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Category: march to war

Mon. Nov. 9, 2020 – a new week, same old stuff

Cool, chance of rain, then again, maybe not.

Had overcast most of Sunday, but when the sun came out, it sure seemed premature to be draining the pool…  but drain it we did.  Now we need a few more days of no rain to get it dry.  It’s so humid, nothing is drying even with fans on it.  My (preps) submersible pump sure came in handy.  My floor dryer blower will too.  It occurred to me that if you live somewhere with heavy rain and flooding, you should have a way to move water.  When I had a chance to pick up some pumps cheap I did.  Ditto for the floor dryer.

My wife is working from home M, W, F this week so I have a bit of leaway for pickups and other tasks.  So of COURSE my client is having issues.  I’m going to try to do my pickups quickly in the morning, then head over to his place.  It sounds like more gear is dying from the lightning strikes.  We’ll probably replace it all piecemeal.   Speaking of pickups, what did I get?  Some accessory stuff for gubs, 3 bottles of smokeless powder, a small chest freezer, which I will offer to a couple of friends before trying to find it a place at home.  Some household stuff.  I even picked up some masks.  I got a couple of boxes of fifty surgical style with earloops.  I don’t wear them but I know people who do.  The price was reasonable.  I got a box of the K95 double strap “3m” style for 0.40$ per mask.   That’s a far cry from $3/mask.  I’ve got plenty of N95s left for our use, but my low bid won, so hey, more on the stack.

Spent a couple of hours looking at the website for the 11 acre property we are considering.   The house is very strange.  It took me over an hour to figure out the floor plan from the photos, and in the end, I have no idea why you’d build something that way…  I know why it’s still available now, in addition to being one of the ugliest houses we’ve seen. “A different wood featured in every room!” is not the plus the seller thinks it is.   Every window is different (which is how I finally figured out where the missing room was.)  So much of the wood paneling is on a diagonal or horizontal.  Some rooms have 5 or more woods in natural finishes…  Low porch roofs make it look very low to the ground.  And why wouldn’t you put the big windows and a door on the lake view side of the house?  Both bedrooms are tiny, long and narrow.  On the other hand, it has a dedicated smoke house, 30×30 metal building as garage/shop, and a covered shed for vehicle storage.  And it’s up against a forest.  It’s on a ‘no permanent docks’ lake which saves $15-40K right off the bat.  It’s very different from the properties we were looking at a few weeks ago.

So I’m going to have a busy day and a busy week.  I’d best get to it.

Keep stacking what you can, while you can.  This election isn’t over, and even when it is, the fight for our country will just be getting started.  Keep the faith, but also keep your powder dry.

nick

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Sun. Nov. 8, 2020 – like lambs to the slaughter

Cool, damp, sunny later.

Nice day on Saturday.  I did some things, picked up some things, bid on some things, and received some things I ordered.

Spent some time at my secondary working to free up space.  I realized that both of my local auction houses have basically said what I gave them is all they’re taking until next year.  Also, from Thanksgiving to February ebay sales have always been slow for me.  That means if I want to get the stuff out of my house, I need to either have an auction of my own, move some to my secondary and storage, or take a bunch to a listing service.  Or just start scrapping out what I can.  Or I embrace the power of and…

I will say I’m filled with anxiety.  The number of people celebrating the end of honest elections in the US is frankly terrifying.  Their willingness to overlook obvious problems, discount what the actual law and procedure say, and accept the biased media line they’re being fed doesn’t bode well for the future.  They’re well trained sheep, herded whatever direction the shepherd wants them to move.  Outrage on tap, denunciations, two minute hates- the whole shebang.   What’s the difference between a happy mob in the street and an unhappy mob?  Still a mob.  Still a wild animal, barely under control.

What have we already seen?  NATIONAL movements to deify career criminals, and demonize cops.  Mobs chanting “Death to America” in our cities.   Tide pod and other dangerous and idiotic challenges sweep across social media.  Freaking “13 Reasons Why” on television.  Blue whale on the internet.  FFS.  MTV broke the nation’s ability to concentrate and facebook, twitter, tiktok, et al broke the ability to think of consequences past 5 minutes of cut rate fame.

The biased media reports on the crooked count and people line up in the streets to celebrate.  Which, BTW, apparently means hounding people out of their homes…  It’s been only a few days.  The conditioning to expect instant and omniscient results has worked.  The mob acts like they think Trump will leave tomorrow and their new king will be crowned on Tuesday.

The left is already calling for ‘accountability’ and tracking of Trump supporters.  I feel like I’m suddenly in the USSR.  I know what an “accountability file” means when the far right uses it.  I’m pretty sure it means the same to the left.  And what it means in practice is imprisonment, impoverishment, and extra judicial killings.  Every single time.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that we have until February at the latest before the shooting starts in earnest.*   It’ll be kooks at first, or victims of the mob, but  singletons.  Then it’ll be sneaky but still basically suicide with no real hope of getting away with it.  THEN it’ll go pro.   I REALLY hope I’m wrong.  I really hope there are people on their side to calm the murderous masses.  I really hope the people on our side decide to live and fight another day.  I guess that will depend on how bad it gets, and how quickly.

I’ll also bet that they are calling for Trump to resign and ‘make way’ before the end of the coming week.   They’ll want to keep the momentum up before the law can catch up with the cheating.  They might use mobs in the street and threat of violence so Trump can resign to ‘calm passions’ ‘for the good of the nation’…  no one will want to hear a word about Hunter either, he’s going to get away with it.

Biden couldn’t even get through his first speech without a ‘gaffe’.   He won’t last until the Ides of March.  I’d put a case of Mountain House on that bet.**

There are people saying “it’s not that bad, he won’t have the Senate, it’ll be gridlock” and “he’ll suck so bad we’ll get it back in 4 years”.   Except we won’t.   The fix is in.  If they get away with it this time it will be worse next time.  And think about this, Ol’ Joe wakes up dead in February and the world mourns the passing of an elder statesman, just like drunken killer Kennedy… and we have Harris for 8 years, and her hand picked vice, AOC or the Iman, for 8 more after that.  The Mean Girls ™ will be armed with the full power of the bigcorps, and three letter agencies.  A weaponized IRS denying tax exempt status will seem so quaint, if any of the dirt people can even remember that.  It certainly won’t be in any of the online ‘learner tools’…

Long before those 16 years are up, we’ll be fighting for independence again.  I’ll have my Republic of Texas passport after all.  It’ll be printed in Spanish.

Keep stacking.

nick

 

*by ‘shooting’ I mean armed violence, could be shooting, or arson, or bombings

** guess what it was before I changed it for sounding like a vague threat

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Sat. Nov. 7, 2020 – non-prepping hobby meets today, but…

Cool and clear, at least for another day or two.

It did get into the 80s in the sun yesterday, and the air is still saturated, but it’s very pleasant compared to a month ago.

I spent the afternoon dropping off a couple more things for the local auction.  I stopped by my industrial auctioneer, and he doesn’t want any more stuff until next year.  Dang.   My local guy isn’t interested in taking much more of my stuff this year either.  I’m hosed.  I haven’t even gotten spam from my craigslist listings.  I am going to have to get  a FB Marketplace account.  I’ll have to set up another lappy to do it, as I won’t have that spyware on my main or secondary machine.  I’ve got some researching to do.  No way I can reach my goals without moving stuff a pallet at a time.

My non-prepping hobby club meets today, but I still don’t know if I’ll attend.  Bigger venue, temps taken, and masks enforced, but I’m coughing again, and daughter’s classmate tested positive, and all that.  Seems unwise to be in a room full of guys older than me.  Maybe I’ll just go hang out in the parking lot.  It’s double suck because it’s the day we have our own little swapmeet just for members, and there is probably stuff I could sell if I’d known with more than 3 or 4 days notice.

I’ve also got to pick up some domestic bliss stuff in Conroe, which is an hour and a half round trip if there is traffic.

I’m sure there is a lot of stuff for me to do here as well 😉  like drain the pool, cut the grass, fix the broken stuff, move/organize/put away….

I’m going to take daughter’s advice and see if I sleep through my alarm or not.  In any case I expect to be away from the computer for a while.

Election Flockery continues apace.  I had to read the wiki to be sure of something.  When I mentioned it, my wife reacted as if the Rs forced the 2000 Florida recount to steal the election, so it’s all just karmic balance… Which of course wasn’t what I remembered.   I was right, the Ds filed for the recount, which the Rs tried to kill several times.  Also the allegation was incompetence and racism, not MASSIVE and ORGANIZED fraud.  Just ‘cuz the Rs ended up winners, they get blamed for it.  Wasn’t the case at all.  In the end it came down to <1000 votes, not 90,000.

Pray for an aggressive and righteous response to the allegations of fraud by the appropriate agencies, or we’ll be praying for the souls of our dead.

You can’t have too much, or stashed in too many places.  Start thinking about dispersal and cover, hiding places and friends in useful places.  Just in case they come for you or your stuff.  It’s happened before, it will happen again.  And keep stacking, resources, skills, knowledge, and contacts.

 

nick

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Fri. Nov. 6, 2020 – another quick week

Cool, dry and sunny.  Nice.

Just like yesterday.  Only we did get a bit of patchy cloud, making me wonder if rain was coming anywhere in town.  Didn’t materialize though.

Spent the morning getting some additional stuff ready for auction, spent the afternoon dropping it off, chatting with the auctioneer, and then wasting better than an hour on a pickup when the guys weren’t there.

I made over $800 on the previous bins of stuff so I’m hoping for more this time around.  Drop in the bucket, both for stuff and for money, but ‘baby steps’.

I mentioned previously that I was shifting my focus and treating the election shenanigans as a disaster that has arrived.  I meant that the watching, waiting, and prepping phase was over, and now I’m in the ‘dealing with it’ phase.  If this was a hurricane, I’d be raking the yard,  running the gennie, and passing out hot chocolate.  As it is, I’m not going to watch obsessively, only ‘keep an eye’ on things.  I can’t change anything except to spread awareness, and the people that are likely to be convinced already are, so that’s mostly wasted effort.  Instead I’ll continue getting ready for the next blow, getting stuff in order here.  Bad times are still coming, and now they might come with sleepy Joe or the ho* in charge.

My advice is the same.  Be ready for shortages. Be prepared to stay at home for prolonged periods.  Expect social and economic disruptions and continuing degradation from ‘the good old days.’  Plan to see this through to the other side.  Grand gestures are grand, but there are still Jews in Poland, and Germany.  We, the collective we, can and will get through this.  We, the personal we, may not.  But there are no guarantees in this life anyway, and as Zero Hedge says, On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.

So do what you can, accept that it might not be enough, but give it the old school try.

And keep stacking.

nick

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Thur. Nov. 5, 2020 – the end is nigh or nay, or possibly nee

Cool and sunny, another beautiful fall day.  Probably.

That was yesterday to a T.  I did a bunch of work outside because it was so nice.

Took down and put away all the Halloween decor, both inside and out.  I’ll still be finding stuff I missed for a week or more I’m sure.  Moved stuff around in the driveway.  Moved some stuff in the garage.  Cleaned the house.

When I get stressed I clean.    Kitchen is clean.  And I am stressed.

I don’t see anything good coming out of the blatant and amateurish cheating going on.  I see CWII looming.  I hope you’ve been factoring that possibility into your plans and preps.  I think perhaps we haven’t acknowledged how brutal and vindictive that could be.    Lots of old scores get settled in the name of progress.

Think on it.  What would you do differently if you KNEW your neighbor thought they could kill you with the power of the state?  Think SWATTING on an industrial scale.  Think about weaponized IRS audits.  Think about ‘compliance’ audits.  We’re not going to get there overnight, but those are the sort of thing that happen very suddenly if they happen.

Got some things that you know don’t have a paper trail?  Might want to secure them separately from the stuff that does.  How about ‘tangibles’ without a trail?  It’s worth remembering that the family hiding Anne Frank was breaking the law, and those who betrayed her, and imprisoned her were enforcing it.  Only took a couple of years to get to that point too, in a ‘modern’ and industrial country.

I’m not panicked yet, or calling for drastic measures, just pointing out that if you think things might be headed in that direction, the time to act is SOONER rather than later.

In the mean time, keep stacking.

nick

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Tues. Nov. 3, 2020 – going to get the whole family’s fangs scraped

Cool and clear.  Still damp though.  Should be a nice day.

Yesterday was nice.  A bit chilly, 45F at 6am, 49F by 7am, and warming throughout.

It was a bit cool in the shade when I was pressure washing.  Still, not freezing.

So I pressure washed the north side of the house.  What a difference to have the green and black off the siding and eves.  Did the driveway too.  Took in and put away some more decor.  That will continue for another day or two.

Kids have remote learning today.  Not sure why, they were scheduled to have the day completely off.  We’ll be headed to the dentist later, and OH, wife and I will be voting in person.

If you haven’t voted yet, and you are eligible, please do so.   Vote your conscience but consider the plans each of the candidates has for America.   If you seriously can’t pick, leave President blank and at least vote NO on all the incumbent judges.   If they’re well loved, it won’t hurt them, and if they should go, you’ll be helping.  For the other local positions, I hope you can make informed choices.  If you know nothing at all about them, the Republican party doesn’t want to go socialist, and the Democrat party does.  Vote on that basis.  Local matters and it’s where your vote DOES count.

Lots of predictions.   I’ll say that I think it will be Trump by a wide margin.  I’m basing that mostly on enthusiasm.  His base is fired up and WILL go to the polls.   Biden is the negative candidate, his base is reluctant, and might just say “F it” and stay home, or switch.  I hope I’m right, because I see dire changes to the US coming if the Dems take control.  They’ve TOLD us what they want, and it isn’t for you and I to live in peace and comfort.

Short term, keep your eyes open and your options open too.  Treat crowds like flood waters and ‘turn around, don’t drown.’    Take another route.  Try another time.  Give my druthers, I’d stay home today.  There are places that are going to explode tonight.  Stay away from them if you can.  If you can’t, WIN.

And remember that there are cameras everywhere.

Stay frosty.

 

nick

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Tues. Oct. 27, 2020 – Taco Tuesday! Or maybe not.

Cooler and humid.  We’re supposed to get some Fall weather for a few days.  The national forecast also says ‘rain’ or really thundershowers possible.

Monday was mostly overcast depending on your part of town.  Houston is a collection of micro-climates and even the local forecasts aren’t local enough.

I did my pickups, got some gub stuff and some household stuff.  That ate my afternoon by the time I got the stuff and went by my secondary location to drop some of it off.  I brought home some of what I need for my halloween candy dispensing machine too.

Before I left the house though, I went looking for a drive for my NVR pc.  Grabbing some drives from my box-o-random drives, I plugged them in to see what was what.   Two of the 4 were dead- clicks and whines, no platter spin up.   Two were fine, spun right up, partitioned and formatted no issues.  The dead ones were both Seagate, the good ones both WD Caviar Green.  Tiny sample size and old random drives from who knows where, but it was striking.

Had a police chopper orbiting over the neighborhood again too.  Then he went straight up a major street until it ended, then followed another to a point where he orbited, then back to the barn.  Looks like they were watching someone, who ran.  They followed until he ran out of road, watched for a while, then left.    The flight radar website was very helpful.

That led to some playing around with scanners for a while, but nothing productive.  I never did hear any chatter about the chase.

Closer to home I put the motion sensor for the “Driveway Patrol” on the porch and the receiver at my desk.  Even with the camera covering the front porch, I’ve been surprised to find a package waiting on the porch.  I really want to know if someone is at my door.  So I picked one up at an estate auction, and it works great.    Now I see the flashing light when someone approaches the door and I can glance at the camera and respond or not.

Small steps, baby steps, but steps nonetheless.

And I encourage you to take some steps toward your own goals.  Some of those steps should be stacking the stuff you might need later…

 

n

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Sun. Oct. 25, 2020 – more stuff to do today of a domestic nature

Cool, breezy, and partly sunny, unless I miss my guess.   I can guess too, just like the pros.

Drove around town in the part sun, part overcast and enjoyed not sweating constantly.  It was still pretty humid, and when the sun peeked through it was hot, but the overcast and breeze kept it nice for most of the day.

I did my pickup, and then went to my secondary location.  I needed to get some stuff for my wife to take to Girl Scouts for craft projects.  I also took some stuff from the house to store, and spent some time cleaning and moving stuff.  I need to spend a week there, but won’t have the time.  I have to just chip away at what I can.

Today I have to get stuff put away and organized here.   Between youngest taking over the library/toy room for her classroom, and all the temporary bins and piles of holiday decor, the place looks like a thrift store exploded here.  It must be driving my wife crazy.   The best thing I can do is get the house in order today.    That and get some more stuff out of the house.

Getting some more decor set up is far down the list.  My neighbors are all looking forward to Halloween, both the ones with kids that will be trick-or-treating, and the ones that will be home handing out candy.  It feels a bit like the last chance to be ‘normal’ before it all gets crazy, and the first chance to be ‘normal’ in a while, at the same time.  Yeah that’s crazy too, but then this year has been crazy.

It’s not suddenly going to stop being crazy either.  Remember that UFOs are on the agenda too, which would trump all the other stuff, while at the same time, making it worse.   More realistically, a NATO ally is busy supplying weapons into  a hot war  with a nation allied to Russia, and promises to send troops and get even more involved if anyone interferes.  So at the same time we’re weakened at home with the run up to CWII, internationally we might be in the run up to WWIII…  after all, SOMETHING has to get rid of all that debt that Europe ran up.  And something has to goose the world’s second largest economy, and those other countries didn’t go to all that trouble to set up alternatives to banking and the petrodollar just as an academic exercise… nor was it an accident that got their islamic shock troops/fifth column embedded into Europe.  It’s no coincidence that one of those parties is in bed with the Presidential candidate’s son, or that all this is happening while we are being attacked internally, especially since those attacks are well funded by known enemies of the US and freedom.

In other words, it’s like there’s  an ‘all you can eat buffet’ of ways spicy time can come.  One or more is almost BOUND to come.  So keep stacking.

 

nick

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Sat. Oct. 24, 2020 – lots to do, as usual, so let’s get started…

Cooler.  The front arrived.  It was 61F last night, and is likely to be cool most of today.   Yesterday’s weather was a mixed bag, with a HUGE wind coming in with the cool front.  One of my weather stations has a full memory, since 2014, and didn’t get a good windspeed today, the other didn’t see any wind above 13mph.   It’s entirely possible that it didn’t as the wind was very gusty and mixed.  Flags were tearing free but I felt no wind at ground level.   My guess is 30-40mph gusts in places.

I did some domestic bliss stuff, laundry, cleanup, restock the kitchen fridge, that sort of thing.   I also move a small bit of stuff around in my office.  Man that needs a bunch more work.  Spent about an hour on the pool.  It was pretty sunny while I was working on the pool, but got very overcast later in the day.  I also spent some time moving and cleaning some stuff in the driveway.  I need to spray the house foundation with bug killer, but I’ve misplaced my jug of poison.  I have that on my list for today again…

Also on the list, getting some stuff out of the house and over to storage.  And moving some stuff around in the garage.  I figured out where to put a cabinet I took down during the initial re-org.  I’ve got to tetris some stuff around to get it into place.  That should also expose some older auction stuff that just got buried and forgotten.

I don’t know if we’ll have a hamfest swapmeet in March, but I’m still gathering stuff as if we will.  It’ll be fewer radios, and more random electronic parts and ‘stuff’.  Switches and relays sold well, so I’ve gotten more of them.  Power supplies and wire always do well too.  In the mean time, it sits in bins in the garage.

Halloween should be a big deal this year, weather permitting.  Last year we got rained out, and there is a LOT of pent up demand for ‘normal’ things.  I’m going to do my part and stay distant while feeding candy to the little beggars.  We’ve got a lot more little beggars in the neighborhood now than when we first moved here, and that’s nice.  People have an incentive to support the area when they have kids here.

We got a note from the elementary school that they had  a teacher test positive and enter self-isolation.  The kids affected have been notified to ‘be mindful’ of their health.  My elementary student has been virtual all this year so it didn’t affect us, but it did come right on schedule with the new crop of ‘in person’ learners.  No indication of which way the infection went.

Still not seeing many Biden/Harris signs or bumper stickers.   I see lots of Trump signs.  They look much more ‘vigorous’ for lack of a better term.  Trump supporters REALLY support him, Biden supporters seem to be kind of reluctant.  Not sure how that translates at the polls, but I can hope.

There are moments when the weight and enormity of what I believe is probably coming  just slams into me.  My number one daughter and I had a very intense discussion about racism, BLM, and rioting last night.  At the end she was looking for reassurance and asked me “would you shoot someone who was coming to burn down our house with a torch?”  “Yes sweetheart.  Right in the head.”  “I love you daddy.”*

So take some prudent steps to secure you and yours if things do indeed go pear shaped.  Decide when and how you’d leave, and where you’d go.  Or what you’d do to stay.  And keep stacking.

 

nick

 

*FWIW she initiated the conversation, and definitely brought stuff she’s getting outside our home.  She’s angry and frustrated by the double standard for acceptable behavior depending on what you look like.  She does not approve of rioting or violence toward innocents.

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Fri. Oct. 23, 2020 – home again today

Cooler with a chance of rain.  We got some short but strong downpours yesterday.  Different parts of town had very different weather.

Spent yesterday driving around and doing some errands.  Had some auction stuff, a radio for me, some household stuff, and I needed to get my ebay item out of storage and packed up. Everything was very spread out geographically.  Very poor planning on my part.

I had to buy a special box to ship the big ebay item in.  It will eventually end up in Germany so it took a while to safely pack it.  Still, nice profit on a quick flip.  $275 on $25 investment, not counting taxes and fees on both sides.   I sold another case of disinfectant too.  Maybe my sales are picking up?  That would be nice.  The UPS guy seemed happy to see me twice in the same week.

The stuff I put in my local industrial auction went for about a dollar a lot.  It was a blowout.  I’d have been better off dumping it in the trash.  No idea why prices were so low.  They were generally low for all the items in the auction, not just mine, but mine were exceptionally low.  Yikes.  I hope he will accept my next load of stuff for consignment.

I didn’t watch the debate.  I’ll look at clips today if there was anything surprising.  I’m betting ‘not’.

FWIW, far more Trump Pense signs in my area than Biden.  Lots of signs for the Dems in lower and state offices though.  Clearly the battle is local.  Vote.  Even Bob voted in the last Presidential election, and he was pretty convinced of the futility of it.  Vote.   Especially for Sheriff and Judges.  Local.  When everything blows up, local is what’s left.

And keep stacking.

 

n

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