After the fall

The Youtube creators seem to be in agreement. After a certain age we mark time as "Before the fall" and "After the fall". Falling is never a grand thing. For many people, a fall results in a hospital stay and a big step-down in ability and independence.

Having nothing better to do, I am going to pretend to be an expert in falling.

Charles Page

Charles was one of my coffee drinking buddies and was in his mid-80. I was pulling into the Burger King and I saw him crossing the parking lot and he was almost to the door.

I gave a very short toot on the horn and watched him collapse in a heap like a fainting goat when they hear a semi set the air-brakes.

He extraordinarily cheerful about he event. "I fall once a week. You did me a favor. Today is Monday so I should be good until next week."

Then he told me "I learned a long time ago to fall like a bag of potatoes. Don't try to catch yourself, 'cause you will tear your rotator cuff or break your wrists. Just go down like all the strings holding your bones together got cut."

Sage advice from somebody who had lots of practice.

The physical attributes that make moving forward while upright

Obviously, it takes balance to stand upright. If you have been bed-ridden for an extended time, you lose the hang of it. You also get out-of-practice if you spend too many hours of the day sitting.

You can help yourself if you concentrate on carrying your weight mid-foot. Think of each foot as an old-fashioned roller-skate. You want equal weight on all eight wheels. That gives you maximum time to make corrections if you get bumped or hit by a bit of wind...regardless of the direction it comes from.

Intentionally balancing is something you can train yourself to do.

A sudden lack of balance points to underlying medical issues like an ear infection, low blood pressure when standing or even brain tumors. Seek medical attention if you experience sudden changes. 

Flexibility is also important. It is very tempting to over-correct if you don't have much flexibility OR you can severely strain a muscle or your back if you are not whippy enough.

There is no substitute for leg and core strength. Some falls are due to lose of traction and you don't want to do the splits. More strength means you have more ability to modulate your recovery response.

I believe that many broken hips (actually a fracture of the femur's trochantor) are due to a person with weak leg muscles panicking and taking the impact of stepping down with a locked knee. The shock of the impact runs right up the fibula and femur and the fusible link is the brittle trochantor.

Reaction time comes into play. Likely, more falls occur when we are tired and have slower reaction time. We start to topple and we don't process the fact until our fall is inevitable. I suggest that we avoid obstacle courses when we are tired.

As a side-note, if you know you are going to be in an environment with a higher risk of falling...say you are attending a party where you know the patio blocks are heaved...avoid the adult-beverages and avoid riding the merry-go-round. 

Mrs ERJ surprised me when she suggested vision is important. How many falls are caused by tripping on something that we didn't see. Maybe the room was dark. Maybe the wire was the same color as the tall grass. Maybe our bellican obscured our view of our feet and we missed the fact that there was one more step to the ladder.

Another way that vision comes into play is that it supplements the balance feedback from our inner-ears. Our eyes seek the horizon and provide our brain with supplemental information about the direction gravity should be acting in. 

Mrs ERJ's suggestion was to practice bending over and picking up items from the floor; even if it might be more efficient or easier to sweep them up or to use a "grabber". For one thing, it reduces slip-trip hazards. For another thing, it improves your flexibility and core-strength. 

And if all else fails, do a Charlie Page, pick a soft looking bit of asphalt and go limp. Strive to keep your noggin from denting the pavement, but other than that, go with the inevitable.

Another day in paradise

Blogger does not seem to be accepting comments at the moment.

I have no control over that. Sorry.

Gym notes 

I slept in until 7:00 AM this morning. Pure decadence.

Mrs ERJ and I went to the  gym. I performed my maintenance routine. Nothing special. I tried one set at 225 but didn't feel strong and I only did 4 reps.

While walking in, I saw that the gym was hosting a blood drive. After lifting, I popped in to donate. Unfortunately, my BPM stubbornly remained in the 104-to-102 BPM range and I was not able to donate.

Reloading notes

I have been fighting with reloading some .223 Remington. I kept blowing the decapping and expander out of the die.

I finally got it isolated to IK brass with an astoundingly aggressive crimp. I can tell by feel when I got one in the die. It is much faster to just run them and reject the ones that I can "feel" than it is to visually inspect every headstamp.

For those who do not know, ammo that is intended for military use has the primer staked in place by upsetting the brass around the rim of the primer pocket. That is so the primers do not back-out and potentially disabling the firearm.

Sometimes the necessity of warfare requires that old, less stable ammo be used. Sometimes it means the ammo is stored at less-than-ideal temperatures or shortages require that the ammo be loaded with more variable lots of powder. Or, the round can sit in the barrel which cold be 400 degrees F and the powder could ignite more quickly and generate more pressure than the system was designed for.

Another factor is that some military rifles have oversized chambers. It can be due to looser acceptance criteria for the reamers during the shortages of wartime production or it can be intentional because large chambers will accept dirtier and dented ammo. Firing ammo in an oversided chamber can cause the head to dilate as the pressures peak and the primer pocket gets larger and can fall out during cycling. Again, a loose primer can jam up the action.

Brass that is crimped is a pain to deal with when you are reloading. So is dealing with brass that was fired in oversized or fluted chambers.

Never-the-less, I am grinding my way through this lot of brass and we will overcome.

Raising pigs

I am enjoying Homesteading the Hard Way channel which is mostly about raising pigs/hogs on a small scale.

The guy isn't smooth and polished. He doesn't candy-coat anything.

A very large tonnage of pork can be raised on a relatively small footprint. Pigs can extract protein from garden waste although to raise them quickly they need high-quality feed. There are some applications where hogs are an economical substitute for a wood-chipper.

To really save money, I think you almost need to butcher them yourself. That is more doable than butchering a steer because the animal is a more manageable size and there are assorted plans for "cold rooms" to hang multiple deer.

T-storms

We got a chain of thunderstorms starting at 2:00 AM today and it looks to continue through the day. We picked up an inch of rain and the weather-guessers think we might get another inch.

My location at the red-x. Storms are traveling in from northwest toward southeast.

The ducks are not happy that I didn't mix their dry, powdered feed (mash) with water. If I did, the inch of rain will turn it to soup.

I might do a little bit of carpentry today. 

Woodchucks

I usually dispatch woodchucks with body-grip traps or the might .22LR (Long Rifle).

Yesterday, due to an unusual confluence of events, I found myself looking at a woodchuck from a range of 15 yards and I had a 5.56mm NATO rifle in my hands. I had 77 grain TMK ammo in the magazine.

It was enough gun. Bang-flop. A hole in the east end and a much larger hole in the west end.

Dialing back

I decided to drop back to running every third day just like I am lifting. I will off-set them so I will have Lifting-Running-Rest, repeat.

I had been aiming to run every-other day and lift every third day. That inevitably resulted in running and lifting happening on the same day about once a week.

Data Centers

Based on the area that lacks cooling units, I suspect this facility is only running at half-capacity. All images from Google.

 So, "B" over at Middle of the Right asked, "What caliber for AI?" in a recent post.

I decided to look into the issue.

The picture shown above is a small, 70,000 square-foot data center. 

The power-switching yard that feeds it is approximately 800 feet away and feeds 138.00 kV underground to the facility.

 

8' by 20'. Ground mounted.

Each unit appears to have a fan mounted in the southwest corner. There are two pads on the west end of each row that does not have a unit on it. There may be a utility panel standing where the northwest end of the unit would be when it is installed.

 

Weird spacing for mobile offices

Whatever they are, they were important enough to erect Jersey barriers around them. 

Another anomaly

This factory was sold to a concern whose name suggest that they make tin-cans. A growth industry: Food in tin cans. Yep. I totally buy that story.

I drive by the factory about once a week. Very large HVAC units show up. Then they disappear. Who knew making tin cans required so much cooling power?

Blue Hill Wildlife Nursery

An odd thing happened today.

The home improvement project for this summer is slowly coming to the conclusion. The inspector will be showing up next week and hopefully that will be the end of it.

This week, a contractor showed up to perform some trenching and a few other tasks that needed to be done before the inspector shows up.

Mrs ERJ must be feeling under-the weather because she failed to direct me to stay out of the contractor's way. Consequently, I was chattering away while he was working up a sweat. He paused from what he was doing and pointed at the tree behind him and asked, "What kind of tree is that?".

"That is a persimmon tree. Deer love persimmons" I told him.

"I heard of them but I have never seen one" he told me. 

That got him to talking. He is a bow hunter and is managing some property to encourage deer while making it easier to harvest them in an ethical way. He has been drinking from the firehose on managing deer.

And then he started raving about a place he has done business with in Pennsylvania, Blue Hill Wildlife Nursery. They don't just sell plants, they are passionate about teaching guys like me and like him how to move the needle in terms of game animals and non-game animals.

Small world

I had the privilege of meeting Ryan in cyber-space. Ryan is one of the guys who runs the nursery and he is a very focused and results oriented guy. I looked through their catalog and as near as I can tell, they carry proven performers that can thrive in sub-optimal conditions.

Kerr apple-crab. Image from Blue Hill Wildlife Nursery catalog. Apple-crabs have smaller fruit than domestic apples (minimum of 2-1/2" diameter) but are larger than ornamental crabapples (arbitrarily smaller than 3/4" diameter).

For example, they offer Kerr apple-crab. Kerr fruits heavily even after experiencing -40 wintertime temperatures. It tends to biennial bearing but is very heavily loaded during the "on" years and it hangs onto its fruit until mid-winter.

They also offer Harrow Sweet, Korean Giant and Kieffer pears, all no-brainers in my book. 

They also offer "homesteader packages" which may be of interest. 

Their prices are about half the cost of what most boutique retail catalogs charge.

Small world! 

It is hard to stay on-task when it is hot outside

Quicksilver is going through a growth-spurt. She is eating everything in sight.

She followed down the stairs when I went to rotate my laundry. She said, "Let's crack some walnuts?"

So, I cracked them and she ate them. The walnuts are three years old but she thought they tasted just fine, and the flavor might have been just a bit sweeter since she had to work to tease the black walnut kernels out of the shells.

More technical oddities

Our attic fan has not been kicking on during the hot weather.

I assumed I had an electrical problem. I switched out the snap-disc switch for a new 110F close-on-rise and I put a few drops of oil into the fan's orifice and hand-spun the blade to ensure it spun freely and the oil was distributed.

It still didn't run during the heat of the day.

Curious, I opened up the access again and used my IR thermometer. Most of the bottom of the roof was +12 over ambient, that is 98F.

We had a white, steel roof installed about five years ago. Wow. What a difference.

Running notes

The first half mile was about 6:30. It was hot and humid.

I got about 2.7 miles before dropping to a walk. The last segment of the run was into the sun and with the wind. That is, it was hotter than the other three segments.

I committed to running a 5k as part of a team in early-October. I don't know if anybody else will be volunteering, but the plan is to pull together a team of five. I think there is a 50% chance that the team will not get four more volunteers.

If I end up running, I will be thrilled to break 40 minutes. It is a possibility if the weather is cooler and the course is flat and I drop five pounds. I have about 12 more runs to prepare.

Mowing

I made 3/4 of a lap around the yard with the lawn-tractor and the belt snapped.

It was too hot to push a mower.

So, to use the last bit of late-afternoon light, I adjusted the height of the mowing deck. I bought this mower from a guy who mowed a perfectly manicured lawn and he had it optimized for putting-greens. 

Random picture

Hot, Hungarian Banana (Wax) peppers

Red netting protects some crops better than other colors

Japanese researchers discover that red netting is more effective at protecting crops from insects than white or black netting.

I wonder if red netting would protect berry bushes against bird better than black netting. Or, if you cannot find red netting, perhaps garnishing the net with bright red, fake "cherries". Say, two 12mm, red beads joined by 50mm of florist wire. Pinch the dingleberries around strands of the net several weeks before the crops ripen and train the birds that the "cherries" on these bushes/trees are not edible.

A tip of the hat to Lucas the Tireless

Bling, dreams and filters

The group play-dates are starting back up for Quicksilver. Being a country-girl and having very few kids her age near-by, this seems like the most efficient way to socialize her.

The boys were in the sand-box using the diggers. The girls, who outnumbered the boys by 5:1, were on the merry-go-round and the castle-themed slides gabbing like a flock of laying hens. Nobody told them. That is where the gravity pulled them.

Then I had an evil thought. Fake jewels and coins can be purchased on Amazon for a pittance. 

I expect those young fellows would get a lot of feminine company if it became known that the sandbox was filled with "drip". If I can't have peace-and-quiet, I don't know why they should.

Nightmare

I dreamed that I had to give a speech in front of hostile people RIGHT NOW. I tried to make an outline and the paper was wet. There were chickens in the car and I was invited to eat breakfast as I walked toward the venue as the paper shredded under the pen.

Technical oddity

The technician replaced the filter on our furnace with a different brand two weeks ago. The unit started whistling and moaning when the A/C kicked on.

We called the firm and he came back. He deduced that it was due to the filter. I suspect that the pleats collapsed due to the absence of the wire mesh that supports the pleats in "normal" filters. When the pleats are not collapsed, the area of the filter-media that the air can flow through is about 4X the width-times-length of the filter for a 2" filter. If the pleats collapse then it is 1X and the fan cannot pull enough air through it to keep the evaporator from icing and it makes horrible sucking sounds.

The failure cascades as inadequate air-flow causes the evaporator heat exchanger to ice up and shuts off flow. 

The tech didn't have filters of any other brand with him. We dismissed him and drove to the hardware store to purchase what we needed.

The "self-supported" filters without the wire mesh might be fine for larger fliters like 20x20" but was a total failure in the 14"x20" model.

I expect that the HVAC company will switch back to the traditional, wire-mesh supported filters. They cannot afford unhappy customers.

Lifting report

Usual warm-up. Two sets of 205. Two sets of 225. It was a chore to finish the last set.

The session was notable because there were seven other lifters who drifted through their routines while I was there and none of them were wearing ear-buds.

I tried the Aloha protein bars and they were more than edible. I will try the Perfect bars next time.