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January 24, 2023 – Is Bigger, Better?

January 24, 2023 /

There is a old saying that goes like this “If the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem is treated like a nail”. Today I am talking about knives and for a very good reason. I have been watching the developments of this murder investigation of four Idaho college students very closely.

In the morning of November 13, 2022 it was reported that four college students were murdered in there house. My first thought was gang or drugs but it turned out to be something much more sinister than that. On the surface, three coeds and a boyfriend were stabbed to death. Two remaining roommates were home and did not hear a thing. I think I will do a podcast so I am going to skip the further details on all of this for some other time.

The suspected murder weapon is a Ka-bar knife. I say suspected because the weapon has not yet been found. But evidence at the scene suggests that it was a Ka-bar knife. The Ka-bar is known as the military knife as versions are issued to the Army, Marines and Navy and have been used since World War II.

Knives are tools and going back to my first sentence, it is one of the few tools issued to soldiers in the field. Consequently, the soldier’s knife is subject to all kinds of abuse like digging in the ground and opening cans. While I have no doubt that it has been used in combat, 99% of the things it has been used for are much more mundane.

I have a knife in my office that I primarily use for things like cutting cheese, sausage apples and the like. I took it out of my vehicle kit where I originally purchased it for things like bushcrafting. That would be things like building temporary shelter or batoning wood (to make kindling) as well as digging and opening cans. So, I would say it is pretty inappropriate for the tasks that I currently use it for.

My knife is a Buck 119. I was looking at it the other morning and the thought occurred to me that it looks a lot like a Ka-bar. So, I did an internet search for comparisons between the Buck 119 and Ka-bar knives. What I got was some good information while a lot of it fell into the ‘Mall Ninja’ category. “The Ka-bar is a fighting knife, the Buck is a hunting knife.” That is the statement that struck me as a pure point of ignorance.

The eight inch kitchen knife is the standard for chefs and cooks alike. It is good for it’s chopping and dicing capabilities, but not for all things, particularly delicate work such as peeling. Now, I use my chef’s knife for most things including tasks that would be better suited to the smaller pairing knife because I don’t want to dirty another utensil or it is already dirty or I just think I can do it.

Getting back to my point here, people that say the Buck 119 is a hunting knife have never used a knife in their lives. A hunting knife is primarily used to eviscerate and skin an animal. Just like any job, having different tools can lead to an advantage for the efficacy of the task. But, sticking your hand into the body cavity of an animal to cut the esophagus and therefore remove all of the innards is not a job for a six inch blade, way too large.

I think the optimum blade length for a ‘hunting knife’ is about three inches long. It is too large for some tasks (inside the body cavity) and too small for others (like breaking meat into primal cuts). It performs perfectly for most of the field butchering activities. Here is a place that I definitely agree with Steven Rinella on the best qualities of a hunting knife.

I fortunately can’t speak to the best qualities of a fighting knife. I think that if it comes to testing that aspect, it is a bad, bad day. But, generally speaking it is my opinion that knives with long blades are only useful in the kitchen and wildcrafting. There are too many variables in combat to makes the data only anecdotal. Just like people have been killed after being shot with a BB gun, so have people been killed with a pocket knife.

End Your Programming Routine: In my wild, circuitous route to get here I guess that my point is that internet information can be wildly misleading. There is no doubt that the Buck is marketed as a hunting knife. This particular knife is carried at many stores in the sporting goods section that only sanction hunting not tactical (or fighting). Bushcraft is a very niche and expensive category of knives usually reserved to boutique makers. As with all tools, having the right one for the purpose is always better but having the knowledge of what the right tool would be is better yet.

January 23, 2023 – Coping With the Winter Blues

January 23, 2023 /

As a person growing up in the pacific northwest, I thought that I was immune to the winter blues. Apparently, if it gets bad enough then it has a technical name called Seasonal Affective Disorder. I don’t feel as though I am mentally effected but I definitely feel sluggish. sometimes.

My solution is to power through by setting goals and achievable milestones. That keeps that ball moving with ‘wins’ so that I can keep those blues away. Today I am talking about strategies and things to consider.

End Your Programming Routine: The silver lining here is that we are on the upswing, it is already late January and Spring is right around the corner. Or at least it getting ready for spring is around the corner. So, we just have to keep vigilant of the potential problems that arise.

January 20, 2023 – Atlas Shrugged 3:9

January 20, 2023 /

This is the second to last chapter and we are heading to the big bang. Last chapter we had Galt’s refusal to cooperate, so where does that leave us? Well in true government fashion, we need to double down on failed efforts. Because more of the same will eventually work, right?

I keep saying that things are not going well but truly they are failing at this point. I think that our own experiences have proven that failing is often hard to recognize when you are in the middle of the collapse. You need a point of reference in order to establish how much change has actually occurred.

I am going to skip the chapter synopsis but to say that Dr Stadler and Cuffy Meigs blow themselves up at Project X trying to take over a portion of the country. Numerous high level government officials quit because of hopelessness and others just go straight strongman.

I want to go back to the idea of collapse. I have heard it describe as slow collapse because it doesn’t happen overnight. I suppose that there are those immediate changes like in the case of a coup. But, I actually think that this is normal. If we think about near history collapses like the Soviet Union it was fairly quick as over the course of a couple months. It probably seems fast because we condense history but I am pretty sure that three months of hell doesn’t seem fast at the time, especially if you are in it.

The course of Atlas Shrugged seems to run over multiple years. If there were concrete date references, I missed them. But I do distinctly recall descriptions of different seasons and we went through multiple winters and falls in the book. My point with this is that this would be termed a slow collapse.

There are so many things that we are born into that we never knew any different. Recently, I have heard many comparisons to the speculation of 2023 and 2008. For those that don’t study or remember history, 2008 was when the US government had a policy of “Too Big to Fail”. Different pundits are predicting that 2023 is going to be worse than 2008. Let’s take a look.

Yesterday, I was reading a headline “223,000 non-farming jobs added in December 2022”. The subtext of the headline was that this number blew expectations out of the water. And the implications from that is that things are so much better than expected and you should feel good about this too. I say this in context that also released in the Twitter files the FBI paid Twitter $3.5million for the ability to influence who and what was allowed to be posted on twitter.

Now I ask you, even if the numbers are truly accurate can we even trust any source at this point? Even if we believe that to be true, how many jobs were lost. I saw a lot of sizable numbers between Meta, ABC, Twitter and Amazon. You see, when you add 200 but lose 500 there is a lot to be desired. The headlines I was reading to support this writing was saying the ‘hot economy is starting to cool’. I am thinking to myself ‘what hot economy’? It’s hard to say that seven interest rate increases and 50% inflation equals a hot economy,

Anyway, I am probably going to get out of my lane if I keep going because I am not going to provide proper source citing for this. My point here is that we are in collapse and we have people telling us how lucky we are going to get. At the risk of mixing politics and economics, I ask are we more free today than we were in 1980 or less? Since there is no evidence that anyone can provide that we are more free, we have failed liberty. And that is a collapse in my book.

End Your Programming Routine: This topic could warrant an entire series. I also think that there is very little that be done about all of this, especially as an individual. I suppose the good news is that it is not a violent collapse. Smart money recognizes the situation and takes advantage of it. Don’t be afraid to study the rules and find the loopholes, there is still profits to be made in my lifetime. And that is all we need to be successful and by proxy happy.

January 19, 2023 – Humor, a Deep Cut

January 19, 2023 /

Today is one of those days I am just writing and we will see where we end. If you are like me, then you probably remember the campy 1980s movies with titles like Caddyshack, Airplane, Police Academy, Vacation and the list goes on. Given my age, this was a very impressionable time in my life (5-15). I don’t know what the specific trigger was, but I have been very influenced by comedy.

It wasn’t just movies but also TV and print. We weren’t generally not allowed to stay up and watch Saturday Night Live or the late shows but for when we might be over at a friend’s house. I remember checking out Garfield compilations in grade school at the library. A daily read was the comic section in the newspaper.

It was a great day when I could get my hands on a Mad magazine. My mom was really kind of against them because they were crass but we had a handful of them anyway, usually purchased at the used book store. Funny story, one of them had a parody lyrics of Bruce Springsteen’s song called ‘Porn in the USA’. My brother and I would yell it out at the top of our lungs when we heard the actual song. It was only about ten years ago when I was thinking about that moment that I actually realized what I was saying. I am kind of shocked that my mom never said anything when we were doing it.

Later as I went into my middle school years, my interest in humor got more dark following the Mad magazine vein. I started to make sure that daily newspaper reading got political cartoons as well. In fact, the used book store we occasionally frequented had a free monthly that compiled political cartoons throughout the country that I liked to read. I started skipping all the strips that never made me laugh. But there were a handful that I liked such as BC, Calvin and Hobbes and and especially The Far Side.

This is actually what triggered me to write about humor. I was a huge fan of The Far Side. I still have the Best Of’s volume 1-3. Unfortunately for me, Larson decided that he had reached his pinnacle in 1994 and it was over. Incidentally, 1995 was also the last year of Calvin and Hobbes syndication so it was kind of a difficult time in my humor journey. That’s OK because I was in college, so TV took over.

We had very strict TV limits when we were kids. It was a handful of approved shows until we got into middle school. That means that we watched the most popular shows but that was it. I remember some of my parents friends persuaded them to allow us to watch The Cosby Show. What stuck out for me was actually a show called Night Court. Sure, Cosby was cutesy but Night Court made me laugh. I found myself re-watching episodes when I was not working in 2019. I wrote about this show in 2020. Ironically, there is a reboot of Night Court coming to NBC very soon.

There were three other sitcoms that I consider brilliant. That was Seinfeld, That 70’s Show and The Office (the Steve Carrell years although I have given the later years a chance recently and found them better than I remember). There were other shows that I found entertaining but never planned my evening around like The Simpsons (and all of their spin-offs), Southpark and the ‘adult cartoons’.

I would say that we are in the post TV era at this point. I don’t really watch TV anymore and my wife watches them via streaming platforms. My kids don’t watch TV at all. I am talking like the over the air, nightly line-up like we did growing up. But there was a couple of years that I had an XM Serious subscription. Most of the time, the station was tuned to Raw Dog Comedy.

I would say that my early 30s were the genre of stand up comedy. Raw Dog is the unfiltered station and pretty much anything goes. You know that I love Norm MacDonald and of course, I loved the big acts. But I found some others that really clicked with me like Todd Berry and David Cross. It takes me back to those days of listening to Eddy Murphy on cassette. That was some good stuff.

From the mid thirties onward, it was podcasts over everything else. I do like the ones that make me laugh as much as the serious ones, like Adam Carolla shows. I would say today, I spend my time primarily serious entertainment like reading books. But, my wife bought me this Far Side Calendar for Christmas. So, I have a daily dose of an old friend when I turn on the lights in the middle of the night. It brings me back to a simpler time.

End Your Programming Routine: I guess where we ended up was me rambling about all the content that I liked. I suppose this a window into my soul. I believe that humor is important in health and happiness, not just for entertainment. I have just been letting Todd Berry autoplay while I write this, I am having a hard time finishing because I am laughing so hard. I am going to sign off so I can keep listening.

January 18, 2023 – How Hot is Hot Enough?

January 18, 2023 /

Recently, I noticed a problem. It seemed like the first five minutes of the shower was hot and then it went lukewarm. I didn’t think that I was imagining things so I started to ask some questions. Did my wife take a shower before me? Are the kids here? And the answer was no. Hmm, seems like we might have a problem with the hot water heater.

I looked at the date on the water heater, it was dated 1994. So, that is 29 years old folks. The common stated lifecycle is 10-15 years. That means that when we bought the house, we were at the end of the expected duration. But, that is crazy, as long as the tank is not leaking (meaning rusted throughout), then there should be some serviceable parts and some way to check it.

Electric water heaters have two elements at top and a bottom. I surmised that there was a problem with the bottom element because there was some hot water. A quick aside on how water heaters work. Because of the temperature gradient, hot water is on top and cooler water is on the bottom. As you draw from the tank, hot water comes off the top while cooler water is added to the bottom. This actually pushes the hot water out. Time to test things out.

First, take the covers off of the tank. This exposes the elements and thermostats (one per element). Then, with a multi-meter set to resistance (that is the ohm’s symbol omega, sorry I cant add special characters) put the lead on each wire terminal and measure. The expected result depends on your particular element but I was expecting around12 and 13 ohms. From the picture, you can see that the top element measured 13.4 and the bottom measured 0.7 ohms.

If you remember you basic physics and circuits, 1 ohm is a broken circuit. What is likely happened that the element is all gunked up with mineral build-up. But, the element could be burned out and the circuit is completed with the mineral build up, at least that is my speculation.

Had I gotten two good resistance measurements of the top and bottom elements, I might have turned my attention to the thermostat. In theory, those could be tested too, but it is more complicated and I didn’t do it so I am not going to talk any further about it. I am going to attempt to replace the elements.

I say attempt because I hope that I can get the bottom element out. There is a lot of corrosion around the element and who knows what the inside is looking like. I will probably look at the top element and will make a decision as I get there. The replacement I ordered comes with two elements and is billed as a ‘tune-up’.

End Your Programming Routine: If you are interested, stay tuned to follow up on this project. What I am trying to get across today is that things like this are not out of reach of the average homeowner. A little knowledge of how a hot water heater works and what is possible can lead to saving a lot of money. I don’t know this for a fact, but my guess is that a plumber would replace the whole thing because after all, it is three times older than it’s expected life.

January 17, 2023 – Dealing With Pantry Bloat

January 17, 2023 /

If it were left strictly up to me, I would keep a tight control on what goes in to the pantry. Right or wrong, I feel an obligation to ‘get rid of things’. It ends up being an alphabet soup if you will of things that you thought you would make or partials or whatever.

Here is the technique that I use. I pick an ingredient and then I build a meal around it. That’s it. You keep doing that until you eliminate oddball stuff or get the volume of items cleared out. Of course, you could always use the canned food drive as well.

I strongly recommend that you “buy what you eat”. Looking at my picture you can see that there are a couple cans of soup. I purchased those because my wife was sick and she wanted pho. It was already 5pm and I was 30 mins from home. I made the decision to buy chicken noodle soup instead of adding another hour of going to a restaurant and ordering take out. She told me that she hates chicken noodle soup. You would think after 30 years, that might be something I knew, but that was news to me. So, I bought something that we don’t eat.

You can also see that we have a can of Jack fruit. That particular item, my son bought from the Asian grocery store. We have a vegetarian, Mexican cookbook that uses jack fruit in place of meat. This particular ingredient I do plan on using, I have just been lazy about doing it.

The dry side of the pantry is more difficult to one and done. For this reason, I suggest that you either substitute whenever possible or buy the smallest quantity available. If you find that you are really gaga over the results, then invest in the real thing because going the other way around leaves you with a 7/8″ container of an ethnic spice or mix that you have to make copious quantities (or throw it out).

I have loads of hot sauces, rubs, seasoning mixes etc. I personally have an aversion to some of these things because I don’t trust the composition. My preference is to make my own blends from basic spices that is sized for what I am doing. I guess that it doesn’t hurt to have these things around, I just don’t like the clutter. We will be thankful in the zombie apocalypse.

Another trick I have used successfully is the bulk section. Bulk doesn’t necessarily mean large quantity, it means quantity of your choosing without packaging. So when you have 3 leftover lasagna noodles because the pack has 12, you can buy 6 noodles from the bulk section to get rid on the three you do have. It is also good for recipe sized purchases. And added advantage is that it is cheap.

I have a similar relationship with the refrigerator as the pantry. And the strategy is the same, pick an ingredient and build a meal around it. Things like jellies can be incorporated in sauces or compotes for example. Keep going and stop buying things that you only use once and pretty soon, things will be cleaned up.

End Your Programming Routine: This is a balance. I would never tell my family that they couldn’t purchase something. But, I don’t appreciate the burden of having leftover ingredients around. I guess if no one can stand it, you can always pitch it but I hate the waste too. I would much rather find a way to use it up than throw it away. Above all, if you focus on eliminating the problem, then chances are pretty good that you will succeed.

January 16, 2023 – A is A

January 16, 2023 /

Reading Atlas Shrugged gave me a fundamental paradigm shift. Not only did it inspire me to look into philosophy as a discipline but change my appreciation for it in general. I guess it never occurred to me that fundamental understanding of the same definition is critical to proper logical analysis. It sounds so simple but I guess that I have never done it before.

End Your Programming Routine: I think this is where we start the end your programming routine. We need to understand the fundamental questions in life to be able to successfully manage and thrive. I am definitely thinking of doing more in this line, including study of philosophy. I enjoyed it, I hope you do too.

January 13, 2023 – Atlas Shrugged 3:8

January 13, 2023 /

We are getting close now, I can almost taste it. After this chapter, there are approximately 40 pages and two chapters remaining. I have to say, I didn’t anticipate completely what happens in this chapter and I am still noodling how this is going to end. So let’s get into it.

This is the chapter that follows the 60 page statement by John Galt. Immediately, the government representatives that were hijacked are stunned. The entire country is in a tailspin, of course and government continues to put up a false front. This is where the plan to coopt John Galt starts to happen.

Dabny looks up Galt’s address despite being warned not to. Her finding him draws the government to him as well. They capture John Galt and he is then held in an attempt to give the appearance that he has joined sides with the status quo.

The entire book has been this chess match of proxy conflicts between the group saying they represent ‘the people’ and the group of people that say that they represent ‘the individual’. In this chapter, we have direct interaction between the two groups. Surprisingly, Galt gets captured and is held prisoner in the attempt to win him over to the side of the people.

I suppose, this is where the rubber meets the road in this chapter. It is sometimes a good strategy to emulate what is successful for your own purposes. For instance, I have heard the advice that if something is working in a particular genre, then that means that there is a market and the possibility for it to work for you. In more plain language, I will use an example.

In today’s day and age, there is a kind of career as what is called ‘an influencer’. The nearest way I can figure is that people get money for being a celebrity of sorts. It is enough money to be a full time job and sometimes significant amount of money. So, because that is a career, that means that there is room for others to do the same thing even in the same space. The same can be said for contractors or widget makers too.

What isn’t said or known is the formula on how to make it actually work. Certainly, there are attributes like appearance, use of popular platforms, consistency of interaction but there are also intangibles; one of them that I would call luck. My point with all of that is that emulating success is a way to obtain it. I think we have quite the opposite in Atlas Shrugged.

One of the characteristics of obtaining success is authenticity. Politicians are in a way influencers as well. Recently, a former pope just died. During his time at the head of the Catholic church, he was seen as a traditionalist or conservative. This direction of the church was really seen as a shift from the populist direction of his predecessor.

I am not a Catholic, but a Christian so I am adjacent. There is no doubt that the Pope is an important figure to people in that religion. My sense is that even though there was strife over policy, there was no doubt that he was a man of faith and genuine in his beliefs. What I am trying to say is that whether we agree with the direction I don’t think that we can disagree on the intent.

That is the thing that any organization which tries to coopt a movement or attach itself to a rising star could possibly make it work. Of course Atlas Shrugged was not going to work because the government really didn’t believe in the same things as John Galt. They wanted to use his popularity and be seen as associated with him rather than embrace his beliefs. The reason that I say this is because they truly don’t need Galt to fix the problem, they need to change their beliefs and therefore the policies.

I sometimes think that a parliamentary style government would be better than our government. But, then I think that Parliaments are so much more subject to opinion with the ‘no confidence’ card that can be played that I am left with no good government options. You might think that makes a government more responsive to the people but my observation is that it is an entity that is more manic.

End Your Programming Routine: Just like Lord of the Rings and a score of other fiction works, you cannot control the power if you are not worthy. Simply attaching your name to a rising star doesn’t work without being genuine with your convictions. Even at the point of a gun, John Galt refused to cooperate. Because after all, are you going to murder someone on a national broadcast? Before completely chancing it, know your environment and risks. If you stand for your convictions, you can’t be swayed, even by force.

January 12, 2023 – The Red/Green Show

January 12, 2023 /

Back when I had first got out of college and began my career, of course all of my co-workers were older than me. I remember one of them that could have been my dad was so ecstatic about this Red Green Show. He went on and on about how funny it was and that I should watch it. For us, it aired on PBS on Friday nights so I tried to watch it once and I didn’t get it.

Red Green was the main character’s name. I feel like Red Green was also a dichotomy; kind of two states that cannot exist simultaneously. You can’t be a handyman and use duct tape to fix everything for instance like in the TV show. This leads to today’s topic of red and green lasers.

I have had a red laser for 5-7 years. The laser is put into the bore of the barrel and used to project a dot that you would then try to manipulate your scope so that the first shot is on paper. This is the process of bore sighting a scope. After numerous uses at the range I decided that red is not adequate for range work.

The picture on the left is in near darkness. The camera flash made it seem lighter than it really was. My point is that in the dark, the red laser is readily visible up to 25 yards or so. I have used it in the basement to get a preliminary bore sight. But, I really only have 10 yards of distance in my basement. At the rifle range the closest target stand is 50 yards. Sometimes even that initial bore sight is not adequate enough.

This is when I decided that I would try green. I haven’t actually used it at the range yet but the picture on the right is outside in the daylight. I had to get close enough so that the camera could actually pic up the dots (about five yards) but I could see it at 15 yards easily. By the time I could see the green dot in the camera, I could also see the red light with my eyes.

Light in the green spectrum is easier for the human eye to see than red in daylight. A couple things to be aware of. Green light requires more power to generate. So, you will see with pricing that they are also more expensive. I have heard that you get a couple of hours of laser usage with green but double or more with red. So, a long day at the range you may run through a battery or more.

In my day (before cheap lasers) if you had one it was red. That means that red lasers are ubiquitous in laser sights and bore sights. But, now there are often choices between red and green. Pick green if money is no option. But, don’t feel bad about red. My view is that lasers are low-light tools when it comes to aiming. I suppose that my vision and skill is fine enough that in daylight I am going to use the sights and not rely on the laser for aiming.

As I said above, I have yet to use this green laser on any sight in activity. So, what I am talking about comes from colloquial wisdom and not experience. What I can say is that I can’t see the red laser at 50 yards, so there was a lot of guessing when I was working on sighting in last year.

End Your Programming Routine: This is one of those topics that I had on my list for Tacticool Thursday last year. This is an example of some of the stuff I am occasionally going to talk about still. I am going to reduce the frequency of this kind of content and I am surly going to avoid outing anything specific that could be construed as illegal in today’s political content.

January 11, 2023 – Think Outside the Burrito

January 11, 2023 /

The breakfast burrito is the the perfect palate for leftovers. I often find that I can creatively use things that I wouldn’t normally do because it is fun. Frequently it is the case that when we have significant quantity of leftovers that I am looking for ways to re-imagine them. But breakfast is a place to use that tiny bit.

I will give some examples. My wife is a big fan of what we call church tacos. When we talk Taco Tuesday, this is what we are talking about. They are what you might recognize as the classic, Taco Bell style ground beef taco. I am abhorred by the fast food version but we use our own beef and corn tortilla, lettuce, tomato, cheese, sour cream and salsa. The reason we call them church tacos is because the local catholic church sells tacos like this out of their food cart at celebrations.

This is a lot of background to explain that we usually have two or three tacos worth of meat leftover. It is not enough to do much with but I like to mix with scrambled eggs to put in my breakfast burrito. Another thing that I like to do is make a hash with that leftover end of roast beef and potatoes, onions and peppers. It is not just meat, but those small quantities of green (red/yellow/orange) peppers as well. If you have leftover fajita fixings scramble well with eggs as well.

During New Year’s Eve, we mad a ton of snacks for a very few people. One of the things that was brought over was a pile of jalapeno poppers. So, when you have 20 of them for four people along with a charcuterie and dip and other things, you end up with a lot leftovers. What to do with them? Put them in breakfast burritos.

I simply cut a whole one in half lengthwise and added it to my eggs and potatoes and instant breakfast burrito. I find that this is a good place to add the one leftover hotdog or sausage. I have also used those take-home box French fries as well. We also often have a small amount of beans as well. I love beans in my breakfast, burritos included.

One more tip. After the burrito is wrapped, I think that it benefits from putting on the griddle whole. This gives a chance for the cheese to melt and it also reduces some of the excessive moisture that the tortilla contains and also tends to keep the whole thing together while you are eating it.

I have not taken the time to master the flour tortilla. This is something that I probably won’t ever do because we just don’t eat many of them. And when you want to make a breakfast burrito, it is not something that you want to add another couple of hours making tortillas. However, I will say that the homemade tortillas doubles the quality result.

There are some different strategies that I use with leftover corn tortillas and salsa, but that is a topic for a different day. If you don’t like tortillas then all of these things can be made without the tortilla and then I call them a scramble. Sometimes I do it that way, particularly when the vegetable quantities are higher that I want to use or when I replace white potatoes with sweet potatoes.

End Your Programming Routine: What I am trying to get across today is that you can have small amounts of things that you can mix together and get some magical results. This not only keeps you inventory tidy but keeps things that would normally be passed over because there is just not enough to do anything with from hanging around until they get pitched. I have my preferential palate, but I am sure that there are other combinations of things that would be just as good, I just haven’t tried them yet.