07:44 – More science kit stuff today. I need to get everything lined up so that we’ll have what we need to build a bunch more subassemblies for kits this weekend.
Most of my time this week was devoted to working on science kit stuff, but here’s what I did to prep this week:
- I started researching gardening issues for the book, or more likely for volume two of the book. Interestingly, the seeds I already stock for science kits–lima beans, onions, and carrots–are all heirloom varieties that are suitable for a long-term food plan.
- I started compiling recipes to test, all of which use only shelf-stable ingredients. Barbara doesn’t believe I can cook, so this should be interesting.
- I spent a fair amount of time preparing for our move up to Jefferson/West Jefferson area in the Blue Ridge Mountains. I spent an hour on the phone yesterday with a real estate agent in West Jefferson, discussing what we’re looking for. She sent me dozens of listings to look at, and at some point soon we’ll make another day trip up there to look at homes.
So, what precisely did you do to prepare this week? Tell me about it in the comments.
Basic cookery really isn’t that difficult, but cooking food that people will enjoy is more difficult. I’m not sure I’d bother with recipes in a prepping book. I mean, why does it matter whether the flour came out of prepping supplies instead of fresh from the store? Your recipes won’t be much help to someone who can’t cook; someone who can cook won’t need your recipes.
I’d think the same thing about gardening. It makes sense to encourage people to have a stock of seeds, and tell them how to store seeds long-term. That’s not common knowledge. Telling them how to garden, on the other hand, is less useful. It’s too complex for just a few tips to cover. Those who can grow food well don’t need tips; those who kill plants just by looking at them aren’t going to be helped so easily.
@RBT, at one time you mentioned using an automated pipette. Are you still using it, and do you need tips? I have cases of various tips from an auction purchase, and would contribute them as a gesture of support. What style of tips (brand or equiv) do you need?
I could get them out of my storage and that would count as a prep for me 🙂
nick
Bought more cans of tuna and am organizing my piles of information on various topics, along with the associated gear a little better, i.e., radio, firearms, gardening, first aid, etc. And a Ruger 10-22 Target model is on the way, which, once I’ve done the recommended mods, will be used during my two-day course at Project Appleseed in the fall. It’s been kind of hectic and annoying couple of weeks here, so once again my time was devoured by locusts.
I’ll probably pick up some bulk bags of sugar, flour, cornmeal and more canned goods this weekend, when I finally get some breathing room; I’ve been doing recon in the various food stores to see what’s available and what we’ll both eat. Also been doing ongoing recon on the potential AO (area of operations) around here and ordered up a couple of custom maps from these guys:
http://www.mytopo.com/index.cfm
Keep in mind your own potential AO and if you aren’t doing it already, try to get better relationships going with your neighbors before it becomes a problem. I really need to get better at this myself and will be making social-type forays out into the local area and to organizations that I belong to but haven’t spent much time at yet. Like the American Legion post, the sportsmens’ club up the road, and our parish. I’m not a big social guy and I’ve had my own little issues along those lines since the wars, but I have to get off my ass and get going on it.
VA appointment again today WRT to the CPT caper, now about halfway through it; then I gotta pick up a couple of items at the cleaners, as I’ll be representing half the clans tomorrow night at our young cousin’s Army commissioning ceremony here:
https://www.cardcow.com/images/set428/card00150_fr.jpg
His mom was all enthusiastic a month ago when this was announced, but since then she’s gotten a job as a nurse at the same VA medical clinic I go to every week and has had her eyes opened just a bit by her veteran patients. Now, I’m told, she’s scared. So I will also be trying to help out in that regard, looks like, after my conversation with Mrs. OFD on the phone last night.
@brad
The issue is cooking/baking with *only* shelf-stable ingredients, which is not a common skill. I’m no great cook, but I can put together meals that taste good from scratch. And I have a lot of stuff to test with regard to using shelf-stable ingredients successfully.
@nick
I greatly appreciate the offer, but I’ll decline with thanks because I already have thousands of tips of different sizes in stock. Which reminds me that I need to order another couple cases of 96-well plates.
You’re doing a course at Project Appleseed? I thought that focused on teaching raw newbies the basics of firearms and shooting.
@RBT, I’ve got well plates too, hundreds. PCR quality and normal. Cryo and normal. 96well.
nick
“You’re doing a course at Project Appleseed?”
I’m working on a certification course to become, among a few other new roles, a firearms instructor, and I wanna look at their methodology. Besides, which, it’s been too many years since I had any training at all and there’s new stuff out now and I’ve probably developed some stupid habits I could get rid of. Also, my ancient mil-spec and cop jobs focused primarily on either machine guns or handguns, and I didn’t get the whole deal with the rifle that, say, the Marines still get during their training. (I have the Marine manual for that here and will be working my way through it up the road.)
So it will be a refresher for me, at nearly 62, and an old dawg will hopefully learn a few new tricks; I’ll probably also do their instructor boot camp for a week later in the fall. And I’ll consider more advanced stuff later, but for now I just wanna get my feet wet again, probably literally, depending on location and weather, which is all good.
@nick
Please email me at thompson at thehomescientist.com. I’d just as soon buy them from you as from my regular vendor. I assume they’re new/unused.
@OFD
Ah, makes sense. I used to shoot rifle quite a bit, mostly at 100 to 400 yds. but some at 1,000 yds. I’m not sure I could hit a barn nowadays.
“soon we’ll make another day trip up there to look at homes.”
I’d suggest a Friday night, Saturday night, and a Sunday morning visit. These are the party nights and ‘ wash your car while listening to thrash metal turned up to 11’ times.
We’ll do that, but Jefferson/West Jefferson aren’t party or thrash-metal kinds of places.
I remember back in 1980, when I was dating a girl who was a student at Clemson. On Saturday nights, the thing was to cruise The Strip in your pickup with the speakers blaring country/western music. So we went out and cruised The Strip in her Mercedes-Benz with the speakers blaring classical/baroque. I like to think we made a difference.
And then there was the time I shocked my friend David Silvis, who was a pianist and listened mostly to classical. I noticed the album sleeve when he put something on, and when I heard the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth, I remarked, “Ah. Beethoven’s symphony #5 in C minor, Opus 67. That’s one of my favorites.” He almost fainted because the only things he’d heard me listening to were The Rolling Stones, Dylan, etc.
@RBT, sent.
nick
I used to be a decent rifle shot. Not great, but decent. I’m still a good pistol shot, in semi-realistic street scenarios – quick reaction, quick decision, short range.
Until I’m healed up a bit more I won’t even waste the bullets sighting in my rifles. “Until” may be “never”. Various joints aren’t working right and don’t seem to be getting better (or rather, they do get better, but keep getting reinjured or overridden by other injuries), importantly including my buttstock shoulder, my opposite wrist, and my trigger finger. And I’ve regrown my eye, but it’s not right, and it was my dominant eye. I think that my days of hitting anything more than shotgun distance away are done. On the plus side, Son#2 has been wanting my .30-06 and occasionally reminds me that he’s waiting for me to die. I guess I could give it to him now. Or, you know, sell it. Out of spite.
Sell it to him at the maximum price. And then tweak something with the bolt so it doesn’t work, but make it so it doesn’t kick in until after you’re gone.
Depending on how yer crib is laid out, ya may wanna consider a pistol-grip 20-gauge; less recoil and easier to hoss around up and down stairs and around corners and doorways. And your handguns, should you own any, are also good for home and personal defense at close ranges.
In other nooz, from my WSJ feeds to the iPhone today:
“Hillary and Bill Clinton received more than $25 million from speeches since January 2014.”
That’s about $1.5 million per month. And that fugly pig has the gall to whine about how poor they were/are and what a terrible travail it’s all been. Meanwhile their successors rake it in and do expensive vacations while they’re still IN the WH. Criminal scum, the bunch, fit only for firing squad practice.
“Criminal scum, the bunch, fit only for firing squad practice.”
Assign SteveF to the firing squad detail. They’ll take hours to die… 🙂
Hillary and Bill Clinton received more than $25 million from speeches since January 2014.
Sir, do you realize how much it takes to maintain that face? I also read some Dep CIA Dir said the Rooskies hacked her private server. Now they know her secret yoga routines since that is all that was on there.
” Now they know her secret yoga routines since that is all that was on there.”
And also the recipes for cookies that she got from Tammy Wynette.
Thanks a lot for the image of her doing yoga routines.
What did I do to prep this week?:
Well, slow day at the estate sales, and no yard sales due to rain. Maybe I’ll get lucky today.
I did get 3 really good sleeping bags, for $3 each. They are grey goose down-filled, USA made, climbing/backpack style, and vintage. They were top of the line when new, and still in great shape. I also got a couple of good reference books, one on boatbuilding carpentry, and one on edible wild plants.
Sold some stuff to help clear out my shop (itself a prep) and provide needed cash.
Worked on refurbing my multi-band vertical HF antenna. Picked a spot for it, and got the last of the needed parts. Should have it up by next week.
Spent some time watching youtube videos of electronics repair. You can blunder your way thru troubleshooting and repair, and getting more skill in this area can’t hurt. It has saved me a ton of money and made me some too. Many things have very simple failures. Power supplies develop bad caps. Cold solder joints are surprisingly common. Transistors blow. Those are all naked eye visible problems once you know where to look.
My garden continues to grow, but SLOWLY. My lettuces are thumb high. I harvested the radishes (long and woody) and turnips (yummy, a little bit of heat.) Lime and lemon trees have set fruit, so I should have some if the pests leave it alone. Asparagus is up! That is one thing that is growing fast. Topped up the rainwater tank with all this rain. Still need to get the 2 new 55gal drums set up.
As an aside, to grow enough to actually feed your family, and not just supplement, will take a LOT of room. I’m trying to be stealthy and balance the needs of the family for a yard, with desire for a garden. I’ve got 3 raised beds, and some “window boxes” on stands and on the fence. My total crop of turnips supplied one meal! I’m expecting maybe 10 meals from carrots. If all the brussel sprouts grow, then another 2 dozen meals. We’ll eat the leaves too (like collards) for a few more meals, and there are onions and zucchini, tomatoes and peppers, but that doesn’t equal full bellies! Watching the Alaska homestead show, they were hoping to put up 100 pounds of veg for each person IIRC. That is a big garden! I’m getting the feeling that most preppers are SERIOUSLY underestimating their need for seed, additives, and effort for a long term truck garden. Stored food to get you thru the immediate problem, and waiting for your first crop to grow, but after that first year, you better have a plan B….
nick
“Thanks a lot for the image of her doing yoga routines.:
I heard she did yoga with Janet Reno.
In the nude.
(Just thought you’d want to know that…)
Oh, that’s right, I’d forgotten you had the videos. Have you converted them to DVD yet?
When I was leaving the US with them in 2003 they were confiscated by Customs. By the size of the bulge in the agent’s pants I guess he was a Hillary and/or Reno fan… 🙂
Wait. You mean that 1-pound can of heirloom seeds from Augason Farms that claims a yield of 2,600 pounds is lying?
I’m kidding, incidentally, although I do have one of those AF cans of heirloom seeds. In reality, I’m storing 20 to 100 times the quantities they include in that can, and of at least 10 times as many species. If they include 2 oz. of one, for example, I’ll be storing 10 pounds, and if they include a gram I store an ounce or two.
When I was a kid our family garden was a good fraction of an acre, tilled with a gasoline-powered rototiller, watered with a bazillion gallons of city water, and canned with lots of heat from a natural gas stove. There were hundreds of 1-quart jars in the basement. All that was merely a supplement to the food bought from the grocery store.
Feed four to eight people from your garden, when the gasoline has run out? Good luck with that.
Which is the reason I don’t stop after one year of stored food. Barbara would freak if I mentioned it to her, but my real goal is 10 to 15 years’ worth of dry staples per person at 1,000,000 calories per person-year (2700+ calories/day, with sufficient protein, fats, etc.). Wheat, flour, sugar, salt, beans, etc. etc. The first two years will include “luxury” foods like canned meats, cheeses, etc. etc. to allow us to maintain a normal diet. After that, it would be iron rations supplemented by garden produce and so on.
My first priority is to make sure we can drink, no matter what. Second is that we can eat, no matter what. Third has many components, including medical, power, defense, etc.
“Feed four to eight people from your garden, when the gasoline has run out? Good luck with that.”
Yet it was done routinely before fossil energy became so cheap and plentiful. In this country, too. Very labor-intensive, though, and kinda rough on folks in my age bracket after a while.
“…my real goal is 10 to 15 years’ worth of dry staples per person at 1,000,000 calories per person-year (2700+ calories/day, with sufficient protein, fats, etc.)”
Storage space for all that?
Assuming we use mostly #10 cans from the LDS home storage center for dry staples, we can fit two person-years worth in a space about 2X4X8 feet. Call it 32 cubic feet per person year, so 20 person-years of iron rations fits in about 640 cubic feet. Call it a space about 8 x 10 feet and 8 feet high. Weight-wise, it’s about 15 tons, depending on actual items stored, and cost-wise it’s currently less than $9,000. Much less, if you pack your own instead of buying #10 cans from the LDS HSC. Of course, we’ll be spending much more than that because I want to store a lot of things other than dry staples and vegetable oil.
When I was leaving the US with them in 2003 they were confiscated by Customs.
I would have thought you would have lost them in a shallow river.
Fixing to fly to Germany in less than a month. I wonder what TSA will steal out of our luggage on this trip. Every trip something has come up missing. Valuable stuff I keep with me. TSA seems to like stealing hand lotion, which must be packed in checked luggage because it is more than 3 ounces.
” Call it a space about 8 x 10 feet and 8 feet high. Weight-wise, it’s about 15 tons, depending on actual items stored…”
So, we could probably fit that in our basement currently, but it would pretty much take up most of the space, in between the oil burner, hot water heater, oil tank and freezer. Some of the lighter stuff we could store in the attic, I guess and out in the studio/shed.
” TSA seems to like stealing hand lotion…”
Probably a necessity for the agents who are confiscating videos of a nude Field Marshal Rodham cavorting in yoga postures with a nude Hauptsturmfuhrer Janet Reno.
Sure. With plenty of horses and mules and maybe even oxen.
The US has upwards of 300 million humans. The US has upwards of 3 million equines. (ref http://www.americanequestrian.com/pdf/us-equine-demographics.pdf) Even assuming that every one of them critters is ready to pull a plow and wouldn’t die of heart failure because it’s a pampered show horse or a broken down nag, and even assuming they aren’t eaten in the first wave of hunger, I don’t think they’re going to pull enough plows and threshers to feed the population. Oh, sure, it wouldn’t take too many weeks to lash up a steam engine tractor to pull some plows, or rig an internal combustion engine to use alcohol, or get the biodiesel plants running at max. It won’t be enough, not unless we have a massive die-off first. I’m in favor of such a thing, of course, but I want a targeted die-off, letting the idiots and the scumbags die.
Here’s a video on how to turn a Raspberry Pi intro a streaming media server. Â For you Pi Guys, Mr. OFD.
“…not unless we have a massive die-off first. I’m in favor of such a thing, of course, but I want a targeted die-off, letting the idiots and the scumbags die.”
Unfortunately or not, that is what it would take, and most of the projected 80% die-off is gonna occur in the giant metropoles on both coasts and the handful in the Midwest, South and West. So mostly idiots and scumbags, to be sure, but the One Percent and their minions will probably survive alright. Which is the main point. The remaining serfs will be used for grunt labor and grunt combat.
“…For you Pi Guys, Mr. OFD.”
Thanks. I’ve seen a bunch of possible PI projects; I’ve already got cable, Roku, and streaming from PlayOn and the Windows machine, and we hardly ever watch anything anyway here. So for my PI projects thus far I’ve got a secure mail server, and I’m working on a SDI radio with a little touchscreen, and next up is a supercomputer PI cluster like Mr. medium wave has going.
It’s fun stuff for me, in between the to-do list, VA appointments, job searches, online training, etc., etc.
Just got back a little while ago from the young cousin’s commissioning ceremony; he’s now a second looey in the Army and headed in September for Fort Lee, VA, Transportation Command. Bunch of lifer NCOs sitting in front of me with multiple hash marks down their sleeves, and also a bunch of retired officers from various branches. All, so far as I know, were in the wars AFTER mine.
The youngsters liked me, but the old lifer farts gave me a fairly wide berth; seeing the ‘Nam decorations and long ponytail and beard. Plus I towered over them. Probably kinda nightmarish for them; we seem to have a rep, oddly, as very embittered, angry and nasty sons of bitches. Oh well.
Gee, think the draft might have had anything to do with that? The only good I see out of American involvement in Vietnam is the effective ending of the draft. Oh, sure, some argue that the conflict bled the USSR white and led to their demise, but I’m not sure I buy it. For one thing, while Russia may no longer be officially Communist, the totalitarian nationalists still seem to be in charge. The labels changed but the players are the same.
I’m utterly opposed to a system which has even the possibility of slave soldiers, but I think I’ll carve out an exception: The US should set up a special draft system for the descendants of national leaders. Every military-age descendant of the prez, congressmen, supreme court justices, Secretary of This-n-that, and department head will be enlisted, trained up, and sent to war. If the national leader doesn’t have military-age descendants, send his siblings or nieces. No exceptions. No deferments for any reason. I figure, if Afghanistan is important enough to American interests to send American soldiers to die, then it’s important enough to send the family of the leadership.
Yup, I agree with that.
I’d also make the actual political leadership pull tours in the VA hospitals here and be on hand to greet and take charge of returning caskets and attend the funerals.
In all my mil-spec time and overseas tours, I did not run into even one rich kid. I understand that Vinegar John was over there in the brown-water Navy capers and transported spec ops personnel all over hell, but that’s the only case I know of; he is actually a distant relative, believe it or not; comes from his Forbes middle name. That family owns most of the Elizabeth Islands off the southern Cape Cod elbow.
That would be the same John Kerry who got “injured” three times in four months and went home to Nursie, right? And who managed to get silver and bronze stars (with V, yet) for walking into ambushes? I’m obviously a bit young to have been there, but I know a few vets who say they’d have been embarrassed to put in for Purple Hearts for scratches or bruises, and if they had done so their sergeants would have smacked them. As for the silver and bronze stars, there seems to be too much (deliberate) noise around the issue for me to figure out if he deserved them. My opinion is that he didn’t but that’s based on the smell of the situations more than anything I can point to.
It’s all bogus; I don’t even care anymore. A lot of officers awarded themselves and each other all kinds of decorations and there are plenty of guys who have them and don’t deserve them and plenty of other guys who never got what they deserved. Case in point: they’re still awarding stuff to WWII vets in their 90s who should have got them back then. And there are names on the Wall of guys still alive and names not on that Wall who should be.
Sorta like all the pro sports and Olympic records and medals over the past half-century; who knows what’s real and what’s not anymore. Why even bother caring?
As for Kerry, he’s been a political hack and rich kid since he was born and like Algore, his military record is full of questions, mysteries, and bullshit that will probably never be sorted out, since those guys have the power to change anything they want or make it disappear. And I’m waiting for the “stolen valor” crowd to hunt down all those officers who are walking around with Purple Hearts and Silver Stars, etc., who got them while cutting themselves shaving and being within 100 clicks of some action somewhere.
I remember my late friend Al Brower telling me about an incident he’d witnessed during the Battle of the Bulge. He and his squad were on their way forward, but had stopped at some rear depot or other (to the extent that there was any front and rear during the BotB). The depot came under heavy German artillery fire, and everyone dove for the nearest hole or bunker. One guy, not from the squad he led, couldn’t take the bombardment. He broke and ran. He ran to a parked truck and drove it off, just to get the hell away from being shelled. Al found out later that an officer witnessed this action, and nominated the guy for (IIRC) a Silver Star for heroism under fire. Apparently, whatever was in the truck was extremely valuable to the war effort, and the officer thought the guy had abandoned his hole despite the risk to save what was in the truck by driving it out of the area being shelled.
Now that one’s actually pretty funny, except that the guy who got the SS should have explained himself and taken the heat rather than, for example, having all the other guys know the truth for the rest of all their lives.
Here’s another funny one: a pal of my next-younger brother’s and mine, and drinking buddy back in the day, had been with the Marines on the rooftop of the U.S. embassy in Saigon when they were all bailing out. He was killed in a stupid car accident in Brookline, MA a few years after he got back and was buried in the big cemetery in Needham, MA out by those radio towers and Route 128, “America’s Technology Highway.” Anyway, somebody screwed up and listed him as a colonel on the headstone instead of the sergeant he’d been; his family said fuck it and left it like that. Dunno if it was ever changed; I’ll have to ask my bro.
Sorta like all the pro sports and Olympic records and medals…
Let’s not forget Hollyweird blowjob awards every couple of months, with the Oscars as the BJ Klinton capstone award.
Indeed, sir.
Add to that the Pulitzer, and Nobel prizes for b.s. stuff like literature, which almost always goes to some commie or wack job. Or some commie wack job. As the late Ezra Pound said, “Literature is news that stays news.” No prize is gonna determine whether or not a work of writing survives more than a few decades. In the much-hated and reviled Western canon, it’s pretty much dead white males, sadly, haha, or as the late Aussie critic Robert Hughes called them, “the pale grey penis people.”
So this means the lineup of hated white male scum like Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Aristotle, Plato…see where I’m going with this so far? “all them Greek homos…” So saith the Reverend Al Sharpless.
Then we have the Romans, Virgil, Ovid, Juvenal, Horace, et. al., followed by mostly more Europeans and Angles, Saxons and Celts, with a few Gauls and Teutons thrown in, maybe a couple of Italians and then a slew of Russians.
Hollyweird awards? They haven’t produced anything worth any kind of award in many decades now. It’s been mostly utter rubbish. I remember as a kid going to see “The Man Who Would Be King,” “Lawrence of Arabia,” “Doctor Zhivago,” etc., and there is nothing like that now. I still watch each of those every year.