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Thur. Jun. 6, 2024 – D Day.

Cool to start but warming rapidly to “hot”. Because Texas and summer. And if I’m wrong? Well that’s ok too. It stayed cool all day yesterday, but then it rained buckets too. Low 70s cool, which was very nice.

So I mostly stayed in. I did swap vehicles at the repair shop. Eventually the Expy got smogged and inspected and passed. That’s one out of the way. The Ranger still needs some driving around before smog, so I’ll be driving it today. And probably this weekend to the BOL.

The rest of my day was taken up with driving the kids to their various things. Didn’t get my own stuff done because it broke up my afternoon. Some days are like that. It’s the “stay at home dad” thing, and it means I don’t get to do whatever I want all day. Compromises, I’ll make ’em.

The stacks did pay off with a new turn signal bulb. It saved me a trip to the store yesterday anyway. I’ll try to remember to stop and get new ones when I’m out and about, so I have one when this one fails, or it’s opposite number fails. Doesn’t sound like much, but in a day full of other stuff it saved the trip and about an hour. I’ll put it in the ‘win’ column.

Today will be a couple of pickups, and getting ready to head to the BOL. My non-prepping hobby meeting got moved to next weekend, so we might just head up early and make a long weekend of it. I’m sure there are things for me to do…

And I’m sure there are things for you to do too. I’ve learned the hard way this month that I shouldn’t have procrastinated about the vehicle inspections, renewals, generator maintenance, and auto repairs…

It’s easy to stack, harder to do the stuff needed to stay ready. Pick something you’ve been putting off and do it.

n

(added, and on this anniversary of one of the biggest things humans have ever tried to do, think about history repeating… the horns of war are blowing. Do what you can to be ready.)

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Wed. Jun. 5, 2024 – ah the life of Riley…

Hot and humid again/still/etc. It got over 100F in my driveway yesterday. That’s hot. Especially when it is humid enough that mildew grows on the moist windows, and condensate drips from A/C vents…indoors. Probably gonna be like this forever now, ‘cuz of the global warming. Or at least until Fall.

Did some stuff yesterday, although not the stuff I started the day thinking I’d do. My truck wasn’t finished, for one thing, so I didn’t spend any time on that. And I stepped through the ceiling in the kitchen, which led to fixing drywall there, and in the bathroom.

I did get a random camera to boot, and figured out how to access its stream without installing any of the chinese malware disguised as an app. It’s a new one built very cheaply, but loaded with ‘features’ and sold for incredibly low prices. I’m not totally comfortable about having it on my network, but it’s better than having the app running on my phone, or in a browser. Slightly better. If even I will put a chinese IOT device on my network, the average joe doesn’t stand a chance of maintaining security. I’ve got it in the attic watching one of the major rat traffic paths. Oddly, I haven’t seen any today.

I also vac sealed and froze a bunch of meat, and did some small tasks for auction and sales stuff.

Today should be more of the same, with some drywall mudding, some auction stuff, some car stuff, and some cleaning and organizing and fixing…

The stacks have been neglected for a while, and they need attention.

Stack what you can, but also maintain what you have.

nick

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Tues. Jun. 4, 2024 – probably should take better care…

Hot and humid, sunny. But if you are in the shade, it’s manageable. That describes yesterday afternoon too, although it was mid 90s or higher…

I walked home from the car repair place, took about 1/2 hour, and I was pretty warm by the time I got home.

Speaking of car repair… I do some maintenance. I check oil, fluids, tire pressure… I take care of tires and run a good spare. I monitor my gas mileage and pay attention to noises… that said, I have a tendency to let things go and then fix them after they break. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that my truck needs a bunch of stuff when I do take it in for service. In this case it needs front brakes, some heater hoses (21 years old), gaskets, and a lot of bits and pieces. It’s not getting the bits and pieces. Crumbling and rotten hoses? Oh hell yes. That leaves you stranded on the side of the road. Brakes? Yes. I’m hard on brakes, and you need to be able to stop. Noise in the power steering pump? Not a concern at this time…

They are supposed to be done later today. We’ll see. It should be around $2000 for everything. I said no to about $1200 in additional work that is either not critical, or can be done later. It’s not a restoration, it’s about having a reliable vehicle. And I can buy a lot of motor oil for the $900 a new oil pan gasket costs to install. Yeah, I looked several places and that’s not out of line. Apparently there is a lot of stuff in the way and the book says 6.5 hours… F you Ford. Oil pan that takes 6 hours??

I’ll swap the Expy for the Ranger and get it smogged, then I can proceed to get legal again. Although technically my parts truck needs to be registered as ‘non-op’ to be fully legal… and I don’t think that’s happening. If I’m not driving it, why should it be registered?

Didn’t get a lot done yesterday. Wasn’t feeling great most of the afternoon, then D1 needed chauffeuring around. Still not feeling 100%, but need to actually suck it up and do some stuff today.

Entropy increases. The fight against it never ends.

Stack the good stuff.

n

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Sun. Jun. 2, 2024 – in the summertime, the livin’s easy…

Hot and humid. Possibility of rain. Possibility of scorching sun. It was nice yesterday at the BOL, with a cool breeze in the shade, and brain boiling heat in the sun… while Houston got some cooling rain.

I did get a bunch of work done at the BOL. Cleaned up almost all the remaining downed branches, cut up logs, and other debris. Now I have 3 burn piles as tall as me… Cleaned up the demo debris from the dockhouse. Reset the A/C in the dockhouse after the power failure. I’m running it 24/7 to help dry out the wood. Mowed the grass. Put most of the patio furniture back after moving it out of the way for the tree guy. Put away all the solar stuff I’d brought to Houston, and did some general cleaning up and putting away.

It was enough to fill the day.

Today I’m home in Houston and will be doing storm recovery stuff. I need to make repairs to our driveway gate, back fence, and some other things. I’ve got to get stuff back where it belongs, and sort some stuff out. I should do something about the rat situation, and my general pile of stuff that needs attention…

After resting and getting a slow start… if it’s hot.

Stacks. I got ’em. You should too.
n

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Sat. Jun. 1, 2024 – Saturday, in the dark, I think it was a month to July….

Cool to start but surely getting hot later. Unless it’s pouring down rain. Which is apparently a possibility. ‘cuz that’s what we need today. More rain.

The ground is getting saturated, and the trees are falling over whenever the wind blows.

I started yesterday with the best of intentions, got thwarted by my own procrastination, and ended up just doing auction stuff anyway after wasting the whole morning. Then I did some grocery shopping and loaded the truck for the BOL.

Now I’m up here, and my day will be dependent on the weather. I’ll either clean up debris, and load the truck for a dump run, or I’ll hang out indoors while it rains. I’m tempted to stick around if it’s storming, in case the power goes out again. Locals say the number of outages and the length of the outages are unprecedented. I say it’s probably the new normal for one reason or another. Some sort of automatic failover to a backup power supply is nearly at the top of the list now…

Infrastructure is awesome when it is intact. Lots of ways to break it, and only so many ways to fix it. Plan for losses.

Stack what you need to be 80% or more of what you are now. You’ll be better off than almost anyone else, and the 80/20 rule of thumb says you will be maximizing your result vs effort and resources.

Or choose a different path, but I think our choices now will be the major factor in how we live 1,2,5,and 10 years from now.

Stack.

nick

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Fri. May 31, 2024 – School’s out for summer… school’s out for ever….

Or not. But it is summer and summer temps are here. Not quite on the 10s which is my own phrase for when it’s 80F at 800AM and 90F at 900AM, and 100F at 1000AM… soon though. And rainy, probably for the next 4 days. Just what I need.

Spent the day at my client’s poking at things. What details there are in yesterday’s comments. Basically I hate “automagic” programmer BS. That’s probably the root cause of why I’m not an apple fanboi. I certainly had exposure to them during my formative years. Never ‘took’ for me though. I did make progress and fixed a number of issues. It’s always nice when I can do that.

Today is going to be a couple of pickups, and also me attempting to get my truck registrations up to date. We’ll see how long that takes. While I’m doing that, I’m going to apply for the Radio Operator plates too. There is a small opsec issue with the plates, but anyone sophisticated/knowledgeable enough to look them up can probably dox me anyway from my regular plates. The advantage is having the same plate on both trucks, and having only one renewal date.

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In bigger news, they found Trump guilty of something. This is surely someone’s red line, and signal to go active. And if not this one, then sometime soon, and someone serious. I’m looking for “terror” attacks on infrastructure, and around NYFC in particular. Could be anything though. Might take a bit for them to update plans, etc. Or they might be ready. Or we could see a false flag, since I’m not the only one speculating…

And the flip side is that it will surely embolden both our domestic lefties and foreign devils. Watching the crowing on tv yesterday was kinda bizarre. No one ever thinks they’ll be out of power, or out of favor, but history shows us that the pendulum swings and what is sauce for the goose quickly becomes sauce for the gander. In 10 or 20 years I hope they think it was worth it to destroy what we had to get the orange man.

In any case, ordinary folks are going to be in a world of hurt when it all kicks off.

You’ve had time to prep, use the remaining time wisely. Stack all the things, and keep your personal awareness level HIGH.

nick

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Wed. May 29, 2024 – back at the BOL?? Maybe.

Cool, but warming. No idea if it’s gonna be nice for a while. Yesterday was certainly a kick in the teeth.

Started the day at the BOL when the tree guy arrived early. He said there was a storm on the way… He got done and gone in 2 hours, and I left another hour later, with black skies behind me. The storm was moving very quickly and chased me all the way to Houston. When I stopped running south, it caught me.

HUGE downpour, 3-5 inches of water in my buckets. An incredibly long hail storm with mostly golf ball sized hail. Before I could drive to shelter, one smashed my windshield. And the way things were spanging off the sheet metal, I thought the truck would LOOK like a golf ball. The damage to the windshield is in the lower corner, so it’s drivable, and the sheet metal held up better than I thought. Still, crazy storm.

Of course, it hit the BOL shortly after I left. Power went out around 1130am so it’s going to be almost 24 hours by the time I get up there to start the generator… This assumes that power isn’t restored overnight, since I’m planning and writing this Tuesday night. I’ll know in the morning if I actually have to head up.

Getting some sort of automatic power backup option for the BOL is rapidly becoming not optional.

This weather is nuts, but it is nothing like what will happen if people start targeting infrastructure.

Think about that if you are patting yourself on the back for not being in Texas…

And I don’t want to be the boy who cried wolf, but things seem to be getting out of hand in the political realm, and the geopolitical realm. Of course, in the end the wolf DID come… it won’t take much to break the grid.

A breakdown in previously reliable systems is one of the things that happens when a society starts to collapse. And there are plenty of people willing to help it along.

Think about your alternatives seriously. Make some plans and buy what you need.

Then stack it up.

nick

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Tues. May 28, 2024 – Tree work and more!

Another hot, humid day, with heat alerts and high misery index. Yesterday was crazy obnoxious between the heat, humidity, and the blazing sun. No wind just added the fuel to the fire. Just standing in the shade talking soaked my shirt with sweat. And we’ll probably get more today.

Gah.

I did manage to get a few things done, by going very slowly, waiting for small breezes, and sweating profusely.

I got the Wen inverter generator running. Turns out it needed oil, some shipping brackets removed, and then it started. Just needed to do the proper commissioning. Apparently it doesn’t ship with a bottle of oil, making it useless to you when it arrives. I’m sure whatever they save is far outweighed by the outraged buyers and returns…

I fixed a chainsaw. Fuel poured out immediately upon filling… so something must have been disconnected. I finally had the time and inclination to pull the cover and figure it out. One fuel line came undone. Took 10 minutes to fix. Thank you amazon returns. $25 and a bit of time and I’ve got another like new chainsaw as backup.

I loaded the truck for my trip home. I was already soaked, and didn’t want to get sweaty today. It didn’t leave any room for trash or flood debris. I’ll get that next time. I guess.

Finally I took down the cell booster antenna and cleared the path for the tree guy to work today. He’s fitting me in between jobs, and I wanted to be here at least when he gets started. I’ve got a pickup in Houston in the afternoon, so I will have to leave at some point, no matter what the guy is doing. He’s said he doesn’t need me here, so it’ll be ok.

Sometimes I feel like Dory in Finding Nemo. “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming…”

Wish I could outsource some of this stuff.

You do what you have to do though…

Stack it up, you’ll probably need it sooner rather than later.

nick

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Sun. May 26, 2024 – another day to work… and there is work that needs doing

Warm and humid rapidly becoming hot and crazy humid. Like yesterday did.

I tried to stay out of the sun, and not really exert myself. Those leg cramps kinda scared me. So I mostly worked on the mower. Details are in comments yesterday, but the summary is, there is always something more. And spending time on the mower, when I used to have a working mower, is time spent going backwards.

That is one of the risks of keeping older stuff running. The time it takes can be trivial or it can eat days. And you probably won’t know until it happens. On the other hand, new stuff breaks too, and the starting cost is higher.

While searching for the parts I know I bought, I did do a bit of sorting and organizing. That’s always good.

I’m hoping to finish messing with the mower, and actually cut some grass today. Then I’ll probably do some more demo in the dock house, and maybe give it one more spray with the ‘kills everything’ treatment (VitalOxide, if you were wondering, and not from any specific knowledge, but from getting it cheap in the auctions last year.) In Houston Texas you know you’ll need cleaner and disinfectant eventually. This stuff is supposed to be better than plain bleach, and has an odor reducing property too. Seems to be working so far.

I’ve got some other gas powered equipment that needs work too, so maybe I’ll get to that.

Or maybe I’ll do something else. The lists are long.

Having part on hand helps. Having the supplies you need on hand helps. Having the knowledge to apply them helps a lot. Stack all three.

nick

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