09:19 – Amazon updated my Kindle Fire, and presumably Barbara’s, to the new version of their OS overnight. The changes are significant, and many of them appear gratuitous, but we’ll see how they work. I normally work in landscape mode, and they’ve moved the home and back arrow keys from the side to the bottom of the display and changed the icons. That’ll take some getting used to.
My new desktop system from Costco arrived yesterday, but I haven’t had time to unbox it. It has three times the memory and about 10 times the processor of the notebook I’ve been using, so it should be a lot better for my typical work habits. On the downside, it runs Windows 10, which I have to leave on it because I need Windows to run the stamps.com software. All my time over the next couple days is allocated to government-mandated administrative crap, but I’ll get moved over to the new system on Monday.
Other than general relocation/moving-in type tasks, I didn’t get much done this week on the prepping front. Here’s what I managed to do:
- I read a bunch of PA novels, most of which weren’t very good. One exception is the one I started last night, Matthew Mather’s CyberStorm, which I borrowed with Kindle Unlimited and got through about a quarter of last night. Unlike most of the new breed of PA novelists, Mather can actually write. He’s also prolific and likes to do series, so I expect there’ll soon be a sequel or sequel to this book.
- I did more research on small solar power setups. I don’t yet understand all the issues well enough to start buying panels and so on, but I’m getting there. My goal is to have sufficient solar capacity to be able to run our well pump and provide sufficient power for basic lighting, comms, and so on. I do know that I’ll focus first on acquiring the high-tech components–panels, charge controllers, inverters, and so on–and worry later about storage batteries. We could, if necessary, use ordinary automobile batteries, although they’re not ideal.
So, what precisely did you do to prepare this week? Tell me about it in the comments.
I will go ahead and share my opinions about the solar stuff. I do have a BSEE, but I’ve been doing software for the last 25+ years. I’m thinking of getting this panel and charge controller and this battery so I have something to play around with. Yes, the charge controller is inefficient, but it is enough for me to have something to experiment and learn with. I’m thinking of adding a second panel, a second battery, a decent inverter and a better charge controller. But a better charge controller could cost almost as much as my basic experimental setup, and a decent inverter will probably cost more than my basic setup. I welcome recommendations for a better charge controller and a decent inverter.
Here are a few basic comments which are all pretty obvious but I will say them anyway.
1. Remember that batteries and the current levels before the inverter are dangerous. As in remove wedding ring and metal watch bands when working around them dangerous.
2. Go with at least a 24 Volt system to minimize the danger and power loss.
3. Use the heaviest conductors you can find to connect the DC stuff.
I would use batteries that are matched to each other. The only emergency I can think of that I would connect a car battery to a solar installation is to start the car when another vehicle isn’t available for jump starting.
Yeah, I think I’ll do the same. One 100W panel should produce, on average, about 300 Wh per day, so that’s a good match for one 420 Wh battery. As you say, I could add more panels, etc. as I go along. I think my next purchase would be a high-capacity inverter that could output 240V, followed by something like this 400W kit with an MPPT charge controller (I’d put the high-end charge controller in a Faraday box just in case, and use the low-end one that comes with the basic kit):
http://www.amazon.com/Renogy-Watts-Volts-Monocrystalline-Premium/dp/B00E0YBL0K
@Dave – your comments are good. They may seem simple, but they are key.
BTW, I took a look at that battery and noticed in the lower right corner it says “Made in China”. Have you tried looking locally for U.S. Made batteries? Unfortunately our wonderful (not) EPA has basically destroyed the battery manufacturing and recycling industry here.
I too am looking at solar and wind charging and storage systems and am dismayed at the poor and confusing state of things.
On solar, we’re back to: can somebody recommend a comprehensive resource on building solar systems? I mean from basic electrical/electronic knowledge to panels, controller, batteries, 12V vs 24V. Surely there is something out there with all the solar companies trying to sell you on buying/leasing large systems. They had to train to design them somehow.
I wouldn’t mind learning and ginning up a small solar config to run our well pump if the Grid goes down for a while, even though we have limited sunlight for part of the year in this little microclimate/zone. But meanwhile I’m thinking a propane generator in the cellar to hook up for shorter periods when the juice cuts out. The Honda machines are looking pretty good and get good reviews on Amazon.
On another note I watched a kinda long vid on the Toob showing the Fed confrontation with the people out in Oregon near that wildlife refuge; it’s taken from above, I assume from a hovering drone, and you can see a pickup truck/camper zooming along up to the LE roadblock/checkpoint and then instead of slowing down and stopping, it veers off into the snow on the side of the highway. A few seconds later a guy bails out on the driver’s side with his hands high in the air and stumbles through the snow away from the vehicle. Another guy suddenly appears out of the trees and blows his ass away, on the spot, and it looks like several other guys who’d been approaching him also open up on him. He drops immediately.
Cut and dried cop murder of a surrendering citizen for no apparent reason.
Know what? Why bother? Why step out with your hands up and begging them not to shoot ya? Take some of them with ya, will be the new paradigm after events like this go viral on the net.
Bob, you’re talking about an inverter that could literally, briefly, power an arc welder. I wouldn’t run such an inverter from 12 volts. I’d use 24 Volts or 48 Volts. I would decide which before buying the inverter. If you do a 24 Volt system you need pairs of panels and pairs of 12V batteries. We’re talking multiples of four if you go with a 48 Volt system. Remember 15A at 120V is 150A at 12V. Doubling the voltage will halve the current and quarter the power losses. The charge controller in that bundle will only support 12 Volt or 24 Volt operation. I’m guessing you will wind up doing a 24 Volt system, but if I were you, I would decide before buying expensive electronics that commit you to one or the other.
1. When buying an inverter, look at how close the DC power terminals are to each other. Close is very, very bad. Touching the wires together is worse.
2. You need a fuse in the power line between the battery bank and the inverter.
3. I would connect the DC leads to the inverter before connecting them to the battery bank.
4. I would disconnect the DC leads from the battery bank before disconnecting the DC leads from the inverter.
5. Other fuses on the DC side may be a good idea and/or required to meet the National Electrical Code.
Remember, while I have an EE degree, 5V is my idea of high voltage. The above is very basic information and may be incomplete.
The KEY to any solar or wind energy system is the STORAGE. Get the BEST deep cycle cells you can afford. Look into the Tesla home storage devices. I haven’t tested these yet but they are designed SPECIFICALLY for this type use. Be sure to store your battery bank in a secure, fire-proof, cool and well ventilated, location. When we built a large Uninterruptable Power Source for an IT bunker in Arkansas a few years back we used 240 Deep Cycle, 24v, lead acid cells. These required good ventilation as they can produce explosive hydrogen when charging. Doesn’t matter if you have the BEST solar panels if you can’t safely store the power, you can’t use it.
Setting aside the hippie/new-age stuff, I recall from when I took a renewable energy class at the local community college that Real Goods was a good resource, e.g.
http://realgoods.com/solar-living-sourcebook-14th-edition-ebook
.mg
Some prep notes, before I forget:
Regarding food expiration dates.
Horizon Organic UHT lowfat white milk in single juice boxes- used 1 yr past date will have BB sized chunks and grit and slight chemical taste, but won’t poison you. Used a couple of months past date, has a degraded flavor, would be ok in sugar cereal in a pinch. Texture and color normal. My kids won’t drink it due to the taste at that point.
Quaker Oats instant oatmeal, in single use envelopes from the multi-flavor costco case- over a year past date still taste good. Flavors are strong enough, I’d make 2 packets for each serving one of flavor, one of original.
Idahoan instant potatoes, single meal envelopes from case available at Costco- over 1 yr past date and still taste great. These are some of the most real tasting instants I’ve ever had. Some of the flavors are even better! This envelope was ‘baby reds’.
Minute brand instant rice cups, over a year past date, color is slightly darker, taste is fine.
Shelf stable loaf of bread, from costco, good for 6mo on shelf, many months past date. Color is darker, more of a whole wheat or light rye than the French it’s supposed to be. Slightly more dense but still tastes great.
Had some soda cans leak after a year.
Don’t like the pop top cans for long term storage. They seem weaker.
The “Steakhouse flavors” series of dried potato side dishes are premium price but they are so good they fooled my wife. She thought I’d made the potatoes from scratch. Can’t think of the brand offhand, sorry.
As long as I’m reviewing, Kirkland brand canned peas are pretty lame, mushy and poor flavor and color. Kirkland canned green beans are flat out nasty. I’m never buying them again as there are much tastier brands- pretty much any name brand. Kirkland canned corn is awesome. Fresh and crunchy with a great taste. Kirkland automatic dish washer pods are not as effective as the name brand either.
nick
added, I expect shortened life and degradation due to my long term stores being primarily in my garage– in Houston — in summer. Not cool, not dry, but reasonably dark. I’d rather lose some to spoilage than not have it.
Yeah, I’ll probably end up going 24V. I’d like to go 48V or even 96V to minimize transmission losses, but then I get into issues like internal battery resistance, which I don’t have a real handle on.
The hybrid car systems are mostly fairly high voltages. I’ve been looking at the Toyota RAV4 Hybrid which uses a 245 volt system and a 67 kW electric rear motor.
What other preps?
Already talked about the suture kits and any lidocaine I probably didn’t get 😉
Already mentioned the Stanley thermos and the wide mouth, but the wife surprised me with this- talk about a wide mouth!
http://www.amazon.com/bubba-sport-active-black-charcoal/dp/B008BM9PRI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1454091526&sr=8-1&keywords=bubba+72+oz
Supposed to keep cold drinks cold for 24 hrs. The whole top screws off. Looks like a perfect tool for hay box cooking.
She wants to use it for drinking water on the go, so I won’t be testing it with stew, unless I get another one….
The ongoing ‘cleanup and sell stuff project’ generated some metal scrap so I took it to the dealer. If you want an indicator of the world wide economy, scrap metal prices are pretty good as they reflect manufacturing demand and energy pricing. Steel is 1c / pound. That’s down from 8c just 2 years ago. Cast aluminum is 32c/lb down from 85c. Copper is similar to Al. Brass is $1, which is holding well, down from over $3 though. Prices for other metals are similarly down. 230 pounds of scrap out of the garage and driveway is a plus, even if it did only net to $34.
Since some folks have expressed an interest in the economics of my prepper life- (ie, is it worth the time and gas to hit the secondary market for stuff). Well, I’ve been selling about $1000/ month on ebay for the last 3 months, just small items primarily from estate sales. It takes about an hour a day on average to pack and ship/update listings/deal with buyers. Some of those sales are industrial salvage from surplus auctions, but most of what’s selling lately is “smalls” from yard and estate sales. Almost everything I’ve sold online in the last 3 months has netted between $10 and $50. Bigger items are NOT selling well. The sold items have more than paid for the items I bought for myself. Because I do it as a business, I deduct miles. I don’t know where my hourly wage would end up, but that is not as important to me at this stage of my life than it would have been at others. The key is being there, looking. You never get the good stuff if you aren’t there looking.
Another anecdote. I recently won an auction lot which included 12 surveillance cameras, IP based, megapixel, with lenses. I’m pulling out some for my use, and selling the rest at $150 each. They are a few years old, but were REALLY good cameras when new. The very first one I sell will double my money on the lot. In addition, there are 7 thermal imaging cameras. I’ll be keeping a couple of those, you can be certain! I don’t know where I’d ever have gotten something like that, let alone for free (since the first sale of the other cameras covers the cost of all), if I wasn’t buying at surplus auctions. Sale of just one will pay my mortgage for a month (or 2 if I can get it.) In all, the new price for the gear in the lot totaled over $200k. Ebay value is somewhere around $10-15k. (assuming every piece works, which I haven’t confirmed yet, and that I sold every piece.)
So yeah, if you have the time, I think it’s totally worth it to shop yard, estate, car boot, and surplus sales, and also thrift shops and pawn shops. While you are looking for stuff for yourself, keep an eye open for stuff to sell, and that will finance the stuff you keep. It takes time, and work, and sometimes you make mistakes, but if you are smart, it will pay for your preps, and get you nice things for yourself.
nick
(and I like to think that this sort of reuse, repair, repurpose activity has good training value for a slow collapse. Maybe I’ll be a tinker in the new fallen world….)
OFD, Jerry Coyne saw it differently…
“As far as I can see, then, the police acted professionally, not precipitiously. Finicum should have kept his hands up, and he would have lived. But, as he said, he never intended to let them put him in jail.”
Jerry Coyne must be out of his mind; the guy KEPT his hands up from the time he exited the vehicle until he was shot down like a dog. I noticed that Ammon Bundy also kept his hands up and walked right into the middle of the potential circular firing squad, so if anyone had fired, they would have run the risk of hitting one or more of their own. The deceased was all by his lonesome out on the snow with hands up and some thug came snaking outta the trees and shot him, from about ten-twelve feet.
I did not see any fire coming from the stopped vehicle but noticed the cops kept firing into it; you could see the smoke hits and bullet holes; amazing anyone else got out of it alive.
Outrageous murder, pure and simple. Like Ruby Ridge and Waco.
I’ll have to watch again.
I saw what looked like him sweeping his coat with his left, and moving his right toward his chest twice…
n
Ok, watched in slow motion. Where is the first shot? If from the guy moving from the street, before he lowers his hands, then they absolutely shot him with his hands up. I don’t see muzzle flash or gun movement, so I can’t tell.
WTF is making the fireballs at around 47 seconds?
WTF is with the sympathetic fire on the van? That alone is wrong, even if the rest is justifiable.
WTF was the shooter who enters from the trees on the left doing way out in the trees? Taking a piss? Everyone else is near the vehicles. And what sort of geniuses stand next to the vehicles that are blocking an icy road?
Final WTF, given the high profile of this case, if you were honest and competent, why aren’t there some body cams or dash cam video? We’ve got only shaky cam aerial footage with no sound?
This stinks to high heaven.
nick
Lunn – excellent idea. I watched an episode of “How things are made” today about building a BMW hybrid and the battery / charging motor are bolted together as a unit. Could be pulled and used as a unit. However these are Lithium batteries so I’s worry about using a wrecked unit. Also non standard high voltages as you note so would need special electronics. Interesting
Well, you have thought more about internal resistance than this Electrical Engineer has.
I am gaining a new respect for Pat Buchanan, “The civil war of the right – Pat Buchanan’s not sure populists, tea party would rally around establishment nominee”
http://www.wnd.com/2016/01/the-civil-war-of-the-right/
“The conservative movement is starting to look a lot like Syria.”
“Baited, taunted, mocked by Fox News, Donald Trump told Roger Ailes what he could do with his Iowa debate, and marched off to host a Thursday night rally for veterans at the same time in Des Moines.”
“Message: I speak for the silent majority, Roger, not you, not Megyn Kelly, not Fox News. Diss me, and I will do fine without Fox.”
…
“And the Drudge Report, the daily newspaper of Middle America, tracks Trump’s every move.”
Preach on, brother!
Trump is the anti-candidate.
Great comment:
“Trump wins in a landslide over Clinton”
“Obama can’t believe he won 58 of them 57 states”
“Where is the first shot?”
I’ll watch it again but it looked to me like the first shot came from that guy suddenly appearing on-scene from the trees on the left; then it LOOKED like at least one or two other thugs approaching him from the 6 o’clock position also opened fire after he was already down.
“And what sort of geniuses stand next to the vehicles that are blocking an icy road?”
Indeed, and then again why is the operator in the moving vehicle making no attempt to slow down or stop but veers off into the snow instead? I can’t figure that one out.
“…why aren’t there some body cams or dash cam video?”
There are but we’re not allowed to view them.
“This stinks to high heaven.”
So did Ruby Ridge, Waco and a bunch of other stuff that’s occurred over the years. I’m sure we’ve all seen the stat that shows we’re FAR more likely to be killed or wounded by one of our own LE’s than a terrorist, geometric order of magnitude, in fact. Shit, I’d rather take my chances with the swarms of hadjis appearing in Saint Albans Bay.
“I am gaining a new respect for Pat Buchanan…”
I’ve been a huge fan since the 1980s and have read all his books and probably most of his syndicated columns and articles. I get the emails a couple of times a week from his site and his webmaster, who’s done a great job with it for many years now. Her brother is an LE up here; I’ve also met Patrick, along with his wife and one of his brothers, the ex-paratrooper ‘Nam vet. His only “fault” is that he still believes in the system and that it might be saved, along with elections and voting and parties. I don’t anymore.
Both Trump and Sanders are “anti-candidates” but the latter has a long career in politics and likely more beholden to the Evil Half’s dictates if it looks like he has a chance. The Stupid Half’s elites know that Trump is not, unless, of course, this is a whole “black flag” op by the rulers so they can have another big laugh at our expense.
We shall see; I do NOT rule out the Stupid Half ass-hats pulling dirty tricks to keep him out, and I fully expect a rocky year on many fronts and some potential “national security” events that could throw a giant monkey wrench into the works.
“The “Steakhouse flavors” series of dried potato side dishes are premium price “.
Not a huge premium. Idahoan premium steakhouse Bacon and Ranch Red Potatoes are good, even with the ranch stuff. About a buck sixty vs. ~89¢ for HEB au gratin/scalloped boxes.
But that stuff needs to be kept cool. A garage in Burnet or Houston is too hot for long term storage.
I actually like making au gratins with Auguson potato slices, cheese powder, and butter powder. Just as good as a mix from the grocery store.
Not much prepping around here. Work, etc. …
I bought a new router. I’m tired of DLinks going south after a year and needing re-booting every week or so. I bought a Ubiquiti EdgeRouter. ERLite-3. A pain in the backside. The first router was a dud on the WAN port. The replacement, a couple of months newer, had “the smell” new electronics have. The first did not.
My wISP uses a lot of Ubiquiti stuff. Which is a problem because their auto-configuring software sees my router as a new radio and gives a 10.whatever address. So we figured out we needed to clone the MAC. And ya know, at the command line, “set interfaces ethernet eth0 mac f8:e9:03:bb:00:c4” from the Ubiquiti forum does not work. Because the writer assumes EVERYONE just knows to start, after logging in, with the command “configure”. Oy.
Here are the short directions:
==
1) Click on the CLI button at the top of the web interface to open the command line.
2) Log in with your username and password.
3) Type the following commands (replacing 00:01:02:03:04:05:06 with the actual MAC address you wish to clone).
configure
set interfaces ethernet eth0 mac 01:02:03:04:05:06
commit
save
exit
==
You can use putty. Might work better than the CLI because when I get to “commit” the web page kicks up a “reload this page” box and uh, did it really save?
Ok, I need go check on a Unifi AP that seems have lost it with several IP address changes to the LAN. I’m very pleased with the Unifi units. And this router (so far). I think I’ll look at Ubiquiti’s switches…. I just need 8 ports.
“I’m sorry if the people being oppressed aren’t cool enough for you. I’m sorry LaVoy Finicum doesn’t make as cool a graphic as Che Guevara, but Che murdered people. LaVoy was murdered.”
http://takimag.com/article/politics_as_fashion_is_a_bad_look_gavin_mcinnes/print#axzz3yfShfLgo
I think the stuff Gavin talks about here is what’s called by Ann Barnhardt and others, “projection,” a form of lying:
“Unless you have been in a very, very deep coma for the past half century, you have seen this on a daily basis out of the political class. If I may be so bold, every day I see you all who still cling to the legitimacy of the political system trying to square the circle and process these events as if the Constitutional Republic still existed and this isn’t kabuki theater entertainment, and the term “mind screwed” leaps to mind, indeed. Every time a politician puffs himself up and starts bloviating about “fiscal irresponsibility”, “disregard for the Constitution” or any such thing, whilst committing capital crimes on a near-daily basis – crimes of treason, crimes against humanity, and crimes against peace that literally merit execution, this is the quintessence of “projection”. Having the people who exposed the PlannedParenthood baby parts trafficking prosecuted for attempted baby parts trafficking is societal end-stage projection. Hillary Clinton railing that all women who report rape should be assumed to be telling the truth while she has spent her entire adult life character assassinating (and possibly having murdered) women who were raped by her serial rapist husband is societal end-stage projection.”
So the sexists and racists call US sexists and racists in order to fight…sexism and racism…got that?
Re: Oregon: it appears to me, and others, that the guy was reaching (twice) for his handgun in his jacket, for which he got shot. If he had kept his hands up, I believe there wouldn’t have been a shooting. And remember that he had previously said that he wasn’t going to be taken alive, which indicates to me his current mindset at the time.
Re: prepping: minor work to ensure that the generator is ready; I now have 10 gals of gas (with ‘preservative’) ready for any outage events here. And got a new automatic power-fail-sensing FLASHLIGHT (this one http://amzn.to/1QxL0TE for about $9.00) as a backup for the other one I already have.
If in fact that’s true, he was “reaching” for a handgun in his pocket, this does not, as I was trained, justify the use of lethal force. You have to positively identify that it IS a handgun, that he is aiming it at you or somebody else, and you or somebody else is in imminent danger of life and limb. Peeps have reached for wallets, cell phones, etc., and been blown away instantly because of this. They’re stressed, scared, not thinking clearly; it is incumbent on YOU, the law enforcement officer, to do so, i.e., think clearly and deliberately. Regardless of whatever statements somebody allegedly made previously. Jeezum, they got a platoon of cops out there around him; is immediate lethal force the default setting now? “He was reaching for something in his jacket; I was in fear for my life.” So the LE shooter says, and his fellow Blue Wall of Silence colleagues back him up as does the department brass and city, town and state fathers and mothers.
This guy has the right diagnosis, although he doesn’t mention the exact same phenomenon occurring in Russia for the past few decades:
http://takimag.com/article/white_american_anomie_sacco_vandal/print#axzz3yfShfLgo
The problem with the FBI and pretty much every “armed” gummintt agency is the “I feared for my life” mentality and shitty training. Shoot first, be forgiven and protected later (usually by fucking unions). These people are not the enemy. So what if they were occupying some shithole out in the boonies. Our military has stricter ROE than LEOs in the US. Can you imagine if this was a roadside stop in Afghanistan and PFC Snuffy opened up. He’d get a court martial.
Dass right, homie; PFC Snuffy gon get slammed fo dat chit. But not his company CO or battalion CO or whoever was in charge of training and supervision of his narrow PFC ass. Note that Lt. Calley got a hard slap on the wrist but no one above him, including a certain C. Powell, who later went on to bigger and better things. They nailed one female brigadier for the crap at Abu Ghraib but that was it.
It still boggles my mind the number of perps I could have snuffed back in the day if the same criteria had been in use then; a good dozen or more, I reckon. I came within nanoseconds of doing it during three incidents where actual visible firearms were about to come into play. Nowadays I could just shoot the fuckers for looking at me wrong or saying mean things.
Hey, we were suppose to die Wednesday! Did anyone here die? “Algore: We Have Ten Years Left Before Earth Cooks”
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2006/01/27/algore_we_have_ten_years_left_before_earth_cooks
You know how God said you determine a prophet to be false? If any word out of his or her mouth were false, then the prophet was false.
You know what God said to do about false prophets? Yup, stone them.
Let’s stone Algore!
As much as I’d like to (figuratively), after watching a real stoning, I don’t think I have the stomach for it.
[redacted].
Stoning is a nasty way to go but I’d take it over burning any day. The musloids generally do it to defenseless women and harmless men while a crowd stands around shouting the usual blasphemous demonic dreck and taking selfies to upload.
And as I’ve mentioned here before, there are at least a couple of truly fundie “Christian” denominations that advocate this as the approved form of capital punishment, and they’d also apply it to homosexuals and adulterers.
Algore? I’d put him to work in the SEA rice paddies for a few years, sweat off some of that flab, with required nightly readings from the works of his late cousin, Gore Vidal, one of the country’s former literary treasures.
Oh, almost forgot to mention; Mr. Lynn mentioned Pat Buchanan earlier; I’d say Pat, and Ann Coulter, are the two remaining prominent conservatives who will tell the truth and are not afraid to do so. Mrs. OFD can’t stand Coulter but likes Pat. I dig them both, esp. insofar as they piss off and frighten the establishment bonzes and potentates who decree how we shall live.
And of course our man Fred.
I haven’t left my wife yet. I’m sure that counts as anti-prepping.
Eh? How do you figure that? Events of the past couple decades have made clear that unless “civilians” get pictures and they can’t be suppressed*, the pigs can get away with anything. Exceptions may be made if a member of a racial minority is killed by anyone not of the same minority.
Even if there are pictures and a public outcry, very seldom do individual pigs or departments pay any real price. Grand jury numbers tell an interesting tale. Federal grand juries in (IIRC) 2010 were presented with IIRC a couple hundred thousand non-police cases and sent 90%+ to trial. The same year they were presented with 87 charges against police and sent 1 to trial. Bear in mind that it’s a truism in legal circles and even law school that the grand jury will almost always do what the prosecutor wants. State-level grand jury data for the same year were not all available when I looked, nor were the data all comparable. They showed the same trend, though.
* Did you notice that up Oregon way, the pigs confiscated all phones and cameras right after the shooting? Too bad for them they couldn’t shoot down the drones.
Or if pigs and “civilians” played under the same rules.
When I was doing bounty hunting some years ago, and even more when I was getting (state-mandated) training for bounty hunting, it was hammered over and over that our actions had to be 100% above-board and justifiable and that the pigs would nail us on the slightest excuse, such as brandishing firearms in the course of making the arrest. I never encountered it myself, but several others had been hassled, taken into custody, and had the bountyhead “confiscated”. Discharging firearms was pretty well forbidden. Even if you were under fire, if you returned fire you could expect arrest and loss of your weapons and probable conviction of reckless endangerment or worse. The fact that you were going after a bounty didn’t matter, because you didn’t have to be there and didn’t have to try to arrest him. Contrast with “sworn officers of the law”, who in practice can kill pretty much anyone for pretty much any reason and get away with it, so long as there are no “civilians” with cameras.
“Eh? How do you figure that?”
I figure that based on how I was trained and how it ‘sposed to be, not actual reality since those halcyon days of yesteryear, me and Andy playin’ hooky early in the afternoon for some fishin’ with Opie, and me havin’ to reprimand the shit outta Barney for his continued carelessness with the department firearm…
“Or if pigs and “civilians” played under the same rules.”
I’m sure LE’s would like to, and actually do, distinguish themselves from the rest of us, but the plain fact of the matter is that they are civilians, too. The only cops who are not civilians are military police, such as I was, before workin’ with Andy and Barn.
Well, as I’ve said before here, they’ll keep pushing and pushing and sooner or later they’re gonna become targets themselves. If things get bad enough, they’ll be plumb ripe targets, too; all them free weapons and ammo. I’m sure that in a SHTF scenario here we could organize a couple of dozen peeps and take out the whole city department and the sheriff’s department, to boot. All in 24 hours, too.
Meanwhile avoid the buggers like the plague if possible, mind yer P’s and Q’s, and begin, if you haven’t done so already, collecting good intel on them. Some of them could be worthwhile allies and friends; others not so much. In my experience, as with pretty much most organizations, 80% were/are average schmucks just trying to get through the day or the night. 10% are genuine heroes and good people who go above and beyond to do the right thing. And the remainder are scumbags, worse than actual criminals often enough, and never should have been hired. That all said, the training has also sucked for a very long time now, so they go out on the street and we’re the “civilian” villagers who must be contained, etc., etc.
Fed LE types are a different breed altogether, and that series of events out in Oregon is a good example of how they operate, ditto Ruby Ridge and Waco.
ISIS is also fond of defenestration, especially for gays.
Since when does Isis throw people out windows?
“ISIS is also fond of defenestration, especially for gays.”
Wasn’t aware of that one but I remember the Taliban scum toppling brick walls over on homosexuals. They’re a real bunch of sweethearts, those people. It seems to be a thing with their cult and their people to favor unusual and cruel tortures and punishments on other people, including prisoners of war and anyone who runs afoul of their nasty demonic rules and regulations. (here is where someone pipes up with the medieval Church’s Inquisition, etc., etc., but guess what? The Church stopped doing that stuff CENTURIES ago, and it was also due to Christian influence that SLAVERY ended, except, of course, for the musloids, who still practice it, along with mass sexual assault, rape, and pedophilia.)
OFD wonders why “defenestration” is the term for throwing peeps outta windows; can’t ya just say “throwing somebody out a window”? Very few Murkan derps will know that other word nowadays; best to use monosyllables, rhymes, set it to hip-hop and provide the usual pixels…
I’ll continue to talk and write however I want to, using my full vocabulary and whatever complex sentence structure pleases me. Fuck the derps. No, wait, don’t. You’ll just get derp all over you.
“I’ll continue to talk and write however I want to, using my full vocabulary and whatever complex sentence structure pleases me. Fuck the derps.”
Not only a nervy SOB but a hater, too. Wow.
Most North Murkan derps ain’t gonna last long if and when the SHTF here. They’re too stupid and lazy and like being taken care of and told what to do. They’ll sell out their grandmas eventually for extra rations at the camp and dime out work colleagues to avoid the floggings themselves. Actually it won’t even take the rationing or floggings, merely the threat of same. If that doesn’t work, the ruling thugs will threaten family members and children; they’ve long shown themselves perfectly capable of those murders, too, as at Waco, Ruby Ridge and before that at the Ludlow, CO massacres.
Waco was a classic example of that projection thing: accuse the residents of child abuse as the justification for rolling in with automatic weapons and flamethrowers and REALLY abuse those children.
Oh, almost forgot; what did I do to prep this past week?
Got a FEMA online cert course study ID for exams that I can take and be a CERT person for when the usual SHTF in this AO, like floods, blizzards, ice storms, house fires, etc. Finished the radio, pistol and rifle go-bags. Continued firearms mods. Continued online IT, radio and firearms courses.
And with wife continuing to be gone for another two weeks, for a total of three weeks, I’ll be working on setting up the cellar storage config, building more firewood racks, setting up the rear perimeter fence with more solar motion-detector floods and I hope to play around with the webcam gear I got recently. Also wanna get cracking on laying the flooring down in the attic and setting up that space as a combined radio shack and firearms workshop.
Also kicked off the VA disability paperwork with the state service officer and we’ll see how fah I get with that; I intend to collect SS and whatever else I can get to see us over this current financial crunch/hump (taxes, ongoing bills, house renovations and repairs, vehicle stuff, kid still in college with the Seven-Year-BA-Plan and summers in Europe, etc.). If I can also do Linux-based IT work somehow or somewhere, all to the good, and meanwhile I’m working on the writing and the firearms stuff anyway. These “handouts” provide a temporary “cushion” for us and it doesn’t leave me feeling wicked guilty that the wife is carrying the whole friggin’ load again by herself.
So, all systems go for two more weeks of prepping and writing stuff.
[snip] Bear in mind that it’s a truism in legal circles and even law school that the grand jury will almost always do what the prosecutor wants. [snip]
And any grand jury which doesn’t obey the prosecutor is likely to be dismissed by said prosecutor.
One of the online courses OFD has been taking started to run into a potential roadblock when the ass-hat p.o.s. gov down in VA tried to dump the CCW reciprocity the state has with a bunch of other states. I’m on the way to both VA and Utah CCW licenses and I says to myself, ‘gee I wonder if I should forget about the VA license; naw, I’m gonna hope there’s an uproar and it gets reversed…’ Sure as chit:
http://freedomoutpost.com/2016/01/gun-grabbers-in-virginia-blindsided-forced-to-re-recognize-concealed-carry-permits-from-25-states/
Mr. Lynn and Mr. nick; our son will be swanning around the great Lone Star State the week after next, mainly Houston, Plano and someplace else, in his big Salesforce.com senior mangler job. Mrs. OFD will be at his house in the East Bay out in Kalifornia helping DIL with the grandkids. My last time in TX was 1974, for the same damn combat training course I’d already had two years earlier, with the same crotchety old maggot mofo lifers and the same old venomous reptiles and bugs, prior to my third and fourth deployments to wunnerful SEA. Hope sonny has a better time than I did. Try to keep a lid on the riff-raff down there, willya?
We’ve been having great weather for a visit. Cold and clear at night, becoming sunny, warm and clear during the day. A bit windy, but otherwise, chamber of commerce weather.
nick
“We’ve been having great weather for a visit.”
Well, sonny has been spoiled by his time now out in northern Kalifornia. After a life growing up in hardscrabble northern Vermont.
We’re having snow flurries, sleet and freezing rain in spurts with temp in the low 30s, followed, apparently, by temps in the fotties over the next few days. Followed again by the usual colder fronts and a possible storm, the weather liars say. Whatevuh.
70 F at day, 45 F at night, clear skies here in the Land of Sugar. Humidity about nil.
Just got my 14 acres mowed and two trees cut up that fell in the norther that came through earlier this week. Both ponds are full. Looks nice from my office window.
Just about time for an alligator to show up from the Brazos Bend State Park preserve.
“You no longer live in the country that was created in 1781. That Constitutional Republic, based on rightful liberty and equality before the law, no longer exists. You live in a a lawless banana republic, where might is right and there will never be justice.”
Better and more detailed analysis of that Oregon video by a guy who knows what he’s talking about:
http://www.maxvelocitytactical.com/2016/01/comment-video-bundy-arrestst-finicum-killing/
Since when does Isis throw people out windows?
Video of some executions of this type surfaced early last year. There have been followups since then. The LGBTQ community is very aware of it and very aware that they are not the most favorite people in Islamic countries. Or much of Asia.
OFD wrote:
“Jerry Coyne must be out of his mind…”
No argument from me. Hopefully he’ll make the trip downstairs pretty soon so he won’t bother us any more.
“Mrs. OFD can’t stand Coulter but likes Pat.”
Did she say why? It’s my observation that wimminz set higher and more critical standards for other wimminz than they do for men.
“Stoning is a nasty way to go but I’d take it over burning any day. The musloids generally do it to defenseless women and harmless men while a crowd stands around shouting the usual blasphemous demonic dreck and taking selfies to upload.”
St Paul did too, or at least acted as cloak-room attendant for those who sent St Stephen to his reward. I’d prefer the firing squad, and hope that they were good shots.
St Paul did too, or at least acted as cloak-room attendant for those who sent St Stephen to his reward. I’d prefer the firing squad, and hope that they were good shots.
There is quite a bit of conjecture that Paul was involved in many Christian martyrdoms. Stephen was only the first. Paul did not just have blood on his hands, he was drenched in it.
“There is quite a bit of conjecture that Paul was involved in many Christian martyrdoms. Stephen was only the first. Paul did not just have blood on his hands, he was drenched in it.”
Conjecture? In Scripture we have Acts 8:3 and 9:2 mentioning him, when he was still Saul of Tarsus, dragging people off to prison and he admits to this in Galatians, but martyring them? I’d have to see more before accusing him of being drenched in blood. He was himself drenched in it later when he was persecuted and then finally executed by the Roman state.
Conjecture? In Scripture we have Acts 8:3 and 9:2 mentioning him, when he was still Saul of Tarsus, dragging people off to prison and he admits to this in Galatians, but martyring them?
If you are part of the problem, you are part of the problem. When Nero ordered the death of all Christians, Paul was a part of that process.
“If you are part of the problem, you are part of the problem.”
Being part of a state bureaucracy at different levels is a little different from being “drenched in blood.” The actual executioners are so drenched; or the thug cop who blows away a guy with his hands up, surrendering. But not all jailers, clerks and district attorneys. All we know is he was running around tossing alleged Christians in the clink but whether they all got executed is questionable. In any case he was shortly after not part of the problem anymore but a major-league contributor to it.
Being part of a state bureaucracy at different levels is a little different from being “drenched in blood.”
Didn’t they try that argument at Nuremberg?
“I was just following orders” is no excuse because the winners of WWII didn’t want to allow it. In other circumstances, it will be a valid excuse again. Hell, different places, it still is now. Such as bureaucracies in the US, except that it’s called “following procedure” rather than “following orders”.
“Didn’t they try that argument at Nuremberg?”
The winners ran huge media/photo-op circuses for the top Nazis and hanged them; and then they gradually went after aging guards and clerks, to the point where some of the latter were/are in their 80s and 90s. What about all the German, French, Italian and other police forces who arrested and imprisoned the victims initially before they were sent to the concentration camps? Or ordinary soldiers who rounded them up? I’d put Saul at their level, probably a low-ranking officer or NCO, at most. Are they also “drenched in blood?” You run into problems drawing lines with this stuff; the police department brass orders us to go out and lock up protesters, and make an example of a few of them. So I go out and lock up half a dozen of them, but using only the minimum necessary force; a couple of my colleagues bash the hell out of their prisoners and they arrive all messed up at the jail. So what, I’m as “drenched in blood” as those guys?
Saul throws some people in jail. Later some of them are executed. Is he present at any of those executions besides that of Saint Stephen? We don’t know. Did he throw stones himself and let fly arrows? We don’t know; I suspect he would have admitted as such if he had. Are the Roman soldiers who marched Jesus to Golgotha as drenched in blood as the centurion who ran the operation or Pilate or the Sanhedrin?
Saul was a free born Roman citizen. That was like being a US citizen back then, a big deal. Saul was a member of the Sanhedrin and quite possibly on the track to be the next high Priest of the Jews. Saul was highly educated and a Zealot (the best of the Jews). He threw this all away, except his Roman citizenship, after his conversion on the road to Damascus.
BTW, the Sanhedrin of Jesus’s and Paul’s time made today’s IRS and Congress look like a bunch of pikers. When the common Jews went to Temple to go make their annual sacrifice and pay their temple tax, they first had to change their money into Temple money at very bad rates, at the Temple. Then they had to buy unblemished lambs and doves for sacrificing at the Temple using Temple money. They could not bring their own animals for sacrificing. That is why Jesus got so mad at the money changers, they were cheating the people and the priests were in on the scam.
I have deep admiration for Paul. No matter where he was, he was on fire for his faith. And when he was on his missionary journeys, he tried to support himself wherever possible, rather then exclusively use money raised for him by the churches of the time.
Oh, no doubt at all; Saint Paul talked the talk and walked the walk. As did the Apostles, except for one. He and Saint Peter are deep under the Basilica in Rome, and apparently the hundreds of other graves down there with them are all clustered toward and focused on theirs.
Pax vobiscum!
From the righteous and tireless Mr. William Grigg, on the events in Oregon:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/01/william-norman-grigg/tyranny-defiance-death/
And our boy Fred nails it, per usual:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/01/fred-reed/ignore-congress-supremos/
Bought five cases of water at Sams Club. I am not a big fan of the new 40 bottle half liter case of Ozarkas. Too dadgum heavy. I prefer the old 24 bottle cases and may switch to those in the long run.
Bought $100 of canned food and stashed it at the office in my previously unused cabinets. I will probably start buying more Augasons from Walmart over time to add to the mix.
http://www.walmart.com/search/?query=augason
I got evicted from the house study two weeks ago and have been moving into the new game room. I am totally moved in but the wife is doing some moving of her own.
Three and a half years ago the former owner’s “man-cave” shed at the rear of the property suddenly became the wife’s “studio” here. I have been exiled to the still-beta-level attic where I must construct everything pretty much from scratch. But I have my “office” here with the two desktops and floor-to-ceiling books, plus the radio, pistol and rifle go-bags. Got the Uniden scanner, Tecsun shortwave and Bow-Fung radio hooked up here and trying out different stuff with them. The Radio Shack scanner, Grundig shortwave and a radio workbench will be in the attic, along with whatever antenna configs I can run up there and from the office. The other Bow-Fung and the Sangean shortwave are down in the living room for now; Ima gon start taking that Bow-Fung with me in the car and try out different external antenna mounts. Also putting a pistol holster mount in there below the steering wheel.
Don’t worry; if the cops stop me or there’s a roadblock, I ain’t gonna pull the Lavoy Finicum maneuver. I know the drill pretty good by now. Cops up here seem to have a bit of common sense and realize nearly everyone’s carrying nowadays and is on their side, largely.
Lotsa rain and wind coming our way this week with temps starting in the fotties and then dropping again. Whatevuh.
Back to my five hours a day of online courses tomorrow with breaks for outside yard work, the cellar, the attic, the dump run, etc.
Right. Stomp on the gas and aim right for them. If stupid pigs are “afraid for their lives” and that’s why they kill any “civilian” who twitches, might as well give them a good reason for their cowardice.
I certainly would not have tried to drive around them and through that snow, which makes me wonder; if Finicum lived and worked in that region he must have known that the snowpack off-road would be too deep for such a caper, but then again he may have just panicked and wasn’t thinking clearly. Dunno, but maybe bulling straight ahead at top speed aiming right for the middle might have done the trick, maybe not. Woulda caught a hail of lead coming and going, though. Or why not just stop back where the whole deal started, get out, and take yer chances with lawyers and courts. Everybody has to think about it in those circumstances, and make a choice; but he had others in the vehicle with him, so who knows what was said in there.
Keeping a clear head is important; if the costumed gummint thugs have the road blocked front and rear, you’re pretty well screwed, plus a chopper overhead. They intend to either arrest you or kill you and they will always win, at least until the real SHTF and we have a revolution/civil war again. You wanna do the suicide-by-cop thang, fine, but gee whiz, what about the others in the truck with ya?
Meh, anyone who rides with me is risking his life anyway.
(Just a joke. I’m quite a careful driver. It’s my wife who ages passengers six months for every mile driven. And has the accident record to go with it.)
Three and a half years ago the former owner’s “man-cave” shed at the rear of the property suddenly became the wife’s “studio” here. I have been exiled to the still-beta-level attic where I must construct everything pretty much from scratch. But I have my “office” here with the two desktops and floor-to-ceiling books, plus the radio, pistol and rifle go-bags. Got the Uniden scanner, Tecsun shortwave and Bow-Fung radio hooked up here and trying out different stuff with them. The Radio Shack scanner, Grundig shortwave and a radio workbench will be in the attic, along with whatever antenna configs I can run up there and from the office.
Are you talking about that old garage on the back of your property? When was that built, 1926?
That attic of yours looks a little … short. Hey, you’ve got a big back yard. A huge back yard! Just build a new man cave. All it costs is money!
It’s not really a genuine garage; the previous owner works for a big local construction company and built it himself; he could fit the front end of his truck into it and work on it there out of the weather, drink whiskey and smoke cigars while listening to a crappy stereo system. Tiny friggin’ windows, but a decent cast-iron wood stove and chimney that heats the place up nicely. Workbenches and about half of the electrical outlets actually work, something else for us to fix at some point, maybe just a fuse. Wife wants to put in bigger windows, remove some of the worthless shelving, and open up the front in the summer to a retractable awning in the warm weather over the garden of flowers and herbs we have there now, formerly part of the gravel driveway.
I can stand up in the middle of the attic and there’s enough space for me to set up a couple of workbenches and computer workstation. Plus shelving for books and radios, plus the antennas. I’d be sitting down most of time anyway. And I can lock three doors between there and the rest of the house. Just a crying need to put some ventilation in the opposite wall from the one existing window, and also to replace that window when we finish doing the rest of them.
Can’t use a sizable part of the back yard thanks to the septic tank and leach field there; we have raised beds now in other spaces and will add more. We do wanna put another shed in the far rear for the outside yard tools, mowers, snowblower, etc. So my man cave will be in the attic, looks like.
Can’t use a sizable part of the back yard thanks to the septic tank and leach field there; we have raised beds now in other spaces and will add more.
Gotcha. My “leach field” here at the office is a 100 ft by 200 ft area with two sprinklers that cover 100 ft by 100 ft each. It is a nasty area with a big ol’ live oak tree in the middle of it that reminds me of the swamp in the “The Princess Bride” movie.
Ours is probably about twenty by twenty feet. When this house was built, it was the only one on the road (1830) and no road in back of it, just a large marsh where two streams converge, now a wildlife management area and the town park and “beach.” When the state route (36) was built later, it ran around in back of us and over a dirt road through a covered wooden bridge straight over the water, later changed to a steel-and-concrete structure. The park was built on drained land by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s and the covered bridge was still there then. Vermont still has a bunch of covered bridges; when I lived down in the “Garden State,” they were down to three. One of our contractors has theorized that this house may have been the parsonage for the 1857 brick church a hundred yards away from our front door and next to the town hall. It started out as a Congregational parish (descendant of the Puritans) but is now Methodist, with a Korean pastor. There even used to be a Roman Catholic church which my wife’s aunt remembers (she’s 90 and still kayaks and canoes and rides a bike) on the next street over from in front of the town hall, long gone now. Like the trolley train that took passengers between the bay wharf and the “city” of Saint Albans, and this was Port Washington. Used to be a bustling little seaport here but now pretty quiet, except around the July 4th holiday when the city/town does “Bay Day,” with fireworks on the surviving pier, bands, noise, crowds, traffic, etc. I sit in here with all the lights out and watch the show; and while the buggers will park on everybody else’s lawn and driveway they haven’t done that here yet for some odd reason. And I don’t care if they park in the driveway; there’s space for another three, four or five vehicles, and none on our front “lawn.” Have at it, they’re gone a half hour after the stuff ends. Clear right out in thirty minutes; it’s amazing.