The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Matter of Facts: Keeping Sharp, or Sitting in Park

Episode Date: June 2, 2025

http://www.mofpodcast.com/http://www.pbnfamily.comhttps://www.facebook.com/matteroffactspodcast/https://www.facebook.com/groups/mofpodcastgroup/https://rumble.com/user/Mofpodcastwww.youtube.com/user/philrabhttps://www.instagram.com/mofpodcasthttps://twitter.com/themofpodcasthttps://www.cypresssurvivalist.org/Support the showMerch at: https://southerngalscrafts.myshopify.com/Shop at Amazon: http://amzn.to/2ora9riPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/mofpodcastPurchase American Insurgent by Phil Rabalais: https://amzn.to/2FvSLMLShop at MantisX: http://www.mantisx.com/ref?id=173*The views and opinions of guests do not reflect the opinions of Phil Rabalais, Andrew Bobo, Nic Emricson, or the Matter of Facts Podcast*The boys regroup to talk about Phil's trip, then pivot into a phylosophical discussion about how one balances constantly keeping a skill sharp with having to put it on the shelf to focus on something else or deal with the usual pressures of adulting.Matter of Facts is now live-streaming our podcast on our YouTube channel, Facebook page, and Rumble. See the links above, join in the live chat, and see the faces behind the voices. Intro and Outro Music by Phil Rabalais All rights reserved, no commercial or non-commercial use without permission of creator prepper, prep, preparedness, prepared, emergency, survival, survive, self defense, 2nd amendment, 2a, gun rights, constitution, individual rights, train like you fight, firearms training, medical training, matter of facts podcast, mof podcast, reloading, handloading, ammo, ammunition, bullets, magazines, ar-15, ak-47, cz 75, cz, cz scorpion, bugout, bugout bag, get home bag, military, tactical 

Welcome back to the Matterfags Podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network. We talk prepping guns 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 Raveley. Andrew and Nick are on the other side of the mic and here's your show. 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

so that we can shoot some content and I can redo that intro video. I mean, it's served us well, but it's time for an update. True, true. I mean, first of all's served us well, but it's time for an update. True. True. I mean, first of all, we have a third cohost. Second of all, the second cohost 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, I'd say it's a labor of love, but mostly it's, um, 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 out of control i would call that bluff yeah so anyway my name is phil welcome back a matter of facts podcast nick the disappointer phil is on the other side andrew is 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 monk. 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. Well, I don't know. I did see the Ace Ventura movie 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. Raggle, fraggle, I'm sorry, but see, what happened was last week was prerecorded, and normally I'm really good about sneaking in right at the very beginning, which by the way, this is live, thank God. 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. 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 already off the rails three and a half minutes in admin work Andrew's been accounted for the patrons couple of them were 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 link to the social. 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. Man, use the tools. So my memory is crap, but I'm pretty good at pre-planning sometimes and

Cypress survivalist if you're in set 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 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. And coming up shortly, June 14th, two weekends from now actually, is going to be a lunch and learn. So we're gonna get together,

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, honestly, I kind of enjoy having a small group, but it's gonna be just a chance to like chill, hang out, eat some burgers, BS, and learn a couple of things. Cause like I had a lot of people,

I had a lot of people give me some soft criticism about some of the coursework I've put together for our first Cyber Survivors event, and they wanted more information, but I can only fit so much in like 55 minutes Yeah, it was meant it was meant to be like an intro to everything sort of event wasn't it? Yeah, and then that's that's kind of the Not just with cyber 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 but then on 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? So it's the constant back and forth of like, how far to the esoteric can I go without completely losing everybody?

But it'll keep the topic interesting. I think at times, giving esoteric is important because 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, for instance, your- Like a satellite mount? Yes, like your satellite mount. Phil has gone extra nerdy.

You know how we were joking before that it wouldn't be long till you would end up with a satellite dish reading 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 the low Earth low low Earth orbiting Noah satellites 19 in particular and Not two 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.

Yeah, I think it was I figured it'd be less than a month. And then when I told Stewart, Stewart said the same thing, like, yeah, I figured it'd be about two weeks. I was like, damn, both of y'all. I was debating on whether or not to start looking for satellite dishes on marketplace to send you. So here's here's kind of the thing. Oh, thank you, Jeff. I'm going to try to pronounce your last name because it's more consonants than the law should allow. I wouldn't say I went full hamtard. See, like at the end of the day,

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 in a box next to me that needs to be assembled and then I have to I Don't know do a lot of reading and action, 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, absolutely do not They're from an old Actually, I think they're from an old actually I think they're from an old CMM machine so they're pretty accurate stepper motors 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'd 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 pass over my head 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. I think the GOES-E satellite basically covers like this entire side of North America. It's a really impressive chunk of territory.

So to me, it's just one of those things. I would like the ability to have, 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 but that being said um 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. Joy of wonder. Enter.

Yeah. 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 go anywhere and it's way too late to change My stripes at this point sentenced for life So Got a couple little topics first of all as was pointed out earlier the whole reason why last week was pre-recorded was because I had to go on a trip for work and most of what I said I was going to do. I did.

I actually, so you remember during, during the lead up to 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 because like, you know, I was looking at the amount of water and rations I was carrying and I was like, I feel a little better a little bit more. Yeah, better than that. I mean, I packed, I packed a gym bag full of you know, extra curricular activities. I did bring my hiking pack, which just I had like you know one more ration, one more blowout kit, brought

a radio with me which ended up not being super useful but I figured it was intelligence gathering piece of nothing else. Well at the very least if you have a storm front coming through you can hit the Noah channels. 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. There was actually a time we were 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 was a watcher warning I always get these

two mixed up it's one that there is they're looking for them morning is one has touchdown okay well it was a tornado watch then because so we were literally driving down the interstate with Noah on so I could listen to hear like, you know I figure 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

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 ManoaAA if you're listening to it actively, 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 this system Because they can't figure out how to fix it 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. Oh, yeah tacos are amazing Yeah But anyway, so like there really wasn't a whole lot weird to the trip I did want to have to make an unscheduled detour on the way home because of

Memorial Day traffic which which had Interstate 12 in a complete snarl. But even though that's the pretty main interstate through your area, isn't it? Yeah. Well, 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 I think that I know it cuts all the way across Texas, the way to Florida it probably goes all the way to California 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 and it was interstate 10 or say 12 from there all the way to Florida interesting probably then yeah, I mean it 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 roast after start 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 pre-recorded that episode though, because I called it Thursday night. Literally, I jumped into YouTube just long enough to like drop a comment, say, hey guys,

you know, it's pre-recorded. 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. So there would have been zero opportunity to do that if it were not pre-recorded. Well, you know, that's that's why I kind of hinted that we should maybe do that because work trips,

work trips never go according to plan schedule wise. I mean, hell, we had one where we were just going into the city from from where the shop is located to look at a piece of equipment. And I was only supposed to take two and a half half hours including the trip there. It ended up six hours It was ridiculous supposed to be yeah Yeah, it never is Yeah, so like said I mean that 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 to get 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. I literally pulled out my laptop fired up the SDR software and I was just cruising around listening Yeah, listen, you know seeing what was out there fired up our TL 1090 so I was why I wasn't far from Barksdale Air Base and Bouger cities not far from Shreveport. So needless to say there were tons of aircraft in the area to watch. Absolutely 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 skill practicing using 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. It does everything for you. You've got to stand up that program. And then you've got to tweak a couple of settings. Cause 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 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 STR software. It's steps. And STR 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 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 I didn't have to like get a book or anything or watch a YouTube video But I did like sit there and chew on my molars for a second be like no what but I'm I supposed to head 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- within our our our friend group as probably neurodivergent to some degree or the other. Oh, that is, that is a whole other topic all by itself. But like, I know that my personal proclivities are I tend to like, something catches my interest. I friggin learn everything about a humanly

possible obsessively for weeks. I read everything I watch everything I consume all the information I figure out everything about it and Then I'm like, okay cool. Move on to the next thing sure, and I think it makes sense 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 there is there are benefits to that because you can pick up a new skill extremely rapidly

But like any skill it's perishable. And if you don't use it often enough, you're gonna 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. Not necessarily mission critical all the time. Yeah, but I need to cut you off.

Where were you going? 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. 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. It it's an answer that doesn't make sense sense if you stop think about 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 handgun

Semi-automatic rifles a are in a case, so it's two different operating systems to deal with, plus a bolt action, plus a shotgun. 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 every one of those skills equally topped off, which is why I don't try to do that. My bolt action is not a home defense firearm. It's basically a little bit... It's something I enjoy punching paper with. The AK is not a home defense firearm.

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 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 that individual platform is ranked according to What is the thing? I'm gonna go grab when there's a bump in the night? form is ranked according to what is the thing I'm going to go grab when there's a bump in the night. Yeah. And 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 even say it's like, what do I use the most often? Because that's not, if you have to use your home defense shooting skills on a regular basis, I advise you move like different calculus. 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 you know is in of itself a sliding scale because it is I mean you're gonna have that one dunderhead out there says you don't have to aim a shotgun 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 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. On the flip side of things, shooting handguns is reasonably universally acknowledged to be a little more difficult. 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 where you be concealed carry There's going to be lots of freaked out people running around that you really don't want to hit 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 greater dynamic nature of the environment

where you're more likely to be using it. 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. I mean, 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 dress or a wall,

whatever you got shooting down a straight hallway. Fantastic. That's not how it's gonna work at the gas station. That's not how it's gonna work in the quick mart. 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. 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 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 so optimally. Can it? No, that's not optional. I said 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 and in rather easy to access environment, perfectly fine. I use it once a decade, once every couple decades.

I don't do a whole lot of raw plumbing like that. Redo in a bathroom right now, run an 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. 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 Jag head to hem pants last weekend it's been a while since I've run a sewing machine and it shows oh yeah it does sewing I am Z 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 my mother tried to teach me multiple times me and so Do you know how there's that one human being you know that? They could be the most brilliant mother effort on this on the face of the planet But there's that one piece of equipment or technology. They just should not

piece of equipment or technology they just should not come into contact with because yeah something something about the the neural network and in inside their gray matter and just don't work doesn't work together okay that's me in sewing machines okay I was look 18 years old army taught me how to fix an eight and an eight and a half million dollar helicopter that wasn't that hard it's like a huge freakin sports car with a rotorhead on top of it It is um 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 that I am but different different different topic

I'm not stupid, but me and sewing machines do not get along now I can run a stitch by hand it's not gonna 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. 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?

Never learned how to TIG weld. I learned how to MIG. All right. I'd be curious. Another sad unfortunate story. 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. 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, 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 Because it's never it's maybe it's just the crossover of doing one too many things at a time with different appendages. I I don't know like the closest analogy I can draw for you is like I used to autocross and road race and a manual equipped vehicle. So like, you know, stick shift, steer wheel and three pedals. That was not too much for my brain to coordinate interest for some odd reason. So machines are made by the devil, though.

So I can run a hand stitch and I can make well. OK, passable and it metal sticks it passed the hammers the hammer test they passed the bend test what do you mean the bend test all right so what you do is you take two pieces of steel and you bottom up like this with bevels on all four you know the two sides you run a beater weld on one side beater weld on the other grind them off flat and then you bend it into a U and if the weld stays you passed the weld if the two pieces stick together and it bends into a U you're good the welds good. So the shop that taught me how to make weld

basically had me do a weld and then the guy took a five pound sledge hammer and took a whack at it and said If the weld gives it sucks It passed 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 gonna just go God no Not it. I mean it I'm not pressure vessel certified, but I welded up a couple of compressor tanks and they didn't fail at weld My welds are so ugly Helen Keller would freaking call me out on them. Okay, it's they're bad Hey, if it gets the job done, sometimes that's all you need though it dies

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 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 taken apart, put it back together the way it came apart

and so on and so forth. And for people that are really mechanically inclined, 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. I'm like, okay, I could see how it's built You know and I if I come from that comes 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 breaks last year I'm about to have to do struts and shocks on Gillian's Jeep. I'm gonna do Shocks on my truck before the end of the year like, you know I'm constantly working on two ten-year-old vehicles to keep them in tip-top shape because I expect these things to last a good long while So I'm kind even when I'm out doing vehicle maintenance, I'm fixing stuff around the house. Every time anytime something around this house coughs or acts crazy. I'm the one that gets goes and gets the the wrenches and the carb cleaner and the wd-40 and

everything else and be like, okay, it's we can do this 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 sell shirts that says I am the warranty Yeah, I feel that because I am the warranty service around here 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 firearms usage? 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 hand basket. 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

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 freaking shelf. Yeah. Some of that stuff hasn't moved in six months. Sure. 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, 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. Well, I think what you have to look at is what's the cost for failure. What's the cost for failure on any particular skill set and what level of failure are you

willing to tolerate? 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. First aid stuff, 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, so I was telling Nick right before we started, had to make that little hole right there for that post and that post pass through and that nut to fit on. And I did something dumb.

See, I am well aware that you were not supposed to hold on to a chunk of something with your hand, especially not bare handed, not trying to roll us thirdly, most of all, thirdly, most of all, not metal and try to drill a hole through it. I know this. I'm not stupid, but I promise you, everybody that's listening right now, every one of y you all has had this experience where you thought to yourself, I'll just be careful I can get away with it. 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 on to it and I actually I got away with it at first because I started off with a smaller drill bit to drill my pilot hole and that worked beautifully Then when I went to step up to the quarter inch bit It it once again proved that my ability to hold on to a chunk of whatever is vastly exceeded by my drills ability to rip it out of my hand and throw it across the room and Did that in the process and I?

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 link. Like, I swear it's not mine. 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 have little cuts and scars and nonsense all up and down my body. I've got scars on my stump, 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 eyepatch. As much as the powered vibe would be cool, I really really really don't want to lose an eye. Yeah and with what I do for work, bits of metal exploding 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. Safety glasses are a must. Yeah. Olivia said been so good about hearing protection. I am getting better at 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 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.

So after this happened, I did chuck the thing up in a vice and then blow the drill bit through it real fast I mean it was fine. It just 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, ah that gum it. I'm well, you know cheap metal It's not necessarily sharp 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. I actually wasn't, I was milking the trigger. Oh, okay. 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,

heddle 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. See the problem with sheet metal is 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 vise sheet metal is really terrible to drill through with traditional drill bits Do you have one of the step drill bits for sheet metal? I do I didn't grab it. Yeah, that would have been the way to go. Because it's a straight flute, so those straight flute drill bits made for cutting sheet metal, they don't tend to suck the sheet metal up into them.

That's why they're built that way. It's a better cutter geometry for thin material. Ooh, Jeff. That's why they're built that way. It's a better cutter geometry for thin material. Ooh. Jeff, granated apart and an end mill last night, 5,000 in damage. My personal record includes a 40 taper spindle. And then Olivia, basic tire repair, buffing stone shattered and destroyed my last pair of glasses.

I've never actually broken one of those in all the years I's working in tire shops. I've blown up a 12 inch grinding wheel. That got your attention didn't it? Well yeah, so when you're cutting stainless on an electromagnetic chuck sometimes the magnetism is not good enough and the part will decide to Up into the very grabby wheel So 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 taller than the part I was grinding. Grinders are made to take, you know, a few thousands at most, not a half inch.

It didn't like some horse fed. No, no. 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 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 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 Where were you when I needed you Nick? Yeah so off wheels on drummers 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 can literally like you know cutting cutting cutting sparks flying sparks flying sparks fly I mean all of a

sudden the first inclination I had that something was wrong was when I heard the drum roll suddenly I had a way up and I looked down and the disc is gone. Yep, that's what they do. Thankfully I was wearing iPRO and it didn't like fling a piece at my face or anything. But like you could just hear ting ting ting ting ting from little pieces hitting the ceiling,

hitting the walls, hitting my workbench. It was a pucker moment for sure. See, the terrible thing about those Dremels and the little cutoff wheels that come with them is they're incredibly thin, which is great for going through material. Fantastic. They are moving at a pretty high RPM, but the weakness of those grinding wheels is always torsional forces so if you put any side load on them at all the The they're doing 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 a 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. I mean fortunately they're not as bad as like some of the big four inch and eight inch cut off wheels or heaven forbid the big 12 inches. When those things grenade they kill people. I mean that's 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 Matt like they don't have a lot of momentum Right. They stop really fast. I mean it's

Well kind of ballistics 101. Mm-hmm. You know, I'm sorry lighter bit really lightweight thing doesn't penetrate very far. No, no it doesn't. But yeah, the Dremels have always kind of skeeved me out with cutoff wheels just because there's no guard on there at all. They really need to figure out some kind of guard system for those cutoff wheels. Just because of how often those cutoff wheels pop.

Yeah, I mean, my only my only bit of brilliance with using those things 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. That's better. You know, Yeah, better. You know, you got to use tools sometimes. But leave your safety guards on when you know, all the time. Can you just like cover your eyes like

you know, the redneck welder and just do that? And you can. It's not safety squints are not effective. safety squints aren't No effective. No, they're not They're not effective at all My grandfather is eyes have changed colors a couple of times because of using safety squints and getting bits in his eyes You'll appreciate this. So when I remember I told you I I learned how to use a mig welder Mm-hmm. Well, this was in 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. Okay, so I uh, I put on the whole helmet. Thank god I put on the um, the windbreaker that was kept, you know, on top of the bottle, like, you know, for covering up and everything. And then I did my first little bit of MIG welding wearing shorts and flip flops. That got exciting quick, didn't it? a slag on me, but you know, mig welders is like holding a little portable sun, right? So I had some very, very intense and interesting looking tan lines on my feet and my thighs the next day. That'll happen. So, um, 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 and 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 even know why the hell cuz 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 I'm saying like it wasn't. Yep. It wasn't like I was supposed to be a work wearing Flip-flops and t-shirt stop by to take care of something quick. Yeah something like that But that's that's always when stuff like that happens, man

It's always more 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. 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 a perfect reason why I try to keep up on my first aid knowledge. And I try to keep up on used to tourniquets.

I don't really have a good way to practice wound packing. I haven't invested in any of that equipment. Do you have some friends who would also like to practice wound packing. I haven't invested in any of that equipment. Do you have some friends who would also like to practice wound packing close to you? Possibly. Cause my sister found on Amazon, like 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 and I forget what the air thing is. But it's it's like a little interactive. What the investment is, send me it if you can. And we'll see what the startup cost is and something like, yeah, I'll see if I can find it. If not, I'll ask my sister. She brought one out for a cypher 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 do you really have to crank down and make somebody stop

bleeding? Uh, 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. 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, you know, I already brought it up first aid. I do not feel comfortable allowing my first aid skills to atrophy simply because of what I do for work. I mean, it we have had fortunately not in my term of employment, but we have had someone lose a hand at the shop. I work at whoof

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 You're not gonna 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 because in most cases, in almost every case, my primary communications tool is probably gonna 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 I... I mean we're gonna 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 the channels I need into that radio if need be. I can dial channels around, I can dial up a receiver, I can dial up the up-down steps for 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 chats before I give. Go for it. So RaggleFraggle has difficulty spelling apparently. Coordinatikin. And then finally he got it coordination. Hand-eye coordination. That's fair. Hand and that coordination is very important

So, um, so here's I'm gonna say I'm gonna say the skill that I'd be in the list will and at roof Let atrophy would probably also be communications which sounds weird things now. I've been on this enormous communications kick lately, but you know 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, grabbing the radio to talk to people was the last priority I had. had. Sure. You know, 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 we had the sun off of our heads, made sure we were hydrated, got the water going,

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. 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 I guess what I'm saying is 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 I 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 where I'm bored 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 are some things that are more time critical.

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 the atrophy, and it's probably going to sound like an eye roll, I would say emergency management. that I cannot allow the atrophy and it's probably gonna sound like a an eye roll I would say emergency management Sure, that is one 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 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, do like very quick interest balancing where it's like, I need 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.

I don't wanna have emergencies. You know, I don't wanna have to, I'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 gonna 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? 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. 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 widespread emergency situation to realize 95% of the population does not know how to do that. Well, because they've never thought it. 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. Ragel 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 and so good well because in my family like and I don't think my wife would fight me on this but like Whenever there's an emergency situation, I do wind up leading the family But I'm all you have the experience to but I'm also managing things like to me

That concept of like leadership and management those go hand hand in hand because as a leader, and this also comes back, this also comes like I'm sure Olivia could attest this, 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, you are their supervisor, their mom, their dad, their girlfriend, their boyfriend, their camp counselor, their fricking doctor, their cook, their maid. Like you, you 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 you know, blow their nose. But see that their needs are met. Yes so in the military school of thought yes but see this is 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 gonna say, like in my family, I naturally just take a leadership role. 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 wanna be upfront. I don't wanna be a leader, I don't wanna take the reins, I don't wanna be the guy running point, I don't wanna 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 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 calling. The worst thing you can do is nothing. Yeah. And I think that is usually, and that's why I think that like 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. And a person who has that natural

leadership tendency will say, These people depend on me, they need, 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, it's the difference 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. I mean, I'm sure there's a there's probably Like a psychiatrist would say there's probably a read like an underlying cause for that, but we know one of those He needs to show some time we should have him on we should ask him about that so Olivia's question I'm gonna take it as for both of us is do you naturally step into that leadership role or you're

naturally inclined to follow a leader saying go do this and you go and do um it depends 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. 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, 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 a lot more than the guy that just got off the street that's never seen any of this stuff before. Yeah, probably. So 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 Yeah, there's there's definitely a little bit of that there

So there I have the two oops into kind of being one of the go-to people that that guys ask Questions at work. Oh you poor bastard. Yeah, 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. 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. It might be wrong. Sometimes it's been very wrong. 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 alright No, 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. Something that I am willing to try, though. Something that I, it's something I know. Yeah. Well, it's something I know how to force through in Excel. 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 years ago now, and I haven't even looked at it since, because I built it, I automated it, I put it on a schedule, and I'm not gonna 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. 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, but it also made the report impossible to modify Hence I went from 11 to 1

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 gonna suck it up and get basically safety glasses because yeah 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 will have whiskey after work, but never at work at work is a 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, you know, I could take it. I could leave it. It's like soda. Sometimes the soda is nice. Sometimes the whiskey is nice. Coffee though, that isn't always. Coffee is mandatory. Yeah, 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 Ken 20 more minutes talking about it. Yeah, we could talk to talk about it next time. Yeah Well, like I said, I mean that we could talk about that a little more a couple more related things. Hmm but like I said, I mean that that was the discussion that I kind of wanted to have cuz 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 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 gonna 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 just thinking to 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, two birthday parties to do this weekend, I 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 back to work on Monday. And like, you know, we've got a

cyber survivals event coming up. And then we've got the matter of fact, camp and trip coming up. So like, I am trying not to overextend myself and ingratiate myself to too many extra tasks on the weekend so that I'll just burn myself down in both ends. But on the flip side of things, it's like- If you do too much, you get diminishing returns from everything you're doing. Yeah. Well, 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? 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 your hobbies something you need to practice

anyway because it's like 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. If it's not, you're a bad person. Be better. You're doing 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? 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 one 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. Matter of fact's out the door. Bye y'all. The So Thanks for watching!