Electronic conveniences

[5thDragoons]

We had quite a wind storm yesterday. No damage to the house, but it knocked off our TV & internet provider. Went downstairs just now and reset the modem - did a couple other standard startup drills and back in biz! Didn't quite know what to do with myself last night- no TV or email. I don't do social media like fakebook, etc, I communicate by email. I was mildly miffed I was missing a couple programs I like to watch - Life Below Zero and Northern Survival. Joke Island was on, but I don't figure I missed anything there. You can watch the last 10 minutes and learn everything that went on. Personally, I think the pirates returned and removed the "vast treasure". But as long as sponsors will peel out the $ to keep producing the series, it will keep going.

What to do? I recently got a book, Karamojo Safari (hunting elephant for fun and profit = mostly profit) so I read a big chunk of that. Very good book! Everything works again, so right shoulder arms and continue to march! SW

[Doc Sharptail]

A lot of them are scripted- some of them quite tightly: eg Yukon Gold. LBZ definitely follows a template. Still get a kick out of the scenes where people cook and eat what they catch, which is a big part of it for me. They also show quite a bit of .22's nailing grouse. The island treasure thing wears kind of thinly after a while, and I more or less don't watch anymore. They did find some 12th century European coinage, so I guess anything's possible. I'm with the pirates coming back to cash in.

Our grid seems fairly stable with traffic lights being about the only susceptible thing. We did lose power for about 10 minutes in September, (probably due to a lightning strike), but by the time we got candles lit, the lights came back on.

-D.S.

[Allen]

Joke Island. Remember, EVERYTHING is scripted including those old coins "found" otherwise the show would be more boring than it is. I stopped watching "live" treasure hunt shows like this when that Geraldo Rivera fiasco show was shown opening a safe (I believe) on live TV. If a famous treasure is ever found like the Nazi Gold Train, The Amber Room, etc, etc, it will be in the news for years and years.

Still, some shows are entertaining no matter how hokey. I like and watch Moonshiners as staged as it is. Yeah, right, a bunch of guys and a camera crew trespassing on other peoples property and making illegal whiskey w/o arrest being made. I like it for the scenery and the thoughts. I guess making wine or whiskey has entered everyone's mind at one time or another even though most would never attempt it.

RED once brought up (here) that hundreds of stills were being sold on ebay. I wonder if any of those accounts have ever been hacked by the gov't to see who the buyers were?

[5thDragoons]

Not just fleabay - several outlets sell stills online. I received one as a gift and messed around making "hand sanitizer". Kinda messy, but there's a workaround for that. Also tried making wine from grape juice, A little sugar and yeast. Works just fine. Only did it once, though - I don't drink much. Then, a friend who grew up in Siberia told me about kvas. Mild bread beer made from rye bread sugar and yeast. Tasted great! Recipes online for that. she told me to skip the extras like raisins, though - "ruins the flavor". SW


(For some reason, I couldn't post until I posed a pic. So here's a Romanian RR medal a friend in that country sent me)

IMG_0537.jpg

[Allen]

It is legal to make small batches of wine for yourself (but not whiskey). My Mother did it a few times. She would sample the results but that was about all she would drink. She grew up on a farm during depression and prohibition times and most everyone back then made wine and beer (home brew). She would talk of visiting peoples home and occasionally hearing a beer bottle pop under the house. They were stored there for the cooler temps and were sometimes bottled up too soon causing excess pressure and the bottles to pop. Other times they would get too hot. While it was funny, the owners would usually be embarrassed.

One of my co-workers made some wine and gave everyone a bottle at Christmas time. He went into it in a big way and had books on it, one of which I read and learned you can pretty much make wine out of anything organic. It may not taste very good but you can, in fact, make wine out of turnips, old coffee grounds, etc..

On the show Moonshiners it was brought up that what you can make wine out of you can also make moonshine out of including any fruit and some flower blossoms even like Kudzu and Mimosa flowers.

I used to work at a refinery. Think of all the liquor those distillation columns could have produced.

Didn't mean to alter your original thread from power outage to alcohol production.

[5thDragoons]

No worries - it's like a conversation in person. The topic changes as the conversation goes on - like if we were at the Hiway diner having coffee in the morning. SW

[Allen]

Fellowship

That's why we're here but some of the past members would get a bit irate and call it "hijacking THEIR thread".