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Category: politics

Sun. Nov. 8, 2026 – time keeps on slippin’…

Another slightly cool day? I hope so. Yesterday ended up being very nice. The overcast, and later partial clouds, kept the sun at bay, and the temperature was mild, mid 70sF most of the day. A nice day to be outside.

I slept in until 10am, then did auction stuff for a while. Finally got up and out and finished up the decorations. I also did some cleaning and organizing in the donor truck (where I now have a bin of holiday lighting, instead of a big pile) and in the yard. I’m gradually getting the donor truck ready to do the big parts swap.

Cleaning up the decor and some other minor stuff took a few hours, which didn’t leave much light to do my body work on the cart. I got to the point where I should be able to do a few tweaks and glue the new panel in place today. Then I’ll connect the drive systems and give it a test. If the rain holds off, I’ll install the brake light and turn signal kit too. Then it’ll be time to see if the dang thing drives.

———

Turns out that other people are looking at the numbers and voting patterns and there are some things that don’t look right. We’ll see how that plays out, and if there is really something there. My gut says “yes” partly because “we are teh sux so of course we lost” just doesn’t ring true, and too many places are pushing that for it to be entirely natural. It feels a bit like when Bidden didn’t even bother to campaign. It won’t change anything unless there is a true smoking gun, but this time around Trump knows his life hangs in the balance. I hope there is still enough political capital to push for the truth.

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If there is proof, expect a whole lotta violence at street level. Otherwise, I don’t expect the violence until later, as the left got what they wanted for the moment. When they feel secure, they will start pushing.

Either way, having a nice stack of preps will help you get through.

nick

(preppers are like gold bugs, it’s always a good time to buy gold, and always a good time to prep)

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Thur. Nov. 5, 2026 – Still juggling commitments

Chilly. Fall is here. 61F when I went to bed. Of course it’s Houston so it was warm enough for shorts during the day. We’ll be running A/C in the day and heat at night soon. At least it was a clear and mostly beautiful day.

Which I spent indoors. In the morning I did office work and auction stuff, and personal maintenance. Shaved and cut my hair. In the afternoon, I helped at the kid’s old school theater rehearsal. That took me until after dark, at 6pm. I spent some time bringing in some small decorations after that, and putting what I could back in the attic.

Today I’ll do office stuff in the morning and another rehearsal in the afternoon. Maybe I’ll have time to bring in a few more decorations if they are dry.

The next few weeks are going to be strange. There will be a lot of fallout from the elections as people reposition for the changes. I’m astonished how quickly the right has gone down the “we lost because we are teh sux” road. I guess after not being believed about the rampant cheating last time, no one wants to go there again… and there was cheating. LOTS of it. It was just slick and well managed this time. It will come out. Just like last time. Even the dem winners in essentially uncontested places don’t make sense if real people are actually voting.

My response is the same as always. Prepare for bad times, and if they don’t come, celebrate.

Stack. It’s gonna get worse. Lots worse. They’ve already told us as much.

nick

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Wed. Jan. 8, 2025 – ah, Wednesday, what have you and Pugsly gotten up to this time?

Cold. Cold and dry, for the swamp anyway. It’s still something like 50%RH, I think. It got all the way to ‘comfortable’ in the afternoon. Hardly like a deadly global climate change killer polar vortex at all. Good thing the earth is warming, or we’d be well into the next ice age.

So I did some stuff. Mostly I did a pickup in Montgomery. That used to be a small town north of Houston, that was mostly out in the country. Now the amount of new development is staggering. Every couple of miles there were signs for a new residential development. The most telling aspect was the infrastructure upgrades, new power lines, and a lot of marker flags on the ground for where they pushed pipe for new gas and telcom. The infrastructure is long term… not flash in the pan.

I did make it home in time to get the kid from school, then did some domestic bliss. Not much. I ate too much baklava and the sugar made sure I had a nap… Tuesday is a busy evening with the kids coming and going and D2’s hobby meeting.

Today I’ll do some auction, some domestic bliss, and then some more stuff around the house. If I was a “real” prepper, I’d be bidding on a bunch of dentistry stuff, just in case. There is a “mobile dentistry” lot in the medical auction, and I’d need to sit at the computer and watch the bidding if I really wanted it. I keep telling myself it won’t get that bad. I sure hope I’m not kicking myself or pulling my own teeth in a couple of years. The question of what is prudent prepping and what is moonbattery does occasionally arise.

I already pick up a lot of low cost, low commitment, low probability stuff, with VERY high payoff if actually needed. But dentistry office tools? That’s a step beyond picking up medical books and references, and the odd surgical kit or suture tray…

Hope I’m not wrong. REALLY HOPE. Mainly because for that to pay off, about 6/10ths of the US population has to die. Only a deranged lefty would be looking for that to happen.

I have stacks. I have skills. I have friends. I don’t have a crystal ball.

You can always use more of those things. Get to work.

nick

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Thur. Nov. 7, 2024 – so it’s all so very obvious now, is it?

Cool but still damp. Clear and sunny warming things up later. Yesterday was pretty nice by the afternoon. It’s great to drive around with the windows open, even if you might need a bit of heat or A/C to put things right. I need another warm dry day to get my decor dried out and put away.

Yesterday I did some auction stuff. Did one pickup on the north side. It’s near the LDS thrift store, Deseret Industries. I always go in and shop when I’m in the area and it usually pays off. This time I got an Aquatainer for $3, two big spools of direct burial cat 6 cable, which I have plans for here and at the BOL for $25 each, and a big old CB radio for resale, either at the Hamfest or online… and I got some irrigation supplies and some medical stuff too. Then I got the kid from school, and did stuff at home including some domestic bliss. I’ll fold the clean clothes later today.

Today I’ll be trying to rent a drywall cart to help with moving my new bed, and doing other stuff on the list. I rented the trailer so that’s done. I shouldn’t have any pickups, and kid taxi duties don’t kick in until 3pm so I MIGHT be able to make some progress around the house. That’s the plan, Stan.

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I’m finding the news to be entertaining… lot’s of “this is why the Kamel failed” articles. NOW they see it, NOW they know it, NOW it’s so obvious. Well, where were you last week, or the previous months when it was obvious to US? In South Park getting high on your own smug?

The only question now is, well there are lots of questions. Still plenty of uncertainty, even if one branch of the tree is known. We’re on the “Trump won the election” branch, but it forks and twists, and is riddled with parasites, storm damage, weakened branches, etc… There are still a million bad things that can happen, but now there are also good things too.

Prepare for the worst, hope for the best, and try to get through it.

And stack of course.

nick

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Tues. Nov. 5, 2024 – a day that will live in infamy…

And it will be a damp, dreary day. Maybe. Depending on where you are. Yesterday the forecast called for rain, and we got it on the west side of town. On the east side it was sunny and warm. Until it rained out of the clear blue sky. That happened to me several times as I drove all over town. And most of the rain was fairly light squalls. Some places got plenty and pretty steady, but the high winds kept the weather moving around for most of Houston. I kinda expect today to be similar.

Started the day with my volunteering at the kid’s school. That ate a couple of hours but real progress has been made and I think they have a good starting point to work from. I’ll end up back there a couple more times I’m sure, but I’m not doing much until after they get through this performance.

Did a couple of pickups, but the rain kept me from doing my dropoff. Maybe today if it’s clear. Then it was kid taxi service and leftovers for dinner.

I’m getting tired of writing about not getting my stuff accomplished, I’m sure you guys are getting tired of hearing about it. I’m rationalizing it as a counter to the other prepper blogs where they are always trying a new recipe, doing a gear review, or reporting on homestead life… yeah, that’s it, I’m a counter balance…

I will be voting today. I encourage everyone to vote, no matter their politics. If you are undecided or don’t care, vote for Trump. He’s the only non-politician to run in decades, with a real chance, and that alone should get your vote. Will he be effective? Will he be able or allowed to do the things he’s promised? Dunno. Most of them don’t deliver on any promises (first 100 days to solve the “healthcare crisis” anyone??) but he delivered Supreme Court justices that have a Constitutional orientation and that has a chance to shape the USofA for decades. It’s a needed swing of the pendulum. The body politic has swung too far to the left, and has to swing back toward the middle, or things WILL come apart.

I think they’ll come apart anyway, but maybe this way it won’t be as ugly.

That said, my prediction is the deep state abandons kamel, because someone realizes the cheat will have to be too big, and they can just wait 4 years… and Trump wins. Then the economy gets crashed. Don’t think that’s possible? What if the Federal Reserve, which is NOT a government agency, raises interest rates 2, 3, or even just 4 points? They blame Trump for the resulting problems, blame the right for the Left’s violence, and run a Jesus candidate in ’28. I can make an arguement either way at all of the inflection points in any scenario I can come up with.

Maybe they don’t CARE if everyone knows the fix was in. They didn’t seem to last time. So the cheat is massive, undeniable, and their stance is “suck it, btiches”. — Civil war, cold or hot, results.

Maybe there are enough big money people to keep any financial shenanigans in line, and the economy gets a Trump boost. The left won’t allow that to go unpunished so expect violence. Civil war- or just constant terrorism and insurgency. Bombings, fires, riots. Infrastructure destruction… BLM and antifa were training actions. They are funded and organized, they have training cadre with experience.

I don’t see any scenario where things are better after the election, no matter who “wins”. Heck maybe Kamel is their fall guy, so they can go back to white men when they’re done blaming her for the economic collapse and sectarian violence that erupts. That would be an outcome I don’t think many people have considered…

There will be violence. There will be disruption. There will likely be death and privation. People on both sides have been gearing up and have been drawing lines in the sand. People on both sides are radicalized. All that energy is crying for a release.

And don’t forget that our enemies will work for their own benefit- while US attention turns inward, all hell could break loose internationally, which WILL affect us as supply chain issues… and foreign entanglements. Lots of money to be made in war, and war is a traditional way to reset your currency and repudiate your debts.

Could be I’m just a doomer and it will all be fine. Good luck with that. I’m working to make sure we get through this coming time and emerge safe and sound, and maybe even better. I’ve been encouraging all of you to take whatever steps you think are prudent, and I hope you have. There are still Romans in Rome. Mongols in China. And Brits in the UK. We’ll still be here when it is all in the past. Some of us anyway.

The ship of State doesn’t turn on a dime, and this great country has “a lot of ruin in it”. Timing the collapse is as hard as timing the markets.

Be ready for tomorrow, and one year from now, and 5 years from now, and the rest of your life…

And stack, because that is one thing you can control…

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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Thur. July 4, 2024 – Independence Day

And it’s going to be a hot one. Yesterday was hot and humid with fluffy clouds for an occasional break in the brain boiling sun. Maybe today will have some clouds too.

Whatever the weather, we’ll be taking some time to acknowledge what we’ve had, and what we’ve lost. Tomorrow we’ll have a community celebration that will involve lots of fire and explosions. Hooray!

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I did get a bunch of small things done, and then our guests arrived. I got the A/C in the garage plumbed in, and closed the holes in the ceiling. Two units are running, but it isn’t cold, it’s cooler, but not as much as I hoped.

I did test the irrigation pump, and despite being under water for two or three days, it ran. I need to prime it and finish the intake pipe change I started to make, and test it to see if it is still moving water, but at least it spun up, and didn’t sound any different from before the flood.

I took some time to decorate my dock with red white and blue bunting. I’m flying an extra flag today too. We are across from our neighborhood fireworks show, so a lot of people will see my decorations. Love my country, hate…

Hung a string of lights back up over the deck. They are pretty and festive, and useful as the deck has steps.

Did some small and general “yard work” things including killing a bunch of wasps and soaking their nests with poison. One stung me, so I ended them. The roll-on version of “Fire Out” topical analgesic doesn’t last as long as the product with little glass ampules that you break and wipe on your sting. Helps, works great while it works, but doesn’t last. I’ve mentioned the other product before, when talking about my septic guy and fire ants. (Can’t find a package at the moment to look at the name.)

I’m getting really annoyed with the people who are suddenly saying “oh my, look at bidden, he’s a confused old man!” We’ve been saying that for a long time, but NOW you decide to notice? Either oblivious or mendacious, neither is good when considering the President’s fitness for office. In other words, you should have noticed before now, or you are a lying sack of sh!te.

Next week I’ll take up shouting at clouds and shaking my fist at the sky.

Meanwhile, I’ll stack. In an uncertain world, where everyone seems to have gone mad, or is getting mad, it makes me feel better to know my family can eat well.

It’ll make you feel better too!

nick

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Fri. May 31, 2024 – School’s out for summer… school’s out for ever….

Or not. But it is summer and summer temps are here. Not quite on the 10s which is my own phrase for when it’s 80F at 800AM and 90F at 900AM, and 100F at 1000AM… soon though. And rainy, probably for the next 4 days. Just what I need.

Spent the day at my client’s poking at things. What details there are in yesterday’s comments. Basically I hate “automagic” programmer BS. That’s probably the root cause of why I’m not an apple fanboi. I certainly had exposure to them during my formative years. Never ‘took’ for me though. I did make progress and fixed a number of issues. It’s always nice when I can do that.

Today is going to be a couple of pickups, and also me attempting to get my truck registrations up to date. We’ll see how long that takes. While I’m doing that, I’m going to apply for the Radio Operator plates too. There is a small opsec issue with the plates, but anyone sophisticated/knowledgeable enough to look them up can probably dox me anyway from my regular plates. The advantage is having the same plate on both trucks, and having only one renewal date.

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In bigger news, they found Trump guilty of something. This is surely someone’s red line, and signal to go active. And if not this one, then sometime soon, and someone serious. I’m looking for “terror” attacks on infrastructure, and around NYFC in particular. Could be anything though. Might take a bit for them to update plans, etc. Or they might be ready. Or we could see a false flag, since I’m not the only one speculating…

And the flip side is that it will surely embolden both our domestic lefties and foreign devils. Watching the crowing on tv yesterday was kinda bizarre. No one ever thinks they’ll be out of power, or out of favor, but history shows us that the pendulum swings and what is sauce for the goose quickly becomes sauce for the gander. In 10 or 20 years I hope they think it was worth it to destroy what we had to get the orange man.

In any case, ordinary folks are going to be in a world of hurt when it all kicks off.

You’ve had time to prep, use the remaining time wisely. Stack all the things, and keep your personal awareness level HIGH.

nick

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Fri. Apr. 26, 2024 – wow, this week blazed by…

Warm and humid, overcast, possibly clearing later, or possibly raining. No one knows. We did get a little dusting of moisture from the sky yesterday afternoon. Just an occasional spot hitting my face as I walked across the parking lot, or unloaded stuff at home. The national forecast has us possibly getting rain today and this weekend.

I’m really hoping for no rain at the BOL, as we’ll be there and so will 5 of D2’s friends. It’ll be pretty crowded and intense if we’re all in the house all weekend…The forecast looks like the BOL is right on the edge of the weather, and at home that almost always means we don’t get the bad stuff.

Yesterday I mostly did domestic bliss in the morning, and shopped and cooked in the afternoon and evening… which was fine as dinner was a success, with everything coming out as planned. Even got to use my cast iron to sear the seafood, and if my “winging it” sauce was a little bit salty, it still tasted nice and worked well with the scallops.

I ended up getting my wife an OLED nintendo Switch. I went for an “amazon renewed” version in white as I saved $60 which is a significant percentage… I hope I don’t live to regret that, but it looks great so far.

Now that the anniversary stuff is out of the way, I can do a couple of pickups today, then load up for the BOL. Me, D1, and the dog are headed up today to make sure everything is ready for D2 and her friends. We’ll do her birthday when we get back, with just family. I need to giftwrap her presents today, so they’re ready.

I should also hit Lowes while I’m out and get a few more plumbing things for the irrigation system, which might not be working again. This time I’m going to change the angle of the intake pipe, and try to make it float, so the end can’t get stuck down in the silty lakebed. Some McGivering might be in order.

All in all, my day looks pretty ordinary. You’d never know I was a subversive threat to the nation, just because I want honest government, and more self reliance, while opposing immigration, and decrying the increase in crime and criminality. Why I’ve even started a garden without registering it.

The world is getting crazier by the day, and the violence is already getting started for the summer. BLM had some good ol’ new fashioned whitey hate, and race rioting, this summer seems to be going with the old standby of Jew hatred, along with two-faced P-islam…shouting that they’re the religion of peace and if you don’t believe them, they’ll kill you. Coming soon to a city near you.

Get your stacks built. Learn some skills. Meet with likeminded people. It’ll be getting a lot worse before it starts getting better.

n

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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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