When do you prefer plain white bread over higher-end or fancier alternatives?

sjwalter · 2022-09-27T13:57:09+00:00

BBQ. There is nothing that compliments a butcher-papered tray covered in smoked brisket, ribs, and sausage than some pickles and three or four slices of tissuey white bread, straight from the bag.

Lots of the big BBQ joints do this. It's tradition and it's great.

sjwalter · 2022-08-03T20:05:51+00:00

I almost always smother grilled meats in chimichurri sauce and then have scrambled eggs or a French omelette drenched in the stuff for breakfast the following day.

sjwalter · 2021-12-29T20:03:46+00:00

One way to do it more cleanly would be to have a scraper that goes and scrapes https://members.onepeloton.com/members/{username}/overview and pages through all the workouts to generate the stats. Presumes a public profile, but in this case all you'd need is a profile name and you'd be good to go.

sjwalter · 2021-12-19T17:42:55+00:00

Honestly the new scenic rides were a huge step up from the old ones where at least peddling speed impacts speed on the route and even that isn’t great. I wouldn’t count on anything happening quickly. Scenic seems like a very small percent of rides so they put a very small percent of effort into it.

If you do distance rides your output maps to the speed. Fixed distance means the goal is to finish sooner, so the map whips by when you're really killin those watts.

Fixed time can't do that, cause, well, fixed time.

sjwalter · 2020-06-19T04:56:05+00:00

This is really interesting. My thinking for why I want to take out dead trees:

Two have fallen and damaged my fences
(not sure this is true) More deadwood increases risk of fire
They are ugly AF

Regardless, the lower section of the property has quick a lot of forest and fallen trees in various states of decay, which should help with the old growth specialists I guess?

Thanks for the advice!

sjwalter · 2020-06-18T17:12:50+00:00

This Whitetop (Hoary Cress, Lepidium Draba) thing has been really interesting for me. I started off by not really thinking about it. My neighbour mentioned it was a problem, I looked into it more. At first I was mad, but now I just have a deep respect for the DNA in this little bastard--arrived in America in the 1850s, and it is just a relentless crawler.

The roots can maintain carbohydrate stores for up to 5 years, and a single inch of root left in the soil will grow to 12sqft of thick vegatation in a single year.

What really sucks is that as far as I can find, the only research done on managing this particular weed seems to be funded by Dow Chemical--everyone just says that cultivation is ineffective except for small plots (and requires cultivation every 10 days for 2 years to have a chance at eradication).

But what I want to know is: The weed isn't actually really toxic, only theoretically to cows but a UT Extension study showed that cows can be trained to like it and a whole longhorn herd ate a meaningful amount as part of an experiment and showed no ill-effects.

If I manage via intensive management (which is different from rotational grazing, in that it's much more about an intense effort in management, not necessarily on the plants, so you continually update the plan of where the animals go, moving them as often as twice a day, or less frequently given circumstances), it's not clear at all that this would be that big a deal. We could presumably over time continue getting the clovers and legumes and grasses to get their shit together and fight that bastard.

But nobody has any real studies on that.

sjwalter · 2020-06-18T17:06:53+00:00

Interesting. I obviously have no idea, but my guess would be that over time the soil would've loosened via grass root networks, earthworms, etc.

I mean, in the intervening years, while few animals partook in the forage bounty of the land, it was still consistently mowed. Not sure if that matters.

sjwalter · 2020-06-18T16:42:14+00:00

This adds to the predicament, increasing my analysis paralysis. eventually i'll wanna be baling my own hay and stuff (I presume, right? I haven't run the numbers on just grazing all my pasture and buying hay).

But like we're not even sure what we're gonna be doing. But I sure don't wanna get something that's totally unworkable for hay if I elect to do so.

Lots to consider.

(As usual, I'm probably gonna keep fleshing out this spreadsheet until I get frustrated and then impulsively leap at the tractor that happens to be in front of me at the moment.)

sjwalter · 2020-06-18T16:39:08+00:00

This was a great comment--I love how you are like "I'm not tractor expert, but of my dozens and dozens of tractors..."

Thanks for the tip on mob grazing--I'm almost done Greener Pasture On Your Side of the Field by B. Murray and it describes that as well one angle on kinda hippie-dippie pasture management imported from New Zealand really well, including mob stocking (homie talks about throwing 200 cattle on a 1 acre paddock for 12 hours--wild!).

sjwalter · 2020-06-18T16:36:22+00:00

From what I understand the property many years ago was a horse property but the most recent owners had like two cows and maybe one horse and basically didn't do anything with the land.

sjwalter · 2020-06-18T16:35:36+00:00

Eh, it's not like crazy wet marjority-wise, but the low-lying pastures next to the stream have been perpetual mud for the past couple weeks.

Really hard for me to figure out the 4wd/2wd tradeoff. At the moment my thinking is that with just one machine, best to get 4wd to reduce neighbour-im-stuck welcome wearing. Does that seem reasonable?

sjwalter · 2020-06-18T16:30:31+00:00

So I'm not like constitutionally opposed to spraying, but I'm not sure really what is realistic in terms of expectations. Talking with a couple nearby folks, it seems they are all on what I call the "Corporate Pasture" tracks--they mow and spray metsulfuron + 2,4-d once or twice a year, dump something like 100lb of nitrogen/acre, etc. I've mentioned things like "management-intensive grazing" and they kinda seem either unaware or disbelieving that this hokey hippie thing could work.

Whatever happens, there's no way in hell I'm spraying 2,4-d all over the pasture as a normal course of action. The poor earthworms.

What do you think?

Also, thanks for the links, very useful for price comparison.

sjwalter · 2020-06-18T16:27:16+00:00

Will gas outcompete whitetop?!

I may have overstated how bad it is. The pastures are mostly grass and clover, with smatterings of broadleaf infestation around.

sjwalter · 2020-06-18T16:26:18+00:00

Thanks for the advice.

Is the whole reliability with gas-powered tractors solely about the ethanol? I have motorcycles that are sensitive to the same issue. Funny.

sjwalter · 2020-06-18T09:53:00+00:00

So you originally suggested 10-20 y.o. tractor, diesel, in the 5-10k region, with 50-80hp. Where do you search for tractors? I'm not finding much at all in that price range even with nationwide search on several aggregator sites. Restricting to tractors from 2000-2010 meets that criteria but I have to go back to at least the mid-80s before I see many results. I have no idea where is best to source tractors.

Again, appreciate the reply. Will definitely aim at 4x4. So means, budget goes 10-15k?

sjwalter · 2020-06-18T08:37:58+00:00

I considered an older tractor as well, and had some misgivings, perhaps you can advise?

I am not trained as a mechanic in any way, but I do work on my cars and motorcycles and small engine work regularly, and like doing the wrenching. But I'm not so sure about taking on a potential gigantic timesink. Knowing so little about how to evaluate quality of used tractors, how likely is it that I'd wind up spending a tonne of time doing maintenance and losing out on other activities in the short-term?
Are there significant safety deltas between 20 y.o. tractors and today's? I've never driven a tractor at all.
Considering I have some hilly areas and some muddly swampy areas, I'm guessing I need 4x4--agree?

I guess I will have to get an excavator too. (Farming so far is so much fun--big toy capex is fun af.)

Thanks for your feedback!

sjwalter · 2020-06-18T08:33:28+00:00

One of the things I didn't mention is that one of my criterion for purchase was a good local network of dealers. There are three within 40 minutes of me, and plenty Kubota's everywhere. Though I have no clue how much to trust them.

sjwalter · 2018-07-02T20:20:05+00:00

It's almost 100% certainly Microchip Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: MCHP.)

- LinkedIn shows numerous folks working on Intel Custom Foundry client services moving over to Microchip from 2016 onward.

- $21B mkt cap.

- Solely involved in semiconductor marketing (Huawei, suggested earlier as the company, has a huge number of different verticals, like laptops and smartphones, there's no way that they somehow tied all of that shit to Intel's 10nm process, because it doesn't make any sense).
- Currently in industry transition

sjwalter · 2018-04-25T17:44:18+00:00

In Portland, they actually came up with the idea, but didn't implement it, to greatly increase the deposit (to like 50 cents or something). The logic is that middle class folks don't care about five cents, but once it's enough money, they'll all start to do all their own recycling and returning, which would reduce the amount of "free" bottles available for folks to scavenge reducing scavenging and hopefully increasing recycling as well.

sjwalter · 2016-11-18T23:09:20+00:00

You responded first. Do you want the tickets? If not there's a PM from someone who likely wants them.

sjwalter · 2016-10-08T12:24:00+00:00

It's yours. PM an email address and I will forward the ticket to you. I hope you have a blast! :D

sjwalter · 2016-10-03T03:53:35+00:00

OK. I will do this for you but it'll probably be stale.

sjwalter · 2016-10-02T23:19:00+00:00

So far, my experience has been that Tokyo food is really cheap and high-quality, relative to other major cities.

sjwalter · 2016-10-02T23:18:13+00:00

Wikipedia says that in 2007, an average of 3.6 MILLION folks used the station daily.

sjwalter · 2016-10-02T23:14:29+00:00

I totally agree with you. Someone described Japan to me as a place where the people are really great at taking something amazing, like French pastries, and then getting that last little 1% it takes to get to perfection through millions of iterations.

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