10:25 – It was 28.5F (-2C) when when I took Colin out around 0715 this morning. We’re still expecting snow over the next several days, but they’ve reduced the amount forecast. Originally, they were calling for 3″ to 6″ (7.5 to 15 cm) tonight and into tomorrow, which they reduced yesterday to 1″ to 3″, and this morning to a dusting to 1″. They are calling for more snow over the next four days or so, but with only moderate accumulations.
Barbara just left to meet some friends in Galax, VA, where they plan to wander around the craft and antique shops and have lunch and possibly dinner. Galax, like all of the small towns around here, is roughly 30 to 40 miles (48 to 64 km) and 45 minutes to an hour from us. Also like most of them, Galax is three or four times our population, and has a Walmart Supercenter, Lowes Hardware, and other big-box stores that we don’t have here.
I talked to Lori again yesterday morning about food storage, and particularly dehydrated supplemental foods like powdered eggs, cheese, butter, and milk. That got me to thinking that the last time I bought powdered milk was in June 2014 at the LDS Home Storage Center in Greensboro.
Back then, my immediate goal was a one year supply for the two of us and Colin, 2.5 people-equivalents. We hadn’t yet started to store additional LTS food for Frances and Al. So I bought two cases, 42 pounds, of LDS non-fat dry milk, which was marginally adequate for 2.5 people. Since then, we’ve added a couple cases of condensed milk and several pounds of Nestle Nido dry whole milk, but we really don’t have enough dairy for the 4.5 of us. So yesterday I decided to order more.
I first checked Walmart, which has four-pound boxes of their house-brand non-fat dry milk for $14.48, or $3.62/pound. I then checked the LDS Home Storage Center, which has their dry milk at $4.50 per 28-ounce retort pouch, or $2.57/pound. And that’s already packed for LTS, with an estimate shelf life of 20 years. Of course, we’d have to drive down to Greensboro to pick it up, a three to four hour round trip.
So I checked the LDS on-line store, where I found they had cases of twelve 28-ounce pouches for $46.50, or $2.21/pound. There’s a flat $3 shipping charge regardless of how much you order from LDS on-line, but even with that it’s cheaper to have them ship it to us. That gives us a total of 63 pounds of LDS non-fat dry milk, which with the other dairy stuff we stock is adequate for 4.5 of us for one year.
Note that this is all for cooking/baking, not for drinking. By all accounts, LDS dry milk is absolutely horrible for drinking. In fact, seven years ago, Angela Paskett did a comparison taste test among numerous dry milks, and LDS finished not just last, but far distant last. (Speaking of which, if you want a great reference about LTS food storage, order a copy of Angela’s book.)
But it’s fine for cooking/baking and doing stuff like making up pancake mix, and it’s cheap and already packaged for LTS. We like the Krusteaz pancake mix enough that I keep a couple 10-pound bags in stock, but it comes in a paper sack and costs about $0.75/pound, versus less than half that for mix we can make up ourselves from white flour, powdered milk, powdered eggs, and baking powder. Rather than deal with the hassle of repackaging it, it’s both easier and cheaper just to store the components separately.
I often get mail from people who’d like to buy LDS bulk LTS foods, but don’t have an LDS HSC within easy driving distance. (To answer another frequent question, LDS sells to anyone. You don’t have to be a Mormon or even have a Mormon friend go along with you to the HSC.)
LDS prices are generally excellent, although usually a bit more costly than repackaging your own. For example, the last time we bought a 50-pound bag of white flour at Costco, it was $12.50, or $0.25/pound. A #10 can of white flour at the HSC costs $3.00 for four pounds, or $0.75/pound. That’s much cheaper than third-party suppliers like Augason Farms, but it’s still three times as much per pound. Same thing with stuff like oats and beans. But for that higher price, you avoid having to repackage it yourself.
If you compare the LDS HSC price list with the LDS on-line store price list, you’ll find that some stuff is cheaper one place or the other, sometimes significantly. For example, in addition to the dry milk being cheaper from the on-line store, so are the canned onions (at $48.75/case on-line versus $54/case from the HSC). Also, the HSCs carry a wider range of foods than the on-line store, and you can buy individual cans or pouches at the HSC rather than buying in whole cases, which is the only option at the LDS on-line store.
Either way, if you’re building your food storage, keep both the LDS HSC and LDS on-line store in mind. For what they carry, they’re nearly always noticeably less expensive than commercial vendors.
* * * * *
Lotsa good info there, thanks, Dr. Bob.
Or is it “Reverend Bob?”
How ’bout “Reverend Dr. Bob?”
1 degree here, with a “Hazardous Weather Warning” and mostly that bright overcast again; no wind. A light coating of snow last night which will leave everything white for a few days. Tuesday the temp rockets up to 30! Tee shirt weathuh!
Off to the airport in a few hours for wife’s flight to Nawlinz.
I see that National Administrator tRump (speaking of which, hats off for MrAtoz, because he consistently called this for the whole year-plus beforehand); political GENIUS!) is trying to flog the ObolaCARE Lite deal. And that troops are on the ground in Afghanistan and Syria. Swell.
I also saw some stuff on the continuing efforts to take him out, by the Deep State and what appears to be a concerted effort by Obola himself with his commie-muslim minion, Valerie Jarrett, who now lives with him in his mansion/bunker two blocks from the WH. Can’t that place be droned?
Either one is okay. I have multiple Ph.D.s that I bought on the Internet, and I am an ordained minister of the Universal Life Church.
At a friends place in Hallandale FL. Off to the top of the Keys for a glass bottom boat tour, lobster and key lime pie. Weather is beautiful. 70’s.
I’ve not a Mormon, and I’ve been to the local LDS Home Storage Center once. They are very nice people. Two of them even wheeled out a cart containing my small order out to my car. I think the man handed me one box at a time and I put them in the trunk.
I can’t speak to their locations in other cities, but the one here would be a little hard to find without a GPS. It’s in an industrial park and kind of off the beaten path. It’s labeled but not like a more traditional retailer would be. I had a GPS equipped smart phone and I was thinking about giving up and asking my Mormon friend to take me when I found it.
The only thing I would do differently is I would have filled out and printed the order form online. As it was I made up my order on the spot on a paper form. Which was fine, but waiting for the nice little old lady to calculate the totals was the most time consuming part of the process.
All of my certificates proclaim they are from “Steve U”, which means “University” if I need academic credentials in Forensic Microaggression Anthropology or whatever, or “Universe” if the certificate informs readers that they can put their faith in me for salvation, for marriages, and for creating life.
FWIW costco sells the Krusteaz pancake mix here in 5 pound ziplok plastic bags. The ziplok never seems to work right, but I just drop 2 of the plastic bags into a bucket (to keep them mechanically safe.) If I open a bag, I refill one of the costco nut jars (square plastic jars with wide mouth lids, VERY HANDY) with my ready to use mix and fill 3 vac seal pouches with the rest. I do it as needed rather than all at once. If I had room in my pantry, I’d just fill 4 nut jars.
n
Prepping getting trendy:
http://nypost.com/2017/03/09/heres-how-the-rich-can-escape-nyc-when-a-calamity-hits/
“A disaster plan is NYC’s newest status symbol”
“The unique evacuation service costs an annual fee of $90,000 and is catered toward wealthy individuals and corporations who don’t have time to mastermind their own escape”
FWIW my sibling the banker has a new job, but will still be spending her required time in the ‘off site, backup location’ with full body scan required for entry. Some people DO take this shit seriously, and to them most preppers probably look like glampers do to survivalists.
n
“I can’t speak to their locations in other cities, but the one here would be a little hard to find without a GPS.”
ISTR that you’re in Indiana. If so, I assume you’re talking about the HSC on W 84th street. From Google maps satellite view, that looks like a pretty typical HSC.
From the Progressive Label Might Get Confusing Department:
https://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-conflict-within-deep-state-just.html?m=1
Yup, a mini-civil war inside the Deep State, which some of us have kinda grokked for a while now. I’ve heard it from LE and mil-spec and spook types for the past couple of years. According to CHS, the generals are the good guys in this scenario, but excuse me, ain’t it the generals pushing more warlike provocations in Ukraine, Syria, the South China Sea and the Korean peninsula lately?
I tend to agree with Rev. Dr. RBT; we’re fucked anyway, no matter what. This just gives us a teeny little window to get our ducks lined up better. We wouldn’t even have had that with Field Marshal Rodham, who is still out there with Larry, fomenting shit.
And if you haven’t already read this, it’s worth five minutes of yer time today:
https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/
My two takeaways:
1.) This stuff is already several years gone by. We can assume it’s more advanced now.
2.) They keep speaking of “The CIA” and “NSA” as though they are monolithic entities, but it’s actually regular ol’ human beans, our fellow Murkan citizens, in fact, who do this work. Ostensibly for “national security” and pretty decent pay and bennies, but that national security sword cuts both ways, as we have cause to know by now.
semper vigilant, fratres….
OK, here is the difference:
The WWII intelligence agency was renamed CIA shortly after the war.
The existence of the NSA was not public knowledge 25 years ago.
CowboySlim, PhD., Political Incorrectness.
I think I knew about the NSA, although not by name, as an undergrad in 1973 or 1974. I spoke to two guys who were interested in recruiting me for an unnamed government agency. Bizarrely, when I asked them how they decided to talk to me, they said it was purely based on the scores I’d gotten on the SAT and other standardized tests. These guys made the CIA and FBI ones I was interviewed by look like blabbermouths.
My point was simply that it’s regular peeps like us who do this work, whether OSS, CIA, NSA, FBI, etc. Our fellow Murkan citizens. Sorta like the former East German Stasi. Not some giant machine or robot or Zardoz head. Just folks.
And my other point was that the breathlessly awaited tech intel on these guys from Wikileaks is already outta date.
Now the buggers can tell what we’re thinking.
Good thing we’re all just unimportant small fry here…
…but I dunno about that guy down the street, with his chemical experiments,
stockpilinghoarding of goods and weapons, previous FBI files…I can neither confirm nor deny that I have ever spoken to, worked with, or taken orders from any member of any TLA, but I can state that I have never spoken to such a person who did not give off smug assholish superiority vibes.
(Unfortunately, I can’t stand firmly behind that statement because I may have tripled-negatived myself into a cul de sac. If you don’t look too deeply at it and just do a shallow reading, the meaning should come through.)
(Also, the assholish superiority any hypothetical spooks may hypothetically have felt would have been totally unjustified. Keeping in mind who I was running with at the time. Any hypothetical “superiority” would have been only because the assholes had information that they were not giving to us.)
“Terminate the colonel’s command.”
“Terminate, sir?”
“Terminate….with extreme prejudice.”
“I can affirm that I do not know of nor have I participated in, nor am I aware of any such mission, sir.”
You have a good memory. The web version of Google Maps seems to make it a little clearer than the Android version. There was an access road/driveway that I followed because it couldn’t be anywhere else. As I recall the doors were very clearly labeled, I don’t remember exactly what other signage was there, but it wasn’t much.
But then I’m the guy who felt a little weird going to my first RACES meeting. It was at the county Emergency Operations Center. Which is so new it doesn’t show up in Google Maps. I knew roughly where it was, it’s not hard to find things just outside a small town. It just felt weird driving past the signs that said Restricted Access and finding a place to park.
Even with a freeway exit ramp with their name on it, they still take the “No Such Agency” thing seriously.
On a project I might have been involved with, for a sub-sub-contractor, someone mentioned out loud that a security poster (like a Loose Lips Sink Ships poster) had a certain non-agency’s name on it. The next day the poster was gone, although I couldn’t have pointed to anyone who might have overheard the comment.
I’ve had similar things happen on other projects. Some ‘team building’ or ‘espirit de corps’ or ‘Office of Morale’ boosting goes on, then someone points out that it reveals more than maybe should be revealed, and it gets dialed back, perhaps only from “an abundance of caution.”
It’s hard to work in certain circles or on certain types of projects without inadvertently learning stuff you shouldn’t really know. Just reading the Tempest (anti-electronic eves-dropping for data) requirements reveals a lot of capability by what they consider ‘safe.’ Even if not subject to any Official Secrets Act restrictions, it’s generally considered bad form to discuss those things…
Just like any chemistry phd can make all sorts of illicit substances, or any frequent air traveler sees gaps in security, or other experts in restricted fields see and could exploit vulnerabilities, it’s generally not in your best interest to bring those things to light.
Unless you are an author. Then you spill the beans on everything, invent some plausible but not quite there yet things [you hope], and blab blab blab all under the mantle of “fiction!”.
n
Buncha damn idiots with that crap. We all know WTF is going on. A lot of the time. If we care to look and listen carefully. So tired of being treated like retarded chillunz.
And always some lowest-level wannabe-thug type who will get in your grille if you venture too close on whatever level and in whatever venue.
Also: it is way obvious just how bad airport security really is; it’s just security theater, as others have said many times. A show for the rubes and bumpkins and a chance for some cretins to throw their weight around.
A perfect example of why you should endeavor to NOT come to the attention of the masses, the media, or TPTB.
your ass is pwned.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-03-10/weaponized-autism-stupid-shia-labeouf-livestreams-hwndu-flag-remote-tennessee-field-
There it is, to quote a wise man.
…your ass is pwned.”
I saw that same nooz the other day and thought I’d posted a link to it here but senility has probably kicked in again.
Just dropped Mrs. OFD off at the airport, after she once again spent the last hour before leaving here turning the air blue because she couldn’t find stuff. I’ve been a bad influence on her; I don’t think she talked like that when we first met. But I’ve tried to be a good influence and implore her to have all her ducks lined up the night before so she wouldn’t be caught short and losing her mind on the day of departure, the hour, actually.
Many days it’s just like talking to the air.
No one listens to my next-younger brother down there in MA, either. He’s all alone and outnumbered three to one every single day.
We’re both wacky and out of our minds and we’re pretty close to being Nazis. So they believe, apparently.
Many days it’s just like talking to the air.
Say what? You think that makes you some sort of special snowflake?
Most of what I say fails to penetrate the outer ear canal and then I get blamed for not telling the spousal unit. Many times it’s because I am not saying what she wants to hear and just morphs what I said into her version. And thus I am always wrong. She gets it from her mother.
Yeah, the mother to daughter thing works like that up here, too, across three generations now.
And yes I am a special snowflake now because I am officially a differently abled person.
A college buddy got a job offer from a certain TLA based in Ft. Meade, Maryland. After telling all of us “I got a job with …” for a few days, he got a letter telling him not to tell people he was working for No Such Agency.
“thought I’d posted a link to it here” — and indeed you might have. I’ve been eating cough syrup, antivirals, and sleeping in between
hanging outwasting time on the internet with my friends…..Didn’t take them long once they had a direction to look. Other recent cases, and the tradecraft post from ?christian merc? as well as some unfortunates that hit the news all point to the same thing. If you give someone enough motivation, they will find and out you.
The thing with the planes was good too.
n
Yup, it was all pretty slick. And done within a couple of days, too.
I was never offered a job with any spook outfit as I was only a lowly machine gunner for their militarized ops in SEA, plus I’m sure my previous capers with anti-war demos and rock concerts and drug use were all gigantic red flags. Fuck ’em all, anyway.
Well now; we have a wind chill advisory in effect through tomorrow, and then we’re looking at “snow, heavy at times” starting Tuesday and running past Thursday. Only ten days till spring and now we’re finally getting genuine winta. Maybe Mud Season in July. Summuh for a couple of days in August.
Back from the keys stuffed with lobster, fish, beer and KL pie. Still in the 70’s and sunny.
I did apply to several TLAs when I was getting booted from the Army and got through the piles-o’-paperwork state and did some initial interviewing (over a secure telephone line, which was surprisingly sensible) with one or two … and then came to my senses. “These guys are the assholes I spent a good part of the past couple years bitching about. Why would I want to become one of them?” I have no idea what was going through my mind, that I would have applied to them in the first place. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t “Chicks dig CIA field agents. Get laid, yo!” but can’t entirely rule it out as I was young, male, in a high-stress-high-release job, and a dumbass. (Some redundancy may be noted.)
And I was also a young dumbass back from relatively high-stress hijinks in SEA, and (we’ll just ignore that post by MrAtoz above…something about being warm and sunny and eating lobster and drinking and suchlike…)I was stupid enough to apply for the Border Patrol. Passed written tests with flying colors, vets preference piled on, physical exam A-OK and interview with old-timer BP guys went great. Only one problem: I wear glasses. Whoops! Not good enough for the BP or Customs and Immigration then; even though w/glasses I am 20-20.
Even though it was good enough for both the AF and Army, good enough for the cops, and good enough to be a sharpshooter and counter-sniper. Nope. Ditto with the MA State Police even though I was an Academy graduate! Truly amazing. And stupid. Guys whose vision was 20-20 when they came on board and then had it deteriorate on them, got to wear glasses or contacts and that was OK!
But that’s the Feds for ya.
I’ve thanked my lucky stars since that I didn’t get on. Woulda meant at least the first three years down on the southern border and we all know what a joke that is.
I got outta that whole line of work just over thirty years ago and sometimes, to be honest, I miss it a little. And I could pick right up and do it again except for the same shit that soured me on it back then; dumbass Affirmative Action partners, clueless and heavily political brass, and the sheer futility of trying to do real police work anymore. About the only way I’d go back is to be a deputy sheriff all by myself in some godforsaken rural backwater.
My daily weapons EDC would be a Henry lever-action .41 Magnum rifle and a Ruger single-action .41 Magnum revolver. But I’d keep an AR and semi-auto riot shotgun handy, plus maybe a grenade launcher. The AR would be selective-fire, of course.
Too old, too broken down, and too senile. Wait—those are features! I’m actually CHIEF material!
Nope, police Chief is a political position, and you’d have to be a liberal prog to get it.
n
“Password Rules Are Bulls***”
https://blog.codinghorror.com/password-rules-are-bullshit/
I think that the only rule that he wants is the password must be at least ten characters.
The problem with working at NSA, CIA, etc is that their buildings have a great big bullseye on them.
“”About the only way I’d go back is to be a deputy sheriff all by myself in some godforsaken rural backwater.
My daily weapons EDC would be a Henry lever-action .41 Magnum rifle and a Ruger single-action .41 Magnum revolver. “”
Not so sure about that personal choice of calibre, but that set of career options does have a certain appeal for me.
At best, I’ll have to get the flintlocks out of the swamp, of course…
Come to think… Uh-oh, not much flint available around here…
And I guess I need to get busy on converting sulphurous swamp gases into useful propellants…
can’t sleep.
n
Working for any three letter agency comes with a lot of extra baggage. And giving current politics you are likely to be on the wrong side of someone’s purge, at some point. All previous revelations indicate that there is a ton of ‘office politics’ at play, to the exclusion of getting any real work done in many cases.
Not something I’m interested in…
n
I worked for a government outfit (in and out, several separate “careers”) and upon reflection on that situation, I recall that any effectiveness I might have had with the “mission” was more about the politics (or whatever it was; not in my frame of reference but I guess it should have been) than about, like, duh, keeping folks healthy…
Yo, Nick.
I’m awake too. Had a mis-timed nap…
Here for ya, Bro. Rant now!
Bizarrely, when I asked them how they decided to talk to me, they said it was purely based on the scores I’d gotten on the SAT and other standardized tests.
The GRE and SAT used to be IQ tests in disguise. If you took the tests prior to 1995, your scores correlate to your IQ percentile very closely.
Various charts online will show you the correlation if you are curious.
Hmmf. Just checked mine. When I was tested as a yout, I scored a bit higher than my SAT would indicate.
In either case, my mother once told me that the whole family had been tested at one time or another, but they never told us the scores at the time. Didn’t want our heads to swell. From the table, we’re all 90+ percentile at least. Now my head is swelling. Thanks for the link.
Now back to work.
99th percentile on every test as a child. Had the Iowa Basic, that I remember, did SAT and ACT and PSAT-NMSQT in the early 80s. I remember being shocked when a school I was considering took 6+ freshmen with perfect SAT scores. I liked tests, did well on them, but didn’t obsess or do much specific prep like they do today.
n
128 IQ here; wife’s probably higher. BFD. She voted for Larry Klinton twice and Obola twice and then voted for Cankles. When she really wanted Sanders. And thinks tRump is a dangerous Nazi. And we all here know by now how effed my brain is. So IQ in the general scheme of things in Real Life means nothing.
What’s bloody important is common sense.
And the ability to read and at least a liking for reading and learning new things. Even with a crappy IQ, someone with common sense and good reading ability can move fucking mountains. Literally.
So IQ in the general scheme of things in Real Life means nothing.
It means something to the NSA, obviously. OTOH, the only person from my graduating Electrical Engineering class who was recruited by the outfit was considered, to put it bluntly, batsh*t crazy. It also helped that she filled a quota (I’ll bet you can guess which one) and had ROTC training with a clearance.
They started with all the quota bullshit in the mid-70s, just as I was leaving Uncle’s farm system (they started moving grrls into the AF Security Police and “proving” that a pipsqueak chick could fire an M60 from the shoulder.) Then it was the cop shops, where the brass and politicians thought it would be a swell idea to vigorously recruit more women and minorities, regardless of qualifications or test scores that they imposed quite strictly on the rest of us. So we’d suddenly have partners that were pencil-whipped through the academy with test scores well below 60 or 50. We could kinda deal with the minorities, but the women were a problem, unless they were actually sizable and mannish types who could kick ass like we could and defend themselves most of the time. Of course back then it was pretty common to end up in hand-to-hand combat with drunks, bikers, drunk bikers, and other riff-raff who didn’t wanna come along quietly. Now they’d simply be shot.
IQ matters hugely in STEM; otherwise, not so much.
So with my crummy IQ, where would I be in a STEM college grad curriculum and looking for a job? Just for laffs.
I know: cleaning out beakers in the labs and sweeping up.
That “E” in STEM is education isn’t it? Nice of the useless fukers to include themselves into the acronym when the vast majority of the Es are an impediment to ST-M and have neither the training nor the mental horsepower for ST-M.
According to JerryP, IQ is the single best predictor for success in university, IIRC.
The truth is that we need a lot of high IQ individuals to create and maintain our current lifestyle and standard of living.
n
The “E” is for “Engineering.”
But your point about educationists is well-taken. Useless cretins, destined for the scrap heap eventually.
E = engineering
No, the E is for Engineering. They’re trying to make it STEAM and add in the Arts.
Ah, knew there was a basis for my rant in there somewhere.
I blame the lack of codeine.
my arts degree was very technical. My design lab was one of two licensed AutoCAD labs on campus, the other was in engineering. I produced and read far more detailed drawings than I did while working in construction. But then my degree is a BFA in Theatre Production, not basketweaving or acting or history.
n
Well, then, they should stick in an R for Retards and get a STREAM of useless piss.
I was trying to think of an “R” word to make “STREAM” but failed. I blame global warming and climate change.
stick in an R for Retards
You can’t say that anymore as it is not politically correct. I prefer the term Rejects.