Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Pond Boss The sound of telphone dials and TV tuners

No doubt. Like Morton's Tenderquick! I'm buying some online. Absolutely no one around here or even in the extended area sells it and I want some doggone venison pastrami!

Ken:

I found an Amish grocery store that has the high temp cheese for sale. It's already cubed up around 1/8" cubes. Cheddar and Pepper Jack. $3.49/lb. I can get some and ship it if you need.

Todd -- it is crazy what is carried in stores over small geographic areas. Lynda suggested that with all the meat processing we are doing this winter (Gary/Aneta and Lynda/me just bought a dead steer -- 800 lbs. of cleaned and wrapped meat -- plus the venison we already have). She asked if we had enough Tenderquick and sausage casings. I didn't know. We were passing by the Southern States Co-Op store, where we got 10 lbs. of Tenderquick -- plus hog rings, string, and more casings. Tenderquick is one of those products carried in nearly every supermarket, *-Mart, and big box stores in this area.

Scott -- Thanks for the offer. As of this morning, I think we've found everything we need. The smoker is loaded with several types of goodies as I write this.

This all leads me to Internet shopping. In the last several weeks I've ordered over $3000 worth of items through the Internet -- most through Amazon -- including a new LP-gas, fully-automatic, Generac generator. Nearly everything has arrived within two days of ordering.

I don't want to start a political discussion, but it really makes the Post Office look antiquated. Almost everything has arrived via UPS, FedEx, or private trucking companies. I've been able to track everyplace my orders were from the time I placed the order until it arrived at my door.

It all seems to be better than the Pony Express of my early childhood. We know our USPS mail delivery person, but we also know our UPS and FedEx drivers. All are neighbors.

The sight and sounds of telephones sure have changed. My wife's cell phone died recently, and we were eligible for upgrades on our service. We got new phones using the Android operating system. What a far distance from the old crank phones of my childhood.

If you haven't upgraded in the last year or two, things have really changed. For the past 20 years, I've nearly always hated any "new" phone that was replacing the old phone. This phobia goes back to my original "bag phone" as being one of my most favorites.

I recently got a new Android-based phone. These things are incredible. They now act as 4-G hotspots for up to five other devices. The browser is better than anything I have in Windows 7. My Yahoo and G-Mail are better than on a computer. I'm thinking seriously that we may give up our land-line and DSL. I can even get the old-time dial sound and old-time ring sounds, but the "live TV" feature doesn't have a "clunking" channel tuner! However, it does have a built-in FM radio and an Internet radio! $19.95 for the phone, on a renewed 2-year contract that recently dropped in price! It even replaces my car GPS.

What is this world coming to????

Ken, I'm leery of giving up my land line. I still have a corded phone here in case the power goes out. We had some bad storms a year or 2 ago and the cell towers were dead too, but my land line still worked.

A buddy got a LEM grinder and loves it.

Did you find the high temp cheese? It's in the LEM catalog, but at $8.99 per pound. The store was $5.00/lb cheaper.

I would like to go to cell phones and drop the land line but I have a land line to my PC and wifi from my high speed modem in the house that runs my Kindle Fire and Kindle Touch. I have Direct TV and could go to satellite high speed but that is expensive and the speeds aren't that great for the money. I could go to 3G and maybe 4G with a thumb size USB plug-in to my PC but I don't know? Looks like I am stuck.

We have two land lines at our place. One is the business phone because we need a "brick and mortar presence" in the hard phone book. The home phone is Gail's preferred communications link so I am leaving that alone. Personally, I'd be surprised if I make more than a half dozen land line calls in a year.

Decent Internet speed where we live is a challenge. I installed a Peplink load balancing router that allows combining two Internet services (Wireless and 3G cellular). The combination provides consistent 3MB download speeds. My smart phone is a rooted HTC Thunderbolt.

John, how do you like the Fire? Thinking about it for Christmas. Did you compare it to the Nook?

I bought the Fire for my wife to try and bring her into the computer world but so far she isn't using it. I would say for the money it is great. My eyes aren't that good in late life but with most things you look at you can make them bigger or smaller using your finger. The screen shows glair and finger prints but I bought a Skinomi TechSkin - Screen Protector Shield for Amazon Kindle Fire that doesn't show finger prints and cuts down on the glair for $10 including shipping. It installs pretty easy. The screen is backlit for reading and the colors are bright and pretty. The speakers sound good for as tiny as they are, but I bought a great set of ear phones for less then $15 JVC HAS150RX Light weight Flat Folding Headphone (Red) that are highly rated by customers and do sound great. But the Fire for $200 is a lot better then $500 or more for an I-pad.

The biggest Fire downside for me is you about have to charge it every night. Where as the Kindle touch is charged about every two months. Of course Kindle Touch is used mostly for reading but you can get online with it. Both use wifi but you can get the Kindle Touch with a 3G feature also but that is only for downloading books.

Great review, John. My wife and I bought three Kindle Fires for our kids for Christmas. I've played around with one of the units since they arrived (through Amazon and, like Ken's experience, they were delivered very quickly) and have been really impressed. Brilliant graphics and, as you mentioned, color. Can't wait to help the kids really figure them out after Christmas! I'll check out the screen protector you mentioned because I did notice how badly the screen got smudged up from my fairly limited usage so far.

My biggest gripe with the Kindle Fire is it's wifi only. When they come out with a Kindle that lets me download books and surf the internet, all while using 3G, then we'll talk.

In the meantime, I'll download the Kindle app, and the Nook app, for my netbook computer. Yeah, it's a little larger than a tablet, and it's not as nice to read on as a kindle using E-ink, but it will do so much more. I do wish it were touchscreen though!

I have 17 inch HP, 15 inch Dell, 12 inch Acer and 10 inch Acer notebooks. I use them all, though my favorite device is my Asus Eee Transformer.

With the Transformer and my HTC Thunderbolt 4G Hot spot I am pretty much invincible connectivity speaking wherever I may go.

Dwight, was it absolutely necessary to post a link to the transformer?

I was perfectly happy with my nondescript, ordinary, netbook a mere 5 minutes ago. Now, it's a relic, one step up from a coaster on the evolutionary ladder. I feel a great emptiness in my being.

Great. No sleep tonight.

I certainly hope that you have recovered by now! Perhaps you just took the cure and bought a Transformer?

Alas, No transformer here. I spend half my waking moments online reading customer reviews of transformers, comparing specs of different transformers, Watching U-Tube tutorials on transformers, and shopping for the best prices on transformers. The remainder of the day is spent trying to convince myself that I don't need a transformer, and bemoaning the fact that I ever became involved with this thread in the first place.

To further complicate matters, both of my children have recently approached me, apparently suffering from some type of anxiety disorder characterized by frenziedly marking off days on the calendar with a big red "X", and thrust into my hands reams of paper, which I now understand is commonly referred to as a "Christmas List". Curiously, my wife seems unfazed by their erratic behaviour, even going as far as to insist we comply with at least a portion of their demands, which she maintains we have done for 11 years now. The children of course, corroborate her story.

So no transformer for me, unless it's an action figure that folds up into itself in such a convoluted manner that it brings a grown man to the verge of tears every time he is required to "reconfigure" it into "battle" mode, then back again, every 15 minutes. I'm welling up now just thinking about it.

The charging cord is a little on the short side.

I have an older Kindle that has free-3G and Wi-Fi. It doesn't have the best browser, the display is grey-scale, and the keyboard is kind of strange, but I sure use it a lot in the 3G mode. It connects through AT&T, so it works nearly everywhere.

I use it at least an hour a day. If I'm traveling it gets used about 3-8 hours a day.

Besides the free 3G, recharging it only every week or two is a seriously great feature. It will also recharge from any USB port.

It is loaded with more reference books, like cookbooks, sausage books, fish stuff, etc., than I could ever keep on a whole wall full of shelves. Between my wife and me, we've got several thousand books in our archive.

I also have several hundred PDF files on my Kindle, including things like the whole six-volume set of original Fox Fire books.

I'm glad I'm as old as I am. I just hope Amazon outlasts me, and doesn't go out of business anytime soon. I'd have serious withdrawal -- and it would cost me a second bundle to get back a lot of my favorite books.

Hey Ken, I was in Academy yesterday. They have hog rings and pliers in the deer processing equipment section.

Dave -- I gave up on trying to find hog rings locally. I had three nearly-full 500-foot rolls of #14 solid-copper wire in the barn. I decided to use them. I just wrap the casing ends with a couple of turns of wire, and snipping it. It works great, and it is quick. Each sausage takes less than 1/2-inch. Even with scrap, these old spools of wire will be enough to make at least 30,000 salamis, summer sausages, etc.

I finally found plenty of string.

Between six immediate and extended families, I've helped butcher, trim, grind, and package 14 deer this season. The families all helped too -- from the 9-10 year-olds, to us old farts.

So far, I've made about 50-60 lbs., of pastrami, sausage, and other meat snacks. I've also been making lots of my smoked fish spread. People are starting to get "anxious" because I can't make enough each week from the meat they've left with me -- especially with Christmas and New Years coming up. One brought me a really nice big and fancy smoker to help move things along faster.

With semi-retirement not too far off, I'm now at the point of wondering what to do next.

Ken, I know a guy who owned 2 bars, but was like you, and did his own sausage, etc. He sold his bars, and just processes deer meat. He doesn't butcher, you bring him deboned good meat. If you bring him bloodshot meat, etc. he'll refuse it and will refuse to do anything for you in the future.

He smokes hams the the 2 weeks before Christmas, makes jerkey, summer sausage and deer sticks. He only works at this from Oct thru the end of January, and takes the rest of the year off. He does enough work those 4 months to carry him thru the rest of the year. He's BUSY this time of year. IIRC, if you take his prices and average all his products, he charges $5/lb for his work.