Useful Thoughts and Actions Taken

Onward to Copenhagen

Damn The Torpedos full speed ahead

" Damn the torpedos! "  Captain Obama shouted.   We'll deliver this load of government cheese come hell or high water!   Just what kind of cheese I could not discern.  It was the foulest case I had ever encountered.  It stunk to high heaven and we were going to be smellng it for weeks on end.   When finally I saw the mark of the maker on the cheese disks I saw that it was some sort of circular symbol with a sky and earth.  I would say heaven and earth but heaven can not smell like this cheese.

As we sailed at flank speed towards oblivion I could not help but think of the horrible view of the hull below deck.  I could not put the ominous hole in the hull of the ship where I saw water gushing  out of my mind.  The image of the men trying to fix the bilge pumps who looked panicked and shot furtive glimpses that seemed to say without words:

" We are doomed for the fool that runs this ship "

……more

By Fudgy McFarlen, ago

What eventually happens to most stamp collections

I was at the post shipping some items when in came a man with a stack of boxes.  The boxes were all covered in stamps.  Seems what he does is buy large stamp collections on ebay and use them for postage!  The reason why this works is people who inherit stamp collections want money not the stamps.  Thus when they sell the collection most times they sell at a discount over face value.    After a quick review on ebay I realized I could not recreate this scenario for my own shipping needs.  Any ideas why students?   A look at ebay quickly reveals why.   You have to sort through a large number of junky stamp auctions to do this trick.   The only way you do this is to be very interested in stamp collecting yourself.  It is my guess that this fellow probably sifts through collections and looks for any gems and removes them before using the more ordinary stamps for postage.   I would not be surprised if  he is selling some of these winnowed collections again on ebay.  The size of boxes he ships are large enough that if he is doing this then he is selling large notebooks full of them. Likely more than one book too.

The world is full of arbitrages.  Some of them require a genuine interest.  I find stamps boring to the extreme.

By Fudgy McFarlen, ago

Serial Port Software and Tools

Serial Port is more stable than USB for industrial control so far as I have seen.

 

Using the Device Manager to see a list of all serial ports including phantoms.  Batch file here with extension changed to .txt to get paste WordPress security settings.

set DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1
start devmgmt.msc

The registry can be tweaked to do the same thing

By Fudgy McFarlen, ago

Brazilian Cold Bean Salad

I encountered a delicious bean salad at an "a kilo" restaurant in Brazil.  You make it as follows:

  1. cook great northern beans with a little salt, olive oil and garlic.  Drain afterwards
  2. put in a large container and add some more olive oil and mix to lightly coat the beans
  3. add chip chopped green and red bell peppers and onion
  4. add some sort of acid.  I like to use lime juice but you can also use vinegar.  Add and mix a bit at a time until it suits your taste.
By Fudgy McFarlen, ago

Hot Sweet Jalopena Beans

One of the secrets of good beans is adding acid to them. Vinagar and lime juice suit this purpose.  If you like the hot sweet combination here is a recipe for you.

  • molasses – used in the 1800's alot to make beans more zippy.
  • oregano
  • vinagar
  • red bell pepper
  • onions
  • garlic
  • tomato
  • olive oil
  • 1 red jalopena

Use the above ingredients to suit your taste. Cook in your pressure cooker.  Nothing like the sweet of the molasses beating against the hot flavor of the jalopena.

By Fudgy McFarlen, ago