{"id":2338,"date":"2015-06-05T07:24:27","date_gmt":"2015-06-05T11:24:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/?p=2338"},"modified":"2015-06-05T15:37:53","modified_gmt":"2015-06-05T19:37:53","slug":"friday-5-june-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/2015\/06\/05\/friday-5-june-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday, 5 June 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold; color: #000099; font-family: Arial;\">07:24 &#8211;<\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\"> Note that what I said about Obamacare yesterday was what I think the Democrats fear <em>will<\/em> happen, not what I think is <em>going<\/em> to happen.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Most of my time this week was devoted to working on science kit stuff and the prepping book, but here&#8217;s what I did to prep this week:<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">I finished books 2 and 3 in Steven Bird&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/smile.amazon.com\/Last-Layover-New-Homefront-ebook\/dp\/B00J7Z4TJM\">The New Homefront<\/a> series. The later books actually were worse than the first. The good guys are all more upstanding than Dudley Do-Right (and just as dim-witted; they tend to do things like forget to take their rifles when they&#8217;re headed into a fight) and the bad guys are all worse than Snidely Whiplash. The prose is painfully hackneyed and twisted. This guy simply can&#8217;t write. Don&#8217;t waste your time. If I didn&#8217;t read so fast, I wouldn&#8217;t have wasted mine. I do this crap so you won&#8217;t have to.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">I ordered an <a href=\"http:\/\/smile.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B00E3OL5U8\">Anker 14W dual-port portable solar panel<\/a>, an <a href=\"http:\/\/smile.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B009USAJCC\">Anker 10AH portable charger\/external battery pack<\/a>, and a <a href=\"http:\/\/smile.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B00PZ6V99U\">SunJack USB Battery Charger<\/a>. The latter is rather fragile, but it&#8217;s one of the few AA\/AAA chargers that run from USB power. One alternative would have been a <a href=\"http:\/\/smile.amazon.com\/Goal-Zero-21005-Guide-Power\/dp\/B00D2SQ6W8\">Goal Zero Guide 10<\/a>, but that&#8217;s $50 and has some issues of its own, not least that it can&#8217;t charge batteries in pairs, let alone individually, so you need to charge four identical batteries with identical states of charge at a time. The Sunjack, despite its name and despite claims to the contrary on its website, is not recommended for charging with a solar panel as the source because varying output from the panel can cause problems. That&#8217;s not a big issue if you use an oversize panel, which the 14W Anker is. The Sunjack can charge one cell at a time and treats each one individually, so no worries about matching cell states for safe charging. The Sunjack has a 500ma charge rate for each cell, which means it will recharge a set of four typical AA\/AAA cells in 5 hours or so of direct sunlight. In strong sunlight, the Anker panel produces enough power to drive two of the Sunjacks at a time. With two of them, I could recharge eight NiMH cells at a time, which should suffice for keeping our flashlights and lanterns, radios, and other emergency electronic gear powered. Rather than driving the USB charger directly, it&#8217;s also possible to use the Anker to charge a USB power pack or two, like the one I ordered, which can be charged during the day and then used to charge AA\/AAA cells overnight. I&#8217;ll be trying the Anker solar panel with different things, like recharging some old, old NiMH cells to see what happens. I want to get a better idea of how this all works under real-world conditions.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Barbara and I repackaged 50 pounds of flour. Embarrassingly, I had only 10 clean, dry 2-liter bottles on hand, so we stuck the remainder in gallon ziplock bags until I have more 2-liter bottles ready. I have hundreds of the things. I just need to clean and dry them. I&#8217;ll worry about that after we get moved, because we&#8217;re not buying any more bulk staples while we&#8217;re still living in Winston-Salem. After the move will be soon enough to bulk up. I&#8217;ve resigned myself to making lots and lots of trips up to our new house, hauling stuff up on each trip. We&#8217;ll get movers to move the furniture and other bulky\/heavy items, but there&#8217;ll be plenty we can move ourselves.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">So, what precisely did you do to prepare this week? Tell me about it in the comments.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<hr style=\"width: 65%; height: 3px; font-family: Arial;\" \/>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold; color: #000099; font-family: Arial;\">15:37 &#8211;<\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\"> I&#8217;d never heard of the Duggar family, but apparently it&#8217;s made up of two radical fundie parents who don&#8217;t believe in using birth control and their inevitable nearly two dozen offspring. I&#8217;m not sure how you turn that into a TV series, but apparently it is. Who the hell would watch it? So, it seems that one of those spawn is in trouble for admitting that when he was 14 or 15 a decade or more ago he felt up some of his younger sisters. Surprise, surprise. Boys that age are obsessed by sex. In a normal environment, he&#8217;d have felt up 14 or 15 year old girls whom he wasn&#8217;t related to, but I guess he did the best he could with what he had available. Two of the sisters have spoken out, saying it&#8217;s no big deal because he was, after all, just a teenage boy, but apparently the so-called media has turned this into a firestorm. Based on the family&#8217;s stated beliefs, it sounds like they should stone him to death. As well as the girls in question.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>07:24 &#8211; Note that what I said about Obamacare yesterday was what I think the Democrats fear <em>will<\/em> happen, not what I think is <em>going<\/em> to happen.\n<\/p>\n<p>Most of my time this week was devoted to working on science kit stuff and the prepping book, but here&#8217;s what I did to prep this week:\n<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I finished books 2 and 3 in Steven Bird&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/smile.amazon.com\/Last-Layover-New-Homefront-ebook\/dp\/B00J7Z4TJM\">The New Homefront<\/a> series.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/2015\/06\/05\/friday-5-june-2015\/\">&nbsp;&raquo;&nbsp;Read more about: Friday, 5 June 2015 &nbsp;&raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-2","category-weekly-prepping"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2338\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}