08:01 – I finally “borrowed” my first book under Amazon Prime yesterday. I’d given up on trying with Barbara’s and my monochrome Kindles because every time I tried it would lock up the Kindle, requiring a complete reset. Something in the firmware of those older Kindles doesn’t get along with our D-Link wireless router. I figured out the problem one time. It has something to do with the B/G/N mode setting on the router, but it’s not worth the hassle so we just keep our mono Kindles in airplane mode. Fortunately, the WAP works fine with Barbara’s Kindle Fire HDX, so that’s what I used to borrow the book.
Once I’d downloaded the book to Barbara’s Kindle Fire, I used the Amazon website to download the book to my hard drive, dropped it into Calibre to strip the DRM, and transferred it to my mono Kindle. We do all our reading on our mono Kindles, so formerly I’d download every title twice, once into a directory of books for my Kindle and then a second time into a directory for Barbara’s Kindle. That was getting old, so now I routinely download the book once, drop in into Calibre to strip the DRM, and then we can transfer it to either Kindle without worrying about which copy works on which Kindle.
The book I borrowed is Alpha Farm by Annie Berdel, which several websites had recommended. If I were going to waste time writing a review, the heading would be “Stop her before she writes again”. Like most prepper books I’ve seen, fiction and non-fiction, this one is complete garbage. Even elementary school spelling, grammar, and punctuation escapes this woman. The book is full of misused and misspelled words, run-on and fragment sentences, and odd constructs that leave the reader with no clue what the author intended to convey. She apparently doesn’t even realize that she’s supposed to use periods to end sentences. The narrative switches back and forth from first- to third-person, and even characters switch back and forth between names. The author has apparently never met a woo-woo conspiracy theory she doesn’t like: HAARP, chemtrails, government causing severe weather and earthquakes, vaccines causing autism, and on and on. Fortunately, I’m a very fast reader. I got through this piece of crap in half an hour or so, but that certainly was a wasted half hour.
You weren’t warned by the sub-title “Prepper Chick Series Book 1”? At least you didn’t have to buy it.
That’s why I like your writing Robert. I only noticed one typo in your early chapter draft, looks like you’re on the way to another well written work.
As Mr. Pournelle says, ‘I do these things so you don’t have to’.
I actually wanted to like the book. I assumed it’d be a woman-oriented “kinder, gentler” type of prepper fiction. But this woman is nuts, in addition to being a horrible writer. I’ve read of lot of apocalyptic fiction, but I don’t remember any other book that wasn’t satisfied with just one calamity. Sure, Pournelle and Niven had disease outbreaks after the big rocks hit, but that was merely a realistic depiction of what would probably occur in such a situation. This woman wasn’t satisfied with just one disaster. She pulled in just about every far-fetched calamity imaginable.
It will only take a couple of ‘perfect storm’ calamities to really shake up the world situation; somebody lights off a nuke somewhere in a major city; an epidemic breaks out somewhere, killing hundreds of thousands, and then millions; the North Murkan Grid breaks down for longer periods; economic hardships become severe enough to generate mass civil unrest and violence, met by increasingly violent repression from the State; etc.
Civilization is a very thin veneer that can sustain a few cracks here and there, but major splits will wreck it beyond repair. If our rulers bothered to read any history, they’d see this with previous examples, going back to the first empires.
So they don’t, and let zillions of barbarians inside the gates, debase the currency, make their own people virtual and actual prisoners, and embark on wars of conquest, all at the same time.
Only a matter of time.
I still expect a slow slide rather than a sudden catastrophic collapse. I hope it’s the former. Catastrophic collapses are, by their nature, foreseeable generally but not predictable specifically.
The inconvenient part is that I turn 62 years old in June. My physical and mental abilities are pale shadows of what they were when I was 22, or even 42. Even something as formerly easy as hauling around 50-pound sacks of sugar or whatever is now a real physical effort for me. I fondly remember the days when I could pick up two, hefting one onto each shoulder, and carry them for miles if necessary. I actually found myself wondering yesterday if I should downsize Barbara’s and my shotguns from 12-gauge to 20-gauge because of the recoil.
Ditto; I turn 62 in July, you old fart.
And in my 20s was doing roofing work in the summer heat, climbing up two shaky aluminum ladders to the tops of these huge phony colonial garrison houses down in Maffachufetts, an 80-pound bundle on each shoulder, ’cause anything less and you were a pussy. We also drank beer and smoked doobies on the job and got roasted up on those roofs. If I tried that now I’d be dead in an hour.
Likewise, although I have had 12-gauges (subsequently lost in the lake) I’m getting a Mossberg 20 pretty soon, easier to manipulate inside the house and on stairways and around corners, with less recoil and Mrs. OFD can learn to use it more easily than the 870 monster.
This is all the main reason why our defense plan is basically to make a stand here at home; there won’t be any ‘bugging out’ to the wilderness or linking up with militia guerrilla units across the frozen landscape here. And if worst comes to worst, we could attempt a long overland trek, actually combined land and water, to our site in northern Nouveau Brunswick. I would not look forward to such an enterprise, though. The timing would be critical.
I agree. Barbara and I wouldn’t even consider evacuating except under the most extreme circumstances. Something like a huge wildfire approaching. Otherwise, we hunker down and stay put for better or worse. That’s the main reason I want to get us out of the Winston metro area and into a small town environment. I’d still prefer the Montana/Alberta border area, but the area northwest of where we are now isn’t bad at all.
Even something as formerly easy as hauling around 50-pound sacks of sugar or whatever is now a real physical effort for me. I fondly remember the days when I could pick up two, hefting one onto each shoulder, and carry them for miles if necessary. I actually found myself wondering yesterday if I should downsize Barbara’s and my shotguns from 12-gauge to 20-gauge because of the recoil.
Amen! I had to rebuild the four cylinder engine in my 1973 Volvo in 1980 because I stupidly drove through high water and threw a rod. During the process, I picked up the replacement junkyard four cylinder short block at least once to move it. 220 lbs. I could bench press 330 lbs at the time.
And yes, I am wondering about 20 gauges also. 410 don’t look so bad either.
The book I borrowed is Alpha Farm by Annie Berdel
Wow. Gonna pass on this one.
I think that I need to reread “Lucifer’s Hammer” as I am not remembering it very well. I have read 5,000 books since then (SWAG).
http://www.amazon.com/Lucifers-Hammer-Larry-Niven/dp/0449208133/
I read “Hammer” a long time ago and the thing I remember most is the cannibal armies.
Here is some information on the BaoFeng radios.
The Chinese Radio Project is an effort to provide a more detailed manual for the UV-5R. There is probably information that cover many of the radios. A good source for the BF-F8HP, the one I picked up.
An annotated version the the CRP manual.
UV-5R cheat sheet, probably covers a lot of the BaoFengs.
FRS/GMRS frequency list with PL Tones (CTCSS)
I purchased a cheap FRS radio at Walmart to try out programming the FRS channels into the BaoFeng to see if I can monitor them. I’ll try a channel manually and then with CHIRP. Illegal to transmit from the BaoFeng, of course. Maybe a little sqawk to see if transmission occurs. Set it to 1 watt first.
I’ll see if I can post this on the mailing list.
Thanks.
You’re certainly welcome to post to the mailing list, but you don’t need to on my account. I copy comments like these into the master copy of the document. When I go back for a second pass, I’ll incorporate stuff from these comments, emails I’ve also posted into the master copy, etc.
I just re-read Lucifer’s Hammer a few months ago. It held up well after almost 40 years.
After reading Alpha Farm, I may have to reconsider my rating of One Second After and give it two stars instead of one. Of the many prepper fiction titles I’ve read recently, Matt Bracken’s Enemies Trilogy stands out for decent writing. As I’ve said, he misses the point by considering only the left/progressive elements of the federal government to be bad news, when it’s the federal government, period. But at least he writes competently, which can’t be said for most of the other stuff out there.
Gee whiz, getting hahd to keep up with all the info here; thanks to MrAtoz out there in Lost Wages for the spiffy links and tips on the radios and configs.
I forgot I got the Bracken trilogy and was looking around for easy stuff to read last night here and then got sucked into the “Marco Polo” series on Netflix. Maybe I’ll check out “Hammer” again, too. I read a lot of dense pooter and history stuff so all work and no play, as the saying goes…
My email from Sovereign Man came today and he dates himself in it, though a Sandbox vet himself with this, talking about ex-pats living it up in Bangkok and greater Thailand and how everything is wunnerful there…
“And an increasing number of VC firms are now flocking to the scene. Both local VCs and those with Silicon Valley experience are springing up…”
I had to bust out laughing, ’cause obviously he means “venture capital” and not Viet Cong, but the Cong are always the first thing that comes to mind with me for some reason.
Not much difference between a one star rating and a two star rating. They are both crap.
http://xkcd.com/1098/
I ordered the first book of Matt Bracken’s Enemies Trilogy and it is in my SBR.
http://www.amazon.com/Enemies-Foreign-Domestic-Matthew-Bracken/dp/0972831010/
Ditto; I turn 62 in July, you old fart.
I’ll be 63 next month. You guys are just kids.
I don’t feel old.
Rick in Portland
Kids, he calls us!
Then there’s Cowboy Slim out there in Kalifornia…Yikes.
I feel kinda old sometimes when I’m going up and down the stairs or hauling a bag of topsoil or a load of firewood.
Also when I hear the crap the dam kidz listen to now.
I Built an AR-15 in My Kitchen
I’ll be 60 in June. This place is loaded with geezers.
Anybody heard from Mr. Chuck? He doesn’t seem to be someone who goes radio silent unless some shit hit the fan.
Yes, the kitchen table AR has been possible for a while now, just takes some tinkering and being careful. I may try it just to have the practice and just-in-case, but mainly I’d get the finished lower receivers, yeah, with serials, and assemble them from there. I wonder how many of these things are out there now and in the near future, not counted among national firearms ownership stats, haha.
MrAtoz will be 60 in June and Mrs. OFD hits that number in April. Babies.
Mr. Chuck may be straight out with his gigs again; has anyone heard from Cowboy Slim?
Nah, Mr. Chuck is mourning that Rush Limbaugh is still on the air.
My dad and I and maybe my brother were going to drive over to New Hampshire some years ago to buy 80% complete .45s and ARs. There was a good discount for getting them in person and paying in cash or (preferably) gold, and they had open nights every couple months where you could do the machining there under the hands-off guidance of their smiths. But the company closed its doors and moved to Montana a couple weeks before we planned to go. IIRC, New Hampshire politicians drove the company out of town because they were bad for the state’s image. Very impressive for the Live Free or Die state.
I think we should work on an ever-more-entertaining and ever-less-plausible conspiracy theory about Chuck’s silence.
Since it seems to be birthday roll-call day, I will be 65 in September. So looks like a bunch of young whipper snappers on here 😉
Having a great time being bombarded by people wanting to sell me Medicare plans and financial planning.
Like some of the other senior fans here, bunkering down is now my prep of choice. I swing a pretty mean tactical cane (those interested might look into http://www.personaldefensenetwork.com/ ). Like some of the rest of you I have had bad luck with my guns and ammo around large bodies of water.
I have been hoarding my meds for several years. By getting my 90-day refills as early as I can (and a few “dropped my pills in the loo” stories) I have at least a year’s worth of them, my wife’s too (particularly her inhalers).
Say, did anyone notice that no-so-famous rapper Big Bank Hank died last November, in his 50s? I didn’t, but I did notice that someone else, not notable for quietness, went quiet around the same time. And I also noticed that ol’ Big Bank Hank never appeared in photos with a guy who claimed to be from Indiana. Quite the coincidence, wouldn’t you say?
I’m just 52. Dual meaning on “just”, as I’m younger than the lot of you geezers and haven’t been 52 for very long.
Geez, this place is full of old geezers. I’ll be 57 in May, a baby by comparison.
May I add, WHITE!, old geezers since racist is on my list of things I is.
At 67 I’m apparently the oldest GOF reporting in so far today. Somebody help me out here! 🙂
“… IIRC, New Hampshire politicians drove the company out of town because they were bad for the state’s image.”
Probably former Massholes who moved up there from the 1980s on to avoid taxes and cost-of-living issues, and then promptly sought to replicate the shit-holes they’d moved from in NH. Pretty much the southern half of the state now.
“… I will be 65 in September.”
Yikes, that is scary-old! Dunno if I’ll last that long.
“…hoarding my meds for several years.”
I’ll be working on that with Mrs. OFD now, thanks for the tip!
“…bad luck with my guns and ammo around large bodies of water.”
It’s the damndest thing, isn’t it! Future aquatic archaeologists will have a blast!
I’m not sure I get the deceased rapper reference…dense as I am…the article sez he croaked via “… kidney complications due to cancer…” which must have sucked. Who’s the person from Indiana?
So I guess Mr. SteveF, Mr. Greg, MrAtoz and Mr. Lynn are the kidz here. Anyone younger than 50 out there? I think eriticist might be…
Mr. Chuck is one of us old geezers and I bet he finally got dam sick and tired of dealing with the crappy food, crappy insurance industry, messed up shopping, roads, local gummint, etc., etc. and moved back to Germany. On the one hand I wouldn’t blame him much; on the other, living over there don’t appeal to me; an even worse nanny state than this one, about to get bigger repercussions from the Greek situation and the rest of the southern Med tier.
Ditto me moving to O Kanada, for the same nanny-state reasons; it’s bad enough here and getting worse. A corporate fascist oligarchy. May it rot in Hell.
“At 67 I’m apparently the oldest GOF reporting in so far today.”
Youse guys in yer late 60s and early 70s are the same age group as most of my fellow ‘Nam vets, apparently; I’m a baby ‘Nam vet; signed up at 17 near the tail end of the First Indochina War but in plenty of time for the Second.
I think, however, that Slim may have the age record at that end of the scale, 75, IIRC.
Slim’s 20 years older than me, so he should be 77 this year.
Sheesh, OFD, you must be more senescent than we realized. Hinting that Chuck and Big Belly Hank were the same person fits my immediately-previous suggestion of making outré conspiracy theories about him.
But, since that was a flop, how about we start devising and refining theories about OFD, that he’s the secret evil mastermind behind miscellaneous mopery and dopery, while pretending to be a mostly harmless guy up in the up-north woods.
Say, has anyone noticed that the increase in sightings of Champ, increased awareness of global warming, and OFD’s arrival in Vermont were all at the roughly the same time? Makes you wonder…
I’ll be 55 in a couple of months, assuming that a bus does not run me over.
Am I the only person to notice that our beloved President Obola and the beloved head of the Norks have the same nickname, “Dear Leader”?
I must be suffering from Early Senility. I forgot that Tiny Town is actually in Indiana. The reference may still have failed anyway due to Mr. Chuck’s dislike of hip-hop, IIRC, but maybe I’m mis-remembering that, too. Hey, wait till you get this old and start forgetting shit all the time.
I arrived here in the great Green Mountain State permanently in August of 1998. The last decent pic of Champ was back in the 70s, and taken from a point maybe a couple hundred yards from our back porch. And nobody around here has noticed any fucking global warming stuff going on lately. Of course the warmists all tell us it’s “climate change” now, and this bitter cold or humongous snowfall or whatever is part of it, you see…
Some of us old geezers are old enough to remember it was gonna be global cooling forty years ago and we were all headed into a new deep freeze Ice Age. They were mostly about money then, too.
Back to Mr. Chuck; I bet dollars to doughnuts he moved back to Germany and is even now quaffing one of those gigantic steins of great German beer, served by one of those Teutonic beauties with the very low-cut blouses, as jolly burghers in leiderhosen play funny instruments and sing medieval folk songs. Soon Frau Merkel will stop by to sit on his lap and whisper naughty things in his ear.
I call Obola “President Princess Perfect”. I wish I’d thought of that, but I stole it from someone else.
“…the beloved head of the Norks…”
Let’s face it; he’d be more interesting as our Prez. He’d machine-gun his ex-girlfriends and uncles that piss him off personally. He’d have those gigantic mass parades of infantry and tanks on Penn Ave once a month. And he’d be chillin’ in the Rose Garden with his homie, Dennis Rodman.
OFD (and anyone else): a couple more history podcasts I’ve been listening to:
Mike Duncan’s The History of Rome
Mike Duncan’s Revolutions
Podcasts that have been recommended but I haven’t started yet:
Scott C’s The Ancient World
History podcasts I’ve previously recommended:
BBC’s In Our Time – History – no longer made, but 131 episodes are archived and Melvyn Bragg has made and is making other IOT shows, most of which cover history in some way.
Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History – most recent episodes are available, older episodes available for purchase.
I bet dollars to doughnuts he moved back to Germany and is even now quaffing one of those gigantic steins of great German beer
I had a German wheat beer last week at one of the engineering conference hospitality suites. I did not think much of it until I drained it on the third gulp and wanted more. Way more. Good stuff but I was good and limited myself to just one.
Mm-hmm… that’s just what the evil mastermind wants us to think.
Mm-hmm… that’s just what the evil mastermind wants us to think.
Hey, regarding the fizzle of “Global cooling” from decades back, I was recently informed that I was stupid for bringing that up because global cooling was different than global warming, and global warming is real.
(No, contrary to expectation, I didn’t eat the fucknozzle’s liver. This was less from any lack of intent on my part than because the cowardly little shit was safely behind an anonymous account on a forum. Par for the course for AGW supporters: hide behind anonymity, hide behind secret data, hide behind government supporters, hide behind media cover, hide in the screaming mob.)
For any old fogies who might read this: https://www.youtube.com/embed/Xv1tMioGgXI?rel=0
“Par for the course for AGW supporters: hide behind anonymity, hide behind secret data, hide behind government supporters, hide behind media cover, hide in the screaming mob.)”
It ain’t just them; the anti-gun fanatics do the same shit; or they’ll load up a video ad like the one they did here in Vermont recently, financed by that Bloomberg cocksucker, and then disable the comments feature on the Tube after they put it on there.
Most libturds use the same tactics; lying, deceit, hiding behind stuff, ganging up on any competition, making false accusations, etc.
Well, I’m 70 although I sometimes think of myself not quite a year older than Trinity.
I’ve been following the comments on prepping with some interest. As I might have mentioned at one time or another, I’m a big city boy. I live in downtown Toronto in a rented apartment (small) and haven’t owned a vehicle since 1983. I own no weapons and at my age have no interest in acquiring and learning to use one. If I lived in a rural area I might get a shotgun. This is a full 180 change in what would be my thoughts 20 or 30 years ago. These are very different times.
With almost no extra storage space, I make sure we have batteries for light, a couple of cans of gel chafing dish fuel in case power is off for an extended period so we can boil water and heat food up. Also some water for drinking. Other than that there is very little we do. There just isn’t any space for storage.
Dave, if things start to get really bad, the Quebecois will be heading west, not south. And then bitch and complain that there aren’t enough French speaking civil service types to look after them in Ontario. The Montrealers will be ok but the rest of Quebec will be very, very, very upset. That thought makes me very, very, very happy.
It certainly was the case that we (Canadians) were far more regulated than you (Americans). I’m not sure that is still the case. It would seems that the US is increasingly being buried under all kinds of laws both direct and indirect. Here no license is required for low power frs/gmrs radios (<0.5w).
Like Dave, I'm partial to the "Nine Nations" concept. Details to be worked out but I have far more common interests with New York state than I do with the Maritimes or the West coast. But until something better comes along my allegiance is the the Canadian nation ( and not the Canadian state).
Good thoughts there, Rolf. I hope you’ll be OK in the city, probably better off than any of the cities down here; my late Dad once had a work caper in Toronto many years ago and was very impressed; particularly by the clean streets.
Yes, we’re well on the way here to becoming a full-fledged nanny state, the militarized cop version of it.
The Nine Nations can’t come soon enough to suit me.
Thanks for that GolfBrooks link, Mr. SteveF; I forwarded it all over hell just now to other old farts. Just don’t remember who, exactly…or if it was the right link…
At 69, I’m not the oldest or the youngest here. I seem to feel better every year, but that eventually will reverse. I am just grateful for good health, and enough toys to keep me young in mind. Seems like yesterday when I…
Did the wheat beer have a slice of lemon in it? It’s one of the preferred ways to drink it. They also put woodruff or raspberry syrup in Berliner Weiss – available in Texas as St. Arnold’s Boiler Room beer.
I’m still in my thirties… barely. 🙂
On way I probably have the other old farts here beat is that my wife (who is 65) and I have an 18 year old daughter. Our daughter gets $260/month in Social Security as a dependent of my wife. She gets it until she graduates from high school in June.
Rick in Portland
I’ll be 62 when my daughter turns 18. She’s twelve and fourteen years younger than her brothers. When she was very little I liked to tell people that I wanted to name her Daddy’s Little Accident but my wife wouldn’t let me, but once she got old enough to understand words I stopped doing that.
Sigh. No guts. No willingness to stick to my plan. It was the same thing with her brother. When he was a baby he’d always crawl to the front door to meet me when I got home from work. I’d take off my shoes, pick him up, and give him a hug, telling him that was called getting drunk and giving him an ass-whuppin’. I figured he’d just casually mention in kindergarten that when he was little, “Every day my dad would come home, get drunk, and give me an ass-whuppin’.” Alas, I chickened out and stopped saying it when he was about a year and a half old. Sigh…
Think again. I’ll bet you have more space than you think. What about under your bed(s)? Between the back of your sofa and the wall? Under the sofa? On bookshelves behind the rows of books? On the floors and back walls of closets? Against the back walls of your lower kitchen cabinets? Replace your end tables in the den and your nightstands in the bedroom(s) with stacked cases of canned foods covered with draped table cloths. And so on.
Food really doesn’t take much cubic. I just ran the numbers yesterday on storing #10 (institutional size) cans of food. Each is 6.25″ in diameter and 7″ tall. That means you can store 416 cans in a space 25″ deep by 50″ wide, just over 2′ by 4′, and less than 8′ high. That’s more than enough to feed two people for a year, and the volume requirements are similar if you use standard size cans.
Of course, you really don’t need to shoot for a year. A one month supply makes a really tiny pile, and even a three month supply is well within the ability of most apartment dwellers to store.
Was that wheat beer gluten free? Not much of a fan of wheat beer.
Current favorite Firestone DBA (double barrel ale) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firestone_Walker_Brewing_Company
Dave (who at 64 this month appears to be middle-aged for this site).
I’m the same age as Lynn, turning 55 this year. After some health problems late last year, I’m feeling the years a bit. Silly. Everything’s back to normal, but it’s a psychological thing that will take a while to go away…
Did the wheat beer have a slice of lemon in it?
What? No! The beer was not that watery.
The only weird beer that I have ever drunk is a warm stout in Swansea in a pub. Took the entire beer to get used to room temperature beer.
Wait, I forgot. I have drunk raspberry beer and blackberry beer also. Those were good beers with a really weird taste at the end.
Was that wheat beer gluten free?
I doubt it. I am a beer wimp, my typical beer is a Bud Lite about once a quarter.
[snip] my typical beer is a Bud Lite [snip]
Which is it, a beer or a Bud Light?
Good one.
Murkan beers suck, unless they’re brewed in a microbrewery or “artisan” brewery. When I was drinking, it woulda taken me a tanker full of Murkan lager to get a buzz on. The only thing worse than the regular Murkan beers is any of their “Lite” varieties. Why not just drink wottuh?