• I went to the Fort last weekend and I made an amazing pie. Cheshire Pie is one of the recipes shared by Hannah Glasse in her cookbook The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy. The original recipe:

     

    As you can see, it’s fairly sparse with its directions, which is a common theme among recipes prior to the early 1900s. One of the things I do is “redact” or recreate recipes from earlier times. I do this using my own skills as a cook, and it pleases me to no end when I find a great combination. This is one of those times, though I  can’t take the credit. I went to the class to learn how to make a good pie crust (and succeeded: that’s my actual pie in the header image), and learned the recipe along the way.

    For the pastry, I don’t have an exact recipe. I was taught to measure by feel, because your crust turns out much nicer. As this was my first successful crust, I have to say I agree it works. 😉 Basically, you can either purchase a pie shell (you’ll need a top and bottom), or you can use your own recipe. Or you can try this one, which I’ll describe as best I can.

    First, take about 3 cups of good flour. We used a mix of all purpose, white, and bread flour (and no, I didn’t get ratios, so I’ll have to try it on my own), and put it into a large bowl. A pinch of baking powder was added in, and then we added “a bit” of Crisco vegetable shortening (you can also use butter or lard, but I’ve never had success with either and had GREAT success with Crisco, so I’m sticking to it), about a cup or so. Just plop it into the flour. Then, slowly use your fingers to rub the flour and fat together. You don’t want to handle the fat too much or it will melt, so you kind of scoop up a handful of shortening and flour and then rub gently but briskly between your thumb and across all your other fingers. It helps if you keep your elbows tight to your body while doing this. You continue doing this until all the fat is mixed in evenly to the flour. It will start to make little “peas” or look like coarse cornmeal. Add a bit more Crisco and keep doing it until the bits of dough are about pea sized. It took me about 20 minutes to do this by hand. At home, I think I’ll use my pastry cutter to do the early part, and just switch to hand mixing at the very end, which should cut the time down quite a bit. Two knives may also work, but I’d say that handling it at the end is important.

    (more…)

            
  • In sum, literally in the middle of the night, the Court issued unprecedented and legally questionable relief without giving the lower courts a chance to rule, without hearing from the opposing party, within eight hours of receiving the application, with dubious factual support for its order, and without providing any explanation for its order. I refused to join the Court’s order because we had no good reason to think that, under the circumstances, issuing an order at midnight was necessary or appropriate.

    Both the Executive and the Judiciary have an obligation to follow the law. The Executive must proceed under the terms of our order in Trump v. J. G. G., 604 U. S. ___ (2025) (per curiam), and this Court should follow established procedures.
    — 604 U.S. ____ (2025), Alito, J. dissenting. Thomas, J joining

    )

    A.A.R.P. are the initials of one of the plaintiffs. They are currently proceeding as John Does. This is the same with Trump vs. J.G.G., where J.G.G. are the initials of one of the plaintiffs in the inferior district court.

    When Alito and Thomas are on the same side of an issue, your best bet on what is correct is to be on their side. Yes, I know I’ve been on the opposite side from them a couple of times. I lost my bet.

    This case is moving rapidly, the Solicitor General had filed his response shortly after Alito published his dissent. This is “fast” in court terms.

    To start, this Court is “a court of review, not first view.” Cutter v. Wilkinson, 544 U. S. 709, 718, n. 7 (2005). Yet the application insists on judicial review in reverse. It calls for this Court to be the first to resolve due-process challenges to the adequacy of notice that designated enemy aliens receive, on behalf of a putative class that no court below has certified, on a nonexistent record. As the Fifth Circuit observed last night, appellate courts should not address those questions unless and until the district court is given a reasonable opportunity to rule. App., infra, 2a. Yet applicants gave the district court a mere 42 minutes’ notice before divesting it of jurisdiction by filing a notice of appeal claiming constructive denial of relief. Under these highly irregular circumstances, applicants can hardly establish a clear and indisputable entitlement to the extraordinary relief they seek. The application should be denied on that basis alone.

    — Respondents’ Opposition to Emergency Application. 24A1007

    Here we see the Solicitor General say much the same as Alito, with facts involved. Alito also stated in his dissent that the Supreme Court had spoken with the Fifth Circuit and knew that a decision was forthcoming from the Circuit shortly.

    Nothing will happen today. The plaintiffs, (illegal aliens), will file a reply to the response. We might see some amicus briefs, but nothing is going to happen. The Court will have time to reflect and read the briefs.

    We might hear something on Tuesday, but I don’t expect a response until laster in the week. The Supreme Court has given themselves time to move deliberately while instructing the parties to move rapidly.

            

  • This has been a tradition at our house for the last 12+ years. I was roped into doing the Easter Egg Hunt for my kids.

    Easter Sunday, my wife tells me she’s going to be gone with the kids to church for a period of time, I’m to make an Easter egg hunt for the kids before they get home.

    I did. Then played dumb when they came in asking about the eggs they could see. I think that was the year of the jelly bean rabbet poop.

    Things became more elaborate over time. Once I remember clearly was the Easter where there was still snow on the ground. I used a sliding pitch to place eggs in places with no footprints. That cemented the belief that it was the Easter Bunny and not dad hiding the eggs.

    By the time they were teens, the hunt had become something more. The first big hunt was about 100 eggs in the forest behind the house. This is not a “search to find eggs”, this is a challenge to find the next egg.

    Each egg is carefully placed to be visible from the last egg found. Lose the track, you’ve lost the remaining eggs. In general, the eggs were placed in easy to see locations, IFF you were standing where the last egg was found.

    Last year, there was a swarm of 9 teenagers on the hunt. My son bought a handful of cheap orange cones, to be able to mark found eggs so they could go back.

    This hunt was different, there were written clues with either compass direction, distance, or both. This meant that they might not be able to see the next egg from the current egg.

    Of course, they beat that. They used swarm tactics. The 9 of them just moved out in all directions, searching for the next egg.

    3 hours to plant the eggs, 1.5 hours for them to complete the search.

    Tonight I’m sore. I walked about 3 miles placing eggs. Then another mile or two while helping them get back on track. It took them over four hours to finish the hunt. And that was with a rescue from dad.

    It appears that they lost the track, they attempted a swarm, picked up a part of the tail of the track, cleared those eggs, recovered the forward track.

    What this meant was that when they got near the end, there were no eggs in sight to follow because they had already picked up those eggs.

    From the egg count, they missed around 8 of the 100+ that were placed. There were a total of 201 eggs in the hunt.

    10 went to a littles hunt for the 4yo across the street. The next 100 to 150 were hidden in the forest.

    To give some idea, we located three eggs from last year when placing eggs this year.

    The kids had another failure, I had placed 10 eggs on the ground, carefully laid out in an arrow pointing in the direction they needed to go. They got to the “cluster of eggs” and just picked them up.

    The arrow was there because the next egg was not visible from the location of the arrow. Plus, that direction had a heavy thicket full of fallen trees. They should have had somebody maintain that point and sent others around the obstacle until they were in the right location.

    I had fun, I’m sore, my legs hurt. I’m already planning next year.

    Oh, I received permission to place booby-traps next year. This will be fun.

            

  • I am actually good at this computer stuff. It is what I do. So I get frustrated when I order hardware and it doesn’t work.

    A month ago, I ordered a Mini-ITX board. It was cheap, and it wasn’t 17×17 cm, it was 17x19cm. Which didn’t fit in the case. The low profile CPU cooler/fan I ordered was too tall, so I needed to get a shorter unit. It just wasn’t worth the fight.

    I ordered a new Mini-ITX board. This was supposed to be the right size. Not only was it the wrong size, it only had 3 SATA ports, not the 4 on the board I ordered.

    That was taken care of with still another motherboard purchase. This time all was good. And amazingly, I didn’t have to wait 2 weeks for the board to get here from China.

    Everything is installed, I install the PCI SFP+ NIC, it won’t power up. I don’t know if the card is bad but I replaced the card and that machine is now in production.

    Switches are the next big issue. I gave up trying to find a cheap switch, I ordered a new switch, the same as the last I purchased. It should just work.

    This switch is an 8 port SFP+ unit, similar to the one in the featured image. It is powered by a 12v DC wall wart.

    What arrived was a plastic box with 8 RJ45 connectors. Similar switches can be found on Amazon for under $8. To make it pass the Amazon inspectors, they threw in a free USB-A to USB-C connector. That was returned and a refund was issued.

    So I ordered another L3 switch. It arrived in short order. When I powered it up, the power light came on. Then the SYS light started blinking.

    Read the manual. Green blinken SYS light means the unit is starting up. Figure that it might be that the unit isn’t fully configured. No problem, I connected it to the network.

    Still the blinken light. I scan the network where the device is supposed to be. No response.

    Well, the instructions don’t mention the “console” port on the unit (missing from the image because they used the wrong image on the Amazon listing). I ordered a generic console cable to watch the boot sequence, maybe I can spot what went wrong.

    What went wrong? Nothing.

    The unit is working exactly as it should. I’ve configured it, ready to go into production. The documentation is wrong about what the green blinken light means.

    Frustration with hardware, yet this time it is working correctly.

    Once this device is in place, every machine, but one, will have at least on 10Gbit fiber link to the main back plain network. Every machine will have a connection to the management network.

    As a side effect, it means that each data closet will have at least two fibers into the closet for redundant backup links.

    Oh, this also means I can consider using bonded links to get 20G bit transfer rates. That will be cool.

            

  • Big news early Saturday morning, the Supreme Court “ordered Trump administration not to deport Venezuelans under Alien Enemies Act for now” — NPC News.

    Or did they?

    There is before the Court an application on behalf of a putative class of detainees seeking an injunction against their removal under the Alien Enemies Act. The matter is currently pending before the Fifth Circuit. Upon action by the Fifth Circuit, the Solicitor General is invited to file a response to the application before this Court as soon as possible. The Government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this Court. See 28 U. S. C. §1651(a).

    Justice Thomas and Justice Alito dissent from the Court’s order. Statement from Justice Alito to follow.
    — Order in Pending Case 24A1007

    Yep, they did. But there are interesting things happening in this short order.

    First, it was issued at in the early morning of Saturday. Second, the Solicitor General is invited to file a response ASAP. Not on a particular date and time, but now.

    In A.A.R.P. v. Donald J. Trump, in his official capacity 25-CV-00059 N.D.TX., the district court judge found for the administration and did not grant the TRO nor the Preliminary Injunction.

    They appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court, A.A.R.P. v. Trump, 25-10534, (5th Cir.). The Fifth Circuit denied the appeal because the case is at the TRO stage, and TROs cannot be appealed. Where have we heard this before?

    What we are likely to see is the statements by Alito and Thomas in the coming days. From there, they will wait for the Solicitor General of the United States to file a response, so they have both sides of the argument, briefed.

    At that point, they will likely say, “This is in an interlocutory state, we aren’t going to interfere.”

            

  • I noticed that we don’t see Garcia’s face clearly.  All the images are from the side.

    There are some perspective issues when they are shaking hands.

    Finally, they went from, “No, you can’t see him.” With the Senator getting stopped by the military 2 miles from the prison, to sitting and having drinks in a nice location.

    This looks faked to me.  If not the images themselves, then in the setup.

            

  • I had the joy of staying at the Fort last weekend. Originally, the temperatures were supposed to be in the high 40s at night, and the 60s during the day. Perfect Fort weather! That didn’t turn out to be correct (go figure…). It was below freezing overnight Friday night into Saturday morning, and Saturday night into Sunday morning it was 33*F. Saturday was above freezing but very wet and raw. Sunday wasn’t bad, being in the mid 50s and overcast, but dry.

    Staying at the Fort always gives me an appreciation for what our ancestors lived through. In one weekend (with albeit “white man fires” going full blast), we went through an entire bin of wood. Some of that was for cooking, because we ran into our usually spring thaw challenges with warming up the fireplaces. Some of it was because my cabin-mates were cold at night. The first was a necessary issue, but the second just left me flabbergasted. Regardless, if we went through that much wood in a weekend, how much wood would the entire fort community have gone through in an average month? It’s no wonder that the entirety of NH was essentially deforested during that period!

    Here’s the deal: the Fort is made of logs and flagstones and local stone and brick, in a rather haphazard way. In the 1700s, that fire would never have gone out. Ever. During the night it would have been banked, and during the day they’d have been cooking over it. It’s much easier to keep a fire going than to get one started, and that’s exactly what they would have done. When we leave the Fort in November, and it doesn’t get opened up again until March, it’s been sitting almost five months with no fire. Over that time, the damp and cold get into the stones in a way that would never have happened historically. It takes at least two days of heavy fire burning to bring the entire hearth and wood oven up to heat, so that cooking can be done. This was something our ancestors would never have had to concern themselves with.

    No matter how you look at it, when we arrive, it’s going to be COLD at the Fort, and we’re going to have to work hard to change that.

    This is what I do when I’m going on an overnight trip to the Fort (or anywhere, quite honestly):

    • check the temperature for the time I’ll be there at least a week in advance
    • keep checking the temperature to catch any trends up or down as the week progresses
    • check the projected temperatures for my trip the day I’m leaving, and make appropriate choices for sleeping and clothing
    • pack extra warm stuff, just in case

    (more…)

            

  • Trump Before The Supreme Court

    Thursday afternoon, the Supreme Court consolidated three cases on appeal from by the administration and scheduled oral arguments for May 15, 2025, at 10 a.m.

    24A884, 24A885, and 24A886 are consolidations of 10 different cases, though some of those are duplicates as they came through the circuit courts.

    Pursuant to Rule 23 of the Rules of this Court and the All Writs Act, 28 U.S.C. 1651, the Acting Solicitor General—on behalf of Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, et al.— respectfully applies for a partial stay of the nationwide preliminary injunction issued by the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland (App., infra, 57a-59a) pending the consideration and disposition of the government’s appeal to the United States Courts of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and pending any further review in this Court. The government is simultaneously filing similar applications in cases arising from the Western District of Washington and District of Massachusetts. From the following paragraph onward, all three applications are identical
    — 24A884 March 13, 2025, Application for partial stay, submitted to The Chief Justice

    In short, this is the vehicle for the Supreme Court to knock down the raft of inferior courts granting nationwide TROs and preliminary injunctions.

    I don’t know if this will extend to final judgment, regardless, this is the case to watch.

    Fort at #4 — Projects

    I will be up at The Fort tomorrow to take some pictures. I just finished two woodworking mallets. Boy, I’m a poor wood turner. They look ok. I’ve polished one of them and put a sealing coat on it. On the other hand, I can see ever mis-cut and catch as I learn how to do this.

    I’m hoping to get at least one of the spinning wheels down and into the cabins. This will give me something to do when I don’t want to be in the wood working shop.

    Which means I need to finish the clamps for the clamp to hold my wool combs. I like the way wool spins once it has been combed.

    I might even try spinning some carded wool. I’ve not tried that yet.

    I have a reed in our big floor loom. We got the loom for cheap, but the reeds were rusted nasty things. I’ve not recovered them yet. I need to make a raddle to allow me to warp the loom. And I have to spin some yarn for the weft.

    Computer Frustrations

    There are two standard ways that power is supplied to computer type devices. One, they take a 110v AC into a power supply, which then generates 12V and 5V from that for the system. Two, they have a “wall wort” which generates 12V DC, which is then converted as required internally.

    More and more of the small devices I’m picking up use the 12V wall wort. The issue? Space for the wall worts.

    Wed, I went to plug in a new device. Accidentally unplugged the wrong wall wort, dropped my room switch until I got it plugged back in.

    Once I had the correct wall wort removed, I found that I had 2 open outlets but the orientation of the outlets and the orientation of the wall wart don’t fit.

    Now I’m dealing with another issue, A new switch that won’t come online.

    Snope

    The SCOTUS Friday Conference was moved to Thursday. Snope was conferenced again.

    I really, really, want to see some forward motion on these Second Amendment Cases.

    The reason I don’t update you on Ocean State Tactical is that it has been following Snope and I’m too lazy to have another tab open on https://www.supremecourt.gov

    Tea!

    I used to drink Coke-a-Cola. I stopped years ago, mostly because of the sugar content. I was converted to coffee.

    I do drink tea occasionally. It is not my go-to drink.

    In 1773, a bunch of rebels dumped 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor. Approximately 92,000 pounds.

    For much of my younger years, I thought they were talking about Lipton tea bags. I.e., loose tea in individual small filter bags. There was no way that you could get that much tea into just 342 chests. Then I found out about real loose tea. This was better.

    Then I found that what was actually transported were bricks of black tea from the orient. These bricks were solid.

    For use at The Fort, we ordered a brick of black tea. It is formed the same way it would have been formed in 1773. Our brick is 2.5 pounds.

    The cool thing? It has a shelf life of 50 years. This is prepper paradise!

    Question of the Week

    What do you think will happen when Karmelo Anthony is convicted for murder?

            

  • The NPCs will have their marching orders by now. Yesterday it was “Trump is ignoring a 9-0 Supreme Court ruling that he return Garcia”, today it will be “Trump held in contempt of court.”

    Since I’m writing this yesterday, we’ll see how good I am at predicting the NPCs.

    We need to start on March 15, 2025. The Trump signed an EO designating TDA and MS-13 as terrorist organizations and ordered their removal under the Alien Enemies Act. Five TDA members filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus.

    If the writ is granted by the court, the named plaintiffs must be presented to the court, in person, in corpus (body)

    That same day, the court granted a TRO forbidding the removal of the named TDA members. The court claims that the plaintiffs (bad guys) have satisfied the four factors governing the issuance of preliminary relief.

    The court didn’t bother to show what those arguments are, nor did the court bother to write an opinion to accompany the order. It is reasonable for the TRO to be granted, the order entered, and then later an opinion entered into the record.

    The government immediately filed an appeal to the D.C. Circuit.

    Later that same day, the 15th, the court decided to extend the TRO to all noncitizens of the in U.S. custody who are subject to removal via the AEA.

    The government then appealed the class certification, extending the TRO to all terrorists in U.S. custody.

    Lots of back and forth took place, then on the 28th, the court extended the TRO until April 12th. Thus putting a one-month delay on deporting terrorists.

    The same day, the government filed an application with the Supreme Court to vacate the orders of the inferior district court.

    The first thing to note is that what the district court was a TRO the Supreme Court construed as appealable injunctions. The D.C. Circuit Court has taken all TROs at face value. I.e., not appealable.

    The Supreme Court then vacated the TROs on the 7th of April.

    As is normal in such situations, the Supreme Court ruled on the narrow question of venue. And that venue is NOT the district court of D.C.

    Conclusion

    I’m tired of reading this rogue inferior court judge yap. So I’ll wrap it up for y’ll.

    The plaintiffs and the court were attempting to stop the Article II executive branch from performing its Constitutional duties and responsibilities.

    The court issued a TRO even though the court did not have the jurisdiction to do so nor had they properly analyzed the Winter Factors as applied to this case.

    The problem for the government is that judicial orders, in general, must be obeyed. Even if the court issued them erroneously and without proper authority to do so.

    The administration learned their lesson. They are no immediately filing appeals when there are tight deadlines. Even an administrative stay gets them out of the contempt trap.

    In this case, there was no deadline. The deadline was “now”. Since the government didn’t do what the court told them to do, they can be held in contempt.

    Even though the Supreme Court later vacated the self-styled TRO.

    This is just lawfare in a different way.

            

  • If I’m in enemy territory right now, it’s because I’m under cover of darkness, cloaked in mystery, and mistaken for a friend. I spend at least a few minutes each day, reading the news and whispering, “What the actual fuck…” over and over again. It’s depressing. Yes, I realize most of you have been doing that for ages, but hey, I’m new here.

    Yesterday morning, it was the entire mess with El Salvador and Ábrego García being deported.

    What are the actual facts? Well, you really have to dig to find them. They’re always behind the “read more” line in any article on a news site. Basically, García came to America illegally in 2011. Now, if that was the case (and it does seem to be correct), if he had no ties to any gangs or illegal operations, and his ONLY illegal act was in coming to America, he could have appealed to Obama for clemency. If that had happened, he would have been here legally by the time Trump came into office this time around. Regardless, he was granted “protection from deportation” (what does that mean? I can’t seem to find any info on it… Chris?) some years ago, and has been living with his wife and kid in Maryland. (BBC)

    Kristi Noem has said, “This was just one of those examples of an individual that is a MS-13 gang member, multiple charges and encounters with the individuals here, trafficking in his background, was found with other MS-13 gang members—very dangerous person…” (DHS) So according to the director of DHS, García has multiple charges of being in MS-13, trafficking, and other stuff. I would VERY much like to see the paperwork involved with that, partly to shut up the Left, but also because I continue to have a healthy distrust of all things government and I like to check their information as much as I check anyone else’s. I don’t like it when we’re “told but not shown” stuff. It makes me wonder if they’re hiding things.

    Regardless of all of the above, García was transported to El Salvador. At this point, he has been repatriated to his home country, whether that was the right thing to do or not. We no longer have any control over García because he is in the hands of his own government. We don’t get to say, “Hey, García was here illegally and should have been deported, but we want him back so we can run him through the court system to prove it well enough to make some of our citizens happy.” It doesn’t work that way. El Salvador isn’t required to send their citizens to another country, especially another country where they’re going to face possible legal trials. The fact that the president of El Salvador simply locked the dude up as a gang member doesn’t phase me.

    (more…)