Category: FYI

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Fun, Fun, Fun (’til My Daddy Takes the T-Bird Away… )

Well, maybe not that kind of fun, but not bad, nonetheless.

The re-roofing of twc central (RW) is progressing. Minor setback. Make a short story long(er):

Installing metal panels over the existing asphalt shingles: use 1″x4″ purlins over the shingles, screwed into the deck and joists below, metal panels installed on the purlins.

OK, no biggie, except… 1x4s at local hardware-cum-mini-lumber yard, or even at Lowes: WTF?!? That much?!? Nuh-uh, baby. Further away than local hardware-cum-mini-lumber yard store but closer than Lowes “fell off the back of a truck lumber yard”: reasonable, but… The store was way low on 1x4s but had a pot load of 10′ 2x4s for $2 each. Rip ’em down the middle? Nominal 1x4s. Close enough. Bought a passel of ’em; brought ’em home and began ripping ’em up.

Table saw died. *sigh* OK, replaced table saw (much faster than repairing the old one, although I have that in my hip pocket for a later mini-project: repair and sell) and began ripping again. Smooth move. I’m still under the cost of 1x4s at Lowes (let alone the “cat’s back-riding” local hardware-cum-mini-lumber yard) and have replaced a slowly-decaying power tool.

Still to go: installing the safety anchors (which I will be leaving on the roof permanently), the purlins and then the steel. Working on the first two on that list today, until the heat drives me off the roof.

The most fun thing in all this, so far, is that I’ve not done anything quite this physically demanding for the better part of two decades, and while I have the typical muscle aches–and my constant “Olde Pharte’s joint aches, etc.–to contend with, so far the pain’s all of the good kind: I can actually feel the good I’m doing myself. Like it.

Most UNfun thing so far: the buckets of sweat. Oh, it’s not all that bad in some ways, but having a puddle literally pour out of my sunglasses onto some work I’m doing is annoying, although at least that clears the puddle of sweat out of my field of vision. *heh* Playing in the attic (to replace a gas vent that needed replacing before the roofing went on) was interesting–like being in a low-ceilinged, stuffy sauna. Temps outside were 106F and in the attic? On fire, man. Going back into the unconditioned, ambient temp, garage from the attic? Felt like air conditioning. Chilly, dude.

As is Tradition for men in my family for carpentry or mechanicking work (going back as far as my paternal great-grandfather, at least), I have already offered a Blood Sacrifice to the Handyman Spirit. Yeh, yeh: I neglected to put my gloves on before moving the steel panels from where they were off-loaded to a better place for beginning to feed them up to the roof. Blood Sacrifice… What does not kill me hurts like the dickens for a while (and then fades into the background of a world of hurt *heh*), then heals… or not (so far all my past “Handyman Spirit Blood Sacrifice” wounds have healed, for various values of “heal” :-)).

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However Did I Live This Long Without This Stuff?

This is just a short plug for a product I like a lot. If you’re not into “handy-mannery” *heh* stuff, just scroll on by.

DeoxIT® L260 Grease

Seriously good stuff. I have yet to find any Caig Labs cleaner/degreaser/contact enhancer for electronics and simple electrical connections that I do not like, but this stuff has rescued electrical circuits I have not yet found time to replace and noticeably improved connections made by electrical tools and small appliances. Where humidity can be an issue (bathroom, kitchen), I now consider it a must for lighting fixtures and anything plugged into outlets–IOW, any electrical connections.

Seriously good stuff.

No, Caig Labs doesn’t pay me anything. I’ve used Caig Labs’ DeoxIt products for a number of years with great results. I just started using this a couple of months ago and keep on liking it more and more.

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More “Phishing pfor Psuckers”

Text of an email I received recently:

Dear Customer,

Your order has been successfully canceled. For your reference, here’s a summary of your order:

You just canceled order 162-427-72682 placed on May 11, 2012.

Status: CANCELED

_____________________________________________________________________

1 “Mounts”; 2003, Second Edition
By: Jamie Turner

Sold by: Amazon.com LLC

_____________________________________________________________________

Thank you for visiting Amazon.com!

———————————————————————
Amazon.com
Earth’s Biggest Selection
http://www.amazon.com

Now, someone who wasn’t paying any attention (or is just too stupid to waste oxygen on) could easily have been caught out by this. There were links to a malware installation on both the purported “order number” and on the text referring to Amazon.com at the end of the email.

But… this one was just too, too easy to resist. First, I knew I’d not placed such an order. “But then,” someone might say (though certainly not YOU, gentle reader), “surely that would lead one to click the link to check on that order. After all, someone might be using one’s stolen Amazon ID to make purchases!”

Except, not mine, and I’m not clicking on ANY obscured link in an email without KNOWING where it leads. Not happening.

But, I did look at the email’s source text and see that the links were NOT to Amazon but to a site that would steal my Amazon creds were I to go there and log in. Except that neither my browser nor LastPass would recognize the site and offer to log in for me, were I to be foolish enough to have clicked the links anyway.

Oh, and the email was to an account that is not in any way, shape, fashion or form associated with my Amazon account, nor has it ever been. Sure, all my email accounts are polled and gathered by one account, but I checked which account the email had been sent to, AND the form is not what I’d have received from Amazon, what with a few pertinent details missing.

So, just taking few seconds to do a coupla quick checks averted the possibility, remote though it is given my other simple measures, of having my Amazon account credentials stolen.

It’s not hard and doesn’t take any time at all, but I’ll bet a few mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging oxygen sinks with fewer active brain cells than a cracked crock of kimchi will fall for it.

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“A Day Late…

Forty-six years ago, I purchased a set of books, the Great Books of the Western World as compiled by Mortimer J. Adler, et al. The 54-volume set was a tad expensive for a high school kid (twice what I paid for my first car, in fact; nowadays, USED copies of the set run from ~$350 to ~$1,200 on Amazon), but has been a great resource for decades. Sadly, the bindings are in rough shape (largely the result of toddlers getting their hands on ’em a couple of decades and more back, as well as simple wear from use), and some volumes are in downright raggedy shape.

Fast forward to today. I picked up 40 of the 54 volumes in excellent condition at a library books sale of donated books. Most appear completely unread, untouched, although volume 1 of the complete works of Shakespeare is well worn (though still not as worn as my original copy). Glad to have ’em. Oh, why only 40 of the 54? Well, volume 2, the first of two volumes comprising the “Syntopicon” was missing from the donated collection, and 13 other volumes had been purchased by one person before I purchased the rest.

I’ll probably print up some book covers for the “raggedy” copies in my original set and place them in among the “new” set for use, as I still use them for reference, although I have re-read few of them entirely in the last couple of decades. I may also add volumes from the 1990 “second edition” of the collection, at least some works that I don’t already own in other editions as separate copies–who doesn’t already own at least one copy of Kierkegaard’s “Fear and Trembling” for example, or “Waiting for Godot” [Beckett], Animal Farm [Orwell], etc.? I think I may skip volumes 59 and 60 (heavy on 20th Century) from the new edition. I despise Joyce, detest Faulkner and Ftzgerald, and Virginia Woolf gives me a rash. The ones in the collection that are worth anything, IMO, I already have, usually in multiple copies (Brecht, Beckett, Chekhov, Eliot, Shaw and others), anyway.

The recent “classes” via Hillsdale College dealing with the Constitution (thanks for the tip, Diane) have already gotten me re-reading background the Founders drew on in the discussions that formed our national government, so this is a timely find for me.

So, I worked a little bit tonight on some bookshelves. *heh* I may actually get our books organized more sensibly this year. Hey! It could happen! At least I have plenty to read and plenty to re-read (and plenty that’s worth re-reading) handy.

BTW, from that great *cough* reference work, Wikipedia (which nevertheless does have a few good articles), this:

“The scientific and mathematical selections also came under criticism for being incomprehensible to the average reader… “

Well, boo-hoo. Literacy is more than just puzzling out weird hieroglyphs on a page. Other criticisms of the collection are on a par with that one. *yawn* Yes, it’s incomplete, but hey, “Great” used to mean something more than simply “good” or “trendy” or “makes feminazis and multi-cultis feel good”.

Addendum 2: It’s interesting, to me at least, that this work was compiled and the “Great Conversation of Ideas” (largely via the tool of the Syntopicon–a monumental work in and of itself, IMO) fostered as a project sponsored by the University of Chicago, and yet The Zero, that soi-disant “constitutional scholar” who (mis)taught as an adjunct prof at that institution, seems completely unaware of the works (and ideas) contained in this collection except in a sort of weird, twisted mythological manner, since he never seems to get references to Western Civ (history OR concepts) anywhere near right.

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Timeless Wisdom

I don’t know who first said it (and am not even sure where I last saw it *heh*), but this ranks up there with, “Never get involved in a land war in Asia,”* as timeless wisdom:

“A human without at least one sharp pointy thing and the ability to start a fire is just whining hairless ape in most survival situations.”

Yeh, I feel naked without at least two or three “sharp pointy things” on my person at all times, and since I can start a fire with my burning gaze of scorn… *heh*

Continue reading “Timeless Wisdom”

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Personal-Sized, Hand-Held “Big Screen TV”

We have an entertainment center cabinet that’s a wee tad over 5′ in length. When I sit on the couch and hold my teensy lil Kindle Fire at arm’s length, it more than covers my view of the EC. Given the gorgeous display on the Fire, it’s like having my own, personal, hand-held “big screen TV”.

So, as long as I can find streaming video to suit my tastes, I can defer buying a bigger TV, eh? 😉

Of course, the lil 15.6″ screen on my laptop seems even larger in viewing area, when viewed from its usual place on my lap… Heck, in use, it appears to cover 3/4 of the whole wall facing me.

Oh what a difference perspective makes.

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Fortunately…

…the driver died. “Fortunately” in more ways than one. If nothing exculpatory emerges (and I doubt it will), the driver appears to have earned her death sentence from Darwin. Unfortunately, she was old enough that she might already have reproduced.

100 mph down an urban street
No seat belt
Injured four other people.

As I said, the driver appears to have earned her death sentence from Darwin.

If only more of these useless oxygen sinks would find even less harmful ways to remove themselves from the gene pool…

Continue reading “Fortunately…”

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Fortunately, I Don’t Run in Those Circles

I know of a few people–dhimmicrappic leftards, one and all*–who have lost very nearly amazing amounts of weight using the “HCG diet” that uses a combo of Human Chorionic Gonadotropin hormone, a hormone naturally produced by human embryos, and severe calorie restriction (500-800 calories/day) to achieve weight loss. You noticed, of course, that I italicized “weight” in that statement. That’s simply because the amounts of muscle mass lost in this diet is excessive. If one is too fat, then fat loss is a good thing. Muscle mass loss is not, for more than a few reasons. Here, let me just quote a Mayo clinic page on the topic:

“…HCG is used mainly to treat fertility issues. HCG is not approved for over-the-counter use, nor has it been proved to work for weight loss. Companies that sell over-the-counter HCG weight-loss products are breaking the law.

“So why has there been so much talk about the HCG diet? Perhaps it’s because the diet recommends severe calorie restriction — typically just 500 to 800 calories a day. People who follow such a very low calorie diet are likely to lose weight, at least in the short term. However, that level of calorie restriction has risks, such as gallstone formation, irregular heartbeat, and an imbalance of the electrolytes that keep the body’s muscles and nerves functioning properly.”

BTW, I have seen the page I just quoted from excerpted and used in support of the HCG diet. Of course, those who do so are liars, deliberately misrepresenting what was said there in order to promote this dangerous fad diet. So far, every case I’ve seen of such misrepresentation has strangely (NOT!) failed to link the actual page… I have no doubt that the reason is simply to obscure the fact that they are twisting the material they carefully excerpt.

Of course, the target audience of such lying screeds is likely too lazy and stupid to follow a link to the “rest of the story” even if it were provided… and likely too lazy and stupid to understand what’s there, anyway.

Oh, and that “*” earlier? Here it is: I know I run the danger of committing an argumentum ad hominem fallacy by making the association: dhimmicrappic leftards—>dangerous, irrationalbehavior. I’m not actually making that argument by noting that only persons I know who are stupidly abusing their bodies with this dangerous fad diet are the dhimmicrappic leftards mentioned above. The stupid dhimmicrappic leftards I know who are committing this self-abuse are simply data points in a broader correlation I see between dhimmicrappic leftards and many other cases of unthinking (or simply stupid) abuse of self and others. In every case, the unthinking (or simply stupid) abuse of self and others involves blind acceptance of “authoritative” misstatements of fact (or outright lies) and a complete lack of forethought combined with a stupid embrace of “quick fix” solutions to difficult issues.

Just sayin’ It seems, from my observations of the passing scene, to be much more common–though not exclusive to–the left than the right.

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We R Rural

Pretty much, here in America’s Third World County, yep: rural, all right. Purdue University has applied an “Index of Relative Rurality” to stats from American counties that illustrates the point pretty well.

A recently introduced, continuous, multidimensional measure of rurality, the Index of Relative Rurality (IRR), avoids the confusing effects of inclusion in metro boundaries. (2) It does not answer the question “Is a county rural or urban?” but instead addresses the question “What is a county’s degree of rurality?”

The IRR is based on four dimensions of rurality: population, population density, extent of urbanized area and distance to the nearest metro area. These dimensions are unquestioned in terms of their contribution to rurality and are incorporated implicitly in many existing rurality definitions. The index is scaled from 0 to 1, with 0 representing the most urban place and 1 representing the most rural place

(CLEEK to Embeegan, as TWC’s–relatively–vast alien invasion population might say *sigh*)

See that color code next to the bottom? That’s us. We’re not completely devoid of human habitation, and we do have access to–sort of–“urban” areas, but da “piney woods” is our “back yard” (and for many their front yard too), and there are parts of the county where YOU DO NOT GO even if you aren’t a terminally stupid “revenooer”.

A good place for a “bug out location”. Just sayin’.

Oh, you’ll notice I gave no further indication of which of those counties color-coded with the next-to-most-rural coding is America’s Third World County. Long time readers of this blog can pick it out right away, anyway.

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This Stuff Is Simply the Best

I used to use another product that’s almost as good to clean post n pans, coffee and hard water “stained” glasses and mugs, etc., but this stuff is less expensive and better:

While I mostly use it nowadays to shine up my “stainless” steel pots and pans, it has tons more uses. Gottaloveit. Just sayin’.