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Category: ebay

Thur. July 29, 2021 – kids at rock gym, me working…

Sunny and hot, chance of rain. We’re in the middle of the thunderstorm zone today and tomorrow so we might actually get it. We didn’t get any rain yesterday despite the possibility. I even drove across town, and didn’t get wet.

Did my pickup yesterday and have a couple to do today. Then I’m off to my secondary to do a bunch more clean up. It’s gonna be a long day of hot hard work if everything goes to plan.

And I need to keep an eye on some auctions. There is a vet clinic selling everything, not too far from my house. There are a number of things I’d like to have from that auction… if the zombies ever come.

There’s another fairly close auction with a bunch of air rifles and the current prices are low. In the auctions in general, there has been a lot of late bidding lately, so low prices 8 hours out might not mean what it would have last year, but I’d like to pick up a couple of nice ones for the stacks…

And there is another auction with a bunch of stuff for my non-prepping hobby. I didn’t win any of the stuff I was bidding on this week, so I’m keeping an eye on this sale.

But I can’t sit in front of the computer all day, the kids are out of my hair, and I’ve got stuff to get done.

SO MUCH STUFF.

But it will let me break this log jam and keep making forward progress. “Everything takes longer and costs more.” If I repeated that mantra at work, I should understand that it applies to me in my home life too, right? But I’m SPECIAL and I operate as if it wasn’t true. Well it is true, and not acknowledging that can lead to frustration and disappointment and discouragement. Time to deal with it and just keep pushing through.

The end goal is to have stacks of stuff that will help me, not hinder me. Anything that hinders has to go. And if it helps, it gets priority.

I’m picking up more shelves today… and while it costs time, they should help organize, condense, and ultimately improve my situation.

Keep working to improve your situation. By stacking, or by getting rid of some stuff. Sometimes getting rid of a stack is the best thing you can do.

nick

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Sat. July 24, 2021 – the pack will be reunited…

Hot and humid, but maybe no rain. Forecast says we’re dry today. We were dry yesterday although it did get stinking hot. 103F in the sun is hot.

Spent the morning keeping the puppy calm while the cleaners were here, and doing some auction stuff.

Spent the afternoon cutting stuff up and pulling it out of the stacks at my secondary location. I got another 3ft x 5ft x 4ft tall cubic volume opened up. Only about 10 like that left to go. I am using the sawzall to good effect though.

Today I’m headed back over to work on more of that. First thing though, my wife will be collecting the girls from camp. I think I better be home to greet them after being gone for 8 days. The whole pack will be together for the first time in over a week. Doggy will lose his little mind to have his girl back home.

Even with clearing out space, I think I’m still going to explore having my first pallet load auction at their warehouse. If I clear enough space for 6 pallets, and then fill it with pallets, that will stop me working further for a month while the auction process runs its course. If I get those pallets OUT of the way, then I can continue setting up the next six for the auctions after that. Then I should have enough space to get more stuff set up. I’ll lose time and money by doing it that way, but it will move the process along, and I’m already months behind.

While that is going on, hopefully I’ll have a bunch of stuff in another local auction too. Maybe several, although I’ve given up on my ‘industrial’ guy. The stuff I sent him last time made up the last few lots of the auction, wasn’t well described, and brought no money. It was very disappointing.

Other than adding some meat to the freezers and some other food to the shelves, it was a slow week for prepping. I did have one ebay sale this week, after a couple of months of no sales at all, and on an item I’ve been selling occasionally for a couple of years. I’ve got a few left, and it was a surprisingly good score for me. It’s only $10 profit on each sale, but I’ve sold a pallet load of them over the years.

All the usual admonitions and observations are in place, you know what you need to do….

nick

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Mon. July 19, 2021 – do it for a good purpose, not just for the sake of doing it

Hot and humid. Rainy later. Just like yesterday. Yes, that is what yesterday was like. Sunny and hot, but then rain later. A downpour actually, in the late afternoon. There was about one inch of water in the buckets.

I had another day of low productivity. I felt better, but still had some lightheadedness so I wasn’t eager to work on hard stuff, plus it was hot as Hades outside. I did some cleanup before my wife got home, and I spent a couple of hours doing photos, measurements, and weight of stuff for ebay.

I also took the opportunity to concentrate on the puppy and help him succeed with his housebreaking… and had some good success. He is yipping when he wants to go out and pee. He gives a deeper bark when he wants out to poop. And I have started to figure out his timing. We didn’t have any accidents in the house today. First day! I caught him squatting after breakfast and shouted “no” and “outside” while throwing the door open, and out he went. Hooray! It helps that he’s very motivated by treats.

So that’s that. Little progress on some fronts, but good progress on another.

Today I’ll either continue with projects here at home, or get out and do some more work at my secondary. Maybe both. It will depend on how I feel. I don’t like being hostage to my body, I’m not used to letting it dictate to me, but I’m finding it more and more often of late. It’s trite, but I’m not in the shape I used to be in. I really need to spend the time and effort to try and get some of that back.

I think I also need to work a bit on getting rid of ‘monkey brain.’ I think that’s what one of my teachers called it. It’s when you jump from thing to thing, easily distracted. It keeps you from doing what you really need and want to do. Doing things because you can rather than should.

Gotta work on myself as well as the stacks.

Stackin’ won’t hurt though…

n

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Sat. July 17, 2021 – while the cat’s away, I’ll work I guess…

I purely suck at weather forecasting. Yesterday was nice all day and a bit cooler than I expected. There was a little bit of spotty rain in the late afternoon, but generally nice. I’m hoping for the same today.

Spent the morning running d2 back and forth to her day camp. Did some office stuff. Helped get ready for GS camp in the afternoon. Spent the evening watching a movie, Jumper, and it was pretty good. Just a well done movie with some pretty cool locations. Would have probably felt ripped off if I’d paid $18, but for a buck, it was an entertaining hour and a half. It’s been a long time since I sat down and watched a movie for adults.

Today after a slow start, I’m hoping to get some actual cleaning up done at my secondary location. I don’t know what I’m going to do with the puppy, can’t afford a week of day care, so I’ll probably bring him with and just mostly keep him in the crate. I’m not totally convinced about that yet. I’ve got plenty to do here if the weather cooperates.

Tested the replacement Dell curved monitor. Works great. Daughter 1 may be getting a new system with a big curved monitor… now I just have to call for a pickup on the return. Oh, and she found her phone. It was dead battery, under the couch. Technically her little sister found it. She was too enamored with the tragedy of losing it to look very hard. I hope that trait doesn’t get worse.

The canister vacuum I picked up cheap works well too, a Miele, the brand is famous for quality in Germany but mostly unknown here. My kitchen oven/microwave/convection combo is a Miele and it’s like a scientific instrument. I am keeping it, because my wife agreed that our next vacuum cleaner would be a canister, but selling it would make sense too. I make money by seeing what the other guy doesn’t see…

In any case, I’ll be cleaning and organizing something, somewhere today. So I have room for more stacking…

nick

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Wed. July 14, 2021 – well, that didn’t go so well

Sunny with rain, high humidity, and heat. Probably 90s, and RH between 70 and 90. Kinda like yesterday.

Spent yesterday doing stuff. Drove youngest to day camp and back. She had a better day, with more activities. Doing that today too. Took oldest to the Doc in the Box, ended up with a strep test and positive diagnosis, so she’s started on amoxicillian. Which meant I went to the pharmacy too. No need for fish meds when the grid is up. I’ll take note of the scrip for the future though. The positive test means real questions about the weekend plan for GS activities, and next week’s sleep away camp. Dr said she should be fine for camp by Sunday. She’s hoping for Friday. Hmm. Don’t want to be that guy.

Spent time doing online chat with some indian fellows at Dell to get a replacement for the returns monitor that didn’t light up. The backlight comes on, but no image. No internal menus displayed either. The Dell warranty is pretty good for a $200-300 monitor. I don’t have the replacement yet, so, fingers still crossed.

Wife is home from the funeral trip. Thanks for all the condolences. Family gathered for the ceremonies, and my wife says they’re looking pretty shell shocked as you might imagine. She also took a hard look at her own parents and was a bit surprised to see them showing some frailness. They’re in a split level raised ranch style house with some stairs that wouldn’t meet current code because they are too steep. They are going to have to move if they want to stay in a normal house. They are not planning to move. There will be some reality smacking some heads at some point, hopefully not after a serious injury. Neither of us would be excited to have them move here. There will be more discussion another day. Guys, have a realistic plan for coping with the decline in your physical abilities.

My plan for today is to get out of the house, leaving oldest alone for a couple of hours while I do needful things elsewhere. I have to do a pickup on the other side of town and while I’m out, I need to move the piles of trash at my secondary from the place I stacked it to the dumpster. Then back to get youngest home, and nursemaid the sick one.

And getting some of the stuff here out of the house or better organized would be good too. I got more stuff ready for auction,but I still have to get an auction set up. Or three.

All that while working to improve my position, and topping up the stacks.

It’s a great life if you don’t weaken. Keep stacking.
n

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Tues. July 13, 2021 – more camp, more cleaning and organizing

A bit cooler, wet, humid, hot, and probably all at the same time. Yesterday was sunny but then ended with rain. I didn’t get a ton of time to work on the patio, but at least the rain held off while youngest was at camp.

Her camp is a nature walk outdoors in the woods, so better if there isn’t rain in the morning. She was very aggrieved that the other kids weren’t serious about learning and disrespected the councilors and the animals by talking loudly and not listening. They also spent a lot of the time walking off the paths. Drove my little OCD kid nuts. Then last night while we were getting her stuff ready for the morning, we had a yelling fight about bug spray. The stuff I sent her with didn’t work. I pulled out 3 other brands, but they were all “poison” and she didn’t want them. FFS, what other house has 4 different kinds of bug repellent on the shelf?? If you don’t want to use the good stuff, don’t complain about getting bit. (I don’t get bit so I don’t often use the stuff, but when I do, it’s the stuff with DEET. But that’s POISON. Which is the point, kid.) After talking to my wife, it turns out there is a 5th kind in the house. That was what the kid wanted. Jeez.

The other child had a dime sized abrasion on her ankle for the last 3 days, dirty from camp and hiding under a bandaid. Got that cleaned up and smeared with ABX cream. Had a chat about infection and sepsis and that a dime sized abrasion can kill you if not taken care of. Oh, and threw out a box of walgreens bandaids. F that noise. Bandaid brand flexible fabric bandaids stick. Generics do not. It’s not worth the “savings” to later throw them away. Buy the good stuff.

I spent the afternoon organizing and going through auction stuff. So much more to do. No word back from the auction house on the trashed 3d printer. I’ll try them again today. And then back to cleaning and organizing, and chauffeuring… maybe to the Dr’s office.

Oldest isn’t feeling well. That’s a couple of days now. No fever, but generally feels unwell. Scratchy throat, some coughing. If her throat is red, white, or some other color I guess we’ll be going to the doc in the box for some swabbing a bit later. Might as well use it while we still have it.

That should be a motto, use it while we still can. And of course, keep stacking.

nick

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Mon. July 12, 2021 – day camp, work, more work

More rain in the forecast, but we’re sorta on the edge of the zone, so I’m hoping for more sun. Like yesterday. We did have overcast for a lot of the day, but the sun came out for most of the afternoon and evening. Temps got into the low 90s and while the humidity was lower, the air can hold a lot of moisture at 92F…

So I decided to do some outdoor work. I ended up soaked to the skin with sweat, but I got the back yard mowed, some weeds pulled up in the garden, and some cleanup and reorg in the stored stuff on the patio. I’m not done yet, but I did make a start. I even got the shop vac out and cleaned up some more of the glass chunks from when I broke the back door. That was what, two years ago? I don’t know where all those chunks were hiding, but they have started to appear in earnest in the last week or so. Strange.

Also spent some time sorting through 5 pounds of costume jewelry I picked up at Goodwill. There was some nice stuff in there, and one name brand piece. There are a couple of pieces that I’ll have to test but that sure look like silver. I’ll put about half of it back in auctions, keep a few broken pieces for the GS jewelry making craft session, and let the kids have a couple of other pieces. I really don’t understand why the T shirt people don’t grab any jewelry that’s in the bins. It’s $1.19/ pound. There pretty much HAS to be $2 worth of jewelry in a pound… I’ve found James Avery silver, nice vintage necklaces, bakelite bracelets, and even a few watches that brought ~$5 – 10 each. I’m glad they leave it for me I guess.

Today I’m taking small child to a week long day camp at the local nature center. Surly proto-teen will be home this week, skulking around the house and shirking her chores. At least she’ll be watching the puppy so I can do stuff.

There’s lots of stuff needs doing too, and since my wife’s away, I’m stuck home, and anything I do that reduces the piles here will have an outsized impact. The days will be start and stop, what with dropping off and picking up younger child, but I hope to get something done in between.

It feels like time is getting short. I’m not sure what comes next but I want to be ready. Or at least try. That means stacking stuff, and for me that means getting rid of unneeded stuff, to provide space and funds for needed stuff.

Keep stacking.
nick

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Sun. July 11, 2021 – family all together, briefly…

I’ll have a go… sunny and warm, possibly hot, with high humidity, possibly up to 100%RH. I can be just as wrong as the weather liars, and saves the hassle of looking it up and making fancy maps. Saturday was actually pretty nice, sunny but not boiling hot, RH below 60%, mild breeze.

I took youngest child with me to my hobby meeting, where she charmed the whole group, while mostly sitting in a corner reading. I learned some things about my hobby, and had a great time talking with some other members of the group that I don’t always get a chance to chat with.

My wife retrieved the oldest child from Girl Scout camp. Child had a good time, met some new girls and made friends. One big difference between my childhood and kids today, we seemed to be a lot more willing to make ‘friends of the moment’ with kids we just happened to be together with for some reason. What I see in today’s kids is less of that, and a more inward focus. I’m glad she went and met some new kids. Wife is leaving later today for the funeral and related stuff back east. I’ll be kid wrangling by myself for a couple of days.

On the way home from my meeting, I swung by one of my local auctioneers and picked up a check. Turned out I was owed a bit more than I thought. About $350 more, so I’m a happy boy. He’s still pushing me off for the next round of sales though. His current facility is full, and he hasn’t closed the deal for more space yet. My other, industrial auction doubled his space, and has a couple of storage containers. One of my other surplus (old school traditional) auctioneers reorganized after the death of the patriarch, and split into several independent houses, and started doing franchise deals with several more new startups. The auction business is booming. SOMEONE has to dispose of all the cheap chinese cr@p that gets returned to the online retailers when it becomes obvious just how cheap and sh!tty it is… and someone has to try to get some value out of all the returns fraud. If I was feeling uncharitable, I’d say that someone has to pick over the bones of our society too.

I also did a pickup at another new seller and we had a chat. He got burned buying bulq.com and liquidation.com pallets of returns. He mentioned whole pallets without anything but garbage in the boxes. I bought a Dell 30″ curved monitor for $35 from him. I’m pretty sure he was looking for more. Many of his items didn’t sell either, because they were just cheap junk. I’ll fire up the monitor today and see if I got a deal or got punked. He didn’t test any of the electrical items, and I’m pretty sure it’s because he’s working out of a storage unit with no power available. I guess $400/ month for the unit is cheaper than office/warehouse, but it’s not cheap enough, if you can’t sell the items.

A guy I used to read, the Head Druid for North America, writing as The Archdruid Report (iirc) talked a lot about ‘catabolic collapse’- when during the decline of society, we eat our seed corn so to speak. The auction business, selling bankruptcy assets, surplus, etc. performs a vital function in a healthy society that gets those assets back into circulation, and at a low price that helps the next round of businesses succeed. John Michael Greer was describing something else though. He was describing selling off the assets that made our culture and society possible, and the collapse inevitable. I think I’m seeing it happen in real time with some of my sellers.

It can be an opportunity to stack some things at reduced cost, assuming we’ll be able to use them later. The key will be deciding which things are just magpie things, shiny and useless, and which are a little bit of our civilization to hold onto just a bit longer.

Choose wisely, and stack it high.

nick

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Tues. July 6, 2021 – not much to say

Hot, rainy, humid, and more humid. Yesterday was typical Houston, depending on where in town you were, and when, you could have had sun most of the day. Or gully washer thunderstorms. Or both. I was driving around and most of the east and south east of Houston were sunny while I was there. Most of the west and NW got hammered.

Stopped in at my ‘industrial’ auctioneer, and he had left a few items off my last auction. We got that straightened out, and they are in the current one. I’ve got a huge pile of stuff for him, and I can’t even talk to his scheduling person until the 12th… I think I might have to try another local auction house for some bins of stuff. In person contact seems to work much better than anything else for the auction guys in town. Meatspace, it’s important.

Speaking of weather, it looks like TS Elsa is slowing? The last track I saw had it hitting Tampa later than I thought. I can watch it come in on my sibling’s newly installed Nest cam, if I want to… but I don’t think it will be too interesting at this point.

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Lot’s of violence reported this past weekend. NYFC, Chicago, the numbers are getting so high that MSM can’t ignore them. Even my wife made a comment in disbelief about the Chicago numbers, and she’s been purposely avoiding current news lately. Keep your eyes open if you are moving around in the wide world. Go armed if you are able. Have some trauma response first aid nearby.

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There’s a lot of stupidity going around too. More reason to keep your eyes open and your head down. The polarizing elements in our current situation haven’t gone anywhere, they are just getting ready for the next phase, and the next incident.

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I don’t know if we’re having too much water, too much heat, or too little of something else, but I read in different places that there are issues with food production and crop growth again this year. Previous years ate into any stores, bad crops will increasingly have a more immediate effect on the US and by extension, the world. Remember that there were food riots when US producers switched from food production to ethanol production. We still export a lot of food, but every farmer knows that no crop is guaranteed.

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I am seeing a bit of ammo hitting the market, and even a few guns. Prices are still crazy high, but I’d be sorely tempted to buy anyway, because there are a number of things that can cause prices to rise and supplies to decrease, and little that would cause them to drop.

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I think you know where all this is going. We’re already having floods, famine, storms, and plagues, war is next – in some form or another. Keep stacking. Or end up lacking.

nick

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Wed. June 30, 2021 – summer is flying by

Hot and humid, chance of rain. We did get rain yesterday, and sun, and heat (but not terrible heat). Today should be more of the same.

Spent the day mostly indoors, doing a bunch of stuff I’ve put off too long. Paid my toll invoices for driving around without toll tags in my new truck. Put the toll tag in the truck. Did a bunch of other paperwork stuff. Played with the puppy.

Today should be a bit more active. I have to do an auction pickup, and take both kids for their Girl Scout Camp physicals. I’ve got other auction stuff to do too. I was sorting through some stuff to sell in one of the local auctions last night. She’s got a guy who buys all of one particular item that she lists, and I’ve got a bunch of them. She’s waved me off on general items since she has a huge listing backlog, but maybe I can squeeze a dozen of these in. While going through that box of stuff, I might also have found a really good score. I’ll share with the guy who gave me the box though, I’d feel bad taking it all, it’s that good a score, and there were other things in the box that should bring good money on their own.

Part of the fun of thrifting/estate/garage/yard sale hunting is the treasure hunt aspect. You literally don’t know what you will find, and sometimes you do find the treasure.

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Got my FCC license for GMRS about 10 hours after I applied. It’s a “pay the fee and get the license” application, and the license covers your whole family. The FCC isn’t issuing actual hard copies anymore, they just send a link to a pdf. I guess there is very little intrinsic value in the paper, that would make it worth forging. In any case, I’m current for GMRS again. FWIW, I got a new license rather than renew my lapsed one. There were two additional hoops to jump through and a huge fee ($210) to bring my old one current, so I just got a new one ($70 for 5 years) instead.

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There are a lot of people that would make arguments against paying for the GMRS license, working from at least 3 different points of view. Don’t care. I don’t want to give them (.gov) that handle to use against me.

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There are a lot of lists out there. My radio stuff puts me on one or more. My CERT training put me on another. My previous work clients put me on yet more lists. I’m a blogger, which probably puts me on a list. I am on lists with HPD and our Constable’s office, and the associated alumni groups. Purchasing certain items with background checks put me on a list. Visa and Mastercard probably maintain lists based on my purchase history. Amazon certainly does, and likely collaborates with .gov by compiling and selling lists. My school district has me on at least 4 lists. I’ve been to China twice so I’m on lists there, and I’m certain the US State Dept. has me on lists because of my travel to the middle east and the middle kingdom. I’m on a list in Canada, I had a work permit there for several years. I was working on a project subject to ITAR and had to go through that paperwork – that’s another list. At one point in my miss-spent youth, I’m sure I was on some other agencies’ lists as a “known associate”. There may even be criminal enterprises that have me on a list, if they do that sort of thing.

Don’t let the fact that you’ll end up on a list keep you from doing something. There are lots of us on lists, and the more there are, the more noise there is to get lost in. Use the lists to your advantage. I have access to more training activities now that I’m on a vetted list with HPD and the Constable’s Office. The CERT training is very broad based, and definitely worth trading for a spot on a list. So is ham radio. Medical training likewise.

If everyone’s the ‘biggest risk to the US’ then no one is.

Of course, be aware of when you really DON’T want to be on the list, and try to conduct at least part of your life so you don’t get on lists. Especially when it comes to stacking, you don’t want to be on the list of resources to be plundered. And since local is the new hotness, be very careful about getting on your neighbors’ lists… and consider making a few of your own.

You can think of the lists while you’re stacking.

nick

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