July 16, 2014

Is there a job search engine that ranks jobs according to distance

from a specified city? I'm thinking that if there are no jobs in City X, you'd be more interested in jobs 150 miles from X than 1500.

July 16, 2014

Blueberries - we have some old (15+?) plants that we have never pruned.

Right now, each bush has wood at the base about 2" around and bears about 2-4 quarts a season. They are about 4'5'tall. The question is, should we let the plants alone, prune them by 1/3?, prune them more vigorously and when?

July 16, 2014

Word of advice - pull out your Home Owner's policy and check it!

We received our annual bill, and noticed that it still lists a mortgage against our house that was paid off. Not a real problem, just a real headache should we ever need to make a claim.

BUT! - we have our barn insured under a second policy, and just realized that there has been no automatic increase for inflation since we bought the policy in 1987. We're working on getting that changed, since the amount we insured it for would have to be stretched to cover a 2 car garage!

(The young woman answering the phone at the agency apparently doesn't understand the concept of inflation. She kept asking us why we'd want to increase the assessed value of the structure! We're hoping the agent is a bit more knowledgeable!)

July 14, 2014

Q. How can chickens help you tell the weeds from the vegetables and flowers?

A. The chickens will carefully pull out any useful plants while leaving the weeds in place.

July 14, 2014

Q. When is a permanent marker not a permanent marker?

A. When you label all your rose bushes, go away for six weeks, and there are several big rainstorms.

July 14, 2014

Here's a news source I think most here would like to support:

http://investigativenewsnetwork.org/


Non-profit investigative reporting, actually gathering local news rather than reprinting public relations statements!

For example - here's a report from Buffalo, NY:

"City Hall alone would cost up to $180 million to bring up to snuff, the draft report said. Costly work is required for community centers, libraries, museums and other cultural centers, and park, police and fire facilities.

City officials said they have not released the two-year-old report, obtained from sources by Investigative Post, because they believe the cost estimates are high. They are scheduled to meet Friday with consultants in an effort to revise the figures.

Regardless of the final estimates, the work will cost hundreds of millions of dollars. The cost of repairs and upgrades is so big because the city has deferred maintenance for years, allocated relatively little money for capital projects and been slow to spend money that’s been earmarked.

http://www.investigativepost.org/2014/07/10/buffalos-costly-neglect-public-buildings/

July 10, 2014

Mirror universes: this story is being spread on right wing

sources as an example of how bad ObamaCare is:

The original report in a local newspaper:

http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/health/2014/07/05/couple-married-years-separate-wife-can-keep-insurance/12203959/

as picked up by the Left:

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/07/07/3456863/tennessee-medicaid-expansion-couple/

as picked up by the Right:

http://www.thepoliticalinsider.com/obama-forces-married-couple-divorce/

July 10, 2014

Jimmy Carter has driven the near-extinction of a species!

Guinea worm is about as close to a real-life Alien event as you can get — a parasitic worm mates inside a person's abdomen, grows up to 3 feet long and then exits (painfully) from a blister.

But the worm's final chapter is near: The world is closer than ever to wiping the parasite off the face of the Earth.

There were only 17 cases of Guinea worm in the first five months of this year, the Carter Center Monday. That's a 75 percent reduction from this time last year, when 68 people reported infections.


http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/07/08/329519260/going-going-almost-gone-a-worm-verges-on-extinction

July 9, 2014

Challenge! I've been working in Alte Saxony the last few weeks,

and have sampled several specimens of what I think is a local specialty:

It's a 2"-3" thick cheese cake with poppy seeds and cherries swirled though it or layered between it and a 1/2" base of white cake. Everything is topped with streusel and served with whipped cream. Sometimes the cake base is replaced with a dry cookie (as in lemon bars) but I prefer the cake.

So - I can figure out the cheesecake part, and swirling in cherries and poppy seeds is easy, but how do I bake a cheese cake atop a white cake without burning one or the other? Any thoughts?

(since my German is limited to Bitte while pointing at what I want with a smile, I can't ask for any local advice!)

July 9, 2014

Middle school hormones, myth or reality?

For years, I have heard abut how difficult it is to maintain order in middle school/junior high because the kids are engulfed in a rush of hormones (and we aren't talking about thyroid hormones here, but full on massive doses of estrogen and testosterone). I don' know how this threat is handled elsewhere, but the local junior high responded by instituting a series of draconian rules and regulations. My personal favorite? Students were allowed access to the rest rooms in the hall only at class breaks - when tardiness to the next class was punished and each classroom had its own, un-synchronized clock. So, if teacher A held her class 2 minutes over and teacher B started class 2 minutes early, it was up to the student to get from point A to point B in a minute or less. Of course - every student had full access to the single toilet off the cafeteria during their 20 minute lunch break. (BTW - if the lunch line was 15 minutes long, too bad for the kids at the end of the line!)

The alternate excuse for making Junior High a hell was "to prepare the kids for high school". In reality, the high school was laid back relative to junior high.

I liked a lot of their teachers, but I hated the junior high when my kids were that age.

Comments?