Coolish, probably wet, or at least threatening all day. It was that way all day Wed. except it never actually got wet.
I spent Wed. cleaning and putting away. I got the gennies sorted for the short term. I put all the extension cords away and covered them up. Cleaned and organized on the patio and in the back. Looks nicer now, but I still have to put the gas cans away. Found and put aside some more stuff for the auctions or ebay.
Plan for the day is collecting some auction stuff. It’s mostly stuff for use at home, but there are a couple of resale items as well.
One of the craziest/luckiest items is a Buffalo TeraStation that matches my failed RAID. The pix show it on. If it works, I should be able to pop in my old drives, and recover them. Fingers crossed, and appropriate offerings to the hidden powers… maybe being lazy will have ended up saving me a lot of work. I mean, maybe being too busy to learn about home RAID recovery, might save me the work… *cough*
You almost certainly don’t recall that my TeraStation went belly up with a failed controller board. That is why we back up a RAID to another disc. Too bad I hadn’t done that recently thinking that drive failure was all I had to consider. In the time since, I haven’t really needed anything from the failed discs bad enough to try recovering them so taking a low effort approach worked out so far.
That sort of describes my general approach to prepping and most things, low effort. I try to get the most benefit from the least work. Doesn’t always work out but it does more often than not.
That manifests in different ways. One is that by having a more general idea of what I want, I can be open to getting something similar or equivalent if it becomes available. My solar project is that way. I didn’t go shopping for a specific solar panel, I watched for some in the auctions. When the price was right and there were a bunch all at once, I bought them. Now I have solar panels. If I held out for some exact model or size, I still wouldn’t have any.
I’ve done the same with ham radios. I bought what was available, not what I dreamed about in the catalog. They are good, solid radios that more than meet my need and they were significantly less expensive than even ebay used.
I even stock the pantry with a version of this, buying what is on sale at the time, not rigidly following a list or a plan, believing that I can balance the inventory over time.
There is a downside- you need time. If you are short of time, you absolutely can just determine what you want and get it. Or just buy all the things in a great big hurry (so called ‘panic’ buying.)
Of course, real life is a mix of the approaches. Going into the pandemic I had my pantry pretty well stocked using the low effort approach, but I still went out on the ‘last run’ and bought stuff I felt I was short of, without considering the cost. I also stocked up on a much wider variety of OTC meds, believing that there might be shortages later. I thought it better to spend the money on stuff at full price, regardless of immediate need, rather than not have it at any price later.
The current situation with guns and ammo can be viewed the same way. You wouldn’t normally want to pay current prices, but time and supply may be short and getting something rather than nothing might be your most important consideration.
Whatever approach you prefer, get started if you haven’t already. Don’t let ‘paralysis by analysis’ keep you from starting. Any prep is better than no prep. And if you are already on the path, keep stacking.
nick