The mice will play while the boss is away...

Mrs ERJ left me yesterday

She had been invited to a party at a beach. It was a hens-only party, so I was not invited.

The heat index was about 100F which is pretty warm for out part of Michigan.

She brought back pies and cakes and salads. My sweet, darling, soft-hearted wife did not want any of the other ladies to be left with the impression that their best-efforts were lacking in any way.

And since we are a team, I will manfully eat my share of the goodies and then some. My metabolism runs hotter than Mrs ERJ's and therefore I have the greater duty.

Kel-tec P-17

I had a chance to mess around with a Kel-tec P-17 while Mrs ERJ was hanging out with her girlfriends.

The Kel-tec P-17 is a .22LR handgun with a magazine capacity of 16 which is about 6 more than most .22LR handguns and is on-par with the magazine capacity of the Glock 19, 9mm handgun.

My impression is that the Kel-tec P-17 has a very nice trigger and almost cartoonishly large safety and mag-release...very useful if you are wearing gloves.

The first magazine through the firearm had two bobbles. One was a "failure to eject" and other was a "failure to extract". That may slick-up as more rounds are fired through the weapon. Time will tell.

The spent cases tumbled out of the weapon and fell just to the right of my feet. No flinging of the brass across the room with this weapon. 

All .22 semi-automatics are fussy about ammo with pistols being more sensitive than rifles. It is a matter of physics. It is a combination of the simple (and economical to manufacture) blow-back designs and the limited amount of energy that must be "budgeted" for the various functions that must be executed as the action cycles through

• Extract
• Eject
• Reset hammer 
• Strip new round out of magazine
• Seat new round in chamber
• Seat extractor over rim of round in chamber 

Furthermore, the extremely light weight of the weapon, although that makes it a joy to carry, makes it even more sensitive to "limp-wristing" or a gentle-grip on the weapon.

One quirk of this firearm is that the magazine well feels like it is very long (in the direction of the barrel). This is not a gun for people with short fingers.

I have short, stubby fingers (for a guy) and I would not have wanted the magazine well to be any longer. HOWEVER...that geometry locked in the firearm and I had exceptionally low horizontal stringing.

However, the gun shot low with the ammo we tried. That might be a matter of getting used to the sight-picture required with the fiber-optic front sight but non-fiber rear. Aligning the tops of the front and rear sights doesn't work. Maybe the designers expect shooters to align the bright-spot in the front with the tops of the rear. Something to check out. 

If a fellow were looking for a "bumming around in the woods" .22 handgun or a gun to carry on a trap-line or if he was exterminating vermin...I think he would be better served with a Heritage Rough Rider .22LR revolver with the 4.75 inch barrel. The Rough Rider will go "bang" regardless of the ammo and is easier to find a holster for.

If a fellow needed to navigate in places where volume-of fire and speed-of-reload were important, and low hand-strength made centerfire chamberings impossible, then this might be an option although the grip might make it a non-starter for some women. If you opt for this weapon, plan on running several hundred rounds through it to break it in. Also plan on trying several brands of ammo to see which it feeds most reliably.

What is it like to live hundreds of miles from a city? 

I think this is interesting because I am becoming less enchanted by trips to "the city" to get supplies.

This family lives out in the hinter-boonies of Alaska. They have been "homesteading" for fifteen years but JUST moved to Alaska a year ago. 

This is the first run they made to a Costco store from their new homestead. 

While in Anchorage, they wallowed in decadence...They bought a princess dress for one of their daughters,. They ate ice cream. They drank fou-fou lattes from a coffee shop. They ate breakfasts out of disposable take-out cardboard containers. It was a venture in cultural enrichment for their seven children.

The Holy Grail: Shelf-stable dry-goods that are "nutritionally dense"

That is, they take up relatively small volume for their mass and nutritional content.

Spaghetti vs elbow macaroni. Spaghetti wins.

Dried beans vs canned refried beans. Dried beans win.

Flour vs baked goods. Flour wins. (BTW, this guys wife likes to bake. What a treasure for this kind of life!!!)

Slab bacon or even vac-packed mystery-meat hotdogs vs pre-made, frozen breakfast sandwiches. Bacon wins.

Granulated sugar vs Kaptain Krunch breakfast cereal or cans of soda pop. Granulated sugar wins.

Dried milk powder vs liquid milk. Dried milk wins.

Don't buy water. Don't pay money for air. 

Bring a trailer

Day three(ish) on my news detox

I lost track on what day I am in my news detox.

I get irritated when ads pop-up on the video I am watching and the ad pummels me with "news" or politics.

June 10 is the day I remember my dad putting in the garden. I am the second oldest and have seven siblings. The next youngest is three-and-a-half years younger, so Dad leaned heavily on my older brother and me to help with the chores.

I still have some empty space in my garden, so I am not quite up-to-snuff, but I did get most of my garden planted before June first, so that counts for something.

The remaining space will probably be planted to Daikon radishes and California Giant zinnias and maybe some kale. 

Random meme

"It is good to have a cousin who works in the mail-room of the local police station and to have an uncle with a fast boat."   -Central American proverb

Addendum to "From the Comments" post

Victor K. Polk wrote: I put pieces of shingle (Or anything else you can find) on the moist ground. In the morning you will find slugs under the pieces. Spray them with ammonia. They instantly dissolve. Ammonia breaks down quickly and is also a fertilizer.

Mr Polk's comment specifically mentioned "slugs" while my main issues are "snails" which are similar but not identical.

Fortunately, Mr Polk's comment is a testable-hypothesis. This wasn't included in the original post because the testing was still in-progress.

Picture taken at about 9:00 a.m. after turning over board.

 

A close-up to make it easier to see the population-density of the snails.

I sprayed the areas where they were the thickest with cloudy ammonia.

The snails clearly did not like the experience.

I waited two hours before revisiting the spot. I assume that all of the survivors would make a dash for the exits.

Not exactly the same spot, but within a few feet of it.

 

A close-up of the battlefield. Not a lot of color contrast, but there are about 40 dead snails in that picture.

Thank-you for your comment Mr. Victor K. Polk. It seems to work on snails, too.

From the Comments

Terrible drought in NC this year. Do you have contingency plan for a season or two of drought?

If we have electricity, I will water the gardens. I have trickle irrigation installed in the Eaton Rapids orchard. The tree in the ER orchard are on smaller root-stock which are more vulnerable to drought.

For modest droughts, I don't practice square-foot gardening. One of the weaknesses of SFG is that each plant has very little volume of soil from which to pull nutrients and water. If either drop, then the plants are stressed very quickly. It is like flying a plane very close to the ground, there is very little time to recover from sub-optimal circumstances.

For example, commercial cabbage growers will typically allocate three square-feet per plant. I am not running a business and don't count on what I harvest to cover the payroll, mortgage and taxes and I can plant them farther apart. This year, I planted them 24" apart in the rows with the rows 40" apart. In terms of square-feet per plant, that is 6.7 square-feet per plant or less than half of the plant-density of a commercial grower. 

The Hill and Upper Orchards are in another part of Eaton County. Keeping the grass cut short (scalped) reduced water competition from the ground-cover. Most of the apple trees in the Hill and Upper Orchard are grafted on G.890, MM-106 and M-26 and MM-111. MM-111 and MM-106 have a history of good drought tolerance due to deep, plunging roots. G.890 is too new to have much data. M-26 is not known for drought tolerance. 

Frequent commentor Dan wrote: Unfortunately it's not possible to contractually negate legal risk via contracts. Courts and rogue judges routinely toss out such agreements. Contract law is now more of an informal agreement than a binding enforceable instrument. Judges have destroyed most of the legal framework this country was founded on. 

Some of that is related to WHERE the court is. Courts in large cities, the Mississippi Delta and the Rio Grande valley are notorious for seeing businesses and successful people as lambs to be fleeced.

If that were universally the case, wealthy people (who can afford very good legal counsel) would never bother with pre-nuptial agreements.

I do agree that it is common. I also deplore how that trend has made us all poorer. Not that long ago it wasn't too hard to find somebody who would loan you a trailer (for instance). Now it is a case of having to buy your own or pay high prices to rent one for a very short period of time.

Also from Dan but on the ADHD essay: It's genetic/biologic. A significant percentage of the population are incapable of seeing the future. To them next month is a haze and next year does not exist. And they live their lives accordingly.

Many are incapable of connecting actions with consequences. It's why so many low brow people are literally shocked and stunned when they willingly commit a serious crime and are then sentenced to prison. They are not capable of connecting the two.

We are divided into two species. Homo Sapiens and Homo Stupidicus. And the latter group is rapidly out breeding the first. Also they are indistinguishable by appearance. You have to wait for them to start gum flapping to see the difference.

I agree.

Where I was trying to go with the ADHD post is that even animals as stupid  as chickens, pigeons and carp can be trained to do certain things if the task is narrowly defined and the reward/punishment is immediate.

"Make people more intelligent" is not narrowly defined.

"Stopping for a second and asking yourself, "Will this get my ass kicked"." is a narrowly defined task. 

Unfortunately, the current fad in criminal justice defers punishments out of a misplaced sense of "mercy" and the pliable twig is not straightened and thence continues to grow into a warped tree. 

From Michael: Have you given thought about a (Joel Salatin) style mobile coop for (the ducks)? 

Yes, Michael, I have.

Joel Salatin developed the "Chicken Tractor" concept in a very specific context. He was fine-tuning his Management Intensive Grazing methods. He raised beef cattle in (I think) western Virginia. He was thinking very specifically about the rapid cycling of nutrients and the best ways to retain them in the most active parts of the biosphere...say from 1mm above the surface of the soil to 50mm below it. He was also thinking about labor efficiency and attempting to gain additional revenue streams.

One key point that gets glossed over is the scale which Salatin was working. He is grazing hundreds of acres.

He concluded that the ideal situation would be to configure a system where natural creatures, following their hardwired instincts and habits, did most of the work. Chickens scratch apart cow-pats and scatter them. They eat the maggots growing in them. They spread fertilizer widely but it is concentrated where they roost for the night.

So, he decided to make a mobile chicken coop that he could move behind the mob of cattle as he rotated them. It is very rainy in western Virginia. By the time he rotated his cattle back into the paddock, the cow poop scattered by the chickens would not be repugnant to the cows and they would not leave big islands of ungrazed forage.

When he followed with the chicken tractor, he deliberately put it in a different location in the paddock each time so the concentrating effect of the chicken poop at the roosting site was not additive. In fact, he would look around and make sure that he placed it on the site with the shabbiest looking grass regrowth.

The primary difference between Salatin's situation and mine are scale and objectives. 

Salatin's scale involved hundreds and hundreds of acres or in linear distances...maybe a 2000 feet. If I put the duck-jail in the center of the plot that includes my Eaton Rapids Orchard, the fenced in garden and the two potato plots (one planted, one fallow), the walk to the farthest corner is about 120 feet.

So far, my one duck who is still laying eggs reliably lays it in the corner that is opposite the corner where I have a spike-light adding supplemental lighting in the morning. Note that the shelter is a truck cap and she lays it at the end with the gate that opens-and-closes

Salatin's primary objectives were rapid nutrient cycling, fly control and broiler production. My primary objectives are snail control with egg production being secondary. So there is some overlap...but not much.

Another reason that I haven't pulled-the-trigger on making a chicken tractor is I cannot make the cost-benefit numbers work.

I look at what most people call "chicken tractors" and see running-gear (wheels and axle assemblies) that will self destruct in six months. Why not start by laying down some 2-by-4s for skids and dragging it if you are going to be consigned to that in half a year anyway?

If I want more mobility than simply being able to expose where the animals were pooping at night, then I can use "sandwich" building techniques where I have a table under a partitioned-dormitory with doors under an aluminum truck cap. Each subassembly, although awkward to move, isn't very heavy and two medium sized kids can easily move it 30 feet.

Fine Art Tuesday

 

Eugene von Guerard was born in Austria (in Europe) in 1811. He emigrated to Australia (in the Southern Hemisphere) in 1852. He died in Chelsea, England, a pauper, in 1901.

There was an insatiable thirst to experience the novelties of the new colonies of Imperial Europe. Von Guerard scratched that itch.

That fascination lasted well into the 1950s as evidenced by the "Tarzan" franchise and commercial success of The African Queen movie. 

Thinking about AI

Thinking about AI

It is very clear to me that people don't know beans about what they want.

People, even very intelligent people, are rarely self-aware and are not capable of articulating an explicit hierarchy about their desires. They haven't thought about the scales (ratio-of-trade between attributes) of what they want and the relationships between those desires.

The videos on Hoe-Math and the videos where the narrator asks women what they require in a romantic partner demonstrate that.

A typical vignette of the second type of video has the narrator approaching an attractive woman, typically outside of an upscale bar, and asking her "What do you look for in a boy-friend?"

The answer typically comes back "He has to be between 25-and-30 years-old. He has to be making at least $150k per-year in finance or marketing. When we go out on a date (at least once a week), he must be happy to drop $250 for my half of the tab. He has to take me on at least four one-week, over-seas vacations a year. He must be fluent in French and have a swanky apartment. He has to be at least 6'-2" and have thick, wavy hair and have perfect teeth and manicured nails. Oh...and most importantly, whenever I call him or text him (any time of day or night), he must drop everything and call me back for a 30 minute phone-call where he pays rapt attention to events that have absolutely no interest to him."

She isn't describing a human being. She is describing a unicorn.

Guys might be slightly better, but not by much. While our needs in terms of a romantic partner might be simpler, there are other fields where our needs are more complicated.

Why this is important

AI answers questions. If you are unable to articulate a meaningful question, the responses will be equally not-useful.

How we got here

Think back to a pre-civilization village. A very large one might be 120 people. Books did not exist. Knowledge was passed down by observing your elders and your neighbor and copying what they did. Footwear is a good example. What did they make their sandals or mukluks from? How did they cut the hides or braid the straw? Fur in or fur out? How did they stitch them together? How did they care for them so they didn't rot? At what point did they start making a new pair?

Many of our behaviors are patterned on the "copy our peers" thinking. Picking a mate was a trivial exercise when there were only three available candidates and two of them were a day's walk away.

To be overly-flowery in my language, "copying our peers" is a form of "cloud-sourcing the logic" or "wisdom of the crowd".

Weaknesses of the follow-the-crowd model

First, a snarky observation: You don't need AI if you are going to rely on social media to tell you what you want.

Other weaknesses:

Computers will not make assumptions for you. If you gave that very long list that included $150k/yr to a computer, it will not automatically filter out candidates who beat women, are addicted to cocaine, have Monkey-pox and other sexually transmitted diseases, are compulsive liars, make a living denying insurance benefits to widows and orphans or are $1.2 million debt and have no assets.

Many of the things that we think "are a given" are not. Computers deliver a geeky karma of "Be careful what you ask for, because you are likely to get it."

A possible employment niche in the post-AI world

A consultant who does scenario-testing with the client to solidify specifications. Going back to our romantic-partner example because it is something nearly everybody has experienced:

"Suppose you and your new romantic-partner are dropped onto a deserted island or a remote, wilderness paradise. What attributes are you looking for?"

"Suppose that you had to relocate to a city where there was no internet or that it was so slow and unreliable that it was effectively unusable; What attributes would you value most in your new romantic-partner?" 

Both of those scenarios attempts to fire-wall off the "performing for the applause of the audience" grand-standing.

"Imagine you and your new romantic-partner together five years from now, would there be any additional requirements? Would any of your current requirements have softened or become less important? Which ones?"

"Now imagine you are together ten year from now..." 

"How about twenty and forty years from now..."

Then... trade-off studies:

"Do you prefer Jeff who makes $150k and is 6'-4" or Mike who makes $175k and is 6'-2" tall?"

"Do you prefer Sean who makes $200k a year but can only take two weeks of vacation or do you prefer Ian who makes $150k a year but is allowed four weeks of vacation a year?"

"Do you prefer Prakash who is a surgeon making $200k who cannot take phone-calls while performing surgery and must enforce strict sleep-hygiene (i.e. no phone calls during his sleep hours) or do you prefer Jimmy who makes $150k and drives a hazardous material truck and can talk you on the phone (but not text) any time?"

How porous is the barrier between "Allowable" and "Not allowed"?

"So...we found a potential romance-partner who meets all of your criteria except for one. He lives 10 minute travel-time from where you live. The closest candidate who meets all of your criteria lives 90 minutes away. The flawed candidate is 35 years old...would you date him?"

Of course she would date him. She pulled the "25-to-30 years-old" out of thin air. There was nothing magical about that range except she thought there should be an age requirement. 

This deficiency comes up over-and-over through life. Which house should you bid on? Which job should you interview for? Relocate or stay? One more kid or not?

Incredibly, most people have never given a thought to the fact that having a lot of one thing (like income and status) means that there will be much less of something else (free time and flexibility). Critical questions are "How much of each is ENOUGH". Do you value lots of time with your romance-interest and eating balony sandwiches or do you value infrequent times with your romance-interest and Instagram worthy selfies more?

All of this scenario testing is really a "Sims game" but it is exploring the client's real-life desires and expectations. Bonus thought: The person who can write a Sims-like front-end to make a game that combs out the clients real requirements (and not the generic, cloud-sourced ones) will make a lot of money.

Change of topic: Update on the last part of yesterday's work-ticket

The last part of yesterday's work was a piece of cake.

I watched Quicksilver so Southern Belle and Handsome Hombre could assemble the pool.

Then I made a parts-run to Lansing for some odds-and-ends needed for the assembly.

Then I watched Quicksilver some more.

I tapped-out at 7:30 p.m. I was tired and dehydrated. The young people were still hammering away at the project.

 

Today was a productive day, and it isn't over...

 

The cabbage plants don't look like much now. According to my records, I planted the seeds May 14 which means they are about 25 days old.

If all goes well, they will completely fill that space.

Fifty late cabbage plants put in the ground today on 24"-by-40" spacing. 2:1:1 ratio of Deadon:Typhoon:Megaton.

Twenty Happy Rich broccoli in the ground.

Eighteen Hardy Hibiscus seedlings in the ground.

Over at Southern Belle's, I planted four rows of 15 kernels of Bodacious sweet corn and I hoed the weeds in her fenced-in garden.

I also rototilled the spot where Southern Belle wants to put an above-ground swimming pool so she can level it out.

I got the potatoes sprayed for Colorado Potato Beetles.

I was invited to go to Southern Belle's later this evening. I think she wants me to help assemble the swimming pool. The current temperature is 85F with rain expected at 9 p.m. Winds out of the southeast. 

I didn't get to the mowing even though I made progress on world-hunger. 

The Hoes of Eaton County

 

Three hoes, caught in bed (a truck bed).

Not the salacious content you expected?