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Wed. Jan. 24, 2024 -01242024 – the rain continues, “how high’s the water momma?”…

Cool and wet again, with more rain on the way. Ground is saturated, and there has been so much development in town replacing grass with concrete, that I’m sure the downstream watersheds are flooding. My house is about 100 yards from the edge of a watershed, so about as high as it gets locally, it all flows downhill from here… I’m not worried about flooding for myself, but there are going to be some people who get wet.

Had kind of a busted day yesterday. Tried to get to the rent house, but the roads were flooded just getting out of my neighborhood. I didn’t really want to head downstream and then try to get back in time to pick up the kid, and my renter hadn’t replied to my messages. So I went and hung out with my gun store buddy. Had a good long chat with him and his wife. Tenant eventually texted that she’d been sick, but later would be ok… so I’m headed over there today.

EVERYONE I talk to has had the crud that’s been going around, either in December, or they’re finally getting it. I remember a December in 2019 that was similar…

I haven’t been able to do any auction drop offs with the rain pouring down. Just getting stuff out of storage, or to the truck, would mean it got wet. I need to get some lots listed on ebay too. I’m only listing high value lots, pipes, and whatever I can get the kid to list, but I need to actually do it. Inertia is a thing. So is being over-committed.

Stopped at the HEB on my way home yesterday. Bought some more pork shoulder, and beef brisket. Still $1/pound and $2.50/pound. That’s cheap protein.

Dinner was supposed to be pork ribs, but they were spoiled. Still had a day to go on the Best By too, so I’ll be trying to get that money back. If the problem was the store, they need to know about it. If no one else complains, then I guess the problem was me, but I don’t know when it happened. Sucks but it was cheap so worst case I’m only out $12.

I expect a certain amount of “breakage” but food from the store should be good.

Meanwhile the world gets crazier every day.

Stack it high and deep people. We’re gonna be on our own, together.

nick

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Thur. Dec. 28, 2023 – now we’re counting down to the new year…

Another cool but clear day ahead of me, and one in the past. Yesterday was nice, a bit on the cool side, but clear and not too damp. Today should be the same.

I did my main pickup, of all the stuff for resale. That took a while and I was chatting with the auctioneer. He’s a guy who is new to me, having bought the business from the guy I knew before. He sees hard times coming as the dollar is failing, because of inflation, debt, and the other countries that have built alternatives to SWIFT and are looking to avoid the dollar. In other words, pretty clued in.

We also chatted about rent houses. He takes a different approach, renting houses in the ‘hood to individuals, on a per room basis. He’s got several houses, with 2-4 rooms each, cash money every week. He collects in person, and charges a lot if you miss or are late. With weekly rent, he gets a lot of turnover… I want the opposite. One renter, for a long time, with as little involvement as I can manage. I’ll accept that I’m getting less money than I could, if I was more hands on. Not my thing though. And frankly, IDK if it would work for me, being a paleface, vs him, who looks like his renters. Even if I was in Kentucky or someplace, renting to white tweakers and transients, I wouldn’t want to work that hard for it.

There’s room for more than one way of doing business.

Came home and did some domestic bliss, worked on computer stuff, and then had family game night. The first game was not one of my favorites, but the second might become one. Called “SmartAss” it’s a trivia game, but much simpler, faster, and easier than Trivial Pursuit. The kids were able to keep up, and enjoyed playing. My wife won 2 games, I won 3. There are some chance elements that can help or hurt you, which makes for some interesting rounds. Tentatively recommended for a mixed age and experience group, or when looking for a game for adults when alcohol might be involved and nobody wants to work to hard.

Today I’ll be wrapping some things up, probably hit the Lowes for some parts, and the HEB for some groceries, and then off to the BOL for the weekend.

I’ll be taking some stuff up to add to the stacks there, and reduce some of the stacks here. It’s a difficult balance. I’m not sure I have a good strategy or feel for it yet, but I know I’m really short on some stuff (defense mainly), and I need to get a handle on that. I like having stuff close at hand, which makes the decisions about what to put there even harder. We’ll see how it goes.

In the mean time, adding to the stacks is a no brainer, no matter where they are stacked.

nick

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Wed. Dec. 27, 2023 – just another day…

Cool and clear. Supposed to be clear for a couple of days at least. Yesterday stayed clear most of the day, but somewhat overcast at times.

I spent another day of down time, watching videos, and doing minor stuff around the house. I did pick up one item, a table that will get the kids’ 3D printers. D2 was supposed to help me assemble it, but she played video games all day instead.

Today I’ve got one pickup, with a bunch of stuff for resale. Very good scores should get my 2024 ebay off to a good start. I just hope prices on ebay hold up long enough to sell the stuff. There is always some risk.

One slightly odd observation… as I was driving to get my auction stuff today, I noticed a garage door opener laying in the road. People were just going around it. It wasn’t a busy road, but it is two lanes each way with a center median. 15 minutes later on my trip home, it was still there. No one had stopped to clear it. Ten foot long metal thing laying in the road. So I stopped and threw it in the truck. I’ll take it to the scrap yard on my next trip. It really bothers me that no one took the time to move it, even to pick it up and throw it to the side, off the roadway. A couple of semi trucks were stopped at the intersection, and then continued on. Used to be, someone would have cleared the road, especially in a working area where it was easy and safe to do so.

I’ll put that in the declining social cohesion column.

Keep your eyes open, and don’t count on things being the way they’ve always been. Things are changing.

And stack what you need. No one knows as well as you what is critical to you.

nick

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Wed. Dec. 6, 2023 – on this day not much special happened.

Cool and clear, again, and still. Nice in other words. This is winter in Houston. Some rain coming though, just not sure when. Long range forecast has us clear through Thursday or Friday at least.

Spent yesterday doing errands and work. Did my kid chauffeuring in the morning and afternoon. Got to my client’s and swapped some gear. The switch I picked doesn’t seem to work in the application. The goal is to get internet and internal net to the remote driveway gate. I used a pair of ubiquiti AC5’s in “cable replacement mode” for the wireless link between the house and the gate, but I need to provide PoE for the AC5 and I need a small rugged switch there to connect the AC5 and the gate company’s hardware, and provide a future upgrade port for a camera, also PoE. I was using a NanoSwitch, which is 4 ports of PoE passthru. The one I was using had a dead port from a lightning strike so I wanted to replace it.

Enter the Flex mini… a 5 port switch, powered by PoE and providing 4 ports of PoE… Seems perfect, and it is smaller and cheaper than the Nano, and part of the unified management system. (ubiquiti has two main management systems, UISP and UniFi, no idea why, but most of the deployed gear at this site is UniFi and it is automagic… and simplifies deployment and management – when it works.) So the Flex looks like a good fit. Except it isn’t. UniFi gear has to be “adopted” by the management console (another piece of gear running EdgeOS and uses a browser as a GUI) before it’s anything but a lump. In other words, the AC5 provides the connection back to the network, but the switch isn’t a switch until AFTER it sees and joins the network…

When I figured that out, I took the switch inside, connected it to the network, adopted it, made sure it was configured to have PoE on every port, took it back out to the gate, hooked it all up and >>>>> Nothing. AC5 still not powered. The f-ing switch is too dumb (by being too smart) to turn on the PoE and enabling the gear that provides its network backhaul. So I add a PoE injector to power the AC5, and connect it to the switch, and NOW everything is fine. But it feels kludge-y and the additional injector is another point of failure in the enclosure, and it’s an example of someone being too clever by half.

At some point, I’ll go back to a new NanoSwitch, even if I can’t manage it with the same tool. It’s a cleaner solution. It occurs to me that I might not have the issues if I actually was trained on the gear choices but as my career winds down, that is less and less likely.

Someone asked yesterday about extending their wifi a little bit, and this is clearly overkill for that. I am happy with a netgear wifi extender at home. It plugs into a wall outlet for power, and it works to extend my wifi into the back bedroom with a good signal. It needs to be rebooted every couple of months, but other than that, once configured it just keeps working. It also has an ethernet port to provide a wired connection to the wifi for older hardware. Using APs with mesh linking and backhaul is another more involved option.

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Today I’ll do a couple of auction pickups and some shopping for us and for my party duties. With collecting the kids from school, that will eat my day.

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Btw, anyone else have an ulcer/cold sore/fever blister/painful crack on their lip that is unusual for them, along with cold or flu symptoms? My client’s wife has the same symptoms I’ve been having this week, right down to the sore lip. IDK if this is related, something new going around, or just coincidence, so I’m asking the group.

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Take this time as the gift it is, and keep preparing. Stacking is preparing…and it’s easy.

nick

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Wed. Aug. 2, 2023 – Home for a few days… so I’ve got work to do!

Hot and humid of course. It was smoking hot when I left my BOL, and pretty freaking hot when I got to Houston. It started blowing and raining shortly after I got home, and that helped for a short time. Still hot.

Got everything buttoned up, and finished cleaning up some of the mess from all the grading and excavating I did last month at the BOL. It wasn’t on my list to clean the driveway but after seeing it through fresh eyes, it had to be done. It was also the coolest thing I could think of to do in the morning. I’m glad I did it too, as it made a huge difference.

That and putting everything away took most of the day. I left for Houston, did a stop for gas and to pick up some auction items, and eventually got home.

Where I discovered some computer issues. We had a power outage and things didn’t come back up. Details are in yesterday’s comments, but the takeaway is- be sure your electronics are on surge protectors and UPSs, not just ‘power strips’. Even good power strips with metal cases, aren’t necessarily surge protectors. My main PC is one month shy of being 10 years old. It still works (other than this new power supply issue) well for everything I need to do. I have a software environment that I like, with everything saved and auto-filling what needs to be filled, and don’t want to change or re-install a bunch of software. Besides that, it offends my soul to get rid of something that is working well.

So I’ll try a new psu and hope there wasn’t any damage to motherboard or other components.

Today I’ve got stuff to take to my auctioneer. I’ll try to make a couple of trips if I can. One pickup in the afternoon, and IF there is time left after that, I need to go by the rent house and see what my part of the ‘getting ready to rent to new tenants’ clusterflock will be. I’m thinking fence repair, porch floor repair, and ceiling drywall repair, just from what I already know. My wife will be cleaning and painting and doing any small wall repairs. Thank gnu we only have to do this every few years. Five years in this case. I would not like to do it every year.

It’s a busy time of year and the rent house changeover isn’t helping. We’ve got to hit it hard and get the place rented again. There’s no rest for the weary, or the wicked. Take your pick. And stack something.
nick

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Sat. July 22, 2023 – headed home later today… but work first

Hot, but not as bad as Houston. It was only 88F when I got here, and got down to 78F at midnight. Very pleasant. Only a hint of a breeze but the smoke kept the bugs away.

I did my auction pickups, cruised through the ‘bins’ store near one of them. Picked up some more red ropelight for the dock. I’ve already got some, but needed more. It’s to light the edges when we have the telescopes out… When I got here, the 88F temps and setting sun felt cool. How messed up is that? So I got most of the trailer unloaded. I’ll do the rest today, and might do some of the construction/setup to see what the issues are and if I need more supplies.

Then it’s back to Houston.

Where there is plenty of work waiting for me.

Like always.

Stack up some projects. And stack up some supplies. Hurricane season is here after all. And so might be ‘canned sunshine’ season. If that happens, the panic alone will make you want to hunker down and avoid going out. So stack it up.

nick

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Fri. July 21, 2023 – which has come far too quickly this week

Hot hot hot. Humid, humid, humid. 100F or more today, with sun. Like yesterday. It’s hot.

Got my trailer, got to SA, got it loaded, and safely home. Today I will take it to the BOL and unload. Still not sure if I’m just staying up there and installing the stuff or if I’m turning and burning for home. I have not gotten enough stuff done at home recently, but there are jobs to do at the BOL too.

D1 going to camp on Sunday complicates things, as W and D2 will stay home to get her ready and then to camp… otherwise, I think my wife would just bring the kids up for the weekend too. Staying at the BOL by myself feels a bit like hiding from the work down here. Which is really weird.

Oh well, I’ll play it by ear. Maybe I’ll split the difference.

In any case, I’ll be heading up later today. I do have a pickup to make and I want to get a couple of things from Lowes so that should fill my morning.

There is always more to do. I will have to make choices.

Making choices sucks because once you do, you have collapsed all the possibilities down into that one choice. And what if it’s the wrong choice?? Don’t be paralyzed by that fear. You can change it later. There may be more cost, there may be opportunity lost, but for almost everything, you can fix or modify it later. So make a choice. It’s also why I try to have costs as low as possible, so the impact of a wrong choice is minimized, at least financially.

One choice NOT to make is to put off prepping. Do it. Stack some things. Otherwise, you will be cursing yourself later.

nick

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Thur. July 20, 2023 – lots of driving today

Hot and humid again and still. Well over 100F in my driveway yesterday but I missed the peak. It was still 99F in the shade at 7pm. Today will likely be similar. Which should be miserable.

Didn’t do much yesterday. Got my trash and debris from the BOL disposed of. Took D1 to an appointment. Mostly caught up on auctions. Several things I need are in this week’s sales. Hope I get a few.

Today will mostly be eaten by picking up a trailer, heading to San Antonio, picking up a load of stuff there, and heading home. Should be about 7 hours round trip, once I have the trailer. I’ll be driving the Expedition as it has more towing capacity. It’s more comfortable, but drinks more gas. At least I’ll have the Jim Butcher audio book to listen to. Should be pretty close to the end by the time I get home.

I ordered a set of the first 4 books in the series since I’m liking this one so much. I’ve read them, some more than once, but I’m laughing at the humor and turn of phrase. There is a lot of detail in the books, and knowing where the story goes, it’s easy to see where some of the arcs start. One inconvenient thing is that the set is MP3 audio on CDs. I’ll have to convert and rip to regular CDs to listen in my Ranger, it doesn’t play mp3. I think it’s about 10 hours per book, so it will take me a while to get through the first ones, after I finish the current one. The MP3 sets are MUCH cheaper than standard 10 disc CD sets. 4 disks vs 40 is a dramatic reduction.

It might be easier to move them to my phone and play through an FM modulator. That’s how I have my XM radio attached in the Ranger. Or move them to a different phone… android really doesn’t handle concurrent audio from different sources very well. I’ll lose the turn by turn navigation, or the audio stream. Or I could swap out the older factory radio for something more capable. I’ve got the upgraded radio, that will play mp3s, on the shelf as a backup. Nothing is ever as easy or straightforward as it should be though, and I’ve got more projects than I can get to already.

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All the chattering aside, the work on the BOL will be eating up the majority of my time for a while. Somehow I’ll have to fit in the changeover to new tenants and all that entails at the rental house too. Got to keep that income stream flowing. That’s a backup too. And doing all the stuff around the house here, and the vehicle maintenance, and getting the kids started in the new school year…

Yeah. Don’t weaken. Don’t falter. Get ready. Stack.

nick

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Wed. July 19, 2023 – home sweet home

Where it is hot and humid. Because Texas. Hoping we don’t cross 100F again, but not betting against it. It was certainly that hot at the BOL yesterday.

Did some stuff before heading home, details are in yesterday’s comments. Mostly little short tasks that weren’t critical. It was too hot to do much.

Today I’ve got to get caught up here at home, make arrangements for a pickup in San Antonio, and get rid of all the trash and debris I brought home with me. It would also be nice to take a load to my auctioneer… but I’m not counting on that.

And I need to take a look at the current auctions. There is still stuff I need for the BOL and even some things for home.

I may even break down a buy some stuff directly, mainly sprinkler stuff. I need pipe, connectors, and sprinkler heads. I’ll give the auctions a chance, and even cruise ‘the bins’ once before paying retail though.

There is always something needed, and something missing. And usually something that needs replacing or updating. So get to it, stack some things.

nick

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Sun. July 2, 2023 – turning money into smoke and noise, God Bless America!

Hot and humid, likely to be just like yesterday. Too hot to be in the sun, but ok in the shade. High 90s, low 100s and sweaty like a sex worker in the non-denominational house of worship of your choice…

Took a bit of a break yesterday. I was fried. So I slept (mostly) for 10 hours and felt better. Still easily frustrated and fighting with life which is not my normal state. Once I got on the machines I was better.

Built the stairs I should have built the day before. They’ll do just fine for a while, up to a year if needed. Now I have to build a set for the other patio door too.

Spent 5 hours breaking concrete. Dumpster is pretty near full so I’m glad I ordered one for Monday. Still got plenty to remove.

Then we had the community Independence Day celebration. A couple of the neighbors pool their money and put on a 3/4 sized professional fireworks show. They also have a party with food and a live band, and they ask for donations to the local volunteer fire department. The show lasted for 40 minutes and had all the stuff a big pro show would, just slightly smaller, and they don’t go as high. Still freaking awesome. And we watched from just across the cove, about 100-200 ft away.

After the fireworks the band played another set. We could hear them just fine, and it wasn’t too loud.

The guys organize this every year and our little subdivision takes part. This is “community”. This is what we are very aware that we are joining. We are joining with an existing group. I think a lot of people don’t consider this, or give it enough weight when looking for a BOL or a retirement place. Especially in rural areas, you are joining THEM. Act accordingly.

You need to work on fitting in, and starting to take your place in the web of favors, obligations, service, and support. You probably don’t have the family ties the locals do, so you will have to work harder. You need to be ‘known’ to them and be well thought of.

And in this mostly working class community, I think I just ratcheted up my cred by running the machines and doing the work myself. That is an unexpected bonus for something that was driven by necessity. Being known as a hard worker, and someone who can run a machine all day carries a lot more weight than a degree with a lot of the guys in the area. Don’t know if it will pay off, but it can’t hurt.

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Today I’ll probably start with fixing the drain for the washing machine. That is nice and quiet and the area should be in shade in the morning. Later, I’ll start back in on busting up concrete. SO MUCH CONCRETE.

Join a community. Ham radio, some service org, school volunteer, or whatever you are interested in. Get out of the house and DO something. You need to be a part of your local community, if for no other reason, so that you can recognize when things are normal and when they are not. Trouble or help is most likely to come from those nearest to you. Get to know who they are.

Stack up some community.
nick

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