Back to work

By the time you read this I will be drilling holes in concrete walls with a hammer-drill. Drilling is sort of like scraping paint, it uses muscles that usually don't get a work-out.

The Brains of The Outfit bid a large job and needed another strong back and weak mind. Oh, there was one other requirement. The helper needs to be able to keep his mouth shut so I will not be able to share any details of the job.

There are so many holes that need to be drilled that he purchased a corded hammer-drill because there is no way the battery charger will be able to keep-up.

I expect to to have aches and pains over the next few days.

Tastes like Peppermint! (Cumberland Saga)

Sarah and Blain were picked up at first light at the end of the driveway.

Sarah had worked out a complex deal where she and Blain would work at a dairy at the far end of the county in return for being allowed to purchase some old, cull cows and some old bales of mixed grass-alfalfa.

Recent changes in Federal Law mandated that the farmer reduce the number of cows he milked due to climate change. Cows that he would have kept a little bit longer were to be culled.

The ones that Sarah was going to buy were old, bred cows that did not "take" for the first few cycles and so would have an excessively long period between when they “dried off” and when they calved again. The farmer could not afford to hang onto them as “pets” for that extended period.

The hay was late, first-cutting, low-quality hay that the farmer never gotten around to feeding his animals. It was filled with viable seeds. Not only would it feed the cows until the new pasture started producing, it was going to supply the seeds FOR that pasture.

Sarah and Blain were wearing their most decrepit and disreputable clothing.

They were going to be trimming cow hooves.

Sarah moved the cows and she had a knack for it. For her, the work was not that bad.

The work was brutal for Blain. The farmer showed him how to do a couple of them and then handed the angle-grinder with the cutter-head on it to Blain. “Leave them a little bit longer rather than a little shorter. You can’t screw it up. They won’t be any worse after you trim them than they are now.”

Blain wasn’t too sure.

The cattle were put into a stanchion to hold them but it still involved bending over.

The farmer told him to look for the inside of the hoof to change color as he cut closer to the “quick” and to stop before he hit blood. That freaked Blain out. He went very slowly on the first three cows. That was twelve hooves.

Sarah told him he was going to have to step it up. He had over 200 cows to trim the hooves on and he could not afford to spend over 20 minutes on each one.

It was clear from the beginning that this gig was going to last several days.

The farmer invited them to use the showers and the laundry at the end of the day and loaned them protective Tyvek suits to wear while the clothes were drying.

Before they left, Sarah asked if she could bring a load of laundry from home and run it while they were trimming hooves. Having hired many hoof-trimmers in the past who never showed up the second day, the farmer said “I think that is a splendid idea.”

Blain’s speed increased as he became more comfortable with the tool. It also beat him up less as he figured out the optimal pressures and angles to let the power of the tool eat through the tough, shit-soaked hooves.  

Near the end of the second day, the farmer brought an animal for Blain to trim while Sarah was rotating the laundry.

“Be careful” the farmer informed Blain. “This here is my bull.”

The animal was enormous.

“Are all bulls this big?” Blain asked.

“Nope. This one is old. In fact, I was afraid I was going to have to replace him because he was slowin’ down at breedin’ the cows. He just wasn't gettin' after them” the farmer told him.

“That a fact?” Blain responded absentmindedly.

“Yup. He is my clean-up guy. If the artificial-insemination doesn’t take, his job is to get-it-done.”

Blain wiped the sweat off of his forehead with the back of his wrist. “So what did you do?”

“I called the vet. He came out and gave Brutus a check-up and left me with a big bottle of tiny white pills. Told me to give him one every day. So I did and he perked right up. In fact, he about wears those cows out makin’ sure they are with-calf” the farmer said.

“What do you suppose was in them?” Blain asked.

“Don’t rightly know” the farmer replied. “But they tasted like peppermint.”

Blain shot the farmer the look to see if he was kidding.

The farmer gave him a wink and a smile.

On the last day of the gig, the farmer made arrangements with Sarah regarding the details of the delivery of the hay and the cull-cows. Sarah wanted the hay delivered first since there was no forage growing in the new pastures yet. Then she wanted the three cull-cows delivered at the same time. Three cows don’t spook the way a single cow will and are easier to handle.

As they were leaving, the farmer said, “Hey sport! Catch.” as he threw something to Blain.

It was a package of breath-mints.

Blain gave the package to Roger when he got home. He figured Roger could use them more than he could.

Cost of reloading

A nephew asked me about the cost of reloading.

I priced out the cost of reloading 100, .223 Remington, 1X LC brass with H-4895, Sierra #1310 bullets and Rem 7-1/2 primers and it came out to about $63 per 100.

Purchased new, .223 Rem about $100-to-$150 per 100 (before shipping costs) so there is not a huge cost savings and that does not include the labor sunk into preparing the brass for reloading.

The upside for my nephew is that he calls coyotes and his rifle is finicky about bullet weight. The hollow-points were more explosive than he liked and the Sierra #1310 is a weight his rifle shoots well and is reputed to expand less explosively than his current ammo-of-choice.

Disrupting Command-and-Control Executive Function

If you have been reading my fiction for a while, you will notice that I am a fan of certain tactics. One of my favorites involves disrupting the target's O-O-D-A loop by super-saturating their sensory input.

The use of a spot-light and trip-wires were two recent examples.

Spot-lights are used everywhere for poaching. When used for deer it is sometimes called "jack-lighting" or "jacking" deer. Even non-hunters are familiar with the term "deer-in-the-headlights" as a term for the disorienting effect of too much stimulus.

Link

 

In the Cumberland Saga segment, a 200,000 lumen, LED spot-light was MacGyvered with a remote switch (probably from a shop-light) so any return fire would not be directly at the defenders. You can find many examples of LED spotlights at the $30-to-$40 price point.

In sports

In sports, coaches teach their players that the key to winning one-on-one contests is to lose the defender by changes of speed-and/or-direction. These are the basics of one-v-one and team-v-team. Bring the ball down the sideline and pass to the center or to the other side of the goal.

Lights are a simple way to shift the attackers' attention and to knock them off balance.

Trip-wires

The trip-wires were not tensioned when the attackers went up the drive but were when the attackers were rapidly retreating. SURPRISE!

Their sensory-overload was due to loss of balance and smashing their face into the gravel. That gave Gregor time to deal with two, armed attacker in relative safety.

Vision, sound, pain, smell (80%, 15%, 4%, 1%)

Vision can be disrupted with light, irritants (pepper-spray, dust, wood-ashes), darkness, camo.

Hearing can be disrupted with horns, fire-crackers, barking dogs, recordings of crowds.

Pain can be supplied with electric shocks (electric fence energizer), heat, cold, puncture wounds. If the noise is loud enough or a shockwave, it can rupture ear-drums.

Smell can be produced by vomit, fecal matter, cinnamon dust. Vultures vomit. Skunks spray. Camels spit.

The "D" in O-O-D-A

Sensory overload interrupts both the "Observe" in O-O-D-A loop and the "Decide".

Decision-making or Executive function is degraded by sudden fear: Falling (remember the Home-Alone scene?), fire (Elmore Leonard had a protagonist dowse an invader with gasoline and then start flicking a lighter. The gas can had a couple of ounces of gas for smell and the remainder was water...but the invader did not know that), large amounts of blood-like substances or fake-corpses.

Disrupting Command-and-Control functions is a multiplier for the ability to kinetically repel invaders. Zero times anything is still zero. Disrupting C-n-C buys the defenders time. The ability to mount a kinetic defense is still required.

Fine Art Tuesday

Hans Dahl born in Norway in 1849. Died in 1937.

I was talking with one of the workers at the gym I patronize on St Paddy's Day. I asked if she was Irish. She sighed "A little bit. But I am mostly Norwegian."

This post is for all of the Norwegians who sigh and apologize for being Vikings and whose people came from a place that was unforgiving and did not tolerate fools or idlers.

Dahl produced many paintings.

One thing at a time

 

We have two semi-feral cats frequenting our property. One is a calico cat who is at least 80% white. Her coat reminds me of Brach's Christmas Nougat candies. A little bit of orange. A little bit of gray. Lots of white.

The other semi-feral cat has semi-long, black fur.

Semi-feral cats are also known as "barn cats".

My thinking on barn cats has softened over the years. The predators that used to keep rodents in check take a beating. Mowing is hell on large snakes like rat snakes, milk snakes, blue-racers and corn snakes. Owls get whacked by cars. Fox get mowed down by mange, distemper and other diseases.

More rodents means more ticks. More ticks means greater risk of tick-borne diseases.

While I will not feed or otherwise encourage barn cats, I am not doing anything to reduce their numbers, either.

Doctors and such

The last month involved trips to the eye doctor and my personal physician for check-ups.

I also made a trip to the accountant.

The well drillers gave us a visit and took water samples.

I don't like drama.

The best way to avoid drama when purchasing a used car, as an example, is to take it to your mechanic and have him look it over BEFORE you buy it. Then, listen to his advice. If he says "It is a turkey. DON'T buy it!!!" then don't buy it.

He would rather not get stuck fixing a bunch of issues that could be avoided. I would rather avoid periods when the vehicle is out-of-service and having to pay for repairs that were foreseeable.

Same deal with accountants. There are lots of stupid ways to do things and there are some smart ways to do them. Being stupid makes messes that must be cleaned up.

The well-driller called back later in the afternoon and advised that we use a product containing sodium hydrosulfite and sodium metasulfite to purge iron from the resin bed of our water softener as a first-step in the diagnostic process. The water softener will get a second dose in two weeks. If that solves the problem then we got off easy; $13 worth of chemical vs $1500 of equipment.

The eye-doctor suggested that I should visit more than once every five years. My right eye is unchanged but I need a different prescription for my left eye. Since my eye-doctor will be retiring soon, I need to find one another one, preferably one that is not in Lansing.

Meat Hook for cleaning Tiller tines

$12 for two of them

I wish I had figured this out thirty years ago.

You cannot beat these for pulling weeds, wire and twine that have wrapped around the shaft of your tiller.

If you are cheap, you can cut a piece of livestock panel into a tall "T" with one wire for the vertical and one for the cross-piece. Then you can bend the bottom of the "T" into a hook. If you are smart, you can cut the bottom of the "T" at an angle with your bolt-cutters and it will be sharp enough for your purposes.

Calcium dip improves pear storage-life

Filed here for future reference. Placing newly picked Asian Pears into a "dip" of water and calcium chloride increases their storage-life. Different cultivars may vary in their preference for concentration and duration of the dip. Most papers suggest 2%-to-4% calcium chloride, by weight and a 20 minute-to-30 minute dip is adequate.

Fruit is placed into cardboard boxes and allowed to air-dry.

Icing the dip is also a way to rapidly cool the fruit prior to putting into the root-cellar.

Clorox Poolspa Calcium Hardness MSDS claims that the product (about $4 a pound) is 100% calcium chloride. 2.0 lbs of product in ten gallons will yield a 2.5% solution. The same amount in six gallons is just a skosh over 4.0% solution. Calculations are based on 2 pounds because the Clorox Poolspa comes in 4 pound packages.

Trash taking out the Trash (Cumberland Saga)

Stanley 5-1/2 Bench Plane. Image from handplane.com

Sig was dog-tired as he led the Sunday Services. The attendance was phenomenal. The Doxstader’s living-room was packed and there were knots of people listening at the windows and outside the doors.

Everybody heard the “thunder” in the night and were more-than-politely curious about the details.

Sig ditched his prepared sermon and “Called an audible” as Gregor called it. He preached from Romans Chapter 6.

“Sometimes Paul is complicated and difficult to understand but he is very clear in Romans, Chapter 6. We were joined with Christ in baptism and our old self was crucified and died and we arise as men called to be filled with Grace with the waters of Baptism.” Sig said.

“Paul exhorts us to not pledge our body to being instruments of evil but rather to pledge our entire being to be tools of God’s will, as best we can discern it.” 

"Imagine Jesus working in  his father's shop" Sig said as he held his hands as if he were holding his Stanley 5-1/2 wood plane. The position of his gnarled hands evoked the hiss of a razor-sharp blade turning pine or spruce into long, fragrant curls of shavings as the master-craftsman squared what was warped, fitted what was not true and pared off what was stained and scarred by weather-and-use.

 

"When we allow ourselves to be God's tools, He is gripping our souls with both hands just like a carpenter using his tools" Sig lifting his hands slightly and shook and pulled as if somebody were trying to pull away his wood plane.

 

"When we die, if we are acting as God's tools, nobody...certainly not Lucifer...can rip us away from Him. There is no surer sign of Grace."

“Death is not a tragedy. It will happen to all of us. The tragedy is to not be in a state-of-Grace when we die, to not be a tool in the hands of God.

“Sadly, there are many who choose to be instruments of Satan. If we should die while committing grave sin, then we die with Lucifer gripping our soul with both of his hands. And while God could rip our souls out of Lucifer's hands...what reason have we given him to do so?” 

 

"That is the true tragedy because we will be sent to hell where we would see the radiant, blissful faces of those who died in a state of grace even as the flames of hell engulf us.”

 

“It is a simple choice. It is either one or the other. Simple is not the same as easy but God did not promise us easy.”

 

“Know that God continues to bless His people in Copperhead Cove.”

“Evil men, followers of Satan attempted to force their way into a home in the Cove. They failed and were sent away.”

“Be vigilant. Satan stalks God’s people like a lion pacing around a fire searching for the unwary and unprepared.”

The most discerning easily saw the shattered railing on Roger's porch and the blood stains that Alice had tried to scrub away. They saw the congealed blood on the cobbles of the second hairpin of the two-track. They had a pretty good idea of how much blood a man-sized animal can lose and survive.

 

They could read between the lines. Hard men had done hard things, righteous things in the dark of the night. Things not to be talked about casually.

 

What was warped had been squared and what was not-true had been fitted. The shavings had been swept into the fire.

They bowed their heads and prayed for the families of the deceased. They knew all too well that even children of the most righteous parents will sometimes choose Satan’s way. They thanked God that none of their Godly men had been hurt.

***

Deputy Rosa Canina wrinkled her nose as she stood near the abandoned car that had been reported to 9-1-1.

There was very little room beside the road and her cruiser and the old SUV took up most of it. Unfortunately, the only good place for her to stand was downwind of the SUV. The bodies in the vehicle had been shot. Whoever killed the men clearly believed that anybody worth shooting once was worth shooting a dozen times.

Their manner-of-death made the immediate area a crime-scene and protocol required that she maintain chain-of-evidence, for all the good that would come of it. She could see that at least a couple of the men had gang-tats.

The DA was notoriously lax on pursuing gang-crime. Some of it was economics. You could sink a boat-load of resources into investigation and odds were you would never secure enough evidence for a conviction. Part of it was cowardice. Gangs had no inhibitions about whacking county officials.

Nope. The official photographer would show up and take a bunch of pictures. The medical examiner would do the same at the morgue. Then they would be fed into an AI service that would spider through social media looking for images of thugs bragging about doing the deed. Some of them were stupid that way.

To her way of thinking, it would be a blessing if they all killed each other. One of the men she had gone to academy had been shot during a drug raid. The bullet penetrated through the stretch webbing beneath his arm and double-lunged him. Golden BB they called it. Sid was in the wrong place, wrong time, wrong angle.

Trash-taking-out-the-trash. That is what it was.

***

Two packages addressed to Sarah showed up at the end of the drive that were puzzling.

One was a package of tiny plants. The twigs were no taller than the breadth of Sarah’s hand and the roots were encased in soil in the size and shape of a half-cucumber. The twigs showed the tiniest bit of green cracking of their buds.

They were labeled with hand-written tags: Thiessen, Northline, Titania, Red Lake and Hinnonmaki Red. They were packed with a note that read “Please put these in the ground and care for them. They need full sun. I will be there soon. A”

Sarah wracked her brain trying to remember anybody from the Cove whose name started with “A” who would entrust her with such a task. She came up empty-handed.

The second package that showed up was even more puzzling. It was filled with “Kastanie”, not quite as large the Horse-Chestnuts that grew in the Dayton town square or the Yellow Buckeyes that grew on the moister, forested sites near Copperhead Cove. The nuts reminded her of the nuts Alice called "marones" that the locals called “chinky-pins” that grew over at the Frozen Head Park. Weighing the nuts in her hand, she judged them to be five or ten times heavier than chinky-pins.

Glancing at the return address, she saw the package was originally from Olive Hill, Kentucky and had been remailed from St Louis, Missouri.

The note in this package said “Seed-nuts. Please put them in a cool, moist spot. -A”

Curiouser and curiouser.

 

 ***

 

A tip of the fedora to Kevin Alviti for woodworking advice. He is a fellow blogger, a wood-worker and small-holder.

 

Bonus Link: The Touch of the Master's Hand