• BOOM! It happens. The meteor hits, or the fungus zombies arise, or civil unrest causes a loss of infrastructure. Whatever the emergency, the S sure has HTF. It’s time to break out the bug out bag or the get home bag, or check on your emergency stash of stuff. Yep, all there.

    My question is, do you know what to do with that stash?

    I am constantly amazed at the number of people who “prep for the end of the world” but have absolutely no knowledge on how to use the items they put away. A prime example of this was from a few years ago, when we were making regular trips down to the LDS Cannery (back when it *was* a cannery… stupid FDA) to pick things up. The LDS, while not my idea of a religion, has some great ideas about preparing for the worst. They make it easy for their members to put up food for the end of the world. They have convenient kits, each designed for a specific number of people (usually two parents and two kids) for a specific length of time (a month, generally speaking). Each kit includes things like powdered milk and eggs, wheat berries, oats, canned proteins, beans, etc. Each LDS family dutifully purchases two years worth of these supplies over time. And then those supplies just sit there.

    The last trip there, we watched a new couple picking up their first box of goods. We struck up conversation, because we were all standing around waiting for things and that’s what you do. Nice couple, working on having kids. Devout. Polite. Not uneducated. But in the process of chatting, I discovered that they didn’t have a wheat mill. They didn’t know how to cook dry beans. They had no idea what to do with dried eggs. They had no real understanding of what to do with the items in their emergency box.

    My family stores ground wheat in “small amounts” (for me a “small amount” is a 25lb bag, separated into smaller bags that are sealed, frozen for 72 hours, then put away in a cool, dry, dark place) and wheat berries in larger amounts (though also separated into bags or cans and frozen for 72 hours… it kills off any bugs). I go through a 25lb bag of wheat in a short enough time that it doesn’t go off, because I bake weekly, and sometimes more often than that. The wheat berries are a long-term storage solution, because they don’t go off. They’re shelf stable for 20+ years. We have a hand powered mill (that can be hooked up to a bicycle or generator if we really want to make it easier, though we never do), and we use it to grind wheat berries, barley, and other grains to make wheat for baking. Mostly I do that for historic demos, but sometimes just for fun. We only grind what we plan to use, because “ground at home” wheat will not last as long as the store-bought stuff, as it still has all its oils and the germ in place.

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  • This week has given me closure on several small projects, all working together to get the right results.

    In the old days, each device on the Internet had its individual IP address, today, most devices share their IP address with thousands of other devices. Instead, entire locations hide behind a single IP address.

    This is performed with the magic of Network Address Translation (NAT).

    To make everything work, I had to have external DNS servers provide the address of a firewall that just happens to perform NAT as well.

    That firewall had to be configured to forward allowed ports to a load balancer (HAProxy). Each port of interest being properly configured in the load balancer. The load balancer forwards the traffic to a reverse proxy (Traefik) running a docker swarm over a ceph file system.

    Each service within the swarm must be configured within the swarm. The swarm just be configured for networking.

    All of this is supposed to “just work”.

    It is all working now. Not because it just works. The magic was to start inside a docker container, close to the service, verify that service, then move outward.

    Along the way, the local DNS server had to provide overrides so that the firewall didn’t have to do hairpin configurations for each port.

    For testing purposes, we had to set up an internal ACME server, which is working wonderfully.

    The Vine of Liberty now lives on this new infrastructure. There are only a few more pieces to move, and I will be done with k8s.

    My father passed on Wednesday, September 4th, 2024. He joins my mother, who passed earlier this year.

    Even though I am over 60, this is hitting me hard. My entire life, I have felt able to reach for my dreams, to risk so much because I knew my parents were there as a safety net.

    It appears that my parents created a financial safety net for their grandchildren and children, we are working through the family trauma to make sure everything works out “right”.

    We are still looking for somebody to do engagement farming on X/Twitter. If you are interested, please contact me.

    It has taken me a while to realize that this is my site now. In the past, I left the politics to Miguel and J.Kb. I have decided to post a few more political articles.

    Have a fantastic weekend!

            





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  • Today my father passed. He was missing his wife, Prue, of 64 years. For the last 4 months, since her passing, he has been asking everybody that talks to him if they have seen Prue.

    I believe he is in a better place, with his wife, young and joyful, once again.

            

  • I was running behind the gun this week due to the long weekend. I’m tired after three days at the Fort, and all the packing and all the work while there. So I’m going to just toss some news spaghetti on the wall and see what sticks.

    Fort stuff – I went on Friday, and stayed until Monday afternoon. While there, I lit up the bake oven once, on Saturday, and turned out two *perfect* loaves of bread. I didn’t rush myself for patrons, for a change, and the result was that there was no burn on the bread at all, and the crumb was divine. By Monday morning, all that was left of those two loaves were some crumbs at the bottom of the bowl I’d had it sitting in. I decided to make egg noodles on Saturday, as well, and that turned out very well. I made a second batch on Sunday, because I wanted to try and get the dough a bit thinner. I succeeded, and the end result was a very consistent, 1/8″ thick dough that turned into quite lovely flat noodles similar to a pappardelle. They’re still a bit too thick for my taste, but these cooked up quite nicely.

    We had a decent turn out at the Fort over the long weekend. We had a slow but steady stream of patrons come through, all with fantastic questions. I wasn’t rushed for time, so I spent a lot of my “free” time going from place to place and giving tours. I definitely got my steps in, and ended up walking about 17 miles over the course of the weekend! After hours, I had two nice dinners with the volunteers (Saturday night and Sunday night), which included great conversation, friendship, and a bottle of wine to share. It was definitely a fantastic weekend.

    Harris stuff – I’m having a really hard time watching what Harris is putting out on media. Some of it I know is actual lies, because I have been paying attention. Some of it is just bizarre. Her documentary (because that was NOT an interview) was ridiculous, full of contradictory stuff. The fact that she’s repeating the same EXACT speech in city after city is getting a bit old, and the odd fake accents are incredibly grating. Her inability to give a straight answer is painful.

    That said, there are people putting false stuff out about her, and I dislike that, too. There’s plenty of fodder that’s real; we don’t need to make anything up. So no, she was not involved in a hit and run accident in 2011. Yes, Harris was born in America (in California, which explains a lot, but is still a US state). No, Harris did not make a campaign ad that disses herself (for heavens’ sake, why would she? she’s stupid, but she’s not dumb). And no, the Eagles did not endorse Harris. At this point, there’s so much misinformation out there that it’s almost impossible to tell what’s real and what isn’t. There’s a big question as to whether someone on the far Right is doing some of this, or if Leftists are messing with it in order to get caught and blame the Right. It’s crazy.

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  • My social feeds are full of people claiming that Trump’s campaign is imploding. That Kamala’s got the biggest crowds ever. That Vance has weird interactions with people.

    But the one thing that I keep seeing over and over again is crowd size claims.

    I’ve been aware of crowd size estimates since Glenn Beck held his tea-party rally back in the 00s. People were showing overhead shots and then doing counts.

    The numbers reported by the right were much larger than the number reported by the left. Taking them from the same images.

    Then there were the images from Watt’s Mommy’s Demand group. For years, it looked like they had massive crowds outside the NRA annual meeting.

    Then we were able to see photos from gun owners. The crowds were staged to look very dense, but there were barely a 100 people there.

    Before Kamala was installed, the media was constantly going on about how Trump’s crowds weren’t really that big.

    We would see photos seeming to show a rally half full. Then we would find out that the images were taken before Trump got there or after he left.

    Once Kamala was installed, suddenly the left was much more concerned with crowd sizes. They started to post images of the Kamala crowds with all their joy and excitement of getting to vote for a person who has received zero votes.

    Then I started to notice something, the images, and videos posted by Kamala’s people didn’t have the numbers that her team was claiming.

    “Look at this massive line of people to greet the annotated one!”. And there is maybe a block of people, barely 2 people deep.

    As a child, I watched Nixon’s inauguration parade. It was January in D.C. It was cold. My brother and I were bundled up in our winter coats. There were people lining both sides of the street, shoved up on one another 4 or 5 people deep. All to get a glimpse of our new President.

    That isn’t what I am seeing in the Kamala videos, posted by her people.

    Here is my point, the right is poking fun at Kamala’s crowd sizes based on her videos and images. The left has to take their videos and images that are of questionable integrity to attempt to show small crowds at Trump events.

            

  • I’ll write more about my experience at the Fort later, but I leave you with a video of some bread making I did, put together by my friend Garrett. He’s filmed me at ren faires before, but I made a specific invite for him to come this weekend and see me doing something new. He and his mother came, and they had a great time!

            

  • Video editing is from before CGI. An example of early VFX.

            

  • Some of you may have guessed that I like to collect cookbooks, in addition to writing them. I have, for a very long time, been interested in historical cookbooks. In particular, I like original recipes, even if the physical book I have is a reprint. One of the cookbooks I treasure most in my collection is The Original White House Cookbook. The first edition came out in 1887, but there have been several editions since then. You can buy many of the new volumes, but it’s hard to find originals (ie printed in 1887) of that first one. I have a reprint of the original edition, printed in the early 1900s, and I love it.

    I’m preparing myself for going to the Fort again this weekend. I’m hosting a “show and tell” event over the Labor Day weekend, and I want to have some yummy recipes. As I was cooking breakfast this morning, I was thinking about what I’d like to make. My eyes strayed over to the cookbook shelf (actually a whole bookcase, but whatever), and I noticed that the White House one was on its side and out of its usual place. Likely one of the kids had it out and didn’t put it back right. When I had a moment, I went to straighten it, and then stopped, because an incredibly profound thought hit me.

    That cookbook, that original one from 1887, was written for the American people. We were, at that time, barely a hundred years old as a country. We were essentially a toddler, in the grand scheme of things. And here we were, offering our entire people the opportunity to cook like the leaders of that country.

    Our people were (and are) eating the same food, prepared in much the same way, as our leaders.

    Do you get how very insane that sounds? To have a populace who eats what the elite are eating? In 1887, Queen Victoria was munching on oranges, locally sourced salmon, and an early version of the turducken (12 Tomatoes). Kaiser Wilhelm II was eating ice cream and “Fresh goose-liver medallions that have been seared and cooled before being coated with chaud-froid sauce, garnishes, and then sealed in a layer of Port jelly. (Royal Menus)” Napoleon wasn’t eating a lot of rich foods, but only because he suffered from gastritis and insisted on plain and even bland foods. The rich of Europe were eating well, and the poor and middle class citizenry were eating simple foods, and sometimes not much of them.

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  • While at the Fort, one of the visitors to come through, was from Australia.

    I wanted to break out into songs from Men At Work, but restrained myself.

    During our conversation, we were talking about the nasties that live in Australia.

    Of course, there were the spiders. We agreed that spiders were worse down under.

    We agreed that koala bears are cute to look at but nasty, vicious animals if they aren’t drugged.

    She explained that the big red kangaroos are nasty critters. They will lean back on their tails, then kick out with their legs in a way that will knock a strong man down.

    The little gray ones are not as nasty.

    Another thing I didn’t know, was that kangaroos are extremely destructive to crop land. They will eat a field bare.

    This led to a discussion about the definition of varmint. I am not a lawyer, so check the regulations where you are before you depend on some random guy on the net.

    It is my understanding that farmers are justified in removing destructive varmints. So when that cute deer is eating your crops, they are not deer, they are a varmint that can be removed. Same with several other animals.

    Which led her to talking about American’s having guns. I described the lever actions over the sofa. Bear, Deer, Raccoon and Squirrel rifles. Or in gun culture language, 45-70, 30-30, .357 Magnum, and .22LR.

    While we agreed that there were some nasty faunae in Australia, she felt that bears were worse. She wanted that 45-70, “Bear Rifle” if she was going walking in the woods of New England.

    For me, the most interesting part was getting to ask her about the gun confiscation.

    It was obvious that she had been asked this before. She started by trying to answer for the group. Not herself. I had asked her explicitly about her opinion, not the opinion of others.

    She explained that she had turned in their rifles. Not because the state knew that she had the rifle, but because she and her family were afraid that somebody would snitch on them.

    Once the guns were collected, crime started to go up. She wishes they still had guns, envoys the gun culture of America. And of course, strongly suggests that we not give up our guns.