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Desert Cat's Paradise 
Felis desertus |
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Sunday, November 08, 2009No progress...worth reporting on.
Friday morning was taken up with packing more stuff from my desk area in Tucson, undoing some wiring I had done to accommodate a printer there, so that I can set the same printer up at my new place, then buying and installing a new battery for Doozey (my camper) so that I could move her to make way for the trailer in the driveway, then loading my woodworking bench and my boxes of desk junk in the trailer to take out to the farm. By then it was early afternoon. I arrived on the farm mid afternoon and spent the rest of the day unloading my junk. Saturday I did manage to haul a number of loads of dirt into my workshop area, and level and compact the dirt. Endless. But the end is near. I have about six feet of 2-3 inch fill before I get to the level point, and then I need to cut a couple inches off the final ten feet of the area. My plans are to stabilize the top couple inches of the dirt with portland cement (my fabulous Troy Bilt will help with the mixing), and then spread a thin layer of sand mix over the top of that for a level finish surface. It won't be a fine finished concrete floor, but for this application I don't care. I just need something that will stand up to a moderate amount of use. Later I can lay a brick patio over the top of this if I choose. Sunday was a near total loss. I started out the day moving my scooter to continue the dirt leveling operation. I put a charger on the battery overnight, as I discovered it was quite dead late Friday and I had little hope for it. But the charger had revived it. So I thought to scoot into town to pick up some brake fluid, because the brake reservoir was low, and also to make sure all systems were good to go. I hadn't rode it in quite a while, but I am counting on it as my backup transportation system, and I wanted to make sure there were no other issues. Well. A quarter mile down the road it died on me after sputtering and losing power. After pushing it back I went to work troubleshooting. I finally sifted out the fact that the electric fuel pump had failed--specifically the inlet check valve was stuck open. No amount of penetrating oil sprayed into the inlet could convince it otherwise. By now it was 2:30 PM, I was late for lunch and quite crabby. Especially since I learned that replacement fuel pumps are $160. After lunch I went to work searching on the internet and purchased a Bosch universal fuel pump for a third of the cost of the OEM pump. So much for the weekend. Next weekend will be extra long. I have Veteran's Day off, and I extended that into a 5 day weekend by taking Thursday off also. I have high hopes for mucho progresso. Labels: San Pedro homestead | posted by Desert Cat @ 7:59 PM | permalink Saturday, November 07, 2009Jobs "Saved or Created" I was expecting this (surprise, huh?) Remember this graph next fall's campaign season when the president and the Democrats try to tell us how many jobs they "saved or created". Utter bullshit. They made it worse. | posted by Desert Cat @ 11:19 PM | permalink Thursday, November 05, 200912 Dead, 31 Wounded in Base Shootings12 Dead, 31 Wounded in Base Shootings - NYTimes.com
Within moments they get someone from the FBI to say "not terrorism related", before they know Jack! Diddly! Squat! Agenda, anyone? Then: An Army spokesman, Gary Tallman, said that the dead gunman was an Army major. A law enforcement official identified the him as Malik Nadal Hassan.Um, yeah. "Nope! No Islamic terrorism here folks! Run along now! Back to your shopping malls and reality TV!" --------------------------- Update: No, of course I don't know anything more at the moment. But the categorical denial up front, like a knee jerking in response to a knock, is absurd on the face of it. If I were a betting man I'd place bets that this Malik Nadal Hassan turns out to be a Muslim. Further investigation will reveal connections to Islamic groups in this country that have connections to overseas extremists. But "not terrorism". No siree! Labels: conspiracies, military stuff, society and culture | posted by Desert Cat @ 3:49 PM | permalink Wednesday, November 04, 2009Tome Of PreparednessI just downloaded this (courtesy of a link on survivalblog.com) and have looked over a portion of it. This...is excellent! It brings together in one document a whole lot of stuff I have found scattered across the 'net.
I don't have time to go over it thoroughly right at the moment, but I know at least some of my readers should be very interested in it also. LDS Preparedness Manual (.pdf download--right click, save as...)" It doesn't matter if you're not LDS. It is 95% general purpose and maybe 5% LDS specific. If you can print it out and bind it, it would make a great resource whether the internet is available or not. Ironically, only a small fraction of LDS members actually follow their teachings on preparedness. I'm probably set better than 19 out of 20 church members. And even still I feel underprepared. Labels: preparedness, resources | posted by Desert Cat @ 5:17 PM | permalink Permanent EarbugIt's been embedded in my ear for decades now. My parents had an LP (remember those kids?) of the music of Fiddler on the Roof, when I was a kid, and I played it too many times. I saw a live performance of the play in my early teen years, and that was the final hammer-blow that permanently embedded this earbug. Enjoy! Labels: art appreciation | posted by Desert Cat @ 4:48 PM | permalink Tuesday, November 03, 2009Tuesday Is Skunk Day...at the Desert Cat Estate.
Steve walks warily down the street Did I mention skunks are kind of cute and I feel bad having to kill them? How do you deal with "varmint" and "cute" at the same time? Oh well. This is good practice for chicken butchering day, which is coming up soon. Labels: San Pedro homestead | posted by Desert Cat @ 7:35 AM | permalink Monday, November 02, 2009Skullduggery At the FedFor those interested, the truth trickles out in dribbles, regarding what transpired last fall during the big Panic.
New York Fed’s Secret Choice to Pay for Swaps Hits Taxpayers - Bloomberg.com Labels: financial ponderings | posted by Desert Cat @ 3:42 PM | permalink Why It's Not OverLest we forget, this has not yet been accounted for:
Trillion Dollar Ticking Derivatives Time Bomb to Explode Under Bankrupt Banks :: The Market Oracle At Gains, Pains, & Capital I’ve been warning about the Trillion Dollar Ticking Time Bomb of derivatives for months now. As a brief recap, let’s consider the following:keep reading... Be sure to check out the chart in that article showing which banks are sitting on the biggest powderkegs. Ya wonder why I fled JP Morgan Chase? Labels: financial ponderings | posted by Desert Cat @ 3:08 PM | permalink Who We AreI just saw this on survivalblog.com and I thought what this author found was pretty descriptive of my own mindset:
Letter Re: Thoughts on Preparedness in a Diverse Community--SurvivalBlog.com "7) The final funny observation is how close these guys are with all the ex-hippie counterculture... Heh. Labels: preparedness, society and culture, watching the skies | posted by Desert Cat @ 1:54 PM | permalink Sunday, November 01, 2009Progress PicsMomcat harvested her sweet potato bed this weekend, because the frost had finished off the tops. She got 35 lbs of sweet potatoes from a single square yard! That's a phenomenal yield. From a full 100 square foot bed that would be nearly 350 lbs of sweet potatoes! Contrast that to the 75 lbs of regular potatoes she got out of the same size bed this summer. Clearly sweet potatoes love growing in the soil and in the weather we have here.
Titan the Giant Sweet Potato:  I spent all day Friday gardening. I first mowed down the beds that had cover crop in them.  Because Granny J made me feel bad about mowing the gaillardias, I left the pathways unmowed in this part of the garden. There are a lot of them growing here, although the blooms were knocked down by the frost.  I got three of the six remaining beds tilled and seeded before dark.  I had to run into town Saturday to buy a replacement for one of the two sprinklers that were destroyed by the hard freeze. I tried to fix the other one but the glue didn't hold. I will need to replace it also. Most of the rest of the day was spent indoors doing cleaning and other crap, but I did get more of my cold water pipe wrapped near the end of the day. Daisycat joined me Saturday evening and Sunday. There was some stuff she needed help with on her computer. In the afternoon we worked on hauling more dirt to the workshop area, filling in the railroad tie box. Endless. I can see the end soon though. We're working up toward the shallow end and it takes less barrow loads to cover a larger area now. Thomas, my golden honey boy:   Labels: cats, San Pedro homestead | posted by Desert Cat @ 7:02 PM | permalink Thursday, October 29, 2009More On The Mortgage MessMore info on the MERS case and other good info on what is going on:
Why Mortgages Aren’t Modified And What A Ruling Stopping Foreclosures Means And More Here from Reason.com. Labels: financial ponderings | posted by Desert Cat @ 1:08 PM | permalink Fifteen Degrees Fahrenheit...said my thermometer this morning.
The temperature in midtown Tucson at this hour is 38 degrees. It is hard to overestimate the "valley effect" on the low temperature on still clear nights. I was expecting maybe 25 degrees? Fifteen degrees is the coldest I saw down there over the last couple of winters. It is unofficially the lowest low I expect in any given winter. The hard part about this is that it comes so early in the season after a long spell of unseasonably warm weather. Plants and trees are not prepared for this by a longer period of declining temperatures. There will be damage as a result of this. I am most concerned about my fig tree. I may lose some tender cacti I brought from Tucson. I have some doubts about the daikon I seeded a couple weeks ago. Certainly the cowpeas are now done for the season. I should have turned off the irrigation timers and removed the sprinklers. They bust when it gets this cold and I may have to find replacements now. Roscoe was uninterested in coming indoors last night. This morning he rocketed in the door as soon as I went outside. Yes little buddy, it is time to become an indoor cat again. I didn't have time to check on everyone, but Thomas was just fine and I expect the rest found their hidey holes to weather the chill. The good news is my bedroom wall furnace kept the place warm just fine with the main furnace set to 55. Cha ching! Savings in the bank. Also my pipes did not freeze. Although when I turned on the faucet this morning and the water slowed a bit (indicating an ice plug partially blocking a pipe somewhere), it was my first clue that it was colder than expected out there. I need to buy materials to finish wrapping those pipes this weekend! By this weekend we will be seeing highs in the 80's again and lows in the 50's and 60's. Labels: San Pedro homestead | posted by Desert Cat @ 7:14 AM | permalink Wednesday, October 28, 2009S&P 500 Overvalued by 40%Hey, if you're in a position to short the market, now might be a good time to put in your stops. Looks like the bear rally is about to come to an end.
S&P 500 Overvalued by 40%, Set to Fall, Smithers Says (Update5) - Bloomberg.com More from Vox. Well, tomorrow is the first Q3 GDP report. Consensus is calling for 3.2%. If it was actually negative, the markets would collapse. The thing is, I have no doubt that it should be negative given that TOTLL fell 4.25% in Q3 and on an annual basis, GDP usually contracts about one third as TOTLL does. So, that would be -1.4%. Hold on to your panties, folks. Tomorrow could be a thrilling ride. ---------------------------- Update: Well the wizards behind the curtain have managed to massage the data to make it show a 3.5% GDP growth rate. This will likely be revised in a month, but the effect, of course, is to spark a new rally in the stock market today. Armageddon delayed, again. Which is a good thing--gives everyone more time to prepare, and should give my buyer the confidence to hang on through the short sale process. Now Congress has to pass that home buyer credit extension yet for my buyer to stay on the line. There is no way we are going to closing before the credit expires currently, and they will almost certainly pull out if it expires. Labels: financial ponderings | posted by Desert Cat @ 9:56 AM | permalink Zing!Hey, congratulations are due to Obama, Bernanke, and the whole team at Treasury including little Timmy Geithner. They have finally succeeded in eliminating the whole Boom/Bust cycle from our economy!
From now on it will be all bust... | posted by Desert Cat @ 7:40 AM | permalink Rendezvous With Destiny45 Years Ago Today: We Have a Rendezvous With Destiny - Erick’s blog - RedState
“Not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, “We don’t know how lucky we are.” And the Cuban stopped and said, “How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to.” And in that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there’s no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth. 45 years ago it appeared that we still had this hope. It has dimmed somewhat since this man's candle went out. Read the rest... Labels: financial ponderings, politics, society and culture | posted by Desert Cat @ 7:26 AM | permalink Tuesday, October 27, 2009Sometimes When You Pray To God......the answer is "no".
There are plenty of ways that you can hurt a man And bring him to the ground You can beat him, you can cheat him, you can stink real bad And spray him when he's down. Are you happy?! Are you satisfied? How long can you stand the heat? Out of the orifice the stink bomb RIPS To the sound of the beat! Look out! (boom boom boom) Another skunk bites the dust. Another skunk bites the dust. And another one gone and another one gone Another skunk bites the dust. Hey! Pepe Le Peu! Another one bites the dust! Labels: art appreciation, San Pedro homestead | posted by Desert Cat @ 8:55 AM | permalink Monday, October 26, 2009RED LIGHTS FLASHING!Could they be the lights at the end of the railroad track that the train is barreling down upon a high speed? Is this the fabled "other shoe", to match the one from last September/October? Is Desert Cat hyperventilating and getting his tail all up in a frizzy mess aGAIN?!
 Possible Credit Dislocation: Be Warned - The Market Ticker I have reason to suspect that the "monetary transmission mechanism" is full of rocks (again), and we are about to have another instance of what could colloquially be called "fun." (Yes, that's sarcasm.) Keep Reading Crappy timing if you ask me. I have another offer on my Tucson house. A meltdown between now and closing would almost certainly scuttle that deal. Forewarned is forearmed they say. But in this case I'm not sure it makes much difference to most people, as the time required for forearming is measured in months to years in most cases. We're probably measuring T minus meltdown in days or weeks now. Oh, if you still have *any* dollar denominated assets (US stocks, bonds, etc.), Peter Schiff is screaming a loud red light **sell** now. Cash out, I mean *today* get on the horn with your broker and do it. Set aside enough to cover the tax hit if it comes from a tax-deferred account and put the rest into preparedness-oriented supplies ("beans, bullets and bandaids") and whatever you can't convert right away into silver coin. Yeah, if you can do that, you can do something about it in a few days to a few weeks time. I'm just miserable that the remainder of my investments are locked away in a state retirement program that is completely inaccessible to me unless I quit my job. As you may surmise, the job is worth more to me in these times than access to rescue those funds. I already cashed out what I could to put up my solar electric system. You cash out what you can, so that you are not among the roaming hordes of desperate starving heading toward my retreat. Breathe. Labels: financial ponderings, watching the skies | posted by Desert Cat @ 2:18 PM | permalink Sunday, October 25, 2009Progress PicsFriday I buried a heavy duty water hose from the faucet near my erstwhile ramada, over the the garden fence near the gate. I was getting tired of walking the extra fifty feet to the faucet outside the gate. Now I can turn the water on from inside the garden.
 I buried it because the water would get too hot in the summer sun and would freeze in the winter. I need to wrap the above-ground portions yet. Saturday I spent nearly the whole day cooking meals for myself to eat over the next two weeks or so. I save money by cooking from scratch and then freezing meal size portions to take with me to work. I did put a couple loads of dirt in the railroad tie platform I made in between cooking tasks. This process is endless, and I will be glad to be done with it when I can put my tools and shelves and workbenches in the patio cover area. Saturday evening and Sunday the lovely Daisycat joined me. She fiddled with the turtles again--feeding them what will probably be their last big meal before they enter winter hibernation, and adding a bunch of bedding material to their enclosure to give them warm places to burrow for hibernation. These turtles are just your common box turtles that are native to the valley. We didn't get them from here though. Down the street from our Tucson house lives a rather eccentric retired music teacher who keeps reptiles for pets (she dislikes mammals, she told me once). Several years ago two male box turtle hatchlings escaped from her yard and made their way to our yard. When we learned that she was missing some young turtles, we told her they had shown up in our yard. She did not want them back (she had too many male turtles as it was, she told us), so they stayed. Daisycat has adopted them as hers, even though originally I was taking care of them. Now they live out here on the farm in an enclosure that she put together last spring. She certainly gets a lot of satisfaction from taking care of them. Sunday I continued hauling dirt and in the afternoon Daisycat picked more cowpeas and shelled them out. We have enough seed saved now to sow the entire garden area next spring. Green Shoots (real ones) The seeds I planted last weekend are coming up! The daikon is coming up thick, and the peas and vetch are just starting to emerge.  Cat's eye view:  Rumsefeld (foreground), Max (middle), Roscoe (background)  A Maxwell Update: He is doing well. The antifungal medication has tamed the lameness in his left leg and we are in the process of tapering off the prednisolone. He will need to stay on the antifungal medication the rest of his life, but he seems otherwise happy and hale. Labels: San Pedro homestead | posted by Desert Cat @ 7:42 PM | permalink Friday, October 23, 2009Skoonk!!Agh! Skunk!
A plague of them! I am at wits end. I dispatched another skunk this evening. He was hiding in the culvert. Now everything stinks, reeks of skunk, indoors and outdoors! I did some cooking, hoping to mask the skunk odor with cooking odor. It's doing okay, especially since I included garlic and onion in the cooking. I keep telling myself what I smell is my cooking and not the skunk. Now I have a pot of cinnamon simmering on the back burner. First I had a plague of rattlesnakes. Then I had a plague of raccoons. Now I'm in the midst of a plague of skunks. This is the first time I have evidence that the buggers can climb my fence. I'm not surprised though. They have opposable thumbs like the raccoons do, so navigating the overhanging bend in the fence isn't impossible. What flummoxes me is that this fella seemed to have taken up residence in the culvert. He was settling in for a long stay. No wonder the cat food bowl was tipped over two nights in a row. That is not normally something the cats would do. The previous skunk was Monday, and there were two more over the last couple of weeks, for a total of four skunks so far. Dear Lord in Heaven, let this be the last one! Snakes are one thing. Raccoons are one thing. But skunks are a ghastly thing all to themselves! They're kind of cute actually. Unlike raccoons, which I don't find particularly cute at all. But God help you when you shoot them. Their last act of defiance is to let loose with all they have! Everyone knows what skunk smells like from a distance. But did you know that up close and VERY personal (no, I've never gotten sprayed so far), they smell very much like a LARGE VAT OF ROTTING GARLIC AND ONIONS?! My retch reflex has gotten quite the workout in the last few weeks... Labels: San Pedro homestead | posted by Desert Cat @ 10:44 PM | permalink Thursday, October 22, 2009Incorruptible| posted by Desert Cat @ 4:03 PM | permalink "Separate The Saucer Section!"We have a warp core breach...30 seconds to critical...we're going to have to crash land on the planet...
Yeh, I feel like Riker today. My work computer is in meltdown and I'm busy rescuing files off the C: drive in preparation for a "saucer separation" Monday. Labels: minutiae | posted by Desert Cat @ 3:08 PM | permalink Wednesday, October 21, 2009How To InfoHere's a site that is offering a very inexpensive e-book for a series of DIY projects resulting from the author's efforts to live simply:
Simple Solar Homesteading - Home  Forget about mortgages and high utility bills! The author generates his own electricity on site with solar panels and a backup generator, and keeps himself warm with passive solar heating and a small propane heater. It should be a simple matter to fit a small woodstove into a cabin like this if your remote lot is wooded. Water comes from an artesian well and waste disposal is a solar composting toilet. What a life! If only I could do the same. *wink* Labels: preparedness, resources | posted by Desert Cat @ 4:19 PM | permalink New ACORN Sting Video Out: Philadelphia
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