Ruth

Categories Politics

And we wonder whats wrong with today’s kids….

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I just found the answer:

“You have to look at it from every child’s point of view that was raised in the hood,” Harris said. “You have to understand… how he gonna get his money to have clothes to go to school? You have to look at it from his point-of-view.”

Nope, sorry, I don’t have to look at it from his POV.  17 is old enough to hold down a part time job.  17 is old enough to be doing odd jobs under the table to earn money.  By 17 I was working an average of 20+hrs a week, after school and weekends, for minimum wage.  There are plenty of ways he could have been earning the money the get his school clothes.  And that’s without doing his shopping at 2nd hand stores, where it’s entirely possible to come up with entire wardrobes worth of clothes for very inexpensively.

But he chose to break into someone’s home instead.

Regardless of what you think of the shooting, the above comment from the robber’s family should disgust you.  It’s the perfect example of WHY there’s a problem.

On a slightly amusing note, I can’t find a single picture of the home-owner anywhere, so I’m assuming she’s black too.  Guess it’s not fun for the media to persecute someone if they’re not white?

 

found over at Lagniappe’s Lair.

Categories Dog, Gardening, Nothing Much

General update

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I hung on till the appointment Friday evening, and the doctor confirmed another sinus infection.  She wasn’t happy about it being the 2nd one in barely a month.  And warned me if I end up with a 3rd in equally short order they may end up prescribing me the heavy duty nasty drugs which do bad things to how my body copes.  I’ve taken them before.  I know what my body does.  Its bad.  So cross your fingers this is the end of it.

Mother Nature appears to have remembered its only March here in Upstate NY

weather

 

That is much more like what I’ve been expecting to see.  Here’s hoping it won’t kill the apple crops.

Most of my seeds have sprouted, and I’m considering replanting the ones that haven’t.  Seriously considering planting out the snap peas and other such cold lovers this week.

Arty’s been enjoying this warm spell, while Apollo hasn’t started shedding yet and I’m sure he’ll be delighted by the return of normal weather.

I saw my first Bluebird of the season this week.  Cross fingers he’ll stick around!

Categories Gardening, Nothing Much

Sick again

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Woke up Monday with a scratchy throat.  I drank lots of hot tea and tried to ignore it.  BTW, this home-made cough syrup works almost as well on a sore throat as it does on coughs.  Though next time I make it I’m cutting the amount of lemon in half.

But by Tuesday morning it was obvious it wasn’t going to go away so I called my doctors office.  No openings available till Friday evening (and that with a different doctor in the practice)!  “But you can go to the urgent care in the same building if you want.”  Yay.  I hate going to urgent care, especially for something as minor as a scratchy throat, I always end up sitting there for hours.  I took the Friday appointment, figuring I could always cancel if need be.  If I didn’t really really like my doctor herself I’d have already changed doctors because of things like this.  But I really really like my doctor, and she LISTENS to me, and I’ve just had a painful lesson in how important that is…….

By Wednesday morning I was pretty sure that what I actually have is the early signs of a sinus infection.  The sore throat being caused by the post nasal drip.  My sinuses themselves don’t hurt that badly yet, but my ears itch, which is a “good” sign of a sinus infection.  Still wasn’t feeling really sick.  Worked a 4hour shift at work after spending most of the day out in the 70degree early spring weather that Mother Nature gave us.

This morning, Thursday, I have almost no voice, and am feeling decidedly draggy, though I still have no real sinus pain.  Maybe its not a sinus infection, though my ears still itch.  I don’t work today, but I am supposed to work tomorrow morning.  I’m sitting here trying to decide if I should give in and to go urgent care.  One thing for sure, unless I’m feeling better by this evening I won’t be working tomorrow….

In other news, all my tomato and pepper seeds have been planted, along with seeds of the Tzimbalo Melon Pear, which caught my eye as I was seed browsing.  Peppers have mostly sprouted.  If the weather holds the sprouted pots will go out into the greenhouse next week.  Which seems awfully early, and I keep waiting for Mother nature to dump a couple feet of snow on us…..but I have to admit I wouldn’t mind an early spring.  I hope it stays decent though, if we do get a hard freeze after this 2 weeks of warm (that’s currently being predicted) its going to totally kill the apple crops.

Categories Links

Links

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The things kids will do to get out of a test.

Maybe saturated fat isn’t the problem afterall.

Stupidity kills.  Sometimes its you, sometimes its the person or animal you thought you were helping.

The real story of milk and fat.

I’d love to see programs like this being utilized at more animal shelters.

He’s 77, and works 20 jobs.  I feel lazy now.

Nebraska considering law that would require a criminal conviction before forfeiture of property can occur.

How to recycle an old sweater into yarn.

Working before 10am is equivalent to torture.  I coulda told them that.  Course, my mom would insist that having to wait till 10am to punch in is torture……

RI wants to make it a crime to “allow” your trees to shed normal debris on your neighbor’s lawn.

 

Categories Gardening

Speaking of the greenhouse

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I set it up last weekend, new location thats a bit more sheltered from the wind.  And decided to use different christmas lights in it than last year.

Yes, for those of you reading my gardening posts for the first time, christmas lights.  The non-LED ones.  The whole reason we’re supposed to be phasing them out is cause they’re so inefficient because they produce more heat than light.  Strings of cheap christmas lights are really cheap after the season is over and everyone clearances out their left over stock.  WAY cheaper than heat mats or heater units.  They use A LOT less electricity too.  How much heat?  One string of the littlest lights I could find (which, btw, clearanced for $1) placed into a large cooler, jacked the temperature inside that cooler up over 20 degrees in 5 minutes.  Thats alot of heat.  Course, my little greenhouse is alot larger (about 20″x20″x5′), and alot less insulated than a cooler.

Previous years I used several strings of the smallest strings of lights.  Often they’re the only ones left by the time I was hitting the clearance shelves, and at $1 each thats hard to beat.  Plus 6 strings was enough to keep my little greenhouse quite a bit warmer than air temp, even when the wind was doing its best to suck the heat right back out.

This year my work had a TON of white C9 sized bulb strings of lights that just wouldn’t sell for some reason.  They ended up clearanced out for $2.25 a box.  And unlike the little strings, which say to string together a max of 6, the C9’s say to string together a max of 2.  I went ahead and grabbed several boxes to give them a try.  I used one string in my broccoli bed, and it was doing a very nice job of keeping things warm.  I put two in the greenhouse.

This past Wednesday night temps were predicted to drop to 10 degrees Fahrenheit, and according to the Weather Underground station less than a mile from me thats exactly what happened.  I plugged in the lights Wednesday afternoon in order to see how they’d really do against the cold.

When I went out to check the greenhouse thermometer Thursday afternoon, it was a nice sunny day (though still below the freezing mark, temperature wise), and the thermometer said it was 122 degrees in the greenhouse!  Wow, I’ll have to try it with just one string running during the day.  Overnight low apparently never dropped below 38 inside the greenhouse!!  Even better!

Course, next week we’re having an early spring, temps aren’t predicted to drop below the freezing point all week.

Maybe I ought to go start some more seeds…..

 

KIMG0629

Categories Rants

Two rants in one

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Over this past week, as I was setting up my little greenhouse, I was wishing for a better way to track the temperature changes in it.  I currently use a cheap little outdoor thermometer that also tracks the high and low for the last 24hrs, but in order to read it I have to actually go out to the greenhouse and open it up.  Not the end of the world, but not always a good thing either.

I was debating buying a cheap wireless outdoor thermometer ($16 @ Home Depot), which will do the exact same job but allow me to check the temp and last high and low without actually having to open up the greenhouse if I don’t want to (usefull for those cooler days).

But when it really gets down to it what I REALLY want is something that I can track ALL the temperature changes, preferably on a graph on my computer, so I can see whats really going on.

Ought to be simple enough to find a not expensive thermometer that’ll sync into my home’s wifi so I can track things on my computer……right?

Wrong.

I can find the above linked unit for $16.

I can find a USB dongle that’ll plug into my computer and track local ambient temp for $15.

I can find units that’ll record temperature and that you can then plug into your computer via USB to see the recorded data (forgot to save the link) for about $35.

But I cannot find a wifi connected unit that’ll sync to my home’s wifi, that doesn’t require an additional base station wired to the computer, and that doesn’t actually send the data out to a remote website that I then have to access if I want to see the data, for less than $100.  Hell, I’d even accept a small discrete USB plug for the computer if thats what it took.

LaCrosse makes a selection of units that ALMOST look like they’ll do what I want, at least one for less than $100, till you look closer and realize that they actually send the data out to a remote website to be accessed from there, plus it’s a paid subscription scheme if you actually want alerts.

AcuRite makes a unit for just over $100 that’s closer, but it still requires the (not small) base unit to be hardwired to the computer (via USB), plus the sensor isn’t exactly a small discrete unit.

I found THIS piece for $150 that looks like it might do what I want.  If I want to spend $150 (actually there’s a couple sites that have it cheaper, but none under $100)……

Digging deeper, there are a couple units that’ll sync to a wireless device (phone or ipad) that’ll do what I want…..but they sync via bluetooth, not wifi.  Nope, not what I want.

Digging through the smart home products there’s ONE, with a sensor for $50 and a small discrete USB base station for another $50.  All the rest are quite a bit more for the same sort of technology.

I don’t understand.

There are wireless cooking thermometers that’ll sync via wifi.  Which I’d be tempted to just buy, but in theory the greenhouse could drop below freezing (I hope it won’t, but it could) and those aren’t rated for that kind of temp. But the basic technology is there.

Heck, if you dig there are a BUNCH of instructions online about how to build your own, MANY of them coming in under $100 even buying the parts retail!  So clearly there’s a market.

Maybe at a later date, if I ever build the bigger permanent greenhouse I want, then I might be willing to drop a few hundred on a unit.  But right now I just want something cheap.

 

Rant 2-

I did most of the above linked searching on my ipad.   I didn’t think I was logged into my google/gmail account, but apparently I was.  Heck, I was using Safari, not any form of Chrome or any other google made browser.  But 24hrs after completing the above search I started getting spam from Sears.  See, one of the units I’d stopped to look at closer had been on Sears website.  Nothing unusual there.  But that was all I did, read the description.  I didn’t “place it in my cart” or do anything remotely like logging into an account there.  Heck, I don’t have an account on Sears (or Kmart) website.  But those spam emails the next day?  From Sears, stating “did you forget something?” and linking to the unit I’d stopped to look at.  W.T.F.?!  Clearly there’s something linking from the Ipad via google to the info gathering on sites.  But is it an Ipad/Apple setting?  Or a google setting?  I can’t find anything obvious.  Sure, I don’t have “private browsing” or whatever they call it turned on, but that shouldn’t be GIVING websites my email address just because I browsed through!

Categories Gardening

Well, so much for the broccoli…..

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The broccoli survived the cold snap, no problem.  I was delighted!

Yesterday, with the onset of stunning spring like weather I went out to open up the covers and let the plants have air and sun for a few days before I have to close up everything for the single digit lows predicted for Thursday night.

And found all but one plant to be completely bare of leaves, and the stalks themselves very gnawed on.

KIMG0626

 

In other words the rodents refused to be forced to move by  me flooding their holes, and decided to take advantage of the free food right infront of them…….obviously if this is something I want to do again next winter additional thought will have to go into how to keep out the rodents.

For now traps have been set in an attempt to catch them…….

Categories Nothing Much

The Joys of Home Ownership

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I’ve griped before about the state of the plumbing in our house.

Infact, I stated at least once that I thought they’d used grey electrical conduit as water pipe.  Turns out I was wrong about that.  When we redid the shower in the master bath just over a year ago, I got a better look at the pipe being used, and discovered that it’s actually a type of water pipe called “polybutylene“.  And that there’s a reason why it’s no longer allowed by code.  Basically, for no obvious external reason at all, it splits randomly.  Resulting in lots of water mess.

We’ve been replacing it as we run across it in the house.  Eventually we’re going to have to hire a proper plumber to come and crawl under the house and remove and replace all of it under the house too.  Since that requires pulling down all the insulation and water barrier in the crawl space (and since it all needs new insulation) we’ll probably combine the projects, a bill I’m not looking forward too.

Of course that means that we keep running into splits in it in the places we’ve not gotten to yet.  Thankfully all such have been INSIDE the house, but cross your fingers for me, I figure it’s only a matter of time before we get one in the crawl space.

Yesterday it was in the water line carrying HOT water from the water heater.  All internal pipe, no exposure to cold.  Husband turned on the hot water yesterday morning and had no water pressure and went looking and discovered that the entire area around the hot water heater was saturated with water.  God only knows how long it’d been spraying water.

Husband proved again that he’s no handyman.  Last time we had this problem I found the breaker for the water heater no problem.  This time he couldn’t find it and shut off the whole house in his panic to try to stop the water.  Which no, didn’t stop the water.  That required crawling under the house to shut off the water.  Cause he forgot that LAST time this happened we had his father install a shut off on the cold water in line to the water heater.  Even though he’d just looked at it to find the leak.  He did at least have all the clocks reset by the time I got home from work……