It's official, we've passed a milestone!

One problem we've had at Landlady's property from the beginning was getting water from the well to the cistern. The well has a 120-volt AC pump, and it pulled so much amperage that the electrical system couldn't run it for more than fifteen minutes or so without collapsing on its fainting couch and shutting right down. So every so often we had to connect the pump to a gasoline generator and fill the cistern that way. It was a bother. The electrical system could run the pressure pump, but not the well pump.

Almost two years ago, Claire spent a lot of money and M and I spent a lot of sweat upgrading the system. After that I learned that we didn't need the generator any more to fill the cistern. That was a big improvement, but I still left the pump unplugged most of the time because I was afraid to find out what would happen if somebody ran a lot of water after dark. But now there are as many as three people at a time weekending in Landlady's house, and one person full-time for about a month. They go through a lot of water. Also I think the drain-back valve at the well might be going bad, because the cistern was unexpectedly going dry and that was playing hell with the pressure pump. So with heart in throat I decided to see what would happen if I left everything plugged in 24/7 for a whole weekend.

What happened was...nothing bad. The system can keep up with the demand just fine! Happy!

Hillbilly Engineering...

We went to town yesterday for some food and hardware.  Driving back toward the outskirts, I yelled "Stop the car!"

It's a 1939 (mumblemumble) agricultural tractor, that's obviously seen a lot of turnip rows since it left the inside of the factory...

And somebody decided to retrofit it with a cute little backhoe attachment, the likes of which hadn't even been invented before the tractor's manufacturer went belly-up.

Somehow jamming the output shaft of the tractor's PTO into the input of the backhoe's hydraulic pump. As far as I can tell, it works. Sorta.

The owner must like it, too. He wants $6000 for it, which is almost what M paid for Gulchendiggensmoothen - a much larger, more powerful and better thought-out kludge.

Another of those "helpful hints" you only learn...

...by doing it wrong.

This morning M and I started waterproofing the Dome.  Oy, this is gonna be a job.  The concrete was sprayed onto the matrix of wire and [rebar and rebar and rebar and] burlap, and it wouldn't have taken us an hour to smooth it a bit before walking away.  We really wish we'd done that now, because getting the waterproofing compound into all those itsy-bitsy crevices and holes is taking us forever.  It also means we really need to slaver the stuff on, and it's not cheap.

The nasty weather finally broke, though.  Hardly a cloud in the sky, mild temperatures - if it was like this every day, we'd have to beat the Californians away.

We had a terrible scare with M's water system: The pump wouldn't run, and the cistern was less than half full.  That wasn't supposed to happen, but it turned out to be operator error.  Our cistern has a float switch that is becoming the bane of my existence. Pretty soon I need to do a post on the two available types of float switch, one of which you should avoid if you're setting up your own system.

Things a lazy man shouldn't plan to do...

So late this morning, after it had warmed up a bit, the boys and I took a nice walky and then headed down to the Lair for some nice pebble-sifting.

This wasn't my best idea ever. Three hours later I'd managed to clean almost two wheelbarrows full of small rocks. At this rate I'll have a flush toilet sometime around the beginning of the 22^nd century.  But I don't see a lot of alternatives, because I've scarfed up all the free cinders that make sense - picking them up off the ground isn't any more efficient than what I'm doing.

Then it clouded up and started to rain again!  Whathehell?  It was supposed to rain Wednesday.  I wasn't too surprised that it rained yesterday.  But this morning the clouds cleared out right on schedule and I thought it'd stay sorta partly-cloudy and let me work.  Right now I'm actually stranded in the Scriptorium because it's really pouring.  If this keeps up the washes will run, though I saw no sign of water accumulating in the canyon this morning and it's been so dry the past few months that it shouldn't happen.  Still, it might.

So far the best that can be said for the spring is that it's not quite as unpleasant as the winter.

The Ultimate Geardo...

I'm not saying this video perfectly reflects my views on the topic - it is possible to dump a rucksack faster and less comically than this guy does. But I do sometimes wonder about the efficacy of carrying around all that gear all the time. Either view can be taken to extremes, and here's one.

(Note - NSFW Language)



H/T to Sipsey Street.

Gettin' ready to do something all survivalisty!

Back three winters ago during my Year of Solitude, I learned the hard way that the only way to convert money into nourishment and warmth is to spend it first. Food and fuel will get you through times of no money one hell of a lot better than money will get you through times of no food and fuel.

Since then things have lightened up a bit: I have less trouble getting to town, which means it's easier to convert money to commodities and the need to do so is less immediately urgent. But the principal remains. And so does the situation, on a macro level: My food stocks are badly depleted after the winter, and I'm sitting on lots of money from all those geiger counters. I've been putting off doing the obvious thing, because possessing more money than it's convenient to carry in a wallet is a rather unusual feeling and I wanted to savor it for a while. But wouldn't I feel stupid if the stores all closed tomorrow?

Landlady's been holding the accumulated cash because a) she has a bank account and I don't, and b) it was always most likely that she'd be the one spending it anyway. So when she returns to the city at the end of the weekend she'll go armed with a rather alarming shopping list.

Yup, I'm primed for the biggest food buy of my life. Details to follow.

ETA: Someone has just reminded me that since the world is due to end tomorrow, I'm a bit late on that.

Curses! Foiled again!

Snow?

I don't suppose I should be too surprised. Looking back I see that last year's final snow was also in May - though almost three weeks earlier than this one. But I really did wake this morning to wet, patchy snow. It rained yesterday afternoon and it's raining on and off today, the weatherman predicted that, but nobody said anything about snow.

I'd like to go on record that whoever was in charge of the weather during this past winter is fired. Seriously, just turn in your keys.

Spent the last couple of hours doing something I never do - I just took a frickin' nap. Listening to the rain pound on the barn roof makes me want to go back and do it more. What a cold, wet, rotten day!

In other news, Newton County Sheriff torn limb from limb by enraged realtors...

...who can easily guess what his delighted announcement in the wake of that idiotic Indiana Supreme Court decision will do to property values as potential immigrants decide they don't want to live anywhere near him...

CROWN POINT, Ind. – According to Newton County Sheriff, Don Hartman Sr., random house to house searches are now possible and could be helpful following the Barnes v. STATE of INDIANA Supreme Court ruling issued on May 12th, 2011. When asked three separate times ... he emphatically indicated that he would use random house to house checks, adding he felt people will welcome random searches if it means capturing a criminal.

A very surprising news clip

Seen over at Unc's. Some newsies are asking for unwelcome attention from the Blue Boys' Gang.



Don't they know that the money must be proceeds from nefarious activities? How else could anybody have it? If a person's still got large amounts of money in his possession, he clearly isn't paying his fair share. The police are only trying to right that wrong.

Accepting the Premise

Well, it's silly season again. It's inescapable. And over at The Smallest Minority, I encountered the kind of insulting statement that never fails to get my ruff to stand on end:

I'm not worried about the 1/5 of America that voted for [Obama], I'm worried about the 3/5ths of America that didn't care enough to vote at all.

That statement, and its many variations, annoys the hell out of me. It's not indifference that causes me to refrain from voting. When you ask whether I'd prefer to be bitten by a rattlesnake or stung by a scorpion, you've asked a meaningless question. Constant insistence on its deep relevance does not give it the least bit of actual relevance.

"If you don't vote, you don't have the right to complain." BULLSHIT. I'd say rather that you've forfeited the right to complain if you DO vote for any of the pre-selected bastards, because you've accepted the premise that those are the only acceptable alternatives and the one who wins 51% of the vote now has the god-given and indisputable authority to push 100% of us around.

I find that offensive. It is an absolute certainty that the upcoming presidential campaign will not contain one single contender that I would find acceptable, so I'm supposed to accept the idiotic premise that my only legitimate alternative is to vote for the "lesser evil" from among the evil bastards presented for my approval. This is somehow supposed to make perfect sense.

When I fail to show up at the polls again this time I will have voted for my regular candidate, a fellow named NOTA. Once again this time he'll get the majority of the votes, and once again he'll be ignored. But I'll behave as if he won the election, because he did.

Mr. Policeman is Not Your Friend.

Neither is Mr. District Attorney, thousands of Law & Order episodes to the contrary notwithstanding.

Also, there are times when open carry is dumb. Unless you're trying to be a cause célèbre, in which case knock yourself out...

This incident happened several weeks ago in Philadelphia to Mark Fiorino, a 25-year-old IT worker who carries a gun on his hip at all times for self defense. He got the gun after several friends were mugged.

But he didn't count on attacks by police:

On a mild February afternoon, Fiorino, 25, decided to walk to an AutoZone on Frankford Avenue in Northeast Philly with the .40-caliber Glock he legally owns holstered in plain view on his left hip. His stroll ended when someone called out from behind: "Yo, Junior, what are you doing?"

Fiorino wheeled and saw Sgt. Michael Dougherty aiming a handgun at him.

What happened next would be hard to believe, except that Fiorino audio-recorded all of it: a tense, profanity-laced, 40-minute encounter with cops who told him that what he was doing - openly carrying a gun on the city's streets - was against the law.

Judging from the voices on the audiotape, the gun-waving Dougherty didn't believe himself in any particular danger. Maybe if Fiorino had brought a small dog. No, Fiorino's threat to the community was not what Mr. Policeman was concerned about. What he was concerned about was the threat to the monopoly on violence.

Let's face it: It's gotta be a rush (to certain types) to be the only one allowed to walk around with a gun on your hip. It makes you special. You get to be all edgy and dangerous, and know people are going to get out of your way on sight. I sometimes wonder how many boys dreamed of becoming cops after being raised on too many Dirty Harry movies. And now along come real common sense gun laws, by which people are actually permitted by law to carry means of effective self-defense. It's got to be a real let-down to the cops, not to be able to see themselves as dangerously special anymore.

Well, not to worry, Mr. Policeman. I still think you're special. I carry a special place in my heart, just for you.

News Flash: You're gonna die, I'm probably not.

I have this on very convinced authority.

Yesterday, before Landlady and M headed back to the big city, we went to the little town nearby for some restaurant lunch. There we were accosted by the owner, who basically told us we were all gonna die.

This isn't the way I'm used to being greeted by the proprietors of restaurants, so I made the mistake of asking for details. Didn't think I was gonna get lunch. It seems there's this mysterious planet that buzzes earth every 3600 years or so, bringing devastation and massive geological reshuffling. Somehow I managed to avoid ever hearing about this before, but it sounds like big trouble.

Good news, though: She said I live in a stable zone that will escape inundation or destruction by earthquakes or volcanoes. She did suggest I stock up on food.

I just told her that sounded like good advice.

This is why I don't call myself an anarchist.

Nobody seems to know what that means.

For some Greeks, like Nikos Galanos, a 20-year-old chain-smoking in an Exarchia cafe, the anarchist movement has become an outlet for anger. Last year, during a wave of government cutbacks, Galanos’s mother lost her job as a guard at the ancient Acropolis perched above Athens. His father, also a government worker, saw his salary slashed by 15 percent and must now labor more years before meeting the retirement age, boosted last year to an average age of 63.

Here's a hint, though: If you're angry at the government because it isn't giving you enough stuff...You're not an anarchist.

pebbles in a trench

The cinders I scavenged a couple of days ago didn't go nearly as far in the leach trench as I hoped, which means I'm quickly down to Plan B - sift pebbles.

By wildest luck the dirt I dug out of the trench isn't exactly a pebble-rich environment, but it's close to the trench so that's what we sifted today. Ah, well.

And that's gonna be the plan for a while. Lots of dirt to sift. This part of the project is likely to go on for quite some time, alas.

And after we did our chores, we could go out and play.

Busy day yesterday - sorry about the no post thing. M and I spent most of the day schlepping blocks, mortar and concrete for his endless, and yet oddly short, curved wall. I'm told it nears completion, but I'll believe it when I see it.

Still, when we were done we could go play with our toys.

The tank rack we dragged out to the range a couple of weeks ago will gradually become a respectable long-range target stand. Right now we've got one 10-inch gong and an old piece of plywood. Hey, it's a start. I just added this picture to show that we do have a backstop not even I could miss.

Of course the gong was the part we were most interested in testing. M went out and bought pieces of armor plate, or what was represented as armor plate. Only one way to find out.

M just got a new stock for his Savage. He was planning to shoot ball ammo, and I protested that if his barrel twist was like mine he wouldn't get good accuracy from anything but match-weight bullets. As happens so often when discussing shooty things, I should have kept my mouth shut: we shot groups with two lots of ammo and there wasn't much to choose between them. Unlike my Browning, his Savage will shoot ball just fine. Then he put two into the gong, to see what the effect would be...

And the effect was splashes of lead and no deformation at all. This stuff is great!

...a little hard to see at 300 yards though, even through a 9-power scope. The 300-yard mark is right above the shoreline in the big loop of the wash that comprises the range proper. For 400 yards you go out into the meadow. My front yard is right at 550 yards. The longest shot you can take is 1200 yards, but for that you have to climb the big ridge.

And of course make sure the brush is out of the way of the barrel - because there's always that one piece of brush in just the wrong place. "'Is the action open?' he asked belatedly."

We were finding the gong pretty good at 300 yards, but then the wind came up and we...lost the target. Before I die I really want to learn how to dope the wind and be a proper long-range rifleman. I never was very good at it.

But we do know that it wouldn't have happened without torture.

I'll admit I haven't paid a lot of attention to the OBL Assassination Post-Game Analysis. But even I have noticed the story has gone through several iterations, often quite contradictory, each the government's very last word on the matter. The one thing the .gov has been fairly consistent about is that none of this would have been possible without torturing people, and so torturing people is good. We know this is true because Leon (I finally got CIA!!!ZOMG) Panetta told us so, and he'd never lie.

Here's an amusing article that asks the question which has occasionally circled around my head lately,

"[H]ow many more versions of this event that was recorded live from 47 different camera angles do you think we'll get?"

That was weird.

Blogger went away, as you probably noticed elsewhere. I've been blogging like crazy, with posts that would have changed your life forever busy elsewhere and almost didn't notice.

Yeah, got a call last night from GC Guy, who got 300 meters and wanted to build some geiger counters. So I made some money today and will probably do so Monday through Wednesday as well. Landlady's due in this evening, and that usually has some impact on how the weekend goes. Yesterday Gulchendiggensmoothen and I loaded a whole bunch of cinders from a pile somebody left at an old build site and I got permission to scoop'em up. So that saved me some pebble-sifting, though I still need to wash out all the sand I hauled along with them. Where else can you go for all the latest news on improvised septic systems? Yeah, we know how to live.

Ah, the ATF. Still keeping us safe.

Or at least entertained. At least this time they didn't kill anybody.

But I don't get this...

"We found out that the ATF was setting some bombs off to do some checking and seeing what they need to do for their bombs, and this apparently started the fire," DuBois said.

They were doing who to their what? Wait. When I first saw the article I assumed they were getting basic training about certain types of demolitions, or maybe on recognition and disarming techniques. I don't know what "seeing what they need to do for their bombs" even means. I thought the ATF was agin'em - how many bombs (he asked in a small, frightened voice) does the ATF have?

Besides, mine are satisfied with a cool dry environment and the occasional saucer of milk.

The Mall Ninja - It's not just for America anymore.

If you must do this, please don't suggest it to us. I have faith in my friends' marksmanship, and Mama Joel did raise a fool or two. But at least in this particular, I'm not one of them.

H/T to Tam.

And ... it's morning. Is that a good thing?

Woke up preternaturally late, with actual sunlight streaming in through the one window I left unshaded. Yesterday afternoon I actually had the propane heater going because I just could not get warm, and that scared me because what I really don't want is a case of the flu, and I missed the last wave and am kinda due. I catch flu at the drop of any hat, and it lays me down for weeks. But except for the chill that wasn't what it felt like.

Not an especially nice morning - almost-cold, windy, cloudy. I made myself a nice plate of french toast, using a baguette I bought a couple of days ago but didn't get a chance to use while Landlady was here. Cautiously set foot outdoors. I feel okay, but a little unsteady and my right eye keeps going in and out of focus. Yesterday was as bad as it's gotten in a long time. I've got tools and parts and time to get a lot done on the Lair. The tractor battery is in the Jeep and needs to get installed. But I don't know if I'll accomplish anything today beyond watering the trees, which should have been done yesterday.

It's kinda synergistic in a bad way that the only time I ever saw that HBO series Deadwood was when I was sitting in with the flu, and that's what I associate it with. This weekend I downloaded the series from Landlady's legendary external hard drive and what happens? Well, not the flu. Maybe it's best I'm a bit isolated anyway because that show gets me channeling Al Swearengen, and that can't be a good thing. Though he does like knives too...