Been building the pile for 4-5 weeks maybe. Been t 140+ for a few weeks. I keep topping the pile off as it's been above the level of the bin several times. Decided it's time to call her done and move on to a new pile in a new bin.
Metformin turned me into a zombie. Stopped taking it three months after I started and I returned to normal. I could barely walk from the parking lot into work and it's less than 1/16 of a mile.
Yep used to work at Scotts. We used Bonnie plants in the associate gardens. Can't tell you how much junk we found in the soil they used in the Bonnie plants. Won't touch the Scotts or Bonnie brand.
I went to the Dublin location yesterday and they had an entire section that wasn’t Bonnie. They have tomatoes, peppers, and some other stuff in 3 packs.
Skippy no sugar added crunch peanut butter and sliced Granny Smith apple, handful of cashews, rice cake with turkey meat and cheese, Munk Pack keto granola bars, protein shakes…
Some good ideas. I'm vegan so the meat and cheese are out but I just found a tofu type loaf that makes a great substitute for lunch meat. I was using smucker's all natural PB until the price hikes happened and now I make my own.
Oh yeah. I had it growing up and made it myself. I make my own peanut butter and eat it on carbs so here's a way for me to get the PB fix in without the extra carbs
I did metformin at first and became a zombie. Then augh what's the one that starts with a T and is a self injector... that one. I think eventually I had bathroom problems with it and it didn't really help anyway. I was able to get it to normal ranges through just eating right for me, losing weight, and exercise, until we started eating out too much due to craziness.
Good on you !! It took me many years after my heart failure to see the light. Everyone told me to make the changes, I did, then I didn't. A lot of things happened to make me look more seriously at what I was doing and how it was hurting me. After that nobody had say a thing, I figured it out. I wanted to make the changes myself. For me the biggest change was to cut out snacking. Like you I thought whole grains were good for me, oatmeal, brown rice, etc.. All of that had to go. I thought it would be more difficult, but I started getting results right away so I stuck with it. A few years ago I was 335lbs now 250. I'll probably never be skinny but I'm definitely healthier. My A1c was 14 now 6.2. A long way to go but I'm looking forward.
Hmm interesting! So what do you think is more important. Food or stress. What spikes sugars more? Put another way if you were given only one choice, would you control food or stress.
I’m going to cover everything in the cedar shavings like I did last year, I was just waiting to get everything planted and just put the basil in yesterday. I’ll replace the cabbage with flowering bulbs and cover. I’ve also got the thirsty earth in ground watering system so hopefully everything stays hydrated! I’m excited for this season.
Last year when I started gardening it was the beginning of June already and didn’t realize I was planting so many things that would bolt in the heat. Plus I was already late so my plants were tiny. I chose cedar shavings because it was cheap, rot/disease resistant since my seedlings were going to be surrounded by it, light colored to deflect the sun from my cool weather plants, and also smelled nice :) Plus it still breaks down and adds to the soil.
I don't use wood chips as a mulch in my beds as I've read that the wood chips will suck the nitrogen out of the soil as they decompose. Do I know this for a fact? Nah I'm not a scientist, but I thought I saw a video where someone did spend their own money to have soil tested and the soil did show a lower amount of nitrogen in the soil sampl that had wood chips as a mulch. However, I typically look at ma nature for truth. LOL. Wood chips in the forest and there's still a forest. Along the same lines there's the oak leaf thing. "OH don't compost oak leaves they kill plants." Yadda Yadda. I have yet to see ma out in her forest getting rid of all the oak leaves in the fall. I have shredded oak leaves and used them as mulch in an open area of the yard where grass won't grow, in the compost piles, as a mulch on top of my beds. For 15 years. I have yet to see any type of issue. Well the issues I do see is the improvement in the soil structure, the increase in soil organisms, happier trees, and a reduction in weeds. :) I can deal with those issues. Wood chips as a mulch in the pathways... for sure. I just don't have an easy way of getting some, so I either use straw for appearance, shredded leaves for cost savings, or summer grass clippings because I ran out of leaves and don't want to pay the stupid prices that places are charging for straw these days. :)
Today for some reason I tested. My bs was 140 before eating breakfast. Had a solid 2 cups of oatmeal with blueberries and assorted other flavorings, no sugar. 90 minutes later I decided to test and 250!!!! Oatmeal seems to help my trigs though so I'm going to keep eating it.
Yup. I recall my piles going over the top of my 4x4 bins. In a couple weeks, it's below the top. Not sure if it's compaction or actually breaking down but does it really matter in the scheme of things?
If anything I will cut up veggie scraps in the house as I use them. However, I haven't been doing that much lately and haven't regretted it. IE, I basically toss in a whole carcass of a pineapple. I have a coring tool which once the top is cut off the flesh is removed and you're left with the husk. I toss that in whole and it all breaks down. I don't go for finished compost in 30 days though. Coffee grounds are green... you typically can get these for free from coffee shops. Neighbors who do not treat lawns have grass clippings as well. My only other advice is to cover the top of the pile either with a tarp or some sheet cardboard to help maintain moisture and heat. Have fun!
Yeah, veggie scraps shouldn't be too bad and we've already thrown a lot of our grosser way-too-old vegetables in there, so maybe that's not too big of a deal anymore. My pile is in a pretty shaded area, but I'll definitely have to figure out a lid when we start to get less rain. Thanks, I hope I enjoy it, I've been wanting to start for a number of years.
Don't be surprised when you put some of this stuff through a "second" time when you harvest this pile. It all breaks down eventually. My piles usually go a year and I still see some things come through that could use a second go, especially egg shells which you pretty much have to grind up but I don't. The cardboard on top REALLY does help a lot. When I built my bins 20 years ago my concern was air and I made the sides really open. Lets out too much moisture and I've gone the route of putting cardboard on the sides to help keep the moisture in. I can always aerate the pile if necessary. My piles are also in the shade and I haven't had a problem.
Depends on the company. First company I worked at was perfect with requirements. Then it started going downhill. Current company that I'm working for thinks a test plan is one test with very low level steps, meaning you have to be a SME to understand what to test. One of the more recent companies that I worked at didn't have BAs. Let the devs decide what needed to be done without any record. Every bug was a feature. They didn't have QA either.
I'm automation engineer. At the current company, BAs create a ticket with some information and for the most part they also create the "test" plan. I would change a lot at my current company but things are working great to them.
Father in law had these sets stored in the metal storage containers. Not sure if all this is from set 9898 or if multiple sets are pictured. Any help would be appreciated.
I haven't gone through the totes 100% but I know the tote contains pieces of baseplates that the father in law cut up to fit his layouts. Anyone know of a good use for the pieces? Would hate to see this stuff end up in the landfill.
I'll have to take a look. Haven't really looked at what is downloadable. As I posted in another response, I have 2 tons of a collection that I'm trying to sort through and organize so I can put sets back together. Having an existing sheet of all sets where I can go grab the record of a specific set and a spreadsheet of pieces where I can add a column for where that piece is stored in this collection would be of immense value.
I collect vintage sets. Let’s take “classic space” for instance. On bricklink you can go to the hyperlink for classic space. Change it to 100 sets. Then copy and paste it into an excel sheet.
Yeah this might be the best option. The situation is I have inherited the father in laws lifetime collection and he has filing cabinets of manuals and he also called up Lego before Pick A Brick was a thing and ordered hundreds of parts of various colors at the on a regular basis. I've decided to put the sets back together with manuals and likely sell off the rest of the pieces. I've been building my own piece spreadsheet as I catalog and organize but it's slowing me down. I want to put the manuals in a spreadsheet as sort of a menu of what I have available but I'm thinking that an existing spreadsheet would make things go a lot faster than manually entering the data.
The Wayback Machine has helped me quite a bit with finding prices for older sets. Using it, I was able to go to the shop page on Mega's website to figure some prices out on sets that I've had in storage for a while. As for the parts identification, I can try to help if you want to dm pictures of the bags.
Thanks for the offer. I might take you up on it. I'll try Google Lens first, though I think I did take pics of one of the dragons and all I got was Mega Bloks but I really sort of lost interest at that point. Now that I see he has 5 of those metal storage containers I need to figure out what to do with them.
The father in law had kits from all series, yes including Friends. I thought I saw a color called light stone or something like that. Maybe it'll be easier than I thought to sort the light grays. I haven't studied Ryan Howerter's color file that much yet. I just recall seeing all the grays and some being retired. Would love if that file was a spreadsheet so colors could be sorted by color family.
Color variation exists, and is a problem for a "premium" and expensive product. Having said that, you can't see anything in this picture you are trying to point out.
I was fairly certain that the tiles were only one color, but have been wrong before. When I saw the difference in the mold I though maybe a color change was made at the same time.
Ok so this is what I did. I went and grabbed three brown 1x2 tiles that were presorted by the father in law. First a pic of the 1x2 tiles by themselves.
Ah, I’m sorry, my eyes saw the pieces in the original picture as more red-hued than brown-hued in that lighting. It was like a blue & black dress vs. white & gold dress situation. As for the 1x2s (knowing that they are shades of brown), from left to right, they look like Reddish Brown, Brown, and Dark Brown. Attached is a picture with the order Brown, Reddish Brown, and Dark Brown for reference:
It's not just photography that's impacted by the lighting. Really would like to know the best lighting for looking at these tiles. I have several thousand "brown' tiles that need sorted then I have to think about the grays. I'm going to call Lego and find out which block is available in the most colors and order 1 of each. Hopefully they come with the color part number and I'll be able to build my own little color palette.
Look at the colour guide on BrickLink, to see what they call (most of) the colours. Note that these names are not the same as the ones Lego uses eg on Pick A Brick
Thanks! Not sure what my brain is trying to remember when it's thinking of a set. So it sounds like putting a set back together and getting the correct color is going to be difficult at best? I actually just realized that the manual has the part color code number not the brick number. So basically a pallete that references the Lego color numbers would be ideal. I'll look for the table created by Ryan that you mentioned. One thing I really don't want to rely on is printing out something on a local printer. Wouldn't trust our printer to match real life.
Been building the pile for 4-5 weeks maybe. Been t 140+ for a few weeks. I keep topping the pile off as it's been above the level of the bin several times. Decided it's time to call her done and move on to a new pile in a new bin.
Metformin turned me into a zombie. Stopped taking it three months after I started and I returned to normal. I could barely walk from the parking lot into work and it's less than 1/16 of a mile.
Boonies plants was bought (50/50) by the local Scotts Miracle-Gro Company. So that is probably why you see them all over the place.
Yep used to work at Scotts. We used Bonnie plants in the associate gardens. Can't tell you how much junk we found in the soil they used in the Bonnie plants. Won't touch the Scotts or Bonnie brand.
I went to the Dublin location yesterday and they had an entire section that wasn’t Bonnie. They have tomatoes, peppers, and some other stuff in 3 packs.
Thanks! I was going off of what I was told on the phone by the Dublin location.
Skippy no sugar added crunch peanut butter and sliced Granny Smith apple, handful of cashews, rice cake with turkey meat and cheese, Munk Pack keto granola bars, protein shakes…
Some good ideas. I'm vegan so the meat and cheese are out but I just found a tofu type loaf that makes a great substitute for lunch meat. I was using smucker's all natural PB until the price hikes happened and now I make my own.
It’s so good! That was an “appetizer” for kids at my family get togethers when I was a kid.
Oh yeah. I had it growing up and made it myself. I make my own peanut butter and eat it on carbs so here's a way for me to get the PB fix in without the extra carbs
As long as the temp is good, I don't play in the pile. When the temp gets to about 120, I'll sort of aerate the pile, mix it up, play in it...
I was thinking along those lines also. Thanks.
Lol. I lost my thermometer in the pile again.
Why no meds?? Are you comfortable operating at the 7.6?
I did metformin at first and became a zombie. Then augh what's the one that starts with a T and is a self injector... that one. I think eventually I had bathroom problems with it and it didn't really help anyway. I was able to get it to normal ranges through just eating right for me, losing weight, and exercise, until we started eating out too much due to craziness.
Good on you !! It took me many years after my heart failure to see the light. Everyone told me to make the changes, I did, then I didn't. A lot of things happened to make me look more seriously at what I was doing and how it was hurting me. After that nobody had say a thing, I figured it out. I wanted to make the changes myself. For me the biggest change was to cut out snacking. Like you I thought whole grains were good for me, oatmeal, brown rice, etc.. All of that had to go. I thought it would be more difficult, but I started getting results right away so I stuck with it. A few years ago I was 335lbs now 250. I'll probably never be skinny but I'm definitely healthier. My A1c was 14 now 6.2. A long way to go but I'm looking forward.
Good for you! I still snack but mostly healthy stuff like peanuts or wasabi peas or tofu jerky.
absolutely - never declare sugar bankruptcy. That's quite a ride OP.
Along those thoughts, I always think that this one snack or meal WILL have an impact.
Hmm interesting! So what do you think is more important. Food or stress. What spikes sugars more? Put another way if you were given only one choice, would you control food or stress.
For me... definitely food, weight, exercise, then stress. Weight and exercise might be equal. Hard to really tell.
I'd test the bgl after the coke zero if you haven't already. I know some people will react to some sugar substitutes.
I’m going to cover everything in the cedar shavings like I did last year, I was just waiting to get everything planted and just put the basil in yesterday. I’ll replace the cabbage with flowering bulbs and cover. I’ve also got the thirsty earth in ground watering system so hopefully everything stays hydrated! I’m excited for this season.
This is the way. Curious about the cedar shavings?
Last year when I started gardening it was the beginning of June already and didn’t realize I was planting so many things that would bolt in the heat. Plus I was already late so my plants were tiny. I chose cedar shavings because it was cheap, rot/disease resistant since my seedlings were going to be surrounded by it, light colored to deflect the sun from my cool weather plants, and also smelled nice :) Plus it still breaks down and adds to the soil.
I don't use wood chips as a mulch in my beds as I've read that the wood chips will suck the nitrogen out of the soil as they decompose. Do I know this for a fact? Nah I'm not a scientist, but I thought I saw a video where someone did spend their own money to have soil tested and the soil did show a lower amount of nitrogen in the soil sampl that had wood chips as a mulch. However, I typically look at ma nature for truth. LOL. Wood chips in the forest and there's still a forest. Along the same lines there's the oak leaf thing. "OH don't compost oak leaves they kill plants." Yadda Yadda. I have yet to see ma out in her forest getting rid of all the oak leaves in the fall. I have shredded oak leaves and used them as mulch in an open area of the yard where grass won't grow, in the compost piles, as a mulch on top of my beds. For 15 years. I have yet to see any type of issue. Well the issues I do see is the improvement in the soil structure, the increase in soil organisms, happier trees, and a reduction in weeds. :) I can deal with those issues. Wood chips as a mulch in the pathways... for sure. I just don't have an easy way of getting some, so I either use straw for appearance, shredded leaves for cost savings, or summer grass clippings because I ran out of leaves and don't want to pay the stupid prices that places are charging for straw these days. :)
Today for some reason I tested. My bs was 140 before eating breakfast. Had a solid 2 cups of oatmeal with blueberries and assorted other flavorings, no sugar. 90 minutes later I decided to test and 250!!!! Oatmeal seems to help my trigs though so I'm going to keep eating it.
Holy cow! That's a jump. I bet the crash afterwards sucked.
I didn't notice any crash. Going to test it here again to see if today's number reflects what I saw yesterday.
Yup. I recall my piles going over the top of my 4x4 bins. In a couple weeks, it's below the top. Not sure if it's compaction or actually breaking down but does it really matter in the scheme of things?
If anything I will cut up veggie scraps in the house as I use them. However, I haven't been doing that much lately and haven't regretted it. IE, I basically toss in a whole carcass of a pineapple. I have a coring tool which once the top is cut off the flesh is removed and you're left with the husk. I toss that in whole and it all breaks down. I don't go for finished compost in 30 days though. Coffee grounds are green... you typically can get these for free from coffee shops. Neighbors who do not treat lawns have grass clippings as well. My only other advice is to cover the top of the pile either with a tarp or some sheet cardboard to help maintain moisture and heat. Have fun!
Yeah, veggie scraps shouldn't be too bad and we've already thrown a lot of our grosser way-too-old vegetables in there, so maybe that's not too big of a deal anymore. My pile is in a pretty shaded area, but I'll definitely have to figure out a lid when we start to get less rain. Thanks, I hope I enjoy it, I've been wanting to start for a number of years.
Don't be surprised when you put some of this stuff through a "second" time when you harvest this pile. It all breaks down eventually. My piles usually go a year and I still see some things come through that could use a second go, especially egg shells which you pretty much have to grind up but I don't. The cardboard on top REALLY does help a lot. When I built my bins 20 years ago my concern was air and I made the sides really open. Lets out too much moisture and I've gone the route of putting cardboard on the sides to help keep the moisture in. I can always aerate the pile if necessary. My piles are also in the shade and I haven't had a problem.
Tofu Jerky, home made trail mix, wasabi peas, peanuts
Depends on the company. First company I worked at was perfect with requirements. Then it started going downhill. Current company that I'm working for thinks a test plan is one test with very low level steps, meaning you have to be a SME to understand what to test. One of the more recent companies that I worked at didn't have BAs. Let the devs decide what needed to be done without any record. Every bug was a feature. They didn't have QA either.
hmm interesting. Who creates the test plan at your current company? Are you QA?
I'm automation engineer. At the current company, BAs create a ticket with some information and for the most part they also create the "test" plan. I would change a lot at my current company but things are working great to them.
Father in law had these sets stored in the metal storage containers. Not sure if all this is from set 9898 or if multiple sets are pictured. Any help would be appreciated.
I haven't gone through the totes 100% but I know the tote contains pieces of baseplates that the father in law cut up to fit his layouts. Anyone know of a good use for the pieces? Would hate to see this stuff end up in the landfill.
Bricklink, Brickset, or Rebrickable don't have the functionality you need?
I'll have to take a look. Haven't really looked at what is downloadable. As I posted in another response, I have 2 tons of a collection that I'm trying to sort through and organize so I can put sets back together. Having an existing sheet of all sets where I can go grab the record of a specific set and a spreadsheet of pieces where I can add a column for where that piece is stored in this collection would be of immense value.
I collect vintage sets. Let’s take “classic space” for instance. On bricklink you can go to the hyperlink for classic space. Change it to 100 sets. Then copy and paste it into an excel sheet.
Yeah this might be the best option. The situation is I have inherited the father in laws lifetime collection and he has filing cabinets of manuals and he also called up Lego before Pick A Brick was a thing and ordered hundreds of parts of various colors at the on a regular basis. I've decided to put the sets back together with manuals and likely sell off the rest of the pieces. I've been building my own piece spreadsheet as I catalog and organize but it's slowing me down. I want to put the manuals in a spreadsheet as sort of a menu of what I have available but I'm thinking that an existing spreadsheet would make things go a lot faster than manually entering the data.
The Wayback Machine has helped me quite a bit with finding prices for older sets. Using it, I was able to go to the shop page on Mega's website to figure some prices out on sets that I've had in storage for a while. As for the parts identification, I can try to help if you want to dm pictures of the bags.
Thanks for the offer. I might take you up on it. I'll try Google Lens first, though I think I did take pics of one of the dragons and all I got was Mega Bloks but I really sort of lost interest at that point. Now that I see he has 5 of those metal storage containers I need to figure out what to do with them.
Where did you get this box at?
It's just a planp box. Available almost every where. I got mine on ammy
All the colors but the grays that we have in our collection. A lot more tiles but the extra are going in bags and a tote as surplus.
I mean to identify. You're not going to find a brick in, say, Sand Purple or Light Green and mistake it for a colour in the current palette.
The father in law had kits from all series, yes including Friends. I thought I saw a color called light stone or something like that. Maybe it'll be easier than I thought to sort the light grays. I haven't studied Ryan Howerter's color file that much yet. I just recall seeing all the grays and some being retired. Would love if that file was a spreadsheet so colors could be sorted by color family.
Color variation exists, and is a problem for a "premium" and expensive product. Having said that, you can't see anything in this picture you are trying to point out.
I was fairly certain that the tiles were only one color, but have been wrong before. When I saw the difference in the mold I though maybe a color change was made at the same time.
Do you have any Brown or Reddish Brown pieces that you could put next to these in the same lighting for reference? You can look through
Ok so this is what I did. I went and grabbed three brown 1x2 tiles that were presorted by the father in law. First a pic of the 1x2 tiles by themselves.
Ah, I’m sorry, my eyes saw the pieces in the original picture as more red-hued than brown-hued in that lighting. It was like a blue & black dress vs. white & gold dress situation. As for the 1x2s (knowing that they are shades of brown), from left to right, they look like Reddish Brown, Brown, and Dark Brown. Attached is a picture with the order Brown, Reddish Brown, and Dark Brown for reference:
It's not just photography that's impacted by the lighting. Really would like to know the best lighting for looking at these tiles. I have several thousand "brown' tiles that need sorted then I have to think about the grays. I'm going to call Lego and find out which block is available in the most colors and order 1 of each. Hopefully they come with the color part number and I'll be able to build my own little color palette.
Anything that isn't compostable.
Look at the colour guide on BrickLink, to see what they call (most of) the colours. Note that these names are not the same as the ones Lego uses eg on Pick A Brick
Thanks! Not sure what my brain is trying to remember when it's thinking of a set. So it sounds like putting a set back together and getting the correct color is going to be difficult at best? I actually just realized that the manual has the part color code number not the brick number. So basically a pallete that references the Lego color numbers would be ideal. I'll look for the table created by Ryan that you mentioned. One thing I really don't want to rely on is printing out something on a local printer. Wouldn't trust our printer to match real life.