Category Archives: Random Access

Random Access, the op-ed.

Friggin’ ‘Frig

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It was a rough winter in North Puffin. Fortunately, I was in South Puffin at the time. We had some plumbing issues. It turns out we also had a difficulty with the frig.

I have changed my spelling preference.
♦ The first citation of “frig” as short for refrigerator in the OED is from E. F. Spanner’s 1926 novel Broken Trident: “Best part of our stuff here is chilled, and with no ’frig plant working, the mercury will climb like a rocket.”
♦ The earliest “fridge” cite is from Frame-Up, a 1935 crime novel by Collin Brooks: “Do you mean that you keep a dead body in a fridge waiting for the right moment to bring her out?”
Hmmm.

The frig didn’t seem as cold as it should but our only freezer thermometer died in the freezer downstairs, so our first clue was that the milk seemed warm in the glass.

I’ve always resisted buying a refrigerator. We bought this more-than-20-years old frig because SWMBO wanted it, not because our previous white-box-that-makes-cold stopped making cold. It’s a really nice bottom freezer model with adjustable shelves and great access. It was the champ when it was young and had lots of fans. Unfortunately one of the fans has maybe gone on to love someone else. The white-box-that-makes-cold stopped pushing the cold into the box with the food in it.

I put some of the frozen canisters I use in my coolers in the frig and moved the ice cream to the otter freezer.

SWMBO and I both have wanted a French door, bottom freezer, frig.

New FrigNew French door, bottom freezer appliances cost more than some cars. As my friend “Bob” said in 2009, “$1,200 is too much. $3,000 is mindless.”

I agree wholeheartedly. I gave SWMBO the assignment. Check the sale fliers. Check the garage sales. Check craigislist. Find something we can afford.

Regular readers know I like Craigs List.

She found one in the third listing. “Brand new Kenmore…” The asking price was about half the current sale price for that model. I was on the road 10 minutes later.

I don’t really think the young seller is in the Russian Mafia, but it is indeed a brand new frig, fresh off the truck, with original packing and wrapping and taping. SWMBO is quite pleased.

On the subject of tape, if there is an uptick in refrigerator sales, buy stock in tape companies. It took most of a day to find the seller, inspect and buy the frig, and install it. It took twice that to remove all the tape. I don’t think I actually removed all the tape.

We arranged to meet in a hotel parking lot because the seller wasn’t sure of his mother-in-law’s address where the frig was in the garage. We arrived at the hotel first to find a Vermont Law Enforcement convention but no seller. He eventually drove in (the truck he was going to bring it with wouldn’t start), sneezed on us, and lead us back north to his mother-in-law’s house at the exit just south of where we started.

My truck has a cap so we had to lay the new frig down in the bed. The widest door in the house is the front door to the great room. That’s the only possible entrance for a box that is 34″ deep and 36″ wide.

Step 1: Stand the new frig up on the front porch. Cover with blue tarp so it is invisible. Let it stay awhile to reacclimate to being vertical.

Step 2: Move old frig into the middle of the great room and plug it back in until the new one settles down.

Step 3: We renovated the kitchen a few years ago, including building an alcove for the 33″ wide old frig with a nice liquor cabinet beside it. The carpenter had buried the screws in the side of the liquor cabinet, kind of behind the 2″ butcher block top. I pulled the top, got to the screws, and pulled the cabinet. I put it in the garage — out of sight, out of mind. It won’t fit beside the new 36″ wide frig but it’s too nice to toss.

Step 4: When I say I covered a mouse hole in the wall behind the frig, I mean a MOUSE hole. About 4″ high and 12″ wide. I have a vague recollection that the carpenter punched that hole by drilling lots of holes around the perimeter, then punching it out so we’d have access for a water line if desired. It left something that really looked chewed. And I could be misremembering. I do not want to meet that mouse. I covered it with a piece of steel. Since I have now really annoyed it, I really really do not want to meet that mouse.

Step 5: Boy howdy, new frigs don’t roll sideways.

Lurve jail blankets. Lurve.

This is a story very much like the platform bed coming down the low clearance stairway in Jersey. The tape measure said it wouldn’t fit so we just didn’t tell the movers.

I removed the door handles (bad design: two different size allen wrenches required) from the new frig. Popped the great room and cellar doors off their hinges. Moved furniture. There was no wiggle room, even if the frig had been inclined to move sideways when wiggled. I put a plywood plate on my handtruck to distribute the load and used my truck loadbinders to strap the thing on. Used jail blankets to pad the box. Anne pushed. I pulled and balanced. And we got the thing in the door. After considerable jockeying, it landed in front of the alcove and slid right in as if made for it.

I did not break my hand. Anne did not get concussed. We had to put it down while it was still on the porch because we didn’t get lined up straight. She stopped it with her head. And putting it down next to the alcove, it caught my hand. No apparent damage to the frig.

Step 6: Plug it in, run it a couple of hours, and fill.

Lo and behold, it ran like a new frig. Even the door alarm works, evidenced by how long we had it open while loading it. (Thankfully, that isn’t a siren call; it makes a steady ping-ping-ping, then the lights turned off.) There is both more and less room innit. I can put two gallons of milk and three 2-liter bottles in the door(s) but there isn’t as much room for butter or salad dressings because the door shelves aren’t adjustable height.

The worst part of having a new frig is the inconvenience of retraining. I have spent 20 years walking into the kitchen and opening the door by popping it on the edge. Now I have to pull a handle in the middle.

Step 7: Took the handles off the old frig and rolled it out onto the porch. Number One Daughter gave me instruction for that. “For the love of God, Pete and all that is Holy — please put the old fridge directly on the truck and take it to Hodgdons. Seriously, why touch something more than once — don’t move it from one place to another — JUST GET RID OF IT.”

Seriously, after we bounced it around the great room, the temp came down to normal. Maybe the mouse (remember the mouse?) had climbed in the air duct to build a home …

Writing the craigslist ad to sell it now.

A Southern friend pointed out to me that I overlooked a different solution:
Frig Repair
 

Gouged

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2008 Gas SignI drove 1,700 miles up the East Coast last week. Gas prices are down a little from their near-record highs a month or two ago but it was still about the most expensive trip I’ve made which is a major reason Florida orange juice costs so much.

I haven’t heard a peep from any of the usual suspects about the prices and there was no ineffectual Internet gas boycott this year. The House approved stiff gas-gouging penalties in 2007 but prices are higher than ever. Even Sen. Bernard Sanders (“I”-VT) hasn’t been whining about it. I ‘spect he’s too busy running for President.

Mr. Obama is mad as heck about it. He has done nothing.

“How do you propose the president bring gas prices back down to the level on the sign?” my friend Nola “Fanny” Guay asked.

Unfortunately the Administration has done more to raise the price than lower it. Maybe if Mr. Obama stopped lying to us…

Oddly, if you were really a Liberal, you’d already know the answer to Ms. Guay’s question. Bernie Sanders says he does. Jimmy Carter thought he did.

Price controls didn’t work, of course, as the rising price going out my tailpipe shows.

The real answer? An energy policy that makes it possible to increase supply in this country and reduce our demand. Simple as that.

It’s a reasonable argument that the current economy, largely designed in the 1950s and 60s when energy was pretty much unlimited, hammers us when energy is so expensive.

Earth had three billion residents in 1960 when gas cost a quarter and water was free. Earth had four billion people on earth in 1974 when the price of oil had risen from $3 per barrel to $12 and water was nervous. Earth has 7.2 billion today. One-third of those live in China and India and every one of them wants the standard of living people have in the United States and Europe.

There is not enough energy or water in the world to do that so the world that was built on cheap energy and limitless water will soon run on very expensive energy and very precious water. I just wish we weren’t saddled with traders and traitors who want to run that price up artificially.

“It bugs me that America is producing more and using less than ever yet the prices are up pretty significantly,” Rufus said.

Supply and demand is the issue. China already consumes about 66% of what the US does and is growing like Topsy. Asia and Oceania use a combined 25BBL/day total to our 21BBL/day.

Market forces do have some impact on prices (it is, after all, what the market will bear) but speculators have more. When crude zooms because a futures trader is willing to pay (or is afraid not to pay) over $100/barrel, we all suffer.

In case you missed the arithmetic, a barrel of oil rose by a factor of “just” 4 between the day I started day dreaming about getting a drivers license and the day I bought my first new car. Now has skyrocketed by a factor of 40.

The cost per barrel has risen a couple bucks on infrastructure costs. The cost per barrel has risen a few bucks more as we squeeze the rocks harder. And inflation adds the same toll. Still, that means the $3 barrel of oil should cost $20, maybe $30 tops. Speculators get the rest.

Speculators.

I have the two-word solution to speculation: “Take Delivery.”

It works in oil. It works in grain. It works in real estate.

You want to buy something and speculate that the price will go up? Great. Take delivery. Own the product. If these airheads had to sit on a tanker load of oil, how fast would they need to turn their inventory?

And that, dear Fanny Guay, is a solution a President can push through.

“Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe,” Mr. Obama’s first Secretary of Energy Steven Chu told the Wall Street Journal in 2008.

OK, I guess we know why that ship has sailed.

Buick Special Gas Price
 

Memorial Day

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Today is Memorial Day in the United States. The holiday once known as Decoration Day commemorates the men and women who perished under the flag of this country, fighting for what sets our America apart: the freedom to live as we please.

Holiday is a contraction of holy and day; the word originally referred only to special religious days. Here in the U.S. of A. “holiday” means any special day off work or school instead of a normal day off work or school.

The Uniform Holidays Bill which gave us some 38 or 50 Monday shopaholidays moved Memorial Day from its traditional May 30 date to the last Monday in May. Today is not May 30 but perhaps we can shut up and salute anyway.

Editorial cartoon from Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Lest we forget, the Americans we honor did not “give their lives.” They did not merely perish. They did not just cease living, check out, croak, depart, drop, expire, kick off. kick the bucket, pass away or pass on, pop off, or bite the dust. Their lives were taken from them by force on battlefields around the world. They were killed. Whether you believe they died with honor, whether you believe our cause just, died they did.

Today is not a “free” day off work or school. Today is not the big sale day at the Dollar Store. Today is a day of Honor.

2,180 U.S. men and women have died in Afghanistan since 2001.

More than 656,000 Battle Deaths have occured since the U.S. was founded.

“All persons present in uniform should render the military salute. Members of the Armed Forces and veterans who are present but not in uniform may render the military salute. All other persons present should face the flag and stand at attention with their right hand over the heart, or if applicable, remove their headdress with their right hand and hold it at the left shoulder, the hand being over the heart. Citizens of other countries present should stand at attention. All such conduct toward the flag in a moving column should be rendered at the moment the flag passes.”

The American flag today should first be raised to the top of the flagpole for a moment, then lowered to the half-staff position where it will remain until Noon. The flag should be raised to the peak at Noon for the remainder of Memorial Day.

There are those in this country who would use today to legislate the man out of the fight. They can do that but the men and women we honor today knew you cannot legislate the fight out of the man. They have fought and they have died to protect us from those who would kill us. And perhaps to protect us from those who would sell out our birthright.

There is no end to the mutts who would kill our men and women in uniform even faster than they would kill their own. And there is no end to the mutts in our capitol who would let them. If I had but one wish granted on this day, I wish not another soldier dies. Ever. But die they did around the world again this year and die they will. For us. For me.

Because those men and women died, I get to write these words again this year. And you get to read them. You get to rail about Islam or Presbyterianism or Frisbeeism without fear of the government. And I get to read it. Please pause and reflect as you go to a concert, stop at an artist’s studio, grill a burger, or simply read a book in the sunshine the price we pay to keep our right to do those things. Thank a soldier today. And then do it again tomorrow.

Editor’s Note: This column is slightly updated from one that appeared first in 2008.

 

We Only Have 500 Days Left, Part III

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Want to know why I distrust our liberal friends?

They drive how science goes wrong.

I started this three-part series with the simple question, “If you distrust what the Administration told you about the military, why do you trust what they say about global warming?”

Yes, I chose two hot button issues across the political spectrum. It’s always more interesting than yattering in a corner about National Safe Digging Month versus potholes

Sheeple Image Found at alt-market.comThe responses follow a predictable pattern:

“Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and the latest IPCC AR say it is so.”
“in Europe, where environmental awareness is far higher, everyone takes human caused global warming seriously.”
“There is 97% agreement on human caused global warming.”
“Man-Made Climate Change Deniers are the authentic environmental wackos.”
“BS, Dick.”

Trust but Verify
That “simple idea underpins science” but Ronald Reagan gave it a bad name among our Liberal friends who say “the science is settled.”

“Trust but do not verify” follows every “complete agreement,” the Liberal signal that people have not thought through their pet issue, are mistaken about their pet issue, don’t want to hear contradictions about their pet issue, and go ballistic if I ask them to rethink it.

See the summary of responses above.

Let’s look at the 97% agreement on human caused global warming and the IPCC.

John Cook published a paper in Skeptical Science that claims he and others reviewed nearly 12,000 abstracts of studies published in the peer-reviewed climate literature. They found that “97 percent of the papers” that expressed a position on anthropogenic global warming “endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.”

Our liberal friends latched onto that one, you betcha.

Unfortunately, Mr. Cook, um, cooked the books.

It turns out he was not alone.

The Economist reports that “modern scientists are doing too much trusting and not enough verifying — to the detriment of the whole of science, and of humanity” — and they are doing it in fields from biotechnology and rust to, yes, “global warming.”

  • “Too many of the findings that fill the academic ether are the result of shoddy experiments or poor analysis.”
  • “Researchers at … Amgen found they could reproduce just six of 53 ‘landmark’ studies in cancer research.”
  • “‘Negative results’ now account for only 14% of published papers, down from 30% in 1990.”

Papers from PNAS and IPCC fill most of the categories the Economist lists. Unfortunately, I do not expect my Liberal friends to accept the Economist [La la la la la la la la la la la] as a source, though. After all the Economist said of Liberal darling Paul Krugman, “the most striking thing about his writing these days is not its economic rigour but its political partisanship.”

And finally, for those who pray at the institutionalized ignorance altar to Al Gore, there may be a scientific consensus on global warming after all. Only 36 percent of geoscientists and engineers believe that humans have created global warming, although I suspect 100 percent of them believe humans have created the crisis itself. Of course, this finding was in the peer-reviewed Organization Studies, so it must be suspect, yes?

There is good news: The Economist also reports, “The most enlightened journals are already becoming less averse to humdrum papers. Some government funding agencies, including America’s National Institutes of Health, which dish out $30 billion on research each year, are working out how best to encourage replication.” [Emphasis added]

That small trend is a good start, but I don’t see it taking hold anywhere in the human-caused global warming industry and I don’t see it taking hold in the media or populace that supports and pays for said human-caused global warming industry.

 

We Only Have 500 Days Left, Part II

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Want to know why I distrust our liberal friends?

The NYTimes reports that the National Climate Assessment study was prepared by a “large scientific panel overseen by the government and received final approval…” The White House released the report May 6.

The White House “wants to maximize its impact to drum up a sense of urgency among Americans about climate change — and thus to build political support for a contentious new climate change regulation that President Obama plans to issue in June.”

Mr. Obama wants to drum up urgency about climate change and build political support for [his] new climate change regulation.

Mr. Obama didn’t introduce it with a Rose Garden speech, though, because that would (a) give him only one shot at marketing it and (b) would give the people who understand the actual science yet another major opportunity to demonstrate how political this is. Instead, Mr. Obama “spent Tuesday giving interviews to local and national weather broadcasters on climate change and extreme weather.”

Don’t want to take my word for it? Read what climatologist Roy Spencer has to say. Before becoming a Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Dr. Spencer was a Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. Climate Confusion is his popular book on global warming.

For the record, there are still 975 days until Inauguration Day, January 20, 2017, so there is little doubt among our liberal friends that LAX will be underwater before the next President takes office.