73F and damp. No prediction about later, I’ve been wrong the last three days. It did get nice yesterday late in the afternoon.
I’ve got to leave the house today and get some stuff done. Got to. Seriously. Really need to leave……
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we’ll see………………..
63º and sunny. 56 when I hopped on the bus this morning. Shorts & T-shirt weather for me.
Left the truck at home because I had left my bike at work. I know I could throw the bike in the back of the truck (hello!?!), but this way I get to ride my bike. (!!!!) How cool is that?
From now until September, weather forecasts don’t really matter (except tornadoes). It doesn’t matter if it’s raining or sunny. If I’ve a job outside, I’ll be there. Forecast only tells me what kind of hat I’m going to need.
71f and ground fog on the commute this AM
Not looking forward to another Mississippi summer. I had enough of the heat and humidity when I lived in Hong Kong. Ah well. Retirement is always just another year away. At this rate I will be dead before I get to relax.
Yes, it’s not going to happen, at least not now. Was there ever any doubt?
Via Drudge:
Trump cancels Singapore summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un
Duck and cover.
Keep your nickers on.
Scheduling and canceling and blaming is all part of the dance. Little Rocket dude has to do things like this to keep face. It’s all good. Until it isn’t. But to get him even talking about de-nucleariztion is an amazing feat.
Scheduling and canceling and blaming is all part of the dance. Little Rocket dude has to do things like this to keep face. It’s all good. Until it isn’t. But to get him even talking about de-nucleariztion is an amazing feat.
Little Rocket Dude doesn’t want to use a nuclear weapon but he also doesn’t want to die being sodomized by a red-hot bayonet like Khadafy when the State Department changes hands in 3 to 7 years and the new group decides regime change is in order, discarding Trump’s deal for de-nuclearization.
Ah, the advantage of a small country. Just ran into one of our politicians, well known on TV. Getting in the train along with everyone else at rush hour. No one particularly noticed or cared.
The Progs in FL are still grumpy about missing out on that bullet train money.
When I left FL in 2010, Joe Henderson covered the Buccaneers for the Tribune and had done so since the team’s inception in the mid-70s. The NFL writers are surprisingly Prog-leaning in general
http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/columns/Joe-Henderson-With-chaos-the-norm-on-Interstate-4-back-roads-are-looking-more-inviting_168502011
Advance warning. The hosting for this place and others that belong to Robert/Barbara is close to expiration. (I had offered free space on my hosting place for these sites to reduce expenses for Barbara.)
I am in the process of moving all content to my hosting place – that will take a while to transfer, as there are tons of files to move from the current host to my laptop then back to the new place (JustHost).
The WordPress databases will be backed up and imported into a new database on the new host. And I have to move all of the mail accounts and content. So much file transferring will go on. Shouldn’t affect access to this site.
After I move all the files, I will set up the WP databases, import the content, test everything, then change the nameservers for the domains to point to JustHost. I have done this several times – moving sites to a new host – so it’s not terribly difficult, just time-consuming to transfer all the files.
I will notify everyone here when I need to ‘freeze’ the content…so at that point commenting will need to stop. (Well, you can comment if you want, but anything after the freeze will not make it to the new place.)
All of that won’t happen until later today (PDT); there are tons of files to transfer first. So you may continue your discussion. Just keep an eye out for the ‘freeze notice’.
Ain’t gonna be no freeze notices here in south Texas for a long time. But rain, it’s a coming.
Ain’t gonna be no freeze notices here in south Texas for a long time. But rain, it’s a coming.
West of the storm track is generally the drier side. SpaghettiModels.com shows the storm going anywhere from New Orleans to Tallahassee.
The Navy’s site isn’t showing anything right now. I don’t sweat storms until I see their projections, used to make decisions to move planes/ships.
https://www.nrlmry.navy.mil/TC.html
_The Swarm: Volume One of The Second Formic War_ by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston
https://www.amazon.com/Swarm-One-Second-Formic-War/dp/076537563X/
Book number one of a one book series of an alien invasion of the Solar System and the Earth. Note that there are around 17 books in the Enderverse now. I read the well formatted and bound MMPB. I am eagerly awaiting more books in the second prequel series.
This is the first book of the second prequel series to _Ender’s Game_. The first prequel series to _Ender’s Game_, the First Formic War, started with a single Formic scout ship entering the Solar System. It ended with over 400 million dead, mostly in mainland China. Now there is a much larger Formic colony ship on its way to Earth.
When _Ender’s Game_ was published, the IF (International Fleet) was a smooth running military organization capable of protecting the Solar System and taking the war to the Formic home worlds. But in the beginning, it was anything but organized. Turf battles and sheer incompetence as millions of land soldiers and sea sailors were moved into outer space over a very short period.
Note that Orson Scott Card has a very active website at:
http://www.hatrack.com/
My rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars (243 reviews)
@Rick: Thanks for all the work. I know how tedious that all is – we all appreciate it.
@Rick H – I have confidence that you will make the move as smooth as possible. Thanks for all you do to keep this group together.
Thirds on the hats off to Rick H. I think the audience here is rather familiar with some of the details of what you do, and that makes it all the more appreciated.
Roger that, WRT Rick!
“US Senate Democrats ask Trump to act on rising gasoline prices”
https://www.ogj.com/articles/2018/05/us-senate-democrats-ask-trump-to-act-on-rising-gasoline-prices.html
What a bunch of tools ! They are all supporters of AGW (man caused global warming). I’ll bet that they would love to see the prevalent gasoline price in the USA at $10/gal.
What a bunch of tools ! They are all supporters of AGW (man caused global warming). I’ll bet that they would love to see the prevalent gasoline price in the USA at $10/gal.
Election year games. They will start yakking about tapping the SPP next.
Schumer, et. al cretaed this mess. Stalling pipeline construction is my guess as to why Warren Buffett has been so cozy with Progs over the last 10 years. Even if BNSF doesn’t transport the oil, their manufacturing division produces/sells/leases the tanker cars.
Go back a few years in the Berkshire annual letters. Warren lays it out about BNSF’s tanker car operation.
What a bunch of tools !
Democrats Resurrect the Worst Talking Point in Politics
What a bunch of tools !
Democrats Resurrect the Worst Talking Point in Politics
This talking point has been passed back and forth between the parties since 9/11. The reality is that the President can do very little beyond tap the SPR, and that’s 180 days of imports IIRC.
Americans do this to themselves. Pre-9/11 I remember seeing increasingly bigger SUVs popping up in my neighborhood until one housefrau topped everbody with a Unimog (Google it) she imported and had kitted out as a grocery getter/kiddie hauler. Can’t get much bigger and still be anything close to street legal without a lot of work.
@Lynn — I got a job lead email from someone recruiting for C/C++ in Spring, TX.
Friends/competitors of yours?
I’m staying put through at least the six month mark unless management says otherwise. I need some time off, and I will have 32 hours PTO as of July 1, just in time for our FL trip.
I used a boost::multi_index::multi_index_container for my latest assignment. Getting the brackets and types right feeding the template was painful, but the container significantly cut down the amount of code I had to write.
Well, one more step toward getting the rent house back on the market was completed today. My knees are hurting.
Rick, please do whatever you need to do! Just let us know…
nick
@Lynn — I got a job lead email from someone recruiting for C/C++ in Spring, TX.
Friends/competitors of yours?
Not to my knowledge.
I used a boost::multi_index::multi_index_container for my latest assignment. Getting the brackets and types right feeding the template was painful, but the container significantly cut down the amount of code I had to write.
I have yet to use Boost and am hoping to keep it that way. Shoot, I only know three of the STL objects: String, Map, Vector.
Thank you, Rick.
The other day someone was giving me a hard time about my “new to me” truck’s mileage.
Yeah, 12 or 13 mpg isn’t real exciting. But. The old 92 Dodge made 1o most of the time.
Now I have power locks and windows and mirrors and a not quite working power seat plus a couple extra mpg.
Not bad for a $1000 truck with an extra $1000 to have the heater core and a couple of air handling flaps replaced.
Not bad for a $1000 truck with an extra $1000 to have the heater core and a couple of air handling flaps replaced.
My 2005 Ford Expedition with 194K miles has developed several new problems recently:
1. The A/C/heat blower only blows at one speed now, max. Much better than min but living in the hurricane can be nippy.
2. The CD player is having problems loading my CDs and books on tape. I bought a Maxell CD cleaner and have run it through about 25 times now. Has helped so that it now works intermittently.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000001OM5/
3. It only gets 13 mpg in the city now. Wait, it always only got 13 mpg in the city.
I get crap mileage in both my trucks. In the expy i’m carrying extra weight, and in the ranger I’ve got an issue where it’s running a bit rich.
17 mpg in the ranger, 13 in the expy.
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“17 mpg in the ranger, 13 in the expy”
Um…they still make trucks that get 13 mpg? WTF?
We drive a not-small SUV (Toyota RAV4, gross weight around 3500lb), and (if I got all my metric-to-US conversions right) we get around 30mpg, or a bit better. I can’t imagine why US pickups should get less than half of that?
Most get better than that. Bad injectors, poor plugs, plugged exhaust, leaking fuel return lines (dribble/mist) all contribute to poor performance. If it’s not running just right, mpg drops quickly. Used to get about 15-17. Now get around 10. New injectors this weekend, along with plugs, should get me back to 15.
MPG ratings are calculated with specific engine profiles and the vehicle empty of fuel and passengers…. even tires and tire inflation makes a difference. Plus all our gas has ethanol in it, which reduces the mpg.
I’ve got a bunch of work and CERT and general stuff in the back of my Expedition, so several hundred extra pounds. Plus, it has 150K miles and a lot of hours on the engine (police vehicle) and is 10 years old. it has a 5.4L v8 engine, It got 17 when I first got it. Also I do a LOT of idling and city driving, which drives down the calculated number. If I just did pure highway driving, it’s probably better than that.
The ranger pickup has a v6 and never got more than 18 in city, 21 highway, even when new.
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BTW, rav4 is a small SUV. It’s so small it was offered here in electric version.
I think my GVW is 6500 pounds with the Expedition….
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My F350 is 7,000+ as driven. (Wooden bed & contractor’s cap). 135,000 miles. I didn’t buy it for the economy. I hook up to my scoring trailer & GO. It does that extremely well.
“I didn’t buy it for the economy.”
This! For a decade I drove less than 5000 miles a year, and was reimbursed for almost all my mileage. I couldn’t care less about the efficiency or cost of gasoline. Even now, the majority of my driving is business expense, and reduces my taxable income. Gas is relatively cheap at $2.59/gallon.
10000 miles/ year @ 15 miles/gallon @ $2.40/gallon (average)= $1600/yr. That’s less than my insurance for the vehicles. Plus/minus 3-5 mpg doesn’t really make much difference….
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Probably the resister pack. Generally accessible somewhere on the blower housing. Unplug a couple of wires, unscrew, and replace. Not an expensive item. Needs to be in the airflow to cool the resistors.
My F-150 which probably weighs twice as much as the RAV4 gets 20 MPG on the highway. Towing the mileage drops to about 12 but consider that I am now pulling an additional 6,000 pounds. That really affects the mileage.
A new Corvette, a high performance vehicle, will easily get 30 MPG unless you really start putting your foot down. My 2008 Avalon consistently got 32 MPG with a six cylinder engine not the puny 4 cylinder RAV4. Most cars in the US get exceptional mileage compared to just 20 years ago. And the mileage is the same whether in Europe or in the US as the engines are the same. Only difference we have is the use of Ethanol which lowers mileage.
What we are talking about here are large vehicles, heavy, rugged, and with significant mileage. Mileage will drop and they are not driven for mileage nor is that their purpose.
I replaced the resistor pack on my Expy, but it was not the issue. A new fan from an online retailer did the trick. There is a definitive test to see if it’s the resistor pack, look on youtube… I didn’t see it until after I’d ordered the resistors. Resold the pack on ebay for a slight loss.
Neither is difficult to replace, they are under the dash, in the passenger footwell area.
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I was curious if Nick’s fan had more than 2 wires. Every blower I’ve seen had just 2. I found this site https://www.f150online.com/forums/articles-how-s/378955-heater-blower-fan-fix-only-high-speed.html and it has pictures. Everything I find talks about the resistor block. And corroded connectors.
My Mom’s 2004 Freestar has some strange to me “features” but, it’s a Ford. 🙂 Not Chrysler, etc.
My truck’s blower started making noise again a few days ago. I pulled the blower and it had more leaves in the squirrel cage. I don’t see any gaps in the air intake screens. Oh well, just 3 screws. T-25, not Phillips.
@paul, I don’t recall the number of wires, or even if it had a connector block or a pigtail….
I do remember being surprised at how accessible it was.
The torx thing drives me nuts. I had to get a whole set of drivers, and then had to buy the big ones for the ratchet wrench too. GIANT torx screws holding the seats in!
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