Hmm. 8:30 and it’s already 86F, but at least the humidity is only 74%.
More work on the rental, more work around here. Spent too much time at the Rec Assn, working on video, and the check in system. Way too much time. I really need to start tracking volunteer hours, but I think I’d be too depressed at the end of the day. Like a budget with money, I should know where my time goes though.
Anyone do a time tracker for your day to day outside of work? I’m pretty sure too much of mine disappears into the internet….
n
Once again, keep an eye on Gavin Newsom out in CA.
If the Dems are smart (a big if), Newsom will challenge Trump in two years.
https://theworldnews.net/us-news/gavin-newsom-and-antonio-villaraigosa-face-the-past-in-california-race
Anyone do a time tracker for your day to day outside of work? I’m pretty sure too much of mine disappears into the internet….
We use Jira at my new job in addition to a cloud timesheet/HR system whose name escapes me right now. In theory, our group is “agile”.
Still don’t quite know what “agile” means, but okay. I learned an official definition in grad school, but that doesn’t quite apply to where I currently work.
(I also learned CMM levels. CGI claimed to be level ‘5’ with the banking product line, but, having dealt with the reality, I always laughed when I saw that in the sales propoganda.)
Jira is free for non-commercial use so you could use it to track your tasks and time for the Rec Assn project.
Another fine example of how the country is getting crazier by the day.
I’ve been thinking of putting up a new HF antenna and wanted to check out what was available in the way of masts. Turns out that Home Depot carries a Channel Master Universal 25 ft. Indoor/Outdoor Telescoping Mast with the following product overview…
“The Channel Master 25 ft. Telescoping Mast is typically used for TV antenna mounting. The length of this telescoping mast starts at 9 ft. and extends up to 25.3 ft. It includes person rings to accommodate additional support via person wire.”
I guess guy wire is no longer good enough, to be inclusive we have to call them person wires.
Adam Carolla did a great interview with Gaven Newsom a few years back that shows just what a weasel Newsom is. Here’s the link for anyone that’s interested. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbAsD0lEpuA
Adam Carolla did a great interview with Gaven Newsom a few years back that shows just what a weasel Newsom is.
Oh, sure. I’m not under any delusions, and I’m far from a fan. I was *born* in Orange County, CA — I’m incapable of voting Dem for President.
I say the Dems would be “smart” to run Newsom because he would be a break with the wheezebag tradition and offer more of a contrast to Trump than Bernie or Hillary. Newsom could pull it off IMHO.
Fortunately for Trump, the party has a history of being dumb. Bernie as the standard bearer would be a “narc at a biker rally” landslide for the Republicans.
Hillary is still the woman scorned. The margin of Trump victory would depend on whether than meme still works in two years like it has recently.
Don’t forget Newsom is the white guy. If y’all don’t already know Hispanics are the largest ethnic group in California. Not a majority but still the biggest. Villaraigosa may have a chance in spite of the party machine. We’re just nuts out here.
read VDH …
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/california-and-conservatism/
@al, that is just nuts. And thanks for the H/T on that mast. I used a combination of different pipes and fence post clamps for my HF vertical.
Coincidentally, this month’s QST magazine has a hint about the fence clamps. I like them, they are sturdy.
nick
I’ve collected some other mast material and looked at some common choices for field day or mobile use.
I got a nice sturdy fiberglas extension handle from a ‘limb lopper’ type of tree limb trimmer. I intend to put a dual band quarter wave for 2M and 70CM mobile on top of it.
I’ve looked at pool skimmer extension handles (both in metal, and serious pro ones in fiberglas), I’ve looked at the aluminum extension handles for paint rollers, and I’ve looked at the snap together aluminum handles for concrete finishing floats (bull floats.)
Cost is all pretty similar to purpose build antenna masts available commercially, but there isn’t any huge shipping charge ‘cuz you can get them locally.
Fence post and rail is always an alternative too.
I looked at schedule 40 galvanized pipe, but it’s $80 per 20ft stick!
Finally I found some galv pipe at an estate sale for $5 (iirc) and that’s what I used in combination with what I got when I traded for the antenna.
One idea I had was to use the extending metal poles (pool skimmer) to make an HF dipole or yagi that could be tuned by simply extending or collapsing the handles.
Too many projects, too little time!
nick
Build the wall.
“US Veterans Uncover Underground Bunker Possibly Used for Child Trafficking Camp In Arizona”
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/06/us-veterans-uncover-underground-bunker-possibly-used-for-child-trafficking-camp-in-arizona/
The problem is not Jose’ cutting grass, it’s that Jose’ thinks raping kids is ok and that the traffickers have a large population to hide in.
n
Yes, you do and you should. Some years ago I started tracking the time I spent volunteering with tutoring, doing pro bono work for not-for-profits whose mission I agree with*, helping people with fixing things and moving, stuff like that. I was appalled.
That’s about when I began my hard line on helping people who “need” someone to help them fix their lawnmower or watch their dog for a few days or get the word out about this very important issue. Almost always they’re just looking for freebies, and more often than not they’ll try to guilt you into it. To hell with them. I’ll help kin, I’ll help kids, and I’ll help those who are in trouble through no fault of their own. If I have nothing better to do, on a whim I might help someone else, but I get vicious if they push for more. Everyone else can pay someone for what they need.
* I’ve mentioned that I no longer give money to NFPs, but I’ve volunteered time and specialist skills to a number, anything from fixing their database to correlating arrest/prosecution/conviction numbers to forensic source code analysis. I’ve largely stopped doing even that — if an org is constantly calling for donations and volunteer labor but has paid staff and in particular the bosses do pretty well, then they can pay the volunteers. Hell, I’ve even stopped donating blood. Look into the numbers sometime. Everyone involved in the blood donation biz makes out pretty well, except that the donors get nothing but a warm feeling.
I’m sure that’s racist and ablist and global warming denialist.
As the apologists love to point out, not all Mexican immigrants, and indeed not even all illegal aliens from Mexico, are pedos, murderers, rapists, and drug dealers. They certainly do exhibit these criminal behaviors at a rate far higher than the native-born, white population of the United States. Though I’m sure it’s racist etc to point this out. (The compilers of the US federal crime statistics think it’s racist. Last I looked, which was the 2016 FBI crime numbers* I think, Hispanics were identified by race/ethnicity/whatever when they were victims, but they were identified as white when they were the perpetrators. Whatever makes your numbers look more acceptable, I guess.)
* That is, the crime statistics compiled by the FBI, not the numbers on crime committed by the FBI. This is an important distinction these days.
My TV antenna starts with a 10 ft chainlink fencing corner post. Set in a couple of feet of cement. I had my DirecTV dish there and one of their geniuses said the pole was too tall and that causes the dish to move in the wind and lose signal.
Said genius cut 2+ ft off of my post, leaving about 5 ft above ground. And chopped *my* wiring shorter. Took all the scraps with him, too. Didn’t help the signal when it rained, either. Which really ticked me off because they charged $100 for the worthless service call.
I wasn’t home for this. I had the post tall so the splitter and wiring would be out of nibble reach for the donkey or the longhorn.
The dish is on the scrap metal pile. The antenna is on a 10+ ft chainlink fence top rail. There are screws in my existing pipe to support it and I used some composite decking scraps to shim up the difference in pipe size. It works very well. I get the 5 networks with their sub-channels from Austin. The main channels are HD, the subs look like 720 with a few below that. The worse look like a copied VHS tape.
Other than what the leftover pipes cost plus a $50 antenna, we have more to watch than we have time. All free. Add a Roku and it gets really crazy…. just for the free stuff.
Years ago, when there were creatures like the Chrysler Cordoba and K-Cars were mostly new, we worked on cars on the weekends. Bring your parts and a 12 pack of beer and we’ll replace your brake pads or alternator or spark plugs and wires. Not much beyond that. I don’t change my own shocks and one water pump, ever, was enough.
It suddenly seemed our weekends were booked from 8AM to dark. Thanks, Ken. I finally told Ken “No More, it’s summer and we are going to the lake”. That was that… all of our “friends” vanished.
Sure, we worked cheap. Too cheap. We have the tools and we were also learning.
And no, I’m not going to spend more than half an hour trying to fix your w3.11 computer.
Don’t forget Newsom is the white guy. If y’all don’t already know Hispanics are the largest ethnic group in California. Not a majority but still the biggest. Villaraigosa may have a chance in spite of the party machine. We’re just nuts out here.
Nah. Governor Newsom has been “baked in the cake” ever since Jerry Brown took him to Sacramento as heir apparent.
It seems like CA has been trying to make amends to the Brown family ever since a lapse in insanity caused disgusted voters to replace Pappy Moonbeam with Reagan in 66 and reelected Reagan in 70.
Everyone involved in the blood donation biz makes out pretty well, except that the donors get nothing but a warm feeling.
The last time I donated, after they had a bag of my blood, they preached about Jesus and the evils of homos ridden with AIDS, then gave me a 4 ox cup of orange juice and a Chips Ahoy cookie so stale it tasted like plastic.
Oh, wait. They always taste like plastic.
Ain’t never been back…..
Interesting stuff:
“The Language of the Roman Empire”
https://www.historytoday.com/katherine-mcdonald/language-roman-empire
Needs an editor. Or maybe it’s supposed to be 8th grade level.
“The new science of Indo-European origins”
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8025
Good stuff. The comment section could be better as the column narrows to the point of words wrapping onto the next line.
This guy is good:
https://westhunt.wordpress.com/
No, I don’t understand all of it. I didn’t understand how to read when I was 4 and Dr Seuss books were complicated.
The last time I gave blood to the Red Cross, a few weeks later there was a newspaper article about how the local RC blood bank’s paperwork was so screwed up that they had to destroy 40,000 units of whole blood because they couldn’t prove that it had been tested for HIV. This was the second screwup of this type in a couple years. And about a day after the article came out the Red Cross started screaming that there was a critical blood shortage, please donate all you can and then some!!! It’s worth noting that I’d given several gallons of blood to the RC before cutting them off.
After that I’d donate when one of the local hospitals sent their van around to where I was working, maybe eight or twelve pints that way.
But then I heard a Radiolab podcast about the blood business and how an off-hand question to a blood bank executive and his paranoid and evasive answer led to uncovering a whole lot of dirt about the profitable and often underhanded blood business in the US. And I dug into a little myself, just to make sure it wasn’t all a media hit piece, and found that the blood biz was indeed foul and underhanded. And profitable for everyone except the donors, who were paid only in stale cookies and relief from a sense of obligation that had been instilled in them. The similarity to religion may not have been intentional, but it’s there.
And don’t get me started on the organ business in the US. It’s much fouler and more corrupt than the blood biz.
Nick,
Your Portacool thingy you just re-built? What’s the model number?
I’m sort of shopping. Tractor Supply has an assortment starting at $399. I’m waiting for a sale or the random 10% off anything postcard.
My front porch: http://remsset.com/remodeling/Deckroof/index.html (no cookies or ads)
I have moved the pellet grill to the right (away from the house) and now have the gas grill to the left.
The bench is in the same place. The cast metal rocking chairs are gone from the deck just because they were making the deck coating peel off. The glass top patio is now between the bench and the grills. When we need a chair we get one from the stack by the front door. It’s kind of crowded but having a table to sit around is nice.
I’m thinking to put the portacooler thing about where the pumpkin chiminea is sitting.
_Thunderbird_ by Jack McDevitt
https://www.amazon.com/Thunderbird-Jack-McDevitt/dp/0425279200/
Book number two of the two book Ancient Shores series. I had no idea that this book existed, I missed it somehow in 2016, and just saw it at B&N as I buy anything written by Jack McDevitt. I read the nicely printed and bound MMPB. I doubt that there will be more books in the series but, who knows ? One can only hope.
The ancient boat and stargate found on the Sioux Reservation in the Dakotas have been unearthed and activated. The stargate has three gate destinations, two are safe. And the planet and space station gates at the destinations have many other destinations. And aliens.
I understand the end of the book. But I would not have done that. But I know a bunch of people who would do that.
The author has a website at:
https://www.jackmcdevitt.com/
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 3.4 out of 5 stars (149 reviews)
Sure glad I don’t live in Californication
It’s Now Against The Law In California To Shower And Do Laundry On The Same Day
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-06-03/its-now-against-law-california-shower-and-do-laundry-same-day
…
And it gets worse in follow-on years, except for the oligarchs.
Oh wait, at the end of the article it predicts this insane “rationing” is coming to a state near you.
Yup, creeping federalism. Besides, California has often been the trend leader.
Just read that article. I remind that IIRC, some 80% of the water that falls on CA goes into the ocean. Pappy Brown oversaw water resource development, now largely undone by his offspring.
Those who fail to use resources wisely will suffer the consequences.
Destroy the head of California’s Colorado River Aqueduct and you’ll take care of California’s water problems. Not in a way Californians would approve, but who cares about them?
@paul, they don’t make the model I got anymore. It was a 16″ fan with 2ft x 3ft pad. It was marketed to people for their patios, and was tan color and sat on top of a tank.
Amazon has a pic of one in black with a prefilter over the wet media.
The metal frame was missing, so I put a piece of plywood with cleats screwed to it on both sides in appropriate places to keep the whole stack from sliding around. I put it all on a furniture dolly and strapped it together. If I paint the ply, and get a neutral color strap, it will look pretty factory. As is, it’s kinda redneck….
n
added, it’s the right size for home use. Anything bigger is going to be too big.
added more- there are knock off brands now too. It’s a pretty simple idea, the special sauce is in the wet media, which is some kind of stiff, coated, cardboard, with a waffle/weave pattern to it to facilitate even water flow. If the generic doesn’t work well, you can always buy the portacool media as a replacement.
wow.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-06-03/reports-active-shooter-rooftop-halts-san-diegos-rocknroll-marathon
And in custody with 4 victims, shooter is FEMALE according to scanner reports.
n
Updated- now they are reporting the cop as the only victim, and he shot himself….
“Giuliani: Even if Trump had shot Comey he couldn’t be prosecuted”
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/390486-giuliani-if-trump-shot-comey-he-still-couldnt-have-been
Is Mueller crazy enough to indict a sitting President for obstruction ? Or try to force a sitting President to testify before a grand jury with or without counsel and secret service ?
To me, the USA Constitution is very clear on this. A simple majority impeachment vote in the House and a super majority 2/3rds vote in the Senate. And in fact, I believe that this also applies to the Vice President and other officials mentioned in the Constitution. These office holders cannot be indicted or compelled by State or Federal officials.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_in_the_United_States
It is time for Mueller to go away. He is just wasting taxpayer dollars, about a million a month. In fact, there is some discussion that Mueller may be indicted himself for lying to the FISA court.
Hat tip to:
http://drudgereport.com/
Got a NOAA warning, severe thunderstorms, possible hail. Good til 9pm. Well, now at 10pm we’re getting wind and big drops. Don’t know if it will go to 60mph, but there was some thunder just now.
n
big nothing burger. some rumble and spatter.
Swim meet tomorrow, so big storm would be bad.
Thanks, Nick.