Year: 2015

Coping: Life at the “End of the String” ElectriPrepping

Real Life Prepping Time!  This morning’s column will be published in sections due to power outages in our area.

The power went off (inconveniently) just as I was sitting down to write this morning’s column which was going to focus on our pals Gaye and Sheldon (Gaye writes www.backdoorsurvival.com) who are taking their ham radio tests this weekend.  I wrote an article for Gaye on programming their Baofeng HandyTalkies using CHIRP software.  It can be read over here.

As you may remember, UrbanSurvival is solar powered.  Out first big investment came in 2007 and that means our battery bank (8 large golf cart batteries) is aging.  The second 8 aren’t far behind.  We keep it up with regular watering, but with the air conditioning on and some other decent loads, battery string #1 decided to give up the ghost about half way through the first run-through on writing this column.

Since the SuperComputer is on a great big backup, I didn’t worry about it – which goes to show you who the idiot is.

Never to be undone, though, I took a laptop (the one from my alternate work station in the house) and fired it up.

Things I’d thought through seem to be holding together for now, but here are some gotchas to consider.

1.  Will I have coffee?

I lucked out on this.  I’d just made 8 cups in the machine, so no issues there.  Had I not, it would had added 20 minutes to fire up the BBQ and set about doing coffee the old-fashioned way.

2.;  Will I have food?

No problems there:  Breakfast lately has been a handful of vitamins and supplements – along with exactly three almonds.

This morning – screw it – a bag of Oberto Teriyaki beef jerky and more coffee.

3.  Will I have Internet?

Yes – and no. 

Yes, the satellite system is up (Excede) but the DSL on one phone line is down (see earlier note about one inverter stack going offline) and the other is in the house for convenience.  So we’re down to one on-ramp to the net and one string of batteries.

Since I don’t know a) how long before power comes back on and b) I don’t want to run out to the power center and keep looking at meters, I will just update this periodically until 6:30.

4.  Is this an end of the world EMP event?

No.  But it certainly does a good job of cranking up the brain cells and gets me back to my marine electrical days when systems that are robust and dependable were (and are) the order of the day.

I don’t like being on emergency power, but that’s where we are this morning.

Sort of like Universe is handing us a pop quiz about survival planning.

Everything worked – and even with an inconvenient backup failing (which means a small fortunate into fresh batteries) it will means that we persisted and prevailed…a good thing and I am sure there’s a lesson in here somewhere…

What lessons, exactly?

1.  When you have older golf cart batteries, you need to periodically do discharge tests and replace them preemptively. I didn’t  because it’s a big expense.  There are a total of 16 golf carts and that can put a hole in the party & entertainment budget for months.

2.  We did the right thing having all three modems/networks are on different power sources.  HOUSEDSL is on mains power.  WILDBLUE is on inverter 2 and battery string 2, WESTELL is on inverter 1/battery string 1.

WILDBLUE is the one that’s up this morning and has survived so far.  Point is, where you need ultra high reliability, and the cost isn’t too bad, spread your bets around so you have power when and where you need it.

3.  Have lots of extension cords and keep them in good repair.

If the power isn’t on in a reasonable time, say 10 AM, or so, by which time the solar should be putting out decent power, we will run an extension from the power center to the fridge in the house.  The freezer is out in the storage room. 

4.  How is the propane?

No worries there!  I just a couple of weeks ago filled up two twenty pounders and a forty pounder.  So that would be enough to make coffee for a while. 

After the small bottles of propane are done, we have 400 gallons of the stuff in our big tank.  And with two rocket stoves behind that, we will not want for heat or fire.

5.  Batteries and flashlights?

We have a place that serves as a bar when company comes over.  (Oilman 2 came by a month or two back, for example).  But when there’s no company around, that’s where all of our flashlights live.

Someone you don’t appreciate when the power goes out – if you haven’t been through it for a while is…

a.  Using the bathroom is a bit different when done by flashlight.

b.  Doing dishes by flashlight is different – and you’ll see the value of solid  high level interior lighting in short order.

c.  Finding things (around the house, like a bag of beef jerky from the prep kit) is a lot easier with light than without.

6.  What about Wireless Accessories

Oh, yeah…THEM!

I came out this morning, turned on SuperComputer and actually believed the outage may have been EMP because a keyboard was on the fritz.  Nope.  Just a low battery.  We’ve become huge faces of the ultra long-life lithium batteries, with apologies to native people of Bolivia.

We always have a bunch on hand.  Amazon has the Energizer Ultimate Lithium AA Size Batteries – 20 Pack for about $35-bucks, which is what’s running the keyboard again.

Just in the past few minutes, the power came on again.  Long enough to run the a/c unit at the house for five minutes.  But then it went off again.

Whatever the problem is, it’s confounding the power crews.

7. When should we start the generator?

Ah…thought about that.  It has diesel in it and is (more or less) ready to go.  (power just came on, maybe it will stay up this time?)

The problem with the generator is that it is a PITA to set up and run.  One thing I’ve been thinking about is getting one of those 10 kW power take off units for the Kubota.

If you’re a city slicker, the PTO is the shaft on the tail end of a tractor that various farm implements plug into.

And that gets us to the problem with farm PTO units.  I don’t know when the last time you pulled a piece of power equipment off a tractor, but it verges on real work.

First, you have to put the tractor where you want the piece of equipment dropped.  Then, you might want to put some 4X4 blocking under it, so it doesn’t go all the way to the ground.  Makes hook up next time a bit easier.

Then you get on the shaft, which has a spring loaded collar on it – it’s greasy and filthy or you haven’t been working your tractor.  Once the PTO shaft is loose, you can tie it up or block in place because when you put the equipment back on the tractor, it’s a pain to try and get things aligned just so.

Then off come three hitch pins big as your thumb and you finally have a “free tractor.”

Reverse the process at the next piece of equipment, backing up just so will take a minute, and then go through the same spasms of effort and flood of curse words all over again.

You should now be on the verge of understanding why I haven’t invested the dough for a tractor PTO driven generator.  They aren’t cheap.  Amazon has the PTO Generator Kit 10 kW (10,000 Watt) 3 Point Carrier and PTO Shaft Drive Line Included listed for a tad over $2,026.

Northern Tool has a 13 kW generator down the page over here for $1,500, but that’s before you get a shaft, mounting kit, or a trailer to drag the thing around on.

Most people (unfarmerly types, if that’s a word) don’t appreciate that when a PTO is pushing out 10-13 kW of power there’s a fair bit of torque involved, so you can just let the genset flop around on the ground.  Wide base or mobile mountain is mandatory and I like the look of the Amazon unit that mounts on a three point rig, because that is designed to pick up the torque issue. 

Not that you’d see a trailer flop around, but I’ve never figured out just how many foot pounds of torque is involved when the house A/C unit kicks on.  It’s a big starting load  because our 6 kW diesel whines, complains, belches out black smoke and just barely won’t get the job done.

A 7-8 kW unit would work, but at long as we’re talking checkbooks and dreams, how about a 10-13 kW unit for a little safety margin?

Also on this kind of generator solution, be ready to pay an electrician ($500_) labor to hook up a transfer switch ($600-$1,000) and then get the right cables to power everything up according to Hoyle.

Even if we popped for the dough, here’s the problem:  We would be in the unenviable position of trying to figure out when to take off the bush hog (a thrashing mower we use all the time…think of it as a five food WeedWhacker).  Doing this kind of labor at night in the rain (invariably when it’s needed) is just not my cuppa tea.

Since we’re having this impromptu refresher on prepping for power outages,  I have to give you my speech about backfeeding and how dangerous that is.

If you EVER hook up a generator in an emergency situation, make triple-damn sure you have isolated your home, ranch, office, or whatever, from the Grid.  In other words, pull the main breakers so you CAN NOT FEED POWER BACK DOWN THE LINE.

This is critical.  BACKFEEDING KILLS LINEMEN!

It’s also why I love the Outback Grid Interactive system we chose almost 10 years ago.  The beauty of it is that when the grid fails, the Outback system physically disconnects from the line with a relay and that makes backfeeding impossible.

I’ve set ours up so that even when the power comes back up, it will wait a full minute for power to come back on.  I want it to sniff the incoming power really well, and make sure that it’s not just a bump of wires as linemen do their work.

Well, there we have it.

A column on emergency power and I didn’t even plan for it.  The mains power came up about two minutes ago, the inverter/chargers are now refilling the battery banks, and Mr.

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Data, Depression, Discourse, and Decepticons

Quadruple D’s this morning:  Let’s start off with the data part which deals with the Census report on housing starts:

“BUILDING PERMITS
Privately-owned housing units authorized by building permits in March were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,039,000. This is
5.7 percent (±2.0%) below the revised February rate of 1,102,000, but is 2.9 percent (±0.9%) above the March 2014 estimate of
1,010,000.
Single-family authorizations in March were at a rate of 636,000; this is 2.1 percent (±0.9%) above the revised February figure of
623,000. Authorizations of units in buildings with five units or more were at a rate of 378,000 in March.
HOUSING STARTS
Privately-owned housing starts in March were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 926,000. This is 2.0 percent (±13.0%)* above the
revised February estimate of 908,000, but is 2.5 percent (±11.5%)* below the March 2014 rate of 950,000.
Single-family housing starts in March were at a rate of 618,000; this is 4.4 percent (±12.3%)* above the revised February figure of
592,000. The March rate for units in buildings with five units or more was 287,000.
HOUSING COMPLETIONS
Privately-owned housing completions in March were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 823,000. This is 3.9 percent (±10.4%)*
below the revised February estimate of 856,000 and is 5.8 percent (±10.2%)* below the March 2014 rate of 874,000.

There are almost ALWAYS more permits than starts so the real YoY numbers – actual starts and actual completions, are where the disruptive technology bites – which I will explain in a moment.. 

Usually in a “recovery” housing is rolling by now, but what are you reading, hmmmm?  The simple answer is housing is under pressure – and that deserves some deeper thought:

The problems of housing are manifold.  Ure’s Notes shows why housing isn’t going anywhere fast as a number of bullet points:

    • People don’t have enough disposable income to let oodles of people buy new homes.
    • Thanks to the last housing bubble, people have decided not being in debt up  to Ure ass is a smart thing, not dumb.
    • At some point, someone besides you-know-who will figure out that the LBGT movement is a very good approximation of a disruptive technology.  How so?  Think about it:  People once single by gender choice can now cohab, get tax breaks, and halve housing cost.  Out the other end (if you’ll pardon the ill-advised  pun) there are no kids, so who needs schools…
    • And besides, even with kiddies, with home schooling and a PC who needs schools, and so who needs to move to….  (rinse, repeat and let’s save the forests while we’re at it…maybe Ted and Jane can buy up some more ranch land…)

    Well, you kinda see how all this piles up.  Now toss in a double handful of job insecurity because gubmint is just too damn dumb to demand technology impact statements, and then here come the robots to do everything and Uretopia is almost here.

    More, or less….

    Depression

    And this gets us to the second headliner this morning:  Depression and in deflation.  We label tomorrow Prices and Anagram day because Consumer Prices will be our lead item tomorrow and we can hardly wait for my favorite economic anagram at 10 AM Eastern tomorrow, the LEI – also known as leading economic indicators.

    But in the spirit of Depression, here are a few you can ponder.

    First, my consigliore is absolutely hysterical about the WSJ story about how “ Tumbling Interest Rates in Europe Leaves Some Banks Owing Money on Loans to Borrowers– Subzero rates have put some lenders in an inconceivable position.”

    Yeah, I’d say that’s a nice Depression marker.  Banks paying people, in effect, to keep their loans.

    Other samplings:

    UK narrowly misses deflation, price growth steady but let’s check in a month or three…

    Greece deflation slows, but doesn’t stop as prices fall 2.1% YoY in March 2015 …

    And in Forbes: Excellent News; The Next Recession Could Bring Wage Deflation

    Since the idea of working as hard – or harder – for less, is depressing, we’ll call this section self-evident.

    Discourse (De Plane!  De Plane!)

    With our airplane in annual maintenance, things of a skyward nature have my attention.  Especially when a couple of wing bracket attach point rivets are being updated to Jo-bolts in compliance with an airworthiness directive (AD).

    So when the search area for MH-370 is about to be doubled because no wreckage has been found yet, I prefer to cast the whole search in the light of what happens around here when I misplace the tractor keys.

    Seems like everything is in the last place you look, and it may work out that way for 777’s. Not just car keys.

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    Coping: With Karesansui

    Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve mentioned our latest “adventure in odd/transporting home design.”

    Our latest project has been to transform the area between the house and t’other building which houses the shop/office/Panama’s apartment into something different.

    The hard part was figuring out the right thought model.

    There are a couple of large trees on hand.  while it would be tempting to hack them down and turn the area into a huge greenhouse, that seemed like too much work.  Putting in a pool (and using it as a heat sink, crossed my mind, too.

    But in the end, a couple of pea gravel loads from John the Dump Truck Guy, seemed best, so we (mostly Elaine) tore out the odd plant that had taken root and in came the landscape cloth and then 3-4 inches of pea gravel.

    And it looked OK, except something was missing.  What might that be?

    The answer was some research into Japanese rock gardens.  They are NOT maintenance-free.  But damn they look good.

    So I’ve spent some time over on this site, looking at the various approaches.  And, unbeknownst to me, Panama built a big wooden rake – about 2 1/2 fee wide – with teeth about every 3-inches or so.

    Turns out our space was suitable for hiraniwa – flat Japanese rock garden. Although in size and sense of place, it’s more like the karesansui description (of dry rock gardens).

    We may change it up a bit:  The Japanese rock gardens usually have a very few large rocks which act as visual focal points…but we’ve decide to use an old stump-root, or something like that which might be round on the property.  Or, I might weld up an oilrig sculpture and stick it in the gravel – a kind of statement about oil and what’s pending in the South China See where Japan and China have competing claims over oil resource under water.

    Panama has a pretty nice “balanced art piece” out in front of his windows made out of balanced cedar logs.  Kind of like a big mobile jutting up from the ground. 

    Elaine’s drifted into the spirit of this too; she’s carefully raking circles around the bases of the trees.

    In a more controlled environment (like a city) we would have used sand (traditional) but because of the size of the area (35×50, roughly) we used pea gravel.  The other reason on the pea gravel is because I can take a leaf blower to it; something you can’t do with sand.

    Visually, the effect of seeing pea gravel at 30-feet feels like sand at 10…so we shall see how it works over time.

    Fun to rake and play in…sort of like an adult sandbox.  Not terribly expensive and it doesn’t kick up dirt and dust from the mower. 

    Rocks don’t generally need fertilizer and special handling…but this being where we are in human history, I’m sure one of these days a specialized tool (besides a few rakes) will show up on the net.  We’ll be either buyers or toolmakers when they do.

    Membership in the North American Japanese Garden Association is something we’re pondering, too.  Their website (here)  is worth looking at as some really wonderful gardens go scrolling by on their header.

    Membership is $85 for a basic/basic but $150 to get their Journal.  Depending on how important your “outdoor vibe” is, it’s better than just tossing a few railroad times and sod in and calling that landscaping.

    Japan Woodworker has a good assortment of green and white pruning paste and other garden supplies over here.  Training wires for your Bonsai, perhaps?

    More practically, our best regards to Frank Tashiro of Tashiro Hardware in Seattle who turned 93 in January.  A few of us early Seattleites (who were there before California moved north) can remember Tashiro Hardware’s early days, just south of “Muscatel Meadows” south of the King County Courthouse.

    Japanese Economics

    Reader asked this one:

    “with the strong dollar, is it time to buy a Japanese car?

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    V.O.D. – Secret to Great Investments?

    Virtualization of Desires is a pretty damn interesting topic:  What it means, simply, is that the objects of human desires in the bricks and mortar period of industrialization be beginning to fade.

    Not that the “new age” will roll in overnight (as Elon Musk just found out); there are bumps in technology.  But what it drags behind it is a transition period that we’re fast approaching defined as when humans are no longer required to do much “work” – and so economics will have to adjust by coming up with a different basis of compensating people.

    This morning, a look at what the charts are hinting as, where all this virtualization leads, and a call for a technology equivalent of the Environmental Impact Statement.  Because until we get our economic plans in order and until government adjusts, the Singularity might become synonymous with Collapse.

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    Auto Sales Save The Economy! (again)

    But first, an off topic remark or three…

    My consigliore,  just back from a hard week of skiing in Montana, bashed me good on the phone yesterday by pointing out that a major decline of exports doesn’t necessarily mean collapse of the GDP…and he was a) better rested, b) more caffeinated, and c) right.

    After we kicked around the likely date for the Big West Coast earthquake I dreamed about back in January, he let on that in his scans of the net, there’s been an uptick in tsunami talk.  Showing up in prophecy and dream boards and worth noting.  And you do know what happens Saturday, right?

    109th anniversary of the major quake in 1906 that devastated the city by the bay.  My pal then reminded me that there was also an 8.2 that year in Valparaiso, Chile.

    So keep an eye on the volcanoes which are in uptick mode:  Causing smoke and ash at increased levels on the Russian Kamchatka Peninsula now, and last month the one down in Chile that seems to percolate as a quake precedent, popped off, as well.

    Yet another possible precursor:  150 dolphins that beached in the past week in Japan have mostly died.  Australia pilot whales worth watching, too.

    Just something to be aware of while you make a fortune on Wall St.  Or, holding up banks if you’re ethically inclined.

    —

    Which gets us to this morning’s data sets:

    PPI first because it’s boring – but if you can read these far, you’ll make it through the rest of the column:

    “The Producer Price Index for final demand increased 0.2 percent in March, seasonally adjusted, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Final demand prices moved down 0.5 percent in February and 0.8 percent in January. On an unadjusted basis, the index for final demand decreased 0.8 percent for the 12 months ended in March. (See table A.) In March, more than half of the rise in final demand prices can be attributed to a 0.3-percent advance in the index for final demand goods. Prices for final demand services moved up 0.1 percent. Within intermediate demand, prices for processed goods edged down 0.1 percent, the index for unprocessed goods dropped 1.7 percent, and prices for services rose 0.2 percent.

    Final demand goods: The index for final demand goods moved up 0.3 percent in March following eight consecutive decreases. A major factor in the advance was prices for final demand energy, which rose 1.5 percent. The index for final demand goods less foods and energy increased 0.2 percent in March.

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    Coping: With Our Unruly Board of Directors

    Ask a simple question and oh, do the answers get complicated.

    But since you (and both of our other readers) were appointed to our new Board of Directors Monday, we have seen lots of good – mind expanding – ideas to deal with our June bug problem.

    If you just got out of rehab and missed it, the airplane hangar is over-run with June bugs, but how to deal with them is what’s on the table.

    First, Ures truly was reprimanded by the BOD for being too quick to use off-the-shelf pesticides.  They work, they’re quick and all the labels promise.  But they are not necessarily good for the earth and that was the main complaint.

    I don’t care about killing the critters – repelling them would be fine and its here the Board’s guidance gets a bit wonky.

    Other than the moth balls joke, the best suggestion was that we order some peppermint oil (done) and see how that works.  So I ordered 16 oz Peppermint Essential Oil (100% Pure & Uncut) – GreenHealth which will set us back a $35 bill, which wasn’t planned.

    The suggested use would be to mix with water and spray along the whole perimeter and keep them out that way.

    Apparently, the little critters don’t like the smell and are put off to the point of going elsewhere.

    But there were other home remedies offered, including putting a mixture of oils, garlic cloves and cayenne pepper all around, but that didn’t seem like a good idea, at all.  We figured it would smell like we just flew in from Italy, or something.

    Peppermint oil supposedly works well as a pest repellant.   We’ll find out this week, I suppose.

    A dissenting group of the Board offered a different approach: get an animal.

    A few suggested rats or mice, and yet more voted for a cat.  And here’s a particularly grotesque one for you (weak stomach alert!):

    Take a course in STALKING MICE,and a follow up 3 course meal of rat,cat and dog for dinner -by your local china town restaurant ,,just joking of course ,a sick joke neither the less, just joking, except that is what people did during the last depression

    Yeah…we seem to forget that during the last Depression people ate all kinds of other foods.  I remember (being not exactly rich when I was young) eating horse meat.

    And this gets us sidetracked on a different kind of discussion:  If you were hungry and needed some protein, how far exactly would you go to eat?

    I know that many cultures eat rat and some eat large prairie dog kinds of critters (Mongolia if I remember)  and yes, one of our prepping options around here is a .22 with scope to have a kind of last-gasp option with things like raccoons, possums and squirrels.

    Speaking of which…You saw the story about the Florida man being warned about stalking nuisance squirrels?

    I know this is a little off-track but I’m burning daylight until the peppermint oil gets here and we won’t know until I do some field testing Friday.

    So in the meantime, our first board meeting has been a rousing success.

    It’s given me a multi-zillion dollar idea for a new book. I’m going to title it:

    The So Gross You’ll NEVER want to Eat Again Diet.

    It will be filled with gross tips on what people eat when times get tough.  Perhaps a whole chapter on the Donner Party and then selected reads from Upton Sinclair.  I remember losing a pound, or two, when I read The Jungle which (if you forgot) was about the packing houses in Chicago.

    Given the deterioration in American society, I figure this can’t help but be a best-selling.  Just remember, though if you start receiving loads of invitations over to dinner – especially if you’ve been power lifting and bulking up at the gym to be sure and find out what’s on the menu.

    Like that old Twilight Zone episode – “To Serve Man” – know what I mean?

    Let me know how breakfast was… think I’m gonna pass!

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    Mr. Ure’s Free Campaign Advice

    First: I won’t dignify the candidate’s run for the White House by repeating her name.  From here to the end of primary season, I’ll refer only to “She of whom we don’t speak.”  [SOWWDS}

    If SOWWDS wants an ad. she can buy it.

    But I will offer some free campaign advice:  Change ad logos.

    The one rolled out Sunday – which showed up uninvited in my email – begging for money, no less – is a fine example  of political spam.

    What’s more, it’s easily spoofed by anyone with PowerPoint handy – as you can see.

    An arrow pointed sideways?  Isn’t America supposed to be “up”?  Maybe our lone remaining democratic reader will disagree and can explain it to us.  But the majority around here (you and me) are tired of sideways, same-old, and do-over richy-rich aristocrats who should have been put out to pasture long ago.

    The second bit of free advice is double-check your work.

    Says over in this report that “Clinton’s press office left an embarrassing typo in its press announcement, saying that she had ‘fought children and families all her career’. 

    Nice move.  Around here we call that “truth in advertising.”  Take it from the world leader in typos.  Can’t run a campaign?  Then can’t run a country, I figure.

    Third – and final suggestion for this morning:  Any time a multigazillionaire lawyer uses phrases like “everyday Americans” sit on your wallet.

    Related:

    From our news analyst in Winnipeg, which may be the last remaining rational spot on the planet:

    Dear Mr.

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    Coping: Everyone Needs a “Board of Directors”

    Best I can remember, the first time I heard the phrase was at the kitchen/dinner table at about age 8, or so.

    My mom had some question or other, and pappy didn’t have an answer.  “I’ll ask the Board of Directors tonight at work.”

    We were eating at 10-minutes to five so pappy could leave the house by 5:15 and drive the 20 minutes, or so, up to the fire house in West Seattle.  Engine 37 is at the highest point in the city.

    A little trivia here:  The reason fire houses were always built at the tops of hills if possible, was so the horses could have an easy – and fast – run downhill to a fire.  Most people don’t know that one – not sure if it’s in Trivial Pursuit, or not.

    Anyway, pappy was almost always early for roll-call, but he always scheduled enough time for a bridge opening.  The high level West Seattle Bridge hadn’t been built yet.

    The board of directors were the other firemen on his crew.  Fire departments in big cities had different shift, but they followed a paramilitary org chart; platoons, battalions, and such.  And pappy’s “board of directors” was the crew he worked with.  There wasn’t a lot of turnover in platoons.

    Gather any three or four firemen, you could get an answer to just about anything, and while washing hose, cleaning up after drills or training, it was always good to have a fresh topic to kick around. Made the work go faster.

    My mother’s question – and don’t hold me to this – was about some obscure aspect of gardening, if memory holds.      

    Joe had come up a street-smart Italian, Dave was the high-roller who owned a 50-foot boat, and I forget some of the other fellas.  But they all referred to pappy as “the encyclopedia.” He just didn’t know gardening well, having advised me from birth “Never put in a bigger garden than your wife can take care of…”

    It wasn’t the answer that mattered in this case.  It was the form of decision-making that mattered.  One I’ve never forgotten.  Everyone needs a “board of directors.”

    The concept has been around forever.  Some called it a “master mind group” in the early days of the PMA (positive mental attitude) movement, which was in some ways a precursor to the prepper movement.

    When you look at most successful people, you’ll find most of them have a “board of directors” or master mind group.  Some, especially in politics, just get called the “inner circle.” If you’re a drug dealer, it’s your posse, and so on.

    Without further delay, I have an important announcement to make.

    YOU have just been appointed to my personal board of directors. 

    As luck would have it, there’s a thorny problem that is bugging me (in a literal sense as you’ll see):  We are being over-run by June bugs down at the hangar this year.

    Oh, I’ve sprayed.  Even got the security light turned off.  But there’s some magic about my hangar in particular that had become incredibly attractive to June bugs. 

    Since I spray the place religiously – and since we don’t live in the space – I took the electric leaf blower down Sunday and dispatched 5,000 of them – carcasses-  back out onto the grass from whence they came.

    But they keep coming back.

    In fact, by the time I was done on one side of the taxiway, the hardy (*Boston marathoner type) bugs were already headed back to the finish line inside the hangar.  Invisible to Ures truly.

    So your first problem has a Board Member for you is to figure out how to solve the problem.  Selling the airplane or moving to a different hangar are off the table.  The poisons work, but the smell of dead June bugs is not particularly nice.

    It eats about 80-minutes a week says my time log. Get the blower, drive to airport, blow out hangar, lock up, 10-minutes for social chit-chat at the airport office, and then back out to our place..

    The mechanic, who’s doing the annual maintenance check in the hangar presently complains about running over them with this creeper.  I expect he’ll ding me a bit on the bill, too, since it’s no fun to pick up a June bug instead of the 10-40 screw for an inspection cover. 

    Ideally, someone would come up with a simple answer for something to repel them.  I’ve thought about a mothball at opposite corners of the hangar, but I don’t know if they’re legal anymore.

    No trap suggestions, though.  I don’t want to have another project like emptying traps every day or three.

    Send me an email – and ask all your friends, too, since I assume you already have an informal board of directors yourself. 

    “What repels June bugs?”

    By the way, Wikipedia reports mothballs do, indeed, have some risk to them:

    The US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has determined that 1,4-dichlorobenzene “may reasonably be anticipated to be a carcinogen“. This has been indicated by animal studies, although a full-scale human study has not been done.[8] The National Toxicology Program (NTP), the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), and the state of California consider 1,4-dichlorobenzene to be a carcinogen.[9]

    Exposure to naphthalene mothballs can cause acute haemolysis (anemia) in people with glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency.[10] IARC classifies naphthalene as possibly carcinogenic to humans and animals (see also Group 2B).[11] IARC points out that acute exposure causes cataracts in humans, rats, rabbits, and mice. Chronic exposure to naphthalene vapors is reported to also cause cataracts and retinal hemorrhage.[12] Under California’s Proposition 65, naphthalene is listed as “known to the State to cause cancer”.[13]

    Research at the University of Colorado at Boulder revealed a probable mechanism for the carcinogenic effects of mothballs and some types of air fresheners.[14][15]

    Mothballs are a neurotoxin – especially those made of 1,4-dichlorobenzene – and need to be treated as such. They have been used for solvent abuse, causing a variety of neurotoxic effects.[16][17]

    Mothballs and other products containing naphthalene have been banned within the EU since 2008.[18][3]

    Toxin-free alternatives to control clothes moths include freezing, dry cleaning, washing in hot water, or thorough vacuum cleaning.[19][20] Camphor is no longer recommended as a moth repellent, due to its toxicity.

    I’ve thought about cedar oil as an alternative, but I’m not sure if that wouldn’t just mask the smell of dead bugs better. And, it ain’t cheap.

    So send them answer along pronto.  Operators are standing by, this is a free call, this is a special offer, ends soon.

    Oh, and congrats on your appointment to the Board of Directors.  I did mention, I hope, that this is a non-profit and no liability protection for board members is offered?

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    Prepping for a Nuclear Nightmare

    Having covered one nightmare scenario for the future in Wednesday’s Peoplenomics – The drought impacting Mexico and Central America gets much worse and 40-million people simply walk to the US border – we might as well put our the Stephen King hat one more time this week with a look at potential nuclear disasters.

    Don’t get me wrong:  I love nuclear power.   But I don’t like what it does when it breaks, the risk of terrorism shows up, or various and assorted governments (and other nutters) get their hands on assorted dial-a-yield technologies.  That this hardware is still out there somewhere has been an established fact since the breakdown of the Former Soviet Union as the Cockburn and Cockburn classic One Point Safe documented during the loss of administrative inventory control of things like MIRV warheads during the Soviet version of Collapse of Empire.

    Before we have a (bad pun alert) “rad” conversation about how to prep for this next set of nasty’s we’ll scan the news headlines and see what’s shaking.

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    The Money Printing Festival Keeps Getting Crazier

    Remember in yesterday’s column how I told you I would have a stiff drink at the ready and be on the edge of my Lazy Man recliner waiting for the Fed’s latest money printing confessional due out in the weekly H.6 money stocks report?

    Well, NSS, it was worse than I thought.  On a three months annualized basis, M1 is exploding at 16% and M2 is printing blasting away at 9%.

    But as bad as these are, the monthly change rate – when you annualize it – works out to?

    M1 = 29.8%  and M2 = 13%.  Monthly change, annualized.

    Yee gads!  The hidden Weimar is here. 

    One of our readers, obviously a genius, sent along a fine explanation which I will have to paraphrase because his original is lost somewhere in my 6-terabyte wasteland. 

    The real deal is that the Fed is not gong to raise rates.  For the past several years they have been saying a rate hike is just six months off.  but see how it never happens?  It CAN’T happen.

    The reason the fed will NEVER be able to raise rates is the instant they do, the whole compounded national debt balloon will pop and America will be bankrupt on the spot.

    So they really have driven us into a box canyon and there’s no way for the herd to get out…

    So yes, that IS (take it to the bank) the hard reality  that no one seems to be wanting to talk about.

    It also underscores how BAD DEFLATION IS RUNNING.  Just in general terms, if M2 is going up 9% and reported consumer inflation is going up somewhere between 0 and 2% (toss a dart, it doesn’t effing matter) where is the other missing money going?

    Into the rat hole of dark pools of capital.

    The rich are piling up money left and right because falling interest rates have driving them into cash accumulation mode and it’s going to blow up the country – like it does in every Great Depression.

    Here’s why:  When I graduated from high school, I dreamed of making a million dollars:  That would give me $70,000 a year income for life, I figured, with interest rates running 7%.  After I made a million dollars in a 7-year period “playing the game well” I noticed something was wrong.

    With inflation missing in action (despite the Fed’s printing festival), care to guess how much money you’d need salted away to get $70.000 a year of income at 0.5% interest – which you’d be lucky to find?  (and without drawing down capital?)

    $14-million!

    Sadly, this is all true and it’s only a matter of how long it will take the rest of the country to wake up to the -ugly as sin- economic reality.

    Oh, sure, when it happens, everyone will come back to the UrbanSurvival campfire,. pull up a rock and exclaim “Why, no one saw it coming!”  And, as always, they’d be wrong.

    The ONLY game in town is estimating how high this steaming lump of shit can get stacked on made-up money before it all comes down in a putrid heap.

    I’m guessing we could have as long as three more years.  The market ran up 5.6 times its starting level from its 1921 lows to the 1929 high.

    Since the 2009 lows, 6,627 on the Dow roughly, you can run the numbers out and see we’re only about 2/3rds of the way to completely bazitzu crazy. 

    Which is why you can buy 50 new cars with zero percent down, while we all sit in the Roaring Twenties replay and kid ourselves about what geniuses we are at picking the right investments.

    The question isn’t whether you’re nuts…only whether you’ll be a winner or loser when “all comes down.”

    Shall we move on to brighter topics?

    The Slow Collapse of Globalism

    It’s coming – it’s just that the “free traders” don’t see it yet.  We – unburdened by million, minions, and a Gulfstream – are able to see things a bit more clearly.

    Take this morning’s just release report on import/export prices.  They argue that thinks are far from Hunky and Dory Land:

    “Year on year export prices are down 6.7% and import prices are down 10.5% year on year.”

    Another sign of dropping international trade is the drop in the Baltic Dry Index – which (yet again) continues stuck at levels not seen since the 2009 market lows.

    Then there was this part of the Retail Trade numbers – inventory is building: And pardon the bad highlighter but you see how inventory tends to build before crap hits the fan?

    This is no guarantee that trouble is on the way.

    It’s already here – circling the block.  You just don’t see it yet.

    Doesn’t matter to the market – futures are up.  Here, have some free money kid , and shut up.

    No Wreck on the Freeway?

    I know how important it is for gawker nation to slow down and look at video of breaking news.  So the Blaze had some links to the tornados in the upper Midwest overnight that should burn half a cup of coffee’s worth.

    It’s OK, no one works on Fridays any more.

    So Much for an Iran Deal

    Yes, the Supreme Leader of Iran says the White House is lying and that we have devilish intentions toward Iran.

    Could it be that the more centrifuges are spun up, the greater the odds that nuclear materials will be used for something other than keeping the lights on? Naw….

    Madness on Bordering

    While a man popped in Aridzona has been deported to Mexico 20 times, we’re also reading how another human wave of 40,000 kids is on the way.

    As we reported for our Peoplenomics™ readers recently, the drought which is getting so much press in the USA is actually WORSE in Mexico so you ain’t seen nothing yet on border crossings.

    The Price of Freedom

    …to roam the internet is likely to be going up, figures this report.  The recent FCC decision/power grab means there may be higher fees coming to support rural phone improvements. 

    When can I get fiber out here in the outback?   Right now it’s a fog mirror vs. fiber race – rural phone providers are in no hurry to speed up the net in the hinterlands…but like so many government programs it’s big on talk and tax, yet slow to actually change things here in fly-over country.

    If I could actually get a due-by date on 10 MIPS I wouldn’t mind the Universal Service Fee but it’s mostly not helping us a bit.  If you live in a big city, it’s JAT (just another tax).

    It’s a trade off, likely to be arranged by gubmint:  Ure doesn’t get fiber, you don’t get to keep your money.  That is the game, right?

    Is She Really?

    Hillary Clinton is set to announce on Sunday.  In truth she’s been running for the White House a lot longer – probably since marrying Bill.

    As one radio bloviator noted, this signifies the great change from race being the hot ticket in politics to gender coming out for 2016.  Man-haters of the world unite!

    Gridding for Trouble

    From “warhammer”:

    George,

    The U.S. national power grid’s vulnerability has been a poorly kept secret for at least two decades:

    <http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2015/04/08/power-grids-failing-infrastructure-at-risk-of-cyberattack/?intcmp=latestnews>

    The backbone of America’s critical national infrastructure, the grid enables virtually all communication, commerce, heating, cooling and lighting. Taking it down would be crippling.

    A wise adversary would diligently work to exploit any weakness or dependency in the grid. Taking down any aspect of the grid could cause serious disaster readiness delays, not to mention degraded military emergency action responses.

    It seems the seriousness of these infrastructure vulnerabilities, particularly to a surprise EMP attack, is behind the decision to reactivate the Cheyenne Mountain Complex in Colorado Springs.

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    Coping: With a Time and People Study

    The notion that humans are little more than self-programming computers (programmed by parents, society, and social media) may have some validity.  We bump into others and situation that we can add to our programming, or not.  With this in mind…

    I had an odd experience at the store earlier this week that I’ve been meaning to mention to you.

    I’d done a fair bit of shopping, but there was nothing frozen in the grocery cart, so I was fairly mellow about it and not in my usual 10 MPH over /blood pressure rising A mode.

    With nothing but the working end of a shovel and rake waiting at home, I decided to watch people and try to enjoy them – much as you’d do on a trip to the zoo.

    I knew there was something wrong with the checkout line I picked.  There was no one in it, and the checker was standing with an impatient look, hands on her hips.  Her customer (a little overfed and not sharply dressed)  was also fidgeting, rummaging through her purse and judging by the lines around us, I figured this had been going on for 5-minutes of so.

    “Your computer down?” I asked as cheerfully as I could.

    “No, we’re just waiting for change.”

    Ure’s steel trap mind sized up the probabilities.

    “I’ll just load my stuff on the belt,” I reckoned.  “Surely, this can’t take that long…’

    I was wrong.

    Seeing my slow-motion loading of my cart onto the conveyor belt, a busy-looking woman had bustled up behind me.  She was nervously looking at her watch.

    So another five minutes goes by.  My stuff is on the belt.  Life in our lane was stopped.

    And after a further three or four minutes of everyone standing around watching a lot of nothing, the busy-looking woman behind me, who apparently hadn’t heard the “Getting change” part of the conversation burst out “What’s the hold-up?”

    “We’re waiting on change.”

    Another minute of two wanders by; why this is almost like watching kittens about to scrap.  The busy-looking woman behind me was tapping her foot, but obviously was letting her clock and blood pressure get the best of her.

    “Just how much change are you waiting for?” the busy lady blurted.

    “10-cents” announced the customer who was overweight and had a lot of ‘tude.

    Quick as a wink, the busy-looking lady had pulled out a dime, tossed it to the customer and the logjam broke.

    I’m not clever enough to make this stuff up – but a finer lesson about human behavior, served up at the local Kroger checkout line, could not be had.  Who would have thought?  Human nature lessons come at the damnedest times.

    I’m not kidding about the time we all spent standing there:  The customer had decided to stand her ground for a dime even though it took at least 15-minutes on the clock and who knows how much more before I got there.  The math on this was simple:  The customer waiting on the dime valued her time at a whopping 40-cents an hour.

    The Busy-Looking Lady, on the other hand, valued her time much more dearly.  A 5-minute delay was totally unacceptable – especially for the price of a dime – so I knew that the Busy Lady valued her time somewhere north of $1.20 per hour.

    Me?  Well, I was there strict in “watch and report mode.” On the way home, though, I had 20-minutes to try and select which of the old sayings best fit this situation.

    “I bargained with life for a penny and life would pay me nothing more.”

    “If you want something done, give it to a busy person.”

    “Look before you leap” (at least at grocery store lines)

    Intellectually, it was exhilarating.  Until I got to the part where it wasn’t just the customer waiting for 40-cents an hour – it was four grown ups including (gulp!) me.

    Wowzers.  Time to park the observer mode again and get back to being a good little Type A.  But it sure is fun to drop into “observer mode” now and then to see what lessons are out there, waiting for nothing more than some idiot to come along and catch them.

    A Compliment to IRS

    I habitually overpay our taxes.  I always want the government to owe me – not the other way around.  Keeps our relationship on an even keel.

    This year, doing the TurboTax / e-filing thing, our refund hit the bank account in 13-days.  I’m not easily impressed, but this one deserve mention.  Well done!

    I was just talking to John the other day, the fellow who delivered the pea gravel, about this problem with the flow of news.  People always say they want to hear a little good news now and then, but the ratings don’t show it.  The yellower and more riled up and self-righteous, the better.  Ask faux.

    The proof is out there, too:  Next time you’re lined up to pass a wreck on the freeway, which everybody is slowing down to look at – hoping to see blood, I imagine – ask yourself “Do people really care when something goes right?”

    Sadly, you know the answer.

    The Idiot’s Chronicles

    The ‘Merican people must not be terribly bright.  There’s a whole article in Wired this morning that explains in excruciating detail “Why Obama said Global Warming gave his Daughter Asthmas.”

    Google “Obama Smokes” sometime.

    I don’t run a casino, but I’d wager that you know where my bet is on this.   And no, I don’t think Michelle’s organic garden is turning out enough GMO-free food, either. 

    But what do I know?  I’ve only had asthma for 66-years.  Flo-Vent. Albuterol, or Singulair, Mr.

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    Rearview or Windshield? On the Fed & Shareholder Letters

    The Federal Reserve meeting minutes that came out yesterday were no surprise.  Well, except for one thing:  If size matters, the Fed meetings are getting to be a very BIG deal.  I might be off on my count, but it looks like 75-people attended the meeting.

    Other than the usual FedSpeak like…

    “Many participants judged that the inflation data received over the intermeeting period had been about in line with their expectations that inflation would move temporarily further below the Committee’s goal, largely reflecting declines in energy prices and lower prices of non-oil imports. They continued to expect that inflation would move up toward the Committee’s 2 percent objective over the medium term as the effects of these transitory factors waned and conditions in the labor market improved further.”

    But this gets us focused on this morning’s first neuron collisions:  Which way are rates going to go – and what will it mean?  We assume that rates going up in the medium term means five-years or so, although definitions matter hugely.

    I’ve always believe short-term was as long as a person could hold their breath.  Long-term (and this is according to OECD data) marriages typically last 8-years in the USA anymore.  So I guess four-years would be medium term; halfway between breathing and divorcing.

    Here’s the problem with the Fed’s happy-speak:  The Swiss have just started to sell 10-year bonds at a negative interest rate.  That’s right – you have to pay the Swiss to take your money and hold it for 10-years

    Part of the reason for the Swiss skating on the interest problem is the CHF is one of the few currencies out there that was (by law) 40% backed by gold until 2000.  Ah, you’re thinking, those clever Helvetics!  They seem to be adhering to the belief that a currency that holds something (other than ink, like the US currency) is a good idea.

    Not so in America, which has more or less completely given up on “solid money” because it’s much more expedient to follow the dual mandate (full employment, stable prices) than actually have money of reliable value.

    It’s for this reason that you may look forward to tomorrow’s report because we will be looking at the next Fed H.6 money stock report because it has been showing increases of M1 in the 15%+ range while M2 is going up at around 8.9% (basis: 3-months annualized).

    That’s why Ures truly will be sitting on the edge of the recliner by late afternoon about 4:30 PM Eastern when the next confessional is expected.

    Near as I can figure it, the disparity between the Swiss honest deflation scenario and the 75-fedsters thinking inflation will be along, is because the fedsters will be printing money in nearly Weimar-like wheelbarrow loads to put a thumb on the scales.

    JP Morgan’s Jamie Diamond offers a grim assessment – forecasting a major increase in volatility of markets when the next panic comes along.

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    Coping: With Liberal Glee and Snakes

    One of my liberal friends called me this week to announce that the NRA was requiring convention-goers to their national gathering up in Tennessee to remove firing pins from their guns before entering the show.

    I had to just sit back and listen – since once wound up on gun control, I can invest hours I don’t have in listening to anti-gun propaganda.

    But here we have it this morning, over at the Bearing Arms dot com site that no, the only firing pin removal that would be required would be from display guns.  You know, the kind anyone wandering the show could pick up, touch, test the action, weight, balance, and such on.

    Otherwise, notes the article is it really big news that the N.R.A. expects its members to follow local laws – whatever those happen to be?

    As a gun owner (and user) I have to point out that guns are – like any other tool invented by the crazy upright bipeds – useful for good, or evil.  It all depends whose hands the tool is in.  Criminals who use guns are no different, as I see it, than hackers who turn off traffic signals or mess with air traffic control.  Yet so far we don’t have to register mice and keyboards.

    The problem here is, every year, seems, we get a wandering snake come around the house or shop.  Nothing 20-feet long like in Anaconda.  Just your common everyday copperhead, cotton mouth, or coral snake.  I know where the coral snake family lives and we have a deal:  I leave them alone and they leave me alone.

    With the weather warm again, we are on the lookout for our first slithering visiting.  When they show up it will depend where they are and how I decide to remove them.  #4 bird shot from a 12-gauge  is a nice stand-off approach while the .22 with rat shot is good for closer –in work.  A Glock or Ruger with rat shot is a kind of middle ground.

    Last year, in honor of my liberal friend, when the first snake of the season showed up, I tried an experiment.  I was bound and determines to try liberalism.  So I  began by trying to talk the snake to death.

    I’ll told him about Newton, MA, the Boston Bomber, and since he didn’t seem to trust me, I reviewed most of the major gun crimes cases of the past 100-years.

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