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Category: march to war

Tues. Mar. 12, 2024 – not the 13th…

Cold and wet to start, chance of rain later. Hopefully warming up too. It was nice yesterday, getting too hot for long sleeves and long pants. I was pouring sweat while tending the burn pile.

I got a bunch of things started, but nothing done. Today I’ll wrap up several of the projects, hopefully. I’ll certainly start some too.

Springtime chores were not even on my list but have to be addressed. Stuff like clearing debris from planting beds while everything is still dead will be much harder if I wait. There are a bunch of things that need pruning too. And the normal everyday maintenance like painting and cleaning should be happening… but might not this trip. There’s always something. And always something more when that’s done.

I took the time out to chat with several of my neighbors anyway. Meatspace is IMPORTANT. I got more comments about working hard from a guy I have barely met, which is gratifying. People are watching and forming opinions. I’m working hard to make them good ones. My wife has been more in contact with a different group of people up here, so I’m hoping were covering all the bases. So far, all the guys I’ve talked to have been very like minded, but then this is Trump country, and a country boy will survive.

The inlaws are hopeless though. Grandma blamed Trump for not building the wall, FFS. Hinted that the girls need to get out of Texas for college “so they’re not indoctrinated”. And she’s pushing her nonsense diet advice “you need more carbs for energy” on the girls. When pressed last night she did the typical thing of first blaming Trump, then jumping to another issue when I refuted anything. Grampa just keeps his mouth shut now. He must see it, but can’t admit it. They are born and bred, east coast kennedy liberals.

I’m trying mightily to maintain my civility, but it’s a good thing they are going home mid week.

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If it’s not raining today, I’ll keep working on stuff. Always keep improving. At least try.

And stack of course, that can’t hurt.
nick

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Mon. Mar. 11, 2024 – live via satellite… not just for sports anymore

Cool and clear. Yesterday ended up being cool to start, warm in the afternoon, and cold at the end. Today should be similar.

I had a leisurely morning, but worked hard on the grounds all afternoon. Grass/clover/weeds grew enough I had to mow on the highest setting and in most places I could only cut half the width of the mower deck without bogging down. So that took twice as long as usual. I also cut about a third of the common area. The neighbor on the other side cut the other 2/3.

That was followed up with trimming and blowing the debris off of hard surfaces.

When I finally got done, I had a bit of daylight left so I went to see the progress in my shared garden. Stuff was sprouting! Far better result so far than pretty much any gardening I’ve done on my own. With the 1″ of rain a couple of days ago, it was well watered and the plants were putting that to good use. Now, if we can keep the deer from eating it, maybe we’ll get some veg in a few weeks.

Dinner was a pot roast in the slow cooker. Small potatoes, celery, onion, and turnips made a very nice sauce. I used the McCormick packets for seasoning, and I like them better than what I was using. I’ll have to stack some more.

Played a card game with the kids and in-laws, and then had a small fire down on the dock. It as pretty dang cold by then, so I didn’t stay too long past midnight. Shortwave doesn’t have a lot of general interest stuff Sunday night, but I heard New Zealand on 17.500mhz pretty well. Florida was only moderately loud.

There was a woman talking about central bank digital currencies on the same frequency that carries Alex Jones and she had some very interesting stuff to say, based on press releases and other battlespace prep that TPTB have been releasing for the past year. It’s more control and more tracking, and it’s probably coming sooner than we think. I missed her name, but she has a substack. I’ll try to find her later and see if the talk is online somewhere.

Sky was black but there were patchy clouds, so I didn’t see much. No meteors.

One of the other neighbors I don’t see very often was driving around on his side by side, and we had an interesting chat about gardens, and prepping. He’s in Houston most of the time, and considers this his BOL. He was headed to his deer lease to see if he could get some hogs. I mentioned I had freezer space and a bone saw. We’ll see if any pig comes my way. It would be nice to get some, and put the smoker to good use.

FWIW, he thinks the lake would only feed about half the people on it. He hadn’t thought about how many of those people are dependent on insulin and other drugs that would stop flowing in a real collapse, and what that would mean wrt the number of mouths to feed. It’ll be interesting to see if he gives it more thought the next time I see him. It was also interesting that he commented about how much work I was doing, and how hard I was working at it. People do pay attention, and they are making judgements. Hopefully, I’m making the right impression. Being seen as a hard worker can’t be a bad thing.

Today will be more work, stuff that I didn’t get to with all the lawn care yesterday. Family is headed into town to see what there is to see on a Monday, when there isn’t a Christmas festival going on. I’m betting on “not much”.

Stack. Make connections to a community, whatever that means for your area and your life. I’m as convinced as ever that where you are, and who you are with, is going to be critical for whatever comes…

nick

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Sun. Mar. 10, 2024 – work, work, work, fish, work

Cold and dreary? Maybe cold and clear. Probably cold though. It was chilly in Houston yesterday, I changed from shorts to long pants before I left the house.

Had a good hobby meeting. My website design and work was approved as was my plan to continue. So there’s no dodging it now. I’m learning stuff, which is good, but it’s another project and a time sink at that.

Picked up my wind generator on the way to the BOL, and I’ll at least take a look in the box today. It’s not huge, but I don’t know the wattage yet. Looks like it was designed for a boat…

I’ve got a list of projects, as usual. It’ll be pick and choose based on weather, mood, and timing. And if I got all the parts together. Setting up starlink should be at least a little bit interesting.

We’ve got the in-laws up for the first half of the week, so that will add a layer of complexity and angst. Good for the kids though, in small doses.

And apparently the garden has sprouted. So I’ll probably do some weeding over the week. And I might get some seeds in the ground in my plot too. We’ll see. Meanwhile I brought up more meat for the freezers, and two cans of freeze dried for the shelf. My thumbs are not green. So I stack.

So how does your garden grow? If not, better add some canned veg to your stacks.

nick

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Sat. Mar. 9, 2024 – non-prepping hobby today, then heading to BOL

Warm and moist, probably grey and overcast. Like yesterday. It was pretty grey most of the day. Some brief periods of sunshine, depending on where you were in town… and I got a couple. Still, no real rain either.

Did my auction stuff in the morning, then started on the errands. First was picking up the ham gear I won in an estate sale. I got a nice all modes, all bands portable radio. It’s 20 years old but still pretty desirable. Yaesu FT-817, with an antenna tuner, and an external speaker. My current plan is to use it at the BOL as a portable, from the dock. I’ve got to get a battery or 13vDC power supply set up, and some sort of antenna, but then I’ll be able to actually take advantage of the nice radio quiet environment, without having to wait until I can build out a whole shack. One of my non-prepping buddies gave me an old cushcraft R4 or R6 multiband vertical antenna, and I can mount that at the dock or on the dockhouse. I can run a wire dipole or inverted v or sloper for lower bands. I’m itching to get on the air up there, so the ham project might jump the queue.

I found an entry door at Habitat reStore for the BOL. That will get me through all but one of my door replacement projects.

I got a costco run in, although most of the stuff I buy wasn’t on sale this cycle. I did manage some OTC meds, and about 40 pounds of beef.

Seems like beef is cheap the last couple of weeks, so I’m a buyer. Australian lamb is cheap too. The price at costco hasn’t fluctuated much over the last 10 years, but it’s actually down a little bit at the moment. Great quality for the money, and a nice change of pace from chicken, beef, and pork. The boneless leg roasts are economical, tasty, and easy to cook. Modern lamb has a lot less of the “gamey” flavor lamb used to have, so if you haven’t tried it in a decade or more, you might be surprised. Chops and rib chops are awesome too.

Today I’ve got my non-prepping hobby meeting, where I’ll share with the board the work I’ve done so far on the website redesign and hosting move. They should be pleased, and if not, they can volunteer instead. Meatspace is important. Community is important. Getting out of the house and talking with real people is important. There are costs though, even if they are minimal. It’s worth it in my estimation to do some volunteering, to be known as a good guy, and one who is willing to help. You get a lot more help if you are known to help others. I might never need it, but I’ve already been introduced to a local group of hams, and met some good folks, sold stuff to them, and gotten a free antenna… nevermind that I’ve had the pleasure of the company of people who share many of my interests for these last few years.

Get out and join a community of interest to you. You never know where it will lead, and it will probably enrich your life.

Stack some friends and acquaintances…

nick

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Fri. Mar. 8, 2024 – another week passed without TEOTWAWKI. Hooray!

Warm and damp. Probably wet and overcast too. Might even rain. Yesterday was overcast most of the day, with some sun in the afternoon depending on where you were. Some people and places even got rain in the evening. Well, hard to call a few drops “rain”, but they did make the windshield wet.

Spent the day doing some domestic bliss- laundry, haircut, picking up stuff around the house… Spent the rest doing auction pickups. Same stuff as most days, except for the haircut. I did get a little bit of moisture from the sky on the truck as I was coming home.

Hit the HEB for some lunch stuff for the kids. Picked up some onsale prime sirloin, vegetables, and stuff to take to the BOL next week. There were a few things on sale but not many.

Today will be auction pickups, namely the ham radio I won last night, and some other things from the same estate sale. I’ll do some more poking at the hobby web site, as I’ll be demoing what I have for the group on Saturday. I didn’t get much done yesterday. So I’ve got some more to do tonight.

I watched the State of the Union address last night, and commented here as I did. Joe held it together longer than he has in the past, but the address itself was classic Joe, more government, more taxing, more fighting issues most people don’t care much about, and more blame for anyone but the career politicians sitting in the room. What I didn’t see was anything to unite the nation, to heal the rift between Right and Left, woke and conservative, sane and insane… I didn’t see any grand plan to make any significant changes, just more of the same, harder.

I don’t think that is going to work. I think we’re on the same path we’ve been on, and I think it leads to disaster for the nation, and a whole lot of dead people.

In short, keep prepping. Stack it high, in several places. Find the people you can trust. Be a trustworthy person. Get ready for change, lots of it, and most of it unpleasant. But know that just as there are still Romans in Rome, we’ll get through whatever is coming.

Preps will help.

nick

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Wed. Mar. 6, 2024 – feeling smooth brained today…

Warm and moist. Supposed to be clear though. It was a bit more moist and a bit warmer yesterday by late afternoon than was really comfortable. Seems like spring is already starting to shift toward summer. I know it is too early to really say that, but that’s what it feels like.

I did my errands yesterday as well as my civic duty. I don’t like the “new” voting machines that Harris County is using. The electronic machine produces a printed sheet, that is human readable but also has a printed code on it. IDK if they are using text recognition to read the printed choices, or more likely encoding those choices into the barcode and then scanning that. Either way, I have no way of knowing that my choices are actually scanned or read by the separate reader machine. At least the paper pages are saved in a lockbox under the reader. Whether they are ever audited or not is another question. If I was forced to use the setup, and I was in charge, I’d be auditing that the machine tallies match paper hand counts especially in contested precincts and races.

I also don’t like the potential to tie a voter to his vote with a high degree of probability. Every step of the way is recorded and the timing could be correlated. After all, I was the only voter in the room for 5 minutes, that ballot pretty much has to be mine. My electronic check-in is logged. My assigned number is logged into the voting machine, which prints a unique piece of paper, which is then logged into another machine that tallies. Wouldn’t be too hard to collate.

There were several propositions on the ballot. Several seemed to be stage setting for an independent Texas.

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I did some more poking at my hobby website too. Oy. Glad I don’t have to do it here.

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I’ve noticed a billboard war going on in Houston between pro-“Palestinian” and pro-Israeli forces. The “palestinian” ones often quote the Bible, and the Israeli ones are often vandalized. The tone deafness shown by an appeal to “save the children of Palestine” by people who launch rockets at Jewish children, and recently raped, murdered, tortured, and desecrated Jews in Israel is just mind blowing.

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I’ve also noticed an increase in illegal dumping and other vandalism around town, even in areas that didn’t suffer from it in the past. And an increase in spanish on billboards, store names, and apartment complexes. The invasion is ongoing. Lot more crippled and deformed illegals too. Missing limbs, skeletal issues, difficulty even walking- used to be uncommon to see on the street. Not any more.

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Big change is coming. Are you prepared? Stack more.

nick

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Tues. Mar. 5, 2024 – Erect– I mean Election Day… at least for the small fry…

Warm and damp. Clear if the forecast is good, but locally we could get anything. After yesterday’s misty start, it did clear and turn into a pretty nice day. Windows down until later afternoon, then the humidity with the higher temp made A/C welcome…

Did one pickup, although it was three invoices. Got my ventless propane heater for the BOL backup heat. Got a couple of other speculative things too. Sometimes I’ll get something without knowing why at the time, but it usually works out. Has to be cheap and close by.

After getting the kids from school, I went back to poking at my non-prepping hobby website build. I’d spent the morning doing auction stuff and poking at it, and thought I’d poke some more. All I can say is that if you want to do simple things, it can be simple. Still not as easy as the demos. The demo guys are NEVER trying to re-create something existing- I don’t care if it’s a website or a CAD drawing, it’s always easy to just breeze along adding new stuff. Much less easy to keep referring to the old, and trying to incorporate that stuff into the new.

I made progress though, so that was good. I’m hoping I can poke at it enough to have a pretty good “go live” site by Saturday. My non-prepping hobby meets this Saturday and it would be good to put it in front of the board and get sign off on the switchover. It means I’ll be poking more than I’d like during the next few days.

Took some time off to watch Red Dawn with the kids last night. It held up pretty well. I’ve got a list of formative movies and books, and they are receptive to it. Just have to make the time.

Culture. It’s important. They are a bit surprised by movies from before PC and the diversite’. They can name 3 female scientists, but can they name three male? Yeah, that is just one of my issues with school… and it crops up in the strangest places. So, pop culture from the before time as a balance.

Might work. I like watching the movies anyway.

Stack some together time. And ammo.

Wolverines!

nick

(“it’s fried rice you plick!”)

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Mon. Mar. 4, 2024 – let’s get started with a new month and new week! Yea!

Could rain. Could be nice. Openweathermap.org says moderate rain, light breeze, high of 80F. The national forecast has us on the edge of a “possible’ rain zone. The Gulf will undoubtedly have its own ideas about what will happen. Either way, I’ll deal with it. Nothing critical to do outside today. Yesterday was overcast, low clouds, and it never rained.

And it didn’t matter much to me, because after returning my stuff and the trailer, I ate some meds and went back to bed. Woke in the evening feeling much better. So the day was a loss as far as work getting done.

Today should have me getting a few things done. I’ve got a couple of packages to mail, some website work to do, auction stuff, and all the normal list. I’m hoping the relief I got by taking yesterday off continues through today. It’s a lot easier to do stuff if you aren’t really sore.

Antibiotics and pain meds- the marvels of the modern age. Do what you can to make sure you still have access to them… legally of course.

And then stack them. Because no one is coming to help you, unless you’ve arranged it yourself.

nick

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Sun. Mar. 3, 2024 – a day of rest? Not likely…

Cool and overcast but hopefully not wet. Yesterday was supposed to be sunny and clear, but turned out to be overcast and cool in Ft. Bend county anyway. Which was nice. I still managed to get some sun color as I was in it for 11 hours… nothing like if it was sunny though.

Had a successful hamfest swapmeet. Grossed about the same as last year, but sold completely different stuff. Got rid of a few flip top bins. Everyone seemed pretty happy with pricing and several guys came back more than once. I had a good day.

D1 had a bad day. She woke up puking and ran a fever all day. Missed her “color run”. She’s feeling better today, but I haven’t checked her fever yet. I thought it might be food poisoning since none of the rest of us are sick, but the fever suggests otherwise. Hopefully it will resolve today.

W and D2 should be home in the early afternoon. It will be good to have the pack together.

Today I still have to return the trailer and put some unsold items back in storage. That needs to happen in the late morning. I’d rather sleep, but needs must…

Then it will be on to the list of stuff…

Like always.

Still, turned some stuff into money that will be better spent on different stacks. Take a look at your situation, and if you are thinking about selling stuff, do it. People are definitely running out of money.

Stack while you can.

nick

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Sat. Mar. 2, 2024 – at the Greater Houston Hamfest today…

Weather should be sunny and clear with a high of 80F. I’m hoping so, but with some breeze to keep it cooler. I did throw a popup canopy in the truck, but dunno if I’ll have time to set it up. I usually don’t.

Did all my running around and dropping off yesterday. Loaded a small trailer and the truck. Truck is a bit less loaded than past years. And as I’m writing this, I’m remembering something I didn’t load. I’ll get it first thing in the morning.

The Hamfest is a good time, and I never even get inside. If there is one in your area, I definitely encourage you to check it out. And if you are in Houston, or technically Rosenburg, see if you can find me in the parking lot swap meet.

It’s pretty unlikely I’ll check the site or update until I’m home, so y’all behave!

Today I’m stacking money and real life connections. Give it a try!

nick

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