The New Crazies Make me Miss the Old Crazies

Today I had fun mowing my yard in a T-shirt and a shoulder holster. And pants. Then I came indoors, made hot dogs, turned on Youtube, and found out Seattle had been taken over by leftists with AR15’s.

Okay.

By the way, something seems to have gone wrong with hot dogs. I am not a big hot dog eater, so I’m not an expert, but I’m pretty sure they used to be a lot bigger. I picked some up at the store the other day, and no matter which brand I looked at, they all resembled pink noodles. I grilled a couple of Ball Park bun-length hot dogs yesterday, and when I added the requisite ketchup, mustard, relish, and onions, the meat disappeared. I can only guess how awful it would have been had I gone to a full-throttle chili-cheese-slaw dog.

Let me digress from my digression. Smoked sausages are the best hot dogs. Unless maybe bratwurst counts. A Hillshire Farms smoked mystery meat cylinder is actually a lot thicker than hot dogs used to be, and it tastes a lot better, too.

To digress even further…”bun-length” hot dogs??? Isn’t this a blatant admission that most hot dogs are too short? It looks like they shrunk the dogs lengthwise even before they went after girth. Now they’re selling length back to us, like they’re doing us a favor.

This tyranny has to end.

Slob cooking tip: when grilling hot dogs for one, nuke them first. Then they’ll be nice and hot in the middle, and you can grill them a lot faster. Just burn the outsides a little, and you’re off to the races.

So. The exact thing I predicted has happened, except that the rioters are white, not black, and the authorities are in favor of it.

The other day I pointed out that there was a huge danger BLMtifa nuts would realize they could take over cities, and when that happened, we would be in big trouble. Not “we,” really, because I live on a farm surrounded by wonderful people and zero targets of leftist interest. But still.

I figured black rioters would be the culprits, because they have gigantic support from huge ghettos. It didn’t occur to me that white lesbians and man-bun-sporting baristas would beat them to it.

Seattle is a very white city. Less than 10% of the population is black. Compare New York with 25%. Even with the huge white and black exodus and Latin influx, Miami is almost 20% black. Chicago checks in at around 30%. Black people like cities. They just do. But they don’t like Seattle. Maybe it’s the rain.

The takeover includes City Hall, and one of the rioters’ demands is that the mayor, who looks like someone on the editorial staff at Cosmopolitan, resign, immediately. Not one to take this lying down, the mayor says…wait, she agrees completely. I think. In any case, she is on the news forcefully defending the people who put her in the street.

She may not have a good answer to the problem of displaced people and illegally seized property, but she has pinpointed the true source of all of Seattle’s ills. Of course, I refer to Donald Trump. Obvious?

Why do I call these people rioters, given that they don’t seem to be very violent at the moment? Look, if you take over a city using semiautomatic rifles, it’s a riot. It may be a nice, polite, Caucasian-heavy riot, but it’s a riot.

It’s a wonder to behold. I knew white liberals were suicidal, but it’s still amazing to see them self-actualize.

There are a lot of weird things about the takeover. When did leftists decide it was okay to carry AR15’s openly? When did they even decide it was okay for AR15’s to exist?

Part of me wants to cheer them on for buying rifles, because it will be hard for leftists to keep throttling our civil rights if they’re also carrying guns. But capturing cities is not really consistent with the intent of the non-trans cis men who wrote the Second Amendment.

Here’s something weird: leftist crazies can legally carry rifles in Seattle, which is insanely off to the left, but I can’t do it here in Florida, where we are constantly under attack for our “loose” firearm laws. How did that happen?

I’m allowed to carry openly in two places: my home and my business, which, sadly, is my home. It’s really one place. That’s all I get. And I can’t permit you to carry openly on my property, in case you’re wondering. Of course, I would let you do it, if you’re a friend, but that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t be committing a felony.

I saw a fascinating video by a guy in North Dakota. He calls himself Tiborasaurus Rex, if I spelled it right. Weird guy. I thought he was just another grumpy dad bod with various beefs he wanted to air, but I looked at some of his old videos, and I saw a young military-looking guy teaching viewers how to be snipers. Is it really the same guy? It’s terrible what a few years and some kids can do to you.

I’m kidding. You can’t spend your whole life living on the edge and looking like a recruiting poster. Sooner or later, you will probably find yourself wearing Crocs and driving a minivan.

This is why they always kill the girl before James Bond marries her.

Anyway, he apparently lives near a town called Dickson, which is across the state from–you guessed it–Minnesota. BLMtifa terrorists decided to send rioters to various small towns in North Dakota, perhaps because they thought they were good places to commit violent crimes and take selfies. Soft targets, they must have thought.

Oh, you didn’t hear about this on the news? Amazing!

The folks in Dickson knew they were coming, so they got out their guns and invited some bikers. When the BLMtifers showed up, they were greeted with a wall of barrels, more or less. The local mall was completely blanketed in parked Harleys. The people of Dickson must have realized that stealing TV’s was always high on the BLMtifa agenda. You can’t protest from the heart when you don’t have Ultra 4K on the wall in your mom’s basement.

According to Mr. Rex, the BLMtifers packed up and went home without damaging anything. Total buzzkill.

He says he sat at a table in a local restaurant and listened to BLMtifers planning violent crimes and thefts. He said they even planned rapes. He says they were intercepted outside a bank they intended to knock over. For the cause. Hey, lattes and American Apparel shirts aren’t free.

What he said was highly disturbing. It shows how dangerous and cruel these people are. They’re no joke. Well. They ARE a joke, but they’re still very dangerous.

What would have happened had Mr. Rex and his friends lived somewhere else? Exactly what happened somewhere else. There would have been looting, beatings, and fires. Fortunately, he and his friends had the full cooperation of the police, and with their help, they not only kept their town safe; they made a name for it so BLMtifa will be very afraid to return.

Seattle, now…that’s another story. It’s BLMtifa paradise. But it’s relatively safe because the population is mostly whites and Asians who don’t want police records to prevent them from getting jobs at the Genius Bar.

I’ll tell you what I wonder. How are small-town Floridians supposed to be safe if we get arrested when we show up to deter BLMtifa with rifles? How can we help the police if open carry is a crime? It’s illegal to carry a rifle openly, and a concealed weapons permit doesn’t cover rifles, so it’s also illegal to carry openly.

What have we learned?

1. BLMtifa now knows it can take over cities.
2. Leftists may respond to BLMtifa aggression by apologizing and asking what they can do to assist in their own destruction. This feeds back into observation 1.
3. Open carry is the immediate answer to BLMtifa threats in small towns.
4. Open carry won’t be possible in Florida unless the cops issue statements waiving arrest in exchange for help.

One city has fallen. How long will it take for the next one to surrender? Of course, you could say places like Compton, Overtown, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Chicago’s south side already exist in a state of perennial surrender. I grant you that. But when will we see blatant, Seattle-style takeovers spread, with more violence?

I would love to be a fly on the wall, watching girls in short haircuts waving rifles telling Seattle…ites? What to do. They’ve declared their area to be a “cop-free zone.” Okay, so that means you can do anything you want there, right? Probably not, because people would be going in and taking their property back. So if the short-haired ladies are not permitting that…wait for it…aren’t they…the POLICE?

What if someone resists them? Will they shoot? Will they get out the cable ties and pepper spray? How do you restrain suspects–people accused of eating meat or whatever–without force? What if they kick you or punch you? What if they grab you by your blue mohawk, pull your head down, and rain blows on your skull? Do you just walk away? Do you knock them down and kneel on them for 9 minutes? One wonders.

There is a musical called Pippin. It’s about Charlemagne’s son. It’s not all that historically accurate, because Charlemagne’s father was named Pepin the Short, and while he did have a son named Pepin, the son who succeeded him was named Louis. But let’s go with it.

In the play, Pippin gets all soyed up and woke, and he finds his father’s harsh treatment of his subjects reprehensible. He murders him and takes over, eager to show how nice life is under an enlightened king who loves chick flicks and walks on the beach. Of course, he finds he has to be tough in order to prevent everyone from taking advantage of him. Things come to a head when he tells the leader of a besieging army he wants to begin a new day of peace, joy, hot yoga, and pointless sham recycling. The leader sends word that he agrees wholeheartedly and will depart. As soon as Pippin sends him his severed genitals.

At this point, he pulls the knife out of Charlemagne, who magically comes back to life to say, “I told you so.”

In a truly dark country with heartless, despotic rulers, change may be a good thing, but here in the US, every insurgent who gets anywhere will eventually have a Pippin moment. It’s like the first time you open your mouth and, to your horror, hear yourself say something your dad used to say.

Maybe I shouldn’t take such a lighthearted tone, but what else can I do?

Since I appear to be predicting the future successfully, appling a mystical gift known as the ability to perceive the obvious, I’ll say we should expect more takeovers with a more violent, race-tinged (i.e. hostile to whites, Jews, and Asians) flavor. If it doesn’t happen during the current wave of insanity, it will happen during the next one. I’m not sure the current one will end, though. It may be of of them “new normal” deals.

I foresee people using cyberspace to rule through mobs. We are not quite at the point where that would be a slam dunk. Maybe the bread needs to rise a little longer. Maybe America will succeed in getting the current crop of babies to take their pacifiers and nap for a bit, and we’ll see them return with more power when Skynet gets its fingers into all of us sufficiently deeply.

I could totally see Google and Facebook working to make that happen. I’m sure there are Google kids talking about it already. If I’m smart enough to see true technocracy on the horizon, people who actually work for social giants must have seen it years ago.

They saw it if they read my blog.

If you don’t know the Holy Spirit, you better introduce yourself. You’re already way late for boot camp. You can’t save yourself, and the government will either be unwilling or unable to help. You need to know someone who can surround you with favor and tell you where to move and what to do.

Learn from my Bad Example

God changes lives with supernatural revelation, and he has been very generous with me lately. He gave me a compound revelation this month involving my attitude.

He showed me that I need to be much more reluctant to complain. I’ve had a lot of bad experiences in cultures where people were pressured to bury their heads in the sand, and I have come to love exposing the truth, but I haven’t done a good job of separating exposure from pointless bellyaching or from reviling or ridiculing. Revealing the truth is very important, and it’s very important to do it in situations where it will destroy your popularity, but you can’t let yourself obsess on what is wrong or let it become an excuse for giving up too early.

It’s good to say, “I hear a noise coming from my front end, so I need to have my bearings checked.” It’s bad to say, “I hate this car. It’s always letting me down. Why can’t I ever have a car that works right? Other people have good cars. I can’t believe this is happening again. I’m so sick of this thing.”

You have to appreciate what you have and what happens to you.

Here is what God has shown me: you have to have what I call an immigrant/orphan/warrior attitude.

Consider immigrants who move the USA. I know many of them are curses to us. Many come filled with hostility toward us. Some perform acts of terrorism. Some expect us to mold ourselves to their toxic, backward cultures, which they themselves fled, instead of adapting themselves to our superior culture. Many come here out of pure selfishness. All those things are true, but I’m not suggesting we be like them in those ways. I’m suggesting we be like them in our appreciation of what we have.

I read an anecdote about a visitor from Russia. This person kept telling her hosts how wonderful the USSR was and how inferior America was. She could not shut up. Then there was a trip to an American supermarket in the winter. The critic looked around at the packed shelves and the fresh fruit and vegetables and started to cry.

That individual appreciated a blessing I have enjoyed every single day I’ve spent in America. I, on the other hand, feel deprived when my local store doesn’t have the exact cut of choice beef I want to buy or the right brand and variety of tomatoes for pizza.

Consider orphans. Many are hard to place, so they get stuck in orphanages for years, or they go from one foster family to another. They dream of having their own homes, with siblings and parents. The rest of us don’t feel much gratitude for situations older orphans pray for every night.

My family did me a lot of harm, but at least I had a family. My bills were paid, and we never had to live in a shelter or even an apartment. My mother was wonderful. I knew my grandparents. I knew my aunts, uncles, and cousins. Both of my parents left me inheritances. My family damaged me more than most white American families, but it also did me a great deal of good.

Think about warriors. When a warrior in a superior force goes into battle, and enemy soldiers start shooting at his position, he doesn’t say, “I am cursed. These people should have given up as soon as they saw us, but they’re trying to kill us anyway, and now I have to go through a miserable battle.” A warrior expects conflict. It’s what he trains for. He sees it as a normal obstacle he has to pass in order to get to victory.

The other day I bought a new stove. My old primitive stove was very hard to clean, and it only had 4 burners. I was reluctant to cook because it was so difficult to get the stove back in order afterward. I found a great induction cooktop at Home Depot for something like 45% off. I measured the existing stove, and while I couldn’t get at the cutout in the stone counter to measure it, I made a reasonable assumption: because appliances are standardized, a 36″ induction cooktop would fit in a cutout made for a 36″ conventional cooktop.

I got the old cooktop out, and I found that the cutout was 3/8″ too short. I had expected the switch to take about 30 minutes. Now I was looking at hiring someone or buying unfamiliar tools, making the new cuts myself, and enduring a long, messy job. I also learned that the manufacturer had not included some brackets for supporting the new stove in a stone counter. I’m talking about two small pieces of steel plus a tube of glue. Should cost about 10 bucks. In fact, these things should be included in the package with a stove that retails for $1800. I looked online, and the price for the “kit” was about $135.

I felt defeated, and that’s ridiculous. I knew it was ridiculous. I apologized to God even while I was feeling defeated. I rejected the feeling.

I said I knew the stove was going to fit. Victory was already mine. No doubt about it. I wasn’t experiencing defeat. I was just having a setback. I was blessed with an $1800 stove for which I paid about $1000, I didn’t have to use cash to get it, I got free delivery, I didn’t need help removing the old stove, I was sufficiently handy to know I was going to be able to get the cutout enlarged, I was putting it in a beautiful kitchen in a magnificent house in an extremely pleasant county in the United States of America…what possible excuse was there for feeling cursed and defeated?

I didn’t have a warrior attitude. I had a snowflake attitude. An Antifa/BLM attitude. I knew it. I hated it. I refused to continue in it. I asked God to help me.

I knew that on the other side of the work and the mess, a fantastic new stove was waiting. The new stove has a top which is a continuous sheet of glass. Cleaning it after a messy cooking session takes less than 5 minutes. It has 5 burners, one of which is gigantic, which is a nice feature. It’s much, much faster than gas, conventional, or radiant cooking. It won’t work with certain cookware, but I can get new things, and I have additional portable burners anyway. When I’m not cooking, the surface functions as temporary counter space.

God was blessing me like crazy. Feeling defeated and wronged was not just incorrect; it was offensive.

I made a terrible mess when I installed the cooktop, but a tradesman would have made the exact same mess. Instead of getting a new stove for $1800 plus maybe $500 in installation costs, I got it for $1000, no cash left my bank account, and I learned a lot.

Along the way, I found out I didn’t need the expensive tube of glue and sheet metal brackets.

The Bible promises us victory over and over. It doesn’t say we’ll never have to fight or that things will go exactly the way we want. Victory is not the same thing as lack of conflict. When we win wars decisively, we still have to fight, and we still lose people. No one with any common sense says that makes us losers.

Sometimes God has shown me what it’s like to deal with me and my bad attitude. I have been in situations where I’ve been in charge of people who were doing various things. If you have employees, or if you have hired people temporarily, you’ve been there. I have dealt with people who whined and complained. I have dealt with people who stood around conversing instead of working, while I, the one who was paying them, worked. I’ve dealt with people who were so slow and lazy, they were literally much slower than I would have been had I done things alone. I’ve experienced resentment from people I was paying. I felt I was being punished for giving them money.

When I was slaving away as an armorbearer at Miami’s Trinity Church, I worked a couple of Richie Wilkerson’s Rendezvous meetings at the Fillmore Theater on Miami Beach. People volunteered to help the armorbearers. We were there mostly to manage crowds. I had a lot of experience, and I was in a position of authority. A young black man was part of my team.

I set things up the way they were supposed to be, in cooperation with the other armorbearers. Then this young man decided he was in charge. He started moving cordons and changing the way traffic flowed. He started telling me how things were going to be set up, as though I had volunteered to work for him!

His ideas were inept and would have caused problems. I immediately moved things back, and I told him I was running the team. I said if he wanted to help us, he had to follow orders.

He got so mad, he walked off and quit. He could not understand that he we were not equals on the team. It was impossible to explain this concept, which 98% of human beings chosen at random would have understood without being told. No one on the team could figure him out.

I never interacted with him after that. I forgot his face. I don’t know what happened to him. Another young man from the same area had also volunteered, and he could not have been more helpful. He kept making sure he was doing what the team wanted him to do. He never complained. After the conference was over, we would always wave at each other in church and converse a little.

I’ve dealt with a lot of people who could not submit, honor, or appreciate. I have often shown similar attitudes toward God.

If someone is willing to pay you and advise you when he has other options, and you make him miserable, he’s going to limit what he does for you. It’s just not worth it when you have to be treated like you’re imposing. On the other hand, when people have a good attitude, it makes you grateful. It makes you want to do more for them and to be more closely involved with them.

Surely we punish God when we aren’t grateful and respectful, and surely he responds by holding back our blessings. Surely he must increase our blessings when we have better attitudes. I believe there are things I wanted which God kept from me, and now I believe he will provide those things because I will reward him instead of making him wish he had a better son to work with.

Here is something Jesus said:

A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none.

Then said he unto the dresser of his vineyard, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none: cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?

And he answering said unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it:

And if it bear fruit, well: and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down.

When you’re push-starting a car, you don’t push forever. If it doesn’t start to run eventually, you quit pushing.

Every day, I need to see my blessings as though they were new. When I get in my car, I should feel as though I were driving a new car off a dealer’s lot. When I sit in my air-conditioned house, I should feel as though I had been living in a tent in insufferable heat all my life. When I eat and drink, I should feel as though I had just been rescued from a month in a lifeboat. I live in a world where billions of people don’t have the good things I have. I could easily be replaced with someone more grateful.

That’s what happened to the Jews. I’m not talking about replacement theology. They are still God’s chosen. But if you read the Bible, you will see that they got in trouble over and over for taking God’s blessings for granted, and in the end, most didn’t appreciate the greatest blessing of all: their messiah. So most of what he offered went to Gentiles. Now, of course, most Christians take God and his blessings for granted, so we’re in the same boat.

I believe this revelation is extremely powerful and that it will bring me things I couldn’t get before. I pray, and I have faith, but faith isn’t everything. How effective can faith for a result be if God knows you’re going to make him wish he had never granted your request?

I’m astounded when I look back and think of all the blessings I’ve spat on and ruined. My education is an example. I barely did anything in high school, but one of the world’s best universities sent me a letter, asking me to apply. When I was accepted and my parents paid my tuition and expenses without hesitation, I didn’t appreciate it at all. I behaved like a character from the movie Animal House. I thought the administration was my enemy. I thought drunkenness was cool. I made trouble.

I wish I could go through high school again. I went to the best school in Florida. I could have focused on math and science. I could have gone to MIT or Caltech. Even Columbia, the school that accepted me, was a top-notch STEM school.

I know I couldn’t have done much better as things were. I didn’t know God, and I truly was cursed. My family was a constant source of discouragement and pain. Things didn’t go well even when I did things right. But if I had known God and had a better attitude, I would have excelled.

I know people who were thrilled to be able to go to community college. I know people who were thrilled to go to state universities. I know people who have student loans. I had a full ride at one of the best Ivy League schools, and I resented it!

I can’t complain about mowing the yard. Most people don’t have a yard. I can’t complain about doing bookkeeping and taxes. Most people have no money to manage. It’s amazing to me that I ever complained about cleaning up after my pets. Who chose to buy them? How many people are there who would love to have two beautiful exotic birds who love them?

I have to remember that regardless of what happens while I’m here on Earth, I have victory. Under the worst circumstances imaginable, which are nothing like my actual circumstances, I would still be saved when I died. The rejection and problems I face here are like the heckling and reviling Cubans used to experience when they chose to move to America. People would spit on them and call them worms. The speed bumps I deal with are temporary and unimportant, and they precede blessings that will make me forget them.

I think my new outlook will improve my life tremendously, so I want to tell other people who make the same mistakes I did. I hope someone else can make the change earlier and have a better life than the one I’ve had.

Democrats Killed the Small Gas Engine

Today’s amazing news: sonic cleaners work.

I have three chainsaws, two gas blowers, and a gas weed eater. Thirty years ago, these were great things to have. Now owning them is torture because Democrats force us to use inferior gas tainted with ethanol. It turns out ethanol is a great fuel for political campaigns, but it ruins small engines, and it’s not great for large ones, either.

Here is what Husqvarna says about using ethanol gas: “It is recommended that you replace gas in your fuel tank every 2-3 weeks to avoid alcohol and water related engine issues.”

I have 6 small engines. I never know when I’m going to need to use one. Nonetheless, if I use gas station fuel, I’m expected to maintain a strict schedule of replacing fuel in every tank, and “replacing” doesn’t just mean you can pour it out. You have to run every engine dry, and then you have to run them dry with ethanol-free fuel.

Obviously, I am not going to turn my life upside-down so I can nanny a bunch of yard tools. I buy ethanol-free gas, I add the best ethanol-fighting additive I can buy, and I buy new carburetors when I have problems.

A stock carburetor for a typical chainsaw runs somewhere in the neighborhood of $100. They’re made in China. They’re not very good. Even if ethanol doesn’t plug them up, the diaphragms rot. It’s not like you’re doing yourself a big favor by buying OEM.

The same carburetor, made in the same country and sold by a different company, will generally cost you under $15, along with a new fuel filter, a spark plug, and some other useful junk, such as gaskets. My belief is that any time you buy a small engine, you should buy a Chinese carb off Ebay just so you’ll be ready for the inevitable. Some carbs are a pain to replace, but many pop in and out in 10 minutes, with no tools except for a screwdriver.

I am a huge fan of Chinese Ebay carbs, but I know have an even better weapon: the sonic cleaner. I saw a Youtube video about using them on carbs, and I saw my destiny unfold before me. I needed a sonic cleaner anyway. A sonic cleaner, like a welder or a mill, is a superpower tool. It lifts you to new levels most men will never reach.

My pole saw pooped out a few weeks back, due to ethanol. I can’t recall whether the carb is Chinese. I have a dead-carb collection. Maybe one of them came from the pole saw. Anyhow, by the time it died, I had a 15-liter sonic cleaner. I filled it with hot water, partially disassembled the carb, sealed it in a jelly jar full of gas, and gave it the business. Today I reinstalled it. No problems.

Of course, in order to check it, I had to put fuel in it, so once I confirmed that it ran, I had to empty the fuel, run it dry, and so on. Even non-ethanol fuel should be removed from a carb before you put a tool away.

I didn’t have total confidence in the effect of running the saw dry, because, believe it or not, you can run one dry and still have problems later. My solution was to run some Sea Foam through it. Sea Foam is an engine treatment made from mineral oil and secret ingredients. It’s supposed to be great for engines. I am hoping it can’t congeal like gas.

I wanted to use my weed eater today. It refused to start even though it has never seen ethanol. Today’s gas supposedly contains things that can plug an engine even without ethanol’s help.

I popped the carb off, stuck it in the sonic cleaner, and gave it 25 minutes at 53° Celsius. I picked 53 arbitrarily. Then I gave it another 25 minutes. I’m about to reinstall it.

I’m planning to get some of the Gucci premixed gas they sell at Home Depot. It’s supposed to be better than ethanol-free. My plan is to run engines dry, add a little Gucci gas, and run them dry again. It’s a giant pain, but it’s not as bad as taking saws apart and working on the carbs. I don’t know if it will work.

It seems like there is something special about the climate here. Small engine carbs just don’t like it. People from other areas tell me they use gas station gas and never have problems. I can’t explain what’s happening, but I’m not imagining my problems.

I may get some Gucci gas tonight. You can’t use it all the time, because it costs $20 per gallon. That’s over six times the cost of ethanol-free.

Replacing carburetors is actually cheaper than using this stuff.

You can use sonic cleaners for jewelry and a whole bunch of other things. A big one will run you around $150, but having a superpower is worth it.

Maybe the weed eater will run tonight, and if so, maybe I’ll be able to use it to clear the beautyberry bushes out of the shooting lane in my pasture. I sure hope so, because otherwise I’ll have to attach the bush hog to the tractor, and attaching the driveshaft will probably be a one-hour job all by itself. Having a quick hitch on your tractor is great, but if your driveshafts are torture devices, it doesn’t help much.

Get yourself a sonic cleaner. Feel the power.

Asphalt Looks Better Every Day

Winter was very disappointing. Where I live, the daily highs should be below 80 from November through March, and there should be a lot of days below 70. This year, we got plenty of roasting-hot days in the 90-degree neighborhood. When that happens, you feel cheated, because while summer can trespass on winter and ruin it, there is no possibility we will have cold days in the summer to make up for it.

Now that temperatures are high and we’re getting occasional rain, the grass has started growing. The lawnmower and I are resuming our romance.

Today the mower would not start. I got a click, and that was it. I put a charger on the battery and went to brush the pool.

When I finished brushing the pool, I tried the mower again. It ran. I mowed most of the yard, and then I got off the mower to move a branch. My mower has a seat switch on it that turns the engine off when I get off, but I bypassed it because it’s unbearable. Because the engine was still running when I got off to grab the branch, I disengaged the PTO so the blades would stop spinning.

When I got back on the mower, the PTO would not reengage. I could still ride the mower, but I couldn’t cut anything.

I guess this is what happens when you mow as rarely as I have been mowing.

I almost shut the mower down to look it over, but it occurred to me that it might not start, and I was at least 100 yards from the area where I park it. I drove it back to its spot and shut it down. Of course, it would not start again. I got idiot lights but no starter, no PTO, and no headlights.

I did what I always do. I checked Internet forums. I found a wide array of problems and solutions.

I found out oxidation could cause the mower to act this way. My battery cables had some kind of hard oxide inside the terminals. I had to remove it with a Dumore grinder and carbide burr. I lost my battery brush, which would have done the job in 10 seconds, so this is what I had to resort to.

I let the mower charge while I had lunch, and when I tried the key again, it worked.

I can never decide whether this mower is junk or not. It’s impossible to work on, and it seems much more complicated than it needs to be. It’s full of engineering errors. On the other hand, I believe it’s 28 years old, and it should run for another 20. The John Deere 430 is hard to kill. It’s way too easy to shut down, but it’s hard to kill.

I was unhappy about the failure to start, because I had a special task in mind for today. I wanted to go to the pasture and cut a bunch of weeds that were in an area where I wanted to shoot.

I shoot into a berm made from sand taken from a pond. On one side of the berm, there are no trees within 100 yards. On the other side, there is a nice wooded area, which is exactly where I want to be when I shoot on hot days. Between the wooded area and the berm, there are blackberry and beautyberry bushes. Today I attacked the beautyberries while trying to spare as many blackberry briars as I could. Blackberries are useful. Beautyberries are pathetic. People eat them, but I think they’re trying to prove something. They don’t taste good.

I found that the beautyberry bushes were not easy to remove with a mower. They fold over so low the blades don’t make good contact. But with persistence, I improved my view of the berm a great deal. I suppose I’ll have to attach the bush hog to the tractor and do it right. Either that or I’ll have to use the brush blade on my gas weed eater.

How much do you want to bet the weed eater starts after several months of idleness? Ethanol gas makes it very difficult to keep machinery running here. Even treated ethanol-free gas lets me down a lot.

When I get my shooting lane cleared, I’ll move my targets. I’ll be shooting from east to west instead of the other way around. Right now, I shoot toward a highway. It’s totally safe, but I would feel better shooting toward the big lot full of trees to the west of my land.

My pasture is dish-shaped, so even without the berm, from either direction, I am shooting toward the ground. That’s a nice feature.

I don’t know how people driving on the road would feel if they knew a guy was shooting a 10mm pistol in their general direction, but then they do 70 with cars coming toward them in the left lane at the same speed, and they don’t freak out about that.

Maybe I should have a policy of restricting shooting to experienced shooters. I will never fire a round over the berm, but women and kids do amazing things with firearms.

I feel as though my enthusiasm for life is returning, 9 days after my personal tragedy. I let a lot of things go while Travis was in the hospital, and my motivation was even worse after he died. I seem to be getting more done now.

As I have written before, I believe joy, as used in the Bible, means something other than ordinary happiness. I believe it’s connected with results and expectations. For example, the Bible says, “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.” That describes a type of happiness which is related to relief. The word “rejoice” comes from “joy,” and it’s always connected to an event. Something hoped for happens, or something dreadful ends, and people rejoice.

The Bible says, “The joy of the Lord is our strength.” That’s literally true. If you have joy, you expect good things to happen. It gives you motivation to keep going and get things done.

Depression is the absence of joy. It’s discouragement. This is why depressed people kill themselves. They don’t expect things to change for the better.

I had been expecting to rejoice when Travis left the hospital. Instead, joy was taken from me, and I didn’t have the strength to do all the things I should have done.

It may seem strange to get this upset by the death of a friend. I may not have written enough about Travis to give people an understanding of how close we were. I would feel bad if any of my friends died, but Travis was like a family member.

This morning I asked God for joy. It appears it worked. I got the pool in order and mowed the yard, and had the lawn tractor behaved, I would have gotten more done.

I’m coming back to life, and I guess most of the world feels the same way. COVID-19 is going away. Leftists are unhappy about it, because they think the disease will put Biden in the White House, but it’s happening. People are going to work. We can’t play hooky forever.

Leftists say there will be a huge second wave. If that’s true, where is it? Right now, the epidemic is disappearing in places that reopened, and areas that are locked down continue to have problems. Reopened areas are not getting second waves, but locked-down areas seem to be prolonging the first one.

If there’s going to be a second wave, why hasn’t China had one?

Right now, the main reason the numbers look as bad as they do is the local epidemic in Brazil. I don’t know if they got the bug later than the rest of us or what, but their figures are very bad. The numbers keep rising. The other major nations are doing great.

I am determined to keep cutting back on looking at the news, but I still see things. I saw that leftists were going after Trump for using hydroxychloroquine, the quinine substitute some countries use to treat covid. They’re furious at him for taking it. They keep citing studies which suggest it doesn’t work. They don’t seem interested in the opinions of competent doctors who think it does.

Why do they care what he takes? What possible reason could they have for objecting? These are the same people who think we should all be able to get marijuana prescriptions for anxiety. Not just marijuana, but cigarette marijuana which damages lungs and gives off secondhand smoke. They think drugs should be legalized. All except one, I guess.

They excoriated Trump for not wearing a mask. They wanted him to wear something they thought would protect him, even though they certainly did not want him to be protected. Now he’s doing something to protect himself, and they’re angry about that.

One of the great things about Trump is that he knows it makes no difference at all what he says or does. When he goes against the left, they pour vitriol over him. When he does what they want, the response is the same. The result: he pays no attention. He actually needles them to make it worse. Needling people is a vice, but it shows how little their raving bothers him. I think he enjoys it.

Trump gets annoyed in the short term, but you can tell he forgets all about it 15 minutes later. I guess that’s why his blood pressure is good.

Leftists are all over the web saying Trump lied when he said the White House physician gave him the drug. The physician had to write a note, correcting them. He took responsibility and endorsed the use of hydrochloroquinine in Trump’s case. I wonder what they’re saying now. They’re probably calling him a quack.

Maybe they’re saying the note is forged.

Watching Trump reminds me of my own experiences. God knew before I was born that I belonged to him. Whatever my faults were, I was not cut out to be a child of darkness. No matter how much I tried to fit into the body of Satan, I couldn’t do it. I was always rejected, trolled, and mistreated. I have often wondered why people constantly popped up to attack me. I didn’t always know my status as a child of God was the reason.

What Trump goes through is very similar. There is absolutely no way to make the people who hate him happy. They will never make peace, admit fault, or forgive.

Sooner or later, you have to quit worrying about being liked. Jesus never worried about it. He said incredibly harsh things to people. He was extremely rude. I don’t think Christians should make rudeness a goal, but we ought to be truthful. We should lead instead of following.

I just read a book by Anthony Bourdain, the chef who died by his own hand in France two years ago. People said it was suicide, but he was found alone in a bathroom, hanging, and Bourdain was a lover of the pleasures of the flesh.

He was a wonderful writer. His book is very entertaining.

As I read, the thing that struck me about Bourdain was that he was the perfect child of darkness. He was a complete follower. He accepted every vice you can think of. He devoured the corrupt ethos of the people around him like a starving dog on a bowl of chicken livers. I don’t think he ever had an original thought, and maybe that’s why he was not a great chef. Running a kitchen well is only part of being a great chef. You also have to be creative. Bourdain was not. He admitted he was a very ordinary chef.

His description of culinary professionals is revolting. According to him, big-city kitchens are full of sexual deviants, criminals, drug addicts, alcoholics, men who molest other men on the job, thieves, and liars. They are astonishingly nasty to each other. They hurl filthy insults at each other all day. They brutalize each other physically. They enjoy abusing and breaking each other.

Bourdain wrote about this atmosphere with tremendous enthusiasm. He couldn’t get enough of it. He savored it and wallowed in it. When he was a newcomer, he saw how vile older cooking professionals were, and instead of choosing another job, he was filled with drive to become like them. It’s as though they were father figures and he was trying to live up to their debased standard in order to prove something to himself.

He was like a kid who went to a “scared straight” program and thought, “THESE ARE MY PEOPLE!”, and did his best to go to prison.

He was a man of the earth. No doubt about it. He was programmed to go to hell. He was made for it. Hell fits him like a bespoke suit. He was Jewish, which means he was descended from Abraham, but he preferred the other side.

When I say hell fits him, I don’t mean he’s not likable. He is. But he lived like a joyous pig rolling in week-old garbage. I don’t think anything could have changed his attitude. Depravity and misery brought him pleasure. He could never have turned to God, because righteousness appalled him.

There are two families on earth, and only two, and every person belongs to one of them.

When people die, they go exactly where they belong. There is no injustice to it. God may not have created hell for people, but plenty of people fit in beautifully there.

As the decline of the world accelerates, we’re going to see huge numbers of people ganging up on God, Christians, Jews, and Israel. They will be more and more direct and bold in their attacks on God himself. We’re going to marvel at them, and many of us will feel that we have to do something. We’ll think something must be wrong because so many people are competing to get into hell. Nothing will be wrong. We’ll be seeing people who belong in hell, establishing their credentials.

I don’t mean we shouldn’t love them or hurt for them. I’m just saying we’ll be seeing something that makes perfect sense.

We’ll be seeing the Bourdain mindset, sweeping over multitudes.

That was quite a digression, but I won’t delete it.

I feel as if COVID-19 were a sorting mechanism, like a cream separator. It’s doing a great deal to divide people into pro-God and anti-God factions. I don’t think the world will be the same afterward. Some people think masks and social distancing will be the big changes. I don’t think so. I think covid is pushing many, many people into the arms of the Beast. It’s teaching them to cling to the government nipple, trust the state without reserve, and jettison their rights as though they were dirty diapers. It seems like far fewer people are being driven in the opposite direction.

I suspect the main changes will be in people’s attitudes toward governments, rights, God, and those who believe in God.

If we’re really getting close to the end, we should expect all the signs Jesus spoke of. We already have one very strong sign. He said it would be as the days of Lot and the days of Noah. Perversion and wickedness abounded in those days. Genesis said a homosexual rape mob in Sodom tried to violate two angels.

Luke 21 contains the description Jesus gave of the end times. It looks like a lot of the things that have to come to pass haven’t transpired yet. It looks like the rapture can’t come this week or this year, but next year can’t be ruled out.

Enough of that. I’m glad I’m feeling more like getting things done.

Anything Worth Thinking About is Worth Overthinking

I don’t feel like being responsible just yet. I think I’ll write about some trivial things.

My reloading efforts ran into a speed bump. I have been trying to create 10mm cartridges with 180-grain Speer Gold Dot bullets, and I want 1225 fps from a compact Glock.

This should be simple. I did it about 10 years ago. I may get scolded for saying this, but I still carry that ammunition. There are people who are afraid of old ammunition, but in reality, it’s extremely stable. You can put it in on a shelf and shoot it 75 years later with no problems, if you can still hold a gun. It’s common to buy military surplus ammunition which is decades old.

I suppose you have to be concerned if you walk around in wet clothes a lot, but that isn’t me.

Yesterday, I fired a few rounds of my old ammunition. Zero issues. The gun itself is the weak link. It appears that lint from my holster and clothing have the potential to gum up the firing pin.

When you make your own ammunition, if you want to do it right and know what kind of velocity you’ll get, you need to know how much powder is in each casing. To do this, you need a good scale. It has to measure accurately within +/- 0.05 grains, and a grain is around 1/15 of a gram, so you’re shooting for about a 1/150-gram interval. That’s between 6 and 7 milligrams, isn’t it? Check my math.

Precision isn’t very important for moderate loads, but when you start going for more velocity, you risk blowing up cases, so you need to be more precise.

I had a Lyman digital scale, and I learned that it couldn’t be trusted. I bought a second digital scale, and I found out the resolution was 100% too big. Now I have an old RCBS beam scale. Can I trust it? Sort of. I use check weights to set it, but I don’t know how good the check weights are. I ordered better ones. I think what I have is fine, however. I’ll find out after the new weights arrive.

I got around the problem with the first digital scale by weighing two charges at once and dividing by two. I figured the powder measure was pretty consistent, and I had reasonable faith in the digital scale. I started getting 24.0-grain double charges, and I wanted 12.0 grains per cartridge, so things looked great. I made several test rounds, and they came in between 1200 and 1250 fps. Perfect.

Then I let the process sit for a few days, and before starting up again, I checked the powder measure on the beam scale. I got 11.8 grains. I guessed I had weighed the successful rounds incorrectly and that the 11.8-grain figure was accurate. I had to find out. I didn’t want to adjust the powder measure, use 12.0 rounds, and end up with 1300 fps. I made some 11.8-grain test rounds and fired them. I got velocities in the area of 1100 fps. Terrible.

Somehow, the powder measure had started throwing 11.8-grain charges, and I had to start calibrating it all over again.

On the up side, it looks like my digital scale was right. I checked some new double charges, and I got 23.6 grains if memory serves.

Why would the powder measure shift? No idea.

The check weights aren’t slated to arrive until Tuesday, so it would be stupid to go ahead and make defensive ammunition before they arrive. What do I do?

I think it’s time to crank out .45 target ammunition. I don’t really care if I know how much powder is in a target round, as long as I know the amount is safe. I have a bunch of old .45 brass and a fresh box of lead bullets.

After I typed the word “bullets,” I had to go take care of a tax matter, and while I was working on it, I heard and felt a loud thump. It was as though a truck had hit the house. I went outside and saw that the big oak in my parking circle had lost a fork. It was lying across the driveway. Had to go out, cut it up, and move it. It’s a beautiful day for working outside. It’s warm, but it’s dry, and there is a good breeze. While I was at it, I went to the pasture and moved some tree chunks from Hurricane Irma so the cattle wouldn’t have to keep walking around them.

I’m glad the oak lost a big branch, because the oak needs to be cut, and this will make it easier. A tree cutter quoted me $1000, which didn’t include hauling the wood. That’s insane. It’s a 30-minute job for him. For $500, I would have taken his offer, but $1000 is not going to work.

The smaller the tree is, the easier it will be for me to cut it myself. I hope more of it falls.

The tree is leaning, and the danger is that it will “barber chair” or split before it falls. If that happens, a part that splits off can swing around and kill me. I have read that you can prevent this by putting chains around the trunk. If it can’t split, you can’t have a barber chair.

To get back to shooting, I have to do something with the ammo I’m creating. I have very few factory-made ammunition boxes. When I used to go to gun ranges, I took cardboard ammo boxes out of the trash cans. They work pretty well, but they don’t last forever, and they fall open if you’re not careful. And the only range I go to is in my yard.

I decided to get some Harbor Freight ammo cans. These are sturdy plastic hinged cans. Like miniature plastic versions of the steel military cans, sort of. My plan is to throw ammo into them for storage, and when I want to shoot, I’ll move it to small plastic boxes with grids inside them. These boxes are made by a company called MTM. I already have some.

When I’m shooting, I like to know how many rounds I’ve used, and I don’t like to count. A box with a grid inside it will do the counting for me, and it will be lighter than a Harbor Freight box with hundreds of cartridges in it.

I’m getting a new chronograph. The Chrony F-1 I have now works fine, and it was a good choice when I only shot a few times a year. Now that I shoot more, it’s a drag. It has a display which attaches via an 18-foot cable. Attaching that to the chronograph and settling it firmly in the utility cart is a pain. I don’t like having to suspend the cable over old cow piles. The chronograph stores data, but it has some kind of primitive 1980’s-style interface for getting the data out. I don’t even know how it works. When I read about it, it was so unappealing, I decided I didn’t care to learn the details.

With my old chronograph, I had to shoot, stop, enter a number into my phone, shoot again, and so on. I’m all done with that.

Also, the company that makes the Chrony F-1 has an extremely backward website. They don’t have an online shopping cart. You have to email orders. On top of that, it looks like they don’t respond. I sent an order for parts the other day, and I haven’t heard a word. There is no conceivable excuse for doing business that way in 2020.

The chronograph has light diffusers which are held on by steel rods, and I shot one of the steel rods because I was twisting and contorting myself so I could shoot at a lower height. If you lose your steel rods, don’t buy new ones. Get some wooden ones. The diameter is 5/32″. The length is 18″. You can also order 5/32″ drill rod from Zoro Tools, which is what I have done. No idea whether the Chrony people are going to send anything.

I’m getting a newer model from a company called Competition Electronics. It has a bluetooth connection, and there is a phone app. You shoot as fast as you want, and the machine sends the velocities to your phone. I believe the app gives averages and standard deviations. Not sure. Anyway, it will be a big improvement. I should be able to use a Fire tablet instead of the phone.

I had been putting the Chrony on the same cheap tripod I use for cameras. That will not be necessary any more. I got myself an Amazon Basics tripod. Not having to remove my camera and attach the chronograph will speed things up, and it will certainly make it easier to shoot bullets and footage simultaneously.

It’s funny that we still say “footage” now that there are no feet involved in video.

I suppose it’s too late to drive to Harbor Freight. Gives me something to look forward to tomorrow.

You Qualify

I’ve run into an interesting problem when telling people about God. They say they’re reluctant to ask him for things because they don’t deserve them.

This is an extremely destructive problem. It’s rooted in the poisonous teachings of traditional churches. For 2,000 years, preachers who knew nothing whatsoever about God told us we were supposed to look out for ourselves and work really hard. Someone even made up a Satanic saying which many people mistakenly believe is in the Bible: “God helps those who help themselves.” Obama’s press secretary quoted this nonsense and attributed it to the Bible.

God does not help those who help themselves. If you think you can help yourself, you’re completely deluded. You can’t take your next breath unless God helps you. He has been helping you every second of your life. If you think you built your career, your fortune, or your family by yourself, you are disconnected from God. Everything you have is in danger.

The belief that you can help yourself is based in pride. It’s more toxic than hate, lust, greed, or any other fault. If you read the Bible, you will see that the worst evils humanity has suffered were caused by people trying to help themselves. Adam and Eve tried to help themselves by taking a forbidden drug to give themselves the knowledge of good and evil. Read Genesis for yourself. They were trying to improve themselves.

Somehow, Satan has convinced us that pride is a virtue. There are still people who are against other character flaws, but in America, we exalt pride. Some of us even say, “Christian pride,” which is sort of like saying, “Christian rape,” or “Christian abortion.”

I supposed it’s not a coincidence that people who are snared in sexual sin use the word “pride” to label their movement. They’re right. They think they know better than God.

We really need to get this through our heads: God wants us to ask him for things all the time. He wants us to ask for little things, not just big things. You should ask him to help you what you should have for lunch. You should ask him which brand of aluminum foil to buy.

Get over the idea that God is busy. God has never, ever been busy. You can’t be busy unless your a limited being who lives in time. There is no time where God lives. Get over the idea that God does not want to be bothered. He loves us with extreme intensity, and he craves interaction with us. He is full of desire to do things for us.

Stop thinking you’re imposing on God. Everything is easy for him. He has said so. If you ask him for financial help, he doesn’t have to work extra shifts at Target. He doesn’t have to do without. It’s impossible for God to lack. If you ask him for healing, he doesn’t have to strain and pant and work up a sweat. He is not inconvenienced. He sits on the throne of heaven and wields infinite power. He has infinite resources. After he helps you, he still has as much as he had beforehand.

You have to ask for things and give God the glory when things work out. James said you can’t even do normal business without God’s help. Look:

Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that. But now ye rejoice in your boastings: all such rejoicing is evil.

In the same chapter, he says God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. When you say you do things so God doesn’t have to, you’re saying you are your own god.

What is grace? Anything God does for you is grace. Some people think grace is a supernatural ability to suffer and live in misery. That’s insane. Here are some examples of grace: miracle healings, the ability to prophesy, supernatural faith, supernatural love, financial success, marital success, and the next beat of your heart. Anything at all that you receive from God is grace.

You have to understand that God is a testator. He is a person who gives his heirs what they have inherited. He is not interested in your hard work. He is not adding up your hours so he can pay you what he owes. He is giving you things you could never earn. You deserve hell and defeat, all the time. God doesn’t owe you one good thing. The reason you’re not in hell right now is that he is patient and full of love.

God never owed you anything except failure and pain on earth and then damnation followed by perpetual agony, and because he didn’t want to pay that debt to you, he paid it to himself.

God gives gifts, not salaries.

It doesn’t matter what your need is. God wants to help you. Turning down his help will not make him happy. Would it make you happy if your son were crippled and he insisted on hobbling his way through life instead of letting you heal him?

I ask God for little things all the time, just for the purpose of nullifying pride. Hamburger or peanut butter and jelly? The grey shirt or the blue one? A lot of the time, I don’t really care what happens. I just want to acknowledge my total inability to do anything without his help. I want his help to keep coming. I want to be used to receiving it.

I want to be pampered by God. Anything he is willing to give me, I will take. I will gladly say I’m his charity case. It’s true whether I admit it or not, and it’s true of you, too.

I wish someone had shown me this when I was a kid. There were a lot of blessings that never arrived, but I was pretty good at receiving curses.

This was on my mind this morning, as was pistol ammunition. I’m trying to get 1250 fps from 180-grain Speer Gold Dots in a 10mm Glock 29. I’m getting numbers about 150 fps lower than expected, with known loads. Frustrating.

Yesterday I started to wonder if my primers were the problem. Back during the Obama ammo panic, I bought several thousand Wolf large pistol primers. I think they were all I could find. I’ve been using them. I’ve learned a few things.

People say Wolf primers are hard and that they are difficult to seat. Put these things together, and you end up with rounds that don’t go off. This is not a terrible tragedy when you’re shooting targets, but it could kill you in a defense situation. I’ve had a bunch of rounds fail to fire, and I’ve also experienced low velocities.

I believe I used CCI and Winchester primers when I made my original defensive ammo, which ran something like 1225 fps in a Glock 29. I have information dating back to my efforts with Wolf, and back then, I noted that they didn’t always go off.

Primers can affect bullet speeds. How much? I don’t know. But when you add the FTF’s in with the low speeds I’m getting, it’s obvious that I need to try a different brand. I have some Winchester large pistol primers, so today I loaded up 6 rounds for test purposes. I’m going to chronograph them.

I hope they perk up. If I can get 1225 or so, good enough.

I don’t see how a primer can knock 150 fps off a round. Maybe I got a bad box.

I have a new powder scale arriving today, so that will make me feel better about things. I may also get a powder trickler so I can load individual rounds accurately. I don’t need it for targets, but I want to be sure my defensive rounds are okay. It would be a real problem to have one get stuck in the barrel during a home invasion.

I’m avoiding looking at the news. That feels nice. I did take the time to check the local coronavirus figure. We are at 181 known cases for the county, even though testing is going on. Restaurants are open now. I am considering getting a haircut.

I don’t think the global or national coronavirus numbers mean anything now. As Trump said, apparent increases we see now are reflections of increased testing. It may not be possible to infer anything about the disease’s actual progress.

I’ve had an uncomfortable thought. What if the lockdowns don’t really hurt our economy that much?

This is an uncomfortable thought, because it could suggest that the lockdowns weren’t as misguided as I thought.

We have heard two very clear messages from the hysteria crowd: 1. we absolutely have to have lockdowns, and 2. we are definitely going to have a depression. I disagreed with the first claim and agreed that the damage due to lockdowns would be very severe.

If the economy isn’t really that bad, the lockdowns may have been worth the trouble, or at least they may not have been a disastrous idea.

T.B. Joshua prophesies that the world’s economy will do very badly and that there will be deflation. Bad if you don’t have cash. He says people need to grow food. Here I am on sand, with squirrels eating my peaches.

I don’t know if he’s right or not. If he is, then the lockdowns will continue to cause much more pain than the virus.

The last time we had a big recession, God told me it wasn’t for me, and I was fine. Hope I get the same grace every time.

I pray for God to create a huge grassroots Spirit-led church and for him to destroy the many big ministries that made people slaves and weaklings. How many Christians are confident about being blessed and protected? Bad ministries helped make them what they are. When times are easy, even people who don’t know God do well, but it’s different in hard times.

This is why the misery at the end of the age is called the tribulation period. A tribulum is a device for separating edible grain from husks. Hard times expose hypocrites.

I’ve noticed that the big charismatic preachers aren’t talking about the end of the church age. Why would they? First of all, they benefit from it by making people their slaves, and second, they have no idea what God is saying, so they don’t know what’s happening.

They must know Spirit-led people have been predicting the end of the church age for a number of years. They probably hate it. No more $7000 basketball shoes.

We need the Holy Spirit pandemic to start. We need to infect each other wherever we are, one on one, instead of counting on buffoons and human traffickers.

Donate Your Masks and Go Back to Work

If you’re waiting for some great news, apart from the fact that it’s a beautiful Saturday morning, here you go: South Korean scientists have concluded that you can’t be infected with COVID-19 more than once.

In your FACES, doom-mongers.

This is the best news the world has received since we got up on a Wednesday morning and found out Hillary Clinton had lost.

I still remember that day. I felt like crying with joy.

Here is a link to the story about South Korea: LINK.

Some Koreans got test results suggesting they had been reinfected, but now we know that they were actually having relapses. It’s not good that people can relapse, but a relapse is nothing like as bad as a new infection. Once you’re really done with your first infection, it’s behind you for good. If we could be reinfected, coronavirus would continue pummeling individuals over and over until they died or got vaccinated.

We already knew about COVID-19 relapses. Relapse is one of the disease’s known features.

For months, with no apparent justification, people have been telling us the disease was likely to infect us over and over. None of it made any sense. They don’t say that about most other viruses.

The reinfection story was one of the things that made C19 seem so scary. The model was one in which you were very likely to be infected (false), you were very likely to die (false), and even if you got over it, you would probably be infected repeatedly. It was a scenario of hopelessness. No wonder people bought freezers. They actually swallowed the pitch.

Does this mean we can’t get new strains after the virus mutates? I wonder. But even if we can, there will be vaccines, and we will have a lot of experience, so there should be less panic and senseless economic destruction.

It’s very sad that people are afraid to accept good news and that it makes them angry. Neurosis is not a good thing. Neurotics can’t enjoy life. Your irrational worries make it impossible to enjoy the good things you have, and they make it impossible for you to anticipate enjoying the good things in your future. And they make you a giant pain to be around. I do not like having determined pessimists around me.

Worry is faith in Satan, and faith brings results.

All though this thing, the prophets of doom have been wrong, and those who predicted an easier time have been right. That has to be acknowledged.

If Obama were president, Time and MSNBC and all the others would be giving people hell for panicking. What a different world we would live in. A lot of businesses that have failed because of draconian measures would still be alive.

It’s the only scenario I can think of in which an inept socialist president could be better for the economy than Donald Trump.

Think how this will affect people who have recovered. They will be like superheroes now. They can go back to work. They can go anywhere without masks. I wonder if a positive test will be an asset to a person looking for work this summer.

Things are still going well in my county, although I think we will see cases increase for a while. Unfortunately, C19 has found its way into at least three ALF’s. The news says there are two ALF’s that each have an employee who tested positive, and another ALF has multiple infected staffers and residents. We are now up to 175 known cases.

I hate to say I was right again, but there is another story: over 25% of purported C19-related deaths in the USA occur in what a story calls “nursing homes.” This would include ALF’s. I wrote about this phenomenon after seeing that about half of the deaths in Massachusetts were in homes.

This is bad news for people who are confined in homes, but it should encourage the majority of Americans. Not many of us are cooped up in places where careless workers are our only protection from infection, and most of us will have mild or no symptoms if infected.

The high ALF infection rate appears to be proof that sequestering in buildings with multiple residents makes you much more likely to be infected, and it also suggests that ALF workers in many places do a very poor job of protecting people.

Now that I think about it, I was right about yet something else. People are developing an interest in rural properties. You can read about it online. I predicted this a while ago. C19 is, by and large, a city disease. Also, it’s hard to grow food in an apartment. People are realizing these things.

My guess: leftists will cling to cities, and conservatives will be more likely to move. Nothing new there.

I think a redistribution of the population will be good for the church. Cities are ruled by Satan’s stooges. They are not spiritually healthy places to live.

Christians will be more likely to leave cities, and that means they will get away from megachurch pimps and fabulists. Churches are killing us. It would be great to see toxic people like Joel Osteen and Joyce Meyer go out of business completely, but that probably won’t happen, so a significant exodus from cities may be the best thing we can hope for.

I wonder how a conservative exodus would affect elections. I don’t think it would matter in cities, because they are already electing leftists. Maybe it would strengthen certain states and rural counties, though.

Still no major-celebrity deaths. The Baldor bench grinder Ebay poverty index is holding steady in the low 40’s.

Time to move on with my day. I just bought a hunting license online. My new peach tree was loaded with peaches, and now the squirrels here are loaded with peach flesh. Something must be done. The law says I can kill nuisance squirrels out of season, but it’s not all that clear on whether I need a hunting license, so I am not taking a chance. Considering the peaches, the fuel gauge they ate, and all the other issues they cause, I feel that my long truce with the rodents must now end.

Are we Peaking Yet?

Here are my coronavirus figures for today.

My prediction (total global cases): 1,466,645

Johns Hopkins number: 1,446,557

Percentage error: +1.39

I’m not sure why I’m even doing this any more. My number is correct, within a tiny margin of error, every day. I do want to see the deceleration start, though.

My number has been higher than the official number two days in a row. Let’s hope that continues and increases.

I have been wishing I had historical data, so I could look at other trends. For example, I’m wondering if the figure for total cases minus recoveries can be predicted. That gives you the known active cases. The lower that goes, the better life is, regardless of the overall total.

Of course, playing around with disease figures is not my biggest thrill in life, so I have not been working hard at it. Not at all. I spend a few minutes on it once in a while. I haven’t been digging to see what’s available out there, because I really don’t care much. It seems very obvious that this epidemic is never going to approach fulfilling the hype, so I’m not lying awake wondering how I can get better data.

Today I finally checked the Johns Hopkins site, and they have an archive. It’s a bunch of CSV files, not to be confused with CVS files, which would involve very long cash register receipts. I don’t know how to work with CSV files, but I guess I can figure it out. I’ll see what I can do. If I can get numbers for March 5 and a more recent date, I’ll be able to fiddle with an equation. It would be trivial. “Trivial” is a term math and physics people use to describe calculations that are incredibly easy or even unnecessary. All the stuff I’ve done with regard to coronavirus has been trivial. If it weren’t trivial, I couldn’t do it.

Guess what? I got myself a Github account and learned how to download Johns Hopkins’ data and turn it into spreadsheet files. I learned this: since March 5, which is when I started doing equations, the ratio of sick victims to total victims has increased a lot. It went from 2.2202 to 3.6933.

Now I’m trying to figure out what it means. Maybe the ratio of sick people to recoveries is a bad indicator, because it takes longer to recover than to get sick.

Let’s see. The average incubation period is 5 days. It’s hard to get an answer regarding the duration of the disease, but it appears that a typical case takes two weeks to clear, and bad cases take three to 6 weeks. So, assuming 15% bad cases, maybe close to 2.5 weeks on average? That’s a lot longer than 5 days.

Given how recently the epidemic started, I guess recoveries will always lag the total number until some time after the infection curve plummets.

Speaking of the curve, I found pleasant information on the Johns Hopkins site. I’ll post it here. They allow downloads.

How about that? You can go to their page and see curves for individual “hotspot” countries. They’re all on the down slope. Not one exception.

Why am I playing with calculus? Johns Hopkins itself thinks the infection rate’s acceleration is over, unless they don’t believe their own graphs.

That little bump on the left is China. Isn’t that great?

Didn’t I say I thought the curve would turn around this month? Am I a genius, or was it just something any smart person could predict, without calculus, if he was only willing to pull up his pants and look at the numbers?

Reluctantly, I must say I can’t go with “genius.”

Maybe it’s time to buy stock.

Things look good. They couldn’t look better, barring a miracle. Let’s hope the good news holds out.

I hate being manipulated. The lies and manipulation are what disgust me most about the epidemic. Christians know that manipulation is the essence of witchcraft. I have always hated it. I can’t stand people who pull it on me. I can’t stand people who drop guilt trips on me. It makes me angry. I strive not to do it to other people. It’s a filthy, vile thing to do.

If guilt trips are your thing, and you can’t make yourself stop, I will drop you permanently no matter who you are or what we’ve been through. I’ve dropped a whole lot of people, and I have not regretted it even once. The world is full of people who will treat me with respect. Everybody can be replaced.

When I was a kid, I was cursed with a father and older sister who were manipulative. It was unbearable and unsustainable. I’m all done with that.

My friend Mike, who is probably still my friend because he doesn’t manipulate, once told me I was the least codependent person he knew. That was a powerful compliment. It was a nice surprise. I hope he was right.

I’ve had a very good time during the pandemic. Life is better now than it was last year or even in January. God truly does look after people. You just have to stay close to him and do things his way. You don’t have to be all that good at it, either.

Yesterday, I had some fun. I had to move branches out of my yard. We’re not allowed to burn them right now because the fire department has somehow decided coronavirus requires limited coverage. I’m dumping them in the woods.

I started the tractor up, drove 50 feet, and watched my left front tire come off the rim.

Until yesterday, I figured a tractor tire that looked inflated was inflated. I guess I won’t judge tractor tires by the way they look in the future.

Right away, I realized I didn’t have a tire wrench for the Kubota. Never fear! I have three sets of SK sockets plus a Makita impact driver.

I didn’t want to haul a heavy floor jack across the yard and try to jack up the tractor on soft soil. Now what? Well, I had jackstands in the workshop, and I had scrap lumber. The tractor had a front end loader. I used the loader to lift the wheels off the ground. I put wood down. I put a jackstand on the wood. I lowered the tractor onto the jackstand.

Nice.

The impact driver wouldn’t budge the nuts. Problem! But I had 1″ conduit. I put a 4-foot-long piece over the wrench handle and used the conduit as a breaker bar. Problem gone!

Jocko Willink, the professional ex-SEAL, likes to say “no factor” when a problem turns out not to be a problem. No Kubota wrench? No factor.

I got the tire and rim over to the shop. I fired up the big compressor. I had to get the tire back onto the rim. I put it on its side and stood on it. It popped into place. I used a wet paper towel to clean the mating surfaces of the tire and rim.

Knowing the tire probably wouldn’t seal, I gave the compressor a shot, and the tire didn’t fill. Now what?

NO FACTOR!

As a Youtube University honors student, I knew that it was possible to mount a tire using an explosion. You shoot starting fluid into your tire and light it. The explosion expands the tire and fills it with gas.

I didn’t have starting fluid, and I didn’t feel like driving to Tractor Supply, which is nearly 6 minutes away. But I had gasoline!

I put a teaspoon or so in the tire and lit it with a barbecue lighter. POOMP! Mounted tire!

I used the compressor to pump it up, and I was all done.

Guess what? If the tire keeps leaking, and I can’t fix it, I can put a new tire on the rim, myself. I’ll save, probably, 10 dollars. That’s over two Whoppers! And I won’t have to drop it off, wait for it to be fixed, or go back to pick it up.

I can mount my own tires! How about that? Balancing is another story, but don’t count me out until I’ve tried. I haven’t checked Youtube yet.

They have fancy machines for mounting tires in tire shops, but they’re not always necessary. They’re just easier and faster to use.

My biggest problem during the pandemic has been weight gain. The epidemic makes me think about food. I’ve probably bought 1.25 times as much food as I usually do. I refuse to hoard, because it’s tacky, but, to give an example, I bought 4 pounds of spaghetti. Also, Ben & Jerry’s has been on sale, and Tractor Supply put Gimbal’s jelly beans right next to the register.

I told the cashier at Tractor Supply it wasn’t fair to put the jelly beans there, and she said they did it on purpose. I said she needed to move them to the back of the store, and she said, “Not gonna happen.” Never missed a beat.

You have to love Southern humor.

Even though I ate the jelly beans.

Gimbal’s jelly beans are as good as, or better, than Jelly Bellies, but they’re a lot cheaper. You have been warned.

My new Glock is taking forever to arrive. I think I made a great choice. The caliber is probably even better than .357 SIG (which is also tempting).

I saw an interesting story the other day. I got wind of it from a video featuring Massad Ayoob. He mentioned a guy named Gary Fadden, who was a salesman for Heckler & Koch.

Fadden was driving with his fiance, and he had at least one submachine gun in his vehicle. He used submachine guns in his work. He got in a road rage confrontation with two armed bikers and their…lady friend. He fled and look for cops, but he had no success. Eventually, he was cornered, so he got out with a Ruger submachine gun which was already set to full auto. He called the cops on his cell phone. He fired a warning burst, but his new friends rushed him anyway, so he filled one of them with lead.

This happened in Virginia, which is NOT NOT NOT a good 2A state. I know people who think they’ll leave liberal areas for “paradises” like Virginia. They think all Southern states are alike. No, no, no. They are not. Virginia is jammed up with leftists. Avoid.

Florida is not bad, although that won’t last. Tennessee is great. Kentucky is messed up because Kentuckians hate work and love the government teat. You have to be careful.

A Virginia prosecutor charged Fadden with murder, and then he did him the favor of offering him a manslaughter plea, which Fadden rejected. Fadden was acquitted, but the experience didn’t do him a lot of good.

The prosecutor was bursting with enthusiasm to put Fadden away. It wasn’t like his hands were tied and he did his work reluctantly. He even told the jurors they had released a murderer.

Ridiculous.

Reading between the lines, it appears that Fadden gave the finger to the bikers, or did something similar, but guess what? Insulting people doesn’t affect your right to self-defense. I can call your mother everything you can think of, and if you put your hands on me, I can defend myself using whatever degree of force is needed. If I attack you illegally, then I lose the right to defend myself, but I can say anything I want and still be protected. I can give you the finger with both hands and still be innocent.

Ayoob is a self-defense expert. He says using a scary-looking weapon is a bad idea. He says Fadden wishes he had been carrying a shotgun. Ayoob believes people who use scary-looking guns are much more likely to be charged falsely.

Ayoob is an interesting guy. Gun people nearly worship him. He’s a cop. I assumed he was a New York City cop, or maybe Chicago. It turns out he’s a part-time cop somewhere in New Hampshire, where most of the crimes involve moose poaching. He lost a lot of credibility with me when I read that, but he’s still a smart guy.

I used to keep an AK in my truck, because why not? Pistols are for people who don’t have rifles. We carry pistols because carrying rifles is inconvenient or illegal. A person in a vehicle can keep a rifle handy without any aggravation.

After reading about Fadden, I wonder if I should stick to Glocks while on the road.

I used to be concerned that I would miss with a pistol, but now that I’m shooting gongs, I realize I’m a much better long distance pistol shot than I thought. It would be very hard for a dangerous criminal to get within 100 feet of me without getting shot. Maybe the greatly reduced effectiveness of a pistol is okay when balanced against the increased likelihood of being arrested.

On the other hand, I live in the most conservative county in Florida, and if I hosed an assailant down with 7.62mmx39 and then set fire to his blacked-out Camaro, the cops here would probably have a barbecue in my honor. So maybe the AK is still a good idea.

Whatever the story is, I think a full-size Glock will be an asset.

I think I’ll stick with pistols when traveling.

Hope everyone is having a pleasant lockdown.

Three-Dog Nights

I’m back. I was busy with Christmas.

I have an aunt. I will call her Polly. She has a lot of problems, and she has been rejected by the family. She has been divorced for many years. Her daughter, whom I will call Mabel, has also suffered a lot of rejection, as has the daughter’s son, whom I will call Larry.

When I took my dad’s ashes to Kentucky earlier this year, I spent a fair amount of time with Polly and Mabel. All three of us felt we were no longer integral parts of the overall family circle. A few years back, my other living aunt called during the fall and told me how she, four of my cousins, and their families had gotten together for Thanksgiving, and she apparently didn’t think about the fact that she was talking to someone who hadn’t been invited. My dad and I didn’t make the list, which seemed odd. Since then, I have had the impression that we no longer had insider status.

While I was in Kentucky, I told Polly and Mabel they were welcome to visit me over Christmas, and I said they could bring Larry, too. I figured I would probably be entertaining friends as well. In the end, some of my friends could not make it due to work conflicts and another could not be here due to difficulties with an interesting parent, so I only expected Polly, Mabel, and Larry. They had committed to come 9 months ago, so I thought they were serious.

Not long ago, I talked to Mabel, and she said Polly had suddenly changed her mind about coming. She has arthritis, and she didn’t want to travel. At this point, it was starting to look like attendance was going to be limited to me, my parrots, and the squirrels.

People change plans. This is normal. It’s a little out of the ordinary to announce you’re calling off a holiday trip right before it’s supposed to happen.

I wanted them to come. In Kentucky, Mabel and I had talked a lot about God, and she had accepted Jesus. I prayed for her in her mom’s driveway. I told her about the benefits of baptism, and she said she wanted to do it. I suggested she go to a Last Reformation event, but she insisted she wanted me to do it. I thought this was a bad idea, because you should be baptized as soon as you receive salvation, but it was what she wanted. I let her know about some events she could attend, but she didn’t go. I ended up pinning my hopes on the Christmas visit, and it looked like it was not going to happen.

I prayed and encouraged them to come, and they decided to do it. I didn’t understand what I was asking them to do. The only decent car they had belonged to Larry, and it was a mini-SUV. They had two golden retrievers and an Australian cattle dog, and they weren’t happy with the boarding options that were available at the last minute. They had to jam three adults and three dogs into a pretty small car.

They didn’t want to put three large dogs in my house, but I told them to bring them. I was not going to give up that easily. Baptism is important.

When it came time to leave, Polly said she had a bunch of errands to run, and they were determined to make the 11-hour drive in one shot, so they ended up arriving at 4 a.m.

Polly and Mabel both smoke, and the dogs are big, so it was an interesting time. No one smoked in the house, but when you smoke intensely, you can change the atmosphere in a house just by being in it along with your belongings. The dogs behaved, but you can’t have three big dogs in a house without issues.

I didn’t care. I wanted to get the baptism done. How often do people with dysfunctional families get to fight back with real weapons?

Polly has some firm views on religion, and she tends to take a dim view of new things. I had told her about TLR in March, and since then, she had done some Googling. TLR and its leader, Torben Sondergaard, are getting very intense persecution from a wide variety of nutcases here and overseas, so there is plenty of unflattering slander out there for anyone to read. My aunt got the impression that I had joined a cult, and she thought Torben was a wanted criminal in Denmark. Maybe he is, if full-gospel Christianity is a crime. The authorities passed a ridiculous new law because he and his friends were casting demons out of people.

I don’t belong to TLR, and Polly and Mabel had been told this. I think TLR does a lot of good work, but I don’t join denominations or churches, and I think there is a strong chance that TLR will become corrupted and overly regimented soon, as virtually all other denominations have. Polly already had her bad impression, however.

I have Googled TLR a lot this year, trying to find out if they have ever done anything wrong, and all I have seen is prevarication and innuendo. The people who attack them are just like the people who attack Trump. I’ll post a video I found, to give you an idea what I’m talking about. It’s basically hysteria.

That’s a video in which some person uses a video of a completely different ministry to “debunk” TLR.

Here’s an even weirder one. You will see TLR’s own footage, which they post for the purpose of ATTRACTING people, used for the purpose of “exposing” Torben. It’s truly bizarre. Torben and TLR want people to see this footage, so clearly it’s nothing that makes them look bad. It’s Torben and others, helping kids receive deliverance. The kids are happy as they can be when it’s done. No one is forcing them to do anything. They’re glad to participate.

When I was at the TLR event in Raleigh, I was part of a group of people who cast a spirit out of a woman who foamed at the mouth and screamed. Two little girls came over and got involved. I don’t think the oldest one was older than 7. They were working right along with us. They weren’t disturbed at all. Afterward, they accompanied my group on an outing in which we healed people. They continued to pray for people, and they performed some healings. It was their own idea, and they had a great time. The idea that you should hide Christianity from children is a little hard to understand, especially when you consider the fact that we routinely expose them to toxic things like occult videos, Halloween activities, violent entertainment, video games, and the Internet.

The people who post these things appear to be unbalanced fanatics. They evoke visions of torches and pitchforks. There are a lot of truly ill and dangerous people among the ranks of the charismatic-haters.

It’s unusual to see enraged charismatics, but the people who are against charismatics are often extremely angry, to the point of being out of control. There is a reason for that.

The TLR saga is a very interesting thing to watch. The irrationality of the critics is an indicator of a supernatural cause, and this is characteristic of persecution, the flames of which are lit and fanned by spirits.

I fixed prime rib, scalloped potatoes, cheesecake, and Texas trash for Christmas, and we did as well as we could. Things were complicated by the dynamic between Polly and Larry. They had always gotten along in the past, but for some reason, Polly was laying into him over various things, and Larry kept reacting by going to his room and staying there with a video game device. He would come out the next day early in the afternoon, which made group activities difficult.

My understanding is that he spent a lot of time contacting friends, trying to get someone to buy him a ticket home.

My take is that Polly was 70% responsible, with the remainder of the fault belonging to Larry. Polly refused to give an inch, and Larry didn’t do a lot better. It’s a shame, because she won’t be around forever, and they should be trying to create better memories. Larry has a great deal of potential, but he needs to take on the responsibilities and attitude of a man.

I talked to both of them, but I didn’t make significant headway. It’s a shame, because until recently, they had a very warm relationship. Larry has a heart deformity, and he had lots of problems as a kid, and Polly was always there for him, fighting to get him what he needed.

Pettiness is extremely destructive, as I have learned from practicing it. It seems like modern Americans don’t understand how forgiveness works or why it’s necessary. They also don’t understand the principle of the extra mile. It’s okay to let yourself be wronged a little.

Anyway, you know it’s a real family Christmas when people keep making things awkward with what appears to be very little justification. It could have been worse. All over America, cops responded to domestic violence reports on Christmas. Ho, ho, ho.

Our challenges were compounded by my refrigerator’s sudden decision to fail, with many pounds of holiday food in it. Luckily, my spare refrigerator was already turned on. Mabel got down on the floor with a tiny shop vac and cleaned the fridge’s coils, and then I got on the web and figured out what was wrong: the bearing in the circulation fan motor was going, so the fan flopped around and got stuck. With Mabel’s help, I removed the fan and motor, and I used my belt grinder to make the fan’s blades smaller so they didn’t catch on things. The fridge resumed working, and I ordered a new fan and motor which should arrive on Monday.

Speaking of pettiness: really, Satan? You went after my refrigerator?

Last night, Mabel started talking to Polly about baptism for some reason, and they got into a very long conversation about doctrine. Polly made some veiled jabs at my beliefs, and I didn’t respond. I just waited. And waited. I would say she went to bed at around 12:00, which is two hours later than I like to go to bed. I stayed up, avoiding participation in the conversation, because I was determined to get Mabel baptized if at all possible.

When Polly went to bed, Mabel started talking about her reservations and problems, and I told her what I knew. Eventually, she decided her baptism didn’t have any relationship to her mother’s progress as a Christian, so she changed clothes and got in the pool, which was freezing. I had suggested the jacuzzi tub, but she wanted the pool. It probably took her 15 minutes to get into the water because it was so cold.

In the end, we got it done, and Larry was there to witness it. Finally. I guess I got to bed at 2 a.m.

I didn’t care about anything but the baptism. It was done, so I was happy.

They wanted to start driving home today. Polly has a green thumb, and she was not happy with my plants, so when I strolled out at maybe 10:30, after compensation sleep plus prayer and a shower, I found Polly and Mabel fixing up the plants on my patio, which was very nice of them. They also insisted on cleaning their linens and straightening up the house. Larry came downstairs at around 1:15.

I didn’t know what to think. If I had a long drive to make, I would want to leave in the morning, but they do things differently. They had things in the washing machine, so I knew they weren’t leaving for a while. I offered to take them out for barbecue, which I did. I would guess they got off my property at 4:45 p.m.

Until I saw them pack the car, I didn’t realize what they had gone through to get here. There were things stuffed in the footwells. It was very tight. If they have an accident, the EMT’s will need the jaws of life to get them out, even if the car isn’t damaged. With those big dogs in the car, they don’t need airbags.

Whatever. Mabel got baptized. That’s the important thing. Now maybe she can mature and work with Polly, who is extremely unhappy.

Long before all the difficulties arose, I told Mabel to expect Satan to throw everything he had at her to prevent her from coming, and boy, did he come through. But he lost. I prayed, and she prayed, and God listened.

“This Variety Always has Black Bark”

I’m back to writing about my workshop again. Or am I?

Today I wrote about the favor God was showing me. I said it seemed like I couldn’t go to Home Depot without them giving me something for nothing. After I wrote that, I visited the store to get 30 feet of 10/3 power cord for my band saw. The guy who cut the wire made a measuring mistake. I got 31 feet for the price of 30.

Okay, I give up. I surreptitiously returned the last two things they gave me, because I was pretty sure the employees who gave them to me did not have the authority to give things away. This time, I let it go. You can’t give Home Depot back a foot of wire. It was going home with me, or they were going to cut it off and put it in a dumpster. There was no way they were going to go back to the wire area and cut it off. I had to take it.

It was almost as though God were joking with me.

I went to the metal dealer today to get some things I needed. I have a sprayer boom for my golf cart, and I’ve been attaching it to the back of the cart with clamps. That’s no good. I need a support that goes in the cart’s 2″ receiver. I bought three pieces of square tubing to make one.

I also bought several pieces of angle iron in different widths. My Offroad Swag finger brake is a wonderful tool, but in order to make it work, you need accessories. Little pieces of narrow angle iron serve as bottom die adaptors. The press’s bottom die is a huge piece of angle iron which is too wide to work with some things, so you rest small pieces in it to fill up space.

I bought three feet of 1″ steel strip for no good reason at all. I thought I might need some for a plate for the sprayer mount. Screws would go through it to attach it to the boom. I would only need maybe 4 inches for that. I bought three feet because 1″ steel strip is a handy thing to have when you weld. You never know when you’ll find a place where a little strip of steel will save the day.

Scrap is very important. You can’t make anything without scrap unless you drive to the store every time an idea pops into your head. I try to buy more materials, fasteners, paint, glue, and other things than I need, because I know they’ll be useful later.

Yesterday I took some goat wire and stretched it between two shelves on my monster shelf thing. I put it there to prevent long metal objects from falling off the side. I’m using a shelf as a material storage area. The old system of piling it in the corner of the room is no longer in vogue.

Scrap is already piling up on the shelf, making me feel more secure.

I bought 20″ of 2-1/2″ square tube. I made a front end loader support for my Kubota the other day, and it came out great, but it was too short to put the loader as high as I wanted it. The tubing I bought today will become a new support. I could have cut the old support and welded more metal in to make it longer, but I didn’t think about it until I had the new metal, and I don’t know if I trust my welds for a job like that.

When I got home, I cleaned my new steel with window cleaner and paper towels because new steel is always covered with black grime. I deburred the steel using the belt grinder, and I also ground an angle into one of the pieces for the sprayer support so it would project backward from the golf cart when the finished support was in use.

I put 5/8″ holes in the tube that will go into the receiver. There are matching holes in the receiver, and a pin will go through them to hold the support in place. The Silver & Deming bit left huge burrs inside the tubing where I couldn’t hit them with the belt grinder. Enter the Dumore hand grinder.

This is a tool that falls between a Dremel and a die grinder. It’s small enough to use with one hand, but it won’t poop out as badly as a Dremel, and it’s a real industrial tool, so it will last longer than a year. I put a carbide burr on it, reached into the tubing, and ground the burrs out in a hurry.

Nice.

There’s a reason why new Dumores cost hundreds of dollars. Thank God I bought one that was new old stock.

I used a Walter flap wheel to clean up the tubes, and then I used my Harbor Freight MIG to weld them together. It was great. The welds, though imperfect, look better than most professionally done welds. Most pros make ugly welds. Most pros aren’t that good, if you want the truth. It’s a wonder things don’t fall apart and kill people all the time. I was very happy with my work.

The Titanium welder is a joy to use. I don’t know how it will stand the test of time, but for now, I’m thrilled with it. It’s light. It’s easy to use. The Harbor Freight Vulcan welding cart is ergonomically perfect. Zero complaints.

I cleaned the newly made support with a wire brush, and then I sprayed it with black hammer finish Rust-Oleum, using the tried-and-true “hang it from a magnolia tree you don’t mind painting” method. It looks wonderful. There are worse-looking welded products on store shelves across the world.

I’m not totally happy with the tubing I got for the upper part of the support, so I didn’t make that part. I’m going back to the metal place to see if they have something a little wider.

I enjoyed my visit today. The lady who runs the place started talking to me about guns and politics and so on. Of course, she has a carry permit. So nice to live among sane people.

While the paint on the sprayer mount was drying, I started on the front end loader support. I used the dry cut saw to cut one end at a 47-degree angle, which was the biggest angle I could manage with that tool. I then took the plasma cutter and started turning the 2-1/2″ tubing into a C-channel. It has to slip over the tractor’s hydraulic rod, so one side has to be open.

The first time I did this, it took a very long time, because I relied on bad information and didn’t give the plasma cutter enough air. It didn’t cut all the way through the part, so I had to finish the cutting with an angle grinder. This time, I left a few spots that weren’t cut, but severing them only took a couple of minutes.

When I was done cutting one side out of the tubing, I was left with a lot of rough metal on the inside of it. I tried smoothing it with a flap disk, but it wouldn’t really get in there, so I used the Dumore again. It’s terrific. It smoothed and debored everything so a person handling the support can’t get hurt.

I cleaned up the shop and put everything away. The support is waiting for me to come back and weld end plates on it.

I got a great deal done in a very short time. That’s rewarding. So much better than fumbling around and wasting time because I don’t have the right tools or the needed skills.

Welding is a huge blessing. I can make things other people have to buy, really quickly and cheaply. I can customize them. I don’t have to make do with things that aren’t quite right.

I’m planning to build my own welding table. A manufactured table will cost over a thousand dollars, and I just don’t think it’s justified. My milling machine will be here soon, and with it, I’ll be able to make a precision top for the table without paying some company my life savings.

I’ll bet I can build an excellent three foot by two foot table with casters and a fold-out plasma area for $250.

The little Harbor Freight portable table I use now is fantastic for the money, and if you want to weld when you’re away from your shop, it can’t be beat, but it’s flimsy for a main welding table, and it’s small, so it gets crowded.

Maybe if I go to Home Depot tomorrow, they’ll give me a table.

Things are coming together nicely. I almost look forward to spraying the yard.

When You Get the Devil on the Canvas, Just Punch him Harder

This has been a wonderful day.

I got up and mowed the yard. The John Deere didn’t blow up, quit, run over its own grill, pump oil out onto the lawn, or refuse to start. For a John Deere product, that’s remarkable. As far as I can tell from my experience. I also ran the leaf blower, the weed eater, and the edger, and I poisoned some plants I didn’t like. Wonderful.

My friend Amanda came over with her sons, and I showed them some tools and taught them how to run the pressure washer. Which DID quit. But I know how to deal with that. I went to Amazon and bought a new carb for $20, plus a fuel filter, which the pressure washer appears to lack. Never pay anyone to fix a small engine carburetor. Just buy a new one. I could have gotten a fine carb for $13, delivered, but I decided to splurge and get a genuine Honda, which surely comes from the same Chinese factory. Probably. Anyway, it’s coming.

I fired up my tools and made another end shield for my tractor front end loader brace. I didn’t have to pay for the steel. My friends at the metal place gave me free scrap to practice welding on, and one piece was a nice sheet of 1/8″ plate. I cut a rectangle out of it with the dry-cut saw, made a hole with the drill press, cleaned it up with the belt grinder and drill press, and I was done. Bang. Like that.

I used the new 6″ Metabo grinder to cut a piece out of the shield to open it up for the belt grinder. The Metabo is dynamite. So glad I bought it. It will save me a lot of time.

The shield is beautiful. I won’t be modest. I love metalworking. This just proves I need more tools. Which I already knew.

The first end shield is 1/4″ steel, and I wondered if I should wait for a similar piece, but I chose not to. The 1/8″ piece is strong enough, and every time I see it, it will remind me of the pleasant experiences I’ve had at the metal dealer’s place FAR, FAR FROM MIAMI.

In three or four days, I’ll have the new carb, and the pressure washer will almost definitely run. The pump could be giving out, but I don’t think it is. If it is, I’ll buy a new $125 pump on Ebay for $70 and install it. It takes 5 minutes. There is probably no good reason for ever buying a new pressure washer until the engine dies and can’t be fixed.

That’s it. I’m about to go relax with my pets and a cold beverage. I will post photos of the metalwork later.

Oh, all right. I’ll post them now.

Floor now Visible

Yesterday I got a lot of stuff done in the workshop.

Ergonomics is a weak point with me. I tend to put things I use in the worst possible locations. I stack things on the floor in front of shelves. I cover new horizontal surfaces with junk so I feel like I need to buy more tables. I put tools where I have to walk past junk to use them.

I hate clutter and disorganization, yet I tend to generate them.

Yesterday I moved a bunch of stuff in the shop and made it possible to do more work.

First off, I put a set of Amazon casters on my Harbor Freight 20-ton press.

If you don’t have one of these presses (or a better press), you must be a fool. For around $150, you get a press that functions perfectly well, and you can easily upgrade it to air/manual power. If there are things about the press you don’t like, you can modify it. It’s a very simple piece of machinery. The fundamental structure is fine, so any problems the press might have are unimportant and repairable. They used to make orange presses that tended to fail, but the grey ones they make now are great.

These presses sit on steel angle irons, and the angle irons are pre-drilled for casters. I spent around $20 on Amazon and got a set of 4 swivel casters, two of which have brakes. It took 5 minutes to install them. Now I can move the press wherever I want. It will no longer be blocking my access to other things, and I can move it to the metalworking area of the shop.

I plan to put a sheet of plywood between the press and casters. It will give me a storage surface that moves with the press. I may also put some kind of box or shelves on it. I can fix it so they can be moved off when they obstruct the press.

I ordered a Swag Offroad finger brake kit for the press. This will let me put decent-quality bends in very heavy steel. I plan to use it to make improved mobile bases for my heavy tools. Storebought bases have to be adjustable, and this introduces lots of problems. I look forward to having bases that work better, and I also look forward to being able to make boxes and brackets.

I’ll have to do some welding to put the kit together, but I have–let’s see–THREE welders ready to go. I should be able to get it done.

I advertised my John Deere utility cart for sale, and I moved it to the goat shed. When I bought my tractors and golf cart, the seller threw this thing in. I can see why. It’s useless. If I want to move things, I have a pickup and a golf cart with a dump bed. The JD cart sat in the way collecting leaves and dead bugs.

John Deere is a sad cult, like Snap-On and Apple, so people will pay stupid prices for anything green. I think this cart is worthless except for parts for projects, but I have already had two contacts from the ads. I priced it at $500, figuring John Deere lovers had no common sense whatsoever. I’ll bet anything I get $250.

If I can’t get a high price, I may cut the sheet metal off and turn it into a base for a mobile barbecue.

I moved my drill press and grinding cart to the metalworking area of the workshop. Now they’re near my toolboxes, as they should be. I also added my Chinese welders, since I am more likely to use them than the Lincoln, and I put my Harbor Freight welding table nearby.

My wood stuff is all on the other side of the shop now.

With the cart gone, I was able to move a lot of junk to shelves, so now I can walk quickly across the garage instead of stopping and turning to avoid things.

I ordered a 25-foot cord for the 50-amp socket. That will let me move the welders and plasma cutter around instead of jamming them against the wall by the socket. Manufacturers save money by selling these machines with tiny cords.

One of my air hose reels was on a shelf, and the hose was on the floor in sprawling coils. I mounted the reel on the wall and put the hose on it. Now I have air up to 70 feet from the shop. It’s not much air, because the compressor is small, but it’s air. And I can walk where the hose used to be.

There is no outlet on the side of the shop where the compressor sits. That’s unforgivable. There is an outlet maybe 18 feet away, embedded in the wall, and the wires that feed it drop down through the cinderblocks from above. I believe I can pull the box out, drop new wires down from above, attach them to the existing outlet to draw power from it, run them down the wall to the compressor area, drop them into the cinderblocks, and install a second outlet. This is my plan. I don’t really want to splice into the existing romex, but that could actually be a better plan. Anyway, I WILL have another outlet.

I am considering hanging 4 power cords with multiple sockets from the roof trusses so they’ll end about 6 feet in the air. That would let me connect tools to them without running cords on the floor. I already have one outlet up there for the useless ceiling fan. I plan to replace it with a four-socket outlet, and then I can run the cords over the trusses.

I may also run a couple of 250V cords up there for 20-amp tools.

I had a brainstorm regarding the big tractor. I was thinking I should build a shed for it and get it out of the workshop, but then I realized I could park it with the front end loader in the air. The loader and forks take up an area which is maybe 6′ by 8′, so this would make the workshop much easier to use.

I learned that hydraulics can’t be trusted to hold pressure. That means the loader will slowly sink if I leave it up, crushing whatever is under it. Also, if someone (like a kid) touches the hydraulic lever, the loader can plummet very quickly. To prevent this, I need a brace to fit over one hydraulic ram. Kubota doesn’t make a brace for this loader, but I can make out from steel C channel. That’s one of my projects for today. I want to buy the channel, make an end plate for it, cut recesses to fit the loader hinge, weld the plate on, and paint it Kubota orange. Whenever I park the Kubota, I’ll stick the brace on one rod, and the loader will stay in the air.

I looked into sheds for the John Deere, but you have to spend a lot of money to get a shed with a doorway a 6′-wide tractor can negotiate. I might make a wooden shed myself, with one open side. It would be very cheap, and it’s not complicated. Four four-by-four posts with concrete slugs. A bunch of pressure-treated boards nailed to the posts. Galvanized metal for the roof. Done.

I’m going to put casters on my shop fan. It’s very heavy and hard to move.

I now have a big clear area by my workbench, and my metal tools are right there. Very nice.

I’m going to throw out my Rockstar beverage fridge and put my retired mini-fridge in the shop for drinks. I have to make a stand for the fridge first. It’s very short, and I don’t want to waste floor space. A rolling stand will allow me to have some shelf space under it.

I vacuumed the shop. I have given up my delusions about blowing debris out. Women are right about this. Men like to blow debris away. Women like to suck it in. When you suck it in, you can get rid of it. When you blow it away, it just lands somewhere else, where it has to be blown again. From now on, the leaf blowers and compressor blow guns are only for things the vacuums can’t handle.

It makes a big difference to have a somewhat clean floor.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my basic strategy. I was considering building a new shop, because there was so much clutter in the existing building. If I can put up a shed and keep the Kubota’s forks up, I can do a lot with what I have.

I want more 50-amp lines out there. That project is looking less intimidating. The electrician I called to give me an estimate turned out to be completely incompetent, and I had been relying on his expertise. He was wrong about a lot of things. I’ve been investigating, and I don’t think running more wires will be hard. He couldn’t find the place where the existing wires entered. I did. I found out how to bury bigger wires. This is something I can handle.

I tried to open one of the boxes the big wires go through, but the screws are carbon steel, not stainless. On an outdoor box. Unbelievable. The philips slots are nearly gone. I decided this was a good excuse to order special pliers for removing damaged screws. They’re called Vampliers. They look like they have little teeth.

Vampliers are sold on TV, but they’re actually excellent Japanese pliers. The company makes other good tools. If you order them under the Japanese company’s name, you pay much less for the same product. That’s what I did.

I had to find stainless screws made to screw into plastic. They exist. Amazon sells them. They’re called “thread rolling screws.” I ordered a pack of 25 for $3.47. I made sure they had Philips heads on them so I don’t have to go dig out a ridiculous Torx bit or use a flat blade which is guaranteed to slip out 15 times per screw.

I want to put my lathe and mill in the garage by the house. This is not an optimal setup, but I think it’s better than cramming them in an un-air-conditioned workshop. For under $600, I can put a unit in the garage window.

It’s not that terrible, having to walk between buildings to get tools. The distance is around a hundred feet. In fact, now that I’ve got a hose reel mounted, I don’t think I need two big compressors. I can do most of my air-intensive work in one building, and if I need to something in the other one, I can just extend the hose to it.

All I need now is good weather. Hurricane Dorian was wonderful. Yesterday, I enjoyed the hurricane in cool weather with pleasant breezes that really mitigated the sweating. Now we’re getting abnormally hot weather, and it’s supposed to be here for days. The shop fan is okay, but it’s no substitute for October.

I may get tarps for the tractors and start parking them outdoors right now. That extra space is very tempting. The John Deere looks like it has spent at least 15 years outdoors already, so a tarp is probably more than adequate. It’s never going to look like a new tractor.

I still want the brace for the front end loader. With a brace, you can work on the tractor with the loader raised. Very helpful. And it’s a simple and fun project.

I will post a photo to show where things stand now.

The junk in the foreground needs to be stored and/or rearranged.

Clearly, I now have room for a propane forge.

Workshop Soon to Spring to Life

It is a momentous day. I found out I have 250V power in my workshop.

As an annoying side note, I have decided to write “250V” from now on. It seems like no one can settle on 220V, 230V, 240V, or 250V. It causes problems when you search for things online. Well, guess what? Manufacturers put “250V” on their products, and from now on, that’s good enough for me. It’s also accurate. The voltage here is about 250, and it was also 250 in Miami. I’m also going to say “125V” instead of “110V” or “115V”.

Anyway, I got an electrician to check the workshop out a long time ago, and it looks like he was really inept. He said I had 50 amps of 125V (HA!) service out there, and that was all. I never checked to see. He did some other things that were not bright.

He said that because he couldn’t see where the power for the workshop left the house, he was going to have to dig a new trench for new lines. That would have cost thousands, for some reason he didn’t explain. I don’t understand why it costs more than $200 to dig a short slit. Here’s the thing; no matter where you live, you can call 811, and someone will come out and locate your underground power lines…free of charge. You can look it up online. How could this guy not know that?

I’m assuming he didn’t know it. Maybe he did, and he was just a crook.

This free service is provided in order to prevent unskilled people from ripping out power, gas, and water lines while planting trees or whatever.

He also failed to give me the estimates I needed. I told him I had two jobs, and I wanted two estimates. He combined them. I told him I needed him to break the estimate into two parts. He said he would get right on it, and then he disappeared. He was looking at work worth something like $6000, and he just let it go.

Maybe he was dishonest, and he realized he was taking a risk by trying to fool me. I asked a lot of questions. Maybe that scared him.

Anyway, today I checked the workshop electrical panel and found out I have 50 amps of 250V service. It’s not much, but you can do a lot with it. I can run all three of my welders, my band saw, my drill press, and my big table saw. The only thing that probably won’t work is my plasma cutter. Actually, it probably would work on 90% of the jobs I would throw at it. Most jobs would involve thin metal, and the thinner the metal, the less power you need.

While my dad was declining and dying, I really crawled into a hole. I let things back up. I didn’t do things I should have done. I should never have let the power problem go.

Now I have a plan. I’m going to get some #8 wire, some conduit, three or four receptacles, a junction box, and a box for a 20-amp breaker, and I’m going to wire up the workshop. This will give me back everything except the big machine tools and the big compressor. I’ll install two 50-amp receptacles, and I’ll have a 20-amp breaker that goes to two 20-amp receptacles.

I don’t think I really need a separate breaker for the smaller receptacles. The theory is that if something goes wrong, the 50-amp circuit could send 50 amps through a 20-amp cord without one, but we all have 20-amp circuits connected to multiple items that have cords that are only safe for 13 amps. You have things like that in your house right now, and the fire chief isn’t pounding on your door, waiting to give you a citation.

I don’t know. I may put the breaker in just to feel smug.

I’ll probably pay less than $250 for materials, and once I get started, it will take a day or less.

I could also put a couple of lines in my garage, for my mill and lathe. There is room on the main panel.

I’ve really missed the drill press, the table saw, the band saw, and welding with 250V input.

The belt grinder! I just realized I’ll be able to use the 3HP belt grinder! That thing is MURDEROUS. It will do things to metal you would not believe.

I think I should also go ahead and get an anvil. The mashed grill for my John Deere garden tractor will cost almost $800 to replace, which is ridiculous. The tractor doesn’t even need a grill. It does nothing to filter out dirt. Stuff goes right through and gets trapped on an internal screen. I can beat the old grill back into pretty good shape, but without an anvil, it would be pretty unpleasant work. This gives me a great rationalization I can use: I’m spending $600 instead of $800. I’m actually SAVING money.

Yeah. Saving.

That grill is going to sit around the shop and make me crazy until I do something with it.

I feel like I’m about to come back to life again. The only thing that would be better than 250V juice would be a garage air conditioner.

It could happen.

No More Balancing Wrenches on the Tractor Hood

I am rapidly becoming Harbor Freight’s best customer.

Harbor Freight used to be a place where people bought junk tools and nothing else. If you really needed a chipping hammer, but you only needed it for a few jobs, or you just didn’t have the money to get a good one, you went to Harbor Freight, bought the tool, and accepted the fact that it probably wouldn’t be working two years later. You might have ended up paying 25% of the cost of a Bosch or Makita, and you knew you weren’t going to get longevity or a serious warranty.

It’s a different story now. Harbor Freight keeps adding new lines of tools, and some are as good as the big boys. They won’t save you 75%, but they might save you 33%, and that’s still very good. You can still buy the really cheap stuff, too.

Yesterday I bought my first US General product. This line has been around for years. Maybe it inspired Harbor Freight to add newer quality lines like Vulcan and Hercules.

US General is one of Harbor Freight’s funnier brands. They love trying to come up with product names that sound as Caucasian as possible. “US General” is one of their clumsier efforts. “It’s made in China, so we’ll call it ‘US’ something!” No idea what the “General” is all about.

US General makes a line of tool boxes and carts, most of which are about 85% as good as Snap-On, for about 15% of the money. Really, you have to be high on something to buy Snap-On while US General exists. The products will last just as long, and they will do everything Snap-On does, just as well. If you don’t believe me, you can ask around and watch Youtube reviews.

I needed a tool cart. I finally realized this. One of the disadvantages of coming from a white collar family is that I had no one to teach me obvious things about tools, and it should have been obvious that I needed a cart.

Are you a white collar tool dunce? Let me help you. Remember all those times you carried 35 different hand tools across the garage to work on something? Remember balancing 15 different wrenches on the hood of your lawn tractor, while holding 7 screwdrivers in each pants pocket? That happened because you didn’t have a tool cart. It’s why tool carts exist. They’re not substitutes for tool chests. You need one even if you have a tool chest.

This week, I worked on my ethanol-damaged generator, and I found myself putting tools on top of paint cans and other items not designed to hold anything but dust. It was not pleasant. When I needed the impact driver, for example, I had to ask myself whether it was on the white interior latex can, the utility shelves, the Homer bucket, the side of my lift table, or the generator itself. Naturally, things rolled off of other things and had to be chased down and retrieved. This happened to my bowl float pin, and I never found it again.

My rolling tool boxes were 15 feet away, and it was not convenient to move them or the generator. I needed a cart, and it had to be small so I could move it around easily.

I checked the Harbor Freight website, and they had a couple of three-tier US General carts. The $49 one had three trays, and the top tray was designed so you could put flat things on top of it. Capacity: 450 pounds. The $69 one also had three trays, but the top tray had two annoying tubing handles sticking up from it, where they would be sure to get in the way. Capacity: $350 pounds. Guess which one I picked.

I don’t know if it’s as good as the big US General tool boxes, but it should work for my purpose.

I also got two magnetic parts dishes. You stick these things to steel surfaces and drop parts in them while you work. They will hang onto steel parts pretty well. Better than the top of a paint can.

Now I have to put my cart together. I want to keep the parts dishes in the top tray.

The obvious problem with my plan is this: if I put a liner in the tray to protect the paint, it will prevent the magnetic dishes from sticking. I don’t want the paint to get banged up more than absolutely necessary. It causes rust. My solution: truck bed coating in a spray can.

I’ll use the coating on the insides of the trays. It should be much tougher than whatever is now on the trays. I plan to use a tan coating. I don’t want black because it will make things hard to see. Tan is the lightest color I can find.

I think I’ll put my most-used tools in the cart and leave them there. They come out of the box and go back in, over and over. It’s silly to keep putting them back.

If my dad had been a mechanic, I would have had a cart a long time ago, because he would have told me to get one. I had to figure it out myself.

In other news, I know why my ultrasonic cleaner died. This may be of use to other people who own them. I inherited two cheap plastic cleaners from my mother, and I use them on small carburetors ruined by FILTHY STINKING ETHANOL. The cleaners have two compartments each, and I have been using one compartment at a time. This damages the cleaners. If you have an ultrasonic cleaner, keep it full.

I have decided to get a real ultrasonic cleaner. They’ve come way down in price. Thank you, China. I have learned some fascinating things about using them.

In the past, there were wonderful chemicals that worked wonders in ultrasonic cleaners. They would take just about anything off. Unfortunately, they caused things like birth defects and cancer, so you probably won’t want to use them. So what do you do?

Many people suggest the two most obvious things: Dawn dish soap and Simple Green.

I don’t understand the Simple Green craze. First of all, it’s not a safe chemical. Look it up. It’s the same basic thing they put in Windex, only more concentrated, and it’s not good for you. Second thing…doesn’t work. I’ve used it on a number of things, and it’s grossly overrated. I don’t understand why people keep touting it. It barely does anything, it costs a lot, and it’s faux-green.

Dawn is a wonderful product, but it’s not perfect for everything.

I saw a guy on Youtube, using Gunk carb cleaner in his ultrasonic cleaner. You buy this stuff in gallon cans. It’s very expensive. Each can comes with a little basket. You can put a carb in the basket, lower it into the can, and let it soak. Unfortunately, people say it doesn’t work all that well. They took all the cancer stuff out of it, apparently.

I’m going to pass on the most amazing ultrasonic solution information I have found to date. It comes from a Youtube channel called Steve’s Small Engine Saloon. He uses three different cleaners: Dawn, some kind of corrosive degreaser, and pure gasoline.

I can save you the trouble of watching the video. He says nothing cleans parts like gasoline. It even removes rust. And it won’t oxidize aluminum.

His other genius idea: put your solutions and parts in waterproof containers before putting them in the machine.

This is a tremendous idea. When you use the machine, garbage will fall off whatever you clean. The fluid will be contaminated. Eventually, you have to change it, and you will use a lot of fluid. Even if you just filter the fluid and reuse it, it’s a pain. Also, what if you want to use different fluids? Do you really want to empty and refill the machine several times in one day?

He fills his machine with plain old water, and then he uses peanut butter jars to hold parts and solutions. For example, you can put gasoline and a carb in a jar, throw it in the machine, and clean it. The cleaning action works right through the plastic.

I suppose you could also use a freezer bag.

I’m not going to throw out my mom’s old cleaner, but I’m going to get a real one that holds bigger things. I may use it to clean guns. Cleaning kits are not that great, and they damage gun finishes over time.

So, to recap, you need a tool cart and an ultrasonic cleaner with little plastic containers. Stop doing things wrong. Seriously.

Now I have to get to work.

One of my upcoming tasks is to change the oil in my John Deere 430 garden tractor. This machine is a nightmare to work on. I just found out I have to pull out the 300-pound deck in order to drain the oil. I am not kidding.

The deck is supposed to pop on and off like a party hat, in a couple of minutes, but in reality, removing and reinstalling it will probably take me an hour and 45 minutes. It’s badly designed, period.

John Deere is a cult, and a lot of people lose their minds when you say anything negative about the brand, but this tractor is PACKED with inept engineering. They say the 430 runs forever. Well, maybe that’s because Yanmar made the engine. It’s NORMAL for a diesel engine to last a long time, especially if it’s Japanese.

As far as I can tell, all of my problems have been caused by the junk John Deere connected to the engine. By that, I mean the tractor itself.

Imagine what it would cost me to have a dealer change the oil. First, they would charge for pick-up and delivery. Then they would charge for the deck removal and installation. Then they would charge for the oil change labor. Then they would hit me for full retail on the oil and filter. I’ll bet it would run $300, for something I can do on the Kubota in 10 minutes wearing my best suit.

People say this may be the best garden tractor ever built. That may be true, but then the others may all be garbage.

I don’t know how long it will take me to change the oil, but I’m secure in the knowledge that I won’t be scattering my tools on the driveway this time.

Vexing Tractor Finally Under my Boot Heel

In case the Internet is wondering, my garden tractor is fixed.

The other day, the alternator belt came off, and I discovered that in order to replace it with a continuous v-belt, I would have to remove the driveshaft from the engine. I bypassed that issue by putting a linked belt on it. While working on it, I dropped a part on the mower deck, and I had to remove the deck from the tractor to retrieve it.

The deck weighs over 300 pounds, and it would be hard to remove if it weighed 50. John Deere promoted it as something a woman could remove and reattach in a few minutes while holding a gin and tonic in her left hand, but in reality, detaching it takes 20 minutes at best, and reattaching it goes more like 45. And to do these things, you have to lie on the ground and shove your hand under the tractor and wrestle with the unbelievably filthy PTO shaft.

Took the deck out, and noticed that my muffler was resting on it. It had torn free from the tractor in a bid to escape. It had a big hole in it, so there was no saving it. A replacement would have cost $256, and it probably would have broken off, too, because John Deere designed it badly.

I cobbled a new exhaust together from several parts, and I put it on the tractor using two clamps. It ran fine for a minute or two, and then it fell off. Because of the shapes of the parts I had used, I needed to weld two of the parts together. A clamp was not going to work.

My generator was recovering from an ethanol problem, and my MIG welder needs a generator to power it. I still haven’t had 240 sockets installed here. No generator, no MIG. I had a TIG/stick welder that worked on 120, but I’m really bad at TIG and stick. For a long time, I had been wanting to try a Titanium Unlimited 200 MIG/TIG/stick welder from Harbor Freight, so I decided it was time.

I hooked the new welder up and used 308L stainless wire to weld the parts together. One part was a stainless decorative exhaust tip, and the other part was a mild steel pipe I had cut out of the John Deere muffler. People told me stainless wire was best.

I set the welder too hot, so the welds were not pretty, but I got it done. The welder seems very, very nice for the price. I would recommend it to any beginner. You can use it to learn all three major welding processes. You’re supposed to start with stick and then learn MIG. They say TIG is very hard to learn if you can’t stick weld. I have found that to be the case. I still can’t really stick weld.

I put the new exhaust on the tractor and started mowing. Wonderful! Then I felt a bump, and I saw a green object coming out from under the right front tire. I had run over the tractor’s probably-expensive grill. I was afraid it would go into the blades, so I put the tractor into reverse. And ran over it again

I set the pretzely-looking grill aside and tried to restart the tractor. No joy. I figured there was a safety switch that wouldn’t let me restart it because I had had the blades engaged when I stopped the engine. No, I was mistaken. The tractor’s battery had chosen that exact moment to die on me. Incredible.

Today I put a new battery in, and the tractor ran successfully for an hour with no explosions, fires, engine seizures, reactor core meltdowns, tornadoes, or unexpected teleportations into trans-galactic wormholes.

The web says a new grill runs $750. Cost to produce: probably around $30. I think I’ll see what I can do with the old one. It would literally cost less to have it professionally restored and painted than to get a new one. It amazes me that anyone buys anything made by John Deere.

Luckily, the grill is totally unnecessary. It just makes the mower harder to work on.

If you were to ask me what I did for the last 4 days, I would probably say, “I mowed my yard.” Now that I’ve listed all the things I had to do to get the yard mowed, that answer will make more sense.

I feel like buying some metal and welding something together, for no reason at all. Maybe I’ll weld myself a new John Deere grill.

If only it were that easy.

I should get some metal and see if I can figure out how to stick weld.

Anyway, it would be nice to have a little project that went quickly and didn’t try to suck my soul out of me.