[Screwit] I’m old. Gimme free [stuff]

The actual line is; “Fuckit, I’m old. Gimme free shit”, from Justin Halpern’s Sh*t my Dad Says.” Pretty funny book.

That said, I don’t feel old. But there’s been a lot of “huh…wonder why they said that” going on with me. For instance, I’ve had a few older ladies, at social functions, ask me “Are you still working?”. I’m 56. Of course I still work. I pretty much have to, and will probably have to until I drop.

I think it’s the grey hair that does it. I consider myself lucky. After Chemo, it was white. And I’ve been feeling the aches of the aged lately.

But what started this moment of clarity was my son. We were talking after dinner one Sunday, and I was prattling on about the average age of trades guys being mid-fifties, and many I know working the trades in their seventies. So I said something along the lines of “I’m thinking of getting into HVAC. It’ll be a good gig when I’m old”.

To which my son replied “Heh…Yeah…When.”

Ahh…the acorn don’t fall far from the tree. Irish wit must be a dominant gene.

Very funny.

I’ve been meaning to get back to weightlifting, and bought a cheap set of iron to get back into shape where going to a gym is worth it. So I went to the local rec center to check it out. The one I belonged to in Plano had a nice array of freeweights. This one, did not. Only machines. So as I’m asking the reception dude about the lack of iron, he starts selling me on attending the senior center. Wut?

All these things got me thinking hard about what I should be doing as I age.

One of the businesses I have includes doing network and security camera support. I’ve done a few jobs in homes lately that were punishing. Although I’m good at it, I’m not sure it’s for me. There are other reasons, like they don’t pay real well for the hassle, but I’ve already told my partner I’m done with this, unless he wants to do it with a helper, which will drive down the profitability further. I’m simply not as agile as I used to be. My recovery times are in days rather than hours.

And besides, that was part of my career that I liked the least. A necessary evil.

But back to the title. Am I really old enough to start glomming discounts? It’s worth looking into. Pride may keep me from doing it, but entertainment value of being a penny pinching pain in the ass may be worth it.

That was one big assed storm

My city got battered by the most intense storm I’ve ever witnessed Sunday.

That said, I’ve been through tropical storms, including some good Texas ones, but I’ve normally slept through them. What’s funny is nearly zero of the smart tech devices I have gave me any warning whatsoever. We went to Mass, then breakfast. All in all a normal Sunday. I sized up my weather app and it said 60% chance starting at 4 or so. Fair enough. I figured I’d knock out the mowing, stain the fence posts I replaced a few weeks ago, and maybe throw down some grass seed for the upcoming rain. Easy day.

But as I started, it got darker and darker. I had only the side yard left. Took one pass, and as I turned towards the back I could see hell was coming to lunch. A few seconds after hitting the garage it opened up. I was watching it from the Patio with my trusty protective sidekick, Jethro, but it got way too windy so we retreated. I was texting back and forth with the missus, and checking the radar on my iPad. Somewhere along the line I heard an explosion like a transformer cutting loose, and peered out the window at the road. That sound is also similar to an idiot not paying attention and plowing into another car at high speed. No power interruption though.

Soon enough It was just light rain and I ventured out to see what the deal was.

The deal was about a foot of water in the busy intersection near my house. The storm dumped like a foot of rain in a short, short time.

So I took some video, texted some, and walked back in my gate. Then I saw it – The storm had smote my neighbor’s fence’s ruin upon my yard. It pretty much was down, except for a small section in the corner and the section I had just rebuilt.

My big shepherd mix – Jethro, stood on the wreckage of the fence and pretty much claimed my neighbors back yard as his territory, and looked like he was about to repel my neighbor from his own back yard. I got him inside and then picked up on the the devastation all around. I won’t catalog it all, that’s not the point of this post.

But, trees down, power out, fences ruined. A house south of us had a huge tree fall on it’s roof. Texas storm damage. It was our time, this time.

There was a foot of water in the intersection near my house.

So what was good?

This is Texas. And although DFW is a yuge metroplex, most of it is like a small town. In my neighborhood and all over, neighbors were helping each other out – Clearing brush, running a power cord from their house with power to their neighbor without. Neighbors were out checking on the elderly in our block. By Monday, most of the folks in my neighborhood had piles of brush in front. Most of the yards were clear.
We have a functioning utility infrastructure. My power was out 16 hours or so, but it came back nearly to the minute Oncor said it would. The 250K without power, got whittled down in days. Sure it blows to have no power. But what they had to do, they did in a pretty short time, all things considered. They called in resources from other states, probably the instant they realized the scope of the outage, because there were bucket trucks all over starting Sunday evening.
I have two whirlpool refrigerators. My wife picked up ice, which we put in the fridge and freezer sections. The next day, nearly everything was still cold, or frozen. We lost almost no food.
It was cool enough that no AC wasn’t a huge deal.
I have two big, protective, territorial dogs. Ain’t no way anyone breaches the perimeter unscathed. A construction dude nearly collided with me on a walk the other day and the female – the smaller of the two – went for his throat. I can’t imaging what happens when someone tries to enter the house uninvited.

What was bad?

We’re woefully unprepared for this stuff. I have two mobile phones, and both were low when the storm hit. Good thing is I have two APC 1500 battery backups for work. Those chugged away powering the interwebs and charging my phones for hours before they gave up. I need to get a generator. I’ll wait until people forget, and the price goes back down.
My chainsaw is electric. I did that on purpose. My gas one sucked. So I’m consoled by the thought that had I still had my gas saw, it wouldn’t have started and I’d have flown into a rage like I nearly did last time it failed me. So the branches I had to clear, I did so with an ax. I have a collection of really sharp axes. It’s more satisfying anyhow.
There were creepy disaster porn people floating around. A dude stopped and hectored me about people in the neighborhood not keeping things up. I didn’t recognize the dude or his car. It was a spectacularly dumb thing to say to a rather pissed off Irish dude holding an ax. He caught me off guard. Otherwise, I’d have sunk the ax into his hood.
There were dumbshits doing dumb shit all over. How do I know? Sirens. All. Night. Long.
Between the weirdos and the dumbshits, I had enough and moved my .44 to the nightstand from my office when I went to bed. Screw them. The dogs will tell me long before I need to act. If they survive the beasts, I’d cap them with a .44 talon.
My driveway has a gate. An electric one. If I needed to venture out, I’d have to decouple the chain drive. See “generator” above. I think that’s the key here.
My truck was behind the gate. I spent all day clearing limbs and propping up the destroyed fence. Although I gave up alcohol. I wanted a beer. Bad. But there was none to be had. Power was out for miles around. I settled for water.
I stream nearly everything. I have no way to listen to radio, or get info without power. The alternative was to sit in my truck burning power and gas.

I love reading prepper sites. A lot of them, I take with a grain of salt. But, there are some things I need to do. A generator comes to mind, as well as the ability to store enough gas to run the thing at least a week. I can’t get on internet, I can’t work.

I need more guns and ammo. I have a serviceable collection, but there’s room for improvement. I also need my carry permit.

I picked up a battery radio (the only other one is in the cars) and a really cool solar charger for my phone/ipad.

I need to store more non perishable food.

It was a tough few days, but a really good learning experience.

Updates

Whoa! it’s been quite some time since I’ve added anything here.

I was overcome by events. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

So, let’s start.

Behold, the end tables, which I have as the main pic up above.

They came out OK. One thing I’d like to add about Harbor Freight from my last post; with some things you buy there, in my case an air sprayer, you need to upgrade as soon as you get a comfort factor with the tool, even though you don’t use it often. In my case, I thought I made a minor adjustment (which I should have tested first) and the spray gun dribbled onto one of the tabletops. This caused a massive imperfection in the finish, which had to be sanded out and the top re-lacquered.

So, I’m in the market for a better spray gun.

Now that I’ve had my Apple watch for awhile, it’s lost some of it’s luster. One of the major negatives is battery life. Still long enough – more than a day, but short enough that when you find it’s time to leave for an appointment, the damn thing needs charging. And then this happened:
That there is a big honkin’ crack, right at the top. So, do-it-your-selfer that I am, I started looking at new screens. To have Apple fix it costs nearly as much (almost) as I paid for the watch itself.

I don’t like it that much. The cheapest screen I can find would buy me a decent wristwatch.

I recently got a Ring Doorbell, which is Ok, and I’ll write about that later, but the app tells me there’s someone at my door, but I can’t do anything with that information, other than snooze the motion alerts.

I may fix it later, but these days I’m in no mood. I dropped my iPhone off my desk, something I’ve done many times before. But this time it hit at a funky angle on the top corner and cracked the screen. The one part that the case I bought didn’t cover. Replacing it was tedious in the extreme. Add to that the first screen Amazon shipped me didn’t work, screwing up the home button in the process. I was so pissed, I nearly threw it at the wall, and reactivated my spare 6S plus.

It’s fixed now, but I’ve already cracked it again. I will say that the screen kit, by Milmont, was pretty complete.

I have a lot to say about Cameras, having installed Ring, Nest, and a more conventional setup. So keep tuned.

Stalwart Mouse Sander

To be honest, I had no idea what this thing was called. I bought it cheap at Harbor Freight. and had to go look at the box to figure out anything about it.

Here’s the deal. I’m a tool snob. If it’s something I use a lot, or use professionally, I’ll buy the best. That’s why my telecom and NW toolkit is festooned with ChannelLock, Klein, and high end tools. They’ve served me well. Most of my high end tools I’ve had for over twenty years.

I have friends in the trades that have the opposite philosophy. Fully expecting their tools to get broken or stolen, they buy the cheapest they can. There’s some merit to this.

Enter into the picture, Harbor Freight Tools. This is where I go when I need something, and either want to try it out, or know I won’t use it much and don’t want to spend a ton of dough. In this case, I bought this sander to refinish guitars. I don’t do a ton of this, so I went cheap. I think this thing cost me about $15. Turns out, I didn’t need it at the time since the instrument I was working on polished up OK, and the next one in line is so screwed, I have to buy a new neck, which will come pre-sanded.

But, Finishing guitars is harder than furniture and I have some cool end tables to do, and the gear to do it. Although, I don’t think I’ll use my high gloss instrument lacquer on them.

At hand is my grandmothers end tables, which through a series of incidents, I’ve wound up with. They’ve been through a few people, and were hurting.

The other one has paint drops on it, courtesy of my oldest kid. So I hit them with the belt sander.

They are solid mahogany, from probably the first part of the 20th century. There’s no telling. Where there is veneer, it’s an astonishing 2mm thick.

Sanding this, I get the sweet smell of mahogany but also the hard candy and incense my grandmother kept in the drawers which is causing me to have flashbacks.

The mouse sander is working as it should, hitting all the places my other two sanders can’t reach, leaving me with very little left to deal with by hand.

So far, It’s worked flawlessly, since I found 220 grit pads at Home Depot that work great.

Here’s the deal. I don’t use some of these tools daily, weekly, or even monthly. If I did, I’d surely buy Dewalt or another pro series tool. But for this, the Harbor Freight tool hits the mark.

What it looks like now:

Keep tuned. I had an issue where I noticed a brace wasn’t glued any more and had to repair it. In a week or two I’ll shoot it with old school lacquer. They were reddish brown, and I have those dyes. So we’ll see. They should be stunning.

The Media in general, these days.

I don’t read newspapers anymore.

Nor do I watch network news, or even cable news.

Why?

They lie. And it’s too much work to figure things out. You have to visit many internet sites, and see a bunch of media before you eventually get the gist of what happened. The clue here is to hit the sites from other countries. They generally don’t have a dog in the fight, so what you’ll get is more factual than not. Then, compare it to the American sites and media. Eventually the truth seeps out, but it takes time.

When a big story hits, what I find is:

It’s probably not happening at all, or anywhere near like they are reporting.
If it did happen, it probably has been going on sometime and the media has ignored it, or covered for someone.
The amount you should care is inversely proportional to the intensity of the hysterics from the left.

Take this week’s immigration fiasco, for instance. #1 – I know people in law enforcement, and various Christian and Catholic ministries. You aren’t being told the scale, or the nature of the problem, and haven’t been since like 2013. That covers #2 as well. This was happening in Obama’s administration, an no one said or did jack about it. What they did was outsource the problem to various christian ministries to deal with. #3, All I can think of is Nancy Pelosi moaning about inherent human dignity when responding to Trumps “animals” remark about MS-13.

As Victor Hanson said – “When was the last time a dead body turned up on your property?” He’s had several, thanks to California’s malfeasance dealing with illegals. Hell, even my well healed hometown in Northern VA has had a gut-full of it. One of the reasons we moved was the high school my kids would attend sported like four different gangs. This, in an upper middle class enclave of DC.

The amount of propaganda these guys have been spewing would make Goebbels blush.

Bottom line is thus:

Through incompetence or malfeasance, both the legislative and executive branches has created an enormous problem.
You aren’t being told about it, and haven’t been for nearly a decade.
Immigration is broken. It’s too hard to come in legally, and too easy to come in illegally.

I use occam’s razor. The simplest solution is the best – turn them away – all of them. Period. Go back, and do it right. Every country in the world works this way. Keep in mind that since…uh…forever (at least since the potato famine) unchecked immigration knocks the citizens already here off the bottom rung of the ladder. Always has.

I’m not anti-immigrant by any means. My grandparents were immigrants. When I started in IT, I worked with Vietnamese and Middle Eastern dudes that put the bar so high that it was nearly unreachable. I’ve never worked with such skilled, hardworking, great people before or since. When I was working with them they were better friends and mentors than I deserved. And I’m better for it.

But you’d never know that unless I said so. Because these tools in the media are the last people to tell you what is really happening.

Weber Rapidfire Chimney Starter

I grill. A lot.

And when I moved to the new place, I passed along my 20 year old (or so) Weber Genesis to a friend, And now do strictly charcoal in a Weber Kettle, or wood in a smoker. I’m a big Weber fan, since they work well and you can get parts for the things, making them last indefinitely. I recently replaced the grill surface in my kettle with an improved version, which sports doors in the grill that allow you to add coals without disturbing your food. I think I have a total of $120 in the thing, all in, and it’s worked flawlessly.

I also read a number of fine cooking magazines and web sites. They have great recipes, but I can do without the PC crap. The first step is always “Start the coals using a chimney”, as if at my age I don’t know how to prep a charcoal grill. The theory is you won’t get any taste of the lighter fluid on your food.

Uh-huh.

For the record, although my taste buds are forever ruined by cancer, I can taste petroleum products. None of which I’ve ever detected when I start the grill urban caveman style by using copious amounts of lighter fluid. Typically, I arrange the coals where I want them, squirt a third of a bottle of lighter fluid on them, then “Flame-ON” as I enjoy a beer while the coals ready. Not.Rocket.Science.

But, what the hell. I’ll give it a shot, and here’s why – when I use the smoker , I find I need to keep some coals in the firebox to keep the heat consistent, and starting them in the grill and moving them is a pain in the balls. So I reasoned, maybe I’ll try a chimney. I used to use one long ago, but forgot when I gave up on it. Probably when I went propane. So I waddled down to Lowes and picked up a Weber Chimney. Long story short, I should have bought the cheaper one. Hell, I should have bought a big ass can of beans and turned it into a chimney.

I’ve used it three times so far, and the heat has beaten the crap out of the metal. Meh, for $14, I’m not expecting too much. However, my last one was painted black, and seemed ot last better.

So without further ado:

Pros:

It works reasonable well. It manages to start enough charcoal to do a Weber Kettle justice.

You wind up with a well lit grill, and very hot, while retaining the vast bulk of the charcoal, allowing you to cook longer. Or rather, as long as you need. You seem to have plenty of coals for as long as you need. I did chicken last night, and had heat enough left to grill some zuccini.

Doing this, as opposed to starting the coals and letting the flames hit the grill surface keeps the grill part more or less intact. As opposed to overheating it and damaging the surface. Bad part is, it doesn’t burn off the schmutz from your last BBQ.

And if you empty it correctly (use gloves), You can get the coals where you want them without too much re-arranging. Even though I have BBQ tongs, the coals are nuclear hot, and moving them without gloves is tough.

Cons:

The Smoke. Sweet Jesus, it fills the back with tons of smoke. And it’s not nice “Hey, someone is barbecuing smoke.

It’s “Hey, there’s a newspaper plant on fire somewhere” smoke.

It fills the back yard with a fog of acrid smoke. And if it’s near the patio, like it was the first two times I used it, the dog starts freaking out, goes round the house to the kitchen window, stands up, looks at my wife working at the sink and barks – “Holy shit the back yard’s on fire and I can’t get back into the house!”

Maybe it’s the quality of paper I put in it.

Here’s the rub, I don’t get a newspaper. So I use the newsprint ads I get as junk mail. But the smoke lasts long after the paper is consumed. So I guess that’s the other con – no paper, you have to hunt for something to start the thing.

It also has taken a mighty beating in the three times I’ve used it. The finish is burnt off, for the most part, and the grill surface that separates the coals from the newspaper is already beaten and rusty.

All in all, it has a slight edge, – hotter coals that seem to last longer (probably because they heat up faster). Another pro would be that the dog now stays in the house the whole time the grill is out.

In the end, it’s worth the $14. I’ve produced 3 for 3 great meals using it.

“Fastest Car”, Netflix

I love car shows.

I’ll binge watch Top Gear. I’ll hit Grand Tour the day the episode posts. I’ll watch nearly every episode of a car or bike builder show.

So I was plodding around Netflix and stumbled onto “Fastest Car”. The premise is simple, throw a random three cars up against a super car in a drag race, and at the end, take all the winners and race. Meantime, load up with idiocy and drama. The Real Housewives of drag racing.

First, there’s this random matching. The last episode before the final race sported:

An extra cab diesel pickup
A Mazda RX-2
A ancient Datsun, powered by a homegrown electric setup
And a Lamborghini.

This one was especially funny, since the Datsun lost it, hit the Mazda, spooking the woman in the Lambo, allowing the stupid pickup to win.

There’s a reason cars are classed in racing. Just like boxing, you don’t pick a fight out of your weight class. Pick the top supercars, pick the top of each class, then go at it. And really, they should have either limited it to those that raced, or picked drivers. The first place to start would be a race stats from a drag strip. 90% of the show could have been done with math.

Second, Speed is just a question of money. How fast do you want to go? For the most part, a lot of the cars that raced were hopeless. You really think you’re going to take a junkyard 80’s Cutlass and in a few weeks with little money beat anything? I think that guy DNRed (did not race), as did the dude in the supra, Because he couldn’t keep his car running. The supercars are purpose built for speed and endurance. They are expensive for a reason. Sure, the owners didn’t put “blood, sweat, and tears” into their cars, but a team of engineers and craftsman certainly did. Interestingly, the dude that came in second was in a T-Bird he custom built to race – because he races. It was stripped of everything not needed to race and still be road legal.

Third, every non-supercar that was anywhere near competitive used Nitrous (NO2). NO2 is the steroid of racing. That’s like me juicing up, then snorting coke and saying I’m a premier athlete. If your car can’t be competitive without NO2, it’s by definition not the fastest car.

Lastly, their definition of “sleeper” is a little wide, to say the least. Very few of the non-supercars were sleepers. If a car is sitting stupid on bad suspension work, with oversized tires, a hole in the hood with a scoop or other BS sticking out, and a sound like a garbage truck with a missing muffler, it’s not a sleeper. You know all what that dude is about.

Awhile back I was tooling along a huge tollway in north Texas on my way home and I had a bit of a race pass me. I heard it before I saw it. A custom corvette, weaving down the highway way to fast, with what turned out to be a BMW 328 on his ass. Let that sink in. A custom chunk of american pig iron couldn’t outrace a 2.8 liter beemer.

Or a bike. My last bike was a Yamaha FZ-1. It would go 0-140 in seconds with my fat ass on board. For all the street race bravado, I’ve never seen one of these guys beat a bike. They’ve always wound up in my rearview, far behind.

After a few episodes, it descended into farce, and was really just stupid. At that point it was worth it just to see it end, even though you knew the supercars and the pro racers would win and place.