42F and sunny but damp.
Slept in a bit.
Stayed up reading this site actually.
Some good refresher content under the ‘beginning prepping’ ‘prepping 101’ and ‘amateur radio’ and ‘ radio’ tags.
Very nice to hear some absent voices in the comments and posts.
n
Hmmm, it was a no brainer, but who here called it first???
” California Troubled Utility Proposed $2 Billion Rate Hike To Fund “Wildfire Safety”
After infuriating its investors, California scandal-plagued utility PG&E is now set to reap the ire of its clients after a demand for a rate hike of almost $2 billion from customers, saying more than half will go toward wildfire safety.
”
The reporting on this story is all “OMG” but from the quote it sounds like the uni had an insurance policy with one of the global extraction companies, and they used it to get one of their students back. One of the companies I worked for had a kidnap and recovery policy as we worked all over the world. They will do escorts and rescue from warzones, medivac, and wilderness rescue. The policies are not expensive, considering that very few ever get used. I looked into it for my family with a “whole US” policy, and if we were doing a trip overseas, I’d look into it again.
““It was almost as if he’d been waiting for this kind of mission,” Turner told the university magazine, according to FOX. “Per Gustafson said that we had a transport and security deal which stretched over the whole world.””
I can’t remember the name of the company, and searching it with google gets a sh!t ton of irrelevant results. I’ll look at my bookmarks later if I remember.
n
edit – something like these guys
https://www.globalrescue.com/landingPages/wesavelives/
How does your brain work to even put this sentence together??
“Alexandra Shulman’s Notebook: This week my 23-year-old son and I escaped the political chaos of the UK for a couple of days of culture in Paris. The riots had quieted and the city was calm. ”
The reporting on this story is all “OMG” but from the quote it sounds like the uni had an insurance policy with one of the global extraction companies, and they used it to get one of their students back. One of the companies I worked for had a kidnap and recovery policy as we worked all over the world. They will do escorts and rescue from warzones, medivac, and wilderness rescue. The policies are not expensive, considering that very few ever get used. I looked into it for my family with a “whole US” policy, and if we were doing a trip overseas, I’d look into it again.
I’m old enough to remember Ross Perot getting his people out of Iran when the SHTF. There was even a TV movie, “Wings of Eagles” starring Richard Crenna as H. Ross.
Perot wasn’t always nuts. He didn’t go off the deep end until GM kicked him out of EDS.
The Perot family paid for my father-in-law’s heart transplant and, ultimately, his demise at the hands of one of the nurses in UT Southwestern’s transplant program. Mixed blessing there.
Gave the boy a quick refresher on using the portable air compressor so he could air up his bike tires. He’s heading over to a buddy’s house to study for final exams next week.
While I had it out, I checked both daily drivers. Both needed a little added. I also took the time to drop the spare in the Crosstour and check it. Should be at 60, actually at 50. Would have been ok for a true emergency. Filled it and stowed it.
The Caddy, of course, has no spare, since it came with runflats. I took a calculated risk with the new tires, and got non runflats. Better ride and handling. I have a small compressor in the trunk, a small plug kit, and a can of fix a flat. I’ll probably sign up for AAA too. Mainly for the wife (who actually knows how to change a tire), but would benefit me as well.
I also put a few hand tools in the Crosstour’s small compartment with the jack – Phillips, flathead, adjustable wrench, needle nose and cutters. Not a lot you can repair on the side of the road in cars these days, but I’d hate to need a tool and not have it.
I have in my truck-
only a small wire stripper, small adjustable wrench, 6 in 1 screwdriver, and Channelloc pliers.
I use them surprisingly often, to take something apart so it fits better in the truck. Not so much for truck repair.
n
I now carry a tug’em strap in my truck after I ahem, got my truck stuck a couple of years ago. Next to my freaking office building. One of my employees pulled me out with his truck and his strap.
I carry a box full of tools everywhere I go. Plus a coat hanger and a few other items.
Weellllll, I do actually have some other stuff in there. I’ve got my multitool and a swiss army knife, slim jim, wood wedges (for holding the window trim out while using the Jim), and whatever is in my bag for the job I’m going to, but the rolled up shamwow has the basics.
n
I’ve also got a quart of oil tucked into the engine compartment, and I’m looking for a place to stick an aluminum bottle with a liter of gas and a funnel.
So that BS about rat poison- that they crave water and leave the house looking for it?? Well, I’ve got something dead and stinky in the attic. It’s under the floorboards and the furnace and air handler. I’m going to start drilling into each joist bay to see which one stinks the worst. Joy.
n
I worked for EDS in the 1980 time frame. My office was in San Antonio and I would travel to Dallas a couple of times a week on the Southwest Airlines Buses. One trip I rode from Dallas back to SA next to Ross. He was a rectum orifice. Never wrong, dominated the conversation, no one else’s opinion mattered. This was long before GM got involved.
He did take care of his employees. We paid nothing for healthcare, no deductible, no copays, nothing. Everything was paid by corporate. If you made the company money you got rewarded.
One employee had a child with a rare disease that the only treatment offered was in Switzerland, experimental. EDS relocated him and his family to Switzerland for one year and paid 100% of the cost of the move, housing while there, expenses such as food, the expensive medical treatment and still paid him a salary.
I still wonder what/who got to him about 3/4 of the way thru his candidacy. He went from serious to “man, I’ve got to lose this.” overnight.
n
(and for a decade we had to look at flipcharts)
rat corpse hunt was NOT on the list of stuff I need to do today. dammit. every time I think I might get ahead on my list, something comes along.
I’ve drilled a series of holes, and two have a much stronger odor than the others. Time for a saw…
n
And Senor Mortado Raton was about 8 inches from the hole that smelled the worst. Must have been fairly recent as he still looked normal. Not desiccated skin and bones, not liquefied. Pulled out a big contractor bag of soiled insulation too. Vaccumed a whole shopvac worth of nasty too.
Done for today. Nothing else from my list even got started. Bah.
n
Patrick Buchanan sums it up pretty well…
https://mobile.wnd.com/2018/12/populism-and-paralysis-in-the-west/
“Is it coincidence or contagion, this malady that seems to have suddenly induced paralysis in the leading nations of the West?”
I still wonder what/who got to him about 3/4 of the way thru his candidacy. He went from serious to “man, I’ve got to lose this.” overnight.
A deal with the Clintons was obviously part of whatever happened. Perot Systems, his EDS followup, languished until landing State of Arkansas contracts later that year, and Ruth Bader Ginsberg, wife on one of Perot’s main tax lawyers, got the “political payola” seat on the modern Supreme Court when John Paul Stevens retired.
It was a strange summer of coincidences. My wife and I still believe that Clinton would have been toast if Carson hadn’t retired.
The more I learn, the more “It’s a big club and you ain’t in it” makes sense.
n
(nothing could be more surreal when looked at objectively than Obammay’s rise to President. There can ONLY be invisible hands pulling the strings backstage.)
And Senor Mortado Raton was about 8 inches from the hole that smelled the worst. Must have been fairly recent as he still looked normal. Not desiccated skin and bones, not liquefied. Pulled out a big contractor bag of soiled insulation too. Vaccumed a whole shopvac worth of nasty too.
If I suspect varmints at play, I bolt big spring traps to structural pieces using a few decking screws and apply dallops of peanut butter as bait. Never fails, and they don’t run off someplace remote to die.
I think I picked that tip up from our late host. He’s definitely the reason I have a few boxes of decking screws out in the garage.
Mine have learned that peanut butter = death. They won’t touch the stuff anymore.
I’m going to try a new thing, it’s a tunnel with the trap inside. They can only approach the bait from straight on, they can’t leap away, and they LIKE dark tunnels. The youtube vid claims it works like a champ and the theory is sound.
https://youtu.be/Pg9bd7HAgJs?t=388 overly dramatic music warning!
n
I used to use peanut butter, but I watched a rat lick it all off a trap without springing the trap. I will grant the trap wasn’t sensitive enough, and I did adjust it after. I also started using dry roasted peanuts in mouse traps, and dry roasted almonds in the larger rat traps. Worked over and over. I had one trap set for a couple of years, and then catch a mouse. Peanut butter just doesn’t last very long, and is messy. I also used to use candy lemon drops, but they sometimes went gooey after a few months.
To put a small nut in the trap pedal, just use some long nose pliers to curl the pedal up so it clamps the nut. The rodent probably tries to drag the whole nut away, and bingo!
I have been told that rats are too smart to try to eat from a trap that has already caught a rat, but that has not been my experience. Rats are smart, but hunger is powerful. Mice, OTOH, are not very smart, and are more easily caught.
Here in the desiccated desert, a dead mouse only stinks for a short time, then dries out. Still not a pleasant experience. Once had a rat get inside my basement (crawled through an uncapped 3″ x 20′ conduit from the garage, oops.) Too smart to be caught, but eventually died, probably from thirst. I didn’t find the body for a couple of years, when we moved a freezer. It was trying to drink water from the condensate pan, but it probably wasn’t enough to keep him alive. I used mothballs to cover the smell, and it worked. After a few days, all was normal. NEVER leave any path unprotected.
I was renting a house in LA and the fridge stopped working. Landlord sent a repair guy, who found that a rat had jammed the fan- with its dead body – causing the failure. The condensate tray is a common place for rodents to drink. The one under your AC coil in the attic is a good source of water for them too, and any condensation around leaking ducts… which is why I was always skeptical of the claim that the poisoned rats would invariably go outside to look for water.
This one didn’t.
Stink is gone, and tomorrow I’ll spray the area down with dilute bleach solution. Today I’d had enough and showered. And scrubbed.
n
~Jim, et al:
The problem with my HP is threefold. First, the paper pick up doesn’t work reliably, and an e-bay replacement paper tray didn’t help. Second, I think the drum is bad, as I get a grey streak ~ 5mm wide down the length of the paper, 1/4 of the way from left to right. Third, the shop where I used to take it for maintenance is now a pile of rubble. I’ve gotten my money’s worth out of it. I did take it apart to salvage the scrap metal, and gave the rest the heave ho.
Years ago something died beneath some industrial shelving in a warehouse in which I worked. Removing the shelving and its contents wasn’t an option, so I held my nose and dashed in and out to fetch whatever was needed. The stench was strong for about six months before gradually fading away.
A couple of years later the business moved. Disassembling the shelving revealed a dusty, desiccated, half-eaten rat carcass between the bottom of the lowermost shelf and the floor.
We left it as a housewarming gift for the next tenants. 😉
If you are aware of this and you know you have rats, did you consider a DIY mesh around the tray or even all the access at the back of the fridge as a preventative mesure?
You can just imagine them fuming trying to get inside. 🙂
I still wonder what/who got to him about 3/4 of the way thru his candidacy. He went from serious to “man, I’ve got to lose this.” overnight.
Yeah, that was really weird. He had a real chance to win, then…”I’m dropping out of the race”…”I’m back in the race”. At the time, iirc, there was something about his daughter being threatened. But – given his general hard-ass approach to things – that should have resulted in more determination, not less.
A deal with the Clintons was obviously part of whatever happened. Perot Systems, his EDS followup, languished until landing State of Arkansas contracts later that year…
That would be a sad situation, if true. Not saying it’s not – I have no idea – but I had better hopes for his personal integrity.
The more I learn, the more “It’s a big club and you ain’t in it” makes sense.
And that is the truth. Note that Obama also went to one of the Ivy League schools (Columbia) – they seem to be the gatekeepers for the club. One wonders what the club members truly think of the rest of the world. Are they really so arrogant, or does it just appear that way to us plebes?
– – – – –
Today is a gigantic cleanup day for me. I’ve just unburied my desk, thrown a pile of stuff away, and discovered a pile of stuff I intend to deal with this afternoon, before it gets buried again.
I used to have a system – need to put it back into place: Given a document (or whatever) that you can’t get rid of just now, I would put in into a folder with a date. I had folders for each of the coming 12 months, and then for each of 3-4 years after that. When the date came around, the entire folder was discarded, sight unseen. The theory being: if I hadn’t needed it by then, and pulled it out of the folder, it wasn’t important after all.
The trick is to put papers in the earliest reasonable folder, and to truly discard the folders without looking through them.
For electronic stuff, I haven’t managed any sort of equivalent system. OTOH, disks grow so fast that it doesn’t really matter – clutter is pretty irrelevant.
– – – – –
Rats: we have mice, not rats, but still: fencing them off from something usually doesn’t work. We also had a mouse problem with our refrigerator condensation tray – what a stench! But, to get into the kitchen, they had climbed up the outside wall, into the vent pipe for the oven vent, and chewed their way through the damned pipe. Granted, it was one of those flexi-pipes, so not very sturdy, but mice and rats are determined critters…
Rats don’t have any problem with finding water here in Houston. It is a a swamp after all. Still, you don’t want to make it easy for them.
I think my rat troubles started with my garden behind the garage. SOMETHING was eating out the insides of my watermelons, and leaving the hollow husks. That must have been the first of the rats.
n
And that bit about the watermelon and rats reminded me of this tale, still available on the late Dr. Pournelle’s website: https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/dogsinelk.html
Dogs in Elk – what an internet classic!
n