The Furnace Chronicles Part V: To Have My Cake And Flush It Too

Posted on January 30, 2011 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

Even at my subarctic hovel, summer must come. By then I’d saved some scratch to install a furnace. At my leisure. No hurry at all.  Cash.  How cool is that?

I gots the benjamins!

Then the septic system went all third world on me. City dwellers might not realize this but people in the hinterlands have to pay to install their own personal septic system.  “This is my septic tank, there are many like it but this one is mine…”  It’s a lot like buying a good used car and then burying it.  On the other hand we don’t pay monthly water or sewer bills because that would be Communist.  We take a horrific financial body blow every few decades just to crap indoors.  No wonder we listen to country music.

I was faced with a choice; spend money on the furnace or spend money on the septic. Given the choice I’d rather shit in the cold. I chose to ignore the furnace and put in a massive septic system which can flush a Buick. It was completed on the Fourth of July and while the excavator was there I put in a cement base for my flag pole. God bless America! Every time I flush I think of Old Glory and am happy that I live in this great nation of freedom!

All over the world oppressed peasants are crapping in front of God and everything. Not me! God Bless America and God Bless Indoor Plumbing!

Since I blew my money on the septic tank, I backed off on buying a replacement furnace. That was the choice I had made. It met with disapproval from practically every person I know. Americans, like politicians, have lost the ability to make choices. When they can’t afford to buy both A and B simultaneously they consider their options carefully and then BUY BOTH RIGHT NOW.

So it's agreed; my side will spend money like monkeys on heroin and your side will bitch about any tax anywhere anytime. Win win baby!

Meanwhile I’d made a big discovery. If you do not have a furnace you don’t need to buy fuel. If you don’t buy fuel you have more money in your pocket. How much more? A whole lot! (Which helped pay for the septic.)

I was delighted. We may have saved as much as two grand or more. I tried to explain my good fortune and got nowhere. Which leads me to a Curmudgeonly Gem of Insight:

“If you don’t spend money. You still have it.”

If you spend less than you normally would, you’ve improved the household bottom line. This is true even if it’s savings over several months. I know this. Everyone else lacks that level of mathematical reasoning and is busy reading People Magazine. In fact, Americans only recognize savings if you amass all the money at once, put it in a steel box, and beat them to death with it.

I didn’t care. I was on a roll.

Posted in Curmudgeonly Gems of Insight, Furnace Chronicles, Libertarian Outpost, Sagas | 2 Comments

The Furnace Chronicles Part IV: Economics Thoreau Style

Posted on January 28, 2011 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

By now I was a man on a mission. I wanted to exploit my dead furnace “event” to:

  1. Save some bucks by NOT financing a new furnace.
  2. Live a year of flipping the bird at oil companies.

I was adamant about the financing.  Credit cards are radioactive. Visa once had a vice cranked firmly on my balls. I’m not going down that path again. A furnace costs $X. I had $0. $X>$0. So no purchase and Visa can go fuck itself. As for oil companies…I don’t really hate them but they’ll do fine without me.

Visa's corporate headquarters with newly upgraded communications center finally operational! (Big Oil corporate headquarters visible in background.)

My wife, who is saintly, said nothing. Sometimes the most wonderful thing your wife can do is to let you chase your dreams. My wife rocks because she let me chase my dream of being a cheap bastard. All the men who get browbeat until they wind up imprisoned in mini-vans have my sympathy.

Folks were incredulous that I didn’t buy a new furnace on day one. “I haven’t got the money” I’d say. They’d look at me like my head was growing antennae. Which leads me to a Curmudgeonly Gem of Insight:

“Americans have lost the ability to go without something merely for the quaint archaic reason that they cannot pay for it.”

For the rest of the winter I had to take wood from a pile, put it in the stove, and well…that’s it. I worked from home so it was uneventful. Every few hours I’d push back from my desk, toss a log on the fire, enjoy a brief moment of smug contentment because I hadn’t spent money, and then sit back down. I enjoyed it. It wasn’t as convenient as a thermostat but it wasn’t a big deal. Why the obsession with an appliance?  I’ve come to believe that most folks would buy an appliance to wipe their ass if Wal-Mart sold one.

There are appliances that'll wipe your ass for you! The only reason America hasn't collapsed is that they're not sold at Wal-Mart.

People carried on like I was living in a mud hut and wearing sackcloth. What is this? Especially from the men, I expected more…uh…machismo. Tossing an occasional log into a modern, non-catalytic reburn airtight wood burning stove is…misery? In a world that’s experienced war, famine, and pestilence…and that’s just in Detroit…I’m supposed to whine about using a wood stove? Since when did my nation, land of the free and the home of the brave, become a mass of limpwristed pantywaisted chickenshits?

Leading to my next Curmudgeonly Gem of Insight:

“Americans have come to believe that any inconvenience, no matter how small, is impossible to bear.”

The pressure was more or less constant. I expected people would think I’m odd. (Which is fair enough.) But beyond laughing at my kooky refusal to get with the program what of it? I was hounded relentlessly. I could have infiltrated a Buddhist temple and done lines of blow off Krishna’s ass with less social disapproval than I got for refusing to buy what I couldn’t afford. Apparently, Americans have (nearly) lost the ability to tolerate whack jobs who wont buy stuff on credit like God intended.  As always I relied on my super-Curmudgeonly powers of obstreperousness to see me through.

Posted in Curmudgeonly Gems of Insight, Furnace Chronicles, Libertarian Outpost, Sagas | 4 Comments

The Furnace Chronicles Part III: I Decide To Experiment

Posted on January 27, 2011 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

Any fool with a credit card would have dialed the furnace company the day mine conked out. Our society is mostly fools with credit cards. They’d be immediately raked over the coals for emergency, overtime, weekend installation of a second rate replacement appliance. Then random additional fees would be concocted. They’d spend the rest of their days paying 19% interest on a smoking hot Visa. Sound familiar?

This is not going to end well.

I was more or less out of money so paying cash wasn’t possible. But I’m a stubborn cuss. Visa can suck it! I had a house which is fully capable of staying warm, if not balmy. The table was set for an experiment. Could I heat exclusively with wood?

The answer, of course, is yes. How do I know this? Because half the people in my beloved redneck county do just that. Yet my plan was greeted with denial and skepticism by virtually everyone. Humanity can and has survived for millennia with wood heat but apparently we’ve now regressed? I disagree. Hence the next Curmudgeonly Gem of Insight:

“People will earnestly tell you that something is impossible. Even when it is widely and successfully practiced.”

I figured I had a natural intellectual ally in the hippie green movement. Sure I’m a grunting redneck, but I was ditching dependence on “big evil oil”.  How cool am I?  No dice. The same people that tell you to ride a bicycle to work because brainwashed Swedes do it think heating your house with wood is impossible.

Don't you just want to punch him?

Yet Amish somehow don’t die at first frost. Apparently “green” means “progressive” and the only alternative to a fossil fuel furnace is a massive subsidized solar array? I can’t grok that inconsistency.

A carbon neutral alternative vehicle with zero emissions was spotted on the road. Authorities became alarmed when the owner did not follow the usual protocol of requesting Federal Tax subsidies, a multi-million dollar light rail system, or dedicated paved bike trails. The police are maintaining surveillance.

I was actively denounced as anything from a wide eyed idealist to a miserly shithead. I’m used to it but was surprised that everyone had an opinion. This convinced me that Americans are incapable of letting lunatics free thinkers do something that they themselves wouldn’t do. Or, as I like to say it, they don’t know how to shut the hell up.

Posted in Furnace Chronicles, Libertarian Outpost, Sagas | 2 Comments

The Furnace Chronicles Part II: Preparedness Is Unrewarded

Posted on January 26, 2011 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

The furnace died and it’s very cold in the winter. Fortunately we’d prepared for such events. We have a wood stove. The wood stove heats the house just fine so long as you keep the fire going. If I were home when the furnace died that’s what I’d do. I was not home. I was hundreds of miles away and my teleporter was broke. I suggested a simple approach to my wife: “Keep the fire going and it’s not a problem.” Now, for those of you who plan on trying this remember, simple obvious solutions can often cause people to think you’re a jerk. You have to have the confidence of a rhino to pull this off. Fortunately, I am so endowed.

Our house had multiple sources of heat. That’s no accident. As a genuine survivalist nut-case I’ve been planning for the zombie apocalypse. (Us survivalist nut-cases have secret meetings at the Waffle House…you’re not invited.) I refuse to panic when an appliance fails because it’s just like a drill for the zombie hordes trying to steal my beer. (Yes…I’m that smug.)

Secret meeting location. (Photo linked to explanation of the mysterious force that is a Waffle House. Even if you read it you're still not invited.)

I’d already installed redundant sources of heat on the “two is one and one is none” principle. The furnace kindly demonstrated how “two is one” plays out. Wood heat was installed and operational so I merely shifted it from auxiliary to “mission critical”. (We’ve got weak but adequate electric heat which was now our backup of last resort…to be used just before we have to hitch the dog sleds and flee to Dawson).

Your backup bug out transportation device should be immune to EM pulse disasters and ideally be fueled by raw meat.

How wise and intelligent we are to have planned ahead with redundant heat. We deserved a medal!  Which brings me to a patented Curmudgeonly Gem of Insight:

“If you wisely plan ahead for uncertainties you will be in a better position when the dreaded events happen.”

At this juncture I experienced an irony of preparedness; even when you succeed it doesn’t look successful. Instead of a wise man who’s functioning backup spared his family hardship and expense, I was perceived as a cheap bastard who should have bought a new furnace. So much for my medal. Gem of Insight time:

“Society lacks the ability to give credit for the wisdom of planning ahead.”

Everyone presumed that the furnace died unexpectedly. Unexpectedly?!? Au contraire! I knew the furnace was old. I’d had it inspected (twice) and knew the score. I counted on it having an unknowable but dwindling lifespan. I planned on running it until it died…which I did. Which brings me to another Gem of Insight:

“To most people, every mechanical failure is always unexpected.”

Everything had gone according to plan. Sadly “according to plan” looked like flat out chaos to everyone around me. I hadn’t anticipated this misunderstanding but I should have. Most Americans are educated in craptacular public schools. Thus the math behind risk and uncertainty is treated like insolvable black magic. (This explains lottery tickets, extended warranties, and political speeches.) I definitely had failed to communicate the probability based concepts of “it will break soon but I’m not sure when”.  Damn!

Posted in Furnace Chronicles, Libertarian Outpost, Sagas | 2 Comments

The Furnace Chronicles Part I: The Call

Posted on January 24, 2011 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

Every man has gotten “the call”. This happens when you leave town for a trip. The phone rings and folks back home explain how civilization has gone off the rails in your brief absence. In theory, a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle. In practice, a week long absence creates mayhem.

"How's the business trip dear? You'll never guess what happened today..."

Your kid has joined a cult, the dog is on fire, and German tanks have amassed on the border. Dastardly mechanical devices use your absence to wreak havoc; the car won’t start, is leaking from every component and was stolen, the lawnmower fell through the roof, the dog ate the remote and CNN comes on every time he barks. Things stranger than fiction happen with alarming regularity.

When you get “the call” you’re supposed to do… what? You cannot extract the cat from a tree in Baltimore when you’re in a hotel in Wichita. You’re doomed. I hate travel!

One January I got “the call”. The furnace had died. I did what any guy 600 miles from a broken device can do, I used my magic fairy wand to fix it nothing.

However I’m never one to let a disaster go to waste. These are the chronicles of the learning experience that is the saga that inspired the book that will be the movie of “The Furnace: One Man’s Struggle”.

Posted in Furnace Chronicles, Libertarian Outpost, Sagas | 3 Comments

Blogroll Update

Posted on January 24, 2011 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

Yesterday Borepatch and Plumbum et Circenses kicked over some cyber-rocks and found my post Are We Not Men buried underneath a pile of disinterest.  Soon my little corner of the Internet was awash in viewers!  Thanks!  Both are now on my blogroll…which is like being famous in a town that has twenty residents.  I encourage my readers to click over to both of them.

I missed all the excitement.  My computer was off and I was out doing homestead chores in the snow.  (Yeah, my life is that glamorous!)

Since my hit count soared while I ignored my blog I’ve decided the thing that keeps my blog obscure is me. Too bad!  I’m posting anyway.  Stay tuned for a series of posts about something you’ve never cared about but which matter deeply up here in Siberia…furnaces.  (Yeah, I’m that great at marketing.)

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Wisdom From Lincoln

Posted on January 21, 2011 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

The man had a point…

I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts, and beer.

…and as far as I can tell that’s an actual quote and not a brilliant writer loser with a blog me embellishing the truth making shit up.

Hat tip to Sagacious Iconoclast.

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My Commute Got “Stimulused”

Posted on January 17, 2011 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

My commute is pretty easy. I carefully compromised between the rural location I want and the commute that I’m forced to accept. (If it weren’t for daily commuting I’d live farther from civilization…possibly Death Valley or Pitcairn Island.)

A home should be located as far as possible from nosy neighbors.

I drive a flat, straight, two lane, divided, non-interstate highway with minimal traffic.

My morning commute is on the perfect road.

Envy me! Being accustomed to mountain passes and canyons where cliffs and rocks and switchbacks and dragons and volcanoes make driving a lot more exciting, this road fascinates me with it’s simplicity. I sputter down either of two huge lanes between shoulders upon which you could land a Cessna. If, for some reason, I can’t keep the car on pavement there is a big fat, mowed, grassy, gently sloping, median.

Nothing is perfect and whenever there is a blizzard I pass a morning crop of wrecked cars. Sometimes I see the accidents as they occur. Always impressive! They tend to follow a pattern; the vehicle (which is by definition going too fast) hits a slippery patch. It gradually drifts off the pavement and/or begins spinning like a politician covering his ass. Then it charges over the ditch (if there is one) and careens into the deep snow.

Those of you who dwell in southern climates cannot know the joy of winter driving.

It’s terrifying but I can’t imagine anything better for a soft landing than a mowed grassy “lawn”. It’s the vehicular equivalent of smashing into a pillow.

Local residents demonstrate snow conditions. According to the authorities it's better to hit steel than brutally soft snow.

There are exceptions but usually the aftermath isn’t too bad. Sometimes the car takes damage from it’s adventure…crumple zones do what they’re engineered to do and the repair bill goes astronomical. Fortunately, (quite often in fact) the event mandates nothing more than a tow truck to drag the vehicle out of the snow and a new pair of underwear for the driver. What luck! Nobody’s hurt and the damage is minimal. Count your blessings.

Unfortunately in 2008 there was a hiccup in the economy and politicians everywhere went apeshit. The Obama squatted over our country and shat a big steaming heap of stimulus money debt. Some of this wretched excess went into shovel ready “improvements” to my boring, irrelevant, lightly used road. A gobsmackingly large pile of money evaporated as a couple guys spent the summer installing several miles of guardrail. (Apparently this was supposed to create jobs. How’s that working out for us?)

It's a little known fact that guardrails were inspired by World War II tank traps.

This is the epitome of top down decision making. On some roads a guardrail might prevent a long theatrical plunge followed by a funeral. So they “upgraded” on my flat simple road?

The justification was that guardrails were needed to separate the two directions of travel. In my opinion, several hundred feet of sloped grass between them is plenty. Yes, conceivably someone could thunder off one side, careen down the wide sloping median, fly across the depression in the middle, rocket up the wide slope on the other side, and then, with whatever momentum is left, manage to hit someone. Such collisions are rare because a crashing vehicle needs to be moving like greased lightning just to get across the median. It can only occur when there’s no snow and even summertime wrecks usually grind to a halt in the soft turf. Cross-lane accidents are tragic but you can’t protect against everything and relatively speaking this section of road was very safe.

Aside from the wasted money I’m not opposed to safety. However, I was livid because they made minor fender benders into much worse events just to protect against very rare and largely theoretical accidents. What formerly would be an undamaged car lodged six feet into a snow drift is now a totaled heap impaled on a guardrail. I don’t know what it might do to drivers but I do know that it mangles vehicles. In order to minimally reduce a theoretical and rare event they created an expensive sure thing that happens a lot.

Good thing there was a guardrail! Otherwise things might have been dangerous.

My theory that smacking into snow is better than whalloping a steel shaft hammered into the ground never seemed to impress anyone. Today, on my morning commute, I saw events carried out exactly as I predicted. A generic sedan slid off the road in a generic accident. The car was entirely undamaged. Once it gets yanked out of the snow it probably can be driven home. The paint wasn’t even scratched. Except the rear quarter panel, rear bumper, trunk, and rear door which all hit the guardrail. Those sectors looked like they’d been trampled by a herd of Wildebeast. It was pointless. That car wouldn’t have made it to the other lane if I’d pushed it with a bulldozer so a cross lane accident wasn’t in the cards. Obama’s stimulus guardrail did nothing but damage some poor schmuck’s sedan.

I should staple a picture of that damaged car to the forehead of the next guy with a “shovel ready” idea and unearned money ripe for disposal. Just for the record, if anyone wants to benefit humanity by improving a road…stay the hell away from me.

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A Bit Of Restraint In The Press?

Posted on January 14, 2011 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

Last Saturday a maniac shot several people. Tragic. The media jackals began to run with it and I went into a self imposed media blackout. I hate to see tragedy used for political points. I find the whole idea tawdry.

I expected a slew of generic gun control articles to hit front pages by Sunday. It’s as if knee jerk articles are already written and stored on a MacBook somewhere (it would have to be a MacBook!). The press waits for an excuse to print what they’ve already decided and the details of the actual event are almost irrelevant. I expected they’d rush to spew the usual verbiage about how this would never have happened if ammo were taxed, or trigger locks were required, or certain scary looking rifles were banned, or gun shows were outlawed. It could be a crazed maniac that escaped prison, broke fifty laws, and used a clothespin as a weapon; I’d still wind up hearing about how gun banned Europe is better than us American knuckle draggers. Plus, of course, there is the requisite cut and paste paragraph blaming George Bush and/or global warming.

I’m opposed to gun control and it’s depressing when the press starts beating that dead horse again so I avoided the initial feeding frenzy. By Monday I reluctantly rejoined society and read the news. Some was exactly as predicted. It wasn’t caused by George Bush but it was caused by Sarah Palin and FOX news. Who didn’t see that coming? On the other hand the blame game didn’t last as long or go as far afield as usual.

As for the knee jerk call for more gun control? I though it was uncharacteristically muted.

Also, there is a growing acceptance of the fact that people who go on crazed murderous rampages might be…crazy and murderous. Wow!

This is a breakthrough! A giant change in attitude. Sure the media wallowed in their own pet theories but they came to their senses eventually. I’d set the bar incredibly low but was pleased when they managed to clear it.

I didn’t hear the bulk of the chatter (it’s been a busy week) but while I was stuck in my car I thought I picked up a subtle but positive undertone on NPR. It felt like they wanted to nudge their intellectual allies away from the gun control path. It wasn’t much but I’m sure I picked up a subtle vibe. Perhaps some of the left are trying to tell the rest of the left; “don’t go there”? Maybe I’m wrong but I thought I heard a shadow of reticence.

Perhaps this reluctance to go off the rails is like what Borepatch heard:

On PBS, the usual suspects all lined up behind what the sane side of the blogosphere is saying – there’s no connection, the shooter is a lone crazy, the claim that Palin’s “targets” caused this is pathetic, the whole nine yards.  They were all contemptuous and dismissive of the whole thing.  All of them.

The press could have gleefully wallowed in their own crapulence.  Instead they pulled back and didn’t skate on thin ice as much as I’ve grown to expect. Something has changed. I see it as a good sign.

There may be parallels on the right too. After the Republican sweep in November many people, myself among them, demanded that the Republican party and it’s newly elected majority restrain it’s base impulses. The jury is still out on how well the Republican party can follow that loud and clear signal.

If part of the right spectrum was saying “don’t go there” after an election sweep and part of the left was saying “don’t go there” after a tragic shooting; could there be a small movement of restraint? It’s hard to say. If I’m right, 2011 may wind up being a refreshingly sane year.

Posted in Harangue-a-bang-bang! | Leave a comment

Two Party System Explained

Posted on January 13, 2011 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

From Irons In The Fire:

“It’s simple,” explained the Senate staff veteran. “We have two parties in America—the stupid party and the evil party. Since I’m a Republican, I’m in the stupid party, and we stupidly battle against the evil of the evil party.”

“But sometimes the two parties get together and do something really stupid and evil. We call that ‘bipartisanship.’”

Posted in For Your Education | Leave a comment