The Ultimate Answer to Kings

I do feel bad about wasting resources on it, but I guess it’s my unnecessary new toy for the year.

I have a perfectly good Plan B knife, but quickly decided I didn’t like it nearly as well as my everyday knife which I finally admitted I’d truly lost. Inconstant, unfaithful bastard that I am, I decided to see the calamity as an excuse to do something I wanted to do years ago but could never afford when I was living on shit-shoveling and occasional cleanup gigs…

And then, the evening of the very day I swallowed hard and spent $100 on a knife, I found my regular darlin’. Murphy pulled a trick on me that was either mean or just generous…

…and now I have an embarrassment of riches.

ESEE 3 is clearly a really nice knife, probably it’s objectively better than my regular one. It has the blade style I like, with enough blade, belly and point to be useful for just about everything you’d reasonably ask a knife to do, but…

…once the new wears off I think I’m going to find I still like my old one best. It holds a good edge and the handle was made to be more like a tool than a traditional knife. Everything else feels spindly in my hand now.

You can never have too much ammo or paracord. 🙂

I’m off for the Monday morning water run, and since I emptied a propane bottle yesterday baking bread I figured I may as well take it to town while I’m thinking of it, and also one of the 2 10-gallon bottles that have been empty since later winter.

To keep them upright and not clanging around in the back of D&L’s truck, I rigged all my 7-gallon bottles with nylon strapping saved from that old cargo parachute that used to shade the small chickenyard behind the Lair. But I’m out of that, and needed to rig something for the 10-gallon bottles. So I rooted around in my desk drawer for my spool of 550 cord.

About 4 times the length of the bottle is more than plenty to loop it around the top and bottom hooks at the rear of the pickup bed. Works fine. But…

When I came to the Gulch in 2006 I had about 450 feet of 550 cord, including this 300-foot spool. That was almost 13 years ago; it gets used up slowly because it’s so reuseable. It’s strung all over the place around here. It’s immune to UV and doesn’t really wear out; I have long clotheslines made of it that have been in three different locations. The same length of cord held up the chickens’ top cover since 2012. But it does get used, and today I officially reached the last part of this big spool.

(sigh) Wonder what it sells for these days?

It rained off and on all yesterday morning and never fully cleared all day though we got some intermittent afternoon sun. That’s the first rainy day in weeks, and maybe the last. This morning dawned clear and dewy and almost cold.

I’ve been thinking about my lack of initiative to get things done this summer – there are plenty of little projects I planned, but I finished hardly any of them and didn’t even start most. I’m not sick or ailing in any way, can’t say for sure I know what the problem is but I do remember going through the same thing for most of the summer three years ago. I wasn’t sleeping well because of various aches that had grown – oh, what’s the medical cliché for persistent? “Chronic,” that’s it. Lost my word for a moment. Anyway, I was waking up every day almost dreading it, when for years I have hopped up quite happily even if there was no special reason to be happy about it. When the pain was relieved, my ‘joy of life’ came right back.

Probably because of the unusual humidity, I got up this morning practically lunging for my back brace, which I’ve worn more or less constantly all this year. And maybe it’s that nagging low-grade pain that’s making me so reluctant to do any more than the minimum through much of this year’s building season, I don’t know.

If so I’d better get my mind right and get over it, because it’s not going to get any easier as I age – I’ve got more broken bones and twisted joints than Torso Boy has reasons I should give him a cookie, and (hopefully) a long time left to deal with them. If I’d known I was going to live this long I’d have taken better care of myself. 🙂

I use #40 propane bottles because they’re a lot easier for the old man to manipulate than more traditional #100 bottles. I just keep more bottles around, which has the added benefit of redundancy. But while you can tell a bottle is nearly empty by weight, there’s only one sure way to find out it’s completely empty…

…and that’s for the fire to go out. Normally, at the worst possible time.

We’re finally getting a rainy day. I woke at five to the sound of a hard rain on the bedroom’s metal roof; that didn’t last long but it has drizzled and dripped all day without pause. Depressing even when it’s welcome. Fortunately it’s cool, and also fortunately it was going to be baking day in any case and I was looking forward to the cheering smell of nearly-done bread. Should have been warned by the lack of that lovely scent.

The problem with raising chickens in the desert is the same for most lifestock; you can’t let them forage for themselves because there’s not much to forage for and anyway they’re pretty close to the bottom of the food chain. I’ve had chickens die for all sorts of senseless reasons including cannibalism, but so far I’ve never lost a chicken to any (non-chicken) predator.

The price for that is that I (and neighbor L) have to pay for all their feed. To keep the cost down somewhat I supplement the pellets with cracked corn, considerably cheaper. Being me, I tend to keep quite a lot on hand – and cheap out on the storage, which led me to throw it all away yesterday when I dug my scoop into the barrel and it came out green and stinking.

(sigh) I’ve had this plastic barrel since we first started raising chickens, so call it on the order of seven years. Never had trouble like this before, but I wasn’t turning the supply over nearly enough and now it’s all ruined.

I really don’t know if it got wet from the outside somehow, or if the corn in the bottom half of the barrel just naturally absorbed enough moisture to mold and ferment. But I wasn’t feeding it to the ladies. I dragged the barrel out to the edge of the slope overlooking the wash and dumped it out for the wilder critters to do with it what they will. I expect the ravens to have a party.

Probably should find some way to learn from this mistake: Maybe invest in a better barrel before restocking, and maybe get out of the habit of keeping the barrel full most of the time.

Autumn has come early to the high desert. I went for a lovely cool walk this morning, checked on the chickens and Landlady’s late water leak (fixed, to my great surprise) and generally screwed around for an hour and a half or so, visiting places I haven’t been since it got too hot too early in the day.

Otherwise I was stuck for a morning post. Reading the news I left some tabs open on “Beto” O’Rourke’s latest totalitarian kerfuffle but decided who cares. It’s nothing they haven’t been trying for most of my adult life, and I almost wish they’d get on with it so we can see how that goes.

Here’s a take on the old Futility Box I haven’t seen before…

Yesterday afternoon I was vegging out at the laptop, binge-watching old Star Trek episodes. It was somewhere around 3 in the PM and I happened to look up and notice the system voltage was almost a full volt lower than it was supposed to be. That was startling enough to get my ass vertical and go out to look things over. As far as I could tell, everything was just fine; the batteries were charging, albeit at a lower-than-expected voltage. The charge controllers reported everything copacetic. I even grabbed my good meter and checked the output of the four solar panels I could get to; they were each outputting cheerfully away, just at lower-than-max.

My system wasn’t defective, the sun was. I determined to keep an eye on the voltage the next day, which would be today, when the sun was near zenith…

…and of course everything is just peachy.

Sigh – it’s getting around firewood-cutting time. Kind of snuck up on me. We got almost no Monsoon this summer and it’s been so hot and still I’ve fallen into bad habits about sitting around indoors when I ought to have been active and productive. Now summer is gone. The good news is it’s finally cooling off. The bad news is pretty obvious…

Helped D&L load garbage in their pickup for a dump run*, and while waiting around it occurred to me it’s been two years since I put this ammo can on the Jeep trailer for tie-down storage. I should probably do a follow-up post.

Short version, it works fine. You just need three bolts and enough washers to let you tilt the top of the can slightly away from the wall you’re bolting it to, so that the lip of the cover can pass between the wall and the side of the can. This has been drenched in slime and rain and mud but the tie-downs and gloves and whatever else you want to haul stay perfectly dry and secure. Checked the nuts a few times to make sure they weren’t vibrating loose but eventually stopped worrying about it. I don’t recall who originally suggested it, but this is a very useful hack.

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*and full disclosure, I was completely wrong about needing to do all the work. D is really coming along.

Lovely cool morning – I got up and it was 55^o outside; inside was mid-sixties. Woke up only one time in the night, and that was to fight Torso Boy for the blanket. So naturally it was walkie time for Uncle Joel. Nothing big and strenuous, just a pleasant half hour’s overland to and from the chicken house.

Got back and somebody was all butt hurt at being left home. Fortunately the first real chore of the day involved the Jeep…

It’s quite a change in his behavior, that he’s becoming a nuisance about being taken along.

He can’t come later this morning, though, because D&L want a dump run. Neighbor D has his physical therapy this morning, so we’ll need to have their truck loaded with months worth of unburnable trash before about 9:30. And by way of payment for [it’s usually assistance, this time I expect I’ll basically be doing it all] I bring along a can with what little garbage I’ve accumulated since the recent dump run I made with Landlady. But it’s all good; I’ll never live long enough to pay off all the obs they’ve laid on me but it’s fun to try.

🙂 …and New Yorkers are so very law abiding…

h/t

… in terms of the tools and fasteners you’ll need to finish a job?

It’s when you’re rehanging the door of your powershed, which contains all your tools and fasteners. If you accomplish the task without needing to dismount the door even once to acquire some essential item*, dementia has not yet set it.

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*I did accomplish it, though just barely…

I had given up. I’ve been walking around with my eyes on the ground for days hoping to find it. Yesterday I rode all the way up to the hump, six miles each way, just to be thorough.

Just now after my shower I opened a drawer where the knife had absolutely no business being – and there it was, safe and sound. No idea in the world how I happened to leave it there.

I keep getting emails from marketers who want me to advertise their products (for free), and base their pitch on some long-ago post of mine…

…in which I mocked the product in question. The word mock appears in the title, seems as though it would be hard to miss.

This does not seem like a logical path to marketing success. Also, I do not “unsubscribe” from mailing lists to which I never subscribed in the first place. I do enjoy publicly mocking them, however.

Ladies and gentlemen, the website of Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee…

…whose website manager needs a course in title composition – or at least proofreading.

I noticed this while reading about “H.R. 4081: Sabika Sheikh Firearm Licensing and Registration Act,” one of Lee’s trio of “common sense gun safety bills” designed to effectively outlaw gun ownership for anyone but police, military and VIP security (specifically exempted) while not officially doing that. There are several high (low?) points but here’s just one…

(d)Firearm insurance
(1)In general
The Attorney General shall issue to any person who has applied for a license pursuant to subsection (c) and has paid to the Attorney General the fee specified in paragraph (2) of this subsection a policy that insures the person against liability for losses and damages resulting from the use of any firearm by the person during the 1-year period that begins with the date the policy is issued.

(2)Fee
The fee specified in this paragraph is $800.

Per year. And that’s just for the insurance; there’s no mention of what the fee for the annual license renewal will be.

Yeah, I know there’s no chance it’ll pass. This year. But it’s fair warning of what our beloved protectors have in store for us.

We’re in such good hands. I feel safe and cherished by our beloved protectors, as they busily try to legislate me out of existence…

How do you lose a knife?

Just happened to notice yesterday afternoon that the sheath was empty. I hadn’t been rolling around on the ground under anything yesterday, I’d remember that. I can only hope I absently laid it down somewhere, I do things like that sometimes. I looked everywhere I can think of around the cabin and came up empty. If I just misplaced it, it’ll turn up eventually. If somehow it fell out of the sheath, there’s a terrible possibility it’s gone for good. This morning I’m working on Landlady’s batteries and will search around the powershed, chicken house and barn.

In the meantime I have other perfectly good belt knives. But the knife I’ve carried every day for years is my favorite by a wide margin, and for good reason, and literally irreplaceable. I am bummed.

How many American cities are legitimate tourist destinations in themselves? Approximately none, now, but I remember when there was one – right on the Pacific with this big pretty bay. Safe and pleasant year round, with lots of cool things to see and do.

But that was then. It was fine when SF politicians encouraged nonthreateningly whacky behavior, a la New Orleans, after all not even Puritans enjoy living around a bunch of Puritans. But they seem determined to see what happens when you take it so far as to virtually outlaw normalcy…

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has passed a resolution declaring the National Rifle Association a “domestic terrorist organization” and urged the federal government to do the same – the latest escalation in the heated rhetoric from Democrats regarding the NRA in the wake of several deadly mass shootings.

The resolution, which passed Tuesday and says the U.S. is “plagued by an epidemic of gun violence,” accuses the NRA of using “its considerable wealth and organization strength to promote gun ownership and incite gun owners to acts of violence.”

I don’t pay that much attention to the NRA these days* but have a feeling that if any participants in the “epidemic of gun violence” that the cable news talkers like to rant about were NRA members, we’d have heard about it. A lot.

In fact I used to read American Rifleman but don’t recall any particularly overt ‘incitements to acts of violence.’ Bunch of fuddy duddies, really…

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*Full disclosure: Long ago I was a life member – but after I stopped responding to their mercilessly incessant fund-raiser mailings they lost all record of it. Just as well; when I get dragged to the camps by President Omar I want it to be for something I actually did, and not for my long-dead association with a “terrorist organization.”

(EDITORIAL NOTE: The staff and management of TUAK wish to interject that Joel is not suggesting that hurricane winds are no big deal. True hurricane winds are a very big deal. Also stunning and brave. But “sustained wind of 31 mph, gusting to 50” is not a hurricane. We’re not even sure that’s a gale. Thank you.)

I get such a kick out of local broadcast news talkers. They have been praying for a Florida-scrubbing natural disaster for over a week. But Dorian, the insensitive bastard, paused over land, lost strength, and hung a right. What’s a news talker to do? They still gotta fill air time. They could caper about and praise the gods for the reprieve, but instead they invariably go with some variation on this…

Young man, here at Joel’s Gulch we call that “a typical Spring day.” Harrumph, and also get off my lawn.

Sometimes I have paying gigs on the other side of the big plateau to the east of the Gulch. I’ve been interested for some time to know how much hassle it would be to go there on the new ebike. But I wasn’t going to try it until I’d rigged it with tools and water to ensure that a pleasant hour’s outing didn’t turn into a big ordeal. Also it’s been really hot and I didn’t always have the want-to when I had the time. But this morning was both chore-free and relatively cool, so today was the day.

Range is no problem at all. I’ve got about 65 miles on the bike now, mostly in small outings between chores, and I’m learning that there are ways to get more work out of the bike with a practically symbolic amount of pedaling while leaving the throttle alone. The bike doesn’t care if you’re really putting any effort into pedaling; if you’re rotating the sprockets at all, the controller will run the motor. You can barrel right along with the derailleur in first gear, with the motor pulling 400-500 watts instead of the 750-odd watts you use playing motorcyclist. This has a remarkable effect on range, and you only have to push into it when you’re climbing hills.

I didn’t want to go all the way across the plateau today, there’s really no reason to. I only wanted to get to the highest point in the trip and see what effect it had on the bike and me. Neither the bike nor I broke a sweat at any point. I love this thing.

Then I just turned around and headed back down. About six miles by road from this point to the garage.

I’m playing around with ways to carry stuff. I hoped that cutting the top off this old milk crate would restore my ability to mount the bike by kicking over the basket, but the old man can’t quite Ryker maneuver that high and far. This is a tall bike. So I’m dropping $20 on some pannier bags from Amazon. In addition to lowering the rear load, I could carry the spare tube, canteen and chain lock without hassle. I’ll get it right eventually.