MAJOR GARDENING SCORE !!

URGENT: HOMESCHOOLING HAS BEEN UPDATED to post notice about a Common Core information meeting Sat May 25 in Mission Viejo California.

Ah, the blessings which come from turning the other cheek.

If you listen to the marketing hype, Memorial Day is not about remembering our dead, heaven forbid, it's about working in our yards, courtesy of those big Orange and Blue Box stores.

Well, actually, on Monday, I'm going to be doing the traditional, observing Memorial Day, the annual cleaning of gravesites, placing flowers. It's virtually an all day affair.

But SATURDAY, I'm going to be getting my front yard done. Yes, the stars have aligned: my leg is sufficiently healed, the kids are all home, there's no baseball...so I decided we could at least rise at the crack of dawn before it gets too hot, get the grass torn up and the retaining wall in, even if we didn't do anything else.

By the way, before I forget, do an internet search on the Anti-Monsanto rallies taking place world wide tomorrow May 25th. There might be one near you !

So while I was at the Orange Box store picking up my retaining wall stone, I happened to notice a pallet full of torn, damaged bags of compost. "Hmmm," I thought to myself...."I think after I make my two trips to and from the store for the retaining wall," (I couldn't load all 30 at once in the vehicle), "I'll pick up the shovel I need, the level, and grab that compost if it's still here."

Third trip back, grab all the compost on the pallet, push it to the front, cashier goes "yeah, we don't sell individual damaged bags of compost, it's sold by the pallet." I replied, "yes, you do, I do it all the time, and this IS the whole pallet." She's like "well, I can't sell that," I'm like, "well get someone who can." 

30 minutes later, the guy-who-can-make-decisions came out, says "I think someone's already bought that, hence the reason there's no price on the pallet." I said, "ok, well, can you check? Because if not, I'll buy the whole pallet worth" (since I have it loaded already dude.) 20 minutes later he comes back, says, "well, I guess it hasn't already been sold, but I'll have to process it and that will take a little while." I said "ok I'll wait then", but I was THINKING: dude, do I LOOK like someone who's willing to walk away from a killer bargain?? Let's shake some leg!

He comes back about 20 minutes later (so yeah, I've now been standing around for about an hour waiting), hands me this computer printout with all the SKU numbers, description, quantities etc., circled. I'm doing the math and it comes to about $60. I think, well, that seems a bit pricey, but okay, it IS a whole pallet worth after all. 

I push my carts forward, and I realize that there is printing on the other side of the computer printout. I turn it over and it says, "Culled Garden Product. Price is now..." (wait for it....)

$4.08

Yep. Big heavy sigh can be heard expressing deep satisfaction. I live in an 8.25% sales tax area. That basically means I got FREE product and just paid the "retail equivalent" of sales tax.

Just doesn't get any better than FREE.

God loves me. He loves you too, but today I was first in the love line <grin> !

Have a wonderful Memorial Day weekend. Wishing you, your families, and your departed loved ones warmth, love and affectionate memories.

BULLIES UPDATE

As you may have heard a few hours ago, despite 61% of its entire membership voting to retain the 105 year old traditional values of Scouting, 840 members of the Scout voting congress (that would be 60%) decided to go the other way, and voted to change scout membership and accept openly gay scouts as members. 

I can't say I'm too surprised at this volte face. Disappointed maybe--I thought scouting stood for something, but I'm not surprised, particularly after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Roman Catholic Church indicated in press releases that they would not oppose a change in the scouting position.

I was however, a bit surprised to hear almost immediately from Bully Jen Johnsen, of Huntington Beach California. You may recall Bully Jen, I blogged about her a few months ago. (Refresher: http://justkathrynl.blogspot.com/2013/02/bullies-how-left-uses-fear-intimidation.html). For a person who was adamant that communication between her and I was uninvited spam, I was surprised (or maybe I wasn't) to receive this piece of hate mail along with a graphic:

from:		Jen Johnsen <jenjohnsen@socal.rr.com>
to:
date:		Thu, May 23, 2013 at 3:50 PM
subject:		Hahaha.....
mailed-by:		socal.rr.com Leaders will be allowed next :-)

Ironically, I happen to agree with her comment in the body of the email. I also agree with her inferred prophecy that the Left and the unrighteous filled with self-loathing, seeking to normalize their sad, miserable lives, will actively engage to tear down and destroy all that is good and uplifts. Satan desires to make all men miserable like unto himself.

So what to do, what to do? George Herbert in Jacula Penduntum, published 1640, popularized the saying "Living well is the best revenge." Christ said it better: "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." (NIV Matthew 5:44)

I'm not bothered by the Jen Johnsens of the world. As an older-than-I-look biracial woman of color, I'm actually old enough to know first hand what real bigotry looks like. A wiser person than me stated back in the day that the hate and ridicule spewed by people like Jen was "her sadness, not mine."

Rather, I choose to go about my life, following the admonition of St. Paul found in 1 Corinthians 13: 6-7, "Love rejoices not in iniquity, but rejoices in truth. Bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." My job then, is to love as God loves and live as God lives. On these hang all the words and the prophets.

HOME STORAGE STUFF

(Homeschooling has been updated.)

Been a busy two days !

Boneless skinless chicken is on sale for $1.77/lb, so I bought 30 lbs and canned in it pint jars. I ended up with 32 pints (albeit the 32nd one was scant). This works out to $1.66 a pint. By contrast, I usually can chicken breast on the rib bone, when it's on sale for .99/lb. The last time I did that, I canned 45 lbs (including bone weight) of chicken and got 28 pints. That works out to $1.61 a pint.

Yeah, for a delta of .04cents a pint, I think I'll keep my eye out for boneless skinless sales. It was SUCH a nicer process....way less work.

50# bags of white rice were $25.99, so I bought 300# and will be putting them into 5 gallon buckets today. I bought 10 buckets & lids (cheaper white buckets & the slightly more expensive lids) from Home Depot (free shipping when I did it.)

Pasta was on sale for .75 per 1 pound box WYB 10, so I bought 30 <grin.> If I have buckets left over, I'll put them in there.

Walked into a VERY cool deal on broccoli: I ended up with 72 heads of broccoli for $6.00, so as soon as I finish canning the chicken this morning, I'm going to blanch the broccoli, dehydrate some and vacuum seal/freeze the rest.

Oh, and Arrowhead 3L (think 1 gallon) water was on sale .50 ea WYB 10, so I ended up getting 20 of those.

The front garden is really busting out with produce !! Finally, a successful year in gardening (honestly, it's probably because this year, I finally took care of the soil.) We started uprooting our front yard, I can only work with 10 stones at a time, and I received a pretty bad baseball injury from umpiring, so I haven't been back to work on it since I started it. Hopefully within the next week or so I can get it all done and planted.

Really happy all the way around. My self-reliance bank got a few deposits!

ROKU vs. VideoBuzz

5/15/2013

UPDATE: VIDEOBUZZ IS BACK !!! Albeit as a side channel. For a small donation of US$15, the inventor and developer of VideoBuzz will send you the software code and instructions on how to install VideoBuzz as a SideChannel on your ROKU device. WELL WORTH the money, IMO, and you get the added satisdaction of sticking it to ROKU :)

Here's his info: http://www.myvideobuzz.in

Tell him I said "hi" and I wish him much success !!


For those who don't know, there's a product out there called Roku. It's a little black box which produces certain types of internet streaming on a standard Def, high Def, or SmartTV. Although, if you have a SmartTV you probably don't need Roku.

We have a standard def TV (the old old 30+ yo kind!), so I was thrilled to get Roku so we could watch some of our favorite shows without cable. Roku's flagship product is NetFlix, followed closely by BYUTV, TheBlazeTV, HuluPlus and now Amazon Prime Streaming. Anything offered through the Roku "Channel Store" is a "public" channel. I imagine (but do not know for sure) that  they pay some type of royalty fee to Roku for the privilege of being publicly available.

There are also "private" channels. These are created by independent producers, which stream through Roku but over which, Roku has no control (and I imagine, receives no money from them either.) Among these private channels are BBC World News, Al Jazeera english, and until recently, VideoBuzz.

VideoBuzz was a private channel which created a portal into YouTube (YT). Roku, to my knowledge, is the only platform which does NOT stream YT. YT streams on a Wii, through an XBox, comes standard on a SmartTV, but not on Roku. VideoBuzz is not the first to stream YT on a Roku (they've shut down others before it) but it did grow a substantial following.

Roku allegedly shut VideoBuzz down because "it didn't provide ORIGINAL content programming." Yeah, ok. That's such a blatant falsehood it falls flat on its face. Here's my email back to Roku, who was kind enough to ask for "more info" after I wrote an initial (honestly, not very polite) email to Roku complaining that they were taking VideoBuzz down:

Dear Steve: Thank you for responding back. I appreciate it, and apologize that it took me so long to respond.

At the core, I believe that Roku does not make its livelihood off of little black boxes. I think it is much more likely that Roku derives a substantial royalty (whatever you want to call it) from "producers" who create Roku "public" channels. There would be no reason otherwise, for Roku to take such an aggressive stance ridding itself of "private" channels which grew a substantial following, such as VideoBuzz.

If the issue were really "original content/programming" then I will expect in the VERY near future to receive a similar notice that you are discontinuing your flagship product: NetFlix. Last time I checked, NetFlix Inc. didn't produce The Cake Wars, Miss Congeniality, The Lincoln Lawyer, et all, so NetFlix is in violation of Roku's "original content/programming" policy as well. Ditto virtually ALL of the channels streamed through Roku. Congratulations: you have pretty much emptied your stable except for religious and political content.

I do not have a SmartTV. If I did, I wouldn't need Roku. Roku is virtually (now) the ONLY platform which does not stream YouTube. SmartTVs do, a Wii does, even an XBox for crying out loud. It seems quite a bit short sighted, don't you think? If the real problem is you have an axe to grind against a monolith like Google, then just say so (I could probably support something like that!)

I would argue that VideoBuzz DID provide original content/programming in the same category as NetFlix and HuluPlus. Their look and feel is substantially different from normal YouTube, their layout is nowhere close to what YouTube provides (thank goodness.) If the issue is that YouTube itself screaming infringement, then you should be honest enough to publicize that. There are enough of us who dislike Google to make waves.

Thank you for taking the time to read this email. I hope that it results in some serious reconsideration of VideoBuzz (who created this channel FOR FREE mind you, and isn't that the whole point of the internet and entrepreneurship?) and its reinstatement. I don't have any personal stake in VideoBuzz (other than as a consumer), but if it ever goes public, I hope I'm first in line for its IPO.