Almost 80 F at almost 8AM, my rule of tens says over 100F later this morning.
Unless we get rained on. Yesterday’s NOAA forecast had rain for the next two days. This is different from Tues. forecast that had us clear for those days. I wish this guy would get his stuff together. It was rock solid last year.
I’m out of the house all day today. Gotta make a buck or two. Speaking of which, I ran into another reseller who does a lot more networking than I do, and he says everyone is complaining that their ebay sales are down. Maybe it’s not just me. In any case, doing some other work for my last remaining client.
(and a previous employer might have a project that I’m a good fit for, and he’s called a couple of times this week. Might end up getting sucked back in….)
nick
Speaking of which, I ran into another reseller who does a lot more networking than I do, and he says everyone is complaining that their ebay sales are down.
I reactivated my Amazon seller account a few weeks ago to clear a “new in box” item. The SKU is fairly popular new, direct from Amazon, but I haven’t had any interest at a 40% discount. I have a five star rating.
More anecdotal evidence of a slowing economy — I noticed last week that Sanibel had more empty storefronts despite a record season. The popular coffee bar/bakery which required police directing traffic out front 18 months ago was also gone.
No, I don’t think the red tide or blue-green algae are factors.
77º and sunny. Hi supposed to get up to 81º. Good day.
Last night #1 daughter decided that running with Dad would be okay. I talked her through slowing down, breathing, and not walking no matter what. She found what her limits are and how to work with them to keep going. The net effect was slower, but a lot more confidence that she can keep going when it’s tough. We’ll work on form and breathing going forward. We’ll run together whenever she wants.
This morning I stuck my foot in my sneaker and couldn’t get it all the way in. Sock or something in the toe. Funny. I had just worn them an hour or so earlier. Stuck my hand in there & felt a small mammal. Took it outside the shake the mouse out & let it get away, but nothing came out. It was a small bat. Funny – must have been coming in to sleep at night and found my shoe on the enclosed porch. Cute little thing. I hope I didn’t hurt it. I put the shoe aside & told the kids to leave it alone for the day. Hopefully he’ll be okay & can go out & eat bugs tonight.
Finally – cable modem died on me. Ran to WalMart to get an “approved” model for Spectrum. (I had a spare Motorola from 8+ years ago that wouldn’t do). Got it configured, and the tech mentioned that I could save $20/month and get 3 times the speed by switching from the TWC plan to the Spectrum plan. So will call today.
Funny how they don’t proactively move you to the cheaper faster plan, almost like they want to keep milking the cow…
n
Customer loyalty really doesn’t mean dick anymore. It’s all about signing up new customers or changing your mind when you call to disconnect (they call those people “retention specialists”). If you’ve been a faithful customer for 20 years and some new plan will save you money you’ll never know.
There seems to be a growing number of people that just call their cable and cell phone providers every few months and say “This is costing me too much. If you can’t lower it I’m going to have to terminate service.” That’s the only way to make sure you continually have the best deal.
Finally – cable modem died on me. Ran to WalMart to get an “approved” model for Spectrum. (I had a spare Motorola from 8+ years ago that wouldn’t do).
If your cable modem is that old, an upgrade is in order even if you aren’t changing plans.
The ~$60 (at Best Buy) Arris on TimeWarner/Spectrum’s approved list boosted us from 24 Mbps to 100 Mbps without any other changes. Registering the MAC was automatic just by opening a browser.
There seems to be a growing number …..
dont feel alone, it is internationational way doing business, I do it every 6 months
Okay, folks, the DLPs have found the dirt that will disqualify Brett Kavanaugh (with a “K”, not a “C” as some DLPs use) from being a Supreme Court Justice or Dog Catcher for that matter: Via The Blaze
The ~$60 (at Best Buy) Arris on TimeWarner/Spectrum’s approved list boosted us from 24 Mbps to 100 Mbps without any other changes. Registering the MAC was automatic just by opening a browser.
I got the Arris modem as well, though a little more expensive. It did NOT go through automatically, so I had to call. I did get the “register my modem” page, though. I suspect the Spectrum automatic didn’t work because I was still TWC. Just a guess.
Yes, I know I should call periodically. My only (poor) excuse is that I absolutely despise talking to strangers on the telephone, and hate using it with friends. I still haven’t got the VA to call me back, and I hate leaving messages, so I call less frequently, which makes it worse…
I got the Arris modem as well, though a little more expensive. It did NOT go through automatically, so I had to call. I did get the “register my modem” page, though. I suspect the Spectrum automatic didn’t work because I was still TWC. Just a guess.
AT&T ran Gigafiber through my neighborhood a few years ago, and we are 800 yards or so from Google Fiber, just outside the city limits of Austin. Maybe Spectrum/TWC upped their game to compete. Imagine that.
Yep. The local ISP is running fiber to as many houses as it can – the criteria is that a certain percentage on the block (of certain density) must be willing to sign up. They cannot keep up.
The response from Spectrum is to increase base speeds, lower prices, and offer up to 800 Mbps. I’m not going to complain about better service as a result of competition. I like competition.
I just found out that AT&T will be running fiber through my neighborhood soon. We’ll see how Spectrum responds
Competition!? What a novel idea. Here in little Plainville we only have cable 1 provider, Comcast. They know it and charge accordingly.
I complained once and they lowered the bill for a while then jacked it up again. I canceled all TV and phone and just went to internet only since I find all I want on streaming. That was OK for a while then that began to go up. I called and I was told that if I got the phone again my bill would go down. That is evil, but I did it to lower the bill. Now it has creeped up again and I was told that they will only lower it if I get the TV added back in for a 3 year deal. The first year is cheap, after that is goes up each year. I’m still exploring my options but I don’t seem to have too many.
Competition? There is no real competition in the cable business. Yes, there are a few areas where you do have 2 choices for a cable provider but they are few and far between. Saying that a cable provider that you do not have access to is driving your cable provider to provide better service is a fallacy. It is technology in the boxes on your end and in the providers head-end that are providing the biggest and most economical boost.
People who do not live in a big metropolitan area are unlikely to see fiber put in to their home because the cost of installing the cable is just too high for the potential return. This also applies to many old neighborhoods. The fiber companies do not want to have to deal with all the crap people of planted or built in the right of ways. So like in my area fiber was only put in along city/public right-of-ways. New areas do get fiber IF the developer will pay for it which is stupid for the developer. The incremental cost for putting fiber in the trench they have to dig anyway is minuscule over the life of the project.
@DadC is just rambling. Is anybody listening to the old guy sitting in the corner with his cup of coffee?
“Beto O’Rourke hauls in $10.4 million, more than double total for incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz”
https://www.chron.com/news/politics/article/Beto-O-Rourke-hauls-in-10-4-million-more-than-13069385.php
All of the liberals in Hollyweird are not going to turn Texas blue. At least not this year.
OK, I managed to perform a new stunt this morning. I was brushing my teeth, coughed, and somehow got toothpaste down the old windpipe. I am still burning and coughing. This sucks.
“Houston real estate market hits all-time high”
https://www.chron.com/business/article/Houston-real-estate-market-his-all-time-high-13066683.php
Not in my neighborhood. Even though only four homes out of 4,000 homes got water in them during Harvey, people are very wary of Greatwood in Sugar Land. Especially in my area where the levee is the highest (12 ft). There are many pictures circulating around of boats in Greatwood during and after Harvey.
http://www.fbherald.com/free/hurricane-harvey-reveals-superheroes-in-greatwood/article_4ab44325-e203-5572-813f-c3f66fc646f5.html
The Congressional hearings on the FBI douche is a lesson on “Rules For Radicals.” The Dumbocrats are using every dirty trick from that book to stonewall. I hope the sheeple pay attention and deliver what the Dumbo’s deserve in November. And that Commie chick is something else. I hope she wins and goes to the Hill. The old school Dumbo’s will marginalize her toot sweet. Just like Bernie.
“Beto O’Rourke hauls in $10.4 million, more than double total for incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz”
I don’t think the Dems are actually expecting to win wither the Senate seat or the Governor’s mansion in Texas. What I believe is taking place is a data mining operation on statewide races geared towards application in the 2020 Presidential campaign.
They’re going to learn about two scenarios played for real in Texas:
1) Governor – Facing a wildly popular incumbent (Trump) with a radical fringe-appeal candidate (Bernie, Fauxcahontas) sacrificial candidate to cleanse the party.
2) Senate – Going after a less popular but still re-electable incumbent (again, Trump) with youth, energy, and lots of Hollywood money (Gavin Newsom).
1) Governor – Facing a wildly popular incumbent (Trump) with a radical fringe-appeal candidate (Bernie, Fauxcahontas) sacrificial candidate to cleanse the party.
Himlery will be the dumbocrat’s candidate in 2020. She still controls the parties internals.
Do it for the children !
Himlery will be the dumbocrat’s candidate in 2020. She still controls the parties internals.
They know they will lose that scenario in Texas in 2020.
Instead of tackling a broad range of issues, Hillary will have one message, “Vote Justice. Vote The Ultimate Woman Scorned”.
The Dems still have the data from the 2014 Governor’s race where their candidate had a single message based on gender. That doesn’t play well outside of Travis County … for now.
There are two cable companies in this little town. Northland and Time Warner/Spectrum/whatever. Their rates must be awful because I see a ton of DirecTv and Dish dishes. Plus there is DSL from what was Verizon. And the wISP stuff.
All I have is the wISP stuff. 5 down/ 1 up. Beats dial-up for sure. They advertise faster, my hardware can do 135mb on the installer’s magic laptop but their billing software can’t give me the 20mb speed they advertise. [shrug] Whatever, you don’t want an extra $20 a month from me?
I would like to have cable TV and internet.
I feel your pain. I had some acid reflux go down my windpipe a few weeks ago. Burnt for a couple of hours, I was hoarse for the entire day, and I had to clear my throat every few minutes.
All I have is the wISP stuff. 5 down/ 1 up. Beats dial-up for sure. They advertise faster, my hardware can do 135mb on the installer’s magic laptop but their billing software can’t give me the 20mb speed they advertise. [shrug] Whatever, you don’t want an extra $20 a month from me?
I would like to have cable TV and internet.
Plus you have OTA, over the air TV, right ?
On a different subject, I replaced all of my smoke alarms today. Smoke alarms don’t work well after 10 years, and I am in a 18-year-old house.
You can remove a smoke alarm (twist CW or CCW) and there should be a manufacturer date on it. If it’s older than 10 years, then it will not be as effective. Even if you put in a new battery, or if it is wired to AC.
So I grabbed 6 of these (four-pack plus two more singles , from the Home Depot online site, for a total cost of $78.
I picked those because they come with the adapters needed for the most common brands (my existing ones were Firex, which was bought out by Kidde). Took about a week to get here.
Installation quite easy. Get up on the ladder (carefully), twist off the old one, use my little power screwdriver to loosen the two screws holding the mounting plates, remove the old mounting plate.
Grab the right power adapter from the package, clip it on, then attach the new mounting plate. (Use a permanent marker to put the date on the unit for reference.) Connect the power connector, feed the wires back into the hole, and twist on the new one (make sure it is positioned correctly if mounted on a wall). Pop in the 9v battery (included) (which is front-mounted for easy replacement), and test it. All done.
Took under an hour to replace 6 of them in my house.
Reasonable cost. You can get ‘lifetime’ (10-year battery) units, but they cost more. Best price I found was via Home Depot (Amazon and Lowe’s were higher. YMMV).
A good idea to do. Doesn’t take long, and doesn’t cost much.
Good advice on the smoke detectors @RickH. Costco regularly runs sales on them, usually FirstAlert. Never saw that adapter trick, I’ll have to check that out. Our smoke detectors have several more years before I swap them out (have had 5 sets of smoke detectors in our 38+ years here).
Could be worse. You could have eaten a TidePod.
I was brushing my teeth, coughed, and somehow got toothpaste down the old windpipe. I am still burning and coughing. This sucks.
Could be worse. You could have eaten a TidePod.
No, I am moderately smarter than that. However, I did forget about gravity while brushing my teeth.
I’m in favor of teens, twenty-somethings, and anyone else eating TidePods. And drinking bleach, huffing talcum powder, and getting drain cleaner enemas. If they’re that stinking stupid, the species does not need them.
“Trash piles up in US as China closes door to recycling”
https://www.afp.com/en/news/826/trash-piles-us-china-closes-door-recycling-doc-17h4mx1
Surprise, surprise, surprise ! Recyling has problems and is expensive. I’ve been telling the wife to not put plastic film in our recycle bin but she claims that they take it and ignores me. Nothing unusual there.
Although I do maintain that our great-great-grandchildren will be mining our trash dumps for metals.
Hat tip to:
https://drudgereport.com/
I’m in favor of teens, twenty-somethings, and anyone else eating TidePods. And drinking bleach, huffing talcum powder, and getting drain cleaner enemas. If they’re that stinking stupid, the species does not need them.
You forgot condom snorting. The wife saw a picture of a teen snorting a condom the other day and I got to explain condom snorting to her. She was not impressed.
I bought 10yr smoke detectors to add outside the bedrooms, and on the kitchen side of the (usually closed at night) door to the private areas of the house. I got them on sale at costco. Put them in the rental house too.
WRT cable, ATT finally got around to pulling fiber in my neighborhood, and comcast came in a blew thru with fiber too. Comcast is fiber to the pole, then the same coax to the house. I was switched over without even noticing. It only took comcast a couple of weeks to push all the fiber, and no time to light it up. ATT spent MONTHS and still isn’t lit. ATT just sent us letters describing their new fiber plan, and I’m probably gonna switch. We don’t watch cable anymore, and I’ve used IP phone for at least 10yrs. The prepper in me wants to have copper phone, but no way am I paying for it.
In the rural areas south of Houston, there are wisp providers. One of our pool dads is hooking up a whole small town with wISP and I might go up to help.
My customer out in the boonies with only ATT DSL and direcTV available is having the city move closer to him. The next development over got comcast cable/ip and ATT is pulling fiber to areas around him as they get developed. wISP would be a stop gap for him if available. I did two DSL lines for one of his neighbors, and that helped alot. The city is coming, but they’ve got a while to wait yet.
n
“Although I do maintain that our great-great-grandchildren will be mining our trash dumps for metals.”
I’ve been saying this since high school!
n
“Although I do maintain that our great-great-grandchildren will be mining our trash dumps for metals.”
I’ve been saying this since high school!
I probably stole it from you.
My customer out in the boonies with only ATT DSL and direcTV available is having the city move closer to him. The next development over got comcast cable/ip and ATT is pulling fiber to areas around him as they get developed. wISP would be a stop gap for him if available. I did two DSL lines for one of his neighbors, and that helped alot. The city is coming, but they’ve got a while to wait yet.
My office property has AT&T fiber at the front of it. AT&T wants a three year contract at $1,000/month to put in a splitter and pull fiber 1,000 ft back to the main office building. So having AT&T fiber nearby is not necessarily cheap. We have two AT&T DSL 12/1 mbps lines at the office at $60/month each.
Hey Lynn, active shooter somewhere in Houston, scanner didn’t say where. The surveillance guys were chatting about it.
n
Hey Lynn, active shooter somewhere in Houston, scanner didn’t say where. The surveillance guys were chatting about it.
In the city of bayous, there are eight millions souls. Several of them are full on crazy. Stay away from them. I am surprised that there are not more.
Sounds like blacks shooting blacks, wearing red clothing, so probably gang related.
n
I just heard two gun shots outside my office window. But nothing unusual here, I hear gun shots outside the office several times a week since we are in the country. And I just heard two more.
I talked to the Service Advisor this afternoon. I will get my 2005 Expedition back on Tuesday at the earliest. Replacing the a/c evaporator is a 10.5 hour job by the book and they are backed up something fierce with the summer temps and a shortage of technicians. Lovely.
At least my rental car is only $45/day, a 2015 Ford Fiesta. I’ll swear this thing has at least ten gears as it is always shifting. But the a/c is nice and cold.
‘Fire in the hole!’ Watch the dramatic moment Cape Canaveral’s historic LC-17 launch towers are demolished to make way for lunar mining startup, Moon Express
LUNAR MINING!!!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5947745/Watch-dramatic-moment-Cape-Canaverals-historic-LC-17-launch-towers-demolished.html
n
At least my rental car is only $45/day, a 2015 Ford Fiesta. I’ll swear this thing has at least ten gears as it is always shifting. But the a/c is nice and cold.
Dual clutch six speed which is actually two three speed transmissions mated together and shifted with electronics. All the cars in that price range have funky transmissions since that’s the part of the lineup designed to help the manufacturer meet the 37 MPG targets.
We’ve been shopping the low end for something that my son will drive eventually. Nothing made by the manufacturers is truly terrible anymore, but you still get what you pay for. Decent AC isn’t hard, however, so every car has it standard along with decent stereos.
(Best Buy shut down CDs. I’m predicting car stereo installs are next. No point.)
We had a 2018 Camry rental last week. Nice. Very nice. Of course, retail was $35,000 … for a Camry. If I was status conscious (I’m not), I could pay the same money for one of those stolen Chrysler designs which Mercedes is selling as their low end sedan and crossover. CLA 250?
The Camry averaged 35.5 MPG all week, but low end acceleration was much mushier than the 18 year old version of the same drive train in my Solara. Trump vacated the CAFE order, but all the manufacturers still have to design like Gavin Newsom will win in 2020 or 2024 and install Elon Musk as his “car czar”.
Car stereo won’t go away. There is the same demand for aftermarket no matter what.
unless “urban” culture devalues the car, and a thumping stereo, they’re here for a while.
n
There’s also the “value proposition” purchases. My F350 XL came with AM/FM only. No aux input, no CD, no bluetooth, no camera. My big thing was the backup camera, so I bought an aftermarket with a screen, aux input, bluetooth, and camera input. I only spent $60 (China special), but it was worth it to me.
As long as manufacturers put cheapest radios in cars for the bottom of the market, I believe there will be an aftermarket for improvement.
I had a fiesta rental when I was Boston earlier this year. It was a top trim level car – had a moon roof and gps. Fun little car and surprisingly roomy. Nothing like my ATS, but then, it’s not designed to be.
If you have combination smoke/carbon monoxide detectors they may expire even sooner than that. IIRC, most carbon monoxide detectors are only good for about 5 years or so. Perhaps the technology’s longevity has improved.
Nick wrote:
“Funny how they don’t proactively move you to the cheaper faster plan, almost like they want to keep milking the cow…”
They also want to lock you in for another 12/24/36 months. “Yes sir, you can move to our better/cheaper plan, but you have to lock in to us for two years.”