"Carl's Lounge" (Off-Topic Discussion, Traditional Knife "Tales & Vignettes")

Rookie82 said:
We're gearing up here in northwest PA for maple syrup season. I'm hoping the weather stays cold a bit longer. I don't like tapping the trees this early, as the sap is weaker and it take more to get the same amount of finished syrup.

Dad had a full hip joint replacement in mid January, so his help this year will be mostly sitting in a chair telling me what I'm doing wrong while I run around. I think we're going to reduce volume this year by about 50% in an effort to keep me from losing my mind and throwing out my back. Fingers crossed we won't have to tap the trees until end of Feb.
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I grew up in upstate NY, and one of my fond memories is of walking into a sugarhouse near Ithaca. The wonderful smell of all that sap boiling in kettles over wood fires.
 
Murphjd25 said:
$2,886.10 an ounce, went up another $9 and something today. I bought some a few years ago and have already more then doubled my money 😍 It’s going to keep going up to I think, I bet in 5 more years it’s around $5000 an ounce. 😱
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I will simply say that if you look at the actual purchasing power of gold (in terms of say, how much property/housing you could buy for a given weight of gold), the purchasing power doesn't fluctuate much. There are occasional major dips and spikes, but long term gold is a hedge against loss, not a growth investment. Gold pretty much always buys around the same amount of durable goods/real estate. I like to think of it as a hold out against collapse.

One of my personal pet theories is that neoliberal markets have artificially suppressed the apparent consumer price index, so that official inflation statistics have not kept up with actual inflation. Basically, real inflation in terms of actual buying/valuing actual capital (housing, industrial production capacity, etc.) is moving separately from prices of consumer goods. So the official index tracks the prices of consumer goods (phones, TVs, clothes, etc.) and inflation doesn't look that bad. But then people are complaining about out of control housing prices. But gold tracks pretty close to housing over time. And gold has been out-performing official inflation over the last couple decades. But I think that is because gold/housing prices are more reflective of the actual value of the US dollar.

But that is just my personal hypothesis, and I have not seen it described by anyone else. So treat it as the ponderings of some random dude on the internet.
 
waynorth said:
So aftermarket knife prices are following the prices of Gold and Housing??
Or so it seems!!! o_O o_O
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Sure seems like it. Old guns too. After I got burglarized I had to figure out the value of my old guns that were stolen (even though insurance capped reimbursements for firearms at $3,000 total), and let me tell you, the prices had gone stupid on almost everything. On the one hand, it is always nice to know you didn't buy junk, but the prices seemed really unreasonable to me. And that of course means a lot of what was stolen will simply never be replaced :(
 
abbydaddy said:
Sure seems like it. Old guns too. After I got burglarized I had to figure out the value of my old guns that were stolen (even though insurance capped reimbursements for firearms at $3,000 total), and let me tell you, the prices had gone stupid on almost everything. On the one hand, it is always nice to know you didn't buy junk, but the prices seemed really unreasonable to me. And that of course means a lot of what was stolen will simply never be replaced :(
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I used to go to local gun shows with a couple of friends. We got out of the habit during covid. We went to a couple last year and were all stunned at the prices. I sold a couple of handguns and Ralph sold some brass, but none of us found any guns we even considered buying. Good time to be thinning the herd.
 
I sold several handguns, some very good Target pistols, a few years ago, a few years too soon!!! 🙄
 
"Inflation" affects the value of the dollar, not the intrinsic value of the item.
Inflation rates are cumulative, just like compound interest is. We had a period of almost 10% inflation rate. That later came down to about 4%. But that's a change rate, not a static bump. The effects of having had the super high inflation as regards how much something costs will not readjust to what it used to be until we have a period of negative inflation. That's highly unlikely to happen. So my retirement nest egg has depreciated in real value, even though I have not dipped into it much, yet. :(

Meanwhile, my toy fund does not come out of my savings, and I have my eye on a new SAK. 😁
 
I just watched this weeks episode of Pen and Teller fool us and saw an absolutely amazing routine I thought you guys would probably enjoy as well.

I could not clip just this one routine off YouTube, but he was the very first act so you don't have to watch the entire show.

Here is Juan Luis Rubialis and his routine titled " the white white knife ".
On this show you will see the best magic there is because they all have something to prove, but this is one of the absolute best tricks I have ever seen.
As a lover of small traditional pen knives I just could not take my eyes off the screen, it was just amazing to watch.

Hopefully you guys enjoy this routine as much as I did.
 
Hickory n steel said:
I just watched this weeks episode of Pen and Teller fool us and saw an absolutely amazing routine I thought you guys would probably enjoy as well.

I could not clip just this one routine off YouTube, but he was the very first act so you don't have to watch the entire show.

Here is Juan Luis Rubialis and his routine titled " the white white knife ".
On this show you will see the best magic there is because they all have something to prove, but this is one of the absolute best tricks I have ever seen.
As a lover of small traditional pen knives I just could not take my eyes off the screen, it was just amazing to watch.

Hopefully you guys enjoy this routine as much as I did.
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Absolutely incredible — thanks for sharing!!!
 
We haven't mentioned Gene Hackman!
My first thought was carbon monoxide, but that having been ruled out, my theory is that Hackman keeled over, and Arikawa opened the door for the ambulance she didn't get to call, stuffed the dog in the closet because it was tripping her up, and keeled over herself while getting Hackman's pills.
Funny his pacemaker stopped ten days before he was found and didn't raise any alarms anywhere.

RIP to the pair of them. They had a long life together and left it together. That's probably as good as it gets.
 
Yeah, I always liked Gene. He didn't always have his face in front of a camera, seeking publicity, and it didn't matter what kind of part he played, whether it was a hero or villain, cowboy or cop, tv or big screen; he was good at it.

He was 95 years old, with heart problems, and I guess his ticker just gave out. I suspect his wife died something like as screened porch screened porch said, accidentally, while trying to do something about his emergency. I don't have all the info that the investigating officers have, but I don't really see any foul play here. They had three German Shepherds, and I doubt they'd allow any home invasion, or harm to come to them.
 
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A little something interesting. Last August we had a flash flood tear through here. During cleanup, among other things, my two neighbours & I have found pieces of tomb stones/grave markers. There have been settlers around here going back to the 1700's, and although not allowed now, old, small family grave yards aren't that uncommon in the area. I have copies of old township tax maps from back in the early 1800's, and none show any graveyards on any of the properties, other than the local church.

None of the local history buffs have any idea where they could've come from, and to make it even more curious, none of us have found one yet with a date, or last name. I think that there's also a possibility that years ago someone upstream may have been in the business of carving tombstones, and maybe these were the "seconds" that ended up as fill years ago.

Here are a couple pictures of the ones I found in my back yard, along the stream.
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