seething_spendcel
No bio...
User ID: 4215
seething_spendcel
2d ago
Lol thanks for the flashlight recommendation. Recommendations like that are part of why I posted. I guess I also wanted to hear other preparedness, or failures to prepare, that other people had. That flashlight looks pretty great without spending like a hundred bucks because you want the BEST flashlight possible.
Looking more into it, yeah, that radio is probably junk. Apparently the crank is a weak point on crank radios. I guess if I wanted a doohickey like that, there might be better stuff. I'll have to look into it some more. Or maybe I'll just buy that flashlight and forget about the rest of it.
seething_spendcel
2d ago
I'm not saying you're wrong, but... are you sure? Being duplicitous isn't disqualifying for communists, and communists and Islamists alike share an interest in the destruction of the nation. Personally, I think it's likely that Mamdani is just keeping his Muslim status on the down-low.
seething_spendcel
3d ago
I've been following the Free Stars development for a while. First there was that huge legal drama with Stardock that got resolved in a really weird way. Now (and admittedly this is much less eventful) every blogpost has some political crap buried within it. I'm not sure if the two original Toys for Bobs devs are super progressive, or their staffers developers are the super progressive ones, but it's kind of funny to have a giant dev progress update and then have a picture of you protesting fascism in front of the Washington Monument and talking about what a shocking year it's been politically.
I hope it gets out of Kickstarter Development Hell. The Escape Velocity Override remake, "Cosmic Frontier Override", was not so lucky. The devs wasted a bunch of time poorly rewriting everything and then apparently Peter Cartwright, the original creator, died while this all was going on. Maybe it'll keep going. The remaining dev is incentivized to keep going, because he somehow made a Patreon account a year or two after the kickstarter to get even more free money to develop freelance.
Or maybe I don't hope it gets out of Kickstarter Development Hell. How can I hope to defeat leftism if I play every game and watch every movie that leftists make? Maybe it's better if they just waste the money of other leftists and desperate 40 year olds. I am also a zoomer who played Ur Quan Masters, by the way. It was really good.
seething_spendcel
3d ago
Yeah those are definitely good too. I have one, but it's mostly connected to the computers and internet. So the internet worked for a long time, but running a computer makes the battery go out pretty fast.
seething_spendcel
3d ago
I'm just starting to add consistent cardio, so it might have a decent effect on me in combination with the other stuff I'm doing. But be proud of your shitloads of cardio! I donated blood the other day and my blood pressure was 114/68, which is slightly better than it usually is. Do it for slightly better blood pressure!!
seething_spendcel
3d ago
My power went out on Sunday at about 8:30 PM and was out until 3 AM. The entire street was pitch black because the transformers in town got knocked out by a severe thunderstorm that came and went in under 30 minutes.
Lights in the house:
- my phone (other phones were low on charge and could not be used for long)
- two OLight Mini 2s (very useful! marginally brighter than my phone's flashlight)
- decently bright thin rectangular flashlight
- an oil lamp
Observations:
- I went out to check on the neighbors a little ways in, and went along the sidewalk to look closer at a fallen tree, and unwittingly I walked in between two downed power lines. Was this a failure of situational awareness, failure to have a bright enough flashlight, or just plain bad luck? The town guys came to look at the damage, and the first guy investigating had a flashlight that was very bright and could light up almost a whole block. The OLight Mini 2 is useful, but its capabilities are limited.
- I really could have used something that could light up an entire room in the house. If I had that, we probably wouldn't have needed the oil lamp. I consider oil lamps to be fire hazards. But they're really useful fire hazards. The kerosene provides a light for a long time.
- Having a nice, organized room helps you find stuff in it even when it's dark. I did not have a clean, organized room.
- The power going out is a good excuse to play card games. Or do the exercise that you were putting off, supposing the exercise wasn't with powered equipment.
- Surge protectors are good investments.
- It occurred to me that the house was uniquely vulnerable, and I didn't have any loaded pistols at that time, and loading in the dark would be awkward. I have a "nightstand gun" with a flashlight, but you typically don't have that in a holster. What I realized was that I could have used a pistol that had a flashlight that could fit in a holster so I could just put it on "just in case" when the power goes out. But I don't know anything about holsters. I have one holster for my CZ P10-C, but if I put a flashlight on the gun, it wouldn't fit in the holster.
- Sleeping was difficult because they were chainsawing a fallen tree through the night and obviously the white noise fans I have need power. Also it was pretty hot and humid without air conditioning.
I watched a Paul Harrell video about three-day-survival-packs, and he showed this product, and I realized that such a device would have been pretty useful for a power outage. I'm weighing that, a very bright and long-reaching flashlight, and certain weapon attachments due to the power outage. Likely, I'll get all that and then the next power outage will come and I'll find I didn't think of something else, too.
Apparently many people just start up their generators when this happens. Meh.
seething_spendcel
4d ago
That's a pretty good amount of weight! I posted my beer belly in other avenues and was told that I actually didn't need to diet, just exercise, especially resistance training would help shed the ~10 lbs I want to lose. Thus commenced my effort to do 100 kettlebell swings every day, plus push-ups and bent rows for A days, pull-ups and push-ups for B days, plus half an hour of walking every day (at least), plus the complete cessation of the 2-4 hour naps I was taking all the time, plus no coffee after 2 PM (generally drinking about 32 fluid ounces of standard strength black coffee before then), plus eating fruits, vegetables, and (not so highly processed) meat.
I honestly think that the sleep was the best outcome from all this. The naps really were wasting a lot of time and not actually improving my restfulness, and now I feel awake all day until it's bed time. I should have known that would happen; the times I give up eating at lunch, I stop getting hungry at lunchtime. But the regular exercise is pretty great, too. I used to feel like a block of wood on some days, or earlier this year I felt like I couldn't use all of my lung capacity to breathe, but now I feel pretty mobile and my pulse was even under 60 the other day when I measured it. If my left knee didn't hurt after a couple miles, I'd try jogging even longer. I'm wondering if I should increase the kettlebell size, since doing 5 sets of 10 bent rows with 16 kilograms is kind of easy. Overhead pressing 16 kilograms is a bit more difficult, but generally I get a couple sets of 8 in before dipping down to 7 for the remaining 3. I guess swings with 20 kilograms would be better cardio than with 16 kilograms.
seething_spendcel
4d ago
The one anime film I've seen in theaters (it was Chainsaw Man Reze Arc), there were people shouting at the screen on multiple occasions. I relate to your experience. However bad Hollywood is, these things aren't accepted in showings of western movies.
seething_spendcel
4d ago
I imagine it can be uncommon in some areas in the same way that some people might not know anyone who owns a truck. As for the guns, though... the point of concealed carry is that it's concealed. You almost certainly have been around random civilians with guns and you just didn't know it. Unless you're in some hell state like New York or New Jersey or something.
seething_spendcel
4d ago
I think I've seen some people online (not on this site, pocket knives don't come up much) say that fixed blades are better. It kind of reminds me of the old 2DS vs 3DS arguments I've seen. With the old 2DS, you eliminate one of the major structural weaknesses, the hinge. On the other hand, the display itself is exposed, so it could wear out more easily over time. I imagine the same could be said of pocket knives. But to me, it seems a bit impractical; you'd almost certainly need a holster/pouch on your belt for a fixed blade knife, right? Otherwise, you could put your hand in your pocket and cut yourself, or the blade could be dulled by just cutting your pocket up every day. I think the argument for fixed blade knives is best in the case of outdoor, camping, wilderness survival contexts. At least, I think that's the context in which I saw people advocate for them.
seething_spendcel
5d ago
I shoot my Frankenglock (Grit Grips frame with OEM internals, Brownells Complete G19 slide) pretty well, even though it had quite a few problems at first. Maybe it just had to be broken in, maybe it needs some more oil, maybe it didn't like Winchester white box. I think I need to put a lot more rounds into it to be comfortable with it. I don't really like the trigger, but everything else about it is nice, I seem to shoot it better than most other guns somehow.
I'm probably going to make another gun-related thread in the Wellness Wednesday thread. I had a power outage last night and it made me contemplate my power outage readiness, or lack thereof.
seething_spendcel
5d ago
Another of my acquaintances carries a double-action only revolver. His arguments for them make sense to me. It's pretty fun too shoot, too. I prefer autoloaders, of course. They're cheaper and hold more shots and the manual of arms are pretty familiar to me by now, and I wouldn't be surprised if certain autoloaders were actually more reliable than most revolvers. But if I carried a revolver, I think I'd want something with a little better accuracy than the snub-nose he's got. It kind of goes all over the paper, no matter who's shooting it.
seething_spendcel
5d ago
The items you listed sound sort of close to what you'd call a "bug-out bag" a.k.a. a "three day survival kit" if you stocked just a few other items. Nice.
seething_spendcel
5d ago
A Glock guy, huh? The concealed carry guys I know either carry a Sig or an M&P (and you can probably guess the specific model of those guns). When I start concealed carrying, it'll be the CZ P10-C. Despite its cheapness, it seems to be one of the more reliable guns I have, and I can shoot it decently.
seething_spendcel
5d ago
+1 for the Linux thumb drive. I think I'd go with "Johnny Mnemonic" for the movie file alongside it, though. Cool product!
seething_spendcel
5d ago
Okay, I might have to get one now. I can already think of several times I could have used a small screwdriver in quick access...
seething_spendcel
5d ago
I will keep this in mind if I ever have to account to foreigners for my knife. Nobody at the party cared, the house I was a guest in didn't care, my uncle found it useful enough to ask me to borrow it a few times because he left his at home, and a ~13 year old boy bragged to me that he had like 20 different pocket knives at home, which his father attested to as true. I think it's generally a good thing to have. If you wanted to murder someone here, you'd really want to use a gun anyway.
seething_spendcel
5d ago
I guess I worded it poorly. From the concealed carry classes I took and the videos I watched, they emphasized getting into the habit of putting it on every time you left the house, because the gun you leave at home is of no use to you. The more I thought about it, I realized I had a couple things that I also had wanted to carry with me for ease-of-access but never got into the habit of doing so, even though they were easy enough to take along, certainly less burdensome than a compact pistol.
seething_spendcel
5d ago
...What? I didn't say how long my pocket knife is. I have a "Magnum" Boker knife that says "440A" on it. It's a cheap shit knife.
seething_spendcel
5d ago
Wrong, I never said that. I said the pepper spray was for self-defense, and the telescopic baton was a contemplation along those lines as well. The pocket knife is, as I said, useful for opening stuff or cutting zip ties off or cutting cheese or whatever. Knives are not good for self-defense. I guess in an emergency, you could use it on an attacking dog if the pepper spray didn't work, but you're already bitten by then.
seething_spendcel
5d ago
@FtttG was saying he wouldn't accept a knife at a house party or barbecue. I think that's pretty extreme and I hope if he ever visits the US, he keeps in mind a culture difference here. Folding pocket knives are just generally useful for opening stuff. I used mine to cut some cheese for a lunch we were having, too.
I agree that taking a knife to a concert or something like that is a bad idea, but in defense of knive-havers everywhere, stuff you get in the habit of carrying every day is very easy to forget that you have with you. I went to a baseball game on the 3rd and had to think to myself "okay, baseball game, no knife". If I already was in the habit of carrying it every day for multiple years, it probably would have been easy to forget.
seething_spendcel
5d ago
What do you carry in your pockets every day?
For me, it used to just be my keys, wallet, and phone. When I started to consider concealed carry, I realized that I had a pocket knife and pepper spray that I never carried around even though it's really not much more cargo than what I already had, and I just need to build the habit. I don't have the pepper spray oriented in a way that makes it very easy to get out and use, but the pocket knife has already been quite useful; at work, cutting off zip ties or opening packages is useful. At July 4th, other people handling the fireworks were asking to borrow my knife quite a lot. The knife you bring with you is a lot handier than the knife you leave at home! Even a dull one.
I also bought an OLight Mini 2 for my keychain. Pretty nice, though I think it's only really come in handy once or twice so far. It seems to be marginally brighter than my phone light, and a lot quicker to bring to bear. It was cheap.
Things I have considered:
- A telescoping baton. Like the pepper spray, I was considering it for dog defense, mostly, but apparently it's legally questionable to carry one and actually ever use it in a self-defense scenario. I wonder if one would be useful for anything else.
- A lighter. I don't smoke. When lighting off fireworks for the 4th, I was using someone else's long lighter for lighting grills, and it was very unreliable, bad for what we were trying to do which was synchronize 4 different mortar tubes of fireworks at once. I thought that if I had my own lighter, I could have just used my own and not been as frustrated.
- A multitool. These are commonly carried, but I don't know if I would use most of the functions or not. Many people swear by them, though.
seething_spendcel
5d ago
You missed Dark Souls!
seething_spendcel
8d ago
Viramontes was already granted cert on June 30th.
I liked the matcha candy I tasted, but I ordered a matcha latte and it really did taste like really bitter liquid grass, accurate description. It was awful. Never buying matcha anything ever again.
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