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April 25, 2023 – Where’s the Bunny?

April 25, 2023 /

This probably won’t play well. I say that because even though I took the picture, I have a hard time seeing the rabbit in the picture and I know it is there. Regardless, I have no problem making stuff up on the fly.

Back when life was good (just kidding), I drove my Mustang through a National Wildlife Refuge twice a day. Once on my way to work and once on my way home. This was a significant asset to me because it was nearly mid-way and it was really the only bathroom via outhouse after you leave the freeway and town. Driving that everyday, sometimes I would stop on the way home, because I could.

It was 2018 that the gates were closed and they remained closed until a few months ago. In the meantime, they tore down the outhouse and built an interpretive center. I don’t know what the hold-up on opening was, but I think Covid was part of it. I don’t commute every day but I still periodically drove by wondering what this fancy new structure looked like inside and what was actually there.

In the last year, we have become weekend babysitters. I wont get into the details now, but someone needs help and we can provide help. Sometimes, I end up having to be solo babysitter and I need things to do. I am not great at this and it does sometimes crimp my life on the things that I want to do.

I was babysitter this weekend and so I decided to take an excursion to the wildlife refuge. When I said wildlife refuge, I think the child thought that we were going to see animals everywhere. Of course, I knew better but how can you convince them when the mind is made up. There is a short little 1/2 mile path that we walked. It was pretty barren but I did see a rabbit in the bushes. So, we took a picture of it. Did you see it?

Listening to podcasts about children and the outdoors, you don’t want to push too hard. Fishing turns into a walk to the water and 15 minutes of pole time. Hunting turns into snacks and coloring. You have to think of this as an investment, it is going to take a while to yield some returns, especially with a five year old.

When we were around that age, we couldn’t wait to go out with dad. It was such an adventure. But, he could only handle one of us at once. When my brother got home he would regale me with tales of the woods and I would do the same on my weekends. It was a long day for a young child and I am sure that we didn’t add much to the experience for my day but it was those moments that made me who I am today.

My biggest fear is not seeing nothing but seeing nothing consistently. I want to gently lead a young child into this new world without making it a chore or a dread. Who knows… maybe this will lead to nothing, but maybe it will lead to a love of the outdoors. So, we will keep trying new a different things. I want to be entertained too.

End Your Programming Routine: Because it is spring, my mind really starts shifting to getting on the water and getting a few fishing outings in. I also end up being a sort of father figure to this child. So, it is the perfect opportunity to do both. I have to be prepared to fish for thirty minutes but it beats watching TV all day. That I cant do.

April 24, 2023 – Hair On Fire

April 24, 2023 /

My hair is on fire, I don’t have topics stubbed out for the week. I didn’t even finish my outline before recording this podcast. It was all I could do to edit a short five minute video over the weekend. To top it off, it seems like the world is closing in on us and I see some dark times ahead.

End Your Programming Routine: I don’t want to be all about problems, we have plenty of those. What spurred me to talk about this today was how I felt after doing what I did in the podcast. It is simple, why don’t I do it more? I am somewhere between glass half full and glass half empty. I hope that my little adventure spurs people to find the small joy in life despite the world burning around us.

April 21, 2023 – Animal Farm, Chapter 7 and 8

April 21, 2023 /

This week I am combining chapters seven and eight. The reason is that I feel like they are continuations of the same themes. I had to sort of scratch to see if there was actually something new in these chapters. The truth is, I don’t feel like there actually was, but I looked a little deeper to see if there was anything else.

Starting out, the move to the boogeyman has become absurd. Chapter seven is where I think Orwell jumps from generally foretelling to the protest against totalitarianism. For some unexplainable reason many animals admit to conspiring with Snowball and against the Animal Farm. This of course has fatal consequences.

Knowing that they will be killed, the animals knowingly fabricate false and ongoing relationships with Snowball. Ultimately, they are punished for their crimes. I don’t know if this is because things are so bad that death is better than innocence? Or maybe it is this impending sense of fatality that whatever is going to happen regardless of what they say?

I was doing some reading, and this book was published in 1945. There is a thought that this is a direct corollary of the relationship between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. It very well could be that Farmer Fredrickson is Hitler personified and that Hitler betrayed Stalin with attacks on the Eastern Front.

In the book, Fredrickson buys the stack of lumber from Animal Farm. It turns out that the cash that was used was counterfeit. To make matters worse, this was immediately followed by the farmer’s attack and the sabotage of the windmill project. The animals fought back at a very high cost, just like Stalin.

I suppose what I am struggling with a little bit is that if Orwell is protesting totalitarianism in his writings, why then would he personify Stalin/Napoleon as a hero? It very well could be that Orwell is justifying Napoleon’s behavior by the sequencing of events. Or even possibly, this is just an interpretation of the facts and how they translated into history. I guess that we will have to wait until the book is finished to see.

I suppose that it is also possible that when the book was written, the opinion of Orwell of Stalin is not colored by the full force of his actions. Said another way, Stalin’s career was far from over in the mid 1940s. So, what may have looked like a hero in 1944 may not be so shiny in 2023. Again, I will form an overall opinion at the end of the book.

Finally, the cabal between the opinion of friend and foe and it’s daily change be it Snowball, Fredrickson and Pilkington is representative of politics. Hussein was a friend in the Iran/Iraq war and bin Laden was a friend against the Soviets but a foe in the war in terror. The time frame was different in real life but the concept is the same. It doesn’t matter what is said or who is the target, it only matters that everyone is focused how bad everything is at the moment.

End Your Programming Routine: Propaganda is programming. I think like I said last week that the Iron Law of Bureaucracy applies and that the minute a person starts blindly following a person versus an idea, they are fraught with the potential to be mislead. This is particularly true when that person is more into advancing the organization than the objective because it could be that the person is more misinterpreting the idea or that they know that they don’t have to justify their actions.

April 20, 2023 – Reviewing Decisions

April 20, 2023 /

This is a tribute to the old ‘Tacticool’ Thursday with a new way of looking at things. I was thinking about some decisions I made years ago and how that actually faired through my testing of it. I don’t want to be too obtuse, so let’s just get into it.

When I got into reloading was about the time I started thinking heavily about preparedness. It also happened to coincide with the last big run up on firearms and ammunition. The decisions that I made during that period probably didn’t fair as well through this period and I am going to talk about what and why I have changed my thinking.

It occurred to me as I started writing that I probably need to stop trying to name generic periods of ammunition surplus versus shortage. It feels like it is more el nino versus la nina. It seems to be a cycle where we are more in drought than we are in normal years. For context and clarity, I will use specific years in my following assessment.

When Obama was elected in 2008 there was a run on firearms and ammunition. That lasted until late 2010 and then things were in surplus until Sandy Hook occurred in 2012. That period lasted until Trump was elected and then there was surplus from 2017 to the pandemic emergence in April 2020.

We are still in this cycle of disruption. For instance, certain calibers like 9mm are highly prevalent and affordable on the store shelves. But then there are other calibers such as .357 magnum that I have not seen in the store since 2020. It was for that reason that I wanted to start reloading. If I can’t buy it, I can make it.

My dad is a reloader so I have been saving cartridge cases my whole life. So, while I didn’t have the reloading equipment, I had all of my brass all the way from when I was a youth and knew that someday I would start doing it. I purchased my first set of equipment in 2012 so I started watching the component market. In every drought, primers are the first reloading component to disappear.

I decided to make sure that I had primers in surplus. In previous droughts, gun powder and bullets were available. As it turns out in this current shortage, primers are still absent on store shelves, some bullets are available and powder is very hit and miss. What this means is that while I can probably assemble some kind of formula that will go bang, it is highly likely that I cannot put together the exact components that I want.

In addition to this I also decided that I wanted to have some new brass in storage. This is the portion of the decision that I wonder the most about. Reloading is by it’s definition loading brass that has been fired. So, if I have fired it once, I should have most of it to reload. During my recent batch of range trips I made some brass (by shooting at targets) but didn’t have or couldn’t get powder and bullets.

What is the lesson here? I am not talking about specifically ammunition here. I am talking about holistic decisions. If I don’t have the components to load the entire cartridge then I really have nothing. In addition to that, I have stuff taking up space that I really don’t need and stuff I need that I don’t have.

Yesterday, I talked about having three drills. In fact, I have well more than three drills but I have three drills that are essentially the same. I don’t even really want three drills but I hope to save them and give them away to someone that might appreciate it. If we are hanging on to stuff for a potential purpose, I can understand. But, if we are hanging on to stuff because of a false premise, that is wrong.

Another false premise I had to change in the last five years were my college textbooks. I went to school in the emergence of the internet. Books were the only resource that we had and so I saved my subject specific textbooks in Chemistry. Five years ago, I realized that I haven’t been a chemist in 15 years but I still couldn’t part with them. My sunk cost fallacy was that was thousands of dollars worth of books that still had value. My problem was that there was no market value for them. Ultimately, I ended up dumping them in the recycling bin.

I can truthfully say that I hadn’t looked at the textbooks in 20 years and I haven’t even missed them in the five years since. Ten years ago, I went through purging of music, books and movies it was the same thing. I think sometimes we like the idea of having things more than actually using them. I have a whole box of miscellaneous cables that need to go, you get the point.

At least in America, I think that we are all used to having more than we need, including space. It is easier to give up space than to deal with our emotions and true need. I am sure that it is human nature to optimize the activities that are in our interest zone. I am simply encouraging you to evaluate stuff and the whole process for a happier and healthier future.

End Your Programming Routine: Just like Animal Farm, my story here is an allegory on an error made on a false premise. If I want to retire I need a plan, if I want to become a doctor I need a plan, if I want to shoot in an ammunition blackout, I need a plan. I am guilty of holding off on decisions many times, I live it. I also know that there is no one else to blame but myself for that habit. If and when you make a plan, you need to stop and evaluate whether you are on the right path or not.

April 19, 2023 – Makita 6303H Repair

April 19, 2023 /

Good tools are good tools. I have a certain affinity for the Makita brand that goes all the way back to the early 1990s. Both my uncle and my grandfather were users of the Makita brand dating back to the 1980s after the decline of the Craftsman brand as the tool standard of Americans. My uncle told me a story that when he started as a contractor in 1985, he went through two new Craftsman sanders in a week before switching to Makita and never looking back.

When going through my father-in-law’s shed, I donated a lot of items to Habitat for Humanity. I saved a couple of the Makita tools that I thought were not ‘use off the shelf’ ready, like this drill. Sure, ultimately I think it probably cost more to repair than to purchase used. I suspect that they were ‘gifts’ from a friend as he was a retired cabinet maker that had a habit of giving tools away that he no longer saw a use. And my father-in-law was always gracious.

The amazing thing is that I think you can purchase every single part for this drill still. This includes all the plastic cowlings. My original plan was to just replace the cord, but looking at it more closely, I figured I could get away with shortening the cord. That is what freed my mind to replace the missing auxiliary handle which was the most expensive part of the whole project.

End Your Programming Routine: I now have three, corded electric 1/2″ drills, only one that I actually purchased. My ultimate thought was to repair this drill and give it to someone that might feel more of an emotional connection to it, like my son rather than risking it getting thrown away. For that reason, I didn’t mind spending some money on it as long as it was a quality item. It probably won’t ever get a lot of use now that cordless tools are so convenient. But, what would you pay to do a project with Grandpa again?

April 18, 2023 – Milk Street: The World In a Skillet

April 18, 2023 /

The World In a Skillet by Christopher Kimball is the April 2023 is the Left Coast Culinary Book Club selection for April. We find ourselves back from fiction last month to a cookbook. Not that there is anything wrong with that, I find a it difficult to evaluate a book without using it. That certainly is the case here. That being said, there are some unique elements to this particular cookbook.

You may be familiar with Christopher Kimball as he was a host of America’s Test Kitchen for many years. I did notice that he was gone from the show about eight years ago. In fact, his fixture was so long and his transition abrupt that I thought that maybe there was a health problem or something. This is actually the first time I had seen anything publicly and learning that he changed directions.

My supposition about his whereabouts were not without merit. I ran across some allegations and apparently there was a lawsuit between America’s Test Kitchen and Kimball accusing theft of intellectual property and damages in his new endeavor Milk Street. If you ever watched any of his previous work then you will know it was highly technical. Fortunately, it appears this new direction is simpler and more approachable.

It is interesting to see different approaches, dare I say novel approaches to cookbook and I would say this is one of them. Let’s talk about the title first. Kimball’s premise is that there are a lot of specific apparatus involved in ethnic cooking. Or said another way, each culture uses a proprietary piece of cookware and he surmises that this could all be substituted with a skillet.

That was the approach, but it wasn’t the only innovation. The cookbook is organized by time to cook. So, the user can go to the section and look at the 20 recipes that require less than 45 minutes to make. I think that this is a brilliant because skillet meals are often one dish meals. One dish meals are often those made in time constrained periods (weeknights, after work).

I do have a varied palate and I like the idea of Asian one night, Mexican another, soul food on another and comfort food on Friday. I think that it is pretty interesting that the recipes go from Vietnamese, to Italian to African to Chinese on page by page basis. So, it does seem to me that this approach fits my cooking instincts and preferences.

But wait… there’s more. It is not just single dish recipes but also sides and deserts and all things skillet. Now, maybe that is a step too far from what we need in a cookbook. But, if it is anything it is all in on skillets. So, I will give props for wringing the most out of the one-trick pony.

Out of 300 or so pages, nearly half of them are pictures. It does make you stimulated to page through the book. So, barring the fact that I haven’t cooked anything yet, it is a beautiful book. However in my kitchen, books are starting to clog up spaces so I am moving to the point that they need to earn their place. I do plan on trying a few things in the next month to see if it is worthy.

End Your Programming Routine: The book club is emerging out of our Covid hangover. Starting in 2020, we cut our interactions from about 10 a year to 4 (including March that was already scheduled) with outside summer gatherings. We have more books and meetings in the pipeline again as the composition of the group has changed to the new reality. I love reading and cooking but I warm up to people over time. I also love that being part of this group is a leap of faith for the interests of others. More books to come.

April 17, 2023 – What Your Beer Says About You

April 17, 2023 /

My points here are that brands have some reflection of the consumers and that it is difficult to tell what brands are cloaked in conglomerates. This is some of the issues that I tackle today. Maybe I will talk about beer again, the research was kind of fun and informative.

End Your Programming Routine: Pepsi Clear didn’t kill Pepsi, New Coke didn’t kill Coca-Cola. OJ Simpson didn’t damage Hertz. But, all of these companies recognized the damage that was done to the brand and did something about it. Will InBev do the same or is this the signs of change? I guess time will tell but I think we have seen the end of Bud Light.

April 14, 2023- Animal Farm, Chapter 6

April 14, 2023 /

Happy Friday. Maybe this is how parables are written or maybe it is just this one that is packed full of little things. This chapter is no exception. But, it could also be that it is just the way things go and not just a story. I don’t know, all I can say is that this story just seems to be giving truths.

I will keep it short because the chapter is only ten pages or so. It does seem to get a little old saying every other sentence is a validation of the world the way that it is too. I guess I would be remised if I didn’t acknowledge the significant number of truths and parallels that are in the chapter. So, let’s get into it.

Now that the animals have all been unified under Napoleon and the project focus is building the windmill, it seems like that takes all the focus at the expense of everything else in the world. We might not all remember or were around after 9/11 but I am pretty sure everyone reading this were around during Covid. So, let’s use that example even thought I want to eventually evolve away from that period.

We as a society did everything we could possibly do to focus on Covid. Never mind that people were still getting the flu let alone cancer or having their own personal disasters (and to be fair triumphs too) that happened in the midst of this. In our effort to combat the common cold, we destroyed our economy and nearly ourselves because we couldn’t see the forest from the trees. This is animal farm. Every bit of effort went to build the windmill and so the harvest suffered along with the people.

Spoiler alert: If you haven’t read this book a storm ruins the work. Wouldn’t you know it we have to find someone to blame. In the case of the book it was Snowball. But, we can find plenty of other patsies in our recent history. It was Osama bin Laden, well actually it was Saddam Hussein, no I think it was Muhammar Khadhafi. I don’t know, kill ’em all. Whatever we can do to transplant anger from our own administration and questionable decisions keeps the heat of our own problems.

Regardless of our problems with the boogie man, a modern society has a desire to trade outside of the internal economy. Even North Korean and Iran have limited trade partners. I think that it is arguable that an actual animal farm would need to go outside the farm, but when members want more than what is offered they need to look outside. Because animals are now building a windmill, they need supplies to finish the project and increase the overall comfort.

Finally, when the leaders find it advantageous, they are willing to change principal for their own gain. In this chapter, the pigs are living in the house and sleeping in the beds. If you remember, that violates the forth rule. Because the animals aren’t very literate they cant read the actual rule and can’t remember the actual rule. They are easily manipulated into what was wrong is now right.

This is the problem that we have today. We are actually moving the needle from what was wrong to now there is no longer a wrong and right. We are doing this by denying actual biology by men can be women and women can be men. It only matters if we feel like being called or acting however we feel. Don’t you dare question the should or shouldn’t of the situation.

Actually I misstated the above. What is actually wrong is not acknowledging that people can be whatever gender they want. We no longer read the rules (of morality) and we no longer remember the rules. The more absurd statements that are made, the more when you retract halfway between where we are and what was said becomes reasonable.

End Your Programming Routine: You know that I don’t really care if people feel strongly about becoming another gender. What I can’t really believe is all the mindless dolt’s who don’t see this happening. But then again, I suppose that these are the same people that thought that once we get Hussein or wear masks for the rest of our lives, things will be alright. I am not for condemnation, just stop getting hoodwinked.

April 13, 2023 – Storing Fuel: Accessing Electricity

April 13, 2023 /

Whether you have a generator or are running an inverter from your car, the power needs to get from the point of generation to the device that needs the power. It is imperative for safety and proper operation that you have a collection of appropriate extension cords.

Imagine for a minute that you were smart enough to have a generator and you needed it because of an expected, days long power outage. Because you were so smart, you also know that your refrigerator is probably good for a day or so if you do not open the doors. But what isn’t smart is running the generator inside. You need to get the power from the point of generation to the device safely.

To get further into the nuance, you not only need to get the power safely but also appropriately. Some number of years ago, we hired some painters. They were trying to run the paint sprayer on a household extension cord (these are the two wire, flat cords meant to plug in Christmas lights or something like that). Because there was so much power draw, it was tripping the circuit every ten minutes until I gave them an appropriate diameter extension cord.

The farther you need to go or the more power you need, the thicker the extension cord you need to have. The very common orange outdoor power cords are typically 16gauge wire. These are great for running drills or work lights but when it comes to heavy draw, not so much. They might work, but if something is running on a dedicated circuit, you might want to do more of a calculation to see if this is going to be adequate.

In the old days when I had more time than money, I used to read instruction manuals for power tools. It was pretty common for them to recommend different sized cords depending on the distance you are running. If you know anything about electricity, then you will know that it is code to have a minimum 14 gauge wire for a 15 amp circuit and 12 gauge wire for 20 amp circuit. So, this should be your rough guide on extension cords. And this is why you should be OK with a 16 gauge cord with devices pulling less than 10 amps of continuous use.

If you start getting tricky and adding surge protectors or other devices, they are good for some things like tripping an internal breakers to protect the device. I have some extension cords with built in breakers. They will trip if the tool load gets too high so be aware of the set and forget mentality. I use them when I want to have multiple things plugged in but not necessarily running at the same time. The more frequently a circuit breaker trips, the weaker that breaker becomes and trips much easier.

If your cord is ever hot, it is not sized for the load. It might be OK in an emergency situation or monitored use, but leaving it as a semi-permanent installation is a recipe for a potential fire. Fortunately, most devices that the home user is going to use with a generator will likely be lower draw items. But watch out for power tools and appliances for this problem.

I think that everyone knows that electricity and water do no mix. There are specific cords made for this use but they are expensive. I think a better strategy would be to not have any connections made in a wet environment (have a long enough cord). But if you have to, it is probably much more cost effective to build an enclosure. Drill some holes in a Rubbermaid style container to keep connections dry.

The cable of the extension cord is part of the system. If your cords have damage, repair or do not use. What I do if I have cords that have nicks in the insulation, I will shorten them with repair ends. If the nick is in the middle make two short ones if you can find a use for these. Electrical tape is a field repair. It will probably keep you from getting shocked, but if the conductor is damaged, it is effectively reducing the overall wire gauge and therefore decreasing the overall wattage capacity.

There is also the theory that sometimes it is better to have tool extensions rather than have longer power cords. The common adage in air compressors is add more air lines rather than extension cords. That is a high draw tool at 13-15 amps. If you had a 12 gauge cord, I wouldn’t hesitate to use it. But, most people haven’t invested $100 into an extension cord and more air hoses are always useful. For ultimate longevity, consider other options that just extension cords.

End Your Programming Routine: I didn’t realize that I was going to have so much to say about extension cords so easily. But, if we are going to generate power, it makes no sense not to be able to use it. Having sufficient lengths and quantities available when we need them so that we can do so safely and effectively is really the only thing that makes sense. Not only that, we can use them for the same reasons when the power is not off. It’s a no brainer.

April 12, 2023 – Menudo’s Cousin: Meet Pozole

April 12, 2023 /

I think more people may be familiar with Pozole. It is a pork, hominy and chile soup. I think that it is more approachable in that the main meat portion of the dish is not tripe. As a preparer of menudo lately, I think it might be cheaper too.

My wife has generally refused to host pozole when making menudo is possible. But, I convinced her that this was something I wanted to do. It turns out that there are two types, red and green. I had never seen any other than red but it seems as though she didn’t know red existed.

We made pozole for Easter. I thought that probably the time economics of one big pot of soup beat putting some kind of meal together that included sides as well. I had one thing to shop for, one thing to prep and one thing to watch as it cooks.

I didn’t really read the instructions too carefully because once I saw the ingredients I knew how to make it. In fact, it is nearly exactly like making menudo with a few different ingredients. On Saturday afternoon, I put 7 lbs of pork hocks into the pot with 3 lbs dice pork tenderloin, two whole heads of garlic, 8 tablespoons of oregano and 6 quarts of water.

I very likely would have used half to no water if it were not for the fact that we were leaving for the evening. I didn’t want the meat to burn before the liquid was rendered out. When I make menudo, I don’t even add water to it. I turned the burner on to very low simmer. My goal would be to have the garlic dissolve, the meat fall off the bone but still have substance in the morning.

In the morning I added 3 lbs of cubed pork, 1 drained #10 can of hominy and the chiles. The original recipe called for 16 ancho chile (dried poblano chile). I felt that was a little light so I added the remainder of a bag of California chilis as well, about 20. Normally, if I wanted more flavor, I would add more of the same chile rather than mix them but ancho can have some spice to them and I was really trying to keep this spiceless.

There is a lot of mass here, the recipe was scaled to 16 quarts so salt to taste. It is going to take quite a bit of it but keep tasting, over salted soup is ruined. I know because I have done it multiple times and I sure don’t want to do it for Easter dinner.

After seasoning, let it all come together and prepare the garnish. Traditional garnish are tostadas, shredded cabbage, lime wedges, chopped white onion and sliced radish. In my house, we have to have both lime and lemon because some people prefer one over the other. I find lemon too bright and the sweeter lime is the right flavor as well as the authentic choice.

The way I made this, it was very mild. Many people like to spice it up a bit and so salsa or sliced chili peppers to add some heat could also be made. I skipped this preparation this time. I would have substituted menudo mix for some of the oregano if I had it on hand because it has chile pequin in it and it rather spicy. But, I didn’t want any leftover spices I wasn’t going to use for a while.

End Your Programming Routine: Who doesn’t like ham. We had it most Easter dinners throughout my life. I thought this twist was fun and delicious. I think it was a win on the effort front and I think that I convinced my wife that pozole is not the weaker cousin of menudo. It looks a lot the same and even tastes a lot the same, it just comes from a different family (of ingredients).