Saturday, December 7, 2024

Holiday drama

Conventional wisdom holds that suicides have a major up-tick during the holiday season.

Some people attribute it to lost family members or the stark loneliness that can occur when work is not available to distract the person who lacks the stabilizing influence of extensive social mooring.

Another school of thought holds that people abandon what works for them during the Holiday season. Our (good) habits are a metronome that "clocks" our best self.

A typical person might drink a little bit more than is their norm during the holidays. Their diet changes. They might not sleep as much or their sleep-schedules might take a hit. We might find ourselves thrust into social situations with people we would not normally chose to associate with. Exercise takes a vacation as does time outside in the sun. Maybe we are packed into steel or aluminum cans and mailed long distances.

Consider this blog post to be a gentle reminder that to be your best-self you must protect the habits that got you here. That is, "Dance with the one that brung ya"

Watch what goes into your mouth. Watch what comes out of it.

Schedule time to move, whether it is walking to "the can" every 30 minutes or running 5 miles-a-day...whatever it takes to keep your fluids flowing and the bubble centered in the sight-glass.

Be gentle with yourself. Be even more gentle with the people in your life who are most important to you.

Protect your core-hours of sleep. Even if your significant-other drags you to another work-party.

If you are on meds to moderate your blood-sugar or blood-pressure or depression or reactivity...keep taking it at the same time that you normally do.

If you get sick...and THIS IS THE SEASON...beg off obligations and REALLY take care of yourself. Hitting the wall at work or in your personal relationships is not heroic. It is stupid and wasteful.

Stay hydrated.

Spend time with people who make you feel good about who you are.

Don't look at social media until the middle of January. The greatest revenge on trolls is to not read the garbage they spew. They HATE when that happens. If you absolutely cannot resist...then at least spell their name incorrectly when you respond to them.

Wages of Federal Employees

Congressional Budget Office

Assuming 2000 hours per year, the average Federal employee with a high school diploma (or less) earned $117k in total compensation (wages + benefits) in 2022. That compares to a private-sector employee whose total compensation was $84k. Posed another way, a Federal employee's compensation "package" was worth about 40% more than that of his high school graduate, private sector counterpart. 

The Federal employee was also 75% LESS likely to change employers than his private sector counterpart. Attrition is a metric that is closely watched in the private sector. If attrition is too high, then the wages + benefits package is too small. If the attrition rate is too high low, then you are paying too much relative to the prevailing market.

One thing that is not clear from the report is whether the military is included in the numbers. If it is, than the Federal civilian workforce with high school diplomas would likely seem even more lopsided as military enlisted don't get paid squat.

The second set of silos, high school graduate with some college but less than a Bachelor's degree show almost as stark of a contrast.

Federal employees with a Bachelor's degree or a Master's degree are near parity with the Bachelor holder with the Federal job doing a little bit better for total compensation than his private-sector counter part and just a little bit worse if he has a Master's degree.

The only place where the private sector significantly exceeds Federal employment is at the Professional (doctors, lawyers) and Ph.D. level.

Total employment by level

  • High school diploma or less: 603,221
  • Some college: 365,367
  • Bachelor's degree: 599,799
  • Master's degree: 383,901
  • Doctorate/Professional: 85,140

Resistance to D.O.G.E.

The Blob's terror in the face of DOGE is understandable. In terms of total compensation, they are looking at a $16/hr pay hit.

The other thing that should terrify a Federal employee with a high school diploma is...the difficulty in justifying their duties as "knowledge work" that can be done at home. If they are not "clocked into" the facility, then how do they justify the hours they are recording as "worked"?

...and your chicks for free...


 

I suspect the sandworm buries itself in the sediment and has a single antenna gesturing "come hither" above the surface.

The curious and naive fish, thinking it is looking at an easy meal, comes over to gobble the antenna when the rest of the worm makes its presence known.

Freshwater clams do something similar but for a different reason. When they are ready to reproduce, they grow a small, fleshy knob that looks a bit like a cricket or minnow on the lip of their shell. When a sunfish investigates and attempts to mouth the "cricket", the clam blows a jet of larval clams into its mouth. The larvae clams embed in the fish's gills for the next part of their life-cycle.

If something is too good to be true...

"60 Days Free DeNile Prime". "Free Cheese". "Something for nothing". "A gift from the Goobermint."

Just sayin'.


Friday, December 6, 2024

Hermit Cookies and Wandering Wyatt

"Hermits" are a kind of cookie. They are simple and not overly-rich. The local convenience store, Quality Dairy, used to sell them.

A recipe here

I made mine with sunflower seeds and raisins. Next time, I will beef them up with some molasses and use stronger coffee. Mine turned out taller than the ones they show at the recipe site. That is fine by me. They also took longer to cook, 10-to-12 minutes rather than the 8-to-10 listed at the site. Maybe because I used an air-back cookie pan. Maybe because the were more cake-like.

Each 1-1/2 oz-to-2 oz cookie has between 240 and 300 Calories and 45% of the calories are from fats.

Hurricane Brownies are what some folks in the Gulf Coast region bake when a hurricane is predicted to hit in their little patch of heaven. Since the power is likely to go out, the "specifications" for the brownies is that they not require refrigeration, that they be easy to eat and that they be dense in calories (One example). Hermit cookies pretty much fill the same niche with the added advantage of being more transportable than a frosting covered brownie.

Wandering Wyatt

Wandering Wyatt is a Youtube channel "inspired by Ms Rachel" which is a popular kiddy show.

Wandering Wyatt doesn't feature "Mr Blippi" footage like Ms Rachel does.

John (Mr Blippi) started making gross out videos in 2013 under the persona of Steezy Grossman. In a 2013 video, John performed the Harlem Shake on a toilet and defecated on a naked friend.   Wikipedia

Nor does Wandering Wyatt feature crotch-shots of a they-them as it crab-walks around singing like Ms Rachel.

From Wandering Wyatt's About page

Welcome to Wandering Wyatt, the family-friendly YouTube channel that strives to teach your little one about Jesus in a fun exciting way. 

At Wandering Wyatt, we believe that you shouldn't worry about what your little one is watching and that every opportunity we should point our children to Christ. 

All of our proceeds are donated to those in need, so know that your supporting missionaries, Christian non-profits, orphanages and more.

Quicksilver shows no preference for one channel over the other. As a hyper-critical adult, the production values of Ms Rachel are more refined than at Wandering Wyatt but Quicksilver is oblivious to those kinds of things.

In my opinion, the slight loss in production values is very acceptable since I don't think toddlers should be exposed to sexualized content that normalizes/trivializes choices that irrevocably complicate their lives.

Quicksilver has a cold

Quicksilver has a cold.

It is most apparent when she first wakes up and the congestion from lower-down makes its way up.

Kids with colds make lots of strange breathing sounds. Their small breathing passages are more impacted by obstruction than an adult's larger "pipes".

One theory about how hard Covid hit different populations was that older people who got rubbed by snotty-nosed kids had a vast library of antibodies, some of which slowed down the Chinky-cold Fauci-lab-Flu.

The net result is that Quicksilver is clingy and I end up holding her on my lap and we watch videos. When I am watching videos, I am not doing things that will make it to the blog. On the PLUS side, Quicksilver is learning all about Camino de Santiago, paper-patching bullets, running a still, recipes for turnips, carrots and potatoes and snaring starlings.

Thursday, December 5, 2024

Pop Quiz: What and Why

 

To help you keep your mind sharp.

Other pictures

Top of rice pudding after adding more custard and baking

A slice of rice pudding. For some reason all the raisins disappeared.
I purchased an 11 pound, spiral-sliced ham. 8 ounces was "glaze" which I pitched. Another 10 ounces was bone. The rest of it was sandwich meat and provided flavor for bean soup. At $2.99 a pound it beat the "Deli Sliced Meat" at $10.99 a pound by a country mile.

A fair and impartial justice system protects the accused from their victims


Wednesday, December 4, 2024

Grab-bag

Life was better when she had to dial each number on a rotary phone and could only talk to one person at a time.

The days of "cheap junk" might be numbered

Major issues often "telegraph" in advance. The toxic gas spill in Bhopal followed over one-hundred incidents when maintenance/cleaning crews left various processing valves in the wrong position. One fateful night, they left five of them open and gas spilled to the outside environment and rolled downhill into the city of Bhopal, India.

Major earthquakes often telegraph with an increasing frequency of shocks as the interlocking rock that "zippers" the fault together start crumbling under the strain and thereby transfer more of the load to neighboring interlocks which in time also crumble.

In the fatal stage of Wilson's Syndrome, a liver cell dies of copper toxicity and ruptures. Surrounding cells, already heavily loaded with copper, absorb the released copper ions and die. They rupture and a cascading chain-reaction occurs as death ripples outward from the original dead cell.

The United States benefited hugely from the US Dollar's status as the world's reserve currency. We conjure up dollars out of nothing and trade them for manufactured goods. The smartest people in the world leave India, China and Eastern Europe and immigrate to Boston, Austin and San Jose where they write software that renders reality into a simplified, comfortable 2-D rendition and numbs the minds of the users.

BRICS is gaining momentum. World-wide, resentment of the USD hegemony is growing. Those are advance tremors that should be informing us that the days of dirt-cheap Chinesium "cargo" are numbered.

Trump's threats of tariffs MIGHT have a silver lining if it creates an environment that is an incubator that leads to reindustrialization. At a minimum we need to be able to domestically manufacture pipes and ducts and cold-drawn metal products and castings and electric motors and fans and pumps and nozzles and meters and motor-controls and nuts-and-bolts and basic medicines and pesticides and tools.

A random conversation

Mrs ERJ and I were having a conversation with another couple when the man, who retired from his job as a Robotics and Industrial Drafting instructor around 2015 said something curious.

He said "Kids today only know how to think in 2-D"

I asked him to clarify. 

He said "When I started teaching, my students who walked into my classroom for the first time already had a mental, 3-D model of an exhaust pipe or how to assemble a piston in their heads and I taught them how to render it as a series of 2-D drawings. Near the end of my time teaching, the kids coming through the door had never seen throttle linkages or the guts of a door-lock or looked at a bumper hitch. How do you teach somebody how to communicate something they don't understand?

I wonder if those skills are like language acquisition. Do our minds become less plastic as we age. Are those kids doomed to always navigate the physical worlds as if they are speaking a second language acquired late-in-life?

Seeds (in response to a request from a friend)

A link to the Beal Seed Viability Experiment.

...In 1879, Dr. William Beal buried 20 glass bottles filled with seeds and sand at a single site at Michigan State University. The goal of the experiment was to understand seed longevity in the soil—a topic of general importance in ecology, restoration, conservation, and agriculture—by periodically assaying germinability of these seeds over a 100-year period. “The interval between germination assays has been extended and the experiment will now end after 221 years, in 2100.

... twenty seeds germinated!” Fleming says, “They were 141 years old! 

Rice Pudding

Rice pudding is a very economical and filling treat. It pairs well with working outside.

The proportions are approximate and flexible.

Two cups of uncooked white rice. Cook the rice (3 cups water) until the water is completely absorbed.

Approximately one cup of your favorite dried fruits and chopped nuts in whatever proportion you desire (I am using 4 parts raisins, and 1 part chopped dried cherries and 1 part chopped pecans).

Put the cooked rice and chopped fruit/nuts in a greased 9" by 13" glass cake-pan.

Add enough milk to cover the rice. Keep track of the number of cups you use.

Add one egg and 1/3 of a cup of sugar for each cup of milk. Season generously with nutmeg and vanilla extract. Stir to ensure the eggs are broken and all of the ingredients are reasonably well blended.

Bake at 350F until the center of the "pudding" is well set (approximately 30 minutes)

Cool. Cut into bars. Refrigerate. Serve as you will.

Firmer bars are easier to pack. I used less milk (2 cups) than the recipe calls for ---note, I should have used 3 4 ---. If you like lots of custard in your bars, adding more eggs will also firm them up.

You can use less sugar if they seem too sweet. "Fancy" involves soaking the fruit in rum flavoring (or actual rum or bourbon) over-night before using and/or toasting the nuts before adding to the pudding.

Picture of the finished product will be posted later today.

Marking out the ground

I am scheduled to meet with the guy who will put in the drain-tile at The Property.

I have worked with him before. He is a very easy-going guy.

Drain-tile is counter-intuitive in that it dries up the ground DOWN SLOPE from where it is laid.

At this point, it looks like 200' of 4" diameter perf-drain tile in a sock and 50' of unperf to carry what it collects to a ditch.

The dilemma is that I want to dry-up the access road into the property and I want to cut the Black Walnut roots invading the new orchard. If we optimize for the access then we will be cutting the roots on the edge of the orchard and they will re-colonize more quickly. If we cut the roots farther away from the edge of the orchard then it narrows the access.

My guess is that Black Walnut roots might invade about 2' a year. Cutting them 15' from the edge should kill all of the BW roots in the orchard and delay the first new ones from infiltrating by 5 or 10 years.

I intend to ask the excavator how much it would be to rip a second trench parallel to the one for the drain-tile but another 30 feet farther from the orchard. I don't know how his equipment will handle tree roots but I doubt that he will run into anything more than 3" or 4" in diameter. That would delay the Black Walnut issue for a solid 20 years and it won't be my problem.