It seems like only yesterday…

So a bit over two years ago I got into make’n shit out of leather.  I made a bunch of stuff in a brief spurt that lasted nearly a year.  Most of my projects were belt gear for personal use.  My favorite project so far is the custom holster for my cell phone.  That double belt loop goes around the single belt loop on the back of my matching tactical flashlight holster.  Makes a nice neat package that looks like its all one case on my belt.  And they stay put.

Well, time passes and technology gets old.  This elderly Tracfone is on its last legs.  The hinge is cracked and missing a chunk.  The backlight doesn’t work any more which makes the screen nearly impossible to read in all but the brightest of light.  It’s what LawDawg might call a right proper phone.  It’s just a phone.  That’s it.  No camera, no web, no features.  It has a rather pathetic calculator and a couple of games that were old back when I still used my Atari 2600.  It served me well for much longer than the two years that I carried it in the custom case I made for it.

But it’s time to move on.  The service date for this phone was coming up this Saturday and I finally decided to stop throwing good money* after bad.  Time for a new phone.  Naturally the new phone doesn’t come close to fitting in the old case.  So it looks like I’ll be back at the leather table – as soon as I decide what sort of case to make for it.

You know, the funny thing about this case is that I never did actually finish the thing!  All those grooves around the outside were supposed to have stitching to hold the case together.  The contact cement held for two years and seventeen days so far and looks like it would outlast the leather.  Who’d have thunk?

Of course now I have to figure out how to use this newfangled contraption of a phone, and camera, and sort-of PDA and…

Wish me luck!


Oh buy the way…  One of the main reasons I kept the old phone as long as I did was that I had been told years ago that you couldn’t transfer the minutes in your old phone to a new one.  Apparently Tracfone has solved that problem (or possible been legislated or litigated to…  Iduno.  As long as the old phone worked there was no need to pay much attention to what they were up to.) because after finally deciding to abandon the remaining minutes in the old phone because it badly needed replacing I discovered that you now can port over your minutes if you activate on-line.  You have to set up an account and tell them who you are to do it though.  So you loose any hope of anonymity with Tracfone to do it.  That may be an issue for some people.


* OK – fiat currency.  And it ain’t really so good any more.

Vacation = Work, Work = Rest

When I finally give up for the night and go to bed my "vacation" will be at it's end. I go back to work tomorrow - to rest! These past two weeks and the weekends for a month and a half before that were spent moving one of my 10x30 storage bins to my barn in New Hampshire. Single handed. With a retired phone company Astro Van.

The one remaining bin I hope to be able to move in better weather come spring. With my checkbook.

How it’s supposed to work!

It is refreshing to know that this insight is not totally lost from the world.  I had been getting a little down because so often it seems that those holding the reigns of power truly have no clue.  But to my great relief Weer’d links us to a video of the Mayor of Tulsa, who has me wondering if that might not be a good place to be – if you have any entrepreneurial spirit left given the state of the rest of the country…

Wicked Useful Sh … stuff

I just added a new section to the right sidebar: Wicked Useful Sh … stuff.  That’s where I plan to post wicked useful links to wicked useful resources around the web.

The first one on the list is GasBuddy.  In particular; the GasBuddy Heat Map.  This is a zoomable map that shows by color what the average gas prices are running on a county by county basis all across the country.  By zooming in you can see what individual gas stations have been charging within the last 48 hours.  (Or at least what the price was the last time a GasBuddy ‘field operative’ went by the station.)  If you sign up you can contribute to the site by reporting the gas prices you see as you go about your daily travels.

If you have suggestions for other sites that are Wicked Useful let me know in the comments.  If they make the cut I’ll add it to the list.

Prepping for po folk

Er, rather, as Bayou Renaissance Man put it:

Emergency Preparation, Part 14: Preparing on a tight budget

This is a must read post – whether cash is an issue or not.  I will eventually get ‘round to reading the rest of the series.  But I wanted to spread the word on this installment particularly in light of the impending Frankenstorm or snore-easter-cane depending on who you read.

In BRM’s post he goes into quite a bit of detail on the contents of a bare bones food kit to keep one person going for a week.  The anticipated cost is around US $30 and I was able to build a kit at my local Wal*Mart based on these recommendations for about that.  I did read one thing wrong and only got 5 5oz. cans of tuna instead of the 7 recommended.  I will correct that as well as add a can opener from the dollar store before I give the whole kit and caboodle to the friend I put it together for.

Rewind to last night on the phone with my friend:

Me: So you do have plenty of groceries in the house, I trust.

She: Um, I think I have a couple of boxes of Cheerio’s…

This is my friend who gets thirsty and instead of going to the fridge and getting something to drink goes out to the car and drives to the local fast food emporium for a drive through super jumbo humongous soda with a price tag to match.

* Ye gods and little fishies!*  (to blatantly swipe a phrase from LawDawg)

So here I am, having just read BRM’s great post on prepping on the cheap and knowing we may have this nor’easter-hurricane-thing bearing down on us depending on the storms actual track (that we will finally know for sure some time around Thursday in the here’s where it went after the fact report) and I have reason to believe a very good friend who I care about very much ain’t got no preps in place.

I sense an opportunity to put the test to the info.

So here’s the inventory for the little kit that we put together today:

·        1 2-pound bag of Iberia long grain brown rice

·        2 1-pound bags of Best Bet elbow macaroni

·        2 1-pound bags of La Cena pinto beans

·        2 26-ounce jars of Great Value pasta sauce in two flavors

·        1 2-pound package of Great Value whole grain oats

·        5* 5-ounce cans of StarKist Selects chunk light tuna in water

·        1 5-ounce can of Butter Field chunk ham in water

·        1 5-ounce can Bumble Bee premium white chicken in water

·        1 Morton/McCormick sat & pepper set

·        1 Ozark Trail pocket knife

·        1 85-piece Be Smart Get Prepared first aid kit

·        1 5-gallon pail with lid to put it all in**

* Two more cans of tuna and one can opener need to be added to match the inventory from BRM’s post.  The first aid kit was my own little addition since I have no idea what my friend may have on hand.

** At Mum’s recommendation we had originally grabbed two boxes of store brand minute rice – but they wouldn’t fit in the pail.  So I swapped them out for the bag of rice that does.  It may not be as convenient to cook, but it can be protected from the elements (and the cats) inside the bucket.

As mentioned elsewhere at BRM’s, having a bucket with a lid on hand has many uses.  It can be used to store water in case the water supply is interrupted and it can be used as a ‘sanitary facility’ if that stops working.  (Not at the same time obviously!)  In fact he has a whole post on just that subject!

The price tag for my little kit as put together so far at my local Wal*Mart on Route 38 in Tewksbury Marxistchusetts came to US $29.45 including tax.  The can opener will come from the dollar store and two more cans of tuna should be about US $2.50.  Since the first aid kit was about US $5.00 the cost of the basic kit does in fact come in at about the US $30 predicted.

As you can see, putting together this little bitty kit that’ll get you by for a few days of deconveniance is really no big deal.  Augmented by the pantry you should have on hand anyway, going a week or two without access to your local grocery store shouldn’t be much more than a tale to tell in later years.

Now I just have to get this to my friend before the storm hits.

Oh, BTW: I got five more of those knives for barter.  That was a great idea!  Thanks!


UPDATE: Here's another picture of the kit, all packed in the bucket.  That's the P-38 I mentioned in the the comments (good idea, Mr. B!).  I've taped a small rare Earth magnet from Harbor Freight to the inside of the lid to attach the can opener to.

Also in the bucket but not shown is a copy of  BRM's post that started this whole project.  Lots of good information there.  If you haven't read it already I highly recommend that you do.  There is a link at the top of this post.

Toys!

This afternoon while Mum was doing some grocery shopping at our localest Super Waly I spent some time poking around in the camping and guns and ammo department.  Plenty of ammo, not much by way of guns and meh camping gear, as per usual. 

The one thing of note that I did find was a CKRT Guppie and Eat’N Tool combo kit.  It was on the wrong peg, also as per usual, so I took it over a couple of isles to the price scanner.  It worked, which is becoming more usual.  They were pretty bad for a while.  But this Wally seems to be improving in that regard lately.  Holding the bar-code in the cross-hairs and moving it back and forth to find the readers range it finally went boop and I went “I’ll take it!”  The CKRT web sight lists just the Guppie with a $39.99 MSRP.  I got mine in the kit with the Eat’N Tool for $10.

Can’t beat that with a stick!

The other toy in the picture is a NiteIze S-Biner Ahhh…  Yes, that is its proper name.  This S-Biner is even more useful than it’s less talented but almost identical to the untrained eye cousins in that both sides of this ‘biner double as bottle openers.  Having actually used it to open my Sam Adams Oktoberfest this very evening I can attest to the fact that as a bottle opener they work.  I just picked that up last weekend at a slightly less local Aubuchon Hardware Store. 

I hadn’t intended to start a bottle opener collection!  But, since the carabineer clip on the Guppie can also be used in that capacity, there are actually four in this one picture.  Then there’s the one in my MiniChamp SAK that I carry every day in my cell phone case.  And if I’ve got my Maxpedition Fatboy there are at least two more among the various gear in that.  So I guess I’ve got opening bottles pretty well covered. 

Now about all that storage food that comes in cans…

Prepping is going mainstream

And I think that is a good thing!

Seen in the wild at my local Wal*Mart:

As always, click on the image for a larger version.

Each of these buckets claim to keep four people fed for 72 hours.  They also claim to last for 25 years if properly stored.  I haven't done a cost breakdown (and I probably won't bother to be perfectly honest...) but it does seem a bit spendy.  But to be able to exchange a fist-full of worthless FRN's for a ready made kit seems to me to be a very good idea.

Other stores have similar items available on-line.  Costco, for examples has a whole section of their food page dedicated to storage food.  BJ’s has a smaller section.  Neither have any of their storage food available in-store.

However you get it (provided it’s through legal means) you should lay in a supply of food to keep you going in the event on “unforeseen circumstances.”  It doesn’t have to be a full scale SHTF catastrophe.  An extended power failure, as but one example, will shutter the grocery store.  If your cupboard’s bare it won’t refill itself particularly if the stores are closed or the normal supply lines are disrupted.

One thing leads to another

Every time I hear this song on the radio

I think of this

Thanks Weerd!

\\\\’ Hooray! ‘////

Flashlight Blogging

I thought I’d pick up some batteries today.  In bulk.  Just incase…

I go through AA batteries like I go through potato chips.  My radios use them.  My point & shoot Fuji A700 uses them.  My Mini-MagLights use them.  Even the ones I’ve converted to LED use them.  They seem pretty much ubiquitous. 

But my EDC tac light, a StreamLight LT-2 LED, uses Lithium CR123 batteries.  Not uncommon these days perhaps, but hardly ubiquitous.  In fact the shop I went to was out of them.  And as of this writing the effluent has yet to impact the circulation device for atmospheric gases.

But that got me to thinking…

Most of the blogs I read tend to feature a lot of prepper and fire arms information.  And politics – which often leads rather directly to the fire arms and SHTF prep information.  A frequent point of discussion is ‘which gun to include in your bug-out bag?’  That frequently leads in turn to ammo selection. 

Leaving discussion of ‘stopping power vs. weight vs. recoil vs. I shoot really tight patterns with my incredibly obscure Eastern Block revolver chambered in something I have to hand craft because nobody’s made it in over half a century’ aside … 

Well, actually focusing in on that last point, as a matter of fact, I made a decision.

Instead of shelling out @ $35- for a block of expensive and occasionally hard to get lithium batteries for my TL-2 LED I decided instead to replace it with something that uses cheap and easy to get AA batteries.

Enter my brandy spanking new StreamLight ProTac 2AA flashlight.

Also in this picture are my little Victorinox Mini-Champ SAK with the gutted paracord fob that I made for it and my Camilus Heat assisted opening knife.  The SAK rides in the ‘magazine pouch’ part of my cell phone holster pretty much every where I go and the Camilus spends its weekends on my belt in a horizontal carry sheath custom wet molded for this knife. 

You can see all of the leather cases and sheaths and stuff, oh my! in this post dating from January of last year.  A few things have changed from back then: I’m wearing a modern pair of glasses instead of the vintage 3-piece frames shown most of the time these days.  I’ve replaced the wallet shown with something that holds way more cards.  I’m two or three little note pads along from the one shown and I’ve switched to a modern stainless steel putton-click Parker Jotter fitted with a Fisher Space Pen insert.  I’ve stopped carrying the little tape measure and I found a really skinny Papermate pen that fits the pen holder in the flashlight case.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that even though my custom leather flashlight case was specifically made for the TL-2 LED in head up carry, the new ProTac 2AA fits quite nicely in a head down carry mode.  Because the two flashlights are shaped differently and the new light is notably longer that the old one I was expecting to have to make a new case for the new light.  I will eventually, but I don’t have to right away.  When I finally do I will be skipping the concho snap conversions.  They look really snazzy, but I’ve found them to be problematic in use. 

Anywho, what this all boils down to is that as of today the Streamlight TL-2 LED goes into semiretirement.  I’ll probably toss it into my bug-out bag.  Just because…

Banned in Boston

Calling their six page photo gallery a “Trend Alert” Boston.com points out what does seem to be a growing trend at least in Bloombergia and Marxistchusetts: Banning things.  I was going to ask ‘What next?  Dihydrogen monoxide?’ but the list already includes bottled water.

So much for American being the Land of the Free…

So ends the first half

Of 2012. July first. Meh.

I just got back from storage. The van is almost as empty as the day I bought it. I decided to skip the flea this week to “fall back and regroup.” I haven’t decided yet, but I may quit altogether. Last week was a complete waste of time. The weather is only getting hotter and more humid. Wasn’t it Einstein who said “the definition of insanity was to continue doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results”? Not being insane I am looking for a different solution.

Yesterday Mum and I took a road trip in Galileo to check out a barn I can rent for less than half of what I am paying for storage. It was a nice ride, but it was an hour and a half away! And I accidentally left my GPS in a friend’s car when I went with her to a doctor’s appointment that she needed someone else to driver her home from. I had to make due with directions printed out from Google maps. Meh squared.

I want my GPS!

Forgot to mention…

Things got a little “entertaining” while I was across the street using their facilities. There I was minding my own business, sitting there with my knees up next to me ears in this antique of a bathroom that hasn’t been updated in the 35+ years I’ve been going to this flea market, when all of a sudden a pipe burst in the wall behind me! The way the flooding was traveling across the floor I couldn’t tell if it was my side of the stall wall or perhaps in the next stall over. I managed to hitch up my pants legs enough to keep them out of the almost instantly two inches deep flood, finished what I was doing and made a hasty retreat.

Well, at least we made it home in one piece. Then we went out for dinner at Applebe’s. Now I’m ready for a nap.

Gawd! What an awful day!

We just got back to the house after spending the morning engaged in old fashioned American capitalism. The flea market “hoovered” today! It was car show weekend up the street and both fields were full of venders. There were also shoppers a plenty. But the only cash that changed hands was between the flea vendors and the owners of the fields. It costs $25 for a space at Shirley’s flea. We took in $9. No, that is not a misprint.

I’m taking next weekend off to fall back and regroup.

There must be a more effective way to make all this stuff go away. At this point, a roll off is looking better all the time!

More Steadicam: the JR

The goodies I ordered came in so I spent the evening playing with my Steadicam JR.  The first order of business was a little clean up.  It had been stored in it’s camera bag for several years.  I removed the Ricoh R-808H Hi8 camcorder that was on my JR when I bought it used from a friend who used to work for what was at the time one of the best local mom & pop camera shops around.  Sadly, those are now a thing of the past.  Or so it would seem.  So is this camcorder.  It’s so old that the only thing I can find spending just a couple of minutes Googling the make and model are a ton of sites selling replacement batteries. 

After replacing the cork and cleaning up the connections in both battery compartments it was on to the tough part.

Mounting and balancing a camera on a Steadycam JR is not easy!

To work properly all Steadicam systems need to be properly balanced.  My rig came pre-balanced since I bought it used.  Mounting my fairly new to me Sony DCR-TRV310 NTSC camcorder was more of a challenge than I expected!  It took most of the evening to get everything to work together to the point where the camera actually floats the way it is supposed to.  But I finally got it.

Even this camera is old.  According to Amazon.com they first offered it on September 4, 1999.  Right about the time the Moon was supposed to have been blown out of Earth orbit according to the timeline from the even older TV show Space 1999.  Both the “new” camera I just mounted on it and the Steadicam JR itself are discontinued by their manufacturers.  I don’t really mind not having the absolutely newest gizmo on the block.  This camcorder works better than the one it’s replacing and the JR still works.  Even it’s monitor still works after sitting unused for so many years.

Digging around in the JR’s camera bag I came across an unopened regular 8 video tape that works in the Sony camera even though it really wants Hi8 or maybe Digital 8 tapes if such a thing even exists.  The camera came with two Hi-8 tapes from the yard sale I got it at.  It was actually free since they didn’t have a charger for the batteries.  I bought one through Amazon that does the trick quite nicely.  So with a charged battery and a fresh tape it was finally time to play.  Most of what I shot tonight consisted of fine-tuning and testing.  I did a little flying just to get back in the swing of it.  I didn’t actually shoot anything I’d be inclined to share.  But I did prove to myself that the “new” camera works mounted to my Steadicam JR.

To give you a better sense of what the JR is all about here’s an extended clip from the video that came with these rigs.  Enjoy!

I will post some video I shot myself with this rig eventually.  As soon as I have something worth sharing…

Krazy Kontraptions: Steadicam®

One of my favorite toys is my Steadicam® JR (pronounced “Steady-Cam Jay Are”).  I haven’t used it in a long time because I was having problems with the camera that’s mounted on it.  This very afternoon at lunch I ordered a few things from Amazon.com that will let me referb my rig and mount my much newer and better camera.  (Since it’s now discontinued I figured I’d better grab the stuff while it’s still available!)  Hopefully I’ll be posting some cool videos of my own before too awfully long.

In the mean time, here’s an interview with Garret Brown demoing a couple of the big rigs:

YouTube can be such a fun place to loose an entire evening!

PS: Just out of curiosity: Can someone please explain to me how the New & Unproved interface and composition tools (that make it damn near imfuckingpossible to do ANYTHING creative – even simply embeding a couple of YouTube videos – without resorting to raw HTML coding) is an improvement?  Cause I ain’t seeing it!  Word to the wise, guys, I already bailed on LiveJournal when their interface became unusable.  You need to fix this yesterday!

What do you call an update that isn't?

I was going to write something about our busy weekend:

• Grocery shopping on Saturday with Mum at three different stores
• Mowing the lawn Saturday afternoon 
• Bushwhacking our little jungle might me more accurate!
• Powering the electric string trimmer and the blower after that with juice from our solar system
• We've got the power.  We might as well use it!
• Setting up at the Flea today
• Selling a bunch of stuff
• WooHoo!!!
• Getting some actual end mills for my shop at the flea
• Having a great Mother's Day dinner with friends
• Messing around in the shop after we got back home
• Replacing the regulator on the air compressor when I discovered that the quick connect fitting was mounted in stripped threads that it's previous owner gooped up with some kind of RTV so the leak wouldn't be noticed until after the thing sold at his yard sale
• D'oh!
• Thank goodness it didn't blow out before I discovered what was causing that leak this afternoon!
• Hearing from my sister via Facebook for the first time in several months

It's been a busy weekend and I don't know where to start in telling the story without this post turning into one of my epic in length of not content posts.

On second thought, maybe I'll just jump in the shower then go to bed.

It's Miller Time!

What a mess!

Well, I was just messing around...

This was merely and experiment not an actual project.  The pocket facing the camera is almost twice the width of the cutter.  The pocket on top is a single cutter width.  They intersect about half way into each other.  Both were made with a flat end slot or edging router bit.  The top was chamfered (badly) with a V-cutting router bit.  The square U shaped slot on the near face was cut with a round end router bit similar to a ball end mill.

The shop looks and works much better rearranged as I described last night.  I can actually get at most everything!  I still have quite a bit of tidying up to do.  But these changes really are a major improvement.

Just thought I'd add these:

Much better!

I did it again!

So as we were heading out to the Pepperell town-wide yard sales I told Mum that I was going to be looking for end mills and crank handles.  Both would be used with the new vice on my drill press.  I didn't find any end mills today.  But...

Last year, I think it was closing day at the flea, I bought a much nicer scroll saw than I had been using in my little shop up to that point.  It was used and the deck had a light coating of rust, but it wasn't anything that a little elbow grease couldn't remedy.  So it came home with me and I played around with it for the next week getting it all cleaned up and trying a few test cuts with it.

Then the very next week at a yard sale I found another one.  Absolutely identical except for one little difference.  This one was brand new in the box!

I bought that one too.

The first (and it's predecessor if I remember to grab it from the shop in the morning) will be available for purchase tomorrow bright and early at Hollis.

Back to the crank handles I was looking for for my new machinists vice.

I found a set that fit perfectly at a yard sale today.  They were attached to an identical vice that's in slightly better shape than the one I bought last week.  The vice was (still is as a matter of fact) attached to a floor model drill press that is likewise in slightly better shape than the bench top model pictured in the post about my finally finding the vice.

Guess what I did...  :-D

You should have seen the fun I had getting that bench top drill press off of the old table saw body that had been its base!  I can't lift the thing.  With my bad back it's much too heavy.  So, employing the work smarter not harder philosophy I put together a two step rigging plan that got the job done.

Phase 1: I tied the table of the drill press to a structural frame that's holding up the roof over the shop with several wraps of paracord 550.  Using the table height adjusting crank I lowered the table until the rope lifted the drill press off of the saw making sure to carefully balance the machine so it wouldn't tip out of its cradle and crash to (possibly through!) the floor.  Once lifted I tied the head to the beam with more rope to stabilize the machine.  Then I wrestled the old saw body out from under it.  With that out of the way I removed the stabilizing rope and lowered the drill press with the table height adjuster onto the stool I keep in the shop.  On that I could walk it over to a point where the ceiling was a few inches higher and move on to...

Phase 2: With a tad more room above the drill press I rigged it this time with the same small block and tackle I had tried unsuccessfully to move Thunder with.  This time it worked like a charm!  Easily and under full control the drill press was lowered to the floor where I could move it out of the shop on my 2-wheeler.

The new drill press looks nice in the shop standing where the old one was.  And it takes up quite a bit less space.  With a shop as small as mine space is really at a premium!  Another benefit of this drill press over the old one: I can open the belt cover to adjust its speed!  The old drill press was right up against the ceiling beam and the belt cover couldn't be opened.  So it stayed set to the speed it was at when the guy I bought it from delivered it two years ago. If I'm going to try to use this for milling it is imperative that I be able to adjust the RPM of the cutter.  I'm actually going to get a chance to learn about speeds and feeds through first hand experience.

Progress!

I'll update this with a picture of the new rig later in the day tomorrow.  Right now I should have been in bed a couple of hours ago.  The flea starts awfully early!

The promised updates:

The crank handle:

 Attached to the vice:

Attached to the drill press:

Oh, and I sold last weeks vice at the flea market today.

I think I'm going to move the new drill press to where the red tool chest is sitting with my brown machinist's tool box on top and put the chest and tool box where the drill press is now.  With some very monor tweaking I think that layout will give me the best access possible to my stuff and will minimize the floor space taken up by the drill press.

I didn't have much time to wander around today at the flea.  Car show weekend is always busy.  So I couldn't track down any actual end mills.  For short money I picked up a set of carbide router bits at Harbor Freight this afternoon.  That was about the closest thing they had to what I was looking for.  We'll see how that goes working some soft stock.  I'll have to see what kind of wood I have in stock to play with.  :-)

A new toy in the shop

I have been looking for one of these for quite a while.  I finally got my hands on one this very morning!  It's a machinists vice.  One with an X-Y translation stage as an integral part of the vice.  Basically, it can turn my drill-press into a limited capacity milling machine!  Sort of a mini Bridgeport!

I actually saw this vice last week at the little flea down the hill from Wal*Mart in Lunenburg.  Unfortunately I didn't have the cash on me at the time to buy it.  I would have right then and there if I had.  Mum and I made a special trip out there again today in hopes that the vice would still be available.  As I said last week to the guy selling it "If it's meant to be it will still be here.  If not, well, ..." such is life. (or some such.  I don't remember my exact words.)  Anywho, it was still there today so I snapped it up.

It seems to be in pretty good shape.  I have no idea how old it may be or how much use it may have had over it's life so far.  I also haven't found any builder's plate or other identification as to who made it.  It does need a good cleaning, lubrication and adjustment.  That is to be expected with this type of machine tool.  I will also have to replace both cranks.

Even after it's all cleaned up I don't expect to be doing any real precision machining.  I'm not sure mild steel is really a possibility using this with my drill-press.  Aluminum and other soft metals, plastics and maybe some wood should be workable using this rig.

First I need to clean it up and get it ready for action.  Then I need to dream up some things to make with it.

This is going to be fun!

"Drink your Moxie" and stuff...

The following is adapted from a reply to a friend’s “Mrs.Calabash” email in which his cohort of readers were extolled to “make sure we drink our Moxie”:

Hello R,

I'm sitting here with a glass of Moxie that will soon need to be refilled.  It was a good day indeed!  Good to see you and M after this winter.  Kristen* is sitting with her crutch on my rocking chair here in the living room and my batch of war nickels that I thought I'd paid too much for are on the table waiting patiently to be put away.

* Kristen is a Vermont Teddy with a bandage on her leg, wearing a hospital jonnie and holding a crutch.  She was ‘adopted’ at the flea market Sunday morning.  I know her name is Kristen because her wrist band says so.

Today was even busier than yesterday!  Mum and I went first to [our local] town offices to pick up the paperwork to make my little flea business legal.  Then we went to the insurance company to make the van legal.  That took the rest of the morning trying to figure out if I'd need commercial plates or if I could 'get away with' regular passenger plates.  Standard passenger plates here in Marxistchusetts cost $50- for two years.  Commercial plates are $40- per thousand pounds GVW.  Since the van weighs in at just under four thousand pounds that comes to $160- for two years.  (They round up.)  We ended up deciding on the commercial plates.  Hopefully I won't need the van long enough to have to renew!

Then we went to the bank in the lobby of the building where I work to get some cash to move over to my business account in another bank.

After going to yet another town hall to get a certified copy of Mum's wedding certificate for the Social Obscurity Office we went to my other bank to make the deposit.  While I was there I also ordered some checks for the business account.  I couldn’t find any but the starter checks when I went looking for them before we left the house.  It turned out that we hadn’t actually ordered any! 

After that we went to New Hampshire to see if I could get my hands on some TSA knives to go through for my collection, um, I mean, to sell at the flea market.  Yeah that's it...  To sell at the flea market!  (Herr looks around randomly whilst whistling…)

But they were closed. 

Mum was told on the phone that they were opened until four but the sign said they were only open until three.  And there was another sign on the door that said they won't be open for public sales again until June!  Something about an auction…

<expletive deleted>!

Oh well.  It only cost us most of the afternoon, a bunch of gas in Galileo and $4 in tolls to get there…

We got home with plenty of light still left (in fact it was still bright and sunny out even as I was writing this yesterday afternoon) so I set about moving Thunder. 

Thunder is my other van.  He's a 1985 VW Vanagon Westfalia full camper.  Thunder weighs even more than the flea van.  Nearly five thousand pounds, if memory serves.  And he's been sitting in that spot for about two years.  What's more I'd forgotten that as I was getting ready to put him up on jack-stands to work on him I'd set the parking brake.  Two years ago.

Thunder did not want to move from the spot to which he'd become accustomed.

I tried moving him on Saturday with a little block and tackle that uses paracord and with my flat bar under his back wheels.  Not a chance!  In fact I snapped the paracord in the process.

Sunday after the flea (and a very pleasant lunch with some good company!) Mum and I went over to Harbor Freight where I picked up a 4000lb. rated come-along.  I figured the 4000lb. one should be adequate since I'm trying to move Thunder - not lift him.

I extended the cable with the tow rope I keep in Galileo's 'oh crap' bag and some more paracord wrapped in about five loops to make up the foot the cable was too short.  After putting on as much tension as I dared with the winch I got out the big crowbar.  The one I remembered I had after I gave up on Saturday.  Working the passenger side back wheel with the bar didn't do much.  But when I tried on the drivers side I felt the brake come free and the van actually moved a few inches!  I moved Thunder about half of the distance with the come-along and the rest of the way levering the back wheel.  His back wheels are now sitting where his front were for the past two years.  It may not seem like much, but that lets me park the flea van in back of Thunder and opens up the carport for Galileo.

I hope Galileo appreciates all my effort on his behalf!  I think I'll go refill my Moxie and take a couple of aspirin!

Oh by the way, those war nickels turned out to have cost me less than melt!  So even they are in the money!

 

My friend replied with the following:

 

Good Lord, [Herr]... "I'd" have registered the van as a passenger car. Much cheaper, and I don't appreciate the advantage of "commercial tags". Glad though, that all has been accomplished.
     That old Westfalia camper of yours sounds scary at this point. Locked wheels will need pulling off. The brake shoes must have rusted in place. Don't know if you can do mechanical rebuild stuff like that, and hope you now don't just have another lawn ornament on your hands like your bug that sat [at the old house]! Oh Lord!
     We enjoyed seeing you two on Sunday too. We're so glad that the flea has started once more! Next Sunday we'll do it all again, and perhaps this time, the weather will allow M and me to set up our junk.
     Talk to you in a bit......... R ;-)

I replied back with this:

 

Fritz, my antique beetle that we sold last fall (and star of the world famous Official Rules for Punch Buggy), is back on the road with his new owners working on restoring him.  Hopefully Thunder will be too one day.  I had advertised him on Craigslist a while back and will before long again most likely.  I could do the work myself - if I had the time.  I don't.  That's why both cars sat so long.

The commercial plates are a legal requirement here in Marxistchusetts.  It's yet another way the .gov tells small businesses we're not welcome here.  It's all about revenue for the Commonwealth (a concept they are taking much too literally these days.)  While the van has windows all around like the passenger version, the headliner ends at the cage behind the front seats.  There are no seats in back and no mounts in the floor to attach any to were I to find them on Craigslist for cheap.  What is back there are shelves intended for tools down both sides.  Clearly this is a commercial work van.  Any Marxistchusetts cop that might drive up behind me on the road could easily tell that is what it is.  I don't know what the fine is for having passenger plates on a commercial vehicle, but you can count on it being steep.  Then I'd have to pay for the tow and the storage.  And I'd have to get commercial plates to put on it anyway or I wouldn’t be allowed to drive it out of the impound yard.  And on top of that I would not be reimbursed by the RMV for the balance of the time left on the passenger plates when I turned them in.

So as much as I'd love to save the $110- difference in the price of the plates, I believe it would end up costing me hundreds more in the long run to see how long I could "get away with it."

It sucks to live in a communist hellhole!  That's just one more reason I'm so wanting to own that house [that’s for sale in another state].

From behind enemy lines here in Marxistchusetts,

HerrBGone

And a little follow-up for my loyal reader here at the Dragonfly:

I picked up the plates today at the home office of the insurance company.  That’s when I found out that in Marxistchusetts, while passenger plates need to be renewed in the month the car was registered two years hence, commercial plates run from January 1 to December 31 two calendar years hence.  And if you register your van in April your plates are not prorated for the three months you are not getting.  

Just a little more evidence that the former “Massachusetts Miracle” has long since gone the way of the dodo. 

Why does our economy suck?  Because the Commonwealth believes in Robin Hood!  They seem to think that anyone who has or wants to start a business has buckets full of cash sitting around doing nothing and that if the Commonwealth could just get their grubby paws on it they could redistribute it in ways that would do oh so much good for all the regular folk who don’t have these imaginary buckets of cash.  (At least to the ones that vote in the approved manor…)

The longer government policy remains based on fantasy, delusion and outright lies the harder it will be to repair the very real damage those policies are causing.