Good morning!!!!

[RedNeckGeek]

Everything seems to be a scam lately...

It seems that way some days, doesn't it?

Earlier this week my spam folder started blowing up, siphoning off a hundred bogus messages overnight. Yesterday I learned that Facebook had been hacked, losing hundreds of millions of user names, email addresses, and phone numbers. But the whizz kids that run the place had no idea when it happened, because the info was discovered already being disseminated from a dark web hacker site. Didn't stop 'em from trying to weasel out of it, though, claiming that the leak "probably" happened a few years ago before they put measures in place to prevent screen scraping, a method they suppose is what was used for the compromise.

I also learned of a new scam on Citi bank, where an email from a similar sounding domain asks customers to login to a web site under that fake domain, thereby surrendering their username/password combo. In the background, the rogue site logs into the legitimate Citi web site, records the login credentials, then redirects the user to Citi's web site, where they'll very likely never know they've been hacked. The moral of the story, kids, is to NEVER, EVER, use a url in an email to log into any of your financial or other critical websites. ALWAYS access those sites from your bookmarks file, or by typing in the url the old fashioned way.

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming...

 

[RedNeckGeek]

funny RNG thinks Trader Joe's is unhealthy cause my wife is practically a nutritionist and a gourmet cook and TJ's is the first store we shop at both for healthy and price.

At the risk of stealing Don's thunder, the traditional American meat and dairy diet is being viewed by more and more health professionals as the main cause of heart and artery disease. Check out the movie Forks Over Knives for more information.

Personally, I don't think I'll ever end up eating a pure plant diet, but I do think that small changes to eliminate or greatly reduce the biggest offenders would still yield some significant benefits.

:2cents:

 

[jbrumberg]

We are habitual food label readers. Trader Joe's has some decent healthy foods and some foods less so. We do like their teas, coffees and frozen seafood products and peanut butter.

Drives- One thing that I do after opening plastic wrapped cheese is to remove it from that plastic and re-wrap it in waxed paper and put the wrapped cheese in a ziplock bag. It seems to keep better in the refrigerator.

44ºF and mostly sunny this PM. It was too nice to stay indoors = walking Brogen up our somewhat shaded/wooded hill path with sunglasses this time. My eyes still feel like I have recently been in an eye examination.

 

[Looking4new]

check; King Kole ducks, both of them.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

I've not had any of the Trader Joe's teas. However, Twinings English Breakfast is absolutely one of my favorite teas.

Wife likes
Amazon.com : Twinings of London Christmas Black Tea, 2 Tea Bags (Pack of 6) : Grocery & Gourmet Food

 

[hawkeye08]

41F this morning, rain has let up..

Took my wife for followup doc appt yesterday after urgent care on Monday.. all good.

Daughter that is building new house invited me to join her and help her get the pellet stove running that we gave them (80s vintage Whitfield, used until '98 when we went to propane, has been stored since). The auger motor was not turning, so worked on that for several hours, motor part is weak, gear box full of sticky old grease.. cleaned a bunch, got the motor working a bit but not enough torque to turn gears, let alone the auger.. decided to call it a day, went and had a burger with daughter, she took the auger motor/gearbox home to clean more and see what they could figure out.

I googled parts and found a OEM motor/gearbox on Amazon for $51, it will be here Sunday. Expecting the stove to work fine then.. if not will continue to troubleshoot. They were figuring on using it temporary but now have decided it might be the just the ticket for alternate heat source (so they will likely install properly instead of temp). Good conversation and visit.

As I mentioned previously, I got an offer to retire and was thinking hard on it. I applied this morning, will find out mid-late February if I am accepted and when exit date would be. We have been working the numbers and getting answers to questions, it is time to do this.

Stay safe and prayers for all.

Too much to comment on, folks been busy this week.

 

[LS Tractor Owner]

I completed the second set of shelves for the wifey and got them installed. I should not say for her, they will benefit both of us. Kind of a charging area, the lower shelf will house our IPads and phones. Wires come up from the back. She said it was more / better than she expected. That is all that is important.

 

[sodamo]

Drew I have never heard them called tiles. In Texas we call them culverts. Kyle, Rick do you use the term tile?

I seem to recall (not sure how reliable that is anymore) that what we called culverts were of the corrugated metal variety. A tile pipe was some sort of glazed pottery type, brown outside, sorta creamy/tan if you broke it. One end had a bell and were concreted together.

 

[sodamo]

Guess I like maps too. Actually taught map reading and land navigation for a couple of years in the Army (25th ID Recondo School in Hawaii)

 

[RedNeckGeek]

As I mentioned previously, I got an offer to retire and was thinking hard on it. I applied this morning, will find out mid-late February if I am accepted and when exit date would be. We have been working the numbers and getting answers to questions, it is time to do this.

Congratulations, Hawkeye! If I remember correctly, you were bouncing between departments and enduring management issues, so side stepping that situation via retirement is certainly a permanent solution. I went through much the same scenario, and it provided the incentive I needed to put together a spreadsheet that gave me definitive answers on what my financial future would look like post retirement. It turned out that at the same time things were degrading at work, the bursting bubble of the real estate market reset housing prices to the point that the spreadsheet said it was time to go. Retirement was a stressful time for me, but at least I knew that financially I'd be OK, and I hope the same is true for you!:thumbsup:

And good news on your wife's health is some very nice icing on the cake!