I call this, somewhat unsubtley, the suicide month.
So what better time to pick up a classic post-apocalyptic novel that’s been on my list? That’s right, go all in!
In short, it’s the story of a man and his son. The man tries to keep his son alive by scavenging in a nuclear-ravaged wasteland while traveling south in a bid to survive the oncoming winter. In so doing, he attempts to maintain certain higher standards of conduct which most have abandoned for the sake of basic survival, and instill them in his charge.
The book’s been around for a while now, so there’s reviews a plenty if you want to delve into the discussion. And like all renowned creations, there’s volumes of criticisms. To save you time, I’ll reduce them down to the top two complaints and comment on each:
It’s repetitive. Yes, it does tend to touch on the same topics and events, but that’s because the same problems keep arising and don’t go away. Each victory is minor and fleeting, without permanently fixing anything. It’s a narrative of how things just don’t get better.
The writing style is juvenile. I don’t think this is a fair assessment, because it’s essentially the running monologue in the man’s mind. I don’t know about anyone else, but my internal thought train is just that–an ongoing collection of observations, conversations, analyses, decisions, and memories; all devoid of punctuation or grammatical syntax. And that was clearly intentional by the author.
It does ultimately end with a glimmer of hope, that the ethical codes are not extinct. It’s a depressing journey, but a good one for the heart of winter. Keep the fire.
It’s always high on the list of recommended things to do when you move in to a new residence: change the locks. The reasoning is obvious: there’s no way to tell who has a copy of the key. And for all of my various incremental home security improvements, they’d be mostly rendered moot if some acquaintance of the former owner had a key and chose to “visit”. So I finally prioritized a deadbolt swap.
Of course, if I’m doing that, why wouldn’t I take the opportunity to go beyond a simple lock change with a standard residential model and explore something a little more high security?
Introducing, the Mul-T-Lock Cronus Junior!
Grade 2, so a step up (I’m assuming). I think grade 1 would have been a waste of money. (I recently reinforced the door hardware with oversized strike plates and 3.5″ steel screws, but the supporting structure is ultimately wood.)
And the tumblers are actually doubled–tumblers inside tumblers. Cool idea. Having explored lock-picking in my youth, I can’t imagine the difficulty here. This isn’t just adding more tumblers, it multiplying the complexity. How do you bump pins when each pin is two pins with different shear lines?
And the price point was 3-4 times that of a standard hardware-grade variety, so not crazy. All in all, a good match for a residential application.
However, the bolt assembly was anything but user-friendly. And while that wasn’t necessarily attributed to the manufacturer, it does have a certain intolerance if existing cutouts aren’t perfectly true–something a residential-targeted product should have.
For example, the bolt hole and lock holes weren’t quite aligned. I could still feed the parts together, but the internal shield then put sufficient tension on the bolt assembly that the bolt wouldn’t extend to the final locked position. A fair amount of trial and error was required before I isolated the problem, which involved some additional boring and filing.
That problem solved, I mounted everything and tried to throw the bolt. It wouldn’t budge, despite working fine before threading the screws. So I disassembled everything and worked the bolt manually with a screwdriver, which worked fine. I took a break before smashing something.
It saves everyone after you a lot of work if you’d just do the job right the first time.
Additional experimentation revealed that the bolt assembly was being pushed down slightly too far, so the bolt was catching on the strike. The door, having been cut wrong, protruded the strike slightly into the jamb, and when mounting the strike it bent the jamb, causing obstruction. So I shimmed the strike against the door to prevent bending, reassembled the lock, and tried it again.
The thumb switch. Note also the aforementioned extended strike plate. All hardware upgraded to 3.5″ steel screws (hinges included).
The key worked, but the thumb switch didn’t. Not very useful. I disassembled the lock again and pondered the parts, eventually concluding that I needed to rotate the internal metal sheaf once so that the neutral position aligned with the thumb switch neutral position. I reassembled the lock and tried again, both key and thumb switch, in all possible combinations between the two…dozens of times. Finally, it worked as expected.
In conclusion, the door’s inconsistent cuts combined with the lock’s low error tolerance made what would normally be a 2 minute project a 2 hour one (additionally, the instructions didn’t cover installing the cylinder into the lock, or adjusting the bolt between its 1 3/8″ and 1 1/2″ settings, but those were reasonably intuitive with some observation and tinkering). But at least the lock is finally replaced and upgraded. Though in all fairness, after removing the old one, it was a really solid lock. All metal, thick parts, and lots of shielding and reinforcement. Had I possessed a tally on all the keys made for it, and were it not a decades-old standard 5-pin system, I would have left it as-is.
No weathering yet, but it matches the existing hardware pretty close.
Still, it’s nice to have one more security upgrade completed.
I love meat. I hunt. I worked in a butcher shop. I clean it, cure it, season it, cook it, serve it. I’d raise it too, but city ordinances take a dim view of such practices. And with hunting seasons limited and public lands far away, I’m generally relegated to the suburban method of procurement: grocery stores.
And the problem with said stores is that they tend to only carry cuts that are popular, or at least reasonably in the public knowledge. The hangar steak is my favorite, but was impossible to find…at least until the public became aware of it. Of course, when that happened, when I could find it, it was unreasonably priced. Supply and demand I suppose.
So it goes. But on the other hand, the general public’s growing curiosity towards alternate cuts has also increased the supply part of the equation. And so I’m able to find “junk” cuts, like pork belly.
Pork belly is, of course, the part used to make bacon. And bacon, being a holy gift to us mortal men by powers beyond my comprehension, sat on my shopping list were I ever to see it offered.
And lo and behold, one day it was indeed! I bought a 10 pound slab.
Of course, acquiring was only the first and smallest step. I needed to cure and smoke it. But how? I’m sure this is the burning question in your very soul at this moment, no doubt also sharing my analysis of bacon being a boon of divinity.
Lacking experience, I needed a baseline, so I followed this recipe. I take no credit:
However, I will offer my suggestions, learned through trial and error.
Use a Food Saver bag for the curing part. This was very effective in removing most of the air, so the meat remained completely immersed in brine. Not much massaging needed. Just time.
I don’t have a smoker, but a charcoal grill worked just fine. It was hard to avoid temperature swings, so be diligent with the fussing. Better it stay cool than get too hot.
I added wood chips, placed in a foil cup and filled with water. As the water evaporated off, it steam-smoked flavor into the meat before the dry heat finished the cure.
Reduce the salt by half. I wasn’t going to leave the bacon sit out, so I’m pretty sure this is safe. Also regarding salt…
After cutting and before final cooking, soak the bacon strips in water for a half hour. Otherwise it’s just really salty, even with the reduced salt brine. I don’t know how they do this step commercially, but if you don’t, your family will complain.
And there you have it: bacon! “Healthier” bacon, and manlier because I made it myself (I’m in agreement with the above cited article). And now that I know what I’m doing, I can create my own custom cures. Experiments!
One of the more exciting moments from Herbert’s Dune Messiah novel was a nighttime attack with the Stone Burner. The second book in the series, it lacked some of the foreboding intrigue and suspense of its predecessor, and so the few action scenes stick out more vividly in my memory.
The Stone Burner, like most of Herbert’s pseudo-tech, was a rather ambiguous device, hinting at nuclear power but never really confirming. The terror lay in its unique ability–exploding in some pillar of fire, then emitting a radiation which liquefied eye tissue, thereby blinding everyone within range (this was a plot device I suppose, as the traditional law of Fremen was to abandon their blind in the desert).
In the SyFy miniseries, a late night rendezvous is interrupted by the ominous silence of a pre-storm, followed by the crescendoing wind, and a character’s sudden utterance of realization: “Stone Burner…!”.
This post is far less interesting. But I always think of the Stone Burner when loading my new, somewhat less destructive, wood burner, which releases…controlled infrared and…clouds of noxious fumes…at least until I get the vents adjusted properly. For comfort!
Okay: the point now. We had the chimney swept. We do this periodically as we enjoy using the fireplace. And it should be noted at this point that the chimney passed home-buying inspection (which is a nonsense cursory review at best), followed by some company that proved to be not so legit after our first cleaning (a couple rednecks with shop vacs). The time after that, a most apparent professional, or so it seemed anyway, completed a thorough examination of the chimney with cameras, concluding that we had at some point suffered a chimney fire due to excessive creosote, which conveniently put us in the position of being able to file an insurance claim for money to pay him to either do repairs or install a wood burner insert.
The insurance company, balking at a 5-figure claim, sent out their own inspector, who concluded that there was no chimney fire, but agreed that the creosote buildup, combined with ageing mortar, rendered the fireplace unusable.
We, not being chimney experts, weighed our options, and ultimately settled on the wood burner insert option (albeit without insurance money to pay for it), which bypasses the chimney entirely with it’s own metal piping (well, not bypass as it uses the path of the chimney, but it doesn’t rely on it’s insulative properties). The burner itself is entirely self-contained–essentially an oven which traps the heat, catalyzes the smoke for a clean burn, and employs a fan system to pass house air around the system to heat the room. This solution was not only half the price of a prospective chimney repair, but it actually heats the house.
It did have its learning curve though. Wood has to be split much smaller, I often have to override the fire vent’s automatic shutoff to keep it burning, and I have to leave the door open long enough for the fire to reach a self-sustaining size before closing (this is all contrary to the official instructions). Then it requires multi-stage feeding to build the coal bed.
It also works much better to burn large fires, and to not periodically feed them. It’s more of a burst system, and function over form. Still…
I have another garbage pile of posts, on account of me being lazy and not posting over the holiday. So here we go:
Managed to compost all the leaves this year. Hell yeah!Tried steaming rice in banana leaves. Cook the rice first.Sister sent us emu meat. Looking forward to trying that out.We did get some snow this yearThe Jupiter/Saturn convergenceChristmas eve dinnerBeen a long time since I got a rabbitMore pretentious this yearNew Year’s eve dinner
It’s February.
