Latestarter's ramblings/musings/gripes and grumbles.

[Mini Horses]

Bruce, I find same..........

Mike, freezer2 (?) or can, dehydrate. Appears there's only 2 humans there...one here...and the entire thing gets out of hand easily when you are in this situation. Love fresh butcher, love a garden, love to cook but, don't as much with no one to share it. I do make pots of soup or stews to then freeze in smaller containers for use later. I've saved time & $$ but, most importantly, kept myself eating well. Often, I feel like not cooking & these little preps help me to NOT go out or just not eat but snack.

Going thru my mom's stored treasures a while back, I found a box with 8 jars of canned green beans. She had brought them home from a visit to family in WV. Lid dated, they were 12 years old . I wanted the jars, so carefully opened to feed to pigs. Looking clean and still pretty firm, I sampled them. NO off taste, could have eaten them but just wanted to test. A well kept jar is a long term investment.

 

[Latestarter]

I've been experiencing the missed alerts for some time as well Bruce & Mini. I don't know what the cause is... I'll throw a quick post up to support and the site owner in the general section:feedback and see if they can't get it straightened out. What I've taken to doing is up top you'll see a link to "New Posts" and I go there and scan down to see if there are any that are dark/highlighted text, with a blue dot indicating there are posts I haven't read. It will also show my avatar if I've previously posted to the thread, and over on the right it will show a pair of glasses if it's a post I'm watching.

 

[AClark]

Home canned goods are definitely good longer than the USDA suggests! I would just make sure you cook whatever it is well to avoid botulism, since it doesn't taste, smell, or look off at all. I'd have saved the jars too, I have quite a collection of them, all the way back to jars from the 40's that are blue colored, my mom found them in their barn.
I personally love having home canned goodies for nights I don't want to cook too!

Late, I didn't know anyone actually preferred the wings, yikes. I like the crispy skin and the dark meat, the rest of it I couldn't care less about. Deep fried turkey has to be my favorite though, not much beats the skin that comes off of those.
How long do you have left in CO now? I bet you are counting the days, in a way, and dreading it also! I hope you have help with the packing, nothing sucks more than packing up. Unpacking is fun, but packing and moving by yourself sucks.

 

[Latestarter]

LOL you mean there are folks who DON'T love them crispy wings? I mean there are businesses that exist solely because of them! I've never had a deep fried turkey but have seen youtube videos of "exploding" frozen turkeys being dropped into boiling oil! I've also read that eating deep fried turkey is like inviting a heart attack and being able to hear your arteries harden as you eat it I like deep fried food too much as it is...

Barring anything unforeseen the closing on my sale here is 10 days from today. Haven't ordered the moving truck yet or started packing. I'm a last minute packer. I should be able to get it done in 2 days or less. I really don't have much stuff after multiple moves over the past 15 years, and never hung pictures or anything here, never unpacked the collectibles, etc. It's all still packed. My favorite oldest daughter will be coming for a final visit this weekend, so I'll probably put her to work and pack up the few miscellaneous items I won't need in my final week here. Also get her to help stage a bunch of stuff out to the garage. As far as loading the actual truck, that will be mostly just me. I'll have three days to get it done so shouldn't be too much of a strain.

Actually, my biggest concern is internet connectivity at the new place. I do virtually everything online from correspondence (Email) to banking, insurance, taxes, & paying bills. I know my present provider (Comcast) is not an option where I'm buying, so in addition to losing my Email address of decades, I'm outside city limits/rural, I don't think any cable is even an option. So that means satellite... and phone line... I've been spoiled with high speed internet for so long, that this is going to be a major hurdle for me. And I don't have a laptop so I can go to a free WI-Fi spot and connect. I also have serious concerns with security using those free WiFi connections and sending passwords and the like... pretty scary... I'll have to figure that out after I get there.

 

[AClark]

Cable probably isn't an option, and in TX we have lovely Time Warner Cable - let's just say I have a different name for them saved on my phone contacts and it's not family friendly. They were recently bought out by Charter Comm. They are notorious for over billing and I find almost every month mistakes that I have to call and have them fix.
You will probably be like my parents, they are too far out for cable, DSL is non-existent. They had dial up for years and years and finally they moved in dish internet. Be careful who you sign with there as they only allot so much and charge for overages, so any streaming devices just aren't going to fly. AT&T U-verse might be available in your area, though it isn't here due to where I live being primarily owned by TWC, you can also try AT&T DSL. It kind of depends on how much of a stickler you are for speed. Places like Wild Blue and Hughes Net...I'd just read the contract very carefully, as I am sure you are aware of but it's like a cell phone contract. Nobody likes a surprise $500 phone bill.
I think one of the problems with my parents is they are using the ISP email, and the allotment space is 50 MB...can you imagine? It is constantly "over" and I've been troubleshooting it from here on getting it cleaned out. Contacted the ISP and they want more money for a tiny bit more space, and act like the 1GB of cloud space they provide is totally awesome. Hardly, I set my parents up with my server email that I admin and she gets 15 GB of space on the email and an additional 15 GB cloud space - free. The other problem is their customer support sucks and they are not helpful in helping my elderly parents with why their email was like this - I ended up logging on it from here in TX and fixed it myself. They were charging them space for quarantined spam messages!

I use a desktop primarily, though I do own a laptop, and for the laptop when I don't have a wifi connection I use my cell phone hot spot for wifi. It is slow, but when you have to work from the truck and it's all you have, you work with it.

 

[Mike CHS]

We like but didn't put up any pickled okra this year. I make a good batch of gumbo and usually when we make it large enough for the neighbors. We only planted 6 hills but like I said we get a quart every other day.

 

[Latestarter]

So I spent the afternoon calling around trying to figure out internet service at my new place. zero luck so far. no fiber optic cable so no high speed available. No cable so no high speed available. So looks like satellite internet with all their limits, so contacted Hughes Net, they're at capacity there, so no Hughes Net. He recommended I could try dish, but warned me about their severe limits, slow speed, no streaming etc... Too late now but tomorrow I'll be back on the hunt... maybe peoplescom.net with DSL... I'm really running out of options fast. Might have to get a laptop with a wireless keyboard and mouse and start hanging out in coffee shops or mickey D's to use that free wifi... Not a real happy camper right now.

 

[NH homesteader]

Ugh sorry that stinks. My internet... Is a phone with a data connection. It gets old and I can't do everything but I can do the major stuff. On my teeny tiny screen. We could get internet, but I am too cheap for that. Someday .

 

[Baymule]

I'm on Hughes Net and well satisfied with it. A neighbor switched from Excede (horrible-do not use them) to Hughes Net and is happy with them. Same with @Devonviolet . I was without internet for 7 months and used my phone to get my BYH fix. I even resorted to texting Devonviolet pictures and she posted them for me!

We have Direct TV and are happy with it. AT&T bought it out and now bundles internet, phone and TV. But AT&T will not service this area for internet, so I don't want their stupid land line.

Do not even call EarthLink. They are in India and have a nasty habit of cleaning out people's checking accounts. I just love talking to someone with a strong British/Indian accent named "Dave". Yeah, right.

 

[Baymule]

And you really need to get a laptop. I'm on my 3rd one and love them. Kicked back in a recliner next to hubby watching TV is sure better than parked at a desk top.