Month: September 2024

Still hot in Houston, and muggy too. It started mid 70s, got to mid 90s on my driveway, and ended with mid 80s even until 10pm… and humid the whole time. I’m hoping the BOL is a couple of degrees cooler.

Today should be busy. I’ve got to get some stuff at Lowes for the projects at the BOL, but IDK which project I should buy for… maybe both. I’ve already got a truck full of stuff to go up, including more insulated chimney sections for the woodstoves. I never thought someone would USE and then return chimney pipe. That is what they did though. 4 of the five sections have soot in them. People suck.

I also picked up two steel cabinets to use as pantry. With critters, dust, moisture, etc. I’ve decided to try cabinets and not open shelves. Even with the lidded plastic bins, (which I’ll keep using in the cabinets), food isn’t as accessible or protected as I’d like. Looks bad too. It was ok during the wuflu lockdowns, but it’s looking bad now. Anyway, I’ve got to get them out of the truck so I can load it for the BOL.

And I need to do some grocery shopping for a nice meal for my wife’s birthday celebration. I pulled last night’s steaks out of the deep freeze, and they had 2021 dates. They were marked prime sirloin, which is what I’m still buying when it’s on sale, but they were SO MUCH better than the current meat. The grain and texture, the amount of connective tissue, it just didn’t compare. So not only is meat more expensive, standards have slipped too. I’d like to get her a couple of nice tenderloin filets since we don’t eat them very often. We’ll see what Costco has.

If they have some nice meat, I’m sure it will be pricey.

Lot’s of running around to do today. And then load the truck and head out…

I will bring some more TP and paper towels with me to stack at the BOL… there is likely to be something you need to stack too. Figure it out and act.

nick

And it’s still hot in Houston. Humid too. 100F this afternoon according to my truck, and 88F at 10pm. Humidity to match. Weather liars said it would be the same for a while yet. I’ll probably bemoan the cold when it finally gets here too, but I’m heartily tired of the humidity.

Did some stuff yesterday. Mainly poked at networking stuff at my client’s house. Frustrating. But got the xfinity fiber working. I have to go back and clean up the install, and swap some settings around so that xfinity is primary and the ATT fiber is secondary. He’s still got at least a month and a half to go on his ATT contract so we’ll run with a backup until then. xfinity still hasn’t buried the fiber, they just left it laying on the grass. Supposedly a crew will come back and underground it. I’m thinking a plow, but I don’t really know. I’ve got some firmware to update on various pieces of gear, and some other stuff to do as soon as it cools down a bit. I won’t work in the attic if I don’t absolutely have to with it being this hot.

Today I’ve got to pick up some metal cabinets I won, and do some other pickups too. Then I should hit Lowes and buy project materials for the BOL. And I should definitely run some stuff to storage to get it out of the house. Wife’s birthday celebration will be at the BOL this weekend but getting the house cleaned up will put her in a good mood. I’ve been sorta trying all week but things keep coming up. Happy wife, happy life and all that. The opposite is certainly true.

Last night’s dinner was put in the deep freeze back in 2020. I did a little moving and digging in one of the freezers, and dug it up. There is plenty more in there from that time, and even older. Keep it vac sealed, keep it deep frozen, and you can keep it a long time. I haven’t been very good at rotating…

But I have been good at stacking. I’ve even switched to just mostly replacing what we eat as I’m comfortable with the amount I’ve got stored. I DO need to do some extra replacement for spoiled cans, and stuff that failed, above and beyond what we’re using. And I’d stack more, but we are already way behind on rotating stock, and I’m frankly running out of space that is good for food storage. I’m still building up the BOL with new stuff though. It’s just here that I feel like I have to turn over some of the old if I want more new. Of course if I’m feeding more than just us, I don’t have enough. But that would be the case no matter how much I had.

Stack what you need, and then stack more, but try for balance with the inevitable entropy and a reasonable use budget.

nick

Another hot and humid day is on order. Satan must be vacationing in Houston, and he likes it hot. It was another sweltering day yesterday, with sweat dripping down my back even when just standing still.

I did get out of the house and do the kid chauffeuring which involved a lot of back and forth to almost the same place. Just THAT MUCH too long in between trips to make it worth staying…

I didn’t get to my client’s house so that moved to today. This morning in fact as his wife is having people over in the afternoon, and I want to be gone… I hope the xfinity guy really did get his part done, and that I can remember how to do my part. Only doing the config changes every couple of years means having good notes, and re-learning over and over.

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I wish I could look around the world and say things were getting better, but I can’t. Still on the downward slide with more bad to come. We are far from the darkest hour. Which also means we’re far from the dawn. We’ll get there eventually.

It’s funny that when I first started building my apocalypse library of reference books I thought of it as a cheap but very unlikely hedge… and I LIKE old books, and books of knowledge, so I liked collecting them. I even use one or another occasionally, just because I can. The way things are falling apart, I’m taking it much more seriously. Still a very low likelihood of needing it on a wider scale, but still has little downside and low cost… I’ve got a nice bookcase behind glass doors at the BOL, and they are moving up there.

Stack some reference books. Some log tables and calculators. Maybe even a slide rule or two, and a book on how to use them. Books of tables for engineering, math, design… the Foxfire series. Some people like military manuals and training courses, I like the 50s and 60s books aimed at getting people up to speed in a trade. Stack some medical references. An encyclopedia, atlas, and globe. The best of western thought and writing. The “collected works” of authors in one volume are CHEAP. Goodwill and estate sales will fill your shelves for little money.

Take Yoda’s advice. “Save you what can.”

And stack.

nick

Hot and humid again, or still, or of course. Sunny and bright too. Yesterday was crazy hot and humid.

I drove in a big loop across most of Houston to do 4 pickups and then come home to get the kid. Saw three fires. I never see fires after that one year when I saw a half dozen. These all had responders on scene so I didn’t need to use my fire extinguishers. I’ve got a bunch in the truck… if needed.

Went out to my client’s house to help get xfinity fiber to the home installed. The installer wouldn’t get in an attic without a floor. And he really didn’t know much about networking, and barely could explain the features and limits of the service he was installing. For example, he didn’t know if it came with a fixed IP address or not. We’ll see later today if he managed to get it configured and provisioned, or not.

And that’s what I’ll be doing late morning, early afternoon- transitioning from the ATT fiber to the xfinity fiber. I’ve got some changes to make to the ubiquiti security gateway and router. Hope xfinity gets their part done, so I can flail away at mine. Then we’ll run the two concurrently either in load balance or in failover mode until the ATT contract expires. I can’t believe it’s been almost two years since we put the fiber in.

Time flies. Life. It’s what happens when you are planning for something else.

Don’t miss it.

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With this second assassination attempt on T, things are getting even sportier. Get your stuff in a row.

Stack like time is short. It might be.

nick

Hot and humid, but maybe no rain today. Small blob of “T Storms and rain possible” but a lot of “clear” on the forecast map too. I’m leaning toward “clear”. It was plenty hot yesterday, getting well into the 90s.

I did manage to get a few things done. I got the fan unstuck in the new garage fridge. The freezer was super cold, but the fridge wasn’t. The fan turned out to be stuck and the passage between them was blocked with ice. Cleared all that out and it’s cooling the fridge normally again. So now I can put that in place in the garage.

It will give me a nice platform for the live animal cage trap. To get the possum that is moving from my garage to the house attic, through the soffits and the breezeway roof. I’ve definitely got one in the attic, and one in the garage, but IDK if they are one in the same. I think I blocked the path between the garage and house, but I could be wrong. Or there might be another path. We’ll see what the attic trap does in the next day or so.

And I’ve got a big armadillo in my back yard. Dog went nuts last night, and we went out to pull him off the possum, but it turned out to be an armadillo instead. Dillo was trying to burrow under my house slab. Dog was trying to eat what he could see. Dang thing moved FAST when it had the chance to run away… then it got trapped trying to dig under the woodpile by the fence. Like a toddler or an ostrich, if it’s head is safe, it doesn’t care about the rest and it just kept trying to burrow. Crazy good digger too. Not much of a climber. I think it’s only the second time I’ve seen a live one, and the first time I’ve seen one that close or that long. Not really happy to have him in the yard.

Cats, rats, dogs, squirrels, coons, and now ‘dillos. Oy.

Today if there isn’t a security incident at school, I’ll be continuing my cleanup and organizing, while knocking off a small project here or there as I can. I’ve got pickups I can do if I get the chance.

And if not, there are always things to do here.

Stack something. Do something.

nick

Hot, hey boy it’s hot. Thought we were gonna head into Fall, but nope. Well into the upper 90s yesterday, and as humid. Soaked me to the skin to do some work in the garage. Today will likely be similar. Not looking forward to it.

Did my hobby meeting yesterday. Got an overview of how the club did with our show, we lost ~$70. We usually make a couple of thousand dollars, but attendance was down. If not for a new deal with the table rental company, we’d have lost almost $2000. We have money in the bank, but the yearly show is our only real fundraiser, and it pays for the stuff we do during the year. I grossed somewhere between $1200 and $2400 for my three days. Dunno where I ended up net, because some of the stuff I sold I’d had so long I couldn’t even guess what my cost was. Since I didn’t take any big hits, I’m guessing somewhere around $1000 net. That will fund my hobby for the next year, mostly, and the main point is to be out there talking with people and interacting with them. Just like my hamfest sales.

After the meeting, one of the guys locked his keys in his truck. A newer F-150. I have a slim jim and a chinese made kit of “entry tools” in my truck, but I didn’t have my air wedges. The F-150 door is solid enough that without the plastic pry bars and the air shims, I was afraid to try to open it. The guy he called opened it in 1 minute using 2 air shims and a big long metal stick. He used the stick to push the unlock button… I want one. Charged $200 and had the nerve to ask for a tip. My buddy is considering getting an AAA membership…

Getting into your own vehicle is something everyone should learn to do, and practice at least a couple of times. And a spare key in a magnet storage box tucked up under the frame is a good idea. $10 to save $200, and a half hour waiting… that’s a good prep.

Speaking of “entry tools”… one of the auctioneers I was talking to this week had their work pickup truck stolen from their office complex. They had previously had their catalytic converter stolen, and then the replacement was stolen a week later. This time, 4 guys in two cars drove up, one guy messed around under the middle of the truck (my guess, disengaging the transmission or putting it in neutral) for a few seconds, then they pushed it out of view of the camera. Don’t know if they towed it from there or did more breaking in away from the cam… The office is in Stafford, generally considered a decent and ‘safe’ area. Lots of ‘immigrants’ in the area now.

The security situation is degrading everywhere.

Today I’ll be doing stuff around the house. What stuff will mostly depend on the heat. There is a big list, so I’m sure I’ll find something to do to avoid it 🙂

Stack some friends, stack some knowledge, and maybe stack some specialty tools…

nick

Warm again, sunny and clear. Humid, too. Like the 13th. Sweaty thighs just standing around. Yuck.

I drove around in that heat doing my pickups. All over town and back. Got a couple hundred feet of razor wire. I’ll add it to the stacks of several hundred feet of barbed wire. Don’t know where or when I’ll need it, but I’ve got it. I actually think one of my neighbors at the BOL will need the barbed wire… or we’ll need to build some barricades after the fall…

And my project of ripping DVDs to the media server continues. Like so many things in life, just doing a little bit at a time, over time, will yield results. I’ve managed to rip another dozen or more movies, and a couple dozen CDs while sitting here doing other things. My collection grows…

Today I’ve got my non-prepping hobby monthly meeting. We’ll be doing show and tell about what we got at our big yearly show, and wrapping that up. My duties will be limited to the web site again, which is just fine. I enjoy being a part of the group and the group effort. I recommend finding something that gets you out of the house and involves you with people outside of your immediate acquaintances. It is a valuable experience, helps avoid tunnel vision, and is rewarding in its own right. People are important, and learning (or re-learning) how to get along and be part of a group is a valuable skill.

Stack up some friends and acquaintances. Stack some stuff. Do both!

nick

And it’s hot again. Mainly because it’s warm with crazy humidity. False Fall seems to have ended so that Summer could have a few more beers and stick around for a bit. High in the 80s in the afternoon, but dripping, stifling, humid. And today is likely to be similar.

Spent all day yesterday, when I wasn’t driving a kid somewhere or doing auction stuff online, moving stuff in and out of my office. I pulled a lot of stuff out, and sorted through it. Reorganized some. Put some elsewhere. At the moment I can walk straight into my office and sit down. Still need to work on opening up the paths to the rest of the office, but at least I got some done.

During that exercise, I also moved and sorted some stuff in the living room and ‘toy” room or library. I’ve got a ‘scratch and dent’ humidor the size of a 3.1 cubic foot dorm fridge that I had to get out of the box, and see if it runs so that I can sell it… and I finally got that set up and out of the living room. I had to lay it on its back to fix the door hinge, so I’ll plug it in today and see if I will make some money, or need to spend a bit more time and energy on it. I’ve got several to flip, but not as big as this.

Today I’ll get a pickup or two, drive the kid around, and generally continue with my cleanup, organizing, and fixing binge.

Still trying to make some money as well as stack. So I can make room for stacks, and stack some do-re-mi…

‘cuz stacks of money will solve a lot of issues…

And stacks of food will help too.

Git you some!

n

Cool with more overcast and possibility of rain. Yesterday was cool, and had rain, but not much of it. Occasional misty drizzle barely counts as rain by Houston standards. It did get stuff wet…

Between the stuff I’ve got piled up, and the stuff that needs doing, I shouldn’t have a free moment or a clear space to put stuff, and yet… I moved stuff around, did the kid driving duties, and picked up a couple of things. I’m really buying less that I used to. I ‘ve got most of what I am looking for, and that helps, but also I’m being a bit more picky. In any case, my typical pickup now is just a few items from each auction house.

There are exceptions, of course.

Today I’ll be picking up locally from one house, doing my normal household stuff, and maybe working on the list of projects. In other words, just another day in paradise…

Find your own little paradise, and get to work building it up. And stack. Paradise has needs.

nick