The family that eats together

 I had never quite thought about the 'family that eats together stays together' meme until I saw this article today:

But now thinking about it in my own home, I can see it is true.  The big major cracks in my home was when my wife started demeaning my insistence that everyone always eat together about a year or so ago.  He daughter was always doing her online college, which judging by the presentations I overheard, pretty much useless paper shuffling, and lots of feminist memes.  When I insisted on eating together the defense lawyer aka mother would jump up to yell her objections over and over.  

Now that they are out of the house, I realize that a lot of mischief was happening under my nose in the house with food.  Cleaning out the fridge the other day I realized that there was way way too much fast food condiment packs.  I had cleaned out the fridge and threw away everything but the ketchup only a few months earlier.  To my surprise I found a rather large number of pizza condiment packs.  Which only come two per pizza and there was at least 20 or so packs there, from Shakeys, which I do not order from, but they prefer.   

The house had spiraled down to where the wife was cooking and eating supper at 4pm, a half hour before I arrived home from work and I was left to either spend a lot of time preparing a meal for just myself or eating a sandwich.  

I was discussing this very thing the other day with Filipino friend here, and they said that their family always ate together.  That person lives in a extended family household, with several sisters and their husbands/children/single sisters/adult nieces under one roof and they all eat together.  The living arrangement allows them to live in a upscale house, while individually only needing to pay about a hundred bucks per adult.  

Comparing to American culture, growing up I was told I was getting evicted at high school graduation. Zero for college or vocational training would be given.  I was told this starting around 10 or 12 years old.   

I understand now that this is the cancer that the hippie feminism has poisoned society with.  

I am certainly not implying that Filipino society is better in this respect.  Frankly the local culture is not much to write home about in many aspects.  Kinda like Puerto Rico.    But on the other hand I would definitely contend that for the single unattached handsome or semi handsome 20 something male, the chances to find a trad happy diligent housewife are higher here than the USA.  In my case however I did not even know these things were a option when I first visited here at the age of 29.  I only was thinking of the yuppie double income lifestyle that USA TV and movies told us to ascribe to.

As I joke with some friends here, I should have at the age of 29, met a 18 year old virgin, married her, and started a tribe off on some remote island by having 8 kids, all the while saving every bit of money and building a lifestyle where we did not need to spend money for every calorie that entered our mouths.  But alas that ship has sailed, and I did not even know it was a option.

Hand operated grain mill

I have been looking around for pigments to use in coloring the plastic and have cast my eye to one of these hand operated mills to use with charcoal.  As charcoal is cheap, and the cost of  2 kilos of pigment would be the same as one of these mills.  It would get it down pretty fine but then I would need to run it thru a  cheapo electric coffee grinder for that last bit of extra fine powdery goodness.  Or make a ball mill.  

The shop where I buy my coffee has one of these with a electric motor mounted to it in a angle bar frame.

 

The new chicken coop is underway.  The corner post is set in a bag of dry concrete.  It will be awhile before it sets.  I removed the galvanized screen as it has already rusted away after less than a year.  Will use polypropylene mesh instead.  Work in progress here.  The panels are in the spot I need them, but I need to adjust some things, add in a half roof/awning, and some perches for the egg laying birds.  

Most of the green plants in the pic are sweet potato runners.  When digging down to set the post, I observed that the sawdust was mostly decomposed into a nice loamy soil.  

SHTF and life style change is coming...Now is the time to prepare what level of comfort you want.

 Not exactly the cheery news I would like to think about today.  Now the talk is sending Naval ships to escort grain ships from the Black in a reprise of the US Navy escorting ships thru the Persian Gulf back in the day.  

Trump saying nuclear war odds are greater to happen than not.  

Meanwhile, just being that squirrel, gathering the nuts before winter.

So now is the time to not only think about putting some stuff away, thinking about wealth preservation and all that.  The word on the street is that you need to have all your cash out of the banks by October.  My other source says November 25, so there is some logic in getting it out a month before cash supplies will be run low.  

I do not have a whole lot of cash at the moment, so that does not apply to me.  Spent my wad already with the covid, and re-arranging the house to be self suffecient, which I have documented here.  

Fixed the problem I wrote about in the last post with the customer.  He was not happy, but oh well.  I refunded him his order amount minus the 50 bucks he owed me.  Then I sent him to my waterjet cutting supplier and metal supplier directly.  He will have a good ol time paying 1500 bucks or more for his order.

At least I did not lose any money on that deal.  Close call.


I do have a good amount of welding consumables, and somewhere on the list is another big box of welding rod.  I still have the weld rod I bought before the covids, sealed in the mylar packaging from the manufacturer and bubble wrapped in the shipping box.  I will be able to run a stick welder off the inverter if need be.  

Started cutting up the plastic lumber into 23 inch long pieces today.  72 pieces made in 4 days, I need 400 total.  Gonna be a hard slog.  Weighing random pieces I see I need another 800 kilos or so of plastic waste which will cost 375 dollars.  The project is 20 big heavy duty plastic boxes for a golf course to fill with sand.  The stuff is damn near bullet proof..  I guess it is sand for filling divots.  

Also this morning, every single one of my pets did something mischievous.  I caught two cats simultaneously sneaking in the pantry and pissing.  One attacked my foot during breakfast with claws.  One of the dogs dug up the newly built raised bed garden plot on the side of the house and dug it up, the other one started chewing a big sore on his paw.  I kicked all the cats out of the house into the rainy weather this Saturday morning.

Also never forget that this is CNN:

Essentail info to download and save. Farming manuals + business advice

 https://archive.org/search.php?query=farm%20Cyclopedia

Some good info here, have not had time to look it all over yet.

Trying to find a good program to convert a pdf like this to better text format, like the last cyclopedia that I posted.  Acrobat pro is not exactly working right to auto format

This article is some really good business advice, not just for farming.  Do not do business solely with depreciation in mind but at the same time you must carry in your mind the idea of depreciation.

This guy buys old tractors, refurbishes them to near new and runs them.  With a cost  of a fraction of buying a new from the manufacturer machine.  But at the same time, he keeps in mind that not always it is cheaper to do this and sometimes you need to buy new.

As a example, I bought a 89 mazda, fixed it up and did exactly the same as this guy.  Because buying a new or late model ford Ranger, or Chevy Colordao would not make any more money.  Even with the extra repairs, it was still cheaper to buy a old truck, fix it all mechanically and run the dog shit out of it.

Also when it comes to a home, until you have a ton of excess cash to splurge, you should not be looking at that 300k house that was 50k in 1990.  The math does not work.  Raw land and live in a camper or tent if you need to.  Screw the keeping up with the Jones.  If you wife is obsessed about wanting a 3000 square foot house and you making 50k a year, then you got a wife problem, not a house problem.

Home as the lifeboat in this storm

 The worlds Bond villain's met in Davos to plot their global destruction.  The critical part of their plan is destruction of everything, which they may well accomplish.  But they will not be able to build back.

It simply is not possible.  The writing is on the wall that the USA and most of the west is going to Venezuela-like status and from there, the world.

So with that in mind, I further shored up the lifeboat yesterday.  I am still a bit ill, so the work was fueled by antibiotics, zinc, vitamins, and claritin anti-histamine.  

I ran out of raw shredded plastic to run thru the extrusion machine for the plastic lumber order.  A scrap yard promised delivery of a few hundred kilos yesterday but that did not happen.  So I took the crew to the house, and we worked on the lifeboat instead.  Since I am paying for them, might as well get something for my money. 

I have produced about 300 kilos of 2x4 in 4 days so far.  Doing the math and comparing the USA prices I think I am under-charging for this product.  Menards lists the same plastic 2x4  at 8 feet long for 25 bucks, and they have had 62 orders in the last month.  So it is something people buy at this price.  I am only charging around 16 bucks for a 2x4 foot stud plus cutting and bolting it together into a plastic box.  

I am not making a whole lot of money for this job, but it did pay for a extrusion machine upgrade with the down-payment and I will be able to afford a wood thickness planer with the final payment plus a few hundred bucks for the month of work. So okay, unlike the other project below.

Cleared out all the wifes poisonous houseplants in the plastic pots.  57 pots to be exact.  Roughly 100 pounds of plant pots were going to waste.  3 full trash cans of various stuff removed, and I finally got rid of my 120+ year old oak dresser that the wife left outside to rot in the tropical weather.  I kept trying to bring it in, but she objected.  It is only good for firewood now.    RIP oak dresser.

Plant pots are not situated yet, so there is a few hours of work to be done.  

The chicken coop from Pandemic garden 2.0 was disassembled, and the materials brought to the house.  It is now 8x10 feet vs 10x10 before.  I sectioned off the worst performing part of the garden where nothing would grow due to shading from the coconut tree.  I dry set one corner post in concrete so it will be a few days before I can go back, weld the panels together (tie wired together for now) put up a partial roof, and the rest of the life support systems.

It is enough space for a couple egg laying birds and a few meat birds.  

The malabar spinach was overtaking part of the garden so that was harvested and given to a employee.  In his mind it is only cooked chinese style, soy sauce, garlic etc.  But I find that tastes pretty bad.  Cooked in tomato, however turns it into a delicious dish.  It has mucilage, which is the same stuff that makes okra slime.  That is a soluble fiber that can be broken down with the acid in tomato.  Same as you cook okra with tomato.  

Meanwhile yesterday I found out I made a expensive stupid mistake in the shop.  Client asks me for some custom shredder blades.  He has been in a pain in the ass pretty much ever since he walked thru the door.  So he sends a half ass drawing over of his order.  I am not really in the mood to do the engineering drawings just to estimate the job.  So I took what I thought was a similar sized item from my own parts list, doubled the price and quoted that.  Except I messed up somehow with the cm to mm conversion.  As a general rule I work in MM or meter in the shop.  I do  not use CM normally precisely because of this issue.    So for the price of something I assumed was around a foot long was actually 2 feet or so.  Which meant that the waterjet alone would barely cover the work, not counting the material.  Plus I need to buy additional armor plate on top of the sheet I already sent over. 

So as I write this out here, putting it into words on screen, I think I should cancel the order and refund the money.  I would send back the 500 dollar down-pay.  So no regrets there as to filling the order.  To push thru would mean coming up with 1000 dollars cash, above the down-pay, to only get 500 dollars back if or whenever he will pay me for the order.  As he still owes me 50 bucks for some other work a month ago, plus not paying or taking delivery of a glass crusher he ordered and I built without a down-payment.  

Which means that I will not be stressing over payroll or other shop expenses risking other projects in the works today.  Mind cleared, lesson learned. 

Only one plastic shredder was built in the last 2 weeks.  Sales have gone to the toilet.  Economy and all.  

Wife had her emergency cancer surgery.  She did not even bother to tell me it went well.  I had to see it on Facebook as she was e-begging for money.  Funny thing about all her pretend 'friends' on social media.  All this fake love love stuff, but if you are dying, all you get back is "oh I will pray for you" and even the closest friends and family bothering to kick in a hundred bucks to save your life.   

As I know most of y'all here may find my daily journal musings entertaining, I would not ask nor  waste  my time e-begging as we are not that close.  

However it really reminded me of something the wife did in 2009 or rather did not do.   He best friend caught pneumonia, and died because no  money for IV antibiotics.  The woman really died cause she did not get that shit treated when a handful of amoxicillin or cipro would have fixed it.  But the third chance was the IV antibiotic,  She got one bag of it, started to get better, then no more money, and died.  Left 2 children orphan.  I know my wife had some extra cash at that time, but if she would not even come up with a hundred bucks to save her best friends life, what makes me think it would be any different for her?  All that fake female social media nonsense.  

This is why one needs to have a real tribe and not fake friends.  I would trade all the fake social media fake friends in the world for 2 solid people in my tribe.  Which I do have a few solid people in my tribe, so no worries there,  But even still.  It took a lot of winnowing of the chaff to figure out who is who.

Dirty Joe and his offspring

 

Coin dealers warning about SHTF

 My news feed last few days has a bunch of coin dealers now talking about people selling their gold for food and basics.  Saying the situation is unusual.  

The coin guys are also saying that fake coins are everywhere.   Even bouillon coins, and bars coming up as fakes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vrimORA5V0

Coins and gold would be my lowest priority for prepping at this time with my financial situation.  However if you got a excess of cash, then genuine gold would be something to get after you got your house in order.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdyIj0mwMcE link to video below

Meanwhile, first day back in the shop in a few days.  For the last few weeks someone has been parking a heavy vehicle in the middle of the night in front of the shop.  First they broke a small hole thru, then they keep returning to break the hole bigger and bigger.  they even found some wood to put there.

Also I caught the squatter next door pissing thru the corner there straight into my workshop.  One step above monkeys, and they wonder why they are poor.  Yet oh so proud to be poor and dumb.  Offer them a job and they 'too proud' to take the job.  

Anecdotal news of the storm getting closer

 Just about every single prepper YouTube channel has been saying this is the big SHTF.  Even during COVID it was not like this.  

Things in the USA are not looking good.  China is hosed too.  EU?  Ditto.

But you probably already know this as you are reading my blog, As this blog has replaced my Faceborg musings.

Weather here in SE Asia is not normal.  I see that it is not normal in other parts of the world too.  Tonga volcano likely is one issue, and solar minimum issues too.  I saw this morning yet again the thunderheads building up over Manila Bay, at 8am.  Which means that rain likely this afternoon.  It has rained nearly every day for the last week.  This is not exactly unusual weather except for the time of year.  several months ahead of schedule.  

I went out to the store to get some bread and see if I could find any old stock canned goods at a discount price.  I managed to get some of that premium canned tuna in olive oil at the old price.  The supermarket has sold out of that stuff long ago.  

Since I bought out all the sugar at the lower price, The store has restocked at 10 peso per kilo higher.  I was sticker shocked before, but now thinking I should snag all the stock as the difference is only 4 bucks higher for 20 kilos, and I need at least 40 kilos to round out that line item.  

I purchased cat food this morning, and the import stuff from Australia is not available.  I got some Thailand made Whiskas.  Chick booster number one, still unavailable, local made cat food is higher too.  However local made cat food, I do not buy as the cats seem sickly after eating it and they do not like it much. 
I made some reconstituted TVP with raw egg, and a bit of fish for them this morning before going out and they dined like kings.  So I will keep the dry food for when I do not have time to cook them up some stuff.

Will harvest beans from the garden again this week.  The second and third plantings of lima beans are nearly ready.  Sweet corn is bout a foot high, sunflowers are back in bloom.

I need to get one of the boys to work at the house when I am feeling better.  Will rip out the ornamental crap, and plant a lot more food.  Vertical garden has been re-planted.  Only some basil and a couple lettuce are ready to pick.  

If you had to pick stuff to stock up on right now, I would say dry pasta, oils, sugar, and home canned meats.  With the weather better, even if you got hardly any cash, you best be going off and doing some fishing if you can too.    Cured smoked then canned fish.  If I was still in the Midwest, I would be stocked up on yellow corn, fish, for sure.  Locally yellow corn is not so easily to come by unless I go out to the country side.  This is because it is ground and value added before it is sold in the feed stores.

Keep an eye on the monkeypox thing.  Something does not pass the smell test there.  

This will be me the rest of the day.  Miss Revlon (cause she has eyeliner) disappeared for almost a day this week.  The wild tomcat in the area, got in the house and was fighting with her.  She is fixed so she does not go in heat anymore, so it was not a love spat.  I was wondering if I was down to the two kittens until she jumped on me in the middle of the night to announce her return.  

Emergency Antibiotic Stash

 Have to dig in the emergency antibiotic stash today.  15 hours ago or so my nose started running, now just feeling like absolute dog shit.  Popped a 500mg amox tab, zinc, vit c, d, quercitin and hope for the best.  

I got the tabs from the vet supply, which has the exact same tabs as the pharmacy, down to the numbers on the blister packs.

Feels like a sinus infection again.  

Gonna try to soldier thru the day today.  Got two plastic extrusion machines running the same time.  First time that has happened.  Getting a stack of plastic lumber going here.  One ton is the projected production run.  

Monkeypox current outbreak is bio weapon?

 As per Dr Robert Malone, Monkeypox is a nothing burger.  US has enough doese in the national strategic stockpile for everyone, yet why go out and purchase a whole new vax?

Now reports online that it is a lab mod.  

So this is falling under the "no shit sherlock?  What gave it away?"

When we look for answers, re: NWO, the answers point to evil.

Obama: International Order Took Generations to build

"Ordinary Men and Women Are Too Small-minded To Govern Their Own Affairs"

"Surrender Their Rights To An

ALL POWERFUL SOVEREIGN"

THEY TOLD YOU

Just randomly clicking around.  Saw this below...