STILL not freezing cold. I’m beginning to think the whole “winter returns” was ‘overblown’…. I expect today to be better than yesterday, ie. clearer, and about the same temperatures. I think it hit 82F in my driveway. Sun came out late in the day too.
I did a bunch of cleaning and putting away. Wellllll, putting somewhere else… in the morning. Then I did a pretty big round trip to pick up a bunch of auction items. The most notable from a prepping perspective included several dozen first aid kit reloads of single serving antibiotic cream packets. I put them in my altoids tin first aid kit, and altoids tin “everyday” survival kit. Of course I also put them in normal first aid kits too. I think it would be hard to have too much antibiotic cream.
The other interesting lot was several boxes of lumber crayons. I got boxes of black and of white. I put the lumber crayons in my bigger kits, in my vehicle kits, and just loose in the truck. They will write on just about any surface and if you have black and white, you can mark on dark or light surfaces. You can use them to leave notes for others in your party who are following you, blaze a trail, or to do the FEMA cross on buildings in a disaster… and they don’t dry out. Yeah, pretty extreme use case, but they are small, cheap, and durable. Low cost and low effort but might save a life later…
Speaking of blazing a trail, I also keep a couple of rolls of flagging tape in bright colors in my truck. It can be used for trail marking, but most often I use it for flagging lumber or pipe when it overhangs the back of my truck… or for marking guy wires for temp antennas. I’ve also used it as streamer to stabilize kites when I have big kites in the air at the beach. Florescent orange is the brightest and one I use most often. Cheap, small, and useful.
Today I’ll buy the rest of the electrical parts I need for my project at the BOL, and I’ll head up later in the day. I should be able to crank out the work, but may need to stay Monday as well. We’ll see, as always. And I’m sure there is something on the list that could be done too.
Whatever small steps you take, whatever small job you get done, that’s one more thing you’ve done to help yourself and the ones you love. Big steps are important, but little things are too.
Stack.
nick
Slugabeds! Noon on Saturday here already, and no one has posted yet!
Nick, I use those white crayons to fill in the serial number and proof stamps on gubs that I have to present to the proof house. When those are legible and evident, it saves time, trouble and money…
@Denis: We’re just the early risers 🙂
TxDOT has toll lanes under construction on 183 from the I-35 interchange all the way up to Cedar Park.
The Colonists build their big homes in Leander and the west end of Georgetown. Very little planning happens beyond new toll roads for the traffic.
29 will eventually get tolled from Leander out to I-35 running east-west.
Welcome to Texas.
OVERRIDE
INSIDE THE REVOLUTION REWIRING AMERICAN POWER
Perhaps a little simplistic and melodramatic but, if accurate, so, so sweet!
Me, too. LOL, how long before this site ages out? It will be all obits.
74F and light overcast. Again.
——
LOL, how long before this site ages out? It will be all obits.
— a concern in any organization. Loss of institutional knowledge and all that. There are a couple of youtube channels that will be like losing a library… and it won’t be LONG, 10-20 years.
I noticed one of my auctioneers looking suddenly old and frail yesterday. It was a shock. I’ve been working with the guy for 6-8 years…
and my two main hobbies are aging as well.
Time waits for no man.
n
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/02/the_radioactive_mark_milley.html
Nah. They’re in a back room in a strip mall in Scranton, home of the future FJB presidential library. They’re going to save money by sharing the entrance with the laundromat.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/02/tone_deaf_anonymous_fbi_agents_sue.html
Sad isn’t enough. He should be sleepless and puking every time he looks in the mirror.
Who is going to push a Scranton Joe library project once he’s dead?
“Who is going to push a Scranton Joe library project once he’s dead?”
They had a competition for the location and Scranton lost.
The strip mall owner is 100% behind it–he also owns the deli, the Chinese restaurant, and the car wash.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/02/08/bidens-ev-bus-disaster-another-green-energy-scam-collapses/
Investigate and file federal charges against every bleeping one of them. Make them unemployable. Buy the house next door and convert it to a drug rehab. Piss on their petunias.
We need to create a public mechanism to crowd-source analysis of green boongoggle project. Allocate a small amount of money for submissions showing why a proposal is pie in the sky and will not work. Then let the public vote to see if they want tax dollars spent on it. If the project gets awarded and the nay-sayers are later found to be correct, award them a bigger chunk of money to use to do more analysis.
This is an example of a project that had no business being funded in the first place. The economics of electric school buses are non-existent, the company awarded the taxpayer subsidy had no track record, and the technology does not exist.
https://www.epa.gov/cleanschoolbus
Show me one. Show us all one.
Or more likely, show me a list of elected representatives that need to be retired for not asking that basic question.
@drwilliams:
If true, something needs to be done. But I think you’ve missed out a step. I would add the words, “if convicted” before “make them unemployable”. You don’t want to come off as a lynch mob.
G.
I think he died 4 years ago.
@Geoff Powell
“You don’t want to come off as a lynch mob.”
Good point. I would not advocate lynching for anyone pizzling away U.S. taxpayer’s funds of less than $1,000,000. Over that I’d leave it to the actual mob, most of whom have no prospect of taking home that much over a lifetime. But over $100 million I’d teach the class on tying the 13-looper.
Sat. Feb. 8, 2025 – People are strange, when you’re a stranger, faces look ugly when you’re alone…
Morrison was one weird dude but he made great music.
Jim Morrison lived with his grandparents in Clearwater, FL on and off, including a year he spent attending the same community college as I did 15 years later.
The grandparents house used to be a destination for the fans, but, in the end, it was prime waterfront real estate and torn down for a condo parking lot about 20 years ago.
All that survives of the house are … I’m not kidding … the doors, preserved by a really hardcore fan.
Just a few blocks away from the house is the place where Keith Richards first got the inspiration for “Satisfaction”, the Fort Harrison Hotel.
Maybe it is something in the water. Scientologists own most of the area now, however, including the Fort Harrison.
“Holding Your Ground: Preparing for Defense if it All Falls Apart” by Joe Nobody
https://www.amazon.com/Holding-Your-Ground-Preparing-Defense/dp/0615497551?tag=ttgnet-20/
A standalone non-fiction book on whether or not to bug out and how to defend your place if it all falls apart. I read the well printed and well bound trade paperback that I bought new from Amazon. I suspect that the author used the book as starting point for his excellent eighteen book “Holding Their Own” apocalyptic fiction series.
The author presents a mathematical model in a spreadsheet on how to calculate if you should stay in your present location or bug out if it all falls apart. For instance, a high rise apartment or condominium building is an instant bug out due to the probability of fire.
Then the author presents methods for defending your place. The number one item is planting trees to keep attackers from driving into your back yard or your difficult to defend areas. And the author advocates against active security defenses.
My rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.3 out of 5 stars (214 reviews)
Lynn
“the author advocates against active security defenses”
Is that no land mines or no boomsticks?
Left-Wing Media Faces the Chopping Block as Government Funding Comes Under Fire
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2025/02/08/nyt-is-a-govt-funded-media-outlet-n2651900
Not good enough.
Draft and pass the Left-Right News Equalization Bill.
Tote up the funds secretly pizzled out to the left wing rags, apply a correction for inflation, and set aside a like amount to support conservative journalism.
But don’t give it to conservative media, use it to support endowed chairs at journalism schools.
Oh, yeah, about those journalism schools. Hotbeds of left-winging communism mischief that they are, they need a bit of encouraging to de-bias their faculty. How about another bill to deny journalism schools federal student aid until their faculty has a left-right balance?
Not good enough.
Extend it to the entire campus.
I’m sure that, say, the African studies department would benefit from the diverse viewpoints of conservative faculty members.
Diversity–Not Just The Way They Define It Any More.
https://redstate.com/streiff/2025/02/08/the-us-treasury-spent-how-much-illegally-now-you-know-why-the-left-wants-to-stop-doge-n2185365
Just clear the Capitol Mall and build gallows.
Better yet, build a big 3-D printer and feed it with dump trucks of material and the electrical output of a nuclear plant.
Mass hangings would be much tidier than simply hunting them down in the streets.
“What’s Coming For Academia”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/02/06/whats-coming-for-academia/
The picture is the worst.
Allowing the Borrower Defense mechanism in the student loan program wreak havoc even on “good” schools’ reputations would be far more devastating to academia, but Trump views disbanding the Department of Education completely before his term ends as being more important.
“all academic institutions get vast sums of money every year from the federal government”
This does not seem to account for the student loan money.
“Much of that is for bona fide research”
What is much?
72F at the BOL with the moon in the sky. Not super clear, but better than it has been. Too much moon for good viewing though.
Just finished my leftover stew, and I think I’ll read for a bit before heading down for a small fire…
n
“the author advocates against active security defenses”
Is that no land mines or no boomsticks?
Specifically. He says that children or pets will be killed accidentally.
He does advocate trip wires all over the place with electronic notification.
He also says that wildlife cams are useful but get too many false alarms.
“Source Code” Hardcover – February 4, 2025 by Bill Gates
https://www.amazon.com/Source-Code-Beginnings-Bill-Gates/dp/0241736676?tag=ttgnet-20
Trying to repair his image with an autobiography ???
I would not be surprised if James Patterson ghosted it.
Fell asleep in the chair, decided discretion is the better part of valor. I’m headed to bed.
n
Ah, the ultimate retribution.
If DOGE wants to have a long-term impact, the best thing they could do, would be to force all federal financial transactions online – viewable by anybody and everybody. Leave no place to hide.
Public benefit agencies like like USAID, HHS, EPA, Social Security, et all: none of these have any reason to have any classified data at all. All financial transactions should be online, viewable by the public.
In one of his tweets, Musk writes:
To be clear, what the @DOGE team and @USTreasury have jointly agreed makes sense is the following:
– Require that all outgoing government payments have a payment categorization code, which is necessary in order to pass financial audits. This is frequently left blank, making audits almost impossible.
– All payments must also include a rationale for the payment in the comment field, which is currently left blank. Importantly, we are not yet applying ANY judgment to this rationale, but simply requiring that SOME attempt be made to explain the payment more than NOTHING!
– The DO-NOT-PAY list of entities known to be fraudulent or people who are dead or are probable fronts for terrorist organizations or do not match Congressional appropriations must actually be implemented and not ignored. Also, it can currently take up to a year to get on this list, which is far too long. This list should be updated at least weekly, if not daily.
The above super obvious and necessary changes are being implemented by existing, long-time career government employees, not anyone from @DOGE. It is ridiculous that these changes didn’t exist already!