Category: Uncategorized

Some of those supplies I mentioned a few entries back came in today… The first was the two one-week boxes of rations.

As long as I have water, I have food — and I have several cases of bottled water. These will be awesome for camping next year if they don’t need to be used before then.

The other box was three 20-round boxes of 45-70.

People often ask “just how big is that round!?” Well, here’s a slightly larger than standard issue human hand for scale…

This set of 60 rounds are a bit hotter than the Marlin rounds and are 1509 fps and 2044 ft-lbs at the barrel. If that doesn’t mean anything to you, it’s okay — it just means that they work as intended on literally any critter in North America.

I’ve had tinnitus most of my life.

It all started with a trip to a HamFest with my parents. A HamFest is essentially an organized garage sale for radio nerds, and this one was held at the Boulder National Guard armory back in the early 70’s.

I was wandering around looking at the junk on offer and spotted what looked like a tape deck. The guy selling it asks if I’d like to have a listen, I say yes, and he hooks it up and puts the headphones on my noggin…

Upon powering up the device makes this tortured electronic screech through the headphones that’s loud enough my mom hears it outside.

There’s a small freakout, but I can still hear people so I’m deemed to be okay. The ringing in my ears is shrugged off as “it’ll pass” and life carries on. It was the early 70’s — people didn’t sue other people for looking at them crossways and kids were made of sterner stuff.

Since that day, if it’s quiet I get a high-pitched whistle in my head that I have trained myself to not focus on. If I do, it quickly becomes oppressive and I need to forcefully move my focus to something else.

Well, they say as you get older tinnitus gets worse — and they’re right. These days I have that infernal whistle in the background 24/7 and I have to keep some sort of background noise going all of the time… Which as an I.T. professional is pretty easy as there’s always AC, server fans, drive noise, etc., etc. in my environment.

But at night it’s different…

For the last ten years or so I’ve had a fan running in my room for the white noise, but as winter comes around this becomes less of a good idea. I’ve tried to replace the fan with music in the past, but the breaks between tracks will wake me up. I’ve also tried a few “sound machines”, but the machines are very looped and I pick up on the repetition in about 15 minutes. Once that happens, I start listening for the loop instead of the sound and I can’t sleep…

But technology marches on and things improve… So, I decided to try the latest high-tech gizmo — and yesterday my new “Sound+Sleep SE” arrived.

This is basically a nightstand radio that has 64 channels — all of them tuned to environmental soundscapes.

I turned the big knob to “Meadow” last night and for the first time in weeks I slept the entire night. “Meadow” consists of crickets, an owl out there in the trees, a breeze rustling the grass and leaves, rain patter, and a small brook somewhere in the distance. And what makes this machine different is it procedurally generates the sound from pieces — so it’s not repetitive.

The down-side (there’s always a down-side) is the machine gets a lot of reviews about it failing after a couple of weeks to a month. Either the amplifier craps out and it develops a static hum, or the memory in it fragments and the sound samples stop working.

Hopefully I got a good one, because with my sample size of one night — it works.

Given the sliding scale of crazy out there as the year winds to a close, this week I ordered another 60 rounds of 45-70 and two 7-day ration kits that should be here early next week. This is in addition to my 30-ish days of dry stores — and I now have four 24-pack cases of bottled water set aside as well.

This weekend I’ll be airing out my camping gear and getting all of that organized too. I’ve also gotten most of my friends licensed on GMRS in the last 30 days, and they all have fairly nice HTs or trunk-mounts now, and Scott has a full 50watt repeater in his Jeep.

Now, I’m not a “prepper” by any stretch of the imagination — I’m just being cautious and having a plan in case I need to high-tail it south and circle the wagons for a while. I can live pretty happily in the Murano for a couple of weeks in any weather. And my property is fairly remote, so it should be outside the zone of stupid should stupid happen.

It’s always the situation you aren’t expecting that gets you. And while I don’t expect anything ‘life and limb’ to happen, I also didn’t expect all of the crazy rioting, arson, shootings, and unrest this year either. So — better safe than sorry I guess.

And hey, if nothing happens everything I’ve purchased will come in handy on the next camping trip. 🙂

It’s the end of September, which means the first real snow here in Colorado should be less than 30 days away. While it’s already snowed here for a couple of days, it didn’t really amount to much because the ground was still warm.

For me, mid-to-late September is when I get the car ready for winter; new wipers, seasonal maintenance, tires if needed, swap the regular mats for the WeatherTech mats, a full detail inside, and a fresh coat of wax outside to ward off some of the car eating goop they spray on the roads.

The Murano is 2.5 years old now and the average OEM battery is only good for 2-3 years… So to prevent any surprises at -10, I had a new one installed at Batteries+ on the way home today. While generally any battery would be better than an OEM one, it was $300 for the really good AGM battery which has a 60 month warranty. That seems like a good deal.

Batteries+ is also right near “El Chubby’s“, which is home to the best green chili smothered burritos in Denver — so that’s dinner tonight. 🙂

Chubby’s has been there forever and I’ve been a fan for about as long… In fact, it’s the first place I stopped when I arrived back in Colorado in 2002 after having been gone since 1997; I rolled into Aurora at 6:30 PM, had a “smothered beef and bean, half and half” to go at 6:45, and checked in to the hotel at 7:00 to have a fantastic dinner.

No such thing as a good Burrito on the East Coast, so I was jonesing pretty bad…

I’ve been working at the same place for over sixteen years now; you can even read about the day I got hired, and it’s been quite an adventure since then. I’ve done some pretty amazing things over the years and worked on some really interesting projects.

The most challenging aspect of the place is that at any particular time I can be called upon to do pretty much anything. On paper I’m the “Directror of I.T.”, but in reality I wear most of the hats: tester, test engineer, project manager, marketing department, web team, art department, building manager, mainenance man, janitor, and any other title as required. 😀

This makes it a little complicated to take time off, because any time I schedule some event in advance something invariably comes up at work on that date that I’m needed for. It usually works out in the end, but it’s so routine that, as a joke, if things are slow at work I’m told to schedule a vacation.

Well, this just happened again.

Earlier this month I volunteered to work the election as an election judge – civic duty and all that. This entails some training and then five full days between the end of October and the third of November.

This would normally be no big deal and I’d just take a few days of vacation. But today the employee working a very technical project gave his two weeks notice, and all signs are pointing to me having to pick up the project and run with it. The client on this project is pretty high-maintenance, so there will undoubtedly be some frowning when I tell them I’ll be out for a few days at the end of October…

They’ll get over it – they always do.

There’s also a slim chance that the load test engineer might be tapped to do it, and if so everything will work out even better. So, here’s hoping. Haha!

With large sections of the west coast being on fire and the jet stream moving west to east, and Colorado having a few of the yearly blazes as well, it’s been quite smokey outside the last couple of weeks.

Last evening I had to button up the house to somewhat keep the wood fire smell at bay.

It’s hard to see in the picture, but everything is foggy – except the fog is smoke.

Saw “Tenet”. It was very SciFi Channel, but after not seeing a movie since “Rise of Skywalker” nine months ago, I won’t complain.

And the popcorn was really good.

Scott and I were the only people in the entire theater — but once the lights went out and the movie started I was still able to pretend things were normal for a couple of hours.

On the way out we struck up a conversation with some of the staff and they said they had about 30 people show up tonight. They’re only open for one or two evening showings on the weeknights right now, and they can only seat about quarter capacity in a theater — so 30 people is okay they said.

All in all I was happy to spend $60 on a ‘meh’ movie just to LARP living in a normal society.

I was just looking through some old emails and found the email trail I sent back and forth to someone here on LJ in order to get a code to create an account.

Back in August of ’03 LiveJournal was invite only. 🙂

One of the more unique qualities of Colorado is how quickly it changes from “summer” to “winter”. Fall or Autumn here lasts about a week if we’re lucky.

It’s really like someone flips a switch some years. 🙂

I picked up Marshal on March 10th, 2007 from the PetsMart in north Aurora. They said he was 3 years old then.

Today Erin, who has looked after him since 2013, had to put him down — kidney failure finally claimed him at around 15 years old.

He was a really great cat, and I loved him to bits — which is why Erin eventually ended up with him… He was the most ‘dog-like’ cat I’ve ever met, and likewise he was really, really people-centric.

I tend to be super busy all the time, and with travel and whatnot I couldn’t give him the attention he really wanted. So in 2013, after leaving him with Scott and Erin while I was away from home for two weeks, it was decided he would stay with them. Erin tended to be around the house enough to sate Marshal’s need for company, and she was pretty fond of him as well.

See, Erin was a roommate of mine from 2008 to 2012, so she was very familiar with Marshal’s wants, needs, and desires. It really worked out for the best, for everyone involved.

I’m sad the little guy is gone… He was really a fantastic cat, I missed him a bunch…

I’m noting some depression starting to darken the edges of things.

I’ve not really left the house for anything other than to go to work since March. Sure, I’ve been out for walks around the neighborhood, and a couple of times I’ve driven a half an hour east to get an hour of wide open space, but otherwise I’m under house arrest for four months now.

And it’s starting to wear me down.

Now it’s the mask thing… Last week the state government decided that people need to be wearing masks if they’re anywhere there are other people. I’m not playing that game.

Not that it’s a big deal being as I’m not leaving the house for much of anything.

Today I decided that I needed to get out of the house just for my sanity, so I hopped in the Murano and drove over to my local gas station to put gas in it. The Murano was between a quarter tank and a half tank — and the last time I gassed it up was before the lockdown — so it needed some fresh fuel anyway.

$27 dollars later and I decided to get a couple of sodas for my impromptu road trip, but I was without a mask… Saying an internal ‘fuck it’ I went into the gas station, got my sodas, and walked up to the counter to pay for them. The cashier was cool, but some random lady started to give me hell for not having a mask — and I just pointed her attention to my t-shirt and walked out with my sodas.

The shirt says “Attempting to care — please wait”.

Anyway, encounter with the self-appointed mask police over I headed around 470 with the intention of heading up Waterton Canyon to get some pictures of the dam that fronts the reservoir.

I arrive to a new fence and signs stating that the canyon is closed until further notice.

Sigh…

Being as I was on Wadsworth near Chatfield, I decided to do my usual drive up Deer Creek Canyon, and take the back way into Conifer then back down 285…

Unfortunately Deer Creek Canyon was wall to wall cyclists going 3 miles an hour up the hill in packs of 20 or more — so at the turn off at Martin Marietta I looped back to 470 and came home.

I’m more irked now than before I left.

In a surprise to exactly no one, my background check came back okay and I was able to finally pick up my new rifle today.

And there it is in all of its Wild West glory. Mine is a little special with the colorful case hardening, dark walnut woods, and a 22″ blued octagonal barrel, but otherwise this is pretty much the rifle that won the West. It’s a late 1880’s design firing late 1870’s ammunition, but made with modern metallurgy.

Now to order a few more bits and pieces (a cleaning kit, case, ear and eye protection) and some ammo, and then get her sighted in at the local range.

Anyone who tells you it’s too easy to buy a gun, especially right now, has never bought a gun… It’s a simple eight step process that can take a week or two to complete:

Step one: Find a weapon you would like to purchase and then locate somewhere to purchase it from.

Step two: It won’t be in stock because of zombies and riots, so you need to pay for the gun so that your local gun store will order it, and then wait 5-7 days for it to arrive.

Step three: As soon as they get one in stock, drive down to examine the weapon you purchased. 

Step four: Once satisfied, produce a government ID to prove who you are and where you live. In my case I also needed to provide the title for my Vespa because I’d moved and Colorado doesn’t re-print driver’s licenses or titles for address changes — you just write the new address on the back, which isn’t good enough. The Vespa was titled to the new address and as such is an acceptable government issued proof of said address.

Step five: Once you prove who you are to the store, you can then pay the $25 transfer fee for the store to transfer their weapon into your possession, which is required for the background check.

Step six: Fill out ATF Form 4473.

Step seven: Wait another day or two for the background check to come back.

Step eight: Return to the store and take delivery of your new gun.

I’m currently at step seven…

Things have definitely changed since I ran that pawn shop in Vail — we used to do all of the above in 15 minutes. But that was long before zombies and riots…

I’ve not directly owned a firearm for a really long time, in fact the last time was my Navy days back in the late 80’s. I carried a 1911 while on watch and had to routinely qualify on M14/M16 rifles.

I have a pretty solid belief on what guns are used for and when they are required… And living in an urban metropolis doesn’t really necessitate owning a firearm — I don’t need to hunt for dinner and a call to 911 tends to solve most problems, so I’ve not really thought about owning a gun for decades.

But the times, they are a changin’.

Zombie virus lockdowns are making people a bit crazy, violent riots where the police stand down and just let the crazies tear things apart have been going on for a week now, and now there’s talk of disbanding police forces entirely… And it’s only going to get worse as the election approaches… And this is prompting me to get more self-reliant.

I also own acreage down in southern Colorado that, someday, I plan to be living on — and down there the opportunity to fill a freezer full of deer is a lot higher, bear, coyote, and mountain cats can be a problem, and the police are a half an hour away at best.

So after some soul-searching and a rather lengthy bout of weapons research, Friday I ordered a new gun which will arrive at the gun-shop some time this week.

It’s a Henry lever-action rifle chambered for the 45-70 government round. It’s case hardened (the old-school oil-on-water looking hardening), blued 22″ octagonal barrel, semi-buckhorn sights, and dark walnut furniture — it’s a beautiful bit of machinery and something definitely worthy of hanging over the mantle, if I had one.

It also fits in well with the Wild West aesthetic down in southern Colorado.

The 45-70 is a rather hefty round, but it was designed back in the late 1800’s to be very utilitarian; one round for most purposes. It’ll stop any predator in North America from eating you, is good for hunting as it’s big and slow so there’s a lot of power but not a lot of meat loss, it’ll drop bad guys like no one’s business, and it’s fairly cheap.

With the riots and all, every local gun store is sold out of pretty much everything, which is fine as I wanted a custom rifle anyway and those need to be ordered. But it’s still weird to walk into Cabela’s and not see anything but skeet shotguns and .50cal hand canons in the display cases. As well as the background check for purchases taking days instead of minutes right now because of the volume…

And with the incredible uptick in gun ownership, the local ranges now have waiting lists to join up. This is because they just can’t hold all of the people wanting to get familiar with whatever they just bought.

Definitely interesting times.

With the threat of zombies and whatnot, a lot of the local grocers are generally out of good meat these days. Sure, you can still get generic 70/30 ground and frozen chicken – but steaks, when available, are like $20 each for pretty sketchy cuts.

Being a Colorado native I know a thing or two about beef… Colorado has types of cows and cuts of steak like Washington state has kinds of beans and types of coffee.  This means we have lots of local ranches, and some of them will sell directly to the public.

So, today a styrofoam cooler containing about 12 pounds of grass fed/finished red angus arrived on my doorstep from Christensen Ranch up in Sterling (north eastern Colorado).

Thats 2 NY Strip Steaks, 2 Flatiron Steaks, 2 Denver Steaks, 4 Western Grillers, 6 1/3lb Dry Aged Patties, and a pound of Single Source Ground Beef — and some Jacobsen flaked salt to boot!

Thursday I have another delivery coming from a different ranch located south of Parker in order to contrast and compare.

My current freezer is far too small for a quarter beef order (where you buy basically a quarter of a cow and specify what cuts you would like) which is about $700, but I have until April of next year to remedy that. And if things work out then I might start buying a year’s worth of beef at one go; maybe even go in on it with a few friends who happen to like superb steak for ~$7 a pound.

A few shots from today’s route:

It was weird to be the only customer in V.I. who wasn’t staring at a phone… Luckily I had my Kindle to fill the gap between ordering and eating. 🙂

I’m still getting some separation anxiety from my iPhone; I leave it home, and then check my front pocket for it 3-4 times while I’m out, but I’m getting better.

And once again the G12 proves that an actual camera will always beat a cellphone when it comes to pictures. Having physical controls are really nice, and there’s no computer making your bad photos better — you are the photographer, and if the photo sucks, it’s on you. 🙂

After picking up a couple of sodas at 7-11 on the way in to work this morning, I stepped off of a curb into a pothole and unceremoniously face-planted right there in front of God and everybody…

I managed to twist my ankle, bang up my right knee, take a big chunk out of my right elbow, mess up both wrists, my right palm is road-rashed really bad, and I tweaked my neck…

Sigh.

So I made it to work (and only bled a little on the leather in the Murano), cleaned myself up as best I could, and dressed all of the leaky bits with hand sanitizer and paper towels until I stopped leaking. Hand sanitizer on an open wound will definitely wake you up in the morning by the way.

After a few hours of limping around the office I left to head home at lunch (I had some stuff to get done before I could go) and stopped by Walgreens — which is where I discovered that because of zombies finding a bottle of hydrogen peroxide is akin to spotting a Unicorn.

Sigh.

Luckily the nice lady at Walgreens was able to locate a solitary bottle of made in Mexico hydrogen peroxide in the back. So I’m all antibioticed, bandaged up, and waiting for the naproxen sodium to kick in…

What a day.

A few weeks ago I discovered that some of the local steak places are selling ‘you cook it’ steaks, chicken, pork-chops, etcetera to offset the lack of eat-in business. For me this is a nice alternative to going to the steakhouse, which I can’t do thanks to the zombies. 

There was a problem to this though… The proper cooking of meat requires fire, and the modern electric range one finds in the average townhouse is sorely lacking in the fire department…

Well, last week I remedied this and bought a Weber “Spirit II” 2-burner grill. It’s a really nice unit and rolls in and out of the garage really easy, is easy to clean, and creates the requisite fire for proper meat preparation.

Since then I’ve had steak pretty much every other night… I know, I know — I’m really roughing it during this lockdown thing. 🙂

Well, with my new source of cooking fire it has meant that I’m purchasing a lot more meat and that’s pretty much filled up the freezer side of my kitchen fridge… So Tuesday I have a small chest freezer being delivered.

The freezer is a tiny little 3.5 cubic foot thing that will sit nicely at the end of the kitchen counter. 3.5 cubic feet doesn’t seem like much, but it’ll free up my regular freezer for my lunches and whatnot… That and the zombie scare caused a run on freezers so getting one at all is quite the trick currently.

With this being stuck in the house thing, I’ve realized how important the drive to and from work is… 

The drive serves as a line in the sand between the activities of ‘work’ and ‘not work’, and without it the day just never seems to end. I find myself working on some insurmountable problem for work until 9 — 10PM because ‘I’m already working on it, might as well finish it’… And I honestly don’t have much else to do but stare at the walls.

I’m having the same problem with weekends; last Saturday I was up at 6am and doing my morning routines of checking and tuning all of the remote operations stuff at work for almost two hours before I noticed no one else was ‘at work’.

The fact I’m salaried and don’t have to clock in and out for the day probably exacerbates this.

I sure hope this lockdown thing ends soon so I can get back to my normal 50 hour weeks.