08:06 – It was 57.1F (14C) when I took Colin out at 0635, partly cloudy.
Bad news about the little Malamute, whom I’ve decided to call Bella for short. One of my vendors sent me samples of a couple of learning aids designed for young children. I had no use for them, so I gave them to Barbara and suggested she donate them to the Friends bookstore or something. She decided to give them to Vickie, our next-door neighbor, to give to her grandchildren.
While she was standing out by the road at Vickie’s, a guy pulled up in a pickup and stopped to talk to her. He was a farmer from down the road, and he’d just lost a dozen of his chickens to the little dog. He was very upset, naturally, and told Barbara he’d already reported it to the sheriff and animal control. I suspect if he sees the dog, he’ll shoot her. If animal control or the sheriff’s deputies catch her, it’ll probably be a one-way trip to the dump.
While they were standing there talking, another woman pulled up. She’d seen the little dog around and said she thought it belonged to a Mexican family that lived in a house behind the trailer park down the road from us. She told them that she thought Mr. Mabe’s wife had been giving her food because she felt sorry for her.
It’s not the dog’s fault, obviously. She’s hungry and she’s just doing what comes naturally. But that won’t matter. Just like any rural area, a destructive dog has a dim future. I told Barbara that I’m going to keep my eye out for her. I’ll catch her if I can, and take her over to the veterinarian that runs an animal shelter/rescue operation. I don’t want to see her killed just because she was hungry.
So, about 1700 yesterday, I managed to lure her into the garage and get the door closed. There she stayed for the next several hours, with us checking on her periodically. When Barbara went out to check on her, she called me from the garage. Bella had climbed up the steel-wire shelving unit against the back garage window, knocking over a case of 18/400 caps on her way up. She was standing on the top shelf, three feet off the floor, looking out the back window. We got her down safely and cleaned up the 8 million or so caps from the garage floor.
Barbara decided to assemble our steel-wire dog crate. We did that and got Bella into it. She showed absolutely no aggression at any point, just extreme skittishness. She doesn’t want to be captured. She lay unprotestingly in the crate for the next couple of hours. She knocked over the bowls of food and water we’d put in the crate, but otherwise there was no problem.
It was pretty warm in the garage. We’d left a fan pointed at the crate, but after we’d gone back to bed, she started yipping and barking. Barbara decided we needed to move the crate out onto the front porch to get her some cool air. That was a mistake. We got the crate with her in it moved onto the corner of the front porch near the garage, but the door latch came loose and Bella made a break for it. We spent the next 45 minutes trying to recapture her. No joy. We finally gave up and went back to bed.
This morning, she wasn’t around when I took Colin out, but she showed up at the front door shortly thereafter. We spent half an hour or so luring her into the house with lunch meat, with Colin penned up in the bedroom. Barbara finally got her into the garage, where she allowed Barbara to get a slip leash on her and get her loaded into the car.
Barbara just took off a few minutes ago, headed to the vet’s office, which has a private animal shelter next door. I’ll call them later on today to see what they can tell me. I want to make absolutely sure they don’t put her down. If they can’t find someone to adopt her, I want to take her back. We’ll find someone, up here or maybe down in Winston, who’ll take her. As a last resort, I’m going to tell Barbara we should take her ourselves.
When we were moving stuff from the upstairs vertical freezer to the downstairs refrigerator yesterday, we were bitten by a task that’s been on our to-do list for a long time that we just haven’t gotten around to doing. That’s reorganizing the LTS food room.
Barbara keeps a “downstairs shopping list” on the refrigerator upstairs, so that when we go down we’ll be able to get what we need to bring up. She did fried rice for dinner Monday night, ran out of sesame oil, and put it on the downstairs shopping list. While we were downstairs I walked into the LTS pantry, intending to pick up a bottle of it to take upstairs. Standing there surrounded by stacks of cans, bottles, and boxes, I realized that I had no clue where exactly the sesame oil was. There should be two 12.5-ounce bottles of it, which I ordered May 2nd from Walmart and which arrived two days later. I remember them arriving. I remember seeing the bottles. I just don’t remember where I put them.
It all started when I was stacking #10 cans of Augason powdered eggs in the downstairs freezer. I remembered that I’d ordered four more cans of these from Walmart.com back on March 2nd. They’d foolishly priced them at $12.99/can. Amazon, of course, had matched that price, but at the time everyone else was selling them for $27 to $30/can. I ordered only four, first because we didn’t need any more than that with what we already had, and second because I didn’t want to make a pig of myself. (Amazon and Walmart are both selling them now at $35+/can.)
So, I was actually in the LTS pantry looking for those four cans of eggs so I could stick them in the freezer. Embarrassingly, among all the other stuff stacked in there, I couldn’t find them. A box of four #10 cans, buried somewhere. Oh, well. I’ll find them.
But that just reinforces that we really, really need to spend a day or two getting the food room reorganized and inventoried. I’m doing that with my new downstairs refrigerator/freezer as I load it. I’ll post a dated inventory list on the door (using Scotch tape because magnets won’t stick to stainless steel…). Just looking at the available space, I’m guessing I can fit maybe 150 cans and jars in there: 28-ounce cans of Keystone canned meats and pint jars of Alfredo sauce.
The other night, a series we’re watching had a character who was a writer suffering from “writer’s block”. I think that’s one of those mythical things that everyone has heard about but no one has actually ever seen. Kind of like a unicorn or a compassionate prog.
Writers write. It’s what we do. Someone who suffers from writer’s block wasn’t actually a writer in the first place. When I sit down at a keyboard, words just flow. If I can’t think of anything to write about, that just means I can’t think, period. In other words, I must be dead.
And I do write. Every day. What you see on this site is just a small fraction of what I write. For example, I’ve mentioned that I’m working on a post-apocalyptic novel, but I haven’t said anything about it lately. I’m currently in first-draft mode, and I’m up to 100,000+ words on it. It’s still a complete mess structurally, but the prose flows. How good it is, I don’t know. I can’t evaluate my own writing any more than any other author can evaluate his.
The problem is, I have so much other stuff going on. I’d like to get the novel finished and up on Amazon, but I can spend only an hour here and a couple hours there on it, usually while Barbara is out volunteering or down in Winston. If I were treating fiction writing as a full-time job, I’ve estimated that I could knock out three or four 125,000- to 150,000-word novels per year. Maybe more.
The novel I’m working on now is what some people call “prepper porn”. In other words, it’s very heavy on non-fictional details. Kind of a non-fiction novel, with lists. I will (eventually) post it out for anyone who wants to read it, but I should warn you that so far there are at least a dozen microagressions and three or four triggers.
The main problem I’m having, particularly working on it so sporadically, is not one I foresaw. I have trouble keeping my story straight. What happened when, who’s already there and who hasn’t arrived yet, when events have occurred that impact future events, and so on. Is the neighbor’s first name Tom or Bart? Is the last name of the chairman of the county commissioners Smith or Jones? What day does the electric power and Internet service go down permanently? If it fails on Day 12, it can’t very well still be there for scenes I’ve written that take place after Day 12.
And that’s how I’ve gone about writing what I’ve done so far on this book: writing scenes, which vary in length from a paragraph or even a sentence that I can expand upon later to some scenes that are full chapter length.
For the next novel in the series, if there is one, I’ll know better. I’ll start by sitting down and writing up a detailed timeline, day by day, with a short summary of significant events for that day. That’ll avoid the need for a lot of re-write. I’m embarrassed to admit that I actually had a minor character who was killed one day re-appear several days later, alive and well. Ugh.
@RBT, your kind faults are safe with us. Thanks for doing what you could for the pup.
As to be expected, the article about our airborne plutonium and americium is the headline article in today’s Tri-sickle Herald. The little chuckle thing is that the page that the article continues to is the obituary page.
Still no relief in sight from the heat and smoke. And now there are worries that the total eclipse will not be able to be seen in the Pacific Northwest.
Good luck with the little dog. I hope you can save her and find a good owner for her.
Organising downstairs food storage – that’s also on my long list of stuff to do. We don’t have a basement, only a small wine cellar, about 4x2m, which houses our wine (duh), the upright deep-freezer (mostly venison and German bread) and our secondary fridge (cheese, joghurt, champagne/white wine, beer, gin and tonic) . We have also reached the point where we know what else is in the room, but not where to find the individual items. I plan to attack it on the first available rainy weekend. I’ll move as many of the non-food items as possible to shelves in the adjacent boiler-room, and reorganise and catalogue the food storage. My priority wish is to clear a space to stack water from floor to ceiling (we buy it in packs of 6x2l plastic bottles). I’m also considering replacing the waist-high fridge with a full-height model, on the basis that most of the space above the current one is wasted anyway.
Evaluating one’s own writing – I would disagree with you, up to a point. I can certainly tell the difference between my writing something good and my writing drivel. OTOH, it is certainly easier to review and improve another’s work than one’s own. Whence the profession of editor…
We’ve had lots of red sunsets here on the Columbia lately because of the smoke. Our globe trotting son is on his way to Portland for the eclipse and will be disappointed if he can’t see it. He started out from his home in Beijing and took the train to Moscow and is currently in St. Petersburg, on his way to Helsinki for the World Science Fiction Convention. From there to New York and then Portland, scheduled to arrive on August 19. On the 20th we’re scheduled to drive to Corvallis, which is in the path of totality. He’ll be here a week and then head across the Pacific back to Beijing.
The eclipse has become a circus here. There are predictions that over a million people will descend on Portland. Prices have been raised accordingly and accommodations are obscenely expensive. The governor is mobilizing the National Guard to help with expected problems. It should be a good boost to the economy of a lot of small towns in Oregon.
I lived in Portland during the last total eclipse in February, 1979. It was not a big deal back then. Typically for February, it was cloudy. It got dark for a little while, but that was about it. My wife, whom I didn’t meet until November of that year, went with a group to view it east of the Cascades. It was clear there. She said there were people who came to watch it, but it was not the production it became this year.
Rick in Portland
I grew up in farm and ranch country, and have seen this play out. Once a dog gets a taste for killing chicken it can’t be around them. Even given all the food they can eat they will continue killing, some sort of instinct being triggered I suppose. We went through this with a family pet, and later a neighbors dog.
Fifty years ago, and its still an unpleasant memory.
I STRONGLY suggest you not keep it, or let anyone rural adopt it, because it will end in tears and hard feelings.
I wasn’t going to travel to see the eclipse, but an old work friend called and was looking for someone to share the drive of about 500 miles from Carson City to the center of the total eclipse path. I said I’d go, though I’m not actually looking forward to it as much as I normally would because of the crowds.
I’m wondering if we should bring a few jerry cans of gas, in case the stations run out, or have huge lines?
RE: The Eclipse
My brother in California TXT me Sunday proposing we have a family reunion in Kansas City to view th eclipse. He works in Government (Park Service) so I guess he can get time off at the drop of a hat. My time off requests have to be submitted 30 days early and I have already maxed out my allotment through Christmas. Our other brother has just settled into his summer place in Pueblo Mexico where he will stay till the end of October so he couldn’t attend anyway.
If I wanted to view the eclypse, not a priority to me, I’d just drive up to Nashville.
The main problem I’m having, particularly working on it so sporadically, is not one I foresaw. I have trouble keeping my story straight.
A while back, I read an interview with Neal Stephenson in which he talked about writing “Reamde”, his first (!) novel drafted on a computer. He used Scrivener to keep all the details straight.
Unfortunately, Scrivener requires either Mac OS X or Windows, but it will run on XP, lowering the resource requirements for a VirtualBox VM to ~ 1 GB of RAM.
RBT, there are any number of tools and techniques used in keeping timelines straight.
A lot of writers use a spreadsheet. This wouldn’t seem ideal; I think they use it because they have it and it allows easy tabular presentation of data.
Many writers’ tools like Scrivener have features for side-notes as you write, outlines, and I don’t know what else. (Many people swear by Scrivener for its huge swath of writer-friendly features. I don’t use it myself.)
I use a plain sheet of paper, usually cut from a roll of butcher paper (because I happen to have a roll of white butcher paper) and write events and rough times across the top and people, groups, and such down the side. If timing is important for some scene or activity, I’ll pencil in a timeline from “starts here on this day” to “it takes four days to get here”. Nothing conceptually difficult, but helpful when a bunch of things are going on and the author is completely anal about making sure there are no internal contradictions.
More generally, you might want to search on terms like “how does a seat of the pants writer keep the timeline straight”.
Actually, no one actually SAW her killing chickens. For all anyone knows, it could have been a different dog, a coyote, or even a raccoon.
Re: keeping my story straight
Thanks to both of you. The problem is how I started out. That, plus the fact that I used to have literally a photographic memory while nowadays I suffer from a severe case of CRS.
I’ve got this first book pretty much on track now. For the second and following, should there be such, I’ll get started right by doing a detailed timeline before I start writing prose.
Any update on the real prepping book, Dr. Bob?
I stopped working on that one when I got covered up with other stuff, like running our business.
I should probably polish off things chapter by chapter and post a chapter or a section at a time.
The eclipse has become a circus here. There are predictions that over a million people will descend on Portland.
Portland is always a circus. The only difference next week will be the number of out-of-state clowns.
I’ll be here all week. Tip your waitress …and try the veal.
Seriously, though, where it will really suck to live is Newport/Lincoln City up to Canon Beach, where the eclipse will start in the US. The Coast generally isn’t a circus south of Seaside; 9-10,000 people is a big day at the Tillamook factory tour.
quick tour thru the blogosphere, and I feel a little bit caught up….
Didn’t do much news reading whilst on the road, don’t like the phone page format.
Home and rested. Got huge pile of stuff to do, and been gone long enough that I’m looking around with fresh eyes. Don’t like some of what I see.
Promised an AAR, will start on that soon.
n
They are expecting large crowds in my neck of the woods. My home will be in the eclipse path but only for a short duration as it will be on the edge. I will be traveling about 40 minutes to Spring City which falls in the direct path of the eclipse. Hoping there are not large crowds. If there are I can stop short of Spring City and still be in the path.
Typing on my laptop while on the couch with my Boston on my legs…….you know where my feelings are.
CowboySlim who auto donates monthly to ASPCA:
https://secure.aspca.org/donate/ps-gn-p2?ms=MP_PMK_Googlebrand-T4&initialms=MP_PMK_Googlebrand-T4&pcode=WPSE9XXGOGN2PK00014&lpcode=WPSE9XXGOGN1PK00014&gclid=Cj0KCQjw5arMBRDzARIsAAqmJewhcyRYOWmvErLIpJPMGrckbQoU_riWdcgf-o2hsK-xSlkR8vnL4Q8aAkyVEALw_wcB
OK …. time for a change.
I began using JungleDisk cloud backup a few years back (maybe 7 or 8) because they had a decent Linux client, folder sharing, synchronization and used Amazon cloud storage as the backend. The cost was tiny, $2 a month for the software and a few dollars for the Amazon Storage. But lately the costs have been climbing. And the latest invoice was $8 for the software, that no longer shows the dashboard on Ubuntu because of flaw/feature in the latest version. Now Amazon charged me $72 for storage and bandwidth. I’m only storing a little less than 1TB but the new software is now incredibly “chatty” xfering megabytes simply to determine if the copies are in sync.
SO, I am done with JungleDisk. I am looking for recommendations for a cloud storage / backup / data sharing service. It must support Linux, Windows, and Android. It must allow (require) strong encryption.
I use JungleDisk now as a secure off-site storage for my documents, copies of legal papers, passports, driving license, etc. and 60 years of family photos.
I have already looked at Box & DropBox and Google (hawk-spit) but no sale.
What alternatives do you use or know of and would recommend?
Suggestions?
Suggestions?
I tried out Spideroak some years back. It supports Linux. Back then, it had problems with a Devonthink DB syncing, so I dropped it. I may pick it up again as it is “zero knowledge”. It is highly recommended for the ZK feature.
I currently use Vivint/spacemonkey. You may want to check that out. You actually get a drive you hook to your net access. I bought in during crowdsourcing, so I got a deal.
Aeon Timeline from scribblecode.com
“synchs” with Scriviner.
Windows and Mac versions
I currently use Crashplan from http://www.crashplan.com . It’s on a Windows desktop; I think they have a Linux version also.
Unlimited backup, automatic, $59.95/year. Might have some first-year discounts. Has worked well for me. They send you a backup report every 1-2 weeks.
I use Western Digital My Cloud. Sits on my desk.
A bunch of external hard drives.
Yep. If the data is not under my control, it’s not my data.
Ditto here; external hard drives and USB sticks. Not that I have a ton of important chit to back up anyway, just tax and financial data and pictures and videos, nothing critical to Nashunal Insecurity.
Thanks for the suggestions Everyone.
I am paranoid about loosing data and I want to be able to get to critical documents from anywhere in the world. I backup to a local hard drive attached to my PC and to a home NAS device. I have my wife’s PC backing up to the NAS as well. She would be devastated to loose her geneology data. I am backing both our systems up to the cloud so we don’t loose anything if the house burns down. At least I don’t have to deal with stacks of floppies (or later, ZIP drive cartridges) any longer. But I do still have my last floppy backup set from 1994.
And from the Let’s Keep Spending Our Money at Disney Department:
http://mobile.wnd.com/2017/08/disney-now-targeting-preschoolers-with-gay-cartoons/
Seriously? What’s next? Homosexual toy mobiles above babies’ cribs?
Enough is enough.
Backup drives on your desk aren’t going to help you in a house fire or theft.
That’s why my laptop backups go to the local desktop, and the desktop backups go to the Crashplan ‘cloud’. Crashplan backups are automatic, so don’t have to remember that. Laptop to desktop are done with SyncToy, which just works (although not the fastest, it just works, so not going to bother with alternatives).
Important to have a non-local backup, for personal use and certainly business use.
IMHO. YMMV.
I back up our most critical financial stuff to an encrypted USB stick and I have that on me all the time; it also contains a bunch of prepper-related files and some vids. A second encrypted stick sits in my car’s glove compartment. We don’t have anything super-critical and most of it can be reconstructed easily enough in case of disaster. I’m thinking of keeping a third stick at MIL’s place down in beeyooteeful Shelburne Bay.
The upshot is that I want such data on hardware I have access to ricky-tick. Not sitting at somebody’s server farm inside a far-away data center, i.e., “cloud.” With Lord knows what for security or the company’s future longevity.
If I was running a biz with LOTS of data to back up, I might reconsider, but I would still have backups going to local hardware.
Or…we could just let Google have all our data on their “cloud.”
https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2017/08/09/google-search-engine-or-arm-of-the-deep-state/
By Labor Day, no more Google here.
I have already looked at Box & DropBox and Google (hawk-spit) but no sale.
What alternatives do you use or know of and would recommend?
Suggestions?
I have never used Backblaze but I am fascinated by this incredibly open company. The cost is $5/month for unlimited storage for personal users. They have a 15 day free trial.
https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-backup.html
“How Backblaze uses Encryption to Protect your Data”
https://www.backblaze.com/backup-encryption.html
I have already looked at Box & DropBox and Google (hawk-spit) but no sale.
What alternatives do you use or know of and would recommend?
Suggestions?
Personally, I use a WD 500 GB internal backup drive for my home pc. The internal drive is full so I am getting ready to move my WD 1 TB main drive to backup and get an SSD or an M.2 drive for my primary drive. I also use three external USB drives that I backup to randomly.
Business, I use internal WD 4 GB drives on three PCs to backup our 15 PCs on the LAN. I also have seven rotating USB WD backups drives that I store offsite and bring one in every Friday. Our LAN backup is now 3.5 GB and I am in the process of replacing all of the backup drives with WD 8 GB drives.
https://www.amazon.com/Book-Desktop-External-Drive-WDBBGB0080HBK-NESN/dp/B01LQQHLGC/
BTW, my parents have been wandering the Maine coast for the last couple of weeks. They both love lobster cooked any way. One thing wild that they have run into is that McDonalds there is selling lobster rolls for $10.99. Just a sign that rapture is near ?
I have never used Backblaze but I am fascinated by this incredibly open company
I used BackBlaze when I was working full time. Never had an issue. It was possible to log on to their system and restore a single file.
For backup at work I used Backup For Workgroups to backup multiple servers to a single external drive on another server. In case of quick evacuation it was possible to grab the drive and get out. System kept deleted files and file history for up to year (user specified). Made recovering past version of files very easy.
Once a week all the data files from all the servers was backed up to a desktop system using a file copy utility from Microsoft (I forget the name). It would only copy changed files and was able to keep three copies going at a time. This desktop system was the one that was used to copy the files to BackBlaze. Then the files from the desktop were copied to an external drive that was taken off-site every Friday.
Thus we had backup on the server for immediate access that was current every day. Backup files on a desktop that were at most a week old. And files offsite that were at most a week old. Losing a weeks worth of data would be inconvenient but not the end of the world. If the disaster was wide spread enough to encompass the primary site and the offsite backup site no one really gave a rat’s ass about the organization anymore and could care less if there were no backups, especially me.
For home I just copy to a couple of SSD drives in external cabinets. A 0.25 TB and a 0.5 TB. Drives were rescued from systems that were being tossed. Put them in a USB 3.0 enclosure and just backup to them. Financial files are copied to Google Drive and OneDrive daily so I have offsite copies of those files. The rest if I lose them I would be upset but in the scheme of losing such lose would be trivial.
System kept deleted files and file history for up to year (user specified). Made recovering past version of files very easy.
Deleted files on the backup device should NEVER be deleted. Not until the backup device is full and then the backup device should be reformatted or cleaned with a complete new backup run.
BTW, I always run incremental backups until the backup device is full. I never reformat the backup device until it is absolutely full. This is also the reason why I need extra large backup devices since all temporary files are never deleted on the backup device.
I also use robocopy.exe for my backups. Robocopy just copies the files to the backup device. Robocopy does not create image files and do any compression, all that is left to the device. I have been burned by too many proprietary programs and weird image formats to use anything that is not a just a plain old disk drive. I’ll bet that I threw away thousands of 9-tracks tapes and Vaxstation tapes and Apollo tapes and etc over the years. No telling what we lost in the process but when the computer died, the proprietary backup device dies with it.