Jade's weblog Archive

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My friend Stanley sent me this information:

''Muscle meat from the cow was sent from the Centralia slaughterhouse to two Northwest plants that process beef. One is Interstate Meats of Federal Way, Wash. Officials identified the other as Willamette Meats.''

I have NOT found this in any national or international media reports, but I heard Washington State Governor Gary Locke mention on a regional news report this morning on Northwest Public Radio that they are NOT sure where the muscle meat went. He assured the public that brains, spinal cord, and other nervous system tissue from the subject cow were NOT put into the food supply.

I believe that it is possible to stream NWPR live, but I don't think that archives are available online.

This report from The Oregonian (Portland, Oregon, USA) gives more revealing information (also on the front page).

And, look at this from the King County Journal (Seattle area): ''after the cow was slaughtered, it was deboned at Midway Meats in Chehalis. From there, the meat -- though no contaminated spinal or brain tissue -- was sent to two other plants in the region, identified by the USDA as Willamette and Interstate Meat. Midway Meats appeared to be operating at full blast late Tuesday afternoon, with workers loading meat into trucks, and fresh blood running out of the slaughterhouse into a drain.''

A sanitized version of Gov. Locke's statement and more general info on BSE are available.

Personally, I am appalled that they would proceed with the slaughter and meat processing of a cow which prompted enough suspicion to warrant sending tissue specifically for a BSE test. What certainty is there that no risky neurological tissue was included in the meat sent to distributors?

The cow was apparently a ''retired'' dairy cow from a farm near Mabton, Washington, in the Yakima Valley; which is less than 100 miles from my home.

Thanks for sending me all, Stanley!

The first problem we ran into was we weren't sure how to remove the SID from the display. We opened the cup holder, and gently rocked it side to side by using a small screwdriver (covered with a paper towel) to rock our the left hand side. It slid out pretty easily.

Next, our SID unit doesn't have four screws, like the above Saab SID fix posting. The screws also require six-pronged screwdrivers. The screw is 10 units wide (probably mm?)

Then, as the instructions say, you press down on the four plastic tabs with a screwdriver to slide back the black plastic back of the unit. However, what the instructions don't explain well (the second one has a picture of this), is that you actually have to pry open the doorway in between the connector and the plastic base, and completely remove the doorway. Otherwise, the connector will get in the way, and you won't be able to remove the darker black plastic from the base of the SID.

The next part was easier than I thought it would be. I only had to remove 1 screw from the center of the circuit board to slide out the circuit board + display from the black plastic container.

I then turned the unit upside down, and removed the two screws next to the white ribbon. I then took the unit apart, just like the second set of instructions said. The part that was difficult was making sure to unplug the two circuit boards from each other. The second set of instructions is good here. I then pressed on the end of the ribbon, like the second set of instructions said, and put in a strip of high-density foam. It was 3/16 " thick, 3/8 " wide, and 17' long, Foam Tape.

Then I put everything back together, slid it back in, and turned on the car. It seems to be better, although not perfect. Apparently, it might be even better in a couple of hours. I'll see!

It's pretty easy to do. Just put this code into your website:

<a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html">Miserable Failure</a>