07:54 – Science kit sales are going well. After five days, we’re already well ahead of last August at this time. Now it’s just a matter of building kits to keep finished goods in stock.
It’s not just Barbara who’s wearing down. I told her last night that I’m starting to feel the effects as well. Oh, well. Another six weeks of this and then I’ll be able to relax.
The offer on the new house is officially in, and we’re waiting to hear from the seller. We made a cash offer, which is a good thing from the seller’s point of view. We’ll keep our fingers crossed.
So the story finally hits the MSM, I believe this was in Gateway Pundit some months ago.
“More than 3,500 people detained in secretive Chicago Police warehouse where there have been only THREE official visits from lawyers in a decade”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3186767/More-3-500-people-detained-secretive-Chicago-police-warehouse-THREE-official-visits-lawyers-decade.html
When WILL it be time to start shooting?
nick
More info from the 3 nuts in NC.
Seems there were at least 2 informants:
“Ironically, the owner of the military surplus store where the men bought some of their supplies ultimately turned them in to authorities.”
“The documents indicated that Litteral told another person in a phone conversation: ”
and it looks like the ACTUAL crime was the straw purchase:
“Litteral also tried to purchase a firearm and ammunition for Barker. According to court records, Litteral filled out the required form with his own information, even though the gun was intended for Barker. ”
So, not the sharpest tools in the shed, with the history of their bad life choices literally written on their faces.
nick
Here’s a guy with some cajones:
A police officer is being investigated after a video emerged of him pulling a gun on a man recording him from a cellphone.
The footage shows a Rohnert Park public safety officer driving toward Don McComas and stopping outside his home as he is filming.
The officer looks like he jokingly starts to film him back before getting out of the police vehicle and telling McComas to take his hand out of his pocket.
It is amazing the cop didn’t just empty his magazine into him after actually pulling his weapon out. Is there any way this cop will not be fired? The guy is lucky to be alive.
Did you catch the part where the cop says “what are you some kind of constitutionalist crazy guy?”
That right there should have bought him a trip back to class, seeing that he swore an oath to uphold the Constitution, and ALL his powers devolve from it.
nick
“…and it looks like the ACTUAL crime was the straw purchase:”
Very similar to the entrapment case at Ruby Ridge years ago. A minor firearms violation is ginned up to generate a pile of other charges, but yeah, these guys were pretty stupid. One wonders just how stupid and to what extent gummint operators got them going.
That Chicago PD warehouse story has been around off and on for a LONG time, more than just a few months. I remember seeing something about it a couple of years ago. It’s like they have their own Gitmo there and can just let people rot inside. Are those people mostly criminal scumbags? Sure, but they don’t automatically lose all constitutional rights upon arrest. If it can be done to them, it can be done to any of us.
Spent 45 minutes around midnight last night with a Comcast tech on their “chat” window concerning the down time here lately; got two South Asian guys, naturally, but they were OK. The second guy apparently flushed and rebooted the router completely and that seemed to do the trick last night. This morning around 06:30 I was roused from sleep by what we used to call a steam shovel (what are they called now, I forget?) excavating a big hole on the corner of this street and the shore road, with a dump truck, a fire engine, and guys yakking away. I got up and then discovered the net and phone down again, but we also had a power hit, probably related to them guys out there. Now it all seems OK, at 11:00.
We shall see; dump run, VA group and then back here for lawn mowing, etc. Wife due back sometime this evening.
Yep, the crazy is strong on this blog. I wonder if this will ever make MSM since the *offender* is WHITE! No Trayvon, Obola’s Son, Ferguson, Freddie Gray here, move along citizen peon. I bet Fartinacan and his minions won’t be rising up for WHITEY!
Remember the heroes of the world Left, Che, of course, and Fidel? Here’s some shocking news:
“Sánchez details how Castro uses this wealth for his personal comfort, a state secret carefully hidden from the people he led until his recent official retirement. For the first time, Sánchez exposes the secret properties Castro owns, giving exact locations, using maps and Google satellite imagery. The leader who preaches the need to sacrifice for the revolution has, in addition to 20 homes throughout the island, a private island called Cayo Piedra, where he and his entourage would go each weekend in June and for the entire month of August. It was, writes Sánchez, a “millionaire’s paradise” where Castro kept his private yacht, Aquarama II, and had his own ecological underwater sanctuary.”
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/defender-fidel_1001523.html
Same old story; radical militant revolutionaries win victory, gain power, and become nabobs and potentates themselves, while various media sycophants worship at their feet and lie about them to the world.
Should the U.S. have opened regular diplomatic channels and recognized Cuba finally? A tossup; I would have said yes a while back, but now I don’t see how it’s gonna help ordinary peeps there. At least not much beyond getting some McDonald’s arches built and inundating them with junk manufactured by Red Chinese slave labor.
Back in the 60’s, I thought The Who was talking about liberals when they said we’ll be fighting in the streets with our children at our feet. What a difference 50 years makes.
I still think we’re a long way from things really going sideways. At least I hope so. I’m too old for this shit.
“I bet Fartinacan and his minions won’t be rising up for WHITEY!:
Hell, not even Whitey will be rising up for Whitey. Note the large number of violent riots and mayhem every time a white person is beaten or shot dead by the cops. What do we hear? Crickets.
Every incident polarizes things further. Right now, the vast majority of people don’t think it’s worth their time or effort to think about it, let alone to try to do something about it. But that’s slowly changing. Obama and Clinton are the best recruiters for the good guys that I can imagine.
More and more people are utterly disgusted by what they see going on. Eventually, it’ll reach critical mass, but I still think it’s going to be quite a while before that happens. When it does, look out.
Obummer and the Klintons have also been the best salespeople for the firearms industry in the history of that industry.
Critical mass? Could take a while, or it might happen when we get a “perfect storm” of polarizing events at some point.
Survivalblog.com has an interesting 2 part article up about preparedness while traveling.
I admit to learning some things. Also, I spent 15+ years traveling for business around 200 days a year, and I would have considered many of this guy’s preps to be extreme. Now I’m not so sure. Mailing a rifle to yourself seems a bit over the top, but I can see the logic.
http://survivalblog.com/getting-home-part-1-by-bf/
He lists what he carries and what he’d want.
http://survivalblog.com/getting-home-part-2-by-bf/
He lists what he was able to get for ~$100. I like that he used most of my techniques, with the exception that I’ve given up on Salvation Army stores. They are WAY overpriced and their stuff smells funny, so I don’t waste my time. Instead, I look at pawn shops. I don’t often score at the pawn, but when I do it makes all the looking worthwhile.
Their landing page has an interesting article about the reality of growing food for subsistence, including some hard numbers.
Worth a look.
nick
what we used to call a steam shovel
That’s still what I say. At least in the UK, the modern term is a “digger”. Dunno about the US.
Your tale of Comcast difficulties reminds me: My wife has started using an accounting application “in the cloud”. Which actually means: the application runs locally, but communicates with a server elsewhere, where the data is stored.
Our access to the server, for example, doing a data upload, is really slow, like, a factor of 50 slower than it ought to be. The support person on the company end tried an identical test from their computers, just to check. The support person happened to be the business owner (it’s a small shop), so I’m pretty sure he’s telling the truth here.
Otherwise, we have no internet problems. I monitored the bandwidth used during the test: it was tiny, a few dozen bytes per second. Our latency is around 20ms, which isn’t great, but isn’t bad. I’m kind of at a loss for what else to check.
When I was working highway construction during college summer breaks, we called the little ones excavators and the big ones power shovels. They were diesel/hydraulic. No steam.
Of course, we also called front-end loaders hi-lifts.
Am I crazy? In Lucifer’s Hammer there are a bunch of books that are sealed in zip bags and tossed into a septic tank and are later rescued. I want to reread Lucifer’s Hammer, not just because it’s good, but because I also want to add those titles to my Amazon wish list.
@bill, if you want a BIG list, check this out:
http://zerogov.com/?p=3846
There is some duplication across his buckets, but I’m assuming there is a reason (different focus, higher level instruction, etc)
I’ve started on this, but I’m substituting where I find it convenient. I buy mostly at estate sales. Since they are older and classic works, a lot of old guys had them in their libraries. If nothing else, it will give you the types of books….
This is good for a couple of days down the rabbit hole:
http://www.basiccarpentrytechniques.com/
I started downloading copies where I could find them. Most are not available in other formats though, and he hasn’t put them up in a way that makes them easy to grab.
nick
There are probably a ton of other “essential prepper library” lists too.
Added: these are “rebuild society after the fall” libraries.
mmmm …. flashlights ….
http://www.banggood.com/CREE-XPE-Q5-600-Lumen-7W-Zoomable-LED-Flashlight-1×14500-p-907006.html
$2.49 US
@nick
I wasn’t really think a bucket list of books, especially not twenty nine buckets worth, but if I decide to open a library, I’ll keep that in mind. I was thinking a half dozen to a dozen books to start.
Well, while waiting to either win or get outbid on one of my auctions, I did google “essential prepper library” and got 72k hits.
Just a quick scan of the first 10 hits, and OH LORDY what a crock.
Maybe it’s just my prejudices, but these are disqualifiers for me:
Any book with prep or prepper in the title.
Any book aimed specifically at “preppers”.
Any book with survival in the title (with VERY few exceptions. US .mil handbooks basically.)
Anything with a glossy full color “pop culture” appealing cover.
Anything written in the last 10 years (unless medical in nature)
On that score, the first couple of pages of results are weak at best. There are some gems in the lists, but if your 101 most essential has both adult and kid fiction sections with 20 books, I’m not gonna trust your judgement for the other 81.
nick
BTW, I overweight books from the steam age, early industrial age, anything put out by the Farm Bureau in the 40’s and 50’s or earlier, or anything that was written before lawyers and liability lawsuits became prevalent in US society. The exception is medical resources.
I recognize the value of fiction. I’ve started my kids with Swiss Family Robinson, and the Little House books. When she’s older, we’ll read “The Girl Who Owned a City”. I’ve posted before about what fiction I put on the “prepper library” bookshelf though. They tend to be Complete works volumes by accepted western masters, Andersen, Twain, Doyle, Grimm, etc.
@bill, what is your goal with the library? Goto references when the net is down and you don’t know how to do something?
nick
Essentials by category
Medical references-
-a drug reference, how to recognize and use existing meds
-first aid, kid and adult
-wilderness first aid
-modern conditions with limited access to help
-primitive conditions
Food
-gardening for your area, emphasis on maximizing results
-gardening for your area, emphasis on traditional techniques
-preparing food from ingredients, using older techniques/recipes
-outdoor cooking
-preserving food
Building
-camp sanitation/management, primitive living
-simple structures, esp farm or livestock related
-household repairs, electrical mechanical plumbing
General knowledge
-basic encyclopedia, possibly older extravagant set
-how things work books
-complete history type books
-household product production, how to make the stuff you buy now to use in your home
-great books of literature
-classic religious texts
-world atlas, or a really nice illustrated world map book
Others useful skills or references
-bushcraft
-camping
-foraging/wild edibles
-hunting/fishing
-butchery
-blacksmithing
-soapmaking
the lists can be extensive.
nick
Some of these can be found in one volume,
For example, a lot of the camp stuff, outdoor living, bushcraft, etc can be found in the Boy Scout Handbook, esp one from before the ’60’s. Just don’t use the First Aid section without a better reference.
For medical, grid up and grid down are different, so you need a couple of volumes like the where there is no doctor/dentist books, but also the grid up volume that RBT likes- which is for ship captains. Add a current Physicians Desk Reference, or AARP Guide to Prescription Medicine type book. If you are inclined that way, add a modern herbal medicine book. I can recommend the Pediatric First Aid For Caregivers And Teachers for grid up, and Outward Bound Wilderness First-Aid Handbook.
Any of the DIY books at your local Home Depot with titles like Everything you need to know about Electrical/plumbing/carpentry would be fine.
The “How to fix and Repair Anything” book about appliances would be good too.
The best thing about the DIY books, they are widely available used at thrift stores and estate sales.
You can fill in the cultural stuff with whatever strikes you…
nick
@nick
I was thinking of basic prepping skills to start. A book or two on first aid, one on gardening, maybe one on canning. Probably a book or books about guns or other self defense. Adding books on other subjects on an as needed basis.
I guess I’ll have to look out for an old Boy Scout Handbook.
lol lol lol!
The circus is starting. All the *loser* Redumblicans are pummeling Trump the Great ™ because they couldn’t get in on the debate, but TtG did. Even Bush called Trump an “asshole.” lol This is gonna be good!
mmmm …. flashlights ….
Specs are bogus. You cannot pull 5 amperes from a single AA cell. Internal resistance will severely limit that amount of current.
Still a good price and even it is crappy, a crappy light is leaps and bounds over no flashlight.
“Mac users have two new vulnerabilities to worry about”
https://www.petri.com/windows-10-privacy-concerns-are-overblown-but-perception-matters
Viruses suck no matter what the platform.
It seems a macteriophage joke should be possible in this context.
@bill,
For me, basic prepping skills are sort of my basic life skills taken one step further. It isn’t something I do separately, but something I do continuously just as part of my normal life. I EXTEND my normal life into prepping. Along the way, I learn some skills.
I try to use others experiences and learn from them, so I often post here about self defense situations from real life. I think there will be more need for self defense so I extend my knowledge in that area by studying other peoples incidents.
That’s why I got my CHL, and have taken shooting classes. I consider myself a normal gun owner, but I’ve extended that by getting training, and then practicing. I also made appropriate purchases, because I think shooting will be part of prepping.
In the area of food, I think food security will become increasingly important, and difficult. So my prepper skills in that area involved storing food, learning about gardening and practicing!. I extended my normal life (shopping, cooking, gardening) to include more long term storage foods, alternate means of cooking, and growing something besides peppers and tomatoes.
WRT shelter, and my home, I’ve extended into prepping by building water collection systems for the garden, adding physical security to doors, adding surveillance cams, collecting “dual use” items that would be handy to have, like a sandbox full of sand, and some concrete blocks, and a fountain made from a wash basin. The kids play in the sandbox, the concrete blocks hold up some things out back, the wash tub gets used until needed. Again, just EXTENDING my normal life in a particular way.
Same with outdoor skills. The family calls it ‘camping’. We will learn about tents, cooking on a colman stove, packing food, outdoor living, local biomes, etc. Along the way, the kids will learn about safe drinking water, knife use, foraging, ropes and knots, fishing, hiking, map use, etc.
I think that medical skills will be more hands on and less ‘go see someone’ and certainly less “call 911 and wait for the helicopters to arrive” so I have extended my knowledge and stores in that area. I took a CERT training program (free) that includes first aid, and disaster medical. I have reference books appropriate for my knowledge and ability, as well as some resources to be used by MORE qualified people if they are available. There are a couple of grid down doctors/medical pro’s sharing their knowledge online. I extended my family medical stores DRAMATICALLY. It takes a LOT of stuff to care for a major or even medium wound. I am trying to take an EMT-B certification class this fall. It really doesn’t cost much, but the time for traditional classroom instruction is hard on me.
I think communicating in a disaster or slow decline will be very different from now, whether thru attempts to censor the news, slant reporting, DENY access to reporting, failed infrastructure, or whatever, so I got my ham license and a radio and started learning about that. I listen to my shortwave every night so I can learn about how radio propagation works (range is different all the time.)
I think it might be a good idea to have friends in the emergency management, law enforcement community if the world goes to hell so I took my CERT classes and got my certificate. I’ll be doing a community policing training program this fall. Again, just extending my normal life.
So that’s how I choose to think of prepping, just as an extension to my life. That’s why I am vocal that people should LIVE their preps, use them, practice with them, and just make it lifestyle rather than a checklist of things.
nick
you could think of it as analogous to how a small business man might always be looking for a way to ‘write off’ his expenses. Eventually, most of what you actually spend ends up being business expenses. I try to find the prep in whatever I do….
in the area of food, I think food security will become increasingly important, and difficult.
So things are going to go back to normal for the human race. This utopia that we are living in is wasting away.
@bill,
IF you want a list of skills I think every prepper should have:
First Aid- basic to advanced, stop the bleeding, stabilize the injury, seek help
Cooking- with whatever is at hand, and however you can
self defense and gun use- includes situational awareness
basic repair of home auto bike and/or appliances and electronics -identify the problem, replace a part, normal maintenance.
ham radio license- general class, but tech is a good start
camping – make a fire, construct or find shelter, avoid getting eaten
land navigation (map reading)- get from a to b in anything short of wilderness environment
and critically,
the ability to improvise and adapt to the situation, and proceed toward a goal.
The last is hard for most, and takes practice. Fortunately you can get it in sports, or at work, or in other ways short of shtf.
Let me know what you think!
nick
@lynn, yup,
mean brutish and short – wasn’t that what the man said?
The poorest person in America has access to wealth that kings and potentates couldn’t get at any price just a few hundred years ago.
nick
Heck, my FATHER considered it a great treat to get fruit at Christmas, less than 80 years ago.
Net down when I left for VA group today, down again when I got back, and it’s been down longer than it’s been up since 4:30 PM so fah. Can’t do online courses, can’t use landline, can’t watch the GOP ass-hats get pantsed by The Donald. No knowing how long it’ll be up right now, either.
Next step is me swapping out with another router I have lying around here for laffs; then getting one of their techie drones out here to fiddle with stuff. This is unacceptable and the mystery is why it was fine since last fall and only screwing up in the past month to six weeks.
Why are we still hassling with unreliable net in 2015 in this country? I see data that several other countries are WAY faster than ours and much more reliable; we put guys on the moon and built nuke power plants but we can’t do decent net or run high-speed trains or win a frigging war anymore.
“…mean brutish and short – wasn’t that what the man said?”
“Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” Thomas Hobbes, author of “Leviathan” and “Behemoth,” and translator of Thucydides and Euclid, tutor for the young Charles II in exile. Few are aware, but it was his writing far more than Locke’s which influenced our Founding Fathers.
And he was referring to the former ‘state of nature,’ when the hand of every man is raised against every other man. Thankfully, since then, according to him, we have all-powerful, divine-right monarchs to rule and protect us, we who are totally obedient. When this fails, or when the god Democracy fails, we go back to the state of nature. Anyone noticing any manifestations of this in our Current Situation?
I put the ‘decent net’ on monopolies and regulatory shenanigans.
Trains? Well, I love trains, but with the Interstate Hwy Act, focus was directed elsewhere. And there must be monopoly and regulatory shenanigans or SOMEONE would have tried it in SOME market.
FWIW there isn’t a public transit light rail anywhere in the world that makes money, with the exception of a link to Macao thru a tunnel. Gambling pays for that one. *
nick
*this was true some years ago, I didn’t check, but I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t still be.
Macao? Chinese gambling island, think that’s the spelling.
In shocking news, everything is the fault of predominantly white, English-speaking, advanced nations.
Yeah, that’s the correct spelling; former Portuguese colony; the Reds weren’t gonna kill that golden goose. Or Hong Kong.
It was a huge mistake to kill the city trolleys and the trains. Happy Motoring ain’t gonna last forever, though it might seem that way this week. Also a big mistake to kill the canals. I hope to see all of that back before I finally check out, but I doubt it.
“In shocking news…”
Yup. If only white, English-speaking mofos had never existed at all….
[snip] but with the Interstate Hwy Act, focus was directed elsewhere. [snip]
Ike pushed that through at a time when the railroads were more or less at their weakest. Post WWII, the physical tracks were worn down, and all the rolling stock was exhausted (generalities, certainly, but bear with me). And there was no money for the capital re-investment, because of the extremely high tax rates necessitated by the war. Look at just how many railroad bankruptcies there were in the period 1945 – 1970, just as Uncle Sugar was building the competing system.
There it is. Plus the rise of the common man’s access to Happy Motoring Forever! Affordable cars for everyone! Drive all over hell anytime ya want! In privacy! And with the building out of the ‘burbs, ya gotta have a cah! Only losers take Greyhounds and trains; drive yer cah into the city!
Oh, and Ike & Co. also designing the interstate highway system so mil-spec aircraft, like B52s, could take off and land on them, in our new war against our former allies, the Soviets, while we were now allies and pals with our former enemies, the Japanese and the Germans.
And today at group I got to hear again how we can take tours to Vietnam and find “peace” and “healing.” Our new pals, the Vietcong and NVA and former cadres.
” so mil-spec aircraft, like B52s, could take off and land on them”
Once you know about the “x number of feet of straight and level for every y number of miles” thing it jumps out at you. Particularly in areas of the country that don’t have much straight and level….
nick
BTW, well over 100deg here today, in the shade. Misery.
I guess I’ll have to look out for an old Boy Scout Handbook.
Also get a copy of the Fieldbook. The previous editions apparently have more knots, construction techniques, etc. Various versions may be available as PDFs. I have the 1967 version I bought back then.
I-89 here in northern Nova Anglia (NH and VT) has some long straight flat sections and when it was built, residents were well aware of its purpose on those stretches. Other than that, most sections of I-89 here in VT are like a friggin’ roller coaster, between rock cliffs. One must have one’s wits about one, esp. at night and/or during “inclement” weather.
Over 100 in the shade down there? Yikes. No thanks. Hottest it ever gets here once in a blue moon is maybe 90. But then again, the winter chill factuh can go to 50 below. To each his own, I guess; I just note there are no venomous reptiles here, no scorpions, and not many peeps from tropical climes deciding to stick around for very long.
Speaking of which, they dump all over The Donald for his various comments, and all over La Coulter for hers, but the MSM won’t report chit like this:
http://humanevents.com/2015/08/05/donald-trump-still-right-about-mexican-rapists/?utm_source=coulterdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl
So let’s bring in more tens of millions and pat ourselves on the back and say they do it “out of love.” And call Trump an “asshole.”
He may well be; but so is everyone else running. Or worse.
I see data that several other countries are WAY faster than ours and much more reliable;
Most of those countries have much higher population density and are much smaller. I’d also bet that the net speeds for rural areas are much slower. Also, in many of those countries, the internet is run by the government and is subsidized by taxes.
All true. Nevertheless, I believe we have the financial and technical resources to have a much faster and much more reliable net infrastructure, and yes, that means extending it to the poor slobs who still live out in East FumBuck. Take a slice of cash off some other useless “project” or gummint agency/department and make it worthwhile for a private enterprise to get it done. Instead of, for instance, sending millions and billions to Red China or Egypt or our wunnerful allies, the Israelis.
The Saudis are toast, according to this article… 🙂
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/oilprices/11768136/Saudi-Arabia-may-go-broke-before-the-US-oil-industry-buckles.html
My dad wants to build himself a new home pc. Anybody got a recommendation list? I always like the newest Gigabyte UD5H motherboards and Intel CPUs. Intel SSD are awesome too.
@OFD – re: ‘net issues. You have cable, correct? If you have any splitters, pull the connection & blow on it. A little wet. Kind of like the NES cartridges. Re-connect. Restart your cable modem.
I got rid of most of my issues by running my cable directly to my cable modem with one splitter for the rest of the house. Got rid of almost all my troubles by dropping TV altogether and that last splitter. Now I need to do the Nintendo Blow maybe once/6 months.
Those components are all good. I’d say if it’s going to run Windows, then Windows 7 or Windows 10. Does your dad really need a new computer? For some time my mother wanted a new computer, and I didn’t build or buy her one. The most signifcant problem with her old computer was that it was full of malware that she installed. The second biggest problem was that it was an old Dell that my dad’s sister bought shortly before she wound up in a nursing home.
Build your own – maybe, but only if it’s because of the fun factor. Prices are so low on pre-built systems, even for some really good hardware. Whatever your do, don’t skimp on the SSD – it’s worth getting a big one.
@Brad
+1
Those components are all good. I’d say if it’s going to run Windows, then Windows 7 or Windows 10. Does your dad really need a new computer?
Knowing Dad, Windows 10. His present computer is just fine, he just likes new stuff all the time. Bleeding edge, he does not care. He is 76 and has 4 monitors, etc, etc, etc. He has probably bought ten million dollars of computers over the years. Several minis (Prime and Vax), a couple of plant historians so we could install our plant optimization software, many unix boxes, many PCs, etc.