07:51 – With the approach of autumn, cooler weather may finally be in sight. The warmest day this coming week is forecast to be in the upper 80’s (~31C), but by Saturday the high is to be in the upper 60’s (~20C) and the low in the mid-50’s (~13C). It’s been a relatively cool summer, and most of the long-term forecasts say it’ll be a cold winter. Which is fine with me. I much prefer cold to hot.
I’ll spend today, as usual, building and shipping science kits. I need to get another batch of 30 or 60 chemistry kits built, which means I need to fill bottles for the half dozen chemicals we’re short of for that.
I can tell that winter is approaching here in the Land of Sugar because the cold water coming out of the faucet has dropped below 85 F. But the concrete pond is still at 87 F, even with the two inches of rain that we got Sunday.
We be a closing our cement pond in a couple of days. Leaves are starting to fall and I don’t want to have to clean them out of the pool. Skimmer got clogged along with the bottom drain. Enough suction from the pump to break the skimmer. Happened within the space of a couple of hours from a storm. So it is time to install the cover.
A chainsaw might partially fix that problem.
What is your pool temperature now?
Looking at scheduling a camping trip for Columbus Day weekend. My daughter has been begging me all Summer to take her camping. Figure I should take her while she has the interest before adolescence sets in and her nose is glued to a smartphone. I love Autumn camping. To hell with Summer camping. Nothing is more miserable than sweating on a hot humid night in a tent while you’re trying to sleep.
A few days ago we touched on the subject of Get-Home Bags or Bug-Out Bags. I knew I had had something meaningful I’d said on the subject, but hadn’t remembered that a browser lock-up ate my work. One of the many occasions when I thought I’d learnt to create it with an auto-saving text-editor, then copy and paste into the on-line posting window. It won’t go to waste, though, so I’ve re-created it, and post it here. The whole thrust of it is cheap, light, and quick. It’s not ideal, but it’s a lot better than nothing. It’s certainly worth having for an emergency, even one where you stay with your vehicle. It would be better with more clothes, better food, better tools, better bag, and a firearm and ammunition. However, what I’ve got, accompanied by a print-out of this note, will be way better than nothing, can be pulled together at home in only minutes, costs (excluding optional items) less than $5, and can also be used to equip others (or serve as a gift starting-point for others to build their own).
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Suggestions for quick, easy partial contents of a Get-Home Bag (GHB) or Bug-Out Bag (BOB). Most of this is cheap and can be put together in minutes or hours starting right now without access to shops, the rest can be filled in with an hour or less of shopping. When it comes time to use these, you can and SHOULD discard anything which would be excess weight without worry. Contents should be rotated frequently – they WILL need it as they have been cooking in a motor vehicle until called upon. Note all this stuff is cheap and light – if you need to help others by distributing some of this, then you can easily afford to do so.
Water: PET soda bottles, mainly 1.25 and 2 litre bottles, one 600 ml, just three-quarter filled with water, tightly sealed. This allows air-space, so if they happen to freeze the air can compress rather than bottles bursting. PLENTY of water – use to top-up radiator if it boils or leaks, bathe baby or wounds, top-up windscreen washer. Drink LOTS, preferably not from your stores, before you start.
Footwear: joggers, walking shoes, hiking boots – whatever you have used, have broken-in, and will be comfortable using to walk long distances. This may vary with season, but have SOMETHING.
Fire: boxes and books of matches, long fire-starter matches, Vaseline and cotton balls, a magnesium tinder-scraper with flint and steel, some char-cloth. Pack a small very strong magnifying glass for fire-lighting, along with tweezers for medical reasons. Ideally have two BIC lighters (NO BRAND SUBSTITUTES), but they need to be rotated often as the gas will evaporate. Alternatively a Zippo lighter and fuel. Everything sealed in zip-lock bags. Possibly some lighter fluid, petrol or gasoline, turpentine, Shellite or Coleman fuel or white spirits, in a small sealed jar inside a larger jar (which can also double as a disinfectant for wounds).
Candle (wrapped tightly and sealed in alfoil, then in a plastic bag, then another – it will melt in high temperatures – keep it roughly in shape).
Knives. Paring and fillet knives – approx. 2½” to 6″ blades, ideally sharpened with stone and steel. Maybe some saw-edge serrated steak knives. Decent protection against hand slipping onto blade, sheaths made from corrugated cardboard wrapped and sealed with duct tape.
Multi-tool – Swiss army knife or Leatherman.
Socks. Two types, thin cotton knit, and thick sports socks. Can also be worn as mittens and “bed-socks” for warmth at night.
Underwear. Change of underpants (or swimming trunks or briefs) and singlet/vest. Spare T-shirt.
Brassiere as/if appropriate.
El Cheapo rain jacket or parka.
Ski-mask or balaclava. Cap.
Triangular bandages/slings torn from an old sheet. They can substitute for bandannas, and can be folded for bandage pads.
Micropore 2″ medical paper tape.
Toilet paper or paper towels (which can also make bandages).
If you use joint supports or Ace bandages regularly, then spares of those.
Duct tape (or hundred-mile-per-hour tape).
Folding scissors.
“Housewife”. Small package with various needles, thread, various buttons, safety-pins, dental floss.
Food. Sugar – ideally sugar cubes, but granulated will do until you can get cubes. Sweets – hard candies that won’t melt or go stale – barley sugar, butterscotch, fruit drops, mints, whatever. Dried fruit – sultanas, raisins, currants, dried dates and apricots and apples, anything else selected for keeping ability. Many separate waterproof packets.
Space blankets – possibly.
Baby wipes or sanitised hand wipes – possibly.
Water filter straw – possibly.
LED flashlights – including one headlamp.
Fishing line, heavy duty, hooks in corrugated cardboard, swivels, split-shot lead sinkers.
Line stripped from CAT3 or more cord, which can be used for fishing leaders, or for making snares.
Some spoons/spinners cut from an aluminium can.
Some soft plastic worm or minnow lures.
Thick strong elastic or rubber bands.
Cord or twine. Paracord is traditional, but any thin light cord made to tie loads onto trailers or roof-racks will do fine, and is cheaper.
Lightweight plastic tarpaulins. Use as tent, as “hoochie”, as poncho, as ground-sheet, as back wall to an open-front shelter with fire out from the front.
Garbage bags. Climb into one to keep legs warm at night. Wear another with head and arm holes. Make a back-pack or haversack with cord shoulder-straps – at least one end of strap being a quick simple loop “lasso”.
Contractor’s garbage bags. Big enough for a waterproof, windproof sleeping bag. One inside another can be quite (relatively) warm.
Freezer bags – assorted sizes. Obviously can be for waterproof storage, can also serve as gloves or mittens, waterproof linings inside/outside socks, waterproof leggings or gauntlets. Hold in place with big thick (¼” wide) elastic bands.
Newspaper. Multiple layers trap air as insulation, as any worthwhile hobo knows. Also windproof.
Wrap torso, possibly limbs, hold with rubber bands, then put outer layers of clothing over it. Sleep in it in garbage bags to absorb condensation at night.
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So far it’s all super cheap and disposable. Heaviest portions, apart from water, are fabrics, footwear and duct tape, and maybe the multi-tool.
One day off to rest, then back to a dizzying grind through the weekend. This is the day I paid bills, including another installment to the US Treasury. Since we lost our biggest video client (she moved to another law firm and is no longer doing Med Mal), I am going to be overpaying this year.
Summer is finished here. Walnut trees began dropping their nuts before August was out. Temps are barely into the 70’s and next week is forecast to be mostly in the 60’s. Fall is just around the corner: 22:29 EDT on 09/22 — it will already be 09/23 in Europe, so autumn comes late this year.
I do not use printers very heavily, but never had a problem with anything laser (desktop, not the high-volume stuff) from HP on Windows, once they got out of the earliest generations but before Carly F. took them from one of the finest engineering companies on the planet, to one of the worst. I buy refurbished printers from Jamie Dellinger in Madison, WI, at Madison Office Machines, but on the web at something like ‘Cheap Printers’. The printer is too new if it no longer has a dust cover over the paper tray; that is the ‘cheap stamp’ Carly F. left. I have had 3 of the HP1200 laser series, and those are incredible printers. Never a misfeed on any of them — unlike my first HP, a LaserJet II, which crinkled about every 5th page, and HP never could fix that.
One place I worked had that problem of 2 trays, one plain and one with letterhead. (Actually, it was 3 trays, because we also did ledger printing on that machine.) Some jerk, instead of using the ‘second tray’ command while printing, would change the plain paper tray to letterhead, and never switch it back. It actually took a couple months to identify the culprit, as the machine was located in an alcove that no one in our area could see into. We had an open office arrangement, and it was somebody from ‘the other side’ (of the toilets that were in the middle) using our machine instead of theirs. It was not supposed to be possible to do that, but somehow they did. It was a big machine that was also the office copier for our unit: one output tray for printing, and the other for copying. Cannot remember the brand right now. But opening the paper drawer and not closing it just right, caused paper jams, so the jerk who was constantly putting letterhead into the plain paper tray was causing us even bigger headaches with the paper jams.
Being a whistleblower has too many downsides for me to ever do it. If I happen on an incident and somebody else also witnesses it with me *at the same time I do*, and it was some kind of criminal offense, I might report it. Never otherwise. With family in the legal profession, the risk of being sued as a whistleblower is great, and just defending yourself could bankrupt you. Also, — pressure from businesses and government trying to encourage whistleblowing notwithstanding, — the general population intensely dislikes whistleblowers. Not sure where I saw the statistics, but the overwhelming majority of Americans do not like or respect whistleblowers. Some recent cases, including Snowden, show just how caustic being a whistleblower can be to one’s life prospects. And — ironies of irony — a study in the UK which was mentioned on one of the BBC podcasts I listen to, showed that the majority of whistleblowers lose their jobs — in spite of the fact their companies encouraged them to blow whistles. Beware! It is going to take much more than dirty pictures for me to report anyone, and even then I might not.
I cannot agree that being in debt personally — especially as one gets older, — is a good idea. I saw a person lose all of his assets and have to go back to fulltime work, just when he should have been retiring, all due to the debt he thought he could cover before the asset loss. An older friend of my late wife’s lost her husband just at the time she was retiring. His debts forced her to go back to work fulltime in a day care center to make ends meet and pay off the debt. The lady was still working there well into her 70’s. It is the unforeseen unexpected that always lays waste to the best of plans when it comes to debt.
Even for business, my paternal grandfather always maintained that a good business idea was not that good if it required going into debt. He and his brothers, who came of age around 1915, started several successful businesses during their working years. Even though they lost a considerable fortune when one of the banks they had money in went insolvent during the Great Depression (there was no insurance for deposits back then), my mom said the remaining money they held (which was far less than they lost), made them rich during the Depression.
The sole plus from my first wife’s divorce was that — regardless that it left me with nothing — it made me debt-free. Although I am a practicing atheist, I *will* pause for a moment of reverence to that good Irish-Catholic judge who sent my ex’s debts on with her to the new relationship she started with someone else while we were still married.
From what I can tell, HP’s consumer printers are junk, but their more expensive office lines are good. We had to replace our all in one and got a Brother, it seems to work well. I also have a Samsung color laser that has been excellent.
A chainsaw might partially fix that problem.
Not an option.
What is your pool temperature now?
About 85 degrees.
[snip] Micropore 2″ medical paper tape. [snip]
Skip that, and use Elastikon. Much much stronger, more sweat / water resistant, etc. Just don’t put it directly over a wound, use gauze. Also tampons, not just for the customary feminine uses but they’re outstanding for staunching a serious bleed.
Have you ever thought about putting a polycarbonate pool enclosure over the pool?
I cannot agree that being in debt personally — especially as one gets older, — is a good idea.
Consumer debt, you bet. You should pay off credit cards each month. However, asset based debt such as home and businesses does not bother me. In fact, I have far more debt now than I have ever had. A first and second mortgage on my home and a mortgage on my business property. I am paying off the mortgages on a 15 year basis and will probably have them paid off way before then.
I may buy a new Expedition or F-150 next year and expect to pay cash. Hard to justify replacing my nine year old Expedition with 145K miles since It runs so well.
“I love Autumn camping. To hell with Summer camping. ”
Mrs. OFD and I heartily agree and endorse your position. We like to go when the state parks up here close up after Labor Day, or at the latest, Columbus Day. Outstanding sleeping weather and no damn bugs. Rarely any other people, either, as we do the boat-and-remote deals in the more remote parks, but this year we’ll probably explore up the lake a ways and into the 6,000-acre wildlife refuge there on the Canadian border. We may try wintuh camping this year, too. I am really digging my new snowshoes; deep into the woods and sail along on top of five feet of snow!
I am copying/pasting Don’s BOB list and and correlating it with my own as I work on one here for the coming wintuh and the forty-mile commutes over a roller-coaster highway in sparsely populated northern Vermont.
Whistleblowers: probably too closely associated in the Murkan mind with stoolies, rats and super-grasses. They almost always get the short end of the stick if they follow their moral compasses and try to do the right thing when it really counts a lot. But like Mr. Chuck sez, it would have to count a huge lot for me to ever take the plunge; I’m thinking of what we’d consider capital crimes anyway. Naked pics of adults on a computer ain’t gonna do it.
Told the Production Manager just before I left today, after sweating out for many hours trying to get two users hooked up to their Outlook mail accounts, that Windows 8 is not cutting it for connections to the ancient Exchange 2007 server running on an even more ancient Server 2003. To make a long story short. Plus, anytime a group of them moves their offices around, it screws up at least one person’s connections, logins, etc. So I’m dealing with the aftermath now of two recent office moves upstairs around me on top of my regular diet of Winblows help desk crap. He says to why not put Windows 7 on both of them, “since we know it works.” Fine by me. And I will recommend for the time being, until we get the Exchange server updated and more RAM for the 2012 domain controller, that we simply run Win7 and Office 2010 for now, and I’ll try to support the few Win8 machines as best I can. Apparently this is common out in the corporate world these days; still too many showstoppers with Win8 and connections to older hw and sw packages that were running fairly smoothly before.
They also have another kid coming in tomorrow morning from the local tech/vocational skool to interview for a position helping me out for a while, until we can get a regular full-timer on board. I suppose this is OK, but I sense they’re trying to get out on the cheap again, which I’ve been told is a trademark there. The kid supposedly is heavy into IT and good at help desk chit, so we shall see.
And will be contacting a local joint here to see about installing a scanner in the vehicle pretty soon. My SiriusXM is enroute and scheduled to arrive tomorrow, but more likely Thursday.
Have you ever thought about putting a polycarbonate pool enclosure over the pool?
No. Don’t need the expense.
Told the Production Manager just before I left today, after sweating out for many hours trying to get two users hooked up to their Outlook mail accounts, that Windows 8 is not cutting it for connections to the ancient Exchange 2007 server running on an even more ancient Server 2003. To make a long story short. Plus, anytime a group of them moves their offices around, it screws up at least one person’s connections, logins, etc.
Move the entire place to google apps. It will cost the business five dollars per month per email address. And your users will love you for the amount of freedom it gives them.
Move the entire place to google apps.
Exactly, move the email. No more worrying about an email server. Access from almost any device (even the new AppleWatch). Spam protection. To hell with Exchange server as that is just too much to maintain and handle not to mention licensing fees. We only maintain an email server (IMail) because we send email from our web applications.
I am not really sold on the other applications that supposedly replace word and excel. Not quite there yet.
Hi Bob,
Up here in North Central Massachusetts, according to my thermometer the highest temperature this year was only 92, which is at least 5 degrees cooler than the usual highest temp. We had a hot humid spell last week, and used out AC as much last week as we did the rest of the preceding Summer; 8 days total. Forecast highs for the foreseeable future are in the70s with lows in the 50s…
[snip] Micropore 2″ medical paper tape. [snip]
Skip that, and use Elastikon.
Sorry, for heavy-duty use duct tape or better is there. The medical paper tape is gentle on skin. I’ve got shin skin that’s gone thin and fragile – sorta crepe-like and parts with the underlying structure all too easily. Anything that holds on too hard is a bad thing. The Micropore or equivalent is just right. I’ve tried Elastoplast white tape which looks similar to Micropore (and I assume is similar to your Elastikon) , and it’s too rough on fragile skin, whereas if you use enough of the Micropore it will get the job done without also doing damage.
“…Up here in North Central Massachusetts…”
Haha, DOWN there in North Central Massachusetts, which I know much about, having lived in the area through the 1980s. Woostuh itself, of course, the Haht of the Commonwealth, and Lovely Leominster, Plastics Capital of the World. Two siblings and nephew live in West Boylston and son and DIL and three grandchildren in Jefferson (Holden). I hiked and x-c skied all over that area back then.
My 2 cents on printers.
– Corporate floor standing:
The Kyoceras we had ended having ongoing hardware and software issues, Konica/Minoltas needed a lot of maintenance both by local people and service people. We now have Canons with excellent integration to Exchange and good software support by Canon.
– Personal:
Ink jets that were good for me were Canon but I got tired of issues with clogged nozzles and the cost of consumables. I bought a mono laser Brother with LAN support for little money with toner cartrdiges cheaper than others and it has been rock solid since day 1. I plan some day to buy a colour laser from Brother but do not realy have a need just yet. They have come down in price a lot.
I’ll look into the Google Apps thang, if for no other reason than to dump Exchange and Outlook, which I loathe. But otherwise, from a sys admin POV, it appears to be just another mish-mash of stuff to administer on a daily if not hourly basis anyway. And pulling PHB manglers away from their beloved Excel spreadsheets is like unto squeezing blood from a turnip. Like the lawyers fifteen years ago with their WordPerfect being replaced by Word, en masse.
I briefly saw another WSJ nooz squirt earlier, something about polls showing enough Murkan cretins have bought into the ISIS scare-mongering and support yet more military actions against them, etc., etc., blah, blah, blah. I swear Orwell was only forty years off. This Murkan cretin supports massive military action against Mordor, posthaste.
Senor Reed on immigration, and right on target, too:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/09/fred-reed/los-indocumentados/
ech wrote:
“I also have a Samsung color laser that has been excellent.”
Could you give the model please? I have a three in one Fuji Xerox that’s okay but I’m thinking of getting a second, and colour would be nice.
On this I will have to agree with the first statement which was made by Chuck. I hope that by the time my mother’s estate gets settled that we will be able to write a check and pay off the mortgage, which at this point is our last remaining debt. I would much rather pay off the debt and invest what we are currently paying on the mortgage every month than invest the lump sum and keep paying on the mortgage.
That way whatever happens to house values, we’ll never find ourselves upside down on the mortgage. As Dave Ramsey says, 100% of foreclosures happen on houses with mortgages. The investment markets have gone up and down like a roller coaster for the past 10 years. I’d much rather have everything paid for and a smaller stake in the roller coaster ride.
Thanks for the inputs. I agree that HPs business-class printers are (or used to be) very good. However, the last one we purchased (Enterprise Laserjet 550M) was supposed to be a network-capable workgroup printer, but actually isn’t. It doesn’t take and store print jobs at all, but relies on the drivers on the individual computers to do all the processing. This leads to all kinds of fun. Just as an example: even though the printer has a “scan” button on it, you cannot really scan from the printer, at least not more than one page. You go to the printer, put in the page, go to you computer, press scan, go back to the printer to flip to the next page…
I have three printers I am considering: a Kyocera, a Samsung and a Sharp. Since someone said that Kyocera has caused them problems, and another is happy with Samsung, that’s probably the way I will go. Sharp is odd – they apparently only sell directly, and you don’t buy toner at all, but a service contract that includes consumables. The price per page is actually very attractive – the reason I probably won’t go with them is simply that I cannot find any neutral online reviews or information about this family of printer at all.
And pulling PHB manglers away from their beloved Excel spreadsheets is like unto squeezing blood from a turnip. Like the lawyers fifteen years ago with their WordPerfect being replaced by Word, en masse.
You can use the google apps apps but we generally do not. We POP3 down all email to Thunderbird or Outlook. A couple of my people use IMAP also which works well with google apps. The spreadsheet tool and the writing tool in google apps are OK, nothing great. Excel and Word are definitely better. For now.
Basically, the best of class app in google apps is gmail, hands down. It is the best web mail tool out there, period.
Disclosure, google tried to hire me to go work on google apps a couple of years ago but, no way!
And, the spam detection in gmail is the best, bar none. You have not lived until you have tried to clean out 100,000 joe job email bounces out of your email server. I basically gave up editing the master email files and just started deleting them after a while. Took me all day. Gmail stopped that nonsense by blocking that nightmare at the SMTP level.
As Dave Ramsey says, 100% of foreclosures happen on houses with mortgages.
Um, no. Houses get seized for failure to pay taxes and HOA fees all the time.
I would like to be totally debt free but life just does not work that way. I am right at 80% (cost basis) mortgage on my house and 48% (cost basis) on my commercial property. I am getting ready to add a game room and new utility room to my home and have the cash to cover that.
Unless, I find a house that I like better. One story, around 4,000 ft2 with two master suites. Having one’s disabled daughter living with you is a space consuming thing.
My University of Adelaide account is handled by Google. Zero SPAM ever. How do they totally prevent SPAM?
For us, at least, Google isn’t quite perfect. I get about one spam every two weeks. I think what happens is this: When something seeps through their algorithms, but enough users mark it as spam, then it is quietly put into everyone’s spam folders, and their algorithms updated.
Given how aggressive their algorithms must be, I am also amazed that I have never (iirc) seen a false positive, i.e., a desired email marked as spam.
In the last six or so months I don’t think I’ve had a false positive in my Hotmail account, but it has happened often enough that I skim the SPAM folder before deleting them all. I get about two SPAMs a day, on average.
I still get 40 to 50 spam emails a day put into my gmail spam folder. I do a quick review and then mass delete them. I get a false positive about once or twice a month.
Before we moved our domain MX record to google apps, I was getting 1,000 to 10,000 spam emails per day. It was horrible!