Matter of Facts: Keeping Sharp, or Sitting in Park

[00:00:06] Welcome back to the Matter of Facts Podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network. We talk prepping guns and politics every week on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify. Go check out our content at MWFPodcast.com on Facebook or Instagram. You can support us via Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners. I'm your host, Phil Ravelet, Andrew, Nick are on the other side of the mic and here's your show.

[00:00:30] I'm not gonna lie, at this point I'm kind of looking forward to get like the three of us getting together in a couple of weeks. Oh yeah. So that we can shoot some content and I can redo that intro video. I mean it, it's served us well. Yes, but it's time for an update. True. True. I mean, first of all, we have a third co-host. Second of all, the second co-host is in and out. And last but not least, I've cut half my beard off since most of that was shot. So, you know, you have, but it still looks great. It, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's

[00:00:59] a labor of love, but mostly it's, you know, me begrudgingly not wanting to look like a homeless person because my wife has sworn she'll shave it off of me if I, if it starts to get too wild and out of control. I would call that bluff. Yeah. So anyway, my name's Phil. Welcome back to Matter of Effects Podcast. Nick, the Disappointer. Phil is on the other side. Andrew's not with us tonight. Andrew sent me a postcard and he has taken a vow of silence and celibacy, you poor SOB, and has become a Tibetan mom.

[00:01:29] So no more talking, probably no more cigars and booze, you know, got to treat your body like a temple and all that nonsense. Definitely no fornication with women. Well, yeah. I mean, you know, I'm not here to shame him for his lifestyle decisions. I'm just saying that like, I definitely think I'm going to have more fun than he is.

[00:01:50] Well, I don't know. I did see the Ace Ventura movie where, where he was a Tibetan monk for a little bit. And those guys seem like they knew how to throw a party at the end there. Yeah. I'm pretty sure that's Hollywood. So let's address a couple of things. Rackle Fraggle. I'm sorry, but see what happened, what happened was last week was pre-recorded. And normally I'm really good about sneaking it in right at the very beginning, which by the way, this is live. Thank God.

[00:02:18] But I'm usually pretty good at sneaking in at the very beginning, but I completely screwed up. And Nick reminded me 25 minutes in. So I also forgot my bad. Yeah, that's hard. Our bad, but Olivia, he died the first hour of that. I think if I think I think to take anyone at our point in life and suddenly deny them like, you know, whiskey and cigars and fornication.

[00:02:45] Yeah, I mean, war crimes have happened for less. If I don't die, war crimes will probably occur. Yeah. But remember, it's never a war crime the first time. True. You just got to get real creative. Embrace Canadian theory. OK, we're we're already off the rails. Three and a half minutes in admin work. Andrew's been accounted for the patrons.

[00:03:12] Couple of them are in the chat stoking the fires of lunacy. And the rest of them are probably in our signal chat stoking each other's fires of lunacy. Merch. The links are in the show description. If you would like to purchase a koozie, a T-shirt, something to support the show and support small business, I encourage you to look down in the show description. I'm really good about getting all that in there, mostly because I draft up a document and I copy paste. Use the tools.

[00:03:41] So my memory is crap, but I'm pretty good at pre-planning sometimes. And Cypress survivalist. If you're in the area of like southeast Louisiana, the Gulf Coast, you'd like to meet me and my wife and the other board directors. You'd like to learn some things about preparedness. I mean, anything from like basic to the more advanced stuff. That's definitely another link in the show description you should check out.

[00:04:05] And coming up shortly, June 14th, two weekends from now actually, is going to be a lunch and learn. So we're going to get together at found blue state park. We're going to, at this point, I think we only have like four or five people registered. And I'm not mad about that. I mean, I honestly, I kind of enjoy having a small group, but it's going to be just a chance to like chill, hang out, eat some burgers, BS, and learn a couple of things.

[00:04:34] Because like I had a lot of people, I had a lot of people give me some soft criticism about some of the coursework I put together for our first Cypress survivalist event. And they wanted more information. But I can only fit so much in like 55 minutes. Yeah, it was meant to be like an intro to everything sort of event, wasn't it? Yeah.

[00:04:52] And that's kind of the, not just with Cypress survivalist, but like even with this show, I find that I sometimes have to run that gambit where it's like on the one hand, there's that person who's brand new. And they need the basics. Yeah.

[00:05:08] But then on the flip side of things, you've got guys or girls who've been around this lifestyle for so many years that if I sit there and talk about like, you know, if I start talking about the basics, they tune out because it's like, I feel I've already done that. Like what else you got?

[00:05:25] So it's the constant back and forth of like, how far to the esoteric can I go without completely losing everybody, but still keep the topic interesting. I think at times getting esoteric is important because it, even if you lose some of the people along the way, you're bringing up things that might spark an idea in someone else's head. You know, like a satellite. Yes.

[00:05:55] Like your satellite mount. Phil has gone extra nerdy. You know how we were joking before that it wouldn't be long that till you would end up with a satellite dish, read an L band. So guys, it took less than two weeks. Yeah. So, so what happened here was I done some playing around with satellites a couple of weeks ago, got some pretty nice images from the low earth, low, low earth orbiting.

[00:06:24] Noah satellites, 19 in particular. And got some great images. I thought so, but to continue to go further down that road, I really have to start playing around with L band, which is microwaves. And I need a satellite dish to do that. And when I told you, Hey, I just ordered a satellite dish. I'm pretty sure your response was, I told you, I figured it'd be about two weeks. I think it was, I figured it'd be less than a month. And then when I told Stuart, Stuart said the same thing.

[00:06:53] Like, yeah, I figured it'd be about two weeks. I was like, damn, both of y'all. Honestly, I was debating on whether or not to start looking for satellite dishes on Marketplace to send you. So, so here's, here's kind of the thing. Oh, thank you, Jeff. I might even get to try to pronounce your last name because it's more consonants than the law should allow. I wouldn't say I went full ham tarts. See, like.

[00:07:21] At the end of the day, what the way I always approach a lot of these things is like, does it have utility in my weird little world? And if it does, then to me, it's not so much hobby. It's more of like, it's a tool in the toolbox. And I don't anticipate myself like, I don't anticipate myself going much further than this, honestly. Like, I've got a dish and a box next to me that needs to be assembled.

[00:07:46] And then I have to, I don't know, do a lot of reading and, you know, like figure out how to actually make all this crap work together. But like, I do have those NEMA 23 steppers when you want an auto tracking mount. No, I absolutely do not. They're from an old, actually, I think they're from an old CMM machine. So they're pretty accurate stepper motors.

[00:08:09] The thing of it is, though, is that I, the whole intent here is to be able to tag the, the GO satellites, which are geostationary. And I don't, I really just need to like point the dish and let it eat at that, you know, to access those. But the thing I like about the ability to go after the GO satellites is the fact that they're not, I don't have to go out there and wait for the satellite to pass over my head.

[00:08:37] I point the dish and I connect to, connect to the laptop and I just download the data. Yeah. And it's better imaging capability because it's newer satellites. Much better imaging capability. One of, I think the GO's East satellite basically covers like this entire side of North America. It's a really impressive chunk of territory. So to me, it's just, I mean, it's just one of those things.

[00:09:03] I would like the ability to have kind of like, you know, my mantra is always like, I want to decentralize everything. I want to have, I want to cut as many steps out of this supply chain of information as possible. So if I don't have to get on the internet, if I don't have to log into a website, if I don't have to do all those things, if I can go directly to the source that's producing the image and pull it down myself, that's always the way I want to try to do it. Yeah, it makes sense.

[00:09:33] But that being said, as soon as I, as soon as I came home and saw the box, I was like, oh, my dish is here. My wife started immediately calling me nerd. And I told her that if she wasn't nice to me, I wouldn't let her play with my satellite dish. And then she asked me if that was a euphemism for something. So yeah, that's, that's what happens when two nerds marry each other. She's just a different kind of nerd than I am. She's like a biology. Enjoyable banter. Yeah.

[00:10:02] I mean, the enjoyable banter is like key to a relationship right there. Well, I mean, I hope she likes being married to a nerd because I don't plan on going anywhere. And it's way too late to change my stripes at this point. Sentenced for life. Yes. So got a couple little topics. First of all, as was pointed out earlier, the whole reason why last week was prerecorded was because I had to go on a trip for work.

[00:10:25] And most of what I said I was going to do, I did. I actually, um, so you remember during, during the lead of that trip, you and I had a good old fashioned discussion about like what to bring. Yeah. I did wind up recanting myself and I did drag along a bag of like extra bottles of water and mountain house just to be on the safe side.

[00:10:49] Cause like, you know, I was looking at the amount of water and rations I was carrying and I was like, ah, I feel a little better, a little bit more. Yeah. But other than that, I mean, I packed, I packed a gym bag full of, you know, extracurricular activities. I did bring my hiking pack, which just means I had like, you know, one more ration, one more blowout kit. I brought a radio with me, which ended up not being super useful, but I figured it was intelligence gathering piece of nothing else.

[00:11:17] Well, at the very least, if you have a storm front coming through, you can hit the Noah channels. Yeah. Yeah. Which is like one critically underrated thing. I always tell people about radios is like the ability to, the ability to almost anywhere in the country, get to the local Noah stations. That by itself has come in really handy for me a couple of times.

[00:11:37] There was actually a time we were at the three of us were driving through an area where like we were, there wasn't an active tornado on the ground, but there was a tornado watch all across or was a watcher warning. I always get these two mixed up. It's one that there is. They're looking for them warning as one has touchdown. Okay. Well, it was a tornado watch then because so we were literally driving down the interstate with Noah on.

[00:12:03] So I could listen to hear like, you know, I figured if all of a sudden there was a tornado on the ground, we'd probably hear about really fast that way. Yeah. I mean, so for a while there, I was using like the satellite radio for my truck. Ended up getting rid of that because I had to start paying for it and not paying for radio.

[00:12:25] But, you know, anytime I've been in a nasty weather event and I've been listening to a local AM or FM station, they break in there pretty quick too. So maybe you gain a couple of minutes from the Noah if you're listening to it actively.

[00:12:46] But gosh, you know, by the time the alert goes out and the sirens go off, the FM and AM stations are often breaking in anyway. Yeah. The problem is down here, we don't have tornado sirens. Yeah, we have one in my hometown, but it got apparently hacked and now will only ever be on. So they just turned it off permanently because they don't feel like replacing the system because they can't figure out how to fix it.

[00:13:16] Jeff says the only way he remembers it is watch me make tacos or warning there are tacos. That's actually a very fair point. And I can only take one wild guess why that sticks with most people because it involves tacos. Well, yeah, tacos are amazing. Yeah. But anyway, so like there really wasn't a whole lot weird to the trip.

[00:13:39] I did wind up having to make an unscheduled detour on the way home because of Memorial Day traffic, which had interstate 12 and a complete snarl. But even that's the pretty main interstate through your area, isn't it? Yeah. Well, I mean, interstate 12 cuts, I think, all the way from California. Well, 12 slash interstate 10. It's the same road. It just changes names. But like I think that I know it cuts all the way across Texas, all the way to Florida. It probably goes all the way to California.

[00:14:08] But I mean, it's... I don't know. Well, I've gone as far west as... I've driven as far west as Houston. Okay. And it was interstate 10, interstate 12, from there all the way to Florida. Interesting. Probably then. Yeah. I mean, the problem is it's a major thoroughfare across the Gulf Coast. Yeah. And traffic was just in a snarl. And then after I got... After the roads...

[00:14:33] After it started moving, we had slamming our brakes because there was a six-car pileup because people don't know how to drive. But other than that, like there really wasn't a lot to report. I was very, very glad we prerecorded that episode though because I called it Thursday night. Literally, I jumped into YouTube just long enough to like drop a comment and say, hey guys, you know, it's prerecorded. I'm... You know, we'll catch you next week. But I was literally like sitting around with a bunch of my coworkers like visiting and everything.

[00:15:01] So there would have been zero opportunity to do that if it were not prerecorded. Well, you know, that's why I kind of hinted that we should maybe do that. Because work trips never go according to plan schedule wise. I mean, hell, we had one where we were just going into the city from where the shop is located to look at a piece of equipment. And it was only supposed to take two and a half hours including the trip there. It ended up six hours. It was ridiculous. Supposed to be.

[00:15:32] Yeah. Yeah. It never is. It never is. Yeah. So like I said, I mean, the trip was largely uneventful. It did kind of lead to the topic for the week though, which is maintaining skills or putting them in park. So just to kind of give you the what happened while I was on this trip that brought this out. There was an evening. I was sitting around. I was bored.

[00:16:01] I literally pulled out my laptop, fired up the SDR software, and I was just cruising around listening to listen, you know, seeing what was out there. Fired up RTL 1090. So I was, I wasn't far from Barksdale air base and Bossier city is not far from Shreveport. So needless to say, there were tons of aircraft in the area to watch. Absolutely.

[00:16:22] But one thing I noticed was I had to, like, even though I've been really playing with SDR a lot lately, because I had put it aside for a couple weeks and because I haven't spent a lot of time practicing those skills, practicing using that, that skill and that software. I had to stop and, like, think about it. Like, just something as simple as getting RTL 1090 set up so I can start listening to transponder signals. It's not a double click on the icon.

[00:16:51] It does everything for you. You've got to stand up that program, and then you've got to tweak a couple settings because for some reason it does not memorize the settings I put in. So I have to tweak everything to the way I know it works. And then I have to break up another program, and then I have to, you know, like, there's steps here. That's the way it is with a lot of this SDR software. It's steps.

[00:17:12] And SDR trunk, by the way, is 10 times worse because that is start the program, and then I have to go grab the library of channels I want, and then I have to activate that. There's, like, five steps before you're actually listening to anything. Right. So it occurred to me that because I haven't spent a lot of time practicing using this software or because I haven't done it in several weeks, I literally already started to forget how to make it work. I had to relearn how to do it.

[00:17:41] I didn't have to, like, get a book or anything or watch a YouTube video, but I had to, like, sit there and chew on my molars for a second and be like, you know what button am I supposed to have next to make this stupid thing start working? And it got me thinking about this exactly. I don't think I'm the only person. Like, first of all, you and I are both fairly convinced that there's a larger than average cross-section within our friend group that is probably neurodivergent to some degree or the other. Oh, sure.

[00:18:11] That is a whole other topic all by itself. Mm-hmm. I read everything. I watch everything. I consume all the information. I figure out everything about it. And then I'm like, OK, cool. Move on to the next thing. Sure. Yeah, that makes sense.

[00:18:37] And I put that thing in park because my personality does not lend itself to, like, steady, slow, steady anything. It's like, you know. It's all or nothing. Well, it's like trying to daily drive a frickin' like a top fuel dragster. It's like, foot to the floor till the engine burns out. Yeah. Screw the engine back together. Try it again. There are benefits to that because you can pick up a new skill extremely rapidly. But like any skill, it's perishable.

[00:19:06] And if you don't use it often enough, you're going to have to relearn all over again. Which, hey, maybe that's enjoyable to you. And maybe that's fine because it's something like your trunk SDR set up there where it's not necessarily mission critical all the time. Yeah. But I didn't cut you off. Where were you going?

[00:19:31] Well, what I was going to say is I think what we all need to do is we need to assess where or how much utility we need out of any one skill to determine how much we need to maintain these different skills. Yeah. Yeah. And the, you know, like as I was thinking about this, the most flippant answer anyone can issue down going down this road is you should just maintain every skill, which makes no sense.

[00:20:00] It's an answer that doesn't make sense if you stop thinking about it for five seconds. Because like, I can't speak for most people, but just within my personal gun safe, I mean, I've got five, six, seven different, different weapons platforms between like, you know, revolvers, semi-automatic handguns, semi-automatic rifles, AR and AK. So it's two different operating systems to deal with, plus a bolt to action, plus a shotgun.

[00:20:27] It's like just in the vein of maintaining my skill set with the weapons I have available to me. That would require literally every weekend burning down at the range to try to keep, try to keep every one of those skills equally topped off, which is why I don't try to do that. Like, you know, my bolt to action is not a, it's not a home defense firearm. It's basically a, it's something I enjoy punching paper with.

[00:20:57] Um, the AK is not a home defense firearm. The one of the revolvers is a backup gun. So it does get shot. Some, the other one is basically a woods gun. So I shoot that occasionally. Most of my, most of the handguns are not home defense guns. They're not dedicated home defense guns. So the, the order in which I prioritize maintaining that individual platform or my skill with that individual platform is ranked according to what is the thing I'm going to go grab when there's a bump in the night. Yeah.

[00:21:25] And I'm, I'm finding that of all the various skills I've learned over the years, I'm having to prioritize them. Like, what are the things that are most important to keep that skill sharp? And it's, you can't, I can't even say it's like, what do I use the most often? Cause that's, that's not, if you have to use your home defense shooting skills on a regular basis, I advise you move. Like, yeah, different calculus.

[00:21:53] So it's, it's more of a, how bad is it if this skill goes away and how often am I going to use it? And I think also what level of proficiency do you need to maintain to use it adequately for your use case? Yep. Which is in of itself a sliding scale. Cause it is, I mean, you're going to have that one dunderhead out there. It says, you don't have to aim a shotgun.

[00:22:20] And I'm sorry to say you absolutely do have to aim a shotgun, but you don't have to aim a shotgun. Like you have to aim a bolt action rifle shooting at 500 yards. There's a little bit more margin for error. So it's kind of like if I have, if I, if I keep the skill with a shotgun to this level, then that is sufficient to be able to defend myself inside of a home. That will work. Sure. But on the flip side of things, shooting handguns is reasonably universally acknowledged to be a little more difficult.

[00:22:49] You have less points of contact. You have shorter sight radius, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So because you're going to be using that, you're going to be carrying that more often. You're going to be using it under duress because you're not going to be expecting to be attacked. If you're just like, you know, at the grocery store or whatever, it's inherently more difficult to use. And ostensibly, if you're in public, which is where you'd be concealed carry, there's going to be lots of freaked out people running around that you really don't want to hit.

[00:23:15] So maybe the minimum skill level to use that is higher than the minimum skill level to use the shotgun in your own home. Yeah, I would say that's, I would say that's fair because of the, the greater dynamic nature of the environment where you're more likely to be using it. You know, you're, you're not going to get to bunker down with a perfect kill box in front of you. That is your bedroom door when you're using your concealed carry handgun.

[00:23:45] I mean, unless that's your, unless that's your only home defense gun that you have, in which case all the power to you. Congratulations. You got the best scenario you possibly could. You can be braced against a bed, a dresser, a wall, whatever, whatever you got shooting down a straight hallway. Fantastic. Fantastic. That's not how it's going to work at the gas station. That's not how it's going to work in the quick mart. That's not how it's going to work in the grocery store. No.

[00:24:10] So, but you know, one of the things I ran into really recently, as far as perishable skills goes, is soldering pipe. I haven't, I haven't had to solder copper pipe since I was in high school and had to install a new whole home filter system in my house. And it's not pretty, but the pipes don't leak. And that's really what matters. So like I'm not selling this pile of soldered pipe to a plumbing customer. It just has to hold water and not flood my house.

[00:24:41] Optimally. Can it? No, that's not optional. Flooding my house is not optional. Optimally. Yeah. Well, the bare minimum is not flooding my house. It would be nice if it looked okay. Fortunately, it's in a room the guests don't occupy. So, you know, my, what I would call passable skill at soldering pipe in a rather easy to access environment. Perfectly fine. I use it once a decade, once every couple decades.

[00:25:11] I don't do a whole lot of raw plumbing like that. Redoing a bathroom right now. Running electrical. I don't do a whole lot of that, but color matching, pulling out reference diagrams if you need to for the different styles of switches and outlets and whatnot. Perfectly acceptable. I'm not on a time crunch to get this wiring done. I don't have a paying customer that I have to satisfy.

[00:25:38] I can take the time to refresh as I'm doing it and still get an optimum result, which is electrical that works. I have to throw this up and then enunciate it for the listeners. Jeff Jagg. Had to hem pants last weekend. It's been a while since I've run a sewing machine and it shows. Hell yeah, it does. Sewing is not easy. I am 42 years old and I have never managed to run a sewing machine. Oh, my grandma taught me when I was like 11. Oh, no, no.

[00:26:07] My mother tried to teach me multiple times. Do you know how there's that one human being you know that they could be the most brilliant mother effer on the face of the planet, but there's that one piece of equipment or technology they just should not come into contact with. Because, yeah, something something about the neural network and inside their gray matter. And it just doesn't work together. OK, that's me and sewing machines.

[00:26:36] OK, I was look 18 years old. Army taught me how to fix an eight and eight and a half million dollar helicopter. That wasn't that hard. It's like a huge freaking sports car with a rotor head on top of it. It is. Learn how to work on lots of cars. Learn how to friggin like I still to this day like do like little fabrication and clutch stuff together and just, you know, hobbyist type stuff. I'm not a moron. Yeah. Unless you ask my wife and she's aggravated at me than I am. But different, different, different topic.

[00:27:04] I'm not stupid, but me and sewing machines do not get along. Now I can run a stitch by hand. It's not going to be pretty. No, it will hold clothing together. Yes, Rachel, I can hand. So don't ask me why I can't run a sewing machine because I still to this day do not understand why.

[00:27:25] I just know that every time me and the sewing machine got together, it led to profanity and my mom having to like take everything apart to get all the thread out that went. Did you ever learn how to TIG weld? I never learned how to TIG weld. I learned how to MIG. All right. I'd be curious. Another sad, unfortunate story. Remind me. I would be curious if, okay, so the thing with the sewing machine is you're doing three things at once. Same with TIG.

[00:27:52] You're collecting, you know, with the sewing machine, you're managing the cloth on the backside. You're aligning the cloth on the front side and you're managing the speed of the foot pedal to go along with what both your hands are doing. TIG's the same way. You got a torch in your right hand. You got feed wire in your left hand. You got, well, unless you're backwards. And you got a foot pedal to control the amperage. I bet you've got a similar, you have a similar problem with TIG welding.

[00:28:21] I don't know. Okay. Passable. Yeah. The metal sticks. It passed the hammer test. It passed the bend test.

[00:28:52] What do you mean the bend test? All right. So what you do is you take two pieces of steel and you butt them up like this with bevels on all four, you know, the two sides. You run a bevel weld on one side, bevel weld on the other, grind them off flat, and then you bend it into a U. And if the weld stays, you passed. If the two pieces stick together and it bends into a U, you're good. The weld's good. So the shop that taught me how to make weld basically had me do a weld.

[00:29:21] And then the guy took a five pound sledgehammer and took a whack at it and said, if the weld gives, it sucks. It passed the hammer test. It was uglier than sin, but it passed the hammer test. I mean, if you're just doing raw fabrication, it doesn't have to look pretty. Sure. That works. Yeah. Will it pass x-ray? Not even going to adjust. Oh, God, no.

[00:29:46] I mean, I'm not pressure vessel certified, but I welded up a couple of compressor tanks and they didn't fail at the weld. My welds are so ugly. Helen Keller would frigging call me out on them. Okay. It's they're bad. Yeah. Right. If it gets the job done, sometimes that's all you need, though. It does. But it's just one of those things where like, you know, like to this day, I still do a lot of my automobile maintenance.

[00:30:12] And like every time I am about to tackle a new a new test that I haven't done before, I've done it just not on one of these two vehicles. It's always the same application of the old skills of like be able to look at a thing and figure out how it's taken apart and take it apart, put it back together the way it came apart and so on and so forth.

[00:30:35] And for people that are really mechanically inclined, that's seen that sounds way simpler than apparently it is because I've met people who cannot take things apart and put them back together without a procedure. I just kind of look at it and I'm like, okay, I can see how it's built, you know, and if I come from life experience, too. Yeah. But I use that skill over and over and over. So it stays sharp. Like I does, you know, like I still do all I do all the oil changes out here. I did brakes last year.

[00:31:04] I'm about to have to do struts and shocks on Gillian's Jeep. I'm going to do shocks on my truck before the end of the year. Like, you know, I'm constantly working on two 10-year-old vehicles to keep them in tip-top shape because I expect these things to last a good long while. So I'm, and even when I'm not doing vehicle maintenance, I'm fixing stuff around the house.

[00:31:28] Every time, anytime something around this house coughs or acts crazy, I'm the one that gets, goes and gets the, uh, the wrenches and the carb cleaner and the WD-40 and everything else and be like, okay, it's, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. What's going to make you behave yourself? Like there's a, there's a YouTuber who has a, uh, sell shirts that says, I am the warranty. Yeah. I feel that because I am the warranty service around here.

[00:31:54] But I use those skills constantly so they don't really take any maintenance. It's more, when I think about skills that require maintenance, I think about the stuff that like really in terms of the preparedness community, it's the things that we don't use that often because God almighty, you hope not to need it that often. It's the things like, how do I put a tourniquet on one handed? Or how do I triage a trauma patient? Or, you know, firearms usage.

[00:32:23] It's, it's all these things that we've learned over the years. And most of the time, most of those things we don't practice on a regular basis because you don't really want to practice on a regular basis because that means your life has gone to hell in a handbasket. So then what is, how do we find the happy medium where like those skills that we acknowledge we don't use very often and we don't want to use very often. And we certainly don't want to practice them very often because that sucks as bad as your life depending on them.

[00:32:52] But what's, what's the appropriate, what level of atrophy for those skills can we tolerate before we're at a point where we might as well not learn the skill in the first place? That's really the thing that I'm, I'm philosophically wrestling around with right now because I look at the shelf behind me and I'm like, there's a ton of stuff on that frigging shelf. Yeah. Some of that stuff hasn't moved in six months. Sure.

[00:33:20] Some of that stuff moves every freaking weekend. Like, you know, the coffee roasting stuff. That is a once or twice a week, got to do it, can't stop, or I run out of coffee and then bad things happen. So like that skill cannot atrophy because it has to be maintained. Yeah. And then there's all those other things that don't get used all the time. And I have to look for opportunities to, to, to practice those things just in case it comes in handy one day.

[00:33:49] Well, I think what you have to look at is what's the cost for failure. Like what's the cost for failure on, on any particular skill set? And what level of failure are you willing to tolerate? Great. Like, so first aid, you guys all know I work in a, basically in a machine shop. One of my hobbies is playing with my metal lathe back there. Um, first aid stuff.

[00:34:12] I try to keep fairly up to date on because rotary power tools are stronger than you and they're faster than you. And Phil found that out the hard way. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, I was telling Nick right before we started, um, had to make that little hole right there for that, uh, post and that, that post pass through and that nut to fit on. And I did something dumb.

[00:34:39] See, I am well aware that you were not supposed to hold onto a chunk of something with your hand, especially not barehanded. Not try to drill us. Thirdly, most of all, thirdly, most of all, not metal and try to drill a hole through it. I'm, I know this. I'm not stupid, but I promise you, everybody that's listening right now, every one of y'all has had this experience where you thought to yourself, I'll just be careful. I can get away with it.

[00:35:07] And if any one of you in the audience hasn't done that, you're lying. You're a lying bastard. You're lying. Every one of us has done it. Well, I held onto it and I actually, I got away with it at first because I started off with a, um, a smaller drill bit, drum, a pilot hole. And that worked beautifully. Mm-hmm.

[00:35:27] And then when I went to step up to the quarter inch bit, it, um, it once again proved that my ability to hold onto a chunk of whatever is vastly exceeded by my drill's ability to rip it out of my hand and throw it across the room. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And, um, did that in the process. And, uh, you can't see, but I got a spot of blood on this white t-shirt and walked into the house. My wife was like, why are you bleeding? In a very accusatory voice. Like, what are you doing? I swear, it's not mine.

[00:35:56] Oh, she knows better at this point. Yeah. Okay. Now, Olivia, I will say this much. That is what I do not mess around with. I, okay. I, I have little cuts and scars and nonsense all up and down my body. I've got scars on my stomach, like on my abdomen from getting hit with things. Okay. I am not a lucky nor careful person, but I am, I am an a-hole about eye protection because I really don't want to go through the rest of my life with an eye patch.

[00:36:25] As much as the pirate vibe would be cool, I really, really, really don't want to lose an eye. Yeah. And with what I do for work, uh, bits of metal exploding or, or flying at near ballistic speeds is a regular hazard because people make mistakes. And turns out if you biff a decimal on a CNC machine, it will not care. And it's going to go exactly where you told it to, regardless of what's in the way, uh, safety.

[00:36:55] Glasses are a must. Yeah. Olivia said, been so good about hearing protection. I am getting better about that. Yeah. It's not service related. Don't worry about it. No. Olivia said, well done lads, but she, she might be overlooking the fact that I'm sitting with a bandaid around my finger. It's fine. It's fine. You didn't lose the finger. I remember. No trip to the ER. That's, that's pretty good. I remember the eye protection just forgot everything else.

[00:37:23] So after this happened, I did chuck the thing up in a bison and blow the drill bit through it real fast. I mean, it was fine. It just, um, it hurt. And it didn't, I didn't even realize I cut myself until the throbbing started to go down. And I noticed just blood dripping. I was like, oh, dadgummit. Well, you know, cheap metal, it's not necessarily sharp, but it got moving pretty quick. I mean, cause you, I don't know what the max RPM is of your drill, but I'm betting you were using the higher end of it.

[00:37:53] I actually wasn't. I was milking the trigger. Oh, okay. Just, just because in my experience and like you're the fabricator, you tell me, but like in my experience, when you run a drill through metal pedal at full speed, it doesn't seem to cut as quickly as if you modulate your speed a little bit. Depends on the size of the drill bit, the material you're cutting and how thick it is.

[00:38:15] See, the problem with sheet metal is, um, that last sheet metal tends to give, especially like aluminum and really thin sheet metal. That last little bit tends to give and form around the flutes of your drill, which then it grabs and just wings it or breaks the drill bit off or climbs the piece right up out of your vice. Sheet metal is really terrible to drill through with traditional drill bits. Do you have one of the step drill bits for sheet metal? Um, I do.

[00:38:45] I didn't grab it. Yeah, that would have been the way to go because it's a straight flute. So what it, so those, those straight flute drill bits made for cutting sheet metal, they don't tend to suck the sheet metal up into them. That's, that's why they're built that way. It's, it's a better cutter geometry for thin material. Ooh, Jeff. Grenaded apart and an end mill last night, 5,000 in damage. My personal record includes a 40 taper spindle.

[00:39:16] And then Olivia, basic tire repair buffing stone shattered and destroyed my last pair of glasses. Yeah. I've never actually broken one of those in all the years I was working in tire shops. I've blown up a 12 inch grinding wheel. Mm. But that got your attention, didn't it? Well, yeah. Yeah. So when you're cutting stainless on an electromagnetic chuck, sometimes the magnetism is not good enough.

[00:39:42] And the part will decide to up into the very grabby wheel. So the part went up, tipped 90 degrees. Well, attempted to. And as it transitioned from here to here, the corner of the part was now a half inch taller than the part I was grinding. Grinders are made to take, you know, a few thousandths at most. Not a half inch. It didn't like being force fed. No. No.

[00:40:12] No, it shot parts clear across the shop. Little bits of grinding wheel. But. Yeah. I think. You do my job long enough. You're going to blow up some cool stuff and expensive stuff. It's just a matter of time. I think my last oh crap moment was cut off wheel on a Dremel. Oh God. And no, no, like the little bitty ones. Yeah. But still, man, those things are really cruising. It. I do not like cut off wheels on Dremels.

[00:40:41] Where were you when I needed you, Nick? Yeah. So. Well, I learned that if you get a little bit too exuberant with them and they get a little bit too hot, they explode. And like. They can. Literally like, you know, cutting, cutting, cutting, sparks flying, sparks flying, sparks flying. And all of a sudden, the first inclination I had that something was wrong was when I heard the Dremel suddenly idle way up. And I looked down and the disc is gone. Yep.

[00:41:11] That's what they do. It. Thankfully, I was wearing an eye pro and it didn't like fling a piece at my face or anything. But like you could just hear ting, ting, ting, ting, ting, ting from little pieces hitting the ceiling, hitting the walls, hitting my workbench. It was it was a pucker moment for sure. The terrible thing about those Dremels and the little cutoff wheels that come with them is they're they're incredibly thin, which is great for going through material. Fantastic.

[00:41:39] They're they are moving at a pretty high RPM, but the the weakness of those grinding wheels is always torsional forces. So if you put any side load on them at all, they the thinner they are, the more likely they are to snap. And probably what happened was is as that cut heated up, it pinched that wheel. And then it's like it's like a shotgun going off throws shrapnel everywhere. I've had pieces of those little Dremel ones embed themselves in my finger and I had to dig at them to get them out.

[00:42:08] I mean, fortunately, they're not as bad as like some of the big four inch and eight inch cutoff wheels or heaven forbid the big 12 inches. There's when those things grenade, they kill people. I'm asking the only good thing about the little bitty ones is that like they don't have a lot of mass to them. So when they pop, I mean, it'll fling stuff in every direction. But no, the individual pieces don't usually have a lot of like they don't have a lot of momentum. Right. They stop really fast.

[00:42:37] I mean, it's kind of ballistics 101. You know, smaller, lighter bit, really lightweight thing doesn't penetrate very far. No, no, it doesn't. But yeah, Dremels have always kind of skewed me out with cutoff wheels because there's no there's no guard on there at all. They really need to figure out some kind of guard system for those cutoff wheels. Just just because of how often those cutoff wheels pop. Yeah.

[00:43:04] I mean, my only my only bit of brilliance with using those things is that I'm always very cognizant of making sure that I'm not looking at the edge of the blade. Like I turn it, I turn it. So I'm looking at the flat so that if it lets go, it goes that direction and not this direction. Yeah. Better. But, you know. Well, you got to use tools sometimes. But leave your safety guards on when, you know, all the time.

[00:43:34] Can you just like cover your eyes like, you know, the redneck welder and just do that? You can. You can. It's not safety squints are not effective. Safety squints aren't? No. Some are effective. No, they're not. They're not effective at all. My grandfather's eyes have changed colors a couple of times because of using safety squints and getting bits in his eyes. You'll appreciate this.

[00:44:01] So when I remember, I told you I learned how to use a make welder. Mm hmm. Well, this was a period of my life where I was definitely tougher than I was smart. Were you tack welding with one of the old flip down visors and doing it with your eyes shut? No, I wasn't that dumb. OK. So I put on the whole helmet. Thank God. I put on the windbreaker that was kept, you know, on top of the bottle, like, you know, for covering up and everything.

[00:44:28] And then I did my first little bit of MIG welding wearing shorts and flip flops. That got exciting quick, didn't it? It didn't actually because I didn't get any slag on me. But, you know, MIG welders is like holding a little portable sun, right? Mm hmm. So I had some very, very intense and interesting looking tan lines on my feet and my thighs the next day. That'll happen.

[00:44:59] So you're wearing a cotton T-shirt that's too thin. You can get sunburn on your chest through your T-shirt from a welder. So, yeah, it was one of those things where I was like, you know, from the waist up, I was perfectly fine. I was wearing all my protective gear, but I should have been wearing my steel toe boots and my long pants. But I don't remember why the hell, because I never I never went to that shop wearing shorts. I must have been like stopping stopping off on the way home from something. You know what I'm saying? Like it wasn't. Yep.

[00:45:27] It wasn't like I was supposed to be at work wearing flip flops and T-shirts. You were stopping by to take care of something quick. Yeah, something like that. But but that's that's always when stuff like that happens, man. It's always stuff like that. Or when you decide you don't want to take the time to chuck your piece of metal up in a vice because you're trying to hurry up and get something to drill before you have to come and do a podcast with your friend. Yeah. It's always it's always those moments where you're like, I'm in a hurry.

[00:45:55] So let's forget everything we know about safety. And sometimes it is. Sometimes it is. And sometimes the universe giggles at you and says, oh, you thought it was going to be fine. But, you know, that's that's a that's a perfect reason why I try to keep up on my first aid knowledge. And I try to keep up on use of tourniquets. I don't really have a good way to practice wound packing. I haven't invested in any of that equipment.

[00:46:25] Do you have some friends who would also like to practice wound packing close to you? Possibly. Because my sister found on Amazon like a a thing and it's like a simulated arm and it has like different tubes running through it. You use you hook up the tubes to a bag and you basically like gravity feed through water and you can practice wound packing and a tourniquet.

[00:46:51] And I forget what the other thing is, but it's it's like a little interactive. We'll have to see what the investment is. Send me it if you can, and we'll see what the startup cost is and something like that. Yeah, I'll see if I can find it. If not, I'll ask my sister. She she brought one out for Cypress Survivalist. And we actually had people we had attendees who were like coming up to the table and strapping cat tourniquets on this thing to practice. So so that they could get a feel for like how hard you really have to crank down. It makes my stop bleeding.

[00:47:20] Turns out pretty hard. Well, the thing they told us in the army, which thing I've continued to pass on everybody is I'm like, if your buddy is not screaming and trying to punch you in the face, it's not tight enough. Correct. There's a reason why you usually have someone holding person down. Or you do it when they're unconscious, which makes things much, much simpler for everyone. Yes, but I digress. Yeah. So let me put you on the spot, because here's here's something that I'm not even sure how to answer.

[00:47:51] Go for it. What is one skill that you in your opinion, you absolutely cannot allow to atrophy? And what is one skill you feel comfortable allowing to atrophy? All right. So I already brought it up. First aid.

[00:48:15] I do not feel comfortable allowing my first aid skills to atrophy simply because of what I do for work. I mean, we have had fortunately not in my term of employment, but we have had someone lose a hand at the shop I work at. Oof. Yeah. He dropped a very heavy object because he was not using the restraining devices that we have available to keep the stuff from tipping over. And he bumped it and tried to catch it.

[00:48:42] But you're not going to catch a falling multi hundred pound piece of steel. It's just not going to happen. One that I feel comfortable allowing to atrophy, probably my ham radio stuff.

[00:49:04] Because in most cases, in almost every case, my primary communications tool is probably going to be one of these several options on my cell phone. If I have gotten to the point where we are having to use ham radios to communicate, then we are so far down beyond where I normally would prepare for that.

[00:49:30] I mean, we're going to be making up a lot as we go along at that point. I do have basic literacy on how to use my ham radios. I do play with them on occasion and talk to various people on the repeaters. But I do not have it in my head how to program every the channels I need into that radio if need be. I can dial channels around. I can dial up a receiver.

[00:49:55] I can dial up the up down steps for for the one of the duplex communications. I can do that simple stuff. I cannot do the advanced stuff off the top of my head with that. So I have to dip in the chads before I give. Go for it. So Raggle Fraggle has difficulty spelling, apparently. Coordinatican. And then finally he got it coordination. Hand-eye coordination.

[00:50:25] That's fair. Hand-eye coordination is very important. So here's... I'm going to say the skill that I'd be most willing to let atrophy would probably also be communications. Which sounds weird seeing as how I've been on this enormous communications kick lately. But, you know, in those moments where I have had to dip into, like, our emergency management skills to various degrees,

[00:50:54] grabbing the radio to talk to people was the last priority I had. Sure. You know what I'm saying? Like, the day after Hurricane Ida, my first... Like, the first four hours after we woke up after the storm passed was get shelter. We set up a tent in the front yard so that we... Like, we were outside. We had good ventilation. We could keep cool. We had the sun off of our heads. Made sure we were hydrated. Got the water going.

[00:51:23] Got the coffee going. For obvious reasons. Trying to prevent war crimes. And started figuring out, like, okay, like, we got a whole dry stock of stuff, but we've also got stuff in the fridge that's going to spoil in X number of hours. Or, you know, in X amount of days when we run out of gas for the generator. So we probably should start eating the fridge down quickly. Yeah. So things like, you know, let's make omelets. Let's cook all the eggs. Let's do this. Let's do that. Like, let's get the stuff in the fridge. Let's eat. And let's have a good breakfast and a good lunch.

[00:51:52] The stuff in the fridge, let's just eat it up and get rid of it. Absolutely. We need the calories in our bodies for what we're about to deal with. And then it was things like gloves and closed-toed shoes, appropriate clothing. Because, like, I guess what I'm saying is, like, I think about the first four hours after Hurricane Ida and grabbing the radio to talk to weirdos on the internet was not my biggest concern. It really wasn't until later that evening when, like, the cell phone, the cell circuits came back to life. And even then, it wasn't, oh, I just want to talk to people who are on board.

[00:52:21] It was, I just need to get messages out so that people who will come looking for us know we're okay. We don't need to be rescued. We're good. Take care of yourselves. Yeah. It's kind of lower down on the priority list of needs. I mean, yes, communications is important. Having communications is a huge force multiplier. It allows you to do a lot of things that you can't without it. But there's other things that are more time critical.

[00:52:48] Food, water, keep the blood inside, keep your body temperature where it's supposed to be are a lot more immediate need than anything else. But now the thing I'll say is the skill that I cannot allow to atrophy, and it's probably going to sound like an eye roll, I would say emergency management. Sure. That makes sense.

[00:53:09] Because one of the things that most people, most people that are in this lifestyle or most people that have like been first responders, military, various disciplines. And just a lot of people that don't have that background at all, like they have the ability to like maintain their composure, maintain their cool, think rationally, unpack complicated situations and balance.

[00:53:36] Do like very quick interest balancing where it's like, I need this, this, this, this, and this. Which one's the most important? How do I get those needs met? The ability to think through those situations to assess and unwind and unpack and manage an emergency situation is a skill that like I don't get to practice super often for obvious reasons.

[00:54:00] I don't want to have emergencies, you know, I don't, I don't want to have to, I don't want to have to bring that skill back out. True. But I also look for opportunities to flex it a little bit. Things like last week when we were talking or two weeks ago, we were talking about like, hey, I'm going to go to, I have to go on this work trip. Like what are the things to, what are the things to think about? Because that in and of itself is what are my threats? How do I mitigate them? What are my threats?

[00:54:28] How do I mitigate them over and over and over? Yeah. And I look for opportunities to practice that way of thinking. And I look for opportunities in my daily life to practice that way of thinking. Because when things go to 11 is the wrong stinking time to have to learn that. It's true. It is the wrong time to have difficulty restraining your emotions and maintaining your composure.

[00:54:54] That is the time when it is time to like take a deep breath, think through the problem at full speed and work the problem down. And I think most people, probably most people that are in the chat right now probably think themselves, well, of course, Phil. And I'm like, yeah, but you only need to be in one, like a mass casualty event or one and one widespread emergency situation to realize. 95% of the population does not know how to do that. Well, because they've never thought it.

[00:55:23] They've never thought it through to begin with. They've never thought. They've never considered themselves being in one of those events to begin with. So there's a shock factor there that they're having a hard time overcoming. Raggle brings up a good question here. Would you prioritize leadership skills or management skills? I don't honestly know how to answer that question. Because in my family, like, and I don't think my wife would fight me on this.

[00:55:50] But like, whenever there's an emergency situation, I do wind up leading the family. But I'm also managing things. Well, you have the experience too. But I'm also managing things. Like to me, that concept of like leadership and management, those go hand in hand. Because as a leader, and this also comes back, this also comes like, I'm sure Olivia could attest. This comes from a military perspective where when you are, when you're in a leadership position in the military, you are not just them boys and girls supervisor.

[00:56:18] You are their supervisor, their mom, their dad, their girlfriend, their boyfriend, their camp counselor, their freaking doctor, their cook, their maid. It's like inheriting a bunch of adult foul-mouthed children, for God's sakes. And it is your responsibility to care for them. And I don't mean like wipe their butts and blow their noses. No, but see that their needs are met. Yes.

[00:56:44] So in the military school of thought, yes, but see, here's the thing, Olivia, depends on if you yourself are a leader. And in my experience, most of the people that really excel at leaders are not the people that want to be leaders. Because like this is what I was going to say, like in my family, I naturally just take a leadership role.

[00:57:08] At work, I am known as I am very happy to be the quiet little guy in the back with all the statistics and the math and the nerd stuff that doesn't want to be up front. I don't want to be a leader. I don't want to take the reins. I don't want to be the guy running point. I don't want to be the guy that has to go explain the idea to senior leadership. It's not what I want to do. I am very happy to be part of a team, just a cog in the machine. But if no one else steps up, I'll jump into it.

[00:57:35] Because to me, it's like, I want the thing to get done. If you want to take lead, go for it. I'll support you every bit of the way. But if everybody's going to stand there with their finger in their mouth, then I'm going to jump in the middle of it and just take it over and get it done. Because I feel that's calling. The worst thing you can do is nothing. Yeah. And I think that is... And that's why I think that most of your really effective leaders don't look for a leadership role. They're kind of thrust into it. It's like it's the situation that brews up or blows up.

[00:58:04] And a person who has that natural leadership tendency will say, these people depend on me. They need direction. We got to get this done. And they just go for it. And the people who usually, I think, look for leadership roles aren't always the best equipped to deal with it. Because it's the difference between, like, I am leading because it needs to be done and I'm leading because I want to lead, if that makes any sense. Yeah, it does.

[00:58:32] I mean, I'm sure there's probably, like a psychiatrist would say, there's probably an underlying cause for that. We know one of those. He needs to come on the show sometime. We should have him on. We should ask him about that. So Olivia's question, I'm going to take it as for both of us is, do you naturally step into that leadership role or are you naturally inclined to follow a leader saying, go do this and you go and do? It depends.

[00:59:02] If there's, if I perceive the person giving the orders as like being a strong leader, as having their people's best interest at heart, if I believe that following them will get to the goalpost, I'll follow. And I'll just be cog in the machine and I'll do. If, on the other hand, the person who is trying to lead is kind of a dithering retard, then I'm not going to follow them. I'm going to buck them every bit of the way.

[00:59:27] I'm going to question everything they say and everything they do because I am questioning your leadership potential. I'm questioning you. And I'm not going to stop because you haven't convinced me that within, within my classical education and business management, there are two forms of authority. There is, oh, I'm totally drawing a blank on what they're called. But the idea is like, if Nick, if I took like a dude that knew nothing about running a machine shop and I said, he's the boss, he's in charge.

[00:59:57] He has one type of authority because he's the boss in air quotes. I've given him a title. So he's the boss. And then you, knowing a lot about running machine shop, would probably. I don't know about running it. I know about running the machines. But you know, but you know a lot more than the guy they just got off the street that's never seen any of this stuff before. So do you think the, do you think your coworkers would come ask you a question or the boss in air quotes a question? Because he has the title, but you have the knowledge.

[01:00:26] Yeah, there's, there's definitely a little bit of that there. So, so there, I have, I have oops into kind of being one of the go-to people that, that guys ask questions at work. Oh, you poor bastard. Yeah, I, I done an oops. Well, it's just because I, I find myself compelled to learn all of the things about my trade. I really deep dive into what I do. I really like what I do.

[01:00:55] And so I've become kind of a knowledge base for the shop. And I'm guessing that if there were a lack of leadership around you, you would feel kind of compelled. Yeah, because if, if, if, so if someone comes to you with a question and they can't get any work done without an answer, yes, you give them the answer, the best answer you can. And it might be wrong. Sometimes it's been very wrong.

[01:01:20] But like I said before, if it's between doing nothing and doing something that may be correct or may not be the, the most ideal solution, I'll take a slightly less ideal solution rather than doing nothing. God, you just reminded me of something that happened at work today, but I don't want to derail you. That's all right.

[01:01:43] No, I, I got asked to, I got asked to figure out how to drive a report for my boss today. And I went into it pretty sure I knew how to make it work only to discover that I absolutely cannot make it work and no one can make it work because. It does not work that way. It does not work that way. It's something that I, you're willing to try though. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's something I know how to force through in Excel.

[01:02:09] Like if you do an Excel dashboard, but this, this built in like this, this front web front end we use for our metric supporting was not going to cooperate that way. But in the course of trying to figure it out, I looked at, I looked under the hood at how I built this report. I don't know, two, two years ago now. And I haven't even looked at it since. Cause like I built it, I automated it.

[01:02:33] I put it on a, I put it on a schedule and I just, I'm not going to fool with it anymore until my boss says, Hey, I need you to take a look at this. Well, I looked under the hood at how I built it and I built it like a complete idiot. Hey, you learned something. Yeah. Immediately realized there was a much, much, much simpler way to build it. So instead of it taking 12 different logical statements to drive this population into this report, I got it down to two. Nice.

[01:03:03] Yeah. Replaced 11 logical statements with one. And anyway. Hey man. You know what though? Those 11 logical statements. Was it more than you needed? Yes. Did it get you what you needed in the end? Also? Yes. Yes. Yes. But it also made the report impossible to modify. Hence I went from 11 to one.

[01:03:29] Olivia, these are ballistic rated glasses and impact rated frames. Yeah. Well, I am wearing my eyebrow. I am slowly getting nearsighted. And when I finally have to bite the bullet and get glasses, I think I'm just going to suck it up and get basically safety glasses. Yeah. Because titanium framed Oakleys with ballistic rated lenses. It's the same price as regular glasses. Why? Why would you not? I mean, I do. I mean, I will have whiskey after work, but never at work.

[01:03:58] At work is very bad call. Power equipment and alcohol do not mix. I mean, I like to drink as much as the next guy. Well, maybe not as much as every next guy, but the I have whiskey bottles over a year old because I drink that seldomly. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I could take it. I could leave. It's like soda. Sometimes the soda is nice. Sometimes the whiskey is nice. Coffee, though, that isn't always. Coffee is mandatory. Yeah.

[01:04:28] Coffee is mandatory. But you know what? I could probably give it up if I felt like it, but I'm no quitter. Yeah. I'm kind of thinking, well, I'm kind of thinking we shelved this last topic for the night because otherwise we'll be here for again. 20 more minutes talking about it. Yeah, we could talk to we talk about it next time. Yeah. Well, like I said, I mean, we could talk about that a little more. A couple more related things.

[01:04:57] But like I said, I mean, that that was the discussion that I kind of want to have because like it's. It's pertinent and I don't think it's pertinent just to you and I because like every and it's not even like a preparedness thing. It like every every person out there that has ever learned a skill.

[01:05:15] Has to acknowledge it requires some kind of regular practice and upkeep to keep keep that skill sharp, but you most of those skills are not something you're going to practice every stinking day because we're adults and we have stuff to do. Yeah. You know, like I. That's just the way it is. I actually was was just thinking of myself today like, wow, I really need to get out to the gun range because it's been a while. But then I was like, yeah, but I've got like.

[01:05:44] Two birthday parties to do this weekend would like to. Cuddle up with my wife on the couch at some point and like downshift and, you know, take take a woosah moment before I have to go do go to back to work on Monday. And like, you know, we've got a Cypress survivals event coming up and then we've got the matter of facts camping trip coming up. So like.

[01:06:04] I am trying not to overextend myself and in ingratiate myself to too many extra tasks on the weekend so that I'll just burn myself down on both ends. But on the flip side of things, if you do too much, you get diminishing returns from everything you're doing. Yeah. Well, and that's that's the discussion I keep having to have with myself is like, what skills are most important? What can I afford to let it slide a little bit?

[01:06:32] But I will also say and we've talked about like preparedness related hobbies in the past. Like this is one of the great reasons to make to make your hobbies something you need to practice anyway, because it's like you don't mind. You don't mind practicing if it's fun. Yeah, because now it's a leisure activity. It's not a oh, I have to practice this stupid thing again. Yeah, I mean. Training with firearms. It is fun. It is fun.

[01:07:00] If it's not, you're a bad person. Be better. You're doing it wrong. You are. Do it faster with bigger guns. True, true. All right. Well, I guess we can go ahead and punt this one out the door. For anybody that's out there in the audience, like ask yourself that question about what skills need to be maintained. What do you put in park? How long can it be put in park?

[01:07:27] And at what point does putting it in park turn into serious neglect to the point where you might as well not learn the skill at all? And ask yourself that question because you're the only person that can answer it. Talk to you all another week, guys. We will probably talk about the Louisiana load shedding activity we had down here recently. And I'm hoping that by then we actually know a little more about it because at this point, all I can tell is that bureaucracy is bureaucrat. Yeah, more than likely. Yep. Well, good night, everybody.

[01:07:57] Matter of fact, it's out the door. Bye, y'all.