state are technically insolvent so the aftermath will be interesting to watch … from a distance.

    When we left in 2010, I had a quote on my desk for 2011 homeowners’ insurance from the state-owned carrier for nearly $5000. Yes, per year.

  19. Dave Hardy says:

    Off to the VA Med Center for a fun MRI and x-rays! Beeyooteeful sunny day with blue skies, around 70F. Two hours down and two hours back, no idea how long I’ll actually be there. Probably come home in the dahk. How to blow a Thursday afternoon on a nice fall day, but I gotta get this done.

  20. Dave says:

    According to the manager at out local Costco, different regions of the country get products made by different manufacturers. This manager has worked in several regions and laments that Costco’s quality consistency is not what customers expect. He says Costco is working on it, but slow (as with all things Costco).

    I mentioned earlier that I would be surprised if this was the case, but it does explain different reports regarding quality of items in various regions.

  21. pcb_duffer says:

    [snip] counting dead rolls each time they emptied the bathroom trash. [snip]

    One possible flaw in their methodology: How much toilet member is used by household members when out of the house? If, for example, Hurricane Matthew does a number on the three gold coast counties (Palm Beach, Broward, & Miami-Dade) then lots of people aren’t going to be going to school, work, shopping, etc for a couple of weeks at a minimum.

    [snip] if you ever wonder how the 2000 election mess happened [snip]

    At the risk of flagellating a deceased equine: *ALL* of the problems were in counties which were the fiefdom of one particular political party. And *NONE* of those problems were new to that specific election. But that party cared not one whit about the voting problems until it hurt their party’s candidate. And the other party would probably have been guilty of the same hubris; a pox on both their houses. The only good side to the whole thing, IMHO, was exposure of the offenses against democracy. The fact that the media didn’t get to call my part of Florida a bunch of ignorant country bumpkins was a bonus.

  22. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    @pcb_duffer

    Good point, and one I broght up with regard to other supplies recently.

  23. lynn says:

    “‘Alien Megastructure’ Star Keeps Getting Stranger”
    http://www.space.com/34303-alien-megastructure-star-strange-dimming-mystery.html

    And in other news, the aliens working on their Dyson sphere are making significant progress.

  24. JimL says:

    $5000/year seems a little low. Unless you’re interior, with good stormproofing, and your home is worth less than $100,000.

    Insurance should cost what the risk says it costs, not what politicians say it should cost. If you want to live in Florida, with Florida hurricanes, you should bear the cost of the hurricanes as a cost of living.

    /rant.

    I used to work with insurance companies. Some of the stories were simply astounding. And the risks that were covered were even more so.

  25. Greg Norton says:

    $5000/year seems a little low. Unless you’re interior, with good stormproofing, and your home is worth less than $100,000.

    Insurance should cost what the risk says it costs, not what politicians say it should cost. If you want to live in Florida, with Florida hurricanes, you should bear the cost of the hurricanes as a cost of living.

    Interior, good stormproofing, greater than $100k but less than $200k. The eyes of two Cat 2/3 storms went over my house in 2004 with nary a shingle lost.

    Insurance costs in Florida only partly reflect the storm-related claim potential. For a while, sinkhole claims became a form of welfare for the middle class in certain counties looking for a way out of their refi problems left over from the housing bubble, and the state-run carrier is still working out from under after taking the brunt of that financial hit.

  26. lynn says:

    To give you some perspective on insurance costs, here are mine.

    The insurance cost for my 3,465 ft2 home in Fort Bend County, Texas, 40 miles away from the Gulf Coast, is $2,400/year. Amica Insurance company has my home valued at $450,000.

    The insurance cost for my commercial property is $7,000/year. It is 0.5 miles away from my home as the crow flies and also 40 miles away from the coast. I have a 5,344 ft2 office building valued at $550,000, a 3,750 ft2 office warehouse (800 ft2 office) valued at $250,000, a small 450 f2 office valued at $35,000, and a 100 ft2 well house valued at $3,000. Total of $838,000 which might cover 90% of the rebuilding costs. I am using some no-name insurance company out of Phoenix this year.

    I do not have flood insurance on either property since they are both elevated and protected. My father says that I am idiot. I look at the $400/year cost over 20 years and decide that I am willing to take the risk.

    We have had 90+ mph hurricane winds here twice in the last 25 years. We always get the wind from one direction first and then the other direction as the eye passes. So, an equal test of all of the structures strength.

  27. JLP says:

    Today’s scatological discussion needs some scientific rigor. Let’s substitute the meters-kilogram-second (mks) system with sheet-person-trip (spt). SI and common prefixes apply (kilosheet = 1000 sheets of TP, decatrip = 10 trips to the bathroom, etc).

    Derived units can be constructed, e.g. a wipe=sheet/trip/person.

    Other values can be extrapolated, a joule is kg*m^2/s^2, so in the new system it would be person*sheet^2/trip^2, sort of a measure of bathroom energy.

    I’m supposed to be checking my boss’s enzyme kinetic calculations for a publication. Obviously I’m having trouble focusing on the task at hand……

  28. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    I thought this *was* the task at hand, so to speak.

  29. SteveF says:

    She announced that between us we use one roll per month.

    Perfectly plausible. You have an office building-style bathroom dispenser, right, which takes rolls of about 10,000 sheets?

    Subsidized insurance pisses me off. Thanks, you assholes in government, who take my income to subsidize the choices of other people.

  30. lynn says:

    Insurance costs in Florida only partly reflect the storm-related claim potential. For a while, sinkhole claims became a form of welfare for the middle class in certain counties looking for a way out of their refi problems left over from the housing bubble, and the state-run carrier is still working out from under after taking the brunt of that financial hit.

    OK, I googled this and got a shock. I had no idea that there was a “sinkhole alley” in Florida causing new homes to have “serious” issues:
    http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/banking/floridas-sinkhole-alley-homeowners-struggle-with-insurance-overhaul/2201564

  31. lynn says:

    Jen and David average 2.2 rolls/week for the two of them. Brittany and her family average 4.1 rolls/week. That sounds about right. Men average about half a roll per week. Women, particularly those of menstrual age, go through two to three times that much. Young children average somewhere in between.

    Am I the only person here who has had a major dosage of morphine ? When I had my first heart attack in 2009 (wow, 7 years ago next month), they gave me two big shots of morphine in the ER to try to cut the pain. I have no idea how much but the barrel of the syringe was about an inch in diameter and there was at least an inch of plunger travel. Maybe two inches, my memory of that day is not good. The first shot did nothing, the second shot settled me down and took the pain level from a 9 to a 3.

    Anyway, morphine depresses all of your systems, including your bowels. It took 3 or 4 days to get my bowels moving again. In the meantime, the contents of my bowels had seemingly turned to concrete. As a result, I now have internal and external hemorrhoids. Which, makes it much more difficult to wipe due to “hideout”. I’ve probably said way more than people are interested in but, I use much more toilet paper than I used to.

  32. DadCooks says:

    @lynn said:” Which, makes it much more difficult to wipe due to “hideout”.”

    Get yourself a bidet (https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Home-Improvement-Bidet-Seats/zgbs/hi/6810566011), or use a shower wand with a “power” setting, and for prepping for when there is no running water a high capacity turkey baster.

    I’ve heard that Illiary has to use a pressure washer.

  33. SteveF says:

    I’ve heard that Illiary has to use a pressure washer.

    Not so much “has to” as “likes to”.

  34. dkreck says:

    The Voter Guide arrived today. 224 pages cover to cover. Waste of dead trees.

  35. DadCooks says:

    Thanks for the additional information @SteveF. 😉

  36. Ray Thompson says:

    Get yourself a bidet

    Or a water pick. As for Hillary, must be a big two cylinder engine, maybe even diesel.

  37. MrAtoz says:

    Scanning a small book is a pain in the keister! I didn’t want to rip the book open (yet), so I used an overhead scanner. It’s in pdf and ocr’d. You can easily read pages that are wavy or some text obscured. Your brain will read right through it.

    Grab it for your e-kitbag if you want from my Dropbox:

    A Field Guide to Roadside Technology

  38. Greg Norton says:

    OK, I googled this and got a shock. I had no idea that there was a “sinkhole alley” in Florida causing new homes to have “serious” issues.

    Florida is a Carl Hiaasen novel except much stranger.

    And BTW — be careful about The Times. That is one of the most liberal papers in the country.

  39. lynn says:

    And BTW — be careful about The Times. That is one of the most liberal papers in the country.

    I just picked the first entry on the google list.

    All of the bigger papers are liberal to very liberal now. Nothing with a daily circulation over 50,000 ? 20,000 ? 100,000 ? is conservative that I know of. The Houston Chronicle used to be fairly evenhanded but they just endorsed Hillary.

  40. lynn says:

    Scanning a small book is a pain in the keister! I didn’t want to rip the book open (yet), so I used an overhead scanner. It’s in pdf and ocr’d. You can easily read pages that are wavy or some text obscured. Your brain will read right through it.

    Man, I thought some of our scans of old documentation were bad but, that takes the cake. I thought that I was having double vision there for a minute. Here is one of our old scans using a flatbed scanner and program that produces a PDF file (54 MB):
    https://www.winsim.com/news/1984.pdf
    from
    https://www.winsim.com/newsletters.html

  41. dkreck says:

    I’m sure the hurricane is Trump’s fault. I read the news today.

  42. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    oh boy
    About a lucky man who made the grade

  43. Rick H says:

    Re: storm preparations.

    Here in the OlyPeninsula in WA, big storm coming through tonight. Higher winds (gusts to 40mph) and all the trees around here mean probable power outages. (Not on the scale of hurricanes.)

    So, today’s prep included starting up the generator and letting it run for 10 minutes; getting some fresh gas (which got Stabil-d), and ensuring that all the FLASHLIGHTS were workable (and findable). Charged up all phones and eReaders.

    I live in a subdivision with underground utilities, but fed by overhead lines. Last big power outage (last year about this time) caused a 14 hour outage.

    So I think I am ready. .No hurricanes forecast for here. But my overall preps have not been last-minute, just minor tune-ups.

  44. MrAtoz says:

    Man, I thought some of our scans of old documentation were bad but, that takes the cake.

    Yup. The book is perfect bound so I may try a hairdryer to get the pages out and run it through the Scansnap. Then just use my comb binder to repackage it.

  45. Dave Hardy says:

    “About a lucky man who made the grade…”

    He blew his mind out in a car.

    He didn’t notice that the lights had changed.

  46. DadCooks says:

    Here’s my contribution:

    Woke up, fell out of bed,
    Dragged a comb across my head
    Found my way downstairs and drank a cup,
    And looking up I noticed I was late.

    So I stayed home 😉

  47. Spook says:

    I started on a project of weighing toilet paper to get an idea of the relative cost.
    Thickness and “fluff” is an issue, of course, so with thin paper you use more sheets.
    I’m not sure that thin paper isn’t the better deal, even if you use 3x or 4x the length.
    I’m not anal enough to have really followed through on this project, and of course price variations (including sales and coupons) are particularly relevant, too.

  48. pcb_duffer says:

    [snip] Am I the only person here who has had a major dosage of morphine ? [snip]

    My knees have been under the knife 11 times, starting at age 12, so I’m a long time friend of the poppy. The MDs have always seemed to be more concerned with bladder function, at least to me. Maybe they’ve always added a mild laxative to the mixture of drugs, I don’t know.

    [snip] the barrel of the syringe was about an inch in diameter and there was at least an inch of plunger travel [snip]

    I’m looking at a standard 30cc syringe as I type this. The barrel diameter is ~ 2 cm (3/4″); barrel length to the 30cc mark is ~ 8cm (3.5″). Ain’t no way they gave you that much morphine in one dose, although at the time I’m sure it looked like it. Drugs.com says “-Acute myocardial infarction:
    Initial dose: 4 to 8 mg
    Maintenance dose: 2 to 8 mg every 4 to 15 minutes as needed”

    [snip] Florida is a Carl Hiaasen novel except much stranger. … And BTW — be careful about The Times. That is one of the most liberal papers in the country. [snip]

    And Hiassen himself is wildly liberal; my local paper takes his column. Like Jim Hightower, argumentum ad hominem is part of his daily routine.

  49. Spook says:

    [snip] Am I the only person here who has had a major dosage of morphine ? [snip]

    I wasn’t in a lot of pain, but they gave me enough to plug my guts for the duration.
    Prune juice and fiber ought to be part of the standard dosage for opioids.

  50. lynn says:

    Yup. The book is perfect bound so I may try a hairdryer to get the pages out and run it through the Scansnap. Then just use my comb binder to repackage it.

    We have a “perfect” binder here at the office but it adds a new back strip and glues the pages to the new strip. Works well up to around 100 sheets. But we get our doco printed at http://www.lulu.com when we want some for new users. Old users, we just point them to our doco page, https://www.winsim.com/doco.html , and tell them to order some. Printed doco is expensive ! We don’t get a piece of the action, I figure that the users pay us enough for the software.

  51. nick flandrey says:

    Shortwave is booming in tonight, 40 and 80 meters.

    n

  52. lynn says:

    I’m looking at a standard 30cc syringe as I type this. The barrel diameter is ~ 2 cm (3/4″); barrel length to the 30cc mark is ~ 8cm (3.5″). Ain’t no way they gave you that much morphine in one dose, although at the time I’m sure it looked like it. Drugs.com says “-Acute myocardial infarction:
    Initial dose: 4 to 8 mg
    Maintenance dose: 2 to 8 mg every 4 to 15 minutes as needed”

    I lost the back side of my heart that day, about 15% of the muscle. Or at least my 2nd cardiologist thinks I did, no one knows. My right coronary artery is only two inches long, no one knows if I was born that way or if it plugged 100% that day. Given that you can stick a pinky finger down my left coronary artery, who knows ?

    The two morphine shots were about 30 minutes apart. Or maybe two hours apart, I was going in and out. The first morphine shot was after four aspirin and four nitroglycerin pills interspersed with no pain relief whatsoever. It took them four hours to kill the pain and I was the only person in the ER. BP was 200 / 100 when I got there and peaked at 210 / 110. I forgot the pulse. I do remember my EKG had no upper sinus rhythm at all, just a lower sinus rhythm, they were freaked out by that (so was I). The nurse and doctor in the ER had a internet connection over to a cardiologist in Victoria and shipped me over to him when they stabilized me. Got there about 2 pm and left about 9pm to Victoria.

    One of my great-grandfathers over in Wharton, TX had the same problem in 1934 ? when he was 52. He never walked again after that due to angina and died two years later. I survived the second attack so I figure I’ve got 5 or 6 more attacks to go. Or maybe I will die tonight. I don’t have angina which I am thankful for.

    I wasn’t in a lot of pain, but they gave me enough to plug my guts for the duration.
    Prune juice and fiber ought to be part of the standard dosage for opioids.

    Yup. The wife was on morphine for week+ in 2005 when she had a mastectomy and tram flap reconstruction in one 12 hour operation at MDACC with two surgical teams. She went into ICU with 35 inches of abdominal and chest incisions. But she already had hemorrhoids from having three kids. They built her new breast out of a piece of belly skin and fat about 17 inches wide and 9 inches tall at the center. Plus two transplanted arteries and veins. She could not stand up straight for three or four months since they removed so much belly skin.

  53. Spook says:

    This is not a good sign…

    Firefox can’t find the server at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov.

  54. Spook says:

    http://www.nhc.noaa.gov

    Back up. At least it didn’t blow away…

  55. nick flandrey says:

    I thought my time dealing with corporate newspeak would prepare me for looking at the “new direction” guidance documents for our school district. Nope. It’s even MORE nonsensical than corporate.

    Here’s a typical section, Resilient Foundation refers to the last of the “four Strategic Themes of this Strategic Plan”

    “RESILIENT FOUNDATION
    The Resilient Foundation drives maximum organizational effectiveness through consistency, transparency, soundly aligned and clearly understood structures and processes, and robust, accessible actionable data and analytics tools. The Resilient Foundation undergirds the other three strategic themes to assure [district] successfully achieves transformational change.

    Resilient Foundation Strategies:
    –Organizational Autonomy
    o Define and operationalize a shared vision for organizational autonomy that better defines the roles and responsibilities associated with district‐level support services and school‐based decision making processes.”

    Operationalize??? WTF. It’s a very ‘strategic’ plan with ‘strategies’ for ‘strategical change’ produced by ‘strategizing’.

    It’s like a parody, but they are deadly serious about spending my money on this crap sandwich.

    nick

  56. nick flandrey says:

    And as part of their “data driven” strategy, they’re gonna ask someone to develop software, in part to provide:

    “– Inputs & Indicators to Inform Instructional Design
    o Develop a robust platform of measures to include a variety of indicators gained through formative, interim and summative practices”

    and

    “–Research & Development as an Engine of Innovation
    o Catalyze an organizational culture of continuous improvement through innovative research, design and development.
    o Incubate, scale, and disseminate actionable learning practices and structures throughout the district.
    o Develop rapid and rigorous evaluation practices to assess progress of designed initiatives.”

    Sweet jebus wept

    n

  57. nick flandrey says:

    I think huge chunks of this word salad were lifted wholesale. Anyone know of an anti-plagerism engine online that would find me the chunks?

    just googling the two bullet points above got me hits on ‘scholarly’ articles with .edu focus

    nick

  58. Spook says:

    I threw up a little. Gag!

    Glad my formal “education” is long in the past.
    Actually, back then it was actual education…

    Glad I don’t have any kids for whom I am likely to
    make decisions.

  59. pcb_duffer says:

    It’s 1130 PM here, and the NHC’s web site comes right up. I’m fairly sure that the NHC’s headquarters is in Miami, I don’t have the faintest where their servers are located. Hopefully they have backup systems in some other state. I seem to recall that Hurricane Andrew passed more or less directly over NHC’s buildings in Miami when it made its jaunt across south Florida. It then made it into the Gulf of Mexico, found more energy, and wound up bashing Avery Island, Louisiana, home of the Tabasco sauce folks. I mention this because it looks like the NHC’s current best guess is for Matthew to make a loop and come back towards south Florida, maybe crossing the peninsula and crossing back into the Gulf.

  60. Spook says:

    “It’s 1130 PM here, and the NHC’s web site comes right up. ”

    What I saw could have been some disconnection between there and here…
    and it didn’t last long.

    NHC is a tough outfit, apparently in all ways. Salute !!

  61. lynn says:

    I mention this because it looks like the NHC’s current best guess is for Matthew to make a loop and come back towards south Florida, maybe crossing the peninsula and crossing back into the Gulf.

    I’ve been wondering about a crossing to the Gulf myself. There is a cold front coming down Saturday that might drive it back out into the Caribbean. Or not.

    “Hillary blames Hurricane on climate change; says Trump ‘totally unfit’ to protect USA from ‘the threat of climate change’ ”
    http://www.climatedepot.com/2016/09/06/hillary-blames-hurricane-on-climate-change-says-trump-unfit-to-protect-usa-from-the-threat-of-climate-change/

    Wow. She is getting desperate. I wonder how many people will believe her ? Of course, according to Hillary, the USA can tax itself into prosperity. It has never worked before but Hillary can make it work !

  62. ech says:

    Prune juice and fiber ought to be part of the standard dosage for opioids.

    If you are inpatient, they usually monitor your stool output and will give you softeners and ramp up if you don’t go. My mom is on a stool softener as she has a prescription for PRN Tramadol.

  63. brad says:

    @Nick: I’m very sorry, but it looks like this document really was written just for your school district. I had no trouble finding it from the text you provided, but I didn’t find any other documents it might have been plagiarized from.

    “I’m sorry”, because that means that they actually paid someone money to write this thing. On the other hand, flipping through it did amuse my feeble mind for a few minutes, so thank you for that 🙂

    I particularly like this bit from the introduction: “…we are perfectly designed today to achieve the results we are achieving.” Yep, whatever we’re doing, we sure are doing it.

    As someone who occasionally writes specifications, and teaches others how to write them: I pound into my students that any plan or specification must have specific, measurable goals. How else will you know if you succeeded? The nearest thing this “strategic plan” has for goals are the “priorities for growth and improvement”, which contain such gems as “we must improve the system’s use of data to better inform continual improvement.” Yep, we gotta improve our improvement, like wow man, we got data!

    Really, though, the document is quite impressive. I mean, most people won’t understand the overly-complex language, and won’t notice that it spends 14 pages saying basically nothing. Its existence does, however, serve to justify employment for lots of administrative deadwood. So it has probably achieved its primary mission.

  64. Dave Hardy says:

    “So it has probably achieved its primary mission.”

    Indeed. And reminiscent of World War One British soldiers, fed up and beyond the realm of any semblance of reason or sanity, would sing the ditty “We’re here because we’re here, we’re here because we’re here!” Over and over again. But they had an excuse. The administrative bureaucratic deadwood is only taking up valuable earth space and oxygen. Is re-education feasible? No? To the wall.

  65. SteveF says:

    As someone who occasionally writes specifications, and teaches others how to write them: I pound into my students that any plan or specification must have specific, measurable goals. How else will you know if you succeeded?

    Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa! Measureable goals? Are you crazy? Having someone being able to point at your project and declaring it a failure is the surest road to … to … to being a failure!

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