Fingertip Pulse Oximeter

 

One of the conversations that popped up during our Thanksgiving celebration involved a guest who was unable to attend due to a lower respiratory infection.

I remember when we were caring for my dad, we were coached to take his blood O2 level when he seemed lethargic. If his O2 saturation was below 90%, then we gave him a nebulizer treatment with albuterol which was prescribed by his personal care physician.

Belladonna (an RN) chimed in that any O2 saturation measurement below 89% was an issue and warranted a trip to the doctor (or doc-in-a-box). It isn't necessarily an emergency but that it needed looking into.

My personal belief is that one of these O2 Pulse Oximeter monitors is a basic home-medical device right up there with a thermometer. Objective measurements takes the guesswork out of knowing when to escalate an issue.

I sent our Fingertip Pulse Oximeter to the person who was not able to attend and ordered a replacement unit. I don't expect the device to come back.

Comments from my readers who have medical training will be appreciated. It is not my intention to spread misinformation.

The soul of wit

I had a long post lined up to publish. Upon rereading it there was nothing there that excited me.

Consequently, you get a short, unexciting post. While not exciting, it has the virtue of brevity. 

Socializing

A couple of guests yesterday were having a conversation about the awkwardness of "socializing". 

ERJ's life-hacks on socializing

• You win if you get the other person to talk about something they are passionate about.
• Points are scored when you don't HAVE to speak
• "... Yes, and...." is a powerful tool. In social situations, ban ".... No, but..." from you lexicon. "Yes, and..." builds on momentum. "No, but..." extinguishes it. Find something the previous speaker said that you agree with. Validate that tidbit and ignore what you disagree with. 
• Build on what you are in agreement with. 

Birds

Saw-whet owls are very cool birds. They are specialists in eating mice, voles and other small rodents and they reproduce rapidly when given decent habitat. Suitable nesting cavities are usually the limiting factor.

Snow, more snow and homeless-camps

The big news here is that we have some weather blowing in. The weather weenies tell us to expect between 6"-and-9" of snow out of the event with winds in the 10-to-12mph range and gusts of twice that speed. 

Since the temperature will be below 30F (in Eaton Rapids) for most of the snowfall, the snow will be "dry" and subject to drifting which means plows will struggle to keep even the main roads clear. Minor roads will be unplowed until noonish Sunday, maybe.

On Sunday, the temperature will be at or just above the freezing mark. That will result in the snow compacting, becoming sticky and heavy. Great weather for making snowmen...and for old men holding a shovel to have a heart-attack. 

Some other bloggers I follow are looking forward to 9"-to-12" of snow.

The snow will impact two events for us. We are hosting our family Thanksgiving today. We moved the event to an earlier time so guest could leave before there was heavy accumulation of snow. One of our guests has to travel more than five miles to get here, so that is a blessing. He will be invited to stay the night.

The other event is Mass tomorrow morning. We are going to play that by ear.

How they handle storms "Up North"

The Keweenaw Peninsula sticks up into Lake Superior like a hitch-hiker's thumb.

One of my friends lives in Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula. They get a lot of snow with some years totaling over 300".

They recently had an early ice-storm. Here are some excerpts from the local paper;

“Outlying areas are still without power, UPPCO updated us this morning,” Keweenaw County Sheriff’s Office Corporal Darren Jurmu said. “They have crews still working in outlying areas in Keweenaw County and Houghton County. They have a couple of crews in Lake Lenore today to do some more off-the-road fixing of the power lines.”

Jurmu says ‘a few hundred’ trees of all sizes were knocked down, with several causing the ongoing power outages. He also says up to two feet of snow can be found across the county.

Due to the storm, some areas across both counties opened emergency warming centers for residents without power. “One gentleman, he was like 83, and he was staying in his house,” Bootjack Fire Department Engineer Mark Serotzke said. “It was actually our chief that went on the call as a first responder, and he talked the gentleman into riding in the truck back to the hall and staying here.”

Serotzke says that due to power not yet being restored at the time, the shelter even saved one family’s Thanksgiving dinner. 

“They had their turkey all at home and everything, ready to cook,” Serotzke added. “We told them, ‘Go ahead and go back home and grab your turkey and cook it here and have your Thanksgiving here’. And that’s what they ended up doing. It really made their day.”  

Hat-tip to Coyote Ken for the news article. 

On the other end of the spectrum

In Ingham County (Lansing), a judged ordered a landowner to provide and maintain porta-potties for squatters who the landowner was unsuccessfully trying to evict. Let me clarify, the judge ordered him to do it at the landowner's expense.

Imagine the cost of maintaining enough porta-potties for 40-to-60 people if they are on the flood-plains at the bottom of the steep river bank and 300 feet from pavement.

The landowner complained that some of the squatters had been on his property for more than three years and officials turned a deaf-ear to his complaints. In fact, the police admitted that when they found an indigent or vagrant in a respectable part of town, they would transport him/her to the "camp" and drop them off. 

In that three years, the "camp" grew to be more than 40 people. It is hard to get an exact fix on the population because the residents are transient. They move in. They move out.

The origin of the camp is a mystery, but it may have been one of the landowners allowing a down-on-his-luck family member stay there. After that, one thing led to another.

Think things through before you offer "charity"

Sadly, we live in a time when one simple act of charity can snowball. Don't expect help from the government when you-being-a-victim solves a lot of expensive problems for them.

One gentleman who I know did offer four separate individuals charity. The offers were spaced in time. The man and his wife sat the potential recipient at the kitchen table and outlined what they would do, what they would not do and what their expectations of the receiver were.

They also pointed out that they had firearms, hogs, a backhoe and property. That if the receiver "crossed the line", they would disappear forever.

"Missing persons" reports for vagrants are almost never solved. In fact, they are very rarely filed because they could have just hitched a ride to St. Louis or Atlanta or Charleston...

What made the gentleman's effort work is they made the offer to just one, selected individual at a time AND both he and his wife stone-cold meant what they said about the hogs and backhoe. Most people are not going to be able to make that work.

One of Chicago's many homeless camps. This one is just west of Lakeshore Drive. It is hard to get overhead images of camps because the homeless put their tents beneath trees for the shade.

Ground view of the Chicago camp take a year earlier.

An interesting academic paper

 This is an interesting paper: Influence of the Schwabe/Hale solar cycles on climate change during the Maunder Minimum
Authors: Hiroko Miyahara, Yusuke Yokoyama, and Yasuhiko T.
Yamaguchi published 2009

A trace showing sunspot activity and cosmic ray intensity. Cosmic rays are very high energy (short wavelength) Electromagnetic radiation similar to Gamma rays and X-rays. Some of them have enough energy to convert Nitrogen-14 into Carbon-14. Carbon-14 is radioactive and it decays with a half-life of about 5700 years.

One subtlety that might slip by the causal reader is that there is substantial variation within any given period. That is, the raw data trace is fuzzy.

If you have access to samples of wood of a known age, say the beams in the roof of a cathedral or a temple or palace, then you can take core-samples and test them for C-14 and determine if it is higher-or-lower than what you would expect given their age.

The authors of this paper link sunspots to the spectral output of the sun. Fewer sunspots means more cosmic ray output. The next image suggests that more cosmic ray output came at the expense of electromagnetic radiation in the visual and IR spectrum.

The time-frame circled with red corresponds to the Maunder Minimum

Tucked in the tail-feathers of this paper is a graphic that suggests that long periods with no sunspots has a historical precedent.

Weather is chaotic and the time-horizons defy easy human understanding.

In a stunning coincidence

Airbus is performing major software maintenance on the Airbus 320 due to anomalies that have been linked to CME scrambling sensor data.

A walk in the woods

 

10th Annual Cranberry Sauce-n-Toss

An action shot

I went for a walk at Burchfield Park in Ingham County yesterday.

I ran into a group celebrating Thanksgiving by playing disc golf. They informed me that it was the 10th Annual Cranberry Sauce-n-Toss. They were a loud and gregarious crowd and didn't mind if I took a couple of pictures of them.

Lots of blow-downs at the park.

I used to run every day at the park. Heck, that was twenty years ago. I was working at a factory that was being closed down and didn't know where I would be working in the future.

The park changed with the times. Large sections of the forest have been manicured for disc golfing. Duff on the forest floor has been swept. Undergrowth mowed. Mountain biking/trail-riding is a big thing now.

Location  Northern Red Oak and White Oak. Sandy soil. Decent light coming in during the afternoon.

This short stretch of river bank looks like a great place to reintroduce Lowbush Blueberries or other Ericaceae plants like Vaccinium pallidum and Gaylussacia baccata. I think they would thrive on the cusp of the bank between the trail and half-way down the bank. It they would be quite a treat for sharp-eyed hikers.

Thanksgiving

I am thankful that I can still freely worship God as I see fit.

I am thankful for my family, especially for Mrs ERJ.

I am thankful that we are not homeless.

I am thankful that I am still alive.

I am thankful that I still have mobility. 

I am thankful that I am not addicted to drugs or alcohol.

I am also thankful to you, my readers. Writing this blog is my "therapy" and I remember being thrilled when I hit 20 viewers in one day.

I am thankful that there is a community of people who were raised to mind our own business, to (mostly) stay in our swim-lane and to communicate when we were foundering. 

I am thankful that I am not a kid anymore. Even though there were charlatans and crooks, the path to success was clearly marked and didn't change much over the decades.

On the political front, I am thankful that we are not embroiled in unwinnable foreign wars and serious efforts are being made to end the two current hot-spots. I am also overjoyed at the progress in election integrity although I fear it will be too slow to save the Republic.

A man has to know his limitations

I gave blood today. This is the first time the Phlebotomist had to "stick" me twice in the 40 years I have been giving blood.

The first one worked fine as long as the blood was flowing even though it seemed to take much longer than I am used to.

But the "hub" clotted up after I filled the bag and they had to do a second poke on my other arm to fill the vials for blood typing and all of the other mysterious things they need to do.

Waste

One of the advantages of a simple diet is that there is less waste than a diet that demands a great deal of variety.

When I clean my refrigerator I see that I never throw out milk or mustard, apples, shredded cheese or eggs. I do toss celery, green onions, weird sauces, chip-dip and other exotic items.

The point is that the high-runners in my diet have enough demand and turnover that very little gets wasted. The "Hey, I need to buy some of this for this one recipe I want to try" invariable results in 3/4 of it being tossed a few weeks later.

I have to keep reminding myself of that as I drool over the seed catalogs. The Baker Creek catalog came today and every page is a work of art.

If I was forced to engage in triage, my list of vegetables might look something like this. If I could only grow ONE vegetable, it would be tomatoes. If I could only grow TWO, it would be tomatoes and potatoes, and so-on...

1. tomatoes  
2. potatoes
3. zucchini 
4. Turnip/Kale/Daikon (cover-crop/late fall greens/roots) 
5. green beans
6. sweet pepper
7. cabbage
8. Butternut squash
9. cucumber 
10. field corn
11. Romaine lettuce
12. beets
13. broccoli

On the other hand, if I only had a few square-feet of garden the list would look different:

1. Hot peppers
2. Garlic
3. Cherry tomatoes
4. Rosemary
5. Mint 

Some vegetables are notable for their absence. No onions, carrots or sweet corn on my list because they are grown commercially by local farmers. I can buy a 50 pound bag of carrots for $7...and I am not very good at growing carrots.

Adding more crops usually adds more complexity. There are exceptions. Turnip/kale/daikon seeds can be broadcast into the canopy of your squash/pumpkins/melons in early July (in Michigan) and will give you a second crop with no fuss or bother three or four months later. But those are the exceptions.

I admire the people like Leigh and Lucky who seem to be able to effortlessly grow a boundless cornucopia of delicious, garden edibles. Alas, I am living proof of Dirty Harry's opinion that "A man has to know his limitations".

All opinions will be much appreciated. Since choices of what you grow are very sensitive to climate, please consider listing what state or region (i.e. Intermountain West) you are in.

Added later:

For those of you who worry that my lack of success (so far) this hunting season will render us to a meat-free diet, rest assured that my friends who HAVE been successful cheerfully donated the hearts, livers, kidneys and tongues of their kills.

I have been pressure canning them. Zeus really likes a little bit of real meat added to his dried kibbles, and if push-comes-to-shove, it is plenty good enough for me to eat.

Is it OK if I characterize my deer hunting season as "Offal good so far"? 

"That happens"

 Mrs ERJ and I were commenting on one of Quicksilver's stock phrases; "That happens".

When confronted by shortfalls, calamity or misfortune, as often as not Quicksilver responds "That happens". Not a helpless shrugging of shoulders and "Whatever" but a matter-of-fact statement and "Ok, now we deal with the consequences".

No drama. You can do everything right and still get an unwanted outcome. There doesn't have to be a bad-guy or a victim. Sometimes we decide to take shortcuts and they don't work out. 

We thought Handsome Hombre and Southern Belle were doing a fine job of teaching her those lessons. Sometimes things get bumped and fall off of the table. Sometimes the dog eats your cookie. Sometimes Grandpa uses the last wet-wipe and doesn't get another package out of the pantry. Not every accident is Freudian.

"That happens".

 And then we started hearing ourselves use that phrase, same inflections and everything.

It is a little bit eerie to hear something that you wholeheartedly believe in come out of your granddaughters mouth...and then realize that it is something you had unconsciously instilled in your child, the one who is your granddaughter's mother. No wonder it resonated with us!

We were hearing echos of our parenting. Thank God it was something positive.

Just for fun

 and

 

Gloomy days and Aladdin Lamps

I heard that one of my coffee-drinking buddies wasn't doing very well, so I decided to visit him.

"Skyd" Jorgensen (not his real name) is now 80 and is down to 130 pounds. In his prime, he could run a jack-hammer all day long and then work his second job for another eight hours...day-after-day-after-day.

One of his favorite stories is how he walked into a liquor store one Friday and the young men behind the counter had a barbell they were "curling".

"Iffen I can do that 25 times, will you give me a fifth of vodka?" Skyd challenged. 

The older of the two men looked at the weights and then at Skyd. "If you can do it one-handed...then I will give you a bottle of vodka. If you can't, then you pay double."

Skyd started to reach for the weights when the man added "...left handed."

Skyd cranked out the 25 curls with the 90 pounds using his left arm.

Then the man challenged Skyd. "I will give you two bottles if you can to another 25...but you give back that one if you cannot."

Again, Skyd started to reach for the weights when the man added "...with your left hand"

Skyd knocked out another 25 curls using the same arm he had done the first 25 with and left with two, free fifths of vodka. Vodka has very little taste, but the vodka in those two bottles tasted like victory.

Anyway, Skyd is in decline. He was short of breath just sitting and talking.

He insisted that I take one of his precious Aladdin Lamps. He and his now-deceased wife collected them. That is not a great sign in terms of how much longer he expects to live. I didn't ask for it. He told me to bring it over to the table from where it was displayed.

We had talked about Aladdin lamps in the past. It was one of the wonders that my dad remembered from his childhood. He grew up poor during the Great Depression. His dad had TB and died in 1936 "poor". Raised by his widowed mother in a shack by the river round the bend from the hobo-camp poor. 

We talked about his will and how he wants his estate to be divided up. He only has one heir, and that heir has been stealing from Skyd. Perhaps he thinks that since he is going to inherit it all anyway, he will just speed up the transfer.

In other news, Skyd told me that he had a plumber quote the cost of replacing his water-heater. The quote was for $3000.

I realize that there are extenuating conditions: Poor access, old pipes and such. But I have to wonder if maybe the plumber looked at Skyd and thought "This guy is tottering on the brink of dementia. He is a pigeon waiting to be plucked."

Unfortunately, there are people in EVERY profession (and most families) who see people who are in their last five years of life as nothing more than resources to be strip-mined. 

So it has been a gloomy day.

The weather is changing and the sky is gray. Plants are being squirreled away in piles of mulch and compost to over-winter. I ran out of time getting them into the ground.

Cherish the people who treat you well. 

Fine Art Tuesday

Guillermo Gómez Gil was born in Malaga, Spain in 1862 and died in 1942.

Renowned for his seascapes and luminous light. In general, his paintings are very easy and restful to look at.

A tip of the old fedora to the tireless Lucas Machias for suggesting this artist.

A story in pictures

 

I used the wire from a surveyor's flag . 1/8" diameter holes. Peanut butter for bait. Long ke-bob skewers also work but you need 3/16" diameter holes.

About an 1-1/2" of RV antifreeze in the bottom of the pail

Books, keys, scopes and budgets

It came to my attention that my hunting and fishing buddy "Shotgun" never read a book by Robert Heinlein. I plan to fix that deficiency.

Shotgun informed me that he thinks Louis L'Amour's book "Last of the Breed" might be the finest book ever written. Do any of you have any opinions as to WHICH of Heinlein's many books is the best "first" book? If that is too broad of a question, then which of his books is the most like Louis L'Amour's book "Last of the Breed"?

Keys

One of my brothers bought a Kawasaki murder-cycle. It only has one key. The dealer told him to have a second one cut at a lock-smith's. The best lock-smith in town told him to get it from the dealer.

Photos of the business end of the key

My brother found a firm in the U.K. that will cut a new key if he has the key-code or if he sends them a picture !! 8-) !!!.

Do any of my readers know of sources in the US who can provide this service?

Thermal scopes

Scopes that help shooters make ethical shots in low-light conditions are HUGE force multipliers. Short video here that compares several models from one supplier.

There are countless varmints that only come out at night. Raccoons, 'possum, hogs, coyotes and so on. Having some kind of thermal scope also helps identify items that might be lurking in the background.

There are two key-words used to describe scopes that are sold for low-light conditions. 

The older technology is "night vision" which relies on an infrared "flood-light" and video technology that can sense IR light. Actually, nearly all digital camera technology can see short-wave IR; commercial cameras require an IR filter to remove short-wave end the IR spectrum to ensure that IR sources like hot pavement and heating elements on stoves don't show up as light sources. 

The down-sides of the old "night vision" technology is that it gobbles batteries and is a huge beacon for anybody looking for IR.

The newer technology is "thermal" which is passive and senses the difference in temperature between your target and the background. For example, a 'coon in a tree is warm while the tree is cool and the sky in the background is near absolute zero. That is an easy "find". A 'possum moseying along in front of a stone fence that has been baking in the afternoon and evening sun is a much more difficult "discrimination" problem.

Low-end "thermal" scopes with coarse image resolution are available in the $700 range. Very functional (in my uneducated opinion) with 300x400 pixel resolution can be had in the $1400-$1700 range.

I don't see value in putting thermal on every rifle and air-gun in the safe but I can see that having one on a general purpose firearm. If shooting varmints that took refuge in a tree is on your menu, then you need to be hyper-vigilant about where your bullet will land...and you should strongly consider mounting the scope on a stout, nitro-spring pellet-gun or a low-recoiling shotgun (like a 20-gauge, semi-automatic). 

Noo Yawk take notice

Most cities in Germany are on the brink of bankruptcy

Their cash-burn is accelerating by the month. Budgets that were made last year are hundreds of millions of Euros in the red this year. Most of the black-hole is related to immigrants "pulling" benefits they are not paying into.

 

Wardrobe malfunctions

***Disclosure: This post is not appropriate for people with refined sensibilities nor should it be read by women who are subject to fainting spells or are cursed with vivid imaginations.

For those of you who still harbor the tiniest bit of respect for my skills as an outdoors-man, you might want to skip this post, too.***

---PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK--- 

Having learned my lesson the last time I sat in the Orchard stand, I was prepared this time. The wind-chill was 38F which was almost identical to the last, cold sit I had in the stand.

I upgraded to a quilted shirt, quilted bibs and an honest-to-goodness parka.

But let me back up a bit in this story....

As a frugal family who did not want our kids to feel left-out or "poor", it was our habit to "pad" the number of presents beneath the Christmas tree by wrapping packages of underwear and socks.

I am tough to shop for. My needs are very simple. If I have Mrs ERJ, a warm place to sleep and adequate food then I am a happy guy. Throw in a truck that starts when I turn the key and I am filled with ecstacy!

So, my supply of undies and socks is also replenished on Christmas. Often, they are the only gifts I get. It is all good.

I do my laundry every week. That means I need a minimum of 8 pairs of undershorts in the fleet to make it to the next laundry-day. A few more is better in case my laundry-day is delayed.

If you do the math, there are 49 weeks between the end of regular, firearms Deer Season in Michigan and the previous Christmas. For the senior-undershorts there have been 101 weeks have elapsed from the Christmas before that and the last week of Deer Season.

Back to the story

I had been piddling around the orchard for a couple of hours before adding the warmer clothes. My plan was to sit from 4:00 p.m. until the end of legal light.

I waddled from my truck to the Orchard stand and started to climb the ladder to reach the stand.

As I started climbing the ladder, my undershorts shinnied down the rump-roast of my butt and continued heading for my knees. I went up. My shorts went down.

Curses!

I climbed back down the two steps I had taken to get back on to solid ground. There was no way I was going to let go of the sides of the ladder to fish-around and try and yank my shorts back into position.

I unzipped my parka and reached through the slits in the sides of the bibs. I had to worm my hands through the folds of the quilted shirt and snake them over the waistband of my jeans and down the legs before I was able to find the flaccid waistband of my undershorts. Then, through an aerobic sequence of dance gyrations and manly "come-hither" evolutions with my hands I convinced them to return to their appointed position north of my privates. 

I started back up the ladder, assuming I had handled the problem. I was wrong. The bibs, insulated shirt and my carpenter jeans interacted with my shorts and down-they-went.

(Lather. Rinse. Repeat the previous three paragraphs) X 3

Resigned to the inevitable, I waddled up the ladder with my knees splayed as far outboard as I could manage. Miraculously, the undershorts only slid MOST of the way down. That worked great until I got to the door of the blind which is about 20" wide. I had to squeeze my knees together to get inside and yes, the undershorts slide beneath the waves like the submarine in the movie Das Boot avoiding an airplane.

By now, that pair of shorts had acquired sentience and they hated me. 

More dance gyrations were performed in the confined space of the deer blind. It may have been my imagination, but I thought I heard deer down in the pucker-brush chortling.

 Of course, it could have just been the Fruit-of-the-Looms jeering.

The only deer I saw last night were as I drove home. The deer were grazing in the alfalfa field south of my stand. They stopped eating and started pointing at me as I drove by. Word gets around quickly.

A quick re-visit on Seven Year Mortgages

I am not going to die on the hill of "Seven Year Mortgages", but I will point out a few advantages:

I agree that it is totally unrealistic for nearly everybody when we are talking about the median house price in the US of $400k or of a typical new-construction of about $600k, it is not beyond the imagination when talking about a $150k house in a medium-sized, mid-western city like Lansing, Michigan.

With 10%, the financing payment (not including property-taxes and insurance) is about $1900 a month. That is well within the reach of many two-income families.

Regarding the "crime" issue: It would vaporize all of the airy-fantasy, criminal justice tripe they were force-fed in college. Crime is bad in cities because well-to-do liberals in safe suburbs elect soft-on-crime judges and prosecutors. If more newly minted liberals lived in the areas impacted by crime, they would start demanding that city and county "justice systems" start doing their jobs. 

Regarding "lack of asset appreciation": I subscribe to the "rational market" theory where every seller is demanding a price whereby future appreciation is boiled into the price they are asking.

Regarding crappy schools: They are all crappy schools now, regardless of where you move. You either home-school or send them to private schools (good luck finding a solid one). Or, you can sell out when your oldest kid turns five and move to what you think is a "decent" school district. And, may I point out that if you waited a year before you tried to make a baby, you oldest kid turns five about...seven years after you got married. 

Regarding crappy construction: Yes, there are some crappy houses in legacy cities. There are also houses built with real, oak trim, fine plaster work and hardwood floors. Survivor bias means that the IKEA, throw-away construction houses are gone.

Regarding crappy neighborhoods: Pick a house that is very close to a church you are willing to be active in. Eat out at the closest pedestrian-friendly restaurant. Join the local bowling team. Walk your dog and chat-it-up with the other dog-walkers. Stay in your house after dark. Don't flaunt your wealth. Give every appearance of sinking roots rather than being a snooty tourist.

Longevity in a community and "pests"

Yesterday, as I was dropping Quicksilver off at her play-date, I approached one of the young lasses who is the mother of one of the tots who Quicksilver has taken a shine to.

"I think I met you about seven years ago" I started out.

Recognition flashed across her face.

"Oh! You are Kubota's dad" she finished my sentence for me.

"And Quicksilver is his niece" I added. 

"I LOVE Kubota. He is so funny. I follow him on social media" she gushed.

I expect Quicksilver's aristocratic connections (to Prince Kubota) to make the rounds with the moms of the other kids a play-date. I know the young lass is friends with several of the other moms, so I expect that they went to high school together and they all know Kubota.

Musk oxen closing ranks to protect the calves

Southern Belle left Eaton Rapids in early 2009 and didn't move back until the middle of 2023. Most of the moms at the play-date were in second grade when she graduated from high school. 

Eaton Rapids is a small town. It can seem close-minded and rigid if you are an outsider. The view from the inside is very different. On Wednesday, Quicksilver was just another, anonymous kid. On Thursday she became "real" to the rest of the moms. As a sprout from a multi-generational Eaton Rapids family, she is safe to invest in emotionally because she probably won't move away in a year or two.

Cool-amp

Back in my days in the factory, we used a product called Cool-Amp to silver-plate the ends of copper welding bus-bars and jumper cables.

Copper oxide has a high resistance. Silver oxide has relatively low resistance.

The powder is silver nitrate combined with a pH buffer and a mild abrasive. The copper ions are more reactive and rip the nitrate anions away from the silver cations. That deposits elemental silver on the surface of the copper.

Zinc is even more reactive than copper, so it would be very easy to apply a thin wash of silver metal on top of the zinc-copper alloy used by Rocky Mountain bullets.

Since the bullets don't need to be solid silver to kill juvenile were-wolves and other common, paranormal varmints, the thin wash of silver should be sufficient for most of your pest-control needs.

Speaking of pests

We have mice in the attic.

I am catching one-a-day and am not sure that I am keeping up with their reproductive capacity.

It is odd that I am catching so many with foot and tail catches. I am not sure what is with that. I have been euthanizing them by dropping the trap into a bucket of very cold, soapy water. They only struggle for about a half minute.

I may have to resort to placing several adhesive traps out to get ahead of Malthus. 

More pests

A black walnut root sitting on a 2-by-4 for scale.

I was cleaning out a nursery row and planted a couple of pear rootstock in the Hill Orchard. I hit this root three inches down. The flap of bark sticking out on the left side of the root is where my shovel hit it.

I excavated three feet in each direction and cut the root out. I removed it so it wouldn't leach toxins into the soil beneath the pear as it decayed. 

Seven-year mortgages

If the average marriage only lasts seven years, wouldn't it make sense to offer seven-year mortgages as the default? 

A leopard cannot change its spots

 

A-a-r on the funeral and a short, palate-cleanser video

 

 

I went to the funeral of the 102.4 year-old man today.

There were about 80 people attending, which is a really good show for somebody who has outlived nearly all of his peers.

I was surprised to learn that the man was baptized at the age of 84. Please note that I am NOT recommending that you put it off that long if you feel called to get baptized. 

 

Job categories that will shrink during hard-times

Jobs that won't fare well during hard times:

Personal Fitness Trainer

Reason: People will be walking six or more miles a day. We won't need the gym to get exercise. We will not need a "cheer-leader" to motivate us.

Exception: Massage specialists. There will be boatloads of people with sore muscles.

Internet Influencers

Internet Influencers exist to goad people in to spending more and consuming resources that the viewer didn't know existed. The tide will be running in the opposite direction during hard-times.

Event Planners

Events to commemorate rites-of-passage in our lives will no longer be a competitive sport. Weddings might be a handful of friends and a few family members from each side. Graduation parties might be playing disc golf in the park.

Lawncare specialists

Large lawns that are professionally cared-for are a historical anomaly. Some of the lawns will likely be turned into gardens or orchards. Some will be abandoned and allowed to revert back to native scrub or prairie. 

Please feel free to add to the list. 

Shorts

Today's goal is to get to a funeral in downtown Lansing.

My friend's father died. It was not unexpected. His father was 102.4 years-old.

Investing in semi-precious metals

A pretty good price for a good product. 

An even better price but they might not work for you. 

The word of the day

The word of the day is "eye-ballie". 

Used in a sentence: Bucks use their nose to explore the world. Does are eye-ballie and will bust you in a tree-stand quicker than a buck will.

The iron law of supply-and-demand

It is my perception that women often do not feel "valued" by men. They complain that men treat them as a fungible commodity like nose-tissues (aka Kleenex).

It is also my perception that most of the women making those complaints are in areas that have a gross over-supply of women vis-a-vis men. To be specific: College campuses are now dominated by women. Large cities are magnets for women. Some professions like HR, education, advertising and the social "sciences" are dominated by women.

If you are a woman and do not feel "valued", consider finding pockets within your society where women are not in over-supply. Adapt, improvise, overcome. Leave your comfort bubble. 

Women start looking like this when they are competing with other women.

No man ever looked at this and swooned "OMG! She is gorgeous."

Nope. We are far more likely to say "Do you need your EpiPen or should I call 9-1-1?"

Warren Buffet's thinking on "quality"

Warren Buffet was famous for his annual letter the the shareholders of Berkshire-Hathaway. He used those letters to explain his thinking in various investments.

In one of those letters, he explained why he opted for "quality" especially when the economy seemed to be hitting a rough-patch. Even though I present the following in quotes, they aren't actual quotes. Rather, it is my best remembering of his logic.

"I bought shares of Coca Cola last year and I was asked why I didn't invest in companies with stronger positions in the lower market tiers...companies like Shasta, Faygo and companies that bottled 'house-brand' soda-pop."

"The logic my questioners bring up is that people change their consumption habits when money is short. They expect consumers to shift to cheaper products and the "quality brands" to take a beating."

"My logic is that the pricing power of premium brands means they have a much greater margin for price decay. Coca Cola doesn't pay more money for sugar or flavoring than commodity brands yet it can command twice the retail price. That difference in pricing power falls directly to the bottom-line."

"Yes, they spend a lot more on advertising, but that is a discretionary variable-cost that they can temporarily economize on."

"When the price of a house-brand drops by a dime a bottle, they lose money. When the price Coca Cola can command at the cash register drops by a dime a bottle, they are still very profitable."

"The same thing can be said about Hersey candy bars, Marlboro cigarettes, Dior lipstick and a host of other comfort/luxury items."

Economic lessons from Bullwhip Griffin

---Disclaimer: I am not a Professional Investment advisor. This blog post is offered for entertainment purposes. It is your own money. Do your own research.--- 

In 1967 a movie that supplied profound insights into economic booms was released by Disney Studios. The title of that academic study was The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin. The book that was released was simply titled Bullwhip Griffin. The book is better than the movie.

The story is set in California in the early days of the 1849 Gold Rush. The underlying message is that the surest and most durable path to wealth is not the obvious path. For every miner who struck it rich in the gold fields there were 99 that could not pay all of their bills. Nope. The surest path was to supply the miners with tents, shovels, pans, apple-pies, pants, shirts, alcoholic beverages, fried oysters, quick-silver, lumber, barbering services, a hot bath and so on. 

A conversation with a friend

My friend is a pretty sharp guy and he shared a few investment insights with me yesterday.

Like me, he sees inflation as a major threat to the wealth he saved up through his working years. Unlike me, he can afford some very high-end analysis people to sort through the details.

The obvious AI plays, NVIDA, Microsoft, Open-AI, Oracle are over-bought and have very high Price/Earnings ratios. The every-increasing revenue that is reported by those firms is reminiscent of the washer-women in Hooverville who survived 1932 by taking in each other's laundry. The speed-of-money between those firms is an ever accelerating merry-go-round. 

Another complication is that it can be difficult to determine if a firm is a viable concern when capital is flooding into it. Large volumes of incoming capital will mask structural flaws and weaknesses in organic demand.

The less obvious investment plays are to buy stock in companies that mine or smelt copper. To buy stock in companies with proven reserves of rare-earth metals. To buy stock in utilities that serve states with a permissive, regulatory environment toward nuclear or fossil-fueled plants. Even if AI collapses, there will still be markets for copper wire, rare-earths and for electricity.

If you aren't comfortable buying individual stocks then another way to balance your investment risk is to move some of your savings into a mutual fund that focuses on "Value stocks". Value stocks are typically boring, mature (i.e. not rapidly growing) businesses that generate profits the old-fashioned way. 

Why not sit on cash?

Well, that would be a great move if you could predict if/when the stock market will crash.

But history tells us that inflation and deflation can exist within the same economy and that the inflationary parts of it will vaporize the wealth that is stored as "cash".

Wait a minute. How can an economy be both inflationary and deflationary at the same time? 

Consider the Wiemar Republic in the early 1920s. The nominal value of a producing apple tree or garden full of potatoes or a cord of firewood sky-rocketed while the nominal value of certain luxuries like musical instruments, fancy clothes and pensions dropped to zero. Some sectors went up (way up) and other sectors collapsed.

The ones that preserved wealth were assets that served the lower levels of Maslow's Hierarchy. The assets that collapsed were ones that invested in the higher levels of Maslow's hierarchy.

Even if you lose money investing in productive assets, you will lose even more buying power if you squirrel away all of your assets as cash.

This observation comes with a caution. You need to have enough cash-like assets on-hand to pay your taxes and currency-denominated debts like your mortgage. 

A final word

The movie contains a "fight" scene where (seemingly) prissy "Bullwhip" Griffin beats the hell out of a street-brawler. Hence his new nickname "Bullwhip".

There are times when the only viable coin-of-the-day is to be able to vigorously defend what is yours, your honor and the honor of your woman. 

Some days are like that...

Today was off-kilter right from the beginning.

Most kids wait until their teenage years before they start pushing their parents' buttons.

Last night, Quicksilver, now three-years-old, played with Southern Belle's alarm clock.

Consequently, Quicksilver and Southern Belle showed up in my driveway exactly an hour before I expected them. That set the tone for the day.

Mrs ERJ had appointments all day long, so I was the one to drive Quicksilver to her Tuesday play-date. I also got to pick her up and she kept me company while I did various errands in the early-afternoon. She fell asleep for about 20 minutes in the truck, so of course she didn't take a nap once we got home.

Over the course of our multiple in-and-outs of the truck, I misplaced her "bunny" and that had consequences. Fortunately, I had plied her with a cheeseburger and had cookies to distract her with. 

It is a good thing that I had today penciled in as a "recovery day". It wasn't so much a tragic series of unfortunate prat-falls as it was a high-speed, syncopated hobble as we staggered through the day.

Some days are like that.

Maybe I can kill something tomorrow. 

 

Fine Art Tuesday

 

Edvard Axel Rosenberg was born in Stockholm, Sweden in 1858 and died in 1934.

His artwork captured the special quality of the low, slanting light of winters in Scandinavia.

Thanks to Lucas Machias for recommending this artist.

Another day at the office

 

Looking north out of the office about 45 minutes before "legal light" ends. The dusty-beige weeds are the tops of goldenrod. The goldenrod is about 3' tall.

Looking west out of the office.

So, there I was in the Orchard stand. I had been there for three-and-one-half hours. The wind-chill was a balmy 40F but I wasn't very well dressed. I wasn't hypothermic but I would not have wanted to be any colder. I had already popped-open two of my "body warmers". One was in the pocket of my tee-shirt and the other was in the pocket of my flannel-lined jeans.

Yes, Virginia, I was wearing a coat and a hat. 

The light was rapidly fading. I was watching the time like a hawk. I could hear hooves crunching through the leaves in the swale east of me. I still had five minutes of "legal light".

Then I saw blobs 120 yards out, but only one-or-two at a time.

I did not want to take one of this year's fawns. I wanted to shoot a wall-hanger buck or a mature doe. I could not see any antlers nor could I determine if any of them were larger than the others.

Finally, they started moving in my direction through the frost-killed goldenrod.

I was tracking them with my scope. That is generally considered bad-practice because folks will do that to ID targets they are not certain of...but I had already ID these animals as Whitetail Deer and they were definitely not humans.

Two minutes of legal light left.

I could see their ears. Still no antlers. There were five of them. Three of them were might have been small. Two of them might have been "shooters". I look at the size of their ears relative to their heads. Like a dog's paws, a deer's ears get their full-size early. If the ears look large relative to its head, it is a small deer. If the ears look small, it is a large deer.

I looked and looked and looked. I could not make out their bodies as they moved through the goldenrod. If I can't see their bodies then I don't have a target. Some people take neck-shots but I avoid them because heads bob around and move, making the shot a time-urgent thing. 

They passed within yards, YARDS, of the base of the Orchard stand.

Alas, the clock ran-out and legal light ended.

I waited several more minutes for them to clear the area before exiting the stand.  Perhaps my luck will change. Maybe their alarm-clock will go off a few minutes earlier another day.

They call it "hunting" rather than "shooting" for a reason.