Hot, humid, really humid….
Yesterday was ok in the shade but smoking skin hot in the sun. I felt my neck and scalp crinkling while I was cleaning the pool.
After doing the absolute minimum in house and yard work, I headed out. Did an auction pickup that was about 20 minutes further away than I thought. I’m not doing that again. Then went to my secondary location with the best of intentions… and got completely sidetracked into a 6 hour conversation with my neighbors. Suddenly it was dark out, and I was 3 hours overdue for dinner. I think I might have had a reaction to being isolated. Maybe it’s getting to me more than I think.
So today I plan to do a bit of work in the garage, cut the grass, and then head over to do the work that didn’t get done yesterday. We’ll see how that goes.
Summer travel season and gas is ~$1.60/ gallon here. Crazy low.
I see that third world style statue attacks are continuing, as are the marches. We’re far from peak stupidity on this issue. Plan for it to get worse.
Wuflu still is out there claiming victims. Don’t volunteer for it.
Keep planning and keep improving your position.
And keep stacking.
nick
No, you’re thinking of the products of the universities.
“Haven’t most of the universities been zombies for a decade or two now ? ”
–they’ve been sucking up the ‘everyone needs to go to college’ money for the last decade. A lot of people were starting to rethink that before covid struck. I’m sure a bunch more are considering skipping the whole thing and making some money working instead.
The student loan program was nationalized to pay for Doh-bamacaree. Remember, we had to pass the bill to find out what was in it.
No matter where the check goes, the government issues the paper and collects most of the interest payments on the debt. If you or a child have loans and you see a non-Fed name on any paperwork, that institution gets to wet its beak (collect a small piece of the interest) as part of the racket to make everything look legit and shuffle some statements in the Kabuki.
The student loan forgiveness being promised to the Millenials by the Progs is actually an effort to monetize the Doh-bamacare debt and finally put an end to the “revenue neutral” charade which was required to get the bill through Reconciliation once Uncle Ted assumed room temperature in 2009
Welcome to the crazy. You left too soon. It gets worse. You should have tried one of the Richmond Street bars by the Galleria to see the real overcrowding. Wait, they are closed again.
The infection vector party in Austin for 300 teenagers was billed by the news media as a “Pong Fest” without any explanation. When I Google around for the term, it still isn’t clear, but lots of stories and pictures linked to Kardashians come up. I got a bad feeling about this, Chewie …
I guess if you live in Austin, you’re supposed to be familiar with the term “Pong Fest”. I’m guessing as to what that means meant at this point, but I doubt I’m wrong.
Where the h*ll were the parents? Lakeway isn’t a poor section of town.
Summer travel season and gas is ~$1.60/ gallon here. Crazy low.
It is a good opportunity to try Ethanol-free gas in your vehicle if your local WalMart or Buc-ees offers it.
I made a trip to the office on Friday to change the password on my laptop on the network. The *non-hybrid* Camry reported 50 MPG on the way down and 46 driving back.
I forgot to mention yesterday the condition of the office — year old building, and roof leaks have started, complete with trash cans on desks to catch water. The place smelled like mold to me, but I have a really acute sense of smell.
At least I know I don’t have the Wuxu Flu. It makes me wonder about our germ-o-phobe Health and Safety officer, however.
@Lynn: Happy anniversary of another awesome journey around the golden orb.
The addendum to the travel adventures from yesterday was us rolling into Mobile at 10 PM last night and seeing the bars near our hotel downtown packed with “youts”, probably from Pensacola. Next virus hotspot, film at 11.
I was not happy about the urban setting of the hotel, especially considering we hadn’t fed our kids and been delayed for 20 minutes on the drive in with the Alabama State Patrol “teaching the smartass from Texas a lesson”.
(I consider us more fortunate than the African American family we saw another group of “heroes” had pulled over, probably playing the same ticket quota, just inside the MS/AL border eastbound. Everyone had been removed from the car, and all assembled were obviously waiting for K9 to show up and conduct a “search”. It isn’t as if the protesters don’t have a point.)
When I asked my wife to find a place close to the Battleship Alabama, our destination this morning, I thought that common sense would prevail and we would be in a Holiday Inn Express or something similar across the bay. Bzzzzt. She probably wanted valet parking and the big tub that will never see use.
Gotta hit the road to the battleship. I’ll need to stop at the ATM in the hotel lobby first since feeding the kids was $60 for bad pizza out of the hotel bar last night and I gotta tip the valet.
Again, I’m not thrilled with us being out in the mess after the last week of numbers, but the deal is that if the hotel at our final destination is packed full of boozeheads getting around the closed Florida bars by staging an Andrew Gillum style “Party At Kitty And Studs Redux” out of the rooms, we’re headed home the next morning.
Valet parking?
Noooooo!11!! 🙁
I’m guessing “Pong Fest” is something to do with “beer pong” which is some sort of drinking game, which looks similar to a game we played back in the day that involved shared cups….
I saw that phrase and thought of our British cousins’ reaction to it, as “pong” means “bad odor” iirc…
Keep your head up and your eyes moving in the urban jungle…
n
I drove back from Hilton Head Island, about 500 miles, took nine hours, lot of traffic around Columbia.
At one point there was a police car with a couple of vehicles pulled over. People moved, or attempted to move over. This caused a big traffic jam and about six vehicle back from us the people pulling over, or the traffic being slowed, caused a traffic accident. Rear end collision. Real good law when it causes other people to crash.
In TN the law is slow down to at least 10 MPH below the posted speed limit if you cannot move over. Mr. Greg I would check the law and see what it says. If you can slow down, make the argument that you did slow down and for the officer to provide your speed when passing the vehicles on the side of the road.
Louisiana stations a lot of officers on east bound I-10 past the Texas border. TX is 75 mph, LA is 70 mph, down to 65 mph in spots where the officers are stationed. A big speed trap that nails a lot of people. People that will not return to challenge the ticket.
I suspect you will not be returning to challenge the ticket and the police know that. Easy revenue.
“Mexico City police chief shot in assassination attempt, blames drug cartel”
https://news.trust.org/item/20200626143847-rl10g
Just another sign of a failed country. Hope that we do not head in this direction also.
@Lynn: Happy anniversary of another awesome journey around the golden orb.
Thanks ! The awesome hurt a bit this morning when I got up which is the new normal. Mum says it gets worse.
I am considering skipping transitioning into elderhood and go straight to geezerhood.
0 – 20: childhood
20 – 40: young adult
40 – 60: middle age
60 – 80: elderhood
80+: geezerhood
In TN the law is slow down to at least 10 MPH below the posted speed limit if you cannot move over.
In Texas the law is to slow down by least 20 mph below the speed limit to a minimum of 5 mph.
https://www.txdot.gov/driver/share-road/move-over-slow-down.html
I am not counting nor celebrating birthdays anymore, just stopped using them.
We are all born with a random, but unknown amount. At 75 I decided not to use the rest up, so I just stopped having them.
I’ll relay that advice to my mom and dad. Thanks for the tip!
I forgot to mention yesterday the condition of the office — year old building, and roof leaks have started, complete with trash cans on desks to catch water. The place smelled like mold to me, but I have a really acute sense of smell.
Wow, the office building is just a year old and the roof is leaking ? The roof on my office building is 16 years old and has had one leak which I got fixed.
I am not counting nor celebrating birthdays anymore, just stopped using them.
We are all born with a random, but unknown amount. At 75 I decided not to use the rest up, so I just stopped having them.
Wise advice that I probably will not follow. I’ve got 15 years to decide.
Just checked my android phone and it was installed. Turned on bluetooth without asking me too.
h/t wrsa
n
I’ve looked before but it wasn’t there. Today it is. To turn on covid-19 exposure notification, I need to open an available app. My phone is on Verizon.
Oh. I need to download the app from My Government. Yeah, no, I’ll pass on actually adding a tracking feature to my phone.
I wonder if the needed program will suddenly appear?
hey Paul, if the tracker is on and bluetooth is on, then they are collecting the data- all your known and casual associates….
The d/l app is only to notify YOU if you have been near someone.
I can think of so many ways this could be abused, and data is forever.
For that matter, I’d like to know every bluetooth device I’ve been near. Apparently that only takes an app, not the multi thousand dollar ‘solutions’ that various Bigcorps are offering, or the expensive subscription models that the Access Point vendors are offering.
I wonder, can anyone with an app access the on phone database? ‘cuz that would get me 90% of the way toward knowing every car and person that goes down my cul de sac…
n
I keep BT off unless using Torque to connect to car OBDI gizmos.
Location is off… I don’t care about my phone telling me there is a Subway or whatever 3 blocks away. I have used it with Google Maps to find a store in south Austin, but other than that, nope.
“Guardian: “Rapid transformation needed, … particularly in lifestyles of rich” to Solve Climate Change”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/06/27/guardian-rapid-transformation-needed-particularly-in-lifestyles-of-rich-to-solve-climate-change/
So if we can just force the 1% to stay home, global warming will cease.
Good luck on getting the 1% to do anything they do not want to do. And they tend to be extremely mobile, moving from house to house.
Over The Hedge: National Bug Week
https://www.gocomics.com/overthehedge/2020/06/28
Hug a bug !
I’m tired of cleaning the guts a few times and then replacing TV remotes. The sheet of rubbery buttons seem to melt on the frequently used buttons. Oily. I keep my hands clean.
I don’t like the “universal” remote that came with the TV because it’s not “universal” as advertised. Doesn’t work my Yamaha receiver much beyond Mute and Vol Up. The Sony BluRay I bought with the TV can be paused, not un-paused, and I can skip back a track, not forward. The Pioneer LaserDisc, yeah, nothing. But not a surprise…. Squeezebox? Er, it’ll change tracks to the next song, that’s all.
And yes, you can do the head to head programming. Done that. It vanished when the batteries needed to be changed. Nice.
Oh, and it has back lighting. So the buttons are translucent with gray lettering. It’s pretty. I got to give it that.
I think the problem is with the translucent button membrane. None of my other remotes have problems.
This time around I searched on the TV’s model number and not the remote’s model number. Interesting. I can get remotes without the back lighting feature and the “universal” feature.
Go figure. A TV remote that does nothing but the TV. Sounds sort of 80’s. Black buttons with white text, no back lighting.
I ordered a couple. From Hong Kong, sort of. Expected delivery “by August 18”. That tidbit was not mentioned until after I paid. I thought about it and canceled the order 15 minutes later.
I found the same thing for $3+ less, shipped from Houston, should be here on July 2.
If the order cancellation is denied, ok, I’ll have a couple of spare remotes.
In TN the law is slow down to at least 10 MPH below the posted speed limit if you cannot move over. Mr. Greg I would check the law and see what it says. If you can slow down, make the argument that you did slow down and for the officer to provide your speed when passing the vehicles on the side of the road.
They got me fair and square. I only noticed that the cops did not actually have a car pulled over, slowed down to a few MPH below the limit, and gave some room on that side in case a door swung open suddenly. That’s standard procedure in Austin, but APD is more about handing out the $500 “no touchee cell phone” tickets than petty ante “failure to yield to law enforcement” fines of $100 or even $200 speeding tickets.
The ticket isn’t as troubling as the game the Alabama State Patrol had running last night. A pair of cops with lights on just sitting every 5-10 miles, no traffic stops actively being worked in most locations. Everyone is hard up for cash, but that’s really pushing it.
While wandering through Wal-Mart yesterday for stupid stuff like beer and wiper blades, they had a Samsung 65″ TV for $898.
I was like “dayum”.
I’m waiting. I dropped $2000 on my 55″ Vizio. I’ve spotted 55″ TVs for about $600. It’s just a matter of time to be able to buy an 80 or 85″ TV for about a grand.
And the way my Vizio is wearing out, what do I do with a perfectly functioning 55″ TV? Oh, it’s The White Man’s Burden. Grin.
And by the way, Wal-Mart had NO 16″ wiper blades. Not that I’m going to pay $20+ for a blade for the back window of the stupid van.
The joint looks like WoolCo a year or so before they shut down.
“I forgot to mention yesterday the condition of the office — year old building, and roof leaks have started, complete with trash cans on desks to catch water. The place smelled like mold to me, but I have a really acute sense of smell.”
Wow, the office building is just a year old and the roof is leaking ? The roof on my office building is 16 years old and has had one leak which I got fixed.
Cr*p construction. The plumbing has never worked right. To be fair, we probably rushed them so we could be out of the temporary space under the Dobie Center pool.
(If the name sounds familiar, Dell was founded in the penthouse apartment.)
I have no doubt that the warehouse/office complex will be a vast homeless services center eventually. City of Austin already owns a couple of the deteriorating hotels, and the complex is bookended by a VA clinic/service center (where my wife works) and a large food pantry.
@paul,
I just replaced the failed 55in TCL with another under costco warranty with the new TCL 55in model for $285.
It looks great. 4K, UHD, plus roku and other ‘smart’ features if you connect it to a network.
They last about 2 years outdoors, so probably good for 5 indoors. Add the Square Trade warranty at costco for $34 and you get full coverage for 5 years.
They have the same guts as the Insignia tvs Costco used to sell, as they were the OEM.
FWIW, costco also has the Samsung 50in, 4K, UHD for $379?
n
“[WATCH] ‘Grandtifa’ Protesters at The Villages in Florida Face Off with Pro-Trump Golf-Cart Grannies”
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/megan-fox/2020/06/28/watch-grandtifa-protesters-at-the-villages-face-off-with-pro-trump-golf-cart-grannies-n583496
“Did you ever dream you’d see a pro-Trump golf-cart parade full of angry old people battling other angry old people over a political candidate? The simulation is working overtime to provide us with all the evidence we need to wake up to the reality that we are living in some kind of dream state where jokes come true, everything is ridiculous, and battling grannies are the final stage before we all wake up in alien pods.”
“This cannot be real. WARNING: Grannies using very foul language ahead.”
I keep waiting for my 2010 vintage 60” Sony lcd tv to die. It still looks good, though not as good as the newer tech. But honestly, it’s just good enough. I will need (ok, want) to get another tv for our guest bedroom that is going to be converted to a billiards room. That will be whatever Walmart or Costco has on sale.
I made a comment to my almost 16yo son the other day. I told him he would likely never own a tv. He never watches it, unless it’s with us watching a movie. He will watch movies on his iPad. I guarantee I won’t need to get him one for college. Whatever pc/laptop he has will be just fine.
One of my long time friends and immensely talented people died of cancer earlier this year.
Funeral services today.
Seriously cool human. He could make just about anything out of metal, and did it old school with a hammer and sweat.
This is a nifty video produced by a local independent outfit about cool people doing cool things. They featured him a few years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqXqaLPeHyE
“This cannot be real. WARNING: Grannies using very foul language ahead.”
No, it is for real. Sigh. The Villages. I don’t want to be anywhere near a place like that when I’m 70.
Imagine the kind of place where the Boss character in Dilbert will go when he retires, and you have a pretty good idea about The Villages.
Sadly, no Republican can win statewide in FL anymore without going up the Turnpike to kiss plenty of hands and shake a few babies. The development has absorbed the better part of three counties.
They last about 2 years outdoors, so probably good for 5 indoors. Add the Square Trade warranty at costco for $34 and you get full coverage for 5 years.
I have a “dumb” Samsung 40″ which we bought at Fred Myer (Kroger) in Vantucky eight years ago, and the set still runs like new despite daily use.
1080p, but 40″ so there really isn’t a point to UHD at that size.
Sony 50″ 1080p TV, bought 14 years ago. Daily use – about 6 hours a day.
Still working. Still great picture. Use it with DirecTV, FireStick, DVD players.
Re: funeral
Jeez what a train wreck.
Ok we are mostly all old. Write a brief outline of what you want / who gets to speak at your funeral. Not for you because you’re dead, but out of compassion for your friends watching in horror as the sister sniveled into a despairing soliloquy of childhood with the departed loved one. IMHO family should shut up at funerals. Rare that family can present well in funeral setting.
No organization, wind blowing off the inlet with sideways rain and she’s up to 3rd grade.
@jenny, yikes!
@lynn– did you see this? https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/chesapeake-files-bankruptcy-wiping-out-7-billion-debt-and-any-existing-equity-value
@all, the difference with the new tvs is UHD, extended color space and REALLY black blacks. The brighter colors and blacker blacks make an incredible difference. I’ve never even watched a 4K source on my samsung 70 inch, but even dvds look great. The blacker blacks and the high contrast ratio are the biggest factor. The vibrant colors can even be distracting, and you want to use the ‘cinema’ mode for any movie made before 2000 and shot on film.
n
At my father-in-law’s funeral my wife and her brothers yammered on and on. And on. And, after a brief pause for weeping, on a bit more. Hagiography (normal at a memorial service and apparently de riguer for Chinese) and excessively detailed memories of their childhoods. (I missed a lot of the detail as my spoken Sichuanese/Mandarin isn’t great, but I got the gist.) The three of them spoke for close to an hour and a half in all. Ugh.
I got up and said a little bit after that, amounting to “thanks for your daughter”. It took about two minutes, even with the translation. Afterward, a number of people told me they were impressed my how moving my speech was. “And short” was, I believe, implied.
The whole thing would have gone better, I think, if the three adult children (and the widow, if she could have pulled herself together enough to be coherent, which she couldn’t) had worked with someone to put together a half-hour presentation of the man’s accomplishments* and had that someone give the speech at the funeral. -shrug- But maybe letting it all out in front of the audience was necessary for them. I don’t pretend to understand it and won’t judge it.
* Which were limited but impressive. I’ve mentioned here, but not in a while, that he was a Communist Party member and climbed decently far up the ranks. At the peak of his career he managed 200,000 people, not a small number even considering the PRC’s population and centralized ownership of almost everything. At the nadir of his career he and the family were in hiding so he wouldn’t be executed because of being associated with the side which lost a power struggle. So far as I know he never invented anything or contributed uniquely to the well-being of the species, but to claw his way so far up the dog-eat-dog party system was impressive.
Seriously cool human. He could make just about anything out of metal, and did it old school with a hammer and sweat.
This is a nifty video produced by a local independent outfit about cool people doing cool things. They featured him a few years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqXqaLPeHyE
Neat guy ! Sounds like a good guy with lots of stories.
@lynn– did you see this? https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/chesapeake-files-bankruptcy-wiping-out-7-billion-debt-and-any-existing-equity-value
There are more bankruptcies (maybe many more) coming but I have been hearing rumours of this one for quite a while. I thought that when the coal companies started filing bankruptcy that was going to be it. Instead, the government subsidies of the so-called renewable power sources have destroyed the entire fossil fuel industry. The government subsidies are around 40 to 50% of the total costs for the so-called renewables. So now the bankruptcies are extending into the natural gas and crude oil industries.
The oil and gas industry is in serious trouble. I do not know how to fix it and am very concerned about my particular business.
“The Week They Drove Ol’ Dixie Down”
https://pjmedia.com/culture/bryan-preston/2020/06/26/the-week-they-drove-ol-dixie-down-n580255
They are trying to get rid of our history.
My 80 year old uncle knew his great-grandfather who was a member of the Texas 7th Artillery Battery as a 13 year old muleskinner. He told my uncle about walking to Virginia in 1861 ? with the mules and artillery. He then told my uncle about slowly walking back to Texas, eating the mules along the way, being driven by the Union forces.
No matter what, it is our history.
Ok we are mostly all old. Write a brief outline of what you want / who gets to speak at your funeral. Not for you because you’re dead, but out of compassion for your friends watching in horror as the sister sniveled into a despairing soliloquy of childhood with the departed loved one. IMHO family should shut up at funerals. Rare that family can present well in funeral setting.
My father and I hadn’t spoken in nearly two decades when he passed in 2012, but no one told me about the event until after the funeral and will reading. My sister is still withholding the will contents eight years later.
@Greg
That’s brutal.
My last contact with my father was in 1973. I was on the way back from Hawaii to Colorado Springs and figured to spend a couple of days with him. Nope. He spent time with his friends instead, so I left never to return. His funeral was in 2008 (I think) which I attended. He had remarried, developed a new family which did not include his children. My two brothers had contact, I did not. But they had something he wanted, I did not.