Font Size:     

Category: WuFlu

Sat. Sept. 18, 2021 – work, work, work, and then work

Cool and sunny, tending toward hot, with some small chance of rain – because Houston. Friday was overcast in the morning, and sunny in the late afternoon and evening, with moderate late summer temps. No rain that I saw, but lots of threatening clouds.

Drove around, did my pickups, then got home in time to see my girls off to camp for the weekend. That leaves me free to work at my secondary without regard for anyone else. Dog is fine at home in the kitchen, with access to the back yard. He’s big enough now I don’t worry about a bird swooping in and carrying him off. That was an actual concern when he was new.

So my plan (ha!) is to sleep in a bit, then pack a lunch and head out. Simple, direct, and we’ll see if it happens that way.

In the mean time, do an inventory, even if just mentally, but actually lay eyes on your stuff. See if you can find it, count it, assess its condition.

And then where you have gaps, stack some more.

nick

Read the comments: 58 Comments

Fri. Sept. 17, 2021 – another week gone in a flash…

Slightly cooler, still humid, maybe rain. Had overcast most of yesterday and some threatening clouds, but never did rain where I was. It’s lot easier to do auction pickup with the pickup truck but then I need to be fairly confident that it won’t rain.

Pickups are the order of the day, at least the order of the afternoon…

Yesterday’s pickup went well. Got stuff for my non-prepping hobby, including something to flip. In the late afternoon, I finally got together with the craigslist flake and did a deal. Sold my $5 auction purchase for $250. I wish I had more of them… I do have more high value items to sell, I just need to get busy with listing them.

I am starting to see a difference in my house, my office, and my secondary location. It’s just slow going.

And I want to go faster, because the decline is accelerating. The latest is fedgov limiting the drugs that 7 southern states will get to treat covid. We’re using up too much, what with our not vaxxing, and not cowering, so they need to save some for the others, who might need it later, because we’ve been BAD and don’t DESERVE the EXPENSIVE treatment. So, people in Florida and Texas can just suffer and die. If there’s anyone thinking that “well they should hold some back for the other people who might need them later” contrast this action with NY Governor sending State Troopers to other parts of the state to seize ventilators for NYC’s use in the early lockdown days.

The uniparty intends to bring us to heel. I don’t think that is going to work out like they think.

USE the time that’s left. Always be improving your position. And stack stuff. Lots of stuff.

nick

Read the comments: 66 Comments

Wed. Sept. 15, 2021 – well that was a big nothing burger, thankfully

Cooler and humid, forecast calls for rain. Yesterday was cooler but pretty wet, with high humidity and occasional misty drizzle.

I got the yard raked up and all the small debris in a pile. We didn’t have any real ill effects, and most of the people we know were the same. We do have school friends that were without power, and two schools in the district will stay home today because they are still dark too, but we were fine.

After the cleanup, I did stuff in the house. Too dreary and humid outside. I put up two of the new child safety gates I got at auction. We have one room in the house that still has carpet, the sunken formal living room. We left the carpet for the kids when they were small and we use the room as a “play” room and library. The dog decided he likes pooping on carpet. So the child gates went back up until we can break what became a habit very quickly. I also gave up and got a “potty pad” of fake grass. We put it in a spot he’s picked to defile, and the plan is to move it outdoors gradually. I don’t think it’s gonna work, and I didn’t want to do anything that encourages or allows ‘going’ in the house, but I got overruled. I just buy the stuff.

I was also able to list some ebay stuff, and fix an electronic gadget that’s been on my list for a while. It was sitting on the freezer, and I need to clear off the freezer, and I thought I knew what the problem was, so I decided that today was the day. The main problem turned out to be corrosion on the power input jack, but I was able to reflow some sketchy looking solder joints, and clean up some moisture damage on the board. In any case I got it working and now I have a Logitech Squeezebox Boom to sell or more likely, use to listen to internet radio and streaming. It was the kind of project I like. It sat on my list for a long time, it got me something I wanted, and it moved from where it was just piled up, toward someplace useful. Three birds killed with one stone. Of course, it was a low priority thing that jumped the list but sometimes I just need to do that.

I also had one of the weird coincidences that seem to define my life happen. I picked up a big LG monitor for $2 because “it won’t stay on”. It would light up with the “nothing connected, going to sleep” message, but as soon as you connected a source to it, it shut off. Google said the wall wart psu was aging, and ailing, and replacing it should solve the issue. The connector is strange, so I didn’t have one in my bins. 19v, and has a center pin in the plug. The weird part is that Monday I stopped in Goodwill, looked in the box of power supplies, and FOUND ONE. $2 and it worked. Monitor now displays source material just fine. Wife will use it in her work from home station to make sure it keeps working, and then I may move it somewhere, put it with a system for sale, or just sell it. Weird that I got exactly the thing I needed, but that is how my life works.

I also looked at the UPSs and couldn’t find any reason why one PC would stay on while the other shut off. Both are in the ‘battery’ side of the box. And in the bedroom, everything is in the battery side as well, so I think it just wasn’t turned on. I did some cable cleanup and pulled my other old TiVO out of the bedroom. Put a new keyboard on the KODI box and got it back online. The youtube ‘add on’ is still fubar’d and I didn’t mess with it. I’ll just keep using the TiVO bolt for now. I’ve got an apple tv, and two roku boxes I could use, or one of several of the Kodi based streamers from china. I just need to mess with it and I don’t think it’s that important yet.

So I got some stuff done, but all stuff from down the list, and not critical stuff. My back felt better, so I really didn’t want to do a lot of physical activity. Today I’ll have to do better. Auction stuff, ebay stuff, and prep stuff. Joy.

I better get to it, ‘cuz those things aren’t gonna stack themselves…

nick

Read the comments: 79 Comments

Tues. Sept. 14, 2021 – Welcome Czar Nicholas…

Probably hurricane conditions today, although who knows? Nicholas became an official hurricane last night. We’ll see where it came ashore and what it did this morning.

Yesterday was overcast with misty drizzle interspersed with downpour…

I got wet on my ‘last run’ to the grocery store. Being the good prepper I try to be, I didn’t really need to go to the store and we’d have been fine but it was time for my normal grocery run. The bonus was getting a bunch of prime steak on serious discount, and even grabbed some pork chops on sale. It’s been a while since I had a good meat score, so I was due. And it never hurts to top up the fridge.

As of midnight, we still didn’t have any real weather at the house. I watched some youtube footage of it coming ashore in Surfside TX, and it was blowing pretty good, with some storm surge. Definitely 2-3ft flooding in Surfside.

This guy in his house is better than network coverage by a factor of 10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QC2Xh_dvAo4 Ryan Hall, Y’all. His Ida coverage was great. He must have an iron butt and huge bladder because he’s in the chair for a long time. His setup is stunning. Interesting to see the future of ‘citizen journalism’. One guy, education and skills, a lucky break, and good follow through, joined to a crowd funding model. Ain’t technology grand? And some people are ready to burn it all down.

Opportunities are everywhere.

Keep your eyes and mind open, your powder dry, your head on a swivel, and your stacks high 😉

nick

Read the comments: 54 Comments

Mon. Sept. 13, 2021 – bad weather inbound

We’ll start the day normally, hot and humid, chance of rain. We’ll see where it goes from there. Yesterday was sunny and a bit cooler than summer, but still plenty hot in the sun. But then, in the late afternoon, the sun went away and it was uniformly overcast. It cleared briefly for a very pink and orange sunset which was very nice.

I got the yard trimmed and mowed. Weeded the raised beds in the back yard. Moved some stuff around. Filled 4 big water jugs (that I had cleaned after the freeze but never refilled.) Other than that, I took it easy. My back issue was borderline bad all day. I was right at the point where it could get a whole lot worse very quickly, so I didn’t want to strain too much.

WRT to water jugs, one was a Coleman 5 gallon, two were 7 gallon aqua-tainers, and one was a 7 gallon Reliance jug in a more NATO style. One of the ‘tainers was new to me, just picked up last week, the other had been out in the sun. Well, I stacked the new one on the old just to see, and the old split open on the bottom corners, which had been exposed to the sun… I’ve noticed before that the ‘tainers will get brittle from the UV. Keep them in the cool and dark and you will keep them longer… The coleman and the other Reliance jug are much heavier plastic, and a different type. I’m sure they could deteriorate too, but they seem sturdier.

I have replacement caps and vent covers that I bought some time ago for the aqua-tainers. The spigots break and let air and junk into the jug. Fortunately the caps usually don’t, and the thread for the spigot is a standard US NPT pipe thread. I’ve used a hose bib in place of the plastic spigot before, but this time, I just used plastic pipe plugs and removed the spigots that had broken.

To prep the water, I rinse the containers out with straight bleach, empty that out, and then fill with tap water. There is plenty of bleach left to treat the water. I had some treated that way that were still drinkable after 7 years. Bigger containers will need more bleach added. When I use the water, I put it through a Britta filter pitcher just for taste. You can also remove any chlorine taste or smell by aerating the water (pour it back and forth between pitchers a couple of times).

I’ve got lots of water stored, but the 5 and 7 gallon jugs are very convenient for daily use when you don’t have city water. You can easily bring them into the kitchen, or your ‘camp kitchen’ and dispense water as needed. It was past time to get them filled and back into service.

I’m sure there are other aspects of my preps that need a similar review and refresh. One more thing to add to the list… we’ve got time, until we don’t. Time to get cracking on inventory and double checking that everything is still in good order.

Stacking is the easy part. Don’t neglect the other aspects of maintenance and rotation like I’ve been doing.

nick

Read the comments: 64 Comments

Sun. Sept. 12, 2021 – big storm coming, better get ready

Nice day in the forecast for today. Cooler and sunny, not crazy hot. Sat. was similar, although it did get hot in the afternoon.

Went to my meeting, had a good time. Went shopping. Came home.

Plan for today is sleep in, then either do some stuff around the house, or sort stuff in storage and get it ready to take to the auction.

There is a big storm coming. Both literally and figuratively as it turns out. The Gulf Coast of Texas, Louisiana, and even parts further east are about to get up to 20 inches of rain if the forecasts are right. That’s several days of downpour and flooding with lots of damage.

So I’ll be topping up the day to day and getting ready to not have my pickup truck for moving stuff that can get wet.

In the figurative sense, we’ve been talking about the coming troubles for a while. I don’t see any way to avoid it at this point, and these things tend to kick off with very little warning. Use what time you have well. Hey, maybe it will be months or years. Good. Our stacks will be higher.

I quoted author Larry Correia yesterday, and I think one part of his advice bears repeating. Make yourself useful to your community. I’ve been slowly coming around to the importance of this. RBT thought he could position himself as resident wizard, but I thought that trying to do this AFTER the Fall was pretty difficult. (We had one discussion about this wrt ham radio.) He did get out into the community more at the new house than he ever mentioned at the old.

Other people in the blogosphere have been hammering on ‘tribe’ and community for a while, and on the folly of being a ‘lone wolf’. In our isolated and fragmented and mobile lives, it’s a difficult thing to do- becoming part of a group, part of a community IRL… we’ve found online substitutes but too often neglect the local, local, local aspects.

Hence part of my push for meatspace activities, real world training opportunities, group activities, and civic participation. We don’t have lodge brothers anymore. We don’t have high school friends nearby, or even poker buddies. Use what opportunities arise. Get out there and meet some people. Leverage what you have.

And stack it high and deep.

nick

Read the comments: 64 Comments

Sat. Sept. 11, 2021 – and yet life goes on

Slightly cooler, and less humid, with sun and little chance of rain. REALLY nice in the shade with a breeze. Anyway, that was yesterday and what I’m hoping for today.

Got my plumbing repair done. For the record, yes. You do need to shut off the water before removing the screws holding the shower mixing valve in place. You really do. Took about half an hour start to finish and was very straightforward. The youtube video called out the only tricky part (not getting the old O rings out, or not getting the new ones in place) so it was easy to do.

Got some more stuff into bins for the local auctioneer, and got several bins dropped off.

Went back to storage and sorted through even more stuff.

Put a few items up on ebay, as a test. I never used my phone to list, but a youtuber I really like watching says he does all his listing from the phone. His product mix is different from mine, but for common items that have upc codes or are otherwise easy to find on ebay, the phone app works pretty well. It saves a couple of steps involving picture handling, and it fills more of the listing form for you. It isn’t great for entering a lot of text if your description is long. So far, I’ve just used it for a couple of books, games, and DVDs. I’ve already got 2 lowball offers on one of the game disks*, so it works.

You never know what you’ll find at the Goodwill Outlet stores. Two days ago I grabbed 10 pounds of costume jewelry for $15. I’ll make that back easy with the bakelite bracelets and still have a pile of stuff for my Halloween pirates’ booty. Yesterday I grabbed a B & W powered subwoofer that originally sold for $1400 and people are still asking $500-700 online for used ones. It’s a heavy SOB so I paid up for it. Still, should be a nice score. In the last week I found a $1500 coffee maker, nike watch, vintage sportswear, and tons of books for the kids. Gub accessories and reference books too.

Now I need to get it sold. I’ve already listed some, and taken a bunch to the auction. Some recent scores will bulk out the bins of other stuff that I’m selling that way. BTW, the auctioneer is still happy to get more from me, including some of the industrial stuff. He’s the first of them that actually meant it when he said “bring it all.”

Non-prepping hobby meeting today, so I’ll be offline until noon-ish. Mostly I think we’ll be doing ‘show and tell’ for stuff we swapped around at our show last weekend. Should be fun.

I really hope the islamic terrorists are content to carve up Afghanistan for a while and don’t have anything planned for today. It’s a big day for them too, so if you’re out and about, keep your awareness up. Self radicalized ‘lone wolves’, or an organized plan, an attack is overdue. Never forget. Never forgive.

Go to the store and buy some stuff. Stack it high.

nick

*sold it for listing price while I was writing this post. Now if I could do that for some big ticket items…

Read the comments: 55 Comments

Fri. Sept. 10, 2021 – some days these write themselves, others? Not so much.

Probably hot and humid, although if we’re lucky we’ll get a little less of each. Yesterday started cool but ramped up to over 105F in the sun at my house… that is pretty hot. It was less in the shade, but still, pretty hot.

Did my pickups. Had to get D1 from school. She stayed after for some math tutoring and the bus situation for late buses isn’t great. That cut my day short. I did get stuff into appropriate bins and I have an appointment to drop off those bins at my auctioneer today. I have to load up a few at my storage unit too.

I did a small amount of additional cleanup of my patio pantry shelves. Another box of instant oatmeal, and two more big round cardboard canisters of regular oatmeal went in the trash. There will be some more spoilage when I get the shelves fully cleaned. I’m sure there is another ugly surprise in the garage shelves too, when I get to them.

There was some discussion of Best By dates and stored food longevity over at Borepatch’s blog. I made a comments about some of my successes and losses. This week we ate ham I froze a year and a half ago, Knorr pasta in a ‘sorta’ foil pouch from 6 years ago was fine, and 5 yo cake mix tastes great. IDK when the crumbled bacon is from, nor the butter. It lives in the freezer until needed, and I’ve got a lot of it to rotate through. I’ve let some stuff draw down a bit, and I’ll be fixing that in the next couple of weeks. I already am ahead of replenishment on several items once again. Still, balancing is needed.

Other stuff needs to be looked at and rotated or refreshed too. Gasoline is my biggest question mark and I need to spend the time to go through all the cans and check on their condition. I’m pretty sure I will need to siphon the gas off the top and leave the water behind in several cans. Getting the dual fuel kit for my Honda inverter gennie would take some of that pressure off, but it’s one more thing to do.

Oh and I’ll be doing plumbing today. Got the shower part too late in the day to do the repair last night. Hey, it did get here in one day, just too late in the day on that one day…

Gotta get a bunch of work done so I don’t feel bad about doing my normal monthly non-prepping hobby meeting tomorrow. My biggest observance for 9-11 is living my life NORMALLY for that day. And remembering the dead. But trying for normal.

Keep working on your stacks. Might want some extra buckets. There’s a plastic shortage headed our way. And buckets are crazy useful.

Stack all the things!

nick

Read the comments: 78 Comments

Thur. Sept. 9, 2021 – cha cha changes

Slightly less hot, followed by hot, and accompanied by really freaking moist. I was really encouraged when I got up yesterday and it was 68F. First under 70F morning all summer. Then it still managed to get to over 100F in the sun here at Casa De Nick… so I’m thinking today will be a lot like yesterday. And hopefully we get a couple more days without rain so things can dry out a bit.

I did my errands yesterday, including stopping by my secondary location and putting away some of the stuff I pulled for my swapmeet. I need to take a couple more bins to my auctioneer, and move some stuff to storage today. I’ve got a pickup too, including a Creality 3d printer. It’s a filament style, open framework, and I’m hoping it both works, and is simple enough for the kids to run. My big uPrint is too complicated, large, and uses a proprietary CAD/CAM package. I wanted something a bit more approachable, and if I end up doing a ‘maker’ class at D1’s school, I could conceivably take the Creality in for class. I guess we’ll see. (been a while since I said that)

It’s interesting watching some other bloggers I read for different reasons become very interested in food storage, or some other aspect of prepping. When you look at empty shelves, and you think “Ya know, we ARE in the middle of a global pandemic, there have been a lot of riots, crime seems to be going up, and a crazy man is in the Oval Office, maybe putting some food up is a good idea, there might really be hyperinflation, or a civil war…”

Change is in the air, and not in a good way. People are starting to smell smoke and are realizing they are standing in an inch of gasoline. There are so many places the spark could come from, it seems almost inevitable that it WILL come.

I know there were some regular readers here who were caught a bit short way back in March and April of 2020. Please don’t let that happen again. Take the time and do some of the things you’ve been putting off. What can it hurt? 4 buckets of rice, <$200 worth, could help you stretch whatever you can get. In a year, or less, those buckets could save your life. What else could you get for $200 that you could say the same, that is so easy, and that will still have value, even if nothing bad happens? I think if I was starting from scratch on food, and was looking at what I could do that wasn't "crazy", didn't cost too much, would last, and was easy to store, I'd buy as much rice as I could. I'd get a pound or two of salt, a gallon of soy sauce, and a shoebox full of gravy mixes. You could get all that, 100-150 pounds of rice and the rest in a single black bin with the yellow top... or several buckets. I'd go with the buckets, but I've got bins with bags of rice in them and it stored fine for years. Add canned veg to mix into the rice, some canned meat, and canned beans as you can. There are a lot of strategies, and you can combine them, just DO IT. Get some food put away for a rainy day. Because when Claire Wolfe starts saying things I was saying a couple of months ago, I'm starting to get a bit freaked out. It means that a certain amount of the zeitgeist is changing to 'getting through this' and 'coming out the other side'. People are starting to see an event, a period, an era, what have you, and they are shifting from surviving the moment to planning for the long term. This is very different from 6 months ago. People are making plans to pull back, go underground, hide, (take active measures), etc. and survival has become the goal. NOT 'get back to the way things were', but survive until they can start again. That's a change in mindset. No more 'try to keep some bad thing from happening.' Now it's 'try to survive the bad thing. Later you can do something else, if/when you make it through.' Eventually it will be about 'what comes next' but we have to get through some stuff before it even makes sense to think much about that. Changes. Big changes. Little changes. 1939-1945. Six years but what a difference in the world. On the bright side, change brings opportunity for some. It opens doors that were firmly shut, shuts some that were long overdue for shuttering, and generally stirs the pot. Stay flexible. Keep your eyes and ears open. Act if it makes sense. And stack all the things. nick

Read the comments: 103 Comments

Wed. Sept. 8, 2021 – mom’s birthday, among other things

Hot and humid, but the forecast calls for a lack of rain for the next three days at least. It was less hot yesterday than almost any day in the past month. Saturated humidity level though, and that was still pretty unpleasant. My wet buckets did not dry.

Took D1 to get her teeth tweeked. Did my pickups, hit the Goodwill outlet near me and the one near the airport. Got about 20 CDs and about 30 DVDs to add to the collection. I like to own media. Got some discs I really wanted too. I also picked up two laserdiscs. They are only worth about $3 on ebay, but I grabbed them for my very slapdash ‘museum of forgotten media formats’. They didn’t cost much and aren’t huge.

I got a bunch of appliance parts and accessories for ebay. Things like the water tank and cover from a Keureg coffee machine sell quickly and for good money considering their size and what they are. I need to get a bunch of stuff listed. I may work on that this morning for a bit. I need to check out the coffee makers I grabbed too, and make a decision to either list, fix, or part them out. Loading up a few more bins for auction is on the list as well.

Passed on all the items I was watching last night. It may sound like I’m buying a bunch of stuff while moaning about having too much stuff, but I’m trying to adjust the RATIO of the stuff. I want to get rid of the stuff that’s been sitting around, not selling, and replace it with either quick sellers, or stuff for the household. A box of Jeep CJ parts isn’t helping me, a couple of child gates will.

So I better get to it. Nothing is getting better in the world, clock is still ticking.

Keep stacking.

nick

Read the comments: 89 Comments
// ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- // end of file archive.php // -------------------------------------------------------------------------------