I’m sleeping in but I’m sure it’s hot. We did get a brief shower yesterday so maybe FEMA was right to put us in the Tstorm zone. Still, the openweathermap prediction was much closer to an accurate portrayal of the day.
I know it’s a “Hallmark Holiday” but I like Fathers Day. The dads out there get little enough recognition, and I like the pause to do so. I love being a dad, no matter that it changed my life or my outlook. I consider it to be my most important job. I understand my own father better because of it too. I had the chance to tell him so, and was glad I did. I miss him terribly.
I’m very grateful for the childhood he and my mom provided for us, and I’m mindful that not everyone had that experience. A lot of people find themselves estranged from their kids or their parents for one reason or another. If that’s you, and over time the reasons aren’t really that serious, consider reaching out. No one knows what the future holds.
nick
(somehow I screwed up the autopost. It’s 91F and 72%RH.)
Sarah Hoyt has an interesting observation about the ongoing open-ended biology experiment we’re currently running on ourselves…
https://accordingtohoyt.com/2019/06/15/bio-engineering/
n
Some quick short showers have not cooled it down, and have increased the local humidity considerably.
Lovely Fathers Day brunch put on by my wife and daughters. Got some tools for my non-prepping hobby, and some model rocket stuff! Never played with model rockets. It looks like a lot of fun.
Aesop over at Raconteur Report has been knocking it out of the park on the Ebola issue, as he has for years, and I’ve been beavering away in his comment sections… and now have made his front page twice! Squeee! given the quality of his readership, I’m proud of that.
Well, more puttering around the house doing stuff, like most weekends.
Freaking grape vines are being eaten by something AGAIN, and something ate the weak little clusters of grapes that WERE growing anyway. Frustrating doesn’t begin to describe it.
n
Sarah Hoyt has an interesting observation about the ongoing open-ended biology experiment we’re currently running on ourselves…
For now, my wife is over private practice in Texas. The amount of Adderal she has to write here is easily an order of magnitude larger than the amount she wrote in Florida or Washington.
If she doesn’t just give the patients the drugs, they drag out the visits arguing their case for their fix and her paychecks decrease since the group wants to cater to anyone with decent insurance. If she hands the drugs over too quickly, the Texas DEA starts an investigation, part of an attempt to dispel the image of the state as “ADD Central”.
An experiment in law enforcement as well as biochemistry.
Interestingly, 98% of Adderal is written in the US. Overseas, the prescriptions are rare.
Of course, as soon as my wife turned in notice at her job, they announced the promotion of a younger doctor, two years out of training, to Family Practice chief. He *doesn’t* treat ADD, is a lousy doctor, but does have a UT Austin diploma hanging on the wall.
My wife’s standard line about the situation behind closed doors? To paraphrase Freddy Krueger, “Help yourselves, F*ckers (add middle finger emphasis).”
From @greg yesterday:
WTF were they thinking?
“Spy fears as Chinese-owned company builds circuit boards for top-secret F-35 warplane”
Try to find someone in a Western country who can supply complex multi layer circuit boards without breaking the bank. Not happening. Even when I worked for Jabil in the early 90s, we bought Chinese boards.
I talked to my buddy at church this morning who has been building PCBs for 30+ years now here in Texas. He designs and his company builds four layer PCBs every day of the week. He can even heat treat the PCBS and certify them up to 350 F (deep oil well downhole temperature). They have built 16 layer PCBs and still have the capability but get undercut by the Indians all the time.
Aesop over at Raconteur Report has been knocking it out of the park on the Ebola issue, as he has for years, and I’ve been beavering away in his comment sections… and now have made his front page twice! Squeee! given the quality of his readership, I’m proud of that.
URL ?
Getting some thunder and lightning…. not much rain, yet.
Won’t be going to the pool, or spraying the crops.
This article has some shocking numbers in it. I love that when enough time passes, some of the truth comes out and they try to play like everyone always knew it…
” this represents a massive shift from the final quarter of 2009, when negative equity peaked at 26% of all mortgaged residential properties.”
–I was paying attention and I don’t recall ever seeing that 26% number. That is a shocking number of people affected.
n
https://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/
look at everything on the first and second pages.
n
“The touchscreen infotainment systems in new cars are a distracting mess”
https://www.osnews.com/story/130149/the-touchscreen-infotainment-systems-in-new-cars-are-a-distracting-mess/
“When I’m in charge of a car company, we’re going to have one strict rule about interior design: make it so it doesn’t cause you to crash the car.”
I agree ! My cousin’s Tesla 3 has everything controlled by a 19 inch vertical screen in the middle console. A serious distraction.
My sister’s Suburban will alert her with a message on the cluster that a song she wants to hear is playing on another XM channel. That is way unnecessary.
in other news, I added a page to the About page. My name in the intro is now linked to a description of why I’m posting (instead of Robert.)
Take a look and let me know if it’s ok with everyone….
n
I talked to my buddy at church this morning who has been building PCBs for 30+ years now here in Texas. He designs and his company builds four layer PCBs every day of the week. He can even heat treat the PCBS and certify them up to 350 F (deep oil well downhole temperature). They have built 16 layer PCBs and still have the capability but get undercut by the Indians all the time.
The overseas players don’t have to play by the same environmental rules. When you have to make 100,000 of something, pennies add up to real money quickly.
The last time I played consumer electronics engineer was 1992, and we worked with PII in Oregon. The Tyco Ponzi bought them out in 1999, and Bob Praegitzer died a few years later. The *only* reason we stayed domestic with the boards was that PII was a partner in the project, trying to carve out a piece of the cell phone market, and ate the price difference.
–I was paying attention and I don’t recall ever seeing that 26% number. That is a shocking number of people affected.
When I sold my FL house for what the market would bear in 2010, six households in my subdivision (out of 18) were forced into some combination of bankruptcy, short sale, and/or foreclosure within a year, and another tree only survived because the banks didn’t move on foreclosure filings.
26% actually seems a bit low, but I was in Florida. Even responsible homeowners wanted things like jet skis and bass rigs. Weber was so completely booked in the state that they bought Ducane — by then deteriorated to selling Chinese made junk — just to have product to put into the home stores.
(BTW, the stupidest lenders around Tampa were the military credit unions. If you bank with one, I suggest getting your money out NOW.)
Since we bought our Texas house, the state’s appraisal and lending standards have loosened, and I don’t think the big city suburbs will fare as well next time around as they did in the last real estate bust.
Our former landlord’s nearest property to our current house is still listed for rent on MLS, and the leases usually get snapped up quickly this close to school starting.
“26% actually seems a bit low. ”
–certainly for FL, not so much in TX
Cali was bad too.
n
–certainly for FL, not so much in TX
Texas will be ugly next time. A lot of things loosened quietly since we bought our house.
Texas will be ugly next time. A lot of things loosened quietly since we bought our house.
Like the output of GM Arlington going straight to the rental car lots at ABI. A free upgrade from midsize for the Gold club members the last time we had execs out for a demo.
–certainly for FL, not so much in TX
Texas will be ugly next time. A lot of things loosened quietly since we bought our house.
Don’t say that while I am considering spending $600K buying a one acre lot in a nice neighborhood and building a 3,000 ft2 house on it.
https://www.har.com/5511-bridlewood-drive/sale_91845304
ADD: I saw ugly in Texas back in 1986 when my $80K house outside Dallas dropped to $60K when I tried to sell it in 1989. I ended up renting the house out until 2002 or so. Since then, I ain’t seen much ugly in Texas, even in 2008 / 2009.
Went with my 80 year old dad and my 35 year old son to see “The Secret Life of Pets 2” this afternoon. It was good but not as good as the original. Parts of the movie had me rolling on the floor though. I felt that the target age was 6 to 12 but we still enjoyed it. 4 stars out of 5.
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_secret_life_of_pets_2
Man, the official rainfall may be 0.7 inches but we have gotten around 4 inches here at the house today. And it is raining again now just as I was going out for a miler walk.
We had scattered smatterings and a bit of heavy rain around dinner time. My weather station shows 1.76 inches today. It’s currently raining, but not heavily. We’ve been getting distant thunder too. Don’t know if we’ll have our swim meet tomorrow…as the forecast from FEMA showed the same t-storms as today. Temp dropped to 67F! Chilly even.
n
ADD: I saw ugly in Texas back in 1986 when my $80K house outside Dallas dropped to $60K when I tried to sell it in 1989. I ended up renting the house out until 2002 or so. Since then, I ain’t seen much ugly in Texas, even in 2008 / 2009.
Regardless of changes to appraisal rules and lending standards I’ve observed, The current Texas real estate market is built on 4% mortgages. Even a reversion to 6% will be ugly, much less historic “low” norms like 8%.
We broke even selling our house in FL, but we ate ~ 30% loss on a piece of property we sold a few years ago. The property wasn’t in an HOA, but the old guy across the street was underwater in his retirement dream house by about $200k, and he had zero patience for the grass growing beyond ankle height — maintenance from WA/TX was a constant struggle with services.
“I added a page to the About page. My name in the intro is now linked to a description of why I’m posting (instead of Robert.)”
Very suitable. Thank you. Indeed, many thanks to you, and to all the other involved, for keeping this place up. I followed Bob’s journal for many years, and would hate to lose this oasis of thoughtful sanity on the internet.