So quickly does time fly. One month of 2018 already gone.
40F and clear this morning. Beautifully clear last night. Looked at the full moon thru binoculars with the 6 yo. She walked 20 feet across the yard “so it would be even bigger.”
I’ve got a pickup in College Station so I’ll be off the air most of the morning. Talk amongst yourselves…
nick
(is this the beginning of the great unraveling? Finally some people being ‘exited’ from the FBI, financials going nuts, and maybe people realizing that crypto won’t pull us out of this. I don’t want my trip this morning to turn into a PA road trip story….)
Chilly here – 15 now and a high of 20F expected, and winds up to 20 mph. Chilly enough that I’m contemplating staying inside instead of venturing out. We’ll see.
We haven’t had any nights clear enough to set up the kids’ reflector, but we have gone out with the binocs a couple of times. It’s amazing what kind of detail a small pair will bring out for the kids. Wonder in their eyes is a great thing.
Our fruit crop here in SE WA State (apples, cherries, grapes, stone fruits) are going to be in for a real challenge. We have had several weeks of mild weather, high 30s to high 50s, when we should be below freezing and have some snow on the ground. When I went out to feed and water the outdoor cats this morning I noticed that the neighbor’s big maple tree had totally busted out in bloom, that means the fruit crops will too soon. February usually sees a lot of sub-freezing temperatures so those fruit buds are in trouble.
I keep an eye on the Jet Stream. It has not been acting normally this year. The freezing North wind we should be getting has shifted to the central USofA, explaining all the snow that has hit East of the Mississippi. The central Pacific Ocean is warmer than normal (due to sub-ocean volcanic activity) and this is pushing warm moist air North North East onto the coast, hence all the rain.
None of this is due to Man (sexist), but it is just Gaea (I use this original spelling rather than the abomination that the eco-weenies have created) taking care of Herself (more sexism).
Back in the old Ikonboard days we used to have a membership roster and certain membership benefits (I was a Patron). Could we have something like that here?
(is this the beginning of the great unraveling? Finally some people being ‘exited’ from the FBI, financials going nuts, and maybe people realizing that crypto won’t pull us out of this. I don’t want my trip this morning to turn into a PA road trip story….)
I believe our host had it right when he predicted a long, slow decline, measured in decades. Contrast our current situation to where things stood around 1988, and then extrapolate.
@DadCooks
Back in the old Ikonboard days we used to have a membership roster and certain membership benefits (I was a Patron). Could we have something like that here?
I second the suggestion.
Doesn’t matter. Didn’t you get the memo? Tyrant Trump is kidnapping, torturing, and deporting all the honest, hard-working farm workers needed to bring in the crops, so the food will go unharvested and we’re all gonna die.
Actually in our area MS-13 is scaring out all the good hard working Mexicans (racist, yes). MS-13 has made life a living hell for these folks. They have now essentially taken over the streets and low cost apartments in most SE WA cities.
The folks (Mexicans) who take care of my lawn are some of the best salt-of-the-earth folks who you would want working for you. I talk to them every time they are hear. They were here last week and lamenting that MS-13 is making life very unpleasant for them.
The Local, County, and State Police now spend the majority of their time dealing with the crime, prostitution, drugs, and human smuggling that is MS-13. MS-13 is bringing in every scum of the earth via Mexico (Salvadorans, Venezuelans, Somalis, and Pakistanis to name a few). If you see tats on anyone on the neck and above, be ready to dispatch with extreme prejudice.
Last night SWAT was out chasing 2 MS-13 miscreants just 2 blocks from my home. Glad that I have 360-degree video surveillance that is also remotely monitored. Baseball bats (my term for… ) in rapid opening safes throughout the house. Wife and kids drilled.
Forever vigilant, forever ready.
Re: membership roster and certain membership benefits
What benefits specifically?
Smug by the bucketful? We’d have to mug the Prius owners and take theirs!
n
(we’re already the kool kids, with our clubhouse)
Hi Nick and the rest of Old Farmer Dave’s buddies – this is his wife, Liz. I figured I’d just comment on the most recent post to notify you all that Dave has been hospitalized since the end of October and as been diagnosed with a variant of Guillain-Barre Syndrome, an autoimmune disorder that attacks the motor nerves. We spent Christmas and New Years in the ICU, and he is now in a regular room, but is on a ventilator, has a feeding tube, and can’t use his arms or legs. Docs say he has turned the corner, but full recovery won’t happen til the motor nerves grow back – one Neurologist said that nerves grow at the rate of 1 mm. a day and he has a meter to grow – do the math. He is amazingly brave and patient – but it is a tough road. He can’t talk or text, but he would love cards – can see them from his bed. His current address is Dave Hardy, Baird 494,. UVM Medical Center, 111 Colchester Avenue,Burlington, VT 05401. I’m checking his email for him, and will pass along whatever messages you have. We both send our condolences to Barb and thank all of you for being such an important part of Dave’s life.
Smug by the bucketful? We’d have to mug the Prius owners and take theirs!
Prius owners? They’re amateur hour compared to the Tesla faithful.
I’ll count that as good news. My day just got a bit brighter.
Awww, sweet news.
Thank you for the update Liz, we’re all pulling for you.
OFD has beaten tough odds before and he’ll beat this.
Please let us know if there is anything we can do for you, and please keep us as updated as you and Dave feel comfortable with.
nick
Liz,
Glad to hear he has turned the corner and is on the road to recovery. Wishing the road to recovery were shorter. I will continue praying for both you and Dave.
Looking forward to future updates as time permits.
“Thank you for the update Liz, we’re all pulling for you.
OFD has beaten tough odds before and he’ll beat this.”
Roger that!
Liz: thank you very much. Card will be sent very soon. Is a mix of English and Latin good? And cat drawings?
Annoyingly, that’s one of the medical centers where I left a message for them to relay to Dave, if they knew of such a person, but I’m guessing they didn’t.
I’m three hours away, not a casual distance but not an impossible one. I could swing up one day if non-family visitors are allowed and it would do Dave some good. You can contact me here or at steven dot furlong at gmail dot com.
This kind of thing would keep me up at night.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/01/in-a-first-us-hit-by-jackpotting-attacks-that-empty-atms-in-minutes/
Thank you for updating us Ms. Liz. We are all pulling for your husband. Thanks for the address. We miss him here.
I’m checking his email for him, and will pass along whatever messages you have.
Thank you for the update.
First and most important: Great News About Dave Hardy!
@Mrs. Hardy, thank you so much for the address.
@Rick H asked:
I don’t recall any big benefits, just the status of Patron, etc. with your name. Access to folks profile’s where they could put as much or as little information as they wanted, also designate info for Administrator only. You got your “Patron” by contributing to the costs of the site.
Hi Liz, please send my best regards to Dave, too. I wish you both plenty of patience in growing those little fragile nerves one mm at a time. You can do it! Be positive!
I wonder what OFD would appreciate as entertaining, so not to be bored while waiting. Maybe listening to music or an audiobook or watching a show, movie? Perhaps not too relaxing as to forget to grow the nerves back (joke). If I were on that bed, I think I would appreciate some music or a nice person telling stories from her life – that would get my attention…
(is this the beginning of the great unraveling? Finally some people being ‘exited’ from the FBI, financials going nuts, and maybe people realizing that crypto won’t pull us out of this. I don’t want my trip this morning to turn into a PA road trip story….)
I believe our host had it right when he predicted a long, slow decline, measured in decades. Contrast our current situation to where things stood around 1988, and then extrapolate.
The feddies are spending about a trillion dollars per year that they are borrowing. The total debt is around $20 trillion. When it hits $35 to $45 trillion, watch out for a sudden devaluing of the dollar as tbills flood the marketplace.
Hi Nick and the rest of Old Farmer Dave’s buddies – this is his wife, Liz. I figured I’d just comment on the most recent post to notify you all that Dave has been hospitalized since the end of October and as been diagnosed with a variant of Guillain-Barre Syndrome, an autoimmune disorder that attacks the motor nerves.
Hi Liz,
Thank you for the good news ! I wish Dave the best and will drop another get well card on him soon.
Thanks, Liz. We have been worried. Please do not hesitate to ask if you or Dave need anything. There is a wide mix of skills and capabilities here.
The feddies are spending about a trillion dollars per year that they are borrowing. The total debt is around $20 trillion. When it hits $35 to $45 trillion, watch out for a sudden devaluing of the dollar as tbills flood the marketplace.
5% on the 30 year bond will crater the housing market first.
Karl Denninger has pointed out several times how ANY real rise in interest rates will collapse the whole thing now.
n
WRT MS13. I’ve mentioned previously that we had some MS13 tags go up in the next door neighborhood. Naturally behind the cheap and rundown apartments. I know they are operating in Houston, because they bust them regularly running drugs or sex slavery. I don’t know if they were actually in the apartment complex or if it was just wannabees claiming something they aren’t. It’s been painted over, and hasn’t reappeared.
I’ve said it before, I don’t object to Jose and his landscape business (I would still deport him, as rule of law has to be upheld, or we’ve lost). I hate that Jose and his family provide a reservoir population for the really bad guys to hide in and exploit. If you live in a border state, you’ve gotten the early warning, but they have spread out throughout the US following the Interstates. Hartford CT is predominantly hispanic, with a huge percentage with NO english at all. Hartford!
If you think the problems of illegal immigration- drugs, crime, violence, drunk driving, slavery, prostitution, kidnapping, pedophilia – are not your problem because of where you live, you either haven’t been paying attention to local conditions, or you WILL soon become aware. They keep coming, keep spreading out, and the parasites ride with them.
ncik
Mr. DadCooks,
I have 3-days access to the Subaru Tech Info site. All their service manuals are there. I downloaded the 2018 Outback 3.6 Touring. About 330Mb
If you want, email me the VIN of your Forester and I will download it for you.
zotarm “at” gmail “dot” com
Y’all are the best. Heading down to the hospital now and will pass the good vibes along.
If you live in a border state, you’ve gotten the early warning, but they have spread out throughout the US following the Interstates.
SW WA State was already pretty bad when we left thanks to I-5. Heroin is a serious problem in Portland, and, believe it or not, a market for illegal weed still thrives in both WA and OR.
The opportunities are too good to pass up if you are an enterprising young hoodlum.
@MrAtoz, thanks for the offer of a link to the Subaru Forester but I am beyond my self repair days. Also, my dealer lets owners create accounts to have online access to all the manuals and bulletins for their vehicles. Very refreshing to find a dealer that is so open, but I get the impression that Subaru encourages it.
As an aside regarding the fellows that do my yard care, that I mentioned earlier. The company that they work for does not hire anyone but citizens. Some of his employees are second generation working for him. They seem fully assimilated and have no tolerance for “dreamers” or any other flavor of illegal.
BTW, SWAT has been busy today, 3 raids. These scum are worse than @Nick’s rodents.
-nod- We’re awesome like that. Well, except for MrAtoz, but we let him hang out with us awesome folk just in case one of us obtains an armed helicopter and needs a pilot.
🙁
I’m not going to watch the SOTU tonight, but I might watch Maxine Waters’ response on BET. lol! You can bet it’ll be all RAYCISS SEXIST XENOPHOBIST from start to finish. And the celibutard rally of the rich smug liberals is hilarious. They don’t get that in their socialist utopia they will the first ones stuck on the greased axles. Gated, perpumed fcukstiks one and all.
@Rick H, here is the link to RBT’s Ikonboard:
http://forums.ttgnet.com/ikonboard.cgi?
IMHO, I sure wish that Ikonboard had not gone away. There are many features that WordPress in no way touches. WordPress is pretty, but requires too much programing and plug-ins to be truly functional. I don’t need glitz and glamor, I want function.
@Atoz
Lol, is that harpie still around? Given half a chance I would have thrown her in Lake Merritt ten years ago. Still, it would be more entertaining than watching the big Wig.
@DadCooks :
1) Many of the ‘regulars’ here are ‘subscriber’ user-level. As such, they can log in here http://www.ttgnet.com/journal/wp-admin/ with their user name and modify their profile. Use the ‘forgot password’ link with your email to reset your password. Although I don’t think this theme shows any of that info…
2) The ‘Ikonboard’ is a typical ‘forum’ type area. It’s a little more difficult to figure out one’s ‘user name’, since a ‘reset’ requires that rather than an email to get the user name. Bob posted this on Jun 2011: “As of this morning, I’ve disabled all functions on these forums other than reading existing posts. I did this because Ikonboard is a dead product and the current version already has numerous vulnerabilities. I hope that toggling these forums to read-only will prevent forum spammers from abusing these forums as long as they remain available.”
So, although the content is still there for perusal, there are probably better choices (phpBB is one that I am more familiar with).
3) But that brings to mind that perhaps a discussion of the ‘next step’ for this place might be. I’ve shared my ideas with Nick, but we have come to no specific conclusion. I (and I suspect Nick) are open to ideas on the ‘next step’.
I was a heavy participant on another board, pure forum with threads, topics, etc.
For something with thousands of users it makes sense. For the ~300 of us, it’s overkill.
Other than some sort of pure chat room, this gives some structure (calendar) and back and forth without silo-ing content.
It does mean you need a good search tool, which google sometimes is, and sometimes isn’t….
n
@Nick:
Actually, for the last 4 days, there have been about 700/visitors a day:
Visitors Visits
Today: 679 3,105
Yesterday: 754 3,419
Personally, this comment format we’ve been using is my preference.
Ditto. I see little need for change.
300 approx registered commenters. I wasn’t clear. Some days (although that little bar chart thing isn’t on the dashboard anymore) I sure there were far more than 700.
n
Have the SOTU on but not paying much attention. Bread crumbs Pelosi is stewing in her seat. My congressman Kevin McCarthy as usual has got his face firmly planted in DT’s butt.
I’m waiting to see what the loudest wailing will be tomorrow. Then I’ll wash my truck with liberal tears.
n
Personally, this comment format we’ve been using is my preference.
If it aint broke…
My congressman Kevin McCarthy as usual has got his face firmly planted in DT’s butt.
Following a winner is usually a good place to be. While they are winning.
Personally, this comment format we’ve been using is my preference.
If it aint broke…
Yup.
@Liz: Thanks so much for checking in. OFD has been (and continues to be, in absentia) an important part of our group. If you have the patience to read our rambling to him, I imagine it would provide him with some entertainment, and a connection to the outside world.
—
Interest rates: They’ve been so low, for so long. Here, on a normal saving account, you earn – wait for it – 0.01% interest. I expect that’s because the software at many banks doesn’t allow values smaller than that. In fact, interest rates on cash at the national bank are negative, and have been for a while. The federal government can borrow at negative interest rates (thankfully, we have a balanced budget amendment, so this only applies to refinancing existing debt).
The banks have been surprisingly careful in the housing market, tightening their restrictions rather than loosening them. Nonetheless, after years of this stuff, the effects are finally happening. Not far from here, they are building 8 teeny-tiny starter houses. Price: 3/4 million. Nuts, just nuts.
We’re going to start prepping our house to sell this summer. It’s going to be a difficult building to sell (17 rooms, plus full basement with another 8 rooms or so) – no ordinary family in Switzerland wants that, but we’re not in a business district either. Works well for our weird private/business combination, but finding the right buyer will be tough. On an acre of land, with a beautiful view over the valley. We’ll see…
Hey, anybody wanna buy a house? 🙂
—
Y’all enjoy the SOTU today. I’ll be interested to see what the Swiss press has to say about it tomorrow. They’re pretty hilarious – when Trump visited the WEF here last week, they kept bemoaning the sheer amount of press coverage he was getting, because he’s just such a terrible guy. They kept going on, and on, and on about how Trump shouldn’t get so much press coverage, how he really didn’t deserve it, how…Trump, Trump, Trump…
My irony meter was pinging off the wall. Just how clueless can journalists be?
I fell asleep during the SOTU. Normal for me. The “highlights” from Fox delivered a unifying speech that reminded me of his inaugural address. The Nay-sayers are panning it for being 180º from the way he actually runs the place.
I’ll have to watch the full thing again. I have a hard time following his speeches. They’re not as well delivered as President Obama or President Clinton. 43 and 41 were in between. Trump sounds like he has the vocabulary of a 10th or 12th grader. That’s not bad, as it gets to more of his audience. But I’d rather have a better delivery. Best I ever listened to were from President Reagan. Now there’s a president I’d like to have back…
I suspect that most reviews of the speech will be heavily flavored by the reviewer’s politics. I’d much rather have an unbiased review and solid fact-checking than what I find nowadays.
Out to look at the moon at 5am this morning. Dark (of course) so not very interesting. Space.com has a live feed from Griffith observatory that’s better viewing.
45F and clear.
Just out of curiosity, are the timestamps on our posts local, or are they set to the RBT’s time zone?
Rather than the STOTU, I’d rather hear Maxine Water’s caterwauling, like I said before. Now _That’s Entertainment!_
EDIT: That settles that: EST, or GMT -5.00 houris. (which was a deliberate mis-spelling. Go get a dictionary)
MSNBC is showing Nixon footage for comparisons. Now CNN is talking Nixon too. It’s all about firing the prosecutor, something that hasn’t happened.
Sad.
“EDIT: That settles that: EST, or GMT -5.00 houris. ”
Or Harpies when considering Ms Waters…
There is a setting on the account page for local time zone. Not sure how it interacts. I do know that if you are typing a comment, and take 3 hours to do so, it will post in the timeline at the time you STARTED the comment.
This can lead to missing comments by others, if you are both typing and both take more than a minute or two. Someone else’s comment can be inserted enough above yours, that you might miss it.
n
I would not so much like to see a change in the comment manner, but a way to see who all the “registered” members are as well as much or little information as they want to share. That was available in the Ikonboard and other boards of the time. Some recognition for longevity and contributions. Yo could also see how many people were online, with the ability to be anonymous if you want.
I use the FeedDemon RSS (http://www.feeddemon.com/) reader so I don’t get out of sync with my reading of comments. Even though FeedDemon is frozen in time it is still the best RSS Reader that ever was or probably will be. Its solid programming is evidenced by it still working without a hitch years after updates stopped. FeedDemon is one of the few freeware programs I supported with my monetary support.
@dadcooks, you used to be able to click on the commenter’s name, and see a short bio that came from somewhere… and I’m not sure where the avatars come from, but it must have something to do with being signed in to some other commenting system. Gravitar? Discus?
I’m not sure how you’d do it, since you don’t actually have to be ‘logged in’ to post or read here.
n
Yes, our Avitars come from the Gravitar site. It also shows up in your profile.
My irony meter was pinging off the wall. Just how clueless can journalists be?
Rush Limbaugh calls tv journalists a $50 haircut and a $5 set of brains. I suspect that he has the same feelings for print journalists.
I think the haircut costs way more than $50, and I would think most journalists would be lucky if they had two cents worth of brains.
the only brains some of them seem to have are in a jar marked “Abby Normal”.
n
Not all. I’m the earthly avatar of the God of Awesome. You mortals may use Gravatar if you wish.