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Month: December 2020

Fri. Dec. 11, 2020 – week went by so fast I missed a day…

Cool, getting warmer, breezy and sunny.  Until the rain comes.

Got some stuff done yesterday.   Not what I was hoping but that’s the story of my life at the moment.

Today I’ve got a couple of pickups about as far apart as you can get in the metro area.  Conroe to League City.  And then I have to see my client out on the northwest side of town, at 290 and 99.  Lots of driving in my day.  I could slip one of the pickups to Saturday, but I’ve got my non-prepping hobby meeting and I feel like I really want to go.  I’m feeling healthy, and I’ll mask up.  I miss the guys and the technical sessions.

I have noticed that if I’m tired from not getting enough sleep, I rarely get done even half of what I hoped to.  I’m not as young as I was I guess.  I have trouble focusing too, when I’m tired.  Good reasons to head to bed earlier.

Physical condition is an often overlooked part of prepping.  I’ve been eating less, and I’ve gradually lost about 10 pounds since March.  I hover around 200 now.  At 190 I’m too thin and my skin hangs on my face.  It would be nice and prudent to convert some of the weight to muscle mass instead of spare tire.  Nice, but I haven’t got the interest in spending much time on it.  With the cooler temps, it’s easier to work outside and inside, so I’m hoping to firm up a bit while doing some work.  Either that or it will break me…

Dinner last night was canned beans, canned corn, leftover canned carrots and frozen pork chops on the grill.  As I was opening the cans, I had a thought.  You used to see a can opener as a primary appliance in every kitchen.  Most had some sort of electric opener, some were attached to cabinets, and there were many styles and models to choose from.  It suddenly struck me that was because our parents and grandparents ate a lot of canned food.  It was the only way to get fruit and veg out of season for most people.  Two sides per dinner meant opening two cans at least.  Soup for lunch, and pie for dessert meant a couple more cans.  Jar openers were common gadgets too.  They used enough cans that it made sense to have a faster and easier way to open them right there on the countertop.  Contrast that with our diets now, with any fruit or veg available fresh in any season due to rapid and cheap shipping and handling, and the global nature of our supply chain.

Prepping and the current emergency have shifted my family’s diet back toward canned… even though we get fresh veg and fruit with every grocery order.

If the supply chain faces further disruption, if the cheap peasant labor in far away lands should suffer a population decline or political strife that shuts down commerce, if energy became much more expensive, everyone would be forced to shift toward canned food.  Which would cause shortages.  One more reason to stock up now.   And to work on your gardening skills.

So stack the stuff you’ll need in the spring for your garden, and stack more canned goods in case your garden doesn’t grow.  In fact, keep stacking all the things…

 

nick

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Thur. Dec. 9, 2020 – if I were a rich man, deedle deedle deedle diedle dum..

Cool and windy.  Getting warmer later.  Basically nice.

Wednesday was cool to start but got to 84F in the sun.  Still pretty damp, there was water in the buckets from days ago, and condensation on the concrete.

I started my day with a fresh from the tree grapefruit.  Ruby red and sweet.   Success at last!  There are about a dozen more.  There are a couple of oranges on the other tree that I’m giving a bit more time.  The lemons are ready, but I leave them in place as long as I can.  Broccoli is doing ok, and I might harvest some spears in a couple of days.

I spent a good part of the day going through ebay/auction stuff, moving it from bin to bin and getting some ready for the next auction.  They stood me up on meeting to get my check and do my dropoff so I’ll have to reschedule.  Next week I’ll have stuff in 3 of the local auctions, and it still won’t have made much of a dent.

I didn’t get much else on my list done, so that all slips into today.  If I’m away from the keyboard, I’m working my list.

Interesting thought experiment, what would 2021 look like if there are aliens here?  They have been here for a while, they haven’t dropped rocks on us, they are either in a lifeboat or have some business with us.  What might it be?  What would the confirmed announcement do to current social issues?  I bet they’d get the blame for wuflu…  What the heck would they want?  Botanicals?  Slaves?  Food?  Fuel?  Colonization has always been about resource extraction for us, or later new markets, and cheap labor.  What would prepping look like for benign aliens instead of zombies?

My suspicion is that people would lose their shirt and we’d want to stay quietly at home for a while, just like a lot of other scenarios.  Couldn’t hurt to be prepped up.

Which raises another issue.  If you didn’t have to worry about budget, beyond some reasonable amount (no buying Yard Moose Mountain) what would a serious prepper look like and be stacking?  Vs an ‘ordinary’ prepper, or a beginning prepper?  What do you start stacking when you realize that 2 weeks while waiting for FEMA and the outside aid to get there isn’t going to be enough?

What makes one serious?  Is it building a “Rebuild society” library?  Or stocking fish meds?  A suture kit?  Injectable drugs?  Having a stocked root cellar?  Livestock? A garden measured in fractions of an acre?  Bushcraft knowledge?  Foraging for food?  Hunting/fishing/trapping?  Butchering your own food?  A pantry measured in “person-years”?  More than one gun safe?  Off grid power?  Off grid property?

I consider myself pretty serious, but there are things in that list I don’t even have plans for.    Ok that’s a lie.  But there are things in that list I don’t have serious plans for 😉

Get to work.  Stack something today.  Even if it’s just knowledge.

nick

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Wed. Dec. 9, 2020 – up late, tired, stuff to do

Cool and windy, still damp.

I did get a few things done yesterday.  I didn’t do plumbing at the rent house (tenant nixed the plan, had critical zoom meetings), I didn’t take another load to the auctioneer, and I only got some of the Christmas lights up.

I did get some stuff put away in the garage.  So that helps somewhat.  And did laundry, cooked dinner, fed the child lunch, answered math questions, and other general domestic bliss.  Still didn’t get groceries ordered.

All but the plumbing slips to today.  Joy.

Time to do a big push.

All of you were busy as beavers getting ready for the coming troubles, so I know I don’t even have to say it… but I will.  Keep stacking.  Work harder.  Lord knows I need to.

 

n

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Tues. Dec. 8, 2020 – work, work, work. And more work.

Cool and sunny, lots of wind.

That was Monday to a ‘T’.  Still not drying outside even with only 35%RH.  I’ve still got standing water on my driveway from 2 days ago.

Well, I took 6 more bins of stuff to the auctioneer yesterday.  And I didn’t even get into the driveway, much into the garage, or at all in my secondary or my storage unit.   I’m going to continue pulling stuff today, and I’ll either get one last drop off today (if I can get away with my wife at work) or I’ll take some to my other auction tomorrow when I go to do my settlement with them.  It won’t be before Christmas, but it will be ready to go right after.  I’m finding stuff I forgot about which is nice but also horrifying.   I found some model train stuff, and some nice Hot Wheels cars from the mid and late 70s.  They should do well.  I wish I had a thousand of them though.

My industrial auctioneer is still listing a few items they didn’t get in the last one, but he’s already told me twice he doesn’t want more stuff from me until next year in January.  I’ve got a ton of stuff for him, but I can’t force people to take it.

On a personal level, I’m feeling very anxious while out driving around.  Everywhere I look I see new bums panhandling.  I see more new For Lease signs.  I saw workers taking down a big sign on a business today, and a whole strip development on what is a pretty busy street with ALL the businesses closed.  There were several- a chinese buffet, and ‘alkaline water’ boutique, some other salon, and a phone or tech repair place.  All gone this week.  Lots more trash in front of several stores too.  Goodwill is parking trailers full of stuff in front of the Outlet.  They can’t process the stuff fast enough to get rid of it.  Even the temporary ‘day’ labor provider across from the Goodwill closed down.

On the sorta prepping front, my wife did most of the jewelry badge with her Girl Scouts this weekend.  I was able to provide a dozen sets of pliers, wire, jump rings and clasps, different stones charms and bits from old costume jewelry, and some of reference material, even a ring sizing mandrel (one part of the badge is learning about the tools.)  I had accumulated the stuff with an eye toward craft projects with  my kids.  I had plenty to share…

And I went into Costco today.  I needed to pick up the Christmas cards, so I walked through the store too.  Not much Christmas merch left on the floor.  And they reorganized the whole place since I was last there!   It looks like they did a major upgrade to their cooling system, made dairy and eggs a big walk in cooler, and tied all their display coolers together- there were pipes linking them that weren’t there before.    They still had a guy wiping cooler door handles, and aisles seemed wider.  I could see marks on the floor that showed that the stuff HAD moved.   They had a whole corral set up for TP, mostly piles of Kirkland, but they had Charmin blue label, so I bought some.  $23 instead of $16 on sale, but it’s time to start building the stack up again.   The only other prices that jumped out at me were $1.87/lb for spiral sliced ham, and in the other direction, $6/lb for Kirkland organic ground beef.   It’s been on sale to match their normal ground beef in the past.  Normal hamburger was ~$3/lb which is a good price.

The TP was my only purchase.  I’ll do instacart for my normal stuff.

The lot was not full, nor were there lines for gas, but it was a Monday afternoon, which is normally a slower time anyway.  During my other dropoff I drove right past what should have been a busy shopping area, but it was not.  In person retail is in trouble if that’s any indication.

All this is to say, even here, in one of the strongest local economies in the country, with ‘sensible’ restrictions from COVID, I’m seeing evidence that the economy is in trouble at ground level.  Big trouble.   We’ve found our local charity for the season, the Stagehand’s local has an emergency fund and present collection for their members.  Yes, they are union pukes.  But they’re OUR pukes… (my wife was card carrying for years) and entertainment is in our blood as well as being part of my wife’s business.  I encourage you to find something local and direct that you can help with this year.  And if you need help, get it, there are resources out there.

Local local local, and Meatspace baby!

Keep stacking.  You can’t help others if you aren’t ok yourself.   And there will be others.

nick

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Mon. Dec. 7, 2020 – waking the sleeping giant is a bad idea…

Cool, and hopefully dry.  I’ve got stuff to do and rain won’t help.

Got through Sunday without rain, and got a bunch of stuff done at my secondary location.  Took forever to get the forklift started, and then it wouldn’t stay running on a hill.  Which is where I needed it.  I did get stuff done despite that, and I’ll have to call in a mechanic to take a look at it.  I was hoping to avoid spending money on it, but it looks like it is the prudent thing to do at this point.

I didn’t really get anything else done though.  That all slipped to today.  Plan is to get my local auction stuff together, then delivered.   Then do decor, at least lights.  Housecleaning, laundry, groceries, present shipping, and all the normal stuff needs to happen too.

79 years ago, the Japanese made what would turn out to be one of the biggest political and strategic blunders of recent history.  It ended up with them being the test bed for the only time anyone on the planet has used nukes in anger.  And we did it twice.     Now you can make an argument that by ~60 years later they actually won the conflict.  To the extent their homeland survived and thrived, yes.  Any imperial ambitions were ended though and they haven’t been a world power since.

I don’t know that we’re the same people that we once were, or that there is a giant left to wake.   I have a feeling that we’re going to find out though, and some time in the next year.   It’s unlikely to be pretty, or quick, and it’s likely to damage us severely for years to come.   The lines won’t be clear, the enemy won’t be far away, and we won’t be messing up someone else’s cities.  We won’t have a clear end state goal either.   Frankly at this point I’m HOPING for aliens, because we’ve always united against the outsiders.

But I’m stacking food, clothes, tech, defensive items, books, various and sundries, because I want to bring my family through whatever comes and out the other side.  I’d like to see all y’all there too.  Keep stacking.

 

nick

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Sun. Dec. 6, 2020 – Gang aft agley*

Cool and damp.  Maybe rain, maybe not.

We did get a super light sprinkle late in the night last night, but the day was otherwise mostly clear, and overcast.

I slept late, drove across all of Houston, drove back, stopped at my secondary location to retrieve some presents, and got home late in the day.

Then I sorted more auction and ebay stuff, sorted Christmas presents, and stayed up WAY too late.   I really shouldn’t have had any iced tea after 6pm.  I barely noticed when it got to be 130am.

While I was doing other things, I started going through 2 big binders of music CDs that I picked up.   They were mostly full of commercial disks but there were also a bunch of “backed up” CDRs.   They appear to have been written in around 2009 and almost every one has errors.  Many have flaking reflective material, or holes in the foil.  Some have damage to the edge of the disk, either from moisture or hand oils.  All have a network of fine scratches from use.  In general, at least one track is unreadable, and for many, no tracks are readable without errors.  The problems are across all brands, memorex, office depot, the verbatim disks that look like 45 records, pretty much all the ordinary brands.  If you are counting on CDRs or DVDs for long term data storage, you should probably be rotating and re-burning your data, or putting it on spinning rust with periodic checks.  and if you can see through the foil when you hold the disk to the light, you might want another brand from the beginning.

Today I have to get to my secondary location and move some things.  There will be some inspector there on Monday, and some of my stuff is out where it shouldn’t be.  This can only happen if it’s not raining though.  Same for putting up lights and decor, or for most of the stuff on my list.

I really better get cracking on some of this or I’ll fall even further behind.  And that would be extra special not good.

So I’m off, to unstack, pull, toss, sell, and restack.  And in the mean time, also try to ‘live my best life’ as the whiny brats say.

I’m sure there is something you need to keep stacking….

 

nick

 

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_a_Mouse

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Sat. Dec. 5, 2020 – it all depends on the weather

And it will probably be cold, and damp again today, but maybe the rain will hold off.

It was cold-ish yesterday and certainly damp.   I put on a fleece jacket and I was sweating inside buildings and cold outside.

Someone asked a while back if I was still hitting the Goodwill stores.  No, not really.  I haven’t hit a thrift store in months.  I AM still hitting the Goodwill outlet.  I mask up, N95, and glove up, and maintain a distance from people.  I am hyper aware of what I touch and change gloves as needed.  I use the clorox wipes before getting back in the car too.  I’ve grabbed some great stuff lately, and it will mostly be going to the auction on Monday.   You can’t really beat a men’s Kenneth Cole leather jacket for $3.  Especially one that’s in perfect condition.  Or a lady’s wool trenchcoat from the mid 80s that still brings $85 on ebay.  Or 70 pounds of vinyl LPs that have been averaging 8-12$ apiece on ebay.  I’ll send them to my local auction,  and get a whole lot less, but won’t have to deal with shipping or returns.

The outlet gets the weirdest things.  I’ve found a low power ham radio transceiver kit, arduinos, gun parts, glock 43 magazine extensions- NIB, and today I found a milsurp cold weather sleep system and a watch battery change tool kit.  Not expensive, but exactly what I needed.  I could have a complete set of the Harvard Classics of literature.  I’ve grabbed all the ones I thought I’d personally like.  Some of the editions bring $10+ per volume…  One day I found a gun guy’s library.  A bunch of Paladin Press sort of books, and coffee table gun history books too.  “Modifying your MAC-10” kinds of things….  The funniest thing for me, I can find great stuff AFTER the locusts have gone through the bins.  They’ll fight over 25c t shirts and leave an ORVIS jacket, new with tags (headed to ebay or the auction this week).

My best estate auction score this week was probably a Western Mountaineering down sleeping bag for $4.  Even counting the half bottle of down tech washing soap, that is a stunning value for what was a $400+ bag new.  The kids and my wife have used the heck out of the expensive USA made down bags I got at an estate sale 2? years ago for $5.  There are certain things that people just don’t seem to recognize the value.  That’s where I come in 🙂

And some people do weird things too.  I grabbed a couple of fishing poles yesterday, one complete, with the last loop missing, one just the lower half.  I didn’t find the top half so I put it back in a bin, and the other one, I’ll just clip 1 inch and the existing loop will be the end one now.  🙂   Later I noticed a couple of young ladies standing to the side with a dozen poles.   They were looking up the poles on their phones.  They spent a while doing it too.  Obviously not experienced resellers.  The poles weigh less than a pound.  So they will cost $1.20 each.  BUY EVERY ONE.  There isn’t a new fishing pole with a reel for less than $20 anywhere.   These poles were new, still in plastic.  Grab them and GO!

The other customers are all masked, some even wearing them correctly.  Staff wears masks correctly.  As a side benefit, no one out in public is sneezing or coughing.  No runny noses either.

Today I’ll be going through stuff getting more ready for the new auctioneer.  And if the weather is good, I’ll finally get some Christmas decor up.  But that will be after sleeping in.

And then I’ll do my grocery order, and stack some more.  Because everything is changing, and we don’t know who will come out the other side.  If we’re distracted and weakened by a civil war, declared or not, someone else will have a chance to rise.  It might take a generation to recover.  Maybe more.  Gonna be hard times if that happens.  Think about that for a while.

And keep stacking.

nick

 

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Fri. Dec. 4, 2020 – ayup, FLEW by.

Cold again, still damp. Maybe some sun though.

I was cold enough yesterday to get my jacket out.  Of course by the time I got to my later appointment, I was sweating and took it off until sundown.

I got some bins of stuff dropped off a my newest local auctioneer.  He was surprised by the amount and actually expected more.  I had the impression he didn’t want a truckload so I didn’t bring one.   I’ll be bringing another load down to him on Monday.   He also took a look at my Pokemon cards and we figured out that I DON’T have a $10K card.   The version I have is $45.  The version with the printed difference (a missing drop shadow) is the one that brings the big money.   It’s likely that it’s the same error that is NOT on my other big money cards too, so no $1200 cards either.  Probably.  I still have to go back through them looking to see if I have any with the missing drop shadow.    Not a lottery winner anymore, but still worth about 40x what I paid.  Funny how that feels disappointing.

I picked up a small but important defensive training item too.   I paid less than online prices, but 50%  more than I would have in January.  I think it will be another 50-100% higher come this January.   It’s very clean and fills a gap in the progression from BB to airsoft to Cricket (gap) to black scary gub.  The store where I picked it up had inventory.  Expensive inventory, slightly more than online sellers, but he had stuff on the shelves and in the display cases.  He said his purchasing manager has been scrambling to find stock.  Much of it is used or consigned too.  Friendly guys and right down the street from one of my auction sellers.

Today I’ll be loading bins, sorting, doing a pickup, and hopefully getting some Christmas lights up.  I used to be the only one on the street with lights, now there are a dozen houses that are already decorated.  I’m the slacker!  I love seeing the change.  BE the change you want in the world.  It’s not just for hippies.

Now I need to get to it.  I’ll leave the politics and conspiracy to everyone else today.  Unless it rains.  Then I’m gonna drive this keyboard like a rental.

Keep stacking.

nick

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Thurs. Dec. 3, 2020 – whoooooshhhhh. <--sound of this week flying by

Cool and wet, but hopefully not raining all day.  Like yesterday.

When I got nothing done.  Well, did get the daughter safely to school and back for her class picture, and annual hearing and vision checkup.  Talked to a couple of the moms while there.  One was the volunteer coordinator for the science program I led.  She’s working on getting something we can do remotely with the kids.  I miss seeing the kids and doing the experiments.

I miss doing all of my volunteer stuff.  I miss my ham radio lunches, and my non-prepping hobby meetings.  (Both of those are primarily composed of guys with a couple of decades on me and a laundry list of co-morbidities.    Wouldn’t be prudent.)  I wonder where we’ll be in three weeks.

It occurs to me I’ve been saying that for 9 months.  We’ll see in a few weeks…  and for the most part, what we saw was not as bad as we feared (but we did see the increases, and the deaths).   And we’ve gradually gotten used to it, and the overton window has moved dramatically.    March – “FREAKING FOUR PEOPLE HAVE DIED IN WASHINGTON!!11!!  December – “It’s barely 2000 dead a week, and most of them were ready to die anyway, I need a beer.”

We got used to it.

I don’t know where we’ll be in three weeks.  I don’t know where we’ll be in three months.  I don’t know where we’ll be in three years.  I do know that what has been set in motion will continue in motion.

In a state that was isolated from the worst of the .gov excesses, where we were never really locked in our homes, where businesses continued as much as possible to keep going, with the strongest economy in the country, I see the signs of the downward spiral.  I was driving in different areas Wednesday, near to home but toward the kid’s school.  Areas that I really haven’t been in much in the last few months.  LOTS more bums.  Lots more immigrants on the street in the rain.  More vacant storefronts.   More ‘For Lease’ signs.   Projects that got started, but now haven’t progressed are everywhere.  They cleared the lot and put up the fence, but no further work has been done, and the weeds are 4 foot high.  They remodeled the restaurant or store but never opened.  There is a LOT of newly vacant commercial property around me.

There are some signs of life.  Several big housing developments are still building houses- a block from one that is built out, but has a 20 foot sign “HUGE incentives to buyers” in front.  The Aldi store a couple of blocks from my house is going to open this week.  I can’t help but wonder though if that is just momentum.   Once the money is in motion, it sometimes costs more to stop than to continue, even if the deal no longer makes sense.

We seem to be in the stage where things gradually get shirtier.  More bums on the street.   More trash and litter.  More illegal dumping.   More graffiti and tags, and they stay up longer.   McDonalds took 20 minutes to get me two large fries, and they both tasted like they’d been held too long, even though the drive thru girl said we were waiting while they cooked them.  Limited menu and few customers too.  AND over $5.

Smaller sizes, and higher prices.  Limited selections and more frequent shortages.  Increasing frequency and duration of outages of basic services.  We are ALREADY in this stage of collapse.  Inertia will carry us further into it no matter what happens in the next two months.

In the past we dealt with adversity.  We rolled up our sleeves and we tightened our belts.  We sacrificed because ‘we were all in it together’.   We’re not anymore.  We can see the ‘elite’ and connected getting a better deal than us.  They say ‘stay home’ while they fly on a private jet to a vacation resort.  A jet they don’t own or pay for, that someone else in their network ‘shares’ with them.   They’re already laying out the new Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in their tweets.  Oppose the party and be crushed.   Express any idea or hold a belief that isn’t approved, and the might of “the people” will be focused against you.

It’s all going to get worse for at least a while too.  There is still hope, but not for long.  We’ll know in a few weeks….

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And then it might get a lot worse.  Possibly very quickly.  And…….

We’ll get used to it.

Hard times are coming.  Hell, for many they are already here, and just getting started.  Use the time wisely.  Keep stacking whatever you think you’ll need.  Moxie and pretzels, if that’s your thing.  But stack it high.

nick

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Wed. Dec. 2, 2020 – both the Advent calendar and the Elf on the Shelf are back

Cool and damp, windy and cool, but no more freezes this week.

Froze here for about 8 hours Monday night though.  I really hope my citrus made it through.  I didn’t remember the warning and was busy so I didn’t cover anything.  I think the lowest it got was 28F and it was there for about 4 hours.  I am really unhappy about that and I’m kicking myself in the nethers for the oversight.

I spent the day yesterday doing auction stuff.  Didn’t get much else done.  Had a moment of weirdness when I noticed a guy standing around in my ‘troubling’ neighbor’s yard.  He looked like a contractor, and was acting like a contractor waiting for a meeting about the house, but the neighbor’s elementary age kids were just coming home from school, and had forgotten their door key.  So they couldn’t just walk past the guy and enter, they had to walk past him twice.  I was in the front yard watching because it caught my attention.  The kids went around to the back, and the guy got a ladder and got up on the roof.  I went to look into the back yard and make sure the kids got in, while keeping an eye on the guy.   He finished on the roof and left.  If it weren’t for the timing, I might not have noticed, but then again, something caught my attention.

The mom and dad came home shortly after, because the kids called about a strange guy in the yard and on the roof.  (They rent, so it could be legit, just something the owner didn’t mention.)  The parents were freaked and came to talk to us about what I saw or didn’t see.  We had a good talk for about half an hour about security issues and calling the Constable’s deputies if anything weird is going on.  She related that on more than one occasion a truck was parked in front of her house watching or waiting, and that one time the truck followed her out of the subdivision.   I gave them the Constable’s number and suggested that that would be an EXCELLENT time to call for a driveby….   I’ve mentioned before that something is going on with these two.  They were super keyed in on my cameras, they had the very tense custody exchange shortly after moving in, and he did the whole ‘get up in your face and see if you back down’ with me the first time we met.  I don’t usually back down.  My normal reaction is to step into it, and mention some of my experiences with cops or crims, depending on which I think will de-escalate the best.  Some things I just ignore* while noting them.  In any case, he cooled off that time.  (Did I mention, both have tats with probable gang history, although nothing as obvious as signs or facial markings.  To be fair, a lot of early middle-aged people in this area have some evidence of past indiscretion on their bodies, so it didn’t concern me but I did note it.)

I think I’ll move my new camera install back to the top of the list, pointed to cover the area in front of their house.  I have good video of the guy’s truck, but nothing great of the guy.  He’s probably just a roofing contractor who was supposed to meet the owner, and the owner didn’t show for some reason.  Probably.  But he didn’t have a front plate on his truck, and he disappeared around the back, up the driveway for a few minutes while I was watching.  Momma said he looked in her car (she didn’t waste any time putting cameras up to cover their vehicles after they moved in, and she knows her way around the system if she checked the video that quickly.)  Hopefully the landlord will shed some light, otherwise we notch up the security level.

Looking at the video took me a bit longer than I expected.  Linux has different tools for playback than I am used to, but I got good recordings of the incident.  I’ve got the motion sensitivity turned too far down for the onboard recording at the camera, as I didn’t get his truck driving away in native resolution on the cam.  I have to take another look at that.  It’s been my experience that no matter what the system, or how you’ve configured and tested it, until you go looking for video of an actual incident you don’t REALLY know what it’s recording or not, and if it’s what you need.

I’m home today with the student, so I’ll continue the auction and ebay preps, and maybe get up on the roof with a new camera.  (Both my plumber and my auction drop off got canceled yesterday, leaving me at loose ends.)  Thursday filled up, so I need to be productive today.  It’s always something.

Oh, and I went through the shelves of food I just stacked in March.  I moved some to my ‘working’ shelves, and I think I’ll move the rest back to my secondary location.  That will free up some space here, and give me some redundancy.  Turns out, I don’t need those 8 gallons of bleach to be so close to hand.  And some buckets of bulk can be shifted too.

On the other hand, I’ve got 7 cu ft of freezer to fill.

Keep your eyes and ears open.  Keep stacking.

nick

 

*once I was chatting with my local work crew in LA.  Quite a few of them had the signs of previously mis-spent youth.  I mentioned that I grew up on the South Side of Chicago (south suburbs to be exact, but South Side has a richer connotation.)  They had previously asked me “where you stay at” which is a dialectical way of asking ‘where do you live right now’.  That particular phrase indicates a subculture I’m familiar with, so when they asked me “who I was with” or “who I ‘claimed'” they were asking me about MY past gang affiliation.  Since I had none, and that would have been all in the past anyway, I ignored the questions like I didn’t hear them and kept on chatting.  Eventually though, they kept poking at it (good-naturedly) and I ended up saying “I know what you’re asking and I am not hearing you ask it, cuz I ain’t gonna answer it” which got a laugh,  and then I made some jokes about throwing signs and tags that got some more laughs.  That worked out ok because they were technically working for me, were mostly guys I’d worked with on other shows, and it was friendly and in a ‘lets see what this white boy really knows’ kinda way…   In another time or place I would have let those questions blow right by me like I didn’t even recognize what they were asking.  Sometimes it’s better to be a player, or to have BEEN a player (even better as you don’t have to keep up the same level of face) and sometimes it’s better to be a ‘civilian’ and off limits and out of play…and sometimes if you are 200 pounds with a grey crew cut, and drive a white Expedition with a push bar it’s better to let them make other assumptions about who you  might work for.

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