A Weekend Emergency Ration...

I was visiting different blogs reading different ideas about creating light weight food stuffs to have in my pack as a just in case. MRE's can be had for 10+ $'s from various places. After reading and poking around I decided on a path to take. I would create my own version of an E-RAT. As a matter of fact I made two for each of the kids, son-in-law, and wife.
I used my Food Saver to create an air tight package. I suppose that a zip lock bag will work as well.

Here is what I placed in the pack:
2 - Cliff bars
2 - Lipton Cup of Soup, Chicken Noodle
2 - Instant Oatmeal packets
2 - Swiss Miss Hot Cocoa
4 - Jolly Rancher Candies
3 - Instant Coffee packets
3 - 4C Light powdered drink mix packets (100% vitamin C)

This very basic packet is good for one day or over night stay in the woods. If one conserves maybe two days. The packs the kids have contain items to filter water, start a fire, container to heat and carry water or eat from. The items will keep for sometime, well over a year if not left in the sun. All that is needed is a fire and little water to create the meal.

All of the items can be purchased at the local grocery.

Enjoy,

A Way to Store Food...

Many ways exist to safely store food stuffs for future or emergency use. Folks can purchase dehydrated food in buckets that are meals, there are MRE's, any number of combinations are out there in the market place. The price also reflects the quantity, but not always the quality.
Uncle Sam recommends that Americans have at least three days of reserve food and water on hand.

Starting off with food storage. One will need food grade storage buckets. A lot of folks sell them, but this place has the best prices as they are a manufacturer; freckleface.com. These five gallon pails will store plenty of beans, lentils, white rice, salt, pepper, sugar, and whatever else your heart desires.
I am not going into how to store the food. The internet has plenty of resources on how to store food. I am just putting up a link to the folks who had the best deal for me when I needed the buckets.

The Gamma lids are awesome and will not break you hands while opening them. A great find and worth sharing.

** Update 8 Feb 13
Here is a link(s) to some handy ideas for storing the food; Modern Survival Blog.com, Backdoor Survival.com. Plenty of other resources out there, these are just a couple I have visit from time to time.

Enjoy,

To Learn Something New...

I have decided to try and learn something new; Emergency Medical Technician Basic (EMT-B). So far so good. My class meets two nights a week for three hours. The instructor(s) include one paramedic and a few intermediate EMT's. All of the instructors are very knowledgeable concerning the subject matter.
One particular area of interest is the FEMA training courses available to the general public free of charge. These courses can be taken by anyone and provide introduction(s) to several different topics in regards to disasters. A test can also be taken upon completion of the course. If a passing grade is received a certificate of completion is e-mailed to the users.

Check out the courses here: FEMA Independent Study

Why are these courses useful? Well, you can help your community to prepare for emergencies as well as the arrival of resources to implement recovery. These courses all provide some insight as to what is expected in government response and how the organization is built to respond. If a community decides to handle the recovery without external help than these course will provide basic knowledge of what should be done.

What is unfortunate is that whenever the government gets involved the recovery effort is prolonged and drawn out. This was witnessed locally.

So, maybe folks should complete these courses on their own and be ready to help their communities and keep the inept government out.


Enjoy,

See What Congress is Voting On...

All,
I found out about the awesome website that lets me read a Bill as well as send a note to my Congressman or Senator. The note lets these folks know if I support or oppose a particular Bill. Now if you decide to read a Bill you will be years ahead of those voting on them. I suspect the percentage who actual read them is pretty low. I base this one some of the recent Bills that have passed. To me it looks like some were never read, just stuffed with Pork and passed.
Anyway, here is the link.

PopVox

Check it out. This has got to be the easiest way to read a Bill and let your delegation know where you stand.

** Be sure to read the Bill contents. Some of the titles will throw you off. I found out about this site from MAINEPREPPER on Youtube. Check out his channel, very informative.

Enjoy,

Or Wanted a Tablet...

When tablets first came out I thought that I would like one. Along came the Kindles, Nooks and iPad, etc. These tablets are cool, what would I use one for?

Here is what I came up with:
1. Check email without having to crank up the desktop or laptop.
2. Read my Kindle books.
3. Maybe watch a Youtube video that I received a note about.

As you can see the list is not very big. Tablets are nice and light for these tasks. Anything else will really tax the tablet and for what I wanted to initially accomplish these tasks can easily be handle by the tablet.

Recently I came across this interesting article: They Can Hear You Now: Verizon Patent Could Listen In On Customers and this one All Americans’ Emails Are Collected By The FBI, Says NSA Whistleblower or Americans Are The Most Spied On People In World History

Talk about Soviet Russia or even 1984... Wow! Not impressed with the encroachment of my personal correspondence and liberties. What a mess!

Now one question that I asked of myself was what kind of tablet should I get? Which one will allow me to control most of the tablets activities? Is there a way to maintain my privacy? I continued to review my wants and needs...

The tablet I ended up ordering was a Flytouch III. Not as flashy as the iPad or Samsung Galaxy. The Flytouch has Android OS Froyo 2.3.3, 16GB at the time I received it. I have had the tablet for about a year now. The Flytouch does what I need it to do and a little more.

So, what does this table have?
Android Froyo 2.3.3
2 x USB ports
1 RJ54 network jack
1 micro SD slot
1 HDMI
10.2" screen
1 GPS antenna connection w/ antenna

Pros
Let's see what the likes are and see if I reached my initial goals of getting a tablet.
1. Checks emails, fine, easy configuration. Check.
2. Kindle e-books, loaded, works great. Check.
3. Youtube access, works. Check.
4. Price was right at the time of purchase.

Bonus'
Attach the GPS antenna and drive around to test. Pretty accurate and a nice extra. Wi-Fi can be manually switched off. Don't need a network connection to use navigation feature. Just need the GPS antenna to utilize.

Cons
1. You get what you pay for. Construction is good to fairly good. Some folks have issues with the tablet. Check the internet for reviews and comments. But, for me some of the cons were not enough to prevent me from getting one.
2. The audio and WiFi ckt has an isolation issue. I get a bit of noise over the audio channel. But, not bad enough or happening often enough that I cannot understand the audio.
3. Battery life when the WiFi is on will let you go for a few hours.

Summary
I have had the Flytouch III for about a year now. Happy with it and it does what I wanted to do. The GPS feature is nice and I have the power adapter for the auto. I can control the internet access with a switch and not worry about the software controlling network access from a remote source. This does not mean that when I finally connect to the internet a log of my activity is not sent anywhere. But, at least the log is not real time.
I clear the cache often and will have to research further to see if that also clears any log data that gets collected. At some point I will root the device to see about cleaning out some of the un-needed utilities.
This tablet may not be for you, but for some it may be just the ticket. Android can be configured to the users needs. Check it out and see if the Flytouch works. I have read the newer generation is much better all around.

Enjoy,

To Get Amazon Kindle for PC Working on Ubuntu 12.04...

On Ubuntu 10.04 I had the Amazon Kindle for PC working well. At the time there was a bit of trouble and had to spend some time hunting up what needed to be done to make it work. Recently I inherited a laptop from my wife and promptly dumped Winoz for Ubuntu 12.04.
The laptop is an HP Pavilion Entertainment PC. Ubuntu 12.04 works well on the the PC and graphics are nice and crisp. So far so good. I wanted to get Kindle for PC working and was having trouble. The configuration for Ubuntu 10.04 is different that what 12.04 used, however slight. I found a couple of useful links that I will place here that will help one get the job done quickly. No need for me to go into any detail as these links provide all the info needed.
I hope this helps someone out and saves them the hassle of banging their head against the wall.

Amazon Kindle for PC

 Remove or Rename a Wine file

The two links above will have you on your way to accessing the Kindle material in no time.

Enjoy,

A Better Knife Sheath...

My last post was about picking up a durable knife on the cheap. While this knife takes up an edge and holds it well the sheath was only fair. I say fair because the nylon it is made of is feels rather thin. Single stitched around the edges and no keeper strap for the handle. In the past I lost is really good knife because of a lack of a keeper that went around the handle on the top portion of the sheath.
I set about searching the net for a way to make a knife sheath. A lot of the knives in am interested in have a kydex or high impact plastic sheath with rivets or metal joiners. The joiners can be made of steel or aluminum.
I found a really good tutorial on making a knife sheath here: Willow Haven Outdoor.
From there I was lead here: Knife Kits. Off I went and placed the order. Everything arrived promptly. The sheet of Kydex was 12" X 12", big enough for my project.

I measured everything two or three times to make sure I had it sized. I ended up using half the sheet. I don't have a way to secure the rivets nicely. I found that the grommet tool I have was to small or to big to make the finish look nice. No worries there as Knife Kits also sells a proper rivet tool for making a knife sheath. I did not order it, but just wanted to mention it.

Due to the shape of the knife I could not get the belt loop on the sheath itself. I used a piece of Kydex and some joiners I got at the local hardware store to attach it. A little bit of Lok-Tite and wham I have a decent functional knife sheath. The knife snaps right in and is secure.

Below are some pics. Not to bad for my first go at something like this.