10:06 – Barbara is tied up this week with the charity golf tournament. That tournament is the major annual fundraiser for the non-profit NGO Wellness Center, which is where Barbara goes to the gym. She mentioned yesterday that a lot of local businesses hadn’t even “bought a hole”, which is an inexpensive way to sponsor the tournament. She said that she’d like to buy a hole next year, which is fine by me. She said a hole sponsorship is $100, but I’d imagine that’s for a cheap hole. Better holes probably cost more, and the best may cost much more. Or at least I hope so. If they’re really charging a flat $100 per hole, they’re leaving money on the table. If I were they, I’d auction the final hole. Whichever it is, we’ll buy the hole in our corporation’s name and write it off as an advertising expense.
After some discussion, we decided not to install propane, at least for now. The electric cooktop works normally, and the oven preheated properly when we tested it with two hanger thermometers yesterday. From my point of view, it’d be nice to have 200 or 300 gallons of propane stored on site, with connections to the cooktop, oven, and generator, but we can live without it for now. As Barbara pointed out, we can run the generator long enough every day to run the well pump on about 5 gallons of gasoline a month, and we have more than half a dozen ways to cook/bake, from a woodstove to the propane grill to the propane and dual-fuel Coleman camping stoves, to a couple of Coghlan’s Folding Stoves (which happily run on twigs), to an ad hoc solar oven to an ad hoc rocket stove that we could build in about two minutes from concrete blocks.
The house in Winston is supposed to close a week from today, so our next trip down to Winston will be the first we’ve made while not owning a house there. I want to make a big Costco run on our next trip down. For months, we’ve been eating a lot of our LTS stuff without replacing much of it. Stuff like canned chicken, soups, spaghetti sauces, applesauce, canned vegetables, and bulk stuff like sugar, flour, oats, pasta, oil, and so on. Some of that I can order from Costco and Walmart on-line, which avoids the need for us hauling it back up here.
We’re still in decent shape on LTS food relative to the general population, but the shelves are starting to look a bit bare for my comfort level. As I keep saying, I don’t really expect a catastrophic event, but food is cheaper now than it’ll be next month, let alone next year, so there’s no downside to buying it now. And I confess that I am a bit concerned about the run-up to the election and its aftermath. In terms of civil unrest, things are nowhere near as bad as they were in the late 60’s, but the potential exists.
Speaking of which, there’s been a call to action for a latter-day Days of Rage in 37 large cities this Friday afternoon and evening. This would be a very good time to avoid large cities and any concentration of large numbers of people. It’s pretty likely that there will be violence at at least one of these protests. Even if the BLM folks avoid violence, large groups of people are magnets for musloid terrorists. If you live outside one of these cities, avoid being in town on Friday afternoon or evening. If you live inside one of these cities, Friday would be a good time to visit family or friends who are well outside these areas.
Thanks for the comparison. I was blissfully unaware of politics and racial tension in the 1960s.
I lived through it when I was in high school. Things were peaceful in little New Castle, PA, but there were NG and even military troops on the streets in larger cities, where looting and arson was commonplace and there was quite a bit of shooting going on. A guy I met later lived in Pittsburgh at the time. There were NG troops deployed all over the city with their M-14 rifles. The guy I knew found out that they hadn’t issued ammunition to the troops. He cleaned up selling .308/7.62 ball rounds to the troopers at a buck a round, which was ten or twenty times what it actually cost back then.
The late 1960s featured “politics and racial tension” every night on the 6 o’clock nooz; imagery and video footage of major riots in a half-dozen large cities alternating with body-count stuff from ‘Nam. And ’68 had violent riots in Europe, Tet in Vietnam, and several huge political assassinations. Today’s unrest is by comparison a day at the beach so far.
Picture Obola having been assassinated five years ago, and then this year a U.S. Senator running for Prez and a major “civil rights leader” like Jackwagon or Sharpless. With a series of devastating attacks on our troops in the Sandbox and European governments falling behind major rioting.
“…we can run the generator long enough every day to run the well pump on about 5 gallons of gasoline a month…
What generator did you end up with for the well pump? And how do you store the gasoline?
I learned about the political and racial tension in the 60’s after the fact. I wasn’t aware of them at the time, because I was younger than our host was during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
I trust some guy I’ve never met who lives in rural North Carolina more than I trust anyone in the media to provide a comparision of the two periods.
“What generator did you end up with for the well pump? And how do you store the gasoline?”
It’s our Generac 5.5KW unit, which we’ve had for 15 years or more. We store the gasoline in our vehicle fuel tanks, so it’s rotated constantly. I very seldom let my Trooper get below 15 gallons, and Barbara’s Chevy seldom gets below 8 gallons, so we have enough there to run the generator a couple times a day to pump well water for maybe four or five months. I’ve avoided buying gas cans simply because we don’t yet have an outside storage area for them.
Ah, OK, thanks. Do you actually have the generator hooked up yet and if so, did you do it yourself or have an electrician come in? Transfer switch? Tested the unit to make sure it works?
I suppose I could rig up an outside storage spot here but that tip on the vehicles would be nifty, too.
OFD is right. What we’ve seen so far in recent years is a walk in the park compared to the late 60’s. That was also back before the federal government had gotten complete control of the news media, so there were still quite a few real reporters sending back reports and video of what was going on in Viet Nam. The network news ran such stories and footage nearly every evening, so the average person was much more aware of the war than they are today, with the federal government through the military controlling what reporters are allowed to report, whom they’re allowed to speak with, and so on. It’s all PR now, not that there are many (any?) reporters or news organizations left who’d report anything that reflected poorly on the military or the government.
“Do you actually have the generator hooked up yet and if so, did you do it yourself or have an electrician come in? Transfer switch? Tested the unit to make sure it works?”
Not yet, although I could if necessary jerry-rig (jury-rig?) a connection between the generator’s 120VAC output and the input to our well pump/pressure tank. I had an electrician come out several months ago to give me a quote on installing a transfer switch and an external receptacle that would let me connect a male-male cable from the generator to the receptacle. We told him to go ahead and get it done, but we haven’t heard from him since. That’s pretty unusual up here, especially since a couple of people had recommended him. I should call him back and tell him we’re still waiting.
As to the generator, I’m like most people. I run it once a month every couple years or so. In my defense, I run it dry each time, so there’s no remaining fuel to gum things up. I also have carb cleaner and know how to clean it out if needed, and I keep a couple cans of ether starting spray. I’m pretty confident it would fire up now, or that I could get it to fire up if we needed it. If not, there are lots of competent people around here. Which reminds me that I need to pick up an extra case or two of motor oil to keep for the generator.
How well conditioned is the power coming out of such a generator? Good enough to run anything?
tip on the vehicles would be nifty
Be careful using a car’s fuel tank for storage. Many have anti-siphon guards making extracting the fuel difficult. You would have to disconnect a fuel line and run the fuel pump. Or disconnect the fill line at the tank.
Better is to fill a can, add stabilizer, keep for a year, then dump into your vehicle. The dilution with new fuel in your tank will allow the old fuel to work just fine in your vehicle.
Remember the controversy with the late asswipe Mike Wallace? He said that if he was on a patrol with our guys and saw up ahead that there was a VC ambush, he wouldn’t warn the guys but rather get the story. The other Murkan nooz assholes agreed with him. He also said he was a reporter first and an American second.
Of course now the nooz media is “managed” six ways from Sunday at all our little clusterfucks around the world. We only get what they deign to tell us. Be advised it’s very far from the truth and much worse than you might think; that’s just the way war is.
“The real war will never get in the books.”
http://www.bartleby.com/229/1101.html
As for the forthcoming “days of rage,” I’m willing to bet they won’t be as ugly as what the former Weathermen concocted around the country, with bank robberies, murdered police officers and and bombings, at least one of which killed the bombers before they could wreak havoc somewhere else. Usually, if not always, upper middle-class and wealthy spoiled rotten brats, too.
“Better is to fill a can, add stabilizer, keep for a year, then dump into your vehicle. The dilution with new fuel in your tank will allow the old fuel to work just fine in your vehicle.”
Thanks, Mr. Ray.
“… jerry-rig (jury-rig?)”
Either is OK, apparently. I’d use “jury-rig.”
“I should call him back and tell him we’re still waiting.”
We’ve had the same experience up here; call an electrician or plumber, and then never hear from them again. Evidently they’re straight out with all the biz they can handle; either that, or they’re just lazy impolite slobs. I’d be interested in how he (or she) hooks it up with the transfer switch and panel.
My daughter and a friend are going to Seattle on Friday. I have been trying to dissuade her since before Dallas. She is making a poor decision. At least it’s her friends car that will get F’d Up, I just hope they do not get hurt.
Of course this in some ways pales compared to her planned trip to London in August.
I have failed as a Dad. I hope I am wrong, but if she comes back safely she is still going to find me stuck in my ways of reality. I’ve had bullets whiz by me, smelled the tear gas, smelled the molotov cocktails, and more. These kids can’t be bothered to put down their facecrack, twatter, and games. Folks, we have lost a generation.
Folks, we have lost a generation.
Said every generation since Aristotle (and probably before), when their kids grew up differently from the way the older generation remembered. Imagine what your parents were thinking, when you were close enough to smell tear gas and molotov cocktails? As long as daughter-and-friends don’t go looking for trouble in Seattle, they’ll be fine.
London is no different – I’ve been there numerous times, including when I was young and stupid. She’ll have a great time.
@brad, thanks for trying to put a positive spin on my fears, but I cannot be so positive. We have been lucky up to this point, but the trigger has been slowly pulling back. It could fire tomorrow, next week, or next year.
Most of us here know about situational awareness and can avoid chaos, but the Millennials have no experience or knowledge.
Yes, @brad every passing generation laments that the new generation is different. Change is inevitable, but change with logic or reason or learning real lessons from the past is what has led to the cycles of prosperity and destitution.
Yeah, I remember reading an essay by, IIRC, Cicero, that started, “These kids today …”
I think I lost all faith in News reporting when Uncle Walter admitted that he, and others, started slanting the news during Vietnam to get us out. I grew up with him on the evening news and thought he was a good guy.
What was it they called him? The most trusted piece of shit in America?
Be careful using a car’s fuel tank for storage. Many have anti-siphon guards making extracting the fuel difficult.
We had this discussion before, so I bought a siphon kit on Amazon. The one that helps you “poke” through the anti-siphon guards. I’ve tried it on all the vehicles and was successful. You have to feel your way through the guard.
Bob, do you siphon fuel from your vehicle(s) when you run the generator? Do you use anything special?
“Be careful using a car’s fuel tank for storage. Many have anti-siphon guards making extracting the fuel difficult. ”
This. We’ve had some discussion of this on here before. I thought I’d be able to siphon, but when I actually tried, I couldn’t get the hose down into the tank, due to the anti-siphon measures. (off hand, anyone remember the outrageously high gas prices that made it necessary to buy locking gas caps, and for auto makers to just go ahead and build in defenses? I’m curious what that price was.)
Someone posted a link to a siphon system specifically made to work with modern cars, and had actually tested it. Time to repost!!
As I’ve been sharing, I finally got an actual flammable storage cabinet for my onsite gas storage. Until now, I’ve had it in five gallon cans stacked in rubbermaid upright ‘garden’ storage cabinets in the shady spot between my garage and the fence.
Stabilize it, and rotate it into your vehicle every so often. That’s the easiest way. It will also expose your lacks, when you realize you can’t get that little nozzle into the gas filler on your car, because the door gets in the way of the can, and the can is too F’in heavy to lift that high without spilling everywhere…….
I got one of these, https://www.amazon.com/Hopkins-FloTool-10709-Spill-Funnel/dp/B000EH4V18/ref=pd_sim_263_1?ie=UTF8&dpID=41JQQFBHPAL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL320_SR318%2C320_&psc=1&refRID=Z9EJ2QMB8Z363R7M4KXD with a long flexible spout, and a bungie cord to hold it in place. Otherwise, filling the truck from a can is next to impossible.
This is one of those hidden gotchas. TRY filling you car from cans, and see what you need to do it safely.
I’d recommend a siphon pump anyway for filling the gennie. You might be able to lift the five gallon can and refill carefully without spilling, but can your wife? Child? What if you are injured?
nick
Even then, my parents didn’t watch CBS News because they didn’t trust Cronkite.
Our daughter and my brothers’ daughters don’t give a blind rat’s ass for situational awareness or the advisability of avoiding cities and crowds and big events. They’re married to their pixels and apparently feel that they’re indestructible, but still want a nice, safe, comfortable life, provided by others, of course.
We have to remember that they’re adults now, too, and they’re just gonna do what they’re gonna do and we can beat our heads against the wall trying to talk sense to them and still not even make a dent.
Then I think back to my teenage years and thereafter and if my parents and grandparents knew a tenth of the chit I got involved with their hair would have turned white back then and stood on end. And while I’m still here, above ground, several of the kids I hung out with are not. Come to think of it, most of the cops I worked with in at least two MA jurisdictions back in the day are also gone now.
And while I’m still on the topic, I note that there is my mom, aunt and uncle and then me, as the next oldest in line for the bed of lavender. (remembering threats from Mom back in the day: “I’ll lay you out in lavender, mister!”)
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/222725.html
Death threats from one’s mother.
Also: “I’ll knock you into the middle of next week!”
Alas, none of the threats materialized and I was still an incorrigible rascal.
I returned an Amazon item through their Amazon Locker machine. There is one 1/2 mile from me at a grocery store. It only took about 15 seconds. Touch, scan barcode, and a door popped open. I don’t know if there is ever a charge using that system. There wasn’t for this item ($15). I’ve returned some items through UPS that were charged.
My mom never threatened us. Ever. She did, however, break many a wooden spoon. There was also that one time she used a switch.
Dad just used his hand.
Was a Junior in High School in ’68. As the school let out for the summer a Senior pulled me aside and warned “Better take sides now. We have thousands of people in the Oakland hills and this summer the revolution will take over.” Given what all had been happening in the news, I wouldn’t have been surprised. It was a BAD year for America.
Yeah, it was. Not, in retrospect, as bad as 1909 (the year that Alinsky was born), but pretty bad.
1968 did indeed suck.
1953 was a banner year, however; Koba the Dread finally croaked, probably poisoned, the Korean War armistice was signed, and I was born.
DadCooks – We lived outside London 1995 – 2001 and I worked in the City. Most of it is pretty safe if you stay around the tourist areas. BUT … there are places, like in any city, that you better not go if you aren’t a local. In the tourist areas, there are LOTS of “immigrants” looking for opportunity for pick pocketing & purse snatching. The UK has lots more property crime than the US but not as much violent crime (yet).
DadCooks wrote:
“Of course this in some ways pales compared to her planned trip to London in August.”
London? 100x times safer than Seattle, I would have thought. I’ve been to the former many times and felt completely safe.
This would be a very good time to avoid large cities and any concentration of large numbers of people.
But how will we play Pokemon Go?
Seriously, I noted that the list doesn’t include any city in Texas. Wonder why……
Come to Vegas and bring lots of disposable cash.
I know a lot of Texicans don’t much like Austin, but I hadn’t realized it had been ejected from Texas.
“Seriously, I noted that the list doesn’t include any city in Texas. Wonder why……”
Same reason, I’m guessing, that musloid scum don’t try bringing guns into C&W cowboy bars and honkytonks.
RBT: $100 is very cheap for a hole sponsorship, which usually consists of a small sign with a company name and maybe a logo. As you surmise, it’s advertising. Many / most charity events will sell multiple signs per tee box, “Dana Chang, MD” & “Kowalski Insurance”. It’s bad form to put competitor’s signs on the same tee box, but as a rule all tee boxes are the same price. There is no ‘last hole’ because it’s played as a shotgun start – Group A plays holes 1 – 18 in order, Group B plays 2 – 1, Group C plays 3 – 2, etc. If you really want to cough up some money (probably not the best investment of your advertising budget) you’d sponsor a team. For say $600 you get the tee box sign, Barbara brings three of her close golfing friends to play together, mention in the program / announcements, etc. Yes I’m a golfer, and actually a decent one, although I rarely play charity scrambles.
We don’t have an advertising budget, but it’s in a good cause. A hundred bucks is no problem, but no way we’re springing for $600 or more.
The list does seem to lean toward heavily Democrat cities.
Democrat cities is repetitive and redundant.
I’ve often thought that the TV series Jericho, where the 20+ largest US cities were nuked by terrorists, would actually have made the US a better place.
What do you call 50 million dead progs? A good start.
“The list does seem to lean toward heavily Democrat cities.”
Yo, ’cause dey already gots boots on de ground. Local commie agitprop operators have long since ginned up the numbers for the coming ‘days of rage.’ They work happily in tandem with the official Dem Party operators and have also long, long since, thoroughly infiltrated the official Repub Party.
Our history since the 1930s, short of regional “brush-fire” and proxy wars like Angola, ‘Nam and Korea, has been that we’ve been pantsed and reamed without our enemies actually invading, bombing or firing a shot here. Now their plan is to work with the musloids in our slavery or extermination and then they’ll turn on each other and the winner takes all. Which, in either case, would end up with the world in a hellish state of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse writ large.
And our objective has to be to stop them both, with a political leadership that would fuck up a soup sandwich and a population that is mostly comatose and doesn’t give a rat’s ass.
Incidentally, I gotta love Veronica Mars, the only series to my knowledge where a character has flashed a copy of The Anarchist’s Cookbook.
Eeeeeeeeeek! Trigger warning, you bastard, trigger warning!!!!!
You’re not the only one to recommend that series. I oughta put it in my “to watch” queue.
I like Kristen Bell’s Samsung commercials. Somebody actually spent some time writing those.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlqAvSXX6fA
Although, I prefer top loaders.
We were living in Oklahoma in 1968. The only thing that happened there was that we got a MacDonald’s restaurant. Or was that 1967 ?
Now their plan is to work with the musloids in our slavery or extermination and then they’ll turn on each other and the winner takes all.
Never gonna happen, too many guns in the general USA populace. But they can severely damage our infrastructure with a hundred well placed mortars (see The Borrowed World series).
https://www.amazon.com/Borrowed-World-Novel-Post-Apocalyptic-Collapse/dp/1511974419/
I think back to my teenage years and thereafter and if my parents and grandparents knew a tenth of the chit I got involved with their hair would have turned white back then and stood on end.
I was pretty tame, all in all. No drugs, not even alcohol, but there was still the odd incident that could have gone very wrong. I think that’s part of being an immortal teenager. The miracle is that any of us survive. Those that do – and it does seem to be most – grow at least somewhat wiser.
Of course, we are all still the same people we were at 20, or even at 10. Just a better facade and a collection of aches and pains.
Asked my mother about that period, since she was a bit of a coffee house jazz listening beatnik before marrying and kids (I was born just a couple years before 68) and she said, “I was worried about my step brother in the Air Force, but was too busy with kids to notice it much.” This was in a Chicago suburb, not out in the boonies.
I’ve got a clear memory of my dad showing me bullet holes in the arena when we went to see a Blackhawks game, sometime in the 70’s … although I didn’t understand WHY at the time.
Having been in LA during the Rodney King riots, I can tell you that seeing fires from your front porch while smoke blows thru the door is NO FUN. No amount of guns makes that feel any safer.
Currently my weather station says 102F and 48%RH with ‘feels like’ 114F. I’m inside cooling down after a couple hours of breaking down scrap. Sucks to be me ATM.
nick
The rioters were going to trash Oklahoma in 1968 but they got lost.
“Hey, Marcus?”
“Uh?”
“Were we supposed to turn left at the 168th cornfield or the 186th cornfield?”
“I dunno, man. Don’t matter anyway. I lost count around 20.”
“I wish there was something we could carry that would just tell us where we are. Then we’d never get lost.”
That’s the true origin of GPS. Democrat politicians wanted to make sure protestors — right-minded protestors, which is to say left-leaning, right-minded protestors — never got lost again.
94 F with a heat index of 104 F (52% relative humidity) out here in the burbs of Sugar. Mr nick, you need to get out to the third ring (Grand Parkway). That heat island is going to kill you.
There aren’t many cornfields in Oklahoma. No water except torrential rains one week a year. Lots of cows and hay fields though.
)(*<)($*()*&){(@{@!$# I meant wheat fields.
I blame global warming for any confusion.
Just about feeling normal again. Time to get back out into the heat. This stuff isn’t gonna turn into cash on it’s own…..
nick
[snip] Eeeeeeeeeek! Trigger warning, you bastard, trigger warning!!!!! [snip]
Only once have I seen an actual shotgun used to start play, usually it’s just an air horn, or the pro announcing “Go to your assigned holes” over the PA system.
More hateful, nasty and evil statistics that tend to correct the usual media and gummint lies and obfuscation:
http://takimag.com/article/the_presidents_prejudices_steve_sailer/print#axzz4EK7p7uqL
“I’m inside cooling down after a couple hours of breaking down scrap. Sucks to be me ATM.”
We must be on the same sweaty wavelength or somethin.’ It’s over 90 here which really sucks for me, but there is a steady breeze off the lake; a quarter-mile inland, though, no breeze and sweltering. (we get that same breeze in February, too, and it’s not quite as pleasant coming off two or three feet of lake ice with sideways snow). So I’ve been cleaning up the area in the rear corner behind the studio/shed structure and moving canoes and kayaks around, weed-whacking, raking, and laying down ground cover. I also mowed the front and side yards, and probably lost about five pounds in sweat.
Tomorrow I’ll finish the ground cover, hang up the canoes and kayaks, and start on the rear perimeter fencing, which, if it goes easily enough, I’ll try to finish. The air and sky right now portend possible t-storms…
…checking just now and yep, t-storms in the forecast for today, tonight and rest of the week, with a heat index today and tomorrow close to 95. Frankly, for us north-country denizens, that blows. And is at the outer limits of acceptable. I’m happy at 60-65 and don’t get annoyed at cold until it goes below zero and into extreme wind chill levels.
Wife just called and sez it’s about the same temp down there in southern NC.
lynn wrote:
“I like Kristen Bell’s Samsung commercials.”
I prefer the Tab commercials.
Poor, poor fat people:
Fat people are less intelligent than people with a normal weight, a provocative study claims.
Overweight men and women have less grey and white matter in key areas of the brain.
They also have greater impulsivity and ‘altered reward processing’, the study said.
The researchers said that their findings could explain why overweight people make poor diet choices – they do not have the mental capacity to control themselves.
Nor are they able to stop themselves from making poor choices when the do eat something.
I’ve been saying that for years. Not only fat people are offended by my observations.
Grossly and morbidly obese peeps near large cities + SHTF = Long Pig BBQ
Cain’t run fast enough to get away and otherwise too damn stupid anyway. Sure, there have been some smart fat people but they got fat with age. Not these teenagers and toddlers I see nowadays waddling around. Half the derps leaving that creamee stand on the corner every summer should NOT be gobbling creamees.
Lotsa good reading here:
http://www.woodpilereport.com/html/index-434.htm
And here, nice and short and sweet.
http://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=7984
The ruling elites can now either back the fuck off, or we are gonna have a war. Simple as that. Maybe not this weekend. Or this month. But it’s gonna come.
We hope, and some of us also pray, that more level heads among them will realize they’ve bitten off more than they can chew and have gone a step too far now.
Seen on the front page of today’s paper, the Fort Bend Herald:
The Countdown
A new American holiday:
Obama’s last day, 1/20/17.
An end of an error.
-BH