Archive for July, 2009

Go Ask Steve

Saturday, July 25th, 2009

When He’s Ten Feet Wide

What IS it they put in McDonald’s breakfasts?

I just ate a McMuffin, a greasy biscuit sandwich, and three hash browns, and I’m pretty sure I’m high. I can’t get enough of this stuff. The only breakfast I like better is a big Southern breakfast with country ham and biscuits and gravy. And jelly. And honey. And red eye gravy. And Dr. Pepper.

There has to be a drug in this stuff. It can’t just be grease and flour and eggs.

I look forward to this all week, because I diet every day except Saturday. All week long, it has been oatmeal, oatmeal, oatmeal, OATMEAL. I have breakfast with my dad on Tuesdays, and on those days, I have a tuna sandwich, because eggs are bad for my gall bladder. Once a week, I have to have something I can actually taste.

I stopped losing weight. I guess I manage to eat so much on Saturdays, it kills the rest of the week. I may have to adjust my calories downward. But I’m not giving up Saturdays. I don’t care if the other days go down to three hundred calories each. I have to have decent food on occasion.

Speaking of decent food, I had a magnificent Costco steak this week. I went down there hoping the local Costcos was one of the stores where they had started selling prime beef. Sadly, it was not. But I picked up some choice rib eyes, and beef grading is not an exact science, and what I ended up with was pretty much the same thing as prime. I pan-fried one for dinner, and it made my eyes roll back in my head. I think it pays to study the beef you buy, because you will occasionally find something better than the grade on the label indicates.

Dinner is pretty dull for me these days. Roasted chicken, grilled fish, pork chops, or pan-fried steak, plus a couple of boring vegetables that are low in carbs. The food is good, but there is no imagination in it. And it’s a little monotonous. Lunch is almost always a tuna salad or salmon salad sandwich and a little fruit. If I didn’t break loose on Saturday, I’d go insane.

Imagine eating a gorgeous rib eye with steamed snap peas and Brussels sprouts. This is what I am reduced to.

In my book, I advised people to cook steaks outdoors on a propane-powered griddle, and that gives incredible results, but lately I’ve been using a cast-iron skillet on the stove, right under the vent fan. The smoke has been tolerable. Seems like a piece of cast iron will start imparting a wonderful flavor to steak, if you cook steak in it regularly. Maybe I should dedicate that skillet to rib eyes and CFS.

I believe a Christian has to have self-control, and that means you can’t eat everything you want. Like Jim from SOTW says, it’s irritating to hear a big, fat, sloppy preacher with a 50-inch waist and giant wattles make the ridiculous claim that it’s a sin to drink moderately.

Why are Christians so fat? Is it my imagination? The people at my church look pretty normal, but if you turn on religious TV, you will see some real porkers punishing the pews. I guess we take the energy we can’t channel into other sins and put it into gluttony. If you’re letting your physical urges ruin your life, you’re sinning, aren’t you? How is weighing 300 pounds significantly different from taking drugs or being a drunk? I realize obesity has fewer ill effects on you and your family, but it will still kill you and make everyone around you miserable. Have you ever sat next to a fat person on an airplane? Do you have a fat relative who ruins your meals because of the way he or she eats? Do you have someone who makes it impossible for anyone else in the house to get anything good to eat, because he or she nails it as soon as it comes in the door? Do you have a fat relative who always gets the best seat in the car because he can’t get in the other ones? Fat people hog the bathroom, because they have to. They ruin furniture. Fat women destroy wooden floors with their tiny heels. If you’re huge, you’re probably making your family suffer. You should try to do something about it.

I wrote that silly cookbook, but it wasn’t intended to be a set of rules to guide you through every day of your life. I am fat, and I will never claim it’s okay, and while I will continue cooking good food as often as I can get away with it, I will never stop working on my weight.

Speaking of drinking, I haven’t made beer in ages, and I really need to get back to it. I rarely drink, but it would be a shame to get so good at homebrewing and then throw it all away. When you drink very little, you ought to make it count. Have something really good. I can’t remember my last drink of hard liquor, but I can promise you it was something excellent. I can afford it because one bottle lasts two years.

I wish it were next Saturday already, so I could hit the drive-through again.

Captain America and His Swell Lathe

Friday, July 24th, 2009

Patriotism no Cure for Stupidity

As a machining hobbyist, I find that I have one problem that is very difficult to overcome. Of course, I am referring to stupidity.

Today I was determined to do something with the lathe. I went out to the garage, and I saw a part on my Moto Guzzi which needed to be replaced. It’s a simple rod with threading at each end. It connects the shifter to the transmission. The original part is chrome-plated, and the chrome fell off. And I just happen to have a lot of stainless rod for machining. Stainless is obviously better than chrome.

I got all excited and decided to take a whack at it. It was just a matter of turning some stainless to the right size and threading both ends.

Then I remembered: I bought a standard lathe, and this is a metric bike. Arrgh.

I rooted around on the web, trying to find out what I could do. It turns out you can get metric gears for the Clausing 5936, but only if you can FIND them. And then you’re likely to get robbed. I found a partial set, but that was no good.

I felt dejected. I decided to quit. I started cursing myself (again) for not listening to Og when he told me to get a Grizzly lathe. I don’t know what I was thinking. That lathe came with a follow rest, steady rest, and metric gears. And a warranty. I still think I should get rid of the Clausing. Antiques are fun, but I am paying a big price for sticking with “old iron.”

Then I remembered something. I had stuff for metric threading! A while back, I bought drill and tap sets. Stupidity had prevented me from remembering.

I took the part off the bike and measured it. I laid it on the workbench and reached for the taps and drills. Then I realized…no dies. I can’t do external metric threading.

So while stupidity had gone into remission on one level, it was still hard at work on another.

Now I have to put the part back on and look around on the web for metric dies.

On top of that, I have no follow rest, because I bought a piece of ancient American history instead of a working tool. The rod I need to make is 0.272″ in diameter and about 7″ long. I’ll bet I can’t make that without a follow rest.

I should sell this thing. Problems like this are going to keep popping up, and the parts are impossible to find. I started searching for a steady rest and follow rest weeks ago, and nothing has turned up.

Guided Missile

Friday, July 24th, 2009

Crowley Bringing the Kryptonite?

This thing with Obama and Cambridge cop James Crowley is amazing. Crowley may possibly be the worst person on earth Obama could have picked on. Crowley’s initial interview on TV was nothing short of astounding; no attorney or handler could have improved on it. And he looks like a movie star; if they made a movie about Russell Crowe, Crowley could play him. And he was picked by his black police chief to teach about racial profiling. On top of that, he tried to save a black NBA star by giving him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. And he didn’t play that card! His mother did!

The class and shrewdness Crowley displayed in his interview are exactly the types of traits Obama lacks. The contrast between the Crowley video and the video of Obama’s idiotic slander is instructive.

I think many events in life have a supernatural origin. This guy may have been fated to breach Obama’s hull. He is almost too perfect for the purpose.

The cops are demanding an apology, and there is absolutely no doubt that one is necessary. Obama doesn’t have a leg to stand on.

Obama is a very small, insecure, and arrogant person, so I see three possible outcomes, ranked in order of descending likelihood:

1. No apology; the Messiah can do no wrong. The unbelievers are the problem! Attacks on Crowley and those demanding an apology will be mounted, if at all possible. Robert Gibbs sends out for a fresh crate of Maalox and ends up looking even more slimy and condescending than usual.

2. Mealy-mouthing tarted up as an apology. “I regret the misunderstanding.” “I am sorry the Cambridge police [stupidly] took it this way.”

3. An apology which looks sincere when displayed on a teleprompter, but which Obama will be unable to deliver without making his contempt and anger obvious. Followed by a quick exit and a weekend of pouting.

Maybe 2 should be on top. Depends on whether the handlers have any luck when they beseech the Anointed One.

Tuesday?

Friday, July 24th, 2009

Whatever

The rigger just emailed. He says the company that is bringing my milling machine says the mill will be at the rigger’s place on Monday morning. That puts it here on Tuesday.

Truth, or more cruel machine-tool industry humor?

Major “Duh” Moment

Friday, July 24th, 2009

I Decipher the Lathe Chart

Time for the world’s worst machinist to pose a stupid question.

I have been complaining that my lathe doesn’t tell me how fast the power feed moves. It has a threading chart, and I assumed the little measurements on the chart, below the thread pitch numbers, indicated the distance the carriage moved per revolution when threading. However, I didn’t bother to see whether the measurements made sense. Yesterday I realized they did not. For example, at 4 threads per inch, the measurement is 0.0367″, which is not even close to the 0.25″ each thread would require.

Are these numbers power feed speeds? They have to be. The manual doesn’t say, but it’s the only thing that makes sense.

I got amazing news from my rigger today. He says the mill should arrive at his place by 1:00 p.m. This is like waiting for the Second Coming. There have been so many false labors, I find it hard to believe that it will ever get here.

I wish I had some metal on hand for a project. I have lots of round stock, plus a little thin rectangular bar, but my only meaningful piece of milling fodder is my 72-pound chunk of mild steel, which is the size of a loaf of Wonder Bread. I had the chance to get a Jet band saw at a great price, but I failed utterly, so I have no practical way of making smaller pieces from the loaf. I can use the mill, but that would take a century and waste a lot of metal. I guess I could part it in the lathe! That would be pretty terrifying.

I was kidding just now, but I suppose it’s possible. Mount it in the 4-jaw chuck, center-drill it, stick it on my poor beat-up dead center, and pray. I’d have to back the tailstock off every time I got close to the center of the work, because you’re not supposed to part using a center. I’d also have to drill over and over, because each slice would take a drill hole with it, and then I’d have slices with drill holes in them, so I’d have to face the material down to the point where the holes disappeared, wasting metal.

I wonder how slowly I’d have to run the lathe. Like 20 RPM, unless I wanted to dodge a 72-pound missile as it came off the chuck.

No, this is not a great idea. I may as well get a band saw or find someone to cut this thing. If I pay someone, I have to decide in advance exactly how big the pieces will be.

I parted my pathetic hammer handle project with one end in a chuck and one end on a dead center, but I pulled the dead center out before I got close to the end. I hope that’s not insanely dangerous. It seemed to make sense. The center kept things working through most of the cut, and at the end, it wasn’t necessary.

The VFD is pretty great. Combine it with the back gear, and you could probably turn slowly enough to roast a pig. Helpful when parting.

VFD…pig roasting…help! I’m having an awful idea! I have a crappy 3-phase motor I’ll never be able to sell. How cheap can I get a VFD for it? I’d be the bull goose pig roaster of all time.

Thank God, the VFD is too expensive. It’s $144. There is no way I would do that. Tempting idea, though. Low frequencies for slow cooking; crank it up to throw excess grease off the pig. I guess the motor would burn up at 1 RPM.

I never followed up with my pig roaster idea. A long time ago I planned to weld one up, out of fence posts. But the motor I ordered never arrived. They discontinued it or something. I should check Grainger. Fence posts cost virtually nothing, and I already have a couple. The motor is the only real expense.

Knurly, Dude

Thursday, July 23rd, 2009

Ebay Wins Again

I gave up and ordered myself a better knurling tool. I think part of my knurling problem was that I was using 304 stainless, which is not all that soft. You need to use a lot of pressure. My lathe is only a 12″ job; there is a limit to the pressure it can exert on a part held between centers. I decided to try a tool that applies pressure all by itself. I found a knockoff of the Eagle Rock scissors-type knurling tool, which has two knurls that apply pressure from opposite sides of the work. The tool I have now has two knurls on the same side, and the lathe does the pushing.

I could have gone with the real Eagle Rock tool, but these things look pretty simple, and I think I should be able to make a perfectly good one once I have a mill. I would at least like to try it before spending money needlessly.

Another problem is that 304 stainless hardens when you apply force to it, so I was clearly an idiot for trying to do multiple turns. On the first turn, you harden the work, and then you’re in trouble.

Some people make their own knurls. A guy named Frank Ford posts regularly on the Chaski forum, and he made his own rope knurl. This is a knurl that goes around the edges of things like cabinet door knobs, leaving a surface that looks a lot like rope.

I have been told that I should use my power feed to move knurls down a workpiece, but as far as I can tell, there is no way to know how fast my power feed moves. The threading chart has speeds listed in thousandths per turn, but that’s not the power feed. Maybe there’s something in the manual. I don’t see why I couldn’t use the threading feed instead.

Someone somewhere said you can move knurls down a workpiece by applying pressure with the handwheel. The knurls try to pull the carriage, but they can’t do it by themselves, so you give them a boost. I haven’t tried that.

I’ve also been told–by a very respected machinist–that when you make diamond knurling, you don’t have to worry about the diameter of the work. Uh…okay. I know he has to be right, but I will have to see it happen in front of me before I’ll get the idea.

I made a lot of notes while watching the ATI lathe videos today. One nice thing about that series is that the instructor uses a puny 10″ lathe, so I don’t have to worry that he might be teaching me things that I can’t do on my 12″ Clausing. The other DVDs I have feature a giant lathe, by my standards. I think it’s a 15″ Leblond, but I forget.

I need to get out in the garage and try to knurl something. The tool I have is probably not good for stainless, but I have other stuff. I would hate to waste good aluminum, which is expensive, but I can grab some crummy steel.

The mill is supposed to be within the city limits tomorrow. After waiting seven weeks, I think I should sell tickets.

Obama Shows his Gratitude to Police Unions

Thursday, July 23rd, 2009

“Stupidly”

What is it with Barack Obama and his junior high attitude? Why does a sitting President do Jay Leno, let his daughter wear a leftist peace symbol on a visit to Russia, and attack private citizens? Next he’ll be judging American Idol. “Uh, your singing isn’t very good. Uh, I would go so far as to say, ‘No, you can’t.'”

I was amazed when he stooped to bad-mouth Rush Limbaugh. Is this Presidential conduct? Maybe Obama should start a blog and post at Democratic Underground. Now he’s sullying his office by making wild accusations against the Cambridge, Massachusetts, police. He says they acted “stupidly” when they arrested Professor Henry Gates. And in the same breath, Obama admits HE DOESN’T KNOW THE FACTS.

Forget the Presidency. Let’s pretend Obama is just a lawyer, acting in his professional capacity, on television. No lawyer who deserves a license offers legal opinions without doing his homework. It’s fine, if you’re blathering on a blog or ranting in a bar with your beer buddies, but when you put on your suit and go to work, that kind of thing is supposed to cease.

Look at the result. We have a lowly Massachusetts police sergeant at the mercy of the liberal press, and their newest ally is the President of the United States. And Obama admits he’s going after Crowley BEFORE determining whether Crowley did anything wrong.

Imagine how that feels. Imagine being accused of screwing up at your job, and going home, and turning on the tube, and seeing Barack Obama flapping his lips about what a bad employee you are.

Instead of saying, “I am the President, and it is not my job to investigate, or comment on, trivial arrrests made by local peace officers,” he convicted the entire Cambridge PD without hesitation, and he used very harsh language while doing it. He didn’t even allow for the possibility of an honest mistake.

I would hate to be fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan right now, depending on this immature, approval-craving pop idol to back me up when I do my job.

Newsbusters put the police report up. Predictably and credibly, it says Gates acted like a jerk. He essentially dared the police to arrest him. If the facts alleged in the report are true, Crowley showed up to prevent Gates’s home from being burglarized, asked to see some identification, and tried to leave. Gates pursued him into the yard and berated him in front of the public. I find that very believable. The police can be obnoxious and tyrannical, but it’s pretty unusual for them to fabricate a reason for an arrest, in front of a gawking crowd.

Gates was cited for disorderly conduct. I don’t know what the elements of disorderly conduct are, under the controlling law in Cambridge. I would guess that wearing a McCain button would suffice. Before Obama pronounced judgment, he should have had one of his lackeys check the law and read the arrest report, and he should have spent fifteen or twenty seconds performing an analysis. Some law professor.

Obama went on to convict the entire American law enforcement establishment. He said this:

“What I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there’s a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That’s just a fact.”

What he didn’t point out is that we also have a long history of insincere minority activists slandering the police. Maybe that’s what happened here. But why wait to find out? President “I Won” doesn’t have to check the facts. He rules by prejudice, assumption, and fiat.

We also have a long history of cops showing up when people break into houses, as Professor Gates did. Maybe that’s relevant here.

The cops are hard on minorities. No question. The other day, someone told me someone he knew had been pulled over for having a light out on his car, and I interrupted and said, “That HAS to be a black person.” And sure enough, it was. I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. I know a lot of cops look for reasons to pull black people over. But if I were President, would I go on TV and indict millions of workers who constitute the front-line troops in the domestic part of my own branch of government? Uh–as Barack would say–NO.

I might say, “We need to continue working to treat minorities as well as the majority under the law.” I might say, “There is a continuing effort in our police departments to prevent disparate treatment of minorities.” I would not turn on the cops as a whole, sapping their morale and giving the green light to race-card players all over the nation.

Imagine if Obama had said this before the Simpson murders. O.J. was already spoiled by police (white and black) who refused to follow up on his transgressions against his wife. Think how happy he would have been, knowing the cops were intimidated by a kneejerk pronouncement from a President who doesn’t think. Ask yourself whether prosecutors would have been as likely to prosecute Simpson. From now on, every cop who has a legitimate reason to arrest a prominent black person will think twice before doing his duty.

This is a man with no maturity and no understanding. He’s like a green piece of fruit. The words “class” and “grace” are beyond his comprehension. His Presidency is coming to resemble the Jerry Springer Show.

How can anyone be surprised? This is a man who turned on the white grandmother who raised him, while penning a book in praise of a black man who abandoned him. What kind of treachery can be beyond a person like that?

I hope all the union-brainwashed cops who voted for Obama understand that their throats have been cut. I hope they realize they have been betrayed, and I hope they won’t be stupid enough to let their unions choose their candidates in the future. He sandbagged the Jews by putting the screws to Israel. Now he’s turning on the police unions. I wonder whose back will feel the knife next.

Churlish Knurls

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

DVDs Deceive

Man, I am irate. I have two sets of lathe DVDs, and neither one has the right information about knurling.

As I noted earlier, I did not understand how the machinists in the videos got the knurls to track in the same cuts, over and over as they turned the workpieces. When I do it, on successive turns of the workpiece, the knurls make new marks overlaying the marks made on the earlier turns. You don’t get a sharp diamond pattern this way. You get a mess. The guys in the videos say nothing about this. They just knurl away, and everything comes out perfect.

I just found an article which explains it. Apparently, you have to measure the distance between the ridges on the knurls and then turn your work to a circumference that is a multiple of that distance. Why don’t they mention this in the videos?

The more I read about this, the more I see that I don’t know anything. I’ll quit until tomorrow. But I’m pretty sure I should get a scissor-type tool.

Swarf for Brains

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

I Nearly Threaded

It is a bit frustrating, having a weird lathe with no clutch or brake and no lead screw. Or is it feed screw? One of them is not there.

I am trying to figure threading out. I have two sources of instruction. First, my Lathe Learnin’ DVDs from Adrian Pendergast. Second, my rented ATI DVDs featuring Darrell Holland. I haven’t looked at the ATI stuff yet.

Pendergast threads without moving his compound slide. I do not know why you would want to move the compound slide, since I have never been taught that way, but it is my understanding that it’s the standard method. I’m sure I’ll find out about it when I see the ATI disks.

My lathe has a belt drive, a quick change gearbox, half-nuts, a sliding gear (?), a back gear, a VFD, and power feeds. Plus a lead screw direction lever. Since I have that lever, I guess I have a lead screw but no feed screw. Whatever the deal is, there is no screw to disengage when I thread. I’ll put it that way.

Forgot: I also have a selector knob that determines the lead screw speed. It has three positions labeled A, B, and C. And of course, B is the fastest. That makes perfect sense.

To get the thread pitch I want, I have to select the lead screw speed, threading gear, motor direction, and slide gear position. Am I forgetting anything? Maybe.

To make the machine thread, I turn it on, position the tool at the right depth, and engage the feed while watching the threading dial. I’m supposed to do a light scratching pass to see if I have the pitch right.

I have had to figure out which of the controls affect the pitch. Some do, and some don’t. It looks like the back gear isn’t relevant, but I decided to use it anyway. It may be a good idea, because it allows the motor to turn faster.

I looked at the machine’s threading chart today to find the pitch I wanted. I was trying to thread the hammer handle I started working on a while back. I needed 11 threads per inch.

I got everything set up more or less right and took a light pass. The threads were like a 64th of an inch apart. Totally wrong. I started adjusting things. I moved the sliding gear knob. I fooled with the lead screw speed. You name it. Finally, I made a brilliant observation. You can’t thread using the power feed lever. You have to use the half-nut lever. They do exactly the same thing, at different rates. I had them mixed up. I’m not sure why the machine needs two levers that are nearly redundant, but I guess there’s a reason. Maybe it’s impossible to gear it up so the same lever will give feed speeds that are good for both threading and power feeding.

I totally ruined the part while I was doing this experimentation, but I think I finally have it figured out. But because my machine has no clutch, I have to be really alert to keep from running the threading tool into the chuck. I have to hit the half-nut lever instantly, when the tool moves off the area I’m threading. If I just shut off the motor, the tool may keep going for a while.

Now I have to get knurling under control. I watched Darrell Holland do it, and it didn’t make much sense to me. I don’t understand how you get the knurls to go into the same marks over and over as the piece turns. You would think there would have to be a constant integral ratio between the diameters of the knurls and the work, but his knurling looked great. He set his lathe up to move the knurling tool .015″ per turn, to push it down the work. I can’t figure out how how you can make a knurl go sideways without jumping out of the marks it’s making. And how did he know .015″ was the right amount to move the knurling tool on each turn?

I’m sure I’m missing something obvious, because he didn’t worry about any of this stuff.

I think I’m going to take my handy Home Depot Chinese dowel and try to learn knurling on it. It’s cheap metal, so I don’t care what happens to it.

It’s fantastic having a TV and DVD player in the garage. I have the AC running, and I sit out there in a state of total bliss, watching my DVDs.

Maybe I can get that stupid dowel knurled. Then I guess I’ll have to cut some more 304 stainless and try making the hammer handle again.

I have to put all the stuff I’m learning into the instructions I’m writing. The lathe manual is pathetic. It’s not intended for pinheads who play with lathes in their garages. It’s for people who don’t need a manual at all.

If I create anything useful, I will announce it here in big bold type. Don’t hold your breath.

Sharks are Precious

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

Babies are Solid Waste

As you know if you read Drudgebart.com.tv, the wildlife people down here are trying to arrest some goofballs who tried to sell a nurse shark to a store. One of the charges is “improper killing and disposal of an animal.”

Is PETA running the world now? Do we seriously have to worry about being charged with crimes when we off primitive creatures that barely know they’re alive?

When I was a kid, my friends and I killed fish right and left. We were real idiots. Maybe it was because our fathers didn’t spend much time with us and didn’t teach us things, but we had no grasp of the notion that you should only kill things you can use. We gigged every fish we could hit. We would have gigged whales if they had come close enough. And we almost always threw out the meat, because virtually none of it was worth eating.

I remember the time we gigged a cownose ray. I think Mike was there. It was about three feet wide, and it was stupid enough to swim near the seawall where we used to hang out. That amounted to suicide. We lugged it to a friend’s house and performed an autopsy. Our medical conclusions were that if you poked one of the things inside a cownose ray, green stuff would come out, and if you poked another thing, you would get something that looked like thousand-island dressing.

I don’t know where that ray ended up. On another occasion, we tossed a stingray into a neighbor’s pool.

I told you, we were idiots. Sometimes I wish I could travel back in time and take a belt to myself.

Let me say that I have reformed. I don’t fish for worthless creatures. But sometimes I catch them anyway, and the sad fact is, a lot of them get killed in the process. Do I have to worry that a couple of years down the road, PETA nuts will be riding along with the Marine Patrol, yammering at me for not being nice to moray eels and other trash fish?

I very much doubt that nurse sharks are protected. They’re supposed to be very tasty, but very few people know that, so they get thrown back. I would imagine that their numbers are copious. If they are protected, I suppose the doofuses who killed this one should be fined. But the bit about improper killing…that is disturbing. It sounds like it’s unrelated to the species killed. If we give random animals the right to life, we’re going to have to get permits to kill rats and ants.

Not babies, of course. Don’t worry about that. It will always be open season on unborn human beings, and, if Barack Obama gets his way, on human beings which have been born in spite of efforts to kill them.

Did you know Barak (no “C”) was the name of Mohammed’s horse? Interesting. It was the white horse Mohammed allegedly rode to heaven. Muslims like white horses a lot. Christians, on the other hand, see the white horse as a symbol of the beginning of the Tribulation. I think. See the sixth chapter of the Revelation.

The inconsistency of the animal worshipers is puzzling. Right now, we have a problem with a group of Cubans (I am assuming, with good reason) killing and butchering other people’s horses. People are outraged. Because of the theft? No, that would make too much sense. They’re upset because HORSIES are dying. No one cares about pigs and cows and chickens, thank God, but when you kill a horse (which is about as intelligent as a chicken), people act like you shot the Pope.

I have been told that we have a law in the US, banning the slaughter of horses. If you want to make a jacket or a pair of shoes or a baseball out of horsehide, which is a wonderful leather, you have to wait until a horse drops dead. Can someone explain the logic? If I felt like it, I could buy 50 pigs tomorrow, kill all of them, and have a huge barbecue. No one would care. And pigs are smarter than dogs. But a horse…that would be a sin. It’s crazy.

The reason I think Cubans are killing the horses is that no one else will eat them. Cubans eat salted horsemeat, which is called tasajo. More power to them, I say. The stealing part, I’m against. But the life of a horse is no more important than the life of a turkey. I don’t care if they open a restaurant called The All-Tasajo Cafe and hang dead horses in the main dining room. They hang hams from the ceilings in Cuban sandwich joints. It’s the same thing.

I have two horsehide jackets, one pair of horsehide pants, one horsehide belt, and four pairs of horsehide shoes. It’s all leather to me.

I think it’s wrong to kill a pet, because it does great harm to the people and other pets who are attached to it, and because there is something sick and sociopathic about killing an animal that trusts you and loves you. But apart from that, as long as the harvest is humane, I see nothing wrong with killing an animal you can use. The life itself has little or no value. And I don’t know why some animals are sacred and others are not. I don’t get the hysteria about whales. I’d buy a whale steak in a heartbeat, if I could find one. Just to see what it’s like.

Actually, I do understand why some animals get more protection. Generally, it’s because they’re cute. Horses are cuter than pigs. Baby seals…don’t get me started. Never mind the horrible standard of living in the areas where they have seal hunts. Let the humans starve! Just don’t kill those cute seals! If I were making the rules, I’d weigh in on the human side. I think I would require them to quit using clubs, but life is hard in the Arctic Circle, and I can’t imagine outlawing the hunt. Who am I to sit in an upscale suburb and tell the Indians they can’t supplement their income by selling fur? Maybe the Indians should dress up like Hello Kitty when they club seals. Fight fire with fire.

If unborn babies looked like baby seals, the abortion picture would be a lot different. And it’s a lot easier to kill something you never see. I always say that abortion is legal because it’s like peeing in a swimming pool. When it happens, you can’t see it. Every time you go to a public pool, you know half the people there are peeing in it, but you swim anyway, because you can’t see them doing it. Imagine how different it would be if they all peed in the pool while standing or squatting on the edge. The quantity of pee would be the same, but there is no way you’d swim.

Similarly, abortion would be less popular if they had to remove the baby from the womb and cut its throat on the table, in front of the mother. Partial-birth abortion approaches this standard, but they keep the head concealed while the killing is done.

It’s kind of odd that you can arrest someone for dumping a dead shark in the street, while we have no problem putting several thousand babies into incinerators every day. They used to go into dumpsters, but then that got exposed, so now they burn with the rest of the medical waste. An excised appendix, a quart of liposuction fat, a diabetic’s gangrenous toe, your unborn son or daughter…same thing, in the eyes of the law.

Maybe the answer to the seal problem is to teach the Indians to get baby seals by aborting them in the last trimester. The hippies could never object to that.

I plan to keep the next nurse shark I catch, just to find out if it’s as good as I’ve heard. I hope they don’t put me in a gulag.

I’m Giving Odds

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

Newest Wild Guess

Here’s the latest news on the milling machine. It is officially, definitely, probably going to arrive in town on Friday.

Who wants to place a bet?

Outsource Your Facelift

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

Pina Coladas Can be Considered Painkillers

It looks like Obamacare is dead. Thank God. In order for the plan to live, lots of Americans would have had to die. So the way I see it, it was aborted to save lives. That’s pro-choice, isn’t it? And if you believe, as I do, that Obama got elected by accepting money from China and Muslim nations, then the pregnancy was also the result of rape.

It’s odd, but I can’t remember anyone suggesting that caregivers just charge the poor and uninsured less. As it stands now, the poor get all the treatment they need, but then they get charged huge bills they can’t or won’t pay, and the rest of us (the ones who take bills seriously) end up subsidizing them. Why not just admit that we overtreat and overcharge people? Let’s give the poor and uninsured good but not excessive treatment, and let’s charge what the treatment is actually worth. Maybe some of them would actually pay, and that would bring prices down for the rest of us. And the poor would be more likely to go to doctors.

Whenever I think about health care prices, I think about my first kidney stone. Like all medical emergencies, it happened on a weekend night, so I had to go to the ER. They gave me a totally unnecessary scan that cost several thousand dollars. They doped me up and kept me on a Gurney all night, and then they sent me home on Saturday morning–still containing a stone–with enough Percocet to get me through one day. Because clearly, I was a drug-seeking patient, and I had magically generated a kidney stone in order to get enough pills to last until Monday.

In the end, they charged me around six grand. That includes a few hundred bucks for my urologist, who actually provided useful treatment.

What did I really need? I’m not a doctor, but I know what doctors have done with millions of other people with tiny kidney stones. They x-rayed their abdomens (or not), gave them painkillers, and waited for them to pee the stones out. You can do this, including drugs and a follow-up x-ray, for maybe six hundred bucks. Apart from the pointless scan, this is the treatment I received.

The second time I got a stone, I called my urologist’s office, and I got his unbelievably nasty receptionist, and I was so offended, I decided not to get treatment. And a couple of days later, I was fine. Total cost: $0.

Now I lay off the calcium antacids, and I go easy on tea. And I definitely don’t take calcium antacids WITH tea. No more stones.

Apologists can say, “You could have had cancer! You could have been on the verge of death! You should thank God you got that scan!” And my response is that you could say the same thing about someone who went in to get a pimple squeezed. You can mistake cancer for a pimple. Or for hemorrhoids, or for any of a huge number of other trivial ailments. The fact is, the odds that I had a serious problem were incredibly low, and if I had turned out to be seriously ill, it would have become obvious with or without a scan.

The purpose of the scan was to make money. And it worked.

Have you ever gotten sick overseas? It’s a very different experience. The care you get is likely to be nearly as good as the care you get here, but it costs much, much less, and it comes with fewer bells and whistles. For example, I knew a kibbutz volunteer whose appendix went crazy while he was visiting Jerusalem. The same day, he went to a charity hospital in the Old City, and they yanked his appendix out, and they sent him back to the kibbutz when he was ready to travel. Didn’t cost him a thing, because the Catholics paid for it. But if he had been charged, it would still have cost much less than American care, because they didn’t generate 3,000 pages of documentation and give him fifty things he didn’t need, and he didn’t get a private room with cable.

I sliced my finger open in the Bahamas. Did a real number on it. There was no doctor on the island, unless you count the vacationing Americans who were lying drunk on their yachts. I went to the local nurse, and she ran a giant needle up through my fingertip and out of the nail, and she tied it up and bandaged it and sent me home. I was fine. In an American ER, they would have given me a bone scan, an EKG, three caviar enemas, and a grief counselor. I didn’t pay her a dime, but even if she had charged, it would have been dirt cheap.

I’ll bet this would have been a $500 injury in the US. If you’ve paid to have a minor cut stitched, leave a comment and tell me what they charged.

The other big excuse is that lawyers force doctors to overtreat. Yes, I’m sure the added profit is no incentive at all. Because nobody ever went into medicine to make money. Everyone knows lawyers screw life up, but they’re not the whole explanation for our medical costs. Doctors proactively look for ways to charge more. My dentist now has a racket where he tries to charge you for an oral cancer exam, and if you don’t buy it, you have to sign a release. That’s so blatant, it’s nearly a scam. And the obvious inference is that if you don’t pay, and he sees a lesion anyway, he’s not going to tell you. I hope that isn’t the case.

I avoid doctors for the same reason I avoid mechanics. You can’t trust them. You go in for a trivial problem, and while you’re there, they look for other things that can make them money. And unless you’re Superman, they can always find something. Actually, that might not be enough to make you safe. “Hmm…I can’t get this needle into your Kryptonian vein. I better give you an expensive yet inconclusive test for scleroderma. And some type of scan, as soon as Steve gets out of the machine. He has a very ominous pimple.”

If I trusted doctors–if I had not been cheated so many times already–I would be more likely to visit them regularly. It’s that simple.

Here’s another idea. Why not fly the poor overseas for treatment? I know it sounds insane, but it isn’t. You can go to Central America, pay a pittance for top-quality surgery, stay in a resort hospital on a beach, pay for your airfare, and still come out way ahead. If you don’t like arepas, you can go to India and have curry. Or Singapore.

Let’s see. Here’s how it would work. Poor person shows up at hospital. They determine he can’t pay. They diagnose him with a condition requiring expensive surgery. They send him to Belize. He recovers and doesn’t pay. The benefit? Now the hospital can cover his small foreign bill out of money received from paying patients, instead of covering his huge American bill. Sounds nutty, I know, but if it saves money, why not?

I wonder if my medical insurance would cover treatment at a ritzy beach hospital. I would greatly prefer it, wouldn’t you? You’d think they would jump at it, if it saved them money. A 2008 Time article says insurance companies are starting to take the bait.

Speaking of great foreign deals, I still have no Chaiwanese milling machine. The rigger I’m working with just emailed, and he said the shipper called yesterday to ask if he could unload the machine from a box trailer. They were looking for a flatbed and couldn’t find one. This means that as of yesterday, the machine was in…CALIFORNIA. This is amazing. I just checked, and it appears that I ordered this thing seven weeks ago. I hadn’t realized so much time had passed. Twice, I’ve been told they shipped it, and twice it has turned out to be untrue.

The seller says he has a different brand of machine he can sell me; he’ll be getting them in a week and a half. I told him to go ahead and make the switch, if the other machine was still sitting 3000 miles away.

I’ve been waiting for lathe videos from Smartflix, and they arrived yesterday. These are from ATI. I highly recommend their stuff. It’s very methodical and thorough. I guess now that I know the milling machine isn’t going to be here in the near future, I should watch the lathe videos and try to get some things done. It’s tempting to stall when you think a new machine will arrive at any minute. A milling machine would make projects much easier, so I find myself wanting to wait until it gets here. I really don’t understand the guys who claim you can do all sorts of great things with just a lathe. It’s not true. You need to be able to make straight cuts, and you can’t do that with a lathe unless you spring for an expensive milling attachment. Here’s what you can do with just a lathe: you can make a machinist’s jack and a head for a hammer. And you can thread things and cut rods in two. That about sums it up. I’m exaggerating because I’m annoyed, but what I say is true in principle.

Let me close with something useful. Heather’s mom (an actual person) just had more surgery. Stents in her urinary tract. Please offer a prayer.

She probably should have gone to Costa Rica.

Have Your Straitjacket Pressed

Monday, July 20th, 2009

HI is Back

Here is good news. Moxie has re-opened The Humor Institute. Learn about Sonia Sotomayor’s new musical!

Not sure what Moxie’s plans are for the site, but at least she’s writing again.

How to Make Your Motorcycle Stop Making Strange Noises

Monday, July 20th, 2009

Brilliant!

I guess I am getting serious about motorcycles again (i.e., I plan to ride more than once a month), because I just bought a new garage-door remote. I am tired of taking the other one out of the car and putting it back later.

I took the Moto Guzzi out yesterday. And finally, I remembered to bring ear plugs. I got a little ways up the street, and as I got up to about 40 miles per hour, I started hearing all sorts of strange high-pitched noises. Like something on the engine had come loose. I stopped and started several times, trying to figure out what the problem was. Finally, I decided to take the plugs out so I could hear better. And the noise disappeared.

Looks like I was hearing the wind as it passed over my helmet. The plugs made the engine harder to hear, but they let the higher-pitched sounds through. Another problem solved by Amateur Motorcycle Genius.

I should probably get the tires changed on both bikes. They’re in good shape, but they’re old. In the past, tire age wasn’t something people talked about a lot. Last year, I found out that tires deteriorate with time, so you shouldn’t keep them longer than around six years. I have read that the tire industry kept this quiet because they didn’t want to have to rotate their stock. Pun, if any, not intended.

I wonder where you go to get a motorcycle tire. I’m sure the local Harley dealer will do it, for five times what it should cost. I’ll bet I have to go to Hollywood or Fort Lauderdale to get it done right, at a fair price. There are a lot of services you just can’t get done correctly in Miami.

I should also get some stuff to get me back on the road if I have a flat. It looks like there’s a motorcycle equivalent to Fix-a-Flat. I should put some kind of bag on the Guzzi and keep a few tools and so on with both bikes.

If you have old tires on your car or bike, do something about it. Don’t wait until the sidewalls give out.

Primed for Good Eats

Sunday, July 19th, 2009

Costco Gets Even Better

I can’t believe it. I won’t believe it. It’s too good to be true. If I believe it, it will turn out to be a hoax, and then I’ll be crushed.

A news story says PRIME BEEF IS SHOWING UP AT COSTCO.

No. It’s a cruel joke.

I am absolutely crazy about prime beef. This is one reason I love rib eyes so much. A choice rib eye is nearly as good as the prime version of some other cuts. I don’t buy a lot of prime beef, because it’s so expensive. Once in a while, I’ll get a prime rib roast, age it, cut it into steaks, and freeze them. But I haven’t done it in a while. Even I feel strange, paying over $150 for one roast.

I still laugh about the “green bag” the store gave me the last time I bought a prime roast. It’s really stupid. The greenies, in their hysteria, are moaning about a nonexistent landfill crisis caused by grocery bags, so the store decided to reward people for big buys by giving them reusable cloth bags. I paid $162.50 for a huge hunk of corn-fed prime beef, so I qualified for a ridiculous hippie green bag! I love it.

Now maybe I can get a jump on the prime beef game. According to the Wall Street Journal, the economy is hurting steakhouses, so the beef they usually buy is going to grocery stores, and the prices are low.

Did I just wake up in a dream? Don’t pinch me.

I don’t understand why prime beef has always been so hard to find in some areas. Mike lives near DC, and you would think there would be an awful lot of spoiled, narcissistic people up there who would be willing to buy prime beef which they are unable to appreciate. But he has a hard time getting it. Maybe the people who eat prime are generally willing to go to restaurants to get it.

Big mistake, if true. My steak dinners blow the steakhouses away, and yours can, too. You have to be nuts to waste money on Ruth’s Chris or Peter Luger’s when you can eat better food at home, cheaper.

I guess I was noticing a fortunate trend when I saw prime rib selling at the local store for $12 per pound last week. That’s not bad at all. It means I can get five mindblowing 2″ rib eyes for $120. If they have prime at Costco, I can do even better, although they’ll probably cut out the bone.

To me, the ideal dinner is a rib eye, a big baked potato with sour cream and butter, homebrew, and a killer dessert, like homemade blueberry cheesecake or a big apple pie. That is as good as food gets. I would guess that the ingredients for an entire cheesecake run about $10, if you downsize my recipe to make it more practical. Add $48 for the steak and maybe five bucks for the potato, and you have a dinner that will kill two people, for around $65. Why would you go to a restaurant and pay more for inferior food?

Costco charges about $5.50 for choice rib eyes. Some dude in the story I linked to says they charged him $9 for prime steaks. And Costco rib eyes are always boneless, so while I prefer bone-in, the price is even better than it looks. I would almost buy another freezer to nail that deal down.

I was thinking of filling my second beer cooler with frozen food, to make Obamanomics less frightening. I guess I should do it.

I shouldn’t be glad. People are suffering. That’s why the cheap food is turning up. In a year or so we’ll probably see many, many things dropping significantly in price. Businesses that benefit from high markups in good times have to slash their margins to survive in recessions. Prices will fall, but many people will still be unable to buy. I’m assuming Obama’s efforts to devalue our money will turn out to be weaker than downward pressure on prices.

I got a crazy deal on my milling machine. It would have been a deal at full price, but they reduced the price AND threw in a variable-speed head. I suppose they were thrilled to make a sale.

Man, I hate being on a diet. I get 1800 calories on a typical day, so I can’t fit a real meal into my schedule, even if I only eat once a day. You can get 3000 calories in a high-fat feast without really stuffing yourself. A rib eye is probably over 1500. My only decent meals come on Saturdays, when I drop the restrictions. So I only get to cook good food a couple of times a week. And this is how I plan to live from now on. Maybe I can get some relief if I make smaller portions of good food.

I guess if I can get boneless Costco prime rib eyes, I can cut them thin enough to make them fit into a normal day. When I get bone-in rib eyes, I can’t cut them any thinner than 2″, because that’s the distance between ribs.

It’s rough, writing about this on a day when I had oatmeal for breakfast.

Costco mission this week.