Month: May 2019

79F and 89%RH, windy and overcast.  Boy it got HOT yesterday.  I was literally sweating gallons.  I think I’m back to balanced as I’m peeing, but dang was it hot.  I even got a bit of a sunburn on back of my neck, and face.  Guess I’m a redneck today.

Late getting the post up today because my phone (which I use for an alarm) had a bunch of settings changed.  When I am soaked in sweat, and the phone is in my pocket moving around, the touchscreen gets activated and eventually the gesture password gets “picked” and the phone unlocks.  After that, all the jiggling navigates through the phone, often getting to settings WAY down in menus.  This phone is a Galaxy 7, but my old Moto did it too.  And this is despite the “don’t turn on in a pocket” setting, and the gesture being sorta complex.

Yesterday my backlight got turned to O, so I should have taken a look at my other settings too.  Didn’t, so I got up half an hour late.  This led to a scramble to get the family out the door on time.  Normally I wake up a little bit before the alarm anyway, but I was up late reading and was exhausted from working out in the sun.

I got some stuff done yesterday, and have more on the list for today…

Better get started.

n

78F and  just less than saturated.  Yesterday was partly cloudy and hot.  Openweathermap is showing the same for us, clearing to sunny.  No chance of rain.  FEMA’s map shows the same.  I guess a little rain won’t hurt 🙂

Nothing profound, provocative, or even pithy to say this morning.

I guess I should start my day.  I’m sure it won’t stay that way.

n

90F at 9am.  If we’re really in summer, we’ll be starting my ‘rule of tens’ for temperature….  70%RH and sunny, so maybe a nice day, if hot.

I woke up at 7, decided to go back to sleep for an hour, and look what happened.

I loaded several thousand pounds of wood- and metalworking machines on a trailer yesterday.   Some were on pallets, but most were just dragged.  Even moving a couple thousand pounds on a pallet isn’t easy.  I am pretty stiff and sore today.  They’ll go to the auction tomorrow.  After all, how many broken drill presses does one man need?   I have the trailer all week if needed and will be making at least one more trip.  All part of the medium range plan.

Picked up a rainbarrel yesterday.  I’ll add that to the rain capture system some time this week.  That’s another 50 gallons of stored water.

Sprayed the grape vines for caterpillars again.  They have FRUIT!  The bunches look a bit scrawny but I guess we’ll see.

I better get the monsters fed, and get started.  I’m thinking that today will be a ‘fix and repair’ day.  The list is long, and the time is short…

n

Already 79F and 90%RH. Yesterday was another beautiful spring day, may we have many more.

Almost all my work and activity is outside today. Looks a bit threatening out though. NOAA has us on the edge of a system, with T storms and high winds. Openweathermap has misty drizzle during the day with partial inch overnight. We’ll see who’s right in the morning.

I think daughter 1 wraps up volleyball today. School PTA talent show was last night. Some of the kids really do have talent. I saw some of my science kids in a totally different light too. All schools have volunteer programs. Get out and do something, you’ll learn a lot about your community and might help someone.

Bought another chainsaw yesterday. That means I’ve got 3 that need work to run… couldn’t pass up a Stihl for $10 no matter what the condition. I really need a half day spent on small engine maintenance sometime soon.

14 days to the start of hurricane season. Start going thru your stuff.

n

67F and saturated.  Yesterday was beautiful but a tad damp.  Nice breeze for the last softball game of the season- we ended up second overall.  Volleyball should end soon, but swim is just getting started.

This week was a bit slow for preps as my main effort continues to be selling off excess stuff.  I did pick up some more pieces for a permanent solar install, and I had another chat with a guy who installs solar for a living (another dad at our pool).  Meatspace baby!

The garden is doing well.  The cukes and zukes seem to be growing and are still alive and flowering.  The apple trees are flowering, and the peach is leafed in.  The old pepper plants are still producing.  I think I got the caterpillars on the grapes before they did too much damage.  The blueberries have yielded a handful with more set to ripen soon.   Lots of tiny fruit growing on the lemon and lime.  There is at least one green tomato so far.

I added the one bucket of bulk that I described this week, and some cans.  More to come.

I found a dead rat in the garage, on a sticky pad, so they are still plaguing me.  Time to refresh the poison and reset traps.  I have to get that taken care of.

Ebay continues to be slow.  The local auction is selling but not for huge prices.  Next week I’m moving a bunch of bigger items to them.  We’ll see how they do.  If nothing else it will give me room to clean up some stuff and work on other things.

Some ammo might have come my way… and some parts.  Lots still  to do in that regard though.

So what have you done this week to increase your readiness?  It’s FEMA’s Preparathon time, so you have natgov backing for your efforts….

n

65F and damp. Yesterday was beautiful all day. I’m hoping for more of the same. These last few days of spring are precious.

Quick scan of the headlines shows things continuing to slide. Venezuela isn’t getting better. Trade isn’t getting better. Shipping, trucking, and retail sales all slumping.

Canned goods are cheap! HEB was blowing out hams. $1.59/pound. Yum. Holiday sales are coming up. Ammo and toys are still reasonably priced compared to highs…

Go forth and shop…

n

66F and saturated.  Sunny though.  Nice day so far.

As I look at my gutted dishwasher, I’m contemplating an idea that may be more important than I first thought.  The idea is that we’ve been trading resilience for convenience.

As far as I can determine, a power surge/overvoltage/etc damaged the control board in my dishwasher during the storm of a few days ago.  A dishwashing robot is an incredible convenience.  Load it up, press start, and an hour later you have clean and sanitary dishes.  The price for that is a microchip that can be damaged easily and will stop the whole machine from working.  A few cents for the part, but without it, nothing.  The design engineer went with a micro because he could put logic in software, rather than discrete hardware.  They potted the board because it reduces failures but it also reduces resiliency in that it can’t easily be fixed.

I see the same sorts of decisions everywhere in the modern world.  New heat pump water heaters have a computer on them.  Old ones used a simple thermocouple which was cheap and robust, easy to stock a spare, and easy to replace.   Furnaces have gone the same way.

Cars have a huge number of convenience features that can all break.  I wonder if the ‘lane assist’ will let you operate the vehicle if the system is broken (not off, but actually broken.)

Society is falling into the same trap.  No cash because you can always use cards fails completely when the comm links are down.  Then you get no food.  Just in time inventory is also convenient for the stores, but absolutely not resilient.

We’ve been cutting “slack” and “excess capacity” out of systems for 40 years and there is little left to cut.  We are always running on the very edge of every use case, one small failure away from a big one.

Think about adding resilience BACK into the systems and devices you use daily.  That is sort of the essence of prepping anyway…

n

66F and saturated. FEMA national forecast has us on the edge of a big system, openweathermap has today dry. I guess we’ll see.

I was very glad to hear that Ray is recovering. If you have an issue, get it looked at. Take care of it while you can. Even if the world continues to be unchanged, I can’t think of any health issue that gets better the longer you ignore it!

I don’t think the world will be unchanged. Whether we limp along, or crash, or enter into a violent conflict of enough scope to positively impact our economy, the world is going to look very different in 10 years than it does today. I don’t think anyone here will think it’s an improvement.

Hard times are coming. Look at Cuba. They thought things were looking up. Obama lifted the travel ban, Venezuela was giving them money, Castro was gone… today they are rationing staples again (and using their EXISTING ration books, wonder why we haven’t heard about those before?) What else are we not hearing about?

Plenty of reasons why things could get worse. It’s the natural way of the universe to increase disorder, and much easier to destroy than build.

In the mean time, do what you can to decrease your local entropy. Put energy into creating structure and order. Make your life better, your community better, and your tribe better.

n

58F and saturated.

Openweathermap has us clear until late.  FEMA has us right on the edge of some bad weather.  One way look at FEMA’s poor record with weather prediction this year is that whenever we were marginal or right on the edge, it didn’t happen.  I guess we’ll see.

I am sore and stiff today.  It’s a pretty good wake up call that I really need to get more exercise and more regularly.  I better start with some stretching.  I keep meaning to start, but there is always a reason to delay.

I woke my 8yo and she said “Morning already?  I can’t do this every day.”  That’s how I’m feeling too.

Scanner has someone running surveillance this morning, watching a van and people coming and going.  Crime never sleeps.

Prayers for Ray this morning, and looking forward to hearing about his successful result…

nick

68F and slightly less than saturated.  Forecast is for sunny and clear.

Woke up dreaming about joining some sort of Rothschild bank, as some sort of volunteer guard/depositor/social club.  Like I said, weird.

Today we honor our mothers for doing their job.  Which is both silly and profound.  Without mothers, fathers, FAMILY the culture and people don’t survive.  Naturally, those who hate the culture attack the family, and for a large part they are succeeding in destroying a culture that brought the largest increase in wealth for the largest number of people in history.  It’s time for the pendulum to swing back.  Do your part, wherever you can.

For those out there who have had very negative mother/family experiences, and I know there are some extraordinary examples in the readership here, you are exceptionally resilient and tough to have made it through that.  It’s a testament to the tenacity of humans that even though we seem to be designed to require a long period of supervised and supported development, some of us can do just fine without it.

I hope that the younger couples who used to lurk here and send email to Robert are still stopping by occasionally, and read my sincere best wishes for all the Moms who are working hard to bring the next generation along, and for all the Moms who raised our generation, and the ones that came before.

Have a Happy Mother’s Day.

nick