NINJA SHOE 2
*note: free books, two in a series https://amzn.to/2rxfxv9 and then https://amzn.to/2KR21Lr
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Yesterday’s summation, as
I was busy stockpiling plastic shoes, unbeknownst to myself the company shrunk
the shoe dimensions and I now own seasonal back-up shoes rather than year round
shoes ( the space between the top and bottom was shrunk which effects whether
you can wear socks or not ). This is
little different than other quality issues ( such as, just discussed, how you
need to stock twice as many nail clippers due to crap quality ). What got my attention was I began to wonder
how many lower quality items snuck into my stockpiling, a stealthy little ninja
thief.
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This isn’t about
entropy. That is a completely separate
issue. Eventually, everything
degrades. The only answer for that is
rotation, and for those items not rotated, doing without items too susceptible
to degradation. My concern here is an
understandable confusion, as you stocked items you believed to be pre-quality
drop and then they turn out not to be up to snuff. The best example I can think of is Wal-Mart
food. We’ve all noticed that the edible
items section at Wal-Mart has turned into a death lottery.
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It is one thing, Sam
Walton’s retarded inbred descendents, to sell me a can of spray oil that has a
faulty propellant and I end up with half the liquid left in the can,
unusable. You can look up YouTube hacks
on re-pressurizing the can with a bicycle pump ( the fact that enough of these
cans were sold to prompt a video being made is telling in itself ). It is bad enough that your can of condensed
milk is barely condensed and should be called “NON condensed can milk”. But when a generic Spam has faulty tops and
cracks open during storage, that is flat out dangerous.
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So dangerous, then I have
to wonder if you aren’t doing other dangerous stuff as you panic and go full on
retard screwing customers to stay in business.
Are you buying human consumption rejected food, changing the label and
repacking it? Are you stuffing more
sawdust soaked in Mad Cow diseased blood into your Vienna sausage? Are you buying more McDonald’s fake foods and
putting into your frozen dinners? It is
hard to trust any food from Wal-Mart anymore.
But then the new question becomes, did I buy their food early enough?
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Let’s say you noticed the
quality decrease around 2009, right as the economy was collapsing. Your last Wally storage food purchase was
2009. Was it just the decrease in
automotive spray pressure, just the drastic reduction in thread count in
clothes, just the industry leading adoption of sub par material in footwear…
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( sadly, I DID have to go
back to Wal-Mart for new slider shoes. I
went to the store wearing thick socks and crocs so I could easily test the
shoes there-and only one type had enough foot clearance to be worth
buying. I can’t believe some Wally
plastic shoes are now better than Family Dollar’s. And don’t worry, I won’t buy a duplicate pair
without testing those also. Lesson
learned )
*
…or just only selling
super crap quality bike parts, or did they start cheaping out on food at the
same time also? Minor pollution is no
big deal. We are all eating Fukishima tuna,
and one even doubts that food grade plastic is completely safe. We breathe in crap all the time, drink
bleach, etcetera. But what if the
Wal-Mart food goes one level beyond minor pollutants? I bought ALL my food at Wal-Mart for Y2K (
besides the wheat, obviously, as they didn’t carry any at the time as far as I
was aware ). If the food had been crap
rejected by McDonald’s back then, it would have had a serious effect on my
health.
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But my point is, you can
only vaguely and incompletely time when a company started screwing you. I have no idea which Payless Shoes brand
boots are “five year” shoes and which ones are “five MONTH” shoes. I think I dodged that bullet since I went
many years between buying the BOGO sale, but I won’t know until I crack that
storage box and try them out ( the reason I haven’t worn the three pairs in
storage is because I’m pretty confident they are good quality and I’m saving
them until all the crap shoes are gone-I’m confident they will last longer than
me ).
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Do you know WHEN Remington
ammunition started cutting back on quality?
If their rimfire was always known to contain a small percentage of
misfires, what is to say there aren’t now more?
As in, dangerously more. After
all, the company might be going bankrupt and those are the companies that go
out in an orgy of customer sodomy ( and to be clear, this is only conjecture
about Remington, not experience or a report from others ). If your once favorite gun maker is now
selling crap, did you buy before that shift ( the Brazilian one, perhaps
)?
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There isn’t a whole lot of
solution to this, other than multiple suppliers of everything and always
following the One Is None rule. You don’t
JUST have one jacket, in case of faulty thread and fabric, you have other types
of jackets, other brands, from other sellers, plus sweaters and thermal
underwear and padded shirts and etcetera.
In winter clothing, I have redundancy out the wazoo, and it was all done
on the cheap so I could stock deep.
Freezing is not an option. You
need to apply this across the board. For
instance, if I had relied solely on my made in India M1 Garand ammo belt
reproduction for all my ammo portability needs, I would have been in trouble as
while not a total piece of crap it still has some issues.
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It is important to keep in
mind that most of lifes certainties have been for some time rather
uncertain. We no longer have a rule of
law, America is no longer independent on anything including food
production. The century of Dollar
supremacy is already done. Any promise
for the future is already a lie ( pension, anyone? ). And, mass production factory goods are no
longer affordable and good enough. You
cannot count on them any more. At
all. Adjust you plans accordingly.
END ( today's related link https://amzn.to/2rltCwk )
* By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there
Couple points:
ReplyDeleteGet a large container of corn oil AND buy a quality squeeze sprayer. Get the sprayer at Lowes or HD or wherever but make sure it's the duck one. You know, the sprayer part is white and yellow and is sort of shaped like a ducks head. I think it might have a blue twist tip. That aerosol shit is poison, make your own. Yeah, you have to pump the bitch. sigh Get 2, 1 for olive oil.
My experience shows that this "cutting back" is across the board. Last year my wife bought 2 pairs of shoes from LL Bean that she likes and under my recommendation a couple weeks ago she ordered 2 more. They ain't the same. Don't remember what the issue was but it was bad enough she sent em back.
Here's your hot tip O' the Day:
You know the over the top irritation when a waist button breaks on your pants or shorts? Take a close look at buttons these days. The space between the holes in the button are microscopic, they HAVE to fail. They were designed to fail by way of lack of structural integrity.
I went to Hobby Lobby and bought a bunch of metal buttons but the idea of sewing them on was unbearable, so I went searching and I found this:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00EIOLPV2/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
A 6 pack, for $6.99 plus free prime shipping, for the type of closures like you find on jeans. The metal stuff. I had 6 pairs of shorts stacked up here in my office waiting on repair and I installed these and instantly my wardrobe doubled. It was like christmas in May!
Here's the thing with those closure devices. Notice the back part, the nail, it's kinda small in diameter and could pull through the hole in the cloth. Before I joined the 2 pieces I used small and thin washers to widen that nail head, maybe 1/2" wide.
Also, I saw complaints that pounding the 2 pieces together split the shaft. They were concussion breaks. I put blue tape on my vice jaws and slowly squeezed the pieces together. I haven't seen a failure yet. I imagine you can use these little pieces of magic for all buttons, just be careful when widening the hole in the cloth. (maybe use 2 washers, 1 in front and 1 in back?) I used an exacto knife.
Lastly, I have never seen, or heard of, a failure with Federal brand ammo. Yeah you'll pay a little more sometimes, but you'll get to use more.
Get a 5 gallon bucket and lid, and a big round oatmeal box. Roll up a piece of duct tape and put it on the bottom of the oatmeal box and stick it right in the middle of the bottom of the bucket. Now fill up the space around the oatmeal and bucket wall with old bolts, nails, metal riff raff. When the riff raff gets level with the top of the oatmeal spray the riff with a heavy layer of spray adhesive. Very heavy. Let dry. Now, you can slide a 1lb propane can down in that oatmeal. Maybe 2. Tear apart an old regulator so that it can hold a rifle bullet, screw it onto the propane tank. The bullet should be facing down toward the tank. You can get a battery powered digital timer at the dollar store and glue it on the top of the bucket lid after you drill a wire hole in it. You can figure out the rest. Or you can use a wireless remote from a cheap dollar store kids toy. Spary paint the bucket black, or use a black bucket, and sit it on the perimiter of your property line in dense foliage so it can't be easily seen. Set em about 20 feet apart.
Damn, dude, you're on a roll today!
DeleteI'm not certain, but I think the Walton clan may have sold out completely from Walmart. If so, it's now completely at the mercy of a CEO and stock-holders.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't heard one way or another, but I would imagine that since we can't tell the difference it just means they ran it the same as any other corporates do. Ride it like a rabid pony to the glue factory.
DeleteJim, you are spot on with observational notes here. Diversity in product-gear (don't work with people) will help to mitigate quality issues and failures. There has been no escaping the corporate reductions in quality (they are mearly trying to stay alive themselves) for decades now. I have used surplus buys from likes of sportsman's guide etc. to stockpile foreign nation military type gear that has better than corporate quality and "last century give a damn" materials and constructions. Minions should also bi-annually or so do a "pull out and reinventory/re-pack/re-staged for evac of their gear. This action will help to re-assess usability issues and re-prioritize their kit and battle plans. Minions really can't just shop, put upon a shelf, be done with prepping, then go make popcorn and watch t.v. until the sky lights up at night or mushroom clouds cover the horizon.
ReplyDeleteI don't know about decade(s) worth of quality decline. I'd say merely ten years. True, Wally brought in lesser quality, but it matched the price drop so you didn't lose anything in the deal. A $20 camp stove used daily still lasted five years. Impressive by most standards. Not a lifetime item, but great for the price. I don't cry for corporations. Nobody forced them to borrow money to the point interest payments exceeded profits. They drank the Growth Uber Alles grape Kool-Aid.
DeleteYeah,it has been decades worth of decline.
ReplyDeleteMarlins made before Remington bought them out had suffered compared to pre-64s, let alone 1970s models. Same with Winchester, Ruger, S&W.
Herman boots(remember those?) turned to junk in the late 80s, Blue jeans use to stand up by themselves and now they're soft. Craftsman, do we really need to talk about them?
Another example is Rocky boots. I favored them over others because of my 15 sized feet and they were one of the best brands of boots made. I bought 2 dozen boots for Y2k and stuck them away. Pulling them out of the last 5 years and the thin plastic cover over the leather has completely deteriorated and the 3 Arctic snow boots?
The rubber bottoms completed rotted away.
All food has been turning into trash since the mid-80s.
I'm sure you're right. If I think about it, I didn't really buy much past minimal clothing, books and computers through the 80's. I would have entered into the already subpar practices. In my case, subpar was normal, went to complete trash the last decade. My only brushes with crap quality in the late 80's and early 90's I just blamed the companies as they did seem one-off's. But I did pretty much live my "one duffle bag move" for many years and was a bit of a minimalist until right before Y2K. Been collecting crap since then. Perhaps a lot of prepper equipment/cold weather gear being military surplus also skewed my perceptions.
Delete