The Ultimate Answer to Kings

Yesterday and half of today I’ve watched the voltage readouts with increasing concern – I know the voltage on the batteries running the 12-volt system is low and I think I know why, but the overall voltage wasn’t setting the world on fire either and not because the batteries are failing. Granted that we don’t have 100% sun right now it should have been doing better than it was. On a hunch I went out and ran my hand over the ground-mount panels and it came away pretty dirty.

Well, if that’s the problem there’s an easy fix…

And sonuvagun! That may have fixed it right there!

ETA: Might as well be complete…

Yesterday the blog saw just shy of 6500 visits, which slightly more than doubles the previous best day ever and proves as if we needed proof that Ian McCollum is a bigger star than Milo Yiannopoulos. And a couple of those visitors bought copies of the Solar Electric ebook, so that’s nice. Also want to welcome a couple of new and/or ‘improved’ Patrons! Thanks much, you’re helping keep old Uncle Joel in flour. (Also 400 people hit the Free Stuff button, which maybe spread the George Potter word a little bit.)

Speaking of flour…

I brought home the remains of the last loaf I made in the city, but it was already past its prime and I woke yesterday morning to find it covered with mold. So that went to the chickens. I had a lot of little things on my plate and couldn’t bake early, and the outdoor temp went over 100^o so I sure as hell didn’t bake in the afternoon but instead opened one of my cans of bread. Good stuff to keep in stock, says I, if you eat a lot of bread which I do.

Anyway, that meant that the very first chore of this new day, while it’s still cool indoors and out, is…

I had the first rise started before 6:30, which means I’ll still have time and temperature suitable to a nice long walkie and chicken chores before it gets hot. Yesterday I had to use the Jeep for the chickens because I ended up moving over 20 gallons of water from the Lair to Landlady’s powershed to top off waterers and jugs. But that clears my plate of heavy lifting, and this morning I plan a nice long walkie ending up at the Chickenhouse before it gets too hot. Late June before the start of Monsoon is always the hottest time of the year, and I got home just in time for it.

When I got home yesterday, three things about the cabin’s water were clear: It worked, the pressure was high normal, and the toilet valve had been leaking for quite some time. Normally that last thing would have had me worried about the level in the water tank but the gauge said everything should be fine. Therefore one of the items on this morning’s chore list was to check and see if everything was really fine…

…and everything was fine, though a good deal lower than it should have been given that I topped off the tank before I left. I’m afraid my septic system got a bit of a flush while I was gone but it probably did no harm and the tank level wasn’t so low I’d have expected to see low pressure at the gauge. I’m going to go ahead and let the tank level drop for a month or two, so I can get a better idea how that affects the pressure.

Also I think I’m going to retire the Interstate batteries in the relatively near future. None of the cells are absolutely shorted, but the specific gravity readings are all over the place. It’s hard to be sure because I have the fans on and the sunshine is kind of iffy so even though it’s near noon the batteries still haven’t gone into float which makes me think maybe I should test the charge controllers next time I have full sun. They both might be getting long in the tooth themselves, though I don’t really know what the usual service life of a charge controller even is.

I’m very happy to have had an opportunity to compare the Interstates with some badly-abused Trojan T-105s because there’s a real qualitative difference – I’m not especially unhappy with how the Interstates lasted, I always knew they weren’t top of the line, but my electrical system has come up in the world since 2013 and I won’t be buying any more of them.

In fact I might even be retiring the old Trojans before too long, since it appears an opportunity to do so might be arising. When you live ‘way out in the boonies without regular transportation, opportunities come when they come and it’s best to be ready to land them when they do.

Watching it now more than a month after the shooting, I’m amused by how completely befuddled I appear throughout. I wore the Official TUAK Sunglasses so I couldn’t see to read and also couldn’t remember the names of any of the guns we were talking about, plus the situation was hopelessly out of my comfort zone. So if it appears to you that sometimes Uncle Joel’s mind seems to wander into the weeds and play with its toes on-camera, that’s pretty much accurate. Wouldn’t expect it to become a regular feature.

Also right now the pageview counter is spinning its bearings dry, as it sometimes does briefly when TUAK gets mentioned by somebody far better known.

This guy showed up the very day after I left…

…and I don’t begin to know who he is, or whether he thought twice about proceeding before or after he saw the camera, which he surely did.

As to the others, I know who the dogs are and they belong to neighbors. The coyote(s) are local residents, just checking to see if everything’s all right.

We raced rain for the last 50 miles or so getting me home this morning. Things settled down for a while but boomer cells started moving around in the afternoon. Right now I’m out on the porch with a cup of wine watching it rain.

Torso Boy has spent most of the time laying in the middle of the bedroom rug, I don’t know if he’s resentful or re-establishing ownership or just tired but either way he doesn’t seem to want much human contact. That’ll probably change around bedtime. A hummingbird just now flew by my face, maybe wondering when I plan to pay a little attention to the empty feeder. Me, right now I’m crashed with a cup of wine watching it rain.

We were chased by rain for the last fifty-odd miles so my friend dropped me off with all my stuff and skeedaddled back to pavement. With big fat drops falling around me I got TB in the cabin, disconnected the Jeep from the Battery Minder, got it started and up to the top of the ridge to get my stuff under cover before the rain fell. Of course as soon as I did that the sun came out but oh well.

The spiders had a three-week kegger all over the main part of the cabin and there was some gruesome spider-on-spider drama in the kitchen sink. Seriously it looks like a set in an over-the-top Vincent Price movie in here and of course it’s hot and stuffy but otherwise nothing seems to be amiss – the water runs and the lights turn on though I do want to go out and have a look at my batteries because this isn’t quite right…

Those values should be about equal at this time of day, so I need to check that. But first, having swept a path through the middle of the cobwebs and finished putting my stuff away, TB and I need some lunch.

My friends have returned, safe and sound though very tired from their unfortunately extended journey. All continuing well I’ll be home by this time tomorrow. In the meantime I was able to touch a couple of acquisitive bases…

…a case of Three Buck Chuck…

And a new pair of boots that actually fit!

I bought a pair of Rocky desert boots online 3-4 years ago and have been repenting of it ever since: They came ‘way too big but could be worn if stuffed with enough sole inserts. Never comfortable, but not quite so uncomfortable as to allow me to give up on them. Unfortunately, unlike every other pair of lightweight footwear I’ve ever had they wear like iron. For years I’ve waited in vain for my plastic foot to wear through the sole so I can replace them. Today I finally gave up: I was in a city that had actual shoe stores, I could sit down and try on desert boots till I found a pair I liked.

I brought them back to the house, and then came the hard part…

Seems as though these days all boots have gusseted tongues that make it impossible to put them on my left foot. So I unlaced my brand-new boot and prepared to cut through the gusset. Turns out, though, that this one is cut generously enough that I can put it on my plastic foot without mutilating it first! Joel happy!

Anyway, if everything goes according to plan I’m going home tomorrow. So the next dispatch should come from the Secret Lair.

Offered without comment, except to request that if anybody knows if there’s a why to these things, please offer old Uncle Joel a clue…

Wow, I just spent four hours unconscious and it literally couldn’t have come at a better time. I’m happy to be of service to my friends but I won’t deny I’d like to go home now, and having that event delayed by even a couple of days kind of depressed me. So even though old Uncle Joel really isn’t much of a napper, when I got a little sleepy around eleven I went with that. To my surprise I fell right to sleep and woke up at three – just in time to meet the mail carrier for the very first time in three weeks because it turns out this was the day the vacation hold came off my friends’ mail. So I blew off four hours of boredom, caught up with my sleep, and still didn’t miss the mail. That’ll do for a good day, by recent standards.

Woke this morning to learn my friends’ return has been delayed. Only slightly, won’t really change anything, but still. “Delay” is not, at this point, good news.

My cerebral function having come almost entirely to a halt, I’ve been sitting here watching videos of this guy carving walking sticks. The videos contain a certain percentage of folksy bullshit but he’s quite skillful at producing photorealistic rattlesnake carvings. He has clearly given rattlesnakes a lot of thought, and I’m impressed by his patience for detail.

This morning’s stick depicting the last moments of a mouse that has attracted a snake’s attention kind of matches my mood…

I’m so bored. Going on three weeks here at my friends’ house, and (if I correctly recall) only a few days before I can go home. It’s Sunday afternoon and I’m drinking wine and burning up their wifi watching Youtube videos more or less at random because the alternative is … I forget if there’s an alternative.

Anyway. Longtime readers know that Uncle Joel has kind of a knife problem. I can watch a hundred reviews of a hundred guns without my heart going pitty-pat but I want every knife I see advertised despite already having a very nice EDC knife and a pretty damned nice backup knife and two or three perfectly serviceable backup backup knives. It’s positively silly to collect working knives – but I’d do it if I could afford to.

Which is why I’ve been privately having adulterous thoughts lately. Not long ago Ian brought home a Terävä Jääkäripuukko (Yeah, I looked that up, because I no longer have a life) which is a modernized take on the Finnish Puukko and is sold by Varusteleka. I ALREADY HAVE A PUUKKO, I KEEP IT IN THE JEEP AND NEVER USE IT AND I ABSOLUTELY DON’T NEED ANOTHER ONE but I acknowledge that I’m powerless against knife addiction and my life has become unmanageable and that’s not even the pet peeve to which I earlier alluded.

This shit is. Just stop watching after the first few seconds, because it’ll rot your brain…

See what he did there? Did you see that? I haven’t even watched past the first ten seconds of that excerpt, because I no longer have any respect for the idiot’s opinion. The very first thing he does with the knife is start beating on it with a heavy stick. Somehow “batoning” has become the most important thing any working knife can do – if a knife won’t survive severe abuse, it must be just no damned good.

Look, I won’t even try to claim I’ve never done it. Actually I did it for weeks, the first winter I lived in the Secret Lair because I didn’t own a hatchet for splitting kindling. Cold Steel UWK, and it worked fine – but I was still aware with every painful concussion that I was abusing the knife through poor planning: I never tried to fool myself into believing that’s what the knife was for. And then I got a hatchet and in eight years I’ve never done it since.

Seems like every knife review on every video, “batoning” is the very first thing the reviewer wants to show me. And it’s idiotic, is all I’m saying.

Okay, I’m done.

This news story suggests the chain of custody is circular. The government steals’em from criminals or “criminals.” Then somebody steals’em from the government and sells’em to genuine criminals, since the rest of us wouldn’t dare touch’em. Then the government ends up with’em again…

ATF Caught w/ Pants Down, Scrambling to Find Thousands of Firearms Stolen from Facility

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) found itself in hot water last week when an investigation by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel revealed that thousands of firearms and firearm parts had been stolen from an ATF gun-destruction facility in West Virginia.

According to the report, a contract security guard at the facility has been stealing federal property since 2016, including automatic rifles, semi-automatic handguns, Glock slides, magazines, and scopes. The ATF is being cagey about how many firearms the guard stole, but his plea agreement indicates that he nabbed at least 3,000 Glock slides, over 4,000 firearm parts, fifteen rifles, eighty handguns, and nine NFA Class III firearms.

h/t to Mutti

…because I need this sign in my kitchen…

I overslept for an hour and would still be in bed if Torso Boy hadn’t reached Peak Bladder and started licking my nose to move things along. It’s after six and I’m only about half an inch into first coffee, so leave me alone. Under the circumstances I got a kick out of this.

I’m just an old one-legged guy trying to get to the market before it gets hot.

Thought about that as I was laboriously pedaling the mile and a half to the Trader Joe’s this morning, heard “on your left” behind me, and got contemptuously passed by a guy on a skinny racer bike who made me mutter, “You’re not a superhero, you’re just a dweeb in brightly-colored Spandex.”

I saw a lot of brightly-colored Spandex this morning, particularly on a crowd of elderly morning bicyclists meeting at the “Bakery Cafe.” Yup, matching bike jerseys with faux-sponsorships splashed all over them as if they’d just stopped off from the Tour de France to have a croissant before entering the winner’s circle or whatever bike racers do. I thought it was … cute. I guess.

But I’m just an old guy trying to get to the market before the heat makes it unpleasant.

…and having missed the opportunity to stay up with trends in morning snackeries, I prefer Dunkin’ Donuts.

This is a very nice city, I’m sure. I mean no insult… Continue reading →

Regular readers know I normally carry a bunch of stuff on my belt and so don’t normally have a lot of use for a penlight. But for the past few weeks I’ve gone with virtually nothing on my belt and so adjustments have been required. I have a good folding knife that seldom comes out of the drawer – check. I have a semiautomatic and an IWB holster – reluctantly check. And thanks to a Generous Reader, just barely in time for this trip I have a new pocket flashlight…

…and I was interested to see how it holds up against my normal expectations – and honestly whether I would even end up carrying a flashlight at all. I never used to before I moved to the boonies, and got along just fine. But for many years I’ve lived in a place with lots of little utility outbuildings and without ubiquitous electric light, and would no sooner go without my flashlight than without boots so I’m used to having one around. And it turns out that yes, even in this strange world with lots of lights everywhere a handy flashlight is still … handy.

Getting that basket back on its track in the dark is a hassle.

Anyway, for the past few weeks I’ve been using this little thing, and except for missing my belt sheath I kind of like it. It’s an LED, runs on one AAA battery with three light modes, none of which are flashy annoyances. It’s not a “tactical” light’em up till their eyes bleed and then stab’em with the pointy bits light, it’s just a very handy and surprisingly bright little tool. Unlike my usual BLF…

…which is substantially bigger, heavier and more expensive, I actually like the pocket clip on the little Lumentop. It’s substantial and reversible and won’t pop off into the nothin’ without notice. Clip this bitsy thing to your hatbrim and you won’t even know it’s there except for the light. I can’t yet speak for the overall battery life but my trip is soon to come to an end and it hasn’t let me down yet and AAAs are cheap, so it’s all good. I can recommend it.

…for decades, really. It seems, in the glorious clarity of my uneducated hindsight, to have been the most avoidable of wars. And it does seem that one of the causal factors was how few influential people really wanted to avoid it. I mean I tend to put all the blame on Kaiser Wilhelm but that’s clearly not all there is to it. Wilhelm could have simply invaded France any time he wanted and no doubt eventually he would have, it’s not as though he needed Austria to invade Serbia first, but already I digress.

My point is, sometimes really bloody wars start for really silly reasons and I wonder if I’m watching one start now.

This Russian guy is cool. He’s a St. Petersburg lawyer who spent a few years of summer vacations building a log cabin. Here he shows how he built surprisingly long-lived temp structures with saplings and stretch film, a material I wouldn’t have considered…

I doubt this would work for very long anywhere UV is a consideration. But as a quick way to waterproof a structure without having to figure out how to fold a tarp just right, it’s clever.

The second temp structure is a hoop shed, with which I have some experience. Always a good design, simple and windproof, if you don’t mind open ends.

Indoor temperature is beginning to climb. Those linemen I mentioned the other day, who have been laying new cable every day this week, shut off the power without notice this morning. It’s only been an hour or two so far but that’s enough to begin to make itself felt – these houses aren’t meant for use without air conditioning.

The workers are aware of that and I’m reasonably confident that they plan to reconnect the power before there are headlines and lawsuits about dead geezers – they do this all the time. But the irony of the situation does not escape me. At home, where the electrical service consists of whatever half-assed contraption you built, this doesn’t happen. The houses aren’t dependent on air conditioning, for one thing – the windows open. Nobody would ever be stupid enough to let their life depend on home-grown electricity, and even if they did there’s nearly always a Plan B even if it’s only a generator. Finally, nobody gets to pull a switch and shut off your power without you getting a vote. Yeah – that’s the way it’s done when a bunch of redneck amateurs run around loose.

So to actually find myself without power and without any backup plan but to wait and hope, I had to come to the big city where professionals are in charge. Swell.

BTW I’m pecking this post out on my phone because of course there’s no wifi.

ETA: My faith in the power guys was not misplaced, the power came back on about fifteen minutes after I posted the above.