The Ultimate Answer to Kings

Okay, I’ve been using a second-hand iPhone for over a year, courtesy of Landlady. And recently I replaced the Official TUAK Laptop with a refurbished MacBook, courtesy of Big Brother, of course using the iPhone for connection. And I asked myself at the time, “Self, what are the chances these two things won’t start conspiring against me more or less immediately?”

Credit where it’s due, it wasn’t immediate. At first I could use the iPhone as a hotspot like I’d been doing, but for some reason that recently stopped working. Turns out the two gadgets were hatching a plot to get me to physically connect them, because when I did so two things happened right away: I had my connection back, and the ‘pooter asked if I wanted it to “synch” with the iPhone. Maybe shoulda said no? I don’t know. Continue reading →

Damned if I know… 😀

I’d be so tempted to be out there with a basket, playing Mama Bear…

So for the past week or more I’ve been instructed over and over to feign deep concern over the new Mars robot and NASA’s supposed “seven minutes of terror,” or whatever. Don’t hate me if I got that wrong.

I was all over this shit in the sixties – I was a geeky white boy, so of course I was. It was sometime around Skylab when I began to get the first inkling that there was a problem with the narrative. At what point would all these stunts stop being about sending highly trained military test pilots on extremely brief excursions into earth orbit? As I wrote much much later, on the occasion of NASA officially having no manned space program at all that didn’t involve Soyuz capsules…

When I think about what they squandered – what WE squandered by leaving it to “them” – I want to weep. Back in the sixties we were all gonna grow up living in the asteroid rings and wearing silver suits. Even then we should have known better. If NASA had been in charge of westward expansion they’d still be expensively experimenting with ways to get highly-trained professionals across the Mississippi. Briefly. And they’d now be reluctantly admitting that they no longer have the capability to build a Conestoga wagon. In my wilder flights (hah!) of antigov paranoia I wonder if it wasn’t planned that way – if NASA wasn’t the National Spaceflight Prevention Agency all along. After all, why should “they” want “us” in space? It might get a little difficult to keep track of the taxpayers.

And now it’s a very exciting (you are commanded to be excited) robot gonna colonoscope Marz. As if my children or their children will ever have the option of leaving the plantation to visit the place on their way to the Belter Habitats. Okay. I’m excited. About how fricking angry I get every time there’s a news cycle about this bullshit.

Rant concluded.

This is the shortcut channel the water has cut in the horseshoe turn of the wash. The main part of the wash is at least 150 yards wide at this point, just beyond that bank behind the dog. But here the water comes barreling through – that driftwood that got stopped by the juniper is stacked over my head. That got stacked up during the flood in August.

I didn’t expect it to take half the damned day, but I did get it back at last…

In hopes that things would go well I poured my last five gallons of fuel into D&L’s red Jeep, then brought two jugs to town because that didn’t do the trick. Took about four more gallons to top it off, but it is customary to return a borrowed vehicle with a full tank. A proper redneck is not a deadbeat – at least not if he’s hoping for future kindness.

Can’t say I’m all that impressed with the engine work done, in fact I have reason to fear that the complaint that most plagued me lately is not fixed. You don’t charge a guy for a “major engine overhaul*” and then leave the Check Engine light still burning – plus it started pretty raggedly after a brief hot soak at D&L’s place. But on the other hand that serpentine belt has been going to break at any moment for months, and now there’s a new belt and idler. And the Jeep certainly steers better than it has for years, so I’ve got that going for me.

All in all, not gobsmacked but also not angry. This place is what it is.

*Tune-up, I mean

…when you actually run into a bunch of them while out walking. Sure, it happens in the Jeep but they’re not especially afraid of cars and cars cover a lot of ground more quickly than they seem able to process anyway. On foot, I don’t remember ever just blundering into mule deer within easy half-blind-old-man rifle range. I only saw a doe with a fawn this morning, but the doe started pronking (or stotting, whatever) right away instead of bulletting away so I’m guessing she was behind a herd I didn’t see.

Possibly this herd, which is also acting too big for its britches. The middle of the afternoon? Seriously? I should lay out and shoot a few just to teach them respect.

It’s a little early in the month for Battery Day, but yesterday afternoon was beautiful and not very cold so I decided to stop putting off fixing what looked like a looming problem with Landlady’s batteries.

Even with ALL NEW BATTERIES AND CABLES AND CONNECTING HARDWARE, somehow Landlady’s batteries still have more trouble with corrosion on the positive posts than anybody else I’m responsible for. Not as bad as before, but it’s still there.

Mostly just this green powdery stuff that washes away with a water bath. But I needed to know how much corrosion scum was building between the posts and cable connectors. It can insidiously cause a lot of resistance.

One thing I like about Landlady’s new setup is that I can completely isolate the batteries from the solar panels as well as the load, reducing arky-sparky to nothing. Uncle Joel is a macho man who fears nothing…

…I’m just being considerate to Torso Boy, who’s a scardie-dog.

Anyway…

Turns out that at least at this early stage the corrosion was only affecting exposed surfaces and didn’t seem to be building up between the connections at all. But I gave them a good scrape sandpaper anyway, and then went ahead and topped off all the electrolyte levels. So I’m done with the biggest Battery Day job a week early.

Fans are like bacon: Almost anything can be improved by adding a fan to it. But my early days off grid were in an environment where any appliance whose power draw was measured in amps was immediately suspect unless proven essential. I saw an Ecofan on a neighbor’s woodstove several years ago and thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen, but they are expensive and, well, not essential in a small cabin. Then last January a Generous Reader sent me a heat-powered fan, and I got to check one out for myself.

This is a Chinese copy, which some Internet voices condemned as inferior immediately, instinctively, and as far as I know without justification. The original Canadian gadget is no doubt sans peur et sans reproche but so far I have seen no reason to suggest that anybody steer away from the later copies, which often sell for less than half the price.

Operating one is as easy as lighting the stove; the fan itself has no controls or adjustable doodads. It operates with a tiny current generated by convection rising up the extruded aluminum body through a “thermoelectric module” which, like solar panels and automatic transmissions, is basically magic. The fan is silent in operation and doesn’t run with any real authority: Stick your finger or (for demonstration purposes only) your dog’s paw in the exposed fan blade and it will stop without severing the offered appendage. But you (or the dog) won’t like it very much and will be more careful next time. There’s only one caveat…

Any idiot is going to look at those wires visible through the little stamped plate and figure out for himself that you don’t want to base this thing right up against the stovepipe. The written warning shouldn’t be necessary, but is there anyway.

So the fan is silent, requires no outside power, and actually does move hot air downstream in a noticeably useful way. And it doesn’t need a huge amount of heat, it starts spinning as soon as the iron heats up while the kindling is still involved.

A model such as this one costs just north of $50 online, and works great. I kept the box so I could store the fan safely during the warm months, and one thing I wanted to know before writing a review was how it survives a long period of inactivity following a full season of use. I’ve had problems before in storing used electronics and then hoping they’d work when needed. But when I unboxed it and plopped it on the stove this month it worked flawlessly and seems likely to continue doing so.

It’s not essential to operating a woodstove, but it’s not hugely expensive or any sort of bother in operation, nor does it require any resources and it really does make a woodstove heat a cabin more efficiently.

Says the State of New York…

Democratic lawmakers in New York state are pushing a bill that would require gun purchasers to turn over to the state their social-media profiles and search histories.

According to a report by WKBW, the ABC affiliate in Buffalo, the bill drafted by two Brooklyn lawmakers, state Sen. Kevin Parker and Borough President Eric Adams, is in committee in Albany.

“There should be more restrictions on how guns are purchased. We should have more background checks,” said Paul McQuillen, director of the Buffalo chapter of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence.

Do I even want to know how I’d go about “turning over my search history?” What if there’s a Facebook account I opened two years ago and just forgot about? Is omitting it from my “profile” a felony, or only a misdemeanor? What if I don’t use “social media?” Does that label me as a whacko right away?

Wow, maybe I should just avoid getting one of those scary “gun” things right from the start. I don’t want to be on a list or anything…

The setting moon was magnificent this very clear morning but apparently you need actual camera equipment to do it justice. Can’t see any surface features with the otherwise excellent phone camera.

Easier to sleep now that I can close off the bedroom from the excessive light: In the Interim Lair, which was basically a fishbowl, the very bright moon was a real problem I was always happy to see leave. Now I can enjoy it.

…(sigh) may be more difficult this year.

But at least the federal government isn’t actively promoting arguments about socialized medicine, so there’s that.

I’m in the happy situation in which only those family members I really like (yes, there are two, not counting offspring) have ever chosen to visit, and that not this week. Which means I’m getting together with friends for turkey pot pies, which I believe may be meant ironically. One of them gets really quiet when I mention Hillary, so I won’t.

If – may the gods forbid – your hosts insist on playing this embarrassing game where everybody has to name something for which they’re happy, just play along. It’s over quickly.

Actually the thought of meeting the neighbors for pot pies this year makes me a little sad, because it reminds me that when I got ready to go last year I had a helper. But I’ll get over it.

I hope contentious arguments at Thanksgiving feasts are only a figment of the internet, or at least that they don’t occur at your house. Enjoy!

Looks like I’ll get it back on Monday with the steering and suspension repaired at least. I’m less confident about the engine – I believe there’s something wrong with the fuel system along the lines of an injector leaking down and he doesn’t – but at least the serpentine belt and its broken idler will be replaced.

He wanted to replace all four shocks and I demurred since I already replaced them myself less than a year ago; he says all their bushings are shot but I want to see for myself. Maybe I just bought some shit shocks, I don’t know.

Anyway, good news at last. The projected cost will be pretty much everything Generous Readers donated and everything I earned on the paying gig that broke the Jeep, but there’s enough to get the Jeep out of hock barring surprises.

…just before the world goes red and then black…

…that maybe this “antifa’ shit was a bad idea and you’re not cut out to be a street fightin’ man after all.

Best pictures of a bull elk I’ve seen so far!

Click to achieve full embiggenation.

I’m pretty sure these whackos are being serious.

It’s a 30-minute video and I don’t claim to have watched it to the end, so possibly there’s an “April Fool!” stuck in there somewhere. But it’s November, and they really appear serious. They’re weirding me out and that’s hard to do.

I’ve had people whose opinion I value tell me I put too much faith in armed self-defense, and I have respectfully disagreed. But I would like the record to show, please, that I never claimed it was a holy sacrament. And I din’t never wear a bullet crown. Or a woodland camo blazer.

Hey, remember that ever-so-measured tweet from the congressvermin who thinks gun grabbers have the edge because they control the government that controls the nukes?

Well, he’s in trouble now. Correia’s on the job.

The confiscators don’t live on base. They live in apartment complexes and houses in the suburbs next door to the people you expect them to murder. Every time they go out to kick in some redneck’s door, their convoy is moving through an area with lots of angry people who shoot small animals from far away for fun, and the only thing they remember about chemistry is the formula for Tannerite.

In something that I find profoundly troubling, when I’ve had this discussion before, I’ve had a Caring Liberal tell me that the example of Iraq doesn’t apply, because “we kept the gloves on”, whereas fighting America’s gun nuts would be a righteous total war with nothing held back… Holy shit, I’ve got to wonder about the mentality of people who demand rigorous ROEs to prevent civilian casualties in a foreign country, [but] are blood thirsty enough to carpet bomb Texas.

You really hate us, and then act confused why we want to keep our guns? But I don’t think unrelenting total war against everyone who has ever disagreed with you on Facebook is going to be quite as clean as you expect.

There will be no secure delivery of ammo, food, and fuel, because the guys who build that, grow that, and ship that, well, you just dropped a Hellfire on his cousin Bill because he wouldn’t turn over his SKS. Fuck you. Starve. And that’s assuming they don’t still make the delivery but the gas is tainted and [the] food is poisoned.

Oh wait… Poison? That would be unsportsmanlike! Really? Because your guy just brought up nuclear weapons. What? You think that you’re going to declare war on half of America, with rules of engagement that would make Genghis Khan blush, and my side would keep using Marquis of Queensbury rules?

Oh hell no.

This is super-long, but also super good because it’s free Correia, which is the only thing better than Correia you have to pay for. Enjoy!

I may have mentioned from time to time some of the disadvantages of locating outside the smallest, most apparently pointless, most obviously dying little town you ever encountered in the course of a long life. Among these disadvantages is the inevitability of proving the truth of the old saw, “It’s hard to get good help.”

I decided at the beginning that there was no point in bugging anybody about the Jeep. It would get done, I reasoned, when it got done. This was a mistake, probably brought about by my own reluctance to talk to people on the phone and especially to have unpleasant conversations with people on the phone. But after a week passed, having heard nothing at all about this rather straightforward job for which I had already supplied the part, it seemed not unreasonable to ask how things were going.

Things were not going well. Indeed it could be fairly said that things were not going, full stop.

The roots of this begin almost two years ago, when (using Generous Reader money) I bought the Jeep a new set of tires. That became an adventure in itself. Among other things I asked the shop to purchase and install 20 new lug nuts, since the nuts that had always been on the Jeep were mismatched and badly worn. They ordered the wrong nuts for the wheels, installed them anyway, and then just to make absolutely certain it was a cock-up they overtorqued them. I was aware of this problem but figured I’d leave sorting it out to someone with an impact wrench: In fact it was on the list of things for them to fix last week.

Guess what? In attempting to remove the front wheels so they could repair the axle, they rounded off one of the lug nuts. And then, apparently never having heard of techniques for cracking a frozen nut, they … stopped right there. For the record, “I was in here all day Saturday chipping away at it” is not going to be taken as mitigation by the customer you just disappointed to the point of homicide.

I came home yesterday in a rather bad mood and just sort of sulked for the afternoon – frankly obeying the “post every day’ rule barely even occurred to me. And except for that business there’s still nothing going on here at the Gulch so I still don’t have anything good to say.

I just can’t find them anywhere…

I wonder where they all went?

Thank the gods I never yielded to the temptation to own one of those evil AR15 things…

Make mine a nice peaceful peasant’s AK. They never whisper “Kill! Kill!” in their owners’ ears.

On the other hand I know several people who, according to this lady’s account, must be mass murderers several times over. Now I’m getting scared and paranoid…they seem like perfectly nice people, but it’s always the quiet ones…

Oh, wait! Nina Burleigh, right? Ms. “presidential kneepads.” Yeah, I’d be shocked if anybody in her exalted little circle ever even saw an AR, let alone owned one. Not sure how her utter ignorance gives her the notion that her opinion on the subject has any basis in reality – but if I were in her shoes I’d probably have the same delusion.

In the summer I bake in the morning because it’s too damned hot to bake in the afternoon.

In the winter I bake in the morning because it helps heat the damned cabin in the – morning.