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Mon. Mar. 13, 2023 – Spring Break! for us anyway

Cooler and supposed to be clear.   I’m hoping for light overcast and  a breeze as we are supposed to go to the carnival at the Houston Livestock and Rodeo.   It was mostly overcast Sunday, with some sun in the afternoon.

I got the back yard weed whacked and then mowed.   Used the blower attachment to clear pin oak leaves out of everything.   Cleaned the fish pond of leaves, and cleaned the pump filter.  Took down the bird netting around the blueberry bushes so I could weed and blow the leaves.   Used the rototiller attachment to loosen some dirt in the front yard.   I’d like to plant a small flowering tree in the spot, but will settle for wildflowers for now.  The ashy clay soil was rock hard.

It was an ‘outdoor’ day.  Didn’t get to the gas engines on the list, but them’s the breaks.

Today I’ve got stuff to do in the morning, then rodeo in the afternoon.   Sold a freezer locally to one of my hobby guys, and one up at the BOL.  I’ve got to get the BOL one loaded up, along with two steel cabinets, and all the stuff for this trip north.

There is always a bunch of stuff headed up too.

I’ve gotta admit the bank failures have me more nervous than usual.   And I’m not surprised that the pols will cover the depositors despite them not being insured.   Because why let people suffer consequences from their informed choices?    This isn’t over.  Where there is one, there are many, and the good times are coming to an end.

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.  Don’t put more eggs in the basket than there is legit insurance to cover- you don’t have friends in high places.   Have cash on hand for your needs- you’ll have to decide on the time period yourself, but I’d say at least a couple months worth of bills.   Think HARD about having cash money sitting in banks.   Gold, jewelry, land, food, guns, guitars, ammo- whatever you choose, it should be durable and fairly easy to convert to something else of value, or ideally, provide an income stream.   I turned my bank balance into a BOL, and am continuing to turn cash into infrastructure up there.  Yes there are downsides and risks to all those physical things.   There are risks to cash  in the bank too.  Nope, crypto and the stock markets aren’t  good places.  One is based on fantasy, the other is gambling against insiders, neither is a good bet right now.

War profiteering looks like a growth area…

Private security services will be too, as long as there is something to pay with and get paid with.

Stack up some things of value.

nick

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Sun. Mar. 12, 2023 – not going to the rodeo today

Warm to hot, clear, should be a nice day.   Yesterday was another gorgeous day.  Didn’t see the high, but sunny and warm, light breeze.

Went to my hobby meeting.   Took youngest to sell some more cookies.  Weaponized cuteness is fading as her height increases, but it is balancing with an outgoing and razor sharp personality.  Interesting to watch, if a bit terrifying.

Today I intend to sleep in a bit, eat a nice breakfast, and do some outdoor work around the house.   I also need to rearrange the stuff in the back of my pickup, and pull a freezer out of storage.   My fisherman buddy at the BOL found a buyer for one of the freezers.  I’ll have a full load this trip up, especially if I pick up another metal storage cabinet.

I’m hoping to get some yard work done, maybe some small engine repair, maybe wash the Expedition,  and whatever else seems doable.   It’s ambitious.   Going away for a week means front loading some of the week’s work though.

Somewhere in there I should buy some more pipe insulation too.

The list is endless.   But tasks do get finished, and work does progress.  And sometimes movement is progress.  Work your own lists.

Stack it up, and hope the bank failure doesn’t spread or cause some over-reaction… the world feels kinda ‘teeter-y’ at the moment.

 

nick

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Wed. Mar. 8, 2023 – moderation in all things, even moderation…

Warm and damp.   Got up into the 80s yesterday but never cleared up.   Threatened to rain, and indeed I saw rain in the clouds over various parts of town, but I never got any where I was.  Today should be similar but may have a better chance of clear sky.

Yesterday I took advantage of the ‘no rain’ state (hard to say ‘dry’ in Houston) and picked up a metal cabinet.   It’s your typical office tall cabinet with shelves inside.   It should be a good match for the one I already have at the BOL.    I would like the majority of my food to be behind the closed cabinet doors for a number of reasons, among them protection from depredation, visual tidiness in the garage, and not least, concealment from casual viewers.  Did I mention ‘keep the rats off it”?   ANYWAY…

Did my pickup.   Couldn’t do my drop off.   Will explore other avenues.  Would like to get a couple of bins together today and drop them off at the other auctioneer.  Nothing stopping me but me.

That’s the plan for today anyway, go through some stuff, drop off if I can.   Pick up what I can.

We’ll see…

stack it up…

n

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Sun. Feb. 26, 2023 – can’t think of anything snappy

Warm, wet.  Supposed to be clear.   Didn’t stay clear around here yesterday though.   The overcast came and went but mostly came and stayed.   No precip that I noticed at the house.

I did do a little bit of prep for the hamfest.   Not nearly as much as I wanted to, it was too stinking hot and damp and it was triggering my allergies.   So I found other stuff to do.

I imagine today will be very similar.    I’m not even going to make any other predictions, I’ll just play it by ear with the idea of a hint of a goal somewhere in mind.   Perhaps if I just go with the flow?

I did find stuff in the stacks I’d forgotten about.

It’s important to check and re-stack so you know both what you have and what condition it’s in…

so that when you stack more, it’s the right stuff.   You are stacking more, right?

n

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Thurs. Feb. 23, 2023 – 02232023 – wouldn’t be prudent…

Warm.  Damp.   Warm and damp.   Felt like we missed Spring and went right into Summer yesterday.   Once the rain stopped anyway.  Today is supposed to be similar but clear.   I hope so.

I’ve got stuff to pickup today and rain won’t help that.   It’s stuff I couldn’t pick up yesterday because of the morning ‘moisture from the sky.’

I was able to drop off a small bin of mostly Pokemon stuff at my auctioneer, and pick up a check for my profit on the last several auctions.    My big score was an antique book that brought $400.  The most I paid for it was 50c…  that’s good return on investment.  If I bought it on a day with more books, it might have been 33c…    There were some other good sellers too, with high multiples for ROI.    I need to focus on those type of items.    FWIW, they tend to be vintage, and unusual or even unique.

Books that have some local interest, a Texas subject, and are at least 75-100 years old do well for me at the local auction.  “Smalls” or small collectible items did very well in the last auction as well.   Bigger items, sports cards, and household things didn’t do well.   Old toys, even in bad condition, usually do well, and sometimes do VERY well.   It’s always  a crapshoot, and sometimes things I thought were a slam dunk barely sell at all.  The trick is to be there every time with a variety of stuff.  And don’t pay very much for your stock.

I’ve got some other running around to do today, and some maintenance stuff at home.   The wifi needs attention, as signal levels are very low in places.  My wife has moved dealing with that to the top of my list.  I’m going to add  two Asus nighthawk access points at opposite ends of the house.   That will probably be overkill, but we have a lot more wifi devices now than we did when I set everything up originally.   Getting the wifi off the att fiber router will allow me to specify my own DNS and use openDNS initially,  and set up a pi-hole later.   I’ve got a stack of wifi routers from the goodwill, some from client sites, and some from estates or yardsales.   I’ll use the asus at home for now, and save the ubiquiti for the BOL.   That’s the current plan…   Or I could just add a couple of ubiquiti UAC access points here and be done with it… I haven’t made a choice yet, which is why it hasn’t been DONE yet.

SWMBO has spoken though so I will be making a choice today.

External deadlines.  I needs ’em.

Other than DVDs ripped to my server, I haven’t done much stacking this week.   We’ll see what I can do later to improve my situation.

I will say that stacking food and money  probably isn’t a bad idea.  You should give it a try.

 

nick

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Thur. Feb. 9, 2023 – well, there you have it, too many notes…

Cold this morning.  Supposed to be clear and warming later.   We got some rain yesterday after noon.   Depended mostly on what part of town you were in, but with the front came strong winds and a drop in temps. It was 69F when I woke up, and 45F when I went to bed.

Did some errands.   Picked up some auction stuff.   Filled the Ranger with gas at $2.79/gal.   Costco gas was empty.  It was a bit eerie to not have to wait in line.

Was going to shop Costco, but D1 and her friends missed their bus, so she called for a ride home.   It wasn’t their fault, one of the other kids was disruptive while they were doing “rainy day dismissal” and calling each bus number in each classroom.   Got permission to bring her friend and another classmate home too.   Both kids live only a couple of blocks away from us.

But that did eat up an hour of my time.   Plans.  Yeah.  Even when I only kinda sorta make them, the universe laughs at me…

Today, I might try for a pickup.  Or I might do other things.  NOT GONNA SAY.  Maybe I won’t get thwarted.  😉

I’m trying to stack some money by getting some stuff sold, but it’s a slow process for some reason.    I’ll have to stack some stuff instead.

Better get to it.

n

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Wed. Feb. 8, 2023 – Hey Joe, where ya goin’ with that gun in your hand..

Dare I say “warm” today?  It was 69F when I went to bed and that is arguably “warm”.   So lets go with that- warm and wet today.  Overcast and rain possible.  Yesterday was “warm” and certainly damp.   Overcast and mixed clouds until dusk then misty drizzle for a while.  Yuck.

Did some pickups, won some items, dropped off about 30 pounds of lego at the auctioneer.   I put it in gallon ziplok bags, each about 1 pound.     I tried for a mix of small pieces, minifigs, and bigger plates.   I also tried to keep stuff that should be together as a kit together.   Since I scooped it out of surplus bins, that last part is kind of hit or miss.  🙂   I’m hoping to do better than just the bulk rate of about $8/pound.   If it sells well, I’ll package another 30-50 pounds for the next auction.

One of the pickups was an equatorial mount for a telescope.   It’s a bit smaller than I thought, but seems nice enough.   It’s sturdy and the ‘scopes are light.   The limits are probably going to be whatever kind of mounting plate I figure out, and how sturdy the tripod ends up  being.   Tripod is definitely a deficiency with the cheap chinese ‘scopes, every one I’ve seen was very flimsy.   Fortunately I’ve got a dozen surveyor type tripods that are very sturdy and I think I can figure a way to mod one of them into something suitable.   Oh, and the mount has a little motor drive that is optional (it’s essentially a friction drive for the knob) and eventually it would be nice to figure out how to power and control that.  Projects.  I just can’t help myself.

For that matter, it would be nice to find the computer control for the little table top Meade ‘scope, then we could use that to “steer” us to an object, and look at it through the bigger ‘scope…   or maybe that’s all too  much fussing.   Dunno.   Very new to the whole thing.   We’ll figure it out.

Today, I need to keep knocking some stuff off the list.   I really haven’t been feeling it, but sometimes you just have to power through.   Getting a bit more sleep will help.    Actually getting stuff done helps with a virtuous feedback loop.

There’s an old saying that if you want something done, give the job to a busy man.   That only works to a point though.   The trick is staying under the saturation point.    Prepping is like that.   When you do it, and it works, you want to do more…   but sometimes you  just can’t muster the effort.   It’s ok.  It happens.   Move on, get back to it, and stack some stuff.

 

nick

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Mon. Feb. 6, 2023 – another day another dollar…

Cool, and damp, probably clear.   We should have another day or so of clear which will be nice.  It was gorgeous yesterday.

Wife and D2 were at a camping resort for Saturday evening and Sunday morning, with relatives.   They had fun.  I was home with D1, who mostly stayed in her room and read.  Everyone is home and ready to go back to school today.  Which is fine with me.  I’ve got my own stuff to get done.

Freezer pickup and some other auction stuff being top of the list.  Freezer selling coming soon after that.  Sometimes I bite off more than I can chew in an effort to ‘share the wealth.’  We’ll figure something out.

Figuring it out is my main strategy for pretty much everything.   That and having a bunch of stuff on hand so I have options.

Prepping is about giving your future self options.   Options let you avoid unpleasantness.   They let you  function when others are frozen.  They can save your butt.

Stack up some options.   For health, cooking, water treatment, sanitation, and repair.

You’ll be glad you did.

nick

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Fri. Feb. 3, 2023 – 02032023 – silly old bear…

Well it’s cold and wet again.  Supposed to clear up and warm up a bit later, but we’re starting in the same place.  Misty drizzle most of yesterday, although the overcast was brighter.   Seemed plenty cold to me, maybe mid 40s…

I ended up spending the day indoors, clearing out room for the Girl Scout cookies.   In the process I did some other cleaning, some auction stuff, and some ebay.   The single biggest thing was getting 20 or more pounds of lego into 1 pound bags.  That’s not all the lego I have, it’s just the lego that was in the foyer.   I’ll drop it at the auctioneer’s when I pick up a couple of lots.   I won some books about maintaining some things…

I also won another telescope.   Bloody hell.   It’s a 10 inch dob, and is the LAST scope I’m buying this year.   Pinky swear.   It was cheap without a mounting base.   The base often shows up in the auctions as they ship the stupid thing in two boxes and the shippers can’t keep track of both.  Worst case, I’ll slap a base together from plywood.   I’m not in a hurry though, so I’ll let the universe have a few weeks to solve my problem.   There weren’t any on ebay yesterday, which is a bit of a surprise.   I’ve seen them for months as I watched other lots go by.   This time, my lowball bid of $175 won.   With tax and fees, I’ll be around $220.  That leaves a lot of room to buy a base or make one.   It should let us both look at the sky together, and that should be more fun than swapping off.

Some of my day got eaten by the scanner and what was going on at a Houston school.   It was a bit harrowing to just listen without knowing where they were or what exactly they were facing.  Details are in yesterday’s comments.   Especially coming on the heals of me reading the Uvalde report, it was gratifying that they seemed to be aware, motivated, and in command, and got the guy out of the school without issues.   Hopefully they’ll do an AAR and learn from the event.   And hopefully the school will figure their security situation so an armed man can’t run in and hide from cops.  FFS.

Having the scanner on and running all the time in the office has clued me into a number of breaking news type stories, as well as ordinary law enforcement activity in the city and my neighborhood.   Knowing what goes on around you is valuable.  Knowing what’s normal, let’s you key into when something is not.   Takes practice, like anything.

Today I’ve got stuff to pick up.   No plan to go to the BOL this weekend, but that could change.  If not, there is still a huge list here, and it just keeps getting longer.    Clear weather will certainly help.

Work your list, always be improving your situation, and stack the things!

nick

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Wed. Feb. 1, 2023 – 1/12 of the way…

Cold again.  Wet again.  Overcast again.  Dreary again.   Jeez, it’s the third day of this cr@p and you’d think it was the third year.  It’s winter FFS.

And I’m SOOOOOooooo not looking forward to John Ringo’s prophesy in The Last Centurion coming true so I can enjoy my kula bar.   We don’t want to live in a John Ringo novel.

Spent yesterday doing some things, and going some places.  Ok that’s already old.   Did my errands.   Some of them anyway.   Tried not to tempt the universe by announcing my plans, but I got stuck anyway.

I did get some more stuff out of the toy room/library/future GS cookie warehouse, and the foyer.  More will leave today.  Wife is serious about having my stuff out of the way so the cookies can be dealt with properly.

Tried a new thing for dinner, a Kraft cheesy box meal, chicken with rice and broccoli.   Used two cans of Costco chicken.   Did the optional crushed Ritz cracker topping, toasted brown under the broiler.  It was really good.  Like an old school casserole.    Kids and wife liked it a lot.   Always nice to have another way to use my primary stored protein.

Today will involve some grocery shopping.  Maybe Costco but certainly HEB.  I am out of eggs after we finish this carton.   I could use some more cream too.  And fresh veg if they have any that look ok.  Baked beans in cans.  On sale meat…..   the usual.

Between shopping and cleaning, I’ll try to either do some more organizing at my storage unit, or list some ebay stuff.   I might put a couple of the freezers on craigslist.   I think I’ll hit up a few more friends first though.  Meatspace, after all.

Do what you can to help your friends get ready.  Stack up some good will.  Doesn’t have to be specifically “prepper” just want them to think of you in a positive way.   “Man, Nick really helped us out that time, I’d hate to see anything bad happen to him…”

Stacks of food will help too.

nick

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