Grab-bag and protecting my investment in infrastructure

 

 

Another oxytocin generating "cuddle" song.

The feminazi will undoubtedly whine about the song being "creepy". 

Men cannot win. We are supposed to talk about our feelings but then some people use them as weapons against us. Men are wired to be protectors and we are anchored by ideals.

Garlic

Garlic bulbs of Ivan and Korean Red were dropped off as a housewarming gift to the new home owners who we helped move. I didn't think to take a shovel, so I will be contacting them and asking if I can help plant them.

My hope is that their new home will be a vampire-free zone. 

Quicksilver definitely has a cold

She had a three hour nap yesterday. Nose running. Coughing. 

I did the heavy-lifting watching her yesterday and my backside grew roots into the recliner. Mrs ERJ will be doing the heavy-lifting in terms of watching QS today and I hope to get a lot done today.

Dipping steel tools in oil

One way to increase the life of steel tools and fence is to dip them in oil. Tools like shovels are also easier to use when kept oiled between uses because rusty surfaces have high friction and it is more work to use a rusty shovel than one that is shiny and bright.

Some people put sand in a shallow pan like the kind used to catch oil during an oil-change and add a bit of oil. They stick the blade of their shovel or hoe into the sand several times to coat it with oil before hanging it on the wall.

Poultry netting is an item that sees a lot of use on a small holding. I foresee need a great deal of it as I rely on ducks more heavily for insect and snail control. The problem with poultry netting (locally called "Chicken wire") is that it rusts even though it is galvanized.

I had been stymied on how to efficiently paint or oil it until I was oiling my body-grip traps with vegetable oil.

The hot ticket is to place a five gallon bucket on a level surface and half fill it with water, then add about a half-gallon of the cheapest vegetable oil. The oil will float on top of the water. Slowly insert the 24" wide roll of poultry netting into the oil-water until the end of the roll rests on the bottom of the bucket, then slowly add water (probably from a hose) until the top of the oil is within an inch of the top.

Lift the roll of netting straight up and let it drain/drip back into the bucket for about fifteen seconds. Turn it dry-side down and slowly lower it back into the bucket until the end of the roll touches the bottom of the bucket.

When withdrawn from the bath, the entire width of the roll should be covered with oil. Allow the roll to drip back into the bucket for fifteen seconds. Then move to a place where the oil that drips off the roll will not damage whatever is beneath it. I put mine on the woodpile. 

Vegetable oil is not the greatest at protecting against corrosion but it will seal up the tiny cracks formed in the galvanized coating when the wire is formed into the netting. That is, it compliments the zinc coating. It can also beef up the corrosion protection in welded-wire fencing at the welds where the zinc coating is compromised although you will have to up-size your bucket.

Vegetable oil is subject to UV degradation but will last a relatively long time in shaded areas. One place where vegetable oil shines is that it bonds to zinc and/or iron via a soap bond (short-fatty-acid to metal ion). Oil that has been partially degraded by frying forms those bonds more quickly than virgin oil.

This is messy work, so wear grubby clothing and old gloves. 

Oxytocin fix

Your oxytocin fix for the day 

Not all music triggers dopamine rushes. This is the music I played for Quicksilver this morning. Simple, calming melody. Simple message. A lovely piece of music.

Dental issues

I am losing weight due to my dental issues. I bought a piece of cheesecake for medicinal reasons. 550 Calories. Into every life a little rain must fall but I am making the most of it.

Weather

Excellent weather for camping! Looking ahead at the weather is part of working outside this time of year.

I have lots of small tasks to get done after finishing the potatoes. I need to get smoother at switching tasks.

I worked one season in a commercial orchard and I struggled with not knowing what tasks I was going to be assigned do through the day. 

The owner of the orchard like me as an employee. I always said "Yes Sir!" and did my best. I really learned to like Thursdays. We always pressed cider on Thursday and I had the same job. 

I got the impression that many employees were incapable of or unwilling to switch jobs. That is tough on the boss because everything has to get done and sometimes equipment breaks or big orders materialize out of nowhere and have to be filled.

Programmed to fail

The primary difference between charity from an individual-to-an-individual and charity from an institution is that the individual donor is more likely to be invested in weaning the receiver off of his dependency whereas the institution's existence (and the paid positions within it) relies in the dependency never being cured.

I was watching this video, "Why I will never do charity work ever again" and the woman lays it out in her own words.

She was a single mom on-the-dole. She took classes. She volunteered so she would have "work experiences" to put on her resume (i.e. C.V.). She joined "boards" to develop connections and to learn how act like a professional and to improve her tiny sliver of the universe.

She gained skills and confidence. She wrote a grant to create a paid position in the food coop she worked in. The grant was approved. She interviewed for that position and she didn't get the job. 

The person who was hired by the interviewers was a slob with a defeatist attitude and who had virtually none of the skills the narrator had. The difference is that the narrator who had pulled herself up by her bootstraps told the interviewers that she believed that the food coop could be self-sustaining within three years and could possibly expand without the government aid. The woman who got the job told the interviewers that the food coop would (obviously) shut down the month the funding stopped.

I suspect that Mamdani's government grocery stores are being hatched in the same incubator. They will always require government subsidies to keep their doors open. Employees who point out obvious efficiencies will be shown the door. Most of the NYC votors will applaud. 

Fine Art Tuesday

 

The traditional, Japanese fan used very few resources and transformed an ordinary utensil into an item that was both useful and beautiful. The fans moved air, shooed away biting insects, were useful for flirting and signified social position.

Typically crafted from hinoki, Japanese cypress, and thread, and washi paper, the number of strips of wood on each fan was meant to reflect the rank and status of its owner. These laws transformed Japanese hand fans into tools of aristocrats and the samurai class and became a means to signify social standing.

Most of the fans displayed on this page are hundreds of years old. 

 

Note from ERJ: I am not sure how having an "only fans" page generates revenue but I will soon be finding out. Thanks for visiting!

Transitions and an uplifting story about some neighbors

 

Source (1:30 run time)

16" barrel, AR pattern rifle. 55 grain, commercially loaded .223 ammo with a listed velocity of 3240 fps. Actual, measured velocity of 2800 fps. That slower velocity is actually an advantage with conventional soft-point bullets. It is a disadvantage with FMJ bullets with a cannellure which depend on +3000 fps to fragment.

Ripples

Southern Belle is going through an adjustment in her job situation. Nothing bad, just different. The adjustment required many hours to transition. I expect Quicksilver to be cranky and out-of-sorts today. 

The end is near...

Fifty more feet of potatoes to dig.

I "gifted" one of my nephews with the potatoes from a row-and-a-half and the weight averaged out at 1.5 pounds of potatoes per foot of row. It is very good soil but I didn't add any nitrogen fertilizer this year.

A neighbor

A neighbor has been cheering me up with updates from his family's garden. As the Iranian conflict evolved through the spring and the Ukes started blowing up Russian refineries and plants that made fertilizer, my neighbor's wife decided to plant potatoes in addition to their usual vegetables.

Let me simply note that she has great instincts. First for marrying my neighbor, secondly for planting potatoes, third...for doing a better job than I did.

According to my neighbor, the total harvest amounted to 1300 pounds. A third of it was given to one of the missions that is supported by their church. Additional potatoes were shared with people who had participated in the planting, care and digging of those potatoes. 

The spuds that remain will be eaten by four adults, three teenagers and two toddlers.

But that's not all, folks!!!

They hosted a butchering party.

A small stream runs through their property and EHD flattened the local deer population this year. So they decided to slaughter and process some of their excess domestic animals instead of sending them to auction.

The one picture from my neighbor that I am comfortable sharing.

My neighbor sent me many pictures which I do not have permission to publish, but I counted eight separate young people (i.e. younger than 20) helping in the meat processing.

They were cutting meat, feeding a meat grinder, running a vacuum sealer, standing around socializing, watching younger siblings and so on. They "typical" kid was probably 13 years-old. Three families other than my neighbor's appear to have been involved in the project.

My neighbor and his wife are intentionally raising God-centered, resilient children. Those kids know the amount of work that every bite of food represents, if not by them then by somebody else. They are not snow-flakes who are freaked-out by barbarians who actually eat meat with bones in it (not joking, it is a thing).

I know/knew young people lived entirely on one brand of frozen, cheese pizza. I knew other teens who refused to eat meat that had a bone in it...it was McD chicken nuggets or nothing. Their imagined fragilities were a core part of how they identified themselves as human beings. They saw those fragilities as markers of elitism and refinement.

My neighbors are also intentionally and deliberately building community. I am blessed that they trust me enough to share their struggles and successes. People who keep their noses to the grindstone rarely ask for attention so it is difficult to get a tally on how many kindred spirits are out there.

Stress reliever

This is from one of the Dacha video channels I watch.

A granny wearing a babuska is stripping leaves from a cane pruned from a grapevine. She then feeds the leaves to domesticated rabbits.

This might be a Continental Giant rabbit.

Most of the rabbits look like California White type meat rabbits but she also feeds one "novelty" breed with enormously large ears. She may be following the "Breeding herd" and "Terminal sire" plan where moderate sized maternal animals are bred to a large-framed, muscular sire. Most of the cost of running meat animals is in the base metabolic load of the maternal animals and that directly scales from their body-weight.

The entire rabbit feeding sequence is about 2:30 seconds long. 

Boiling frogs

How do we avoid the fate of the boiled frog?

When do the rules change?

In a football game, it is the two-minute warning. In investing it might be when the closing price of a stock drops below the 40-week-moving-average price or when quarterly revenues drop across a multitude of industries.

This is an intensely personal issue. Everybody will have a different answer. The most important thing is that you indelibly mark the "trigger looks like" into your brain because there will not be balloons and trumpets marking the occasion.

Everybody will have a different profile of "immediate actions" that will be their primary response. The ardent pacifist might purchase a gun. The miser might drain most of his money out of his IRA. The city-slicker might buy property and pick up a shovel and start a garden.

A few scenarios

For one person, the trigger came close when the Canadian media reported hundreds of mass-graves near schools that taught First Nations (Native American) children. The Brownshirt-thugs responded by fire-bombing churches across western Canada. The only thing lacking for that person was that the Brownshirts were not hunting and executing clergy.

A few key points:

• Fire is potentially a weapon of mass destruction and in urban areas or areas where conifers or tall grass grows (like western Canada), can rage uncontrollably.
• Churches/temples/mosques were traditionally neutral areas that were not targeted. They were granted the status of sanctuary.
• The information was twisted by the media. The academic findings were "anomalies in ground penetrating radar returns" which can be rotting roots, marmot dens or a host of other changes in soil density.

A second scenario (that I am totally making up) involves somebody who is attacked but successfully fends off their attacker. He reports it to the police.

Scenario 2.0 has the police being professional. Collecting information. Ensuring that the person who was attacked receives medical care. Providing feedback about the investigation to the victim. Maybe recovering some of the property. Promptly supplying the victim's insurance company with photos/evidence and police reports.

Scenario 2.1 has the police tossing the victim in jail for fighting back and harming the local entrepreneur who was just trying to make a living via small-scale wealth distribution. Medical attention is not provided in the jail. Cooperation with the insurance company is stonewalled.

A third scenario might be some arbitrary rate of inflation over a period of six months. What happens if prices across a broad market-basket of goods goes up by 25% over a period of 6 months? It might be bad for people on fixed incomes. It might be bad for normal people living near folks who depend on entitlements for their Doritos and Mountain Dew and suddenly their EBIT amount doesn't cover their needs.

A fourth scenario might be when random attacks at gas stations in certain areas become a regular occurrence. Maybe thugs demand protection money and bust your windshield if you don't cough it up. That would quickly make the areas where that behavior tolerated a NOGO zone. Incidentally, that has been happening in parts of Chicago for more than 25 years. Dudes start washing your windshield and then demand payment.

 A fifth scenario might be when the thugs declare open-season on first repsonders. 

What Mrs ERJ and I are doing

We are intentionally becoming more local. We stopped donating to "national" and "international" causes. Vacations are closer to home. I am considering a dentist who is more local.

We are battening down the hatches in the house. Last summer we had a contractor renovate a bathroom to make it senior-citizen friendly. This summer we replaced our 1977 oil furnace and air conditioner with more efficient units.

We are ruthlessly culling out plants that are not paying their rent. For example, I will be removing almost all of the grapevines growing on the trellis between the rows of fruit trees. They don't produce enough grapes to justify the complications the create.

We are also culling books. Some books are a waste of paper and a waste of storage space. Like the grapevines, I have an emotional attachment to some of those books but priorities change over time.

A big one for me is to organize my tools and prioritizing putting things away right after I use them. I am getting more absent-minded as I age and I need to invest in tool-box infrastructure. A tool is infinitely more valuable when you spend less than five minutes between thinking "I need my carbide-tipped, metric gonculator" to having it in your hands vs. when you have to hunt two weeks before finding it. 

A parting thought

The best time to plan is any time before the bullets are whistling over your head.

It doesn't have to be a great plan but it does have to be simple to execute. Fine motor skills and the ability to process nuance turn to crap under stress. If-Then-Else sign-posts must be clear.

A quote that has been attributed to Col. Jeff Cooper "We will not rise to the challenge. Rather, we will regress to the highest level of training that we have mastered."

So, decide what skills you need to master. Get the appropriate tools. Make a plan. Work the plan. Tweak the plan as you get boots-on-the-ground experience. 

There will probably be a Part II to this post. 

If we become what we repeatedly do...

If we become what we repeatedly do, then I will be turning into a freshly dug potato.

In other news

I went to a large high school cross-country meet today. There was a team from Holland, Michigan on the shores of Lake Michigan and a team from Ypsilanti, Michigan and there were teams from many towns in between.

The two local teams were from Charlotte and Olivet, Michigan. The women from Olivet were notable because the top three fastest finishers were all from Olivet. The fastest girl was at least 100 yards ahead of the second fastest who was 100 yards ahead of the third fastest...and then a gap when they started showing up in twos and threes.

I was a passenger in the vehicle that transported our group to the venue. The van hit a rough patch and was bouncing all over the lane.

I eyeballed the rear tires after I got out and they seemed to be properly inflated. Then I bounced the back end up-and-down. As far as I could tell, there was not a drop of fluid in the shocks or perhaps they had ripped out of the rear strut-caps. Boing....boing....boing....boing...boing...

As payment for the ride, I offered to transport replacement parts from the auto parts store in town to where she lives if she paid for them. She thought that was a spiffy idea and her hubby will swap them out some time this weekend.

USD as World's Reserve Currency

I had a thought as I was digging potatoes.

One of the horror scenarios for the United States economy is the US Dollar being unseated as the default, World Reserve Currency.

The way it works now is that the US Dollar is the hydraulic fluid that moves the engines of the world economy. If you want to buy cobalt ore in rebel held territory in the eastern Congo, you pay with $100 bills and the ore gets stacked into the back of your truck. Not Chinese Renminbi. Not Euros. Not Japanese yen. US Dollars, preferably in $100 bills.

Because there is a universal demand for USD, as a nation, we do not need to redeem them by exporting goods and services in order to support their value as a currency. The dollars we use to buy Chinese goods, for instance, are used by the Chinese to buy oil or bauxite or German machine tools. Other countries redeem the value for us.

If/when the universal desire for USD collapses, they will all come rushing back to the US to buy US property or products and we will see massive inflation in prices.

The simple fact is that there are no Chinese ships keeping the Straits of Hormuz open. There are no Japanese aircraft carriers or European fighter-jets or Brazilian or Indian troops carrying the load.

The US is not charging money for the service. But I bet that behind the scenes they are making it clear that we would only guarantee the safety of oil-tankers that are destined to the US IF the malcontents dethrone the dollar as World Reserve Currency.

Yes, those dollars will all come flooding back to the US but it will be to buy the oil that they could not ship out of the Persian Gulf and Red Sea. And that oil will be insanely expensive because it will be taking a much, much longer boat ride to get to Shanghai or Mumbai or Pusan.