Tuesday, 26 September 2017

By on September 26th, 2017 in personal, prepping

09:19 – It was 60.7F (16C) and mostly clear when I took Colin out at 0725. He let me sleep in this morning, but eventually he couldn’t stand it anymore and started licking my hand to wake me up.

Barbara and I both had dentist appointments yesterday to have our fangs cleaned and sharpened. Hers was for 1145 and mine for 1230, so we rode in together. We got there around 1130, and I was surprised a few minutes later when they called me in. As it turns out, Dr. Flowers had hired a second hygienist, so they ended up being able to treat Barbara and me simultaneously.

I ended up with the new hygienist, Kayla. She’s 22 years old and has always lived here. She’s getting married next May to a guy who’s also always lived in the Sparta area. They’ve already bought a house, but they won’t move in together until they’re married. They plan to have at least two children and maybe three, and Kayla said she wants to have them all before she’s 30.

We ended up finishing about 1240, only 10 minutes after the original time of my appointment. This was our first dentist visit since our COBRA dental insurance expired in March, so I was curious what the charges would be. They ended up being $134 for each of us, which was noticeably less than it would have been down in Winston.


I got an interesting email yesterday from a woman who asked what brand of rechargeable NiMH AA and AAA cells we used and how many we stocked. The brand is easy: Eneloops, whether they’re branded Panasonic, Sanyo, or AmazonBasics.

The first batch I ordered was three years ago. I bought an 8-pack each of AA and AAA AmazonBasics High Capacity, which at the time (and maybe still) were Eneloops. They were manufactured in Japan, although some of the AmazonBasics rechargeables at the time were Chinese. I avoided those. I also avoided US brand names like Energizer and Duracell. Their rechargeables seem inferior to the Eneloops, probably not least because they want to protect their alkaline battery business.

Since then, I’ve ordered Panasonic Eneloops in either standard capacity or the Pro version, which is higher capacity. They’re all LSD (low self-discharge) models. The difference is that the Pro versions have higher capacity, but are rated at “only” 500 charge cycles (versus 2,100 cycles for the 4th generation standard-capacity models).

As to how many you need, I told her that was completely up to her. I suggested at least one full set for each of their devices, along with maybe 20% extras. At this point, I’m still using up our stock of Costco Kirkland AA and AAA alkalines, but as we run out of those, I’ll replace them with NiMH cells in everything from flashlights and lanterns to remote controls to radios.

As to rechargers, any name-brand smart charger seems to be fine. You’ll want at least a couple of these, and you want ones that charge cells individually rather than requiring that you charge them in pairs. Ideally, I’d want at least one charger that can be plugged into a 12V auto receptacle.

54 Comments and discussion on "Tuesday, 26 September 2017"

  1. Greg Norton says:

    As to rechargers, any name-brand smart charger seems to be fine. You’ll want at least a couple of these, and you want ones that charge cells individually rather than requiring that you charge them in pairs. Ideally, I’d want at least one charger that can be plugged into a 12V auto receptacle.

    I have a variety of chargers, but I keep one La Crosse BC-700 around to revive “dead” NiMH and NiCad batteries using that unit’s “refresh” cycle.

  2. nick flandrey says:

    Some info Maria ongoing response– slow mo disaster is starting….

    Hurricane Maria – Caribbean
    Current Situation
    Life sustainment efforts in PR and the USVI are ongoing
    Impacts
    • Shelters: USVI: 7 with 621 (+230) occupants; PR: 172 (+4) with 11,253
    (-106) occupants (Senior Leadership Brief as of 5:55a.m. EDT)
    • Power Outages: USVI: 48k; PR: 1.6M [this isn’t getting better- n]
    EDT)
    • Airports:
    o USVI closed except for military and hurricane relief
    • Communications: Cell sites out of service PR: 95%; USVI: 77% [not getting better- n]
    Health and Medical: PR – 11 of 69 hospitals have either power or fuel
    supply; government will create 7 temporary hospitals; USVI – 1 hospital
    condemned by USACE
    [ 1/7 of hospital capacity! 7 MMUs! Condemned!]
    • Water: PR – 44% of population without potable water; USVI – potable
    water services restored on St. Thomas and St. John
    • Guajataca Dam:
    o Still intact but must be reinforced to ensure stability; water level
    behind dam needs to go down before a comprehensive assessment
    of dam can be performed
    FEMA Response
    • NRCC: Level I (24/7); NWC: Steady State
    • National IMAT East-2: PR
    • FEMA Region X IMAT: USVI
    • FEMA Region II
    o RRCC: Not Activated; RWC: Steady State
    o IMATs: deployed to USVI and PR
    • US&R: FL-TF1/2, TX-TF1, CA-TF2/6/7, MA-TF1, NY-TF1, MD-TF1, IN-TF1
    • ESF-6: Feeding Plan developed: to provide 2 meals per person per day;
    Food/Water missions continue to arrive via C-17

    • Points of Distribution: 12 opening across PR & USVI
    • Blue Roof mission: PR – initial assessments show 30k roofs damaged;
    USVI – estimated 13k combined total over all islands

    The real disaster is just getting going. Some thoughts for preppers:

    only one in 7 hospitals open at all, what does that mean for you in POST disaster mode?

    FEMA is feeding PR. About half the people don’t have clean drinking water, still.

    It’s 95F-105F outdoors in PR.

    Cell service is NOT being restored.

    I know it’s a third world shithole, but I think it’s a pretty good indication of what we could expect here if the scope of an event was more than regional, or if the hits just keep on coming.

    Take a look at the spending details, and at the manpower levels in today’s brief:

    https://content.govdelivery.com/attachments/USDHSFEMA/2017/09/26/file_attachments/885868/FEMA%2BDaily%2BOps%2BBriefing%2B09-26-2017.pdf

    n

  3. Dave Hardy says:

    This ain’t a third-world shithole but it is a rural, small-town, and mainly working-class AO up here. One sizable hospital/med center over in the “city” and several smaller med treatment facilities scattered around, plus the big university med complex down in Burlap, the VA Med Center in White River Junction (about a two-hour haul each way) and across the river down there, the Dartmouth-Hitchcock med center.

    A major disaster might be a series of blizzards and ice storms that knock out power for a couple of weeks amid drastically falling temps for a while in the dead of winter. Most of us have already been there and done that at various times and more than once. But the basic infrastructure would remain in place and get fixed pretty quickly, and it has.

    Further south, however, in this state and NH, there is still residual evidence of the nasty floods from a few years ago and it’s taken this long to finally repair certain roads, culverts, bridges, etc., and as to be expected, the crews have been out there milking it all very heavily and dragging it out. We’ve seen bridges up here take YEARS to fix.

    If all of that was combined with longer and more widespread Grid-down, and/or some other kind of Black Swan event, then things could get pretty grim. Without the supermarkets and gas stations, that is.

    We’re behind schedule on storing food and water and I plan to rectify that this fall, well before The Holidays.

  4. nick flandrey says:

    More to think about from :

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4918854/Hundreds-try-flee-hurricane-ravaged-Puerto-Rick.html

    Keep in mind, we’re well past the “72hours of food, water, and medicine” FEMA recommends by rote.

    “His plea for help comes as hundreds of stranded tourists and Puerto Ricans filled the sweltering halls of San Juan International Airport on Monday anxious for a seat on one of the few flights out.” —- I’ve commented before on the futility of saying “just don’t be there” in most cases, but this was clearly a case of DON’T BE THERE. Hurricanes don’t sneak up on tourists.

    [photo of ticket counter with “Cash Only” sign]

    —- how much cash do you travel with? Enough to get your family home? I have $1k stashed in my bag, and another oz of gold. STILL wouldn’t be enough for a single ticket out of PR…

    “Mike Henderson, a construction firm superintendent, was trying to return to his family in Detroit after his wife paid $2,000 dollars for a seat on a Delta flight. ”

    — somehow he had comms with help OUTSIDE the disaster area.

    —don’t plan on getting cash locally:

    “A line of people wraps around the Banco Popular in San Juan as people are desperate to get cash”

    “Hundreds of people waited in line to go into a bank in San Juan on Monday as they deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Maria”

    “Nearly one week after hurricane Maria devastated the island of Puerto Rico, residents are still trying to get the basics of food, water, gas, and money from banks”

    —speaking of which, Got bleach?

    “People carry water in bottles retrieved from a canal due to lack of water following passage of Hurricane Maria”

    Again, they are starting from 3rd world shithole, and ‘failed state’. How many of our big cities are only a step away from that?

    -as much food as you can store and some way to prepare it
    -water, and ways to get more
    -cash- one month ALL expenses, on hand. Can be converted to “Get Out Of Dodge” funds when it’s time to leave.
    -fuel, to run gennie for week or longer (until you can expect resupply), enough to double your vehicle range
    -hygiene and meds, you are on your own. Plan accordingly.

    nick

  5. nick flandrey says:

    My food is being eaten by pests.

    In the garden, all my watermelon vines died this week. Before that the fruit was eaten in the middle of the night.

    My stored food is still being eaten. I’ve caught and killed one fair sized rat, and two that are gerbil sized, ie bigger than mice, not scary big. Glue traps are the only thing that has been effective. Vermin are a good argument for canned foods and for keeping stuff in original (small) packaging- that way you only lose the contaminated box, not the whole bucket. I’ve had no trouble at all for years, now there is trouble. Either my ultrasonic pest chaser isn’t working, or flooding and habitat change pushed them toward me, or the word went out on the rodent grapevine that dinner was served…..

    BTW, a couple of rodents can eat an astounding amount of food and spoil much more. I should have gotten more aggressive, sooner.

    Garden update. Collards continue to produce. Finally getting cukes that look like cukes instead of mutant (and bitter) crosses with zukes. Not long for those vines though. Citrus looks to be doing well, with fruit on all the trees. Won’t be a bumper crop, but WILL be more than a single fruit. Looks like the trees are finally established. Onions in fence ‘window boxes’ seem to be doing well.

    It’s just about time to get fall veg in the ground….

    n

  6. MrAtoz says:

    Either my ultrasonic pest chaser isn’t working, or flooding and habitat change pushed them toward me, or the word went out on the rodent grapevine that dinner was served…..

    That’s a good point, Mr. Nick. I wonder how the Houston flooding is redistributing the wildlife in the area?

  7. nick flandrey says:

    Def having an effect. Bugs, rodents, alligators, hogs, deer, all showing up in different places. Hard to say with the bugs and rodents whether it’s from normal seasonal changes or from normal development pushing into habitat. LOTS of open field development around here lately.

    The reservoir flooding and bayou flooding displaces a BUNCH of wildlife.

    n

  8. Dave Hardy says:

    We got a few tomatoes, about enough for a weekend of various meals. Ditto artichoke and rhubarb (which will keep coming and does well in these pahts). In sum, pathetic. Next time we’ll start a bunch of stuff indoors w/grow lights and also only do one tomato plant per grow bag and install higher supports. We need to get the septic tank people out this fall and then set up another half-dozen raised beds around it and in more direct sunlight. Ditto for more containers and grow bags.

    But realistically speaking, I don’t expect much on this small, sunlight-deprived lot with clay soil. I wanna go for the most bang-for-the-buck root veggies, though, and anything else would have to be bought or bartered for somehow, including eggs, dairy and meat. Obviously.

    The only other route I can think of to increase garden yield would be to either buy a larger plot of decent land within a reasonable distance, and/or go in with other people here to do that. I’m guessing no one else feels any urgency along those lines yet. But as Mr. Nick has said, it takes quite a while to learn stuff, make mistakes and figure things out season to season.

    I need to do some more research into our local CSA sites.

  9. SteveF says:

    Either my ultrasonic pest chaser isn’t working, or flooding and habitat change pushed them toward me, or the word went out on the rodent grapevine that dinner was served

    I’d guess it’s the flooding.

    You can probably check that the ultrasonic doohicky is working by putting it near your computer’s microphones and running a mic volume calibration utility to see if it registers anything. Assuming you don’t already have an audio spectrum analyzer in your pile o’ stuff.

    What would the rodent social networking be called? Chitter? Micebook?

  10. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    After reading the Woodpile Report posted today, I took Ol’ Remus’s suggestion:

    “Enter the words “American inventors” at Google , then hit “Images”. Wow. Who knew?”

    What I learned was that a vast majority of American inventors were/are black, and a lot of them were women. And here I’d always thought that white men were literally 99.9% if not 99.99% of inventors, American and otherwise. How could I have been so wrong?

  11. Greg Norton says:

    This was our first dentist visit since our COBRA dental insurance expired in March, so I was curious what the charges would be. They ended up being $134 for each of us, which was noticeably less than it would have been down in Winston.

    If you are paying cash (this includes checks and Visa/MC/Amex) dental care is still very reasonable in my experience. We always weigh the cost of two cleanings a year vs. the insurance premiums when we change jobs. Currently, we have coverage, but we went without in Florida.

    The last time I had a serious dental emergency while doing self pay, the final bill was $300. The office gave me a 40% discount because I wrote a check instead of making them hassle with insurance.

    The hard part with dentistry is finding a conservative dentist with decent hygenists who won’t push unnecessary work. Sounds like you have one.

  12. RickH says:

    @RBT … I miss the “scroll back to top up arrow” at the bottom of the posts….

  13. lynn says:

    This was our first dentist visit since our COBRA dental insurance expired in March, so I was curious what the charges would be. They ended up being $134 for each of us, which was noticeably less than it would have been down in Winston.

    My dental cleaning yesterday was $211. But, I got the annual x-rays also so that upped the bill. Plus the dentist got two foot of water in his new home and might have an emergency price increase. I mean, why not ? Governments do it.

    The hygienist mentioned that if the Brazos River had gone four feet higher as originally predicted, their office might have flooded. Their office is about four miles away from the river. The dentist said in that case, he would have retired. He is 62 or so and raised six kids. He and his wife are living with their oldest daughter’s family now until Christmas or so.

  14. nick flandrey says:

    “I took Ol’ Remus’s suggestion:”

    did that some days ago. White Scientists gets even more bizarre. The original article list a couple other phrases that don’t give the result one would expect.

    duck duck go gives a much more ‘white’ result, but still includes a couple of blacks and asians.

    I’ve been trying the Brave browser. The biggest problem for me is that I’m an extensive user of autocomplete and autofill. Couple that with keeping my setup the same for years, and there are websites I visit daily that I don’t actually know my login. There are dozens of websites (shopping mostly) that I visit much less often that FF just autofills and I can log in. Sometimes, I’m even surprised that I HAVE a login. Big timesaver, not there in Brave.

    The second issue I’m having with Brave, it’s F’ing SLOW. It often hangs for 10 seconds or more, and doesn’t even make links clickable for a while. I can usually load a page, and click on a link before the page is done loading to move off to where I actually want to go. Not with Brave. This may be related to my saturated network connection. FF is slow too, but doesn’t hang in an unclickable state. (my connection to my network is maxed at 95-100% of 100MBPS most of the time due to all the cameras feeding the security NVR software. I still haven’t moved that to its own box.)

    When I want fast, I load FFportable. That is really quick, but (by design and installation) has no persistence which doesn’t work for everyday browsing.

    More investment needed….

    n

  15. nick flandrey says:

    @RBT … I miss the “scroll back to top up arrow” at the bottom of the posts….

    I was gonna ask about that, I’ve been missing it for at least a couple days. thought it was me……
    n

  16. nick flandrey says:

    For years in SoCal my dentist was my primary care physician, and I worked with him on a completely cash basis.

    We are cash with our current dentist, despite having some sort of plan thru my wife’s work. I think it’s cheaper to pay, than to pay the deductible.

    n

  17. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    “@RBT … I miss the “scroll back to top up arrow” at the bottom of the posts….”

    I keep getting emails from my hosting company telling me that “Your Website is Still Running Rough” and that I’m reaching and frequently exceeding the allowable amount of memory and CPU on a shared server. What they really want me to do is upgrade to a virtual private server, which I think is ridiculous for a very low-volume site like this. I average in the range of 750 to 900 unique visitors per day and maybe 3,000 page reads.

    Among the many other things they recommend is disabling any WordPress plug-ins I don’t really need, and one of those is that Simple Scroll to Top plug-in. (Actually, it worried me anyway. It wants to update itself as often as all of the other plug-ins put together. How hard can it be to write a scroll-to-top plug-in?) So I disabled it. What worries me is that it then apparently re-enabled itself, because when I checked first thing this morning it was still active.

    I’ve been using WP for six years now, and I strongly suspected when I made the change I’d regret it. And I do. I wish I’d stuck with static HTML pages all along. I made the change because it was the easiest way to have commenting, so I suppose I’ll stick with it.

  18. nick flandrey says:

    And my current FF 55, which upgrade broke video completely, will now crash when attempting to play youtube vids.

    After installing Brave, I was able to play vids on Daily Mail again, but not youtube.

    Now for some reason, I get a green screen then FF shuts down.

    n

  19. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    “I was gonna ask about that, I’ve been missing it for at least a couple days. thought it was me……”

    It was just you. I disabled it only last night and then again this morning.

  20. nick flandrey says:

    And a reminder, FWIW, “HOME” button takes you to the top of the page with one press, and “End” takes you to the bottom……..

    n

    although, when using the mouse, I just grab the scroll handle and fling it to the top.

  21. lynn says:

    And a reminder, FWIW, “HOME” button takes you to the top of the page with one press, and “End” takes you to the bottom……..

    There ain’t no home button on a smartyphone. Or arrow keys.

  22. Dave Hardy says:

    WRT browsers; we use what works best for us. I don’t care about auto-fill and auto-complete (although it will do a-c in the url bar) and am willing to put up with that in exchange for slightly better security. Haven’t noticed any slowness here and as for logins, I keep a txt file open that has all my login info so I can just copy-paste and I close it when I’m done. I should set up the password mangler to run all that, though.

    I’m happy enough so far with Brave and the Quant search engine.

  23. lynn says:

    I am using Firefox 64 bit 55.0.3 on Windows 7 x64 with 16 GB of ram. A very important add-on is the Ublock Origin ad blocker. Don’t use Ublock, it has holes and they forked it. Otherwise my Firefox has continuous memory runaways due to ads with embedded videos. I have filed a Mozilla bug but they do not seem to be able to fix the problem.
    https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1392137

  24. Miles_Teg says:

    I found DuckDuckGo to have the same number, roughly, of black inventors as Google.

    And I usually have to kill FF in Task Mangler several times a day.

  25. nick flandrey says:

    try white scientists

    n

  26. RickH says:

    @RBT – it was me that re-enabled the scroll-to-top plugin. I thought it had broken.

    I don’t think that the plugin is adding any extra ‘load’ to the system. It may be that an optimize of the database is all that is needed. There is a plugin that will do that – on demand, so it doesn’t affect the daily ‘load’ of the site. It will clear out the ‘crud’ in the database – such as revisions, etc.

    As for going back to HTML … that would be a lot of effort, especially if you had to implement a commenting system. For me, the comments here are a big reason why I visit this place. (Where else would I find out about FLASHLIGHTS ?)

    Implementing that in an HTML system would be a lot of work. And having a separate ‘forum’ bulletin-board type system is not my favorite solution for that. A lot of work involved in running an HTML-based site that has continuous new content.

    Updating plugins (and themes);WordPress is usually set to auto-update) does take time. I know, I have 50 separate WP installations that I have to monitor and update. Luckily, I found a great plugin (Infinite WP) that allows me to monitor updates (and perform them) on one page. One button to click to check for updates, and another button to click to update things on all the sites. One-click admin login on every site (and I don’t have to remember user/pass). Very convenient, and well-supported.

    If you are interested in optimizing the WP database, I use the “Advanced Database Cleaner” on Jerry’s Chaos Manor site occasionally. Have had no problems with it.

  27. lynn says:

    And I usually have to kill FF in Task Mangler several times a day.

    Are you running Ublock Origin ? The original Ublock was taken over by the advertising folks and they put backdoors in it. So the original Ublock guy created Ublock Origin, works wonderfully.
    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/

  28. medium wave says:

    From the “Wish I’d thought of that” file:

    NFL = No Fans Left

  29. JimL says:

    WordPress – I’m very glad I moved my 3 sites over a year & a half ago. Whoops. December of 2015 was when I started the migration. I think it was completely worth the effort.

    Of course, I’m doing work remotely, and on laptops & smartphones, so mobile access was a much larger concern for me than for our host. Even so, I like the WordPress setup a lot better than anything else out there. It’s feature rich and relatively easy to setup and use.

    The one thing I’m disappointed in is community involvement. One of the driving concerns was to allow local runners to post events & results for themselves, with nothing but approval from Yours Truly. That almost never happens. The two folks I have given extensive training and step-by-step instructions cannot be bothered. It’s enough to make me weep.

    But my own site is worlds better than it was, and I’m not sorry.

  30. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    @RickH

    Thanks. I installed the Advanced Database Cleaner you mentioned and ran Clean and Optimize passes at default settings. I also re-enabled the Scroll to Top plug-in and disabled the stats plug-in I’d been using. It may have been the culprit, and I don’t really care about stats anyway.

  31. RickH says:

    @RBT Huzzah! Now I don’t have to reach for the Home button…or scroll madly (I read all the comments, then go to the top and click on the top comment item, so I’ll know where to start reading the next visit).

    As for analytics, my current favorite is this one https://wordpress.org/plugins/google-analytics-dashboard-for-wp/ . Minimal impact on the site, and the stats are good. They were helpful as I was monitoring the sudden traffic at Jerry’s site – daily views jumped from an average of 2800 to almost 17K. Has a nice ‘real-time’ view that will show users on-site ‘right now’.

  32. nick flandrey says:

    Anyone wanna make the tired old argument that gold isn’t worth having?

    Anyone think these women would have preferred to have some gold tucked away rather than bolivars in the bank?

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-26/venezuelan-women-forced-turn-prostitution-afford-food

    Anyone think they’d have trouble converting gold into dollars/bolivar/dolars/pesos, etc?

    n

  33. Marcelo says:

    I have been using Firefox for years and years but it was getting worse and worse lately. I have recently installed the latest version of Vivaldi that uses the Chrome engine but strips out the feedback to Google. All Chrome plug-ins should work with it. I only use AdBlockPlus.

    Vivaldi is fast and has heaps of settings to tailor it to your taste.

    In Win10 systems I am one of the minority of users that prefer Edge (with AdBlockPlus).

  34. lynn says:

    From BH, editor of the Fort Bend Journal:

    “Liberals bellow about sharing the wealth.”

    “But I’ve never heard one say anything about share the work.”

  35. lynn says:

    “Probes estimate billions of delayed mail to facilities and point to Postal Service ‘manipulation’ by a few employees”
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/09/26/probe-estimates-billions-of-delayed-mail-pieces-postal-service-acknowledges-some-coverups/

    Yup. We only get our mail at the house every other day and our mail at the office once or twice per week. This is getting very old. And it started a week before Harvey.

  36. OFD says:

    Liberals are full of shit. Always have been. But their days are numbered. Let’s see what their attitudes and priorities are in another few years. I bet they’ll be quite different. Normals are getting increasingly fed up out here, even liberal Dems like Mrs. OFD, who is otherwise pretty conservative on many things. Her working partner this week is a BLM type sistah who evidently deeply dislikes white people and just barely puts up with them because of having to work with them and instruct them. Apparently her FaceBerg page is rife with BLM-type agit-prop and confused lies and bullshit. Wife and other colleagues have tried to be decent with her and amiable but she’s like that old Foreigner song, cold as ice….

    …imagine if the shoe were on the other foot; how long would a racist white instructor last these days?

  37. OFD says:

    ” We only get our mail at the house every other day and our mail at the office once or twice per week.”

    Up here in beeyooteeful SAB, we have days where the mailbox is empty, like today, or stuffed to bursting, like yesterday. And a musical-chairs sort of personnel series manning or womanning the building, including at least three well-built blonde chicks; I wish they’d stick with one of them.

  38. lynn says:

    The wife took Lady, our 14+ year old British Cocker Spaniel, to the vet last week for her her quarterly trim. The groomer found an abscess at the base of her right ear at the skull. The vet cleaned it out, gave her a shot, and some antibiotics to take. We knew that she was bleeding a little but we had no idea where since her hair gets long so very quickly.

    Lady is now a different dog. She is bouncing again. She is running again. It is amazing how well dogs (and us) can do when they are feeling well. Even though she is 88 in human years. We walked a mile earlier and Lady was first at the back gate (ah, blessed air conditioning was waiting for us).

    And yes, Toby the 18 lb Jack Russel / Chihuahua mix, is still here. And Toby still thinks that he can take Remy the 14 lb Siamese cat.

  39. MrAtoz says:

    We get mail Monday through Saturday almost without fail. If only I could get a deliverer that speaks English.

    Me: Can you p/u Priority at my door?

    USPS: scrick..scrack go to POSER OCCIFF hick glub snick.

    Could be Laotian or sumpin’.

  40. MrAtoz says:

    Lady is now a different dog. She is bouncing again

    We took in our daughters Chihooahooa since she is gone a lot. He’ll be 18 in October. The longest living dog in the family. He still gets excited for meal time, sleeps most of the day. Mostly deaf, but barks when the other dogs bark. He still makes it in and out the doggie door to do his business. Trips to the park (we drive) tire him out in 20 minutes and he just lays down and watches. Gonna miss him.

  41. lynn says:

    “Roy Moore Wins Alabama’s GOP Senate Primary”
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/roy-moore-wins-alabamas-gop-senate-primary-1506475781

    I’ve been thinking about this for a while. My thoughts:
    1. Alabama elected the true conservative
    2. McConnell took a black eye on this election
    3. I don’t think Trump took a black eye as he was obviously doing McConnell a favor and everyone knew it
    4. The 2018 elections are going to be interesting

    Will Trump campaign with Moore for the Dec 12 election ? In a heartbeat. Will Moore ask him to help ? I don’t know.

    Draining the swamp takes time and fortitude. Looks like Alabama has both. I wonder about the other 49 states.

  42. Ray Thompson says:

    how long would a racist white instructor last these days

    Exactly. If a white male exhibited the same behavior as most of the black females the white male would be terminated and probably facing charges.

    This also goes beyond just people working together. I see shows like “Blackish” on TV and wonder how that is not racist when a show called “Whiteish” would immediately spawn massive riots. You have a Black Congressional Caucus. What would happen with a White Congressional Caucus? Society of Black Engineers, Ms Black America, black entertainment award shows, all manner of groups that align themselves with black people only.

    My opinion is that these groups need to keep racism alive as that allows them to keep special privileges. To do things that would be savagely attacked if such were attempted by white people. Racism allows people of less than stellar credentials to advance over others more qualified. Of course they want to use such advantage to get the rewards without the effort.

    I also feel that using such techniques is a slap in the face to minorities that have exceeded on their own using their own effort and intelligence. People using the race card to advance only cheapens the efforts of those that are truly qualified.

    Racism will never disappear in this country as long as someone can gain something for nothing based on their skin color.

    My father was a big time racist for as long as I knew him. At his funeral the man that gave the eulogy was black. I was shocked. After the funeral I asked the man how he was friends with my dad as my dad was a racist. The man replied that yes, my dad was a racist, but so was he. However, they had other interests that were more important and thus were friends. He stated they told racist jokes, called each other names, neither denouncing or changing their racist mindset. Instead they acknowledged the racism, used it for humor and moved on to more important things, things they enjoyed together.

  43. JimL says:

    @RickH: (I read all the comments, then go to the top and click on the top comment item, so I’ll know where to start reading the next visit).

    I click on the date below the name to mark last read comment. Then I can just reload.

    That, and the comment history doesn’t go back as far as I might like. If I don’t get back for a day or two, I just guess.

  44. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    “the comment history doesn’t go back as far as I might like. If I don’t get back for a day or two, I just guess.”

    Good point. When I set up this site back in 2011, I just accepted the default of showing the most recent 25 comments. On some days, that’s just not enough. So I just boosted that to the most recent 50 comments.

  45. paul says:

    I installed Adblock Browser on my phone. It’s FF with Adblock Plus bolted on. It feels slower than the phone’s factory browser. It did import the few bookmarks I have. So far it’s a waste of time. The adblock settings are grayed out and can’t be edited.

  46. SteveF says:

    What would happen with a White Congressional Caucus?

    I’ve brought that up many times over the years. Most people treated the suggestion as a joke. Some black people said that everything was always about white people and white people have all the power, so it’s not needed. Yah, when I was a kid going hungry, I noticed all the power and wealth my skin color gave me.

    I also feel that using such techniques is a slap in the face to minorities that have exceeded on their own using their own effort and intelligence.

    There was a black medical doctor in town when I was a kid. My dad told me the guy hated “affirmative action” because it meant no one would trust black doctors, that they’d just assume they got in because of AA and weren’t any good. And by gum, he was right!

  47. JimL says:

    “Good point. When I set up this site back in 2011, I just accepted the default of showing the most recent 25 comments. On some days, that’s just not enough. So I just boosted that to the most recent 50 comments.”

    Much appreciated.

  48. Greg Norton says:

    Draining the swamp takes time and fortitude. Looks like Alabama has both. I wonder about the other 49 states.

    Florida will most likely return Bill Nelson (D) to the Senate. Something dramatic could happen, but I doubt it. The likely (R) candidate is the sitting Governor, Rick Scott, and Scott has way too many skeletons in his closet for squeaky clean Nelson to exploit with help from the editorial pages of the St. Petersburg Times and Miami Herald.

  49. ech says:

    Alabama elected the true conservative

    A true conservative respects the law. Moore doesn’t.

  50. lynn says:

    Good point. When I set up this site back in 2011, I just accepted the default of showing the most recent 25 comments. On some days, that’s just not enough. So I just boosted that to the most recent 50 comments.

    @RBT, thanks for a place where us deplorables can hang out and grouse about weird things.

  51. lynn says:

    As to rechargers, any name-brand smart charger seems to be fine. You’ll want at least a couple of these, and you want ones that charge cells individually rather than requiring that you charge them in pairs. Ideally, I’d want at least one charger that can be plugged into a 12V auto receptacle.

    I have a variety of chargers, but I keep one La Crosse BC-700 around to revive “dead” NiMH and NiCad batteries using that unit’s “refresh” cycle.

    I just have not had good experience with rechargeable batteries. I keep around 600 to 700 Duracell AA batteries on hand. I buy those 48 packs from Sam’s Club for $17 each. Whoa, the price is now $19 at the club. I use 4 to 6 AA batteries a week in my nighttime walking plus all the other miscellaneous stuff.
    https://www.samsclub.com/sams/duracell-ct-aa-48ct-aa-48ct/prod10680092.ip?xid=plp:product:1:1

    I also keep about 200 to 300 Duracell D cells on hand for my Coleman LED lanterns. I buy the 12 packs (at least I thought it was 12 packs) at Sams Club for $11 each. When they have them, they seem to have problems stocking the D cell batteries lately.
    https://www.samsclub.com/sams/duracell-d-10ct-d-10ct-batteries/prod10680120.ip?xid=plp:product:1:3

  52. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    “I just have not had good experience with rechargeable batteries.”

    How so? My guess is that your experience is from some years ago. Rechargeables used to have very high self-discharge rates and very limited charging cycles.

    If you’re going through that number of alkalines, you owe it to yourself to pick up some Eneloops and give them a try. Something like this:

    https://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-K-KJ17MCA4BA-Individual-Rechargeable-Batteries/dp/B00JHKSMJU

    It’s $16 for a Panasonic charger and four AA cells. They come pre-charged.

  53. lynn says:

    How so? My guess is that your experience is from some years ago. Rechargeables used to have very high self-discharge rates and very limited charging cycles.

    Yup, it may have been 20 years ago. You know, back in the dark ages of battery technology.

  54. lynn says:

    How so? My guess is that your experience is from some years ago. Rechargeables used to have very high self-discharge rates and very limited charging cycles.

    You know what, I was wrong. I have had an Anker 10,000 mah smartphone battery that I bought back in 2013. Works like a champ, I even used it last weekend when I forgot my house charger plug. I use the battery at conferences to recharge my smartphone while I am surfing the web XXXXXXXXXXX answering customer emails while someone is speaking.
    https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009USAJCC/

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