A New Toy

• 26 Aug 2010
• Jayce
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I will never hide the fact that I am a geek, a gadget geek in the scope of this post.  I love playing with various “toys” and trying to find the perfect tools for whatever need I have.

Image Taken Straight From ThinkGeek

So this week, one of the shiny things to catch my attention is found over on the ThinkGeek Gadgets site, It’s a key-sized multi-tool, for a decent price.  Now I’ve checked out lots of ‘key’ tools the past few years.From constantly watching for a chance at picking up an Atwood Ti, to usually crappy quality key-tools that are way too clunky to want to carry on my limited keychain.  Previously I was leaning towards the Gerber Artifact (via ThinkGeek:
Gerber Artifact Pocket Keychain Tool) (Which I still wouldn’t mind, for sure).  It’s a nice tool, but still isn’t quite the same idea of this.  While the artifact tries to be another knife, this tool attempts to be all the various non-blade tools from your swiss-army knife.

This however beats out those crappy ones (not the atwoods though, of course).  It’s thin, not wider than a normal key.  Nor is it bulky, sticking out wrong.  It has several helpful functions which are actually labeled to help jog the memory.  It’s the perfect choice when I don’t want to carry my swiss army style knife, but would rather keep a single blade on me.  I don’t lose access to the common tools this way.  Hey, it’s probably safe to take on a plane too!.

Also well thought out, is that it actually wraps onto your existing keys, so it covers the sharper edges, and doesn’t rip up your pocket so much.

Link: Keychain Multi-Tool

Alternatives:
These keys always seem like they would open up in my pocket at the wrong time :(

The artifact, cool, but not sure about that blade.  Like the pry-bar aspect.

New Design

• 06 Jul 2010
• Jayce
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I’d like to give a huge thanks to author Wade (anavidesign.com) who has given his time to help provide us with a new site design!  For those reading this from Facebook, RSS, or other means, please head on over to the site and check out the kicking new design.  And if you need work for your site, well check him out, since I’m sure he wants to buy some more preps :)

And for those drooling over that new amazing logo in the corner, we’ll have some links soon to get it on various items.  I know I’ve already put it on a bumper sticker on my truck, as well as a t-shirt; and it looks great.

Shelf Reliance Developer Job

• 18 Jun 2010
• Jayce
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Our friends over at Shelf Reliance have been expanding, and they need another person to help work on their websites.  Of course, a company like theirs would be interested in the type of person that follows a prepper blog like this, so they asked me to pass this along.  If the skills fit, please contact them.

Shelf Reliance is looking for an experienced programmer to work on our company’s website.

(more…)

Shelf Reliance Special Event

• 15 Apr 2010
• Jayce
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Our friends over at Shelf Reliance (the people that make the amazing roller shelving all the authors here love so much) are having a special event this weekend, that I’ve been meaning to post for a while now.  You see, they’ve been selling awesome shelving, and a great line of food storage products for a while now, but they have decided to open up another channel for sales.  Yes, they are starting up their own “Home Parties“.

For those interested in maybe making a little money, or getting even better deals on some of the best, locally made food storage products, it might be in your interest to check it out.  It’s open to everybody, and they’ll be giving demo’s for people interested in how to use many of their products.

From their blog announcement:

The goal of Shelf Reliance Home Parties is to share the vision of preparedness and food storage with people across the country. There’s a certain sense of accomplishment that comes from building your own future while helping others prepare for theirs, and Shelf Reliance Home Parties is the perfect opportunity to experience this for yourself. Our great-tasting food and competitive pricing have made us a leader in the industry, and this new business opportunity will allow you to benefit from our history of excellence. Whether you’re interested in a career with Home Parties, want to host a few parties here and there, or just want to see what it’s all about, we invite you to attend and hope you’ll stay to chat!

When: Saturday, April 17th.

Place: Golf Clubhouse at Thanksgiving Point in Lehi, Utah

Time: 1:00-5:00 PM (1-3 Open House, 3-5 Launch Presentation)

Admission: absolutely free

Humor: Mormon Hoarder Friends

• 19 Feb 2010
• Jayce
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Ok, Here in Utah we like to poke fun at our own dominant religion (of which I am a member).  One blogger had a great post today that I had to share with the Prepper community.  For those who are LDS, it’s great to laugh at ourselves a little.  For those not LDS but preppers too, well you’ll realize that your ‘oddities’ fit in pretty well with us.  Head on over and read ‘The Jet Set’ take on Why You Should Have a Mormon Friend: Hoarder Edition

For anybody who does have questions, come on back and read more.  And yes, the LDS Church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) does actually teach to have at least a 3 month storage of regular use items, and has consistently taught that you should have 1-2 years of more long-term storage.

Losing your storage to disaster

• 04 Feb 2010
• Jayce
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Photo Via Flickr User un_photo

Recently we had a reader ‘Lonnie’ write in with the following excellent question, that I’ve heard asked in other forms too;

Was thinking about the earthquake in Haiti, and if that happened along the wasatch front. I live in Utah county in a 2 story home with a basement. My food storage is in my basement. What if the earthquake totally destroys my house and my food storage is buried under the rubble of what was my house? It won’t do me any good when I can’t GET TO IT! Any suggestions on mitigating that problem?

Well Lonnie, it looks like I’m finally going to get around to addressing your question, and hopefully in a helpful manner. (more…)

Social Preppers

• 21 Jan 2010
• Jayce
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Interested in a little more discussion with the preppers here, and elsewhere?  In our association with the American Preppers Network, you now have several ways to interact with other people that like to talk preparedness.

Forum

For people interested in forum discussions, we have two available places to talk.  The APN forums will allow you communicate with the other utahpreppers, as well as other state prepper groups.  Also available is the new LDS Preppers, a similar concept but geared for the LDS readers.  By keeping with the rest of the groups, you can participate not only in the Utah discussions, but also any other regions, or specialty topics you wish.  It’s a great resource to communicate with other preppers, without having having to come out of your well-stocked mountain retreat (ok, a little humor there).  If you need to understand a little bit more about what a forum is, check out the wikipedia description.

Chat

If you like real time discussions, you can now join us in our chat rooms.  These chats are accessible to computer novice, as well as the geeks among us.  For the novice, you can easily go HERE and join the chat rooms in your browser (no software to install).  Just click the link, and you will be prompted for a nickname to use, then it’ll log you in and you will have a page to  There are several rooms available, the most important ones being the #preppers, and the #utahpreppers rooms.  Chat rooms are an ‘always-open’ type of room where you can go in and interact in real-time.  Just clicking that link will open a page with a small bar on the top that lists which rooms you can listen in (just click on one to see the activity in that room).  On the right hand side will be a list of people currently in the room, and at the bottom, you can type in a message, and just hit enter for everyone to get it.

For the Geeks, we’re all using the rizon IRC network, and you may use any IRC client (such as XChat, WeeChat, or others) to connect.

Crossroads Gun Show: January Meetup

• 06 Jan 2010
• Jayce
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Yes, it’s time again for a Crossroads of the West gun show (Saturday January 9, 2010), and I know several authors and readers here were planning on going.  With that in mind, I figured it’s a great time to have another meetup.  With this I think we should set two times, one earlier in the show to meet up inside, for those that want to discuss things in the show, and a second time, meeting for lunch. (more…)

Wrapping Up, With Blankets

• 20 Nov 2009
• Jayce
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As snowflakes begin to frequently drift down, my wife begins her odd seasonal transformation from warm, to cold-blooded being.  I’m not sure how many of you are familiar with this process, but it is the true mark of seasonal change around my home.  Appendages seem to have ice permanently on them, and thus have an odd habit of always finding their way to me, which is cause to no small amount of distress.

With that in mind, we have discussed what else we can do in my family to increase our ability to stay warm inside (because my wife sure doesn’t want to go out).  Beyond just comfort in the dark months, my southern CA native wife is petrified of the idea of being without power/heat, and our ability to deal with that. (more…)

Reminder: Driving in Snow

• 28 Oct 2009
• Jayce
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With the recent storms, and onset of Winter conditions here in Utah, I felt it appropriate to send out a little reminder of things people should do to prepare for winter driving.  Please prepare before the storms come, so that you can be ready for the enjoyable experience that is Utah roads in the Winter. (more…)

Book Bomb – How To Survive The End Of The World As We Know It

• 25 Sep 2009
• Jayce
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This is a little reminder for those that might have already heard, or a great intro for those that haven’t.  James Wesley Rawles, Author of the renowned survivalblog, as well as the novel Patriots (which we reviewed here before) has a new book coming out shortly.  It’s been available for pre-order for a little bit now, but everybody was requested to wait until today (9/25/09) to actually place pre-orders.  This makes a big difference to companies such as amazon, which use the purchase velocity in their rankings. (more…)

Liquid or Powdered Pectin

• 24 Sep 2009
• Jayce
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This year has been a big experiment in new canning recipes, and foods.  In doing that, my wife especially has been learning a lot as she has stretched beyond some of the basic recipes we’ve used in previous years.

Well, over on her own blog, my wife made a comment about something she’s learned this year.  Go check out what she’s learned on the difference between liquid and powdered pectin.

And boy has she been using that a lot this year.  I’ve been grabbing pictures to post up here, hopefully I can get to it soon.