So it looks like Blogger.com has transitioned to an All New (cough) IMPROVED format, grrrr. Needless to say, it isn't worth squat.
This is all the behind-the-scenes stuff, and one of the things it ISN'T allowing me to do is post comments. So if your comment doesn't get posted for awhile, please forgive me and feel free to heap all the curses and blame on Blogger, as I've been doing all morning...
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Monday, May 28, 2012
Freedom isn't free
It is the veteran, not the preacher, who has given us freedom of religion.
It is the veteran, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press.
It is the veteran, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech.
It is the veteran, not the community organizer, who has given us freedom to assemble.
It is the veteran, not the lawyer, who has given us the right to a fair trial.
It is the veteran, not the politician, who has given us the right to vote.
Remember - only two defining forces have ever offered to die for you, Jesus Christ and the American GI. One died for your soul, the other for your freedom.
Sunday, May 27, 2012
SurvivalBlog down
WARNING: GRAPHIC LANGUAGE
Several readers have emailed and asked why they've been unable to get on SurvivalBlog.com lately. We haven't been able to either. This is the official announcement:
This weekend, our server in Sweden was put under a "ping flood" Denial of Service (DOS) attack that resulted in 65% packet loss for a few hours.
This attack was most likely orchestrated by the man in Texas who last week anonymously sent me a racist rant and threats against both my blog site and my books. (His e-mail began: "You ni**er lover you have five days to take all links and any [sic] metion for [sic] links below off your site. If you [sic] dont [sic] do it I will post [sic] everyone [sic] of [sic] you [sic] cr***y books on [sic] prirate [sic] sites and kiss your ni**er loving income from them good [sic] by [sic] .")
The attack was timed for a three-day holiday weekend, because the miscreants expected that the staff at our ISP would be unavailable to help up reconfigure.
OBTW, the attack did not initially include our dotted quad backup address: 95.143.193.148 (Which is explained here.)
At least this provided a good test for our Continuity of Web Services (COWS) defenses. Obviously, we are now going to need multiple mirror sites as well as an adaptive cloud server that can handle any future DOS onslaught.
The other lesson this teaches is the importance of having a backup. We provide an offline archive of the past six years of SurvivalBlog posts, available for a modest price.
~Jim Rawles~
Editor, www.SurvivalBlog.com
There is also an update posted on the excellent blog The Orange Jeep Dad, so go take a look at that. Please excuse the language, though Orange Jeep Dad did some admirable deleting.
I never fail to shake my head at the astounding depths of hatred which lurk in some people. Please pray that the SurvivalBlog folks can get things straightened out.
Several readers have emailed and asked why they've been unable to get on SurvivalBlog.com lately. We haven't been able to either. This is the official announcement:
This weekend, our server in Sweden was put under a "ping flood" Denial of Service (DOS) attack that resulted in 65% packet loss for a few hours.
This attack was most likely orchestrated by the man in Texas who last week anonymously sent me a racist rant and threats against both my blog site and my books. (His e-mail began: "You ni**er lover you have five days to take all links and any [sic] metion for [sic] links below off your site. If you [sic] dont [sic] do it I will post [sic] everyone [sic] of [sic] you [sic] cr***y books on [sic] prirate [sic] sites and kiss your ni**er loving income from them good [sic] by [sic] .")
The attack was timed for a three-day holiday weekend, because the miscreants expected that the staff at our ISP would be unavailable to help up reconfigure.
OBTW, the attack did not initially include our dotted quad backup address: 95.143.193.148 (Which is explained here.)
At least this provided a good test for our Continuity of Web Services (COWS) defenses. Obviously, we are now going to need multiple mirror sites as well as an adaptive cloud server that can handle any future DOS onslaught.
The other lesson this teaches is the importance of having a backup. We provide an offline archive of the past six years of SurvivalBlog posts, available for a modest price.
~Jim Rawles~
Editor, www.SurvivalBlog.com
There is also an update posted on the excellent blog The Orange Jeep Dad, so go take a look at that. Please excuse the language, though Orange Jeep Dad did some admirable deleting.
I never fail to shake my head at the astounding depths of hatred which lurk in some people. Please pray that the SurvivalBlog folks can get things straightened out.
Random pix
Some random shots from the last couple of weeks:
I took the camera and hit our pasture one day, trying to take a photo suitable for the front cover of the quarterly magazine I edit for the Purebred Dexter Cattle Association. This is the photo I used (our cow Ruby).
My folks are up visiting (staying in Coeur d'Alene for a couple of months) and they came over for dinner one evening. Older Daughter snapped a pic of my dad chuckling over a comic book.
Chickens on tires.
The girls discussing something in the barn.
Bumper sticker we saw in Spokane.
Another chuckle:
Some serious "awwww."
Building a better mousetrap. Older Daughter had a mouse in her room. So one night she decided to build a mousetrap using some books stacked stair-step fashion, with bits of cheese leading up the stairs. At the top were two folded pieces of paper laid lightly over a can, with a piece of cheese in the center. The idea is the mouse would step onto the paper and fall into the can.
It worked!!
What I want to know is, how can a four-day trip result in two weeks' worth of laundry?
A chickaree (a type of squirrel) in our barn (blurry shot, sorry).
We have a robin nesting in the rafters of our barn. Usually it's swallows who like to nest in rafters, but this is definitely a robin.
This is Snap, our rooster.
We've been having fewer eggs in the chicken coop lately. This could explain why.
Tossing tires with Jack's wonderful wife, Natalie.
Jack and Natalie's youngest. Oh so cute!
I don't know my snakes. Anyone? Gopher? Rat snake?
Alert!
Older Daughter is gradually papering the back of her bedroom door with our weekly church bulletins. Not your typical teenage wallpaper.
Explaining the intricacies of geometry (in a very messy room).
Moonset at dawn (behind a cloud of steam).
Sunset.
I took the camera and hit our pasture one day, trying to take a photo suitable for the front cover of the quarterly magazine I edit for the Purebred Dexter Cattle Association. This is the photo I used (our cow Ruby).
My folks are up visiting (staying in Coeur d'Alene for a couple of months) and they came over for dinner one evening. Older Daughter snapped a pic of my dad chuckling over a comic book.
Chickens on tires.
The girls discussing something in the barn.
Bumper sticker we saw in Spokane.
Another chuckle:
Some serious "awwww."
Building a better mousetrap. Older Daughter had a mouse in her room. So one night she decided to build a mousetrap using some books stacked stair-step fashion, with bits of cheese leading up the stairs. At the top were two folded pieces of paper laid lightly over a can, with a piece of cheese in the center. The idea is the mouse would step onto the paper and fall into the can.
It worked!!
What I want to know is, how can a four-day trip result in two weeks' worth of laundry?
A chickaree (a type of squirrel) in our barn (blurry shot, sorry).
We have a robin nesting in the rafters of our barn. Usually it's swallows who like to nest in rafters, but this is definitely a robin.
This is Snap, our rooster.
We've been having fewer eggs in the chicken coop lately. This could explain why.
Tossing tires with Jack's wonderful wife, Natalie.
Jack and Natalie's youngest. Oh so cute!
I don't know my snakes. Anyone? Gopher? Rat snake?
Alert!
Older Daughter is gradually papering the back of her bedroom door with our weekly church bulletins. Not your typical teenage wallpaper.
Explaining the intricacies of geometry (in a very messy room).
Moonset at dawn (behind a cloud of steam).
Sunset.
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Tires tires everywhere...
Ask and ye shall receive...
When it comes to tires, that's all ya gotta do. Ask. Everyone wants to give you their old tires! Now that word has gotten out, we've been buried in the dirty (beautiful) old things. I'm getting them faster than I can process them.
I'm trying to lay out the garden as ordered and regular as I can. To this end I'm using measuring tapes and strings to line everything up.
These widely-spaced tires along this narrow strip of garden will be for viney plants such as pumpkins, watermelons, cantaloups, etc. I've put newspapers and wire mesh beneath each tire and they're now ready for planting.
I lined up a series of huge tires along a string to be used as herb beds.
In this respect, measuring tapes are very handy.
Then two evenings ago, we got a call from our friend Jack, who works at a tire store. He was on his way with the company truck to deliver a load of seventy tires (!).
Needless to say, his company is thrilled that we can use the tires, since otherwise they have to pay to have the tires recycled and/or processed. Jack said they'll give me as many tires as I could possibly want. And then some.
See? A veritable mountain of tires.
Then yesterday, Don and I borrowed a neighbor's trailer and drove to a nearby town that has a tire dealership specializing in tractor tires. They had dozens of huge old tractor tires they would be delighted to get rid of. "Dozens" would be a bit much -- these babies are huge and are correspondingly harder to manage than smaller tires -- but we'll take some.
It's hard to appreciate the size of tractor tires until you're up close to them. Don estimates they weighed about 300 lbs. each. The fellow used a forklift to load them onto the trailer.
The trailer held five tires...
...which we strapped down firmly before creeping home with our groaning load of 1500 lbs or so.
We chained up and used the car to drag each tire off the trailer. Don and I were then able to hoist each tire on its side and roll it out of the way.
Okay, time to get these things under control.
I started by trundling 27 of the biggest truck tires into the garden.
These I left uncut and merely stacked by the potato tires, to be held in reserve until it's time to start building the stacks.
That reduced the pile by about one-third. Then I sorted the remaining tires into small, medium, and large sizes.
There were a few small odd-sized tires mixed in, so I'll cut these and use them for flowers.
I stacked the cut-off sidewalls out of the way. We have some ideas for using these discarded parts.
Meanwhile Don tried his hand at cutting one of the tractor tires.
It was hard going, but he finally succeeded. The cut was wavey-ier and more jaggety than he wanted, so he said next time he'll use a chalk string to mark it so he can get a cleaner cut.
Next steps: cutting out sidewalls, moving the tires into the garden, lining with newspaper and mesh, and filling. (Oh, it that all?) I'm encouraged that for all the work I have to do this year, I'll have a whole lot less work to do next year.
When it comes to tires, that's all ya gotta do. Ask. Everyone wants to give you their old tires! Now that word has gotten out, we've been buried in the dirty (beautiful) old things. I'm getting them faster than I can process them.
I'm trying to lay out the garden as ordered and regular as I can. To this end I'm using measuring tapes and strings to line everything up.
These widely-spaced tires along this narrow strip of garden will be for viney plants such as pumpkins, watermelons, cantaloups, etc. I've put newspapers and wire mesh beneath each tire and they're now ready for planting.
I lined up a series of huge tires along a string to be used as herb beds.
In this respect, measuring tapes are very handy.
Then two evenings ago, we got a call from our friend Jack, who works at a tire store. He was on his way with the company truck to deliver a load of seventy tires (!).
Needless to say, his company is thrilled that we can use the tires, since otherwise they have to pay to have the tires recycled and/or processed. Jack said they'll give me as many tires as I could possibly want. And then some.
See? A veritable mountain of tires.
Then yesterday, Don and I borrowed a neighbor's trailer and drove to a nearby town that has a tire dealership specializing in tractor tires. They had dozens of huge old tractor tires they would be delighted to get rid of. "Dozens" would be a bit much -- these babies are huge and are correspondingly harder to manage than smaller tires -- but we'll take some.
It's hard to appreciate the size of tractor tires until you're up close to them. Don estimates they weighed about 300 lbs. each. The fellow used a forklift to load them onto the trailer.
The trailer held five tires...
...which we strapped down firmly before creeping home with our groaning load of 1500 lbs or so.
We chained up and used the car to drag each tire off the trailer. Don and I were then able to hoist each tire on its side and roll it out of the way.
Okay, time to get these things under control.
I started by trundling 27 of the biggest truck tires into the garden.
These I left uncut and merely stacked by the potato tires, to be held in reserve until it's time to start building the stacks.
That reduced the pile by about one-third. Then I sorted the remaining tires into small, medium, and large sizes.
There were a few small odd-sized tires mixed in, so I'll cut these and use them for flowers.
I stacked the cut-off sidewalls out of the way. We have some ideas for using these discarded parts.
Meanwhile Don tried his hand at cutting one of the tractor tires.
It was hard going, but he finally succeeded. The cut was wavey-ier and more jaggety than he wanted, so he said next time he'll use a chalk string to mark it so he can get a cleaner cut.
Next steps: cutting out sidewalls, moving the tires into the garden, lining with newspaper and mesh, and filling. (Oh, it that all?) I'm encouraged that for all the work I have to do this year, I'll have a whole lot less work to do next year.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)