Cold and wet here, lots of snow melt.
Good day yesterday. All the traditional snow activities for little kids were introduced and practiced. LOTS of homemade cookies were eaten. Wine was consumed (by others) and presents were stacked under the tree. Three huge dogs got their freshly bathed bellies skritched.
A good day.
I hope your holiday preps are happening smoothly, and your lives are where you want them to be.
I need to get the kids out to buy for each other and mom, and we might go see the Star Wars movie. Dunno. Maybe it will snow a bit more. That would be cool.
I also have to add to and rotate out some stocks in my cache here. I was disappointed to see that the Walmart here doesn’t carry the canned Keystone meat anymore. I’ll have to add some other canned foods I guess. The rice bucket is marked 9/17, so that needs replacing. Most of the rest is canned, but any box or pouch meals might need replacement too. It’s winter now, so maybe I’ll be able to find some hand or foot warmers to use as O2 absorbers.
Anyway, stuff to do!
n
Well, no new snow this morning. Kids have already been sledding again.
Sunny and low 40s.
Good times.
Not much snow here. We’ve had two storms dumping a foot or so, and a couple lesser storms, but it’s mostly gone. Cold, though.
Cold and raining. If the forecast is correct, we should hit 60 degrees Christmas Day. Still too cold for me, but better than the alternative.
Cold and raining. If the forecast is correct, we should hit 60 degrees Christmas Day. Still too cold for me, but better than the alternative.
Shorts weather.
As a near native Floridian, it is my God-given right to wear shorts at Christmas. Even when we lived in WA State.
Very strong warm Santa Ana winds blowing since last night.
10am and 72F
Winter, HA!
64°F, sunny and calm on the SoCal coast now, 11:30 PST. Rain forecast for late afternoon.
From yesterday:
https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2019/12/19/homeless-crisis-housing-city-citizens-again-california/
Hmmm. A PRC. What could possibly go wrong?
In case you don’t want to follow the link, it’s a 300 Acre homeless shelter with dorms and underground tunnels.
“Daune Nason, founder of the Folsom-based Citizens Again, released details Thursday of his plans for an estimated $3 billion private city equipped with amenities and services for a 150,000 “high-needs” population.”
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ! Three billion dollars !
It will also take thousands of paid staffers to “service” the lazy, stinky, bums.
Truck in the soy rations today so they get used to it.
Massive employment scheme for the NGOs. Huge escalation in their staffing and budgets. It’s disgusting the way they farm human misery for their own benefit. You know the director of a facility like that would have a mid-6 figure salary, with a huge benefits package, and spend most of his/her time at parties, galas, and fundraisers with the rich and beautiful set…..
The second facility would be needed to house the overflow, and then the third… and pretty soon you have the “projects” all over again. The pictures are glossy, but anyone doubt that it would be poured in place concrete and concrete block construction? Or that it would be a festering shithole within a year?
But ah, the noble savage mixed with magic dirt, sprinkled with tax subsidies and seasoned with do gooder feel good. . . that’s a winning combination.
n
Massive employment scheme for the NGOs. Huge escalation in their staffing and budgets. It’s disgusting the way they farm human misery for their own benefit.
The warehouse/office development where I work in Austin seems destined to be one of those misery farms. We already have a food pantry and VA outpatient clinic bookending the property, and once the first hotel goes homeless shelter, all of the rest will follow. Out of sight, out of mind, down near the airport.
I feel sorry for the people in the trailer park around the corner, tucked into the V where 183 and 71 meet. Lots of poverty, but no one there is interested in being homeless if they can help it.
IIRC, this was in the news about six months ago; it appears that California is determined to persist in teh crazy.
Why Do Government Officials Want to Ban Ham Radio? It’s Already Begun in California:
IIRC, this was in the news about six months ago; it appears that California is determined to persist in teh crazy.
West Coast puckered sphincter types *hate* big ham radio rigs. My wife’s relatives in Vantucky griped all the time about a property just outside their housing development where the owner had a tall antenna mast.
Granted, you couldn’t *see* the antenna from their house, but the fact that it was there irked them none the less.
Probably also irked them that they could do nothimg about it. At least that’s the way it was when I was active. Then, as long as we complied with some FCC regs, the locals had to approve. Probably no longer true.
The ham story linked to above, probably from Instapundit, is wrong.
http://www.arrl.org/news/report-causes-concern-and-confusion-in-california-s-amateur-radio-ranks
It pays to research these things. More often than not, it’s overblown.
You got me started. A few years ago, a county supervisor heard a complaint about a farmer who had his personal dump on his land, visible to a new housing development. Didn’t matter that the farm was there waay before the development. One thing led to another (confusing, but stay with me,) and now we can’t have more than one unregistered vehicle visible from the street.
I have two. Fortunately, some neighbors have several each, and enforcement is usually driven by complaints, so everything’s cool. Besides, I am ready for the gummint types. I own a few other pacels of land, and would first offer to move one next door. That would be enough, but if for some reason not, I could register one. Heh. While I’m at it, I could offer the neighbors parking spots. Some of them also own multiple parcels, and you can see where this is going. Suddenly, we would have the cars spread around and more visible. Don’t mess with us 😉
Batman lays down the smack.
Probably also irked them that they could do nothimg about it. At least that’s the way it was when I was active. Then, as long as we complied with some FCC regs, the locals had to approve. Probably no longer true.
The house was not part of any HOA or city jurisdiction and looked like 70s construction. Most of the puckered sphincter developments popped up in the last decade or so, as Vantucky turned into a bedroom community for people who worked in Portlandia.
The puckered sphincters have a point about cell towers and property values, but I don’t see the problem with a ham rig.
From BH in yesterday’s Fort Bend Herald:
“No matter how old you are, an empty Christmas wrapping paper tube is still fun to bonk someone over the head with…”
The stupidity of Medicare simply amazes me.
The water tank gasket of my CPAP machine needs to be replaced. The DME provider no longer stocks them and cannot get the gasket. Thus Medicare will pay $1200.00 (Medicare’s portion, insurance covers the rest) for a new machine, a machine with worse reviews than what I have.
It gets better. I can find the gasket for $7.95 at CPAP.COM. But they are not an approved provider. Thus Medicare is not allowed to use them as a supplier.
So I spend $7.95 of my own money to keep the machine I like or let Medicare pay $1200.00 for a new machine. And for a point of reference the new machine is only $850.00 at CPAP.COM.
I think I will buy my own lid gasket as I like my machine and don’t want the one with crappy reviews.
“Trump is remaking the federal judiciary”
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Trump-is-remaking-the-federal-judiciary-14924789.php
“ASHINGTON – After three years in office, President Donald Trump has remade the federal judiciary, ensuring a conservative tilt for decades and cementing his legacy no matter the outcome of November’s election.”
“Trump nominees make up 1 in 4 U.S. circuit court judges. Two of his picks sit on the Supreme Court. And this past week, as the House voted to impeach the president, the Republican-led Senate confirmed another 13 district court judges.”
“In total, Trump has installed 187 judges to the federal bench.”
I win. All I wanted was one conservative SCOTUS judge. Everything else has been gravy.
Hat tip to:
https://drudgereport.com/
The ARRL has retrenched on a bill that would require HOAs to provide a path to accepting “reasonable” antennas. They pushed it thru with sponsor two or three times, but each time it gets killed by one particular senator, who gets a ton of money from the HOAs. ARRL is currently exploring other avenues to get similar results some other way.
The cali story has some other nuances to it. FIRSTNET is going forward. It is intended to be a parallel cellular 4 and 5G wireless network, sort of a secure and limited access internet for first responders. It requires an antenna array roughly every couple of blocks, more in high density areas. Very few NIMBYs fighting that.
Hams are building out high speed networks of their own, knowing that some day they will be needed for that as well.
n
The ARRL has retrenched on a bill that would require HOAs to provide a path to accepting “reasonable” antennas. They pushed it thru with sponsor two or three times, but each time it gets killed by one particular senator, who gets a ton of money from the HOAs. ARRL is currently exploring other avenues to get similar results some other way.
It isn’t the HOAs profiting from lawsuits, it is the lawyers and management companies hired by the HOAs to pursue the nonsense legal actions at the request of the puckered sphincters.
The last revision of FS720 in Florida under RINO Charlie Crist struck lines through 3-4 words and turned the statute into a profit making machine for the association industry.
No matter how reasonable the ham rig, someone is going to have a problem with it. I speak from experience.
“Massive employment scheme for the NGOs. Huge escalation in their staffing and budgets. It’s disgusting the way they farm human misery for their own benefit. You know the director of a facility like that would have a mid-6 figure salary, with a huge benefits package, and spend most of his/her time at parties, galas, and fundraisers with the rich and beautiful set”
They not only take advantage of the people they are supposed to be caring for, they take advantage of their employees. Most of the actual worker-bees in places like that really believe in the cause, and work for crap wages. It’s a couple of levels up that the shennanigans start.
“A few years ago, a county supervisor heard a complaint about a farmer who had his personal dump on his land, visible to a new housing development. Didn’t matter that the farm was there waay before the development.”
One of our favorite restaurants has been in the same location since forever. The current owner, in his 50s, is the fifth generation of his family to run the place. They have a huge, well-tended garden, where they used to do events. It’s a high-end restaurant, so we’re not talking wild parties. More like wine tastings and buffets, 40-50 people talking and eating.
A few years ago, someone bought the house next to the restaurant. They promptly complained about noise from the events. According to some bureaucrat somewhere, the noise complaint was technically justified. So: no more events in the garden. Idiots: buy a house next to a restaurant, and then get upset that people visit the place. Bigger idiots: bureaucrats.
What’s funny is throw that in a ProgLibTurd’s face and they’ll screech “RAYCISS!” They have no clue what tRump is really doing.