Fallen and falling trees

Seems everytime I go out, I notice yet another fallen or falling tree I'd not noticed before.

The storm of just over two weeks ago downed some of the biggest trees we have in our neck of the woods, and a bunch of the smaller ones as well.

While some of the downed trees cracked from the winds, others remained intact as they tumbled over, exposing huge root balls.

If you look closely as you hike or drive the area, you'll see others partially uprooted and leaning heavily.

They may have not completely toppled in the last storm, but they appear at risk to complete their fall come the next round of high winds. Or maybe, with time, gravity will finish what the storm started.

Not unique to Trump

Democrats are practically in a rut when they make yet another call for impeachment of a Republican president.

Trump vilification

The agenda Trump presented during the campaign seems at best bogged down in the DC swamp.

Yet Democrats (and some Republicans) show no sign of letting up in their increasingly shrill and mostly manufactured attacks on the president.

Why's that?

They still fear the damage Trump may inflict on their dreams of an America fundamentally transformed into the progressive one Obama promised.

– the Dems must get rid of Trump before he can appoint another Supreme Court Justice. Their fear of that cannot be overemphasized.

Some things take time

Tomorrow is a day short of two weeks ago that a storm ripped the power lines from one of our mountain cabins. Tomorrow may also be the day power to the cabin is finally restored.

No damage the the cabin whatsoever except that the powerlines, when they came down, bent the cabin's connection post and ripped the guts out of the meter box.

To the point

"Colleges are totalitarian states. And they are the blueprints of the left’s plan for the entire country." - Daniel Greenfield

Back up power at home

If you live in areas prone to power outages, there's a couple things you may want to consider.

One's a generator.

The other's a power supply transfer switch.

The transfer switch allows us to plug in the generator from outside, and then manually (and safely) switch over selected household circuits to generator power when needed.

Using a small transfer switch like the ones from Reliance Controls, not all household circuits are wired for generator power, but enough are to lessen the inconvenience of a long term outage. And when running a small generator like the Honda, circuits can be switched on and off to prioritize which ones are needed at certain times while avoiding a generator over-load.

You won't get 220 volt appliances to run on a small generator like the Honda EU2000i, but you can probably get a gas-fired furnace or refrigerator, as well as some basic lighting and power outlets, up and running safely using it along with a small manual transfer switch.

The intent here isn't to live long term off-grid. But having some access to basic electric-driven functions during the next intermediate to long term power outages (be it a half day or several days) should make things go a little easier.

I've had noisy rattle-trap generators for years, but the Honda is new addition since our storm caused power outages of a couple weeks ago. Easy to move, easy to start. It runs quiet, and puts out clean power that's safe to use with delicate electronics. I've been wary of using my old school "dirty power" generators in recent years for fear of damaging delicate microcircuits that now control so many modern electrical devices.

Honda generators are priced on the high side, but the Honda is built by Honda at its plant in Thailand. Most the other less expensive brands apparently come out of contracted factories in China. I went Honda because of their long term record, and their parts and service network, but there are other less expensive brands that also get plenty of favorable reviews.

I still pull out my older generators from time to time, but tend to use them only to power stuff like drills or power saws, or to charge batteries that can then be used to power inverters to power today's sensitive plug-in electronics.

I've previously blogged about the utilitarian practicality of those little generators available for around a hundred bucks from places like Harbor Freight. Mine makes a good back-up for charging batteries on days when solar's not producing. But, yeah, it's kinda noisy. And for charging batteries, I only use mine with an old school manual charger.

Old school tattle tale

We've had a bunch of power outages at the cabin recently. The big one of two weeks ago as well as some blips that only lasted a few seconds but were enough to mess up the digital clocks or triggered the PF (power failure) notation on appliance read-outs.

So, I've resurrected the old school way to estimate how long the power's been out for those times I'm not home or asleep when the outages happen.

I picked up an old analog plug-in clock.

It stops when the power goes out, restarts when the power comes back on.

I can now take actual time, subtract the time on the plug-in clock, and have some idea how long an outage (or outages) have been.

Yes, if I'm gone for a while, I can't tell if there's been a single outage or multiple ones. And things get complicated as well if an outage is more than 12 hours, but those are the very rare exception.

Most the power outages are of short duration. But now I have a way to determine if they've run longer, helping to determine if refrigerated food might need to be checked, or if I might want to consider beefier battery back-up power supplies for stuff like Internet or my cell phone booster.

Bears sighting season has begun

When in bear country, best to keep your car locked and refrain from leaving snacks or other food inside.

BTW, had my first bear sighting of the season in north Georgia. Young black bear was sitting by the road along SR 183 just inside the Dawson County line after I crossed over from Gilmer. Thought for sec he might like me take his picture, but once we made eye contact, he skedaddled back into the woods.

Caught my eye

If things were as bad as MSM claims, I seriously doubt MSM would squander time and effort to report Trump got an extra scoop of ice cream.

Lights out

Freak storm knocked down hundreds of trees in my region of the North Georgia mountains Thursday, and plenty of power lines came down with the trees.

Electic power was out at my cabin nearly 12 hours. And even now, power supply seems to be having burps and grunts as crews work to get the lights back on in other nearby communities.

For all the down side, there are some positives.

I now know for sure that the UPS (uninterruptible power supply) on my Internet modem and cell phone repeater provide back up for only about four to five hours here at the cabin (I have much deeper battery reserves and a small solar array at our main home, but have not yet ventured to install such things here in the woods).

I'll also have to go through the refrigerator and cull food that's likely spoiled. Not so much of a problem, as I tend to keep relatively few refrigerated perishables on hand here on the mountain, knowing that storms tend to cause power outages (though typically not lasting more than four hours).

May Day

May Day 2017 seemed to have brought out Leftist crazies in the typical places.

But outside the Left's limited zones of influence, did anyone else seem to notice?

I'll admit, there was some effort to create buzz online. But I kinda doubt it lured any new followers to the socialist, leftist, or anarchist ways of thinking. The continued displays of radicalism may actually be a turn-off to most Americans.

A freind sent me this cutesy GIF. Says it's from
International Women's Strike NYC. 

The NRA's fetish for blacklisting

Meant to post this last week, prior to the start of the big NRA show in Atlanta.

But I got distracted.

Taking some time to read other blogs this morning, I see others managed to stay on-point.

Hattip to Mr. Zachary's blog for the reminder.

Here's the article from David Codrea I had intended to post.