That’s a wrap!
That’s a wrap. Both daughters married off. I only wish I had more weddings to pay for.
The Happy Couple
Tariffs
U.S. tariffs are among the lowest in the world – and in the nation’s history
I asked Gemini AI: “Show a graph of what major countries charge for US exports?”. It responded:
My opinion is that poor countries have high tariffs because they don’t have a ton of industries like the US. If they didn’t protect their major industries they would probably be in serious economic trouble. We are in a world economy. Cars is a good example where different components are made in different countries. Assembly is often not in the US due to cheaper labor in Mexico/Canada or other countries. It is AMERICAN companies that are choosing not to manufacture or assemble their products here. The US needs to innovate and create new markets and leave some industries to countries that are better suited. There are some exceptions like AI or electronics or militiary equipment where even if more expensive we don’t want to give up the lead to other countries.
Bourbon Cabinet
Ordered this Cabinet for my bourbon from Amazon. Paid $160 plus $20 for shipping. Took 3-4 hours putting it together. Two strips of LED lights iluminates in different colors or can rotate through all of them.
Old Fashion
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 3 dashes Angostura bitters
- 1 teaspoon water
- 2 ounces bourbon (or rye whiskey, if preferred)
- Garnish: orange twist
- Marachino cherry (or 2)
Steps
- Add the sugar and bitters into your glass, then add the water, and stir until the sugar is nearly dissolved.
- Add the bourbon, and stir.
- Express the oil of an orange twist over your glass, then drop into the glass to garnish.
- Add 1 or 2 Marachino cherries
- Add a large ice cube to glass
Refrigerators
Cassidy got this GE French Door 28.7 Cu. Ft. refrigerator (PGE29BYTBFS) for free and gave it to us summer of 2023. We kept in in the garage. Only lasted a year. Just before the year warranty was up it stopped cooling and GE replaced the condenser. A month later it stopped working again. I had purchased a service contract with Assurant for only $270 for 3 years! They replaced a unit that directed the cool air between the 3 sections. It did not take. When we tried fixing it again, Assurant after a visit by a technician decided it was not repairable because we were violating the T&Cs having it in the garage. I cancelled the contract and got a partial refund. Posted the fridge on NextDoor (for free) and someone picked it up a day later.
The refrigerator in our kitchen is a small 21 Cu. Ft. Whirlpool (WRS571CIHZ01). This size is the only one that fits our kitchen.
The following week we purchased this 2nd refrigerator which is “Garage-ready”. Speced to work in temperatures between 32-110 degrees.
Bidets
Let’s go there. Living with a septic system and recently calling a plumber to help with a clog, we decided to give a bidet a try. I was a little skeptical. Would it work well? Would I like it? The answer to both is a resounding YES! Previously it was recommended we start using one of 2 brands of toilet paper made for septic systems. The latest plumber said the best thing we can do is not put ANYTHING down the toilet except what comes out of our body. So besides the health and comfort benefits, using toilet paper only to “dry” and disposing of it in the trash is what the bidet allowed us to do.
Wanting Jane to be fully onboard, I chose the Toto Washlet C2 Bidet (SW3074). It came with all the bells and whistles the top ones are:
- Adjustable temperature heated seats
- Adjustable Water Temperature
- Adjustable temperature air dryer
- Automatic air deodorizer (really works!)
- Auto-clean wand
- Auto slow seat lowering
We paid $333 on Amazon for it. It arrived Oct 2, 2024. The heated water & seat and air deodorizer really makes a difference! I say this because we bought a 2nd one but a more basic brand with no heating.
The Tushy 3.0 bidet was $125 on Amazon, it arrived Oct 28, 2024. You can adjust pressure and angle. It works fine, you just may get a bit of a cold water jolt, will use more toilet paper for drying and you’ll still have to have an air deodorizer in your bathroom. We installed it downstairs in our “basement” bathroom.
75in Hisense TV
Our Samsung 75in blew up last night. Right in the middle of playing Gears of War Horde there was a very loud mini-explosion and the TV went dead. Does not turn on. Something blew! I looked into having it repaired but a visit to determine the problem was $180 and labor to replace any parts would be $120 so before ordering parts I would be in $300. I was told parts could run between $300 & $1000! I passed. I ordered this Hisense 75in (75U7N) on sale at Best Buy for Black Friday. Got it for $900. For $65 I am having the Samsung hauled away. The 75U8N model is better and brighter but I decided it wasn’t worth the extra $400 since I’ll be using it in our dark media room. The Hisense has a 144Hz refresh rate! The Samsung was 120Hz which was actually enough for gaming.
Sugar in soft drinks & mixers
Grams per 100 ml
4.5 Fanta
6.9 Sprite
7.2 Dr. Pepper
10.6 Coke Classic
10.9 Pepsi
11.8 Sunkist
12.3 Mountain Dew
Gammon & Backgammon
A gammon occurs when you remove all your checkers from the board before your opponent has the opportunity to remove any of theirs. You are awarded 2 times the current bet.
A backgammon occurs when you remove all your checkers from the board before your opponent removes any of theirs, AND your opponent has at least one checker in your home or on the bar. You are awarded 3 times the current bet
Editing out bad frames in Video
My Osmo action camera (Go Pro clone) started recording poorly. Black frames showing up at various parts of the video. Sound was missing. I’m hoping it is the micro SD card I was using. It was a Speed Class of 10 (min write speed 10MB/s), UHS Speed Class of 1 (again, 10MB/s write speed). I switched it out for a micro SD card rated UHS 3 (30MBs write speed).
I use iMovie and though I edit my video to try to remove the black segments, I often miss some short black segments or even a single black (bad) frame. I movie fails when I save with the message:
Share Failed
Exporting ” has failed.
Error: RequestCVPixelBufferForFrame returned 3 for absolute frame: NNNN
To locate where in the timeline the bad frame occurs I used this website to convert frame to timecode. The calculation is not difficult. You just need to know the frame rate of the video. You can check your project settings but if it does not report the FPS, just advance the video 1 frame at a time from the beginning and count how many frames until the timecode reaches 1 second. I shoot in either 30 or 60 fps.
Take the absolute frame reported in the error message and divide it by the frame rate. This is the number of seconds into the video where the problematic frame exists. Now divide the number of seconds by 60 and that is how many minutes into the video you’ll find the bad frame. Multiply the full number of minutes by 60 and subtract this from the total number of seconds to get how many seconds after the full minutes where the problem occurs. Removing the few frames around the problem will fix the issue.
Don’t know why iMovie doesn’t offer the option of removing these bad frames for you.