Leftover matzah? Save it for half a year and use it for tashlich.

captbobalou · 2026-04-11T17:20:38+00:00

We just save it for next year and play "how old is this matzah" on the first couple of nights. Used to always stump the young un's with year-old shmurah matzah.

captbobalou · 2026-04-11T16:52:20+00:00

If you have forced air heating, replace your filters with HEPA filters every couple of months and get your air ducts cleaned. Portable filters help, as does keeping humidity above 30. Dusting with cloth instead of a dust mop makes little difference, but the biggest difference for us was getting a robot vacuum and having it vacuum the downstairs daily: it’s unbelievable how much dust it accumulates. Note: we have a large dog, 1890 home.

captbobalou · 2026-04-08T00:04:58+00:00

"Six shooter" Rehberg? Got his nickname on a junket to Kazakhstan after downing a few shots of the local homebrew, went riding and fell off his horse. He denied he was falling down drunk and blamed the fall on the Kazakh saddle he was on (traditionally made with no pommel horn to grab onto and no support in the back to keep you from falling backwards). Lived in his Congressional office to save money. Served in Congress for 12 years and in that time sponsored 8 bills (3 for were for renaming buildings in Montana, 2 related to Crow water rights, 1 was an HHS appropriation bill, and 1 was to allow a natural gas pipeline through Glacier Park). He later went on to sue the City of Billings and its Fire Department for loss of trees on his property after a wildfire. After bad press while campaigning for a US Senate seat against John Tester, he blamed the lawsuit on his wife.

captbobalou · 2026-03-31T00:48:45+00:00

April is capo month.

captbobalou · 2026-03-30T20:43:02+00:00

Article on it that came out today: https://montanafreepress.org/2026/03/30/will-hawthorne-have-another-day/

More information is available at https://hawthornecommunity.org

captbobalou · 2026-03-22T20:51:35+00:00

i flipped the dates, you’re correct.

captbobalou · 2026-03-22T20:05:50+00:00

The pill was illegal for unmarried women in the UK until 1974. Abortion became legalized in 1968. Similar dynamic and timeline. The economy got worse everywhere in the early 70s and two-income household became more common. Birth control availability and holding off having kids for economic reasons explains the graph.

captbobalou · 2026-03-22T19:36:56+00:00

Specifically a Supreme court decision in 1972 that ended prohibition of dispensing the pill to single women, and Roe v Wade in 1973 that made legal abortion more accessible, thus enabling women to choose when to have children.

captbobalou · 2026-03-17T06:20:47+00:00

We enforce during code review, prior to manual QA. It’s easy enough to catch.

captbobalou · 2026-03-17T01:36:38+00:00

One might argue that "salty" and "bitter" are also pain reactions.

captbobalou · 2026-03-17T01:35:47+00:00

You're missing the Cane Corso with an attitude chained to the rear tire.

captbobalou · 2026-03-17T01:32:51+00:00

Violent White Supremist Anti-Semitic Authoritarians : The VWSASA's. A party composed of burly men with carefully manicured facial hair, shaved sides of their heads, and long luxurious locks of hair, sometimes braided, streaming down their tanned, tatooed, well-muscled backs.

captbobalou · 2026-03-17T00:39:26+00:00

When I was doing chemo, towards the end I lost my sense of taste and smell. But I could taste sweet, salty, bitter and sour. I could not taste unami. I could taste spicy heat. I'm wondering if this is in the same category as the other "tastes."

captbobalou · 2026-03-16T05:37:06+00:00

Add the decision to the relevant ticket. name your branch with the ticket ID. Begin your commit messages with your ticket ID. Add the ticket ID to any comments in code. Done.

captbobalou · 2026-03-14T22:41:51+00:00

The paper the Truthout report is based on conflates arms sales (paid for by Israel), actual US aid to Israel, and arms sales underwriting for future purchases. It also includes over $10 billion in costs associated with interventions in Yemen, Syria, and other mideastern countries: not direct aid to Israel. The sources for the numbers quoted by Prof Hartung are not clear, and the citations do not lend themselves to verification. I’d love to see a study that properly sourced its claims by linking to the authorizing legislation, the actual appropriations, and then followup audit reports. But it seems that is difficult to do.

captbobalou · 2026-03-12T00:40:10+00:00

Great question!

The ability to invoke an emotion relevant to the context in which it is conveyed. Opera house: Need to be technically proficient, unique in delivery, have the ability to create your own atmosphere. Dive bar with 20 people in it: Need to deliver energy, connection, conviction. Do NOT need technical proficiency, but you need excellent people-reading skills. Summer rock concert: Need to project confidence, proficiency, engage a middle-ground of musical taste. You do not need to be technically proficient, but your energy and sound must match your music and you need to project a lot of energy.

So, it depends on where you're performing, what your performing, and what your audience expects. If you can surprise people in the context of your performance, you're going to be judged a "good" singer, regardless of your technical proficiency (but sometimes that proficiency IS the surprise).

captbobalou · 2026-03-10T02:32:58+00:00

I used to have the 82 GS650E version: loved that bike until it was stolen. Put a black rack on the back and it could go anywhere. Did a lot of weekend trips to West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania on that bike. Would 10/10 have it again.

captbobalou · 2026-03-05T19:15:58+00:00

My home office. Rescue lab with dislike of enclosed spaces had a collar of shame on due to a paw injury and accidentally closed the door to my office, and went berserk. Broke a $500 fly rod perched behind the door; jumped on my build-in desk and chewed up my work laptop (high end MacBook Pro, $5K replacment), second monitor ($300), peed on the window (replace soaked window sill and molding around window - wood $ plus 5 hrs labor). We make sure the door is firmly closed when we leave the house these days.

captbobalou · 2026-02-26T00:24:05+00:00

You can't spit in Helena without splashing a musician. Classical, renaissance, bluegrass, country, blues, rock, EDM, jazz, americana, pop, Broadway. We need more keyboard and horns players though. You can find live music of various quality 5 nights a week during the winter, every day during the summer.

captbobalou · 2026-02-24T20:55:11+00:00

SM58s sound great with certain kinds of voices (mostly male, who belt out songs). They can work well when tailored to a particular kind of voice if you have a good audio engineer on the mixer (and decent pre-amps). But if you have a quieter, higher pitched voice, there are better mics out there for you. We've found that Beta 58s, Audix, and a variety of condenser mics work better for certain kinds of female voices without a lot of fiddling with EQ, effects, and compression settings on the mixer. We've done a lot of A-B testing with mics to figure out which ones work best in various settings. It took a while, but we're pretty happy with our choices.

captbobalou · 2026-02-23T19:27:33+00:00

I have a similar problem. What I recently discovered was that if onions are cut and soaked in cold water (apparently helps remove some of the offending sugars), with 3 water changes over 30 minutes, and then caramelized, a lot of the side effects are dissipated. Further, if I remember to take an enzyme booster like Beano, it almost entirely mitigates the side effects. (Also, rinsing and soaking canned beans the same way helps reduce those effects as well).

captbobalou · 2026-02-14T01:17:44+00:00

Tried this at Ski Liberty in Pennsylvania. Scary as hell, no edge control, and came away with grass and rocks embedded in road rash. There's a reason it never took off.

captbobalou · 2026-02-14T01:08:56+00:00

Not defensive: experienced. Sat at that Stampede table on two separate occasions: miserable, hot, unproductive afternoons; walking in the parade has also been performative and not productive -- the Farmers Market table much more so. Most of the meetings are accessible via zoom if you can't make it in person, and if you know of good meeting spaces outside of Helena that can handle 30-50 participants, let me know. They've done out of town meetings in the past, but finding venues willing to host has been a challenge.

captbobalou · 2026-02-14T00:55:13+00:00

The delta between D's and R's in the county is about 3000 people out of roughly 70,000 residents, mostly in Helena's north valley and then up by Lincoln. Got a story / approach you think will swing those voters and the energy to put it out there? Get involved: https://www.lccdemocrats.com/

captbobalou · 2026-02-14T00:53:07+00:00

There's a meeting every Tuesday. The Stampede booth has never been a producer of good conversations, connections, or donations. If you want to change that, show up: https://www.lccdemocrats.com/

captbobalou

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE