Melting wheel-weights

 

Today was a beautiful day to be outside.

I whittled away at my collection of wheel-weights.

I used a mini-muffin tin for a mold. The cardboard and bricks are splash-guards.

I weighed one muffin. It was 9.5 ounces or enough lead to make 25, 158 grain bullets (or 33 125 grain bullets)

That works out to a bit less than 300 bullets per cycle.

A picture I liked

The sign reads "Food born here. Prices raised elsewhere"

A trip to the dentist

I spent 90 minutes in a dentist's chair this morning.

I am getting a crown for one of my molars.

If you want practice praying under trying circumstances, try praying in the dentist's chair. If you can pray while pummeled while the dentist is drilling your tooth than you can probably pray almost any where, any time.

One of the differences between this time and the last time I had a crown installed was the nature of the temporary crown. The last time it was a soft, metal crown that I crunched down on and it conformed to the opposing molar. This time it was a "composite" temporary that is supposed to be much more durable.

I suspect that some of my dentist's patients got frozen out in the first lock-down. They had temporary crowns intended for two-weeks usage and ended up waiting four months for the dentist to reopen.

In light of the hype about the "second-wave" I am glad my dentist installed a temporary crown that is more permanent than the previous technology.

FAFSA

Imagine my surprise to learn that I needed to fill out a FAFSA application for Belladonna's training.

Back in 2007 (oldest kid) I had been told that once my kid had their B.S. or B.A. they were considered adults and were on their own. 

Things changed in the last 13 years. I had to fill one out because Belladonna is less than 24 years old. She could apply for grants or scholarships unless we filled one out.

Between the dentist and the FAFSA, I was in a grumpy mood today.

Melting lead and thinking about making projectiles was good therapy.

Old school communication

 

One of our greatest vulnerabilities is our reliance on cellular communication.

Cell towers are not difficult to take off-line. They are power intensive. The units on the ground generate a lot of heat. A can of expanding foam insulation or a blizzard of disposable, plastic grocery bags will interrupt the flow of cooling air into the cabinets. Silicon does not like heat.

So, what is a fella supposed to do?

Planning

This is where prior planning prevents piss-poor performance.

Pre-arranged rally points is one example. In my case, home is always the ultimate goal.

However, there might be circumstances where it is not safe to get there. Hostiles might control areas or bridges between my (or a family member's) current location and home. Knowing where to go instead takes a lot of stress off of everybody's mind.

Low tech

Low tech, like a foot off the ground tech, involves the use of common, wooden clothes pin, a wire twist-tie from a bread wrapper or something similar. If the rally point is scrubbed then the party that is leaving can put a message clipped to a shrub or fence wire a foot off the ground. Why a foot? Because most people scan at a 5' level or at the ground. Plus, a foot keeps it from getting damp which is a possibility if the message stays there for any length of time.

NO, not an 8.5"-by-11" memo on bright-white paper. A few words scribbled on a scrap of paper torn from a fast-food bag is far better.

Since the rally point is likely to be large it is important that the late-comers have some idea of where to look for the dropped message. One possibility is to use the memory aid N-E-W-S as in "Look for the NEWS". The late-comers would first search the North side of the area, then the East and so on...

This is a game you can play with kids. You will be amazed at how sharp they are when they win a few skittles or a marshmallow upon finding the message.

Early December running report

The good news is that I am still running.

My "by" days are usually two days but sometimes three.

Physical conditioning is the process of stressing and then healing. As I age, the "healing" portion takes longer. That is the simple reality.

Deer season was a two-week period of sloth and sedentary schlepping about.

This past Friday-Saturday was a big "Mom" weekend for us. I ran into one of the local runners on Lansing's Westside. "N" had Covid back in early November. It started in her sinuses and then migrated to other parts of her body. One week here, another week someplace else.

Her frustration was boundless.

She started running again a two weeks ago. She had been running 30 miles on the weekend and now she is down to two miles. Her pace would still kill me.

Technology

I tolerate technology. I downloaded an app that promised to tell me my speed, distance, "splits", credit score and general attractiveness to the opposite sex. 

I was disillusioned. My first "split", the marker I had always assumed was 1.0 miles from my starting-point was only 0.92 miles away.

Then every time I stopped the software "restarted" so I have no idea what my pace was for the entire 3.7 mile run (plus 0.3 mile walk-down). Doing the math for the first 0.92 miles and the last 1.432 miles my pace was almost exactly 11:30 minutes-per-miles for both legs.

As a reference, most boys on a high-school cross-country team can regularly knock out six-minute-miles at that distance and the exceptional ones can tickle five-minute miles.

I am not bragging or apologizing. That is just what the numbers worked out to. Sixty-one years old and thirty pounds overweight. Take the data-point for what it is.

Listening to my body

One of the things that amazed me when I was a relatively serious runner was how incredibly consistent my times were.

I was working in a metal stamping plant that was closing in a few months. I had no idea where I was going next. I ran to deal with the stress. Fight-or-flight. In general, flight (running) is more socially acceptable than fighting at work.

Day-after-day-after-day I ran the same 3.8 mile loop. My times were about 34:50 +/- 15 seconds.

Even when I felt like crap. Even when I felt good. Sunny weather. Cold weather. It did not matter.

I run with a relatively short stride of about five feet (counting a left-right as a single stride). That is about 4000 cycles. 15 seconds out of 35 minutes is a bit more than a half-percent of variation.

For a biological process, especially for a fat, middle-aged man, that strikes me as incredibly repeatable.

The downside

---Full disclosure--- 

I get little sympathy from Mrs ERJ. 

---End disclosure---

We have a firm mattress. When I sleep on my back, it feels like somebody slid a phone-book beneath my butt.

Maybe I will get used to it. It just feels...odd.

Playing coy

 

The corporation that employed me had its own, captive Information Technology company. 

That IT company recruited in a unique way. They did not recruit from Stanford or UC-Berkeley or UT-Austin or MIT. They recruited from Fly-over State Regional University and School of Brake Repair.

Further, they only recruited the top 5% of each class.

Their reasoning was that anybody in the top 5% was hungry and could ignore distractions like hunger, pain, privation, the spouse-du-jour's demands for time together.

The other quirk of their recruiting is that the interviewer always worked in the question, "What is the absolute, rock-bottom salary you would consider?"

The company had a cut-off. If the minimum salary stated was too high, the candidate did not get an offer. If the minimum salary was below the cut-off, the candidate got an offer and it was exactly, to-the-penny the number the candidate volunteered to the interviewer.

For a while, that IT company's ticker-symbol was the best performing "stock" on the NYSE.

Speculation regarding future actions

I am loath to speculate regarding how I will react in the future.

Consider the candidate for the IT job. They GAVE away every bit advantage they had in their negotiations. If they had been coy in answering the "...rock-bottom...consider?" question they might have been offered the "cut-off" salary instead of what the graduate naively asked for.

You see, the graduate had NO idea of the cost-of-living in other places. Their "rock-bottom" demand was based on the cost in living in Scottsbluff, Nebraska or Springfield, Missouri rather than Massachusetts or inside the Beltway.

The interviewer-candidate scenario is a classic case of information asymmetry. The interviewer started the interview with more information than the candidate and ended the interview with an even greater disparity.

What benefit?

What benefit do I gain by tipping my hand? I see no upside and dozens of downsides.

Perhaps the biggest downside is that it gives the opposition a few pages of my play-book. Loose lips sink ships, and all that.

Frankly, I think the opposition will provide their own undoing. Hives are very susceptible to entropy (disorder). Everything has to work well to support the population densities of the Leftist enclaves. 

A simple example: A riot stops garbage collection...rats thrive on garbage...rats carry diseases...BAM...a real epidemic with fatality rates in excess of 10%.

There are dozens of scenarios where major cities would go down on their knees in a matter of hours, days or weeks. You can tick them off on your fingers: Electricity, water, sewerage, trash, EBIT cards, food logistics, natural gas, illicit drugs, prescription drugs, traffic control, bridges, airports, Information Systems, parcel delivery.... that is sixty seconds of brainstorming.

And the Loonie Left is more likely to destroy that kind of infrastructure than sane, rational people who can anticipate consequences. Destroying is in their DNA.

I will share that, if God is willing, I will NOT be in a city or incarcerated when entropy bites them in the bum.

Happy St Nicolas Eve

 

December 5 is the night when good Catholic boys and girls put footwear outside their bedroom door in the hope that St Nicolas will fill it with edible goodies.

Meanwhile, on Lansing's Eastside

Do we have any graffiti forensic experts among the readers? Were both of these done by the same person? The "S"s look more blocky in the second image and the horizontal elements of the "P" and "R"s have more over-spray but are otherwise similar.

The last one has me totally baffled. Give me a credible instance where destroying property protects life.

• Burning drugstores in underserved areas? I don't think so.
• Burning low-income housing? Nope.
• Breaking windows in a hospital. Nada.

New Green Deal? There we go! The tenets, doctrines and dogma of Global Climate Change and the New Green Deal sanctify destruction because all current infrastructure is complicit in the oceans boiling and the high cost of Starbuck's coffee.

Also on the Eastside

Hunter Park's Community Garden

A very nice stand of red Pac Choi

Sage

Mint

Catnip

Radish?

Spoiled children in the check-out line

We know how this ends.

The parent tried to love their child into behaving well. They never wanted to make a scene.

The child quickly figured out how to manipulate their parent. That is their job.

The parent bribed their child to behave in a civilized way. The worse the misbehavior or the more public the venue, the larger the bribes.

The child took notes.

Now the kid is on the brink of adulthood. They resent having to go to Walmart with mommie. They are going to let everybody know it.

Show time.

Merchandise gets swept off the shelves. Carts over-turned. Bottles broken. Abusive language flies.

As long as the show was between Mom and the Brat, it was Mom's rodeo. But it stops being a private affair once the Brat overturns somebody else's cart, or gets red wine on something that needs dry-cleaning or an adult slips-trips on the trash on the floor or the kid assaults one of the other shoppers.

How is this any different than how the Democratic party treats their captive zoo-topia of voters?

The Dems either bring their menagerie to heel or it will be done for them. Like Open-Mic night at the tavern, the amateurs will run the show and it ain't gonna be pretty.

One day at a time

They don't look very happy. There were about 15 plants crammed in each pot and wrapped in plastic. The plants were starved for light and were under exceptionally humid conditions. They should perk up once they get used to their new conditions.

 

Kubota

Kubota got laid-off Tuesday.

He was not in a good space about being unemployed, a fact that I was secretly happy about.

We went out and cut firewood at the deer lease. I really don't have a place to put the wood at the moment but Kubota needed to do something to take his mind off his plight.

He was a lot happier after I slipped him a few bucks for his help.

I will give the wood to Sprite when Kubota isn't watching.

He had applied to Amazon but they are in the final sprint to the Holidays and training is a drag on productivity. If he had been laid off two weeks earlier...

We are at the young-bull/old-bull stage where he doesn't take advice well. Consequently, he gets to muddle his way through this one on his own.

Seeds

Seed catalogs seem to have more than the usual number of out-of-stock items. I suggest you place your order early. But, if you buy more than the usual number of seeds I ask that you either plant them or gift them to somebody who will.

Belladonna

Belladonna is a scary-good cook.

As a guy who now needs to watch his weight, I don't need better tasting food. Belladonna's perspective is different. Her thinking is that if she is only going to eat a modest amount of food, then it should have immense flavor-impact. That way, her brain will THINK she ate a lot.

For the first time in a long time I put herbs in one of our sunny windows.

I bought some "super market" herb plants and split them apart. The set-up is not fancy. I repotted them into paper cups.  I hope Bella likes basil, cilantro and rosemary.

Old Blue

The local recycling professional picked up Old Blue and hauled him off. I asked that he give me back the tires. I expect to see them in a few days.

Mice

The mouse on the "office" computer crapped out. Mrs ERJ purchased a new one. Mrs ERJ does the weekly schedule for Mom's care and the lack of a functional mouse cramped her style.