09:10 – It was about 66F (19C) when Barbara took Colin out at about 0730 this morning, gray and with high winds. She woke up earlier than usual and decided to let me sleep in. As usual, I woke up when I heard her moving around, so I got up a few minutes later than she did. Barbara is off running errands now. She’s going to stop at the local flooring place to look at replacement flooring and get them to come out and measure to give us a quote.
We worked on science kit stuff yesterday. More of that today. Jay Shaw from Shaw Brothers, our contractor, showed up yesterday morning to look things over and write up an estimate for repairs. He’s also going to come out Monday morning to meet the insurance adjuster.
When I started reading prepping websites several years ago, it quickly became obvious that most of them had no idea what they were talking about, many even less so than others. There were a very few that were generally accurate, and a relatively small group of others that were accurate on some things but wildly wrong on others. Most of them, of course, were trying to earn money from their sites, and they usually do that by recommending (and often selling) overpriced stuff like freeze-dried foods, MRE’s, and so forth. Even some that were otherwise mediocre to decent spoiled things with their whacko focus on “healthy” foods or herbal “remedies”. There were and are very, very few sites that don’t just talk the talk but actually walk the walk.
Among the latter are sites like Lisa Bedford’s Survival Mom, Angela Paskett’s Food Storage and Survival, both of whom have books I recommend people buy, Jamie Cooks It Up, The Prepper Journal (particularly anything written by Rebecca Ann Parris), and Pat Henry’s Gray Wolf Survival. There are some other decent ones out there, particularly ones devoted to specific aspects of prepping, but these are the ones that immediately come to mind.
Then there are a lot of prepping sites that draw a lot of traffic and publish a lot of articles, but their content ranges from error-ridden to completely useless. Many of those fall into the “healthy foods” and/or herbal “remedies” category, and most of them try to sell you stuff.
Among the worst of these, which I won’t link to for obvious reasons, are Tess Pennington’s Ready Nutrition and Daisy Luther’s The Organic Prepper, neither of whom have much idea of what they’re talking about. In fact, Daisy Luther just now figured out that it probably wasn’t a good idea for a single mom with a teenage daughter to be living by themselves in the middle of nowhere with her nearest neighbor half a mile away. So she moved away from her isolated homestead, which was an excellent idea, but she moved TO a suburban area, which certainly wouldn’t have been my first choice.
But my biggest frustration with these poor sites is that they’re not data-based. They recommend things that they’ve seen others recommend (like the Berkey water filters. Hawk, spit.) rather than actually testing the stuff themselves. And I don’t count as testing using, for example, a solar oven that a vendor provided as a free sample to bake one cake and then decide it works great. Even some of the good sites are guilty of this.
I wouldn’t accept a $400 solar oven from a vendor, even on loan, but if I did I’d make damn sure to compare it against the alternative, an oven that I’d made myself with $5 or $20 worth of materials. I’d record the intensity of insolation, and graph the outside temperature versus the inside temperature. In other words, I’d put myself in the position of providing actual data rather than simple impressions and opinion. Anecdotes are not the plural of data.
I also try to be very clear in my own writing to discriminate between what I believe to be true and what I know to be true by personal experience and observation. If I tell you that in my experience canned fruits last easily ten years past their best-by dates without noticeable loss of nutrition, it’s because I used (the very fugitive) Vitamin C as a proxy for nutrition and actually did a quantitative analysis of Vitamin C in two identical cans opened ten years apart. And so forth.
Her teenage tried to get into a ‘vocational school’. Okay, what’s that? Teaching woodwork, plumbing, gasfitting?
Typically a 2-year community college that teaches various things like those you mention, auto mechanics, lab technician, nursing, EMT/paramedic, dental hygienist, etc. etc.
77F and 91%RH this morning. That yields a ‘feels like’ of 86F. It feels stifling.
Finished my two new fence “window boxes” yesterday. I needed one more board to finish. Somehow I’d added wrong. This time I lined the boxes with plastic. I don’t know if there is any issue with the wood leaching chemicals, so I’ll try this and see if I get different yields.
The fence boxes will not provide enough to feed the family, but they are good for ‘salad veg’ and small root veg like radishes, turnips, and beets. All those have been successful, just not enough volume. In my case, they capture the best light on my whole property, so I think it’s worth doing.
While driving home yesterday, I noticed one of the very cheap apartments had an extensive container garden on their very small patio. I don’t know how they’ll keep the fruits of their labor from being stolen, but they should get a nice supplementary crop. If they can do it so can you.
WRT labor, another data point. The park where the ‘day labor’ hangs out was down to FOUR people yesterday. This is a significant change for the better. If they aren’t just displaced, then there are a large number of young (ish) men that have self deported. In any case, they aren’t in the day labor market in my neighborhood anymore.
I was at the auto supply store yesterday, and I picked up a 5 pack of road flares for my other truck. It’s actually kind of hard to find flares these days. Almost all the pre-packaged ‘road side emergency kits’ have dropped flares in preference to cyalume lightsticks, led flashers, and reflective triangles. I think you should all have a couple of flares in your vehicle kits. You might never need one, but being able to start pretty much anything on fire (including a spare tire, forex…) could save your life.
n
50 rocketing to 60 and sunny today and tomorrow with clouds and rain expected Saturday, so I gotta make hay while the sun shines here.
WRT to RBT’s commentary on the prepping sites; agreed on all counts. I’ve found that I routinely go to half a dozen sites for specific interests, whether radios, firearms, food storage, etc. And I get emails from some of them and some others, maybe a third of them actually useful in some respect.
WRT to road flares; I once read or heard that they light up at 2,000 degrees Farenheit. During the 1960s period of urban rioting, people from the local black underclass elements in New Bedford, MA found it an entertaining activity to bust out windows in cars up and down white neighborhood streets and toss in lit road flares. Those would quickly gut the interiors and leave them smoking metal hulks. I remember seeing that as a kid staying at my grandparents’ house for part of summer vay-cay; that neighborhood got overwhelmed by that same underclass and now looks like Beirut.
There are a lot of ‘wargame’ scenarios I can think of that involve gasoline and a road flare…
n
I’m off on a lovely 10 day jaunt with MrsAtoz:
Corpus Christi
San Antonio
Nashville
LA
San Jose
Vegas
One of those get up early, work, fly out late most every day. I don’t know how she does it. At least I can do all the driving now. She used to have to do that, too. Bless Southwest Airlines and their “Companion Pass”. We’ll save a lot of $$ with me flying for just the security fee.
Many blessings be upon you, MrandMrsAtoz! I dunno how y’all do it, either. Of those cities I have zero desire to visit any of them. I’m getting better, but still, to me the “city” to our east (Saint Albans) is a big town with lots going on. Burlap (pop. 50k) is the BIG CITY and I find it a PITA. Cities like those in your list are Beyond the Pale to me. I was in Boston a couple of summers ago and it squicked me out, not least because I must have stood out like the proverbial sore thumb. Sasquatch Lumberjack visits the humans.
Off shortly to commune with some fellow combat vets, mostly of the Late Unpleasantness in Southeast Asia, but we’re now seeing some young guys popping in, and boy are they pissed off!
Multiply those young guys by a few hundred thousand across the land, trained and experienced in urban combat operations, and many of them still armed. They’re not fond of “dune coons” (their words not mine) nor the government and have zero trust in the latter. It’s like pulling teeth to get them to come in initially and they’re often “in crisis” on arrival.
But let’s light off some more wars in Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan Redux, Iran, the Korean peninsula, the South China Sea, Somalia Redux, etc., etc. And put boots on the ground in Poland and install some more Patriot missile batteries.
Well the DOE has declared that the “emergency” at Hanford is over (yeah, right). Just their usual method of solving a problem, cover it with more dirt. Real good show with the fully garbed back-hoe operator and water spray.
BTW, if the “emergency” is over why is the DOE trying to find some “experts” to fix the ditch. Let’s bring in a bunch of engineers and Ph’Ds to stand around and scratch their butts while sucking up ridiculous consulting fees. The fixes and plans were done years ago and are still valid today, but the wheel must be reinvented and then redesigned; rinse and repeat.
It’s another government achievement. Can you hear the sound of one hand clapping?
Makes ya wunduh what other sites around the country are on the brink.
I’m off on a lovely 10 day jaunt with MrsAtoz:
Corpus Christi
San Antonio
Nashville
LA
San Jose
Vegas
If you have time to kill in San Jose, find the Computer History Museum and The Weird Stuff Warehouse (I’m not kidding about the name of the place).
You can safely skip the Intel tour.
BTW, if the “emergency” is over why is the DOE trying to find some “experts” to fix the ditch. Let’s bring in a bunch of engineers and Ph’Ds to stand around and scratch their butts while sucking up ridiculous consulting fees. The fixes and plans were done years ago and are still valid today, but the wheel must be reinvented and then redesigned; rinse and repeat.
Again, based on what I’ve observed and read, Hanford is a full employment act for certain types of nerds similar to what NASA is for space geeks.
At least progress is being made at Hanford, no matter how slow. Who wants to take bets about SLS flying more than once? Ever?
To put it simply, all of them. Hanford, INEL (Idaho), and various sites related to/with Oak Ridge/Clinch River are the worst, but many other states have situations that they do not want the public to know about.
It could be done right and fixed, but the gooberment looks on doing things wrong and inefficiently as a way to ensure the bureaucracy lives forever.
Back when I was laid-off it was claimed that there were too many contractors and employees. 20+ years later there are now there are twice as many contractors, employees, and gooberment bureaucracy overseers. The budget is more than double and productivity is 1/10 of what it was. The average experience level has gone from decades to just a few years at best, many highly degreed people have no real world experience. There is still a good experience/competence among the few crafts remaining and they are responsible for preventing many serious accidents (a tough job when you have dozens of people telling you what to do, all of it wrong).
Here’s one to watch:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4494274/Man-kills-gunman-shootout-Illinois-gas-station.html
In TX, as soon as the red jacket guy attempted to open the car door, deadly force was appropriate. No idea for IL.
In general, according to use of force trainers I’ve watched or read, if you are in a vehicle, you should retreat. Courts think the vehicle evens the odds tremendously or even gives an advantage that negates the “feared for my life or great bodily injury.”
n
Bazillion peeps at the airport today. 100% dog butt sniffing. lol! MrsAtoz got a bag check. I walked with my standard gadget load with no problem. TSA sucks rocks. WhatABurger in SA upon landing.
various sites related to/with Oak Ridge/Clinch River are the worst, but many other states have situations that they do not want the public to know about
Living very near Oak Ridge, driving through almost everyday, involved in a couple of contracts, you are spot on. The corruption and back scratching is beyond comprehension.
Lockheed Martin had a mandate, a performance item, in their contract that if met was worth several million dollars. The task was to create local jobs. So Lockheed Martin sub contract to individual companies, companies that are formed by the buddies of the higher ups. Then moves the particular trade workers to that company. Boom, Lockheed Martin claims to have created a hundred jobs even though they were just transfers. Net workers remained the same.
Then Lockheed Martin decides they are paying these subs too much and Lockheed Martin is not scraping enough off the top. So Lockheed Martin cuts funding to these subs by 25% resulting in layoffs of at least 25% or more. The buddies that formed the company are still drawing their huge salary. The subs have to layoff workers resulting in net loss of jobs. Lockheed Martin still got their bonus (in the multi-million) as Lockheed Martin’s stand was they created the jobs it is not their fault the subs cannot keep the people.
Lockheed Martin wins big, the workers lose big time.
WhatABurger in SA upon landing
Yep, had to snag a couple of those when I was there in October and March.
Back from the VA. Got there early. They had moved my appointment from 1:00 to 12:30. I got there at twelve. Signed in at the kiosk, and three minutes later was ushered into the office by the physician. He interviewed me, said he was not going to ask me to go through contortions to see if my movement suffered. Apparently just comments were enough. Also asked if I used a cane. I said no but I use a walking stick when I hike. He said that’s a cane and will go in the report without the mention of hiking. Seemed like he really wanted me to get the increased disability. Will know within 90 days.
As I stated, goal is 50% as that will provide prescriptions without any deductible on any medications from the VA. They also allowed me to submit a mileage claim, about 22 miles each way.
Sounds good, Mr. Ray. The doc was apparently on your side. Good luck with the rest of it. Mileage claims: I got paid for one round-trip to White River Junction, about 240 miles total; then they denied me the mileage for two more round-trips there, said I didn’t meet the criteria. I let it slide for now, due to other considerations and payments, and also my total bill from before either being reduced or eliminated entirely.
Back from a fairly lively vets group meeting; some nasty war stories told this time, kind of unusual for us. A little heat when politics started to get touched on; we have at least two liberal Dem-type vets in our group; the others are mostly old-school Fox News and Limburger “conservatives,” and your humble northern CONUS correspondent is a bit to the right of Patrick Buchanan, i.e., a paleoconservative/reactionary. I keep a low profile with that and don’t say much concerning politics or religion; several others are lapsed Roman Catholics.
Other good nooz from here is that they’re repaving Lake Street, a.k.a. VT Route 36, which winds from the “city” three miles to our east, down around through the village here, around the back of our property and up to Swanton. Kinda decrepit with pot holes and frost heaves before, it’s now becoming as smooth as a baby’s bottom.
Next up: sidewalk and bike path, I think. Connecting the Rail Trail to our northeast down to the Bay here.
Now out to mow the lawn and move some stuff around…
Great news there @Ray, sound like you got a Doc who is more concerned about meeting his patient load quota than going through all the BS that is really already known. He also helped you out with that little key regarding the “cane” and “hiking”. It’s all in the key words and tricky phrases.
WhatABurger in SA upon landing.
Hit The Riverwalk for dinner if you are downtown. The district has restaurants at all price levels.
If you have the time tomorrow, Lockhart and Luling offer excellent BBQ options, but Texas BBQ is a noon-time meal. The best choices (such as the pork chop at Kreuz Market) sell out quickly and are gone by early afternoon.
Don’t forget to stop at Buc-ee’s in Luling before heading back to SA.
Rudy’s “Worst BBQ in Texas” is in town if time is short.
Mileage claims: I got paid for one round-trip to White River Junction, about 240 miles total
Seemed odd to me as when I had to travel to Nashville, about 150 miles, they did not compensate me on one of the trips but did on the other.
helped you out with that little key regarding the “cane” and “hiking”
Yeh, I sort of ciphered that when I was talking with him. All about knowing what the board is looking for, keywords, etc.
Roger that on the keywords; I discovered that I had to make clear to the examiners that I was “in fear for my life.” Well no shit; I figured that was ASSUMED. We all know what that spells, amirite? And that one phrase is what took so long for me to get the disability rating for PTSD.
A couple of the stories told by other guys today and you’d have to be insane not to be afraid for your life, either that or a spec ops pro or somebody on their umpteenth deployment who just doesn’t give a shit anymore. I was very close to those categories by the last six months of my last active-duty deployment. And I was just a short-timer, but damned if they didn’t stick me in one horror show after another. I haven’t even told ANY of my stories to these guys in the three or four years I’ve been in the group. Told one or two to the wife and she of course was horrified but you know they still don’t really get it. And that’s OK; we just have to remember that this stuff has an IMPACT on them, TOO. I think that tends to get forgotten by too many guys coming back and I was guilty as charged until, believe it or not, I read some stuff in a Rutgers course we had to take on Afrikan-Murkan poetry.
It was like a light bulb turned on and I realized that peeps back here got fucked up over their guys in the wars overseas. The frosting on the cake was when I was rambling about related chit to my mom, she brought me up short when she told me she had a combat vet for a son, for her husband, her brother, her father, and her father-in-law. And I thought to myself, holy shit. That must do a number on somebody. Because they have no control over any of it, can’t see or hear what’s happening, and often go many moons with zero contact at all.
Just mowed the lawn and had to stop three or four times and sit for five minutes. The kid does it in half an hour and I dodder along for two hours. Getting old blows.
Jerry Pournelle says getting old is expensive over at Chaos Manor.
“Jerry Pournelle says getting old is expensive over at Chaos Manor.”
Roger that! Forty years ago I was getting my kids through college. Now I’m helping with their kids and it 10 time$ more!!
Lynn,
It looks like Win32 emulation on Windows 10 for ARM is still happening. I wouldn’t be surprised if the VB 6 support also works. Win32 forever!
https://liliputing.com/2017/05/windows-10-arm-less-locked-windows-10-s-supports-non-store-win32-apps.html
Hybrid x86 DLLs with ARM 64 code included? Interesting.
We just discovered that thousands of our laptops came from HP with a hidden keylogger built in the audio drivers. You could say we are pissed.
https://thenextweb.com/insider/2017/05/11/hp-is-shipping-audio-drivers-with-a-built-in-keylogger/#.tnw_EzlSSRom
” You could say we are pissed.”
I guess we can also assume those machines are pre-loaded w/W10, also?
Two ways to avoid/circumvent: specify that no o.s. is loaded on them and you will do that yourselves, or, once you have them, reformat the drives and install whatever. Lotta work and I’d charge HP for the time and effort involved/demand a major discount. Assuming also, that upper-level PHBs didn’t specify the keyloggers in the first place to spy on their plebs/serfs/prolecube drones.
If I was upper mangler-level, I’d specify or load Linux Mint on all those laptops and install Crossover for Linux for those people who absolutely can’t live or work w/o M$ Office apps. On an app-by-app basis. And then I’d tell M$ and HP to take a short jump off a long pier. Forever.
http://freedomoutpost.com/2-doctors-found-bound-with-throats-slashed-in-boston/
So many outrages in this story, even I don’t know where to begin. Codrea provides more intel than the MSM or gummint were evidently willing to share.
http://conservative-headlines.org/hypocrisy-alert-msnbc-host-calls-out-maxine-waters-for-her-complete-lack-of-credibility/
Yikes. Maybe she’ll run for National Administrator, too. These people are supposedly thinking about it:
http://freedomoutpost.com/mark-zuckerberg-the-rock-katy-perry-and-oprah-winfrey-are-all-thinking-of-running-for-president/
Given the choice, I’ll pick the The Rock, of course.
We really have nobody. They’re all sock puppets once they get to Mordor and inhale the treacherous and toxic vapors off the Potomac and the underlying swamp there. The ones who rise to the upper levels are the most competent diabolical narcissists.
One more, in the Midnight Hour…
….http://buchanan.org/blog/americas-goal-world-126997
My answer to Patrick is: the corporate fascist oligarchy prefers endless, zero-closure, zero-victory wars to keep the arms dealers and their own corporate interests rolling in dough. If we ended a war, victorious or not, those markets would falter or even dry up. Can’t have that. So we have at least one war going somewhere in the world in every generation. And if we get antsy about it, they’ll stage something or allow something to happen here in CONUS that scares the shit outta people and then we’ll all start waving the flags and doing the parades and getting all teary at the missing-man formations flying over an NFL stadium at kickoff.
My family has had three generations in a row fight in FUSA wars over the past century. Somebody tell me WTF for???
OFD for President!
If I was upper mangler-level, I’d specify or load Linux Mint on all those laptops and install Crossover for Linux for those people who absolutely can’t live or work w/o M$ Office apps. On an app-by-app basis. And then I’d tell M$ and HP to take a short jump off a long pier. Forever.
Linux Mint or Fedora. Whichever works better on the given hardware. It varies in my experience, and Fedora offers the Wayland experience if you want to try the future Linux GUI standard.
(Please, no conspiracy stories about Fedora. Way too many eyes are on that distro, and IIRC it is the current distro of choice for the Linux Benevolent Dictator himself.)
I have “No Windows, None Of The Time.” laptops. Booting Windows is sometimes necessary to update BIOS or perform maintenance chores on my Crucial SSDs.
“OFD for President!”
A chicken in every pot and pot in every chicken.
doobie doobie doo…
Yes, my humor is warped this morning 😉
Rudy’s “Worst BBQ in Texas” is in town if time is short.
On the list. We live in SA for 10 years, so know the places. We’ll stay with out daughter a couple of days before Nashville.
On the list. We live in SA for 10 years, so know the places. We’ll stay with out daughter a couple of days before Nashville.
You know SA better than I do, then. I lived in FL most of my life before our Northwest misadventure. If you’re ever headed to Orlando, Tampa, Fort Meyers/Naples or Miami, leave a note here.
Given the choice, I’ll pick the The Rock, of course.
Have you seen some of Stretch Pelosi’s latest speeches? Stuttering, mispronouncing, CRS. She might expire before Coffin Cankles.