I am still fighting the fight against the witchcraft troubling my home wireless set up---the problem has dismayed everyone....every repair person, expert, and helper i can find...so i construct this blog on a netbook without access to my photo library. My apologies for only words----

Our homesteading work has paid off for me mentally in the past few weeks.....as our national economic and spiritual depression deepens. Since we have prepared I find myself caring less and less about the state of the nation surrounding me...we have seemingly become sovereigns of ourselves....

Our Prius and bicycles coupled with our home site selection right off of a working downtown makes us immune to increases in the price of gasoline. Our gardens, stored food and the soon to be completed greenhouse makes us immune to food price increases, manufactured food poisoning events and any upcoming shortages. Our long, hard work at becoming debt free allows us immunity from current economic manipulations....our continuing work on solar and wind power for the house will someday free us from energy dependence....
Our rejection of society's demands and propaganda is possibly our most valuable accomplishment....
One cannot be a slave to post Christmas debt if one rejects the force-fed concept of a holiday designed only to feed capitalism.... without a TV who cares who won the super bowl-----the total rejection of what our nation now calls politics allows for individual peace.....It has struck home to me these past few weeks how lucky my wife and I are and how worthwhile our hard work has been.

LITTLE THINGS we've started to do:

My wife and I are both smokers, an expensive proposition, but we have begun keeping a good pair of scissors near our home smoking zone---snipping off the lit end of a half smoked cigarette allows for no wastage from stubbing it out and allows the cigarette to be finished later in perfect condition....

By letting my hair grow (which is now tied back in a ponytail) I saved almost enough money so far this past year to repay the cost of the netbook i am constructing this blog on...

I have shelled three gallons of pecans from our backyard tree so far---with probably three more gallons available by the time i am completed.

I have begun charging all my portable computing devices, mobile phone etc. at work---although i should feel bad about this..... it is liberating. They care nothing at all for the conservation...of anything so why not? Sort of my own 12 Monkeys rebellion.

My wife purchased us a PITEBA hand powered mechanical oil expressor---from Holland...we grow sunflowers every year but this year I'll be hand cranking out free sunflower oil for us to store and utilize...all year. We had been worried about how we could obtain a self-sufficient supply of cooking oil and with the acquisition of this excellent, superbly built tool this is no longer a problem.


Again my apologies for the delay and shortfall of this blog----soon hopefully i will be back on target---pictures of the greenhouse construction to come as well....

warren

Average Annual hours worked 2006:

United States-----1,804

Netherlands-------1,391

Elderly below 50% of median income 2006:

United States-----24.7 %

Netherlands------2.4%

Children below 50%of Median income 2006:

United States-----21.9%

Netherlands-------9.8%

Per Capital GDP 2006:

United States-----$44,155

Netherlands------$40,167

So tell me again how social democracy is bad and American Capitalism is good?

The Greenhouse has been purchased and sections are starting to be delivered today via FedX freight truck.....it will apparently take several deliveries to obtain all the parts, sections etc. for assembly. We have contracted a contractor to put the greenhouse up since power will have to be run to it for the fans, and heaters, as well as a water line for the misting and watering system which is included with the greenhouse itself. We very well may have the greenhouse up in time for seedling starts for the upcoming gardening season which would be excellent but there are several additional items such as shelving, tables etc. which have to be acquired or made after the GH itself is up and available for use. The greenhouse is a major step forward in our urban homestead.....and for our self sufficient lifestyle. This will seriously take us further off the commercial food landscape....giving us food independence year round if necessary. I am going to try my best to take pictures during the assembly process but i seem to always forget photo's i guess i am not orientated that way i guess---but i will try.

My forced wireless for the homeless process is working out well ok----with no wireless at home i find that i have more available time...and i am not as insane to get on the net as i have been for the past few years----I have been working from my coffee shop at lunch..doing what i need to do like emails, amazon purchases, etc. The time frames are small over lunch to do this so i try to plan out what i need to do on the net in advance. At my now netless home, i try to write to a thumb drive for copy/pasting when wireless is available...... My biggest difficulty is just not having net access whenever i want it---i have been spoiled.

My Lifebook U810 is a godsend during this homeless wireless time---the perfect computing companion for these mobile computing forced circumstances....the keyboard is small but i am learning how to work it and eventually i expect to be at close to the same word per minute level as i am on a larger laptop. I am not going to do a complete review of the U810 they are all over the web. Let me just advise that if you can find a good used one and you are at all into UMPC's and mobile computing .....buy it...I am extremely happy with my purchase and the U810 does everything i hoped it would. I finally managed to photo my U810 pictured below with my tiny Nokia internet device and my Mimo usb monitor which i can hook to either device for a larger screen view. I carry the U810 and the Nokia but the Mimo stays at home although i can remove the screen from the stand and carry it if necessary. As you can see by the cigarette pack i am into a small world now....

The book of this month that I have really, truly, enjoyed reading so much that i will be sad to see it end is "Were you born on the wrong continent" by Thomas Geoghegan.

A wonderful examination of social democracy in Europe and why the European society is light years ahead of American society. When you read this book it makes you want to cry----at our national loss and stupidity. Goeghegan is an excellent and entertaining writer who informs as well. If you are a thinking American you need to read this. Although as I've said you'll cry over what we could be as a society and what we are.

An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.
Albert Camus

My Rovio remote, mobile, robotic camera system for the house is still a failure---i cannot make the wireless remote access points on the internet connect me to the robot-cam at home to activate it. Therefore it sits lit up looking cool in my nerd cave but i am without success in operating it yet===FAIL.

My straight razor project---at the moment is a FAIL--i cannot seem to cut only facial hair without stripping the hide off my face----more practice---might be the answer but i could easily through more practice wind up looking like i immigrated from a location that required manhood initation facial scarring as a normal part of growing up? Which of course could be really cool but this also ranks as a major FAIL

These two projects have been my biggest fails within my recent world of projects...and I wanted to be honest and report on them.....it does no good for the mind and soul to report only successes.

--my home wireless system has failed.

I am currently having to use only the wireless internet access i can obtain in public due to the fact that my home wireless system is screwing up and both myself and the experts on both onlaptops and routers cannot figure out why this is happening, not a single clue---i have replaced everything and no repair or replacement works. My internet access at home has become like electricity in Haiti---you never know when it is going to come on but it spends the majority of it's time not working for mysterious reasons----- i am going to have to develop a system to allow both my equipment to operate on the free wireless internet available out in the world since my laptops will work on public wireless but not on my home wireless--yeah this is the voodoo kind of process i am fighting against.

I think i can, with the proper organization and desire, substitute public wireless for home wireless. I may wind up more organized on what to do where and when but i would also be able to utilize my home time in a more effective manner. Since I have no wireless a home now this may be the only way can continue blogging. I am currently producing this off line to a thumb drive with the idea of copy/pasting to the blog control page and i have no idea of this will work....

Often overlooked in this country, Korea makes some of the best, most bizzare, angst ridden, techno and firearm orientated science fiction movies....I am currently watching YESTERDAY a Korean science fiction film made in 2002. It is by no means the Matrix but it is a solid SF film. In Korean SF you often have to sit through much oriental interpersonal character crap to get to the little gem moments of visual futurism like corporate advertising on police wireless communications to pay for access or Korean Rasta's commiting assinations aided by Basuke motorcycle gangs in futuristic cities.

Do not pass up a Korean SF film...even tho the plot may be weak the visuals will probably be stunning, and their views of the future are more on target than ours.

I am going to bring up an ugly point--and suffer the consequences without a doubt but i feel it has to be said---- so OK but why haven't military personnel health care, salaries, and benefits been cut along with everyone else's? Don't give me that patriotic crap---i wouldn't ask this question if we still had a draft army---now IT'S a JOB---volunteer means you don't have to if you don't want to....not like my day where they yanked you from the world you wanted, shaved your head and put you into a world you didn't want and if you resisted you went to prison for not doing what you were told.

This is now a JOB like all the other JOBs then why no cuts? I don't care about the blahblahblah of support our troops------- if they are being killed they are being killed due to the stupidity of our leadership---- Change the leadership, they DO NOT HAVE TO DO THIS---- unlike draftees who had face the choice of being killed in a stupid war or maybe being killed by their own government for refusing. This is now a JOB.

We have 536,000 people in the military doing what for society right at this moment? I mean cast off the ingrained propaganda as best you can....does driving a truck around FT. Leonard Wood for a couple of years entitle you to free health care for life? Is that right? and who of course is paying for this? If the concept is that military creates an actual job for people then put them all in engineering battalions and work on the infrastructure or fix old peoples houses. At least OUR SOCIETY would get something back from the gazillions of dollars we have contributed which have been WASTED by the military over my little lifetime for chirstsakes. Right now our military exists to maintain a crumbling empire that has never worked...we have only allowed the rest of the world that we protect to utilize their money for national health care, good schools and developing their society instead of paying their nations real defense costs....Our military today is a JOB and should be treated like one without the flag waving----as should their costs versus return value to society value imbalance. We cannot continue paying for an imperial army...or provide benefits for life for anyone that gets hired. With the result as a return on the investment of them wandering about Afghanistan, getting killed and solving nothing in ten years......PUT AN END TO THIS!

A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason.
J. P. Morgan