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Category: Jen

Wednesday, 17 February 2016

13:40 – Another inch or three of snow overnight, although it’s currently just over freezing so it won’t last long. Our front lawn was solid white this morning, but it’s already mostly green/brown.

Barbara’s in the den putting together Petri dish bags for biology kits while she watches the last-ever episode of Mad Men. I gave up on it after the first two seasons, which were decent. It jumped the petunia in season three, and has been getting worse ever since.

Question from Jen. She’s been reading a lot of prepper fiction, and it seems as if the characters always have $600 red-dot sights (if not $4,000 NV sights) on their AR’s and AK’s. Jen wanted my opinion about whether I thought they needed to spend so much money on these things. I told her that, speaking as someone who’s never been in a firefight, I thought these expensive sights were a low-priority item. Jen and her family all make decent money, but I told her I wouldn’t spend $600 per gun let alone $4,000 unless and until they have the basics very well covered, with redundancy. I suggested that she instead do what I did: buy a small container of UV glow powder and us it in colorless nail polish to coat the tip of the front sights and outline the rear sights of each of their weapons. That gives them reasonably good night sights for all of their rifles and pistols for under $10 total. The best glow powders (green) remain bright enough to be visible in the dark for several hours after brief exposure to direct sunlight, and they can always buy a few $3 UV FLASHLIGHTS to activate the glow powder as needed without destroying their night vision.


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Sunday, 24 January 2016

12:31 – I hope USPS is running tomorrow. I have kits stacked up and awaiting pickup. Barbara shoveled the front steps and walk this morning. I got the Trooper out of the garage and used it to punch through the pile of snow that the snowplow had left blocking our driveway.

We’re watching Last Tango in Halifax and Orange is the New Black on Netflix streaming. The former is typically high-quality British drama. The second is up to Netflix’s usual high standards. It features lots of nekkid women and simulated cunnilingus, so it’s not appropriate for pre-pubescent children, although teenagers won’t find anything new or shocking in it.

Last night, I read Bobby Andrews’ Prepper’s Crucible (Omnibus, Volumes 1-3): An EMP Tale. He’s not a great writer, although he gets better as he goes along. He calls this three volumes, but in really it’s one mid-length novel. The fourth volume is also available, like the omnibus volume, from Kindle Unlimited. It’s only a nominal 115 pages, so I’ll go ahead and read it as well. Volume 5 is imminent, and is available for pre-order.

I’m going to help Barbara hang more pictures this afternoon. Tomorrow we need to make up more biology chemical bags and build more biology kits.

Email from Jen. She reads lots of PA novels, and has decided that she could do a better job. She’s currently outlining the first volume, which she intends to self-publish on Amazon. We’ll see. Lots of people start writing books. Few finish them. On the other hand, Jen is a very determined woman, so perhaps she’ll actually do it.

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Sunday, 10 January 2016

11:06 – We made a trip down to Winston yesterday, where we met Frances and Al. Between the Trooper and Al’s F-150, we hauled quite a bit back up. Frances and Al couldn’t stay overnight last night, because he had to meet with one of his home health care clients this morning. I was looking forward to them spending the night here, but the important thing is that they know how to get here and that they’re welcome to stay with us indefinitely if things ever get really bad in Winston. Not that I’m really expecting things to get that bad anytime soon, but one never knows. I’m old enough to remember the rioting and cities burning in the 60’s, and the threat of violent civil unrest is much greater now than it was then. Also, in the 60’s a major long-term power grid down situation wasn’t really of much concern, while nowadays it’s a very real and potentially catastrophic possibility.

Long email from Jen about the results of their trial run over the long New Years weekend. She could probably have summed up what they learn with a short phrase: “Try it before you depend on it.” For example, although they have lots of stored propane and multiple propane Coleman stoves, they wanted to simulate running out of propane during a long emergency, so they did all of their cooking on the woodstove. Not, as it turns out, as easy as everyone thought it would be. Similarly, their electric power was down, so the well pump was non-functional. They ended up hauling water from the pond in 5-gallon buckets, and purifying the water they were using for drinking and cooking. But, as Jen said, flushing toilets takes a LOT of water, and water isn’t light. And, although Jen has toilets in her home that use 1.6 gallons per flush, the friends to whose home they’d “bugged out” have older, standard toilets that use 3.5 gallons per flush. Or, as Jen put it, about 29 pounds per flush. They quickly began enforcing the no-flush-for-just-urine rule, which Jen said was pretty hard for some of them to get used to, particularly the women.

Jen said her main takeaway from this trial run was to test EVERYTHING before it mattered. She even found herself eying their Sawyer SP191 PointZeroTwo absolute water filter and thinking about unpacking it and trying it. I’d advised her to keep it unopened on the shelf if there was even a chance that it’d ever freeze because freezing destroys the filter if it’s ever had water in it. She said she’d eventually decided not to use the SP191, but she did order a second one from Amazon to serve as a spare. At about $125, it’s cheap insurance. That one will stay on the shelf. She’s going to pull out some 5-gallon pails and assemble the first one, but not run any water through it.

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Monday, 4 January 2016

08:37 – The cold weather has moved in. Our overnight low was in the low 20’s F, with wind chill down in the single digits. Our forecast low tonight is 14F (-10C), with wind chill down around OF.

I plan to spend today getting set up to build more science kits. We’re in decent shape on chemistry kits, but getting low on biology kits and forensic kits. We’re out of stock on both of the forensic kit supplements. The top priority is to build all the subassemblies we need to assemble the various kits, but before we can do that we need to get the work area set up.

Barbara made dinner last night using only shelf-stable long-term storage foods: pasta, Keystone canned chicken, and Bertolli mushroom alfredo sauce. It was excellent.

13:38 – Email from Jen. Short take, everything went pretty well. They had some cold weather, but everyone managed to keep warm by clustering in the couple of rooms nearest the woodstove. The remainder of the house stayed well above freezing. Jen said that trying to cook on the woodstove was a bit of an adventure, since there aren’t any knobs to adjust temperature. But they tried several LTS food recipes, and managed to get through the weekend without any real problems. They did decide to lay in a few more 20-pound propane cannisters so that they could continue using their propane campstove as long as possible. Either that, or they may get a propane heater and a 250 gallon propane tank installed. They kept watch 24×7, but no one “attacked” them other than the mailman on his regular Saturday route.

We’re making progress on getting the unfinished basement area set up for making kits, although it’s slower than expected. Still, getting this stuff organized, labeled, and stacked is a big part of the job.

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Sunday, 27 December 2015

09:23 – Frances and Al left for home yesterday afternoon after a nice visit. Colin is officially bored, since he now has just Barbara and me to manage.

We’ll get back to work downstairs starting today. We need to get a literal ton of LTS food and bottled water moved out of the unfinished area and into closets in the finished downstairs area. Once the unfinished area is cleared out a bit, I can start getting science kit stuff shelved and get set up for building more science kits. We’ll use my office as the staging area for getting everything organized.

It looks like the weather is about to turn. Through the end of year, forecast temperatures are to remain 20 or 30F above normal, but that all stops on New Year’s Eve. Our overnight low Thursday night is to be in the 20’s, and starting on 1 January we’re to be back to daytime highs around freezing and lows in the 20’s. I’m expecting to see some significant snow or freezing rain early in the New Year.

Email from Jen. She and her group scheduled another trial run starting Thursday and running through the holiday weekend. Their weather outlook is similar to ours, so they may get a bit chilly without central heating. She picked up a copy of Jan Jackson’s 100-Day Pantry on my recommendation, and plans to use several of the recipes to cook for the group during their trial run.

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Monday, 30 November 2015

08:23 – As of today, the new house is ours. We have so much to do in Winston-Salem to get ready for the move that we decided not to stay up in Sparta tonight. Instead, we’ll make a flying trip up there for the closing and then head back down here tonight. That way, we can get an early start tomorrow morning on the continuing packing. We’ve already arranged for a locksmith to change the locks this afternoon or first thing tomorrow morning and deliver the keys to us. The movers are coming Friday to haul all our furniture and other heavy/bulky stuff up, so as of Friday afternoon we’ll officially be moved. I told Colin that come Friday he will officially be a Spartan Dog.

The electricity is already in our name, and we’ll stop by the Internet provider to get the fiber broadband turned on as of this afternoon. Barbara has already changed the billing address on our credit cards to our new address, and I’ve changed the ship-to address for Amazon, WalMart, and the other vendors we buy from on-line. We need to stop by Costco to make that change in person. Today or tomorrow, I need to cancel our Internet service here and call Buck Stoves to find out about getting a wood stove installed. There’s already a good sized wood pile up there. It’s rotting, but it’ll do for now. Once we’re moved in, I’ll see about getting a cord or two of fresh wood delivered. Before I do that, I want to get one of those steel tube firewood racks installed to keep the wood up off the ground. And Barbara is going to meet her sister and go off in search of some new furniture to have delivered here this week so the movers can move it up to Sparta on Friday.

Email from Jen overnight. Their simulation over the Thanksgiving weekend went pretty well. Her husband was badly wounded in an attack by rampaging zombies. As a veterinarian, he was their primary medical person, so him being wounded was a problem. They talked about the need for having at least one more person trained in trauma care, and decided that it made sense to have two of their group go through first-level EMT training at the local community college and then train others in the basics. Their well pump also failed, so they had to haul water up to the garage, pre-filter it, and then run it through their Sawyer SP191 Point Zero Two water filter to provide water for most of the long weekend. They also found that maintaining a 24-hour watch was a lot more wearing than they expected it to be, particularly since they were down a person. Overall, though, Jen thought the trial went very well, and said they all think they’re pretty well prepared to deal with just about any emergency.

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Friday, 6 November 2015

08:40 – Another murder/suicide in Winston-Salem. The guy shot and killed his wife and then himself. I think we need a training course for these people. How often do I have to say it? Order is critical. Shoot yourself in the head first. THEN shoot your victim.

Email from Jen. They’ve completed the arrangements for their trial run over the long Thanksgiving weekend. Jen wanted to introduce as much uncertainty as possible, so she’s done something rather clever: using sealed envelopes and random drawings to simulate unexpected events. For example, they plan to simulate an attack on their home at some point during the trial, but Jen wanted both the timing and the outcome of that attack to be unknown to all of them going into the weekend. So she made a series of dated envelopes, one of which they’ll open each evening. She also made a series of folded sheets of paper, all but one of which say “no attack” and one of which says “attack occurs”. She then put them in a hat, drew them out, put each of them in an envelope, and sealed it. They’ll open one each evening, and won’t know about the attack until it’s actually imminent. Same thing for casualties among her group. They won’t find out which of their group are killed or injured until the attack occurs and they open the appropriate envelope. Then they’ll have to deal with one or more of their group being hors de combat and figure out how to deal with that person or those people being unavailable to help. They might, for example, lose their primary medical person (Jen’s husband, a veterinarian) or their primary cook. Presumably, “casualties” will spend the rest of the weekend observing and taking notes but not otherwise contributing to the effort. I did suggest that they not actually bury any of their “casualties”.

Here’s what I did to prep this week:

  • Our relocation finally seems to be on track. Our offer on the house up in Sparta has been accepted. We’re getting inspections and so on scheduled and we have a closing date scheduled.
  • I put in about three full days on the prepping book. It’s starting to shape up.
  • I finished reading John Ross’s Unintended Consequences. It’s huge, and it’s so pro-gun and anti-government that I’m surprised that Ross is still alive and not in federal prison.

So, what precisely did you do to prepare this week? Tell me about it in the comments.

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Friday, 30 October 2015

08:56 – The lead headline in the paper this morning says that 24% of Winston-Salem residents live in poverty. Says who? How can anyone define poverty to include people who have plenty to eat, including meat every day if they want it, heated living quarters, television and cable service, their own automobiles, money in their pockets, and even cell phones, all provided at taxpayer expense? Living in real poverty means you have none of those things, and by that definition more like 0% of Winston-Salem residents live in poverty.

Enough is never enough for these clients of the state and the politicians who covet their votes. Neither will be satisfied until tax-consumers enjoy a better standard of living than the taxpayers who support them.

Email from Jen. One of the men in her extended group had suggested that they do their second trial run over the Christmas holiday, a suggestion that was quickly vetoed by all of the women and most of the men. Instead, they’re going to do a four-day second trial run starting on Thursday, 12/31 and running through the holiday weekend. They figure that’ll give them enough time to digest the results from the Thanksgiving trial run and make any fixes necessary.

Here’s what I did to prep this week:

  • We’re just about finished packing up the seed containers. We got germination on all the seed species, although in some cases we almost literally needed a microscope to see evidence of germination. All that remains is to bin them into sets and do the final packaging in foil-laminate Mylar bags. Well, that and I have to finish the planting guide, create and print the main package labels, and make up the PBS saline for the Rhizobia culture and bottle it. My original goal was to ship the kits in mid- to late November, and getting that done shouldn’t be any problem.
  • I put in several hours on the prepping book. I think another thousand hours will do it to finish volume one.
  • I read William Forstchen’s One Year After, the sequel to his earlier One Second After. I won’t link to either book, because the ebooks are priced outrageously. I wouldn’t have read either if readers hadn’t sent me copies. The second book is better-edited but no better-written than the first, which is to say it’s second-tier. And that’s grading on the not-too-demanding curve that I apply to PA novels. Rather bizarrely, the sequel opens exactly TWO Years After the first. Not only can’t Forstchen write, he apparently can’t count, either. I also started reading John Ross’s Unintended Consequences, a massive tome that’s larger even than Crawford’s Lights Out. Ross’s book is apparently out of print, although you can buy used paperback copies for $28 and up. The book appears so far to be a collection of snippets that relate in one way or another to America’s “gun culture”, presented as a spirited defense of the 2nd Amendment.

So, what precisely did you do to prepare this week? Tell me about it in the comments.

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Thursday, 29 October 2015

08:05 – Email from Jen. A couple months ago, she said she and her family intended to run another readiness exercise later in the year, when the weather was colder. Well, it’s later in the year, the weather is turning colder, and they’ve decided on a rather ambitious plan. They’re going to hold a four-day readiness exercise over the Thanksgiving weekend. Jen and her husband will participate, along with Jen’s brother and his family, for a total of six people. Prepper friends of Jen’s family that live about 30 miles from Jen will also participate: the husband and wife, their three young-adult sons, and their daughter-in-law, bringing the total to twelve people. They plan to do Thanksgiving dinner completely off-grid, using only their stored supplies and equipment. What could go wrong? They’ll find out, and Jen promises to report to me on the results. It sounds to me as though they’re planning the private equivalent of Operation Overlord.

It won’t be just a holiday get-together minus central heat, electric power, and other utilities. They’re going to simulate a serious disaster. The second family and Jen’s extended family have agreed to be evacuation destinations for each other, and they’re going to run it as a simulated evacuation, with the second family bugging out in multiple vehicles, carrying as much of their emergency supplies and kit as possible. The bell rings at 6:00 p.m. on that Wednesday evening. Until then, the second family will just be doing what they usually do on a normal day. At the stroke of six, the emergency evacuation commences, with hurried packing up of their vehicles and a convoy to Jen’s place. Bridges will be down and roads blocked (virtually speaking, of course), so the other family will have to use alternative routes. (They won’t know about what specific travel problems they’ll encounter until they’re actually on the road.) Once they arrive and unload, there will be various scenarios, including a medical emergency and an attack by ravening hordes of zombies. They’ll maintain a round-the-clock watch to spot any zombies before they attack, as well as a 24-hour radio watch. It all sounds like great fun, and I wish we were participating. I suspect they’ll all learn a lot.

As indeed they expect to. Jen says they’ll be taking copious notes on what goes right and, more importantly, what goes wrong. Once they’ve thought it through and talked it out, they intend to run another long-weekend readiness exercise, but this time with Jen and her extended family evacuating and the other family playing host.

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Wednesday, 30 September 2015

08:04 – Today is Barbara’s last day of work at the law firm. As of tomorrow, she’s working for our own company.

Instead of rooting my Fire HD7 and installing Android, I decided to contact Amazon about a warranty replacement. Even after wiping it to defaults and using nothing but the standard configuration to check web pages and email, it locks up several times an evening to the point where it requires a hard reboot. The usual symptom is that the screen either goes completely black or the left 2/3 remains lit up although unresponsive and the right 1/3 is black. I’ve had it for only five months, so it should still be under warranty. I’ll contact Amazon today.

Science kit sales are fine. For 8/15, we did only 74% the revenue of 8/14, but for 9/15 we’ve done 153% the revenue of 9/14. Total revenue for 8+9/15 is at 99.8% of total revenue for 8+9/14. One more order today would take us over 100%.

We are getting low stock on biology and forensic kits, so I’ll spend some time today making up chemical solutions and filling bottles.

Email from Jen. She and her husband decided to order that Renogy 400W solar starter kit, a decent inverter, and some heavy cabling for a battery bank. They picked up several golf cart batteries locally. They’re going to charge up the battery bank with an AC charger, connect the inverter, and then run a known load to see what kind of life they get from a full charge. They’ll then connect up the four 100W panels and see what kind of charging performance they get from them. After that, they’ll stick the fully charged batteries on the shelf in the garage and store the panels and associated gear in a Faraday cage they’ll build from copper screening.

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