75F and damp this am. NOAA said we would get Tstorms, now, not so much. Some rain. We’ll see.
The title is a long running joke, shared by RBT and Jerry Pournelle and others. Pay attention and stay safe today.
The march to war continues. The financial shenanigans continue.
This week I moved one of my raised beds to accomodate the pad for the whole house gennie. That meant moving another bed 4 ft to the right. I’m about half done with that. The beds were thoroughly infested with feathery roots. It points up the necessity of turning over your soil every year.
The brusselsprouts have been eaten down to the stalk. Zukes are doing ok so far. One of the transplant blueberry bushes didn’t thrive, so back to Lowes for the guarantee. The others have all set fruit. The grape vines set fruit this year, hooray. They are table varieties so I’m looking forward to seeing what happens with them. Radishes and beets have sprouted and are doing well. Cilantro never got bigger than an inch or two. Basil looks good, and the other herbs are doing well. I think I’m done trying for strawberries. They’ve never done well for me. The trees are doing well. Start planning, and start growing! get something in, even if it’s just herbs in pots.
The HOA approved my driveway gate design. I’m counting that as a prep since it gives privacy and limits access.
In meatspace I met our local Deputy Constable in charge of our subdivision, and our new Houston Police Department watch captain. Got a card and email from each. The HPD PIP (Positive Interaction Program) is a community outreach program that meets once a month with the local citizenry. Next month their Active Shooter Response Trainer will be presenting. I’m going if I can. Look for similar programs in your area. PIP, CPA, COP, and others.
Radio reception continues to amaze me. What a difference 10 extra feet of height and quality cable makes. Again proving that you have to actually try this stuff and work at it.
I haven’t added to my food stocks or replaced what got eaten as I’m still fighting with the rats. Moral of the story, at first sign, react aggressively and effectively. DON’T let them get established. Glue traps are not sustainable long term, nor is poison. Look into vermin control BEFORE you need it.
Sales have been slow, and so have my source auctions. I think there is a slowdown going on, with people holding on to their stuff longer, and getting rid of less. Thrift stores locally are way understocked too.
And that’s it, what did you do to prep this week?
nick
Shocked, I am. I worked for a state agency 15 years ago. At the time, it was a good progression in my career path. To become vested in the system, you had to have 20 years of service. After 6 years, one of my decisions to leave, besides the workplace itself, was the fact that I could earn so much more in the real world. Left and never looked back.
I grew up in Illinois, not far from Harvey. Went to traffic court in Harvey many times 🙂 Went to the unemployment office many times in Harvey. Bought liquor illegally many times in Harvey. Rarely went to Harvey on a whim, it was not a good place for a white kid to be hanging out. Still isn’t. Sh!thole comes to mind.
This statement right here sums up why I’m not invested in the stock market– “Many pension funds had not recovered from the dot-com bust by the time the Great Recession hit less than a decade later. And many haven’t recovered from that, either.” You are not in control of your money, and you have no influence on whether it does well or poorly. You are at the mercy of insiders and pros. And as they like to say, quickly and in small print, “Past performance is not a predictor of future gains.”
n
LOT of pigeons gonna come home to roost as the piggies have been voting more and more slops into the trough, without any means to GET more slops. Some piggies are gonna get fat, some will be squeezed out. Piggies will SQUEAL and squeal then. And since some piggies are more equal than others, I’m betting piggies will get fed while the rest of the farm is squeezed for the slops.
added– ” Pension administrators were counting on median returns of 7.5 percent that year. Instead, they made just 1 percent.”
My sole prepping for the week was to take your advice from yesterday and order a Adventure Medical GlacierGel and blister first aid packet for each Get-Home bag and a couple for the house. I had moleskin in the packs but these look to be MUCH better. I was always concerned if SHTF and we had to spend much time afoot, blisters could be incapacitating. Thanks for the tip.
I grew up in Illinois, not far from Harvey. Went to traffic court in Harvey many times Went to the unemployment office many times in Harvey. Bought liquor illegally many times in Harvey. Rarely went to Harvey on a whim, it was not a good place for a white kid to be hanging out. Still isn’t. Sh!thole comes to mind.
Harvey. Dixie Square!
“Lots of space in this mall.”
Chicago politics in a nutshell — it only took them, what, 30 years to demolish the shell after the “Blues Brothers” film crew left? IIRC, the school board even tried to sue John Landis and Universal over the damage from the movie shoot.
I really like the GlacierGel. They are so thin you don’t even feel them. The kids have been the main beneficiary, but who likes the feel of moleskin?
n
xkcd, “turkish delight”
https://xkcd.com/1980/
Yup, Cinnebons is much better for bribery.
Oh man, I bought 24 tons of limestone gravel for delivery today. The first 12 tons was just delivered. It went about 1/4 of the area that I was hoping for, about 1,500 ft2. I have about 50,000 ft2 of graveled roads and working areas on my property. This does not bode well at $550/truck as I need new gravel for half of the areas.
Plus I need to blacktop another 5,000 ft2 of my main road at $2.50/ft2. Money, money, money !
Oh man, I bought 24 tons of limestone gravel for delivery today. The first 12 tons was just delivered. It went about 1/4 of the area that I was hoping for, about 1,500 ft2.
So a truck is 12 tons? In how many cubic yards?
Darn metric system. 🙂
Yup, Cinnebons is much better for bribery.
I don’t get the appeal of Voodoo Donuts, Austin’s newest “turkish delight”, but the line is out the door at the store around the corner from where I work.
I chalk it up to Austin wanting to be Portland. God only knows why.
I *do* get Franklin’s, however. When you watch Favreau’s “Chef” and see the scenes shot at Franklin’s, yes, the brisket really is that good.
So a truck is 12 tons? In how many cubic yards?
The trucking company says it is 12 tons. I’m not weighing it.
The first truck graveled area was about 150 ft long by 10 ft wide by 3 inches deep. About 14 cubic yards. BTW, those numbers are serious SWAGs.
The first truck was about 150 ft long by 10 ft wide by 3 inches deep. About 14 cubic yards. BTW, those numbers are serious SWAGs.
My only experience with containers that large was when my wife ordered a dumpster to clean out my father-in-law’s house in Orlando when he moved out to Dallas. IIRC, the number was 10 cu yd, and I was amazed that they completely filled it.
I *do* get Franklin’s, however. When you watch Favreau’s “Chef” and see the scenes shot at Franklin’s, yes, the brisket really is that good.
The latest fad coming out of Austin is to forgo the BBQ sauce on your meat. Man, I cannot do that. That would require extremely juicy meat for me.
And the second truck dropped her gravel and is gone (and paid). Looks like I am going to need 4 more trucks for the warehouse and at least 6 trucks for the main road. That is only another $5,500 of gravel. The wife is not happy at all.
I prefer the BBQ sauce on the side to use as a dip.
Sometimes the sauce is so strong ya might as well skip the meat and slop it on bread.
Sometimes the sauce is so strong ya might as well skip the meat and slop it on bread.
I have been guilty of that behavior. My favorite local BBQ uses a base of Louisiana Hot Sauce and molasses and then adds their secret ingredients. It is freaking awesome and takes your breath away.
Since I went on the Atkins diet I stopped eating sauce on my meat. Lotta sugar in barbecue sauce. I like the flavor of the meat.
I’m looking at adding gravel to the decrepit parking lot at our rec assn. Do you need a certain depth to have it stay in place? Do you need a certain mix of big and small stones so that it will compact instead of just squishing out-of-the-way?
N
For my driveway/yard, I’ve been getting 5 yards of 2B gravel (larger than the 1B) and spreading it myself. It sinks into the clay and firms it up. I now have my driveway, parking area, and circle for the trailer well covered. That’s 25 yards in. I plan another 5 yards this year for a muddy spot that I use for turn-around and to cover some low spots.
If you get too much on a spot, it will spread itself. If you don’t have enough, you’ll know soon enough. Just my experience.
Locally (ok, Burnet) you can get “Dirty D” gravel. It’s a mix of limestone and “sand” that compacts nicely. I think the D refers to rock size… just guessing. The rocks average about an inch or so in size. I use the tractor and spread it out a couple of inches deep in the tire tracks.
It squishes out some but once a year on the tractor with the blade angled pulls in back in. Which reminds me…. thanks!
On our so-called parking lot we spread a small size of limestone gravel. Pea to Lima bean size. Not very thick, a couple of inches perhaps, but enough that you are not in mud getting in and out of the car. That was about 20 years ago. No wash out noticed.
I’ve read opinions from “experts” who say that the real good BBQ cooks do not apply the sauce before or during the cooking. It is supplied tableside for the guests to apply.
Yes, and I cook that way on my Weber gas (CH4, methane) BBQ.
Furthermore, AlGore doesn’t want the fire to burn off the sauce and cause more global warming.
I’m looking at adding gravel to the decrepit parking lot at our rec assn. Do you need a certain depth to have it stay in place? Do you need a certain mix of big and small stones so that it will compact instead of just squishing out-of-the-way?
Robin at Triple R Trucking (832-363-7220) delivers 12 tons of 3/4 inch crushed limestone for $550 using her dump trucks (she has two). She gets the crushed limestone out of a quarry outside the north side of Rosenberg. She also has 1.5 inch crushed limestone for the same price. She has crushed concrete for $450/load.
The depth that they delivered is 3 to 4 inches deep. They do not spread it perfectly evenly (a grader is needed for that) but good enough.
The problem with gravel is that it crushes over time and converts into dust. Which then blows away, like today when we have a high south wind. If you have a lot of trucks (1/2 ton to 70 wheeler) on the gravel roads like I do, it crushes faster. My asphalt roads are getting beaten up also. TXDOT is moving back to gravel roads since road maintenance is eating them alive, especially in south Texas.
You are more than welcome to drive out here to the sticks and see what it looks like. It is not very impressive though.
https://www.winsim.com/contact.html
The latest fad coming out of Austin is to forgo the BBQ sauce on your meat. Man, I cannot do that. That would require extremely juicy meat for me.
The hardcore places within daytrip distance of Austin don’t automatically give you sauce — or forks — unless you ask, but I don’t think that is a recent change.
IIRC, the sign in Kreuz Market in Lockhart reads, “No Sauce, No Forks, No Kidding”. We always ask for forks … for the sides, of course.
WRT Prepping this week: I received my WyzeCam interior camera (here) this week.
Interior camera, small cube, 1080p, outputs to phone app only (Apple or Andriod), no web streaming, motion capture, infrared, and easy to set up.
Best part: $20.00. Each. You can link several together. You can view the picture on your phone everywhere; connects to your home wi-fi. Cloud storage of images; also support for small memory card.
Doesn’t work outside (per specs, although I suspect you could put it in a dry exterior location). But at $20, you can get several of them. I think I will order some more.
I suppose you could even put them near a rat trap and use the motion detector to capture the beasts as they are grinning at you…
I have a couple of Wyze cams. Really like them. Waiting on the new version to get a couple of more. Would like to stream to desktop but I do think that will eventually come.
From earlier this week
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Q1MgUsPM0hBbXL1BjZ1ZIdU8Go5OXWKm
@RickH said:
I have a v1 WyzeCam (purchased on Amazon), it works well. My v2 (which I pre-ordered direct from Wyze) is on a slow 3-legged burro from Fife WA to Kennewick WA. It left Fife on 4/10 via UPS Mail Innovations and has yet to be received by the USPS for the final mile.
Wyze is a small startup by 3 or 4 previous Amazon employees. They are having growing pains, but IMHO they are performing well for a new company and should have a good future IF they can develop a closer relationship with Amazon like Ring has (oh wait, Amazon just bought Ring).
This is where I buy sauces and beans.
@dkreck : how does your WyzeCam look at night through that window? Do you turn off infrared for better picture?
Night vision on Wyze sucks through glass. Mine’s inside in an upstairs window. Same with my other looking at the front door through a side window. Front porch is usually lit at night so it’s not so bad. The driveway has a 300W motion detection lamp so that lights up pretty well with that. The motion detection on the cam was too annoying so right now it’s off. I may try to tweak later.
My prospective tenant has disclosed to me that he does not have 100 lbs of chlorine in storage at any given time. He buys chlorine 2 to 3 times per week as necessary. He wants to buy 1,000 lbs of chlorine at a time which would be good enough for at least a month of his needs. Of course, that is way over the 100 lbs of Chlorine Tier 2 self reporting limit in Texas.
What’s the next thing they’ll try to ban? Body armor, especially .mil style
These guys are still having their blow out sale and some of it is shockingly cheap.
https://www.ar500armor.com/promotions-sales.html
If you just want a panel to, say, slip into the hydration pocket on your backpack, or inside a book bag, they have a level 111a panel, 10×12 for $44. That is cheap.
n
Well, I see the Trumpster did it. Launched missiles against another country. Bet it made him all tingly inside.
I fail to see why the US is guardian of the world. If some country wants to kill it’s citizens why is that the problem of the US. We should pull all our troops home and protect our borders. If another country wants protection using US military payment must be made in advance.
Took a couple of hours this evening and did some more work moving the raised beds. I’ve got the old one moved out of the way of the gennie. Now I need to finish both beds and plant. They need manure and some soil to top them off.
Then I can frame the pad for the gennie and get working on that.
Spent some time with the eye tracker this am. Between tech support and installing it on my desktop I’ve concluded the issue is not enough power. I’ve got a last trick to try. I’m going to use a higher wattage wall wart with the USB power adapter feed and see if that does the trick. I’m also gonna take another look at the power saver settings (thought I shut them off, and I was using the yellow, always on, USB port for power.) Anyone know how to assign bandwidth to the USB port? I can see that windows assigned 20%, but I get a message that the device can work faster, which tech support suggests might be a setting issue.
Anyway more poking.
n
Might be a USB 3.0 device and the port you are using is only USB 2.0. I get that message on some devices that are USB 3.0 and plugged into a USB 2.0 port on Windows 7 and Windows 8. Do not get that message on Windows 10.
USB 3.0 devices can be recognized by the USB plug being blue rather than black.
@ ray, the lappy has a dearth of the required 3.0 ports so I installed an expresscard to USB 3.0 adapter. The adapter has a jack where you can add a jumper from another USB port to supply more power to any device plugged into the USB3.0 port (which doesn’t have as much power as it should, because the express card interface doesn’t normally supply power to devices. I suspect that the standard USB 2 port doesn’t supply as much power as a 3.o port should, thus leaving the eye tracker and its power hungry IR emitters short of juice.
What I’m gonna try next is using an external wall wart USB power supply to feed the aux in on the express card. It’s all a kludge, but then again, it’s not $7000 worth of adaptive communication device either…
And I’ve discovered something interesting about myself in the process. I’m getting poor tracking results even on my desktop when it’s working as it should. Turns out, the tracker is losing sight of my right eye. I’ve got some damage to that eye that is flaring up lately and making my vision blurry. What I learned is that when my eye is in this condition, I let my lid droop and squint that one eye to combat the blurriness. That causes the tracker to lose my eye and my accuracy drops thru the floor. If I wear the ‘cheater’ glasses I finally admitted I need, it tracks much better ‘cuz it sees both eyes.
The things we learn….
n
I fail to see why the US is guardian of the world. If some country wants to kill it’s citizens why is that the problem of the US. We should pull all our troops home and protect our borders. If another country wants protection using US military payment must be made in advance.
Supposedly the CIA told the trumpster where those chemical weapons are stored and he bombed those places. With the CIA’s track record lately, I’ll bet that we just bombed a bunch of aspirin and baby formula factories.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-france-britain-launch-strikes-syria-trump-013255933.html
When you watch Favreau’s “Chef” and see the scenes shot at Franklin’s, yes, the brisket really is that good.
My brother was set decorator on the Austin portion of that film.
I’ve been to most of the top places in Texas for BBQ. Smitty’s, Kreuz Market, and Black’s in Lockhart; Salt Lick, Stubbs’, and Franklin in Austin; Gatlin and Killen’s in Houston; and Mueller’s in Taylor. All are pretty darn good.
Best overall – Killen’s in Pearland outside Houston. Highly consistent, great sausage, great pork belly. Best sides of all – Ronnie Killen is a Cordon Bleu trained chef, but his family had a BBQ joint when he was young. His sides are prepared with the same care as the ones at his high-end steak house.
Best beef rib – Louis Mueller’s Amazing stuff.
You mean the Clueless Idiots Agency?
Supposedly the CIA told the trumpster
You mean the Clueless Idiots Agency?
It does seem to be heading in that direction. And I blame look down satellites and micro management from Congress.
Starting in, IIRC, the Carter misadministration, human intelligence — working with traitors and spies — was deemed icky and not something that the fine, upstanding, and morally righteous United States should be involved in. That began the transition to almost entirely electronic intelligence gathering, via breaking into phone systems, signals monitoring, and looking down from above.
I don’t know much about the effectiveness of the CIA’s intelligence gathering in the old days, as it was before my time but intel gathered in the all-electronic days doesn’t seem to be worth what the taxpayers are paying for it. (Though everything to do with Cuba, Iran, ad Central America suggests that the CIA was never that good.)
If you want some variety on plain or spiced meat, try Eastern Carolinas Barbecue Sauce. It’s mostly vinegar, salt, and peppers, with a bit of brown sugar to take the edge off the vinegar. Ask if you want a recipe; it’s easy to make. It fits a low-carb diet so long as you don’t go and chug a pint of it.
re brisket, I’ve had uneven results in cooking it. I don’t know if that comes down to the cuts of meat being different or to my doing things slightly differently each time. As may be, one time it came out so unbearably good that my daughter and I ate a good half of the four-pound brisket plus potatoes and carrots in one sitting. Sure, I got most of it, but for a small eight- or nine-year-old girl who normally doesn’t eat much she put a hurtin’ on her portion.
Little girls can eat a shocking amount of food when they want to!
n
My brother was set decorator on the Austin portion of that film.
The location people nailed Miami and Austin making that movie. I don’t know enough about New Orleans or LA to judge.
Living 3000 miles away, on the opposite side of the country, the Miami portion of the film just killed me, especially the scenes inside Versailles.
People who put sauce on good quality grilled meat are in a state of mortal sin.
I was always mortally offended when my brother slatered tomato sauce on my chicken and veg and steak pies.
How about the “ketchup on everything” folks.
At a good, not great, local BBQ place I once saw a person start to put ketchup on a rack of ribs. The owner went from the pit to the table side in flash and ask the “gentleman” to kindly leave his establishment as he refunded the cretan. Since the offender had practically everyones’ eyes on him, he decided it would be best to accept the refund and leave.