Author Archives: Stan King

Mar 20

It Was A Slow Sunday Afternoon. Then, Suddenly, Absolutely Nothing Happened. Need Some Coffee.

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Don’t know what to tell you.

New Study: Lifelong Marriage Reduces Risk of Dementia: Probably mostly because SHE won’t give HIM the satisfaction and HE won’t get dementia without her permission. I’ve been married awhile …

“Shattering Records” – Wildfires in 2021 Emitted a Record-Breaking Amount of Carbon Dioxide: And, somehow, it’s all Trumps fault.

How Parents Decide if They Should Vaccinate Their Kids Against COVID-19: Try it first on the kids you’re not quite so fond of. If it works …

Revolutionizing Biotechnology: Scientists Create Supercharged Bacteria with Immunity to Viral Infections: Because gain of function on the COVID wasn’t deadly enough.

Physicists Confirm 50-Year-Old Hypothesis About Selfish Behavior: We’d love to share the results with you but it’s Mine. Mine!

Revolutionizing Neuroscience: First-Ever Complete Wiring Map of Insect Brain Neurons: Unfortunately, they used only 2300 Democrats in the study. Offer them more “free” shit to participate. That’ll work.

Made three (3) dump runs with my dump trailer this week; totaling just over 3000 lbs of wallboard taken out of the Father-In-Law Apartment (FILA). Was fairly easy and the dump trailer worked a charm. Saturday’s run I even got through quickly cause I didn’t have to wait in the “unload it yourself” line. I got to use the dump trailer side. Cool. Less than $200 for the three loads.

Hired a young guy and a couple of his friends to tear out the FILA and load the trailer. Best $500 I’ve spent lately! They did good work.

Contacted the Recycle/E-waste place about the butt-ton of old cd/dvd cases I have that I’m looking to get rid of. Nope; not recyclable. I can donate/give them to someone or throw them out in the trash (where they will sit in the ground for 1000+ years). Just seems like they’re made of plastic so they should be able to be remade into other plastic “things.” Melt them down and recast them in a new shape. If I had the means I’d try it here at home. With aluminum cans too. Wonder how much a small furnace would cost?…

My hydroponics experiment in my bathroom is going well. The spinach is doing really well. The lettuce not so much. The tomato plants are taking off and doing so well that I took one and put it in a pot to do the “Kraty(?)” method. Just to experiment. Yeah, I know we’re going into spring in a couple of weeks; but I’m trying to learn this stuff.

Made a kick-butt pork roast in my insta-pot for dinner. Pork was still mostly juicy. SWMBO liked the carrots: which I put a couple spoonfuls of Lemon Curd (jelly), wrap in tin foil, and put on top of the meat when I cook it. Pressure cook for 15 minutes and let depressurize “naturally.” Taters were kind of a bit too mushy though.

Ah well.

Been watching those “shuffle dance” video’s on YouTube. I don’t think I had that much energy when I was that age!

 

Mar 14

Centurylink Techs Stopped By. Internet Appears To Be Fixed. Went From 0.40 mbps Down to 2.45 mbps Down.

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Which means more to SWMBO than to me. Happy Wife. Happy Life. All it took was switching pairs in the wire and a new modem. They were slightly surprised that our modem was so old (8 years or so) and it still worked.

So she’s off in her room doing genealogy on ancestry.com and familysearch.com AND listening to YouTube music happier than a tornado in a trailer park.

Hired a young guy to tear walls out in the FILA. He got a lot done today! Impressive. Filled the utility trailer with wallboard so we’ll have to make a dump run tomorrow. Cool! Found big black ants (hopefully NOT carpenter ants but I’ll find out) and lots of mouse poop. Told SWMBO to turn her new cat loose overnight down there. Probably not happening.

I’m going to bed.

Mar 12

My Internet Totally Sucks Right Now And I’ll Be Lucky If This Even Posts.

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Last Wednesday after taking SWMBO out for breakfast, we stopped by the Chef’s Store and bought 2 10-lb chubs of 80% burger. $66 +/-. Thursday I cooked up 10 lbs and started it in the freeze dryer. Today I did the same to the 2nd chub but saved enough out to make some kick-ass chili. And it was. The beans, mushrooms, and corn came out of our pantry (well, technically the can of Mexican Style tomato’s did too) since we NEED to start really using the freeze dried stuff. But, man, that chili was good. And, yes, I’m freeze drying the left-overs.

While all that was going on I re-initialized our modem to factory specs to see if that would help our Internet connectivity. Nope. Not really. But I do have way fewer “things” attached to the modem now. And re-installed only a few of the WI-fi electronics. (Our phones. My tablets.) Had to set up new ip addresses for all the devices and make everything connect to each other. Kinda fun but kinda a pain in the ass. But SWMBO has the NAS for her music and shows so she’s not complaining to me about not being able to do anything. That’s a plus.

So now we wait for the Century Link Tech to get here sometime Monday. I figure our drop-outs and really (really!) slow speeds are either the modem is just too old or there’s some type of of actual damage to our lines. Which was caused by our neighbors digging them up the last time we had these kinds of problems. (But, of course they called the “call before you dig” folks and THEY said it was okay to dig there …NOT!) Personally, I’m kind of hoping they’ve done it again and the Century Link folks turn them in or whatever they can do.

Absolutely not a lot of anything else going on. Still cold and wet out and has even snowed a few times this week. Did get out and start up my tractor and run it up and down the driveway a few times to be sure it (and I) still worked.

Coffee last Thursday with some of the NMARES members at the QFC. Didn’t order a $6 coffee this time. Had a $3 gator aid type drink instead. Holy Shit things are spendy in the QFC these days!

Bought another pump for the hydroponics experiment. Didn’t work much better than the last pump I bought. Looking at the chart on the side of the box I need the largest pump they make (195 gpm or something like that) to get my plants watered automatically. Next payday probably. Bought a new lamp that puts out different colored lights for what stage the seedlings are in. I don’t quite understand that part; yet. I will though.

The DSL and Internet lights on the modem are dark. Reboot.

So, let’s see if this will post.

Mar 05

Snowed A Bit Today. Was All Mushy By 1500.

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Which pretty much defines Western WaRshington in March every year.

Otherwise, SSDD.

Saw my Doc yesterday. He’s referring me to a knee surgeon and an audiologist. (I’m thinking I need to keep my knee out of my ear or something…). And, since my Blood Pressure was 190/95 in his office he upped all my BP meds. Personally, I think I was kind of upset that they still require everyone to wear masks even though they’ve been proven to be ineffective in so many studies. But, be that as it may … Got my meds filled at the local instead of the Naval Hospital and it came to $53 out of pocket. Probably saved at least that much in gas and waiting (masked) at the Navy Pharmacy for a couple of hours (minimum). Still, 90 days of meds so I’m not really feeling the pain.

Speaking of feeling the pain: that TerraMaster NAS I bought finally started really not working like I believe it’s supposed to work. Half the time I can’t even access it without rebooting. A semi-angry e-mail to TerraMaster tech’s got the reply of: The file system is probably corrupted. Do these 45 steps (which I attempted) and that’ll fix it. Nope. Not happening. Long about step 13 the NAS kept responding in a way contrary to what I was being told to expect. So I just started the “wipe everything and start over” process. If this takes as long as the “add a new drive” process took then it’ll still be doing this Monday evening. But the little box said not to close or navigate from this page OR ELSE! We’ll see.

Met some of the guy from my Ham Radio club at the QFC in town last Thursday and I lost my Starbuck’s Virginity. One of they guys bought us all a coffee but we had to order what we wanted ourselves. So I did. First time. Made it 70 years before taking the fall though. Felt awful spending $6 bucks of his money for a coffee though.

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