Monday, March 18, 2024

One thing at a time

 

We have two semi-feral cats frequenting our property. One is a calico cat who is at least 80% white. Her coat reminds me of Brach's Christmas Nougat candies. A little bit of orange. A little bit of gray. Lots of white.

The other semi-feral cat has semi-long, black fur.

Semi-feral cats are also known as "barn cats".

My thinking on barn cats has softened over the years. The predators that used to keep rodents in check take a beating. Mowing is hell on large snakes like rat snakes, milk snakes, blue-racers and corn snakes. Owls get whacked by cars. Fox get mowed down by mange, distemper and other diseases.

More rodents means more ticks. More ticks means greater risk of tick-borne diseases.

While I will not feed or otherwise encourage barn cats, I am not doing anything to reduce their numbers, either.

Doctors and such

The last month involved trips to the eye doctor and my personal physician for check-ups.

I also made a trip to the accountant.

The well drillers gave us a visit and took water samples.

I don't like drama.

The best way to avoid drama when purchasing a used car, as an example, is to take it to your mechanic and have him look it over BEFORE you buy it. Then, listen to his advice. If he says "It is a turkey. DON'T buy it!!!" then don't buy it.

He would rather not get stuck fixing a bunch of issues that could be avoided. I would rather avoid periods when the vehicle is out-of-service and having to pay for repairs that were foreseeable.

Same deal with accountants. There are lots of stupid ways to do things and there are some smart ways to do them. Being stupid makes messes that must be cleaned up.

The well-driller called back later in the afternoon and advised that we use a product containing sodium hydrosulfite and sodium metasulfite to purge iron from the resin bed of our water softener as a first-step in the diagnostic process. The water softener will get a second dose in two weeks. If that solves the problem then we got off easy; $13 worth of chemical vs $1500 of equipment.

The eye-doctor suggested that I should visit more than once every five years. My right eye is unchanged but I need a different prescription for my left eye. Since my eye-doctor will be retiring soon, I need to find one another one, preferably one that is not in Lansing.

Meat Hook for cleaning Tiller tines

$12 for two of them

I wish I had figured this out thirty years ago.

You cannot beat these for pulling weeds, wire and twine that have wrapped around the shaft of your tiller.

If you are cheap, you can cut a piece of livestock panel into a tall "T" with one wire for the vertical and one for the cross-piece. Then you can bend the bottom of the "T" into a hook. If you are smart, you can cut the bottom of the "T" at an angle with your bolt-cutters and it will be sharp enough for your purposes.

Calcium dip improves pear storage-life

Filed here for future reference. Placing newly picked Asian Pears into a "dip" of water and calcium chloride increases their storage-life. Different cultivars may vary in their preference for concentration and duration of the dip. Most papers suggest 2%-to-4% calcium chloride, by weight and a 20 minute-to-30 minute dip is adequate.

Fruit is placed into cardboard boxes and allowed to air-dry.

Icing the dip is also a way to rapidly cool the fruit prior to putting into the root-cellar.

Clorox Poolspa Calcium Hardness MSDS claims that the product (about $4 a pound) is 100% calcium chloride. 2.0 lbs of product in ten gallons will yield a 2.5% solution. The same amount in six gallons is just a skosh over 4.0% solution. Calculations are based on 2 pounds because the Clorox Poolspa comes in 4 pound packages.

Trash taking out the Trash (Cumberland Saga)

Stanley 5-1/2 Bench Plane. Image from handplane.com
Sig was dog-tired as he led the Sunday Services. The attendance was phenomenal. The Doxstader’s living-room was packed and there were knots of people listening at the windows and outside the doors.

Everybody heard the “thunder” in the night and were more-than-politely curious about the details.

Sig ditched his prepared sermon and “Called an audible” as Gregor called it. He preached from Romans Chapter 6.

“Sometimes Paul is complicated and difficult to understand but he is very clear in Romans, Chapter 6. We were joined with Christ in baptism and our old self was crucified and died and we arise as men called to be filled with Grace with the waters of Baptism.” Sig said.

“Paul exhorts us to not pledge our body to being instruments of evil but rather to pledge our entire being to be tools of God’s will, as best we can discern it.” 

"Imagine Jesus working in  his father's shop" Sig said as he held his hands as if he were holding his Stanley 5-1/2 wood plane. The position of his gnarled hands evoked the hiss of a razor-sharp blade turning pine or spruce into long, fragrant curls of shavings as the master-craftsman squared what was warped, fitted what was not true and pared off what was stained and scarred by weather-and-use.
 
"When we allow ourselves to be God's tools, He is gripping our souls with both hands just like a carpenter using his tools" Sig lifting his hands slightly and shook and pulled as if somebody were trying to pull away his wood plane.
 
"When we die, if we are acting as God's tools, nobody...certainly not Lucifer...can rip us away from Him. There is no surer sign of Grace."

“Death is not a tragedy. It will happen to all of us. The tragedy is to not be in a state-of-Grace when we die, to not be a tool in the hands of God.

“Sadly, there are many who choose to be instruments of Satan. If we should die while committing grave sin, then we die with Lucifer gripping our soul with both of his hands. And while God could rip our souls out of Lucifer's hands...what reason have we given him to do so?” 
 
"That is the true tragedy because we will be sent to hell where we would see the radiant, blissful faces of those who died in a state of grace even as the flames of hell engulf us.”
 
“It is a simple choice. It is either one or the other. Simple is not the same as easy but God did not promise us easy.”
 
“Know that God continues to bless His people in Copperhead Cove.”

“Evil men, followers of Satan attempted to force their way into a home in the Cove. They failed and were sent away.”

“Be vigilant. Satan stalks God’s people like a lion pacing around a fire searching for the unwary and unprepared.”

The most discerning easily saw the shattered railing on Roger's porch and the blood stains that Alice had tried to scrub away. They saw the congealed blood on the cobbles of the second hairpin of the two-track. They had a pretty good idea of how much blood a man-sized animal can lose and survive.
 
They could read between the lines. Hard men had done hard things, righteous things in the dark of the night. Things not to be talked about casually.
 
What was warped had been squared and what was not-true had been fitted. The shavings had been swept into the fire.

They bowed their heads and prayed for the families of the deceased. They knew all too well that even children of the most righteous parents will sometimes choose Satan’s way. They thanked God that none of their Godly men had been hurt.

***

Deputy Rosa Canina wrinkled her nose as she stood near the abandoned car that had been reported to 9-1-1.

There was very little room beside the road and her cruiser and the old SUV took up most of it. Unfortunately, the only good place for her to stand was downwind of the SUV. The bodies in the vehicle had been shot. Whoever killed the men clearly believed that anybody worth shooting once was worth shooting a dozen times.

Their manner-of-death made the immediate area a crime-scene and protocol required that she maintain chain-of-evidence, for all the good that would come of it. She could see that at least a couple of the men had gang-tats.

The DA was notoriously lax on pursuing gang-crime. Some of it was economics. You could sink a boat-load of resources into investigation and odds were you would never secure enough evidence for a conviction. Part of it was cowardice. Gangs had no inhibitions about whacking county officials.

Nope. The official photographer would show up and take a bunch of pictures. The medical examiner would do the same at the morgue. Then they would be fed into an AI service that would spider through social media looking for images of thugs bragging about doing the deed. Some of them were stupid that way.

To her way of thinking, it would be a blessing if they all killed each other. One of the men she had gone to academy had been shot during a drug raid. The bullet penetrated through the stretch webbing beneath his arm and double-lunged him. Golden BB they called it. Sid was in the wrong place, wrong time, wrong angle.

Trash-taking-out-the-trash. That is what it was.

***

Two packages addressed to Sarah showed up at the end of the drive that were puzzling.

One was a package of tiny plants. The twigs were no taller than the breadth of Sarah’s hand and the roots were encased in soil in the size and shape of a half-cucumber. The twigs showed the tiniest bit of green cracking of their buds.

They were labeled with hand-written tags: Thiessen, Northline, Titania, Red Lake and Hinnonmaki Red. They were packed with a note that read “Please put these in the ground and care for them. They need full sun. I will be there soon. A”

Sarah wracked her brain trying to remember anybody from the Cove whose name started with “A” who would entrust her with such a task. She came up empty-handed.

The second package that showed up was even more puzzling. It was filled with “Kastanie”, not quite as large the Horse-Chestnuts that grew in the Dayton town square or the Yellow Buckeyes that grew on the moister, forested sites near Copperhead Cove. The nuts reminded her of the nuts Alice called "marones" that the locals called “chinky-pins” that grew over at the Frozen Head Park. Weighing the nuts in her hand, she judged them to be five or ten times heavier than chinky-pins.

Glancing at the return address, she saw the package was originally from Olive Hill, Kentucky and had been remailed from St Louis, Missouri.

The note in this package said “Seed-nuts. Please put them in a cool, moist spot. -A”

Curiouser and curiouser.
 
 ***
 
A tip of the fedora to Kevin Alviti for woodworking advice. He is a fellow blogger, a wood-worker and small-holder.
 

Sunday, March 17, 2024

Pepper seeds started

Stocky Red Roaster peppers are heavy producers.
 I finally found the Stocky Red Roaster Pepper (Capsicum annuum) seeds. They were hiding behind the packages of Jiffy Corn Muffin mix.

SRR a star for production and blanched-and-frozen slices of the brilliant, red fruit have been gracing our pizzas and omelettes all winter. 

Golden Cayenne, nominally 30k-to-50k SHU

I am also starting Aji Mango (C. baccata) and Golden Cayenne (C. annuum). I was leaning toward Carolina Cayenne (C. annuum) because it has stellar disease resistance but at 100k Scoville Heat Units, it is a scorcher. As a  reference point, jalapeño peppers run 2500-to-8000 SHU.

The reason for listing the species is because planting hot peppers with sweet peppers will result in surprises if they are the same species. Mrs ERJ does not relish the idea of chomping into a "sweet pepper" and being surprised. The Cayenne pepper plants will be isolated from the Stocky Red Roasters for that reason.

Peppers are one of those garden plants where people with a certain personality (ERJ looks in mirror) can go off the rails. There are thousands of varieties and hundreds more are introduced/found every year.

Another complication is that the flavor of a pepper variety grown in El Paso will usually be different than the same seeds planted in Eaton County, Michigan. And more primitive, less highly selected varieties will have a greater range of heat than varieties that have been "stabilized" by intensive selection.

Aji Mango. Fruit is about the size of my thumb. I selected my seeds from the one plant that did not fall over.

I am a sissy when it comes to hot food. I love the SRR peppers. I used the Aji Mango (30k-to-50k SHU) to make a hot sauce similar to Frank's for general use. 

The attraction of Cayenne-type peppers is that they dry quickly and easily due to their thin walls. Dried peppers do not require refrigeration (like the frozen SRR rings) and are less bulky than vinegar-pepper sauces. Oh, but they are so, so hot!

Can anybody recommend a thin-walled, Cayenne-like pepper of approximately 5000 SHU?

Busted!

The Home and Garden show was held at the Michigan State Livestock pavilion. Free samples of organic fertilizer were available in the parking lot.

One of my roles at the trade-show was to entertain the spouses while an interested party talked to The-Brains-Of-The-Outfit. Or, if potential clients were stacking up, I would keep them occupied so they didn't walk off before TBOTO had a chance to work them over and get contact info.

A petite woman was talking with TBOTO so I started chatting with her husband. He was a man of middling-size and about my age. I struggle to describe him. Imagine a calm, intelligent Jack Russel terrier. He was clearly comfortable in his skin.

Glancing down at my name tag, he said "So, Joe, where do you live?"

"Eaton Rapids" I responded.

"Are you Eaton Rapids Joe?" he asked.

First time ever. Busted.

I admitted that I am Eaton Rapids Joe.

He elbowed his wife and pointed at me. "He is Eaton Rapids Joe."

Her eyes got big. "No!"

Then she asked "Can I take a picture?"

I thought she was kidding, but she was serious.

I promised that I would give them a "shout-out" on the blog but like a ninny I failed to write down their names. So if you read this and I messed up your names, please forgive me...my brain was turning into oatmeal.

"Hey, a BIG shout-out to Rick and Terri G."

Saturday, March 16, 2024

Another gig at the Home and Garden Show

Shamelessly stolen from Fred at Vern's Stories

Today was another gig at the Home and Garden Show.

I am reading a book about Dementia. It claims that social interactions have a protective effect for Alzheimer's Disease. I think I had enough interactions to last me for the rest of the year.

I think of social-interactions the way some people think about taxes or washing dishes. They are necessary and if you don't like doing them then it is to your advantage to be able to do them well, and do be able to do them smoothly with minimum trauma and there are bonus style-points if nobody knows how much you would rather that you never had to do them.

Fortunately, two of my brothers are men of great charm and charisma. I ask "What would M do" or "What would R do" in social situations.

I expect that there will be two or three posts about my experiences pretending to be an extrovert.


Public Service Announcement

 

 

We now return you to your previously scheduled broadcast

Sabotage?

Who benefits when a major developer and manufacturer of high-end military hardware and software becomes the target of sabotage?

The question is being whispered in few dark corners now as the number of incidents involving Boeing comes to light.

Some of the damage is self-induced.

A small factor might be increased "newsworthiness" increased the amount of coverage by the mainstream media.

But given the number of incidents seems  to be increasing and the causes are beyond the control of "the factory", one must consider the possibility of malicious actors.

Means, motive, opportunity

In no particular order:

Trade-unions benefit because they can point to Boeing and insinuate "Nice brand you got there. It would be a shame if something happened to it."

During times of inflation, trade-unions seek every bit of leverage they can manage as they seek to negotiate wage increases  that keep up with inflation.

Never underestimate the value of a "brand". Name-brand shoes can command 5X the price of the equivalent un-branded shoe. Huge profit potential and a lot of advertising equity is a risk.

Foreign powers can benefit if they maneuver and become a White Knight and rescue a company in free-fall. Boeing is a treasure-trove of advanced technology that could leap-frog a second-rate defense industry into the big-leagues.

Competitors would benefit from increased sales and more pricing power. I discount this because sabotage is Pandora's box and there are no fire-walls that prevent the practice from being inflicted on the competitor.

Environmental zealots can achieve some of their goals by squashing civilian air-travel which would reduce petroleum consumption, make the skies "prettier" (i.e. no contrails), reduce transport of strawberries and farmed salmon from the southern hemisphere and reduce tourist numbers of pristine beaches so turtles' copulating is not disturbed by college students' copulating.

New World Order can achieve some of their goals of squashing dirt-people's ability to travel, assemble and communicate.

Russia believes that the west has been waging a stealth war against Russia by blowing up assets like pipelines and bridges. Reciprocity?

Anti-Zionists same as Russia. Bonus link.

Domestic traitors trapped in delusional thinking.

A breech in the levee 


My guess is that Boeing's institutional failures created an opportunity. It is possible that multiple actors saw the potential and ran with it.

Like a high-speed turbine losing a blade, the forces of the imbalance is tearing the machine apart.

Do what you can to not be standing down-range of fragmenting blades  or the rubble of the building that houses the turbine.