Automotive Maintenance and Repair Now and After a Collapse

Just a little post on doing regular car/truck maintenance now so you don't have to do repairs later.

My jeep broke down around 10 PM last Wednesday. The idler pulley broke causing the serpentine belt to come off. Never found the old belt. I pulled over into a shopping mall parking lot that I was near and turned the car off. Luckily the engine didn't overheat nor did the battery go dead. On cars built from about 1990 on up a single belt is used to drive all of the engine accessories. Cars before the 1990's used more than one belt for all of the engine accessories. Not sure if the year given is correct, I'm just guessing.

My wife and I were on our way to pick up her uncle from work when this happened. My wife and I looked online for auto parts stores open late and according to the websites autozone, napa and oreilly's each had a store open 24 hrs. Come to find out after trying to call each one this was not the case. Apparently the 24 hr stores went to 10 PM closing times like all of their other stores respectively. There was another parts store across from the mall but they were closed till the next morning. My wife tried to call for a ride home but nobody was available. Since we didn't have a ride home we had to sleep in our jeep. Not the most comfortable night but we did it.

Got the jeep fixed the next morning after the parts store opened. 3 hours late for work but still made it. To keep this from happening to you please do regular car maintenance. Also keep spare parts in your vehicle even if you don't want to or know how to fix your car yourself. Duct Tape and bailing wire can only fix so many things and can only last so long before you have to really fix the problem.

I suggest keeping the following parts in your car: radiator hoses both upper and lower, belt(s), water pump, alternator, idler pulley, and tensioner pulley . Some of these parts you may not need but once in the life of your vehicle however having them on hand could keep you from being stranded overnight.

From Pandemic to Epidemic

I'm writing this article because I just learned yesterday that my brother has meningitis. He is doing good so far and the infectious disease doctor believes it is bacterial meningitis. The doctors believe they caught it in time but not sure until they see how the treatment goes. He apparently had strep throat last week and it got worse from there so he wound up in the hospital where they found out about the meningitis. Hopefully he gets better soon.

My question to you is: How long do you think it will take for a local pandemic to become a worldwide pandemic?

My answer to the question I just posed is one week or less. The reason I say this is because of the way we live today. Yes we have better sanitation that in decades past but our modes of  and speed of our transportation systems can spread a disease worldwide within 1 week or less

Right now we have Ebola flaring back up in Africa and the WHO (World Health Organization) is having a tough time containing it. That disease may spread to the U.S.

Depending on the disease contracted and the person first contracting a particular disease several people could become infected by the original carrier and non of them, original carrier included, may be showing signs of the infection before enough people have been infected to cause the disease to spread from pandemic to epidemic proportions. Again this depends on the diseases incubation period and each persons reaction to that disease after contracting it.

In the case of my brother everyone he has come in contact with in the past week needs to be treated just in case they may be carrying Meningitis. If just one person refuses to be treated and is infected they can cause the meningitis to keep spreading even though they are not showing any signs of the disease.

I didn't write this to cause a panic but to let people know that diseases can spread around the world very fast. If you feel sick and it doesn't go away after 2 or 3 days seek medical attention. This could at the very least save your life but could very well save someone else's life.

3 types of gardening

Even though winter is still here and spring seems far away you may want to start thinking of getting your gardening started.

When I say thinking of getting your garden started I mean the following:

*take a look at any garden tools you have and make sure they are in good condition

*look at your garden plot and see what if anything you may need to amend the soil based on what is currently growing in that area. Certain plants grow in certain types of soil, while others won't grow in that same soil.

*take stock of any seeds you have and order and look thru catalogs for this year and try a new or different variety of fruit or vegetable

*for those growing plants in containers get some potting soil  and verify the plants you have will grow in that type of potting soil. If not amend as necessary. Not all potting soils are as good as claimed. If you want you can make your own soil, just Google d.i.y. soil or make your own soil.

The above info is for 2 types of gardening. conventional and container.

The third type of gardening I suggest is aquaponics. This is similar to hyrdroponics but instead of using man-made liquid chemical fertilizers aquaponics uses fish poop to fertilize the plants. You are basically raising freshwater fish and instead of filtering the waste you use that waste to feed your plants. Just as with plants needing the proper soil PH the fish need the proper water PH to thrive.
As long as you can keep the fish healthy your plants should be health.

With the above being said about aquaponics there are certain garden plants that can't be grown aquaponically. Do a Google search on aquaponics for more info. Just remember that aquaponics uses electricity.

P.S. Container gardening and Aquaponics can be grown year round. 

Hopefully with these three types of gardening you can be reasonably guaranteed of having something to eat at the end of the growing season.

not posting in a while

Sorry for not posting in a while. I have been trying to earn money and pay bills. Basically go to work, come home tired, go to sleep and then start that process over again.

I have also had writers block. Because of this I would like you my readers to help with article suggestions or to write an article for me to post.

Thank you to all my current readers. Thank you also in advance for any suggestions or articles to help me keep this blog going.

Sincerely,

The Dependent Independent

P.S.  Hopefully in the next couple of months I will be building garden tables for my Mother-in-Law to use. I will do a post on this when I get them started.

Job Found

I finally found a job thru an temp agency. I actually get to use my educational knowledge and earned degree in this job. I'm putting together electrical/electronic control panels for various industries. So far this job has been great. For those of you out of work for a while you might consider going thru a temp agency. You would be surprised at how much some companies actually want to pay you even though you are a temp.

Just wanted to put this out there to let readers know there are still good paying jobs out there.

No Guarantees

Just to let you know I am now a casualty of Obama. I just lost my job yesterday. Hopefully this is only temporary. Your job just like mine is not 100% guaranteed.

2 Articles On The Future Of Medical Care

Here are 2 articles on what we can expect in the future regarding medical care, particularly in the E.R. Read both articles in their entirety and give me your opinions on each.

The first article link is from drudgereport.com

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/10/20/hospitals-face-whole-new-world-under-health-law/3078353/

This deals with how the government will pay for medical care in the future. The article basically says that the government will pay the hospitals based on quality of care not quantity of patients served.

The second article is from survivalblog.com

http://www.survivalblog.com/2013/10/-surviving-the-er-by-j-in-montana.html