I found 2 extra gas cans last night and decided that it would not hurt to add 10 more gallons to the supplies.  South Floridians are officially driving in the polite/aggressive mode which means they will cut ou off, but won’t shoot/machete you outright.

Kidding aside, there is palpable anxiety which leads to people making dumb decisions like playing chicken with a shopping cart and cutting off the gas station line.

The black car had tried to cut in front of the truck whose owner went mad max and would not let him. The whole pack behind closed ranks to keep the interloper out and he was not happy at all which is why I started taking pictures.

Then something smart happened: the moment the line moved, the guy in the white car allowed the black car to go in effectively defusing any situation that may have risen in the contest of genitalia.

And that was the move to make.

Your number one philosophy for personal security should be a life long commitment to avoidance, deterrence, and de-escalation.

Avoidance: The act of avoiding or keeping away from (Three Stupid Rule.) If you can safely retreat from the encounter, by all means do so. For instance, if you are out for a walk and feel threatened or intimidated by an occupant of a car, you should retreat in the opposite direction that the car is traveling.
Deterrence: The act of discouraging someone from taking hostile action against you by being aware of them and their possible intent.
De-escalation: The act of decreasing in intensity. To not let your ego or emotions get the best of you, to refrain from escalating the problem into more than it already is. As a CCW you may need to back down from non-life threatening, argumentative encounters in order to not allow things to spiral out of control.
When these things do not work, then and only then may you need to show or use the gun. Just because we are carrying does not mean that we need to use the gun. You want to do whatever is reasonably possible to avoid using the gun. But when your well researched, well thought out “line in the sand” has been crossed you need to act without hesitation.

Roger Phillips.

I was reviewing the latest tracks and wind predictions for Dorian and I know I am going to get hit with Hurricane-Speed winds.

It seems the center lands well away from us down here, but we are going to be still 50-70 miles for which a tornado is just a mention in the news up north, but with a hurricane means you are in the crap, just not full power. Hurricanes re just too big not to get tagged.

And the estimated winds are not making me a happy human:

A Category 4 denotes winds of 130 to 156 mph or “I am gonna rip your roof off” winds. The sudden drop in the graphic corresponds to the moment the hurricane’s center hit land and starts losing strength, which according to the predictions/guesses is going to take 12 to 14 hours to occur.  And during that time ALL MODELS predict a turn north so Darien will become God’s Roomba and screw with Central Florida. You may want to invest in Orange Juice Futures.

Still in DEFCON 3.  See you guys later.

From Fox News:

Omar calls for UN to handle migration crisis at the southern border

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., told a Minneapolis audience this week that the United Nations should be brought in to oversee the migration crisis at the southern border.

“We should do what any other country does, by dealing with this situation in a serious way,” she told the audience on Tuesday. “So we have to bring in the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees – an agency that has the expertise and the training to handle massive flows of refugees humanely.”

Here is the video:

Just out of curiosity, what world does Ilhan Omar live in?

Does she really believe that the UN is “an agency that has the expertise and the training to handle massive flows of refugees humanely?”

Because I don’t think that is accurate.

Remember that it is UN Peacekeepers, the famed Blue Helmets that maintain the refugee camps.

A short search of the kinds of shit they get up to in refugee camps is pretty awful.  UN Peacekeepers and civilians have committed a huge number of rapes of refugees, and because of international law, they cannot be punished for rape by the country they are serving in.

Ilhan Omar complains about the conditions South American migrant children are kept in at US detention facilities, so she wants to bring in the same UN that was responsible for mass child rape are refugee centers in Africa.  That wasn’t an isolated event.  Multiple refugee camps across Africa in different conflicts had an epidemic of UN Peacekeeper child rape.

There is nothing the UN is capable of doing humanly.  When sent to Haiti after a natural disaster, UN Peacekeepers and civilians hoarded food and medical supplies and traded them for sex.

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar really wants me to believe that the only way for the United States to regain the moral high ground over African nations is to let the corrupt, child-raping Blue Helmets take over the detention centers on our southern border.

No member of the US Congress should ever invite the UN to police this nation and erode our sovereignty, but she did.

This is truly disgusting.  Not just does she demonstrate incredible ignorance of just how terrible the UN is, she clearly has the radical Left-Wing mindset that values the unaccountable bureaucracy of the UN over the United States.

Accidentally spill a bulk pack of 9mm ammunition.

In other news, it seems I still have reflexes.

Last word: loading tool beats thumb.

Ok guys, here it is. You are not gonna run the AC and the shop tools with it, but that it is not its purpose.

The battery is from the Walmart brand and under $50 (comes with warranty). The battery box I got it at Auto Zone for $14.99.

The terminals literally arrived an hour ago and they suck. Cheap metal, screws won’t turn and the negative is oversized so I had to add a metal shimmy. I plan to make my own if I can’t find good stuff.

And next is the top of the box with the Heavy Duty  DC Power Outlet Extension Triple Socket Cigarette Lighter Plug Switch Box. ($12)

Three holes, a couple of screws and nuts, threaded the wires inside and I was done.  The USB transformer is the flush mount type and a pain in the as to pull out. and next, Ta Da!

I just grabbed stuff I had with a cigarette light plug and the USB charger for the phone for the picture. On the left is a battery charger that will be used when I am running the generator to bring the battery to full charge.  The wife has one of those foldable dollies which I will have to appropriate (with her permission) to make this gadget mobile

I think I may add another bank of plugs on the other side or at least a voltmeter yo keep an eye on the battery status.

I hope I don’t have to use it, but if I do, I will give you an after action report.

PS: Disaster Battery Box? If you have a better name, go ahead.

Latest projection/prediction/guess:

A slight improvement, but I won’t be happy till the eye is way past 27N and -78W.

Say what you want about South Floridians, they do not wait to the last second to get started with hurricane preparations.  Dorian is still 4 days away to reach landmass, but people were getting their prescriptions filled:

After getting mom’s script, I went hunting for gas:

My first choice was my regular station which was packed. In their defense, it is a shopping club that sells for 25 cents/gallon less than everybody else. Took a hard pass.

I went to the neighborhood station who has been dutifully dispensing gas needs during hurricanes since we moved in the area a couple of decades ago. Busy, but not crazy busy yet. Only had to wait for Junior to get his ass going.

The only hard thing to do yet is to install the hurricane panels and I have a trustworthy guy who will come Sunday if needed to put them up. I can do it, but I know I will be chugging pain killers after that and I rather pay somebody to do the hard labor. I tell you this: next house is gonna get accordion shutters and screw how expensive they are and that if we buy a new house, more than likely it will be in Tennessee .

OK, that’s it for now. I still have one more item to get which is not urgent and the get lunch.