Welcome to May Day. 70F and muggy with light overcast.
If you live in an area with a high concentration of antifa, or other violent socialists, say in Seattle, stay away from crowds. Keep you awareness. Avoid being trapped.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2018/may/01/may-day-rallies-around-world-2018-in-pictures
Early going yet, and the barista crowd is still sleeping in here in the US.
Some folks are out looking for the sportiness…
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/04/hold-anti-day-rallies-seattle-la-180430104241796.html
n
Sunny and 60f in Memphis this morning.
I am very happy with the 2017 Hyundai Sonata I picked up over the weekend. I have a 45 mile commute each day and wanted better milage and more comfort than my (paid off) 2009 Chevy HHR. The Chevy was getting 26 mpg on my commute and the Sonata is giving me 36 mpg. Keeping the HHR for the Granddaughter to drive.
What do you drive?
BTW: It’s a completely uninspiring 4 door silver sedan. Looks exactly like any number of modern sedans on the highway. I’d love a distinctive vehicle but in many situations you don’t want to draw attention to yourself.
Currently 65º and sunny in Trump Country (and friends that are incensed that Trump carried the county.) Small things.
Our county commissioner was one of the congress critters that voted to give us Obamacare in the first place. She was immediately voted out. The one time I spoke to her about it she claimed she did the right thing. Her constituents felt otherwise. I kind of like her personally. Her grandchildren and my children ski together & get along fabulously.
I drive a 2007 F350 with a wooden bed. It gets attention, but only in an “Oh my gosh! Get outta the way!” kind of way. I’m down to about 10 MPG right now, but I’ll be doing the plugs & fuel injectors shortly, and should get back to near 20 mpg. Small things (like dirt) make a huge difference. It’s the same engine (5.4 L 3V Triton) as in many of the
explorersExpeditions. Not the most fun to work on, but I’ve done worse.Same engine as my 08 expy… be really careful of the spark plugs, they have a history of breaking off inside.
I’m getting 13mpg at the moment, but I also have about 500 or more pounds of stuff in the back. It sneaks up on you but carrying a ton of cr@p will cut your mileage.
n
Yep. YouTube is my friend here. I’ve watched a dozen or so videos on the process, and have access to the extraction tool should it be necessary. (It shouldn’t be). I’ve been running Seafoam through it for the past several tanks and will continue until I get them swapped out.
Are you losing oil, too? I’ve switched to 5w30 (instead of 5w20) due to the excessive oil going out the exhaust. I’m losing less that way.
What do you drive?
2001 Solara. Great vehicle until our Northwest misadventure. High ethanol gas, road deicers (they say it isn’t “salt”, but c’mon), and the long drives in WA State did a number on the car. I’ve managed to undo most of the damage … I think.
Power steering hoses are shot, however, and I don’t think I can get the car through another inspection without spending $1000. Gotta ponder that one.
The Ford engineer responsible for the 3 piece plugs should have been taken out and shot. Actually, he should have been beaten, water boarded, made to watch Oprah, and then shot.
Love the new to me 2015 Caddy ATS so far – have put almost 1000 miles on it.
The wife has a 2015 Honda Crosstour. Bought it new and will keep it at least 10 years. We both really like that car.
The other car is a 1971 Corvette convertible. It’s not a numbers matching car – didn’t want that. It’s a good driver car. Good, not great paint. I put a new 350 in it (425 HP) and shipped the 4 speed muncie trans off to a guy in Texas to rebuild. Still using the original rear end, but seems to be holding up ok.
I replaced the half shaft u-joints this winter. Yesterday, I drove the vette to work. On the way home, a spontaneous clicking sounds develops. No, it’s not a spun rod bearing. Its coming from the rear and is dependent on speed, and doesn’t matter if the trans is in gear or not. I didn’t get it on the lift last last night, but I did crawl under the back and take a peek. I see one u-joint that has oil dripping on it. My guess is I lost a u-joint, but will know for sure when I raise the car in the air and dig in. Maybe this weekend.
One other data point. I got the telling clunk when I moved the car in reverse to back up a little in the garage. Actually, I’ve felt the clunk caused by bad u-joints on several auto trans cars, and this was much more pronounced. I’m hoping nothing else broke…
I had a used 2007 F150 for a couple a couple years with the 3v engine. My local dealer quoted me $500 to replace all the plugs. I couldn’t give them my credit card fast enough.
I kept getting a code on one of the cylinders. The remedy was either a new COP or plug. Swapping the COP with another cylinder didn’t cause the problem to jump cylinders, and new COP didn’t fix it either. So, instead of messing with the plug myself, I had them all done by the dealer. I could have done it, but some jobs I just don’t want to deal with.
@JimL, yeah, I’m going thru oil. Engine has 140k on it, and 100k was hard cop miles. LOTS of engine hours idling. In fact, I’m thinking about changing the oil today. It’s been nagging me for a while, and just turned on the ‘wrench’ icon. The biggest danger is that the display can say “change the oil” when it really means “you’re about out of oil, dipstick!” I’ve got a couple of cases that I bought on sale at costco, so it’s a simple thing to do. My mechanic suggested going with the heavier oil too.
n
For the first time in over 40 years I DON’T own a van or a pickup. Bummer at times such as Saturday when I had to replace Mom’s water heater. Had to get a friend with a truck but I needed his muscle too, to wrestle it in place.
Now we have a ’14 Kia Optima sedan (also silver) which we both really like even after years of Honda Accords. Still have my ’95 Accord, purchased new, sold to nephew in ’06 and bought back from niece 4 years later. Second engine but those are relatively cheap. Lost A/C last year but not sure if I’ll fix (even in Bakersfield). All in good shape including interior. Also have Mom’s ’92 Chevy Lumina, 82K miles but still solid and good A/C.
Still miss a truck from time to time.
My other personal vehicles are:
2004 Chevy Suburban with 250,000 miles, roomy for hauling kids or things
2009 Chevy HHR
and my Wifes pride & joy 1993 Honda Civic Del-Sol (all original)
I also have a selection of Harleys from a 1970 sportster to a 2015 Road King with all the options (it’s jut too freaking heavy for me to pick up any longer). My favorite is the 2009 soft tail.
Anyone interested in some info about home grown violent extremists can read these short briefs. Despite paragraphs like this
they give some background and some interesting stats.
n
https://www.joinipsa.org/IPSA-Blog/5991288
added- can no one write clearly anymore? If that quoted para was in a blog comment, I’d assume one of the auto-generating spam bots wrote it.
HERE’S more of what I was expecting to see today…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5677717/Colourful-parades-rallies-place-world-mark-Day.html
Since it’s just late morning in Seattle, I’ll bet the riot hasn’t started yet….
n
Larry Niven, JEP, “Oath of Fealty”, several decades ago….
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5674825/Icebergs-float-rescue-Cape-Town-water-crisis.html
n
“How to Destroy America”
https://comicallyincorrect.com/how-to-destroy-america/
Yup.
“Tracking Employee Theft”
http://dilbert.com/strip/2018-05-01
Yup, this is where we are heading with cameras EVERYWHERE. And in the loo, why do you ask ?
Well, we’re done. We finally managed to close my wife’s business, and pass it on to a successor. Not a lot of money, because she was technically a franchise, but the stress levels are already dropping nicely. My wife emits an occasional, random “YES!”
—
There have been several links, lately, to comicallyincorrect.com – dunno about y’all, but I cannot see the links. Actually, what I do see makes me distrust the site: a demand that I run an “anti-virus” scan – which sounds fishy as hell, given that I’m on Linux.
I drive a 2007 F350 with a wooden bed. It gets attention, but only in an “Oh my gosh! Get outta the way!” kind of way. I’m down to about 10 MPG right now, but I’ll be doing the plugs & fuel injectors shortly, and should get back to near 20 mpg. Small things (like dirt) make a huge difference. It’s the same engine (5.4 L 3V Triton) as in many of the explorers Expeditions. Not the most fun to work on, but I’ve done worse.
I’ve got a 2005 Expedition EB with the 5.4L and 193K miles on everything. Four speed automatic. I have had the plugs changed three times now. My independent car maintainer told me the secret is to back off the plugs a quarter turn and put penetrating oil in the the plug wells. Then pull the plugs in the morning. He has had several break off on him. You can get the plug out without pulling the head using his secret measures. According to him.
And yes, she drinks about a quart of Pennzoil 5W-20 oil every 2,000 miles. And no oil light that I know of as I have had to put two quarts into her at one time. Except this last time, the Kwik Kar guy put Mobil ??? synthetic in her. At 3,000 miles, she was only down a half quart.
She gets 13 to 14 mpg in the city and 17 to 20 mpg on the highway. If I keep her below 80 mph where the second stage of the fuel injectors open up (you get that whoooooooooo noise from the intake). Then she gets 15 mpg at 85 mph.
Wow. Rights enable terrorists now?
Speaking as a legal immigrant, rights are the best thing about this country. If only the law respected them.
There have been several links, lately, to comicallyincorrect.com – dunno about y’all, but I cannot see the links. Actually, what I do see makes me distrust the site: a demand that I run an “anti-virus” scan – which sounds fishy as hell, given that I’m on Linux.
Huh. I am running FireFox x64 v 59.0.3 with Ublock Origin 1.16.2 on Windows 7 x64. The website is full of advertising. Try clicking once as they have a big initial popup on a 30 second timer that might be blocking you.
Six hours ago, I arrived at the Outpatient Surgery Center to have my gallbladder removed. I am now home and resting uncomfortably.
Yikes Dave, here’s hoping for a speedy recovery!
n
If you live in an area with a high concentration of antifa, or other violent socialists, say in Seattle, stay away from crowds. Keep you awareness. Avoid being trapped.
When I worked in the Bank of America building in Downtown Seattle in 2013, the building security sent us home at 3 PM on May Day, right around the time of afternoon shift change at Starbucks.
Ironically, today, it looks like Starbucks has their new Roastery tasting room boarded up.
“Wow. Rights enable terrorists now?”
didn’t you get the memo? Between the First, Second, Fourth, and Fifth amendments to the Constitution, how do you expect law enforcement to do their jobs? Huh?
If you haven’t done anything wrong, why do you need to hide? Huh?
You’re probably a terrorist!
[end sarcasm]
Actually, unless you are a conservative white male from flyover country, you almost CAN’T be a terrorist under Homeland pc guidelines. (looking for the poster detailing what the new face of terror in the US looks like. hint- ex-army, conservative, white, churchgoer)
n
HERE’S more of what I was expecting to see today…
And, of course, if you try to defend your business in the Former USA, *you* are the one who is a criminal and will go to jail. Business owners in Seattle should just hand the keys to the first fukstik who walks in today.
There have been several links, lately, to comicallyincorrect.com – dunno about y’all, but I cannot see the links. Actually, what I do see makes me distrust the site: a demand that I run an “anti-virus” scan – which sounds fishy as hell, given that I’m on Linux.
Chrome on a Mac with various “blockers” lets me see with no problem.
(looking for the poster detailing what the new face of terror in the US looks like. hint- ex-army, conservative, white, churchgoer)
Um – that’s me. The last part’s a little spotty, but very much me.
Yep, there was quite a bit of outrage when the posters came out. There were also lines about 2A support, small government, and a lot of other characteristics of those ‘ordinary folks’ in flyover land.
No oil change for me, light misty rain, so I’ll be headed to the rent house…..
n
“Hard Drive Stats for Q1 2018”
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-stats-for-q1-2018/
“As of March 31, 2018 we had 100,110 spinning hard drives. Of that number, there were 1,922 boot drives and 98,188 data drives. This review looks at the quarterly and lifetime statistics for the data drive models in operation in our data centers. We’ll also take a look at why we are collecting and reporting 10 new SMART attributes and take a sneak peak at some 8 TB Toshiba drives. Along the way, we’ll share observations and insights on the data presented and we look forward to you doing the same in the comments.”
I would like to see Google’s, Amazon’s, and Microsoft’s hard drive failure rates also.
I would like to see Google’s, Amazon’s, and Microsoft’s hard drive failure rates also.
I have three newish drives installed in desktops around the house: 1 TB Firecuda, 2 TB WD Black, and a 2 TB Seagate marketed as the equivalent of WD Black (model name escapes me).
The one that makes me the most nervous just listening to it run is the WD Black, but it is on the oldest motherboard so maybe SATA revision combined with Windows 7 is the issue.
I have three newish drives installed in desktops around the house: 1 TB Firecuda, 2 TB WD Black, and a 2 TB Seagate marketed as the equivalent of WD Black (model name escapes me).
The one that makes me the most nervous just listening to it run is the WD Black, but it is on the oldest motherboard so maybe SATA revision combined with Windows 7 is the issue.
The WD Black may be the only 7200 rpm drive out of that bunch. The others may be 5400 rpm.
BTW, I have five or seven (not sure) WD Black 1 TB to 4 TB hard drives running at the moment. Not a single problem in the lot.
For the comically incorrect site, with the latest FF (NoScript, uBlock Origin, uMatrix) blocking nearly all, it displays fine for me.
.mg
The WD Black may be the only 7200 rpm drive out of that bunch. The others may be 5400 rpm.
The Seagate drive marketed as the WD Black equivalent is 7200 RPM.
The Firecuda might be 5400 since it has 8 GB flash memory.
I have a USB 3.0 card in the same system as the Black. I may try to enable ReadyBoost with a decent flash drive to see if the noise/heat problems improve.
As promised (threatened?), the GDPR ‘ok to use cookies’ box is now enabled. You should have seen it on the page, and will continue to see it until you click OK.
It will store one little cookie on your browser for this site that acknowledges your acceptance of it. You should only see it once a year, unless you delete cookies earlier.
It’s a WP plugin, awaiting ‘approval’ as an official plugin. But you guys here are ‘beta testers’, so I’d be interested in how it works/looks for your.
No extra check boxes on the comments submit thing.
If you have any thoughts or comments about it, just comment here, or you can email me directly. Details on your browsing environment are helpful.
Thanks!
Cookie is thus:
@RickH – What should the filename of the cookie be? I don’t see anything obvious.
I use CCleaner to get rid of the cookies that do not try to hide themselves, but for sites I want the cookies, like this one, CCleaner allows exceptions.
So could you please point me in the correct direction, I may be missing the forest for the trees.
@DadCooks : no file, it’s a ‘cookie’ called ‘consent_status’ (see picture in my comment).
You can see cookies for a site via F12 (usually), then the “Storage” tab (in FF) or similar. Your browser stores the cookie somewhere.
I looked at F12. I can’t easily read it with a font that tiny.
I deleted my ttgnet cookie and re-started Firefox.
As expected, the name and e-mail fields are blank.
Firefox remembers….
Edit:
I now have a cookie with four fields:
WPAjaxEditCommentsComment145585f01508d9b7667748fa0da90667f3463f
comment_author_58adf8cc2868642c5fee6939a205f5d4
comment_author_email_58adf8cc2868642c5fee6939a205f5d4
comment_author_url_58adf8cc2868642c5fee6939a205f5d4
It seems the “I don’t care about cookies” filter in AdBlock Plus works.
@RickH – so it’s a “cookie” but not in the conventional sense that I know.
As promised (threatened?), the GDPR ‘ok to use cookies’ box is now enabled. You should have seen it on the page, and will continue to see it until you click OK.
I checked this out on my office pc and my smartypants phone. Just one click on each.
As suspected, when I clear everything as I shutdown FireFox, that deletes the cookie also. So I have to click ok again to accept the cookie notice the next time that I surf to ttgnet.com.
You can make an exception in Firefox so the cookie from here is not deleted.
@RickH — seems to work fine for me with Firefox in Windows 7 and Ubuntu. Hope it gets approved as an official plugin.
You can make an exception in Firefox so the cookie from here is not deleted.
I do not see this option. I delete everything, history, cookies, forms, cache, etc, when I shut down FireFox.
@lynn … in FF, use about:preferences#privacy , then change History dropdown to ‘use custom settings for history’, then to the right of ‘allow cookies from web sites’ click ‘exception’ button, then enter the site domain and set to ‘allow’.
I think.
@lynn … in FF, use about:preferences#privacy , then change History dropdown to ‘use custom settings for history’, then to the right of ‘allow cookies from web sites’ click ‘exception’ button, then enter the site domain and set to ‘allow’.
But later in that dialog it has “Clear history when Firefox closes”. In that sub dialog, it has clearances for everything including cookies. No exceptions for specific cookies.
No worries, just one more click each time.
I forgot to mention yesterday that my little one came home from the orthopedist with a shiny green cast on her wrist. Fortunately non-dominant hand. She’s excited all the kids get to sign it. I pray that this phase lasts as long as possible, and the ‘oh god it itches, I hate this miserable thing’ phase is short. Sucks that she’ll miss almost the entire swim season. I can’t really imagine what 95F and 90%RH is going to feel like under that cast…. but I know it won’t be fun.
Got some work done this afternoon. Hope to get more done tomorrow. Never did do more than mist.
n
Got some work done this afternoon. Hope to get more done tomorrow. Never did do more than mist.
Mist is enough to make Austin drivers slow down to look for the nearest ark.
Vivaldi in Windows 7 and Edge in Windows 10: works OK for me.
No cookie killing here so I expect not to see the “banner” again for a year or so. 🙂
Worked for me. Looked a bit weird at my zoom level but was readable and functional.
n
@Nick
I’ve had surgery on my hands three or four times and always needed a wrist cast, which I kept breaking because, well, I act like a kid. Lol, the last time the same doc finally said, “Enough!” and used some super-glue fiberglass/nano-carbon combination. Worked like a charm, so I hope she got one of those and not Plaster of Paris.
Awww, if RBT were around he’d tell us how it got that name.
Gypsum plaster
Gypsum plaster, or plaster of Paris, is produced by heating gypsum to about 300 °F (150 °C)
CaSO4·2H2O + heat → CaSO4·0.5H2O + 1.5H2O (released as steam).
When the dry plaster powder is mixed with water, it re-forms into gypsum. The setting of unmodified plaster starts about 10 minutes after mixing and is complete in about 45 minutes; but not fully set for 72 hours.[16] If plaster or gypsum is heated above 266 °F (130 °C), hemihydrate is formed, which will also re-form as gypsum if mixed with water.
On heating to 180 °C, the nearly water-free form, called γ-anhydrite (CaSO4·nH2O where n = 0 to 0.05) is produced. γ-Anhydrite reacts slowly with water to return to the dihydrate state, a property exploited in some commercial desiccants. On heating above 250 °C, the completely anhydrous form called β-anhydrite or dead burned plaster is formed.
A large gypsum deposit at Montmartre in Paris led “calcined gypsum” (roasted gypsum or gypsum plaster) to be commonly known as “plaster of Paris”.
Wikipedia at work. 🙂
LOL, Thanks Clayton!
n
And the reason it’s called Plaster of Paris? Because the French king decreed that all wood structures would be coated with plaster after a great fire burned much of London to the ground.
It’s a WP plugin, awaiting ‘approval’ as an official plugin. But you guys here are ‘beta testers’, so I’d be interested in how it works/looks for your.
Shows up on my iPad and gone in a click.
Thank you JimL. I rather doubt Wonkypedia mentioned that.
And how many people know in which year the great fire occured?
I used to visit DSLReports and sometimes comment. Nope, not anymore. The people that post are clueless clowns recently and the site has really gone downhill. The forum administrators get butt hurt over little stuff and trying to act important. Done with that site and it can crash and never come back as far as I am concerned.