fuggled

My algae explosion from November seems to be getting under control now. Thanks to @El Diablo and @PRONG HORN for the advice. I have the light dialed back to a few hours a day. None of the nasty black algae has come back and the green stuff is very slowly disappearing. Last week I started to measure nitrates (just 5 ppm) for the first time in a month, so I took that as a sign the algae has slowed enough to not eat up everything in the tank. I'll probably give the snails and oto cats a little longer to work on the algae before I start trying to remove much of it. I picked up some anacharis to float and start shading/competing with the algae. You can see it floating at the top left. My wife doesn't like it floating there so I started looking at options. Now, I'm pretty sure it was mislabeled at the store because it looks like hornwort. Are there varieties of anacharis that look like this? Here's a close up below. Anyway, not sure what to do with it, so just experimenting.

Growing up, my grandparents and great-grandparents would always have fruitcake from Assumption Abbey in Missouri, made by Trappist monks. Been a while since I've had one. Since we're suck at home this year I ordered one from Assumption and one from Collin Street to compare. Sent from my Pixel 5 using Tapatalk

What should I do with leftover gravy? I probably cooked down 2 gallons of homemade stock to get my quart of gravy, and now I have a pint of it leftover in the freezer. Turkey is gone, mashed potatoes are gone, dressing is gone...but the gravy endures. I thought about thinning it out into queso, making some kind of broccoli/rice bake, saving it for pot pie...but not sure yet. Any other solid ideas for gravy?

Making roux (at least dark roux) from scratch is silly. I saw a Cajun blog lamenting the lost art of making roux. Please, there is no art to roux. It's not like brisket where every piece of meat is different and you have to sense when it's done. If there's one food product in the world that you could 100% automate with a machine, it has to be roux. I say this as someone who loves gumbo, who loves spending a Sunday cooking for the family and who would gladly spend an afternoon nursing a pot of beans. But roux? There's no magic there and I'll get it off the shelf for gumbo every time. Gravy, on the other hand, is a different story...

Ok, I'll play here. When you come post at 4 in the morning, respond to yourself a dozen times and call everyone crazy fuckers, you shouldn't be surprised when there's not a ton of immediate support for your point of view. That bring said, here's an explanation of the video with input from the GA secretary of state's office. Pretty much debunks everything claimed about the video. https://leadstories.com/hoax-alert/2020/12/fact-check-video-from-ga-does-not-show-suitcases-filled-with-ballots-pulled-from-under-a-table-after-poll-workers-dismissed.html Sent from my Pixel 5 using Tapatalk

Smoked turkey and andouille. I've used the Prudhomme recipe in the past that involves rubbing down chicken with blackening spice and browning it all, pulling it out and then adding it back to cook through. Man, it's way easier when the meat is already cooked ahead of time. Sent from my Pixel 5 using Tapatalk

No remote on this model and the only controls are on, off and night mode. Not sure I'll be able to dim it so may just need to cut back the hours.

Nice to see a few planted tank people commenting, because I could use some feedback/suggestions on an algae problem I'm fighting. Apologies for the lengthy post. I've been keeping a 20 gallon tank with my 4th grader for a couple years with neon tetras, cory catfish, some snails and marimo moss balls in it. This summer we got interested in live plants and added an anubias nana and vallisneria in early September. The val was spreading slowly and the anubias leaves started turning light green with dark veins, so in the beginning of October I started lightly adding Flourish and added a decent light. Throughout all of this the nitrates were increasing steadily, 10->20->30->40 ppm in subsequent weeks with 25% water change. So I started more frequent changes to keep the nitrates steady. At the end of October we were going out of town for 2 weeks. To make sure the nitrates wouldn't get out of control, I did a series of changes the week before to get them around 10 ppm before we left. I also setup an automatic feeder and reduced the food (we were probably feeding too much anyway) and had the light on a timer 10 hours per day. When we left, we had a bit of brown algae that I was waiting for the snails to attack, but nothing else really. When we got back home Nov 8th the tank was pretty well covered in algae. Brown algae on the plants, a carpet of green algae on the glass and black beard algae on the filter, driftwood and fake plants. It looked pretty gross when we walked in. I tested the nitrates and then were still right around 10 ppm after two weeks. After thinking on it, I can only think of a couple things that changed while we were gone. 1) I wasn't adding Flourish those 2 week and 2) I had reduced the food. Would it make sense that this created a "nutrient deficient" environment that allowed the algae the pop up? Would algae have stayed dormant when the tank had lots of nitrates, only to attack once the nitrates were lower? That doesn't completely make sense to me, but it's my best guess at this point. So, here's my plan of attack so far: I removed and bleached all the rocks, driftwood, artificial plants, filter (just the intake tube) and the anubias to get rid of the black beard algae The things I couldn't remove, I spot treated with hydrogen peroxide while the filter wasn't running I scraped most of the green algae off the glass (I read later that it may be better to let it mature for 3-4 weeks and then manually wipe it out so it doesn't release new algae spores in the water) I restarted my regular weekly water changes and light Flourish dosing I added a few otocinclus catfish to attack the algae (they've already gone to town on the brown algae) I'm going to monitor for a couple weeks; If things aren't trending in the right direction I'll try cutting the light back to 8 hours a day I also thought about adding some kind of floating plant to block some light, but don't want to introduce too many variables Anything else I should be trying to get this under control and balanced out? Any other theories on what might have caused things to go haywire so quickly?

Anyone have thoughts on the new Pixels? Phones are subsidized through work so I can get the 4a for the free, 4a 5G for $80 or the 5 for $150.

Trump was waiting a long time to say "Russia hoax"

Did Trump just say "good" in response to 525K kids not knowing where there parents are?

https://www.fox4news.com/news/dallas-isd-teacher-passes-away-after-testing-positive-for-covid-19 "The teacher was on staff at Nancy Cochran Elementary School in Oak Cliff. The district did not release the teacher's name. Superintendent Dr. Michael Hinojosa sent a letter to parents notifying them of the teacher's death and extending condolences to the family and school community."

Am I reading this proclamation correctly? Abbott isn't saying that state law prohibits multiple drop boxes and he's not saying there is a risk of election security. He is only citing his authority under the COVID-19 disaster declaration to suspend the election code in order to ensure safety during the disaster. The stated rationale is that he's banning the drop boxes to protect public health? What a load of shit.

Thanks for the suggestions. On the river road trip, is that drive equally scenic in both directions? On the day we're travelling from Alpine to Terlingua, I'm thinking we could take the day and go Alpine->Marfa->Presidio->Terlingua.

Good call out, thanks. I saw that the stores are open and assumed that meant the visitor centers. I see that now. And I don't know how I missed the Boquillas crossing, dang.

Well, our family has decided to take advantage of the pandemic and relocate to Big Bend for a couple weeks while we're working/learning remotely. The plan is to spend about a week in Alpine and then another week in Terlingua around Halloween. We already have places lined up to stay. Looking for some advice on things to do with a 6 year old and a 9 year old. Balmorhea State Park is closed and the McDonald Observatory is all booked up, so those are off the list We'll probably make trips to Ft. Davis, Monahans and Big Bend State Park During the week the kids will have Zoom calls 8-10 AM and 1-3 PM; Trying to find stuff we can schedule around that or find stuff that's worth ditching a few calls for; I'll probably try to plan something where we do Zoom in the morning, head into BBNP and have lunch, take a break at a visitor center for more Zoom and then chill the rest of the afternoon. What else is worth checking out in the area besides the National Park? Anyone ever been to the Chihuahuan Desert Research Institute? In the park it looks like the hot springs are closed, so that's off also. We're planning to visit Boquillas and thinking about doing a rafting trip. I need to figure out how well those are setup for young-ish kids. Any suggestions are appreciated!

Yeah, I know. Without getting into specifics, this isn't our first rodeo with this particular teacher and there are several capabilities lacking. I'm not taking a shot at all teachers. But in this instance, I'd like my odds in a first grade cage match.

Here in Richardson kids optionally went back to in-person classes 2 weeks ago (my kids are still virtual). As of this week, our school has had to quarantine one kindergarten class and one first grade class. This is at a small school where there are only 3 classes per grade. They haven't given much detail on why or what the protocol is for those classes to return. On a positive note, I've discovered that I actually like teaching my first grader (when I have time) and I'm 100% confident that I'm doing a better job than his teacher would.

You're a "cusper" like me, also 1981. There was no major event between Gen X and Millennials like there was for other generations (Vietnam, 9/11), so there are a blurry few years between the generations. I remember watching the whole first season of the Real World, didn't have internet until junior high and didn't have a phone until after college. I also thought of myself as more Gen X, but it's not black and white. If you can remember the Challenger disaster, you're definitely Gen X. If you can't remember time before internet, you're definitely Millenial. We're in between.

Just started virtual school in Richardson this morning. Made it ten minutes before a first grader asked to use the bathroom.

You didn't link the story, but it's pretty clear the modelers think the model could be wrong. https://www.kxan.com/news/coronavirus/ut-model-predicts-sharp-climb-in-texas-covid-19-deaths-by-end-of-august/

It's pretty clear from the story that the modelers suspect the model is wrong.

How much of this determination will be dictated by the driver's intent vs the perception of the crowd? Even if the driver had no ill intent and had made the turn without realizing how close the crowd was, it would be easy to understand how pedestrians might feel threatened. Vehicles seem much bigger, faster and more dangerous when you're standing in the road.

Dude, that kid was 21 years old. Your anecdotes don't mean shit unless you find a 20 year old.

Yeah, we're looking at that as an option for our 1st grader. Also, just heard a rumor from a principal up here that Richardson is planning to announce that the first 3 weeks of school will be 100% online.