The Ultimate Answer to Kings

I think most of it is the voice. When she was young she had such a voice.

Maybe some of it is that I have no memory of my mother. But at least a little of it is the … connectedness? I (sort of) graduated public school at the twelfth public school I ever attended, so I fully understand being rejected by schoolkids because … you’re poor, you’re weird, you’re badly dressed, you have a very consistent habit of doing exactly the wrong thing at exactly the right time. I get that.

But I spent a substantial portion of my whole life trying to wrap my mind around this…

My coat of many colors
That my momma made for me
Made only from rags
But I wore it so proudly.

I know, I know. It’s just schmaltz. But you know, the little girl really was the richest one in the room.

Of course a lot of it is just the voice, which is marvelous.

I’m not talking out of turn, I think, when I say that Big Brother keeps forgetting I’m not an electrician. He has said so himself. On my best day I’m a sort of self-taught handyman. On my worst days sparks fly and things that should stay up fall down. I barely know how to make most things work, and when I get them to work there’s always a good chance it could have been done better.

So when on Sunday a commenter said,

Anything bigger than 32 gauge will be more than enough, although you’ll probably want 24 gauge or larger for mechanical strength, so they don’t stretch or break while pulling them.

I thought, “That sounds right, but BB is always after me to use large-gauge wire on DC. I should play it safe and keep doing what I’m doing.” But then BB himself, having read that comment, saw me coming and emailed,

Joel, the person who said that your new meters only need small gauge wire is exactly right (as long as they are the only thing connected to the wire) That’s why I sent you that hank of multi-conductor telephone wire. Basically wire the meters straight to your battery bank each on one twisted pair of wire.

So if you use that wire, the drill you have will be fine.

Okay, so that changed things, possibly more than he intended. If I used that wire, I could come up through an existing hole in the floor and didn’t need to fish wire through the wall at all. Just pry out a caulk plug.

It works! I’m always pleasantly surprised when I wire up something like this and it works.

Anyway, fortunately I had left means by which I could pull new wire through the conduit for once, and soon I had new small-gauge wire inside the cabin and ready to wire to my new meters.

And there you go. Doesn’t really mean anything now but there will be winter mornings and evenings when this will be information of great interest to me.

And anyway I’m just pleased with myself that I got it done. Working with electricity – even at very small amperage – and crawling around under the cabin are two of my least favorite things. Put them together and it’s a chore I’m glad to finally be on the right side of.

Further, the old one won’t go to waste. With the addition of a couple of alligator clips this’ll be screwed to the powershed wall as my permanent battery-checking voltmeter. Better than that redneck analog meter I wired up for the purpose years ago.

I like my morning spam to be entertaining.

Read with understanding please:

Please let this letter not to bring confusion to you. I know that we have not met either before but hear me from the depth of your mind. It is circumstances that made to send this to you.

I will introduce myself first to you, my name is Ms. Beatrice Cleme, and I lost my Father, my hero and my lord Mr. Morris Cleme years ago. He was poisoned to death by his associate in business. He formed a company by one Mr. James Anoh who poisoned him only to take benefit of the multimillion ventures. He was arrested immediately my Father died and he entered an agreement with my father’s brothers that I and the immediate younger brother of my father will represent my father’s interest in the company. After six months I was kicked out of the company because I said that we have to change the company’s lawyer who I termed was part of the elimination of my father. Continue reading →

Up at 3, couldn’t go back to sleep. Did chicken chores early, came back and napped till 9:30 to Laddie’s consternation. Out to town for the Monday water run and only now got things put away…

I’m okay for fuel for a while but I got the wrong propane fittings again. I’m going to have to take the whole damned regulator in to fit the hoses to it. Should have done that last Monday.

I feel like I’m working on a migraine or something. Wanted to shoot out the damned ceiling speakers in the food store: I understand you guys aren’t choosing the most irritating songs in pop music history deliberately but do you have to crank the volume so high? It’s not often I come back from the little town all nerved up and I was kind of upset with myself for getting into a state, but now I’m having vision troubles and a headache and I think I’m just going to go lie down. Checked on the chicks before coming home, so I’m all caught up on chores for a while.

I consulted Noted Gun Expert David Hogg.

Ah, the ever-useful straw man.

It should be noted that our nation has not witnessed an onslaught of individuals claiming they have used AR-15s or other commonly owned semiautomatic rifles for self-defense from 1,600 feet. In fact, deciding which guns can or cannot be used for self-defense based on effective range of rifles versus handguns is like deciding which car you will drive in a 35 mile per hour zone based on the vehicles’ top speed.

Self-defense happens close and, contrary to Hogg’s suggestion, it happens with AR-15s and other commonly owned semi-automatic rifles as well as with handguns.

That’s a pithy line, though, Li’l David. Catchy. Who wrote it?

I’ve been falling into a recurring bad pattern lately, where I don’t sleep well and then all I do all day is grump around and not accomplish anything. I like being busy, but the older I get the more sometimes being busy hurts so I also like to sit around and not be busy.

This morning I woke up (after a pretty good night’s sleep, let it be said) determined at last to replace this…

…which is the indoor voltmeter I’ve been using for nearly four years now, with this…

…which has been sitting on my kitchen counter since sometime in March or April, uninstalled. This new double meter addresses three specific complaints with the original: There are two of them which means I can monitor the voltage in both battery banks rather than only the one running my DC circuit, the meters have four digits rather than 3, and they’ll be wired directly to the batteries so I can see actual battery voltage rather than circuit voltage, which is not quite the same thing.

I finished trenching in the new conduit a couple of months ago but, busy with other things, never got around to the grunt work of climbing under the cabin to install the home-made junction box and then drilling through the wall to run the cables. Life was much simpler when the Lair was an OSB shack, there was no tile on the floor and I could just drill down through it when I wanted to run another wire. Now I needed a long pilot bit to go through the inner and outer walls past the 2X6 framing.

Things went well enough at first…

I climbed under the Lair, stuck the junction box to a floor joist, secured the plastic conduit in the big 2.5″ hole in the bottom. Ran the two cables I plan to use out toward the porch and coiled the remaining spares inside the box. Secured the box cover. Crawled out and went to get my pilot bit…

…and that’s when the project came to a halt.

Stupid! Being DC, the wires are naturally quite large-gauge. Duplexed, each cable is 3/8″ across. So it made perfect sense that I paid big bux for a 12 inch long, 3/16″ wide pilot bit.

Fortunately I’m going to town tomorrow, and the Official TUAK CFO informs me that I have some money in the bank. Unfortunately I’m not at all confident that the local hardware store will stock a 1/2″ pilot bit. I may be stuck for another two weeks, until the next care package day, if I have to order one on-line. Stupid!

A week ago, after that big rainy Saturday morning, I took another fall right on these wet boards. That boardwalk has been slick before but never dumped me; maybe it’s that I’m walking with the grain now rather than against it? I don’t know – maybe that’s silly. But Saturday after the rain it was slick as snot and my meat foot went out from under me in what has become the classic style.

I was uninjured. This time. But all the way down I thought about the nearly two years I’ve been recovering from my last bad fall. Still not 100% and don’t ever expect to be but I’m mostly recovered. Don’t want a replay.

I was planning to replace the traction tape I use on the top step anyway, because it’s getting ragged. But that stuff isn’t very durable and costs $2.50/foot locally. For the larger boardwalk I need a better solution.

Also the obligatory yes, yes, I know I need a handrail. 🙂

Finished the trim on the Lair’s back door, and that’s closing in on the last of the cabin-improving chores for the season. Still need to sand and paint the door itself, and connect a junction box under the cabin for the new battery voltage readout. Plenty of time. Continue reading →

The chicks are growing like little weeds, are nearly all feathered out, and are getting alarmingly athletic and increasingly impossible to keep in Ian’s shower. I could imagine how much fun I’d have chasing them around the cluttered interior of the cave, and so it was clearly time to move them to their interim quarters in the Big Chickenhouse.

I started raising chickens with a baseline of exactly zero knowledge on the subject. In the intervening almost six years I’ve tried various solutions to various recurring problems and some were comically inappropriate: I’m looking at you, fishing net*. Some work a little bit. Some work pretty consistently. For example: I finally learned that if I need to catch a chicken, the very best time to do it is after dark when they shut down. Chickens are strictly day-walkers; they are absolutely helpless after dark. Rounding up 14 very active chicks would have been disastrously impossible at 4 PM, but after 7 PM it’s like picking up fuzzy little rocks.

So I gave them time to go to sleep, then snuck in with a carrying cage and gathered up their sleepily complaining little carcasses and moved them to the big cage…

I had to get out there early this morning because last night I gave them water but not food, so they were going to be very interested in eating. I also wanted to see if the hens were up to anything untoward…

…but they barely seem to have noticed there’s a fat dozen of their replacements present.

The plan, which has worked before, is to leave the chicks in the cage until they’re big enough not to fit through any possible holes in the chicken yard fencing, which will also give the hens time to get used to their presence. One time I just released pullets in with the laying hens willy-nilly, and chaos and death ensued. I learned the hard way that laying hens can and often will go medieval on newcomers.

While at Landlady’s I checked the rat traps in her barn…

…and note to self: Bring mouse traps. This is the second morning in a row I’ve found an untripped rat trap with its peanut butter neatly removed. Checked the trap for function and it works fine, so best guess is I’m just feeding mice at this point.

—
*Sweartagod, there has to be some antediluvian net-related atrocity or calamity buried deep in the traumatized psyche of every chicken. Chickens universally go absolutely apeshit at the sight of a net. My hypothesis is that the dinosaurs were actually wiped out by net-bearing aliens.

…and you always wanted to get to know him better, maybe invite him over for a beer. But you never got around to it…

George Austin, proprietor of the Guffaw in AZ blog, passed away a week or two ago after quite a long bout of cancer. I just found out about it this evening. He’d been in the hospital most of this year, so it didn’t come as a surprise.

I can’t claim we were friends. He commented on TUAK once in a while, I commented on Guffaw once in a while. Never even bothered to learn his name before this evening. Just needs saying – a nice old guy in our virtual neighborhood passed away, and we’re a little poorer for it.

It’s an annual in that the rootstock stays alive, though everything aboveground dies as the weather cools. It starts to sprout in mid-summer, usually around the start of Monsoon. It blooms promiscuously in the evening, the flowers closing as the day heats up. It’s very common here and I can’t seem to nail down what it is called.

I was concerned at first that there wouldn’t be space for the top piece below the light box. Turns out there just barely was, leaving a space so slim I had to paint the top edge of the trim before I installed it.

Laddie wanted to be outside with Uncle Joel, and once he got with the program he just found a shady spot and kept me company without getting in the way at all. A fine little guy, all around. In terms of usefulness he doesn’t even live up to Little Bear, which is a pretty low bar. But he’s the bee’s knees for just keeping an old guy company.

I’ll give the caulk today to cure. Then tomorrow is for painting trim and (oh frabjous day!) breaking down the work table and hauling it out to the woodlot. I have one electrical project to finish on the cabin (and you know how I like to put off electrical projects) and the solar panel rack and woodshed both still need a coat of paint but other than that I am DONE WORKING ON THE CABIN FOR THE YEAR!

I have a decision to make, though, and I need to make it by tomorrow morning: I’ve never been entirely happy with the plan to paint the back door the same color as the trim. Looking at what Claire’s been doing with her house – she’s got three colors going on and it looks really good. Counting the white of the Lair’s front door I sort of do as well and it occurs to me that it might be better to hold off painting the door till I score a quart of white semigloss, rather than painting it the red/brown trim color. What do you think?

So where’s the upside for this decision of Levi Strauss management?

Levi Strauss Forms Gun-Control Group with Bloomberg, Pushes Employees to Donate

The clothing company said it would be partnering with Everytown for Gun Safety and Michael Bloomberg to form Everytown Business Leaders for Gun Safety in a blogpost on their website. It also said it would set up the Safer Tomorrow Fund, which Levi Strauss said would direct more than $1 million over the next four years to “fuel the work of nonprofits and youth activists who are working to end gun violence in America.” The company went on to say it would begin doubling the amount it matches for employee donations to gun-control groups aligned with the fund and pushed employees to use their five hours a month in paid volunteer time at the gun-control groups.

Levi Strauss said while they had already requested customers not carry firearms in their store in 2016 and had supported gun-control initiatives in the past, they felt they needed to become more politically involved in the issue.

I get it that the CEO and maybe his mother or somebody is a gungrabber who believes pissing off his customer base will somehow curtail “gun violence. But are there no stockholders willing to take exception? Is he or are they aware of this thing called “Wrangler?” I don’t follow matters economic, but these are the things I wonder about.

Along with “What if we’re supposed to boycott everything? That wouldn’t work.”

I really thought I had the right fittings. This is the story of my life.

Last weekend with Landlady’s visit I received the propane hoses I ordered several weeks ago, that would allow me to connect bottles to the new regulator. ALAS! The fittings on the new hoses were too big for the fittings on the regulator. For some reason the fittings on the regulator won’t bloody come off. So there was nothing to do but wait till the next time I went near a hardware store, to get adapters. And I was so certain I had purchased the right adapters! That certainty lasted until I tried to put the whole damned thing together. Damn and blast. Now this’ll sit here until next Monday when I can try again. Continue reading →

…and nobody laughed out loud?

No? Well, neither do these people.

Apparently now the Senate is just a new cosplay venue.

Can’t quite tell if this is supposed to be a supreme court confirmation hearing or a war crimes tribunal. Depends on who’s talking for the camera.

We had four downpours Saturday morning, one after another. Judging from the way the washes behaved they were centered right here and also to the south, not so much to the east which would have made our wash flood. It did run, of course, but only because all the gullies were waterfalls and the water had to go somewhere.

Poor Jeep. Mud will be flaking off this thing from now until the next time it gets mud-covered, which will most likely be sometime in December or January. Continue reading →

I do! I do! But it needs photos and the morning is getting away from me, so here’s a funny picture in the meantime.

He mostly thinks Dharma is just fine.

Which doesn’t mean he’s prepared to share. Shortly after I snapped that collegial shot she nosed toward his kibble – which was a sin against the guest rules, I guess. He growled at her and suddenly became very hungry. He didn’t come up for air until the bowl was empty, and then he went back to being her friend.

Ian came back from Finland lately and look what he gave me!

A stretchy wool hoodie in my favorite color. Why, just being in the same room with it makes me want to do something badass, like tell Stalin to shove it while racing a rally car at insane speed on a mountain road and picking my teeth with a puukko!

Also, last time he was up here he noticed that I’d actually started decorating the new bedroom with Forgotten Weapons swag…

…and he said, “Don’t buy any more posters.” Because he gets a discount when he buys them, of course.

And today he sent the whole series of 1919 Secret Weapons posters!

…all advertising light arms that might have showed up at the Spring 1919 offensive, but lost their moment thanks to the unjust and discriminatory November armistice.

Most of these – the German guy in the gas mask might be a little creepy to wake up to every morning – will make their way gradually to the bedroom wall as money permits frame purchase.

Thanks, Ian!

I’m no one to judge, of course. I can’t play it at all. But still, it shouldn’t be possible to turn a message around quite this effortlessly…