peejman

Just for reference, the tempurpedic mattresses are made in Duffield, VA. It's about 25 miles north of Kingsport.

I've worn a Beltman belt daily for about 7 years. It's still in excellent shape.

Re: JetBoil... this. I've got two old Coleman stoves from the '70's, I think. My parents got them when they used to camp before they had me. One is a single burner that google suggests is a 508. The other is a big 3 burner model. Both still work fine and have been known to hold pressure for more than 10 years. Lanterns too...

I had an inguinal hernia (the kind in your groin) repaired in August 2010, on friday the 13th. A number of guys I work with had hernias repaired around the same time... it was really kinda weird there were so many at the same time. The procedure itself really isn't a big deal. Outpatient surgery, took about half a day. The worst pre-surgery part was the antacid stuff they make you drink. It tastes horrible and you can't wash it down with anything. Yuck. Mine was repaired with the mesh patch, which according to the doctor is basically gore-tex. My incision is about 3" long, just below my waist. The hernia itself was much lower down, but the doc said they do the incision up high because it heals much better. I was very, very stiff for the first couple days. It's very hard to sit on the pot and wipe your arse when your left hip joint doesn't work. My (at the time) 2 yr old didn't understand why Daddy couldn't play or pick him up, and that jumping on Daddy wasn't such a good idea. DO NOT cough or laugh. It really, really hurts. They gave me hydro's for the pain and I didn't like them. They made me loopy and itchy. I only took them for 2-3 days. I had very little bruising, some other guys looked like they'd been hit with a baseball bat. I was moving around fine within a few days. My doc wasn't real strict with the "no lifting" stuff. He basically said, "if it hurts, don't do that. If you tear it again, I have to fix it again, so choose wisely." Some guys played basketball a couple days later. The worst post-surgery part was the staples, they got real tender after about a week. He removed about half of them after the first week, then the other half after the 2nd week. They were replaced each time with the stickiest tape I've ever seen. Removing the tape wasn't real fun either. I had phantom pains around the incision for several months afterward. Sometimes when I'd move in a odd way, sometimes when sitting still. Nothing severe, just enough to get your attention. Otherwise, it healed up fine. My surgeon always had students around observing during pre and post-op visits and one during the procedure. During my 2nd post-op visit, the doc walked in with a girl who was 20 at the most (and kinda cute ). It was only after we chatted for a minute he told her why I was there. She was really embarrassed when I started undoing my pants and I tried real hard not to laugh.

Doh! I bet that didn't tickle a bit! Hope it heals up quickly.

Great pics of all that stuff. I hope he teaches you how to use all that stuff, it's quickly becoming a lost art. Building the shed/cabin sounds fun to me. Might be a good idea to wait until it's a tad cooler.

I turn the tables on them.... My kids' pediatrician asked if we had guns in the house.... "Of course I do, don't you?" On a later visit, I noticed that one of the nurses in the office wears her ID on a Glock lanyard.

Most receiver hitches are pretty easy to install. I've done a few. The hardest part is holding the hitch up to get the bolts started, that either takes 2 people or some redneck ingenuity to manage by yourself. Lots of places to buy them online. Given that it's an F150, an auto parts place (or even walmart) may have one in stock. Otherwise, this is the cheapest place I've found online... http://shop.autoanything.com/towing/73A3874A0A0.aspx

I clean my Mosin every time, but only because the ammo is corrosive. The other stuff (rifles and pistols)... I wipe the crud off the muzzle and bolt face/breech/chamber area. Then I wipe all the the finger prints off and that's it. I only clean the bore when it looks cruddy and/or accuracy is affected. That can be lots and lots of rounds down range. I'm a firm believer that more guns get broken and/or prematurely worn out due to obsessive cleaning than by obsessive shooting.

NIce work.

There are such things as motor gliders too. Some have combustion engines, some have electric motors.

I believe they do.

Someone around has an EZ. I'm a few miles from TYS so planes fly over my house all the time. I've seen the EZ a bunch of times. It does look funny if you've never seen one before. There are also a handful of ultralights with canards. The engines are those can have a chainsaw-ish sound.

Glad she's ok. I can't imagine what you're feeling at this point. If this place has been robbed that many times and they've done nothing about it, that sure tells me how much they value their employees. That $100k will pale in comparison to the cost of the lawsuits.

My feet sweat way too much for crocs, they get slimy. And smelly. Yuck. My wife and kids love 'em.

Looks good. I sure couldn't do that with a pocketknife. For an authentic trench art appearance, bury them in mud for a week.

Wow.

Meh. At least until he blows out his knee again.

I've considered an air rifle to dispatch the rabbits. It would be mostly up to to wife to do the dirty work. While they are eating her garden and she has lots of experience cutting up critters to feed other critters, I suspect she'd be less than thrilled with idea of eating them herself. Besides, if my dog was worth a darn, she'd be keeping the rabbits away. Mother Earth News has a rather prolific e-newsletter. Backwoods Home has a monthly e-newsletter. Both are free.

Forgive my ignorance (or blindness)... where's the insulting reference to Islam? I wouldn't buy one, but to each his own.

Purdy. Wish I had the time/money to get into cowboy shooting. It looks like great fun.

I'm quite sure it could nickel and dime you to death if you're really anal about stuff, need all the latest gadgets, etc. I dump some compost and fertilizer, turn it, plant it, water it, and see what happens. I pull weeds occasionally. I spray for bugs if they get really bad. I don't kill myself messing with it. You are correct. I've no idea how I came up with $0.40. It has to do with efficiency of heat transfer and cost of the energy. A gas burner on an open stove is very inefficient. The air space necessary for the burner to burn allows lots of the heat output to escape to the atmosphere rather than being transferred directly to the pot. An electric eye where the pot is fully covers the element is far more efficient. That's how the nifty new induction elements boil water so fast. The catch is that the gas burner's total output is 10x higher than the electric eye, so the reduced efficiency is more than compensated for by the much higher output. 1500W = 5120 BTU/hr compared to the 50,000 BTU/hr gas burner. Electricity costs $0.086/kWh. Using the grill bottle example (and doing some conversions...) yields $1.4/kWh for propane. Bulk propane would be much less expensive, but you can see the difference.

Happy B'day!

What it boiled down to was me trying to shoot too fast... practicing double taps and such. Squeezing really hard helps reduce the amount the gun comes off target during recoil and shooting fast is all about keeping the gun on target... so why not squeeze the frickin' life out of it, right? Now that I know what the problem is, I can mitigate it to some extent. It still pops up when I'm trying to go fast. That's a good point too... the basic principles are the same, but I suspect that the simple wheel diagram would be too complex to use effectively if it included effects both hands.

What kind of cucumbers did you get? You generally won't find seeds/seedlings for the big, dark green cucumbers like you see in the grocery store. The seeds/seedlings are generally smaller and much lighter green. They will turn yellow if left on the vine too long, it's too hot, or not enough water. A small garden can easily pay for itself. I typically spent about $30 on plants for my small home garden (maters, cucumbers, okra, etc). If you're willing to grow from seed, you can spend half that. If you're good at harvesting and preparing seeds from previous years, it can cost nearly nothing. I then spend about $10 on compost and another $10 on fertilizer. So that's up to $50. I generally water the garden from my rain barrel unless it gets really dry (like now). Tap water is cheap... pennies per gallon. Just swagging numbers.... $0.02/gal, 20 gal/wk, 16 week growing period = $6.40 for water. That's way more tap water than I use. So I'm up to about $60 total annual cost, assuming my labor is free. Produce at the grocery store runs roughly $2/lb. So if I get 30 lbs of produce from my garden, I broke even. I've never kept track, but my guess is I get way more than 30 lbs yield. I'd guess I get about a bushel of yield per veggie. A bushel of cucumber or tomatoes weighs about 50 lbs, 25 lbs for okra, peas, or beans. Again all those numbers are guesses, but yes, I think I'm saving money. Easy enough to figure up... Stove element ~ 1500W. It wouldn't need to stay on high the whole time, but say you run it for an hour. Power costs $0.086/kwh. So that element costs $0.13/hr to run on high. A 20lb propane bottle costs $20 and google tells me propane has about 20k BTU/lb and a turkey fryer burner is about 50k BTU/hr.... 2.5lb/hr on high... 8 hrs per bottle... $0.40/hr to use. The water costs $0.02/gal and you'll use a couple gallons. A dozen quart mason jars costs $16, so $1.33 each and they can be re-used many, many times... One could factor in depreciation the pressure cooker and stove, but I think that would be minimal per jar given the potential quantities. So... as with most of these things, yes it's cheaper as long as your labor is free. Want to pay yourself $15/hr? The cost goes way, way up.