08:42 – After dinner last night, Barbara was back in her office checking email and reading web pages, including mine. I was surprised when she shouted that she wanted me to order her a printed copy of 100-day Pantry: 100 Quick and Easy Gourmet Meals. She assumed I’d gotten it for Kindle but wanted a hard copy to look over and try out some of the recipes. I shouted back that I’d get it for her. When she finished back in her office and arrived in the den, I handed her the printed copy and told her that I’d ordered it and Amazon had just delivered it via drone.
After she’d finished beating me about the head and shoulders with it, she said that she wanted to try some of the recipes in it to use our shelf-stable food storage stuff. Like Jen, I’m fortunate to be married to someone who’s on-board with my prepping activities. That’s still fairly unusual. Most preppers are married to someone who at best thinks they’re nuts and at worst is actively opposed to prepping in any form, some so much so that they actually discard stored food, water, and other preps when they come across them. Normalcy bias on steroids.
Barbara is off to run some errands and then do some yard work. The rest of the weekend, we’ll both be working on science kits.
Stupid but amusing: A (Not Quite) Complete List Of Things Supposedly
Caused By Global Warming
Also, be sure to read the quote and click the BBC link at the top of that page. Amazing, isn’t it, how the nature of this religion was clear a decade ago but can no longer be spoken by anyone in government or the mass media.
They’ve all agreed, with the masses, that the emperor really is wearing a new suit of clothes, and that fable, by the very late Hans Christian Anderson, explains so much about our rotten culture:
http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/Emperors-New-Clothes.htm
Yeah, the spousal support and approval problem is an ongoing topic of discussion on other sites as well.
The best advice is to point out when preps save time/money/inconvenience. You have to be careful about how you point it out. If the result was big enough, it often leads to at least grudging acceptance and has been known to result in conversion.
The second best way seems to be a psyop approach. It works best if the partner reads, but can work with other media. Slowly expose the partner to media that supports prepping or reveals the non-MSM news. People who think they are too smart to prep often are susceptible to the appeal of “hidden knowledge.” So exposure to alternative news sources works well with them. Others can be influenced thru books, TV, etc. Zombie apocalypse fiction is often a good gateway. At a minimum, it can be a good opening for discussion. “If we DID have to leave home suddenly, what would you take if we could only take one bag?” “What would you miss most if the house burned down?” “Man, I bet those zombie hunters wished they had a water filter!”
Since you’ve been living with your spouse for a while, you should know what works to influence them, or not. Take a step back and REALLY look at what you are doing. If it doesn’t work, STOP. If your prepping is a constant thorn in their side, they will never convert. Ask yourself if you are just poking at them in the same way as always, and if yes, look for a different way. Identify what matters to them and work that angle ie. saving money, not having to go out, no interruption in their comfort, etc.
We often fall into habits in our prepping and in our relationships. It is good practice to take a hard look and reevaluate if that habit is helping us or hurting. I’ve decided I don’t need any more colman stoves for a while. I am in the habit of buying them when I see them. I was surprised to find 5 of them in my secondary location. That’s in addition to the many here and in kitchen kits. Same goes for some food items. If you get in the habit of picking up a jar of peanut butter extra every store trip, you might be way overstocked, and need to switch your habit to something else for a while.
It’s always good to pause and take stock. (literally and figuratively)
nick
Wow, I know where I’m heading if I’m in desperate need of a Coleman stove. 🙂
We have only two of them, one dual-fuel and one propane. Of course, we also have a gas grill, stored charcoal, and other means of cooking. If I started buying “extra” Coleman stoves, that’d send Barbara over the edge, I’m afraid. Extra fuel is fine with her. Or extra ammo. In other words, Barbara kind of keeps me in check, which is a good thing. It’s kind of like the keeper vs. thrower-away thing. Any marriage with both one or the other is going to either spend a lot of extra money to rebuy things they shouldn’t have thrown away, or spend a lot of extra money buying larger houses, renting storage buildings, and so on.
The stuff that’s cheap, like bulk food staples, isn’t a problem unless it’s too bulky. I can always convince Barbara that it’s a good idea to keep lots of this cheap stuff on hand so that if there is a long-term emergency we’ll be in a position to feed others like her sister and friends and neighbors.
I’ve tried unsuccessfully to get her to read PA novels like One Second After, but she’s just not interested. She has literally hundreds of novels in her TBR pile for her Kindle, and that genre holds no interest for her. I’m going to try again with the first book in the 299 Days series, which is very different from most PA novels. The protagonist isn’t a Rambo. He’s an attorney who works for the Washington state government. Interestingly, this first book appears to be autobiographical. The author, like the protagonist, grew up dirt poor in the same rural Washington town. They both ended up going to law school and becoming attorneys for the state government. They both saw first-hand the corruption and out-of-control spending. They both (I’m guessing) have wives who are actively hostile to prepping, to the extent that they have to hide it from them. They both end up overweight, out of shape office drones. And they both start prepping.
The author doesn’t completely understand the issues about the dollar. He thinks it’s possible/inevitable that other countries will stop buying US dollar-denominated paper. I’m not sure what he thinks they’re going to do. Stop accepting dollars for goods they export to the US? What’s going to replace them? They’re paid in dollars and they have to do something with them. They have three choices: buy dollar-denominated paper, stocks and bonds, buy US-produced goods and services, or buy real estate, companies, and similar assets, again in dollars. They’re currently doing a lot of all three, and I don’t see that changing in our lifetimes.
From my mail, it seems that this is gradually changing. More and more people are starting to feel that things are badly wrong. Every time there’s a riot in a US city, more and more people decide to get off their butts and do something. I get lots of emails something like, “I was really surprised last night when my wife/husband changed her/his mind and said we ought to get some food/guns/whatever in case that starts happening around here.”
But the best indication I’ve seen is that over the last few years Costco, Sam’s, and Walmart have started increasing their emphasis on emergency food and similar stuff, and even started to feature it in their promos. None of them are stupid. They carry and push what’s selling.
I’ll be renewing our Costco membership this week and also take a spin by the local Wall-Mutt Superstsore and see what they’ve got up here.
We’re gonna be playing catch-up on the prep issues; pay checks arrived today and deposited, but naturally, although banks can debit our accounts instantly in this age of high-tech and high-speed net, they can’t ever seem to credit our accounts likewise, so gotta wait till Monday. I’m sure there’s a logical explanation for this in defense of the banks, natch.
Anyway, the first order is the Costco deal and loading up a few bins of canned goods; second will be deciding on an alternative well pump that doesn’t need the juice to run. And third, I’m clearing out the cellar and assembling shelving down there, followed by the installation of flooring and shelving in the attic when the weather cools off somewhat; it’s an oven up there. At some point we need to knock a hole in the opposite wall from our one window and install a vent or something to get some cross-ventilation; also gotta run the juice up to that area.
Meanwhile I’m on the ham Technician course and some firearms courses and have a good chunk of paperwork in to BATFE.
80s today and tomorrow with chance of t-storms, maybe. Just mowed the whole lawn and now waiting for weed whacker battery to charge again. This used to kick my ass but now it’s not so bad, having lost a few pounds and doing some fast walking, pitiful situps and pushups, etc.
When you figure it out, see if you can figure out the justification for a bank waiting for a cash deposit to “clear” before the money is available for writing checks. I’m not talking about foreign currency or $50k in sequentially-numbered hundreds, just a few hundred in low-denomination bills, two or three decades ago.
Yah, that’s a good one, too! Waiting for a cash deposit to clear.
And now they play games with the amounts of checks deposited, and whether it’s from out of state, or if the check paper is other than off-white, or written on a Wednesday during a new moon.
Our most recent fave was when the IRS dickwads made a mistake and froze our bank accounts, a bunch of checks we’d written to pay bills bounced, of course. Needless to say, the bank still charged us the insufficient funds fees anyway. No recourse or apology from the bank or the IRS, just us with our bounced checks and a nice hit on our credit ratings.
To be fair, the Tax Advocate office DID apologize and got our situation straightened out after the fact and also worked out an installment payment plan with the bastards that won’t absolutely kill us each month.
Continued sunny day on the bay here, with a light breeze, and the usual series of loud-ass motorhead douchebags with their trucks, cars, motorcycles, speedboats and jet-skis. The worst offenders are not tourists but our local yokel shitbirds, who live just up one or the other of the three roads in and out of the village here. Mrs. OFD informs me that similar cretins are rampant way up in Pigeon Hill, NB this summuh, too.
These are some of the derps who will be skulking around trying to rip people off if and when TSHTF comes around; they have no skillz to speak of and zero literacy or common sense. Our own underclass in northern VT.
Most preppers are married to someone who at best thinks they’re nuts…
I think a more general statement would be similarly true.
Most married people are married to someone who at best thinks they’re nuts…
And who is in a better position to know than a spouse?
I’m sure there’s a logical explanation for this in defense of the banks, natch.
Float. The longer the bank can keep the money in their account before putting the money in your account the interest belongs to the bank. Not much money in your case but multiply that by a few thousand people and there is some money to be made.
Checks are truncated at point of presentation. No longer are checks shipped around the country. The wait is a hold back from the paper days. Any check deposited at a bank should clear the next business day. The problem comes when the check bounces or the account is invalid. That works its way back through the system manually and that takes a couple of days. Thus the wait for checks to clear before making the funds available.
A check can be legally written on anything. As long as you have the payee, bank, account holder name, date, amount and signature, the document is legal. You don’t need routing numbers or account numbers, never have. You could write the check on a cardboard shipping box or a t-shirt. It becomes a legal document that the bank must accept. Pisses them off, but legally is a promise to pay from one person to another that the bank must honor.
I bank with a credit union. I can scan checks and deposit them online. The first $3,500 per day is immediately available. They don’t charge any service charge except for bounced checks and pay me 2% interest on the first $10,000. No ATM fees, either. Generally reasonable people to deal with.
Rick in Portland
Yeah, I guess I knew about “float.” Mrs. OFD’s employers seem to employ the same methodology with her pay checks; hang onto that money as long as possible, multiplied by all their independent contractors and employees, while raking in even more tens of millions in revenue from those same independent contractors around the country by virtue of the classes they teach. For which the firm charges a couple of grand per head, with usually around thirty heads per class and many classes per month. It works out so that for a class of 30 that she teaches, the firm charges $60,000 and she gets $7,000 or so, when by now she should be getting a couple of thousand more, but that’s another story (of being screwed over).
Once I get the biz going here, I may well go for a credit union arrangement and our home/family accounts will probably stay with the big bank for now, but I’ll be looking around…
My father bought a car with a check he hand wrote on a piece of graph paper. I was in high school. That’s when I learned that the check could be written on anything. Of course most people don’t believe you and it makes the whole transaction slower and harder. In my dad’s case, the dealer was one of our neighbors, and I’m sure he took it just to humor my father.
There was a story about a guy who paid the irs with a check written on a pig. I’m pretty sure they didn’t accept it. (seems there was a TV show that had this as a plot, still think it was based on a real event.)
google coughs up this :http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/562/can-you-write-a-check-on-any-old-piece-of-paper
nick
(I cashed some travelers checks to buy some metal this year. No one at the counter knew what to do with them. They had to call their bank and be told that they were good as cash.)
We’re usually dealing with chick tellers in their 20s at our local bank branches here, and the mangler on hand is usually another chick in her 30s or 40s, sometimes a guy in that age range. They’ve generally been pleasant and helpful to us over the years, except in one branch closer to the big city of Burlap, there was an hour-long hassle over the status of Princess and her financials, being a dual Murkan-Kanadian citizen. And the 40-something beotch was a PITA.
Dead calm here now, not a breath of a breeze, and kinda warm and humid. Princess reported it was hot out on the lake, from her summer ferry job. Which she crabs about being minimum wage, as if none of the rest of us here ever worked shitty, part-time and min-wage gigs in our lives. Again, the Entitled Generation. And just got paid Thursday and was asking for money again yesterday; wife finally said no more money this summer; she’s gotta learn to live within her means; no more money for playing around and having fun. Etc. And got the usual hour-long argument. We’ll see how long this lasts.
I have always had a CU account wherever I lived, often an employee CU. CUs added checking about 30+ years ago, and right then I stopped doing business with banks.
Rick’s CU seems like a good deal. So far, my CU only has check deposit using a mobile device. I won’t use any mobile device to do any secure stuff, except in an emergency. I always worry about it getting stolen. The other CU in town, affiliated with the world’s largest, has check deposit from a home computer, but it would be a lot of trouble to move all operations. Don’t get many checks anyway, and can use the ATM to deposit them.
You can also write a will on about anything. There is a famous case from Texas where a farmer was plowing and the tractor fell over on him. He had no will, so he wrote on the fender with his blood “House to mother”. It was accepted as a valid will.
Teens running wild:
“Six teens ‘murdered New Mexico father on his driveway as they roamed the neighborhood breaking into cars and burglarizing homes’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3156687/6-teens-accused-murder-New-Mexico-mans-shooting-death.html
There was a story about a guy who paid the irs with a check written on a pig.
When I worked for a large commercial bank holding company in the ’80’s we still processed checks that were delivered from the FED. Three 24 pocket reader/sorters that ran about 20 hours a day. Hundreds of thousands of items per day. A dedicated main frame to run the reader/sorters.
Anyway, we received a package with one of our usual check deliveries. It was a shirt. Someone had written a large check on the back of a white shirt. All the necessary information. The check was to the IRS (OFD would appreciate the humor). It had taken the check about a month to get to our bank, the final clearing bank. Yes, we had to mail the shirt to the client with his regular monthly statement.
That bank also allowed deposits at their owned ATM’s. Any checks that were deposited that day were given an immediate $100 credit per day regardless of the number of checks. Since I wrote the ATM software and was in charge of the online software (from a commercial vendor) there was no way to place a temporary credit on an account. What I did instead was place a negative hold. The hold expired the next business day at 08:00. The deposit was then verified. Any account in the negative got severe service charges which the bank did not mind as those were very profitable.
I bank with a credit union.
I also bank with a full service credit union. I don’t need the fees bank charge. I pay nothing for the account, pay nothing for writing checks, pay nothing for the checks, no ATM fees for in network, pay nothing for debit transactions. Been with them for 27 years.
They have mobile deposit. You have to photograph the front of the check and the back of the check with the necessary endorsements. They basically just receive the image and some person looks at the image and enters the information. It only works during business hours. More hassle than just depositing the item at the CU using the overnight deposit box.
Unfortunately my CU cannot receive international wire transfers nor initiate such transfers. Credit cards are through an outfit in Florida that can be annoying. When my cards got stolen late Friday night Discover had a new card in my hands on Saturday at 10:00 via overnight FEDEX Saturday delivery. VISA took 10 days to get me a new card and VISA is the one that issues the debit cards. I was not happy about the time delay.
Regardless, a CU is the way to go and avoid banks.
pay me 2% interest on the first $10,000
Many CU’s are now offering such accounts. There are a lot of limits and requirements. The one that stops me is my CU requires 10 debit card transactions a month. All my bills are paid electronically through their bill pay system (no charge even if they have to mail a check) or direct debit. I don’t use the debit card at eateries because of the high risk of theft. I don’t use the card at gas stations because of the risk of scanners. I instead use the credit card and transfer money (almost every day) to pay the credit card.
” Someone had written a large check on the back of a white shirt. All the necessary information. The check was to the IRS (OFD would appreciate the humor).”
Indeed he does. OFD is a lover of dark, nasty humor. And has been for many years. Decades, actually. That’s a good one; I’ll run it by the missus right now…yep, she also thought it was hilarious.
For those of a literary bent, I can recommend the writings of the very late Jonathan Swift, esp. his “Directions to Servants.” Also any of the novels by the late Kingsley Amis. My fave comic strips are Red Meat, and Lulu Eightball.
Back in my college days, a Big Impersonal Bank hosed my fraternity (details not important). They were entirely in the wrong, and after we moved the account, we started requiring that checks from brothers which were drawn on that bank *not* be written on conventional check stock, just to annoy them. In the end, once word got around what the BIB had done, about half a dozen other fraternities also closed their accounts and started the same check procedure. It didn’t change their balance sheet one iota, but it did make us feel better. It also made me distrustful of BIBs to this day.
You know, one thing nice about Trump, if you want to bribe him you gotta bring out the BIG checkbook. I hear Obola goes for $10K or so. Monica Lewinsky’s ex-boyfriends wife is reputedly even cheaper.
The other nice thing about Trump is he’s had enough scandal and controversy that it’s unlikely they could find any leverage on him (other than threats to family, and he’s been dealing with those all along, and will presumably get help at some point.)
The OTHER nice thing about Trump is the other jack@sses are revealing themselves because of his candor. Jeb for example, who has never had a real job, right? He thinks we just need to WORK HARDER and stop standing in line for government handouts. Right. I think maybe he aimed that at the wrong people, maybe.
nick
“Wow, I know where I’m heading if I’m in desperate need of a Coleman stove. :)”
I almost dropped one (and a lantern) on Mr Lynn’s front porch, but he commented that he went ahead and ordered one while I was trying to decide if that was too creepy…
I actually passed up a colman stove today. It was the lightweight 2 burner propane model, in great shape, with an interesting 50s or 60s era Smokey the Bear sticker on it, about forest fire prevention. If I was a true collector, I’d have HAD to get it, just for the sticker 🙂
I did manage to find some good preps at a bunch of yard sales today. I got a FoodSaver (TM) with the jar sealer attachments, 2 full rolls of bag material and a box of bags for $5. I always look for the bags, the vacuum sealer is just backup at this point. A Brita water filter (dispenser type that stays in your fridge) for a dollar with a free cartridge will go in the pile. It’s real nice to take out the chlorine taste from stored water, and a convenient way to dispense it. An older weather station with temp, RH, and barometer will be practical and look good on the wall or be sold for cash, one dollar. A new big gelcel battery and charger, meant for a kids ride-on toy, but a good match for one of my solar panels, or my smaller inverter, for $2 each. A nice Bearcat scanner, with 800mhz, but not trunk tracking, joined the rest in the shack for $20. Some high end stainless steel cookware will go in the ‘camping’ pile, if my wife doesn’t want it for the kitchen, $1/ pan. (this one I really don’t understand. Young mother, with young child, selling NICE cookware for nothing. It’s not non-stick and I guess it’s easier to sell than clean. Took less than 10 minutes to get it looking “out of the box” fresh. Kids these days…) 3 boxes of canning jars for $5, and some other misc smalls rounded out the day.
It does take time, but you can prep really well for almost no money.
(and when I’m out, I’m always looking for stuff to sell for cash. That more than pays for the time and usually the preps too.)
nick
Most married people are married to someone who at best thinks they’re nuts….
Hence, one of my favorite sayings: “Everyone is someone else’s weirdo”. At least, in our family, we’re mostly weird in the same direction. Namely, none of us like members of Homo Sapiens all that much. Went out to dinner with the youngest a couple of weeks ago, to celebrate his high school graduation. We chatted a bit, but lots of time was spent in companionable silence. If the diners at the other tables noticed, they’ll have probably thought we were mad at each other or something.
Said young’un is now home for the summer, and had his pocket money cut (because it included money for school lunches, which he doesn’t need anymore). It’ll be interesting to see what happens. He claims he has a part-time job online, doing some website work. No idea how real that is, or whether it’s really paid or just goofing off for a friend. But he hardly spends any money anyway. Going out? What’s that? See above comment about not liking members of Homo Sapiens.
I’m with y’all on the subject of credit unions. I still have an account in the States, opened when I had my first military assignment, so more than 30 years ago. Great service, no fees (since, after all, they get to keep your money). What I don’t understand is why anyone still uses banks? I mean, do people like paying ridiculous fees for lousy service?
Sigh. Your Adelaide correspondent is freezing his butt off. Al, please send me some AGW.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-12/blizzard-gale-winds-heavy-rain-descend-across-the-country/6613474
Jeb for example, who has never had a real job, right?
Nah, Governor of Florida was a real job. Any state bigger than Rhode Island is a total mess to govern in these times. I’m not sure how good he was at it though.
Did you know that his oldest son is our Texas land comissioner? Very clean cut and handles himself well in public.
http://www.chron.com/news/local/article/Alamo-to-the-UN-It-ain-t-gonna-happen-6379156.php
I’m not sure if his daughter is out of jail at the moment though.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2947608/Bush-ebook-chapter-details-emails-Florida-eGovernor.html
“Nah, Governor of Florida was a real job”
I meant one where he wasn’t suckling on the public teat.
A state governorship was the best route to the white house, and it gives you experience as a political executive, and yes, it’s real work. But, kind of hard to know the daily reality for the much larger percentage of the population that doesn’t draw a public check if you’ve never done it.
It would be nice to see someone who understood Real Life ™ and business get in the office.
nick