I spent probably an hour with support today. They can duplicate my problem, but not resolve it. My support case has been escalated to level 2 (which is a good thing). So, I am definitely slow playing anything further until I can resolve images.
I have to say that I have been very happy with the support that I have used so far. The level one is not just reading from a script but is actually trying to fix the problem. So far, level one has been two out of three in resolving issues. I know that this is a tough one because I have been working on it several days myself.
I have some good stuff in the queue. Hopefully, it won’t take too long so I can really get started.
I am still struggling with images today. It does appear that when I try this at night, it works but not during the day. It also appears that android pictures are loading but iphone’s are not. I will look at it some more tonight.
This past week has been a strange and sad week. If you have followed me for some time, you can probably guess my political orientations by my life outlook. Over the years I have become much more apolitical because I don’t believe that either party has my best interest at heart.
My view of voting has really changed as well. I went from red blooded, eagle scout to non-participant. I got in a ‘light’ debate with one of my family members about the fact that I wasn’t going to vote. Her attempted position was that I was setting a bad example for my kids. In fact, I believe the exact opposite, I am not brain washing my kids to believe every vote matters.
Take my state, Oregon. I actually voted as an experiment. I voted a ballot where every candidate of the choices best represented my values. Only one out of the entire ballot won their election and that was on the county commissioner position. Almost all of them lost by a landslide, it wasn’t even close except for state senator and state representative. You tell me that my vote mattered.
I want to go back to the dichotomy. I know people that are refusing to except the presidential election results. I didn’t know them at the time, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they thought Obama was not a citizen.
I also know people that called to rejoice that their candidate won, how great and historical this was, etc. These were the people that claimed Trump stole the election and cried when George W Bush was elected.
None of these people are bad people. I know them all, but they are blinded by their beliefs to the point that they are willing to hold fast to out and out nonsense. Don’t get me wrong, With hundreds of millions of votes, a few are bound to be erroneous, fake or suspicious. But what everyone is missing is that the system is getting over on them regardless of who wins.
This may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I want to use some other examples of how this works. Take a person like Rush Limbaugh, he is a master of the same craft that Trump has used. Say something outrageous, let everyone get into their galvanized camp and use your supporters to make you more money. I do believe that Rush is sincere in his general positions but he is a master at manipulating his strong supporters and detractors for his own gain.
This is almost every politician on the national level and it is definitely pushing down to the state level. At the lower level it is often not monetary, but policy.
Has anyone been to a restaurant or bar lately? How foolish is it that you are required to wear a mask to enter but as soon as you sit at the table you are now in some sort of bubble where masks can be removed. It has got to be one way or the other. The mask needs to be on or it needs to be off.
Notice what is happening from a political standpoint. Both sides know that they cannot strangle the social aspect of the economy. They have made rules that make no sense and are not effective to appease the mask vs. no mask crowds.
Take football. Why is it that the NFL is fining coaching staff when caught with their masks off and the players are playing like normal? Could it be virtue signaling? Don’t the coaches go through the same testing regimen as the players? Is there such a thing as acceptable risk? It all makes no sense to me. We have another half in and half out situation here.
If you think that INS is keeping kids in cages or that dead people swung this election, you need to slap yourself in the face. Trump out trumped himself. He turned off people that were lukewarm in the last election and he certainly motivated people that weren’t engaged in the last election and lost by a very slim margin. Now, slap yourself again because regardless of the election results, we are just going to stand around while we lose our freedom at an accelerated pace. That is where the outrage should be.
I will leave with one more thought. Why do you think Trump did not want to release his tax information? Because if he did, the general public would find out that he is not ‘paying his fair share’. Meaning, the people that write the rules don’t write them for themselves, they write them for everyone else. Why else would insider trading be illegal for everyone but congress people? It is the most egregious and in your face example of a double standard as there is. They literally make the government contracts that can legally enrich there own pockets that is illegal for a citizen to do so.
You have heard of the saying ‘What is good for the goose is good for the gander’? There has been a lot of show over not releasing tax returns, but in the end none of them want the real game exposed – at least while people are paying attention.
It’s career day at Alt-F4. Well, not really especially since I have never had the title of chemical engineer. However, I have done the job. A chemical engineer does a lot of scaling, unit conversions and process type work. I spent over four years doing very similar work early in my career.
So, why the heck do you really care what a chemical engineer does? Well, from a practicality standpoint sometimes you have to do some unusual stuff. In my case, I am still struggling with the leaf blower, I bought some 40:1 fuel thinking that was probably the ticket. I incidentally ran across the manual this week and discovered that it is supposed to actually take 16:1 fuel mix.
First, good luck finding a 16:1 pre-mix in the store. I don’t think any of the modern engines run that kind of ratio. If you are going to make it yourself, that is 8oz of 30 weight oil to 1 gallon of fuel. I don’t really want to make a gallon especially now that I have almost a full gallon of 40:1 that is not really useable in any of my other machines. Another added bonus is that I could make 40:1 into 50:1 in the same way to use in my trimmer or chainsaw. This avoids having a bunch of cans of different mixes lying around because I don’t use that much anyway.
Another thing that I don’t want to do is leave a bunch of fuel in the the tank. I don’t know when or if I will use it all. So, my plan is to make up 1 cup at a time of 16:1 out of the 40:1 that I already have. I have to do some relatively simple calculations so I can use the equipment that I have to do what I want.
Work in units that are ten based (i.e. metric) for easier calculations
According to the manual, the tank is 16.5 oz. The conversion is 29.57 ml/ounce.
16.5 oz * 29.57 ml/oz = 487.9 ml of fuel in the tank, round up to 488 ml
2. Figure the oil component of the mixtures
If the tank was full of 16:1 mix then I will calculate how much oil that is by dividing the total volume by the ratio.
488 ml / 16 = 30.5 ml oil in a full tank
488 ml/ 40 = 12.2 ml oil in the tank in a 40:1 mix
Now, subtract the difference between what you need and what you have and that will tell us how much straight oil I would need to add per tank.
30.5 ml needed – 12.2 ml have = 18.3 ml oil to add per tank
3. There are simpler ways to do this, but I will do it again for emphasis to make up my mix per cup.
1 cup = 8 oz
8 oz * 29.57 ml/oz = 236.56 ml in a cup
236.56 ml / 16 = 14.79 ml oil at 16:1
236.56 ml / 40 = 5.91 ml oil at 40:1
14.79 ml – 5.91 ml = 8.88 ml oil needed per cup
4. Convert ml back to imperial measurement (teaspoons)
1 teaspoon = 4.93 ml
8.88 ml oil needed / 4.93 ml/tsp = 1.8 teaspoons oil per cup to make 40:1 into 16:1
I hope that I made my point that sometimes this kind of math can be useable. My points for doing this this way is to protect the machine from excess fuel in the tank and using what I already have have.
I only have a couple hours a day permitted in my schedule to explore, learn, post and market and then life starts to move in. It is part of the reason why things move slower than I would like. It also means that I need to use my time as effectively as possible.
Today, I have started with researching and adding some new plug-ins. The choices are wide to a point where this is an ala carte endeavor. Each thing can add a couple dollars a month, but what is the return on investment? For instance, I am researching adding a mail client to get more in line with the ‘true fan’ structure. The suggested option from my hosting service is free for the first 500 email addresses and is tiered from there in cost/month.
I can surely get down with free. But will five hundred interested people translate into meaningful revenue to be worth the cost? I don’t know and I don’t want to get locked into something only to switch and lose what is already started. So, I guess I will take it slow.
Another feature I need to explore is the ability to post to other platforms. I am almost a zero adopter of social media, for a good reason I will talk about some other time. But, that being said it definitely has inhibited the ability to leverage some of the most popular and low cost marketing out there. I am lightly active on LinkedIn and Nextdoor but that is really it.
From a principle standpoint, I want to start and grow into spaces that are more concerned about privacy and security. So, using the the platforms that are in line with those concepts are much more appealing to me and I would be much more likely to participate. I have held back a bit as well because I don’t want every post going to LinkedIn for example. They are not appropriate to the landscape of the platform.
Again, today’s post is another snorer. I am testing some features that I added this morning. I promise that I will get back into a better rhythm as the dust starts to settle here. I probably need to set some smaller and more structured goals like adding one feature a week so I can stop writing about dry and technical details and making excuses.
This is going to be short. I have been lost in all the technical junk getting this site going. I have to admit that this isn’t my strong suit as I have never done anything quite like this before. I have spent some time in the Microsoft world of websites and this seems much easier.
I had some trouble getting my domain going. Apparently, there was some issue with the registration information. I had to get tech support to resolve this for me. I am not really sure what the problem was however I suspect that it had to do with the .co domain name because I registered a .net and it was working within the hour that I paid for it.
To get the importing of the old site working, I had to go in the way back machine and modify my host file so that I didn’t need DNS resolution to keep working. It did keep me from generating content however. I think most everything got over to the site reasonably. I did notice that some of the fancier stuff didn’t port across directly like my photo slides from August. I don’t think that it is worth trying to fix at this point.
Another thing I have realized is that I am on my own now. I had to upgrade WordPress and python to get some of the content to render properly. Some of those things are handled automatically when you are on a platform.
My most recent problems have been with getting security working. The SSL certificate was not installed and so people navigating to my site (from work computers) got blocked. I have just enabled that finally after a couple of days reading help files and banging my head. I had to get technical support on that as well as it seems like a cached version of the SSL was installed.
So, that is all to say, I think that I am ready to start moving ahead and putting this public. I can start changing links in my various profiles and maybe I will get some real content this week.
How about that? I am excited to be writing here. Having this site run on it’s own will open a lot of opportunity for me. I believe that I will be able to post audio and video directly without having go to YouTube. I should be able to add plugins so I can begin to create mailing lists and add e-commerce options if I choose.
I am working on a few things right now. Not everything I had on the WordPress site I have working here. There is some difference in the GUI for managing the site. I will keep layering stuff back in as well as changes and improvements. Baby steps…
Alright, I have been dragging my feet and making excuses for almost a year now. I will be working on moving this site to a proper domain and hosting service in the near future. To that end, this site will become dormant soon.
I have gotten out of it what I needed which was to understand the discipline it took to post daily and the creativity to come up with topics that I think are engaging.
For business purposes, I have reasons to have more that one website and I need more than what the free WordPress plan can do for me. Any more practice and not building my businesses are counterproductive. I intend to post until I have fully gotten it up and running, but likely erratically.
It’s interesting, I find this topic difficult to write about consistently. Maybe it is stage fright? It is the one day of the week that I should be able to plan around and I have six or seven things always lined up. Well, I have got one today.
The definition of tactical is “relating to or constituting actions carefully planned to gain a specific military end”. I think in the civilian world, we probably think of tactical as an adjective that describes firearms, magazines, ammunition, camouflage, flashlights, knives and other gear like that. Well today I’ve got some tactics and gear that I want you to consider.
That would be strategically placed fire extinguishers, an escape plan, rally points and communication plan to deal with a more likely scenario than a zombie world. You will see from the picture above that I have a fire extinguisher placed next to some flammables like gun powder and primers. That is in case I have a fire while I am smoking and reloading – just kidding, better safe than sorry.
How many fire extinguishers do you need? Good question, I have at least one on every level of my home, one in every vehicle, one in the shop, one in the garage and one soon to be one in the garden shed. They do no good if they are not convenient to reach so for example there is one in the kitchen in case of grease or electrical fire. They are generally placed where they are close to a fuel source or for life protection like in the bedrooms.
For the uneducated, not all fire extinguishers are the same they have an ABC rating system for the type of fuel or fire that they are effective at stopping. Most homeowner versions are an ABC general type. Here is a chart below for reference.
Know Your Fire Extinguisher Sign on white background,Vector illustration
I don’t think this is an adequate forum to address how to use fire extinguishers correctly. However quickly, spray the extinguisher at the base of the fire or what is burning. Think of it as a tool and not an end all. So, the use of the extinguisher should be to allow you to escape the situation, not to put out a fire.
To the end of escape, you should have a plan to exit the building in every room, particularly bedrooms. If your bedrooms are on the second floor, you need a safe way to get to the ground. In my house, the second floors are at least twenty feet above ground so in an extreme situation, jumping is possible with likely injury. For that reason, I have put safety ladders in each of the bedrooms that can be deployed to climb down to the ground.
Once out, we have two meeting spots. One is primary and the other is secondary. Unlike a business where we have countless employees and customers, once out you are pretty much safe and we don’t have to do an extensive headcount or other more complicated procedures.
To that end, it would be a good idea to have a cache of items outside of the home like tools to shut-off gas and water, flashlights, first aid, clothes, spare keys etc. You want to be able to do what you can safely to mitigate further damage to people or property if possible. You also don’t need to be freezing or wet in the middle of the night if that is possible. I have been in hotels where the fire alarm went off in the middle of the night, talk about a learning lesson for a future post.
Meet and know your neighbors so that if you have to leave without your phone you need to get help. Remember that safety is the optimum outcome, not stopping the fire. Fire department results will depend on a quick triage of the situation, likely preventing the fire from burning anything else. I live within one mile of the fire station and have had the unfortunate luck of dialing 911 several times. I have seen response time of 5-20 minutes depending on the time of day. I have even seen out of town units respond when the local department is busy. So remember that if the fire causes evacuation, that extra time isn’t going to help the situation.
First when going to bed, close the doors for an extra barrier of protection. In rooms with closed doors, touch the doorknob for heat, if it is safe to touch then it should be safe to cautiously open. In the case of smoke, get as low to the floor as possible because that will have the cleanest air. Nothing is ever a perfect situation so assessment of go, which direction, etc is unique to each situation. The training for each household member should be to get out individually and meet at the rally point for headcount.
Some other things worth mentioning are make sure you have adequate numbers and functioning smoke detectors as well as CO2 detectors. Make sure your address is visible from the street. Perform a site assessment for flammables around the property. Use temporary solutions temporarily like extension cords outside and unplug when not in use.
Have a fireproof and waterproof container for your most important documents. Make copies and store them on a cloud location or at least off premises for additional backups. Perform an inventory of your belongings for insurance purposes. You can make a video tour of your house periodically to provide a basic layout and store it offsite. Any collections or particularly expensive items may need to be insured separately to be adequately covered (like firearms).
Wow, I had more to say than I originally thought when I sat down. I think there is more here too. I will boil it down to disaster commonality in that this kind of thinking works for more than fires, but also floods or hurricanes and other disaster scenarios. So, start somewhere and put on your thinking cap to develop a plan that will work for you.
This recipe has been a family tradition of mine probably nearly forty years. Original credit goes back to a printing in the Albany Democrat Herald long since lost in the annals of time. It makes a great snack for parties or after the pumpkins are carved.
4 cups – pumpkin seeds
1/4 cup – soy sauce
1/4 cup – butter
2 tablespoons – Worcestershire sauce
2 teaspoons – lemon pepper
1/2 teaspoon – garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon – celery salt
salt
Optional – dash of cayenne or chili powder
Clean your pumpkin seeds that you removed from your pumpkin. They don’t have to be perfect, in fact a little pumpkin give some sweetness to the seeds that are delicious.
Begin heating the oven at 450 degrees F. Melt the butter with Worcestershire and soy sauce, then whisk into the melted butter. Add the remainder of the dry ingredients.
Put the seeds in a bowl and mix them to coat. Once thoroughly coated, pour out onto a sheet pan to put in the heated oven.
Bake ten minutes and then stir up the seeds to expose mostly un-caramelized seeds. Bake for another five minutes. Take the pan out of the oven and sprinkle salt on the seeds. Wait another 10 minutes for the pan to cool and enjoy.
Now that the important stuff is done, I can tell a story. Don’t you hate those recipes that you have scroll through a bunch of stuff to get to what you want? According to my very limited research on SEO, you want to get right to the content. So there you go, I think I just invented a better way to present blog recipes.
My mom was always a recipe clipper. This one as I have said, came up in the newspaper and was clipped out for the ‘try’ pile of recipes. I seem to recall that it had a few more spices in it that I used, but I think this is the flavor profile I have been using for the last ten years or so.
When my mom made these, my brother and my flavor profile was completely blown. To us, this was exotic. So many spices that were not routinely used in our house. It actually started us trying spices on everything, particularly lemon pepper. We found that we really liked lemon pepper on popcorn. I haven’t done it in a while since it is usually microwaved these days, but it is really good.
Over the years, I have halfheartedly tried to look for the recipe but never finding it. The original was likely thrown out which lead me to making my own out of memory. Here are a few other tips.
Seeds store well in the refrigerator. If you can’t get to them right after carving your pumpkin, you can store them for later. They can also be stored in the freezer for longer term if necessary.
I seem to remember the original recipe having cumin in it. I think curry powder, ginger or five spice powder would also work well for a deeper exotic modification
They are best eaten shortly after preparation. They tend to get soggy overnight like popcorn does.
Not all ‘pumpkins’ are created equal. It seems like most of them these days are specifically for carving and not eating (I am not sure they are actually pumpkins). Seeds can vary from very thin and melon like to very tough. The seed is actually inside the white shell. If it looks tough, it probably is. I am not saying not to try it but the best seeds are from medium sized pumpkins.
I hope that I am not too late for you to try this year. I think that it would be great to hear other suggestions as well. So let me know what you did. Enjoy!
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