DIY Canned Food Self-Rotating Shelf Instructions

http://amy-toby.blogspot.com/2012/03/canned-food-storage.html

Nicely done. A little more planning and measuring would make it perfect, but for a quick down and dirty shelf, this is great. I think you could make something like this out of a recycled pallet too.

Opportunity Costs of Government

One of the hidden costs of government is opportunity costs. That is, money spent on government can't be spent elsewhere. Money taken from you means you can't invest that money in your own future. Just as when a politician shows you a warship or a person who has benefited from taxpayer money, they can't show you the people (or won't show you) that have been unable to pursue their dreams because of the cost of government.

This site lets you calculate how much government will REALLY cost you over time.

sPreserving Freedom: Gary Johnson Interviewed on Your World with Neil Cavuto

Preserving Freedom: Gary Johnson Interviewed on Your World with Neil Cavuto

I promised my mother-in-law I'd look up this interview. It's also a good opportunity for me to link to someone else' blog.

Despite all my previous posts, and hyperlinks, I hadn't linked this way before.

Trampoline Greenhouse

http://www.howdoesshe.com/how-to-create-a-greenhouse-out-of-a-trampoline/

There's the link to turn a trampoline into a greenhouse.
I had asked myself what you could do with a trampoline. I see them for free on Craigslist fairly often. I imagine most of them are picked up by scrappers who get $10-25 dollars for the frame. It seems an awful waste of worked metal. I hadn't really put any thought into it before, but I want to build a green house and have some old sliding glass doors and lumber that I'm going to repurpose. The plastic cover method doesn't seem workable for the extreme sunlight and wind I get in my area, but hopefully the idea inspires someone.

Why do people give them away? I imagine people moving just don't want to take them down, or the kids outgrow them, and I know pediatricians recently came out saying trampolines are unsafe for children (darn killjoys! how do you learn to be prudent without hurting yourself or watching your friends hurt themselves?) I also know that trampolines are considered an attractive nuisance by insurance companies, so perhaps there are landlords and banks giving them away when renters or homeowners vacate the premises. I think there may have been one left on my a property during my 15 years as a property manager.

In any case, maybe you can get a frame cheap or free these days, and put up a greenhouse quickly and grow some food later.

Anyone else have any good greenhouse ideas? Or if you want to do an improvised Amish greenhouse raising with me in the CA high desert, email me, and I'll help you in return. Or maybe help you up-front if you're just about ready to go. :)

Knowledge is Power--Here's a site to increase yours

http://stackexchange.com/

Stack exchange has a number of experts across different field of geeky topics like electronics, computers, photography. I haven't had time to do a lot of browsing, but I've bookmarked it and plan to spend some time perusing it.

Negativity

How did we come to this?

 A friend recently asked me:

How did we come to this?

It's been a slow spiritual journey that started with questioning God's Commandment, "Though shalt not covet ..."

Just as the Serpent taught Eve to question God regarding the fruit, our society has been taught to question God's law about covetousness. We've been told that it's good to covet the possessions and wealth of those who are millionaires. Than we can covet the possessions of those who are $250,000-aires.

Once you covet another man's possessions, it's a short step to stealing them, and if he resists, then it's a short step to killing him to take those possessions. This is especially true if we can tell ourselves that we're doing it for “a good cause”. Who can't think of someone more deserving of money than “that greedy millionaire”. So, in our own pride, we've supplanted God's Law with our own judgment as to what is right. We take it upon ourselves to supplant God with Man.

All of the Commandments are tied together. For as we are made in God's image, to sin against another man is to sin against God. But as it is evil for a rich man to forgo charity, it is equally evil for us to exalt ourselves to the position of God, or deem ourselves more knowing than God, and say to the rich man, “We are going to take your money by force and distribute it as we see fit, for we are higher than God and we know better than God how to allocate that money. God made a mistake when he allowed you to have it, and we are here to fix God's mistakes”
Do you think people that have already told themselves they are smarter than God, and more fair than God, will hesitate to disobey any other commandments? To justify covetousness, is to justify theft, and to justify murder. Just as Jesus said to lust after another man's wife is adultery in your heart, and hating a man in your heart is murder, once you covet in your heart you've committed the theft. Once you convince yourself to hate the millionaire, you've justified his murder in your heart.

But at the heart of the matter is lack of faith in the principles of God's Word; an unbelief that what is written is true.

If you're not a Christian, I'll quote Yoda “Fear is the path to the Dark Side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

This fear of not having enough leads both the greedy and the covetous to sin. But neither groups' sin excuses the other.

Eventually, we end up in a society where everyone is using legal means to keep their temporal possessions or take those possessions from someone else and we lose sight of the spiritual truths as our focus is drawn to rest squarely on the physical And when we're only looking at our physical well-being, the spiritual withers and dies. Once we lose our faith in God, and put man, or government on God's throne we've lost the spiritual battle. And once that happens, everything evil is possible.

 Of course, that's a shortcut.

This is another excuse post for not writing.

Where have I been?

Here's the story.

In mid-April, I entered escrow to sell my 4 bedroom mobile home and be out in Mid-June.
I got things moved into two storage units, in anticipation of taking a 2 week trip to see a close relative who was not expected to make it through the year. We spent a great fourth of July together, and I enjoyed my time with a lot of my family for the annual gathering.
One month later, she died.
After I came back in mid-July, I reached an agreement for deed-in-lieu-of-foreclosure on my commercial property, and my time gone and my property tax payment on the 4 bedroom house had basically depleted all my savings. So I started selling off a lot of my heavy possessions and projects to finance a move to a nearby rental property.
All I can say is that God was gracious and things worked out pretty well, though there were some minor hiccups. I got the rental paid for in September, and spent a month paying rent on two places for October.
I'm paying the bills by God's grace, even after hurting my back and getting sick.

I have to start the gardening over again, as I left my mulch, manure, and compost behind. The new house is in a tract, is fairly new, and the soil has been subexcavated 3' per building code, and the soil is just plain dirt.

Things are a juggle of posting on Ebay and Craigslist--selling more of my stuff. I find the sales are about equal to a $10/hour job as I don't spend any money on gas.

Wish you all liberty and grace.

Especially in light of the dependency on FEMA and other government agencies during the Sandy debacle (remind anyone of Katrina?), here's a link to free downloadable books on "prepping" or, as my scouting troop leader might have called it, "Being Prepared".

http://www.preppers.info/Free_Downloads.html

If you have a smartphone you can even download the articles to it, and charge it with a hand crank charger.

Here's a link to one at Amazon (I don't make any money on the links, just trying to save you, the reader some time)
http://www.amazon.com/SOS-Charger-Hand-Crank-Emergency-Flashlight/dp/B002WRKZZ4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1352170849&sr=8-1&keywords=hand+crank+phone+charger

And you can even check out Ebay.

If anyone has a handcrank charger they recommend, or one they hate, please let us know.