08:54 – It was 66.3F (19C) when I took Colin out at 0710, partly cloudy and calm. Barbara is going to the gym this morning and has a meeting of the Friends of the Library after lunch. Otherwise, more work on science kits today.
The finished area downstairs is complete except for the flooring, which is to be installed around the 18th. It will be a relief to get the piles of furniture and other stuff back where they belong. Barbara has gotten things down there to the point where we can at least get to most of the stuff in the deep pantry room and the unfinished area where we do science kits.
My next project will be to install more shelving in the unfinished area and in the spare bedroom’s closet, what Barbara calls the water closet. That’s roughly 10 feet (3 M) deep, but only 40″ (1 M) wide, so I think we’ll mount shelves on only one of the long walls and the end wall. We’ll start those about three feet (1 M) off the floor to leave room to stack cases of bottled water and other bulky items under them.
More email from Kathy. She and Mike left on a big Sam’s Club run early Saturday morning. They filled up the back of her full-size SUV, as well as a trailer they’d borrowed from a friend. Their nearest Sam’s Clubs, one each in Virginia and Tennessee, are about equidistant from them. Either is about a three-hour round-trip drive. So they wanted to make their trip count. They did.
They returned with 400 pounds of white flour, 400 pounds of white rice, 400 pounds of assorted pasta, 300 pounds of white sugar, 120 pounds of oats, 100 pounds of assorted dry beans, 80 pounds of cornmeal, 48 pounds of iodized salt, 6 pounds of cornstarch, a couple dozen large jars of herbs and spices, 18 gallons of vegetable oil and shortening, 10 gallons of pancake/waffle syrup, several cases each of canned meats, soups, sauces, and vegetables, assorted miscellany like batteries, lanterns, etc., and a partridge in a pear tree. They bought something like a full ton of dry bulk foods and probably another ton of wet stuff. They had to make several trips in and out of Sam’s to get all this stuff, and Kathy said they’d prioritized ahead of time because they were actually concerned that they’d fill up her SUV and the trailer. Which they almost did.
When they got back they were faced with unloading all the stuff, which was worse than having to load it in the first place. They got the trailer unloaded first so they could return it to their friend, and then spent most of yesterday unloading her SUV and getting everything stacked neatly in preparation for repackaging. At least they have a basement garage, so they didn’t need to haul the stuff very far, let alone up or down stairs. During breaks from unloading/stacking yesterday, Kathy put in a bunch of orders with Walmart.com and Amazon.com for Keystone Meats, Augason Farms supplemental stuff, and so on. Not to mention an order with LDS online for foil-laminate Mylar bags and oxygen absorbers.
Kathy says they actually spent, or at least allocated to spend, more than the $6,000 that they’d been about to spend on the packaged 4 person/year kit from Costco, but they ended up with a lot more food and a lot better food than they’d have gotten with the package. What really, really hit her and Mike about my first email to them was that the package was something like 95% vegetable protein, and that little bit came from dried dairy and eggs. No meat whatsoever. All soy. Neither of them has eaten much TVP meat substitutes, ever. Both are whatever the opposite of a vegetarian/vegan is, and both of them are immensely relieved that they now have a lot of actual meat stored, with a lot more to arrive from Walmart once they’ve had a chance to try the sample cans they ordered and then order more, assuming they like them. Now all they have to do is repackage all the bulk food, which’ll be a job.
I don’t really have an adequate sample size to make any generalizations, but one thing that strikes me is that Kathy–like Jen, Brittany, and several other women who’ve contacted me–doesn’t mess around. I think it must be a girl thing. Guys tend to start prepping more gradually, dipping their toes in the water and then gradually building steam. Women tend to wait until they’re sure it’s what they want to do, and then dive in headfirst. I can count on the fingers of one finger the guys I’ve heard from who went from 0 to 60 in 0.1 seconds, but that seems to be almost the norm with women. Obviously, finances play a huge role, but within the limits of what they can afford, it seems that women get serious a whole lot faster than guys do.
So if you’re a guy who wants to prep but your wife objects, take heart. She may do a 180 on you. For that matter, if you’re a woman who want to prep and are facing objections from your husband, take heart. He may change his mind as well. I don’t know exactly what happens. Maybe there’s a trigger event or news story that bumps non-preppers over the edge into prepping. Or maybe it’s just the drip-drip-drip of the constant series of news stories on things that shouldn’t be happening but increasingly are. Or it may be some combination of factors. But whatever it is, don’t give up hope.
” Maybe there’s a trigger event or news story that bumps non-preppers over the edge into prepping. Or maybe it’s just the drip-drip-drip of the constant series of news stories on things that shouldn’t be happening but increasingly are. Or it may be some combination of factors. But whatever it is, don’t give up hope.”
From your lips/keyboard to the Spouse’s ears/eyes ASAP. Unfortunately her nooz sources tend to be from the Hive bubble enclosing the NYC-Mordor Corridor and FaceCrack friends and memes that they all chortle about. Loves Bernie and the anti-pope. And this is a very smart person, as some of you may have caught a glimpse of on the tee-vee last Thursday night. But has had a LOT of very bad news in her life and won’t open any mail whatsoever unless there’s an obvious check inside.
I figure, as you say, that it could be a sudden trigger event, the steady hammering of bad chit nationwide, worldwide, or a combination of stuff, even locally. Power out for a week or two in the winter with well water issues, and the town or city goblins breaking into houses might do it.
Overcast with occasional light drizzle so fah; working on various papers and light stuff inside the house. Not about to further impact the back and legs by any heavy lifting today. Did I mention that it sucks getting old?
My wife is on board. We’re not “preppers”, we have earthquake supplies. No politics involved. We live on an unlimited supply of fresh water and out house should be entirely unaffected by an earthquake.
Rick in Portland
“We’re not “preppers”, we have earthquake supplies.”
Nothing wrong with that. In fact, too many people who do call themselves “preppers” ignore likely threats and instead prepare for unlikely ones. My personal favorite are the people who honestly believe that the planet’s poles are going to shift. Not the magnetic poles, you understand. They shift continually. No, these folks are convinced that the physical poles are going to shift. Conservation of momentum? They’ve heard of it. Or not.
I hope you’re well-stocked. If/when the Cascadia fault does kick loose, it’ll be truly catastrophic. Let’s hope it doesn’t happen in our lifetimes.
I’d hope not. Otherwise you’d be in for a world of shit.
The Yellowstone Caldera (by whatever name) has been drifting over the millennia. I’ve been trying to think of a way to steer it a point south of east so it’ll sit right between DC and NYC (or Mordor and Sodom, as some would have it) when it goes off.
You’re worse than those rabid preppers who have detailed plans in place to take down bridges and dams if TSEDHTF, just to isolate their locations from the high population areas.
I’ve got plans to chainsaw some trees to limit vehicle access to our subdivision. Does that count? I know it’s not ‘evil genius’ level like a super volcano, but still, points for effort….?
n
I was gonna be a hardcore bastard about cutting off access to our village here by blowing a couple of intersections and a bridge, but I liked RBT’s idea of simply moving a bunch of dead vehicles to them and blocking them that way. Which would stop the vast majority of interlopers and invaders; short of a giant truck or armored vehicle bulldozing through them, which would also receive small arms fire, at least.
As for our house, the wife is on board with planting more rose bushes under the front windows and I may plant even more, or something equally thorny, under the east-side ground-floor windows, which don’t get much sunlight. Ideas welcome.
At some point, I may have to sneak ballistic film onto all the ground-floor glass and also stage plywood somewhere that we can nail over them all if it ever comes to that.
I would hate to have to saw down trees to block streets around here, esp. when there’s no freaking shortage of dead and abandoned vehicles in this AO just lying around.
Oh, I think that’s fine. In fact, if TSEDHTF, I plan to organize workgroups with chainsaws to drop a bunch of huge trees on US21 coming up the mountain, over on NC18 on the east side of the county, and so on.
What I objected to was taking irrevocable actions. One guy planned on taking down a major bridge to limit access to his area from the nearest population center. I suggested he think again about that. Once you take down a bridge, you may never get it back.
I told him he reminded me of the Musketeer in the movie. There was a tall wall with several heavy gates, each suspended from thick ropes. The first three Musketeers grabbed a rope each and then cut the rope below where they’d grabbed it. The falling gates hauled them up to the top of the wall. The fourth guy did the same thing, but made the mistake of cutting the rope above where he grabbed it. Ruh-roh.
I don’t have plans so much as desires.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” I have a dream that one day on the banks of the Hudson and the valleys of the Potomac, the sons of the coasts and the sons of the interior can join together and realize they have no masters. I have a dream that one day even the State of New York, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
(Seriously, whatever you think of Martin Luther King, or of black rights, or even of the Southern preacherman style of oratory, that speech was a masterpiece.)
I wasn’t a particular fan of King, but I’d rather they’d have shot the Kennedys. Oh, wait.
You could use Wallyhogs, but they’re nearly spherical so a team of six or eight might be able to roll them out of the way.
Blackberry bushes?
We live on an unlimited supply of fresh water and out house should be entirely unaffected by an earthquake.
How close are you to the urban area? Gresham?
“Blackberry bushes?”
Trifoliate Orange
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trifoliate_orange
The military uses it as “living concertina wire”.
How close are you to the urban area? Gresham?
Closer than I’d like, but I don’t plan to leave without my wife and she won’t. We’ll be prepared as well as we can.
That trifoliate orange sounds good but I’m not sure how it would do here; we get a tad more than just “moderate” frost and snow. And not enough sun on that side for blackberries.
I suppose if the chit gets bad enough, actual concertina wire will be a good option. Plus tripwire noisemaker surprises of varying lethality.
https://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2017/07/10/your-betters-look-at-you/
Not really a big club, per se. The Cloud People. The globalist elites. Most of them have no idea the rest of us even exist.
But yeah, they won’t last long if the S really does hit the F.
“We’re not “preppers”, we have earthquake supplies.”
That was tongue in cheek. My wife wouldn’t want to be seen as a “prepper”. So we have earthquake supplies. They should keep us going through most disasters.
There has been much discussion about earthquake preparedness here including horrendously bad advice from the Red Cross to buy freeze dried food.
Portland is about 70 miles from the Pacific. A tsunami is not going to have much effect on the Columbia this far up river as it’s over 100 river miles from the Pacific here. The Columbia is currently 12 foot lower than it was a month ago, when it was at flood stage. The only effect we saw was that the ramp from the shore to the docks is much steeper than it was then. Since we live in a floating home, we probably won’t even feel an earthquake. There is currently about 20 feet of water under our house. We have a Sawyer Point Zero Two water filter to get drinking water after our bottled water runs out. We should be able to supplement our LTS food with fish from the river if we need to. Not necessarily as good as you are in Sparta, but we’re probably better prepared than 99% of non Mormon locals.
Rick in Portland
Actually, in my experience, a pretty high percentage of Mormons aren’t prepared any better than the general population. ISTR that fewer than one in ten Mormons maintains a one-year supply of LTS food, and probably not even a quarter of them have a three-month supply.
Speaking of which, I tell Barbara that I want to maintain a one-year supply of everything. What I don’t mention is for how many people. She assumes, of course, that I’m planning for the four of us plus Colin. That’s just the beginning.
I watched water shoot 20 ft into the air from the neighbor’s swimming pool during a very moderate quake in San Diego. The quake shook the couch like if a couple of your friends were messing with you, and the epicenter was somewhere out in the desert.
I would expect any sort of body of water with near boundaries to shake and fountain quite a bit.
n
Earthquake preparedness is the gateway drug for prepping for TEOTWAWKI 🙂
There has been much discussion about earthquake preparedness here including horrendously bad advice from the Red Cross to buy freeze dried food.
In Portland, earthquake preparedness = Antifa preparedness.
Repackaging 400 lbs each of flour and rice is a big messy chore, especially for flour. My attempts at this were messy. I settled on buying 5 lb packs of flour and 10 lb packs of rice. Each of those slips right into and 11 inch size vacuum bag roll. I cut the right length then seal and suck with the FoodSaver. It turns into a rock hard air free brick. Other things like sugar, 10lb bags of beans, cylinders of oats all fit equally well into the vacuum bags.
The advantage is I can have things sealed up and ready for storage within minutes of coming home from the grocery store. These are also very convenient sizes if you are going to regularly eat from your LTS (which I do).
The disadvantage is price, but it is not too bad. I buy on sale and the King Arthur flour I like to use goes down to $0.60/lb and the rice down to $0.40/lb.
I pulled some rice and flour out this weekend, dated March 2015. Both were still perfectly vacuum sealed and as good as the day I brought them home from the store.
We’ve had minor earthquake tremors once in a blue moon here in Vermont, with the epicenters up in Quebec. Nothing for many years now.
Our current main prep concerns remain winter power outages that go beyond a few days, and local AO gremlins and goblins breaking into chit or assaulting us.
Both of those concerns would escalate in the event of SHTF on a regional, national or global basis.
Working slowly on the power outage and storage concerns as best we can. Probably in pretty good shape concerning goblins; I go by the general 80-20 rule of thumb: 80% of peeps are just average schmucks trying to get through the day and wouldn’t ordinarily harm anyone else. 10% would go out of their way to help somebody and are close to saintly. And 10% are actively evil and in this town/city I’d figure that to be around a thousand or so bastards, mostly male by far. 700-800 over in the “city” and the rest scattered around the town in the trailer parks and other dilapidated housing. Of all those, how many would actually survive for long in a SHTF situation?
What would greatly concern me in other parts of the country and the large urban areas are groups of trained and experienced renegade cops, veterans and gangbangers like we’ve seen operating in Mexico and points south. That’s a tad different from Jethro and his huckleberry pals busting into the tool shed and stealing a hammer and transistor radio.
Aiming an antenna for digital TV is a PITA. From here, everything in Austin is in a row.
http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29&q=id%3de6a46e7ef2178a
Plus it’s downhill all the way from the paved road a mile away. Oh, and pretty much solid trees from here to the property line. I bought an antenna from Wal-Mart. $50 in store, $39 if I buy on-line. Ah, well, the first four on the shelf all looked to have been opened. The extra $11 is worth it for something that isn’t a returned item.
Put the antenna on a chain link fence top rail. Stuck it in the shoulder high post the DirecTV dish was mounted on. So, shoulder high plus 10 feet more. Call it 12 feet off of the ground because the house is about four feet lower than the parking lot.
Yes, it’s crazy. And no, the antenna is not going on the roof. Metal roof, slick like there are geese on it. I have no desire to slide off.
I’m getting 20 channels or so. Tweaked the aim this morning and 36 is now blocky. Not watchable but at least the TV sees it now. The other Austin channels seem to look better. (But no sign of 54. No worry.)
I wonder if an amp would help?
So far, $50 for the antenna. $42 for a Roku. One time cost. There is a lot of free stuff to watch. Versus DirecTV at $140 a month, right at $1700 a year. I can buy an insane amount of LaserDiscs and DVDs for $1700. And be happy as a bug in the middle of 25 acres. 🙂
“I wasn’t a particular fan of King, but I’d rather they’d have shot the Kennedys. Oh, wait.”
Ted escaped justice…
Why repackage stuff into soda bottles? Why not just leave it in the packaging it was in at the store?
An acquaintance just posted this about preppers. He’s a loon…
“I recently watched a doco about rich Americans, (upper class “preppers”)
who don’t mind making their millions by screwing the poor, now shitting
themselves about the probable consequences of their actions, and
building or buying their way into fortresses or future safe haven
locations. They have no problem about the idea of the rich abandoning
the poor when the Titanic sinks, so to speak.”
I don’t have any problem with it, either.
[snip] Repackaging 400 lbs each of flour and rice is a big messy chore, especially for flour. [snip]
Is there a way to effectively seal that cap on a milk jug? You can buy them in either 1/2 gallon or 1 gallon size, from Uline (and I would assume lots of other places, too). The larger mouth ought to make filling them quite a bit easier.
Teddy the Blob was such a drunken retard that no one bothered killing him.
One of my former IT colleagues from EDS grew up in Southie and told me that FatBoy showed up at their skool during the Boston busing atrocity and tried to talk to the kids there and they threw used wads of gum at him.
And a bunch of us around here are old enough to remember Chappaquidick; all that stuff happened around the time of the moon landing and also Frank Sinatra out on his yacht with Mia Farrow. I was on summah vay-cay at my grandparents’ house in Fairhaven and all that chit was splashed all over the front page of the New Bedford Standard Times.
“Why repackage stuff into soda bottles? Why not just leave it in the packaging it was in at the store?”
“Is there a way to effectively seal that cap on a milk jug?”
The only plastic suitable for LTS food storage is PET, which is what soda bottles are made of. PE, PP, PS, etc. are too permeable to oxygen and water vapor.
One of my friends, probably about your age, was a member of the Harvard Club in Boston. He’s seen Teddy the Hutt naked in the sauna and the locker room, with his collapsed, wrinkly ass hanging out. He’s not sure how he survived the experience.
Oh, and you’re welcome, for putting that image in your heads.
On the Federal court system, and Trump’s potential influence on it:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-07-10/trump-begins-the-rightward-shift-of-america-s-courts
““Why repackage stuff into soda bottles? Why not just leave it in the packaging it was in at the store?”
To remove air and the changes air causes which prolongs the life of the food.
n
“He’s not sure how he survived the experience.”
I’m not sure, either; please convey to him my sincere condolences. Now that’s how someone can be afflicted with lifelong PTSD!
“On the Federal court system, and Trump’s potential influence on it:”
His ability to pack the various courts in no way guarantees that the people he appoints will do the right thing down the road. We’ve learned that hard lesson more than once in our history.
“For an appetizer of what’s to come, look closely at Trump’s twitter feed once the president learns the news of Comey’s alleged transgressions.”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-09/comey-bombshell-fbi-directors-leaked-trump-memos-contained-classified-information
Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!
off topic
have someone played with pwm boards input single phase output single pashe? I was unable to locate with pure sine wave (the chinese says pure sine wave put not % of distorsion)
the aim is build something like this https://www.kikusui.co.jp/en/product/detail.php?IdFamily=0117
rnr people likes to play with this, but, I need the board, everything else is mechanics
thanks
A pretty roundabout way of explaining that our current malaise is due to cowardice:
http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/good-people-really/
I’m getting 20 channels or so. Tweaked the aim this morning and 36 is now blocky. Not watchable but at least the TV sees it now. The other Austin channels seem to look better. (But no sign of 54. No worry.)
I wonder if an amp would help?
It depends on where you live in the Austin area. We are in Brushy Creek, almost to Round Rock, on the other side of the city from most of the transmitters, and the amps I tried overloaded some of the channels’ signals.
And a bunch of us around here are old enough to remember Chappaquidick; all that stuff happened around the time of the moon landing and also Frank Sinatra out on his yacht with Mia Farrow.
I was too young to remember Chappaquidick, but I am old enough to remember that night in 1980 when the Dems were so desperate to stop Reagan that they asked Carter to turn loose his delegates for a brokered convention deal that would have put Ted at the top of the ticket.
Of course Jimmy said “no”. I consider it to be the most decent thing he did as President, possibly the only decent thing. I don’t think it was ego as much as the old Sunday school teacher ending the Kennedy run of debauchery.
I still think it was Reagan’s year, but the election with Ted on the Dem ticket would have been ugly.
With all that to do for tee-vee signals, I’d find that the game ain’t worth the candle to light it. But that’s just me.
I’ll be playing around with a little tee-vee and antenna up in the attic eventually, a setup that Mr. Nick recommended for commo purposes quite a while ago here.
“…ending the Kennedy run of debauchery.”
It’s mainly petered out…get it…petered out?? Sometimes I kill me.
It’s mainly petered out…get it…petered out?? Sometimes I kill me.
The Kennedys are definitely over. Gillian Anderson appearing on “American Gods” a few weeks ago as Marilyn:
“Oh, don’t believe what they say about an accidental overdose. Last thing I saw from the floor of my Brentwood bungalow was a CIA spook jabbing a needle into my eyeball lest I tell Kennedy tales unwanted.”
That line never would have happened even 20 years ago.
(And that isn’t Anderson’s best appearance/line in the mini series. “American Gods” is worth the rental/streaming.)
Drove 260 miles across south Texas today. Had the big block rolling at 2100 rpm which is 17 mpg at 79 mph. I love these new 75 mph speed limits in Texas. Went and spent the day with the parents for their 58th anniversary. I spent the first anniversary day with them also a few years back.
I bought another $200 of canned food yesterday at sams club. The hard part of that was unloading it from the truck and walking it back to the master closet. The wife caught me at one point and rolled her eyes. I may have to just start using the dolly. Here is hoping that there is no hurricane this year since we are somewhat prepared. After all, it won’t happen if you prep, right ?
The only thing that I am worried about is enough propane fof the BBQ pit. I have 3 bombs and a dozen of the little one’s.
When will the Clintons be over? No sign or word of Larry in quite some time now. But then I don’t watch tee-vee so I may have missed it. Nor Princess Chelsea. Cankles is all over the MSM, though, I guess. Won’t stop, won’t STFU, apparently.
” The hard part of that was unloading it from the truck and walking it back to the master closet.”
I’ll be doing that again soon, myself, when wifey ain’t here to roll her eyes or blow a gasket. It will suck moving it up the porch stairs, through the door and down to the cellar. I will use a two-wheeler.
Wife is pushing me to talk with a couple of her contacts, at UVM and Northwest Medical up here, WRT me pursuing the mental health counselor stuff and a grad degree. I guess I’ll go through the motions and do the due diligence thing, while also working the firearms angle anyway.
And from the Damn Good Job, Paul! Department:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmO34nCewvE&feature=youtu.be
Snowflake Warning: bad language
Drove 260 miles across south Texas today. Had the big block rolling at 2100 rpm which is 17 mpg at 79 mph. I love these new 75 mph speed limits in Texas.
On the drive back, try out 85 MPH on the toll road on the east perimeter of Austin.
Pick up 45 north of Buda and drive it east to 71 near Austin-Bergstrom. Fun. The bonus is a medium-size Buc-ee’s (30 gas pumps IIRC) on 71 eastbound in Bastrop when you head back towards I-10.
I’ve only done it once, back when I was considering the permanent job with the school in San Marcos.
I head up 71 from I-10 about once a month, sometimes more often, to pick up auction items at the state surplus store. It’s on Bolm Road, just after you cross the river on 183.
If you haven’t been, it should be on your ‘stop in when I’m on this side of town’ list. Bins full of good knives for $8, multi-tools for $20. Bins full of crap too. Sometimes bins full of pistol and rifle mags, tools, clothes, jackets, belts, you never know. I rarely leave without spending at least a hundred bucks, sometimes more. And that’s in addition to whatever I bought in their online surplus auction.
n
More bad nooz from Oz:
https://smallcaps.com.au/australia-track-hundred-note-cashless-society/
Just kneel and genuflect before images of Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor Regina Secundus.
Meanwhile, early AM reading:
http://www.woodpilereport.com/html/index-486.htm
Pick up 45 north of Buda and drive it east to 71 near Austin-Bergstrom. Fun. The bonus is a medium-size Buc-ee’s (30 gas pumps IIRC) on 71 eastbound in Bastrop when you head back towards I-10.
I may have driven 100 mph or so on 172 from La Ward to Ganado. I passed a 17 ft diameter tank on a super-low low boy with front and back escorts going 70 mph and just didn’t slow down until I needed to.
Since my birthday was a couple of weeks ago, my dad may have given given me a S&W model 686 with a four inch barrel on this trip. I may need to go canoeing on the Brazos River soon.
I head up 71 from I-10 about once a month, sometimes more often, to pick up auction items at the state surplus store. It’s on Bolm Road, just after you cross the river on 183.
I’ve been meaning to stop out there. The place with the used cop cars, right?
The latest Cannonball races set a price limit for the car, repairs, gas, and provisions for the driver(s), restoring the challenge with setting time records. Friends and I half joke about getting a cop car from the surplus store, fixing it, and entering the race.
“The only plastic suitable for LTS food storage is PET, which is what soda bottles are made of. PE, PP, PS, etc. are too permeable to oxygen and water vapor.”
Look up the Resin Identification Codes and check the recycling code in a triangle (typically on bottom of bottle). Lotsa luck finding a useful recycling venue, of course; it’s worth trying to divert from the landfill, though, or worse.
TLDR: PET or PETE is code 1.
When will the Clintons be over? No sign or word of Larry in quite some time now. But then I don’t watch tee-vee so I may have missed it. Nor Princess Chelsea. Cankles is all over the MSM, though, I guess. Won’t stop, won’t STFU, apparently.
When Larry dies, that will be it for the Clintons IMHO.
Keeping all the lies straight requires the kind exceptional IQ which neither Cankles nor Webb Hubbell (if you buy the stories) offspring Princess Chelsea possess.
Princess Chelsea will spend the rest of her life and remaining Clinton Foundation stash simply trying to live in peace out of the spotlight, similar to Caroline Kennedy.
At a minimum, as soon as Larry passes, Carville and George Snuffleupagus will have their books published, the manuscripts for which have been maintained for decades.
PET/PETE is an interesting plastic. It’s nearly as impermeable as glass to oxygen, water vapor, and other small molecules.
For example, I ordered 250 grams of iodine crystals a few days ago. They arrived yesterday. They’re in a PET bottle, and there’s no sign of iodine vapor having penetrated it. That wouldn’t have been true for any other plastic.
Several of the chemicals in our science kits include iodine. There’s a bottle of IKI (Lugol’s iodine) solution in nearly every kit we ship. Back when we started building science kits, we tried packaging the IKI in LDPE, HDPE, and PP bottles. None of those worked. The iodine vapor would penetrate the bottles, staining the labels dark brown. So we started using amber glass bottles for chemicals that contain iodine. We could have used PET, but that’d be one more bottle type to stock. The amber glass is also good for strong acids and bases, which rapidly depolymerize PET.
Incidentally, that’s the reason I don’t use vacuum sealer bags for LTS food storage. They’re polyethylene, which sucks as an oxygen/moisture barrier. The differential pressure means that air and water vapor gradually penetrate them.
RE: vacuum sealer bags. When I read JLP’s comment, I got a little excited. Faster & easier would be nice. Your comment certainly deflates that. What if you were to include an oxygen absorber? Would it have any long-term impact? Or would that method work with the foil laminate bags as well?
5# bags are a little pricier, but…
I never seem to have enough time. Anything to conserve that precious commodity is well appreciated.
[snip] His ability to pack the various courts in no way guarantees that the people he appoints will do the right thing down the road. [snip]
Absolutely true. But I’d rather have the folks at Cato / Heritage / etc. offering up names than whatever group of lunatics would be dredging up names for Empress Pantsuit.
[snip] I consider it to be the most decent thing he did as President, possibly the only decent thing. [snip]
Given the benefit of a few years of hindsight, I consider Jimmy Carter to have been a decent & honorable man. Alas, on so very many topics, he was also wrong..
“S&W model 686 with a four inch barrel”
$829? That’s kinda pricey isn’t it?
Indeed.
I though Carter was an awful president. Weak on foreign policy and simply wrong on many issues.
On the other hand, I admire the man for the life he has lived since. He _works_ on Habitat house. GIVES to the poor. He lives the life he professes to believe. I can admire that.
Don’t get me wrong. JLP’s method is certainly much better than nothing, particularly since he’s rotating his LTS food. It’s just not the best method for extending shelf life.
The issue is that (not counting water vapor) air is 79% nitrogen, 20% oxygen, and 1% other gasses. If you suck all the air out of a PE container, particularly a thin one like a vacuum-seal bag, that 14.7 PSIG pressure differential means that air really, really wants to get into that bag (nature abhors, and all that…). Eventually, the outside and inside pressures will reach equilibrium. As that happens, the food starts reacting with that 20% oxygen, again reducing the pressure inside the bag and sucking in more air.
However, that’s the bag news. The good news is that the incoming air is still only 20% oxygen, so assuming you use a high-capacity oxygen absorber, the air inside the container gradually shifts toward essentially 100% nitrogen.
For example, say you have 100 mL of air in a 2 liter container originally. That contains 20 mL of oxygen. You add a 300 CC oxygen absorber originally. It sucks up that 20 mL of oxygen, leaving the inside pressure at 80% of outside. So 20 mL of outside air gradually penetrates the container. That contains 4 mL of oxygen. The absorber still has 280 CC of capacity left, so it sucks up that 4 mL of oxygen. Next pass, 4 mL of outside air again penetrates the container, adding 0.8 mL of oxygen. The absorber still has 276 CC of capacity left, so it sucks up that 0.8 mL of oxygen. And so on, until the atmosphere inside the container is essentially 100% nitrogen and noble gasses, and is at the same pressure as the outside air. No more exchange occurs.
So, yes, if you’re pressed for time, you can use the vacuum sealer with oxygen absorbers and get results reasonably close to using either PET bottles or foil-laminate Mylar bags (which are BOPET on the inside).
Carter did the best job he was able to do.
This is not meant as a compliment.
I thought through the PET bottles vs HDPE bags back when I started. I use the thicker 4 mil HDPE and the Foodsaver makes a great seal. I actually looked up the gas permeability ratings and decided it was good enough form my purposes. This is especially since I eat from my LTS (at least for the carbohydrates).
I have real time data for ~3 years for several food items stored by this method and all is well. Throwing an oxygen absorber in is a good idea and I might start doing that. Environment is probably a big factor, too. The part of the basement where all this is stored never gets very hot or cold and has a dehumidifier running.
I may do things different in the future but right now this is working for me. The convenience makes me do something rather than nothing. That’s important.
I agree. MUCH easier to bag and vac over the existing packaging. May be less life, but the convenience and “just do it” is much higher.
So many people have barriers to actually getting stuff done. “I can’t store food until I get a vac seal” or “I can’t store food until I get to the Mormon store” or “I can’t store food until I get some Ox absorbers” or “I need my CHL before I can buy a pistol” or “I need to buy and learn the ARRL books before I try to take the test” or or Or….
I know my approach is a bit ‘slapdash’ or seat of pants, or even haphazard, but actually doing something is better than waiting for the perfect alignment of the stars….
LOOK HARD at why you aren’t doing some part of prepping, and see if you are putting up artificial barriers to moving ahead. Perfect is the enemy of good enough. Get some ‘good enough’ going.
nick
So 20 mL of outside air gradually penetrates the container. That contains 4 mL of oxygen.
The air that penetrates will have more oxygen in it. Partial pressures will equalize, not just absolute.
I admire the man for the life he has lived since.
Yeah, in some areas. He’s seems to have become an anti-Semite, though.
G.W. Bush has also been walking the walk, going to Africa to build schools with his wife’s charity. He’s also kept his mouth shut about politics aside from supporting his brother and the Republicans in a generic way. He’s pretty popular in Africa due to his administration helping with the HIV epidemic there.
“Partial pressures will equalize, not just absolute.”
Sure, but I wasn’t trying to be rigorous. Molecular radii also affect things.
Ding ding ding!
“S&W model 686 with a four inch barrel”
$829? That’s kinda pricey isn’t it?
You can usually get new guns for 25% off on gunbroker.com. You’ve just gotta find a FFL holder.
http://www.gunbroker.com/
Incidentally, that’s the reason I don’t use vacuum sealer bags for LTS food storage. They’re polyethylene, which sucks as an oxygen/moisture barrier. The differential pressure means that air and water vapor gradually penetrate them.
Are the Augason plastic buckets made of PET ? I have about a dozen of these now.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Augason-Farms-Emergency-Food-Long-Grain-White-Rice-28-lb/22001476
I think that we are up to 25 person months of LTS food now. That is a pure SWAG, I am not inventorying. I do prefer the #10 cans though.
The latest Cannonball races set a price limit for the car, repairs, gas, and provisions for the driver(s), restoring the challenge with setting time records. Friends and I half joke about getting a cop car from the surplus store, fixing it, and entering the race.
Pool your money and buy a very used Ford GT. You should be able to get one for $300K or so.
https://www.carsforsale.com/ford-gt-for-sale-C137333
LOOK HARD at why you aren’t doing some part of prepping, and see if you are putting up artificial barriers to moving ahead. Perfect is the enemy of good enough. Get some ‘good enough’ going.
Preach on, brother ! Preach on !
When the tough days come, your neighbor will come to you and say, “I need some of your food, water, and guns”. And you will look at his new truck and his new bass boat and say, “You were warned. You chose not to listen.”.
“Are the Augason plastic buckets made of PET ? I have about a dozen of these now.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Augason-Farms-Emergency-Food-Long-Grain-White-Rice-28-lb/22001476”
IIRC, Augason uses standard PE food-grade pails. The type of plastic doesn’t matter if the contents are sealed in foil-laminate bags. If they don’t use a bag, as Augason doesn’t on at least some stuff, the pail will pass oxygen, but Augason uses big-ass oxygen absorbers, which minimize the problem.
“I think that we are up to 25 person months of LTS food now. That is a pure SWAG, I am not inventorying. I do prefer the #10 cans though.”
That’s an excellent start for the three of you. Keep at it.
“I think that we are up to 25 person months of LTS food now. That is a pure SWAG, I am not inventorying. I do prefer the #10 cans though.”
That’s an excellent start for the three of you. Keep at it.
Thanks ! Four of us including the son who lives just outside the inner ring of Houston. Unless he moves to Colorado where he is currently interviewing for the chief software architect job of a company in Denver.
My big concern now is propane. I have no feel for how long those 20 lb bombs will last in a BBQ grill. I have 3 at the moment and am wondering if I need 10. I also have 12 of the little Coleman propane bombs (1 lb ?).
Assuming you intend to bug in, which I don’t think is the best plan, you might consider having a bulk propane tank installed. Our 330-gallon propane tank would drive our propane cooktop for literally years, even though in a SHTF scenario we’d be cooking and baking on it for a lot more than two people.
When the time comes, I’ll be curious to see how long two 100-gallon propane tanks will last for a generator that we’d only run a half-hour per day, just enough to get the well pump pumping and a couple of radios or a laptop running.
“And you will look at his new truck and his new bass boat and say, “You were warned. You chose not to listen.”.”
A truck and boat would be one thing, but looking at his giant-screen tee-vee and zillion-dollar gas grill ensemble might give me pause. The truck and boat could come in handy; let’s make a deal, amigo!
“When the time comes, I’ll be curious to see how long two 100-gallon propane tanks will last for a generator that we’d only run a half-hour per day, just enough to get the well pump pumping and a couple of radios or a laptop running.”
You can get a rough idea by remembering that the energy content of propane is about 91,000 BTU/gallon (or 21,600 BTU/pound), and 1 kW-hr of electricity is about 3,400 BTU. Gasoline varies somewhat according to the seasonal mix, but a decent average is 114,000 BTU/gallon.
Find out what you gennie burns at full and partial loads. For example, our 5 kW Generac is rated at 1.2 gallons of gasoline/hour at full load, which translates to 1.5 gallons of propane/hour.
But our generator would have to run at about 25% of full load to drive our well pump. The relationship isn’t exactly linear, but if you figure 1.2 gallons/hour divided by 4, you wouldn’t be far off. That means it takes about 0.3 gallons/hour to run our well pump. Maybe 0.4 gallons, taking into account start-up fuel usage and non-linearity, but probably not much more.
Thanks for the info. No gennie here until next year, probably, and I’ll also be finding out how long we gotta run it to get a full tank of wotta from the well. Meanwhile I’ll get us a manual pump, and we’ll find out just what that involves by using it, too.
In extremis, I’m not too worried; we’re maybe 100 feet from the lake shore, kind of a large lake. And two brooks nearby that run into it.
We’re maybe half a mile from the Little River. That was one of the downchecks against this property, no surface water or spring.
But we’re almost literally a rainforest, with nearly 60 inches of rain per year, pretty evenly distributed. If worst comes to horrible, we can do rainwater harvesting. Even a quarter inch of rain on our roof provides something like 300 gallons of runoff.
I plan for 30 days without water other than what we have stored. I don’t know if there’s ever been a 30-day period in Sparta without any rain at all. In extremis, I figure the 4.5 of us could survive comfortably on 30 gallons per day total. That’s 5 gallons for drinking/cooking, 16 gallons for 10 toilet flushes per day, and 9 gallons for miscellany including hand washing, dish washing, limited laundry, and limited sponge bathing. That means I need 900 gallons stored. We’re not there yet, but we’ll get there.
Assuming you intend to bug in, which I don’t think is the best plan, you might consider having a bulk propane tank installed. Our 330-gallon propane tank would drive our propane cooktop for literally years, even though in a SHTF scenario we’d be cooking and baking on it for a lot more than two people.
Nice ! I doubt that I can have a bulk propane tank installed at my house in the HOA. The office property, yes in a heartbeat. Yet another reason to build a home at the office property.
If things get so bad that we need to bug out, my parents live 105 miles away in a town of 12,000 people, Port Lavaca. The only problem is that the average family income is just $34K/year. That means that there is not much food stored in those houses for emergencies. My mother was a volunteer handing out food and water after the last hurricane, they had several thousand people show up for the handouts. BTW, half of the houses in town are single wides or double wides that date back 50 years. The county has not allowed any new house trailers for over 20 years due to the wind loads.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Lavaca,_Texas
“Port Lavaca holds the state record of the highest wind speed ever reached. During Hurricane Carla in September 1961, the winds were recorded to gust up to 170 miles per hour (270 km/h).”
I did not know about that wind speed record. And I think that we are overdue for another Cat 5 hurricane on the Gulf Coast. My parents rode out a Cat 3 about a decade ago in PL, they will not do that again.
I plan for 30 days without water other than what we have stored. I don’t know if there’s ever been a 30-day period in Sparta without any rain at all. In extremis, I figure the 4.5 of us could survive comfortably on 30 gallons per day total. That’s 5 gallons for drinking/cooking, 16 gallons for 10 toilet flushes per day, and 9 gallons for miscellany including hand washing, dish washing, limited laundry, and limited sponge bathing. That means I need 900 gallons stored. We’re not there yet, but we’ll get there.
I have 130 cases of Ozarka 24 bottle 0.5 L stored in the garage. That is:
130 cases * 24 bottles / case * 0.5 L / bottle * 0.264 gal / L = 412 gallons of water
Lynn wrote:
“I think that we are up to 25 person months of LTS food now. That is a pure SWAG, I am not inventorying.”
You sure the old lady hasn’t been chucking stuff in the dumpster?
“I think that we are up to 25 person months of LTS food now. That is a pure SWAG, I am not inventorying.”
You sure the old lady hasn’t been chucking stuff in the dumpster?
Yes. She would give it away first. And I can see it stashed all over my pantry and master closet.
If your wife is a typical girl, all you need to do is print up some half-page labels for the cases of stuff. Make them say something like:
CAUTION! LIVE RATTLESNAKES!
CAUTION! LIVE SCORPIONS!
CAUTION! LIVE TARANTULAS!
Etc. etc.
If she asks you what on earth you need them for, just make a move toward one of the boxes and say, “Here, let me show you.”
She’ll leave skidmarks.
And from the Damn Good Job, Paul! Department:
I like his screed on retarded architecture and stuffing poor people into high rise crackerboxes. I’m sure the libturds love this as it gives them a large voting base crammed into cities. When they are done with the poor, just burn down the housing.
Yeah, I saw that vid he ran on modern fucked-up architecture, which both wife and I hate, loathe and despise with a passion.
Typical commie/libturd methodology going back to the Glorious Sixties, during “urban renewal” of Northeast cities; a series of atrocities on several levels. Pen people up like caged rats, get their votes for handouts, and when the place burns down, cry crocodile tears and blame Republicans or the Twelve Years of Reagan-Bush.
I’ve noticed that when I click on a link at this site FF no longer opens a new window – it uses the same window for the new content. Is that a WP setting or something at my end?
Your end.
Must be something at my end, too; I’m using FF like Greg. Used to open a new tab, but no longer. I’ll try it with another browser, just for laffs.
No problems here – Tor Browser Bundle, latest edition. Links open up in a new tab.
Middle click to open in a new tab.
In FF, go to about:preferences (type in the URL area). See the checkbox for ‘open new windows in tabs’ ?
In FF, go to about:preferences (type in the URL area). See the checkbox for ‘open new windows in tabs’ ?
My FF is already set that way but it does not work for http://www.ttgnet.com .
Any link (on any site) will open in the current window/tab, unless the link has a “target=’_blank'” in the HREF tag for the link. If that is specified, clicking the link will open a new window or tab based on that setting in your browser.
Some sites (Jerry’s blog, for instance) have a plugin that automatically adds the ‘target’ thing to all external links when the post (or comment) is saved/updated/posted. This site does not have that process (to automatically add the ‘target’ thing), so any link on this site will open in the same tab.
So the setting does not add the ‘target’ thing to links. It will just do the indicated action if you Ctrl-click a link….i.e., opens the link in a new window or a new tab.
There are probably browser plugins that will do that for you. I just keep my left hand near the Ctrl key, and hold down Ctrl when I click a link that I want to open in a new tab/window. (Or right-click, then select ‘Open in new tab’, but Ctrl-click is faster.)
Middle click. You know, that wheel thing on the mouse? Push it!
Yeah, ctrl-click works quite well. But I have to set my coffee or beer down to do that.
I always and everywhere right click and select ‘open in new tab’ because many sites will send your focus to the new tab that they open. I want to be able to go to the tab when I choose….
The motion has become second nature, which means that the FF team will likely break it soon.
n