09:14 – It was 64.5F (18C) when I took Colin out at about 0645 this morning, sunny and calm. Rain and thunderstorms are to move in late this morning.
A few weeks ago, Barbara met Frances and Al down in Elkin to walk around and visit the various retailers. One of those was Horton’s grocery. They had 2-liter Cokes on sale for $1 each, so Barbara picked up 16 of them for me. What surprised me was that they were packaged in heavy black plastic racks that held eight bottles each. She’d asked if she could have the racks to carry all the bottles and the Horton’s folks didn’t object. The racks don’t look disposable to me. I’d guess they probably cost a couple bucks each. So I figured we’d just hold onto them and use them to organize LTS food that we’d transferred to 2-liter Coke bottles.
Then, a couple days ago, we stopped at the Alleghany General Store, which is quarter mile up US21 from our house, on the way back from a trip into town. They had 2-liter Cokes for $0.89 each, again in the black plastic racks, so we bought two more racks’ worth. And again the guy just assumed we’d take the Cokes in the racks. He even helped us load them into Barbara’s car.
This is apparently a new thing with Coke bottlers/distributors, or at least with ours. So we’ll keep getting Coke in the racks. 2-liter bottles are great for repackaging LTS food like sugar, rice, pinto beans, and even macaroni. The one downside is that the loose bottles don’t stack very well, which these racks solve. With them, we won’t even need shelf space for 2-liter bottles. We can just stack them on the floor, several high. In fact, I think I’ll ask the guy at the Alleghany General Store if he normally discards them. If so, I’ll ask him to save them for us.
More work on science kits today. We have lots of labeled bottles to fill, and lots more bottles to get labeled. Fortunately, it’s pleasant out in the garage, where we normally fill bottles.
Not pleasant here. 82F and 82 RH for a “feels like” of 90F.
Sunny and clear at the moment, but possible Tstorms later, and supposed to get Tstorms tomorrow.
Ebay sales continue to be poor. Did a couple of small sales on craigslist, but it def didn’t make up for the missing ebay sales.
I see the 2 liter racks stacked up behind mini-marts and local markets, and I see them used in some creative ways. One guy has built a wall of them as retaining wall around his garden. Not HOA friendly or super attractive, but a creative use. I’m guessing that they are normally returned to the distributor, but that no one worries about them too much. If the distributor has room on the truck and the store has a stack, maybe he’ll take them, otherwise, they sit.
I like the costco boxes for various storage. They interlock and stack, and if you pick the right ones, are very sturdy. I have noticed that the glue on some will fail in time, esp with high heat. I just replace them or tape them up at that point. Always more at costco.
n
$0.89 for Coke. It might be worth flying down and picking some up. In our area it was on sale for $1.89 last week, down from its usual $1.99 price. I guess everything’s more expensive in Massachusetts.
Huh, just did an online search of my fav grocer, to see what coke was going for.
“2L coke” yielded 0 results
I’ve noticed their site search sucked before, often returning results but not an item I KNEW was available until I’d drilled down or searched with different words.
Today, I noticed why. They are using Bing for internal searches. Bing sucks rocks. Bing fails to find stuff on MS’s own site. bing fails to find stuff on any site. When search fails, it’s useless.
BTW, the house brand is 95c / 2L and coke products are between $1.59 and $1.89
They also have 2.75L and 3L of some soft drinks. I guess it will be in 5 gallon bucket soon.
n
added
re-ran the search with slightly different terms
“We found 4132 search results for “2 ltr coke” in entire site
View search results in: Products [3] | Recipes [4129] ”
4k+ recipes that use Coke??
$1.99 each? Wow. I was upset with the Winston-Salem Costco a couple years ago when they boosted their price from $3.99 per four-pack to $4.25. The last couple times I was there, it was $5. I think $1.25 for a 2-liter bottled of flavored fizzy water is too much, so Barbara’s been waiting for the $0.99/$1 sales at the supermarket and grabbing a bunch when they’re on sale.
Does MA have a ridiculous tax on soft drinks? Oh, wait. Silly me. MA has ridiculous taxes on everything.
WTF is it with today’s web designers.
I just filled out a form and got “invalid zipcode” error because of a trailing space.
Lazy fuckers did data validation, CAUGHT the space, but popped an error for ME to fix, rather than just strip the space.
n
Here in N. Mississippi, 2L Coke products had been hovering around $1.50 for a few weeks then at our Krogers I saw they were $0.89 ea so I filled the cart. Didn’t think to take the racks too. Will drop back by this weekend and check. I did pick up a dozen plastic milk cases from the back of the store a few weeks ago. I drive around the back to get to my favorite parking spot and saw a man setting them out. I stopped and asked if I could have a couple. He said “Take all you want, saves us the trouble of stacking them for the truck.” So I did.
RE: data validation
There are great data valadation functions out there both as freeware and parts of larger I/O packages that will do this and a lot more such as parse phone #s from almost any format. One possiblile thought process here is that if “we” manipulate the data input by the user “we” could be liable for any problems caused by such manipulation. Once you let the lawyers near the design specs you have issues.
WRT coke/soda prices:
Consider yourself lucky to pay less than $2/2L, many many cities (Seattle included) and states are instituting “sugar” taxes that essentially double (and more) the usual price. Califirnia (oops sp? but I kinda like it that way) is among the worst and I hear that there are “Sugar Narks” watching the borders to catch people bringing in untaxed soda from other states.
Question to new guy CA in prison: Whatcha in for?
New guy: Running Coke, Coca Cola. Got caught with 2L.
Yup, we all commit an estimated three or more felonies a day now in this country. We’re all criminals, and if we annoy the wrong people at the right time, we can get arrested, charged and imprisoned accordingly, should they find it convenient.
Or they may find it more convenient to simply shut off your credit, freeze your bank account, shut off utilities, foreclose on your house, repo your vehicles and get you fired from your job. Start your life all over again from scratch, with nothing, only much older and in worse shape.
Consider yourself lucky to pay less than $2/2L, many many cities (Seattle included) and states are instituting “sugar” taxes that essentially double (and more) the usual price. Califirnia (oops sp? but I kinda like it that way) is among the worst and I hear that there are “Sugar Narks” watching the borders to catch people bringing in untaxed soda from other states.
I used to catch a lot of flack from people in the Northwest regarding my soda consumption “problem”. This was especially surprising considering that WA and OR legalized weed on the principle that it is none of anyone’s business what someone puts into their body as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else.
I have a theory that the West Coast nanny state antics regarding soda stem from X-ers and Millennials out there growing up in hippie or Asian immigrant households where the drinks were verboten.
Of the people in our lives during our sentence -er- tenure out there, the Chinese relations used to give me the most cr*p about the soda, especiallly the “boss” cousin who lived near us in Vantucky. Whenever he would start nitpicking, I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying, “So, Number One Son, how many times were you beat by the old man for sneaking a Pepsi? Was it a worse beating than the one for getting a ‘B’ in school?”
It’s finally supposed to get to 90*F (~32*C for those of you in the rational part of the world) around here. Of course, we’re scheduled for some rain in the next few days, cooling it off. I’m tired of the abnormally cool weather.
The on sale soda prices are always $1 / 2 liter bottles, for Coke, Pepsi, & 7Up brands. The various places seem to rotate which which brand is on sale; I suppose the manufacturer has the final call on that. Packages of 12 each 12 ounce cans can usually be found at 3/$10, sometimes as cheap as 4/$12.
Bing is great for porn searching.
Mr. SteveF told me so.
Clock Boy loses in court, again.
Maybe he can work for his BFF Barry Odouche.
Clock Boy loses in court, again.
Strange. Not much about it in the *American* media today. Okay, maybe it is early, but except for the Daily Mail piece, Googling around just brings up the same old stories and pictures of Mohamed holding a soldering iron.
I’m willing to bet that the kid has no clue about how to actually use the soldering iron.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4522560/Federal-judge-dismisses-clock-boy-lawsuit.html
That’s easy enough for California to implement. They already stop all traffic at the border for an agricultural check anyway. It’s probably easy for them to add new things to the list to check for and confiscate or tax.
When I worked at a gas station/convenience store we stacked all of those plastic racks and crates out back and the Pepsi/Coke/milk distributor would take the excess ones back when he made deliveries. I think we were supposed to be on the hook for the cost of them if we didn’t return them, but the drivers doing the deliveries could not have cared less.
Re the “clock boy”. … a quick google news search shows lots of recent entries; including CBS news, and others.
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&gl=us&tbm=nws&authuser=0&q=clock+boy&oq=clock+boy
“That’s easy enough for California to implement. They already stop all traffic at the border for an agricultural check anyway.”
No worry, if coming back from LV on I15, exit at MM198 and make a left on Minneola Rd. Go down to National Trails Highway and make a right to go into Barstow. No 4WD needed; however, it provide a dozen of other go around options.
” It’s probably easy for them to add new things to the list to check for and confiscate or tax.”
If they can’t speak English, inspectors will get fired for checking papers.
Re the “clock boy”. … a quick google news search shows lots of recent entries; including CBS news, and others.
The news departments must run on West Coast time.
The usual deal in most grocery stores is alternating weeks between Pepsi product sales and Coke product sales, with Dr. Pepper and the rest randomly thrown in. The weeks before a holiday may have all on sale, and tends to have the best sales.
We’ve been switching from Diet Coke here to unsweetened, flavored sparking water. The LaCroix and Canada Dry citrus ones are great, but expensive. The HEB house brand of Lime, Lemon, and Grapefruit are good. The Kroger house brand of Raspberry and Cranberry Lime are good. And there is homemade iced tea to fall back on.
We are switching because there is accumulating evidence that artificial sweeteners are not good for you if you aren’t eating food at the same time. They may be implicated in insulin resistance and other problems. Drinking regular soda is off the table, as I am pre-diabetic and my wife is diabetic, though not on insulin. We’ve both been controlling carbs and losing weight.
I was a bit over 170. Almost to the point of buying new jeans. My case of dicky-do disease was getting out of control. Plus, have you priced Levi 501s lately?
I cut out the daily 2 or 3 cans of soda at work. Or the quart of store brand Gatoraid a day. Or the quart jug of orange juice. And the chips and stuff like Trisquit and Ritz. No more Hot Pockets for lunch. No more TV dinners for lunch. No more snacking on jelly beans or gummi bears or sugar coated “fruit” wedges. Can of peanuts instead. Hey, it’s all there when you work in a grocery store.
Leftovers from home or a chunk of cheese and a couple of Nathan’s hot dogs… cubed up with a bit of mustard and maybe catsup on the side. Maybe a can of oil packed tuna with lemon juice. Or Vienna sausage with a squirt of Louisiana hot sauce. A bag of hot and spicy (usually) HEB pork rinds for snacking.
In about two months I went from 173 or so to 150. With no reduction in beer consumption at home or on the highway. Hanging at 155 for the last year. Got out of jail, er, graduated High School, weighing 140. So, yay, Bicentennial Seniors, we rule. (sure.)
We have cut back on the pasta and potatoes for supper. Not to the point of none, just in the way of “less spaghetti and have an extra meatball”. Finally someone else here decided this was a good thing and has dropped 25 pounds in the last three months. No more ice cream. No chips. No cookies, cakes, pies.
Basically, no sugar. Save that for the hummingbirds. 🙂
Well done, Mr. Paul. A lesson for all of us gaining old age pounds.
2L Coke is about AUD4 here. Pepsi is much cheaper. I think Coke Zero tastes better than Pepsi Max but is
almostalways more epensive, so I usually get Pepsi. A 1.25L bottle of Pepsi could be had on special for 80c a few years ago, now it never gets below $1.15 – which is when I stock up with 40-100 bottles.My dentist asked me recently whether I drank a lot of soft drink, and if so sweetened/unsweetened. He said unsweetened is better for my teeth but I should still wash my mouth out with water due to the acid.
99c for 2L of Coke? Almost enough to make me immigrate to the States. What can I say? I’m an addict.
Half the people here want to immigrate to New Zealand. That’s the same as Australia, right? 🙂
The only person here I know who wants to move to NZ is SteveF. If he has the stamina for all those compliant sheep.
I love the acid in Diet Dr. Pepper. That and the caffeine are the reason why I drink one in the afternoon. In fact, I am heading to the fridge now.
A prospective customer just sent me a red-lined version of our standard contract from a lawyer. The lawyer had the audacity to change our standard terms and conditions. He even tried to assign liability from any of the prospects deficiencies in engineering judgement to us. Nice try, we won’t accept it.
I hate lawyers.
Half the people here want to immigrate to New Zealand.
Read some horror stories from UK citizens that moved to NZ. They are treated about the same as H1B visa holders in the US, i.e. not well.
If I ever wanted to emigrate to another country….nope. Would never want to. Despite Sovereign Man’s repeated suggestions for multiple passports, etc. Gots to dance with the folks what brung ya, and my folks brought me into the world here, descended from immigrants of 400 years ago. For better or worse, what’s left of FUSA, but more specifically Nova Anglia, the northern portion thereof. It’s a little messed up but I can still get teary over the damn flag and hearing Taps at a funeral can do me in. Plus, as that biker character said in the thriller-diller crime flick a million years ago, ‘this was a great country once, before the cities and lawyers…’ Exactly. Avoid the cities and do with lawyers what that other character said in King Henry VI.
“do with lawyers what that other character said in King Henry VI.”
Yeah, but remember WHY they planned to kill all the lawyers. And, as I’ve said before, it’s the 99.9% who give the other 0.1% a bad name.
Do we have us a Jack Cade in the White House about now? Or a Dick?
Ayup. Do you realize how rare it is to have a forum like this where most participants knew exactly what we were discussing obliquely, let alone who Jack Cade and Dick the Butcher were?
Indeed.
Hyper-literate gearheads and sex fiends. Often armed.
Most of Shakespeare’s work is pretty good, but my favorite of his comedies is Romeo and Juliet. Oh, sure, most English Lit instructors will proclaim it a tragedy, but they’re mostly a bunch of raddled hags who probably hate any literature by any man, so why should you listen to them? No, get the truth straight from me: In R&J a couple of drama queen adolescents managed to kill themselves without being talked out of it, growing up, and going on to ruin or end a lot of others’ lives. That’s as close to an ideal conclusion as I can imagine. Ergo, comedy.
R&J is good, but my favorite comedy is either King Lear or The Merchant of Venice.
Youse guys are a riot!
R&J has several side-splitting scenes, as with the warring gangs in the street and the Queen Mab speech. The Scottish play is also great for some boffo laffs.
Seriously, though, my favorite of de Vere’s plays are his history cycles, the Henriad, in particular, and the best comic character of all time, Falstaff. His speech on honor is worth the price of admission. Along with the scenes of his times with Prince Hal.
Ignore almost all English Lit professors, incidentally. On ANY subject. I know them all too well and might have once been one of them. The only ones I liked I can count on one hand, and all but one or two are now deceased.