Hot and muggy, getting hotter throughout the day… Probably. Wednesday was like that. 102F in the shade. Not much breeze and plenty of water suspended in the air.
I did get out of the house for a while. Went to meet with the neighbor at the rent house. My renter gave me a heads up that the guy wanted to see me about the overhanging trees. OK. Well, he’s cut them back to the lot line. Not much for me to do at this point. He keeps repeating himself and acting oddly. I have my pole saw and volunteer to cut what few branches remain on his side of the fence but now he doesn’t want me to. And he wants to put pickets on his side of my rotten fence. So I’m confused, because he seems to want something and I’m not giving it. He’s been living in Vietnam for 30 years so maybe there is a cultural thing I’m missing. In any case, I get out of there with minutes to spare picking up D1 at her camp gig. Weird. And a couple of hours out of my life.
Didn’t get to my secondary so I have to go there today and get the stuff I promised to bring to the meet tonight.
Since my day was shot, and I had the saw, I took some time and trimmed up my big live oak. Every year or two I cut about 6-8ft off everything I can reach. That really lightens the branches, and gets it away from the roof of the house. There’s a big pile of small branches now waiting for heavy trash day. Did I mention it was hot? I was soaked to the skin and starting to feel the heat.
Roofs, saws, and feeling overheated don’t mix. The tree has been trimmed as much as it will be this year…
And more stuff gets pushed to a later time.
I took a few minutes after dinner to make cables for the swim timing system. Simple coax with BNC ends, and a barrel to join with the existing cables. I made a 6ft and a 30ft extension. Now if they work, the timer will be able to reset the deck clock himself if they don’t have someone to do it after every race. That’s what I’ve been doing as my volunteer job, standing next to the clock to push the reset button. And you have to stand, because the cable is only 2ft long. Tonight I’ll be able to sit… or move more than a foot from the machine. Assuming the proprietary system isn’t doing something funny to force you to buy their cable. Just nuts that all that seems to be needed is $5 in cable and a joining barrel. I hate vendor lock-in by custom connectors or other foolishness. I’ve mentioned my sewer camera before, obsolete because they used a niche video display with custom connectors. It’s the opposite of ‘green’ or ‘sustainable’.
Sustainable and repairable are very important to the prepper, and lots of other people benefit from them too. It’s not just a declining society that can make getting replacements difficult- location, supply chain issues, suppliers going out of business, all are arguments to be able to fix things locally with commodity and common parts.
If you have a choice between two mostly identical items but one uses common parts and is easier to repair, that is the one you should get. Oh, and avoid the soft plastic overmold that seems to be on everything nowadays. When it fails, and it will, you are left with a sticky mess. Think hard about multi-purpose items too. If you are actually using it in multiple modes, you lose all the functions if you lose the use of the item. If it’s critical, it should do that one job well, and not be used for anything else. And you should have spares.
So stack up some spares, stack some tools, stack some know how, and chose simplicity over complexity.
nick
