• This is an attempt to cleanse my palate after watching part of the debate.

    The magic of the can…

    Or better stated, the how to preserve food.

    We are spoiled today, we go to the local supermarket and purchase almost any type of food we want, regardless of the growing season. It will be fresh and safe to consume.

    My parents would not have dreamed of such luxuries when they were children.

    We have a tradition of putting an orange into our Christmas stockings. Today, no big deal. When the tradition started, in my parents’ or grandparent’s time, it was a big deal. Those oranges were brought from far away at great expense. It was fresh and taste.

    Yesterday, my wife went grocery shopping. We don’t eat as well as we did 4 years ago, inflation has eaten much of our purchasing power. Still, she was able to pick up fresh avocados and a bag of oranges.

    If we don’t want fresh food, we can buy our food frozen. Still tasty. The quality is good, actually. Much better than I remember as a child.

    But that food is not “shelf stable” and it will not last if the power goes out.

    Smoked and dried foods will last a long time, but they too have issues, one of the large ones is that they are unprotected from the elements. It is no fun to find that your dried goods have been eaten by some critter.

    Canned goods are, generally, shelf stable. They do lose nutritional value over time, but that time is measured in decades.

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  • For me, the flavors in a good soup are the taste of autumn. I adore soup weather, and with the nights getting colder, I’m looking up my soup recipes. Last week, I made a small pot of beef barley soup, and I impressed even myself. It’s easy to do, and you can even pop it in the crock pot if you want.

    Ingredients:

    • 2 lbs beef shin bone (with bone and marrow)
    • 1/4 cup red wine (for deglazing the pan)
    • olive oil (for cooking)
    • 1 onion, diced
    • 2 ribs celery, diced
    • 1 carrot, diced
    • 6 cups beef broth
    • 1-1/2 cups pearl barley, rinsed
    • 1 tbsp tomato paste (optional)
    • bay leaf
    • spices to taste (salt, pepper, thyme, oregano, sage)

    In a soup pot, add a bit of the olive oil and bring to a medium heat. When the oil is shimmering, add in the beef shin bones. If you have more than one, you may need to do them one at a time. Don’t crowd the bottom of the pot. You want to sear the meat for about 2 minutes per side, then set the meat aside.

    Add a bit more olive oil if necessary, then toss in the onion, celery, and carrot (this is called a mirepoix, and it’s the base of many soups and stews), and saute until the vegetables are softened but not yet brown. Use the red wine, a little at a time, to deglaze the pan. Add in a drizzle of wine, and then use a wooden spoon or spatula (it should be wooden, NOT plastic or rubber) to scrape up all the stuff off the bottom of the pot. That “stuff” is called fond, and it’s delicious.

    Once the pan is deglazed, put the meat back in (still on the bone), along with the broth, bay leaf, and tomato paste. Stir to combine the ingredients. Bring it to a boil, then lower the heat and allow the soup to simmer for about an hour. Taste the broth, and then adjust for flavor by adding the spices of your choice.

    Rinse your barley well, and pick out any stones you may find. Add the barley to your soup, and raise the temperature enough to keep the liquid at a steady strong simmer. Check on your soup every 15 minutes or so, to ensure nothing is burning. Add more beef broth if necessary. Continue to simmer until the barley is completely cooked and is chewy.

    Lower the heat to its lowest setting, and remove the meat from the soup. Carefully trim the meat from the bone and put it back into the soup. Get rid of any gristle or fat, but make sure that the marrow from the shin bone goes back into the soup. The marrow makes your broth rich and tasty. Taste and adjust the spices as necessary, and then serve.

    I like to serve this soup with fresh baked bread, still warm from the oven. If you’re not a baker, pick up a nice ciabatta at the grocery store, drizzle olive oil over it and toss on some salt and pepper, then heat in the oven at 350F for five to ten minutes.

    This soup freezes very well. If you have a pressure canner, you may can it, as well. I find I never have enough left over to can up, though! A note on the tomato paste: I find it adds a nice zing to the broth, but it isn’t necessary. Some people like to put crushed tomato or stewed tomato into their beef barley soup, but I’m a purist.

            

  • A mentally troubled kid decided to take his AR-15 to school and start shooting.

    The good news is that there was an SRO on site. This SRO ran to the sound of gun fire. The cowardly asshole shooter gave up as soon as a good guy with a gun arrived.

    The bad news is that 2 teachers and 2 children lost their lives.

    Thank god it wasn’t another Uvalde.

    The father of the shooter has been arrested and charged with manslaughter. This is likely a direct result of the parents of the Michigan shooter being found guilty of their child shooting up a school.

    Before the blood was cold, before the smoke had cleared, the blood vultures were at it again.

    For some reason, they are big in the collective punishment game. I’m considered guilty of killing children because I have guns. Worse, I have a black gun that looks like an AR-15.

    They have no issues with the actual weapons of war I have in my collection. The M1, the Springfield Trapdoor, the K98 and others are all weapons of war. They were all carried in battle.

    But for some reason, that AR-15 style firearm is so evil I have to give mine up because some nut job used a gun to kill people.

    Still no word on the murder capital of the US, Chicago. Oh, right, that’s black on black crime. I guess that doesn’t matter to the blood vultures.

    Years ago, my eldest son, in 2nd grade, came home to report that he had been in lockdown. This was the first I had heard of “lock-downs” in schools.

    When I went to talk to the principal, he explained it was a drill because a bad person could come and shoot up the kids.

    He made a mistake, he asked me “What do you want me to do?”

    “I want you to open the gun safe, take your gun out and run to the sound of gun fire and stop the shooter.”

    He did not like that answer. Seems that he would rather children die than have the right tool to save lives.

    Most schools are “weapon free”. A local high school was on lockdown for most of the day, this then extended to a local elementary school.

    The cause of the lockdown? A high school student was spotted with a pocket knife. When they demanded to look into his stuff, he left. He walked home. That happened to have him walking into town. The elementary school was in the general direction.

    This required therapy dogs and counselors to deal with the panic the staff instilled in the kids.

    I’m sick of the blood vultures. Every one of them starts their argument with the same line of reasoning: We should break the law! It is for the good of the children!

    Why do they always advocate breaking the law?

    Oh, that’s right, they don’t like that law. So it must mean something else. You know, like only muskets, they say on their Wi-Fi enabled handheld magic box.

    “You ignore the first part of the amendment, about well regulated! That means plenty of laws.” No, it means functioning well. It is still used in some technical fields to mean exactly that.

    Or it only applies to “the militia”. The English doesn’t scan that way. The Supreme Court has said it is an individual right. The amendment says “the right of the people“. But they are dishonest.

            

  • In the best of worlds, the courts would work to enforce the laws as they were meant. We wouldn’t have judges and justices that are so goal-driven that their wants forces a predetermined outcome.

    The state passes a bad law. The People file a suit challenging the law. They request a temporary injunction, a preliminary injunction, and summary judgement.

    The court looks and agrees that the law is likely bad and grants the TRO. The parties file briefs, the court grants the preliminary injunction as well. The case does or does not succeed on a summary judgement and moves to arguments.

    The case is heard by the court, the court issues their final judgement, or they issue the summary judgement in favor of The People

    The state files an appeal. The administrative panel reads the court’s judgement, allows it to stay in place, schedules the case for a hearing before a merits panel. The merits panel looks at the case law and the lower court’s opinion and finds for The People.

    The state pleads for an en banc hearing. The court denies the request.

    The state file a motion for certiorari with the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court denies cert, case over. The People win.

    Unfortunately, that is seldom how it works.
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  • About 6 months ago, I picked up a Kershaw Select Fire based on a suggestion in one of the comments.

    After I wrote about it, I was asked to do a review after I had been using it for 6 months or so.

    First, it is lighter than my Cold Steel. When in hand, it deploys as fast. It is easier to close than the Cold Steel. I find myself fumbling and being unhappy when I have to close the Cold Steel.

    The liner lock works for me. The only locking knife that has a better release was my exchange blade Gerber. That had the release on the side. Your fingers didn’t get near the blade when closing.

    The liner lock requires your thumb to be inline with the closing blade, but only for a moment, and it is comfortable to move out of the way. With the Cold Steel, you needed to squeeze the lock on the back to release. This put your fingers in the wrong place while you didn’t have a great grip on the knife.

    The Cold Steel is a win on the pocket clip. I can place the knife in any of four different positions, tip down, tip up, left or right clip. The Kershaw only allows for left/right, not tip up.

    For me, this means the knife comes out of the pocket in the wrong orientation. I have to do a rotate in my hand before I can deploy the blade. It is a rapid and easy deploy.

    The actual blade is nice. It has held an edge for the last 6 months. It needs a touch up. Kershaw offers free sharpening. I have not looked into that. I’m sure I can sharpen this blade, I haven’t needed to. Almost there, not quite.

    I’ve used it on cardboard, carving wood, lots of plastic, sealing tape, scraping things clean, cutting food and general use. No issues.

    So what about the gimmick? The folding 1/4″ socket and four bits held in spring-loaded holders on the side?

    First, it is not a Gerber. This is NOT a multi-tool. The number of times I reached for it because I wanted my Gerber is unreasonably high. It just isn’t a Gerber.

    That said, I wouldn’t have had the Gerber with me in those cases, I would have had the Cold Steel. This Kershaw is a replacement for my Cold Steel, NOT for the Gerber. If I leave the house, the Gerber is with me. Inside the house, the Gerber is not with me, but I have real tools instead.

    The first thing I learned is that a 1/4″ socket is not the right size, most of the time. In the past 6 months, two screws have had 1/4″ heads. Those were located yesterday.

    Every other screw has had a larger head size. It had gotten to the point where I was considering adding that socket to my junk to carry. Then decided against it.

    When using the screwdriver bits, it works a champ. Very happy. The bits are good enough. They are well-made, The socket holds them firmly, they don’t wiggle. It feels much like using a fat handled replaceable bit screwdriver.

    As such, I prefer it to my Gerber. It takes a little longer to deploy, but it fits better.

    The downside, yesterday I needed to pry a clip up. The driver slid in, as it should, then I started to pry. The socket popped off.

    It went back on, I was very surprised it came off. I haven’t tried to repair it yet. I’m not sure how to repair it.

    This is a significant disappointment.

    I am more than willing to accept that if I use a blade as a pry bar, I should expect the blade to break. I have had far too many blades destroyed or damaged because I used them to pry or twist and had a piece snap off.

    Do I recommend this tool? Today, that would be “no”. If I can get the socket to stay, it will become a “yes”, with caveats.

    I have also not looked into Kershaw’s repair policy.

            

  • BOOM! It happens. The meteor hits, or the fungus zombies arise, or civil unrest causes a loss of infrastructure. Whatever the emergency, the S sure has HTF. It’s time to break out the bug out bag or the get home bag, or check on your emergency stash of stuff. Yep, all there.

    My question is, do you know what to do with that stash?

    I am constantly amazed at the number of people who “prep for the end of the world” but have absolutely no knowledge on how to use the items they put away. A prime example of this was from a few years ago, when we were making regular trips down to the LDS Cannery (back when it *was* a cannery… stupid FDA) to pick things up. The LDS, while not my idea of a religion, has some great ideas about preparing for the worst. They make it easy for their members to put up food for the end of the world. They have convenient kits, each designed for a specific number of people (usually two parents and two kids) for a specific length of time (a month, generally speaking). Each kit includes things like powdered milk and eggs, wheat berries, oats, canned proteins, beans, etc. Each LDS family dutifully purchases two years worth of these supplies over time. And then those supplies just sit there.

    The last trip there, we watched a new couple picking up their first box of goods. We struck up conversation, because we were all standing around waiting for things and that’s what you do. Nice couple, working on having kids. Devout. Polite. Not uneducated. But in the process of chatting, I discovered that they didn’t have a wheat mill. They didn’t know how to cook dry beans. They had no idea what to do with dried eggs. They had no real understanding of what to do with the items in their emergency box.

    My family stores ground wheat in “small amounts” (for me a “small amount” is a 25lb bag, separated into smaller bags that are sealed, frozen for 72 hours, then put away in a cool, dry, dark place) and wheat berries in larger amounts (though also separated into bags or cans and frozen for 72 hours… it kills off any bugs). I go through a 25lb bag of wheat in a short enough time that it doesn’t go off, because I bake weekly, and sometimes more often than that. The wheat berries are a long-term storage solution, because they don’t go off. They’re shelf stable for 20+ years. We have a hand powered mill (that can be hooked up to a bicycle or generator if we really want to make it easier, though we never do), and we use it to grind wheat berries, barley, and other grains to make wheat for baking. Mostly I do that for historic demos, but sometimes just for fun. We only grind what we plan to use, because “ground at home” wheat will not last as long as the store-bought stuff, as it still has all its oils and the germ in place.

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  • This week has given me closure on several small projects, all working together to get the right results.

    In the old days, each device on the Internet had its individual IP address, today, most devices share their IP address with thousands of other devices. Instead, entire locations hide behind a single IP address.

    This is performed with the magic of Network Address Translation (NAT).

    To make everything work, I had to have external DNS servers provide the address of a firewall that just happens to perform NAT as well.

    That firewall had to be configured to forward allowed ports to a load balancer (HAProxy). Each port of interest being properly configured in the load balancer. The load balancer forwards the traffic to a reverse proxy (Traefik) running a docker swarm over a ceph file system.

    Each service within the swarm must be configured within the swarm. The swarm just be configured for networking.

    All of this is supposed to “just work”.

    It is all working now. Not because it just works. The magic was to start inside a docker container, close to the service, verify that service, then move outward.

    Along the way, the local DNS server had to provide overrides so that the firewall didn’t have to do hairpin configurations for each port.

    For testing purposes, we had to set up an internal ACME server, which is working wonderfully.

    The Vine of Liberty now lives on this new infrastructure. There are only a few more pieces to move, and I will be done with k8s.

    My father passed on Wednesday, September 4th, 2024. He joins my mother, who passed earlier this year.

    Even though I am over 60, this is hitting me hard. My entire life, I have felt able to reach for my dreams, to risk so much because I knew my parents were there as a safety net.

    It appears that my parents created a financial safety net for their grandchildren and children, we are working through the family trauma to make sure everything works out “right”.

    We are still looking for somebody to do engagement farming on X/Twitter. If you are interested, please contact me.

    It has taken me a while to realize that this is my site now. In the past, I left the politics to Miguel and J.Kb. I have decided to post a few more political articles.

    Have a fantastic weekend!

            





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  • Today my father passed. He was missing his wife, Prue, of 64 years. For the last 4 months, since her passing, he has been asking everybody that talks to him if they have seen Prue.

    I believe he is in a better place, with his wife, young and joyful, once again.