Today I have for you a collection of mostly useful or “lite” links. NO politics. Enjoy.
Alert: Lots of Amazon links ahead! Couple of weeks ago I blogged about jump starters. The ones I’d been looking at were big and clunky — basically lead-acid batteries to kickstart your lead-acid battery. Until S. placed a comment, I didn’t know about elegant lithium-ion alternatives, some not much bigger than smartphones. The reason for my interest was that I knew I was soon going to run Old Blue’s battery down. It was inevitable. Around the time we broke down last month, the headlight-alert bell quit. My mechanic thought he fixed it but if so it didn’t stay fixed (he…
Gassed it up and filled it with oil today. Read the manual, turned all the right dials, flipped all the right switches, pulled the cord and we were in business. This is the new generator under its very first load. (And no, I’m not really into froufrou lamps, but that one belonged to my friend Jill who died three years ago.) And this incredibly exciting photo (well, incredibly exciting to me, not that I’d expect anyone else to notice) is the new generator running both the refrigerator and a small chest freezer at the same time. I wasn’t sure it…
Do you carry a jump starter in your vehicle and if so, what are the characteristics you looked for? I’m curious, because the prices are all over the place and oddly, the model with some of the best features, this Stanley pictured below, is one of the least expensive. It’s not only a jump starter, but it’s got an air compressor for filling tires, USB ports for charging two electronic devices at the same time, a light and more. Yet it’s about half the price of some that do little besides jump starting. Now some of the much more expensive…
A few years ago, two of the many kind readers of this blog sent a substantial donation specifically for buying a generator. The money they sent was enough to purchase an inexpensive generator — or make a good start on saving for the compact Honda or Yamaha they knew was on my wish list. They gave me that option. My choice. I decided to stash the donation and keep on saving for the Dream Generator. While it made me nervous not to have backup power, I figured that — not being particularly a Ms Fixit — I needed the reliability,…
From Commentariat member AE comes this warning that as of January 1 the FDA is banning certain over-the-counter veterinary antibiotics. Since preppers have long relied on feed-store meds to get around both the screamingly high prices and absurd regulations around human-grade prescription meds, this could be a big deal. Or not. First important thing to know: It doesn’t affect all veterinary antibiotics. In theory you should still be able to buy that injectable penicillin that’s been the mainstay of so many medical kits. Primarily at stake are feed-grade antibiotics, whose casual use has become so notorious in milk and meat.…
Yesterday evening as darkness fell, I went to close the blinds and discovered the planet Venus beaming in my face. Then there was tiny red Mars above and to the left. This time of year it’s rare to see anything in the sky except clouds and occasionally the obscured light of the moon. So behind am I on my astronomy that I had to doublecheck that it was Venus, not Jupiter, that bright and that high above the horizon. The website I consulted even said Mercury should have been somewhere in view, but there were hills in the way. I…
