08:48 – We had a tough time with Colin yesterday and overnight. He had the squirties. Fortunately, he goes to the hall bathroom when he can’t hold it, and the floor there is ceramic tile. After several indoor accidents yesterday, we thought he was past it when we went to bed. Not so. He woke me up about midnight and had had an accident. I took him out then, and then again two or three times more. At 4:30 he was throwing up and had rushed to the front door, so I let him out loose. He sniffed around the front yard and finally squatted, but then instead of coming in when I called him he trotted down the street, hung a left down our neighbors’ driveway, and disappeared. We ended up driving around the neighborhood until we found him. We were not amused.
Barbara leaves Sunday with her friend Bonnie. They’re headed up to Brasstown, in the mountains in the far southwestern corner of North Carolina for a craft workshop. They’ll return sometime Friday afternoon or evening.
While they’re gone, I’ll be cooking for myself, using only long-term storage food. There are several recipes and methods I want to try, and this is a good opportunity. Some of the recipes I want to try are real recipes, but I also want to try some ad hoc fast meals like combining rice with a can of Bush’s Best Baked Beans. Barbara would gag just at the idea of that one, although she likes both ingredients separately. I want to see how they go together. I figure that if it turns out inedible I’m out only a cup of rice and a can of beans; if it turns out decent, I’ll know one way to make a quick, cheap, nutritious, appetizing meal in an emergency. I also want to try (re-try) methods like slow-cooking noodles or rice in a Thermos bottle. I’ve done that before and it works fine, but I haven’t done it for more than 30 years.
Most of my time this week was devoted to working on science kit stuff, as usual in August, but here’s what I did to prep this week:
- I bought a couple packs of these hotel/institutional washcloths. They’re cheap and handy to have around. I wrote about them in the book in the Sanitation chapter, both for bathing and as the best imperfect substitute if you run out of toilet paper or tampons. The idea of using them as a re-usable toilet paper substitute is pretty gross, but it’s much better than using a handful of leaves or doing without. And with only a couple of five-gallon pails, some chlorine bleach or HTH pool chlorination granules, some hand sanitizer, and some rubber gloves it’s perfectly sanitary. Women need sets of three to six; one for bathing, one for micturation, one for defecation, and possibly additional ones if they’re of menstrual age. Men need sets of two; one for bathing and one for defecation. And even if push never comes to shove, they’re handy to have around if only as cleaning rags or paper-towel substitutes.
- I ordered a Coleman Portable Camp Oven. This can be used on a standard Coleman camp stove, but it can also be used on a propane barbecue grill, a charcoal hibachi, or even a wood fire. For $28, it’s worth having available.
- I ordered 1,000 each of Crossman Destroyer .177 pellets and RWS Diabolo .177 pellets. At a penny to 1.5 cents each, they’re a cheap way to practice. I don’t think Barbara has ever fired a serious pellet gun. It’ll be a lot closer to shooting a .22 rimfire than she expects, and I think she’ll have fun doing it. Back when I was about 12, I used to take my pellet rifle to the dump to shoot rats. It worked very well on them.
- I read the first book in Joe Nobody’s Holding Their Own series, A Story of Survival. Like most other so-called authors in the PA genre, he’s a horrible writer. The first volume was barely readable, full of typos, misused words, bad grammar, poor plotting, cardboard characters, and stupid dialog. Adding injury to insult, the price of these books is outrageous. There are almost a dozen in the series, and most of them are priced at $9 or $10 for the Kindle. Like Tate’s books, I suspect a lot of people just torrent them. This style of PA novel seems to be a new trend, unfortunately. Write what amounts to one very long prepping novel, hack it into 10 or so pieces without much regard for continuity, and then sell those chunks at $10 a pop. It’s insulting to readers.
- I ordered ten 18.8-ounce cans of Campbell’s Hearty Cheeseburger Chunky Soup and a dozen 18.8-ounce cans each of Campbell’s Beef with Country Vegetable Chunky Soup and Campbell’s Chunky Grilled Chicken and Sausage Gumbo. There’s not much nutrition in each can, 200 to 400 calories or so, but one can mixed into a large pot of rice produces an easy, quick, nutritious, and reasonable tasty meal. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t order from Prime Pantry. They started out with reasonable prices, but now they’re far more expensive on most items than Costco or Walmart, and they charge $6/box shipping in addition to the higher prices for the products themselves. But I had three $5 credits for choosing no-rush shipping, so I decided to find what I could that was reasonably priced and see if they’d apply all three $5 credits to one order. They applied two, so I’m not sure what’s going on.
- I started on a revamp of my long-term food storage inventory spreadsheet, adding nutrition/container and total nutrition columns for net weight, calories, carbohydrates, protein, and fat. That’ll give me a much better handle on what we actually have available. I also institute a formal checkout sheet method for recording transfers from our long-term pantry downstairs to our upstairs kitchen pantry.
So, what precisely did you do to prepare this week? Tell me about it in the comments.
This is why we need you to finish your prepping book. At no time did washcloths enter my mind or get onto any of my preparedness lists. I should pay attention to things I use everyday and take for granted.
My prepping activities did not involve buying anything this week, Instead I organized and put things in specific places. I want to know exactly where things are in an emergency.
I also wired one outlet in my living room/dining room area to be on the inverter (fed by batteries and 4 100W panels) so I have easy access to solar power on the main living floor. It has a lamp plugged in it so I can always turn on a light if the power goes out without any extra work.
Still getting over the upper respiratory cr@p that hit me. Starting to feel almost normal, but I didn’t have a very productive week.
I spent some time (detailed in another comment) looking at packet radio for hams. I previously bought a TNC (the modem part for packet) at an estate sale, and although it is a couple decades old, it’s still in use and sells well on ebay. This is an example of ‘buy it when you see it.’ Even if you budget is tight, you should try to have some ‘just in case’ money to take advantage of opportunities. You never know when you’ll see something you need. Oh, and why packet? Well it uses error correction, is text based, and will often go thru when conditions are bad. You can use it on VHF or HF. There are many schemes and different methods, so I’m gonna try what I can with what I’ve got. If I find it useful, maybe I’ll spend some money on a modern TNC.
Which is another hint. If you are doing your research, wide ranging and fairly loose and informal, you will have a better chance of recognizing something when you see it. I like to be skimming thru recommendations and gear so I kind of build a mental box for the info. Later, when I study it in more depth, the spot for it in my brain is already there, and it seems easier to file it away. (I’ve picked up most of my ham gear this way, getting the gear long before I was ready to use it.)
I commented before that my wife let me know to stop buying some flavors of ‘short term’ storage food. In extremis, we’ll be happy to have anything, but why not stock stuff we like and will eat normally? Eat what you store, store what you eat, right? Not always possible, but worth trying. With that in mind, I tried some of the Dinty Moore shelf stable entree’s. Definitely would NOT eat some of them by preference, but again, will eat them if hungry, and they fit nicely into my strategy.
Speaking of radio, I got a Kenwood handheld UHF commercial radio at an auction very cheaply. Normally, I recommend against buying commercial or public service radios to convert to ham use. If you really want one, buy one online that has already been done. They are typically very difficult to program. I made this mistake early and still have some of the radios I bought sitting in a box. That said, unlike Motorola, the Kenwood software is readily available. I ordered a charger, and I have an appropriate cable already, so I’m going to give it a try with this radio. Of course, I’ll be careful to only program channels with ham freqs.
I washed a down sleeping bag. It worked well. I used Nikwax Down Wash. Takes a long time to dry on low. Adding 4 tennis balls to the dryer got it nice and fluffy.
I’ll be headed out to some sales today, so that will be the bulk of my prepping.
A couple of things occurred to me.
If you are prepping for a serious collapse, how many scientific calculators have you stored? (Picked up another for $1, which prompted the thought.) Any of them run on sunlight? The TI 8(x) series of graphing calculators are used in grade schools and are WIDELY available at yard and garage sales, but they eat batteries like a fat man at a buffet. Might be worth having one, in addition to regular scientific calc, which seem to last years on a button cell.
I’ve got a couple of slide rules, a book on how to use them, and a couple of books of log tables. Also the classic ‘Teach Yourself Calculus” and other math books from the 40’s 50’s and 60’s. They don’t take up that much room, and are cheap insurance. (This was stuck into my head a long time ago reading Jerry Pournelle’s Janissary’s series.) I guess it all depends on what you are prepping for and what your time horizon is.
I got signed up for a class on policing, offered by our local constables. It is free, and covers a lot. It is actually longer overall than the CERT classes and more focused. I’m looking forward to it. No matter what your feelings, when things get sporty, having some acquaintances on the other side of the blue line is sure to come in handy. And the training should be interesting!
I commented some time ago, that NOW is the time to start stacking up any training or licensing you can to get yourself as many privileges and/or official IDs as possible. Take a CERT class, do whatever community/ police liaison program is available to you, get ham license, get Red Cross first aid or EMT-B, locksmithing, gunsmithing, clergy, press, NRA instructor cert, RO cert, security guard, personal protective officer, and whatever else you can think of. (MOST of these will get you actual legal perks, like having a mobile scanner in your car w/ ham license, or carrying certain tools as a locksmith, OR they will make you known -in a good way- to the other side of the blue line.) They are all useful skills too. Mix and match, pick what interests you.
nick
Finally, you can watch porn with the volume turned up. 🙂
More of obammma’s sons and daughters:
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/08/how-awful-milwaukee-gang-beats-woman-with-stick-then-runs-over-63-yr-old-woman-in-car-video/
Standing in front yard, gets a beating.
Walking down street with cane, attempted murder.
CARRY, EVERYWHERE, ALL THE TIME
nick
and move away from the thugs
Or, maybe…if it’s getting to that point…do what the cops do down in Brazil…sweep the right ‘hoods and wipe ’em out. Throwing trillions at them and kissing their asses doesn’t seem to have worked very well over the past few decades…just sayin’…..
Or, keep the current situation going….i.e., seething inner cities sorta walled off from the rest of “polite” (and dumb and lazy) society and accept the increasing numbers of atrocities. As the revenants start to sally forth from those inner-city cauldrons and out to the ‘burbs….
“Finally, you can watch porn with the volume turned up. :)”
Heartland isn’t porn. I have seasons 7 and 8 to get through before I start season 1 again. Each season is about 13.5 hours run time, so I should be able to get through both those seasons before Barbara gets back, assuming seven episodes per night.
One thing I don’t think I’ve ever seen in prepping blogs or books is clothing. I keep towels lots of socks, an extra pair of shoes and jeans, several T-Shirts, heavy button-down shirt, a sweater and a hooded jacket in my bug-out trunk. If I HAVE to leave home, likely considering my proximity to the worse parts of Memphis, we will throw much of our closet into rubbish bags as we retreat. It’s great to have food, water, guns, and ammo but you need a variety of clothing (and gloves) too.
“I keep towels lots of socks, an extra pair of shoes and jeans, several T-Shirts, heavy button-down shirt, a sweater and a hooded jacket in my bug-out trunk.”
Good deal; don’t forget the underwear and some means of keeping it all reasonably clean, too.
“…my proximity to the worse parts of Memphis…”
Yikes.
Our proximity here to ‘undesirable elements’ is by orders of magnitude smaller, generally Caucasian underclass types here in town and three miles up the road in the “city.” I doubt they could organize disciplined fire teams but many of them have been, or are currently, hunters, and have some familiarity with firearms.
As others have pointed out, we could conceivably have to bail from our house in the event of some rail, pipeline or interstate disaster, but the odds seem to be with us thus fah. More likely that future political fallout could get us thrown out by State forces for some, or no, reason, as they tighten up ‘law and order’ and ‘national security’ repression and continue to employ legions of bureaucrats and snitches.
Police in my hometown killed a carjacking teenage thug earlier this week. I wonder if my hometown will go full Ferguson over this. My guess is not, because the black victim is saying that it’s a shame the little thug is dead, but that police did nothing wrong. Anything can happen though, because the dead thug’s father doesn’t believe the police account.
http://www.indystar.com/story/news/crime/2015/08/10/carjacking-suspect-dead-officer-involved-shooting/31398827/
@harold, thanks that reminded me of something I was thinking about earlier this week.
SAFETY GEAR! You need it!
It is a given that access to emergency care is going to be limited in ANY disaster, and get real primitive in anything major or long term. (For example, in CERT training you do a module on disaster medicine, focusing on triage. Airway- is the vic breathing? No- try chin lift, worked? No- try again. Worked? No- move to next victim.
THAT’S IT. No CPR, nothing else. Because CPR takes 2 or more people ‘out of the fight’ and once started, you can’t stop until higher medical authority says so. (Even if SHTF there will be lawyers eventually.) After all, the training is for a DISASTER. Disaster = very limited resources.
Soooooooo, protecting yourself is even more important than during normal times.
You need to stockpile PPEs — personal protective equipment.
Gloves- all different kinds for different threats.
Eyewear- I’ve spent most of my adult life wearing safety glasses at work. If they fog or are uncomfortable, try different styles until you can find some that work. STOCKPILE THEM. Treat them carefully, but they are an expendable item. Get the same style in tinted too. northernsafety.com has a VERY wide selection. So does Uline.com Don’t cheap out on pairs you won’t wear. There won’t be any eye care available for a long time if SHTF and basically none afterward. Even if you wouldn’t normally wear safety glasses, wear them while working during and after the event. Get some for your kids.
Ear plugs- buy a box of 3M foam ones, corded and with a smooth finish. They can be used multiple times, and a box per person is a lifetime supply (probably.) Add a pair of the reusable style as backup. You will need your hearing!
Chain saw PPEs- get a set of chaps and a face shield. I know, you don’t wear them now. Well now there are emergency rooms and microsurgery. Not so much later.
AED- if you think you or a family member might have heart trouble, get one if you can afford it. For everything less than a collapse, if they can get to you they will for a heart attack, you are top of the list, but it will take a long time. This will try to keep you alive until then. Post-collapse, you might want to think this thru and discuss something like an advance directive. Not gonna be much stroke care or expensive heart drugs…
Dust mask/respirator- N95 dust masks for cleanup, as well as medical uses. 3m makes good ones. NOT ‘particle’ masks. They are useless. The ‘soft’ ones with charcoal inserts might be useful for cleanup if there are a lot of bad odors, but I haven’t tried them.
Full or half face respirator with dust prefilters and acid/organic vapors cartridges. If half face, get some chemical goggles to go with them. Full face are good for so many things, but are expensive. Look for them at yard and garage sales as people often bring them home from work. Note that there are potential issues with half and full face respirators if you have breathing or lung issues. In industry you have to have a lung function test, and training on how to put them on. In reality, if you have a good seal you can’t smell ANYTHING outside the mask. If you lungs hurt, or you feel like you can’t get enough air- take it off. PRACTICE.
Surgical masks. I find surgical masks, dust masks, and ear plugs at our local Habitat for Humanity reStore on a regular basis, but they can be ordered from catalogs too. northernsafety.com has a wide selection of all these items.
Protective clothing- tyvek or tychem overclothes, booties, head covers. Google ebola and see what I mean. Most likely, you will want something like that for certain really unpleasant clean up tasks if things go pear shaped. Do you really want contact with someone’s body fluids in a world without hot water, bleach, and antibiotics?
Disposable raingear- google ebola
Rubber boots
Steel toe boots- you do NOT want to have a mishap with an ax post SHTF. REALLY.
Most of this stuff is cheap. You don’t need tons of it, and it doesn’t take up much room. Most of it is very useful everyday too. Put the raingear in your vehicle. Use the tyvek when painting the house, earplugs when shooting, safety glasses all the time. Even steel toes are only about $30 if you aren’t gonna wear them every day.
nick
I would like an AED, but other than that, I’ve got the list. Most of it is either stored with my bulk medical, or in with my painting supplies. I only have one full face respirator, but I have a couple halfs. Also, halfs are available in a disposable style in several different sizes. They are reusable if you reseal them in an airtight bag for storage. If I forgot something, add it!
“Every Seven Seconds”
http://xkcd.com/1564/
No freaking way. Maybe every seven minutes.
Bob, a can of Bush’s baked beans, some rice, and some ground beef browned with onions makes a mighty tasty meal– a sort of ghetto shepherd’s pie. Give it a try.
My prepping activity: I bought a Romertopf clay oven dish. Soak in water for 15-30 minutes, then heat in the oven, over a fire, or whatever other heat source you have and it will turn out easy single-dish meals: throw some protein, some veggies, and your choice of stock in it and you’re pretty much done. Last night’s dinner was a pork roast with chocolate stout as a base.
“pork roast with chocolate stout as a base.”
For some reason, I read that as ‘chocolate SNOUT’ and I was wondering what that was, and if I should try some!
nick
“The #1 reason why Donald Trump is the chimpanzee America needs”
http://www.sovereignman.com/podcast/the-1-reason-why-donald-trump-is-the-chimpanzee-america-needs-17355/
Trump! Trump! Trump!
Re: clothing
Yes, I’m covering that in the book. One of the more subtle aspects is that during even routine outages that prevent you from doing laundry, most people will run out of clean clothes pretty quickly, especially if they’re working outside to clear downed trees, tarp roofs, etc.
Most people have enough clean underwear and socks to last them a week or a bit longer, because they do laundry weekly. If the emergency hits on laundry day or the day before, they’re screwed. That’s why I have maybe three dozen sets of underpants and socks, a couple dozen pairs each of jeans and sweatpants, t-shirts, sweatshirts, etc. etc.
Some other things most people are short of are robust plastic bins (capturing water, doing laundry, etc.), plastic sheeting/tarps, and duct tape. And a couple of dozen other things I could name off the top of my head.
I thought men thought about sex every five seconds, which always seemed a reasonable estimate to me. Of course, it varies according to what we’re doing. When I’m working heads-down writing, it might be only every 30 seconds.
@paul robichaux
Sounds good. I’ll give it a try while Barbara is away.
Daughter refers to that type of meal as “pantry surprise.” BTW, I do not recommend instant pistachio pudding mixed with left over rice for breakfast.
“…a can of Bush’s baked beans, some rice, and some ground beef browned with onions makes a mighty tasty meal…”
Throw in some garlic, tomato or chili sauce, and a healthy splash of Frank’s Hot Sauce and Bob’s yer uncle!
Sunny with blue skies and big puffy cumulus clouds over this huge lake watershed and valley farmland; off to follow-up eye surgery appointment and then back here for garden stuff and high-tech gizmos, maybe fool around with some other mods while I’m at it.
Finished Season Two of “Penny Dreadful,” basically a ‘grand guignol’ supernatural version of yet another descendant of “Titus Andronicus” and other Elizabethan and Jacobean horrors, set in late-Victorian London with a former James Bond as the main protagonist.
Now on Season Three of “Hell on Wheels.”
I am rewatching “The Walking Dead” from scratch and amazed at how many of the walkers are wearing personal protective gear (face-shields, chest protectors, heavy gloves, helmets, etc). The deep thoughts that the producers have given to this series is simply amazing. The survivors are about a calendar year in now and the day to day struggle to survive is amazing. I suspect that if you are in a major city with a fast moving virus then you are dead.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Walking_Dead_%28TV_series%29
There is a spinoff coming on August 23, “Fear the Walking Dead” about the virus spreading through Los Angeles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_the_Walking_Dead
Substitute macaroni for the rice and that’s how meals were in my house growing up when we needed to go to the grocery store but just hadn’t made it there yet. Lots of macaroni surprises.
My only problem with the Walking Dead is that it’s getting a little predictable: Wander for a few episodes. Find a place to hole up. The place seems safe and the people there seem nice. Then the place turns out to not be so safe and/or the people not so nice. They end up leaving after struggles that see 1 or 2 cast members killed off and 1 or 2 new ones added. Rinse. Repeat.
Macaroni and beans. Toss in some decent canned sauce (not Ragu) and you gotta pasta fazoole.
Barbara actually prefers Ragu to the other commercial spaghetti sauces that are available and I don’t care, so that’s what we stock. I think we have about fifty 45-ounce jars of it, or enough for about one meal a week for a year.
Barbara’s preference for Ragu is after also trying various types of Bertolli’s, Classico, and Prego sauces. We still have a few bottles of Classico on the shelves.
I’m thinking I should boost our stock to 100+ to give us two meals a week for a year.
My daughter loves the Ragu Six Cheese, but for some reason it’s a pain to find it around here. Only a few grocery stores here stock that flavor of Ragu. When I see it I buy like 6 jars. I really like the Bertolli Arrabiatta sauce, but nobody else in our house does. It has a nice kick to it.
We mostly use the Kirkland Signature Marinara from Costco that they sell in a 3-pack.
Sauce from a jar? My stepsister actually served that stuff to her mother, who is the first generation of her family not born in Italy. I don’t know which shocked my stepmother more, that her daughter served her Ragu, or that I opened cans and chopped veggies and made a better sauce.
They make pretty good jarred sauce these days. I think most people’s prejudices against jarred sauce are outdated. It may not be as good something made from scratch using red wine, fresh tomatoes, and fresh herbs and it may not be an exact match to the recipe you were raised on, but the stuff you can buy these days is pretty tasty. I’ve had plenty of awful made-from-scratch sauces over the years and I’ve had plenty of “authentic” sauces from Italian-Americans that all taste very different from each other.
I think at the end of the day people just want to eat a sauce that taste like the stuff their mom or grandma used to make. That’s true of many foods. It’s more about nostalgia than anything.
My only problem with the Walking Dead is that it’s getting a little predictable: Wander for a few episodes. Find a place to hole up. The place seems safe and the people there seem nice. Then the place turns out to not be so safe and/or the people not so nice. They end up leaving after struggles that see 1 or 2 cast members killed off and 1 or 2 new ones added. Rinse. Repeat.
The thing that has freaked me out in “The Walking Dead” is that the walkers are usually only dangerous in large groups. But, any other survivors, singly or groups, are highly dangerous.
There is very much a message of “humans, not zombies, are the real monsters” throughout the show. Man’s inhumanity toward man and whatnot.
Macaroni and beans. Toss in some decent canned sauce (not Ragu) and you gotta pasta fazoole.
Newman’s Marinara:
http://www.newmansown.com/products/newmans-own-marinara-sauce/
Barbara’s preference for Ragu is after also trying various types of Bertolli’s, Classico, and Prego sauces. We still have a few bottles of Classico on the shelves.
I’m thinking I should boost our stock to 100+ to give us two meals a week for a year.
That is a lot of spaghetti sauce sitting around. How good are the expiration dates on spaghetti sauce?
The thing that has freaked me out in “The Walking Dead” is that the walkers are usually only dangerous in large groups. But, any other survivors, singly or groups, are highly dangerous.
There is very much a message of “humans, not zombies, are the real monsters” throughout the show. Man’s inhumanity toward man and whatnot.
Yup. People are crazy. And if they have not eaten in while, they are desperate. Mix that crazy and desperation together and you get a real nasty mix.
“People are crazy. And if they have not eaten in while, they are desperate. Mix that crazy and desperation together and you get a real nasty mix.”
Fat slobbo Murkan derps, former couch potatoes who couldn’t or wouldn’t get off their asses, roasting slowly on homemade BBQ spits constructed from rusty truck axles, in urban slag-heap rubble, while revenants gibber and frolic to mega-wattage boomboxes playing the hip-hop and salsa tunes they vibrate to 7×24.
Overhead, robot drones and gunships patrol the smog-choked, permanently darkened skies, as loudspeakers broadcast curfew and traffic orders, ignored, and the latest war nooz from Oceania and Europa.
Outside the cities, in high-rise, fortified compounds patrolled by more robots and armed overhead drones, the One Percenters prostate themselves five times daily in accordance with the Sharia they voted in and receive their daily instructions from the current mullahs and Sharia bureaucrats, while cowering nightly in terror as they listen to the mobs outside screaming for their blood.
Remaining bands of patriots are hunted down and liquidated…the loners and woodsman-type survivalists have long since been hung up and gutted.
I’d estimate that the 45-ounce PET jars of Ragu would have some subtle flavor changes after only 10 or 15 years, but they will be safe well beyond that.
How about the life of Newman’s Marinara in their glass jars? I would think that stuff would decay slower in glass over PET?
http://www.newmansown.com/products/newmans-own-marinara-sauce/
I have managed to break two of those glass jars over the years, opening up the rear hatch of my Expedition and guess what comes rolling out? I have learned to knot the plastic bags from Walmart or HEB.
BTW, I keep six of these in stock. And pay dearly for that prepping. She does not like having a lot of those in stock at all.
I just installed this new SSD in my laptop. Hopefully this will give me enough room for THE PORN!
I highly distrust any type of plastic jar. If you have had some, like spaghetti sauce, on the self for awhile and then emptied it have you noticed that the jar is stained red. That indicates to me that the plastic is permeable and therefore the contents are not being preserved adequately for long term storage.
I am a glass and tin man.
It seems there oughta be a joke in there about the Tin Man had a heart of glass, but I’m too tired to make it.
“I just installed this new SSD in my laptop.”
Oh really? What do you do for a living? I need to learn whatever it is and get going on it so I can afford SSDs like that, too. In a laptop, eh? Running Linux or Winblows? Got room for all your pics and vids of Cankles, too?
“It seems there oughta be a joke in there about the Tin Man had a heart of glass…”
Oh Oz never did give nuthin’ to the Tin Man…that he didn’t….didn’t already have…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3fI0mLz3ks
(Be patient; eventually the damn lousy hippie-commie scum quit farting around and kick off the damn song…Air Force brats…)
Though what anything had to do with Sir Galahad is anybody’s friggin’ guess.
As for “The Wizard of Oz,” I always cheered for the witch and the flying monkeys.
Never did root for the witch, but I used to sarcastically say “and maybe winged monkeys will fly out of my ass”. Haven’t said that in a while, for no reason I can think of.
I seem to remember Mike Myers doing that line or a variation of it when he played in various skits.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOKociU8t_Q
Ok back from my forage.
Couple of sales today.
If there is a collapse how are you going to tell time? Do you have any wind up clocks? Weight driven or pendulum clocks? Well I picked up a couple of old wind up travel clocks and one classic wind up alarm clock some time ago. But I don’t have a watch. So today I found a couple of vintage Timex Automatic watches. One is running great. One not, and one is a 17 jewel Bulova. They are surprisingly cheap on ebay. <$20 bucks. I got 3 for $5, and I'll list the other 2 to pay for the band for the running one.
At the same sale I got 40 ft of nice heavy coax for UHF. No radios or other gear tho.
At another sale, I got a cheap Bushnell early consumer night vision monocle (26-0100), and even at $15 it's cr@p. I don't thing I see any better with it and the IR illuminator than I do with my naked eye. I also got a box of 1500 steel BBs, and 2 plastic "letter opener" stiletto knives. They are definitely NOT training knives. You could easily stab someone with them. More of a novelty, but $1/ they were interesting. I will be going back to that sale in the morning. I didn't even have time to go thru the garage, but what I saw was gun cases, web gear, and tools.
Not a super day, but didn't spend much either, and tomorrow might be better.
nick
Now no more talk about naked Hilarity. I'm trying to get OVER being sick.
“If there is a collapse how are you going to tell time?”
Won’t matter none. Up with first light, bedtime at dahk. Like previous societies on this very continent. With the seasons. Work like dawgs from cain’t see to cain’t see. Stand a watch after dahk, too.
…what I saw was gun cases, web gear, and tools.”
Oh yeah. Check dat chit out real good. Hope it’s still there.
Which reminds me; you may have said before and I missed it or forgot, both easy to do in my continuing dotage and decrepitude; how do you know which sales of various types are in your range down there every weekend?
What did OFD do for prep stuff this past week? Worked on raised beds; programmed the two scanners; advised gun guy at the recycling center (dump) on his home IT security issues and maybe at some point he can introduce me to his AR-building-from-scratch ops and basement CNC machine; began a daily/nightly journal of local scanner activity; researched antennas; continued online ham Tech license course; ditto firearms courses; ditto IT courses so as to hopefully gin up more revenue for us here; and got more canned goods in. What kinda canned goods? Mostly tuna, the Campbells Chunky soups and chowders, different brands of beans, 20-lb bags of rice, tomato sauce, and boxes of pasta. Stuff we’ll both eat. Next up is to clean the basement freezer and really clean/scour the main fridge/freezer; assemble shelving in the cellar; program both Bow-Fungs; and reorganize the IT setup here.
For those into ham radio stuff; I installed Andy’s Ham Radio Linux on a Thinkpad and will be working with that on field exercises soon and with a SDR dongle or two and portable antennas.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/kb1oiq-andysham/
https://www.ab9il.net/linux/andys-hamradio-linux15.html
Dump run in the AM and more garden/yard tasks, plus shelving, painting, techie stuff, etc. pretty much filling up the weekend, I reckon.
@ofd,
I use estatesales.net and drill down to Houston, then look at a map. In Houston, they cover all the good sales.
For garage and yard sales, I usually just catch the ones I see on my way to the estate sales. There are a couple of areas nearby where I drive by the entrance to certain subdivisions looking for signs even if they are a little bit out of the way.
I know people who look in the papers and craigslist and plan out their garage sale route, but I take it a little more casually.
With the estate sales, I look at the pictures and see generally what sort of stuff is there. Some sellers don’t ever show the garage so if the sale is close to another, or close to my house, I’ll go, even if the pix don’t show anything good. That can lead to the best bargains, since all your competitors aren’t there looking at the exact same thing.
Don’t trust a listing that says ‘tools’ unless it is more specific. Some sellers will take 3 old screwdrivers and a chinese hammer in the junk drawer and list them as “tools” just to bring in some more people.
Also after choosing estate sales mostly based on where they are, I always use the search function for radios, cb, ham, guns just to be sure I haven’t missed one in town that is in an area I wouldn’t normally drive to.
I prioritize based on what I see in the pix. I usually only have a couple of hours on Friday, and a couple on Saturday, so there is no way I can hit all the sales. I try for ‘clumps’ of sales, and sales on my side of town to minimize the driving. I might do one clump on Friday, and another on Saturday in a different part of town. I also have a couple of sellers who know me and give good pricing, so I’ll try hard to go to their sales even if they are a little out of my normal area. Getting an “arm wave” price for a whole box of smalls and bits and pieces can save a lot of time and money.
A note about pricing. On the first day, prices are usually not negotiable. They may be higher than is reasonable, just hoping to make the sale. Most sellers lower prices progressively on the next day or days. By the end of the last day, 50% off is not unusual. When I started, I never went on the first day, preferring the discounts on whatever was left. I still found plenty of good stuff. When ham gear, guns, or serious tools are listed, I will go early on the first day, hoping that prices are reasonable, and I can get first pick of stuff. If it is a real treasure trove, and prices are high, I will go back a second time near the end of the sale.
FWIW, there are 2 main types of seller. The first prices everything high. Whether because they don’t know any better or because the estate has directed them, they want top dollar even if it doesn’t sell. (The small subset of this type is the dishonest seller. They set prices too high to sell and then take all leftover items to their store to sell later, with a smaller percentage or nothing going to the estate.) The second type, and my favorite, is pricing everything to sell so the house is empty at the end of the sale. In that case, the estate just wants the stuff gone. Pricing can be VERY good at a sale like that even on the first day. You never really know until you get there how it’s gonna be. And sometimes, they care a lot about the lady’s antique glassware collection, but not the man’s vintage electronics or tools or hunting stuff. That’s just ‘man junk.’ Those are good sales too.
I encourage anyone prepping on a budget to trade time for money, and look at thrift stores, estate sales, and yard/garage sales.
whoooff, need to go to bed,
nick
@Nick: I enjoy reading about your finds at sales.
When I moved to Europe, I had a house sale to clear everything out. Geez, what an…adventure. I priced things on the cheap side of fair, because what I didn’t sell I would have to pay to ship. One day only, I wanted it over and done with.
Man, I felt like I was surrounded by piranhas. It just *swarmed*, I suppose because people wanted to be first and get the good stuff.
I’m still pissed at the one person who who switched up price tags, then waited till I was really busy to flash the tags at me and pay. Since things were fairly priced, there was just no need for that shit. But there was only the one who did it, cost me $20 or so. Everyone else was nice, and patient that there was only me to handle everyone.
At the time, I surprised at how fast the tools went. That was, until I had to replace them all on this end – when they accumulate over years, you don’t realize how much value you have sunk into tools. I’d have been better off keeping the hand tools. It’s surprising how many non-metric things you find in Europe, and lots of tools are agnostic anyway.
@ Brad,
Yes, there are always people trying to scam. The estate sellers treat it differently, but they have all been burned. One has signs that say “changing prices is stealing and will be prosecuted.” One has signs saying something similar about putting “sold” tags on items. I had a woman steal baby clothes from MY yardsale, even after I gave her a deal of better than $0.50 per item.
It is amazing the effort people will put into stealing.
And if they will do it grid up, with the risk of penalties, what will they do grid down? (Look to Katrina for guidance on that.)
nick
It shows how clever they are. Same with lying when there’s no purpose served.
Thanks for the tips, Mr. nick; I’ll do some research on this end accordingly, while bearing in mind that the population up here is WAY smaller than in your area and a much shorter sale “season” as well.
Sex. The statistics I’ve heard are that guys think about it on average of every four or six minutes (I can’t remember which.) I guess you guys are just oversexed.
Yard sales. If I had junk I think I’d either ditch it or give it to family or friends. Or keep it and take it with me. I don’t like people and hate having strangers around trying to knock me down from $1.50 to $1.
“If I had junk I think I’d either ditch it or give it to family or friends. Or keep it and take it with me. I don’t like people and hate having strangers around trying to knock me down from $1.50 to $1.”
+1
I don’t like people, either, and the more I see of them, the less I like them. Case in point: the sheer preponderance nowadays of Murkan derps of both genders (yeah, Virginia, there really ARE only TWO.) around all day every day and into the wee hours every night with zero means of visible support, yet multiple tatts, plenty of ciggies, and cases of typical shitty Murkan lager.
Then there are the legions of SJWs, but don’t get me stahted…
Poor people always have money for beer, cigarettes, and lottery tickets. The gross evidence demonstrates they have more food than is good for them. They almost always seem to have cell phones, and an awful lot have large TVs, cable or dish, cars worth a lot more than what I drive, and gas for those cars. I’m sure there’s bias in my observations, in that I don’t mentally tally the poor people who are taking the bus or driving beaters. Still, the “poor” people have a lot of toys often enough that it shows there’s a problem here. And approximately 50% of my gross income goes to taxes and government fees that I can’t avoid.
ISTR a white guy who looked into quitting his job and collecting as many benefits as he could scam. He didn’t (or wouldn’t have) do well. He wasn’t a single mother, wasn’t a racial or ethnic minority, couldn’t or wouldn’t get a dishonest doctor to proclaim him disabled, etc. Sound familiar? I couldn’t find it.
The pudgy little white dope dealer across the street drivers a red Beemer (at high speeds in and outta their dusty gravel parking lot, at all hours) and clearly has a wall-sized tee-vee screen in his second-story lair, on well into the wee hours.
So you don’t have to get a disability ruling; just deal dope or be a hit man or produce counterfeit fiat currency…
And you’re probably right; we don’t really often see the regular poor schmuck poor peeps just trying to get through the day without being hurt or hurting anyone else, taking the bus, driving beaters, clipping coupons for the downscale supermarket, etc. They are legion, no doubt. But it’s the assholes who catch our attention; the fat-as-a-pig male derp across the street just now, with the usual saggy-baggies, 4XL tee, multiple tatts, ciggie hanging out of his gob, several days’ stubble, baseball hat on backwards, etc., and he SWAGGERS across the lot. Wigger writ large. When they drive past the house you can hear that jungle beat pounding away at 120 decibels, too; that’s all they listen to.
They have Peter Pan mentalities, dressed like Cub Scouts, in gargantuan hairy bodies.
But it’s the assholes who catch our attention; the fat-as-a-pig male derp across the street just now, with the usual saggy-baggies, 4XL tee, multiple tatts, ciggie hanging out of his gob, several days’ stubble, baseball hat on backwards, etc., and he SWAGGERS across the lot.
You forgot riding the electric buggies at Walmart while some great-grandma totters around taking one cautious step at a time using her four footed cane.