Adaptive Curmudgeon

[Drafting this post has been interrupted a dozen times. Please forgive whatever non-linear chronology has crept into it.]

A month ago my old bread maker died. The motor that moved the impeller lost it’s mojo. No regrets; I’d paid six bucks when I bought it used at least 15 years ago.

I had an even older backup machine. I dug it out of storage. It had a (presumably) functioning motor but the pivot axle in the bread pan had seized up. No worries, I’d swap one pan into the other machine and all would be well.

Alas, no. One pan hooked to its machine with four external studs. The other pan had an external ring. Other than that, they’re identical. So frustrating!

I run equipment as long as possible but it seemed like trying to drill out an axle to swap or weld some shit to something to get it to fit was going overboard. There’s a time when you’ve gone faaaaaaaaar beyond the average consumer and that point of vanishing returns was already in the rearview mirror.

So, I bought a new bread maker. I planned to write a review. I didn’t. Until now… which isn’t planned but just sorta’ happened as I typed.

Here’s a super quick unboxing and Cliffs Notes level review.

The box itself looks like gorillas used it to play rugby. This didn’t affect the machine at all.

It came with an oven mitt; that’s pink and gay and I don’t like it. But I suppose it’s nice.

It also came with a scoop for small stuff like yeast. It came with a regular scoop like for flour. It came with a “nut dispenser” which is a common accessory on bread machines these days and seems to my (possibly uninformed) eyes to be more or less superfluous.

It came with a device to pull the impeller off the axle if it gets stuck. Nice feature! Very super extra handy!

Most awesome of all, it comes with two impellers. It sounds dumb but the easiest way to make a $150 bread machine into a $150 doorstop is to lose the 2″ impeller. Including a backup is good customer service!

It also comes with a detailed manual and a recipe book. Both are terrible. It’s like AI wrote it. No, it’s like a Martian on LSD spoke Swahili into Google translate and then it was printed and bound and handed to me. Great machine, but ignore the recipe book.

Bread machines in general are a bit annoying in that the parts to all of them are functionally identical but not interchangeable.

Check out these impellers. The bottom two are decades old. They’re just different enough that I can’t use them in the new machine.

Check out the mount points on the bread pans. These objects span at least two and possibly three decades. They’re so damn close I can only assume there’s a factory in China that’s been stamping them out since the 1990’s. Yet, the mount points are a little different on each one. I’ll hand it to the new one (on top), it’s mounted with Philip’s head screws. It’s possible I could disassemble and fix if needed. The older two are press fit and un-repairable. (I already checked, I can buy a second bread pan for the new machine if I want… but they’re stupidly expensive.)

Bread machines are “mature technology”. I’m not impressed by any leaps in functionality over the decades. Appearance is different but irrelevant. The sleek black  “iPhone look” on the right doesn’t seem any better than the old “rounded white iPhone of 20 years ago” look on the left.

I felt genuinely sad hauling my two old workhorses to the dump. (Feeling bad about tossing a 30 year old(?) kitchen appliance makes me so non-commercial as to be unAmerican. What can I say? Cheapness is a thing.)

I tested my newly arrived bread maker with a mildly “complex” recipe for “milk bread”. The first round was a PITA but tasted awesome. I did a little more experimentation and mentioned it in Curmudgeon Cooking Research. With a slightly improved recipe (and utterly ignoring the crappy recipie that came with the machine) my bread came out delicious.

Very tasty indeed. I officially have the milk bread situation totally managed!

You know how there’s a “repeatability crisis” in science? Well fuck those lazy bastards! I’ve run about 14 loaves this year and that includes several “milk bread” loaves and they’re perfect every time.

In case you’re wondering, milk bread tastes incredible.

Did you notice that this post was titled “Survival Bunker Wheat Update”? Did you notice I completely went off the rails? I really did try milling 17 year old wheat berries. The resulting bread was edible but not great. I mentioned that in PSA: Voting Age Wheat Is Suboptimal. I really did try milling 5 year old wheat berries, with much better results. I sat down to write this pose, floated off into space, and here we are. I’ll try again later.

A.C.

P.S. In case you’re wondering, the machine I bought is a KBS Premium 2LB Convection Bread Maker and it easily passes my rigorous testing. I recommend it; just don’t follow the manual.

I’ve been cooped up more than usual this winter; partly because I’m being extra cautious with my health. Finally, I decided to take a very simple, low key, short walk. However, I suck at “taking it easy”.

The first challenge was the dog. The dog needed a walk just as much as I did but she’s never mastered the challenge of getting into my tall truck and Mrs. Curmudgeon’s car was out of town. I rigged up a hand built three step “stair”. I put this next to my truck’s rear door and coaxed the reluctant dog up them. Once there, the dog was in heaven!

The truck’s back seat folds flat for cargo. Much more comfy than the large dog trying to fit on a human shaped rear bench seat in Mrs. Curmudgeon’s Honda. The dog has ridden thousands of miles in the Honda but never in the truck. She was absolutely blissful.

The road by our house is totally windswept. It’s packed, rock hard, ice, but easy walking. I planned a place that would have an equally windswept paved bicycle trail. I didn’t bring heavy boots. This was supposed to be, literally, a walk in the park.

On the way there, I passed a snowmobile trail groomer.

I also passed an Amish (?) buggy. I prefer to see a one horse open sleigh but they’re much less common than a one horse wheeled buggy. I wasn’t fast enough to get a photo.

My idea that the paved bike trails would be clear-ish was completely wrong. The bike trail had more snow than the nearby snowmobile trail!

I wasn’t equipped for deep snow. In fact, I usually roam nature “loaded for bear” but I’d specifically brought much less stuff. I wanted to stick with a short easy walk. I reverted to wandering down a plowed road. The dog looked at me like “are you sure you know what you’re doing”?

It was much colder than I expected and I wasn’t wearing good boots or carrying my SatCom. But it’s just a road right?

I know the road I was on pretty well. It led to a lake I know well too. I figured there would be some activity on the lake and I guessed right. I navigated right to the opening of an ice road. (Look in the photo above and you’ll see a truck on the left side.)

I reasoned that the ice would be windswept, meaning I wouldn’t be slogging through three feet of snow. I was correct. The ice road was easy walking.

I wasn’t carrying my safety ice picks. I hadn’t brought my Yaktrax. I should know better than to leave home without such things. But any ice that can hold a truck can hold a dog and it’s dumbass.

The wind was harsh out there. I wasn’t worried but at some point you have to accept that a frozen lake is a pretty hard core location.

The dog gave me the look, as if to say “See here man, you said this was going to be a walk in the park! Why does a winter jaunt with you turn into Robert Peary’s expedition?” She’s a tough breed but individually she’s a sweet fluffy creampuff. Plus, I knew her feet were fine on land but I wasn’t sure if her paws would get cold in the much harsher lake. (My feet were freezing.)

I turned around. I’m not good at that whole “walk in the park” thing.

Even so, an ice road has fun stuff happening. People drive out there with trucks towing ice shacks. One rolled past us; probably wondering why the hell we were there. Wheeled ice shacks have special axles that allow the wheels to raise. The whole shack will squat on the ice; thus fishermen can drill a hole in the ice from inside and drink beer in warm comfort.

More aggressive (or broke) ice fishermen use fabric shelters and tents; bringing them to select spots with ATVs, snowmobiles, or on foot. There were no such maniacs out in the conditions that day. When you’re out where snowmobile based fishermen aren’t; that’s what you call “a clue”.

I got to watch an interesting situation. There’s specific kind of ice shack that’s smaller than the road worthy wheeled version. They ride on skis. I’ve never seen how they’re deployed.

While I was trudging back in the bitter winds, a truck pulled onto the ice with a car hauling trailer. On the car hauling trailer was a ski based shed. A second truck was traveling in convoy. The two men coordinated as only men on a mission can.

The first truck stopped and the second truck positioned right behind his trailer. Two guys hopped out. This wasn’t their first rodeo. One man deployed the gate to the trailer while the other untied the shed. Then they used the second truck to drag the ski shed off the trailer. The first truck and it’s car trailer zoomed for shore to park on solid land. The second truck followed to pick up the driver.

As I hiked close to the abandoned ski based shack, the dog decided this was total bullshit. There are not supposed to be buildings on ice! We’d walked that way not ten minutes ago and there were no buildings, now there’s a building? Not cool man!

The dog growled menacingly at the aluminum and wood structure… which didn’t growl back. Hackles raised, my dog bravely defended me against the menace.

Soon, the second of the trucks returned. The fishermen had “car pooled” to the ski shed. They hopped out and went straight to work. In a flash they’d hitched the ski shed and were dragging it down the ice road. I’d never seen a ski shed pulled by a truck. Pretty slick operation done by two guys with absolute precision. They’d be cracking a beer and looking at a hole in the ice before I got back to my truck.

Soon, my “low key” hike was over. I was pretty chilled. I need to plan better.

I gave the dog half of my bottle of water, which it ignored. Such a waste of store bought water! Then she hopped in the truck like an old hand at such things. While I stowed the “portable stairs” she sniffed the air with the happiest look any dog could ever have.

We must have gotten some exercise. At home the dog conked out so deeply that it allowed the new kitten to use it for a pillow.

So that’s what “a mellow hike in the park” is when I do it.

A.C.

I used to do all the stuff for making super fresh bread. Life intervened. Nobody can do everything and more important things had to happen. My bread stuff was packed away and that was that.

Nothing is lost if you haven’t given up. Life changed again and now I find myself an empty nester with more time on his hands and slightly reduced health so I’m not out there tilting at windmills or whatever (at least for now). Last month I brushed off my bread machines and started baking. One was completely dead, another one made a few loaves and then gave up the ghost.

So I bought a new bread maker. It’s a KBS Premium 2LB Convection Bread Maker. I’m reasonably happy with it. I thought I’d posted about it but maybe I haven’t. Honestly, most bread makers are so similar I suspect many of the components come out of the same factory. There are a few models that cost more than I’d ever pay. I suppose they’re great but I’ll never know. There are a few in the sub $100 range and they’re probably ok but I use a bread machine pretty hard so I wanted to go up in quality. The KBS Premium 2LB Convection Bread MakerI bought is “on sale”. The recipe booklet that comes with it is absolute trash but the heating unit is a little higher wattage and I like that. I recommend my choice but if you’re fishing in the $100-200 range probably all options are adequate.

I made a few loaves and then decided to bring my beloved Nutrimill grain mill out of storage. It runs just fine even after all these years. I’m glad because grain mills ain’t cheap! I’d link to it but either the model I have is no longer made or Amazon is using its monopoly power to kick it to the curb. If anyone is interested I can investigate further.

How about the wheat I stored a zillion years ago? Only one way to find out! Remember I’m talking about wheat berries, not flour! Flour goes bad much faster and when it goes bad it sucks. Wheat berries store a lot better. I figure they’re fine for 5-10 years. But when I grabbed my oldest bucket of wheat berries it was from 2009!

That’s old! The wheat in that bucket is damn near old enough to vote! It would be reasonable to expect it to be completely shot. But why not experiment?

It ground up into flour that smelled fine. I made a very basic loaf with 2 cups bread flour and 2 cups freshly ground 100% wheat flour. I didn’t have high hopes. Wheat bread in general has less gluten and doesn’t always agree with bread makers. Wheat flour from 17 years ago is an unlikely roll of the dice.

To my surprise, it went through the bread machine and smelled right and raised fine. It came out looking good.

But when I cut it there was a bit of an air bubble in the loaf. Also it tasted ok but not excellent.

Summary: bread made from 17 year old wheat berries is OK but also tastes exactly like it was made with stale wheat.

If you’re in a bunker or something, this would be absolutely fine. I’m not living in a bunker so I’ll toss the 17 year old wheat. I’m thinking of waiting until spring and spreading it on some plowed soil. I’d love to know if it would germinate. The nearby wildlife might be interested too.

No experiment is a failure if you learn so I’m not upset. Also, I’m not done experimenting. I scrounged around and found a bucket of wheat from 2021. Five years is a lot more realistic than seventeen.

I’ll report back with further findings.

Wish me luck.

A.C.

I had a thing I wanted to discuss. It wasn’t a knee jerk reaction. It was an attempt to meditate upon, and learn from, events.

It was inspired by the kerfuffle in Minneapolis. It wasn’t strictly about the spastic faffing du jour, it was (at least intended to be) something with more depth. I put a lot of thought into it.

There are parallels between Kent State (1970) and Sonowgadishu (2026) that weren’t formerly apparent to me. They wouldn’t be apparent to a younger man. I’m no longer a young man. They seem obvious now. A real press might try to illustrate the situation but in lieu of reporting we’ve got clowns scrawling graffiti with a crayon. They can’t address the true shape of things because that would acknowledge facts they’d rather avoid. The truth doesn’t vanish if it’s never spoken aloud, but the human mind does fade. Further, the deductions of a wise mind won’t get hits on YouTube.

The internet is unsuited for big picture thinking. Irrelevant dopamine hits of “like and subscribe” are not the purpose of wisdom. An estrogen shitstorm of short term emotional twitching has become the internet’s bread and butter. To deliberately think things through, hoping to use the written word for exploration, is just too hard for the TL:DR universe.

Regardless, I tried. I started writing shortly after the most recent predictable chaos began. Corruption that everyone already knew about became undeniable. It already existed so nothing had really changed. Yet recognizing a thing seemed to give it substance. Distractions were piled upon misdirection until an excitable lesbian had the misfortune to wind up on the wrong end of a pistol. What a terrible thing. What can be worse than a life squandered and lost! It really sucks that it happened. Yet I think maybe that’s what some people crave?

Virtual voices bay for one team or the other, as if that’s relevant. I’m not without my biases. But what if we’d just witnessed a thing that was fated to happen? Is it Satan or man that starts the ball rolling? Why is it so cyclic? Why have I seen this movie before?

Before I could gather my thoughts, another dipshit turned the dial to eleven. He violated the main rule of carrying. Legality and morality aside, wise people do not go to stupid places and do stupid things with stupid people. He’s another… Another what? Another victim? Another martyr? Another moron? It’s a shame he’s dead. I don’t like that it too seems fated.

I don’t want to make light of human tragedy but I wonder about the almost fanatical lack of freewill. One can get up in the morning and go to work like any other day. Or one can say “fuck it” and go ice fishing. But the ones that died could do neither. They were there because they had to be there. What does that say about freewill?

I’ve seen this before. You have too. I thought hard about 1968 and 2016. I thought about a president that was so popular he won 49 states. He was forced to resign. Another president is pretty popular too. He’s been hounded, hassled, sued, and shot. Does it have to be like that?

My mind’s eye can almost see the circle of time which encompasses all these things. It starts with a sea of agitated souls. If I had a time machine I could go to 1968 and find people absolutely losing their damn minds. In retrospect, from the view of 2026, 1968 doesn’t seem so bad. Decent music, muscle cars, cheap gas, there’s plenty of good to be found. I could take a shorter trip to 2020 and find the same thing. People absolutely freaked out about the end of everything, who are living in a world of plenty and (should they choose it) peace. From the view of 2026 it seems a little silly; governors making proclamations about hair salons, lines painted on the grocery store floor, really? If it doesn’t seem stupid to you now, hang tight, it’ll someday seem like cowering under a school desk in preparation for nuclear war. I just wish our cars and music were cooler.

In 2020 cities burned. It feels like they must. They burned in Watts in 1968. And Los Angeles in 1992. Minneapolis had the same “mostly peacefully” 2020 that gripped Portland. None of these are unique. Are Rodney King and George Floyd the same thing?

I think people need drama. I think they crave it. I think peace and kindness is too boring. I think people lust to experience some portion of hell. If war and famine don’t show up by chance, they’ll make their own hell in their own skull.

I reflect on people that are attracted to it. They go from places where life is boring to where life is not. Some get themselves planted and that sucks. I wonder if that’s what  happened because it was always going to happen. We all know it will happen again. Why? That’s a big question isn’t it?

I tried to write that all out. It was too much. Nor was my attempt likely to do good. I mean good in the true sense of the thing. It wasn’t going to be evil, but I could not write good into existence. It wasn’t going to make anyone happier, or give more insight to those with similar thoughts, or elevate the thinking of people sloshing to and fro in their own tide. Maybe I’ll post that draft sometime. Probably I won’t. It feels unnecessary.

We are awash in shallow, emotionally incontinent, fools. Perhaps the best one can do is stand back and let the tantrum wear out the toddlers. Just shut up and let it happen. Don’t bother trying to explain the Matrix. I had to see it for myself. You did too. Those who won’t look, will not see. That’s all there is to it.

For those of us who keep our own counsel, maybe all we can do is acknowledge each other’s presence. A small nod of acknowledgement. A bit of freewill amid the programmed lemmings. Then we pass by; each to our own fate.

A week ago I posted 3d Printing: UFO The Series From 1970.

My friend has received the print in the mail and was happy. He sent a movie of the missile launching properly along with several photos.

Here’s a set of 4 newly printed missiles, including my goofy but fun “fancy packaging”

The missiles fit perfectly!

Here’s the SHADO land based um… whatever it’s called. Pretty cool.

Here’s some moon based (?) ships.

Here’s another set of missiles from the show. I think this is actor Sylvia Howell and I think it’s the “submarine” uniform; but I seem to have lost focus and I’m not sure of anything.

I think this is actor Gabrielle Drake with her famous purple moon hair; among other notable features. In my opinion she’s the first and last woman to properly pull off aposematic hair. Also… damn that’s hot!

I’ve had to rethink my childhood. I thought Nichelle Nichols was pretty hot as Uhura on Star Trek (1966) but I had no idea about UFO (1970). Gabrielle Drake had a sashay that would have made that horndog Kirk explode.

If you don’t know what a Jet Sled is here’s some homesteading winter advice. If you live where it snows, you need a Jet Sled. Get one yesterday! It’s a huge force multiplier.

A Jet Sled is a load carrying sled. It’s 1000X tougher than the cheap orange plastic toys you loved and destroyed as a kid. It’s not for riding down a hill, it’s for hauling shit. It’s tough enough for an ice fisherman, a hunter dragging a deer, or a Curmudgeon hauling firewood. It’s one of my best investments!

I have an Otter Pro Small. I bought it for $79 over a decade ago. (I’m surprised the logo and price tag have survived all these years!) It has never been indoors. It lives in the woodshed year round. I use in the coldest of weather. I don’t know how, but the rotomolded plastic material they used is going to outlast us all! Mine still looks almost new.

I checked Amazon and you can get the same model right now for $69.* I’m SHOCKED that it’s $10 CHEAPER brand new than what I paid in 2015 (or whenever I got mine). How the hell did that happen?

I easily carry triple in the sled what I’d haul by hand. It’s a lot less work too. I’ve used it in absolutely stupidly cold temperatures and the material has never cracked. If your path is flat and shoveled (or otherwise not deep snow, like scoured by the wind) you can pull gargantuan loads.

If you’re solo (as I always am) I recommend you get the small sled. Too much is inferior to just right. Small size keeps one man from overloading beyond his limit. No need to deliberately line your chiropractor’s pocket. Under the right conditions me and the sled haul wood faster than the tractors warm up cycle!

Now ya’ know.

RED ALERT: NEW INFORMATION INCOMING!

I just couldn’t get over my $79 sled costing a mere $69 now. Inflation doesn’t work that way. I did further investigation:

My first link was to an Otter Jet Sled SPORT; which you can buy for $69. What I have is an Otter Jet Sled PRO; which clocks in at $699.

Am I hauling wood with a $700 sled? I JUST FELL OUT OF MY CHAIR!

Here’s a video of the PRO. That’s what I own and I’ve been working it like a rented mule. Note, the sled in this video is larger than mine. I don’t have a snowmobile so the bigger variant would have killed me. Also I don’t have the blue HyFax skids underneath. Such things are irrelevant at walking speeds.

Fine, so the PRO is built for being towed by machines. I knew that. I’ve been a human tractor so long I never thought about it. I never knew there was a “not towed by machine” variant.

I don’t have the tow assembly because it’s pointless if I don’t own a snowmobile. (If anyone wants to adopt out a Skidoo just tell me!) I’ve just got rope. I have towed the sled behind an ATV (using only rope) and it was fine. The sled clearly has zero fucks to give over any stress.

I found a video with a perfect comparison of the SPORT versus the PRO. I’d guess his conclusion is that I’m a dumbass for pulling an extra 15 pounds of sled when I don’t need to. He’s probably right.

Sorry about going down the rabbit hole; but I am serious that a man pulling a sled can do tremendous work compared to lifting with your arms (and it’s faster than warming up a diesel tractor!).

None of this applies if you live where it doesn’t snow and, as always, YMMV.

A.C.

No shit there I was…

I’d been having a fine time messing with bread recipes and fiddling with my 3d printer but it was time to haul firewood. I’d been anticipating a warm-ish afternoon break but it didn’t happen. It was cold but nothing special. I suited up and tromped outside…

I avoid starting my tractor when it’s super cold (unless there’s snow to be plowed). I prefer my Jet Sled.

Wait. Stop!

It’s at this point that I started to write about my beloved Jet Sled. It’s an awesome tool. I use it for my favorite homestead activity, converting dead trees into a warm house. (That’s a weird way to say “firewood” isn’t it?)

Anyway, I went down a rabbit hole with the Jet Sled and it’s too cold to entertain rabbit hole thoughts. I pushed all that to a second post. It’ll go live some other time.

Back to the story…

So I’m dragging a Jet Sled full of firewood to the house and the weather is rather brutal. I’m not the type to flake out over rough weather. It’s winter; happens every year. But something was up.

You see, the world has gotten so weird that I hardly believe a fucking thing anymore. In the old days I trusted, or at least paid attention to, weather reports. But everything is sketchy all the time now. What once was like this:

“It’ll be normal temperatures for this season. It’s gonna snow the average amount for January. Sucks to live where you do, loser.”

Has turned into:

“OMG it’s snowing! This is the worst thing that has ever happened. We’ve named it Winter Snowstorm Beelzebub. There has never been snow like this in the history of January. Nobody will survive. You’d probably like that wouldn’t you? You bastard! Little birds in trees are going to freeze and it’s entirely your fault.

You assholes don’t fret enough about global warming and now nature is punishing you. I hope you’re proud of yourself. Everything not tied directly to your SUV’s exhaust is because Trump is the antichrist.

How dare you!”

Honestly, you can’t tune in and get simple basic data. We used to have reports that would say shit like degrees Fahrenheit. Now, it’s all “cooked numbers”. “It’ll be eleventy zillion degrees windchill factor with a ‘feels like’ index of flesh being torn from your bones.” Will the winds be basically from the south at 10 MPH? Who knows? “Winds will be variable, gusting to 600 MPH and this too is because you fuckers voted wrong.”

So, I have returned to the old ways. I observe.

What I observed was not great. The chickadees, which are the toughest little pipsqueaks on earth, were eating like their lives depend on it (which is literally true in a cold snap). They were in frenzy, like if I stood still long enough they might start pecking at my nose.

Chickadees fuckin’ know!

The wind was still. Very calm, but the clouds were moving. Were they moving oddly? Hard to say.

I’m not a meteorologist, I just know when nature is throwing red flags.

I loaded the wood in a hurry and got inside to thaw out. As soon as I was moderately warm I hauled a second load. Just in case. And that made me chilled again.

Suddenly I was very worried about the generator battery. It’s on shore power 24/7 but it’s about 5 years old and the service guy said I should replace it. Sound advice which I ignored! Now there is no tomorrow. It’s only a small battery but I’ve no idea how to jump the generator. I grabbed our two small GB-20 jump packs and put them inside. Both were holding a charge but I topped them off. The rest of our machines are on shore power for block heaters and/or battery maintainers.

Sitting by the fire I finally accepted the inevitable and checked the NOAA weather service. They were in full freak out mode. I was under something like two watches and a warning. (I get watches and warnings mixed up.) Actual weather service announcements are cryptic; they sometimes overreact and sometimes don’t. In this case I was warned of cold temperature but it was masked in “wind chill”. Deducing whether my septic tank will freeze is not aided by “wind chill”. It’s fuckin buried! I’m a grown ass man, I don’t need a warning that says “exposed flesh will get frostbite in X minutes”. I need a number and the units that go with the number.

Then I went to the internet. The consensus was this: “AAAAAAAAUUUUUHGGHGGGG!”

Trying to glean information from the blow dried dipshits doing videos like Powerpoint is a religion was a slog. All about how people emote about shit. “What do you think Janet?” “Well Julie, I think this is very scary.”

Put up a map and don’t stand in front of it! And quit parsing the map to wherever you’re most sexually attracted to viewers. If Nashville or Los Alamos is about to be destroyed that’s for them to fret about, show me North America, or CONUS… ideally with fronts and wind patterns.

Ugh. The enshittification of the internet is so complete it’s hard to remember when it was factual.

The best I could glean without spending an hour watching regional reports about Oklahoma City or Baltimore or whatever is that a huge band of CONUS was gonna get curb stomped by cold. I live north of all that and I was gonna’ get equally curb stomped. But since I live in East Cowschitt, Nowher, it’ll never make the news.

I put on a load of hot water laundry. That always helps keep pipes thawed. Then I went around the house turning on all sorts of small heaters and other gadgets that “leak BTUs” into the environment. I could use all I could get. My detached office is lit by LED and I briefly wished it was back on the old incandescent projection lamps. I ran water from various faucets, etc…

I thought about baking something in our new LP stove. I was thinking about recipes when the generator kicked on. Good news is it started. Bad news is we were on generator power well before the sun set.

The chickadee warning had come true!

I have a “load shedding” agreement with the local electric monopoly. If the generator doesn’t start I get dinged a huge fee. I’m so glad it started.

It usually runs 2-4 hours max. This time it was 6. Not a good sign.

The next morning was -29f and the generator was on again. I checked our furnace fuel. We’re at 1/4 tank. Not bad for January but the oil company office was open so I called up a refill order. No rush, no need to pay an “emergency delivery fee”, just put me on the list. Since I’d called early I was put on the routine schedule.

Then it was just a matter of burning firewood and listening worriedly to that generator (which to it’s credit was humming like a champ).

The next day was -28. The oil delivery guy showed up and I happily cut a $500+ check. The generator was on again as the oil was delivered. I hauled more firewood. When shit gets real I need the furnace and the woodstove both; and that’s just to keep it habitable. Cozy is limited to a ten foot radius around the woodstove.

When I was on generator power I was mildly thrifty with AC power. For example, I used the LP stove with a percolator to make my coffee. As soon as we were on grid I ran loads of laundry, took hot showers, and cranked up the coffee maker.

Another day.

Another day after that. By now the generator is off. The load shedding arrangement probably has a “max hours” clause and they might have hit it. It’s the most hours on generator I’ve had in 3 days since I installed the white elephant.

It’s a PITA that feels like a siege. I flit from system to system maintaining civilization (or at least thawed pipes and heating systems) and monitoring everything. It takes up my full attention. But it’s not my first rodeo. It’s fleeting. In a few days it’ll all be over. So far, we’ve ridden it out fine. I even started my truck and (after a very long warm up) made a dump/grocery run. In anticipation of the weather I’d filled it with “wintersafe diesel”. Glad I did.

Unfortunately, the fat lady hasn’t sung. I thought the “worst was over” when the grid stayed up a full day but I guess not. It’s -22f and dropping. Not unbearable or even improbable, but something that merits attention. Tomorrow I’ll haul at least two sleds of firewood and otherwise stay hunkered down.

I should have consulted with the chickadees instead of paying attention to the generator.

Because I can’t help myself…

A friend contacted me about a TV show I’d never heard of. Actually he asked about a toy that was the merchandise that goes with the TV show I’d never heard of. Actually he was concerned with an accessory for a toy that was merchandise that goes with a TV show I’d never heard of.

Could I 3d print a piece to go with the toy?

Fuck yeah! I live for problem solving.

Apparently there were flying UFO defense force things that had giant phallic missiles. My friend had the flying thing but not the missile. The perfect challenge for a Curmudgeon like yours truly.

Step 1: Research.

I watched a trailer for the show. What a hoot! The 1970’s were trippy. I have an urge to play an 8-track tape while slurping a Tab soda. You had to be there!

Here’s 80 seconds worth of research. It’s worth a watch.

My observations:

• • At :26 a brief shot of a space cadet’s ass in a polyester uniform. Excellent!
  • At :28 data on tape. I love data on tape!
  • At :34 a teletype with a grammatical error. NOOOOO! Instead of plural UFOs there’s a possessive UFO‘s. THAT’S NOT OK! I didn’t know that the horror of misplaced possessive apostrophes was already afoot in 1970! The rot goes so much deeper than I knew. I weep for mankind!
  • At :35 we find out the setting is in the far advanced 1980’s. They have space flight and UFO battles; they might even have a microwave in the kitchen!
  • At 1:06 we see women with aposematic (purple) hair hard. What’s interesting is they’re hard at work. They’re presumably competent; calling out space coordinates or something. Nice! It wasn’t an HR meeting about feelings. How cool is that? 1970’s space future was more glorious than reality half a century later. By 2020’s it was empirically established that weirdly colored hair is just one nose ring and three tattoos away from a lifestyle which devolves into marching around in the streets bitching about Trump.
  • At 1:13 I see a giant phallic missile. The target of my engineering challenge! Such tactical brilliance! One big ass missile per machine. Three machines in formation with three shots total. It’s a fictional weapon but one designed for maximum expense per use. Glorious!
  • Conclusion: It ends with a UFO getting blown to smithereens. Perfect!

I wish I’d watched this show as a kid!

Step 2: Find a model.

A quick search established that some dude on Thingiverse has already made the missile! I’m linking to it here.

I briefly wanted to add it to my “store”. I can’t imagine there’s six people on earth that need this object but it would amuse me to list massively eclectic shit. Unfortunately, it’s listed under creative commons as BY-NC. It’s a copywrite issue and I’d like to humbly comply.

“BY” means I need to give appropriate credit to the creator. That’s what I’m doing right now. Creator ThingHuxter can be found here. I heartily recommend you throw money, credit, and accolades his way.

“NC” means I can’t sell it commercially, which is a bummer because I was going to tell my friend it would cost $20 and a six pack. Instead I made it for free… ugh!

Anyway, I can’t sell these things so I can’t list them on my “shop” for fun. But you know where the original guy is should you want one.

Step 3: Printing.

The object was perfectly simple to make. I downloaded 3 *.STL files that are the three pieces of a rocket and even the largest was quick to print.

I printed 2 pieces in PLA white. The third piece merited different material.

My friend tells me nose cone of the actual 1970’s object was made of a soft rubber compound. We both assume it’s to avoid someone putting an eye out. (Secretly I’m disappointed. I thought all 1970’s toys were lethal.) I dried my spool of TPU 95A HF and used that to make a nice safe and squishy nose cone. There was some faffing about because TPU doesn’t necessarily run well in an AMS. I bypassed the AMS and ran the dried filament directly from it’s humidity sealed cereal box; which worked well.

Step 4: Going Overboard.

I planned to make one rocket (of the three pieces glued together) and stop there. Send it off and see if it fit the toy before I made any more. However, once I’d gone through he hassle of loading TPU it seemed dumb to print just one nose cone.

I said “fuck it” and printed four. It was a tiny piece. Since I had four nose cones to go with one rocket, I printed three more rockets too.

That should have been the end of it but I decided to go overboard. I had to ship the four rockets. I ripped apart an old iPhone box, took some measurements, and made a simple object (printed in blue) with voids that matched the diameter and length of the three main rocket diameters. (My first and more cooler plan failed. I planned to upload the rocket *.stl’s into Fusion 360, shell externally a few millimeters, and then cut those objects out of a block. That way the voids would be perfect for the rockets. Alas, every time I load an external *.stl into Fusion 360 it gets pissed off at me. Maybe my free license has limitations I don’t know? Or maybe my skills have limitations I’ve yet to overcome. Sooner or later I’ll master it.)

The box isn’t going to win any prizes but it’s kinda’ neat and I’d already dumped way too much labor into a silly little rocket.

That’s that.

A.C.

P.S. As long as I’m uploading photos, here’s my DIY clock in my workshop (which is freezing cold right now). I think it looks pretty good.

Mrs. Curmudgeon cooks well. It’s a thing of beauty and a pleasure to watch. Her stuff is delicious. It’s an art. She’s creative. She’s got tons of recipes and she’s literally never followed one all the way through. “I was out of ingredient X so I substituted Y, plus I decided to use a little more ingredient Z for an extra bit of flavor.”

I’m a nerd and just don’t do that. If the recipe calls for eye of newt then it damn well needs eye of newt. I’ll get eye of newt or I’ll make something else.

Mrs. Curmudgeon has this unfathomable ability to recite a list of ingredients and imagine how delicious it’ll be. That ability is not wired into my brain. She’ll say something like this: “It has arugula, and beets, and red wine, and asparagus, and a savory compote. Isn’t that great?” What I hear is random nouns in no logical order: “It has motor oil, and tree bark, and Dawn dishwashing soap. Isn’t that great?”

Don’t blame me, I’m a guy. I don’t cook. I manufacture food.

As much as the finer sex (and men that are good cooks) laugh, my way is a fine way to go. My cooking is neither morally inferior nor spiritually bereft. Food I cook is not bad. It’s perfectly adequate. It’s reasonably good. Sometimes it’s excellent, but excellence is never my goal.

Because I use no creativity at all, my dishes are completely reproducible. I don’t wonder how this new thing will taste because I made it once, figured it out, and haven’t changed a fucking thing. I don’t usually burn shit. If it’s baked it’s baked for the right time because I set a fucking timer. The food I make tastes about the same if I prepare it in our kitchen or cook on a fire of cut up pallets in a desolate swamp.

I follow recipes like they’re laws of nature. I measure ingredients like they’re reagents. And I consider the entire process holistically; cooking means gathering ingredients (even if you have to kill something), preparing the food, eating it, and washing the dishes.

Our kitchen is where a beautiful unicorn shares space with a T-800. If I could somehow involve my 3d Printer I’d be approaching T-1000. Poor suffering Mrs. Curmudgeon.

Anyway, I like making bread. I can make bread by hand. I have a grain mill and I can make my own flour too. I can literally start with a bag of wheat kernels and end with a sandwich. But, I’m pretty lazy so I almost always use a bread maker.

I don’t want to hear any shit. My bread is wholesome, tastes good, and cheaper than store bought. Just because I didn’t spend an hour kneading dough doesn’t mean the food is crap. I’m not in it for the atmosphere and I’m happy to use whatever level of technology is most efficient at the moment. You can boil water on a fire or use a microwave; neither the water nor the consumer can taste where the BTUs came from.

Anyway I literally wore out my third bread maker and my “backup” bread maker (#2) just wouldn’t go. So I bought a new one.

The new machine has a recipe book that was written for space aliens, or perhaps Europeans. I expected to scoop something like 3 cups of flour. The recipe that came with the machine calls for unholy measures like 7/8th of a cup and/or grams. (Don’t run to the comments and get all “well actually”. I know about volume versus mass. This ain’t my first rodeo.) The book is so goofy I wonder if it was translated? Maybe written by AI?

I ran a few loaves and they came out fine. So I knew the machine was working right. Then I set out to make “milk bread”. Why? Because there was milk in the fridge and I didn’t want it to go to waste. That’s what happens when you’re into “manufacture” rather than “art”.

I followed the recipe with the care one would use for defusing a land mine. It wanted so many grams of this and a tablespoon of that and by God that’s what I did. The machine even has “menu 9: milky bread”. I was instructed to choose that option. I did.

The bread came out looking like a train wreck! (I didn’t think to take any photos. I wish I had.)

I was pissed.

But I cut it open and ate some. Big surprise, it was good! Way better than I expected. The next day Mrs. Curmudgeon cut the rest up and made French Toast. Holy spacebats! It was awesome. If you have never had French Toast made from hand cut milk bread slathered with real maple syrup then you’re missing out.

I decided to figure out how to make milk bread that doesn’t look like a dumpster fire. I found some nice person who had the exact same machine as the one I own and who was using the exact same recipe as I’d tried. She got the exact same results I did. (Forward to 2:50 to see bread that looks weird but tastes good.)

My initial theory was that I’d fucked up. That theory didn’t seem to be the case. The recipe in the booklet is probably shit. So I searched for a milk bread recipe and found one.

Now I was listening to someone who sounded like an eleven year old girl. This throws up red flags but then again who am I to think a kid can’t make bread?  The kid is probably a fucking genius. I copied all the ingredients from infernal video format to scribbled notes and was all set to go.

But then there was a problem. The kid used the “bread dough” setting, then added ingredients which had been withheld at the beginning of the process, then switched to a different setting.

Not cool! The reason I have a bread machine is to set it and forget it. Plus her machine was different than mine.

So I searched again and got my final set of YouTube instructions.

Hot damn! This lady looks like someone’s grandma. She’s got a southern accent and the exact same machine I own. Perfect.

She went into real detail, in particular pointing out that the pamphlet with the machine had sketchy recipe. She also pointed out that bread is baked based on “feel” and not perfect ingredient measurement. This is an absolutely true fact which I chose to disregard.

Just like the kid, she ran for a while on “dough” then reset the machine to “milk bread”. Message received! If two people did the same approach the logic of an LLM (and most of society) is to accept the consensus opinion. For something irrelevant like bread I can go with it

Here’s what I did:

1. I measured stuff following the kid’s recipe. I could have followed the grandma’s recipe but I was getting sick of going back and forth in video and writing shit down.
2. I held back the unsalted butter. The kid had done that. Why not?
3. I ran the “dough setting” just like both of them had. I wasn’t clear how long to let it go so I just ran it the whole cycle (something like 20 minutes).
4. I had no idea when to add the butter; which the kid had withheld for 15 minutes and the grandma hadn’t mentioned. About 6 minutes in I said “fuck it” and dumped it in the machine. It seemed to work.
5. The dough looked great. When grandma switched from “dough” to “milk bread” she pressed some buttons for “reserve” to give it a 15 minute break. I fucked up and paused. About 20 minutes later I figured out my mistake. I said “fuck it” again, reset everything, launched the milk bread routine, and assumed I’d ruined everything.
6. Grandma removes the bread paddle after ferment 3. That’s a great idea. I took a nap instead. (Napping while something else cooks is precisely why I have a bread machine.)
7. It came out PERFECT.

Measuring stuff:

Success:

My shop had a wall clock. It broke. I tossed it. I decided to 3d print a replacement.

I had a specific clock in mind and was pretty adamant about it. I wanted the plainest, simplest, most unremarkable clock to ever exist. I was thinking of the clocks in my old high school. (At the time I hated those clocks. Even now I’m still thankful I’m out of school… fuck that place. Weirdly, the clocks in my school would click backwards just a little bit, before moving forward for each minute. I never knew why. Nobody knows why. To replicate that would be far more involved than I care to go.)

Makerworld had a shitload of clock models. Some were very impressive! I sorted through them rejecting dozens for the odd reason that they were too flashy, or too clever, or too beautiful. I didn’t want a work of art. I wanted a humble, easily ignorable clock. I wanted something not too big. The footprint of my Bambulab A1 is about 10″ diameter so that worked out nicely. (The Bambulab has a 256 mm cube build envelope.)

I found just want I wanted. If you want to make the same thing: go here.

I had to buy a clock movement. Makerworld has the exact right movement for this model but it’s nine bucks. I thought I could get the same thing cheaper from Amazon and I’d get “free” shipping.

This got weird because I couldn’t remember the word for “movement”. If you can’t remember “clock movement” searching on “clock guts” is just going to make the algorithm cry. I eventually ran into “Persistence of Memory” by Salvador Dali.

That distracted me big time! For inexplicable reasons Dali’s image, painted in 1931, drilled into my brain when I was just a kid. Why did a kid who should be watching cartoons get obsessed about a 40+ year old painting? No idea. Maybe Dali was the real deal?

Eventually, I ordered exactly what I wanted. It cost seven bucks. No matter how much you shop around, it’s going to cost about $7. Was all that effort worth it to save two bucks? NO!

Seven bucks was still about twice what I expected to pay. Then again it’s a fair price and the source of confusion is me.

Warning geezer cogitation incoming!

The world has changed. Fiat currency has done what fiat currency always does. Numbers just aren’t what they were when I was learning “the value of a dollar”. I was fine with prices until the Bidenverse turbocharged everything. Those old numbers are gone; never to return. I think I’ll always feel that way. Inflation was annoying but steady for decades. Then some dude got more votes than any other candidate in history in the middle of the night after the election had been decided. The election was subsequently undecided, and I lived in a new universe where a mini-van costing fifty grand doesn’t even raise an eyebrow. I think some things just hit the limits of plasticity of the mind. It’s not necessarily political, it’s just human.

I remember the novelty of spending Escudos (Portuguese currency before the EU ate Europe). Or of spending Pesos in Mexico. It was always a reminder I was in a different world; spending such large digits on such small things. It was as if people quoted prices in dimes or nickels. “The cost for that pair of boots? 480 dimes.”

I knew it wouldn’t last. Everything feels more or less like Peso-ish numbers now. It’s not hard to drop a grand on a set of four tires. Burgers and a beer for a couple is now a C-note. I remember when a twenty dollar bill was plenty. I remember it cost about 2,000 +/- Escudos for a burger and an evening getting drunk in a tavern in Lisbon in the 1990’s.

I’m not complaining, just observing. I’ve known old people whom said the same thing. Now it’s my turn. Perhaps you had a grandparent who never got used to gas costing more than a buck? Ever hear a Boomeriffic geezer wonder why a Millennial can’t pay off college by bussing tables in the summer? It is what it is.

Live long enough and you’ll be there. You’ll spend two hours shopping for a $9 item to score a deal at $7 and yet wonder why you couldn’t get it for $3.50.

/Geezer Cogitation

Despite my shopping hassles, I thought $7 for a clock was damn cheap. It would be double that once I added in the filament. Make your own clock for $14! What a brilliant guy to save so much money…

WRONG!

In the middle of this project I wandered through a Walmart. I thought a clock was like $25 – $30. Nope. They’re cheaper than that. The smallish ones in this display ranged from about $15 – $20.

It’s hard to compete with plastic injection molded Chinese crap. My 3d fused deposition molded clock would not save me any money.

The next step was to pick filament. I freaked out and bought way too much of filament when I started selling sawhorse jigs last December so I’ve got many options. Since it wasn’t load bearing or anything special I could use either PLA or PETG.

A new roll of PLA black had a spool malfunction last month. It was a perfect time to fix it and use it. I 3d printed some tools to manage the mis-aligned spool and hook a different spool to to my power drill. I respooled, thus rescuing the filament. That was a fun challenge.

For the clock face I used a spool of white PLA filament. For the “text” I used black. Not very creative but that’s what I wanted. Time to start printing!

Whomever made this design was smart. Rather than embedding the clock numerals, which would require swapping filament with the AMS Lite, the designer split the numbers and the background into two parts. One is a backing of black (or any color you want) with the numbers embossed (sticking out). The other is a front of white (or any color you want) with voids perfectly aligned so the embossed “text” pushes through. Brilliant! The whole thing is held together with a third part that screws everything together with huge coarse threads. Also brilliant.

Part 1: The face: This went easy peasy. Very satisfying!

Part 2 the backing. This has huge bridges with no support. Not ideal but it worked.

I planned to make the outer ring in black. But then I decided on red to match the Milwaukee Packouts scattered about the shop. I didn’t have any red PLA so I used red PETG. Would the threads from two different materials work together? I’d find out.

The horizontal unsupported PETG made stringy crappy threads.

But it didn’t matter. It wasn’t a tight tolerance part.

There are a few parts where the white face couldn’t fill embossed voids; like the zero in “10”. The model printed little white things to fill them in. I installed them with superglue.

I could have printed clock hands but I liked the ones that came with the movement. The “seconds” hand was red. It matched my red housing quite nicely.

It cost $15.37 total; $7 for the movement and $8.37 in filament. I didn’t go overbudget, in fact it was at the low end of Walmart clock costs. Whew! But I didn’t save a lot either.

That’s OK. I think it looks cool and I made it myself.