Hot, humid, sunny. Houston.
Ate some grapes from my vine yesterday. I decided if I want any, I’ll have to do what the thief is doing and just harvest the red ones. So I did. Tasty, but the skins were a bit thick.
Not gonna feed the family from my garden, but that’s not the point yet. Get out there and try to grow some stuff!
n
added- looks like the potential storm turned and flubbed, so no practice hurricane for us…
Lots of grapes on my vines. Seedless Thompson, allowed to just grow on the fence with other vines. Be another month before they get sweet enough. They’ll be small but tasty and the birds will get plenty too. Store bought or farmers market are better.
predicted 104F for today but very low humidity. Had a cool weekend and yesterday I thought the pool felt cool. This should warm it up but temps start dropping again tomorrow and should be 10 degrees cooler by the weekend,
We leave tonight for a week in Oregon. Stay in Burbank tonight and fly out in the morning avoiding LAX. House and dog sitter lined up. Hope they can keep the few things that need hand watering going.
Ditched Wittgenstein’s Mistress in favor of the recently-departed Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities.
It’s an amazing book in that none, literally zero, of the main characters are the least bit admirable. Even the “good guys” are lecherous, greedy, and amoral. A few of the minor characters are tolerable, but that’s probably only because they aren’t as well-developed.
A fascinating book in the same sense that an automobile wreck is fascinating. Wolfe is/was a damn good writer.
@Nick: While no actual pissing or shitting is described, a human turd does appear around p. 190. Since the book was published in ’88 it would seem that the playbook hadn’t yet been fully developed. 🙂
It seems there is always some humiliating bodily function prominent in the beginning chapters.
The Corrections has the elderly father “straining over a coffee can” in the garage or basement at some point IIRC. Just freaking weirdos.
n
added- looks like the potential storm turned and flubbed, so no practice hurricane for us…
Predicting the path a week out is impossible, especially something coming up from the Caribbean. The media seem eager for something bad to happen, but this is early in the season with the Gulf still relatively cold.
The Corrections has the elderly father “straining over a coffee can” in the garage or basement at some point IIRC. Just freaking weirdos.
Is this the book you’re referring to? Even the blurb sounds depressing! 🙁
Bonfire is a good read, but I’m looking forward to something fluffier and shorter as a chaser.
Sending my Quarterly Tax payments in today.
One check to the IRS and one to Arkansas. I don’t know why Arkansas, where we only have three, barely profitable locations, is demanding quarterlies but my accountant swears they do. Most of my business units are in Oklahoma and I work full time in Tenn, while living in Mississippi and have investments in New Zealand and retirement income from the UK so I keep my accountant on his toes.
A fascinating book in the same sense that an automobile wreck is fascinating. Wolfe is/was a damn good writer.
It was more interesting reading the book pre-1987 crash when Al Sharpton was rising to power using similar race pimp tactics and the people on Wall Street really were “Masters of the Universe”.
71º and cloudy. It was raining this morning so I drove to work. If there’s one thing I hate more than running in the rain it’s biking in the rain.
I like to avoid such graphic stories. Not that I don’t know they happen, but I prefer my entertainment to entertain me. The current John Ring novel gets a little graphic (sex). So I’ve been skipping pages and sections to get back to where the story is good without the sex & violence. Mixed.
@mediumwave, yeah that’s the one. It was quite famous when it came out and I see it on a lot of bookshelves still. Read the depressing thing some years ago, and the only thing I remember at all is the kid walking in on the poop scene….
Freaks
n
A while back someone wondered about availability of instant apple juice powder at Kroger. Well, I finally remembered to look for it at my local and did not see it. However, I did not check on line to see if it could be ordered for home delivery. (I did pick up some PBR.)
Listening to the scanner, last night’s surveillance op is back up and running.
In addition to the GPS tracker on the cars, they have IP cameras pointed at the suspect houses, and can monitor them either in a room, or from their cars.
More names and addresses in the clear.
Gonna get the helo later today if needed.
These are some bad guys, did a deal for 10 kilos of dope last night.
n
These are some bad guys, did a deal for 10 kilos of dope last night.
I have a former co-worker from Death Star Labs who keeps skating on serious drug charges. At one point, deputies pulled 290g of meth out of his house, enough for an automatic 10 year prison stay in FL, but the rules are different when your father is on a first name basis with the county’s State Attorney, the FL Attorney General, and the current sitting Governor.
The guy is once again sitting in jail, arrested last week for dealing in the parking lot of Tampa’s most infamous strip club. He might do real time for that stunt — do not mess with Joe Redner (strip club owner and Tampa C-list celebrity).
“A fascinating book in the same sense that an automobile wreck is fascinating. Wolfe is/was a damn good writer.”
I have really enjoyed “A Man in Full” and “The Right Stuff” by him also.
Well, the po po have the helo onsite, although the suspects are currently sitting tight.
The observer in the helo is the same as the previous op where they followed the guy after the undercover buy.
Don’t know if that means the helo guys just work all the investigations, or if this op is related to the previous buy….
very interesting though.
n
Wow, that thing called the internet? Well, it’s pretty popular with the young people…
“Social media is fanning violence and transforming Chicago’s gang culture with members regularly engaging in taunts online that spiral into deathly street violence,”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5840453/Social-media-fanning-violence-Chicagos-gang-culture.html
And every once in a while the narrative slips and the truth will out….
Police say there was a gang connection to most of the 650 homicides in Chicago recorded in 2017.
Homicides so far in 2018 are down around 20 per cent, which police partly credit to better intelligence and the deployment of officers to neighborhoods on the anniversaries of gang killings. ”
n
And once again I find myself watching surveillance video…. a neighbor one street over had a break in yesterday. Her next door neighbor got an image of the perp on her Nest doorbell, but it isn’t good enough to get more than male, skinny, wearing blue. The neighbors are hoping someone’s video got pix of the guy walking thru the ‘hood.
The most likely half hour of vid shows nothing, but it was a long shot anyway.
I’ve got good coverage in front of my house, but don’t have coverage further down, at the cross street. I’m beginning to think I should…
n
_Feedback (Newsflesh)_ by Mira Grant (aka Seanan Lynn McGuire)
https://www.amazon.com/Feedback-Newsflesh-Mira-Grant/dp/031637931X/
Book number five of a five book urban fantasy series. There are also novellas and short sorties in the series in ebook format only. I read the nicely printed and bound MMPB. If any more books are written in the series, I will probably buy them.
This book is a redo of the first book in the series, _Feed_, from a different perspective. Although I did get a sense of daja vu occasionally, I enjoyed the book and wondered at the creativity.
From the marketing blurb, “We had cured cancer. We had beaten the common cold. But in doing so we unleashed something horrifying and unstoppable. The infection spread leaving those afflicted with a single uncontrollable impulse: FEED.”
Please note that while the author and I share the same middle and last name, I do not have a clue if we are related. Nor have we ever met that I know of.
The author has a website at:
http://seananmcguire.com/
and
https://www.miragrant.com/
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 3.9 out of 5 stars (68 reviews)
Wed. June 13, 2018 – Friday the 13th is on a Wednesday this month
Well, this is a little bit coincidental. On June 13, 2018, I am releasing version 15.13 of our software to our users.
I must admit that I did think about skipping 15.13 and going straight to 15.14.
Last night’s walk was a little interesting. The dog and I took off around 11pm for my 1.1 mile walk and her 1.0 mile ride in her wagon (homegirl gets out about 5 houses before the end and runs home). About halfway through, a couple of ladies exited their home and started walking from the way we came. They were both wearing very heavy robes and headscarves (eyes, nose, and mouth showing). Folks, it was 80 F and 80 % humidity out there. They must have been sweltering. Me and Lady, we were rocking the cool XXXX warm XXXX humid breeze.
About halfway through, a couple of ladies exited their home and started walking from the way we came. They were both wearing very heavy robes and headscarves (eyes, nose, and mouth showing). Folks, it was 80 F and 80 % humidity out there. They must have been sweltering.
I’ve posted before about the coffee klatch that I used to watch convene at the house down the street from our rental in North Austin every Thursday morning after the school year started in 2014. I half-jokingly called it the “Hijab Club”, but that was the dress code.
The famly moved from California (naturally) a few weeks before school started. At first, the wife dressed like the cover of an Athleta catalog, but then the club meetings began and she was always covered when outside.
Once again absurdity rules…
http://dailycaller.com/2018/06/13/transgender-athletes-place-high-track-championship/
Is it because these people really believe this is right? Of course not. They just want to be in your face and disruptive of anything they can.
Once again absurdity rules…
http://dailycaller.com/2018/06/13/transgender-athletes-place-high-track-championship/
Is it because these people really believe this is right? Of course not. They just want to be in your face and disruptive of anything they can.
One wonders if any of the students, teachers, administrators, etc, etc, etc, participating in this farce learned a life lesson ?
Sending my Quarterly Tax payments in today.
One check to the IRS and one to Arkansas. I don’t know why Arkansas, where we only have three, barely profitable locations, is demanding quarterlies but my accountant swears they do. Most of my business units are in Oklahoma and I work full time in Tenn, while living in Mississippi and have investments in New Zealand and retirement income from the UK so I keep my accountant on his toes.
My accountant “sends” sales tax payments to Texas each month. She puts the data on their website and then they draft our corporate checking account.
Your business sounds complicated. Do you have it all written down ?
My wife is still figuring out the investments owned by her father in the nursing home. Three rent houses, 20 different stocks with dividends, a civil service pension, social security, VA disability, an IRA, and an annuity from Louisiana. And that is all she knows of right now.
Plus the four timeshares of which she has killed off three now. And the eight bank accounts which she has merged into three accounts now.
After saving the video of the drive by at our pool, and looking at it in VLC, I was able to get some more info out of the bad quality video. And one of the other cameras did capture the moments just before or just after the shots. That file copy was corrupted so I’ll have to go try to copy it again. You can see the top half of the truck, so maybe we can get a view of the guy…
Even a bad video is better than no video…
n
Congress moves to ban child sex robots favored by pedophiles
If there was even the slightest doubt that we’re living in Heinlein’s Crazy Years …
And yet part of me thinks better a robot than a kid, since there isn’t a cure…
but that brings the old argument of whether that encourages them to advance in their depravity or gives them a safe outlet, just like the arguments around porn.
I don’t know the answer, but can’t deny it’s a sick sad world.
n
and I need my beauty rest….
n
Didn’t work, still look like me…..
n
After saving the video of the drive by at our pool, and looking at it in VLC, I was able to get some more info out of the bad quality video.
FFmpeg and HandBrake will do de-interlacing if that is part of the problem.
FFmpeg’s “yadif” filter does wonders for video pulled from our TiVo.
Hmm, the camera is at an angle to the horizon, so as the truck moves from right to left it also climbs from middle to top of frame. All the horizontal lines ‘stair step’ as it’s moving across the screen, so it looks like it is ‘wiggling.’
It’s been a LONG time since I looked at using any of the converters to do anything with video files. Long enough that you had to manually choose Bob or Weave when playing back a DVD.
n
Nick,
Those artifacts are from interlacing issues with maybe a dash of ‘judder’ mixed in, and what things like comb filters are supposed to address. So, what others said above.
.mg
Thanks guys, using the deinterlace yadif (x2) helped a LOT.
Funny that the moving vid is easier to see details than still captures, but that is the way our brains work…
n
Lynn, did you sort out your California tax problems?
Lynn, did you sort out your California tax problems?
Neither I nor my business have Kalifornia tax problems. We do not have a presence in Kalifornia, therefore we do not pay taxes there to those kleptobureaucrats.
I thought you said one of their goons tried to strong arm their way in to your place.
I thought you said one of their goons tried to strong arm their way in to your place.
Oh yes, he did. He wanted to audit us in our Sugar Land office. My office manager asked him to leave. I heard her telling him to leave and joined the fray. I asked him to leave. The dude reached out and touched my chest. I think he was going to push me out of the way. I was six inches taller and a hundred pounds heavier.
I told the office manager to call the cops, we were being invaded XXXXXXX trespassed. I almost got the office manager to call an ambulance. For him. But, he left before the cops showed up.
Kalifornia sent us audit letters for many years. But they gave up around a decade ago. They never sent us a tax owed demand though.
We don’t owe stinking Kalifornia any money.