11:14 – I spent the morning yesterday at the dentist, undergoing oral surgery. When Barbara retired from the law firm as of 10/30/15, we elected to continue her dental insurance under COBRA. That expires in March 2017, so I wanted to get done whatever needed to be done while we were still covered for dental. Barbara is volunteering again today to get the public library moved to its new location. She just called to check on me.
It was 14.8F (-10C) when I got up this morning to take Colin out. By the time I did his after-breakfast walk an hour or so later, the temperature had skyrocketed up to 15.3F. It’s not officially winter for another week or so, but winter has definitely arrived in Sparta, NC.
I just ordered another humidifier like the one we’re currently using. The tank holds just short of a gallon (maybe 3.5L), which on high it runs through in about 12 hours. Putting two gallons of water per day into the air helps, but it’s not quite enough. When it’s really cold outside, our indoor humidity starts to drop. Even with one unit running flat-out, the humidity gets down into the 45% range, which is uncomfortable for Barbara. She likes it up around 55% to 60%, which running two units should allow us to maintain.
Email overnight from Jen. They’ve run several readiness exercises over the last couple of years, hunkering down in their home over a long weekend. They decided to run another, longer-term exercise over Christmas, starting Friday evening the 23rd and running through Monday morning the 2nd of January. They’ll have to “cheat” a bit because not all of them can take off the whole week between Christmas and the New Year. Her husband David, for example, has to cover two days that week at his veterinary practice, and her brother Jim will have to go into work for at least half-days most of that week. They’ll both be taking their lunches and thermoses with them, so it’s only a minor cheat.
They haven’t tried to do a week-long readiness exercise before, because Christmas was the only realistic time to run it and the women decided there was just too much going on over that holiday to try a hunkering down exercise. But Jen and David have made some significant improvements to their infrastructure over the last year that’ll make it a lot easier for them. They’ve installed a decent size off-grid solar setup with a high amperage true sine-wave inverter that allows them to run their well pump, basic lighting (which is all LED now), TV, and so on. They also installed a high wattage Honda inverter generator as a backup means of charging their battery bank and driving their refrigerator and freezer directly. Finally, they also did what we just did: installed a large propane tank and a gas cooktop in their basement living area, along with a small propane water heater, which feeds only the sink and bathroom in the basement living area. They didn’t replace their main electric water heater because propane is about three times as costly as electricity, and they use a lot of hot water. Still, as Jen says, that gives them hot water for showers and food-prep/dish-washing downstairs. She can still do laundry upstairs, but she’ll just have to run cold-water washes.
We’re at about 11 degrees F now with chill facta around 11 below. Sunny w/blue skies, though. And for more fun, we’re expecting blowing snow in the wee hours tonight/tomorrow and into tomorrow afternoon, maybe a few inches, followed by sleet, freezing rain and rain on Sunday, when it will supposedly hit 40 F. After that, back to the deep freeze again on Monday. So all that stuff will make a sheet of ice on the surrounding north Vermont landscape.
Wife is due back in Vermont Monday AM and just in time to enjoy the last few days of fall with me.
This is kind of old nooz but still important as a corrective to the anti-gun cretins and hoplophobes:
http://weaponsman.com/?p=33875
“Absent a better idea, we can say that the US inventory of firearms is almost certainly between 412 and 660 million, not the lower numbers recently trumpeted in the media.”
I’m guessing it is closer to the higher number, for obvious reasons.
Boffo laffs for lunchtime:
http://hopenchangecartoons.blogspot.com/2016/12/irony-man.html
Monday could be even funnier!
@OFD – :two thumbs up: and ROFL
I went to a lot of gun shows back in the 60’s and 70’s, when BATF had no interest in anything other than Class III stuff. No records were kept. You handed cash to the guy and he handed over the gun. (Class III stuff was sold out of car trunks out in the parking lot.) It was common to see vendors with cases of SKSs and similar surplus guns stacked 10-high in their booths. I remember lots of people buying literally dozens of surplus military rifles at a time, along with pallets of ammo. Multiply that by thousands of gun shows every year over three decades or more, and it must amount to hundreds of millions of off-the-books fiearms, most military surplus.
I stand by my SWAG of 500 million to one billion guns in private hands. Hell, I buried half a dozen SKSs myself up in Pennsylvania myself, but after 40 years I have no idea of where they are.
If anything, that number could be even higher, given the doubling of the population since then, and having the all-time greatest gun salesman as National Administrator for eight years, plus the prospect of the next greatest coming along six weeks and longer ago. Manufacturers are running three shifts with mandatory O.T. and have been for several years now, and can you imagine the mountains of ammo that’s out there?
I wish I remembered where I saw something recently about the sheer number of AR15s and AR10s and mil-spec-type pistols in the hands of private ownership here exceeding that among the front-line troops of…and I forgot which countries, but it may have been WWII or currently, and it was shocking even to me.
In 2016, Americans bought enough gubs EVERY THREE MONTHS to equip all of China’s AND Russia’s armed forces. The American public is the largest armed force on the planet, and in the history of the world. Molon labe.
Maybe that’s what I was thinking of. I seem to recall the “every three months” part of it, which was what kinda shocked me.
So why have we been so cowed, so quiet, so submissive all these years? It’s us Normals who’ve been buying all those gubs, not our intellectual “betters” in the urban libturd enclaves. Shouldn’t we have told them all to shove it where the sun don’t shine a long, long time ago?
I get it that our cultural and political institutions were badly undermined by the Long March of the commies since the 1930s, but wow, it left us sorta ball-less and numbed until fairly recently.
These next few years are gonna be interesting, what with the tRump phenomenon, Brexit, and the recent kerfuffles in Italy and the former Eastern Bloc countries. I’m just wondering when the Germans will finally get off the pot.
“I buried half a dozen SKSs myself up in Pennsylvania myself, but after 40 years I have no idea of where they are.:
I was in Penn in 2003 and found them. Paid for my trip. Thanks.
We went to the Crossroads of the West gun show at our county fairgrounds recently. Actually, there were more knives on display than guns.
Within the last year, or so, the LA County lefty supervisors banned the future gun shows at the LA County Fairgrounds. Regardless, streetside gun deaths have increased.
Second Amendment Slim
They didn’t replace their main electric water heater because propane is about three times as costly as electricity, and they use a lot of hot water.
Huh ? What are you paying for propane to your house ? Is there a delivery charge on propane to your house that is expensive ? I figure that you are paying 12 ? 13 ? 14 ? cents/kwh for electricity.
“Regardless, streetside gun deaths have increased.”
Really? That’s SHOCKING! Gee, you’d think that banning guns would cause a DECREASE! Wouldn’t it???
Uh-oh….Chicongo. Detroit. DC. etc., etc. All the urban libturd enclaves. How’s that working out for ya, libturds? And you wanna ban MY gubs???
Oh wait—there was a book out a few years ago…”More Guns, Less Crime.” Yeah.
Any chemistry set recommendations for an 8 year old girl?
I think we pay under 10 cents per kW-hr versus maybe $2.30/gallon for propane, which has about 2/3 the BTU/gallon of gasoline or diesel. We haven’t gotten the bill yet, so I’m not sure what propane costs right now.
Actually, Jen didn’t say three times as much, just “a lot more”. I assumed her relative costs were similar to ours. We’re probably paying off the cost of the tank (which they didn’t charge for directly) in the price of the propane. Delivery is free except for a $4 or $5 DOT hazardous materials surcharge.
This is my rental unit up the road:
http://features.hollywoodreporter.com/the-gun-industrys-lucrative-relationship-with-hollywood/
Haha. I wish.
What follows is a little tour of Hollyweird’s romance with gubs, and how the celebs tell us: “Do what we say, not what we do.” As they rake in tens of millions.
In the “Heat” sequence, the bank robbers are mainly dealing with regular street cops and detectives; SWAT is probably still tooling up back at the station. They’re a little tired from raiding the organic carrot farm earlier, and having to bust that old lady with the overdue library books.
(not a dig at all SWAT outfits, just the ones with too much time on their hands and a lousy command structure; one of Mrs. OFD’s colleagues is a former SWAT commander for the city of Rochester, NY, and they earned their money back in the day, maybe still do. I had supper with him down in NJ; nice guy.)
Anyway, just a little digression from the usual doom-and-gloom and the rumor that tRump is appointing Sylvester Stallone as director the Endowment for the Arts, or something. Seriously, Don? WTF? If you gotta pick an actor pick someone with gravitas, eh? Maybe Gene Hackman? Robert Duvall? C’mon, buddy, have a haht.
“What Would Jesus Do? The Pope Says He’d Be a Syrian Islamist Migrant”
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2016/12/16/what_would_jesus_do_the_pope_says_he_d_be_a_syrian_islamist_migrant
Um, no. Does the Pope read his Bible ? The prophecies in the Old Testament are very clear that Jesus was “a son of David”. Or does the Pope think that King David was not a Jewish boy either ?
https://gotquestions.org/Jesus-son-of-David.html
Anyway, you know what the Bible says to do with false prophets. Lots of stones in Italy.
” I figure that you are paying 12 ? 13 ? 14 ? cents/kwh for electricity.”
I did the calculations and I’m paying $0.35 /kWh.
“Anyway, you know what the Bible says to do with false prophets. Lots of stones in Italy.”
Ordinarily I might say, “Seriously, Mr. Lynn?” R U advocating stoning the Pope?
But some of us out here still see Benedict as our Pope for various reasons, mostly involving canon law. (you can’t just “retire” or be some kind of Pope-Emeritus, and have two popes; he probably thought he could do that but he is wrong.) And we find Francis to be an anti-pope. Or worse.
Anyway, you know what the Bible says to do with false prophets. Lots of stones in Italy.
Where are the Vatican’s assassins? This situation with the “retired” Hitler Youth Pope and the halfwit not-really-a-Pope currently wearing the pointy hat has gone on way too long.
There is modern precedent. The assassins made short work of John Paul II’s predecessor.
” I figure that you are paying 12 ? 13 ? 14 ? cents/kwh for electricity.”
I did the calculations and I’m paying $0.35 /kWh.
I am paying 8 cents/kwh at the house and 9 cents/kwh at the office. The office has a demand meter on it which adds about a penny/kwh to the cost.
I’m impressed beyond all measure with Jen’s preparedness.
Ballparking, I’d guess that 2/3 of Americans give no thought to preparing for crises or hard times, beyond maybe having a bit of extra money in the bank. Of the 1/3 who think about meaningful preps, the majority never do anything beyond think and talk. Of those who make any effort, the vast majority either lowball the amount they get or they have huge, gaping holes in the materials they gather and the skills they acquire. Of the preppers who have a good supply of everything and know how to use it, I’ll guess that about a dozen in the US actually do test runs.
And Jen and her group are four of that dozen. Very impressive.
I don’t know what we’re paying, but it’s way higher than that. (Though not nearly what Eugen is paying.)
Back when Enron was happening, 20 years or thereabouts ago, the newspapers (remember those? They were printed on dead tree stuff and were the primary means of spreading lies, propaganda, and careless mistakes.) had sob stories about how Californians’ power rates had gone up 40% in the past year and they couldn’t afford their air conditioning and boo-hoo and the government needs to do something. And then I found out that the new, higher, rate that Californians were paying was about 2/3 of what I was paying at the time, and a big rate hike was going to hit me in the next month or so. Sympathy go bye-bye.
Shortly after that the brownouts began. Yes, Enron was apparently manipulating the supply and the brownouts for their own profit, but the real issue was that there wasn’t enough high tension capacity to get the power from where there was plenty at low cost to where it was needed. Specifically, there needed to be another 300kV line from northern California down to the Los Angeles area. Oddly enough, the power companies and the regulators had seen the need years before and had proposed just such a line. But the NIMBYs blocked it. Good job, retards! Sympathy go bye-bye!
had sob stories about how Californians’ power rates had gone up 40% in the past year and they couldn’t afford their air conditioning and boo-hoo and the government needs to do something. And then I found out that the new, higher, rate that Californians were paying was about 2/3 of what I was paying at the time, and a big rate hike was going to hit me in the next month or so. Sympathy go bye-bye.
My father-in-law owned a few shares of PG&E. That all went bye-bye when California forced PG&E into bankruptcy. My FIL had no sympathy for the customers either.
WRT what are you paying for electricity:
WA State has the lowest electrical rates in the USofA. Ref: http://www.electricitylocal.com/states/washington/
In my town, Kennewick, the rates are lower than the average as we have a Public Utility District (PUD) that knows how to deal with the gooberment.
Enron was apparently manipulating the supply and the brownouts for their own profit, but the real issue was that there wasn’t enough high tension capacity to get the power from where there was plenty at low cost to where it was needed
A friend from high school was the Reliant vice president of energy production in California. One of his generating units was an old gas turbine that ran on diesel in downtown LA. The California Resources Board limited him to running it 150 ??? hours per year. Since it was so few hours, he could not afford to keep any permanent staff on site. The year that they had the brownouts, they maxed the GT hours out by June or so. He then refused to run it anymore due to the CARB fines. The California PUC ordered him to run the GT anyway. I think that he ran the unit but had to pay the fines so running the GT cost Reliant money. If I remember correctly, at one point CARB had an arrest warrant out for him.
Yeah, Jen is an impessive woman. She scares me sometimes. She went from unprepared 2.5 years ago to better-prepared than most serious preppers less than six months later. I sure can’t keep up with her. If I were responsible for organizing Operation Overlord, I’d want her as my CoS.
I am paying about 10.73¢/kWh for electricity. You would think it would be lower with the TVA dams in the area, cheap coal for the coal plants, and a couple of nuclear plants close by. But such is not the case as the bonuses for the TVA management goons totals several millions of dollars each year. Oh, the ash spill from the Kingston plant where the government fined TVA several millions, who just passed the cost of the fine to customers, doesn’t help.
Sympathy go bye-bye
I have zero sympathy for any energy or water supply problems that affect California and it’s residents. They bring it on themselves and then ask for pity. Suck it up and grow a pair. The citizens are their own worst enemy. Best thing that could happen is for the big fault to split and put a major chunk of California under about 300 feet of water.
“If I were responsible for organizing Operation Overlord, I’d want her as my CoS.”
What makes you think that SHE’D be the CoS and YOU’D be the top dawg?
I’m also impressed but I wonder how many folks have the resources and determination to go all-out over 30 months; a LOT of us out here have spouses or other family members who, to put it mildly, are not on board WRT to prepping for whatever. I can manage some stuff up here but it’s mostly in the guise of being ready for winter storms with no power and local goblins roaming around breaking into houses. And even at that, what I consider bare minimum prepping (all we can afford at present), we’re still better off than probably 95% of the Murkan public.
We’re also better off because one party here is a trained and experienced armed forces combat veteran and former police officer, but that was 30-40 years ago, and as RBT says, I’m too old for this shit now. Best I can likely do is defend and protect us and our home here and what neighbors we can help.
And our main gaping hole right now is sufficient food and wotta storage, so I’ll be working on that, plus better security for the front and back door areas.
Low 70s (F) here on the Gulf Coast, forecast for tomorrow is slightly warmer.
11.359 cents / Kw hour for electricity here (large, regulated, publicly traded supplier) + 62 cents / day base charge + a variety of state & local taxes. I have no idea what either form of gas service costs.
And our main gaping hole right now is sufficient food and wotta storage
As we are scheduled to have a minor freeze Sunday night, I am suddenly wondering how my 120 cases of Ozarka 24 bottle water in the garage will do in a hard freeze ? Lets say, 6 F like we had back in Christmas 1989. The hard freeze where just about every third or fourth house in Houston had broken water pipes in the attic that were uncovered and uninsulated.
I figure that my garage will stay naturally 10 F warmer than the ambient. Maybe. The garage is detached and uninsulated. In fact, it has a 3 ft by 6.67 ft hole in the north side where I am eventually going to put a door. And it has roof ridge vents.
“What makes you think that SHE’D be the CoS and YOU’D be the top dawg?”
Subjunctive, but Jen does still ask my advice. Actually, I’d happily be her CoS.
I am suddenly wondering how my 120 cases of Ozarka 24 bottle water in the garage will do in a hard freeze
Put one bottle in the freezer and see how it does.
Buy a heater and leave it running.
Our garage has never fallen below 40F even the night it got down to 0F.
Enron was apparently manipulating the supply and the brownouts for their own profit, but the real issue was that there wasn’t enough high tension capacity to get the power from where there was plenty at low cost to where it was needed
Ah, the early days of W and “Kenny Boy”. The swamp predates Doh-bama, folks.
Once Enron and Andersen Consulting (accounting) received the corporate death penalty, the gummint made the contents of Enron’s email servers available as a resource for forensic researchers. I’ve played with the files several times for a couple of grad school projects. Really interesting stuff if you’re bored and want to learn Lucene/Solr.
If you’ve never seen “The Smartest Guys In The Room”, it is worth the time. It may totally p*ss you off, depending on your political beliefs and whether you held Enron stock. It will definitely change how you look at the Governor Ahhh-nold circus in CA.
” The hard freeze where just about every third or fourth house in Houston had broken water pipes in the attic that were uncovered and uninsulated.”
We routinely leave several faucets trickling during freezes like this to prevent just that sort of problem. So fah, so good.
“The swamp predates Doh-bama, folks.”
Hear, hear! I keep saying this, too, but man, it’s like shoveling sand against the tide.
In my view the swamp dates back to 1787-89. But that’s too much to ask of present-day folks, so I just mention that it mainly goes back to the 1930s and then the national security state rolled into action right after the Good War. Before most of us here were born, but not by much in some cases, lol.
Low 80’s in central Florida.
Don’t know what we’re paying for electric. We pay a use charge and a delivery charge.
We haven’t done any dry runs, because we’ve done some wet runs with actual hurricanes. I then acted on the lessons learned. Still haven’t completely finished, witness my ongoing install of the whole house gennie. Much better idea to practice first….
Nick
Staying around 10 or so here with wind chill knocking it down to 10 below, and some light snow expected starting around 05:00. Followed by sleet, freezing rain, and then rain on Sunday. Supposedly. Megalopolis about to get slammed by one to two feet, supposedly. They will lose their minds.
“…my ongoing install of the whole house gennie.”
I guess that’s down the road for us here; the main purpose is to run the well pump but it would be nice to also be able to run the fridge and freezer and lights once in a while, depending on local circumstances in this AO. I have a nice spot all picked out for the pad, too, with an easy and short distance to the electrical panel in the cellar, and out of sight from the street.
No dry runs here, either, as one of us two is gone two weeks a month most months and sooner or later we’ll have a power outage and winter storm situation anyway.
Mrs. OFD is flying back to Honolulu tomorrow and then staying overnight in the harbor on a catamaran and flying back to CONUS Sunday night, arriving in Moh-ree-all around 09:30 our time, when Princess will pick her up and then they’ll drive back here. The latter is evidently done with this semester and will be staying at her grandma’s all week through Xmas, I guess, and maybe longer. I’m the last to find out anything here anyway.
Football tomorrow night with the Dolphins and Jets and then all day Sunday while it rains outside. I’ll be revising to-do lists, researching more stuff, and doing some house cleanup all weekend. Prepping-related is my current online NRA class and looking again at what I need to do for cellar food and wotta storage and my work space in the attic and organizing the tools and associated gear.
And since I have a Red Hat Enterprise Level license, I’ll install 7.x on one of the machines and Nethserver 7.x on top of that, and start moving all my firearms and radio files over to it so it’s ready to go when I get the furniture organized in the attic. One of the Nethserver options is setting up a WordPress site, which will be, in this case, gub-related for that particular biz here. I’ll also be running Gnucash on that machine and linking it to a new biz account with our bank. I have absolutely no shortage of stuff to do here, whether or not I end up with that Fed subcontractor drone job.
Drink all the water you want to in St. Joseph, Louisiana.
Drudge says it’s OK!
Contaminated Water In St. Joseph, La., Leads To Public Health …
NPR-6 hours ago
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards has declared a Public Health Emergency for the town of St. Joseph, after officials found water going to three …
Louisiana Governor Declares Public Health Emergency for St …
ABC News-5 hours ago
“Public Health Emergency” issued in the town of St. Joseph in north …
KATC Lafayette News-8 hours ago
Edwards issues public health emergency for St. Joseph water
The Daily Progress-7 hours ago
St. Joseph residents told not to drink water; Gov. John Bel Edwards …
The Advocate-5 hours ago
I ran down the coast tonight to spend some time with my parents. My mom was telling me about raising me in NJ as we moved to Princeton when I was six weeks old. Dad had a grant from the NSF ? to go get his PhD in Chem eng.
Anyway, from Nov through March, they could not take me outside because I would turn blue. When I did, she would run me into the bathroom and turn on the shower and saturate the air until I turned pink. A primitive humidifier !
Mom started chemo again last thursday. One wonders how long she can stand it on a monthly basis. One wonders if the chemo will do any good. She is on Toxil once per month for three months and then retest to see if the lymph nodes are growing or receeding.
Sorry to hear about your mom. These things are never easy.
Thanks !