Two years ago I switched from the worst Internet provider to the second worst Internet provider in my area. Fidium by Consolidated Communications.

Until yesterday, when I called, I got an American-based tech support person. They were all at what I consider tier II or better. Their knowledge base was good, and they treated me with respect.

Yesterday Ally pointed out that my voice communications had gotten bad. My new client is complaining about upload speeds to their server. I’m seeing 28 KB/s upload speeds.

Before I go yelling at the client about their network, I verify my own.

Download speed: 1095.4 Mbps down. This is precisely what I pay for. 0.260 Mbps up. This is not the 1 Gbit I am paying for.

To put this into units that highlight how bad this is. I pay for 1.000000 Gigabits up and down. I got 1.09500 down and 0.000260 up.

This is an issue that needs to be resolved. I power cycle the firewall and the ONT. No change.

I call Fidium via VoIP; the representative, speaking with a strong accent, can’t hear or understand me.

I hang up, take my cell off WiFi calling, and call, making my way through the prompts to reach customer support again.

The representative I reach is also not in the US. I authenticate to her. Tell her that I have asymmetrical speeds. Give her the download and upload speeds.

“That’s the plan you’re paying for.”

“No, it is not. I’m paying for 1G up/down symetrical.”

“You called technical support. You need to talk to sales.”

“I am only getting 0.26 megabits up. This is not my plan.”

“You need to talk to sales.”

“Let me talk to somebody competent!”

More arguments from her that I’m getting exactly what I am supposed to be getting

“Let me change that, let me talk to your supervisor now.”

10 plus minutes of waiting before she comes back on and asks, “What are the speeds you are getting again?”

I tell her, and she finally starts to work towards a resolution.

I ask her where is the supervisor that I asked to speak to, “He’s in a meeting and can’t respond.”

She gets me an appointment for a technician. For today at 0800-0900. 23 hours from the time I put in the call.

I tell her this is unacceptable. She refuses to do anything. I tell her to yank her supervisor out of the meeting.

When I finally get to talk to him, I use some emotional blackmail. “My VoIP is down. This means I’ve lost e911 capabilities at my site. Tomorrow is to long. I need somebody here today.”

I’ll update this posting if they actually did get the issue fixed in a timely fashion.

Damn, I miss US-based support.

There are all sorts of old timey skills that are useful in a SHTF scenario, but knowing how to bake bread will be high on the list. At one time in history (ie anytime prior to 1930), pretty much everyone had at least a vague idea of how to bake bread. If they hadn’t done it themselves, they at least had witnessed it being made. The modern grocery store killed the last of the bakers, though. Baking, even the “bougie” artisan stuff, is done largely by machine these days. Why bake when you can just pick up a couple of loaves at the store? And store loaves last for weeks and weeks, while fresh bread goes moldy after only a few days.

When you have access to store bought bread, that’s fine. But what if you don’t? What if … oh, say a pandemic happens, and all the grocery stores are out of EVERYTHING, and you can’t find store bread? The bottom line is you need to know how to make your own.

There are simple loaves, no knead recipes that come together quickly with a minimum of mess. There are complex loaves that require multiple rises and tons of work. I tend to go for bread somewhere in the middle. Two rises to develop the gluten and make for a lovely, crusty bread that will hold together as sandwich exterior. A nice mix of flours. Standard yeast. It’s not a difficult loaf, if you know how to bake.

On Sunday, I held a class for six people at the Fort at No. 4, where I taught them how to make bread. From scratch. In a wood fired bake oven. We had a real range of students. One was a reenactor from the current iteration of Roger’s Rangers, who simply hadn’t learned to bake in the beehive and really wanted some help. One was a complete bread virgin but the price was right and how exciting to get to hang out in a fort and cook bread? The two couples were doing the lessons as a sort of “date day” thing, and were at varying levels of having attempted bread. One of the guys was a baker at a big company, but had never made bread with nothing more than a wooden spoon and a bowl.

We started out the day by adding yeast to warm water, and feeding it a bit of sugar. I explained that we were fermenting the yeast, letting it become active. While it isn’t necessary with dry active yeast (which is what we were using), it’s a good habit to get into. While our yeast was waking up, we went out to start the fire in the beehive oven. Everyone brought some wood, and I had already split kindling and had scraps from Chris’s day in the workshop on Saturday, so the fire started up quickly. Once it was loaded up and roaring, we were off to the kitchen again.

We slowly added our flour into the water and yeast mixture, then stirred with a wooden spoon. Once we had most of the flour in and the dough was forming, it got turned out onto the table, and we started the kneading process. Everyone has sore shoulders this morning (except me), because when kneading entirely by hand, it takes about 20 minutes. They all had various problems with their dough as we kneaded, and I was able to explain a variety of possible failure points. Everyone ended up with a decent “silky smooth” ball of dough, and we set that to rest.

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Or to put it in the jingo of my youth, sticks and stones may break your bones, but words will never hurt you.

In Cincinnati, a white man and a white woman were beaten badly. This wasn’t a one-on-one beatdown; it was a gang of feral hood rats attempting to murder them.

Because they are black, they are not to blame. The white folks are. They said something that justified the beatdown.

It is the white victims that need to be charged and arrested. They are responsible for 6 felonies.

We’re leaving the 15th century behind, at this point, and moving boldly into the 18th! This recipe comes from The Compleat Housewife, written by Eliza Smith in England in 1773. Today’s recipe is entitled, “To boil Fowls and Cabbage” and is another forced meat yumminess!

Ingredients:

• a well shaped cabbage
• savory forced meat
• 2 eggs
• 2 whole chickens, cooked
• “some” melted butter
• slices of bacon

Pick yourself a nice, sizable cabbage, peel off a few of the outer leaves until it looks clean and good, and then use a sharp knife to cut off the top (like a lid), then cut out the inside of it. You want to form a cavity, in which you can put your meat, but it doesn’t have to be anything special. Set aside the removed bits of cabbage to stew up as a side dish.

Mix together “savory forced meat” (generally this means any ground meat mixed well with spices that you like, and I use a nice chub of country ground sausage meat) with two whisked eggs, so that it’s well distributed. Put the meat and egg mix into the hole in the cabbage, then put the “lid” back on. Wrap the stuffed cabbage with a cloth (cheesecloth or even a tea towel tied in place with kitchen string works well), and lower it into a large pot of lightly salted boiling water. Boil until the exterior of the cabbage is tender, and the meat inside is fully cooked (anywhere from 45 minutes to 3 hours, depending on the size of your cabbage and the rate of your boil – you want the meat inside to register AT LEAST 160°F to be food safe).

While your cabbage is cooking, roast up a couple of chickens or warm up some rotisserie chicken. Place these on a large platter, and then put the stuffed cabbage (removed from its cloth prison) in between them. Over everything, place several slices of cooked bacon, and then drizzle it with some melted butter.

This makes a lovely presentation, and is quite historically accurate to the 1750s!

When I started to babysit Cray Supercomputers it was just another step. Massive mainframe handling many users, doing many things.

But I quickly learned that there are ways of making “supercomputers” that don’t require massive mainframes. My mentor used to say, “Raytracing is embarrassingly parallel.”

What was meant by that is that every ray fired is completely independent of every other ray fired. His adjunct program rrt was able to distribute work across 1000s of different compute nodes.

We were constantly attempting to improve our ability to throw more compute power at any problem we were encountering. It was always about combining more and more nodes to create more and more powerful compute centers.

Which moved the bottleneck. We went from being CPU starved to being memory starved to being network starved. So we added more network bandwidth until it all balanced out again. Until we bottlenecked on networks again.

After his passing, I did work with a company that supported multiple large corporations.

I was introduced to VMware. A virtualization framework.

Instead of taking “small” computers and joining them together to create larger computers, we were taking “medium” computers and breaking them into small virtual devices.

What is a virtual device

A virtual device is nominally a network interface, a virtual disk drive, or a compute instance.

To create a virtual computer (instance), you tell your vm manager to create a virtual drive, attach it to a virtual computer, attach a virtual DVD drive, allocate a virtual network interface, and boot.

The virtual drive can be a physical drive on the host computer. It can be a partition on a physical drive, it can be a file on the host computer, or it can be a network-attached drive.

If you attach from the host computer, you can only move the drive to other instances on the same computer.

If you attach a network-attached drive, you can only move the drive to other instances with access to the network-attached drive.

I use libvirt for my virtual manager. If I expect the instance to stay on the same host, I use a file on the host computer. That is easy.

If I need to be able to migrate the virtual computer to different machines, I’ll use a Ceph Raw Block Device or a file on a shared filesystem.

What are the cons of using a virtual machine

It can be slower than a physical device. It doesn’t have to be, but sometimes it is.

While you can oversubscribe CPUs, you can’t oversubscribe memory. Memory is always an issue with virtual machines.

When the network isn’t fast enough, network-attached drives will feel slower.

And the big one: if the Network Attached Storage (NAS) fails, all instances depending on the NAS will also fail. Which is why I use Ceph. Ceph can survive multiple drive or node failures.

Another big con: if a host computer fails, it will cause all virtual computers running on that host to also fail.

What are the pros of using a virtual machine

It is trivial to provision virtual machines. There is an entire framework OpenStack that does exactly this. Using OpenStack you can provision an instance with just a few simple commands.

You can migrate an instance from one host computer to another. Even if the disk drive is located on the host computer, it is possible to move the contents of that drive to another host computer.

If you are using a NAS, you can attach a virtual drive to an instance, work on it with that instance, then detach that virtual drive and attach it to a different instance. This means you don’t have to use over the wire data moves.

You can also increase the size of a virtual drive, and the instance can take advantage of more disk space without having to be rebooted or any downtime.

Besides increasing the size, we can attach new drives.

This means that storage management is much easier.

Virtual Networks

The host computer lives on one or more physical networks. The instances can be bridged onto that physical network.

The instance can also be protected behind a Network Address Translation (NAT) service. This gives complete outbound connectivity but requires extra configuration for inbound.

But an instance can be placed within a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). A VPC provides the complete internet IP space to the instance (or instances).

This means that user A can have their instances on 192.168.100.x and user B can have their instances on 192.168.100.x with out collisions.

None of user A’s traffic appears in user B’s VPC.

VPCs can be connected to share with gateways. When this is done, all the VPCs must use non-overlapping subnets.

In other words, 192.168.100.1 on user A’s VPC cannot communicate with an instance on user B’s VPC at address 192.168.100.55.

But if user A agrees to use 192.169.100.x and user B agrees to use 192.168.99.x then the VPCs can be connected with a (virtual) router.

Using a VPC means that the user must use a gateway to talk to any other VPC or physical network. This places a NAT service in the gateway.

A physical address is assigned to the gateway, which forwards all traffic to one or more VPC IPs.

Conclusion

While every infrastructure manager (network manager) needs to know their VM Manager. They all work in similar ways. If you know the basics, the rest is just a matter of finding the correct button or command.

This stuff is easy once the infrastructure is set up.

What is Children’s Day?

The Fort runs many events. During the summer season they will have an event almost every weekend. Sometimes it is a group “garrisoning” the fort, that is, they are staying in the fort, manning it as if it were the 1750s. Other times the event is only during standard hours. In still other times, the event attendees stay in an encampment outside the palisade.

Since a major part of the fort’s goals is education, they have many events for schools, homeschooled children, and just children in general.

In the spring we have multiple school groups attend outside normal days we are open, but yesterday was an event for children of all ages to visit.

Manning The Fort

When everything is going well, we will have people in every building doing things, teaching as they do. My hiding place is the Joiner’s shop.

Ally mans Sartwell House, cooking up a storm, attracting every body to come visit.

It made my heart swell an extra size when I heard a group enter the fort and immediately head to Sartwell House, saying very loudly, “Ally’s cooking in Sartwell!”

I don’t get the same level of excitement, but I still have fun.

The Fort Is Coming Back to Life

In Johnny Cash’s video cover of Hurt there are a few brief glimpses of The House of Cash. By the time he made the video, the House of Cash was closed to the public.

That video is haunting, not only for the music but also for the visuals. That empty place which once was alive, thriving, a museum worth visiting.

When I started going to the Fort, it had that feeling of barely hanging on. The same 4 or 5 people were all there were.

Amber, Albert, and Bill were the people that I saw interpreting every time.

Then something amazing happened: more people showed up to interpret. More people were visiting. People that had stopped volunteering came back.

The Richards are there and many others whose names I can’t recall.

All of this because the leadership of the fort put their shoulder to the wheel and made it happen. While the Director doesn’t interpret, she does so much to drive the Fort into the future. Without her, I do not believe the Fort would still be viable.

Today we had over 50 children attend. They brought parents, grandparents, and friends with them. Every house was open with interpreters in the buildings. I was warned that we had three people that could handle the joinery which would allow me to do something else if I wanted.

The fort was alive with people. It was a wonderful feeling.

State of The Joinery

The first thing I noticed was that my wood chips were in the collection barrel, but that there were more chips and shavings. Others had been working in the shop. It wasn’t just me doing the old-timey thing; others were doing it as well.

The best part was that Bill and a volunteer had braced the lathe. They had also replaced the spacer blocks so the belt was tensioned better.

One of my self-imposed tasks for today was to apply a bit of TLC to the drive belt. What do you call it when a leather belt drinks nearly a cup of neatsfoot oil?

I call it thirsty. The belt looks and feels much better now. It should last for many more years.

Eric had also been doing stuff in the shop. He has done an incredible job of cleaning and organizing the shop. It looked like it was a shop ready for use. Thank you, Eric.

Dull Tools Everywhere

I came to the fort prepared to sharpen tools. I picked up a DMT extra course 8×3 diamond plate. Think 220 grit. This is in addition to my existing 320-grit and 1200-grit diamond plates.

I decided to go with diamond plates instead of my oilstones is because I would rather not have to deal with oil. Diamond plates require no oil and no water. You can use water with them, but it is just as easy to wash them every so often.

My first tool was a 1/2 skew chisel for the lathe. I sharpened this by hand.

Two sides with no guide. I did an “okay” job. I saw the facet extend to the edge. I was able to feel the burr from one side and might have been feeling it on the other side.

When you have the facet touching the edge, it will roll a burr. If you can feel a burr across the cutting edge, this indicates that the facet reaches the edge across the entire edge.

I worked my way through the stones, then stropped the chisel. It looked pretty.

Better, when I used it to do a pairing cut, it just worked. I got real shavings.

From there I went to a small wooden coffin smoothing plane. It is called a coffin plane because of its shape.

The blade was in poor condition. I used my jig to establish the correct angle then started sharpening.

By the time I had the burr at 220-grit, I was pretty much finished. It took more effort than it should have. After stropping the edge, I was able to see that the blade had chips in it. It cut nicely but left small grooves in the work.

I should have done more work on the blade until the pits were gone. I choose to move to the next iron.

The third blade/iron was for the jack plane. It looked ok, but it wasn’t. After over an two hours at the stones, I still had 1/8″ of edge that was not turning a burr. That’s as far as I got. I didn’t have time or energy to do more.

I tested it straight off the 220-grit stone; it did an impressive job. I am pleased with myself. I’ll get it done next time.

I have many more irons, chisels, and other tools to sharpen. Once they have a good grind on them, it will be much easier to maintain.

What are the kids interested in?

Augers. We have a wall of augers. They are post 1750s design, but they are old timey so people think they are period. I had a dozen kids use an auger bit to make a hole in a piece of scrap wood.

The augers are not something I’m interested in. Why? Because I can’t find the old-school style my father had. I would rather not pay for a tool I don’t know how to sharpen and which might be of poor quality but high price.

Sometimes they are interested in the planes, but generally not. Maybe one out of a couple of dozen.

Working with the shaving horse is something they enjoy. Unfortunately, the drawknife we use needs to be sharpened. And somebody put a bevel on the back, which should be perfectly flat.

Then there is the lathe. The lathe is still my favorite. Because of the work Bill and his helper did, it was purring yesterday. I did have to adjust the tension, but the drive wheel axle had been adjusted and greased; it moved much better.

Some kids are interested in the lathe.

What did they seem most interested in?

Making fry bread with Ally. That was the winning demonstration, in my opinion.

A (nearly) working lathe!

After over a year of playing with the lathe, it is nearly fully functional. We need to remove or modify a bit of wrought iron that interferes with the treadle. Once that is done, I think it will be perfectly usable.

I managed to actually make some cuts while powering the lathe myself. That’s an impressive improvement.

I had a few “apprentices” working as the lathe motor. Two of them got the wheel spinning, and I was able to make real progress on rounding the shaft. A sharp chisel lets that happen.

I always start by showing them how it is done. Because I have practice, I can almost always get it going on the first try. As long as I only have to treadle I can do it without issue. Trying to make cuts while powering the lathe, not so much.

A young college-age man got the wheel going and was going long enough that I felt guilty. I was making excellent cuts and didn’t want to stop.

Normally, they tire long before I feel guilty; he beat me at that game. Except, as he walked back, he told me that if we had gone just another 2 minutes, he would have had to quit.

Conclusion

It is my home away from home. I love going to the Fort. I love interacting with people in that controlled environment. I love interacting with the kids with such a giant joy of learning.

We need to see you at the Fort. I think you would enjoy it.

P.S.

I have been working on a minimum viable product website for the Fort. With the new client, I’ve had to push that project to deal with the new client.

As soon as I knew, I had Ally inform the Fort people. They responded.

I spent the rest of the week feeling like shit for letting them down. I found out yesterday that they felt bad because they went back to the full project with a delivery in 2026.

I was lucky enough to be able to hug it out with the director. We are both more worried about the other’s feelings than we need to be.

She’s doing a wonderful job. I’m glad she is the director.

For those of you who live in the area, Chris and I will be up at the fort today, and I will be there tomorrow as well. He will be doing woodworking, and I am doing a project on fry bread today. Tomorrow I am teaching bread baking to a class of six. I hope to see you there!

There are a zillion books out there on various aspects of prepping, and I can’t recommend them ALL. But these are some I consider to be truly important, or they’re ones that have been recommended highly by others. I’m going to stick stuff in categories to help make it easier to look through.

SELF-SUFFICIENCY

• The Perfect Bug Out Bag
• Emergency Food Storage and Survival Guide
• Best Guide to Disaster Readiness
• SAS Survival Handbook
• The Self Sufficient Life and How to Live It

MED/FIRST AID

• SpecOps Forces Medical Handbook
• Where There is no Doctor
• PDR for Herbal Medicine
• Medicinal Plants of North America
• A Book for Midwives
• The Survival Medicine Handbook (TY Tom!)

SECURITY/SELF-DEFENSE

• 100 Deadly Skills
• Prepper’s Home Defense
• Holding Your Ground
• Navy Seal’s Bug In Guide

GENERAL SKILLS

• Encyclopedia of Country Living
• Basic Butchering of Livestock
• Shelters, Shacks, and Shanties
• Wildwood Wisdom
• No-Grid Survival Projects
• The Way Things Work (TY CBMTTek!)
• 98.6 Degrees: The Art of Keeping Your Ass Alive (TY Tom!)

CRAFTING/DIY

• The Barefoot Architect
• The Off-Grid Living Bible
• Make, Sew, and Mend
• How to Build a Moonshine Still
• Footwear Pattern Making
• How to Build Wind Turbine (etc)
• Wind Mills and Wind Motors
• Homemade Contrivances

FICTION

• Homestead Bound
• The Collapse
• One Second After
• Going Home
• Getting Out