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December 2, 2022 – Atlas Shrugged 3:2

December 2, 2022 /

I think I can see the end is near, at least I think I can. Have you ever ran a long race? I did a half marathon one time and you could see the mile markers. At mile 10, you didn’t know quite what the finish line would look like but you knew that if you kept going you would make it. That is kind of how this feels.

As books go, this chapter was a long one. At almost 60 pages and tiny font, it feels like I could have read a book just in this chapter. I am going to try and not spoil the plot by talking around what is going on. I will let you infer what happens without me outright saying it.

The citizens of Galt’s Gulch give Dabny thirty days to choose to stay or to leave. It is their hope that they can prove life is superior here to the outside world. I would say that Dabny takes advantage of her time and waits to the last minute to make her decision.

While there are so many parallels to real life in this book, there are just as many results of fiction as well. The book would have you believe that a small group of doers could disappear and put the foundations of a modern society together by chance. Somehow, it would all work out because every person would fill that exact niche in an economy.

Someone would grow all the wheat needed, someone would mill it and package it and someone would sell it. Someone would make the machinery to harvest and process. Someone would make the packaging. Someone would mine the ore to refine to metal, and someone would take that metal and make equipment with it to harvest the grain, even if it is just a scythe. And this is one food item.

I will say, ‘in the real world’ I will talk about two types of people in this category. There are the citizens of Galt’s Gulch and those that haven’t yet given up or seen the light. Within that latter group, there are some that simply won’t give up. I think that this is what makes society work. Just like the song says, the world needs ‘All Kinds of Kinds‘.

There is some advice that I wish I could more easily follow. To find your passion or maybe better, to truly be happy you need to quit. You need to quit doing the things that make you miserable be it a job, an education, a habit or a relationship. As I have eluded to in the course of my writing, the only major thing I have ever quit was my job in 2019. Even then, I only did it because my wife forced me to choose my job or my marriage.

I never give up or surrender if there is a chance that I can still persevere. I was always taught that this quality was admirable so it is ingrained in me. But, it also lacks the true secret to happiness because you spend all your time fighting to win and when you do, it is hollow and empty.

I would wager that a higher percentage of rich people are high school/college dropouts. Why is this? Because they didn’t waste their time, marking time, getting programmed. It is us that followed the path all the way through to start a new journey of someone else’s vision for our lives that didn’t get it. They quit because the status quo didn’t work for where they wanted to go.

I am not convinced that every successful person followed their dreams to what they are doing. I think that their true dreams were to be free and independent whatever business endeavor that manifest itself in. And even then, the creative types try new things, sell their endeavors and try to start over.

Think about Elon Musk for a moment. He was set for life when he sold PayPal. But, then he started Tesla and SpaceX and bought Twitter. I can’t speak for the financial state of the sum of the businesses. But, he didn’t sell PayPal to buy Twitter. He sold PayPal because he was ready to do something else. That is quitting something (like running a company – forever) to try and develop new interests.

To me success is not achieving a goal, it is enjoying the journey. By that definition, there is no possible way to be successful when the journey is miserable. There is a commonly held belief in business that if the business is not growing, it is dying. Why is this? There is no number that a business can achieve that is definitive because it is almost a living entity itself. A business is measured against it’s continual advancement, not what it did, once. So should we behave as people.

End Your Programming Routine: I knew that I would not be successful when I took a job in 2021. The reason being is that nothing changed, only the nameplate on my LinkedIn account. It wasn’t who I was working for that made the difference, it was the fact that I went back to doing the same things as before I quit. The one thing that did was that I started Altf4. The smart person would quit because it hasn’t made a dime. But, you know me: I won’t quit.

December 1, 2022 – My Seed Saving Experiment

December 1, 2022 /

I am very disappointed. I have been anticipating saving seeds from one tomato plant that survived under the lights from my seed starting. I have been waiting for months (since March when I had this idea). I waited for the plant to fruit and mature. I resisted eating the couple ripe ones that made it so that I could do this experiment.

I left the tomato on the vine until it froze. Then I picked it and set it on the counter till I got around to it. It really didn’t look bad when I picked it, but after it sat around for a week, I figured I better get on this project before it is too late.

After reading the article in Self-Reliance Magazine, I was supposed to scoop out the seeds and place them in a vessel containing water. This container would stay in the refrigerator until the gelatinous coating around the seeds decomposed or separated. Viable seeds were supposed to sink to the bottom. All the gunk would be decanted off the top and the seeds could be dried with a paper towel. The dry seeds would be put in a cool and dry location, like in an envelope.

This technique is supposed to work with open pollenated varieties (also known as heirloom). I thought this was, but I could not find any seeds to remove. It is possible that I waited too long and the seeds were buried in the rotting flesh? I don’t know but I searched through this mess. This was the primary reason that I failed.

Back to the drawing board. My gardening success is directly proportional to how much effort I have put in. In the last couple years it has been very little to almost none. But, that is OK because my experiments are really an attempt to align how I want to garden with actual results. So, I will continue low effort type attempts in hopes that I will learn something valuable.

End Your Programming Routine: It has never been intent my to only show successes. In fact, I want to be real with what I do. Of course it wounds my pride to fail at this endeavor. I believe in my heart that I should be able to do anything that I set my mind to. That being said, I am a strong believer of failure as a teacher and the only way to learn is to fail. To be honest, I only selected this tomato because it was the one that ripened. Maybe, if I pay more attention to variety, growing and harvest, I can accomplish this experiment next year.

November 30, 2022 – The Case For an Outdoor Cat

November 30, 2022 /

I have written about the fact that I grew up rurally. It was also the case that no animals lived inside the house. We had a dog that we would let in on a rug by the door, but she went back outside before bed. All cats were outside cats. They were kind of pets and mostly feral.

I am a big believer that cats have a job around the home. Their job is to keep vermin at bay outside the house. In the picture above, you can see Leo got himself a rat.

Growing up, we had mice and moles. I never remember having them inside the house. Here is seems like we have rats and squirrels (as well as skunks, possum and raccoon). Both like to think that they have the right to come in from time to time. I can say that our one outside cat is a pathetic excuse for a hunter. In the ten years that we have had her, we have had very little production like maybe 5 mice total. I have eliminated more than that myself.

Leo is about a year and a half. He has recently decided that he would like to spend more time outside than inside, which is fine by me. Our only true worry is that we live on a very busy road and we have had more than one cat hit by a car. At this point, it is very difficult to stop him from going out, so I guess we will leave things up to fate.

When we first got married, we got a kitten we named Spunky. Spunky was one tough dude. I one time observed him chasing a fox when we lived in South Carolina. He was a true defender of the home and he saw snakes, lizards, rabbits and bugs as well as mice as his prey. Unfortunately, he got hit by a car about fifteen years ago. Every since then, we have been searching for a cat that would take his job seriously.

I don’t know how to pick them and I don’t know the secret to getting a good cat. I will say both Spunky and Leo were obtained as kittens. But so were others that have done little to nothing. Our one shelter cat was a wreck that peed everywhere and ran off and died after about six months. He had some serious disease issues as we spent hundreds trying to get him right. I guess the secret is to keep trying.

We pay for pest service. I have followed all the advice including eliminating the compost pile. The experts say that vermin can get into a building with a whole the size of a quarter. Part of the problem is animals like squirrels create their own holes. I don’t believe that a cat is going to kill a squirrel, but I do believe that they will chase and hunt them and reduce their presence.

The best cats are the ones that go in and out in my opinion. They have confidence to have some affection like a pet and security that they are going to be OK around humans. The feral cats tend to be extremely skittish around people and will never allow themselves to be caught for things like vet care. They also seem to be relatively low on the pest elimination scale. I don’t know if it is the desire to please the owner or survival instinct that makes them behave that way.

End Your Programming Routine: I have heard that cats outside devastate the bird population as the prime argument for keeping them inside. I have seen birds killed, but I find that to be rare compared to the other animals. Around my house, there are a lot of starlings that I would also like to see killed so I am hoping to see more birds quite frankly. I guess I am not saying that they don’t have a negative impact but I think their overall good outweighs the bad. I am all for keeping the pest control outside, that is worth having a good cat.

November 29, 2022 – Learning New Things From Self Reliance Magazine

November 29, 2022 /

I have written about my interest in the Self-Reliance/Backwoods Home publishing universe. Currently, I am buying them as add-on’s when I go buy pet food at the local farm store. I very well may end up subscribing but I am still evaluating the situation because no one wants a magazine subscription where you know all the content. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised but I was when I read the Fall issue of Self-Reliance magazine I found some things that I didn’t know or wanted to pursue.

The second article was about how to save seeds from tomatoes. I literally have tomato setting on my desk that I am going to attempt to do this. If you remember from the spring, I had one plant that survived under the lights of my starting. I have planned all along trying to propagate this plant because maybe it has the secret sauce to withstand my abuse.

The fourth article was about building rain barrels. This is another thing that I want to do in the late winter or early spring next year. The reason that I want to do this is to have a water source near my greenhouse. I am hoping that by making things more convenient, it will empower these endeavors to be more productive.

About 2/3’s of the way through, there was an article about using scraps. What they were advocating were making jelly from peach or pear peels. The article also claimed that tomato paste could be made from the skins of tomatoes (after juicing or saucing). There is something called watermelon pickles where you pickle the white part of the watermelon. I had no idea, and I thought that I knew all the frugal tips.

Finally, there is an article on learning how to arc weld. I literally have my dad’s welder in my shop. It is the same model as the article and it is something that I have wanted to learn. We borrowed it work on my son’s projects and kind of muddled through it. But still, talk about being on the same page.

There were some other interesting and useful things in this issue but not to the same scale of symbiosis. So, if you recall from my last review, I was less enamored with Self-Reliance than I was with Backwoods Home. For some reason, the Fall issue of Backwoods Home never made it to the news stands. I have the Winter one that I am waiting to read in a break from Atlas Shrugged. But, this reinforced my thoughts that subscribing in a bundle is the right way to go.

End Your Programming Routine: I am really glad that I gave this title a second chance. I don’t think the information is as comprehensive as I would like, but I get it. You are probably not going to want to read a ten page article on saving tomato seeds. The basic technique is conveyed in one page. I am OK with it having a little gray area because that is how we learn. We take what we know and think about what we don’t to come up with a method that works for us.

November 28, 2022 – What Does Freedom Look Like?

November 28, 2022 /

I am taking a look at some data from the Cato Institute of Freedom‘s index. There is a state by state comparison of many different categories to make up an ultimate ranking. I found the recent decline of own state very validating.

End Your Programming Routine: This is just the beginning for this journey. I don’t really need to make a move but I definitely want to . This gives me the time to do my due diligence before just making a leap. It is hard to say where this will truly lead but I need to spend some time if it is ever going to happen.

November 24, 2022 – Land of the Pilgrims Pride

November 24, 2022 /

This is a special episode that I only did because the subject was pilgrims. I got to thinking that they came here for a reason. This is the beginning of my succession to ‘Tacticool’ Thursday.

Now, of all of the colors and symbols on the ‘Pride‘ flag, I don’t see Pilgrims as one of them… people should be thankful that they broke the law between required church attendance and citizenship otherwise there would a lot more executions abound.

November 23, 2022 – Atlas Shrugged 3:1

November 23, 2022 /

Surprise! It is a short week so I am doing Atlas Shrugged on Wednesday this week. I may or may not be working on the site during this period, but we both deserve a rest. I want to wish you and yours a Happy Thanksgiving. Don’t forget to be thankful, not just making turkey.

I didn’t fully get what was going on at the end of the last chapter. I even re-read some of it to try and follow but I couldn’t. Apparently, Dabny was flying a plane and it turns out following another plane. I got the part where she was flying but I missed that she was following someone else. As it turns out, John Galt was flying with Quentin Daniels. In the course of flying, she ends up crashing the plane.

The reason that she crashed was that this particular valley is covered by some sort of mirage. This is the same mirage that protects Galt’s Gulch from being seen from the air. If you haven’t read the book, Galt’s Gulch is where all of the industrialists have gone to check out from society.

This was a mistake. While the industrialists are keeping an eye on her, their modus operandi is that this move is free will. It will happen when the person is ready and not without prompting. So, Dabny has not made the full commitment but gets a preview for what is possible.

When John Galt declares that he is going to stop the motor of the world, he does. He takes his revolutionary invention of a motor that derives electricity from static and declares that this world will never have it. He did however perfect his invention to power the community of Galt’s Gulch.

Every single industrialist that left the previous world has taken residence here and has assumed a menial role in society such as grocer, farmer, plumber, handyman, etc. This is really the means to an end because whatever their true passions are are pursued for the benefit of themselves only. They work a small amount or as much as necessary but the rest of the time is leisure time.

“I swear by my life that I will never live my life for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for me”. This is the one pledge to enter or join life in Galt’s Gulch. I find it ironic that I am reading this book at this time. Maybe if I would have read the book earlier, I would have seen the parallels earlier but for some reason the time is now.

The very concept of social justice is the manifestation of what this book is trying so hard to combat. From Wikipedia “Social justice is justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society”. There is something in me that just rails against the premise. Didn’t we tell ourselves in grade school that this was the land of opportunity or anything is possible? Social justice exactly contradicts this idea.

You cannot attain your vision because so and so has more power or this or that and/or the color of you skin prevents success. We must take from others to equalize this injustice. An acceptance of the principal of social justice is a denial of self-sufficiency. And that is against my grain.

Before this is taken completely out of context, I am not for poverty, racism or even inequality. I do have compassion and understand that these subjects are complicated. I do feel that these issues are largely self-inflicted. But, I reject the argument that these problems are my fault or the fact that I am a member of a socioeconomic group by your labels or how or where I was born. I am just as resistant to my stereotyping as social justice warriors are purporting that my group is labelling theirs.

End Your Programming Routine: I am a strong proponent to the concept of giving a poor man one million dollars versus making a successful man penniless. Success is always about mindset and not the assets. Sure, it is easier to make money starting with some money, but still not impossible. The answer will never be taking things in the name of equality whether it is money or respect. If it is not earned, it wont be valued and if it is not valued, it wont be kept.

November 22, 2022 – Election Fallout for AltF4.co

November 22, 2022 /

Only a fool would let his enemy teach his children. – Malcom X

I don’t always agree with Malcom, but this sure resonates with me. I will assume that you are dense and explain this a little further. We send our kids to school for seven hours a day and then we are surprised that they leave after thirteen years woke and entitled.

I wrote early on about being the ‘gray man’. This means don’t get noticed, blend in, be strategic about your permanent footprint. Every day, as I write and post I consider whether what I am producing will have negative consequences. I deliberately leave personal information obscured for those reasons.

While these two things don’t 100% correlate, I guess what I am trying to say is to not educate your enemy because they will use that against you. Don’t be surprised when I talk about a subject every week and all of the sudden I am an expert or at least a target. That is where I am at with Tacticool Thursday. With that, I am going to discontinue that segment immediately.

The truth is I am sad. I have lines of ideas that I want to write about. I have more things in the pipeline for that one weekly segment than any other. But, it is foolish to continue to broadcast even a small amount of attention for what I may or may not have.

Let’s talk about what I am and am not saying. It doesn’t mean that I am going to stop with the activity. It means that I am going to stop writing about most aspects. It doesn’t mean that I am not going to occasionally write about related subjects or even certain gear. But, firearms specifically are no longer going onto the blog and similar topics are going to be greatly reduced.

If I end up moving to a place that respects freedom more, then Tacticool Thursday will likely come back. For now, it makes no sense to continue to paint a background scene to my self portrait even if I haven’t put my picture in it.

It is very likely that a challenge to Oregon 114 will be upheld. Already magazine capacity limits in states like California and New York have been nullified by the results of Bruen v. New York State Rifle and Pistol Club Supreme Court ruling last year. The current precedent of that ruling is that magazine capacity limits are unconstitutional. But, when it comes to the comparison of right and dead or wrong and alive, which one do you want to be?

Despite the fact that these laws are getting struck down, do you want to pay the lawyers’ bill? Do you have 10 years of your life to fight this fight? Do you want to go through the hassle of arrest and bail or ticket? This is what I am saying, stay the gray man.

End Your Programming Routine: I do not deny who I am or what I like. I do not deny what I have written. But, the past is the past. I think that I am going to start investigating freedom on Thursdays. I need to start spending some time researching a better alternative to where I am currently residing and the best way to do it in my mind is to write about it.

November 21, 2022 – Holiday Hate

November 21, 2022 /

Through the years, I have grown less enamored with Christmas much preferring Thanksgiving. I am not going to give away my podcast secrets here, you will have to listen to find out what is driving this.

The name of this podcast is inspired by George Orwell’s concept of ‘Hate Week’. This is whipping everyone up into moving into the same direction. I am getting everyone ready for the holiday season with this podcast.

End Your Programming Routine: I guess my desire is to change the course of my history. I just realized that the days my family will all be home is limited. We can go back to old traditions or start new ones or let things be the way they are. But, let us feel free to make them what we want and not feel trapped by life just passing us by.

November 18, 2022 – Atlas Shrugged 2:10

November 18, 2022 /

This is the last chapter in part 2. Things seem to be no where near resolved at this point, so we will have to stay tuned for the last 400+ pages of the book.

Dabny meets a transient. He used to work at Twentieth Century Motor Company. He describes the process where the owner died and the factory was taken over by the workers. Part of the process was need based voting on wages and other issues.

“Remember that none of us may now leave this place, for each of us belongs to all others by moral law which we all accept”. One man, stood up and as he left the meeting and disappeared forever said “I will stop the motor of the world”. That man was John Galt.

After that conversation, the train stopped, the crew abandoned the train, possibly in Oklahoma or Kansas. Dabny walks with Owen Kellogg a former employee to find a telephone which is every five miles down the track. During the walk, she discovers that he is in possession of cigarettes with the dollar sign on them. He refuses to talk about the origin, but says that they can only be obtained by gold.

I suppose that these are the main two themes in the chapter. However neither is really new. This chapter is forty pages of marking time. Sure we learned the back story of John Galt and the Dollar symbol (in the book). It kind of reminds me of a podcast I heard years ago about the origin of the dollar. Apparently, the origin of the US dollar was based on the Spanish dollar when it was adopted as currency in 1792.

Kellogg draws some comparisons of the symbol, much like history or politics. There are facts and then there is how those facts are interpreted. For instance, there are those that use the dollar symbol as a weapon to mark greed and selfishness. While there are others that see it as a symbol of creativity and output.

I suspect that people that use the 1% moniker would not refuse a $100 bill if I handed them one, no strings attached. I have never heard of anyone refusing a raise solely on principal. For that matter, those same people do not work for free. So, it is not the money itself that is evil but more likely jealousy. And even more likely hypocrisy meaning who wouldn’t trade financial situations with someone in the 1% assuming that we could handle the transition?

Is everyone that rich a nice, hardworking and deserving person? I doubt it, in fact I would be willing to bet that a lot of them worked in some sort of gray area to get there. So let us look at my version of the Facebook story.

Back when MySpace was the top social media site, the internet was much more undeveloped. Because MySpace was adopted by the newest tech generation (pre-teens and teens), it drove slightly older people to Facebook. These also happened to be the population segment that had money unlike teens. Facebook used mining technology to gather information on it’s users to sell. It was a twist of fate that Facebook conquered MySpace.

As a result, Zuckerburg grew wealthy by a gray area activity. Was it legal, yes. Was it ethical, yes as long as the user agreement disclosed it. Was it proper? I dont know, I don’t use Facebook partially for this reason. Do I like Zuckerburg? No, but not for this. I don’t like the fact that Meta is in the business of manipulating speech.

Enough of that, let me remind people how you get rich. You do this by paying people less than what you make. For instance, I am not rich but I don’t pay the person that mows my grass the same wage that I make. This allows me to focus on the things that I want to do. If the price of the job ever came to my current wage level, I will quit my job right now and start mowing grass. I certainly respect and appreciate the job. They can do in one hour what takes me all day to do. But, my time is worth more to me than the cost of mowing the grass.

Whether it is the Waltons, Musk, Buffet, Gates, etc they all payed people around them less than they made so that they could use their talents in other areas. And let us not forget that there are a lot dull people employed at XMart making $18/hour that would struggle to find a replacement job that is as good. Before we get too judgmental about who did what to get where, it would be good to refresh ourselves with the the tenth commandment: ‘thou shalt not covet’.

End Your Programming Routine: I will say that I struggled today. I kept writing until something quasi-impactful emerged. It all starts with the book and this thing is starting to get a little long in the tooth. I certainly don’t regret doing this and it has definitely been worth it so far. It’s just that some of these chapters don’t add any value to the overall work. I will save the rest for when I finish.