• It seems appropriate to talk about what to do after a flood, right now. With all the devastation down in the southern states, it’s on all our minds.

    First and foremost, if you’re in the path of something and you know about it, listen to locals. If you’re asked to evacuate, DO SO. The people in the Carolinas and Tennessee didn’t receive evacuation orders until after it was too late, but people in Florida knew what was coming. Those who chose to stay behind did so at their own peril. When you ignore an evacuation order, you are telling the authorities that you are entirely on your own, and do not expect any aid from them. You do so knowing that 911 won’t work, that health and medical emergencies will need to be dealt with in house, and that you’ve decided you know better than the weatherman.

    I realize it can be hard to leave everything behind. I’ve done it twice in my life, and it wasn’t any easier the second time than it was the first. What you’re leaving behind is Stuff and Things, and I guarantee you, Stuff and Things are not nearly important as Friends and Family. I speak with experience and authority here. Leaving ahead of an emergency allows you to leave on your own terms.  You can take the time to pack bags, to grab family photographs and important documentation. You can bring along family pets, and favorite children’s toys. Leaving (or attempting to leave) once the emergency is upon you means you’re leaving on the emergency’s terms, rather than your own. You may not have time to find the cat cowering in the basement, or find the woobie your kid can’t sleep without.

    If you can’t leave, for whatever reason, then you need to make reasonable plans for what is likely to happen, what could happen, and what is unlikely to happen. There will always be things that can’t be planned for (like the current destruction of Asheville, for example), but you have to do your best.

    In my area, we deal with freezing rain often enough that we know the power will go out at least once, and likely twice over the winter. In the spring, it’s wet weather and high winds knocking down trees and taking out power lines. The most likely occurrence is that we’ll be without power for a day or less. What might happen is that we’re out of power for a couple of days, and our water might be affected. It’s unlikely that we’ll be out for more than a few days, but we have things on hand to make that less troublesome if it does happen. We’ll be very busy canning all the stuff in our freezer, honestly.

    (more…)

            

  • Nerd Babble

    “Switch in the wrong direction…” oh my, that does sound bad.

    We use VLANs for isolating network traffic. Our switches will happily forward all VLANs as on all ports. So a tagged VLAN on port 1 will be transmitted to port 2, if port two responds with an answer on the VLAN. It all just works.

    The new switches are configured so that all the ports are in “access” mode. Access mode means that VLAN traffic does not move across the switch. All of our testing showed that the new switches would just work.

    They did, for the primary, untagged network. Unfortunately, the new switch is “smarter” and refused to forward VLAN traffic.

    The idea of a port in “access” mode is that you can plug an IoT item, think security camera, into a port. All traffic from that port is then forwarded as VLAN traffic, by configuration. This means that the IoT item doesn’t need to support VLANs nor do you have to configure it.

    By changing the ports to the correct setting, things just started to work.

    FEMA

    “We are the government, and we are here to fuck things up.”

    I’m getting some back channel reports that things have gone kinetic down in the disaster area. These are good ol’ boys and they understand the three S’s. Shoot, Shovel, Shut up.

    My reports say that looters were hitting some communities. The looters have gone missing. SSS.

    It is unclear if the looters in question had government ID.

    The number of reports of the government messing things up down there is growing daily.

    The latest story was of one of the helicopter teams having rescued an elderly couple attempted to get them checked into a local hotel, outside the disaster area. They were turned away because there were no vacancies.

    The hotel was filled with government employees.

    The pilot was talking about how they had been living out of their trucks so that there was room for those that needed it in the hotels.

    Seems the government is not as thoughtful.

    Pay careful attention to the words coming out of the puppet and his handlers.

    They appear to have deployed 1000 men to the disaster area. They are claiming that these 1000 men are joining 6000 men already on the ground at work.

    Yes, there are 6000 military men on the ground, getting the job done. They are volunteers there as citizens, not as government employees. They are not under the command of anybody in the government.

    Don’t trust what the MSM says, don’t trust what the government says. Verify everything. Don’t trust my words, check for yourself.

    Ally suggests TikTok. I’m using X.

    Iran, the Target

    Watching my feed blowup over the last 48 hours regarding Iran’s open attack on Israel has been mind-blowing. Hundreds of accounts showing the same footage of explosions in the distance while claiming huge victories for Iran.

    Israel’s ability to wage war was not affected. We know because of the targeted strikes carried out Thursday night.

    Query

    Does anybody have firsthand knowledge of what’s going on down in the disaster area?

            

  • Three steps forward, 2 steps back, we should be stable.

    Nerd stuff: We upgraded our infrastructure, again. We moved from a copper to a fiber backbone. Server links are now up to 25Gbit/second. Everything went smoothly until we started our final tests. It appears that the new switch defaulted ports in the wrong direction.

    This default blocked traffic from our distributed network file system. The switch has been beaten into submission, and is now performing its duties correctly.

            
  • @hunnybeenatural All the info I have is: He’s on IG. Thicc30abroker. Jonathan Howard. Facebook profile Jonathan Howard He has this in his bio on IG Work with me: linktr.ee/jonathan.howard Charlie Keebaugh http://aerialrecovery.org Zeb @National Coatings tinyurl.com/NCIFundraiser They also need Starlink communication. Most areas don’t have a way of communicating. Ppl asking for staging location? Rutherford airport is a great drop off location Please story for other ways to help Hurricane Helene Relief 🙏🏼❤️ #HurricaneHeleneRelief #HurricaneHelene #JonathanHoward #Thicc30abroker #NationalCoatings #aerialrecovery ♬ original sound – Hunny Bee Natural !

    @theappalachianson

    Special thanks to everyone who has supported us and our mountain communities. I see other content creators and myself connecting people with funds and supplies and seeing the power we have to do so is spectacular, but it's still not enough. We scroll through our phones all the time and see tragedies all over the world never thinking it'll be in our own back yard. Donate to: BeLoved Asheville Equal Plates Poder Emma

    ♬ original sound – The Appalachian Son

    Just a sample of the videos that are getting out.

    The primary method of communications, at this point, seems to be StarLink. StarLink has proven itself to be a viable solution to disaster communications. Enough so, that I will be getting StarLink for us, to use as a backup.

    I’ve heard almost nothing good from the federal government. The last I heard was that Kamala is promising those people who lost everything $750.

    I’m sure they will have to pay taxes on that.

    Multiple sources have reported that FEMA has arrived and is confiscating goods and money meant for disaster relief sent by people. One posting claimed that if FEMA decides to, they can choose not to disperse that money, keeping it for the next minor disaster in a blue city.

    If you are donating, make sure your goods and money are going to the people, not the government. Do your research.

            

  • BLUF: Are you in the area that’s been affected by Helene? Talk to us. We want to hear what’s going on from those who are there. If you need help, let us know what we can do. We might not be able to do everything, but we’ll do *something*!

    As I watch what’s unfolding in the Carolinas and Tennessee, I am just heartbroken for the people who’ve lost family members, homes, everything. I’m happy to see so many people, “average people,” standing up and doing what needs doing. I know a lot of people are turning to X for their information from boots on the ground, and I watch TikTok for the same reason.

    I want to scream at the people who are whining about their holidays being cancelled, due to the hurricane’s devastation of the area. Yes, there are people on TikTok who are actually complaining that they can’t go visit scenic Appalachia and such. I suppose they don’t realize that the hotels and AirBnBs they had booked are simply no longer there. It’s not that trips are cancelled to do a bit of clean-up… it’s that entire communities are under water, or have been destroyed. On the other side of that spectrum, there are so many people who are cancelling their bookings but not their fees, meaning they let the owners know they aren’t even attempting to come, but to keep the money because they know it’s needed.

    Yesterday, I watched Trump talking in Georgia (I think? I can’t remember, but one of the places hit hard), and he commented that the state governor couldn’t get ahold of Biden or Harris. I also watched a reporter ask Biden if there was more aid going to the southern states to help dig out the towns devastated by the hurricane, and Biden’s very clear answer was no. Now, Trump’s campaign tends to cut it off right after the “no” but Biden do go on to say more (here’s the clip). I don’t know that Biden’s staff is ignoring the issue, and certainly he managed to get on tv later in the day to tell everyone that there was more aid going to the south. I think the problem is that *Biden* isn’t doing anything. I didn’t really expect him to. He can’t handle simple stairs; I don’t know that we want him somewhere that the ground is uneven and it’s moderately dangerous. Regardless, the mainstream media seems to think that the clip I reference above simply doesn’t exist. They say that Trump is lying about it. But it’s RIGHT THERE.

    I really don’t know what to make of all this. I understand not wanting the President or the VP on the site right now. When Katrina hit New Orleans, Bush delayed going so that he and his entourage of Secret Service didn’t interfere with search and rescue. I didn’t expect anyone from the White House to arrive on scene for a few days, and that’s just fine. But I did expect to see Harris, at least, on television saying words of hope and concern. Isn’t that what she’s all about? The fact that she seems to have completely ignored the red states makes my skin crawl. I mean, let’s face it, there are Blue folks down in the rubble there. Surely she cares about them?

    (more…)

            

  • Elon Musk is making plans to send men to Mars. They will be going on a one-way journey. It will take them months to get there. Once they arrive, there is no short-term way to return. They are risking it all.

    In 1620, 132 people boarded a small ship and sailed west. They were at sea for 10 weeks, nearly three months. The trip to Mars will take 115 days, or so, 16.4 weeks. Not all that much longer than the trip on the Mayflower.

    The colonization of America, by Europe, was a daunting task. Most people who made the journey had no expectation of every being able to return to the land of their birth. When they arrived, they might be with earlier colonists, or they might be in a new location.

    When they landed, they had to survive. They had limited resources to forge a new life in a new land. Some died, others thrived.

    That sense of “we can do” is part of our heritage. It is part of my heritage. I hope it is part of your heritage.

    Over the last half century, it feels like we have lost that mindset.

    My Ex. used to tell me what her mother taught her, “Why try? You know you are going to fail.” There were so many things that she never tried because she “knew” she would fail.

    My parents instilled in me a sense of ability. Do you want to go fishing? Go fishing. Do you want to go hunting? Go hunting. Do you want to disassemble your motorcycle to attempt to repair it? Do it.

    Everything I attempted my parents were there giving me support to succeed. I hope I have given that same level of support to my children.

    I came out of that childhood knowing that I can do better, do well, succeed. Failure is a possibility, but a failure is just a data point, telling me how not to do that thing. Now go try again.

    We lost that.

    We wait for the government to show up and help. “What are the ten scariest words in the English language? We’re from the government, we’re here to help.” — Ronald Reagan.

    Katrina showed that. Sandy showed that. Those cities could not deal, they demanded help from the country. The government responded. And the people were not satisfied.

    This weekend, hurricane Helene made landfall. Florida was hit, but the storm moved north and dumped water on the Carolinas, Georgia, and Tennessee. People describe it as a once in a 1000-year storm.

    Entire mountains washed away. Homes, businesses, roads, bridges are all washed away in the mud slides and water.

    I had family that used to live in that area. I’ve been there. It is gorgeous. Living on the side of a mountain, where your driveway leads to a family road, and it is 1000 feet in elevation to reach a county road.

    I can close my eyes and see it, and it is beautiful.

    Our government cannot help us. When we talk about FEMA coming to help, what they actually bring is a checkbook. They are money people. They are management people. FEMA has no construction equipment, rescue gear, supplies on hand to help in an Emergency.

    They are there to pay bills.

    So instead, the American Spirit came out in force.

    Because our Government has been failing us, we, The People, have been learning that we have the power. We can do. We do have a voice.

    And that spirit is there in the South East. It is people dragging their Bass Boats up from the Gulf coast to do rescue missions. It is private pilots, flying their personal copters into to the area with supplies and to rescue people.

    It is a company that trains pack mules showing up with mule trains to haul supplies.

    It is people sending targeted donations. It is people handing some of their food and supplies for the mobile to move forward.

    It is people, who, like myself, own construction equipment (John Deere 210C), showing up and putting their equipment to use.

    It is we, The People, acting like a community, standing shoulder to shoulder doing the right thing.

    I don’t have places for you to donate. I don’t have a list of things that are needed.

    Find those for yourself. If you do locate a source that you trust, please tell us and include your source or reason for trusting.

    God bless and watch over those at risk.

            

  •         
  • Hey folks, quick update. Current estimate for power is 10/8. We were better prepared than a lot of other folks so we’re doing okay. There are rumors of looting going on and fights over gas. I haven’t seen any, though I also haven’t ventured far from home and only went out once for diapers. Areas around us are totally flooded out but we’re on higher ground and not having to worry about that.

    Please folks, check your supplies and be prepared! This has definitely opened our eyes to a couple of weak spots in our preps.

    Hope everyone is safe.
    — Liberty Doll

    This is from a screenshot from Facebook or X. I have not verified the source, but it sounds like her.

            

  • There are foods that I consider to be autumn foods. Squash, pumpkin, sage sausage, and soups in general come to mind. I love cooking seasonal foods, partly because it tends to be a cheaper way of eating, and partly because there’s just something scrumptious about picking up a squash that was in a field 2 hours ago, and baking it up. Today’s recipe is for a stuffed squash, but I haven’t told you what type. The honest answer is, it doesn’t really matter. I found Sweet Dumpling Squash on sale today, but had originally gone looking for acorn. I will say that Spaghetti and Butternut Squash don’t do as well in this recipe, only because they don’t have a big hole in them to stuff full of yumminess. But if that’s what floats your boat, go for it! You do you, Boo!

    Varieties of Winter Squash

    Ingredients:

    • 2 winter squash, halved and cleaned of seeds
    • 1 lb ground sausage, sage/breakfast style
    • 1 small onion, diced
    • 1 small carrot, diced
    • 1 rib celery, diced
    • 2 to 5 cloves garlic, minced
    • 1/2 cup of COOKED rice, barley, quinoa, or other grain
    • spices, to taste (either sweet or savory, your choice)
    • cheese, for topping (optional)
    • walnuts, for topping (optional)

    Preheat your oven to 400F. Place the four halves of squash, open side down, onto a rimmed baking sheet. Add a bit of water (this helps by steaming the flesh of the squash slightly), and put in the oven for 30 minutes to an hour. Check after 30 minutes for doneness; you want the squash to be soft through, but not brown or caramelized at all.

    While the squash is cooking, brown up your ground sausage in a cast iron pan or pot. I prefer to use a nice sage sausage for this, because it’s my go-to flavor for this time of year. If you prefer sweet or hot Italian, go for it. If you don’t do pork, feel free to substitute in ground beef, tofu, TVP, venison, squirrel, turkey, or chicken. If you’re not using a sausage, pick up a good “sausage spice” to add to your ground meat, or it will be bland later. You don’t want bland.

    When the sausage is thoroughly browned but not yet crispy, use a slotted spoon to remove it from the pot. Leave behind as much of the fat as you can (add olive oil if there isn’t enough in the pan). Toss in your onions, carrots, and celery, and saute until they’re just soft and starting to brown up. Add in the garlic, and saute until it releases its oils, about 30 seconds to a minute. If there’s a decent amount of meat or veg stuck to the bottom of the pan, deglaze with a splash of red wine, using a wooden spoon to mix thoroughly. Add in the cooked grain, and stir to incorporate. The grain should soak up any excess liquid. Add in the meat, and then spice to your taste.

    When it comes to spicing this, you can go either savory or sweet. For savory, consider salt and pepper, oregano, thyme, and sage. If you go sweet, start with salt and pepper, then add in a bit of sweet paprika (get a GOOD type like Szeged rather than using glorified red dyed sawdust like McCormick). Then stir in either a bit of maple syrup (my favorite) or some dark brown sugar. If you go the sweet route, also consider tossing in some raisins and dried cranberries or cherries for a delicious flavor burst.

    Once the squash is ready, fill the hole with your meat mixture, adding an equal amount to each half. Top with cheese if you’ve decided on savory, or nuts and berries if you’re going sweet. Return to the oven and bake at 400F for 15 minutes or so, just until everything is hot through and the cheese, if used, is thoroughly melted.

    Notes:

    If you have picky kids who are likely to eat the filling and then ignore the squash, do what we did: cut the squash up and add the filling to it. Make it into a casserole! This way, they have to eat the squash to get at the “good bits” and you get to feed them well. 😉

    This is one of those “do whatever you like” recipes that changes every time I make it. I’ve made vegan versions with Beyond Sausage, or with diced up vegan Field Roast sausages, or with tofu. I’ve made non-pork versions for friends who don’t do pig, and it’s turned out beautiful. If you want it to be a side dish, simply skip the protein entirely and stuff the squash with your grain and whatever veggies you have on hand. Shredded brussel sprouts are pretty good in this, especially when mixed with a Tex-Mex wild rice blend and raisins.

    Enjoy!

            

  • The Second Amendment should be a viable defense for anybody charged with a “gun crime”. Found carrying with an expired CCW? Second Amendment defense. Cross an imaginary line and your right to carry disappeared? Second Amendment defense.

    We should have seen 100s if not 1000s of cases over the years where the defendants argued that their actions were protected by the Second Amendment.

    The reason was actually pretty simple, the courts refused to give those defenses any weight. No defense lawyer was going to bring up a 2A defense when they knew it would just upset the court.

    Add to that the many circuit courts that had determined that The People had no right to keep and bear arms. The right to keep and bear arms was reserved for the militia.

    As it stood in 2007, private militias were illegal in most states, the National Guard was either formally or informally declared “the [state] militia”, the state AG was charged with bringing any state level constitutional challenges, AND the state AG was charged with defending state laws against constitutional challenges.

    In the Ninth Circus court of appeals, the only group that could challenge California’s gun laws was California.

    In 2008, the Supreme Court issued their opinion in Heller.

    This cut through the crap, said clearly that the Second Amendment was protecting an individual right. It went further, defining almost every word and phrase in the Second Amendment to absolutely define what the protected right was.

    Rogue courts immediately pivoted to a new reason to stomp on the rights of The People, the Second Amendment protected rights of The People were not as important as the important things the state wanted to do.

    Until 2022, this was the state of the right to keep and bear arms. For states that were not infringing, nothing changed. For states that were infringing, the rogue courts balanced our rights away.

    In 2022, Bruen was decided. Bruen reaffirmed Heller. It laid out, in kindergarten language that even a rogue court could not misunderstand, exactly how to apply the law in Second Amendment challenges.

    The two cases of interest that were not decided, but instead were Granted certiorari, the lower court’s opinion was Vacated, and the cases were Remanded back to the circuit courts to do over in light of Bruen were Duncan and Bianchi.

    It was my opinion, at the time, that we would have a decision from the Fourth Circuit court on Bianchi within 6 months.
    We got that opinion August 6th, 2024, two years after the case was GVRed.

    It took the Fourth Circuit court two years to get around to issuing their opinion after they were told to do it over again, correctly. Since they were outcome-driven, the results were, predictably, the same.

    With the respectful consideration and benefit of Bruen, we now uphold the judgment below. The assault weapons at issue fall outside the ambit of protection offered by the Second Amendment because, in essence, they are military-style weapons designed for sustained combat operations that are ill-suited and disproportionate to the need for self-defense. Moreover, the Maryland law fits comfortably within our nation’s tradition of firearms regulation. It is but another example of a state regulating excessively dangerous weapons once their incompatibility with a lawful and safe society becomes apparent, while nonetheless preserving avenues for armed self-defense.
    —No. 114 Dominic Bianchi v. Anthony Brown, No. 21-1255 (4th Cir.)

    AR-15s and their ilk are not “arms” as defined in the Second Amendment. At least that’s what the Fourth says. Mind you, the option is around 59 pages long. The dissent is 120 pages long.

    The opinion is full of references to news reports, articles from all over the place. What it is lacking is references to this Nation’s historical tradition of firearms regulation. In addition, they misrepresented the Supreme Court’s holding in Bruen.

    The Supreme Court said that when the inferior courts were using the two stage means-end balancing method to find every state infringement “Constitutional”, they got the first part right, where they said “This is covered by the Second Amendment”, and the rogue inferior courts were getting it wrong when they balanced our rights away.

    The Fourth says that since the circuit courts were getting it right on the first part, and their first step was to find that assault weapons were not covered by the Second Amendment, even though they did means-ends, they still were right to declare assault weapon bans constitutional.

    Bianchi v Frosh has been going on so long that they had a change in AGs, the case became Bianchi v. Brown. The case is now seeking cert from the Supreme Court as Snope v. Brown. Dominic Bianchi moved out of Maryland and lost standing.

    Duncan is still stuck in the Ninth Circuit court, back in California. We are unlikely to hear anything from them in the next 6 months or more.

    But, we might see Snope make it back before the Supreme Court in the next session. Which means that it will be argued in the 2025 term, which starts in October 2025.

    It is my opinion that the Fourth Circuit delayed issuing their opinion until it was too late for Snope to request cert for the 2024 term.