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Category: Barbara

Wednesday, 25 January 2017

09:19 – We’re to have one nice day today–sunny, little wind, and a high around 64F (18C)–but with a cold front moving in over the next 24 hours. For several days after that, we’re to have highs around freezing, lows in the teens to 20’s (-5C to -8C), and at least some snow and ice.

Barbara got a phone call from Al around 7:30 p.m. yesterday to tell her that their family friend, Gilbert Sloan, had died at 7:04 p.m. He’d been in Hospice, so it wasn’t unexpected. Even so, it was a great loss for Barbara and her sister. They lived next door to the Sloans. When they were young, their mom had significant medical problems and spent a lot of time in the hospital. The Sloans became their surrogate parents, and Barbara and Frances spent a lot of time at the Sloan’s home while their dad was at the hospital with their mom. Cam Sloan is my age, and became like an older brother to the two girls. Barbara is headed down to Winston later this week to attend the service.

* * * * *

About three dozen readers have now requested copies of my book sample, and I’ve gotten feedback from a significant percentage of those. A couple of them said that they’d be interested to see what others thought, so I’m posting anonymous excerpts from several of the feedback emails. There are some common threads running through those.

Good start.

Notes:
1. The chapter after chapter four is labeled three, should be five
2. lots of numbers
3. the conversation seems to “stilted” and that is not the right word
4. lots of details about “stuff”
5. in chapter two, I cannot figure out if the power is up or down when it talks about the well pump, may need something like “the power was up for now but could fail at any minute”. And now I see that you covered that in the 2nd paragraph.
6. It took me a couple of minutes to note that you were switching people at the beginning of each chapter. I need a fairly brutal knock upside the head to realize that the perspective is changing.

* * * * *

Yes Robert, you can certainly write fiction.

Your dialog is off to a good start. It’s a little hard to ‘hear’ the different voices but i have no doubt that will improve.

Reading your first pass was reminiscent of reading Unintended Consequences. I personally enjoyed the deep detail in UC, however it admittedly detracted from the flow of his story. It’s interesting to read about the specific guns (or whatever) and the deeper detail, but that level of detail doesn’t generally move the story forward.

I wouldn’t worry about that much – your preselected audience generally appreciates the detail. If you want to appeal to a broader audience, you might want to lift the degree of detail.

I hope you’ll continue with your fiction efforts. This little taste is better than a lot of the schlock out there already and I am absolutely certain your final efforts will be excellent.

Congratulations on this new endeavor.

* * * * *

I see only one issue with your fiction writing attempt.

You left out the disclaimer:

“Any resemblance between any characters in this novel and any person living or dead is purely coincidental.”

In other words, you need to make up your own characters instead of using people you know.

Reading the snippet of the story, I knew the names of the people who inspired the main characters.

I’m saying you can use a character who is part Nick or a character that is part Dave Hardy, but not just insert them into the novel renamed.

For example a retired Desert Storm veteran/ex-cop might work as a character. His being an alcoholic or recovering alcoholic also might work. But leaving him as a Vietnam veteran or IT worker wouldn’t work.

You could make up a character based on me and I wouldn’t be offended. I’m just too boring to serve as the basis for a character.

[…]

If you write a book, I’ll buy it. But if you can’t master making up characters I wouldn’t write it if I were you.

If I were you, and writing this book, I’d set it in one of the towns you scoped out but didn’t move to, and use a house you looked at there. The main couple should be a little less prepared than you are.

I hope I was just blunt enough to communicate my point without being too blunt.

* * * * *

Yes, you can write fiction. I think it’s a bit heavy on technical detail, it’s fiction, not a prepper manual. I’ll read it again later and come up with more comments.

* * * * *

Great start!
A few comments:
– Ed Burns – USMC and not a prepper? of any kind? food for thought…- Lotsa PHDs…good or bad?- Page 5, Prologue: Maybe a bit too much detail in the second paragraph; one sentence to summarize the type (mac, oats, flakes, etc.) and a total poundage. Maybe turn it into a short discussion with Karen? Can tell you’re a hard-core prepper!- Page 6: continue with fake news and/or media corruption? Closing out the intro?- Page 7, last para: had to look up “dendrochronology”… Maybe drop dates/uber-details and put years/centuries ago-type descriptor? Lotsa details!- Page 9: close out with discussion of local impacts? LDS support? Food/med drives? etc.- Page 13: stray dog? from travelers escaping disaster areas? comments on how to handle stray animals in the future? Possible love interest for Colin? ;-)- Page 17, ???: para continuation – meet & greet; settle down, and brief on situation with potential new housemates.- Page 18, ???: para continuation – Matt & Karen invite Bartletts and discuss logistics to house. Vehicles, seating, gas check, etc.- Page 19, radio gear para: too detailed. Summarize until there is a need later to describe which MHz is needed for what specific situation…- Page 21, gun gear: as an amateur gun guy, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but too many details. Like radio gear, summarize until later…- Page 28, ???: standardize (-ish) everyone’s training to the Gunny’s level is a good idea; gives everyone a common level of knowledge and terminology which helps with imprinting quicker for the new shooters- Page 31, radio call from Ed: maybe reduce to keep simple; “Front watch, four inbound unknown contacts. Repeat, this is front watch with four inbound unknown contacts.” maybe sounds a little military-ish, but…The follow-up transmission is perfect. And it referenced a truck stopping earlier for food; good few paragraphs there for expansion.- Page 32, attack: high number of people in back attack. Good comment about runners being back later; glad you went there.
Can you tell I peer review technical reports and documents for IT? I’m in Federal civil service as a software program manager and retired Air Force E-7/logistics.
Overall, good start. I think you have a lot of details in this rough draft that can be diluted early, and added as needed later. I’ve read several books with waaaay too many details up front from 5.11 pants and the type of Danner boots being worn, but after 3-4 pages of gear talk the person is still standing in the middle of the road surrounded by zombies. If my brain pauses to digest that info, I lose the emotion of the moment of the zombie attack…if that makes any sense.
I really hope you are able to flesh this out into a novel. Your vision of this small piece of the story is excellent and enjoyable to read. I guarantee I’ll drop whatever I’m reading at the time to buy this the day it’s released! And I appreciate you sharing this with us!

* * * * *

I know you only wanted quick feedback so apologies in advance…

The good:

Well written, as I knew it would be, having read several of your non-fiction works and the blog posts for many years. Yes, but can he write fiction?
Absolutely! The dialog is mostly very good (with a couple of easily remedied exceptions below). Plot and character development are such that I want to keep reading even at this rough draft stage. There are issues but definitely keep going – I want more of the story!

The bad:

Some of the dialog is very clumsy. For example, Dr. Smith’s dialog is tedious to read and would have been cut after the 2nd “CE” on any of the
networks. Also Matt’s description of the Bao/Feng radios – this is common to bad PA where catalog descriptions of equipment get detailed in conversations.

Facts/figures: (Disclaimer – I have a geology and several mechanical engineering degrees and have driven over the road trucks). A New Madrid quake would not bother the upper Mississippi river valley. They worry about the New Madrid because it can cause very wide spread, significant damage to much of the Mid West. This is because much of the area is a giant sediment bowl which will shake like jello. This sediment does not extend much into Wisconsin. I live in La Crosse, WI on the east bank of the Mississippi and we sit solidly on bed rock – we would not even be aware of a New Madrid
quake. Interesting fact is that they just built a new bridge here and added traffic control gates at the on ramps. So, even if the upper river bridges were OK, the gov’t would likely be in control of access?
You can’t get 40 tons on an 18 wheeler. Well, you could but you would likely either go to jail or the morgue if you drove it very far. 18
wheelers gross at 80K lbm but the tractor trailer weights ~35K so the max payload is around 45K (call it 22 tons). Not that big a deal, but it sticks out to anyone who has been around trucks as badly as talking about forgetting to move the safety on a Glock to gun people.

It is a bad idea to have both 20 and 12 gage for defense – particularly if you have any break action guns around. And as an avid trap / sporting clays shooter, I can tell you that 90% of the active clays people (at least up here) shoot break action – not 870s. If the women can’t shoot 12 gage, give them 5.56 or something.

Teaming up with cult members: I get it that they are preppers and generally nice people, but they believe some truly wacky chit. It may be an
interesting plot twist to have them start refusing to share/work with the infidels at some point unless the non-believers start wearing magic underwear and reading the teachings of the prophets (just a suggestion). Before you reject this out of hand, consider how strange their world view is during normal times and how it may get much stranger/stronger during what many will consider “end times”.

The Ugly: the battle scene is really bad. Sorry, but I can’t mince words here. This is the type of thing that makes me drop a story toot sweet.
When the good guys all react like battle hardened Marine snipers and the bad guys like brain dead meth addicts, I call BS. No matter how much training and planning goes on, a significant number of good guys will be curled up on the ground screaming for mommy once the real deal starts. All the kills will not be clean – there will likely be people trying to hold their guts in and begging for death, there will likely be IED’s like pipe bombs, Molotov Cocktails, etc. Not only the good guys know how to mix  Styrofoam and gasoline for example.

Well – the good news is I liked it enough to write up this feedback…

* * * * *

I just finished your sample! I graded you an “A” or 95%. My evaluation as a reader rested on three criteria:

1. Does this work tell a story?
2. Is the work believable/plausible?
3. Do i care about the characters and what happens to them?

Hope this confirms what you’ve already decided to do.

Thanks for letting me read it and be a part of something new.

* * * * *

Thanks. A bit stiff early, but by halfway it was already smoothing out. Two thumbs up.

I did make a couple of notes:

Page 7: “Just then, the feed switched…” flows better as “The feed switched” (A few pages later, I just decided you were using “just” way too often.)

Page 10: When you get to the point of mentioning the solar backup for the well pump,
you immediately give all the detail. It’s unnecessary at that point. Save some for later.

Page 11: “Load all of your hand tools” I had to laugh. Got semi?
If you do a printed version, put me down for one autographed copy of the first printing.

* * * * *

OK, I’ve finished what I hope is an excerpt (in plain English, keep typing, I’d like to read it). I have a few thoughts.

The mechanics are fine, and the structure is good. However, I do find everything so far has worked out too well for the characters. We haven’t really seen any rough edges. I realize it’s early days yet, but I would not expect everyone to be coping this well, especially after the assault on the house, with multiple charlies down. Even the casualty is quite calm about the whole affair. I’d expect some panic to seep in by this point, as everyone works through the realization that it’s real and the cavalry will be delayed if they arrive at all. My opinion, but I’ve seen (and sometimes been) the one that becomes useless when reality dawns.

Again, I’d like to read this when completed; I’d be happy to offer comments between now and then if you like.

* * * * *

These are roughly half of the responses I’ve gotten, which I selected more or less at random to give everyone an idea of what other people were saying. I appreciate the time and effort that people have taken to advise me, and I’ll incorporate many of the suggestions.

At this point, I’m just getting ideas down. This sample wasn’t in any way intended to be an organized part of the eventual book structure, and was completely unedited. I may end up expanding one paragraph or even one sentence to become and entire chapter, or the converse. My word-count target for a full book is roughly 125,000, of which this sample is maybe 10%.

Yes, things are too easy so far. That will change. In fact, things may get so bad that I end up painting myself into corners, as writers often do. But ultimately, this book (and I hope eventually series) will be optimistic. Good, competent people can deal with pretty much anything.

Read the comments: 70 Comments

Friday, 2 December 2016

10:01 – It’s Barbara’s birthday today. She’s pretty hard to buy gifts for. She doesn’t wear jewelry or perfume, and I can’t buy clothes for her. So usually I end up just getting stuff she wants for around the house. One year I got her a crowfoot flank-drive flare nut wrench set. This year, I got her a pressure canner (Ma Kettle) and some miscellaneous cast-iron cookware to use on her new gas cooktop.

We finished watching series one of The Pinkertons on Netflix streaming and Mercy Street on Prime streaming. The former was average and the latter above average, but both were packed full of cuties, notably Martha MacIsaac and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, respectively. At first, I thought it was just me, getting older and starting to have trouble telling brunette cuties apart, but Barbara agreed that they could easily be confused for each other and that she had trouble telling them apart.

I used to think that attractiveness between men and women was purely a matter of evolutionary biology. That’s why heterosexual men of any age are most attracted to young women, those of child-bearing age, and women are attracted to men of any age who would make good reproductive partners. What puzzled me for a long time was that, in my experience, gay men are also attracted to young, fertile women even though they have no desire to have sex with them. Last night, I finally realized why: men of any sexual orientation and age are attracted to young, fertile women because their mothers were young, fertile women. Essentially all men spent their boyhoods dependent upon, protected by, and being cared for and loved by young, fertile women. So it’s no wonder that most men are attracted to and protective towards young women. Well, duh. It’s embarrassing that it took me 63 years to notice the blindingly obvious.

Read the comments: 81 Comments

Thursday, 1 December 2016

10:19 – It’s Birthday Eve for Barbara, who turns 3E tomorrow. Wow. When we got married, she was only 1C and I was only 1E.

We ended up getting 3.5 inches (8.9 cm) of rain, which is basically almost a month’s worth in two days. Things have cooled down, and Saturday night into Sunday morning we’re expecting a blizzard with as much as a tenth of an inch of snow.

As usual, kit sales have started to increase after Thanksgiving. We’re down to one chemistry kit in stock, so the top priority for today is to build more of those. We have all of the subassemblies in stock, so it’s just a matter of packing them up. This afternoon, we’ll get more macaroni repackaged into 2L bottles. We have about 40 five-pound bags left to repackage. About 2.7 pounds fit in a 2L bottle, so we’re going to use a lot of bottles.

Read the comments: 76 Comments

Thursday, 24 November 2016

09:49 – Barbara just left to drive down to Winston, where she’s spending Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday with Frances and Al. They’ll do a few errands Saturday, and then she’s heading back. As usual, it’ll be wild women and parties for Colin and me.

They’re going to the Greensboro craft fair tomorrow. Since they’ll be out in a crowd, I suggested she put a gub in her purse. Better to have a gub and not need one than need a gub and not have one.

I got a lot of items checked off my prepping list this month. We’ve added close to one person-year of LTS food (250 pounds of macaroni, 80 pounds of beans, 2.5 gallons of vegetable oil, and other miscellaneous stuff that totals about 730,000 calories, or about 2,000 cal/day for a year). I also added a pressure canner, four dozen more wide-mouth quart canning jars, and some reusable lids. The new gas cooktop has arrived, and we’re scheduled to get a 250-gallon propane tank installed on December 9th. I called an electrician to come out and get a cut-over switch installed for our generator and install a propane adapter kit on it. I have the beginnings of a small solar power system, with four 100W panels and a charge controller. More to do there. I’ve boosted our antibiotic stocks, with half a dozen to five dozen courses each of doxycycline, SMZ/TMP, metronidazole, levofloxacin, and amoxiclav. And various other miscellaneous stuff.

As I keep saying, it’s not that I expect anything catastrophic to happen, although that remains a real possibility and one that I want to be prepared for as well as realistically possible. What I really expect is for things to continue getting gradually worse. I don’t think there’s any way to turn that around at this point. Basically, I think we’re in the calm before the storm. I have no idea when that storm will occur or what form it will take. It may be five years coming, or ten. Or it may occur tomorrow. But it will occur at some point.

Read the comments: 37 Comments

Tuesday, 22 November 2016

09:43 – Barbara picked up Bonnie, our next-door neighbor, at 9:00 to drive her up to the Walmart Super Center in Galax, Virginia. Bonnie is almost 90 years old and doesn’t get out much, so this will be a real treat for her.

About two minutes after Barbara left, Lori pulled in the drive to deliver/pick-up the mail. Lori’s daughter is home from college for the week. Lori said she’d finished repackaging the current batch of LTS food, and volunteered that she loved watching the oxygen absorbers dent in the 2-liter bottles. I’m not the only one who takes pleasure in small things.

The Lowe’s delivery truck is supposed to show up today with our gas cooktop. Eric with the Blue Ridge Co-op called yesterday afternoon to schedule installation of the propane tank and connecting the cooktop. They’re kind of backed up this time of year. He said the next date they had available was the morning of December 9th, so we grabbed it. It looks like we’ll be cooking dinner that day on the gas cooktop.

I did look around for a gas oven, but the only ones I could find that could operate without electricity were commercial models that cost several thousand dollars. There’s no way we’re spending that much. If we do have a long-term power failure, we can use the gas cooktop for baking by using a Coleman Camp Oven or a large Dutch oven.

Barbara took Colin to the vet yesterday to have him looked at. One of his ears was bothering him, and he’d torn a claw on one of his rear paws. A week or so ago, we’d tried cleaning out his ear with dilute vinegar and cotton balls, but it was still bothering him, so we decided to take him to the vet. Their charges are extremely low: $12 for the office visit and another $12 to swab out his ear and do a microscopic stain/exam. The medication they provided was $38, so Barbara got out of there for just over $60. Down in Winston, it would probably have been $250 or $300.

While Barbara was gone, UPS delivered four cases of quart wide-mouth canning jars. When she returned and noticed them stacked up in the foyer, she asked what they were. I told her “another four dozen quart wide-mouth canning jars,” and she said there was no way she was going to be canning food. I didn’t tell her that I’d renamed our new 23-quart pressure canner “Ma Kettle”. To be fair, I also renamed our 9-quart cast-iron camping Dutch oven “Pa Kettle”.

Read the comments: 40 Comments

Friday, 18 November 2016

08:08 – Barbara just left to drive over to West Jefferson, where she’ll spend the day with Frances, Al, and their friend Marcy. It’ll be wild women and parties for Colin and me today.

Barbara and I drove over to Blue Ridge Co-op around lunchtime yesterday and signed up to have a propane tank installed. Lowes is supposed to deliver our gas cooktop on, bizarrely enough, Thanksgiving Day, so we told Blue Ridge Co-op to schedule installation of the propane tank for the first week of December.

We opted for a 250-gallon tank rather than the 120-gallon tank. The 250-gallon is the largest they’re allowed to install above-ground, and we didn’t want to get involved with the cost and hassles of a buried tank. The 250-gallon tank holds about 230 gallons when full. That should last three or four years if we use it only for cooking, even if we’re cooking for more than just the two of us. They’ll also install a quick-disconnect fitting at the back door, which we can hook up to our generator if necessary. Propane costs about three times as much as electricity per BTU, but that’s not a major concern if we’re using the propane only for cooking or in an emergency for electric power.

The gas cooktop we ordered comes standard with a propane adapter kit. It has an electric igniter, but specifically says in the specs that it can be ignited manually if the power is down.

Email from Cassie, who’s been reading what I posted recently about canning. She’s never pressure-canned anything, but they have only the small freezer in their refrigerator and she’d like to can meats that she buys on sale, particularly dark-meat chicken and bacon, as well as game that her husband brings home from hunting. But the thought of botulism scares her to death, and rightly so. She has no canning equipment or supplies, and asked me what I thought about it.

I told her that I’m no expert on pressure canning. The few times I did it I was helping someone else who was an experienced canner, and the last time I even watched was 40 years ago. That said, I told her that credible authorities, including the USDA and Ball, say that canning meats is safe if one follows directions exactly, but that just to be extra safe one should always cook canned meats thoroughly before eating them.

I suggested that she carefully consider the costs of commercially-canned meats versus DIY pressure-canned meats. She’ll need a canner. All American canners are the top of the line, but they cost $225 to $300+ depending on capacity. The 23-quart Presto canner I bought costs under $80, and does the job just as well as the more expensive canner. I suggested she also pick up a set of canning tools and a copy of Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving.

She’ll also need canning jars, lids, and bands. I suggested Walmart as a good source for those. She needs to decide between quart jars, which hold about two pounds of meat, versus pint jars, which hold about one pound. The trade-off is that the jars cost about the same for either size, but that with just the two of them she may not want to have her meat stored two pounds per jar with no easy way to preserve it after opening a jar other perhaps than maintaining a constantly-simmering pot of pottage. If she does opt for pint jars, I recommended that she buy a second canning rack so that she can process twice as many jars per run. It also wouldn’t be a bad idea to buy spares for the gasket, pressure gauge, and pressure valve.

Read the comments: 63 Comments

Friday, 4 November 2016

10:06 – Updated polling results. Last time, I surveyed five people, of whom only four were likely voters. The results were Trump 100% and everyone else 0%. But that was when Barbara had told me she wasn’t going to vote. Yesterday, she changed her mind because not voting would essentially be a vote for Clinton. So, with the sample size now five, the results are now Trump 125% and everyone else 0%. Even with a large margin of error, things are looking dim for Clinton.

Barbara called me on her way back from Winston yesterday when she was about half an hour from home. She suggested picking me up on the way past and heading into Sparta to refill her gas tank and vote. Gas had gone up Monday from $2.13 to $2.19, and it was still at that price. No line. So we filled up and headed for the early voting place downtown. No lines there, either. We voted and headed home, all within ten or fifteen minutes. I was pleased to see that, although the voting machines were electronic, they produced a paper audit trail.

As we got in the car to return home, I commented to Barbara that the last time I’d voted Republican was for Nixon in 1972. Barbara and I were among those millions (or tens of millions) of “hidden” Trump voters. Not that we like Trump. Both of us despise him, but he’s infinitely better than Clinton. It felt very strange to me to be marking the Republican boxes instead of the Libertarian boxes, but there it is. I mean if I, as a radical anarchist libertarian and a former member of the Libertarian National Committee, voted Republican, how many votes can the LP expect to get? My guess is that a huge majority of those who are either large-L Libertarians or small-l libertarians will be voting for Trump.

The Colonial pipeline fire was still not completely extinguished as of late last night, but Colonial is still saying they expect Pipeline One to be back in full service as of this Sunday. They obviously know things that I don’t, so at this point I’ll believe them. Of course, even once they start pumping again, there’s a lot of empty pipe between the break and the tank farm in Greensboro. They’ll have lost a week or so of transfer, but I’m assuming the gigantic tank farm has enough capacity to buffer that loss and continue distribution uninterrupted. If so, the disruption may be minimal.

Barbara made a small Costco run yesterday on her way out of Winston. The only food she picked up was two boxes of Ritz crackers, two dozen cans of Kirkland green beans, and two 3-liter bottles of Kirkland olive oil. FedEx showed up here yesterday morning with my Walmart order. That included a gift Barbara wanted for her sister and four 2-pound boxes of Alpo Variety Snaps for Colin. As usual, I filled in with dry staples to get to the $50 minimum for free shipping, so we also got a 5-pound bag of store-brand macaroni and ten 1-pound bags of egg noodles. The macaroni was indistinguishable visually from the name-brand stuff we get in one-pound boxes at Costco, and we already knew that the store-brand egg noodles from Walmart are indistinguishable from the name-brand ones Barbara gets at the supermarket. Everything was in plastic bags and had best-by dates from 18 months to two years out, so I’m not going to worry about repackaging it.

I also ordered a 400W off-grid solar power starter kit, which gives me four panels and a PWM charge controller. For a functional system, I still need to add a couple of deep-cycle batteries and an inverter, which I’ll do shortly. And the good news is that all of this solar stuff is eligible for a 30% federal tax credit and possibly a state tax credit as well, so our actual out-of-pocket cost will be only a small fraction of the total cost.

And I see that the FBI has issued an alert. They’re apparently expecting muslim terrorists to pull something on Monday in New York, Texas, and/or Virginia. As alway, keep your eyes open, and stay away from urban areas and crowds.

Read the comments: 55 Comments

Thursday, 3 November 2016

08:47 – Barbara left about 0740 to drive down to Winston for a doctor appointment, various shopping errands, a haircut, and lunch with a friend. I expect her back late this afternoon, so it’ll be wild women and parties for Colin and me until she returns.

Colonial’s estimate that they’ll have Pipeline One back in full service by the end of this week is looking more and more questionable with each passing day. The morning paper ran a headline that says the pipeline is still burning. After they get the fire out, they need to let it cool before they can even inspect it, let alone repair it. Unless they’ve spent this week building a bypass, I can’t see any way it’ll be back up by the day after tomorrow.

The timing of this event is very different from the one a couple months ago. In the earlier failure, the problem didn’t hit the news for ten days after the actual failure. That meant that the fuel still in the pipeline had time to reach the tank farm in Greensboro and the pipe itself was empty. This time, the break hit the news just a couple of days after the actual failure, so there’s still fuel in the pipe, still being delivered to the tank farm. That means distribution from the farm to gas stations has continued pretty much normally. Some gas stations are reporting sporadic delivery issues, but basically gas stations are still open and still selling fuel. The crunch will really hit around the 10th of this month, when resupply goes down completely. It looks to me as though analysts’ initial estimates that fuel delivery won’t be resumed until the late November through mid-December period were probably spot-on. It’s like watching a train wreck from orbit. It hasn’t happened yet, but you know it’s going to happen and there’s not a thing you can do about it. I suspect things are going to really start to bite just after Election Day. Just what we need.

Meanwhile, the election looms. Depending on the results, over the few days following the election we may see anything from business as usual to widespread violent civil unrest in the cities. If Clinton “wins”, I would expect little to no violence; if Trump wins, all bets are off. But the main point is that no matter which of the candidates is declared the winner, half the country will not accept the results. If it’s Trump declared winner, the progs, BLMers, and so on may be out in force, looting and burning. If it’s Clinton, things will be calmer in the short term, but don’t discount the burning resentment present in tens of millions of well-armed Trump supporters. No matter what happens on Tuesday, we’ll all wake up Wednesday morning to a very dangerous situation. Either way, it won’t take much to blow the lid off. We’re about as ready as we can be here to hunker down and watch the game. Are you ready wherever you are?

In terms of last-minute preps, Barbara is picking up some food at Costco today if she has time to make the stop. She’ll fill her gas tank when she gets back up to Sparta. Mine is already full. I have 15 more pounds of pasta and egg noodles on order with Walmart, which is due to arrive Monday. I also have a 400W off-grid solar power starter kit on order from Amazon, also due to arrive Monday. Other than that, we’ll just sit back and watch what happens next week.

Read the comments: 74 Comments

Tuesday, 1 November 2016

09:35 – Déjà vu all over again. Except this time it’s different. At least one and possibly both of the Colonial Pipeline pipes was damaged yesterday by an explosion and fire. That’s 100+ million gallons of fuel per day that won’t be making it to the East Coast for an indefinite period. No word yet on how long it will take to repair the lines, but my guess is it’ll be a lot longer than last time. Rather than just having to deal with a fractured line and a large pool of gasoline, this time they’ll have to deal with the aftermath of an explosion and fire.

Fuel progresses through the pipelines at a walking pace, which means it takes a week or ten days to get from the site of the break to the Colonial tank farm in Greensboro. So that’s the good news. We have another ten days’ worth of fuel that’s still in transit. The bad news is that that’s all we’ll get for some time to come. When the pipeline broke on September 9th, the news didn’t hit the media for ten days. During that time, people were filling their tanks normally. By the time most people became aware of what had happened, repairs were underway. Panic buying starting on September 19th and 20th quickly caused big fuel shortages, but it was only a week or so before supplies resumed.

This time, it may be a lot different. The 100+ million gallons/day that the pipeline delivers is a lot of fuel, but only when consumption is normal. When people realize there’s a problem, the panic buying starts. Instead of waiting until they’re down to a quarter tank before filling up, as most people usually do, everyone rushes out to fill their tanks, and gas stations quickly run dry. Panic breeds more panic, so the new norm becomes to keep your tank as full as possible. When people see an open gas station, they get in line even if they’re nearly full already. There’s no way the distribution system can deal with this kind of volume even with the pipeline running at full capacity.

Right now, we’re in the calm before the storm. Supplies aren’t yet restricted. Prices are going up and will continue to do so, but gasoline remains available, as it will for the next few days. As the pipeline runs dry, more and more gas stations will be unable to get gas, and panic buying will start occurring in spades. My advice is to get ahead of the curve. Panic-buy today, regardless of price. It’ll cost more tomorrow, and much more next week. Minimize your driving. Car pool to work. Put off any long trips you have scheduled, at least until the supply situation clears up.

Barbara is scheduled to drive down to Winston on Thursday to spend the day running errands. We’ll keep an eye on the situation. It takes only four or five gallons of gas for Barbara to get down to Winston and back, but depending on the developing situation it may turn out that we’d be better off rescheduling that trip.

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Thursday, 13 October 2016

09:00 – Barbara is due back from Winston sometime this afternoon. Colin and I can’t wait. She’s making a small Costco run on her way back to pick up mostly cold stuff like meat. The only LTS food I asked her to pick up was several 3.25-pound boxes of OreIda instant mashed potatoes. Yesterday I transferred what remained of the 3.25-pound box we’d just opened to 1.75-liter Tropicana orange juice bottles, ending up with one very full bottle and one very partial bottle.

For the last couple of months I’ve been expecting Trump to make a statement on healthcare. Something like:

If you like your Obamacare, you can keep your Obamacare. However, we will repeal the individual mandate and the employer mandate, so no one will be forced to pay for health insurance they don’t want. Nor will the federal government pay any portion of the cost, so whatever coverage you choose you must pay for out of your own pocket. Nor will the government force any insurer to cover any particular person or condition or to provide any particular benefit, which means coverage for those with pre-existing conditions, if available, will be extremely expensive.

It’s definitely autumn here. Cool days and nights down in the 30’s (~ 2 or 3C). We decided yesterday that the new driveway had had sufficient time to cure, so we removed the orange warning tape that had been blocking the drive and pulled the vehicles back into the garage. As I was standing out at the street end of the drive looking toward the house, it looked vaguely familiar. Then I realized that it was about the size of a standard singles tennis court, which I spent plenty of time on when I was in my teens and 20’s. A standard singles court is 27 feet wide by 78 feet long, with 21 feet between the baseline and the fence at each end, for a total of 120 feet. I got out the tape measure and measured the new drive. Sure enough, it was 25 feet wide and about 126 feet long. Now the only thing we need is fences and a net.

Being a serve-and-volley player with an overwhelming serve, I always loved fast surfaces. My absolute favorite surface was polished hardwood, because the speed and low bounce of the surface meant I served clean aces more often than not. My next favorite was grass, which was almost but not quite as fast as wood, and didn’t provide a much higher bounce than wood. My third favorite was concrete like we just had installed. It was a noticeably slower surface than wood or grass, but still much faster than Har-Tru or similar grippy hard court (green/blue/red) surfaces, and immensely faster than clay. And it had a very high bounce, usually higher than the net, which meant I could use a full Western grip off both sides and hit full-power flat ground strokes, and approach shots didn’t need to be chipped.

For future reference:

o A 1.75 liter Tropicana orange juice bottle holds at most 1 pound 15.4 ounces of Ore-Ida instant potato flakes if you tap it well to pack it down.


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