Slowly Coming Along

Posted on August 3, 2015 by Phil Kadath

Life gets in the way sometimes. Especially when something has importance.

These damnable bollards will get done.

I had to work Saturday and was too whupped to work on them by the time I got home. So I figured that Sunday was going to be the day. That is, until Saturday evening when I caught sight of my next-door neighbor sprucing up his deck and patio area for a party. I asked what time he was starting his get-together and it was right at the cusp of when it is reasonable to grind without pissing off too many of the neighbors.

So instead, I left the smallest two pieces of beam unground and focused on getting the other three pieces ready for paint. Burning stake holes doesn’t make much noise, and a couple minutes of hardwire zapping doesn’t generally cause widespread panic, so that was what I was limited to.

I burned the stake holes through with my oxy-fuel rig (sporting a fresh bottle of O2), only setting part of my yard on fire in the process (yes, I had the hose at the ready and a firewatcher). Then I placed the two medium sized pieces of beam onto their respective pieces of plate and whipped a set of MIG skip beads around the perimieter.

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I may go back later and lay down a couple more layers of fillet weld on there, but I’m thinking I already over-welded them.

These are the three pieces I’ve completed so far.

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I’ll get on the final two today after work and then set them up for a light sanding before applying some paint. I’ll also be ordering the stake materials and paint this week.

However, the upcoming weekend is plumb full with family stuff, so if I can’t get it done during the week, it might not happen. The daily high temps are supposed to back off some this week, so fingers crossed and all that.

Last week I showed my boss the progress I’ve made with all the free steel he has let me take home. He was not only impressed and approving of the idea, but gave me the idea of how to put planter boxes on the tops of them to keep people from using them as benches, AND to give me an excuse to tell the county government if they ever complain about them (plausible deniability, y’all). Measurements have been taken and given to the wife. She’ll be shopping for appropriately sized boxes this week. The all-thread rod to bolt the planter boxes down has been donated to the cause.

Posted in Kewel! | 1 Comment

Not pushing the boundaries

Posted on July 31, 2015 by Phil Kadath

Of honesty.

Just pushing dishonest policy.

The National Gun Victims Action Council put a large number of civilians unfamiliar with firearms (and a few law enforcement officers) through a firearms simulator at Mount St. Mary’s University and magically discovered that the LEO’s passed and the civilians did not.

Naturally, they labeled their skewed experiment “science” and says it proves that civilians should not be allowed to defend themselves with firearms.

Somehow they conflate the “a good guy with a gun” comment to mean “the most untrained individual who will pass a background check” and completely ignore the NRA’s call for more training in firearms amongst the civilian population.

Posted in Too Stupid to Live | Leave a comment

RNS Quote of the Day: 07/30/15

Posted on July 30, 2015 by Phil Kadath

It’s been a while, so it’s a bit of a long quote

The worst kind of welfare state is the welfare state that is ashamed of itself and therefore feels obliged to pretend to be something it isn’t. Instead of forthrightly taxing individuals and businesses and converting that revenue to welfare benefits in an honest and transparent way, covert welfare statists usually attempt to disguise welfare payments as wages. Artificial wage increases imposed by law perform the same function as ordinary welfare benefits — transferring income from politically disfavored groups to politically favored groups — but the revenue doesn’t show up on the government ledger as taxes and the outlays don’t show up as spending. Everybody in government gets the opportunity to engage in a little delicious moral preening about how they’re doing the right thing for the hardworking people of wherever while maintaining fiscal discipline, as if the underlying facts of the policy — “Patron X shall give Client Y at least Z amount of money” — weren’t fundamentally identical to those in a transparent welfare state.

Which is to say, laws mandating wages and benefits beyond market prices are political money laundering for unpopular welfare payments. They work brilliantly: Americans have a generally low opinion of welfare programs, but large majorities of us — including majorities of Republicans — support raising the minimum wage.

Kevin D. Williamson – The Insidious Political Power of Minimum Wage Laws

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Eating me up inside

Posted on July 29, 2015 by Phil Kadath

So, a couple weekends ago I took an afternoon off and went to a Meet Up with some local folks who are “interested” in disaster preparedness.

The topic was on “Hardening the Home and Neighborhood” and it was an interesting discussion that focused mainly on hunkering down in place during a natural disaster or other source of civil unrest and went on for over four hours; three in the venue and an after party in the back of a brewpub.

The reason for my interest is that I have come to the conclusion that there is no chance in hell of getting out of suburbia if disaster strikes unless I have exclusive insider information. Hell, at midmorning on any given Saturday the interstates to the south of my home are stuffed in less than 10 miles. Going north would be suicidal. That way lies Seattle. East is little better since it is only a two lane State Route which currently gets closed for bridge replacement on the weekends. West is very wet. Like, Pacific Ocean wet.

While I did get some decent information on newer books to read, I didn’t really get any new ideas. But that may be because I have been thinking about this for a good long time. Longer than most of these folks have.

If you’re local and want a good source for collecting/storing water, these folks come highly recommended: The Art of Barrels.

If you’re local and would like to be part of a bulk purchase, I have a truck and we can discuss the who, what, where, and when.

One of the attendees who managed to pry out of me that I was a gunnie told me to look up this guy’s YouTube channel: Tiborasaurus Rex

Has anyone else heard of this guy? He has a large series titled Sniper 101 that goes waaaaay deep into the weeds of long distance precision rifle shooting. I would normally just watch and take from it what I needed and move on, but it is close to 90 parts long. It appears that the reason for the quantity of episodes in because of how in depth he goes. I’ve watched a handful of episodes already and haven’t heard any obvious bullshit yet, or really anything I could consider questionable, but I would like to know if any of y’all have heard of him?

Also, watching the first six parts has made me want to build another rifle. It’s killing me that I’m stretched so thin that that would be very difficult right now. Hence the post title.

Anyway, it was a good first meeting with strangers. I didn’t even see an obvious mole or outside agitator in the group.

If you’re local and want to join in on the next meeting, which will be on Grey Man/Grey Woman hiding in plain sight techniques, let me know and I’ll point you to the web page.

Posted in Armageddon | 6 Comments

It would be frightening

Posted on July 28, 2015 by Phil Kadath

To sit on this man’s couch.

Is the field of social psychology biased against political conservatives? There has been intense debate about this question since an informal poll of over 1,000 attendees at a social psychology meeting in 2011 revealed the group to be overwhelmingly liberal.

Formal surveys have produced similar results, showing the ratio of liberals to conservatives in the broader field of psychology is 14-to-1.

Since then, social psychologists have tried to figure out why this imbalance exists.

The primary explanation offered is that the field has an anticonservative bias. I have no doubt that this bias exists, but it’s not strong enough to push people who lean conservative out of the field at the rate they appear to be leaving.

I believe that a less prominent explanation is more compelling: learning about social psychology can make you more liberal. I know about this possibility because it is exactly what happened to me.

And if you read the rest of this article, you’ll notice that he completely believes he is right and everyone who disagree with him are wrong. He goes through a trifecta of of things he believes separate libertarians from liberals (progressives): Gun Control, Environmental Policy, and Treatment for Addiction.

After brushing the surface of these topics, he concludes that only government can make up for human nature, and that if you’re going to have a little government, you may as well have all of it.

I can easily picture him getting into an argument during a session over political topics.

Posted in Evil walks the earth | 2 Comments

On a rainy Sunday afternoon

Posted on July 27, 2015 by Phil Kadath

I set out with a fresh pair of oxy-fuel bottles and a task of finishing my bollard cutting duties.

Task complete!

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As you can see, I even had enough gas left to get my plate steel cut.

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Since we don’t toss much plate steel into the recycle bin at work, I have to improvise by cutting the flanges off of some bent channel steel I rescued from the bin.

When I get home this afternoon I’ll commence with the finish grinding duties. Then I’ll have to get a refill on my O2 bottle before I can punch holes in the plate for pinning the bollards down, and that’ll hopefully happen on Wednesday. Otherwise, it’ll just be the attaching of the plates with some 0.035 MIG wire followed by some coats of white paint next weekend.

Posted in Kewel! | Leave a comment

Have a backup for your backup

Posted on July 26, 2015 by Alaska

…at your backup location.

One of the attractions of our retreat in the hills was water availability. (Jim Rawles clued me in to that a decade ago. Embarrassed to say I hadn’t thought of it before then.)


Water pump on a deep well, check. (Filter’s important, though — it’s a shit-brown tub for you otherwise; believe me, I know).


Year-round fork of the Molelumne at our doorstep, running year-round, double check.

Disconnected-but-easily-restored auxiliary pump system pulling from the river, highly illegal triple check.

That last doesn’t exactly work when the river’s at historic lows, though, as I found out this afternoon.

Ah well, we’re prepared for that too.

Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments

I learned something new today

Posted on July 24, 2015 by Phil Kadath

I did not know that you could be a felon on the run from law enforcement and still get your Social Security checks direct deposited.

The leftosphere is seeing red at the idea that this practice might end.

The large transportation funding bill moving through the Senate would end Social Security benefits for 200,000 people who have an outstanding felony arrest warrant—but have never been convicted by a court, or have a warrant for violating probation or parole, according to disability rights advocates tracking the legislation.

…..

The proposal surfaced in the Senate on Tuesday in a package of amendments (page 949, Section 52303) being added to a transportation bill. The House’s version of the bill only would have extended funds for several months, while the Senate is looking at a six-year proposal—which becomes a vehicle for many other languishing bills.

Slightly different versions of a bill to punish people with outstanding felony warrants, or warrants for violating probation or parole, were introduced in both chambers. Disability and low-income advocates were quick to criticize the proposals, saying that they will punish people who rely on Social Security with little law enforcement benefit.

“It would not help law enforcement secure the arrest of people they are seeking for serious crimes,” explained Justice In Aging. “Law enforcement is already notified of the whereabouts of every person with a warrant for a felony or an alleged violation of probation or parole who turns up in the Social Security Administration (SSA) databases.”

My first point would be that these folks have no problem denying people their fundamental civil rights based simply on an accusation, but do have a problem with denying them the money they’re likely using to evade law enforcement.

Secondly, if the money you’re using to evade law enforcement dries up, it makes it more difficult for you to evade. So the Justice in Aging group definitely does not exist in what a sane person would describe as “reality”.

Posted in Dare To Be Stupid | 2 Comments

Imagine that!

Posted on July 24, 2015 by Phil Kadath

When a UK teenager brings propaganda leaflets promoting palestinian terrorist groups to school, the police want to sit and chat.

And the UK left is apoplectic.

They sure don’t mind putting their noses into every other aspect of a child and his or her family’s life via the schoolroom. All of a sudden, when a teenager looks like they might want to go off and play jihad, they think it’s going too far?

Now, for the record, I don’t like the state using their monopolistic schools to get into the lives of anyone. I’m just pointing out the hypocrisy of the folks who think it’s OK to mine little Suzie or Johnny about mom and dad’s dinner time conversations for racism or other thought crimes, but freak the fuck out when the student is carrying evidence that they think blowing up civilians is hunky dory.

Posted in The Left is Never Right | Leave a comment

Supercharging

Posted on July 23, 2015 by Phil Kadath

Their Debt Engine

California Senate Votes to Open Up Obamacare to 2.5 Million Illegal Residents

State Senator Richard Lara has already moved a bill through the California State Senate that would allow illegal immigrants to buy unsubsidized health insurance in the state’s Obamacare exchange. The state would have to receive a federal waiver from the Obama administration before implementing it.

The bill would also extend coverage to illegal residents under the age of 19 to enroll in California’s fully paid-for Medicaid program.

The Pew Research Center has estimated that there are 2.5 million illegal immigrants in California.

Got to cross that one big item off their bucket list before they kick it, I guess?

Posted in Dare To Be Stupid | 3 Comments