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October 20, 2021 – I Am Such a Sucker for Techno-junk

October 20, 2021 /

Over a year ago, I was browsing at a second hand store and I ran across a Technics direct drive turn table. They wanted $120 for it. From what I could see, it was missing a stylus but I was unsure if it was really worth the price. After doing some quick research, it looked like they were going for a couple hundred dollars in working order. I went back two days later and it was gone.

Every since then, I have been looking for that diamond in the rough that I could get for cheap. My wife got this suitcase record player for Mother’s two years ago. We bought some records and I was severely disappointed. The best songs on the used records were ‘worn out’. They look in good condition, so I am hoping that by upgrading the player, I can get better sound out of them.

The other thing that bothered me about the suitcase record player was that it had a pre-amp built in. To plug it into my receiver, I had to use the non-phono jack and that bugged me. Also, it sounded distorted, to high end and not enough low end. I wouldn’t call myself an audiophile. But, I want to really hear what the buzz is about going back to vinyl. From my memory as a child, the sound was always as good as the radio, with more bass and a deeper and richer sound. I should still have some records at my parents house as well. But, as time and technology moved on and so did the record player so I don’t really have a comparison.

My family was shopping at Goodwill on Saturday and my son sent me a text of this turntable. They wanted $40. From what he could see, it seemed like it needed a belt replacement as the platter was not spinning. But the motor was turning. I again did some quick research and saw one was selling on eBay for $200 so I said go ahead. Knowing very little about this, I looked at it the next day and found that it was also missing the stylus.

Belts are cheap $5-10 but replacing a stylus is quite a bit more complicated (and expensive). First of all, the stylus needs to match the cartridge. Having no idea if this is original or not, I am strictly guessing. I looked at the manual and got the specs and ordered what I hope is a match. Otherwise, I am into it probably another $60-100 for a new headshell (that is the stylus, cartridge and carrier) plus I don know what I am doing when it comes to alignment.

I ordered two belts, one stylus and one ground cable. This will probably end up as a video as I get this going. I saw one video on the Toshiba SR230, it was just showing all the features. So, at least I have something to show me how it is supposed to work.

I am not done with the search for more techno-junk. I have always wanted to add a subwoofer to the surround sound setup. I am also on the lookout for a second set of speakers, to put closer to my bench in the basement. If I saw a receiver upgrade or possibly a smaller set of surround sound speakers I wouldn’t pass up if it was the right deal. Since I haven’t quite figured out my final setup, things are still up in the air. However, I doubt that I would pay $40 and another $50 in repair parts like this project but you never know.

End Your Programming Routine: I am looking forward to this, to a point. I like the feeling of taking something that isn’t working, figuring out why and getting it going again. I don’t necessarily need to be spending my time on this as I have lots of more important things to do. But, sometimes you have to prioritize something that you want to do over things that were started first or have a greater impact. It is that irrationalness that makes us human.

October 19, 2021 – Technology’s Tower of Babylon

October 19, 2021 /

Growing up in Corvallis, Oregon feels like a unique and special place for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) or at least it used to be. In 1946, four alumni from Oregon State University (also in Corvallis) formed an engineering juggernaut called CH2M. Eventually, this organization became one of the premier and largest engineering and consulting companies in the world (at least when I worked there).

Because of that, OSU became one of the top engineering schools in the country. This also attracted some other business, specifically Hewlett-Packard. They built a huge campus in Corvallis and for a period of time, this was the ink-jet capitol of the world. Probably some lessor known things about HP were that they established business making measurement equipment for Disney. They had an entire division of scientific and test equipment that was spun off as Agilent in 1999. They were also the inventor’s of the handheld calculator.

My dad started working at CH2M in 1966. Drafting was done by paper and ruler, but that doesn’t mean that the company wasn’t early adopters. A new headquarters was built in Corvallis in 1982 which included a basement with a mainframe computer. There was lots of crossover between what was happening at HP and CH2M including engineers using calculators and computers.

My dad said that his first calculator cost $500 which is over $1600 in today’s dollars. I think that was in the mid to late 1970’s. By the time the middle 1980’s came around, basic calculators were in the $5 range. Scientific calculators were still around $20 mark. HP probably should have seen the writing on the wall but their product was far superior in computing power and durability to the competition.

I bought my calculator, the HP48SX in 1991. It was a technological marvel at the time. It wasn’t the first graphing calculator but it was much better than the previous generation the HP28. Here are some of the functions.

  • Plug in adapter for power in addition to battery
  • Printer for output
  • IR communication between other HP48 calculators
  • Two expansion slots for programming

As a matter of fact, I even had games downloaded to the calculator. I had Joust, Tetris, Kong and Hangman. We are talking about an era that the Nintendo Gameboy had only been on the market several years. All this came at a cost, I paid $250 for the calculator. I bought a math module for another $100 that could do calculus.

What else happened in 1991? Texas Instruments introduced a competitor called the TI-81 for $80. I don’t think it was as nice or as durable as the HP but the cost opened the market for the masses. HP followed up with the HP48GX in 1993 and doubled down with more features (and cost). But, the damage was done. College classes started requiring graphing calculators and the TIs were sold in droves.

In the late 1990’s, when you started to compare the computing speed of the HP’s to the the TI’s, you started to see a real chasm. The TIs were getting faster, cheaper and better while the HP stayed the same. I wasn’t even aware that HP was still making calculators until I looked a couple of weeks ago. It seems like they have a color, touchscreen version now that is around $150. Last I looked in the mid 2000s, I didn’t see any calculators for HP.

End Your Programming Routine: I have a lot of hours on my calculator. It was a good investment for me; I used it through most of high school, all of college and into my career as a chemist. In retrospect, if I had known how the market was going to work, the math module was probably not a good investment and I could have easily gotten off with the cheaper, non-expandable version and saved $100. Doing calculus was really clunky and this could only do simpler calculations. Even with a computer, my calculations were taking over an hour. HP may feel the same way too. If they had known how the market was going to work maybe they wouldn’t have tried to build the best calculator but retain being the choice for the technology.

October 18, 2021 – What is Western Oregon Deer Hunting Really Like

October 18, 2021 /

My outdoor experiences are quite contrasting in the last two weeks. My trip to central Oregon was blue bird skies and relaxation in the boat. Yesterday, my son and I were slashing brush in the rain forest.

If you are not familiar with west coast geography, specifically Oregon then let me try to briefly describe. Moving from west to east, there are two sets of mountain ranges. The first one is called the coastal range, the highest peak is about 4000′ in elevation. Then, there is a valley nearly sea level in elevation followed by the Cascade range where the highest peak is 12,000′

The prevailing wind blows it is generally in the same direction, west to east. It causes a high amount of rain/snow on the western side of each range as the clouds drop moisture moving over the ranges. Consequently, the eastern side is much drier than the western side. Annual rainfall looks like this 80/40/10″ corresponding to the coast, valley and then east of the Cascades.

The way that Oregon breaks out deer/elk/etc. tags are roughly everything on the west side of the Cascades are over the counter. That means that anyone that is licensed can purchase a tag up until the first day of the season. Everything that is east of that is awarded by lottery draw. With my dad, brother and uncle we apply for the lottery each year and this year we did not win so I bought over the counter tags.

In the picture above, my son and I are walking down an abandoned road in a national forest. This road was once used for logging purposes, probably seventy years ago. Part of the changes in access over the last twenty years have had major consequences for hunters like myself.

When I started hunting in the 1980s the geographical landscape was pretty much the same. There are large swags of national forest or BLM land and large tracks of private timber company property. In the late 1980s, Oregon had the highest revenue from public timber of all of the states which had been the case since the early 1970s. Because all of that success, basically all of old growth timber was cut and the replant was not ready to harvest.

This caused political change. The forest service shifted from revenue to conservation which harkens back to the ‘spotted owl debate‘. The large timber companies went on business as usual because they already owned huge tracts of land and were diversified in other areas of the country and even Canada. It was the mom and pop mills that folded as a result of no supply.

Now that public land was largely left to grow wild, private timber land saw the brunt of the hunters. Why? because you cannot see anything in this jungle. If you choose to go in, the brush is over your head and good luck dragging a rifle and a backpack. Also, with less people working in the forest there was less ownership of the overall resource and then came trouble. As a result, private land owners put up gates.

Industry consolidation and streamlining means that there are far fewer vertically integrated companies owning land. For instance, Weyerhaeuser bought all of Willamette industries who acquired all the land that they owned as well. Weyerhaeuser’s policy as of about 10 years ago is to sell leases for access. Boil that down to essentially one person has exclusive access for recreational purposes. The leases are also highly restrictive to even bringing guests.

The situation for a lot of the other timber companies is that there is no lease program, just a gate. The general policy for access is walk-in. Nothing wrong with that, I do but it concentrates other hunters to essentially the main roads. Contrasting that hunting on the east side of the state and you can at least walk off the road and through the forest.

As my son and I spent time in the woods, I couldn’t help but feeling that the environment was sterile. Yes, we saw sign that animals have been in the area but I also saw a lot of boot prints. Who knows how many hunters in the last few months have walked down this same road. We saw no rabbits, squirrels, chipmunk, birds, turkeys, fox or anything for that matter. There have been times in the woods where I sit down and see or hear other animals moving about, not yesterday.

This is why western Oregon hunting is tough. The weather is miserable, the terrain is extremely difficult, the access is competitive and the probability is slim to none. We do all of this to get 40-60 pounds of meat and maybe some antlers to put on the wall? It has to be a labor of love more than anything productive.

End Your Programming Routine: You don’t get anything when you don’t try. And, you also rarely are successful when you don’t spend much time learning the patterns and habits of the area year round. I have seen deer in the area and I have seen recent encouraging sign when I have hunted this area in the past. This is why I choose to go back. My thoughts on it for this year are better luck somewhere else, I just don’t know where at this point.

October 15, 2021 – That’s Not a Knife

October 15, 2021 /

It’s Friday and maybe a day for some humor.

For some unknown reason, my in-laws were overly influenced by infomercials. We have seen the copper pans, the Emeril Pasta & Beyond, the Sweepa (buy one, get one free) to name a few. I think buyers regret sometimes set in and then we were the recipients of ‘gifts’. One time, my father in law bought was a whole lot of cheap knives.

I subscribe to the buy once, cry once mantra. It is why I have a 2003 pickup that I have owned since it was new and a paid off 2010 vehicle. I plan to get the most out of them. When it comes to tools and gear, I look to the premium side first because I think you get what you pay for. I should also say that I am big on value as well. If something at $20 is 90 percent as good as something that is $200, I am going to side on the value proposition in most cases.

I am sorry to say that knives made in Pakistan don’t make my definition. They were poorly built out of poor materials. I knife is not just a knife. It needs to take and hold an edge to be effective. While these may resemble knives, they don’t do either. To top it off, there were fifty of them. In that lot were some that were extra special, like below.

That’s right. I have a sword that came out of that lot of knives. I can’t remember the exact transaction or timing, but one day my father-in-law brought this over and said that I was to give it to one of my kids one day. It has been a number of years ago now, maybe ten.

Now, this is not a jab at my father-in-law or even my relevant disgust for As Seen On TV habit. I do intend to give it to one of my kids, because it was his wish. And, I cant wait to do it. I am sure it would hurt to get hit by it and I think it could do some damage. But, it is not sharp other than the tip. I think that it is cast aluminum, not even steel. The whole thing is heavy and awkward.

About eight months ago, two people were killed in this very town with a sword. A very strange and bizarre situation were three men were high and got in an argument, somehow two ended up dead. There were little terms of details released about this to the media. Those were the first two murders I have heard of in the sixteen years I have lived here. That is to say that violence is pretty rare.

End Your Programming Routine: So, I have talked about cheap knives and murder, where is the humor? I guess the humor is getting a white elephant out of the blue, which happens to be a sword which links to the two stories together. I do think that he genuinely thought this was a worthy endeavor. For now, I am the custodian of the transaction and my son can do as he chooses when he is old enough to take possession.

October 14, 2021 – ‘Tacticool’ Thursday

October 14, 2021 /

I think that I wrote about this early on. If I did, I guess that I will repeat myself a little bit. But if not, I will talk about my journey into self-sufficiency.

I think that the tendency was programmed into my brain when I was a youth. I was a Boy Scout for a number of years and the motto as you should know is “Be Prepared”. That was all fine an dandy, I thought that I was from a camping gear standpoint. When I was in college, I bought some reloaded ammunition at a gun show and the second round was a squib which got the bullet stuck in the barrel. At that time, I had a Leatherman, a small adjustable wrench, a four in one screwdriver and a hammer.

I remember distinctly the moment when I thought to myself that I didn’t have enough tools to do most jobs around the house, the car or anywhere else for that matter. I bought a 3/8″ dowel at the local hardware store and pounded the bullet out from the muzzle and then set about buying lots of tools. With my graduation money, I bought my first socket set from Sears so that I could work on my (now) wife’s car.

After I had mostly one of everything, I started putting together bags that were task oriented. I have an electrical bag and a plumbing bag and then I started adding duplicate tools like screwdriver sets and hammers. Once those were largely complete I started thinking about adding tools to the car so that I wouldn’t get stuck somewhere without tools. That is when I started changing my thinking from just tools but also survival gear.

One site that influenced me early on was Doug Ritter’s site. I definitely looks 20 years old at this point but it started me thinking about assembling ‘survival kits’. One big thing back then was the ‘Altoid tin survival kit’ which was all about having stuff with you when you need it because it is small and compact. This is a long way at arriving to the point that I carry a survival kit in my hunting pack. Today I will take a look at what is in there.

From left to right and top to bottom.

  • paracord – It is said that cordage is one of the most difficult things to build in the wild. This is the stranded core which can be separated into individual strands if necessary
  • bandana – can be used as a bandage, tourniquet as well as traditional handkerchief usages.
  • quart zip lock bag – keep things dry and well as temporarily hold water
  • clip-able flashlight – has a lanyard but could also be clipped to a hat bill
  • small first aid kid
  • Knife sharpener
  • 25# fishing line – Along with the sewing needles, this is primarily for field repair. but it could be put into service for fishing as well
  • zip ties – the biggest use is securing tags to antlers but also field repairs
  • kit bag
  • garbage bag – poncho or shelter
  • signal mirror – making yourself visible from the air
  • fire starters – matches and lighter
  • tinder – wood shavings and cotton balls with Vasoline in a water tight container
  • cable saw – hand operated saw for wood cutting
  • steel fishing leader – fishing or snares
  • Leatherman Wave
  • Small length of duct tape

While this isn’t a course on wilderness survival, you can see that my kit is oriented toward the basics primarily first aid and shelter. Fortunately I haven’t hardly ever needed anything in here. Some of them cross the line between use in my normal hunting and survival, like the knife sharpener. I have used the needle and fishing line before to fix a tent.

Part of the nice thing about this is that the kit can be moved from bag to some other location, car, daypack, etc. Knowing me, I would probably just build another one if that happened frequently. When I started out, I was thinking that I would add one to each scenario that I build but I came to the realization that not every situation is a wilderness survival situation and that didn’t make a whole lot of sense. What I am trying to convey is that building modularly is efficient and convenient when it comes to this sort of thing.

End Your Programming Routine: When I was in Boy Scouts, I was taking the wilderness survival merit badge. Part of the requirements was to build a survival kit, so I already have done this before. When evaluating the kit, he said it should contain whatever you think you need. Looking back today on that statement, I feel like that was kind of a disserve. I think that I need a lot of things more than this. But remember that each added item comes with a weight and bulk penalty. If I were to add anything, I think a way to purify water and more shelter would be in order.

October 13, 2021 – Why I Hate eBay and Online Shopping

October 13, 2021 /

We are starting to come around to the point where I have said everything that I want to say. This is a bit facetious, I have mentioned this in passing in a previous post that I dislike ordering online. Today I am going to make my case.

About four years ago, I purchased a rifled barrel for my Remington shotgun. My thoughts were there are some areas around here that are restricted to shotgun hunting only. They are close and maybe I could sit for a half an hour on my way to work or on my way home. This is not to say that I couldn’t use my shotgun as is, but then my range would be limited to about 50 yards. With this new barrel, it makes 150 yards possible.

I did hunt with it a bit. But, then my son got into trap shooting. So, then I was switching barrels and setups several times a week so I thought that it would be good to add another rifled barrel to the inventory. I do have two other shotguns. One is also a Remington in 20 gauge. The problem is since they have gone bankrupt and have been dispersed, used barrels have tripled in price. My other option is a Mossberg shotgun in 12 gauge.

These extra barrels seem to be mostly available (new) before hunting season and then they kind of disappear for the rest of the year. Fortunately, Mossberg barrels have not skyrocketed in price because they are still being made but all the new inventory is already sold out.

I looked on Gunbroker and I looked on eBay. Because I have thoroughly researched what I wanted, I knew that the model numbers were 90121 and 90049. One is parkerized while the other is blued and since my shotgun is actually stainless, having either barrel is fine with me. They actually made a stainless version at one time and I should have bought it when I saw it but they are really rare.

I couldn’t find what I wanted using the part number in either site. I do know that the model number is often not posted. It is not stamped on the barrel anywhere so I searched ‘Mossberg 500 rifled barrel 12 gauge’ and several choices came up. I did read the description and and bought the barrel. About ten minutes after I made the purchase, it occurred to me that this was probably not what I wanted. For whatever reason, Mossberg makes a barrel with rifle sights but it is not rifled and that is what I bought.

The lore on barrels and chokes are such that it is best to use a cylinder bore choke when shooting rifled slugs. The reason being is that all the other chokes provide some level of constriction which impact the slugs travel to some degree. This barrel has a fixed cylinder choke specifically for firing rifled slugs. To that end, my 18″ barrel also has a cylinder choke. My field barrel has removable chokes and I have a cylinder choke for that barrel as well.

What about the sights? I already have a red dot on the shotgun and I wanted this style of barrel for this reason. The other style of barrel has a cantilever mount for scope. I have this on my Remington and I think that is a great design, but it would interfere with my already installed red-dot and they are about 50% more expensive.

It was too late, there was nothing that I could do. I bought something that I have no real use for. Additionally, I don’t see a way to sell it, I don’t think that it is really has a market because I don’t know why anyone would really want this barrel. I might be able to trade it at the local gun store?

End Your Programming Routine: The Latin phrase Caveat Emptor comes to mind. Translated, it means buyer beware. I don’t necessarily think the seller did anything wrong, the description did not state that the barrel was rifled. I am slightly PO’d that the eBay search brought up related items and not what I was looking for and that I didn’t try to verify this is what I was looking for. It actually didn’t even occur to me until after the transaction. If I was physically looking at it, I would have known right away. It doesn’t mean that I am not going to buy again on eBay, but I can chalk this up as another online disappointment.

October 12, 2021 – The Cure for a Hangover

October 12, 2021 /

One of the most treasured things that I gotten in relationship of a Latino family was the ability to open up to culture that was very foreign to me. I find it fascinating that two families can grow up in the same geographic area and relative socioeconomic level and yet have experiences that are extremely foreign.

The older I get the more I realize this is more common with ethnic families. They have largely embraced the American experience while retaining elements that are important to the original culture. I suppose that I cannot speak in ultimate authority, but I have seen examples in this family for sure. Speaking outside of food traditions for the moment, there is something called Curanderismo or white magic. I am not going to go any deeper than surface level but there is a technique for solving an ear ache or taking away bad dreams.

I find that there is a lot of superstition, most of which I don’t think there is a whiff of science or logic but this one makes some sense, the cure for a hangover. When my wife and I were dating, I was enamored by so many new experiences. One of them was for young families to stay out late dancing, drinking and socializing. Then, after the social outing you would cap off the night (or morning) with soup called menudo.

On first blush, this is a fairly simple composition of ingredients. The primary ingredients are tripe, water, garlic, oregano, salt and chili powder. Some people like some variants that include hominy and pigs feet. Sound good yet? The work is in the prep and the timing because there is a fair amount of those two things.

Having made this a number of times, I would not call it exactly inexpensive. At seven dollars a pound for tripe, buying 15 pounds the price starts to add up. These are big pots, so it is typically made at 10 gallons at a time. But, let’s get into it.

Tripe is most often bought frozen. It is a beef byproduct that is cleaned and fresh frozen in blocks. Most supermarkets will cut these blocks on the bandsaw in smaller pieces but they are never small enough to use. So, these need to be thawed out plenty of time, like overnight before you need to start cooking.

I add salt and about a head of garlic for about five pounds of tripe and enough water to start boiling down the trip. If you use pigs feet, this is also the time to add them. What these do to the soup is contribute collagen for thickening and this soup will end up solid at room temperature when done right. One foot per 10 pounds of tripe is about right. I didn’t want to spring for a bunch of pigs feet, but I did use some smoked ham hock which I already had.

Now, what I have done is put this pot on overnight. This time I added the menudo mix which is oregano and chili flakes along with salt and let it go. By the time I woke up in the morning there was 1/2 an inch of fat on the top of the liquid and the tripe was boiled down to half of its size. I say this so that you are careful about how much additional water is added. I used three quarts initially but if I had to do over again, I would have done more tripe and less water.

I was serving this around dinner time, normally it would be late breakfast time so you may need to get up early to get the seasoning done. I used 25 dried guajillo chilies to rehydrate and make a paste. That happened to be all I had, it probably needed double that amount for this batch. If you don’t have enough which is frequently the case, you can use chili powder to help out. Keep tasting because you want the broth to have body.

Hominy is a slightly controversial ingredient. In Tex-Mex fashion, it is used. My wife likes it so I try to do a 50/50 tripe to hominy ratio. In Mexico, there would be no hominy added. Keep tasting you may need salt, chili and garlic.

Serve with corn tortillas, chopped onion, limes (my wife likes lemons), extra menudo mix and chili for added spice. Coffee or Coke is the best pairing for drinks and eat three bowls. That will cure your hangover.

I will be honest, I don’t love it. It tastes fine and I am good with it every couple of months but I don’t crave it. What I do appreciate is keeping the tradition alive. I also appreciate the waves of people enjoying the food and the camaraderie. I also like being the white guy that makes the best menudo and it makes my wife happy. So, once a year or so I will do it again just for the heck of it.

End Your Programming Routine: Yesterday was the two month anniversary of my father-in-law’s death. This was an homage to him as the hominy and the menudo seasoning was his when we cleaned out the pantry. I made it for my wife who returned home from Texas over the weekend who loves it. His passing still weighs heavy on her heart. We really didn’t have a hangover in a traditional sense, but in a small way hopefully this helps with the figurative one.

October 11, 2021 – Making Plum Wine

October 11, 2021 /

This is something that I should have done a long time ago. I have had these plums prepped and improperly stored in the freezer for over six weeks now. The truth is, I thought that I would talk about brewing much more than I have. This may be the first time I have written about it other than saying that this was one of the things that I was going to write about.

About mid August, a box of plums showed up on the deck. I don’t really know where they came from. I think I do, but nothing has ever been confirmed. Now, I don’t really care for them and would much prefer them dried, then called a prune. I also thought about trying to give them away, ultimately I decided to try and make wine.

Never having done this before, I did some research. Plums are a stone fruit. It seems like they are related to the peach and the almond. So, there is some risk of cyanide that is contained within the pit. It was generally regarded as minimal risk with a whole pit, (not being ground or broken) and in some cases it was preferred to have some pits with the brew. I decided to just pit them all for several reasons. Since I don’t know the source, I don’t know the condition of the fruit. Could they be rotten or green or contain bugs?

I didn’t have plans to immediately brew which is why these went into the freezer for a later date. This has several advantages beside managing schedules, freezes will kill undesirables. It will also rupture cell walls making the essence of the fruit easier to access when I decide to get started. From a (home) brewing perspective, freezing fruit is a helpful technique to to making the best batches.

I’ve done quite a bit of reading and learning about beer. However, the same is not true with wine. I guess what surprises me is that most fruit wines use sugar as an additive. In this case, I had 15lbs of fruit but also 15lbs of added sugar. At least this is the case in the homebrew world. I am aware that in the wine world, nearly anything can be done to make adjustments, from acid to flavor. I guess we will see how it comes out.

What kind of yeast do you use? I chose a freeze dried pastor blanc yeast from Red Star. In my beer research, I know that the liquid yeast strains seem to be the premium choice. However, I have not found it to make that much difference in taste. I have pretty much switched over to dry yeast for the cost and storability. I have both and could have used either red or white yeast.

Along with 3 gallons of water and a few adjuncts (that are not strictly necessary), I got my wine started. I added one teaspoon of acid blend (citric and maleic), 1 teaspoon of yeast nutrient for getting the yeast going, it is some kind of urea (or nitrogen compound) and one teaspoon of pectic clarifier. I dont think that is necessary either.

Finally, I added three Campden (Sodium metabisulfite) tablets. As strange as it sounds, these are added to retard the fermentation. Traditionally, the primary fermentation is done in open vessels and the skins of grapes contain enough yeast to ferment by themselves. The brewer wants to make sure that his added yeast takes off first to have the most controlled outcome. These tablets also contain free radical scavengers to consume oxygen and reduce the oxidation of the juice.

End Your Programming Routine: So far, my experiments with wine have been not great. I have found the best place to use them is cooking or mulled. But that is OK, It is the place where my science training still gets exercised a little bit. I will keep you updated on how the process progresses.

October 8, 2021 – Still Piecing Together My Office

October 8, 2021 /

One of the ways of working that I have discovered is that I cant afford to spend my entire working day in the office. Between kids that need to get out the door and animals that need to be in and out to answering the door, I need to take my computer out of the office for parts of the day. For that reason, I don’t want to plug in 5 or 6 cables several times a day.

Because of that, I bought one docking station to try out. You can see it under my monitor on the upper left. It is meant to have the laptop sit on edge on top of the docking station. If you look closely, you can see that I have two (work) laptops and so I have tried both with the new docking station, so I am looking to get one more.

A word about docking stations. Five years ago, docks were a proprietary device that mated with specific brands and models of computer. These days, there is less of that but beware when looking at them as they are not all the same. For instance, most of them are termed USB-C port extenders and do not power the laptop at all defeating the purpose of one connection. Also, many of them support only one monitor, so if you are using a multiple monitor setup as I am, then you need to verify that will work with the docking station you are looking at.

To me, the power of docking stations gives you the flexibility to unplug and move the location you are working and then come back and pickup. If you do not work in that manner and your computer mostly stays put, then you probably don’t even need a docking station. Also, note the power requirements for your machine. I found several that didn’t output enough watts to adequately charge the battery. It is OK if is putting out more power, but not less. One last thing, if your computer is a consumer grade machine it may not be able to power through USB-C and you can get most of the features with a port extender.

To then use these optimally, I am in the market for a KVM switch. That is an acronym that stands for Keyboard, Video and Mouse switch which allows me to use the same keyboard and video setup to switch between the two computers with the click of a button. Once I have those two additional items, I can go about cleaning up all of the cable mess and my desk will be finally setup.

That doesn’t mean that my office is done. I had a couch that I was going to put in but I found out that my baseboard heater didn’t allow for the couch to be put in (so, I guess it is to the dump with that). But, my wife wanted me to take the loveseat that was in the kitchen area. Which I did and Leo thought it was a good decision.

That means that I had to take the stereo receiver out. I have made the measurements and I can build a table that will fit behind the couch and provide the optimum space to bring that back in. The downside is that with everything going on, it will be a while before I get to that project (hopefully this winter).

I still have stuff to hang up and really make it personal and I think that will help with the sound as well. But, overall it is getting close to finishing. Like everything, just money and time to get everything the way that I want it.

End Your Programming Routine: Like every project, there are the ‘wish that you would have known’ things. I wish that I would have anticipated the space the heater consumed I might have sacrificed my re-use principle to something that uses less space. I also wish I would have known how warm just the electronics would get and possibly add a window for ventilation. Those two things aside, I am still very happy with how it came out.

October 7, 2021 – ‘Tacticool’ Thursday

October 8, 2021 /

**Note: I restored from backup 10-8-21 and I didn’t realize this post wasn’t included as the latest post from an Oct 7 backup. I don’t feel like rebuilding it completely but I will try to capture the essence**

It is hunting season, although I am not going out this weekend. I am hoping to do so next weekend. Today I thought that I would do a gear dump and explain what and why for the different pieces.

First, I will start with the bag. It is a Kelty that I am guessing is 24/28L. The most important thing about the bag is it is made from fleece which reduces the distinctive nylon on branch sound. It has a bright orange rain cover as well that helps you find it when set down. I also carry 2L bottles which is always more water than I need. One other thing that I have noticed is when they are not entirely full, they make a splooshing sound as water moves around. What is on the inside from upper left to right

  • Orange gear – I usually carry a cap and stalking hat. I also have some extras in case I have some guests. These are worn or stored
  • Spare ammunition and cartridge loop – I usually carry a box (20) which is way more than I need.
  • A headlamp (with corroded batteries) – Its a good thing I checked
  • Toilet paper
  • lens cleaner pen
  • bug spray – don’t need that for hunting
  • Survival kit – I will go through that next week
  • deer tag
  • field glasses
  • fingerless gloves
  • hatchet and saw
  • hunting knife

I can fit all of that in with a lunch. I always walk a fine line between having everything I need and having way too much stuff. I don’t know what to do. I guess my thoughts were always better have it and not need it rather than not. I also have used this bag as a day pack for hikes and such. When I use it that way, I usually purge all of the hunting specific items.

End Your Programming Routine: I have several other things that I take with me, I think I will cover them in the following weeks. These are things that are left in the vehicle or camp. This will be the second weekend of deer season. I am hoping to catch weeks 3-5.