Things are hectic around here

We’re getting ready for Mrs. the Poet’s Trip North, which is going to be extended this year because she’s going from the airport to our daughter’s house to babysit our grandson while his parents go to Mexico for their vacation. She’s leaving early Thursday morning, about 0530 to make sure she catches her 0815 flight, so tonight will be our last time in the same bed until after Daughter and Son-in-law return from their vacation near the end of July. So she’s getting back a couple of weeks earlier than usual, but she’s leaving a full month earlier than usual, so I’m Baching it even longer than normal.

To add to the chaos Mrs. the Poet’s phone decided to expire over the weekend, acting like it had a bad BMS that was cutting the power early, until we finally got a full charge way past what would be full, then it was cutting power at random. Or it could be like my previous phone and there was dirt in the power switch contacts, because when we tried to take the sim card out to transfer to a new phone that didn’t use that kind of sim card it started working normally again, again exactly like my old phone that I now use as a tiny tablet, and for browsing web sites I don’t trust to not install malware on my computer or my regular phone I use for making phone calls.

Also I got some more free food to talk about in my blog, almond milk “yogurt”. I put the quotes because the bacteria that make yogurt from real milk yogurt do so by feeding on the lactose in the milk, turning it into lactic acid and curdling the milk slightly. Almond milk is by definition a lactose-free food, so even if they have the right strain of bacteria, without the lactose there is no lactic acid, so the taste is completely wrong from the start. And having said that as long as you don’t expect to get yogurt even though it has “yogurt” plastered all over the container it ain’t half bad. I got the blueberry Kite Hill brand and as a dessert it’s a pretty good pudding that’s not too sweet and has a high degree of “blueberry” because it has real blueberries in it. To reiterate, it ain’t yogurt, but it ain’t bad either. You just have to go into the experience not expecting to get yogurt and it will return you a pleasant sweet treat experience.

Now about that other free food I keep getting, the Oat Yeah oatmilk. This one is targeted at lactose intolerant people who have nut allergies. I don’t know why I’m getting this stuff, I’m not a foodie nor do I have any of the conditions these foods are made to deal with. TBH I just like getting free food and manufacturers sending me free food to write about unsolicited just blows my mind. So don’t stop sending me free food, or coupons for free food which is how I have been getting stuff lately. But anyway, the Oat Yeah brand is non-objectionable, which is the highest praise I can give food that was made for people with dietary restrictions. I have had to eat food for people with restrictions and most of it varies from truly awful to barely edible, to be non-objectionable is high praise indeed. My only dietary restriction is I have to limit my intake of HFCS or I get what resembles IBS. It is not a pretty situation, so unless forced I stick to diet soft drinks or unsweetened iced tea on the road. So if any drink makers want to send me diet soft drinks or iced teas apparently my address is widely known so send it here.

And if anyone has an engine sitting around gathering dust I can figure out how to put it in the Sprint-T. The beauty of the T-Bucket is the unrestricted engine compartment lets you use anything, literally anything that can be bolted to a RWD transmission. If I can buy or make an adapter to a transmission that fills the spaces between the engine and the transmission so they can work together and the engine can be made to run the only issue is leaving room for my feet inside the car. If it needs an engine controller to run and it has 8 or fewer cylinders in an even number, then I can use a Microsquirt or Megasquirt, and the Mega doesn’t even have the even number of cylinders restriction. The tuning software the manufacturer gives away works for either one, and once I know which engine I will be using I’ll also know if I need to purchase the upgrade that allows the use of self-tuning feedback from the O2 sensor to adjust the injector table. I have been playing with the software in the offline mode and it was pretty simple to work with. Even without the self tuning software they have free dashboard and datalogging software that works with Android phones and tablets so you can adjust the injection and ignition tables almost as quickly as making the ECM do it. The wiring needed to convert the RS232 signal from the Micro or Megasquirt to something a modern laptop or phone/tablet can understand is a bit involved, but once communications are established it’s all good.

And I have been sitting for way too long, and there is a container of Moose Trax ice cream calling my name, so buh-bye!

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Just me and the cats again

Mrs. the Poet is taking her annual summer trip away from TX heat and humidity to be with her relatives in Upstate NY. This means a month or so of only eating what I can prepare or scrounge, and the cats having to stay out until I get up instead of when Mrs. the Poet gets up. This morning I had leftover cinnamon rolls that either had to be eaten or thrown away by the end of the week, for breakfast. I usually have PopTarts because until the coffee kicks in that’s pretty much as good as I can do.

Now there are good things about her vacation. I get better sleep because there’s nobody doing laundry or having one-sided conversations with the cats before noon. I get to have braunschweiger sandwiches for lunch, that I can’t have usually because Mrs. the Poet can’t stand the smell of any of the liver sausages. I get as much ramen as I want, and I can mix in the canned veggies as I cook the noodles (drain the veggies into the measuring cup and add water to bring to the 2 cups/package needed to cook the noodles, then dump the liquid and veggies on the noodles and heat it all at once). Five minutes to a filling meal with healthy veggies and flavor. Mrs. the Poet does not like this in spite of how little it costs to make.

On other fronts I’m getting new earbuds to replace the ones I got 2 phones ago that lost the left channel a few weeks back. It just got quieter and quieter, and when I checked it that side was full of something pale and flaky that locked up the driver. I have no idea what it was because I keep my ears very clean. It still makes noise, but if you turn up the volume enough to hear the left side you’ll blast your eardrum out on the right side. So new earbuds, actually two sets so I have different ones for watching YouTube videos on the computer without disturbing Mrs. the Poet. Using the same ones all the time may have contributed to their demise.

And for the blog I also got a zoom lens for my cell phone camera, supposedly a nice solid one that will last for several phones. You might have read previous posts where I note that because of the wide-angle lens used on most cell phone cameras it was impossible to scale anything in a picture even with a tape measure right in front of the object in the picture. This is called a parallax error and requires extensive technical knowledge of the lens to correct for, or you could just slap a zoom lens on and eliminate about 90% of the error. I’m buying a zoom lens. With the Amazon gift card I got for Father’s Day.