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Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Solar Storms



Solar storms could kill civilizations. We go about our lives worried about this and that. None if it matters if the sun blows off a big CME and fries everything. The sun has been particularly active lately.  There have been some serious bursts but mostly they’ve missed us. It doesn’t help that the earth’s protective magnetic field is weak right now. 

A strong CME from the sun could take down all our modern electronics. The more advanced  the electronics the more sensitive it is to solar interference. The things that hold society together would fall apart. 

It’s good to realize that most guns will work just fine. Some fancy electronic sights might get fried but iron sights work. A situation where the infrastructure fails but the ability to kill each other doesn’t has plenty of potential for disaster. 

The less your life depends on high technology the more likely it will continue. 

-Sixbears

Sunday, March 17, 2024

Internet Disruptions


 

One of the area’s biggest Internet providers is having a lot of outages. The details aren’t important so much as the effects.


I noticed issues at restaurants. Apparently some businesses can’t do basic billing without an Internet connection. Cash is king. 


I’m not sure if it’s related but gas station loyalty cards are hit or miss. Sometimes they work, other times they don’t. 


My small Internet provider is currently being swallowed up by the bigger company. The changeover won’t be completed until the second week of April. In the mean time my service is still mostly up. 


When it does go down my cell phone’s hotspot is a decent substitute. For many years we didn’t have cell service here. Then a company put in a new tower that isn’t blocked by the mountains. 


Think of all your services that rely on the Internet besides your computer connection: VOIP phone service, movie streaming, music streaming, cameras, security, etc..  The more “advanced” the household electronics the more vulnerable to disruptions they are. 


My household is not so advanced that I can’t do most things the old fashioned way. I also like to keep some cash handy. The one thing I no longer have is an old fashioned land line. Should the Internet and cell towers go down I could always text using a Garmin InReach’s satellite connection. Or I could write a letter and mail it.   -or I could keep my thoughts to myself. 


-Sixbears

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Snow slowing me down



Yeah, I still have fresh snow on the ground. It’s melted some but we still have plenty of the annoying white stuff. Our mild winter has me yearning for an early spring. It’s not that we didn’t get precipitation. We got plenty but it was often in the form of winter rain. Not only that, our snow, instead of being light and fluffy was dense like cement. 

Okay, it’s not that the snow is really that bad. This is still March in New Hampshire after all. It’s just that I’m a bit more eager to get the scooter out of storage than normal. I’ve a lot of new parts that came in. There’s actually nothing broken on the scoot. It just makes more sense for me to change these parts at home. If I don’t I’ll be changing them on a back road late at night -in the rain. Let’s avoid that. 

I’m also adding a motorcycle rated Garmin GPS. That will get hard wired into the electrical system There’s a lot of body plastic that have to be removed just to get to the wiring. The top box doesn’t thrill me either. The solution could be to build my own. 

There are times I miss not having a decent heated garage. Who knows what would roll out of there after a long winter of tinkering?

-Sixbears

Sunday, March 10, 2024

March is a teaser.

Another Stormwatch


Friday’s weather was nice and spring-like. That’s not at all common in northern New Hampshire this time of year. The weather was so nice that had I not made other plans I would have taken the motor scooter out of storage. 


Today is a different story. The weather forecast is for 4 to 8 inches of heavy wet snow. That’s storm will also bring high winds. That’s just the sort of thing to drop trees over utility lines and block roads. Flooding will also be an issue. 




My usual preps were put into motion. The solar electric batter bank was charged up from the grid. Energy intensive chores such as laundry have been done. Dishes are washed. Fuel for the woodstove is sitting ready. We’ve plenty of food and other necessities. 


The best part is not needing to go anywhere during or right after the storm. It always feels better to watch falling snow while next to the woodstove sipping coffee.


-Sixbears

Friday, March 8, 2024

Taxes?



It had been over a decade since I last filed income taxes. It is totally legal too. Really. 


So this year I found myself in a situation where not filing taxes would be leaving money on the table. That wasn’t going to happen. 


Normally I’m a do it myself sort of guy but not this time. My tax status is weird in normal years. Two years in a row I was audited by the IRS. Eventually we sorted out the fact that I don’t have to file taxes. The first time I was nervous. The second time I wasn’t intimidated at all. 


Side note: I had an uncle who looked forward to fighting with the IRS every year. He was an independent businessman who took outrageous tax deductions. He was such a PITA to the agents that they’d eventually give up and he’d keep a lot of his sketchy deductions. Any man who could intimidate the IRS is some sort of hero in my book.


Anyway, my lovely wife had gathered all the proper paperwork and the tax pro sorted out our situation. It was money well spent. We are getting all our money back, so that’s good.


-Sixbears


It had been over a decade since I last filed income taxes. It is totally legal too. Really. 


So this year I found myself in a situation where not filing taxes would be leaving money on the table. That wasn’t going to happen. 


Normally I’m a do it myself sort of guy but not this time. My tax status is weird in normal years. Two years in a row I was audited by the IRS. Eventually we sorted out the fact that I don’t have to file taxes. The first time I was nervous. The second time I wasn’t intimidated at all. 


Side note: I had an uncle who looked forward to fighting with the IRS every year. He was an independent businessman who took outrageous tax deductions. He was such a PITA to the agents that they’d eventually give up and he’d keep a lot of his sketchy deductions. Any man who could intimidate the IRS is some sort of hero in my book.


Anyway, my lovely wife had gathered all the proper paperwork and the tax pro sorted out our situation. It was money well spent. We are getting all our money back, so that’s good.


-Sixbears

Thursday, March 7, 2024

On the Ragged Edge



It’s easy to look down on those less fortunate. If they are poor they must be lazy or deficient in some way. 


I’m living a comfortable life now, but it wasn’t always that way. America has some big holes in its social safety net. Prepping was always a thing I did and it got me through a couple of bad years. However, the bad years kept coming. Year three was tough. Year four was impossible. 


My wife and three kids were living with the knowledge we two weeks away from being homeless. Then I won a four year legal battle and received enough back pay to bring everything up to date. 


It affected my kids. They’ve gone on to live successful lives. They’ve also never forgotten when times were so tight we didn’t through out potato peels. They have compassion for people in tough situations. They’ve started programs for the homeless in their community, taken in political refugees, and hired poor immigrants. 


Being in tough straits with kids to feed is a real test. During that time I found myself with $3000 cash accidentally given to me instead of someone else. I could have kept it but made sure it ended up in the right hands. Another time a bank sent me all the credit card details of over a dozen people. There was everything needed to run charges on other people’s cards. Instead of doing that I informed the bank of their error -and fried up those potato peels. 


Frankly, it was a near thing -not to make my life more comfortable, but for the kids. I understand the tough decisions people on the bottom have to make. 


-Sixbears

Wednesday, March 6, 2024

Photos of Wreckage


I buddy of mine happen to be in Southwest Florida recently. He took a boat tour out of Ft. Myers. It’s surprising how much hurricane damage is still evident. I was last in that area in 2019. It doesn’t look like it did back then.


Florida has always had problems with abandoned boats. The coast is littered with wrecks. Judging from my friend’s photos there are a lot more of them. Places that used to have them removed appear to have given up. 


There’s also a lot of infrastructure that hasn’t been rebuilt. It appears they are still cleaning up debris out of the water. To be fair, some areas were hit pretty hard. A marina we used to stay at had all their boats and docks dropped into the parking lot. It doesn’t look like they recovered. 


We see areas in the news that are hit with disasters. Then we forget about them. New stories drive out memory of the old stories. For the people who live in those places the nightmare doesn’t end so quickly. Sometimes the money to rebuild just isn’t there. 


The more disasters that hit an area the less likely recovery becomes. Hurricanes are getting worse and doing more damage. Flooding is an issue. When places have “100 year floods” every other year something is wrong. Forest fires can quickly decimate thousands of acres in very little time. 


Add in things like higher insurance rates, tougher zoning laws, and outrageously expensive building materials and it’s no wonder places remain trashed. 


-Sixbears