My parents and my sister went on a cruise to Alaska out of Seattle. On the last day, yesterday, my Dad took ill and went to the sick bay on the ship. He was there all day and got really good treatment and testing and they found fluid around his heart and elevated troponin, and a fever they couldn't touch with what they had on the boat but the doc on the ship wasn't able to do more than stabilize so they got him off the ship when they pulled into Victoria so he could get to a hospital. Seattle was 12 more hours away so he ended up in Canada. He is improving but his troponin level is very high and they are trying to figure out what is going on with his heart. He's got a cardiac history, quadruple bypass 40 years ago. 

In talking to my sister I learned he and my mom got the covid booster a week before they left. And now it is starting to make sense. My parents drank the covid koolaid and pretty much cut themselves off from me and my kids for 3 years. Even today they wear masks around us. At first it was because my wife works at the hospital and then because we didn't get the vaccine. To say it has caused some friction would be putting it mildly.

There isn't a doubt in my mind this is from the covid booster, he has myo/pericarditis and heart damage from it. The fever fits right into the mix as his body is reacting to the shot by an activation of the immune system. I love my parents but they sure got taken for fools by the government.

Check out this video from Elon Musk. This is amazing!
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1842773527004418502

I saw an ad for .22 COLIBRI. I’d never heard of them, but apparently they’re the modern version of a .22 CB. They are a powderless .22 long? Maybe? Or is it a long rifle brass? Do they increase the primer to propel without additional powder?

Anyway, it brought back a flood of memories.

When I was a kid, in a close suburb of Chicago, one had very few options for ridding the space under the front porch of vermin. I set up a round conibear trap and caught one opossum. Turns out she had a pouch full of toothy little rascals. The jill was dead but the joeys were alive and still clinging to her carcass. I dumped the whole mess into a garbage can full of water and pushed it down with a concrete block. We went to dinner and afterwards the problem was solved. Dad didn’t want a repeat, so he just threw away the old trap, opossum, babies, and all (I think he was afraid if I caught something and the trap didn’t fully kill it).

Dad got me a Have-A-Heart trap and I made a catch pole and went to work. I caught (I don’t remember) several more opossums and a couple raccoons under there. Not knowing how to dispatch my catches without attracting undue attention, he got me some BB caps and some CB caps. I would drag the critter out of the trap, hold its head down by the basement floor drain with my catch pole, and put a CB or BB in their ear from inches away with my revolver. The BB caps worked, but not well. The CB caps did better.

1) I miss that old Herter’s single action .22 I traded it when I traded up to my Ruger Super Single Six 9” (still have it).

2) I plugged my nose and skinned those opossums. I learned to ring their feet, neck, and tail (from an article in Outdoor Life) so I could leave the hide whole and unsplit. We froze them and next time we went to the furrier near my Uncle’s place in Iowa, I sold them. They said that they were skinned properly and handled correctly and they gave me $3 each. After that I wrapped the carcasses in doubled garbage bags and threw them away- nobody should touch and smell an opossum for $3

I’m exhausted, so bear with me, went 99 min away to the grassland where you can shoot anything set up tables, lots of targets and 2 canopies 

The 300 blackout AR-15 had massive problems with the magazines, it really did not like Magpul 5.56 mags & had problems feeding but when changed to a aluminum mag it worked fine

Here is a screen shot of my iPhone 15 something or other 
If you have a iPhone 14 & above running IOS 18 you can text without any cell service 

It’s a true game changer 

I don't know if this is true, but if so, it'll make your blood boil! He's saying that fema only allows preferred vendors in for the sake of kickbacks.
https://x.com/ryantyre/status/1841583311782568064

Normally I associate hurricanes with coastal area damage. Helene made landfall with 150 mph winds and certainly devastated that area,  but has been very destructive much further inland. Ashville, NC is 400 miles from the landfall and the storm has dumped 30 inches of rain there as well as some distance north of there, washing out roads and making travel impossible. I know the storms don't end at the coastal areas but 400+ miles inland and people are stranded, no communications, etc. boggles my mind. Maybe I've never paid attention in the past but I can't recall anything like this, at least not in the USA. 
I'm pretty well insulated from events where I live, hurricanes aren't a thing in the Northwest.  Wildfires are an issue, but an 80,000 acre fire doesn't cover the whole area. Windstorms with sustained 40, gusting to 75 happen here but they don't leave us devastated. I'm aways from subduction zones so earthquakes might happen but not very likely. Every decade or so we get major snowfall but roads are usually cleared in a day or so. I only keep 2 buckets of freeze dried chow on hand but I think a 40 day supply is more than adequate.

Actual ham radio emergency nets in north Carolina flooding area. Cellphone service is kaput there.
https://www.broadcastify.com/webPlayer/43107
The guys are providing a valuable service on the w4htp repeater.