The Ultimate Answer to Kings

Funny – you can go a year and never see anything more of elk than tracks and scat. And in fact that’s all I ever see of them in person, except that lately there’s lots and lots of both all through my stomping ground. Probably in the fullness of time they’ll head out somewhere else, but right now they’re not shy about being right here. I pulled the mem card out of the game camera this morning, not expecting much because it’s only been three days or so. Instead I had over 1100 images of at least one elk herd just sort of hanging around, no apparent care in the world, at two different times. It’s always evening or the middle of the night, but the first of these was still in full sun and that’s unusual.

That’s just a random 100 frames, it doesn’t matter: I spent nearly an hour going through the card contents and at no point did anybody do anything particularly interesting or amusing. It’s just unusual that they hung around so long so nonchalantly in such numbers.

And they were quite aware of the camera, of course…

…they mostly just didn’t seem to care.

Clearly they don’t need the waterer to the extent that cattle do, I can go days and nights without ever seeing a single ungulate of any kind and of course last winter there was hardly an elk for the camera to find. But right now they seem to have decided that their place is here, and since that’s so why not have a drink?

Went for a morning walky and came upon the Jeep just shaking off the morning frost out where I’ve been parking it lately…

Don’t dare drive it down the ridge to the Lair until that axle strut is fixed. I hope to get it to the shop outside town tomorrow morning, after which I’ll be completely Jeepless for a week. I need to check if the outside spigot on Landlady’s house works at all: If not I’ll have to make arrangements with Neighbor L for chicken water, since I’m not walking a 5-gallon jug a mile through rough country.

I keep saying “don’t act like food,” and people keep galloping the opposite way…

…and I know I didn’t mention it on the blog.

I used to use a lot of dry milk in my bread. It was literally the most expensive ingredient, and keeping it in stock was a constant hassle. Plus when I experimented with bread recipes that didn’t need it I learned that I’d been paying extra to do it wrong: removing the dry milk also removed the one thing I didn’t like about my bread. That was several years ago and since then I haven’t used a lot of dry milk.

But I still use some, for pizza dough and pancakes and such, and I was nearly out and went looking for more when I learned that the local food store doesn’t even stock it anymore. Don’t ask – this place seems to have “let’s cheap ourselves slowly right out of business” as its actual business plan. I was going to buy some online as soon as I got the Jeep fixed and could think about spending money on commodities again – but then…

…look what showed up among the care packages! You know this isn’t going into limbo with the rest of my sealed long-term storage food.

Spent most of yesterday afternoon playing with this new ‘pooter, and never put the new food away. I unboxed and photographed it at Ian’s place because that’s where I’ve been parking the Jeep lately and my sealed food cache is close to there, but then I had to re-box the stuff going to the loft and hoof it to the Lair one box at a time. That’s as far as I got yesterday, so one of this morning’s chores was to get it stored and out from underfoot.

I never came up with a non-clunky way to get food up into the loft. I wouldn’t call it a problem exactly, but my solution isn’t very elegant. I tied a rope to this little dollar-store basket, which is as big as will go through the small hole in the floor – and also as big as you’d want if you’re hauling canned goods: That basket can get heavy…

…and then I climb the ladder and pull the basket up after me. It…works. And being a dedicated food hoarder, laboriously hauling boxloads of food into my Lair always puts a much bigger smile on my face than expending it a little at a time.

…who sent me that woodstove fan early last winter…

Still works! Which was a question I wanted answered, because I’ve put perfectly good used electronic devices into storage before only to have them completely shit the bed when needed. I’m not sure this qualifies as “electronic device,” but I also don’t know how else to classify it. Like solar panels, it’s basically magic.

Anyway, it still works and still makes a surprising amount of difference in the stove’s heating efficiency. Anybody who depends on a woodstove needs to look into scoring one of these.

Note to self: Need a bigger/better photo manip … app? I don’t know from apps. But either way, I figured out how to crop, copy, paste, save and post a detail from a photo sent from the iPhone, which means a whole bunch of things are working as is. This is a pretty cool machine, I just need to learn all new muscle memory tricks – it’s like going from an AK to an AR. Don’t rock the mag in, slam it in and pray it doesn’t fall out on your foot to the amusement and delight of your friends.

Note to self: Learn how to disable autocorrect. Failing that, build a time machine, go back in time and murder the person who invented autocorrect before he can do so. Till I accomplish those things, please assume that all typos you see are the fault of the computer. If I type “manip,” I mean manip and not mania. Dammit! I still mean it, no matter how many times you make me re-type it!

Three different people sent me gifts of food…

I didn’t recognize the name of the person who sent this – long-term storage food including dry milk, which I was just about to buy on-line because for some reason the local store no longer carries it, so there’s some synchronicity. Goodies! Dunkin Donuts Coffee! And also a contribution toward the Jeep repair.

Colorado Hermit sent a couple of food boxes. Long-term storage food, mixed cocoa, canned meat, and pizza makings!

And this from Big Brother…

Canned meat and beans and snackies for man and dog. Laddie really likes these little rawhide sticks, and gets one every night before bedtime. I was told this was a necessary tradition, and he certainly seems to consider it so – at least that’s what he always says if I seem to be forgetting.

BB also kicked in a check toward Jeep repair. And for the record the part I sent away for has arrived, so the Jeep will limp into town on Monday for repair if all goes well.

Got a couple of books…

Mark Matis sent me a manual for the Jeep, and somebody hit my Amazon wishlist for the one Barbara Tuchman book I’ve never owned or even read.

Thanks, guys! But here’s something really special, which should help get TUAK ticking along a little more smoothly once I learn how to use it…

That’s my very first Apple computer, and I have to say right up that almost nothing on the opening screen makes immediately obvious sense to me. Except for some word processors on minicomputers back in the early eighties I’ve only ever used DOS or Windows or Linux; I have never booted up an Apple in my life. But this has been described to me as the Glock 17 of laptops – “they just work” – so I’m sure it’s only a matter of figuring out what the icons mean and how they want to be clicked on. This is a refurbished MacBook Air from Big Brother, who got tired of hearing me whinge about my failing Linux OS.

I don’t say it enough – you guys rock.

It’s a well-worn old joke that Landlady always brings bad weather with her when she comes – or at least it’s supposed to be a joke. She sent me an unexpected text yesterday saying her schedule had changed and she was coming up in the evening, and while I haven’t actually seen her yet it seems that she did. Twenty degrees outside, and if I’d bothered to check the forecast I’d have turned the bedroom heater on because that’s almost twenty degrees colder than expected. Fortunately the pilot was lit so it was a simple matter of flipping a switch. And the woodstove is crackling cheerfully away in the main room, so it won’t be long before the coat comes off.

I shivered through so many winters in inadequate housing after moving to the Gulch that I really don’t think I’ll live long enough to get blasé about having a house that will actually warm up inside. 🙂

ETA: Look at that!

I lit the fire a little after six. 17 degrees in less than an hour, measured against an outside wall so it’s really a little warmer than that in the main room. Used to be ten degrees of heat increase in an hour required real attention to stoking the fire. I like this brave new world – except for the part where the world turns so cold so suddenly, that part can go.

…keep your arms locked in a safe at home, and bear all the bitchy, punitive things we choose to do to you while we work up the power to confiscate them.

Or so it seems.

“(T)he First Circuit of the US Court of Appeals ruled that the right to self-defense is at its “zenith inside the home,” and the right is “plainly more circumscribed” outside.

“The “core right” protected by the Second Amendment is for citizens to use arms in defense of home, the court said in its decision. “Public carriage of firearms for self-defense falls outside the perimeter of this core right.”

And yet people still live in Massachusetts. I don’t get it, but maybe it’s a really nice place aside from the dictatorial rulers and the slave-market rules.

When politics get weird, the weird get politicking.

Pimp Dennis Hof wins Nevada legislative race after death

He was found dead Oct. 16 after a weekend of parties celebrating his 72nd birthday. Officials are still determining his cause of death, but they don’t suspect foul play.

He beat Democratic educator Lesia Romanov for Nevada’s 36th Assembly District, which includes rural communities and large stretches of desert in the southern part of the state.

😀 That’s gotta sting.

…as we say goodbye to the last dregs of a dear old friend.

Here’s some TUAK news: We’re getting a new Official TUAK Computer. The existing one is still in excellent physical condition aside from the letters being worn off the homerow keys, but it no longer measures up to the strict requirements of the Modern Internet. The new one is purchased and delivered and all set up, but sort of stuck in transit to the Gulch.

Since it is different from what I’m used to, and my creaky brain has trouble with computers doing “different” things, I thought this morning I should get in training by attempting to post something more than text paragraphs using an unfamiliar system. And so the preceding post, with its links and multiple cut’n’pasted blocks, is brought to you courtesy of an Android tablet BB gave me back in April but which I seldom use online.

I got it done, but in the process some bad words were heard in the land. I was sitting on the edge of the bed with a wireless keyboard while the tablet was propped on the nightstand. Laddie was curled up beside me (we’ll work on how to insert photos another time) and became noticeably uncomfortable at my frequent displays of agitation. After I declared eventual victory and hit the Publish button I reached over to scratch his ears, and I swear he rolled his eyes at me and gave a look that said as clear as speech, “I forgive you. But will God?”

Oh, dear. I’ve had this problem before – even in my own bed. But never from a dog.

Nation torn apart by routine election starting to wonder if government may be too powerful

“I was starting to wonder why we were all at each other’s throats,” said one Democratic voter in Oregon. “And then it hit me: the politicians and policies we’re voting on could shake up who has the government’s blessings for the next few years, and which groups will get left out. And then I was like, ‘Whoa. Maybe if the government weren’t so huge and bloated, we wouldn’t care about elections that much.”

He then dismissed the idea as “crazy talk,” however.

Somebody help me out here: I can never keep straight whether root cause analysis is the answer to everything or the silliest idea anybody ever concocted…

h/t

The camera’s fine. It got knocked around till it faced the fence I’d mounted it to and never took another picture worth seeing in this session, but it’s fine.

I was appalled. Was this some sort of joke? I wasn’t quite getting the punchline. Among all the polished and camera-trained TV Republicans^tm to run for prez, here’s this reality show host? Tell me it’s some really clever meta joke that’s just going over my head. Please.

Remember how the whole news cycle, day after day, became about Trump’s gaffe’o’the’week? And how every one of them was going to be the one, and then the big boys would be rid of him and could get back to serious politicking.

Remember how that “last” gaffe never came? How they just couldn’t get rid of him? Kinda funny, really.

But then he won the nomination. Which wasn’t funny at all, because say hello to President Hillary. Thanks, Donald. Help yourself to some peanuts on your way out while they’re still legal.

Remember how he beat Hillary?

Thing is, when I gave him any thought at all I despised the man. He was in the news for decades, and never for anything I valued. He was a famously unpleasant man. His frickin’ tagline was “You’re fired.” Which was the story of my entire professional life, so yeah. I’m gonna love that guy.

But he wasn’t as bad on policy as I expected. And he wasn’t as ineffective and embarrassing as I expected, and he wasn’t as obnoxious as I expected, which shows the height or depth of my expectations. And the lefties hate him so bad! Oh, I still can’t watch Trump video without thinking about Mussolini. And no sensible person would ever put faith in a man like that. But he sure knows how to put on a show. And he has taken so much abuse over the past two years, plus that long_longlonglong election campaign, and he just gives no shits. You gotta love it.

See him stalking day or night
The islands of the bay
Like some veteran tiger
Come to hunt his chosen prey
He’ll never lack a target here
For scum will always rise
And to the man who guards your walls
That comes as no surprise

I knew the debate would rise again. It always does. After every tragedy, it’s always the same old shit. It’s not paranoia anymore when the blood all over your synagogue floor declares without equivocation that somebody really is out to get you. Continue reading →

2018 is the 50^th anniversary of a great many things, both cool and horrifying. But Reason Magazine (which also turns 50, though I don’t care as much) reminds me that this is the 50^th anniversary of something I did care about very much way back when, the Whole Earth Catalog.

Ah, the foolish back-to-the-land homesteader fantasies with which I pleasantly wasted time with the help of the WEC back in the bad ol’ days. It all came to naught, of course – I expect to wake up any second now from my nap in my gray-carpeted cubicle, sad and depressed.

For more practical but not nearly as fun access to tools, try this one instead.

Don’t know if this little guy was here yesterday or not, unexpected complications canceled my planned afternoon visit. But he was floating peacefully in there this morning. A better outcome would have been 3 or 4 meeses sharing a watery nap, but one is better than none.

Hardly stress – I’m pretty sure I have food squirreled away for a year or more, certainly enough for several months. So this is no hardship or anything. But a storm of weird coincidences is pushing me on to my own resources, and whenever I think there’s going to be a lull something else happens. Haven’t seen anything but the Gulch for weeks, and that has now been bumped out at least another week.

I normally go to town once a week, catching a ride with D&L in their truck. That takes care of my drinking water, grocery and hardware needs. D&L have houseguests, which disrupted that. I was warned in advance of the situation, but didn’t know it was scheduled to go on for the better part of a month. Should have bought more onions, I guess.

No problem, I had some stuff – including the axle bracket I need to fix the Jeep – scheduled to come up with Landlady. But then Landlady got the flu less than a week before the scheduled care package drop. Now I won’t see her till month’s end soonest – though I will see the care packages earlier than that if things go well. Saturday night I arranged to get my empty water bottles filled – though I’ll have to hoof them to the Lair because I don’t dare bring the Jeep here – and not even that is really an urgent need yet. I have plenty of drinking water, but letting empty water bottles stack up is just generally a bad idea.

Truth is I have plenty of everything except fresh root veggies and … well, granola bars. Keep telling myself I should stock dried onions, but then never get around to it. But in fact this groceryless interval is showing that I’m in fine shape. Lack of granola snackies only counts as an emergency on the left coast. I have not yet told Laddie that we’re nearly out of his favorite rawhide sticks – but I still have 12 pounds of biscuits so he probably won’t riot.

I like to sit and admire the irony: I’m every bit as poor, in money, as I present myself as being. I basically live off blog contributions, charity from BB, and an occasional paying gig. But I’m already off-grid for water and electricity and neurotic about squirreling away long-term food, and so I’d almost be willing to bet that I’m better positioned to wait out a period when the food trucks stop rolling than almost anybody within the sound of my keyboard.

And that probably puts me in synch with everybody else in the country.

Except I live in a wonderful magical place where I don’t normally have to deal with it. The only confusing bits, normally, are relearning when my favorite radio shows start while I’m in the Jeep.

Except this morning DST reached alllll the way down to the Secret Lair. I woke up feeling refreshed and ready to get vertical. Torso Boy agreed that an immediate visit to water a tree would be a fine thing. I looked at the (electrical, non-connected) clock on the wall, and it told me the time was 4:30 am. Not too obscenely early, so off we go.

Then, approximately half an hour later, I happened to look at my weather panel…

Uh? That’s not … I hope that’s not right. Because if I got conned into rising and brewing coffee at three thirty in the blessed am, I’m gonna be pissed.

Turns out that no, the dumb clocks were right and the smart clock is stupid. I just had it set to a time zone that used to agree what time it is and now suddenly it doesn’t. Re-setting it only took a minute, and that’s as badly as DST interfered with my life or is likely to. But I do remember hating it for decades – especially since it used to take all the sunlight out of my post-workday life for the whole winter.

Really don’t know how you guys put up with it.