Category: lakehouse

Thur. Aug. 1, 2024 – time marches on, gonna be school starting up soon…

Hot and humid, but first merely warm and humid. Supposed to be clear for a few more days, so the sun will heat it up soon enough.

I spent yesterday fixing my mower, and cutting the grass. I did my yard, and the HOA park next door. Took a long time as I had to go slow and take less than full swaths so I didn’t bog down the mower. Grass was really tall and thick.

Today I’ll probably trim and blow to finish the yardwork. Might try to burn some of the slash pile. Will find some projects that don’t involve baking my brain later in the day…

The world continues to get weirder, and march to war. Anyone got a good article about increased export controls? Heard someone mention it in passing as part of the difficulty for their business in this economy. Depending one what’s restricted, I’ll add it to my list of indicators that war is coming.

War or not, preps are a good thing.

nick

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Wed. July 31, 2024 – it’s getting hot in here…

Hot and humid at the BOL today, although slightly less than Houston, if I get lucky. It was hot yesterday in Houston, and dripping wet. Just standing around outside had my shirt soaked with sweat. The humidity just makes it miserable. We’ll get more too, before the summer is done.

I spent the day doing pickups, and running errands before heading to the BOL to do some work. I had to hit Lowes for some lumber and plywood, and grabbed some closeout plumbing supplies too. I always check the clearance aisle and yesterday I hit paydirt. They had a bunch of sharkbite fittings marked down to 1/4 or 1/3 of retail. Since I’ll eventually need to finish my master bath remodel, I picked up a bunch of stuff.

Also swung by the chiropractor, and the HEB for some groceries. Nothing really good on sale at the HEB this visit.

I also dropped the dog off at a friend’s house for the week, and loaded up the truck. By the time I got all that done, and did the minimum housecleaning that would keep me alive when my wife gets back, it was after 10pm. Kinda late to be heading up, but I figured at least I’d be here in the morning.

And I’ve got a bunch of work to do. The grass is knee high. It’s gonna be slow going bushwhacking that. Then I’ll start looking at the list, with heavy weight given to tasks in the shade or in the house. I do not want to hurt myself in the heat.

Maybe I’ll find some time to write and AAR for the past two months. I did learn a few things.

Always be learning new things. And stacking the knowledge as well as the stuff.

nick

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Tues. July 30, 2024 – Still home, but not forever…

Sunny and hot. Again. Dripping sweat hot. Again. Summer is still here.

Yesterday I started my day sweating in a storage unit. Got that job done, and decided to see my main auctioneer. They are still swamped with their own items, so I’m still holding off bringing them more.

Hit the Goodwill bins on my way home. Didn’t get much, but did pick up a couple of things for me, and a couple for the auction. Went to dinner with my sibling, and had a nice chat. W and the Ds are at her parents’ house for the rest of the week, while I’m headed to the BOL to work.

So today I’ve got pickups to make, supplies to buy, a truck to load, and a dog to drop off at a friend’s house. Then I can head out. By the time I get all that done, I might sleep here and head up later. I don’t want to shift another day, as it’s easy to slip the days… and I don’t know if we’ll have a sunny day later. Or in theory, I could take the wife’s minivan…

I just hope I am not dripping sweat the whole day.

I’ve added a couple of solar panels and an inverter or two to the stacks. I’m bidding on an inverter/charge controller and another panel today. I want to start slapping some sort of solar power system together, so I can start finding the unknown unknowns… as solar has moved up my list. I still need a good source for batteries though. Several of my lead acid leftovers no longer take a charge. Something is sure to pop up soon.

And I’ll stack some more when it does. Stacking is what I do.

nick

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Mon. July 29, 2024 – busy day today…

Cooler to start, but plenty hot later. Forecast says we’ll be in the clear after all the rain we’ve gotten, and I’m sure that will make the air hotten… or something like that. Rained gently off and on all day Sunday, so I stayed indoors and puttered.

I spent some time looking at laptops to find something to use at our upcoming convention for power point. I have a stack of lappys but one won’t boot, one has a black screen, one battery doesn’t charge… one is an atom based wimpy POS, and the others are win7 with ppt 2007 installed. I might have to use my new toughbook…

I did some more cleaning and organizing. I can now mostly walk in an L shape in my office… I pulled out two 3 foot stacks of books to take to the BOL and put on the shelf there. I’ve got another 6 foot to take there next trip too. I have a huge pile of stuff to take up there this week. I probably won’t be able to fit it all in the truck, but I’m going to try. It’s also been almost two months since I took anything to auction, so there is a bit of a pileup of that stuff too. I’ll get to it eventually.

Today I have some hobby stuff to do, then pickups, then send the females off to the east coast for a family visit. I’ll eventually head to the BOL but I have stuff that has to get done first.

There is always something that has to get done first…

Oh, and I have to hit the Lowes for materials before heading up too.

It’s a great life…

Stack some projects so you can keep yourself busy. And stack the stuff you need to do the projects. You’ll be glad you did 🙂

nick

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Sun. July 14, 2024 – shot heard ’round the world…

Hot and humid, although it would be nice if the temp stayed under 90F like yesterday. Took overcast and rain to do that, but it helps to not broil the brain in the skull…

I’m still running my two little portable A/C units to take the edge off. I’m spending $25 per day just for that. It’s worth it.

Didn’t get much done. I spent most of the afternoon working on my new Toughbook CF-54. I won it in an auction but haven’t had time to crack it and get it set up for me… so I started that. Because I had a bunch of software out of the hall closet sitting on the kitchen table, and thought “why not?”

I tried the normal route, booting from install media, changing utilman.exe to cmd.exe and then using net user to change passwords, but it didn’t work. Acted like it worked, but I never could get to the actual cmd window. So I tried a program I picked up somewhere, probably the goodwill bins. It’s a pc password changer program on a USB drive. Worked like a charm. Turned on the admin account, cleared passwords for everything I could, rebooted and was in. The guy who returned the notebook to amazon or wherever didn’t have any files on it. So I killed that account and started poking at win10 config stuff.

I’ll run some av, and malware detectors, and hope the cracker didn’t rootkit me. I will ease into using it as my primary lappy over the next few months. It’s bigger, faster, and yet thinner and lighter than my CF-30. I hate win10, but I like the hardware upgrade. I may still install the panasonic recovery media from bare metal. I would like a bigger SSD anyway. But for now, it’s good enough.

I need to get some stuff picked up and put away before the Mrs. gets home. And do some cleaning.

The Centerpoint outage tracker says we’ll be back up Wednesday. I’ll believe it when I see it.

Meanwhile, stack the critical things. The world has taken another step down the path … and it doesn’t end in skittles and beer for the likes of you and me.

Eyes and ears open, head on a swivel.

nick

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Fri. July 12, 2024 – more of the same..

Maybe a bit cooler? The national map shows chance of thunder storms for the next couple of days. We had several around Houston yesterday afternoon, but nothing at the microclimate my house is in… Had to water the plants.

Did a pickup, and drove around some to check on things. My secondary location is near my propane guy. My rent house isn’t too far from either. Checked on a friend’s house and shop. Got gas and LP gas. Cash money for the LP Gas, and only $12 per bottle. The swap a bottle was up to $29 if you needed to use a card, and most of them were probably sold out.

Pick up extra propane bottles when you see them. Yard and estate sales are where I got mine. If the bottle is out of date or in bad shape, everyone says the same thing, take it to HD or Lowes and swap it for a new one. It works. They have staff to refurb the bottles, if they are saveable and it’s cheaper than buying new.

One advantage of LP gas over gasoline is that it stores well. One disadvantage is there is less energy in it and it can cost more than gasoline. Life is full of tradeoffs, and both have a place in your preps. Lots of things use propane too.

We’ll see what today brings. I didn’t do any work on the trucks because of the sprinkles and threat of rain. Maybe I’ll get to that today. I don’t think I’ll be plumbing my gennie into my gas line unless it will run on a 1/2″ line. Anything bigger would mean taking my service apart and changing out pipes to add a bigger tap. Not sure I’m up for that. There is already a valved tap for 1/2″ pipe. I think it was probably for a patio grill. If I can find the manual for my gennie, I’ll see what it calls for for supply.

Always more to do.

Always something to stack.

nick

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Thur. July 11, 2024 – the recovery continues… also Kwikimart Day…

Still hot. Still humid. Still summer in Houston. Still really just the beginning of hurricane season.

I hid from the heat most of the day. Read. Minded the generators. Had “Walking tacos” which are like “Frito Pie” except taco meat and fillings in a bag of Doritos(tm), not chili and toppings in a bag of Fritos(tm). Spent a few minutes cleaning my office. It’s hot and dark in there so I gave that up pretty quickly.

And today might be pretty similar. I’m toying with the idea of doing some work on the vehicles. I have new headlights for the Ranger. Fog lights for the Expedition, and new license plates for both. I should install some radio gear too, to go with the plates. But it is so hot I’m afraid to do much with no cool house to go back to. I’m really feeling the heat, almost like after my heat injury. Don’t want to get back to that mess.

I’ll find something to do, I don’t have the time to just lie about reading, not really, no matter how uncomfortable it is to work or how worn out I am by the labor.

I will try to do some stack sorting at the least, and I need to get out and refill gas bottles and gasoline cans. We could be at this a while.

Wife and kids are contemplating heading to the BOL, where there is power, a/c, and internet for work. I’ll stay here and mind the house. Kids have been really good so far, but are getting a bit stir crazy. D1 wants to go out with her friends, but D2 is ok with books and internet so far. Neither wants to clean house or do chores.

Heck, I don’t either.

Stack something, you will use it eventually, and be glad you had it…

nick

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Tues. July 9, 2024 – will we get power restored before I have to head up???

Hot and humid. Likely to be sunny and no rain. Unlike yesterday! The hurricane Beryl winds and rain hit us in the early morning and were gone by late morning. That left us cool and wet, which helped immensely with cleanup.

Details of my day are in yesterday’s comments, very late in the day. AT&T had and is having a lot of cellular network issues. They sent a text that all of Houston would get “unlimited” data and texts, but the network was failing with DNS errors and a variety of issues all day. My wife’s verizon phone mostly worked like a champ but eventually their network got flaky too.

I don’t know if the AT&T fiber stayed up, but it was there when I finally got around to standing my network back up. Still not booting the computers though. The cams have SD cards so will record about 3 days internally, and I don’t want the linux and windows boxen booting and crashing all day… nor do I want them running off the dirty power from the generac. It’s HARD on boards and PSUs.

Today is “make sure W can keep the gennies running” while I head to the BOL to get power restored up there. Also more cleanup in both places. Something with automatic failover is going to be critical if infrastructure continues to be fragile. Considering the aging condition, terror attacks, weather events, etc, it seems pretty likely that infrastructure will continue to degrade. Driving to the BOL and splitting the party whenever we have a long outage is getting a bit old.

Never split the party. It’s a good rule.

Time to get more serious about some of the “just in case” stuff I’ve been stacking.

Stacks give you choices. Choices are good.

nick

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Sun. July 7, 2024 – still plugging away at it

Hot and humid. Didn’t rain yesterday, might today, might not. Even if the macro forecast is correct the micro (local) weather can still be different. Rain, at least a short quick shower, would be welcome.

I didn’t do much yesterday. Got a nap. Read. Ate. Played a game with the family. Played pool with D2. Hid inside.

Today I have stuff to put away, cleanup to do, and “going home” stuff to sort out. If we go home today. Could be we stay another day if the weather in Houston is bad, and it’s nice here. Well, relatively nice.

Flexibility is good. Procrastination is bad. I will probably poke at the irrigation system some more, maybe even plumbing in one of the backup pumps. They are smaller, and might not really get the job done in the long run, but might be a stopgap. Getting the irrigation running has been a thorn in my side for a year. I’d really like to put it behind me.

So I can move on to the next issue.

I’m stacking projects like they were assets instead of liabilities. Dang.

Stack something GOOD.

nick

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Sat. July 6, 2024 – another hot day, more little jobs…

Hot again. We might have gotten some rain overnight, it was in the forecast and there was some lightning in the surrounding areas… but it will probably still be hot.

Spent the day chatting with sibling and spouse. They are athletic and spent the morning jogging, and out on the kayaks. But it was HOT and humid so we spent the afternoon in the shade, just sitting.

I did do some more investigation into my sprinkler pump. It’s not holding prime. I may have to open it up and see if the impeller is worn out. The grass went from “could use some rain” to “dry and crunchy” in the last couple of days so I would really like to run the sprinklers.

The garden is still producing but if we don’t water it, or get some rain, it will be done soon.

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Today will be about spending some time with guests before they head to the airport. Then I’ll do some work. Probably. But it will be small jobs.

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It was great to have the community gather for the fireworks. Lots of people in the park, lots floating in boats to watch the show. Lot of flags and even some bunting on the houses I can see. Nice to come together.

Work on stacking some friends and neighbors. You’ll need them the most when things get tough.

nick

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