Cogito Aprendo Prepping and Views

Obviously there is 1 thing on the mind of preppers right now. The effects of the Rittenhouse case. I believe that the jury made the right choice. I believe that if there would have been a guilty verdict, self defense would have been all but impossible and emboldened the rioters and looters, allowing them to know that there was nothing to stand in there way.

After the not guilty verdict, there were protests, which are perfectly fine. You cannot make everyone happy. The problem is that rioters and looters, arsonists and domestic terrorist will turn a protest into much worse, as they already are. This is where the issues lay.

We have a media that is intentionally trying to add fuel to the fire to separate our nation. We are in the midst of a global breakdown on multiple fronts, but instead we are to busy infighting to pay attention to what is going on everywhere. Perhaps instead of watching the media we can pay attention to what is going on, and on what really matters.

We have been planning ahead for Christmas ahead of the shortages. We want to make sure the kids are happy. There are rumors of power issues throughout the winter and gas and heating extremes. We are working on the heating with installing a wood burning stove, and have some forms of propane heat to apply as back-ups. These can provide warmth and light. Whether or not there are electrical issues, we want to start segregating ourselves from electricity. What alternative do we use for basic entertainment?

We have low power options that can be charged from solar set-ups to watch movies when mom and dad may have to work and kids may need to be stationary and potentially quiet. What about when everyone is together? Well, we decided to get a game. I should say I did. I bought a game the likes of which I have never played. I got a table top role playing game called monster of the week. Apparently these can last a couple of hours, and can be played with a minimum of supplies.

I do not know much about this as it is a Christmas present, but I am more than willing to learn and play, especially if it is something we can do as a family indoors during winter and without electronics. I am aware that this is outside of many preppers wheelhouse, and is sure as hell out of mine. Apparently this game runs off of the monster of the week tropes than many tv shows do. The reason I picked it is because growing up I watched Buffy and Supernatural (technically Supernatural as an adult as well.)

I also want to attach the ideas of prepping into this gameplay. My kids love playing the game “Bugout” created by youtube creator Praxis Prepper. So the kids are open into the basics of prepping, and are luckily able to keep their mouths shut about preps. In this game Monster of the Week, your characters are monster hunters, so basically Sam and Dean, but you can have different types of characters. You have to learn about these monsters along with the towns you are in. This includes reading town maps and paying attention to directions and travel. Over the coarse of plays, the kids will also learn about things to carry, like everyday carry items. I also hope to teach them a lot about basic prepping and survival skills (basics prior to the next camping trip) in a fun way that they may not be so bored learning about the skills.

I also intend on working is morse code into the game play. Possibly a character locked up giving hints by banging on a pipe in morse code. The options are boundless and I expect to have a lot of fun doing this. The main reason I am writing this is to push the idea of making sure your kids have a decent Christmas this year, and to also remember to have fun with your family. This is very important. I know this particular game may not be your cup of tea, but for us I know we will have fun as well. Make sure you stay safe and stay prepared.

We have a Halloween party to go to for my dad, and actually had a little extra money in the bank account. The kids costumes were easy for them. For the parents, well, the wife let me do our costumes. I am on quarantine, so online ordering it was. This made it easy. The normal stuff like cloaks. They are cheap and cover you. Got some Plague doctor masks (technically 1 and a rabbit version.) Got some leather gloves and some weapons. We went kind of purge style. One set of throwing knives and one pair of sais. The weapons are more what I am a little excited about. More hand to hand type weapons instead of firearms. We can practice those ones here as well. Might as well take every chance you can. Stay prepped and stay safe.

I had Covid last year. Tested positive November 4th, returned to work Nov 16th. Acquired from my work place when it was running through our population. This time, I started sneezing a lot on Oct 11th. When I sneeze a lot, I am starting to get sick. On the 12th, I had chest congestion and coughing along with head and body aches. Normal flu stuff. The 13th, I woke up, and had no sense of smell again, and this time I had no taste. Last year, I only lost smell. It lasted 4 days. This time it only lasted about a day and a half. I tested with smelling Jalepeno powder. I had to call into work on the 13th due to the lack of smell and taste.

I was able to schedule my test for the 14th. I took the test, and now I have to wait for the test results. I cannot see it coming back negative because of the loss of smell and taste again. I am curious because of having a previous infection. I am also annoyed because at work they only test non-vaccinated even though most of our positives since the vax mandate were in vaccinated staff. That being said,our genius Governor put the vax mandate in before the presidents mandate, and 13 days after the same Governor specifically stated that there would be no vax mandates in our state.

What else is interesting is that the covid-19 call off interview now asks if you are vaccinated. We are waiting for that to decide whether you are on paid leave or unpaid leave when sick. Now, on this part, I have to admit that it is nice having the job I have, especially when management will send you home sometimes from contact tracing, and won’t let you back until your test results come in. I would be pissed if your decision makes me go home and lose money. Now I keep my distance and wear masks because I have to at work and am used to it.

That being said, I will post an update. The weirdest part so far was on the 14th when my sense of smell was waxing and waning. When I first got my smell back, it seemed like hyper-sensitive. that it went away again, and by like 2PM it was mostly back. Last time it was gone until it came back. Some other things I notice this time are deep chest congestion and more achy and tired, or fatigued, and plenty of nasal congestion. I know there are many trains of thought on the virus. That is not in my wheelhouse to state.

I am for you having a choice on the vax, if you want it. I am against forcing it on people, especially those who don’t want it. I feel like there are many real questions people have that there are no answers. I also hate that the media spins it like we, the non-vaxxed, are morons who think aliens are going to abduct us if we get the vax. Most of us want to see more long term data, especially with certain ailments. Forcing people to get it by punishing those who don’t is a joke. I will be walked out before being forced to be injected by something per the governments orders. I understand people saying “well, what about Polio? People took that vaccine to help out.” Yes, but what those people fail to understand is that the Polio vaccine also took 28 years to get FDA Approval. Now this Covid vaccine is a brand new type of vaccine (the MRNA shots) and was the fastest vaccine ever made. I do not feel comfortable with that, and will need to see more data, personally. Anyhow, that is where I am at, and will post an update on what I see when my results are in. Stay safe and stay prepared.

Well, to start off with, this is another $40 in half dollars. I am enjoying the fact that I will have $80 stored away as spendable cash without having concern of spending it early. I am looking for silver, be it 90% or 40%, but there are signs that this will be yet another bust. First off, it is from ebay. Second, the pictures shows rolls with black on them and I received rolls with yellow on them. They stated the coins are coming from this box, and that the ender coins may be different for the second half since they were not specifically pictures. Hmm… Well, I guess I should start the check.

So, what is firstly noticeable is that the faces we can see are a 77, 71, 89, 72 and 84.The 84 has a permanent marker streak and one of the tails has a streak right across the back. I am having some serious doubt that these were non-searched as well, but alas, we give it a go. Let us see what we have.

Roll #1- All clad, nothing to note upfront. I will say that if I even find 1 silver, I would be shocked.

Roll #2- Again, nothing of note, except that every 1/2 dollar with a black marker across the back has been a 1971, like someone was looking for something and crossed them off. This is peculiar, especially with 3 in 1 roll. Let us continue.

Roll #3- These were re-rolled edges. You should not be able to pull them apart. I will find nothing at all in these. Nothing of note.

Roll #4- Nothing. Do not buy Original Bank Wrapping on ebay. They are fraudulent. You are better off going to your local bank and pulling some. At least then you are only paying face value. I was going to post pictures, but really not worth it on a cherry picked lot.

Well, at least I have cash on hand for whatever may happen down the road. Thanks for being here, and remember to stay safe and stay prepared.

I was given some cash for my birthday somewhat recently. I forgot about it, and while I was in town, I went to try to buy some silver. The one store I thought sold gold and silver actually only buy gold and silver. The only other place I know who sells junk silver is the pawn shop and they did not open today. I decided to go to the bank. I had $40 in my pocket specifically for silver but did not find any, so I bought 4 rolls of half dollars.

Like I said before, the half dollars are still our normal currency, although not widely used. I can use it for the kids, and it is legal tender. If I find nothing in these rolls, I still have my $40. Right now I am looking at the rolls of half dollars. Here is what I can see:

I can see a Bicentennial half from 1976, a 1971 half, a reverse of Independence hall and the reverse with the eagle with arrows and olive branches. I guess it is now time to open. I am not expecting much out of this, but I thought it would be fun here. People will buy boxes of half dollars and maybe find 1 or so silver in there. This is more for fun and the kids will have rewards for good behavior out of these half dollars. We will open these in the order above. I assume there is nothing in these as the bottom of these rolls are just folded over and not tightly rolled.

Let us open the first: There is nothing. 1971-1986.

Next roll: There is nothing. 1971-2009

Next roll: There is nothing. 1971-2000.

The Last roll: Nothing. 1971-1989.

So, my $40 investment netted me $40 in half dollars. Still a net loss of 0.00%.

Starting into the world of stacking is very interesting and not something to jump into in the beginning of your prepping lifestyle. I am comfortable where I am, and continue to move forward. I am not going to get crazy into stacking precious metals or anything too crazy. I bought some copper rounds as a little intro into stacking. I ordered my 1st oz of silver, and bought some old half-dollar rolls. For real, the half-dollar rolls may have some 90% or 40% silvers in it, but I will always have money for the kids and the tooth fairy.

I am just learning about the world of junk silver, which is where my interest lies. My uncle has been an avid coin collector all my life. He has an awesome collection, including some stuff I an interested in. To me, it would be nice to have the super rare coin mis-prints or whatever, but I am more interested in usability. Silver also has medical uses. Gold has dental uses. I just think that having some metals could be nice. Spending money would also be useful should things go bad. I just thought it was neat and wanted to post here.

As in my last post, there was a security issue with my paypal. That has since been fixed. What is lucky is nothing was used, no money spent. That had the potential to be very scary. It took about 45 minutes on the phone and resetting everything completely. So much fun. I will recommend setting up the 2-step verification if you have not. They would not have had the ability to screw my account had I have had this set-up.

I will also say that by catching it quickly, and talking to paypal immediately, I was pretty well protected. Anything that would have been spent would have been cancelled and my finances protected, although if money had been spent, it could have taken up to 10 days to fix. Luckily we caught it early and the hackers didn’t try to spend anything. Also, watch out for spamming of emails centered around 1 time. They are trying to log into as many accounts as possible after they find 1 they can log into.

On a very odd side note, we just had a state trooper helicopter circling over head. We are wondering if they are looking for something specific because it was very low, and our neighbors have a lot of history with the police. It was very strange, not something that occurs in my area very often, as in ever. Their has been a lot of that since the neighbors moved in, however. Things that don’t seem quite normal all the time now. Anyhow, pay attention, stay safe and stay prepared.

I woke up this morning to an interesting text message from paypal. It asked my if I logged in at 3:30 am local time. The obvious answer is no, but I don’t think anything of it. I log on into my email to see if I received any emails from paypal. I had to look hard because I received 100’s of emails between like 3:15 am and 3:30 am. I had to search. I received 2 emails, 1 saying I added a new email and a second saying I changed my password. Here I am like “Whoa, Whoa, Whoa!.”

I go to paypal and go to log in. Guess what? I cannot. Not only can I not log-in, but my email address is no longer attached to any paypal account. Well, now I am a little scared. I am scared because this is attached to my main 2 banking acounts and, of course, my paypal credit. I take instant care of my 2 main accounts, moving money arround so the accounts are empty. That is fine. While doing this, I am calling paypals service center, for which the email stating I requested changing my password said to call if there was an issue. I obviously checked the phone number in that email to paypals phone numbers, and it was accurate.

I went through their menu… multiple time. At first it says that there is a high volume of calls and that my wait time may be a while, and a quicker way to get help would be on their website. I cannot use these options because I cannot log-in. Figured that would be obvious, and that there would be a way to ask for help without logging in for just this situation. I finally get a little fed up and ask to speak to a real person. This is when the news comes out. I have to wait until 9am local time to talk to someone about this issue. What damage could be done while I wait for this time to talk to some one? I am completely powerless with my own money, more or less, right now.

Although online payment is very convenient, and has worked well for me throughout the last, let’s see, 17 years, give or take, through paypal, I think that I may be giving up online shopping, which is great during a time when people like me are being cast aside in society. Be careful when it comes to online payments. Companies are popping up left and right offering this service, but I was just hacked on the largest and most secure of them.

Today Joe Biden placed orders for vaccine mandates nation wide for employers who have 100 or more employees and requested Governors to have all school staff mandated for vaccines. These mandates also include the current option for weekly testing. My work place has a whopping 22% who are vaccinated and 78% who are not. I find it interesting that my fellow employees are also the majority of the prepping population, Vets. I know not every prepper is a vet as I know that not all people I work with are vets. I am making a very simple comparison.

So, to the prepping side of these mandates. When people see something like this, a major shift in the way our nation works, people tend to panic. This has the potential to see panic buying ahead of what people fear. People have hated the idea of vaccine passports and vaccine mandates, and with this step in that direction, people are going to react as such. It also comes along the idea of potential lockdowns or restrictions in the future. We all remember how people acted early last year when toilet paper was about as common as the 1st edition holo charizard when we were kids, and seemed worth about the same too.

If you have been prepping, I would watch for that, and plan ahead. At the very least, when you see panic buying starting, top off your shopping cart. There are a lot of things coming rather quickly. There is the Russian War Games over the next week, the 9/11 anniversary as we have known terrorist welcomed into our country (mixed with the innocent people that came over,) the supposed 9/18 gathering at the White House that is apparently expected to be as bad as January 6th, which was nothing compared to all the BLM riots in 2020, but those were virtually erased from history, and the fences are being raised around the capitol. There is a lot going on, and there are many openings for people to do bad things that will lead to more government control, and put those of us who refuse out on the fringe.

I think this is the goal, along with Biden taking the fall for whatever happens, and Harris taking the White House. The song “Wake me up when September ends” sounds rather fitting, although I fear we would be the Rick Grimes waking up in the zombie apocalypse. Things have the potential to change hard and fast and the timing seems perfect for turmoil. As all of the preppers have been saying, keep prepping. There is room for error, but I would rather prep and err on the side of caution. My family is the most important thing I have in this world, and I will do what I have to to protect them.

I must still say that my opinion is that it is up to you if you want the vaccine. I see the way other nations are going when it comes to these vaccines, and that terrifies me. I get that other pandemics were ended by vaccines, and I support that, but I still need to see long term effects. Until then, I choose not to take it. Prep for what is in short supply. I am having a hard time finding large bags of rice and beans now, and I see the prices edging up higher. I am also finding it odd that there are social media post asking people to report people who are too prepared. What does that even mean? They are asking for people who are buying too much food. I do not understand, but we will keep prepping, and I hope that you do as well. I will post more once we find out what our new nation will look like in the coming days. Stay safe and keep on prepping.