OFF TOPIC blog

I am not sure what caused the problem. I am not even sure what was done to ‘fix’ it. I am just glad to be out of plug-in hell.

A couple of weeks ago the blog got updated to new wordpress software. Everything seemed to survive the upgrade except the image rotator.

Some time ago I decided to incorporate a header image rotator in my basic Kubrick theme. Something to spice up the bland theme and make it more interesting. It worked great.

As time went on I added a few other plug-ins that seemed to work and cause no problem.

The problems did not start until the wordpress upgrade.

Now, four weeks later, I finally got the image rotator working thanks to the intervention of a skillful hacker. Seems the CSS template was being overwritten by some thumbnail plug-in. Seems also that the WP-Cache plug-in was preventing HTML updates. Not sure which was the real correction or why those things did not seem to be issues under the old wordpress. I am just glad things are back to normal.

The lesson learned here is that if you don’t have time to fool with things that don’t really matter, then stick with an unmodified theme.

You use plug-ins at great risk. They are risky because they are not managed and are probably not even written by programmers. Any fool can write code that works but it takes someone with knowledge and programming skills to write code that works under all conditions. When you have a multitude of people all writing code the others are not aware of, you have a tower of bable situation.

The knowledgeable elite among us will say, ‘Well, you should look at the code in a plug-in before using it’. If I knew the code well enough to find problems, I would be writing my own and not have to use a plug-in.

So, you see, the elite recommendation is not just worthless but an affront to everyone who receives it. It is like telling people that the way to avoid an accident is to make sure they are not there when it happens.

Several weeks ago, after a particularly heavy rain, I was out in the side yard pulling weeds. I have no idea what kind of plants they were. They were new to me. I had never seen them before this year. They had carrot like tops and long carrot-like roots. They are very hard to pull unless the ground is very soft and wet. They come out fairly easily in soft wet dirt and I was making progress on the new crop of carrot weeds.

As I was popping these nasty plants out of my yard, a man approached. He was walking his dog on the sidewalk. I have always thought it would be appropriate to accuse such folk as taking their dogs out for a shit. That is actually what they are doing. Which is okay as long as they pickup after their animals. I consider those who don’t to be a kind of animal themselves and would not hesitate to accuse them of taking their pets out for a shit at the expense of local property owners. However, this gentleman had a plastic bag with him. The bag looked as though he had already recovered at least one turd.

Anyway, he had noticed my chimney mounted Dish Network antenna and was curious as to how well I was satisfied with Dish Network. He further disclosed that he was using cable both for cable TV and internet access and was not all that pleased with the service. His main problem was with e-mail services with the ISP.

I was using the same ISP, a cable service, but I was not using them to provide cable TV. I did not have the problems he had with e-mail because I was using web based mail managed by the service that was providing me with web space and web service. If you are serious about doing anything constructive with a website or blog, you need to have better and less restrictive support than what an ordinary ISP will provide. Sometimes I wonder why ISPs even bother. Serious users are not going to be interested in restricted e-mail and web space provided by folks who seem incapable of providing necessary support. Especially in the area of ISPs providing cable service. We have gone from @Home to AT&T to Comcast to RoadRunner since we first obtained cable internet service. Each time one goes belly up, we get new e-mail addresses. We finally decided that it made more sense not to use such a fickle service for e-mail. All we need from them is a reliable internet connection. They can keep their restricted, unreliable, and inadequate e-mail and web site nuisances.

After that discussion I began to think about cable TV as it compared to Dish Network and Direct TV. I have used both satellite systems and my son had used cable TV. Overall the programming content from all three is the same. The channels may change in the numbers they are assigned but the content is the same.

Currently we have one cut above basic service with no premium channels.

Premium channels cost about ten bucks a month, every month, even though they show the same movies for up to six months at a time. It is sort of like renting the same movie from block buster every day for six months and paying 60 bucks for the priviledge of being a fool. Netflix at 5 bucks a month is a much better deal. Even block buster would be better but we don’t do business with block buster anymore. They busted their credibility with unfair late charges making them an undesirable vendor.

I am not entirely sure how many channels we actually get. I am sure there are more than a hundred available, but I also know that only about ten are worth watching. Even those are prone to showing the same material over and over again, but it takes about a year before you begin to notice repeats and they don’t become an annoyance unless you have been a customer for two or more years.

I remember that my wife wanted ‘cable’ because there was nothing worth watching on the six or so local off-air channels we were receiving at the time. Now we have hundreds of channels and there is still not all that much worth watching and it is costing us considerably more.

When I pay for something I expect to get some value for what I am charged and I do, to some extent. What bothers me is the pay-per-view crap these folk try to pull. If I am paying for cable, I have already paid to view and I consider any further requests for money to be legalized extortion committed by some of the greediest folk in the world.

Some cable channels will show movies without commercial interruption. Most of them do not. I feel that any cable channel running commercials should be free of charge.

Some cable channels, known as shopping networks, are merely scamers preying on the public. There are more than a few of these channels. I think the cable provider needs to pay his customers to be able to send them these useless channels that specialize in selling junk to the unsuspecting.

Some cable channels are blacked out. I have never understood why that is. I have no desire to know that some channels are blocked out. Make them disappear and remove them from the list of channels offered in a package. A channel that has no content has no value.

Some channels are previews of premium channels. There are also two channels which are wasted announcing the existence of these preview channels. Previews occur very infrequently and do not respond with useful information when the info button is pressed.

Some channels are in Spanish. I don’t speak Spanish. My friends don’t speak Spanish. I think that offering channels in other languages is a neat idea. I think that forcing them on everyone sucks. Folks interested in receiving those Spanish channels should be charged extra and ordinary people should not have to be subjected to such nonsense.

Overall, we still use Dish Network and probably will continue to do so. Unless, of course they increase their prices. Any increase at all at this point will be cause to discontinue the service because it is barely useful as it stands. Additional funds would be better spent with Netflix and other movie rental services.

I believe that is what they are called now. Some time ago I remember them as the Morris Minor. It is a small, cute, automobile made in the UK. Even though it is small, it has a substantial look to it. A well rounded body that makes it look like a tough little car. The selling price on it is tough too. Comes in at $20k and higher.

I have always admired it but never seriously considered owning one. Now that I see it has a luxury car price, I will probably never own one. Just would not be prudent.

Still I have always considered it to be an economy car due to its size. I was just certain that it got at least 50 miles to a gallon of gas. Yesterday I discovered that it only claims 40 miles to a gallon!

I know that 40 miles per gallon is a lot better than 15 but when you realize that the mini is less than half the size of most sedans, you got to ask why it can’t get at least 50 miles per gallon.

I have owned and driven a four cylinder Camry since 1996. It is a full sized, four door sedan, with better than average performance. My Camry gets 32 miles per gallon! I find it hard to imagine a car half the size of my Camry only gets me 8 more miles to the gallon. That is just not worth a switch.

This got me interested in some of the hybrids that are being offered by a variety of manufacturers. I discovered prices ranging from mid 20’s to mid 30’s and gas mileage claims around 40 miles per gallon! For a Hybrid!!??? No wonder they are not selling like hot cakes!!!

Unless I am sadly mistaken, I recall that in 1980 a rabbit diesel with a four cylinder engine got around 50 miles per gallon of fuel. Twenty seven years later, after much research and development, the automobile industry offers us a vehicle that costs four times as much and only gets 80percent as much fuel efficiency. And we wonder why areas of the automobile industry are having financial problems. One step forward and two steps back is not going to work.

When you consider the maintenance on the electrical part of the prime mover, the replacement of batteries at significant cost every two years or so, then add that to the depreciation and the initial price, you suddenly discover that hybrids are a bust.

The way I see it, a hybrid could easily cost twice as much to own as a normal automobile. It would have to get at least 60 miles to the gallon to justify such an cost and it would have to last for more than ten years and gasoline would have to get to 5 dollars a gallon. I am pretty sure none of that is ever going to happen. Except maybe gas going to 5 dollars a gallon (with 3 dollars of that being tax.)

Ten years from now we are going to look back on today and realize what joke hybrids were.

The closer you get to an election the more your hear about how different the Republicans are from the Democrats. There may very well have been a significant difference twenty or forty years ago, but after witnessing what happened in the last eight years, I have to admit that the difference appears to be in name only. Still, even today you hear that Republicans are for low taxes and Democrats want to raise taxes.

Ever since President Kennedy, Democrats have been in favor of raising taxes and since that time taxes have become more and more of a burden. Republicans have been in power several times since President Kennedy was assassinated yet taxes have still gone up and up and up. How can that be if Republicans are for low taxes? Could it be that the low tax claim is just something to fool voters into voting Republican?

Not entirely. The Bush tax cut did result in a break in taxation, but for those who do not make all that much money it could not be considered anything serious in terms of tax relief. I believe I remember getting a check for $300 from the government. That was after I was asked to pay more than $5000 in income taxes.

That $300 becomes even more inconsequential when you realize that income tax is just one of a multitude of taxes and fees that our state and federal governments load on us. Less that half what I have to pay out in taxes is due to income. The rest is in fees for government services that should be free, fees for registration of automobile, fees for automobile safety sticker, a very significant property tax, sales taxes on everything I buy, excise tax on top of sales tax for all kinds of products such as gasoline, and the list goes on and on and on. The end result is that over half of the gross income is stolen by the government.
I find it very difficult to be thankful for a $300 rebate. I find it more of an insult that a benefit. All it does is remind me that I am still paying out far too much in taxes. Republicans can’t buy my vote with a $300 tax rebate.

But I would not vote for any Democrat either. If Republicans are at times shifty, then Democrats are always untrustworthy. They want us to believe that they will only increase tax on the rich. Trouble is that they consider anyone who has money left over after taxes are paid as being rich.

The want to raise taxes on corporations, especially the oil companies. They are particularly interested in taping into the windfall profits the oil companies are enjoying from the increased price of gasoline. Uneducated voters hear this, and cheer them on at the sideline. These dummies don’t realize that corporations do not pay tax like we do. Our tax comes from our income. Corporations don’t have income, as such. Just profits. Profits are removed from the top. They are not taken from what is left at the bottom like what an individual has to settle for. And the taxes that a corporation pays the government is part of the selling price of the product they produce. It is included in the cost of manufacture. Guess who pays that? The consumer! We are the consumer! So the next time some slick politican tries to tell you they are only going to increase taxes on the rich and greedy corporations, watch your back. In the end YOU will be the one paying the tax increase. It may be hidden in the price of the products you suddenly can no longer afford so you may not end up paying it after all but it will still effect your lifestyle in a negative way.

I have always been partial to thin and crisp when it comes to pizza crust. This weekend I added about six tablespoons of olive oil to the dough. The result was a much finer and smoother texture. More like cake dough and much more suitable for thick crust pizza than the usual thin crust we have made in the past.

A couple of loaves of bread were made from the excess dough. They seemed softer and more like cake too.

Seems that whenever I try something based on low budget planing I get low budget results. My most recent disappointment is with 300 ohm twin lead. The stuff really does have problems keeping its electrical characteristics when it gets wet.

I was using the good stuff too. The heavier duty twin lead. True, it was spliced in several places and the splices were not taped but I had done the same with 450 ohm window line and never had a problem during rainy conditions.

This morning my 75 meter, 9 AM schedule was interrupted by a thunderstorm. Never mind, I still tried to keep the schedule and fired up the rig. I was using the all band dipole and antenna tuner. The whole setup had been carefully adjusted for an absolute minimum SWR the night before, but now I could not get it to drop below 3:1.

It was pouring rain outside and I never did connect with the target station. He was having storm problems too and had not even tried to keep the schedule. Finally I gave up.

An hour later I fired up the rig again. The storm was over. It was still wet outside but it was not raining anymore. SWR was back down to 1.3:1.

I am sure that the higher SWR was due to the rain.

The whole point to using the twin lead was to avoid having to design an open wire line interface. Or a window line interface using feed through insulators at the window and doing it the right way. Looks like if you don’t do it the right way, you will end up with wrong way performance.

The lesson to be learned here is that it will pay off in the long run to do it right the first time. Go ahead and homebrew your open wire line, design a proper interface through the window or wall, install the tuner in a decent location and don’t forget to run a decent ground to the thing.

We normally have pork chops with mashed potatoes and a green vegetable. This weekend I discovered a new way to prepare the dish using rice.

Although we say pork chops we are actually using medalions of pork loin. There is nothing magic about pork. You could just as easily substitute beef loin or chicken breasts without changing anything else. I bet it would even work with thicker fillets of fish.

The meat is first fried in a skillet. Set the burners to low, add a little canola oil, roasted and mashed garlic, let it come up to temperature, then add the meat. The meat should be cut into sections approximately half an inch thick. In the case of chicken breasts, use them as is.

While the meat is browning, open a can of Campbell’s condensed mushroom soup. Empty the can into a small sauce pan and add one can of water. Mix thoroughly. No need to heat we just want the condensed soup to be more of a sauce so that it will not burn when added to the meat in the skillet.

Check the meat and brown on both sides. Remove the meat from the skillet and add the mushroom soup to the skillet. Stir to reclaim all the browning drippings from the meat. Combine them with the mushroom soup to form a light brown gravy.

Notice we have not added any seasoning. There is plenty of salt in the mushroom soup. No need to add anything.

Cut the meat into half inch wide strips. Then cut the strips into half inch square chunks. Add the meat back into the sauce in the skillet and let it simmer for an hour or two on low heat. Stir every so often to make sure the mixture does not stick to the bottom of the skillet and burn.

The rice can be prepared normally with water. We use plain rice and avoid the instant stuff. Use about two to three cups of water per cup of rice. You can also use chicken broth in place of water. We make our own chicken broth and store it in the refrigerator in salvaged Prego jars. The chicken broth already contains seasonings. Salt, pepper, sage, and rosemary are added to the chicken carcass as it is boiled to make the broth. One chicken makes three to four jars of broth. One jar of broth is enough to cook one cup of dry rice.

Bring the water or broth to a boil in a large saucepan. Pour in the cup of dry rice and stir. Keep the burner on high for a few minutes and let the rice and liquid boil. As the rice cooks it will swell and absorb the liquid. When it appears that is what is happening, turn the burner to low and put a lid on the pan. Let it sit and steam. Check on it periodically to make sure it is not burning. The idea is for the rice to absorb all the liquid so that at the end we have very little liquid in the pan. If there is too much liquid, turn up the heat and boil it off but be careful not to scorch the rice. Scorched rice has a very bad taste even if it has been carefully seasoned.

Serve the meal in a medium sized bowl. Three to four large spoonfuls of rice followed by three large spoonfuls of meat and gravy.

It should be obvious that this is a very versatile dish. In place of the rice, you could use mashed potatoes, or noodles. In place of the meat you could use fish or shrimp. I have not tried this using canned tuna or salmon but I bet it would work that way too.