Cool. Wet. Dreary. Like yesterday.
It never got much warmer than 70F and it started in with a misty drizzle around 4pm. Generally yucky all day.
I made my pickup on the other side of town. A couple of preps this time. There were two deep cycle batteries, very cheap, in unknown condition; a commercial inverter, a couple of gallons of vegetable oil, some PPEs for chainsawing, and some other small items. I’ll get the batteries on my charger/conditioner today and see how they look. The inverter needs a good exam too, but it was priced right.
I spent much of the rest of the day fighting to get my security cam software running on linux. It LOOKED like a straightforward process, but turned out to be a big pain in my backside. Most of the story is in yesterday’s comments. Long story short, it’s currently working, and seems much more solid than the windows version. Unless you have some unusual cameras you just have to use, I’m not recommending iSpy and a roll your own approach at the moment. I saved about $1000 off the price of a commercial NVR of the same capacity, and I did get to use a mix of cams I already had, but there have been some challenges along the way. If you don’t want to mess around with it, I can recommend some ‘pro-sumer’ level gear to you.
I find that my biggest use of the cams is to look outside from my desk and see “what’s making that noise out front?” Most of my clients have expressed the same idea, they use it to look around when they see something. Breakins and other camera worthy things are thankfully rare. Checking on the pool, or which diesel truck is idling out front is much more common. Of course if there is an incident, having the video is a great help.
Today I’m home and working on the same things, plus getting youngest child going on her costume, and working on at least one of my new Halloween displays. It’s not prepping, or dealing with all the other stuff, but keeping up some normality is important, especially for the kids (and not just mine, but the ones coming to Trick or Treat too.)
These are likely to be the ‘good old times’ if even half the stuff coming down the pike gets here. On it’s face it sounds extreme- to think that we better make this special or that special, in case we don’t get the chance next time. But nothing in this world is certain, except that no one gets out alive. And we BETTER make it special, because whether from civil war, disease, economic collapse, or simple poor health or a traffic accident, we might not get another chance.
Keep stacking.
nick