The Ultimate Answer to Kings

I need to re-adjust that game camera a bit, as I feared. Windage is good but the elevation turns out a bit high. Would have been all right but the two deer the camera saw appeared between the camera and the trough, and the line of sight is nearly over their heads. I’ll adjust that today.

Caught a couple of mulies, as expected, just not very good pictures.

Hey, in the boonies you take your entertainment where you find it.

The solstice and length of days isn’t the issue that it used to be here at the Secret Lair. Last winter I substituted the Lair’s two Interstate batteries with a whopping four rather old Trojans…

…and found that while you can use a minimum battery bank for your minimal needs – I did for years – there are unexpected benefits to not doing so if you don’t need to. The batteries of the slightly larger bank are each substantially less discharged overnight – surprisingly so – and while that might not make a lot of difference to these four rather elderly batteries it should improve their replacements’ life expectancies significantly.

Nevertheless, I’ve been doing this a long time now, I’m old, and once a habit has achieved the status of a tradition I don’t necessarily stop doing it just because it no longer makes sense. For example, in mid-winter I do tend to watch and see at what time the sun breaks over the eastern ridge from the kitchen window. And today, for the very first time this winter…

…the sun appeared at 7:59, or officially before 8 AM. That’s only an improvement of six minutes over the solstice sunrise observation of 8:05, but us poor folks take our milestones where we find them.

We still have quite a lot of cold weather ahead, but the days will get inexorably longer and Spring will come. Human sacrifices may not be necessary once again this year. 🙂

Swear it’s starting to look like it might take the traditional month before I shake the aftereffects of that bit of sickness in December. I’m short of energy, my neck’s still stiff, my back’s been singing to me since Tuesday, and all I want is to sit. But some little things still need to get done, mostly having to do with chickens and firewood. Continue reading →

Actually I doubt this is the same rodent we saw a few nights ago, or that dug that tunnel. But this one has paid the price of crime.

There are two things a one-legged person really ought to own, whether he likes it or not…

Technically I owned these, but I left them out in the weather when I moved into the Interim Lair eleven years ago. I was aware that it made no sense, but it was an emotional decision. Having spent months without any prosthesis in the past, I just really (really really) hated crutches. For years I carried them around from home to home, entombing them in the back of one closet or another, then when I moved into the boonies and really needed the backup I left them to rot in the sun.

Ironically, now that I have a ground-floor bedroom where I can crash to read in the evening, I’ve found myself wanting to take the leg off and be comfortable – but leaving it on because I also wanted to be able to use the kitchen and bathroom. And it occurred to me a couple of times, “Maybe I should do something about those crutches.”

Years ago the crutches got relegated to Landlady’s barn, but last weekend she cleaned out a bunch of junk and the crutches ended up on the pile. Looked at them a couple of days ago during chicken chores, then picked them up and stashed them in the Jeep. Bought some pads and tips for them yesterday while I was in the drug store on other business, and cleaned and refurbished them this morning.

I’m really overdue for prosthesis problems, it only makes sense even though I still dislike them intensely.

The various holidays have everybody’s schedules all screwed up, even though none of us work regular jobs. Though I was kind of looking for excuses not to go to town, this afternoon was my first chance in a while for liquid refreshment.

And now everything that was empty is full and my back is singing soprano. I got sicker than I gave myself credit for two weeks ago, and it’s taking longer than I hoped to fully get over it. By the time I even got to town I was ready for a nap – now I’m ready for traction and a morphine drip. But I did get it done. I also got that “sick” box set up in the kitchen, for the next time.

And wonder to tell, the local hardware had a new thermocouple that will (I’m pretty sure) fit the space heater should I need one. I don’t need one, though, because those of you guys who said the heater’s problem was an air bubble in the gas line were apparently completely right. The thought never crossed my mind early this morning. But I thought it through again over lunch, got a wrench and cracked a gas line, then tried again and sure enough the pilot lit and the heater works fine. I’ve been kind of fuzzy in the head lately: Is it possible I never started the pilot yesterday but thought I had? I don’t know. Either way, the problem seems to be fixed with no hardware replacement required. I even hooked up the new propane bottle again just to make sure that hadn’t been a problem, and apparently it wasn’t. I haven’t been 100% or even 70% lately – maybe it really was the mother of all brain farts.

Anyway I think I’m going to stretch out, rest my back and maybe take an old man nap for a while.

Seriously.

Er…because he’s a frickin’ Marine in a frickin’ war zone? Just a guess.

I note that he’s far from the only armed person in that photograph. Just a quick scan shows three M4 buttstocks and another Beretta. So apparently nobody who was actually there considers the Secnav to be doing something too seriously silly.

But that’s okay, Barbara. We can just go with the more easily digested explanation, that he’s in the Trump administration and is therefore a crazy right-wing gunhugger who should die. But thanks for playing.

Honestly, I’d be a lot more concerned about bringing that POS SERPA holster into a sandy environment. Take it from me, bad choice.

h/t

So I woke up at quarter to four this morning and immediately knew there was something wrong with the new space heater. It was noticeably cool in the bedroom, and you know, the space heater is supposed to make that not happen.

Since I had just replaced the propane bottle yesterday morning – the last time the space heater stopped working – and particularly since the bottle now in service was the brand-new bottle, I jumped to a conclusion as to what had caused this little problem. After getting Little Bear squared away I suited up and went out in the dark to exchange bottles. Again.

Good news/Bad news: The new bottle wasn’t empty. Guesstimating by weight, I’d say it’s completely full. Therefore something bad is happening. Something expensive. But to eliminate the bottle as a cause of the problem I went ahead and swapped them out, then went inside and tried to light the pilot.

The pilot was not interested in re-lighting. At all. Continue reading →

…is that some retailer, somewhere, will be stuck with huge stocks of fidget spinners as the fad suddenly ends. My only hope is that it’s a retailer I dislike intensely.

They even sell them at the store in the little town nearest where I live, which must surely mean every other square foot of this great land of ours is covered, saturated, virtually paved with the absurd little things. And the history of fads in the past 60 years proves one thing conclusively: If I’ve noticed them, the fad must surely have ended quite some time ago. Unfortunately I don’t particularly dislike the management of that little store, doing the best they can with what little they have. If only they’d put the fidget spinner money toward a new meat reefer instead, I’d really be rather fond of them.

I don’t know why I’m surprised that it’s taking so long to shake the last of last week’s illness. I’ve always been susceptible to whatever flu bug was going around – back in the world I caught it more-or-less annually and it annually took a month out of my life, creeping around croaking “I’ve been sick.” Now it’s twelve days since I first got sick – two days ago I had a fairly normal busy day with Landlady here and care packages and laundry with L and a trip to the dump with D&L, and I felt like I’d run a marathon. I’ve still got a bit of a sensitive stomach, no big deal, some heartburn, some soreness in my neck, but in general I still think if that was the flu I got lucky. There never was a lot of fever, and I didn’t come out of the active part of the illness as flattened as I used to.

The big lesson, for me, is that though it’s been ten years since I caught a virus I can still catch a virus and I should have been better prepared. There’s a corner in the kitchen cabinet that’s not going to much use, and I’m going to stock it with “sick” stuff just so that doesn’t happen again. I should have had electrolytes in stock and didn’t, I should have had “easy” food handy and instead it’s all up in the loft. It was three or four days before I felt up to anything as adventurous as chicken noodle soup, and of course in those days I got pretty weak – it ironically would have been safer and easier to go out to the powershed for canned soup than to climb the loft ladder.

Having said all that, I can bless luck or synchronicity or whatever it was that had me getting good and sick after building a first-floor bedroom with a propane heater, and not before. I’d have been on an air mattress in the living room otherwise, feeding sticks into the woodstove until I ran out of sticks, and while I don’t think that would have killed me in this case it would have truly sucked. Had I gotten sick during the early-December cold snap and not had the heated bedroom, that might have actually gotten a bit dangerous.

So all in all I came through it far better than I feared – flu is on my short list of things to fear – but not as well as I might have with a bit more preparation. What does not kill me makes me smarter. 🙂

One of the things I’ve wanted to do with a game camera is put it outside an active nest that something dug under the new woodshed. I think the something is probably a packrat – packrats usually make big untidy pile nests, but they can dig quite well. In particular I’ve seen plenty of pregnant females tunnel under things. And this is right where I predicted packrat nests would turn up, which is the reason for all that hardware cloth. She can get under the wood piles, but not in them.

So yesterday afternoon I just stood the camera on the ground in front of the nest. I was afraid it might be too close, but that’s why they call it a learning curve.

For some reason the camera thought I needed nine pictures exactly like that. You can’t quite see the tunnel entrance for the mound in front, but I had hope that the emerging rat would trigger the camera.

And it did, just before daybreak…

So we have scientific proof that the woodshed is being undermined by a large globe of fur.

Pretty clear we need more distance. Also, I’m gonna go ahead and trap that entrance.

…and if you gaze into the game camera, the game camera gazes also into you.

Yo, I just totally made that up. Deep, huh?

While I was taking this picture yesterday afternoon, the background was taking a picture of me.

And then basically nothing happened for about eighteen hours, at least nothing the camera found notable, until…

Guess we’ll give it another try tonight.

Took a good long while to work through all the menu options, and get the game camera taking pictures when I expected it to rather than at widely- and randomly-spaced moments within a given interval. But I think we have it now.

There are places near the edge of the wash where I often see small animal tracks other than the usual cottontail. Often wondered what they are, so one of the places I wanted to try a game camera is low on the wash bank at one of those places. Maybe in a couple of days I’ll learn something!

Landlady got in last night, and this morning it was Christmas!

Check it out… Continue reading →

The 2 millionish (disclosed!) underworked, overpaid federal employees would thank you for all the nice things they can buy, but – well, face it. You don’t thank an ATM machine, and that’s all you are.

Open the Books

KEY FINDINGS:

1. The federal government pays its disclosed workforce $1 million per minute, $66 million per hour, and $524 million per day. In FY2016, the federal government disclosed 1.97 million employees at a cash compensation cost of $136.3 billion.

2. Over a six-year period (FY2010-2016), the number of federal employees making $200,000 or more has increased by 165 percent; those making $150,000 or more has grown by 60 percent; and those making more than $100,000 has increased by 37 percent.

3. On average, federal employees are given 10 federal holidays, 13 sick days, and 20 vacation days per year. If each employee used 13 sick days and took 20 vacation days in addition to the 10 federal holidays, it would cost taxpayers an estimated $22.6 billion annually.

4. In FY2016, a total 406,960 employees made six-figure incomes – that’s roughly one in five disclosed federal employees. Furthermore, 29,852 federal employees out-earned each of the 50 state governors receiving more than $190,823.

5. At 78 out of the 122 independent agencies and departments we studied, the average employee compensation exceeded $100,000 in FY2016.

6. With 326 employees at a total cash compensation of $28.8 million, we found a federal agency in San Francisco – Presidio Trust – paid out three of the top four federal bonuses including the largest in the federal government in FY2016. The biggest bonus went to an HR Manager in charge of payroll for $141,525.

7. Together, the United States Postal Service (USPS) and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) employ more than half of the disclosed federal workforce. As the largest civilian employer within the federal government, the USPS employed 32 percent of all disclosed federal employees, totaling 621,523 people on payroll in FY2016. The VA employed the second most employees with 372,614 or 19 percent of the disclosed federal workforce.

8. Only one-third of the 35,000 lawyers in the federal workforce work at the Department of Justice. The entire staff of federal lawyers earned $4.8 billion in FY2016.

9. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) employed 3,498 police officers at a total cost of $172 million in FY2016. When asked about corresponding crime statistics, the VA was unable to provide any information on the number of crimes or incidents.

10. There are an additional 2 million undisclosed employees at the Department of Defense and in the active military. Their estimated cash compensation value, combined with $1 billion in undisclosed bonuses and $125 billion in hidden pension data, amounts to roughly $221 billion in undisclosed federal cash compensation per year.

It used to be a polite fiction that people went into government work out of a desire to do good. I’ve never met one of those people, but I am old enough to remember when a person might rationally go for a government job because it was secure even though you’d never make much money. Glad to see that’s been corrected and now it’s the perfect sinecure: Secure and overpaid. I’m sure the gravy train will just go on forever, so nothing could possibly go wrong.

Best wishes to all TUAK readers currently experiencing winter.

…and then the next problem of not enough water, and then the life-threatening illness, what’s next? Anyone? Class?

Of course! Very good. Too much water!

That float switch has always been problematic. I’d prefer a switch that’s remote from the actual float, on a tilting shaft like in a toilet tank. That would behave more predictably, and keep electrical stuff out of the very corrosive water. But alas.

Anyway, this one seems to have gone intermittent. I did drag myself up the hill and check the water level as soon as I got vertical after my illness, noted that (probably because it was so overcast) the tank was filling slowly but filling. Then yesterday evening I checked again and found the tank was overfull.

Overfull would be a good sort of problem to have compared to the dialectic alternative, except for a minor design flaw in the tank installation…

If we had a reason to do it this way, I can’t recall what it was. The overflow pipe goes into soft sand under the tank. Why would you ever want that? Especially when the tank is right next to a steep slope, and washing out its bed might just conceivably have really spectacularly dire consequences?

So now I have a pump that’s running too long and I’m using the extra water to undermine the water tank. Excellent.

Fortunately this problem has an effective short-term fix…

I think I’ll call it the Sarah Connor rule: when faced with the possibility of technology running amok, always hard-wire an OFF switch.

Anyway, I’m going to town in about half an hour. I don’t stock enough 1 1/2″ pipe to re-route the overflow, but I can get some. Then I’ll worry about what to do about the switch.

My generous neighbor L, prior to going to the city to celebrate the holiday with family, left me chicken soup and also a Christmas goodie…

No, not the bread. I baked the bread and took the picture yesterday. But this morning I broke the seal on that bottle of home-made Irish Cream.

Dig this recipe…

1 cup heavy cream
1 tsp instant coffee powder
1/2 tsp syrup (?)
3/4 cup Irish whiskey
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/4 oz condensed milk

Makes 3 cups

I’ve long since proven to my grief that heavy doses of rich food/drink will cause me gastric distress even when I’m perfectly healthy. I could only imagine how long it would take to recover from this bout of flu or stomach virus or whatever it was before I could get into that bottle safely, but the problem is it has a finite shelf life.

So this morning I decided to take a very cautious taste, really just wet the tongue a bit, maybe pour half a glug into some coffee.

Yeah, big mistake. It’s delicious but after the second tiny sip of coffee my stomach told me in no uncertain terms that one more sip and it was sending the whole thing back along with everything I’ve eaten in the past two days. Which isn’t a lot.

Thinking of going over and giving it to D&L, because to waste it would be shameful but I don’t think I’ll be able to drink it in time.

Ian tries it so we don’t have to. 😀

If they’d been available when I was a kid, I fear I’d have owned three – and spent effort making excuses for each one.

…until the photo was posted on Drudge…