degringolade

Well, I finished the first crack at the pressure cooker and things went fine. I am now the proud owner of five pint jars of beans and bacon. They all sealed up just fine and I will have them for my lunch and report back tomorrow.

Due to my utter nerdishness and lack of anything else to do, I went looking into the power draw for doing this kind of thing. It was part and parcel of the costing out of the different parts of the process. Folks talk about the savings and how cheap you can eat if you can yourself and eat low on the food chain. I think that his is true, but usually this kind of thing is expected to be taken on faith as an absolute truism.

I don't take anything on faith.

Part and parcel of my obsessive compulsion today is documenting research into the power draw of the electric range that I use. How the deal went yesterday is that I had three of the burners running in order to process the five jars of beans.

1.) small burner, 1400 watts, on high for 20 minutes to scald mason jars
2.) small burner, 1400 watts, on high for 20 minutes to scald lids.
3.) large burner, 2200 watts, on high for 20 minutes to bring pressure cooker water (3 Quarts) to temperature.
4.) large burner, 2200 watts, on high for 20 minutes to bring pressure cooker to 11 lbs pressure.
5.) Large burner, 2200 watts, set between low and medium low for 75 minutes to maintain 11 lbs pressure.

Now, I went and asked the folks at whirlpool (stove manufacturer) about the power draw for the electric range. They shipped me here to let me understand how the controls on your electric range work.

https://techcircuit.org/how-an-infinite-switch-works/

This works out to:
1.) 1400 x 0.33 = 462 watt/hours or 0.462 KWh
2.) 1400 x 0.33 = 462 watts/hours or 0.462 KWh
3.) 2200 x 0.33 = 726 watts/hours or 0.726 KWh
4.)  2200 x 0.33 = 726 watts/hours or 0.726 KWh
5.) 2200 x 0.35 x 1.25 = 962 watts/hours or 0.926 KWh**

So, adding everything together, I come up with 3.3 KWh used in canning these five jars of beans. My current cost for electricity is around $0.19 per KWh, so it cost me around $0.62 for the batch which works out to $0.13 per jar of beans.

______________________________________

**Concerning #5, I am using 35% as a power draw estimate using the link above as a reference

Northern Song Dynasty (960–1126) / Guo Xi/ Clearing Autumn Skies over Mountains and Valley

Been spending the mornings plowing through executor shit. Mostly I am being a good secretary and making certain all the forms are filled out correctly.

I am intrigued by the goings on in the world. It appears that the lack of trust in government is growing and that folks are getting sick of the shit. Maybe not. I am seeing wider and wider pendulum swings of attack and counter-attack in the public statements.

I have given up being worried about such things. I think that I have gone into the land of “intrigued”. It isn’t that things are getting any better or worse, it is just that the world has moved out from under some folks and they are just now realizing it and are frantically trying to operate under a mythical status quo that they have bet their lives upon and that no longer exists.

Makes for entertaining reading, provided you don’t expect rational behavior.

Impressionism / Stefan Luchian/ Immortelles

I read slashdot almost every day. “News for nerds, stuff that matters”. Keeps me in tune with Nerdland, which is still a home away from home.

I think the reason that I read it is to watch people who think that the problems that we have today can be fixed with merely a different emphasis on the same methods that got us to the point that we are now. In other words, these are the folks who find the errors of the past are errors in degree, not in kind.

Now don’t hate me on this, this isn’t the worst thing that could happen. The work we have ahead of us isn’t one of jarring change. The work will be a hundred year devolution to a different state of affairs. These will be the folks that manage the train of changes that will make the next system work.

Oh, I know, you guys will argue that the apocalypse is nigh and we will all be fighting the rats for food, but I see that as a very marginal possibility (<2%) and even if it does happen, I am completely fucked and won’t survive it anyway, so why worry.

Nope, Slashdot is where the future will be worked out at the detail level. There will be documentation of what whiz-bang technical bullshit just went south along with a discussion about possible ways out. Like most of this kind of discussion, you can ignore the individual ideas that particular day, but watching the flow of the conversations over time you can get an idea of direction and velocity.

Best yet, it seems to be written by nerds. Thus the emphasis is on technical means. You always have to remember that the mainstream is written by folks who want to make money.

Impressionism / Lovis Corinth/ Still Life with Buddha-Lobsters and Oysters

In the long ago, fresh out of grad school, I worked with experiments on animals. Heart research mostly. I did a bunch of the work on polymers for the Jarvik heart and did a major piece of the work defining the kinetics of dephosphorylation of the ATP-ADP-AMP cycle in forced cardiac infarct (you old fuckers who have had a heart attack, you’re welcome).

The work was done on cows and sheep. Mostly sheep. The reason that we chose sheep was that they were bigger than dogs and, more to the point, almost no one gave a shit one what we did to them.

I was never thrilled about the whole process. Luckily, I hate sheep, and once sheep get over the bouncy cute “lamb” phase, they are pretty unattractive and stupid. And they taste good.

But we took care of our sheep. We even took them out on walks to mow the grass and keep down the weeds out back. When we took them in for the stage where they died, we alway let them think we were still their friends, they went to sleep and didn’t wake up while thinking this thought.

My point is that animal research has its place in carefully circumscribed circumstances. There are thing that are needing research that can’t be gotten any other way. But you have to have ethics and you have to give a shit about the dignity of the animal, the pain and suffering that you are causing, and what is the actual value of the experiment that you are undertaking.

Tunisian sand fleas don’t make the grade in any way shape or form. The folks who did this torture animals for money. The folks who fund it pay for that torture. I am of the opinion that both of these parties would be an excellent choice as experimental subjects for experimental sandflea research.

Wretched Excess at Kenny and Zukes

Survived the first day of the new regime. Fun and games abound. Surly nurses, clueless administrators, confused managers, the full meal deal of government ineptitude on display. Almost worth paying to watch. Getting paid to watch and put out a little bit of work just seems like kind of a sweet deal. But the truth of the matter is that it is like getting paid to go to a bad dinner theater.

I will use the analogy of a now (thankfully) defunct dinner theater here in Portlandia. Sylvia's Dinner Time Theater was where I went to please my ex-father in law. He truly loved the place. So I went there because he sprung for the check every time and I still was paying the "sleeping with your daughter" tax. I can't say that Sylvia's was ever bad. Nope. It was never bad. But it never quite rose to good. Food was marginal, talent was barely adequate, acoustics were sort of OK. Actually the concept of dinner theater is mediocre in itself. One of my most treasured and awkward and painful memories was watching "A Salute to Sondheim" while consuming what appeared to be Costco Lasagne with bagged salad and overcooked broccoli. Dessert was Cheesecake. I am fairly certain the wine came out of a box. The singers were perfectly balanced with the meal.

One of the hardest things to admit here in this mortal coil is that most things are mediocre. The center of the normal curve is anathema to most folks. In the old days of grading on the curve, being at the mean meant passing. Now that the grading structure has been changed and the curve taken out of the equation so the students have a better chance of a positive self image, they now have a chance of not really being good at something they have purportedly learned and worse yet, not realizing it.

It is like a slap in the face to be told one is mediocre. But that is where most of us lie. We are all told now that we are special. Few of H. Sapiens are.

I am getting the impression more and more that the big change coming at us is the unpleasant realization by most that their skills aren't that valuable and their opinions not that valid.

I wish to take the time to thank those who do stop by. It ain't Steinbeck, but it is who I am.

Current Location: happy lamp and coffee
Current Music: Nickelback: Someday

Profile

Degringolade

May 2025

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31

Syndicate

Active Entries

Style Credit

Style: Fresh Cotton for Crisped by timeasmymeasure

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated May. 30th, 2025 12:37 pm

A Sorta Public Diary and Comment

Entries tagged with hexagram 04

(no subject)

Ante

An Odd Favorite

Sheeps and Cows and Puppies

Mediocrity