09:53 – We went down to Winston-Salem yesterday. Barbara had a 1:30 dentist appointment, and we had meetings scheduled before that at the house with the realtor and the guy who’s going to take care of getting the place cleaned up, painted, hardwood floors refinished, and so on. We’re back to doing kit stuff today.
Saturday, 2 April 2016
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Well folks, the web is no longer the Web and the internet is no longer the Internet. We just can’t have so many proper nouns in these days of impropriety.
http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/2/11352744/ap-style-guide-will-no-longer-capitalize-internet
Anybody remember this:
http://www.businessinsider.com/36-years-ago-microsoft-became-a-hardware-company-by-making-a-device-for-the-apple-ii-2016-4
And the incestuous relationship continues to this day, most people are unaware as Apple and Micro$oft put up a good front as “adversaries”. In the world of Tech (probably should be tech now) all is not as it seems on the surface.
In other tech news:
http://fossbytes.com/microsoft-buys-canonical-kills-ubuntu-linux-forever/
http://fortune.com/2016/04/01/microsoft-snags-oracles-linux-guru/
I figured the Ubuntu thing was an AFD joke and also blew off M$ grabbing the Oracle guy; but an embedded link in that story also mentions how RHEL will be running on Azure and I was kinda surprised. CentOS runs on AWS but wouldn’t have figured the RHEL move.
“In a revealing interview, Trump predicts a ‘massive recession’ but intends to eliminate the national debt in 8 years”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/in-turmoil-or-triumph-donald-trump-stands-alone/2016/04/02/8c0619b6-f8d6-11e5-a3ce-f06b5ba21f33_story.html
“Over the course of the discussion, the candidate made clear that he would govern in the same nontraditional way that he has campaigned, tossing aside decades of American policy and custom in favor of a new, Trumpian approach to the world.”
“In his first 100 days, Trump said he would cut taxes, “renegotiate trade deals and renegotiate military deals,” including altering the U.S. role in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.”
“He insisted that he would be able to get rid of the nation’s more than $19 trillion national debt “over a period of eight years.””
Bold.
And there is more than one way to pay off debt.
He could just print one $19 trillion bill. Try getting change for that one.
By that time it would have to be an even $20 trillion dollar bill. Put his own pic on it, of course, or for more circulation, or at least jacking up more male circulation, his wife’s pic.
If OFD was in charge, I’d sell southern New England, the greater NYC area, the SF Bay area, most of Floriduh, the eastern halves of NJ and MD, and the greater LA/Hollywood region to the highest bidders. That might clear up most, if not all, of the Official national debt.
In local household nooz; wife and MIL off to Denver for the week. Then off to the East Bay region to once AGAIN visit the kidz and grandkidz. They’ve spent way more time with them out there than they ever spent when the kidz were here in VT and then MA. Later this month I’ll go down to MA with wife and visit my own nuke family, none of whom I’ve seen in years. No one comes up this way, of course. I’ll also visit my dead family, mostly buried in New Beffa, Fairhaven, and Nantucket.
Funny things happen sometimes; I got my Remington 597 heavy-barrel semi-auto .22LR by mistake and darned if it doesn’t have a five-star rating on the truthaboutguns site reviews. I also have the 597 .22WMR semi-auto and am looking forward to trying it out this week. My Ruger 10-22 Takedown also got their five stars.
So for ten days I can work on the five-page To-Do List in relative uninterrupted peace and quiet and stock up on some more critical prep stuff. And just about got Mrs. OFD coming around to the need for alternative power on the well pump and pressure tank after doing more research for it. Told her it’s akin to us dumping the electric pellet stove a couple of years ago for the ass-kicking wood stove. I’d also wanna get a second, manual alternative to pump our well wotta.
So that’s shelter, heat, and wotta. Plus defense gear and measures, and commo capability if the net goes belly-up. And we have decent med kits, not quite complete but getting there. Maybe two months of stored food, and I wanna extend that to three and then six and then twelve months.
Objective: Survive comfortably during six months of a beastly cold and bitter winter with no Grid whatsoever and roving skells, leaks, muffs, dirtbags, shitbirds and FSA types. After that, and throughout, of course, work to build neighborhood and community solidarity in the face of potential larger society breakdown.
Well, went out and did my weekly forage.
Slim pickin’s this week.
I did get a few things-
-camp bed modern camping style(steel tube, and frame, fits in a slim sack)
-anatomy study textbook for nurses and workbook/coloring book
-wide mouth stanley thermos (this one classic green metal)
-bone and meat hacksaw (got some frozen elk needs cutting, so will use sooner rather than later)
Didn’t see any medical stuff, very little camping.
Left for the next guy- 3 burner colman stove, new in box, 2 colman lanterns, kerosene space heaters, modern steel version of cast iron stove, and the usual assortment of yard and garden tools.
had a great trip to the grocery store. Just about all the things I normally buy were on sale or BOGO, or special store coupons. Saved about 10-15% of the total bill in cash rebates, and got a bunch of cans for the shelves.
garden is about the same. Still getting delicious carrots, the asparagus is thinner than a pencil but each root is still producing. I have a couple of beets coming along, and the turnips are starting to fill in. Kale, lettuce, and radishes are slow. Some of the collards are starting to grow-finally. Strawberry plants are producing the odd strawberry now and then. This year’s tomatoes aren’t producing yet, but last year’s are putting out golf ball sized fruits.
Selling a few things on ebay. Haven’t sold the Faro arm yet, but I’ve got high hopes it will fund some more stuff when it does. Still selling mostly smalls <$40. I must be doing something right because ebay doubled the number of listings I'm allowed and the value of the listings, not that I'm even within an order of magnitude of hitting the limit.
shortwave propagation has been poor at night, so not much listening, and a bunch of agencies moved around the spectrum in Houston, so I've got to get my scanner channels updated.
Honey do piles higher, prepping falls behind….
World is more dangerous every day. Our leaders beclown themselves on the world stage, the citizens are more and more restless and angry, the markets are behaving completely irrationally, criminals are becoming more brazen, and in many cities the cops are sucking their thumbs and watching their navels, pitching a fit like a two year old that can't have a toy.
Keep piling, keep learning. These probably ARE the good old days…..
nick
“…garden is about the same. Still getting delicious carrots…”
I find that a laff riot; we got zip here. Crocuses maybe starting to come up, along with some lilies, but they could get killed off this next week when temps drop well below freezing again for nights AND days. Plus snow showers. I’m starting a few seeds but not much hope of moving plants outdoors until…July???
“…shortwave propagation has been poor at night, so not much listening…”
Ditto. SW bands kinda dead today/tonight so far; scanner fairly steady with local PD and state police and FD calls, nothing major, though. Usual crap in a small town: accidents, DUI, disturbing the peace, drunks, domestics, ambulance calls, etc. The whole town’s pop is around 6k with maybe another 6k or 7k in the “city” three miles up the road to our east. Here in the former Port Washington, maybe a couple of hundred.
“Honey do piles higher, prepping falls behind….”
That was the situation here but now they’re all gone so I can get back to prep stuff for ten days.
“World is more dangerous every day…”
Same as it ever was. Perspective: the Glorious Sixties had urban riots that make Ferguson and Baltimore look like the teddy bears’ picnic. Plus body counts every night on the nooz from ‘Nam. And assassinations of major political figures, probably arranged by other major political figures. While we all teetered on the nuclear brink under the MAD doctrine. And several major Grid outages. Prior to that decade, two world wars and a world Depression. So far the 20th-C takes the cake easily for the most barbarous and murderous century in human history.
But now there are LOTS more people and amazing new technologies and weapons systems and it’s all teetering precariously atop a financial house of cards propped up by criminal scum for as long as they can keep looting from it.
When the cards fall, we’ll be in entirely new historical territory, though, unprecedented disaster on an international scale. North Murka and the former British Commonwealth of Nations countries will probably be doing better than the rest of the world but it’s still gonna suck pretty badly. So yes, keep piling, stocking, and learning, because…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-FsbW11tGA