I Knew That Stuff Was No Good

Erythritol crosses blood-brain barrier, linked to strokes etc.  Article at Inc, though I'm sure you can find other sources.

I tried that stuff a couple of times in various Monster drinks.  Nasty.  You can just taste that it's no damed good.

Quotes of the Day

I'm in the middle of planning out a radio tower for the new Franklin County EOC, and two quotes came to mind that are worth mentioning here.  The first is from the very best source, author unknown:

Always and Everywhere,

Mission drives Hardware

I'd like to tattoo this on some people's foreheads.  Reversed of course, so that they could just look in a mirror as needed.

The second of course is from Robert A. Heinlein:

What are the facts?  Again and again and again – what are the facts?  Shun wishful thinking ignore divine revelation, forget what "the stars foretell," avoid opinion, care not what  the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable "verdict of history" – what are the facts, and to how many decimal places?  You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue.  Get the facts!

RAH may be an even more unassailable source of quotations than either Mark Twain or Winston Churchill.  Probably not the two combined, however.

Thus ends my smartassery for the afternoon.  Time to get down to some Egli calculations in order to nail down just how high this antenna has to be.  Because "as high as we have budget to build!" holds no water whatsoever with me, and in fact actively ticks me off a good bit.

Thursday Movie at the Library Night: Ulee's Gold

Tonight!  Don't forget!

A Glimpse into What's Going On at the ARRL

Over at KB6NU's blog.  It's bad.

Here are my earlier thoughts on the matter, to provide some context.

Yep, Definitely the Equinox

Today, and the exact moment is 10:46 EDT.  Can't you just feel it?  Nah, me neither, but there it is.

No picture here, but APOD usually has something interesting up on these astronomically interesting dates.

A Look at the Science Behind 'Project Hail Mary'

By no coincidence at all, it's this week's topic at Big Picture Science podcast.  Go & download & listen.

I'd put in an image, but just click through and you'll get all the image I'd put here.

Really looking forward to this movie.

Tent Trauma(s)

As mentioned previously, Friday evening at the Santos Fat Tire Fest had an intense storm that resulted in a wet tent interior.  I'd more or less shrugged and mentally planned on a new tent – it's 25 years old after all, and I'd just Nikwaxed it a couple of years ago and had only used it once in the meantime, and here it was leaking again.  Then two things happened.

First up, while taking the tent down, I noticed a trash line on the outside of the fly.  A little closer examination (see inset) and it appeared that the source of the wet tent was rising rather than falling water.

Even so, I was still open to buying a new tent.  Twenty five years is a good run for any piece of camping gear.  Straight-up replacement, incoming!  Then I went looking for a shiny new Eureka Apex 2XT or something comparable and... wait, Eureka's gone?  Whisky Tango?  I mean, they're one of those great companies that... No, gone, just gone.  More on this in a minute.

So I set the tent up in the back yard and hit it with a hose, and you know what?  Pretty damn watertight.  Oh, I've got the older straight-zipper rainfly model, that zipper's always leaked a little, but it's clear that the water problem wasn't the tent's fault, it's where I pitched it (and that astonishing deluge).  The tent was already up and wetted down for testing, so I just gave it another coating of Nikwax and called it a day.

Now back to the demise of Eureka Tents.  Reading between the lines on what happened, it seems that their 2023 Q3 revenues were way down compared to Q3 2022, and so as an underperforming division of Johnson Outdoor products, it had to go.  Never mind that everybody and his brother had taken up car camping during the covid-19 scare and that of course sales of durable items like tents would be down for a few years after a big boost like what happened in 2020-2022, and that this whole cycle was completely foreseeable and could have been ridden out.  Nope, burn down Yet Another great brand, move on.  For what it's worth, the same thing is happening all over the bike industry as well, and I'm sure it's happening with many other "pandemic safe" outdoor equipment manufacturers as well.  Freekin' bean counters.  For a fairly gentle take on what was going on inside Johnson Outdoors, read this short article about Eureka's demise.

Now, as for the rest of Johnson Outdoor's lines, Wikipedia has the complete brand roll; that makes for a handy no-buy list.  I just have no patience for bean counters anymore.

Anyway, I've still got several good tents – a 9x9 funhouse, the 2XT discussed here, and a dinky 1-man Spitfire, and no good reason now to replace any of them.  Good, because I just had to replace a water heater and my mountain bike shoes.  Things were stacking up a little around here.

Damp Camp