All the good aliens have left the planet. And now this news. Fair winds and clear skies, Dolly.
Alex Sujong-Laughlin writes over at Defector about falling down the doomsday prepping rabbit hole, and she put something into perspective for me that resonated deeply. I’ve also been thinking about this subject since the Second Coming of Cheeto, and given all of the warning signs and terrible news, I took some initial steps. She talks about her husband, a college professor, beginning his Intro to Government class with a lesson on the Hobbes vs. Locke philosophies: basically a Walking Dead humans-are-the-real-enemies mindset vs. a Star Trek we’re-all-in-this-together mindset. I definitely tend to be the latter rather than the former, but I also want to prepare for the Hobbesian hordes if and when they show up at my door. This paragraph really stuck with me:
The way you view the world determines how you live in it. These two theories also underpin the central policy differences between the left and the right. What is responsible for the problems in our world, and how do we go about solving them? If you believe that people are mostly selfish and hungry for power and resources, for example, you will be less likely to advocate for social safety nets. I realized that my anxiety was leading me into an imaginary Hobbesian hellscape, and I was using my impending parenthood to justify it.
I’ve always, since my early days, been focused on being as self-sufficient as possible: knowing how to frame and roof a house, plant and harvest basic crops, keep machinery working, handle weapons, and do basic repairs on most tools has been important to me not only because I’m cheap (and usually on a budget) as well as curious. This, plus my ADHD, has made me into more of a generalist vs. a specialist—something that bothers me less and less the older I get. There’s something to be said for stockpiling food for a Bad Situation, but much like she says in this article,
The amount of preparation I would have to do to maintain a semblance of normalcy in that instance would require such absurd investments of time and money that it would force me to adopt “emergency preparedness” as a main personality trait and hobby.
I think this encapsulates something I’ve been knocking around in my head for a while; I could spend immense amounts of time and money to prepare for the great unknown, but that would require a complete lifestyle change, which we are not prepared or financed to do right now. I’ll stockpile essentials—bullets, booze, freeze-dried food and water—but if the balloon goes up, we’re packing it in a running vehicle and heading north to the hills.
This video from Adam on the Tested YouTube channel features a visit to the Udvar-Hazy Museum, where he’s talking to some of the officials about their Sikorsky JRS-1, a prewar amphibious transport which has the remarkable distinction of being the only surviving aircraft from Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. When I visited the museum with my parents nine years ago, it was sitting on the floor of the restoration hall with the wings and engines still attached. I figured it was being restored then, but apparently they’ve finally started work on it.
This plane is the cross-section of multiple interests of mine: World War II history and aviation, prewar design, mechanical restoration, a love of amphibious planes of the time (the Consolidated PBY is still my favorite), and the Smithsonian in general. What I would give to be on the floor of that shop to have a personal tour.
As with previous Labor Days, I spent the majority of mine laboring. I started out on Saturday with a long list of tasks to tackle around the house, and by Monday afternoon I’d accomplished all of them plus a few.
After making coffee and letting Hazel out for her morning constitutional, I drove down the street to a yard sale and was happy to find a bunch of tools priced exactly where I like them: cheap. I picked up a toolbox full of name brand box-end wrenches, two pairs of dikes, and a pneumatic cutoff wheel for $20. I’ve now filled all the gaps in my wrench sets—I was short on a couple of key SAE sizes as well as the metrics, and with this haul I’ve got full sets of quality US-made tools out in the garage, in my tool bag, and in the basement, so that I don’t have to continue running around to find a second wrench.
My trucks like to mark their territory, and the Scout was getting worse at this until I replaced the power steering pump. I bought a cleaning solution from the Jungle Site which promised it would remove oil stains from asphalt. This stuff is full of enzymes that are supposed to suck up the oil and then dry into silica, leaving puddles of white dust. After brushing the residue away, I sprayed the spots with the power washer until the water ran clear. I’m pretty pleased with the results—most of the smaller spots are now invisible, but the larger ones are going to need another application.
Over the last month or two, Jen and I have been pulling up the FLOR tiles in the living room and using the pressure washer to clean them. We’ve had them for almost 20 years, and they’ve held up very well given the abuse they take on a daily basis. There’s only so much dirt and pet hair that will come up with a vacuum cleaner, even one as good as our Dyson, so it was impressive to see how much came out—and how much cleaner the tiles look—after they dried in the sun. With that success, I hung the dining room rug up on the front of the garage and pressure washed it(you will begin to notice a theme for this weekend) to try to clean that up too. Given its location and proximity to food-related accidents, it’s a miracle the rug didn’t look like abstract art, but overall I think it came out OK.
Then I used Purple Power and a mop to wash and scrub down the plastic on the outside of the greenhouse. Over the last couple of years it’s gotten really dirty from all of the tree sap, especially the side that faces the house. After working it over a couple of times I was able to get about 90% of the dirt off, and then worked my way around to the other side. With the pressure washer, I carefully blasted all of the algae and dirt off the rest of the structure, and it’s about a thousand times brighter out there now. This plastic hasn’t lasted as long as the first batch I bought in 2005, and I’m going to have to replace some sections in the spring—but it looks a hell of a lot better now.
Something that’s been bothering us for a while has been the smell of our clothes after they come out of the washing machine: they don’t smell like they’re actually clean. I did some research and then disassembled the top half of the machine, which eventually required the employment of a car jack and two sections of wood to remove the main agitator basket. When I pulled it out I found the bottom half caked with yuck, and the container in the machine was brown with dirt and sediment. Out in the driveway I used more Purple Power and the pressure washer to blast all of the parts clean, then re-assembled the machine. Jen ran an empty load with some bleach to clean out the rest of the yuck I couldn’t reach, and told me it smelled like it was finally clean.
When I poured a new concrete fitting around the basement surround, I didn’t make the second step deep enough. What had once been a narrow lip around the edge was now half as wide as the other steps, so something had to be done. I put a masonry wheel on my circular saw and was able to cut about 3″ deep all the way across, but there’s still another 5″ left before I reach the top of the step. I think I’ll have to rent a full-size masonry saw with a larger wheel in order to cut it back and level things off.
There were a number of other smaller projects sprinkled in there that I can’t remember now, but by about 4PM on Monday I was beat. We made some guacamole to go on some grilled burgers with fresh corn (EXCELLENT idea, Jen) and I spent the rest of the evening sitting on my ass.
Gina Trapani was the founder of Lifehacker, a fantastic website featuring all kinds of tips, tricks, and toys to make life easier. She left that site years ago to do her own thing, and recently wrote about buying a 3D printer on her own site. She got a Bambu P1S, which goes for about $500 right now, and apparently can’t stop making stuff. I have, on many occasions, considered buying a 3D printer, and this article just re-awakened that itch.
I’m making a deal with myself: I have to learn how to use FreeCAD first before I buy one.
Here’s a video recap of August’s progress on the trucks; my accomplishments have slowed down as the month got busy, but I did get some small tasks completed, as well as hosted a workday last weekend.
I’ve posted this song here before, but I absolutely love the groove to this song. This is a live version from eight years ago, and the vocals are slightly flat, but I still dig it. I would love to see True Widow live.
A few weeks ago, we had a pretty violent thunderstorm roll through our area. I don’t remember where Jen was, but I had Hazel hooched up on me like a tick on a deer as I did some budgeting and watched the trees blow sideways out the window. It wound up being more bluster than precipitation, but the sky did get that weird green color that means “Git in the storm cellar, Dorothy!”
Anyhow, a week later I was in the driveway when my neighbor walked over and told me one of the limbs from a silver maple in the back corner of our lots had fallen on her garage and knocked out her power. This tree was next to a pole holding a transformer that used to explode regularly during windstorms; after fifteen years and a final eruption of green fire and carcinogenic PCBs, BG&E finally sent a crew out to update the unit and it’s been pretty solid ever since.
The tree was almost directly in the middle of where three lots come together, as far as I can tell, but I’ve been the one maintaining it, and I had several branches over our yard pruned a few years ago. I felt bad about the neighbors’ power, and the only main branch remaining hung low and threatening over their garage, so I offered to have it cut down. Silver maples are ugly, dirty trees which grow fast and drop shit everywhere, and this one was choking the light off our greenhouse, so I’m not that upset to see it go—but the number of shade trees on our lot has been reduced dramatically over the years.
They found a service who offered to do it for half of the next lowest bid I found, so we made out OK, but I wasn’t prepared for that surprise bill. I can think of several other things I would liked to have spent that money on.
Jen found us a fun thing to do on Sunday morning: the tiny cemetery in Baltimore City famous for being where Edgar Allen Poe is buried also has a catacombs that’s open for tours. Many, many years ago, my friends and I walked downtown late at night and jumped the fence into the cemetery on the anniversary of Poe’s death. In those days that part of town was Not Safe, and nothing we said would dissuade the girls we were dating, whose idea this was. We didn’t run into any trouble, and everyone had a good time, but the graveyard felt very unfamiliar this time around.
At one time in the early 1800’s this cemetery was at the edge of the city, and most of the prominent members of Baltimore society were buried there. As the city expanded, the trustees decided to build a church up and over a number of the graves to make sure the cemetery did not get sold and developed. We learned a bunch more about early Baltimore history, including the fact that a man named Cumberland Dugan was a prosperous city father, and that the pier where the current National Aquarium sits was originally called Dugan’s Wharf.
Leaving the cemetery, I resolved to learn more about early Baltimore history (Fun fact: Patterson Park, two blocks north of my first house, was the site of Hampstead Hill, the main defensive fortification built to stop the British from burning the city) and do some digging into the Dugan family history, most of which we lost when my Dad passed. I will admit, visiting his and my grandparents’ gravesites a week ago did set this idea in my mind. I know Dad shared his information with my cousin Brad, who will be my next contact to see how far back they went. A cursory web search claims my namesake great-grandfather was actually born in Indiana, which was a big shock to me—but sounds kind of suss.
Recall/warranty notices for a vehicle you own are never good. As the owner of one of the affected vehicles mentioned here, I’m glad to know Honda is taking the matter seriously, but reading some of the comments on that thread, I’m now more worried than before. I have always had excellent luck with the Hondas I’ve driven and owned (a ’78 Accord, ’86 CRX, ’00 Civic, ’06 CR-V, ’09 Accord) but this gives me pause. We are in no position to swap our car out for a Toyota, but if the opportunity presents itself, I might have to get ahead of this issue.
In the meantime, enjoy this picture of Finn practicing her driving!
I took the girls to see The Odyssey on Sunday afternoon, and my ears are still ringing. The movie itself was beautiful, and I left the theater with more questions than answers—which is something I appreciate. I wanted to read everything I could about the original story, Nolan’s commentary on the direction he took, and some of the reviews by people I respect. Every one of the cast did some of their best work, and it was a pleasure to see some favorites bring it (Leguziamo as Eumaeus was amazing; Pattinson was punchable, and I was happy to see the beautiful Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy, I don’t care what the white supremacists say).
However, the sound was absolutely deafening. And when I mean deafening, I mean seeing-GWAR-in-1992-at-Hammerjacks-with-all-the-levels-at-10-on-the-soundboard LOUD. At the climactic battle, I had to plug both of my ears. Whoever mixed this movie needs to have some remedial education on how to actually hear actors speak their lines. When I was looking at the showtimes, there was a separate theater which featured on-screen captions, and when I offered it to Jen, we both said, “Nah…”
Now I’m thinking that was a mistake. It would have been nice to understand the first 10 minutes of dialogue, but after that I was mostly able to separate words from the BLLLEAAAAAAAAHHHHHH when I started reading lips. For years I’ve thought that the sound system in our house was lousy, even though I have a center channel speaker pointed directly at the couch, but I’m beginning to think that the failure to hear and comprehend modern dialogue is not my fault.