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Showing posts from January, 2016

How To Change a Commercial Door Lock in 9 Easy Steps

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The reason that I created The-Asterisk blog is that so much in life is not quite as it is purported to be. Everything seems to have those little asterisks which let you know that YMMV (your mileage may vary.) Most of my blogging centers around politics, which is a target-rich environment for asterisks, but from time to time I discover things in my personal life which I think would be of value to others. Today, I was preparing a commercial suite for a tenant to move in on the first. Because we are splitting the suite, I needed to replace two passage door levers (they aren't door knobs anymore) with latches which have locks and  keys. I also needed to replace a worn out lever on the back door of the suite. I recently had purchased three locksets from a local locksmith company. You don't normally find commercial door hardware at Lowes or Home Depot. The sizing or backset is different between commercial and residential levers. For the rest of this blog, I am going to call these

Sometimes the blind squirrel loses the nut

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I am reading a book called The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels by Alex Epstein. In it, the author goes over some of the doomy and gloomy predictions the Cassandras of the 1970s and 1980s made and how they were not only completely off on the timeline, but they were totally 180 degrees out of sync with what has happened to the supply of oil, coal and natural gas in the years hence. It occurred to me while reading, that if Jimmy Carter had been Barack Obama and somehow could have waved a magic wand and cut fossil fuel use by 80% after the early and dire predictions had been heeded, then these doomsayers, such as Paul Ehrlich and James Hansen , would have been regarded as prophets and savers of the planet. As it was, their voices were largely ignored by the vast majority of the world, the oceans didn't rise, England didn't burn up and waste away by 2000 and not only have we avoided mass starvation, but the population of the earth has continued to increase and the quality of lif

New Leaf v.2016

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In the age of Twitter and Snapchat, traditional blogs seem so Gutenberg-ish, don't they? I mean, who has the two or three minutes it takes to link out of their Facebook feed, their Twitter timeline or their Snapchat blur to read someone's musings? I have fallen victim to this phenomenon. I tend to pontificate on Facebook where 30 or 40 of my best friends can avail themselves of my hyper-important opinions. Ha! Talk about broadcasting ! But, it is so easy to comment or post when you are right there, in the moment. If the best of my brain at that instant goes to Facebook or even Twitter, then pulling up the ol' Blogspot  New Post screen seems almost quaint, like making an apple pie from scratch. So, what to do? Is there a happy medium or an unhappy compromise? I think that I can put my comments up on my blog and keep them short enough so that they can be connected back to Facebook without losing my 'local' audience, but allow the rest of the world to swerve into