24/7 Chat About Anything

[maki2]

The days are just flowing by calmly this month. No major weather events. A few potlucks to attend but I am not the person creating the main event menu items.
I do want to get up early one morning in the next couple of weeks and drive to the border crossing in Los Algodones and get new glasses made. Teeth cleaned while waiting for the lenses to be produced, etc.

Today though is sorting out a gremlin in my vinyl cutter that is preventing truly clean cuts. Likely the blade holder the tiny blade slides into is the cause. Could be paper debris fiber build up in it. I will start by taking it apart, compressed air, WD 40 on the ball bearings, etc. I think I have a spare new one. Fortunately the blade holders are sold on Amazon. So I will schedule a few to be delivered soon.

There is no Amazon locker in Quartzsite. But there is one in front of the General Store in the small town of Brenda. Not too bad of a drive to Brenda from Quartzsite.

 

[Morgana]

For anyone who enjoys reading about the nitty-gritty of where stuff comes from or how stuff is made ... here's an interesting article about dairy farms
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/05/...e_code=1.fE4.xoEJ.TdKapjZnJNTU&smid=url-share
It focuses on bird flu (a danger for dairy workers, but apparently not for most consumers), but what's really interesting about it is how it describes the process and has short videos showing the steps. Just from reading I never would have imagined how it really goes. And it has cool factoids, e.g. that the robot milkers seem to be more pleasant for the cows.
Yes you could take some parts of the article as an excuse to go political but PLEASE don't. It is too fun, and delightfully disgusting, just taken at face value.
Mooooooo.

 

[NctryBen]

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For anyone who enjoys reading about the nitty-gritty of where stuff comes from or how stuff is made ... here's an interesting article about dairy farms
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/05/...e_code=1.fE4.xoEJ.TdKapjZnJNTU&smid=url-share
It focuses on bird flu (a danger for dairy workers, but apparently not for most consumers), but what's really interesting about it is how it describes the process and has short videos showing the steps. Just from reading I never would have imagined how it really goes. And it has cool factoids, e.g. that the robot milkers seem to be more pleasant for the cows.
Yes you could take some parts of the article as an excuse to go political but PLEASE don't. It is too fun, and delightfully disgusting, just taken at face value.
Mooooooo.

Dairy was what I had a degree in… haha!
Was hired by one of my instructors to manage his dairy herd. We had automated milkers… but they either took milkers off too soon or too long. So it took some real knowing every cow. Not milking them out properly would either reduce their production or cause things like mastitis… massaging utters and some hand milking is a must on some cows. I’m sure the more modern equipment is much better. But equipment fails… it amazes me of some of the ways we make things better.
When I was driving for the beet harvest… they were pointing out a farm that milked a huge amount of cows…. It was hard to imagine how that would work out… I started out with the buckets with milkers attached and you’d have to dump milk into a “step saver”… basically a covered bucket with a hose that would suck the milk to the bulk tank. Then went to a pipeline… there the milk never was exposed to the barn smells. And then a couple twelve cow parlors… after graduation was my parlor experiences. This was back in the eighties and then the government cow buyout happened. It was hard to see a herd I had taken from second worst to second best in the county. Registered Holsteins. All get slaughtered and the farm could not be used for milking for X amount of years.
So I went and built fireplaces instead…

 

[maki2]

Fixed my issue with my vinyl cutter for getting clean cuts. While cutting this morning found one of the other gremlins, the end on the power cord is loosing its grip, a slight jostle is tripping off the power connection. I will see if I can improve its grip. I do travel with spare power cords that fit it. Part of my having too much stuff syndrome is that I carry extras of device cables because you just never know! I do not want to be making a 40 or 50 mile one way drive for a cord when I have a shipping deadline to meet

 

[maki2]

Temporary Gremlin fix with half of a wooden clothes pin as a support wedge. Any slight jostling of the power cord was occasionally causing a very slight sag on the plug which caused a disconnect to power disruption to my vinyl cutter. Very frustrating when that happens in the middle of a cutting of a sheet of very tiny miniature cardstock buildings. I can’t recover to the exact position the blade was in as the cutting file sent to the machine from my computer gets wiped out of the machines memory with the power outage. The exact position of a 0,0 cutting start point set by button pushing for each sheet when loaded in gets wiped out when the blade moves back to its normal resting stop when the power goes back on.

Now that the cord is stable I will cut the buildings that are missing from the set of 8 that got disrupted. I doubt I will create a more permanent fix when an easy to do temporary fix worked just fine. It is the perfect height and width to fit onto that little recess. I have plenty of clothes pin support wedges around if this one gets lost

 

[vanbrat]

Temporary Gremlin fix with half of a wooden clothes pin as a support wedge. Any slight jostling of the power cord was occasionally causing a very slight sag on the plug which caused a disconnect to power disruption to my vinyl cutter. Very frustrating when that happens in the middle of a cutting of a sheet of very tiny miniature cardstock buildings. I can’t recover to the exact position the blade was in as the cutting file sent to the machine from my computer gets wiped out of the machines memory with the power outage. The exact position of a 0,0 cutting start point set by button pushing for each sheet when loaded in gets wiped out when the blade moves back to its normal resting stop when the power goes back on.

Now that the cord is stable I will cut the buildings that are missing from the set of 8 that got disrupted. I doubt I will create a more permanent fix when an easy to do temporary fix worked just fine. It is the perfect height and width to fit onto that little recess. I have plenty of clothes pin support wedges around if this one gets lost View attachment 36913

good fix for minor problem. unless of course it didn't get fixed then it would have been a bigger problem

 

[vanbrat]

So I had a good day at work today. I had the day in the 3-5 year old room and we were playing outside chasing imaginary sea monsters that sneaked up from the beach. I sent the 5-6 kids that were playing the game after the scales of the sea monster for they are magical. Of they ran and they all come back with various goodies. Except one little girl she came back yelling "teacher teacher I got his testicals." I stopped what I was doing and asked her "what did you get?" she repeated "I got his testicals! see right here and she showed me her empty but full hands and ran off to show everyone else. I turned my back to the group and laughed and told my coworkers and we all had a good laugh