Katrina changed your BoB philosophy?

skunked said:
Would you mind telling me how one goes about getting a personal gas well? And how I could do so? I would make sure EVERYTHING I have was converted to nat. gas.
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Same way you get a water well, I guess: You dig down into it, tap it, and put a spigot or faucet on it. That requires that your property possess a reservoire of natural gas. That's what I think, anyway. I could be incorrect.
 
Unfortunately the water in NO is all brackish salt water. Lake Pontchatrain is not a lake but rather a bay that is connected to the Mississippi Sound. The only way to get drinkable water out of it is by reverse osmosis. These systems are available at local maritime stores, however thay are expensive and cumbersome.
 
When I was growing up, there were approximatley 50 wells on our land, many of which produced gas. None of it was uasable for domestic purposes without processing. There was one drillers shack on the place with a gas stove plumbed in to an oil well that also was putting out gas, and it was truly dangerous, because the flow was inconsistent and the raw gas was variable. Several times I damn near blew my head off lighting the oven in that thing. Condensate would accumulate in the lines, and you would get a slug of HIGHLY flamable liquid along with the gas.

To use the old, non-technical terms, there is 'sweet' gas, which is more or less pure methane, and there is 'sour' gas, which has any one of many impurities in it, up to and including hydrogen sulfide, the most poisonous naturally occuring substance on the planet.

My maternal grandfather was a tool pusher back in the day, pre-WWII, in west Texas. One of the rigs he was responsible for was in a poison gas field. He drove out to that rig one fine morning and found the entire drilling crew dead. They had hit an H2S pocket in the night, and it killed them all.

There is still, contrary to clean air laws and other environmental concerns, probably more gas just released into the atmosphere or flared than there is going into pipelines. We had one piece of land where a pipeline company put in an iron oxide 'sponge' intended to take the H2S out of the gas before going into the line. It lasted about 2 years before they decided it was not cost effective.

There is a Shell Oil field out around Monahans, Texas that to this day has road signs that say, "WARNING: POISON GAS"

So, if you are fortunate enough to live in a place that has 'sweet' gas, and if it produces at a constant rate and pressue, you are blessed. But it is the exception rather than the rule. And, by the way, it now costs about $50,000.00 to drill a shallow hole, i.e., 5000 feet or so. $100,000 is the benchmark for a producing hole, with completion costs.
 
I make my own "tags." I use my letter stamps (same as for stamping my tools - can be bought in hardware stores.)

I stamp on the brass rounds I buy at Ace hardware. BTW - these are great for dutch ovens, kids camping gear, etc.

Additionally, I have a... sign... I use to ID my stuff - kinda like a monogram, but more like a small logo. My kids and wife and many relatives recognize this.

One day, my son wanted something from my off-site storage shed - I told him to "drive down the second row on right an look for my mark on the right hand side of the row- it's just above the lock..."

He had no trouble finding it, and it wsa only 1 1/2" high and hidden by the lock (on purpose.)
 
More practical (and safer) than a gas well is a biogas setup to generate methane (requires access to quite a bit of organic waste and very little technology) Cooking gas is generated in some households in the third world using this technique. Methane was used, I believe, in large gas bags to power some vehicles durring WWI in Germany. Liquification does take a, relatively, large amount of equipment and power though.
No BOB changes here, no huricanes little chances for big earthquakes and a small chance of a tornado.
Enjoy!
 
In the case of Katrina, one thing that got left behind quite often was important papers. Deeds/Titles, banking info, insurance info, etc.

I am beginning to scan all of my important papers/documents onto the computer. I'll be putting them all on some sort of flash based drive and adding that to my BOB.
My other alternative is saving them on some online file storage site, but I'm always wary of their security.

Good idea? Bad idea?
 
Good idea. You could save to several flash drives, and use a safety deposit box or two. Or small fire proof safes.

Don't forget, you can (for a small fee) record documents at *any* county courthouse. Record the record number, and any time you need a copy, it's legally just as good as the original. I record all of my important documents in at least 2 courthouses separated by about 1000 miles in very different regions, so that a problem in one hopefully won't hit the other. Then all you need is your id, and you can retrieve your documents at any time.
 
Carthage said:
In the case of Katrina, one thing that got left behind quite often was important papers. Deeds/Titles, banking info, insurance info, etc.

I am beginning to scan all of my important papers/documents onto the computer. I'll be putting them all on some sort of flash based drive and adding that to my BOB.
My other alternative is saving them on some online file storage site, but I'm always wary of their security.

Good idea? Bad idea?
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In my experience, it's not such a good idea to scan important papers onto your computer. The computer is easy to break into, especially if you have DSL or similar, where you are online all the time. The reason I bring it up is that our daughter had all of the latest security on her computer and her personal information on her system and someone broke in and stole the information less than a week later. All of her credit cards were used, new ones issued to her in another country, her bank accounts accessed and she ended up with a big headache. The idea of recording your documents in a couple of areas is a good one.
 
longbow50 said:
In my experience, it's not such a good idea to scan important papers onto your computer. The computer is easy to break into, especially if you have DSL or similar, where you are online all the time. The reason I bring it up is that our daughter had all of the latest security on her computer and her personal information on her system and someone broke in and stole the information less than a week later. All of her credit cards were used, new ones issued to her in another country, her bank accounts accessed and she ended up with a big headache. The idea of recording your documents in a couple of areas is a good one.
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Man oh man. That's horrible to hear.
I'm not really thinking about storing them on my computer though. That could get wiped out just as easily as anything else. I'm thinking of something smaller like a flash drive or something that I can keep in my BoB and maybe even send one to another location.

But identity theft is a tough thing. There is probably going to be a lot of that going on in NOLA.
 
longbow50 said:
In my experience, it's not such a good idea to scan important papers onto your computer. The computer is easy to break into, especially if you have DSL or similar, where you are online all the time. The reason I bring it up is that our daughter had all of the latest security on her computer and her personal information on her system and someone broke in and stole the information less than a week later. All of her credit cards were used, new ones issued to her in another country, her bank accounts accessed and she ended up with a big headache. The idea of recording your documents in a couple of areas is a good one.
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The best idea is to store your personal information the old-fashioned, 19th-Century way: on paper. That's how I do it. Paper can be locked up nice and tight.

No matter how well digital data are secured, that information can be hacked and stolen.
 
Carthage said:
Man oh man. That's horrible to hear.
I'm not really thinking about storing them on my computer though. That could get wiped out just as easily as anything else. I'm thinking of something smaller like a flash drive or something that I can keep in my BoB and maybe even send one to another location.

But identity theft is a tough thing. There is probably going to be a lot of that going on in NOLA.
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True enough about losing it on system. My wife picked up a couple of those small, what do they call them, "memory sticks?", is that what you're calling a flash drive. New to me, but then, my best puter skill is turning it on, so..... :rolleyes:

We thought of using the sticks to house important information like documents and such, but if they get wet, or exposed to direct sun, heat, etc., they're defunct.

I agree with above that the old fashion way, paper, but in waterproofed envelopes, is best. At least for us. In a long term wide spread event, technology will be the first thing to go. Of course, if that type situation, would documents hold any weight anyways.
 
Couldn't you just e-mail it to yourself on Yahoo or something? So even if your
computer dies it will still be there in your e-mail account?
 
Burn CDs.
Scan, copy & burn with the internet disconnected. The wire unplugged.
Trash the original scans, empty the trash and reconnect online.
 
Burn CDs.
Scan, copy & burn with the internet disconnected. The wire unplugged.
Trash the original scans, empty the trash and reconnect online.
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Even that's not secure. anyone can pull "deleted" data off a drive if they know how... assuming it hasn't been over written.

With a decent encryption, you've greatly reduced the threat of others getting the info. It's not fool-proof.. people can still crack it, but your average snot nosed 13 year old in cambodia isn't gonna do it.
 
cardimon said:
The best idea is to store your personal information the old-fashioned, 19th-Century way: on paper. That's how I do it. Paper can be locked up nice and tight.

No matter how well digital data are secured, that information can be hacked and stolen.
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I personally disagree with this idea. Paper is easily destroyed, stolen, or copied whether it is on your person or in a vault that is under water. Our agency digitally backs up and stores literally hundreds of thousands of reports a year, quite securely in our records management system. As for your home computer, install encryption using the likes of 428 blowfish, you can then encrypt your flash drives as well as your hard drives. Blowfish was designed by Bruce Schneier. It is a block cipher with 64-bit block size and variable length keys (up to 448 bits). Blowfish utilizes the idea of randomized S-boxes: while doing key scheduling, it generates large pseudo-random look-up tables by doing several encryptions. The tables depend on the user supplied key in a very complex way. This approach has been proven to be highly resistant against many attacks such as differential and linear cryptanalysis.
Your only danger then is a key logger, which is easily defeated using a flash drive log in program. The best part is all of this can be obtained for free. Just my $0.02.
 
gas wells depend on there being gas in the area, some places there is no shallow gas, only the deep wells, which can cost 150-250,000 to drill. the shallow sands here in western pa might go for 35-45,000 per well depending on how deep you need to drill, something like 3,000 feet or so. the gas is good to use, and many of the wells that are under pressure are plumbed into existing gas lines after running through a pressure regulator. a shallow well will usually produce enough for a couple of houses. depending on how much pressure it generates. a friend of mine whose family has been in the oil business for about 100 years or so has a well that has supplied his house for almost 100 years with gas, runs it through a regulator and pipes it to the house.

alex
 
Ebbtide said:
Use a separate computer that's never hooked up to the net?
:confused:
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Rather then dump a grand, or more on a new system. Get a file wiper. Norton Systemworks is a relativity cheap example.

What it will do, is write 0's to all of the free space on a drive. then redo it, this time with 1's.. Then 1's AND 0's, then it deletes the data.

So if someone does crack your drive, or hacks your system, all then can possibly retrieve from "deleted" files is the 1's and 0's the file wiper overwrote them with.
 
for regular hackers, that should be enough....but, it doesn't wipe your swap file!

BC wipe will write 1's and 0's and wipe your swap file

if what you have is super sensitive, you'll nedd to wipe it 5 or 6 times.
 
Can't remember the name off the top of my head, but several free software packages will overwrite several dozen times. Helps in getting rid of any residual magnetic fields, I guess.
 
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