My luck hasn't been as good this year with the dump scrounging, it really seems as if people are buying less and therefore throwing less out. In fact the only real good scores I can think of this year are some kitchen cabinets for the MobIle Lab of Doom and a 19" LCD monitor that I still have to replace some bulged capacitors in. On a fairly recent dump trip, when I was pulling some RAM out of an older computer I realized that I should be grabbing coin cell battery as well. These little lithium batteries get used in a few items we use on a regular basis, car alarm fob, hat brim headlamp, keychain flashlight, miniature led lantern and they ain't exactly cheap to buy quality ones new (most dollar store ones are alkaline not lithium).
If you are looking through a pile of old computer stuff grab the thick old scanners, inside is a cold cathode fluorescent light and ballast that draws very little current and runs on 12vdc.
Those newer all in one printer/scanner/fax and the very slim scanning units tend to use a led light source and I haven't played with it enough to determine what it will take to get them to work, but the cold cathode ones are dead easy to fire up. If anyone is truly interested, comment and I'll dig up some picture I took a while back of what to pull out of the scanner.
Another score I made this summer on the battery front, while visiting a local grocery store garage sale, where they were selling all the knick knacky crap that would never sell in the store for the price they were asking. Anywho I obtained for free a crapload of thermostat lights, a stupid little battery powered light that clips onto your thermostat. Every light had 2 AAA batteries so I wound up with ~200 brand name batteries for free. Got a fair bit of other stuff for ultra cheap there, 8-10lbs of little tea light candles, thermo felt insoles, knitted winter gloves, liners and hats.
I guess this is all for now and remember, If you ain't paranoid, the reptilians already gotcha!
Monday, October 5, 2009
Thursday, September 17, 2009
I had a pepsi and a smile and STFU
Been another bloody long while since I posted, guess I don't really want regular readers or perhaps I just suck as a blogger.
With all the gnashing of teeth over prognostications of what will happen in the fall. Now that we are living in predicted time frames, what has happened and whats looming on the horizon?
The bankster holiday that was supposed to take place 'tween mid August and mid September never unfolded.
Should we wait till the end of the month before pulling it back out of the memory hole, then point and laugh when they proclaim that it was their brave announcement that dissuaded the shape shifting gecko vampires from the fourth dimension from pulling it off.
The only reason I think doing so now would be premature is that gold finally got and stayed above $1000. From what I understand if it gets over the next resistance level of $1032 watch out!
On the barnyard flu subject, first it was said that it would wind up being mandatory inoculations of 2 shots.
Then awe shucky darn, we ain't gonna be able to produce enough to go around and those that were drawing up their refusenik plans breathed a sigh of relief.
Now the story is that most sheople will only require 1 dose, so are we now going to hear that there is plenty to go around and mandatory will be on the menu again.
Speaking of menu, holey moley did our 2 cherry tomato plants have a good production run under poor conditions. I'll share the variety name once I re-find what it was.
Anywho I'm bored of typing, time to see what the reptilian land of bread and circuses and blogs of doom and gloom has to offer.
With all the gnashing of teeth over prognostications of what will happen in the fall. Now that we are living in predicted time frames, what has happened and whats looming on the horizon?
The bankster holiday that was supposed to take place 'tween mid August and mid September never unfolded.
Should we wait till the end of the month before pulling it back out of the memory hole, then point and laugh when they proclaim that it was their brave announcement that dissuaded the shape shifting gecko vampires from the fourth dimension from pulling it off.
The only reason I think doing so now would be premature is that gold finally got and stayed above $1000. From what I understand if it gets over the next resistance level of $1032 watch out!
On the barnyard flu subject, first it was said that it would wind up being mandatory inoculations of 2 shots.
Then awe shucky darn, we ain't gonna be able to produce enough to go around and those that were drawing up their refusenik plans breathed a sigh of relief.
Now the story is that most sheople will only require 1 dose, so are we now going to hear that there is plenty to go around and mandatory will be on the menu again.
Speaking of menu, holey moley did our 2 cherry tomato plants have a good production run under poor conditions. I'll share the variety name once I re-find what it was.
Anywho I'm bored of typing, time to see what the reptilian land of bread and circuses and blogs of doom and gloom has to offer.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Tactical Seed Scare Mongers
Okay, dammit, I've heard, seen, and smelt about enough dammit.
HYBRID GARDEN SEEDS AIN'T GONNA KILL YA!
Seed companies take pollen from stable variety A and introduce it to the flowers of stable variety B and know they are going to wind up with hybrid C.
Now if you take the hybrid C seeds home to grow and harvest the seeds, the next generation from those seeds you can end up with different varieties of plants having traits of A,B, or C.
Ya know what, even if you grow only heirloom varieties, unless you take some really careful segregation steps or only grow 1 variety of that plant, you are going to wind up with a mix of cross pollinated HYBRIDS come next season.
So now what?
Well in a long term grid down, SHTF, TEOTWAWKI situation, if you start out with a broad genetic spectrum of varieties, over the years of saving and replanting the seeds of the plants that have the traits you desire, you will eventually wind up with your own specially customized highly tuned varieties that suit both you and the specific micro environment of your AO.
Ya that's right totally Tacticool fruits and veggies!
Okay, now back to the original point I was going to attempt to make, you don't have to plop down a wheelbarrow of Ameros at one time and buy one of those "Seed Vaults". If you do have the cash, cool, you might be saving money in the long run and perhaps they are specially packaged for longer shelf life. But please don't delay in getting at least some seeds stored away, and this years crops planted.
If you don't have a lot of cash to spend in one place and it seems that most of us don't, buy a few packages here and there whenever you hit a grocery store or hardware store, you will find that most even have some heirloom varieties on the shelf.
Now some will bring up the argument about GMOs and Monsantos terminator gene, these may be problems down the road but for the time being these things are being applied to commercial strains that aren't desirable in the home garden anyways. A further stress reducer is that just about any seed variety that I've on regular store shelves have been around forever and a day, in fact some of the varieties are even on listed strains in the heirloom "Survival" seed variety packages.
This war we are engaged in against the shape shifting reptilians from the fourth dimension is a war of attrition, and you must make any headway you can, even if it is bit by a little and a few seeds at a time.
HYBRID GARDEN SEEDS AIN'T GONNA KILL YA!
Seed companies take pollen from stable variety A and introduce it to the flowers of stable variety B and know they are going to wind up with hybrid C.
Now if you take the hybrid C seeds home to grow and harvest the seeds, the next generation from those seeds you can end up with different varieties of plants having traits of A,B, or C.
Ya know what, even if you grow only heirloom varieties, unless you take some really careful segregation steps or only grow 1 variety of that plant, you are going to wind up with a mix of cross pollinated HYBRIDS come next season.
So now what?
Well in a long term grid down, SHTF, TEOTWAWKI situation, if you start out with a broad genetic spectrum of varieties, over the years of saving and replanting the seeds of the plants that have the traits you desire, you will eventually wind up with your own specially customized highly tuned varieties that suit both you and the specific micro environment of your AO.
Ya that's right totally Tacticool fruits and veggies!
Okay, now back to the original point I was going to attempt to make, you don't have to plop down a wheelbarrow of Ameros at one time and buy one of those "Seed Vaults". If you do have the cash, cool, you might be saving money in the long run and perhaps they are specially packaged for longer shelf life. But please don't delay in getting at least some seeds stored away, and this years crops planted.
If you don't have a lot of cash to spend in one place and it seems that most of us don't, buy a few packages here and there whenever you hit a grocery store or hardware store, you will find that most even have some heirloom varieties on the shelf.
Now some will bring up the argument about GMOs and Monsantos terminator gene, these may be problems down the road but for the time being these things are being applied to commercial strains that aren't desirable in the home garden anyways. A further stress reducer is that just about any seed variety that I've on regular store shelves have been around forever and a day, in fact some of the varieties are even on listed strains in the heirloom "Survival" seed variety packages.
This war we are engaged in against the shape shifting reptilians from the fourth dimension is a war of attrition, and you must make any headway you can, even if it is bit by a little and a few seeds at a time.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Mobile Lab of Doom
Well I took the easy way out, I've been contemplating building myself a workshop on wheels and then came across this. It's a 8' by 16' office trailer, that was formerly used as a foremans office out on the pipelines. At this point all it is, is a tandem axle, insulated, propane heated box on wheels. Now I need to salvage some kitchen counters & cabinets and build a little wood stove to keep it warm on the cheap. I do have to do a little maintainance on the exterior tin & caulking, gotta look what Mayberry was using on his escape pod for caulk.
As well as being my MobIle Lab of Doom (MILD), the trailer fills a very important gap in our preps... all season portable shelter. Up in our crook of the continent, most holiday trailers ain't built with enough insulation to be of much comfort in our -40 spells, and the ones that are built for it are way out of our price range.
I also picked up a barely used Lau-Tze 3500 watt portable diesel generator that I hope I'll be able to run my corded tools and welders off of. First attempt at running a welder off of it wasn't real successful, something popped and it wasn't a fuse or breaker, hopefully it was the voltage regulator or capacitor and not a winding within the genset head. I'm only seeing about 2 volts out of any of the various output taps, oh and both of my welders are rated below the supposed capabilities of the genny.
I'll close this post with an update on the condition of the greenhouse, it survived the winter in great shape, in spite of the snow load lower on the walls and all the high winds.
Well I'm off to the archery shop and to get some details on a possible property for our homestead.
TTFN and don't let the shape shiftin' slimy scaley ones gitcha.
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Painful reminder
A painful lesson I learned while out in camp is to get my damn teeth fixed while I have the opportunity. A wisdom tooth that I should have had taken out of my head years ago decided to act up while I was in camp. I spent 2 weeks living on ibuprofen, and when I came back for my week at home I found that the local dentist was booked solid for the foreseeable future, so that week came and went, and so did the next two at camp till I came home and was able to get in to have it extracted.
I rarely use pain relievers so that when I do really need them, they work quite well for me and fortunately this time around it proved true.
Do I really need to iterate the implications of getting these thing done now? Not just getting it done pre-SHTF but it is also going to be costlier down the road with all this inflation that surely must be coming down the pipes. If a loaf of bread cost a wheel barrow full of cash in Wiemar Germany, imagine what it would have cost for oral surgery.
My next post will be more fun, I promise.
Till then don't let the slimey scaley ones gitcha down.
I rarely use pain relievers so that when I do really need them, they work quite well for me and fortunately this time around it proved true.
Do I really need to iterate the implications of getting these thing done now? Not just getting it done pre-SHTF but it is also going to be costlier down the road with all this inflation that surely must be coming down the pipes. If a loaf of bread cost a wheel barrow full of cash in Wiemar Germany, imagine what it would have cost for oral surgery.
My next post will be more fun, I promise.
Till then don't let the slimey scaley ones gitcha down.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Return to the blogs O'doom
The scaly ones sure have been working overtime while I was away from here eh!
I've been away from this blog for quite awhile now for one simple reason... $
Last fall I took a job working on a drilling rig, damn hardest work I've done. The normal hitch for this rig is 2 weeks in 1 week home. Working 12 hour days 14 days in a row you can rack up some serious overtime, which is why I took the job. The sacrifice of being away so much paid off and paid ahead all of our bills, obtained 2 lower mileage reliable vehicles, bought a few bigger ticket prep items, and I'm a little leaner and meaner to boot.
Now the rig is racked back for spring breakup, basically up here they put serious weight restrictions on the back roads during spring so the big trucks don't shred the roads. So nothing moves in the oil patch during breakup. This comes just in time to get the spring yard work going, my good wife has already planted some spinach, lettuce and Swiss chard, some of the spinach has already popped up.
Well, that is all for now, my to do list is a country mile long and growing at a rate nearing MOAB.
BTW: the batch of wine last fall turned out great as usual.
I've been away from this blog for quite awhile now for one simple reason... $
Last fall I took a job working on a drilling rig, damn hardest work I've done. The normal hitch for this rig is 2 weeks in 1 week home. Working 12 hour days 14 days in a row you can rack up some serious overtime, which is why I took the job. The sacrifice of being away so much paid off and paid ahead all of our bills, obtained 2 lower mileage reliable vehicles, bought a few bigger ticket prep items, and I'm a little leaner and meaner to boot.
Now the rig is racked back for spring breakup, basically up here they put serious weight restrictions on the back roads during spring so the big trucks don't shred the roads. So nothing moves in the oil patch during breakup. This comes just in time to get the spring yard work going, my good wife has already planted some spinach, lettuce and Swiss chard, some of the spinach has already popped up.
Well, that is all for now, my to do list is a country mile long and growing at a rate nearing MOAB.
BTW: the batch of wine last fall turned out great as usual.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Still alive and twitchin'
That's right, I went deep behind the inter-dimensional shape shifting reptilian enemy lines, other wise know as cities, and have returned to the country safe and sound.
While I was away, working and visiting family, I picked up a new addiction - Archery.
Since I've been back I've tried to shoot at minimum 20 arrows a day, my groups haven't tightened up a whole lot yet, but my number of wide flyers have been greatly reduced. The majority of my arrows wind up in a circle the size of the palm of my hand with a flyer another finger length away. These groups are using a release shooting from 20 yards. The last couple of days I've started to also shoot a group or two with fingers. Using a release definitely offers instant gratification, but it's reassuring to know you can put a reasonable group up without a release if you need to.
On a stopover at a relatives on the way home, I was able to pick a grocery bag full of sour pie cherries, and a few pounds of gooseberries and raspberries. The day after returning home the berries and cherries were mashed up to make a batch of wine, which is now happily bubbling away.
I've never really followed a recipe or used one of those kits. When I started making my fruit wine I used this page http://ingeb.org/junk/wine.html to get a general mish-mash idea of what to do. Like the pages author I don't bother with pectin, clarifying agents or any other junk. Just mash the fruit, I'd guess about about 3 parts very warm water to 1 part fruit, sweeten to taste then over sweeten, let cool then add a packet of wine yeast. When it's done bubbling, I strain it out, top it up with some sugar water and let 'er go till it stops bubblin' again then your ready for bottling or another round of sugar and bubbling. Haven't had a batch I didn't like yet, but this is the first batch I've tried using regular old bread yeast.
One of the handiest things I've found for brewing your own is those Grolsche flip top bottles, no buying corks, convenient size, re-sealable if all you really wanted was a splash and they work for regular or sparkling wine and of course beer. Another tip is the 16 liter buckets with the pop up spout that some places get their fryer shortening in, the spout is a perfect fit for the cork and airlock that you get in the carboy kits, this way you don't even need to get out the hole saw kit for the lid.
Speaking of shortening, the bucket I cleaned out for this batch had 3/4 liter of oil left in the bucket, prime stuff to try out a small batch soap recipe.
While I was in town yesterday, I noticed a few crab apple trees that are overburdened with fruit, I just may have to stop in to ask if I can help reduce the mess they'll have to pick up. Any fruit I can scrounge for free is a blessing, since we don't have much growing close to us except for wild rose hips, which I'll probably throw in a batch of wine and or jam with the crab apples.
Well I guess that's all for tonight
G'night and don't let the scary scaly ones gitcha down!
While I was away, working and visiting family, I picked up a new addiction - Archery.
Since I've been back I've tried to shoot at minimum 20 arrows a day, my groups haven't tightened up a whole lot yet, but my number of wide flyers have been greatly reduced. The majority of my arrows wind up in a circle the size of the palm of my hand with a flyer another finger length away. These groups are using a release shooting from 20 yards. The last couple of days I've started to also shoot a group or two with fingers. Using a release definitely offers instant gratification, but it's reassuring to know you can put a reasonable group up without a release if you need to.
On a stopover at a relatives on the way home, I was able to pick a grocery bag full of sour pie cherries, and a few pounds of gooseberries and raspberries. The day after returning home the berries and cherries were mashed up to make a batch of wine, which is now happily bubbling away.
I've never really followed a recipe or used one of those kits. When I started making my fruit wine I used this page http://ingeb.org/junk/wine.html to get a general mish-mash idea of what to do. Like the pages author I don't bother with pectin, clarifying agents or any other junk. Just mash the fruit, I'd guess about about 3 parts very warm water to 1 part fruit, sweeten to taste then over sweeten, let cool then add a packet of wine yeast. When it's done bubbling, I strain it out, top it up with some sugar water and let 'er go till it stops bubblin' again then your ready for bottling or another round of sugar and bubbling. Haven't had a batch I didn't like yet, but this is the first batch I've tried using regular old bread yeast.
One of the handiest things I've found for brewing your own is those Grolsche flip top bottles, no buying corks, convenient size, re-sealable if all you really wanted was a splash and they work for regular or sparkling wine and of course beer. Another tip is the 16 liter buckets with the pop up spout that some places get their fryer shortening in, the spout is a perfect fit for the cork and airlock that you get in the carboy kits, this way you don't even need to get out the hole saw kit for the lid.
Speaking of shortening, the bucket I cleaned out for this batch had 3/4 liter of oil left in the bucket, prime stuff to try out a small batch soap recipe.
While I was in town yesterday, I noticed a few crab apple trees that are overburdened with fruit, I just may have to stop in to ask if I can help reduce the mess they'll have to pick up. Any fruit I can scrounge for free is a blessing, since we don't have much growing close to us except for wild rose hips, which I'll probably throw in a batch of wine and or jam with the crab apples.
Well I guess that's all for tonight
G'night and don't let the scary scaly ones gitcha down!
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