Author Archives: Commander Zero

Incomunicado

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Still screwing around with Bluehost to figure out why my email is all wonky. Practical up shot is that I owe a few of you guys some email. I got your emails just fine, so … messages received. But outgoing is a different story. Will let you know.

ETA: I suppose I should take this opportunity to reply, as discreetly as I can, to a couple emails:

  • Regarding magazines: Yes, please. My mailing address.
  • Holosight: I just picked up the PS2x and like it a lot.
  • Dozen: I’ll be around for Christmas and will let you know when your stuff arrives.
  • Avid Fan: Find help in Galatians 6:11, 15:2, Acts 3:3, Revelations 18:7, Jonah 6:8, John 6:22, Luke 1:7

The Montana boys

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You know, every so often I make a post and people leave comments that mention they are in Montana as well.

So, I’m a bit curious. How many of you folks are actually living in this fine state? You can be as vague as you want, but I am curious to know how many of you reside here in Montana.

I am willing to bet money that some of you have mutual friends with me, and I would not be surprised if I’ve met one or two of you and not known it.

Avoiding freezing to death

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Fall is definitely on the way out. The evenings and early mornings are getting downright chilly. Time to pull the Filsons out of storage and start gearing up for the cold.

I have absolutely no faith that anyone can predict the kind of winter we’re going to have. In fact, I genuinely believe most weather forecasts in Montana should just be a pre-records loop of “And now here’s Ted with the weather. Thanks…might rain, might not. Back to you Steve.”

However, getting caught unprepared is always something to be avoided. And it doesn’t have to be something dramatic. It can be something as stupid as you ducking out of your house without a jacket to just run to your car for a forgotten item, and locking yourself out of the building. People have died in this town from similar experiences. A few years ago some old guy got locked out of his car and froze to death. Maybe he didnt have the strength to bust a window, or maybe he was just reluctant. But either way, he became a statistic because of something as simple as forgetting that his car auto-locked when he got out of it.

I keep a heavy coat and other outwear in the truck, and I have a spare key on the outside of the truck to get into it in a crisis. But I also keep the Winter Module in my Bag O’ Tricks(tm) and that’d definitely make a difference in a pinch. But….the main point here is: don’t go outside without proper clothing even if its only for a few minutes…because life has a way of throwing curve balls at you that will suddenly turn ‘a few minutes’ into an hour and you can lose a lot of toes and fingers to the cold in an hour.

Its that time of year, guys. If you took the sleeping bags and blankets out of the truck over the summer, it’s time to put them back in. And for the love of Crom, raingear in winter is always a good idea. Because cold and wet will kill you a zillion times faster than just cold. Suspenders and a belt, guys.

Ruger fail

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I purchased a couple Ruger MPR 556 rifles when they were on sale a couple months ago. A close friend was having a birthday and I decided to gift them one of these rifles as an upgrade to their current M4gery. So, I open the box and go to grab the rifle so I can do a quick confirmation of the serial number and….

The Magpul pistol grip comes off in my hand.

WTF? Somehow this thing left the factory with no grip screw or grip screw washer. That’s not nice. Fortunately I had other MPR’s to fall back on. I wrote off an email to Ruger politely suggesting that they might wanna have a talk with whoever is supposed to inspect these things before they leave the factory, and to please send me, at no charge, the missing parts.

And now I have to go grab my USMC TM for the M16 and find their checklist of what to inspect and verify when getting a rifle warmed up for service.

I am a bit of a Ruger fanboy, and every manufacturer sometimes has something slip past the goalie, but it’s still a bit alarming when it does. Now I have to detail inspect everything on that rifle to make sure the grip screw wasn’t the only problem.

Still a Ruger fan, though.

Still looking

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I’ve mentioned a few times that I dabble in ‘the market’. A bunch of those investments spat out some dividends Friday and about half of that amount gets funneled into the Land Purchase fund, and the rest gets reinvested. So, as a result, I’ve got a little bit more money to put towards getting a chunk of nowhere.

Unfortunately, this late in the year, it is unlikely I’ll be able to actually go walk any potential acquisitions. I cannot imagine that buying a piece of property that you viewed when it was under a foot of snow is a good idea. It does, however, give you some information on how accessible that place is in the winter, but I need more info than that before plunking down a hundred grand.

While I like western Montana for its mountains, and disdain eastern Montana for it’s flat-as-a-cookie-sheetness ( you can watch your dog run away for three days over there, its so flat) there is lots land between those two extremes. I’ve seen quite a few listings just west of Great Falls in the Cascade area that look interesting, and even some up near Choteau and Augusta, but nothing that ticks off enough boxes on my want list to make a trip there to look. Closer to home, the Helmville and Drummond area have some stuff but now youre up in the 5000′ foot range and snow is a bit of an issue at those higher altitudes, along with a shorter growing time.

I did see a very nice chunk up north of here but it was, unfortunately, on the reservation and I am not touching that with a ten-foot pole. Regular local politics is a clown show, tribal politics (and its racial overtones) are just pure anarchy.

Ii don’t mind waiting until spring to get ‘more serious’ about a purchase. It gives me more time to put together more money, and it also gives me time to explore more possibilities online. However, I’m getting older and I don’t want to be too old to enjoy a piece of land when I finally get it. I really hope that next year is the year I take this step and then can get started on the headache of infrastructure.

Speaking of, I did see a piece of property that was almost a contender. It was in an area that a fire had gone though and wiped out. The trees had started to comeback, and the property already had a well and septic on it, as well as a couple foundations where the buildings used to be. I passed on it for reasons, but here it is if anyone is curious…

Before you say anything, I fully recognize that it is unlikely (but not impossible) that I’ll find a piece of property that is 100% of what I want, and I’m okay with that. I can live with 90-95%. Or if theres an outstanding feature that makes up for a lack of another, I might even be okay with 85%. But I can only really afford to do this once, so I’d like to get as much of what I want as I can on the first go round. So..the hunt continues.

Nationalism as marketing

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You guys may remember a few months back the ‘commercial’ for the Flux Raider that I posted. I enjoyed the whole goes-up-to11 level of ubernationalism. And its always fun to portray the British as foppish sissies. A much shorter, but just as tongue-in-cheek commercial dropped for Black Rifle Coffee.

I genuinely cannot think of any nation that engages in this sort of self-aggrandizement… I think it’s a uniquely American trait. At least, to this all-in-good-fun extent.

And the “1776” brass knucks are a nice touch.

Yup, totally not preparedness related but if it made me laugh I’m pretty sure it’ll make you laugh, and who couldn’t use a chuckle these days, hm?

h/t to the guy playing the redcoat…his inflection and mannerisms belie some actual acting skill.

ETA: While we’re at it….

Canned beef

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I home canned some beef a year or two ago and its been sitting in my kitchen cabinets since. Its good for stews and soups, but theres gotta be more to it than that, right? I mix it with rice and and onions from time to time, but what else can we do?

I went out to breakfast the other day and had a ‘breakfast skillet’ of cubed potatoes, peppers, onions, melted cheese, bacon, ham, and sausage. Man, was it good.

No reason I can’t do that at home, I decided. I threw some bacon grease into my wok pan, cubed up some potatoes, onions, peppers, and went to work. When the potatoes were soft I threw in the peppers and onions, a couple grinds of salt and pepper, a generous bunch of butter, and dumped in the canned roast beef. Broke the beef up a little with my spatula, covered the pan, and let the heat and steam do the work. After a few minutes I threw some Mexican cheese blend on there, covered to melt., and then threw a couple eggs on top. One pepper, one onion, one potato, two eggs, one pint of meat made a lot of food.

About three bucks of ingredients, less the meat. And the beauty of using the home canned meat is that just about any cheap cut of meat, once hit with enough heat and pressure during the canning process, becomes fork tender morsels.

A home run, if I do say so myself.

CostCo solar ‘generator’

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Here’s a pet peeve of mine. I was up at CostCo and beheld this:
It is what is being marketed, wildly inaccurately in my opinion, as a ‘solar generator’. What is this thing, you ask? It’s a battery and some solar panels to recharge it. If anything here is a ‘generator’ it is the solar panels themselves. The battery part of this thing doesnt generate electricity…it stores it. The battery part is no more a ‘generator’ than a 55 gallon blue barrel of water is a ‘portable well’. Not sure why, but this misuse of terminology really grates my grapes.

Ignoring the inaccurate advertising, is this thing worth having? Maybe. Honestly, I’m more interested in the batter/inverter unit itself than I am the panels. In addition to being able to be charged by the panels at what I am guessing is a fairly slow rate, it has plug-ins to allow recharging from household (or generator) current.

Something like this probably has some merit for a very low-draw scenario…running LED lights or maybe powering a radio. While I’m sure the battery is up to more demanding tasks when fully charged, its the ability to recharge completely and in a timely manner off the kinda small panels that I’m curious about.

There are no shortage of ‘battery in a box’ products out there. While I love a turn-key solution as much as the next guy I think that I’d prefer to fab up my own with premium components for longevity and increased function. But…interesting to see this at CostCo. First freeze driers, now these. Someone at CostCo purchasing is wearing some of our brand of tinfoil, methinks.