Fat old retired nobody, blathering into the abyss.
W: 316.0 BS: 150
The Griswold fry skillet got one more polish, and a wash and oil coat. It's out on the gas grill as I type this. Next up on the agenda, a Lodge griddle.
I never got this one right. It's rough. I never got it seasoned right despite multiple attempts. Mostly it just hangs on the pantry rack, used occasionally for grilled cheese maybe.
Today, after putting the skillet on the grill, I loaded the 80-grit and started on this thing.
Hory Cow Batman, this little beastie is rougher than my ex-wifes personality. No wonder I made no progress trying to make it work. This does not speak well for Lodges quality control.
After a couple 80-grit discs used up, I considered getting out the big gun. My angle grinder. For SURE that will remove material, and no doubt. Still on the fence with that one. The last thing I want is to install a big power tool gash on the surface. No coming back from that.
So far today at Castle Bovine Exhaust....
Now, about that Canadian air pollution they are sending at us.... I really think we should fire up the military, spend 20 minutes conquering Canuckistan, and then put their damn fires out. After that, give them back their socialist shithole and walk away.
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W: 318.2 BS: 117
Long long ago, in a previous lifetime, I had pennies to rub together. Enough that when half-brother Wankerbrain asked to borrow $10K, I actually thought about it. I turned for advice to the only person who could have an opinion...Mom. She said he had always paid his debts and thought him good for it. I honestly didn't even know him, but I trusted Mom so I made the loan.
Fast forward a few years and I get a phone call. Wankerbrain's attorney called to tell me the twit was going bankrupt and I was on the list of creditors to get screwed. Wankerbrain didn't call, his lawyer did. The only time I heard from him after that was when Mom died and he kept calling and asking for a death certificate. I finally realized he had taken out life insurance on her. Dick.
Moving on a decade or three, and the half-brother found my address somehow and e-mailed me from where he was hiding down in the Caribbean. Wanted to know if we could reconnect. I told him "I'm game. One thing though... first you return the money you stole from my family".
Never heard from him again. Hope I never do.
I wonder if that is how Trump feels about those people 'Wanting to just move on' after all the evidence coming to light about the 2020 election fraud. "Sure, we can get along just fine, but first return what you stole".
I've been meaning to give this a try for years, and suddenly there I wuz...
A $3 drill kit with an assortment of abrasives hit my door this morning. When I finished my self-appointed chores, I allowed myself the surprising pleasure of.... polishing a cast iron pan.
I'm looking for a slick and non-stick surface once all is well and done. Eventually I'll do all the cast iron except the Dutch oven. I might have to put together a lye bath for the really ugly old pans to get the cooked on coating off.
We will see how this turns out!
I'm not sure which tradesmen are being referenced. My automotive career I had some written assignments. Repair orders, estimates, reconciling parts tickets, such things. Honestly it did not change for much of my career. Moved from paper to computer, still SSDD.
My teaching career... OH HELL YES. The difference between public tech school with high school seniors, and private for profit tech school, was beyond dramatic.
Public school administrators had us filling out, quite literally, binders full of useless unread garbage every year. A stack of binders, progress reports, grading reports, report reports... most of it trashed as soon as we handed it in. You figure out why, because that Bovine Exhaust was irrational to me.
For profit tech school? LOLOLOL....NO. Our valuable well paid time was not wasted on such crap. We compiled and reconciled grades each 3-week session, which was a dead easy job if the instructor did even the bare minimum. Occasional discipline reports. All of it and everything on premade digital forms. For most instructors that was about it. I (being special and stupid) had more paperwork because I was also working to develop curriculum. Not enough to get snowed under because the private school admin could read a clock and understood that time is an actual thing. Public school admin? Not so much. Just keep heaping more paperwork on and ordering instructors to 'Just Deal With It', as they themselves left for the bar.
To the point, have I seen teachers quit the job over paperwork demands? Yes, several, and really good people too. One guy actually said to me "I'm going back to building bridges. A lot less bullshit with bridges".
I admit it, I'm weird about non-stick pans. I expect them to be... you know... NON STICK.
Hell, I knew the guy who quality tested the very first non-stick pans as a scientist. His call sign was 'Handy Landy'. He let me play with them. They were actually non-stick, for a while.
My whole life my experience with non-stick of any kind is they work great out of the box, but it's only a matter of time. I have bought, used, and tossed a lot of pans over the years. Usually deeply frustrated at the time.
Almost exactly one year ago I bought three good quality non-stick pans. One 10" and two 8". I told the kids one of the 8" pans was theirs's, and touching mine was punishable by Dad Glare. That worked for a while, but Girl Child is the textbook example of obstinate. It took me five years to get her to stop cooking eggs on medium high.
Eventually *their* pan stuck food so bad I trashed it rather than try to get it clean once again. Of course Girl Child (And mother) started using my non-stick ASAP. AARRRGGG!
This morning I tried cooking bacon in the 10" pan. BACON! It stuck. I'm not kidding. Bacon, cooking in it's own grease, stuck in the pan so bad I had to scrape it out. That was it for me, and I was poised with pan over the trash can.
Then I calmed down and gave it some thought. Technical thought. WHY does non-stick become must-stick? Every single pan eventually turned into must-stick. Why?
I mean, I know why my beloved cast iron doesn't stick. It has a polymerized coating on it from seasoning the pan properly. If I burn or blow that coating, back to square one and season again. Yet here I am, looking at what *appears* to be a perfectly fine non-stick pan that happens to stick everything that gets near it. Why??
Study time. I read up on what coatings are used, how they work, and most importantly what makes them stop working. I quickly arrived at a theory, and a fix that (almost) worked.
If spay oil is used, and high heat is used, the lecithin in the spray oil will attach to any microscopic fissure and polymerize into a sticky coating. Or sumpin like that. The fix was that age old granny tale of vinegar and baking soda. Fill the pan half full of vinegar, set the heat on, add baking soda, let it boil for a while. That's supposed to get it clean down to the coating.
I'm pretty sure anyone who knows a little chemistry is smirking right now. Acids and bases neutralize each other and arrive at... bupkis. Yet, both substances are quite good at cleaning various things and I use both. It's just that mixing them makes a lovely and useless fizz that appears to be doing something. It's like politicians. All show and no go.
So I thought to myself "Self, can you use vinegar and baking soda but play to their strengths? Baking soda is a base and a very mild abrasive that will clean off any physical presence on the coating. Vinegar, especially heated, is an acid that will strip the lecithin that dish soap won't touch. Lets give that a try!"
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That done, the real test. Fry an egg.
I heated the pan on medium heat. A small pat of butter for flavor. Break a duck egg into a dish and place in the hot pan. Wait till it starts to solidify, and shake the pan. 90% of the egg was sliding. A little fry pan shuffle turned that into 100%.
This method works. I might repeat it again just to see if there is any profit to a second treatment. Two non-stick pans, NOT tossed in the trash.
Meh.
There are people who think there was election fraud in 2020. There are people who don't know what to think about it. Then there are people who choose to believe there was no fraud, and reject any evidence that contradicts their belief.
Note the words 'Choose to Believe'. The majority of humans on Earth believe in one religion or another, and that includes Communism and 'Progressivism' (whatever that is). For most of them there is no shaking their belief because it's built on an internal architecture that is immune to reality. That's fine, right up till their belief becomes dangerous to other peoples well being. Then they are dangerous people, and their motive is beside the point.
W: 319.2 BS: 115
W: 319.2 BS: 164 BP: 130/70
Manufacturing of the original FreeStyle Libre 14 Day CGM sensors (the first U.S. version) appears to have been phased out years ago, though exact stop dates aren't widely documented publicly.
Abbott is currently discontinuing FreeStyle Libre 2 and Libre 3 sensors (which evolved from the 14-day platform). They will no longer be available after September 30, 2025.
