Cooler, rainy.
Looked at the pictures from the Gulf Coast yesterday. Lot’s of places I’ve been were under water from Beta’s storm surge. Not much in the news though. Twitter and FB for the on scene pix. Trad media is dead.
We got a steady rain most of the day. Kept me inside.
I did a bit of work on the possible lake house. Some research in public records, and some time in Sketchup addressing my wife’s main concerns about the house. Virtual remodel is a lot cheaper than actual… The lot is great. The house is a big weird mess.
Gave a buddy some supplies for his security cam install. He’s got a neighbor problem. Also gave him some stuff for his kids to play with – some “take aparts” (old mech and electronics), and some learning toys (soda can robot, potato clock, solar crawler, etc)
I’ve got stuff to do today, since I spent yesterday on other things. Auction pickup, maybe stop by my buddy’s store, who knows? Maybe something crazy like drive thru food.
Or not. Cooler weather means more work in the attic and bathroom. There’s always something to do.
And that’s all in addition to stacking it higher…
n
100 years ago, that man would be tried and executed by a mob the same day.
The Centralia Massacre, one of the defining moments in American Legion history. *In WA State*.
I’ve driven across the Mellen St. bridge countless times.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_massacre_(Washington)
Woke up to the continued rain. Weather station is not up, so no idea yet how much fell here overnight, but it was significant. We’re at the top of the watershed, not the bottom so I’m not concerned for us, but downstream? Folks are gonna get wet.
n
Another win for the Marshal’s office. They are getting a lot of kids back this month.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8757343/US-Marshals-recover-35-missing-Northeast-Ohio-children-one-month.html
n
Looked at the pictures from the Gulf Coast yesterday. Lot’s of places I’ve been were under water from Beta’s storm surge. Not much in the news though. Twitter and FB for the on scene pix. Trad media is dead.
Beta won’t result in a “gas shortage”, which is what the media always wants from a Gulf storm. They lucked out with Harvey when the refinery blew up and people drained the reserves in a panic, Texas moving 50X normal holiday sales volume during Labor Day Weekend 2017 according to one quietly-reported post-mortem from the Railroad Commissioner’s office.
For those of you not from Texas, that’s the state government agency charged with dealing with oil and gasoline industry issues. I actually learned that from the revived “Dallas” TV show.
There’s a quote which may or may not apply here: The thing about smart people is they seem like crazy people to dumb people. (That’s the bowdlerized version, because I’m all elegant n refined n stuff.)
The people are the law.
Put another way, government is simply a name for the things we do together. If it ‘s not “civil” or “lawful” for the majority of the adults in a town to try and execute someone who breaks the peace, what makes it “civil” and “legal” for the “government” to do so?
Our betters in the urban hives have no comprehension of driving more than a handful of miles a day, or no sympathy for the hicks who might need to do so.
Yah. I don’t salute, either. Hand on heart.
“‘I just bought a new HP color Laserjet DN through Amazon from Office Depot. It was discounted almost 50%.’
The whole HP aisle was a fire sale. Actual in-store stock was fairly low.”
But HP is not fire selling the toner cartridges. The toner cartridges are about $350 for that printer.
Most of the moving parts in a laser printer which require maintenance/periodic replacement end up inside the cartridge. When we left Vantucky six years ago, the big rumor seeping out of the HP facility in town was that Canon was unhappy with the deal for their Patents regarding paper handling in the printers and seeking a better deal when the contract came up for renewal. That may be a factor with costs for replacement costs for cartridges in new printers.
“Fake pork chop” equals “slice of pork loin”. I haven’t noticed bone-in pork chops in the store for a long time.
Other than a bit too much salt, last night’s experiment was good. I used a 10 inch square Corning Ware instead of a pie plate.
“Fake pork chop” equals “slice of pork loin”. I haven’t noticed bone-in pork chops in the store for a long time.
The stores around us have bone-in pork chops. And not the “variety pack” with the mutant chops hidden behind two decent looking ones either.
I think the last tray came from Costco in Cedar Park, but I swear I saw them in Sam’s in North Austin/Lakeline. Our HEB is a wild card because it is a legacy Albertsons currently undergoing a long-overdue renovation.
Be aware that the Lakeline Sam’s is within the city limits and has mask kabuki enforced by private security and backed by Austin PD, frequently with a show of force from a “undercover” 4×4 parked at the entrance. Seig Heil!
Lynn and a couple others have repeatedly repeated the “rules for a good shoot” to minimize legal jeopardy.
Take a look at this and read the linked articles and rants.
Now try to tell me that my “kill everyone” isn’t a better policy in our contemporary anarchotyranny.
And yet another instance where “don’t be there” was not an option.
n
I have saluted a few times after being released from ownership by Uncle Sam. All but one of those times have been at the funerals of veterans. Seemed appropriate. The other time was at the tomb of the unknown soldier which I did so discreetly. Seemed appropriate.
My daughter went through a phase for a while where one of her favorite things to do was tear apart electronics. So, we used to stop by Goodwill and pick up an old VCR or DVD player for a few dollars and give her some screwdrivers and she’d be entertained for a couple of hours.
That still works for me.
Also a new Lego Set. I really want this set, maybe for Christmas.
https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/liebherr-r-9800-excavator-42100
Ray, have you seen this video of a Liebherr excavator climbing a tower?
Ditto for me. Hand over heart for Anthem, Pledge, salute for Veteran funerals, usually during last farewell, salute and say so long Hermano.
Wow Ray, that’s an impressive kit. If you build that, you’ve really accomplished something, and then you get the fun of operating it!
My girls love LEGO. I never did like it. I can build some walls and that’s about all I have patience for.
I liked Lincoln logs, erector set (mecchano), and tinkertoy. You could make big stuff much faster with them. I also liked messing around with my HO railroad and building models for it.
There are a couple of guys on youtube doing really fun modelling- Black Magic Craft, and Luke Towan come at it from opposite directions but are both awesome in their own way.
n
“Take aparts.”
That is probably what got me started in engineering. I was about 3YO right after WWII. There weren’t many toys, so my father bought a mil surplus aircraft timer. I took it apart, and spent hours getting acquainted with all the tiny parts. Been fascinated with mechanical stuff ever since. Wish I still had it.
My wife says, big deal, he never put it back together.
I liked Lincoln logs, erector set (mecchano), and tinkertoy. You could make big stuff much faster with them. I also liked messing around with my HO railroad and building models for it.
Same for me. I guess Lego was after my yout’. Those others were great. Only had Tinkertoy, Erector set, and modest Lionel O27 set. Kid next door had Lincoln Logs. Still have the train and Erector set. Too poor condition to give to anyone’s kids.
Happy declining equinox! Dark nights ahead.
I have built several large LEGO projects. A couple of them consumed about 20 hours to accomplish. Instructions are usually quite good if you can pay attention to details. The kits I have are all motorized and can move on their own power. One even has an air compressor to feed compressed air through hoses to the cylinders for the boom crane.
Impressive what the LEGO designers can accomplish. Some very imaginative and creative people in that organization.
I grew up with Lincoln Logs, Tinker Toys and Erector. Had the AC powered motor.
BTW, speaking of equinox, LunaSolCal is a great Android app.
The Fox show Lego Masters was oddly compelling. A bit corny in places and the usual dramatics of any reality series, but it was well done. Some amazing builds were pulled off. No doubt available to stream.
Cool! You even get Lego “rubble” with it.
I wonder how long it will be before the voluntary testing becomes mandatory and the heath department workforce knocks on the doors accompanied by cops.
Again, Sam’s near me is using APD presence to enforce masking.
https://www.twincities.com/2020/09/17/group-of-armed-citizens-confronts-health-workers-conducting-random-covid-19-testing/
Um, if you spend 45 minutes crying in your car over the death of a stranger, one with a charmed long and successful life, you may need to see a mental health professional…
–I’m betting her own kids didn’t cry that long.
–her “jokes” say a lot about how her “mind” works too
–jeez. and these are the “elites”…
n
Houston’s going door to door with testing.That DNA will never be put in a database, I’m sure. It’ll never be used improperly, I’m sure.
n
@JimB: LunaSolCal Looks interesting.
I use “The Photographers Ephemeris” on the iPhone myself, similar I think, nice for setting up shots. Recommended by a photographer friend, several years ago.
Heh. Just checked, sunrise and sunset lines are perfectly East-west today.
Woke up to cool temperatures and light rain. Nothing needed be done before noon so I rolled over and went back to sleep. Until the wife woke me up to make her breakfast. She wanted a cheese quesadilla, much easier than her regular requests.
Looks like we’ll have a day of light steady rain. It wasn’t in the forecast Sunday but I guess the gulf storms are having an effect. I had the concrete team scheduled to pour today but it looks like that will have to wait another week.
@Nick – about the lake house. LOCATION IS EVERYTHING. If you are getting any kind of acreage and outside a city boundary without HOA covenants, I’d say jump on it. When we looked for a place in Indian country, idealy we wanted a place on a lake or river. Not only as a SHTF source of food and water but as an escape route in worst case. You can always remodel at your leisure but you can’t build more land. In addition, a lake front keeps noisy neighbors off one side of the property. We compromised and have a golf course as our backyard neighbor. Very quiet.
Just checked, sunrise and sunset lines are perfectly East-west today.
Within a few tenths of a degree here, close enough. Fun to play with locations, both by name, and by dropping a pin on the map.
I remember tables in almanacs and spherical trig formulas in astronomy books. Now, the drudgery is done by a small slab in my hand. We are blessed.
It’s scary how deeply damaged people on the left have become. I’m sure we have all seen the videos of people screaming in their cars.
They are NOT sane but they are so deranged that they think everyone else is insane. Non-lefties don’t scream in their car or cry for 45 minutes over someone they didn’t know.
Jerry Pournelle mentioned that occasionally. For me the hardest part is recognizing someone who speaks well and puts together what superficially sounds like a reasonable argument, but is actually nonsense. Economists are like that. Social scientists too.
As to your self-aggrandizement, Steve. Hmmm.
I did a professional catalog photo shoot for a car maker. We were on an airport in PHX, and the photog had a feature in his handheld GPS that not only gave the time of local sunrise/sunset, but also the direction.
We oriented all our setups to take advantage of the sun setting behind a mesa, which gave us a few more minutes of “golden hour” sunlight without the sun in the sky. Only once did we have to re-shoot a vehicle in the morning, because the asst. photog actually forgot to load the film holders. They started shooting, and none of the plates were ready. We turned the setup around, and the assistant had to come in early with the crew and shoot at sun up the next day. There was quite a bit of pressure to get the shots, because you really didn’t have much time. We shot two majors and two minors every evening for a week. (two main photogs and their crews, with two assistants shooting the minors – door handles, some other close up feature of the car.)
It was fun seeing the shots I built end up in the promo literature at the dealer when I was shopping for an truck later on… and some on the web. Early days of the web for sure.
n
Huh, just became aware of this, look how easy object removal is in video these days
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEY_jNkWYe4
REMOVE UNWANTED OBJECTS easily with Content aware fill in AFTER EFFECTS
n
One of my brothers was working on a film shoot that was doing a scene at the evening golden hour (had to be evening due to the location) and was dressing the set with his crew. The DP kept yelling at them that “hurry up or we will lose the light”. They got it done just in time and the scene was beautiful. (Animal sculpture scene in “The Straight Story”, David Lynch’s only G rated movie.)
“hurry up or we will lose the light”
–yep, it’s a cliche’ but that’s because it’s also the truth.
–we were shooting in Phoenix because not only do you get good light, and it’s flat so you get a lot of sky, but that sky is usually clear too, so they didn’t get a lot of “noise” in the window and body panel reflections. (clouds to you and me)
n
“Um, if you spend 45 minutes crying in your car over the death of a stranger, one with a charmed long and successful life, you may need to see a mental health professional…”
Actress Ali Wentworth said she and her husband, Good Morning America anchor George Stephanopoulos, both ended up crying in the family car for 45 minutes after he told her that Ruth Bader Ginsburg had died.
George Snuffleupagus and Candy Cane (how’s that for obscure reference). They aren’t real people; they’re friggin’ Muppets.
On second thought, scratch that. Most of the Muppets had more fully developed personalities and back stories.
Did George cry whenever he helped Carville destroy another woman’s life dealing with the “Bimbo Eruptions” in the Clinton “war room” in 1992?
The term “war room” doesn’t strike me as cuddly. I have a long memory.
Which reminds me — kinda fitting that the Payola seat on the Court may be filled shortly and that makes George sad. RBG was Clinton Payola to Perot, pure and simple, and Snuffleupagus owes his whole career to the fact that Perot allowed Clinton to win without a majority.
Many years ago, early 1990s, as an IT consultant, I took a gig for a large display advertising (think billboards) company located just south of Chicago. They had an idea to use computers to control the illumination on their boards remotely. This would allow them to not only save money but to sell custom illumination packages as a differentiation from their competitors. I helped them design a system driven by a Motorola pager in the billboard unit that would receive codes from a centralized system telling it to turn on or off. Then came the fun part, to design a system that would allow for custom control of each unit based on factors like “on 1 hr before local dawn and off 5 hrs after local dusk”. To do this I had to learn all about how local dawn and dusk are calculated for each location as well as deal with the craziness of daylight savings time. I was on the project for two years off and on, made a ton of money, and learned a lot.
I put together a logical argument of why subsaharan Africans are not human which fit that criterion. I was pleased with it because it was obvious bullshit if you know more than a trivial amount about genetics, statistics, and neuroanatomy.
… And then I saw people using it seriously.
I read somewhere that almost a quarter of liberal (Democrat/progressive/communist) adults in the US are on medication for mental problems.
That’s disturbing.
It means that 3/4 are not being treated.
@nick
You can’t build more land. If you’re handy enough to tackle the house, go for it. I suspect you are.
I’ve been monitoring Alaska MLS daily for the last couple months. Finding a lot in Anchorage that is over 1/3 acre is tough. I have been watching this one. We drove past. The house is enormous, I found references to it being a private care facility for older folks years ago. Some renovation has been done, as you click through the pics you think, ‘huh, not so bad, we can do that’, then you reach the tragedy hall.
We are considering it. We have mad skills between us. But lately we have been feeling very old. Might be a bit much.
A 2 acre lot in Anchorage would be amazing. Plus it’s already (mostly) fenced. Plus it is horse property. One aspect we would have to seriously consider is the increase in property taxes once the house was repaired. My preference would be to tear it down and put in a 1,400 sf ranch.
Click through the pics at your own risk. Tragedy hall is scarring.
https://www.alaskarealestate.com/Search/Property/PropertyDetail.aspx?cid=l8X8N5hobtt2P5lZWQMtmg==&li=ouy1/HNwekQ9SHfxprTNuQ==&esf=MA
“… And then I saw people using it seriously. ”
–in one of the 90s scifi books I read, either by Melissa Scott or Wilimina Baird, the main character (a con artist?) creates a diet based on the color of the food. In the book, people talk about “doing the colors”…. Last year I read part of an article that talked about a celebrity’s diet system that was – you guessed it – based on the color of the food.
Once it’s out there in the zeitgeist, it will swirl, circle, mutate, and return…
n
I did a professional catalog photo shoot for a car maker. We were on an airport in PHX, and the photog had a feature in his handheld GPS that not only gave the time of local sunrise/sunset, but also the direction.
Our high end license plate cameras set exposure based in part on lat/long and accurate time sync, tracking the position of the sun throughout the day. Reverse celestial navigation.
As an example, the one thing I got out of Tony Blair’s biography was that economists were telling him in the late 90s/early 2000s that they understood the economy and that if Blair followed their advice, everything would be great. Then 2008 happened.
It was surely obvious to everyone that unlimited credit and lending to people who can’t repay is a mistake. Everyone except economists and politicians.
We are considering it. We have mad skills between us. But lately we have been feeling very old. Might be a bit much.
We’ve been trying to get someone out to do tile in one of our bathrooms since March. We admit that we are old and too busy.
Last week, the soap dish fell off the wall, and I’m not proud of the interim fix. You don’t want to know.
I’m actually looking for an above-toilet cabinet similar to the one in the picture of one bath. “Antiqued” is a bonus. 🙂
One aspect we would have to seriously consider is the increase in property taxes once the house was repaired.
What work would require drawing a permit in Anchorage?
Freeze dried food and #10 cans have their place in every preppers arsenal.
Amazon has several desirable flavors of Mountain House back in stock or listed to be in stock this week.
It’s lightweight, takes almost nothing to prepare, and by all accounts is pretty much the best in the business. To balance that, it costs more than some other choices.
On the other hand, we had beef stroganoff with hamburger and the Kraft version of hamburger helper for dinner last night. From frozen beef, $5, and the kit, $3 we had dinner for 2 and 2 for $8, but also needed milk and I added a can of mushrooms. Call it $10 even. The MH can has “10” servings for $40. Call it 4 adult and 4 child servings or $20/ meal. That’s still cheaper than our McDonalds or Jack in the Box bill. And with long term storage food? Keystone meats, ground beef, 14oz can is $4. Flavor pack is $2. Half pound noodles, $1. Powdered sour cream, etc, $2. Rounding gives us $10/meal.
Fresh or canned, about the same cost. Freeze dried? About double but still cheaper than 4 Happy Meals and very convenient.
n
Continuing to plug away at home improvement. With the help of an electrician friend, installed an exterior GFI electrical outlet at the chicken coop. Dug a narrow 15′ shallow trench to bury the 1/2″ grey pvc w/romex. Punched hole through garage to access electric below existing light switch. Started to install a hard wired digital timer (so I could set the lights for the chickens and rabbits to ensure they get 12-14 hours of light daily for egg laying / reproduction) but discovered my $1 bargain timer from ReStore I scored a few years ago was too deep for the box. No biggy, plan B.
My friend did most of the fiddly bits (retired electrician and man does he work fast), I’ve done a certain amount of dummy level electric work, now I know more. I think I know enough to tackle running lights to a couple other parts of our property and to tackle adding electric to the exterior backside of the garage.
Also got the poop chutes back under the rabbits, with improved tarp and better slope. Cleaned up the enormous quantities of poop that had accumulated and distributed it across the area occupied by the pool this summer. Chickens tilled it in for me. Tilled under the rabbits to work in the poop I missed and dissipate the residual urine odor. 24 hours later and the rabbits are odor free again.
I’ve got a list of remaining minor outdoor chores however this is closer to being ‘done’ than I typically get in the fall. I have a lengthy indoor chores list, most focused on improving the house in case we have to sell.
Pulled down the mill rates for property taxes in Anchorage. Hacked together a database to hold data about the houses we see on MLS that we like. Recording the zoning and tax district for each, as well as the other typical data points. I can run a report with variable interest rates / term / down that gives me a reasonably close guess of what our monthly will be with respect to property tax, insurance, principal and interest for each property. Also cobbled together a query that looks at the value of the house based on size of lot / sf of house so I can compare apples to apples.
Work continues on getting a repeal of AO 2020-66 onto the ballot. The city clerk, with feedback from the city attorney, denied our petition. We (the three neighborhoods) are moving forward in court. This was expected. Another group which is working on recalling Assembly members have also had their petitions denied and are likewise moving forward in court. It is a bunch of baloney (except you should substitute the epithet of your choice in place of baloney).
Oh – and this local uprising has been labeled as ‘astroturf’ by the mayor. Umm, I’m sure as heck not astroturf and neither are the neighbors with whom we’ve been working. I guess it means we are being moderately successful at being annoying if the administration and assembly are resorting to name calling.
It was surely obvious to everyone that unlimited credit and lending to people who can’t repay is a mistake. Everyone except economists and politicians.
At this point, however, even a revision of the 30 year fixed rate to a historic low rate of 6% would crater the housing market and, thus, the economy. 20 years of Government meddling have put a floor under prices which must be maintained to keep the status quo going.
Rule of thumb, IIRC, is to slice $50k off the price of the house for every 100 basis points (1%) of interest rate increase. A lot of first time buyers are sitting in houses worth a lot less than their mortgages in a “normal” interest rate environment if you consider the numbers behind the $8000 tax credit used for 3% down mortgages a dozen years ago. I have several friends in that situation — essentially they rent money.
Jenny, if the mayor is accusing you of taking money and being a fake popular movement, turn it around: ask him who’s paying him to push this? Whose pocket is being filled, and by whom? Which companies will be doing the work and how are they connected to the city politicians?
@Nick – about the lake house. LOCATION IS EVERYTHING. If you are getting any kind of acreage and outside a city boundary without HOA covenants, I’d say jump on it. When we looked for a place in Indian country, idealy we wanted a place on a lake or river. Not only as a SHTF source of food and water but as an escape route in worst case. You can always remodel at your leisure but you can’t build more land. In addition, a lake front keeps noisy neighbors off one side of the property. We compromised and have a golf course as our backyard neighbor. Very quiet.
SECONDED !
And we just went six months in the USA without serious home building going on. All of the home building was a token amount to meet contracts as half of the workers stayed home. That means that there is a backlog of home buying going on which is causing prices to rapidly rise.
Absolutely, yes! Just because mental health practioners have never, ever solved, cured or successfully treated a mental health illness does not mean that the cannot cure crying over the passing of RBG.
“Sen. Romney Backs Vote on Trump’s Supreme Court Nominee”
https://www.newsmax.com/politics/romney-trump-supreme-court/2020/09/22/id/988133/
The Bishop has spoken ! Obviously his constituents are filling his ear and probably making threats.
And Rush says why does Amy Coney Barrett need the Judiciary committee ? Just take her straight to the Senate floor.
https://www.ampgoo.com/rush-limbaugh-calls-for-gop-to-skip-hearings-for-trump-scotus-pick-and-go-straight-for-floor-vote
Over The Hedge: remote teaching
https://www.gocomics.com/overthehedge/2020/09/20
Oh yeah, that is a true picture of remote teaching. If anything, it is probably a milder moment.
100 years ago, that man would be tried and executed by a mob the same day.
The Centralia Massacre, one of the defining moments in American Legion history. *In WA State*.
I’ve driven across the Mellen St. bridge countless times.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_massacre_(Washington)
My son thinks that we are going to have to start shooting the communists soon.
My mother is rereading her Russian historical fiction series again. She says what is in the books is the exact same thing that is going on now in the USA. It is all manufactured and fake.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0753L4S1H?tag=ttgnet-20
“It was surely obvious to everyone that unlimited credit and lending to people who can’t repay is a mistake. Everyone except economists and politicians. ”
— looks like a mistake until you realize that THEIR goals and reasons are not YOUR goals and reasons. Kinda like CDC downplaying the use of masks. Didn’t help YOU or ME stay healthy but it protected the supply for health workers, which was the CDC’s goal. Again and again when I look through the lens of “what makes this make sense from THEIR point of view” I see a very different picture than when I look from MY pov.
@cowboyslim, bullspit solutions for bullspit problems…. and keeps both groups of otherwise potentially dangerous people occupied 🙂
@jenny, that property needs a LOT of work, just to stay even, let alone get the house back into shape. I’m assuming the crazy low ceilings are in a basement? and that bath, oh my.
WRT getting your own house in order, my wife pointed out to me last night, while looking at savings accounts, etc, that we need to leave $XX,000 available to finish the projects HERE before starting projects elsewhere. (bath, roof, windows, hvac, and possibly siding)
It’s a half acre lot with 100ft of lakeshore, basically rectangular, level from side to side, and dropping slowly to the water. Those characteristics are NOT all present in the other houses or properties around the lake.
n
Gorilla Glue and Duct Tape. We know!
You don’t want to know
Gorilla Glue and Duct Tape. We know!
–blue tack? Hot glue?
n
No, no, no.
Greg used Harold’s white lithium grease to hold up the soap dish.
Jenny, who would have thought that the largest state in the union would not have spacious properties available. I never claimed to understand real estate.
It’s a half acre lot with 100ft of lakeshore, basically rectangular, level from side to side, and dropping slowly to the water. Those characteristics are NOT all present in the other houses or properties around the lake.
Changes in elevation are death to older people in their 50s and above. So, you have a PRO.
Is there any way that the house can flood from the lake ? You would be fascinated to see how much damage one inch of water in the house can do. Been there, done that.
And for a definite CON of the Lake House, Creekmore says that even a mobile home on a remote property works well for a bug out place. Of course, you might have to run electric, put in a water well, and put in a septic tank for an unimproved property. About $30K to $50K.
https://www.amazon.com/Dirt-Cheap-Survival-Retreat-Mans-Solution/dp/1983810592/?tag=ttgnet-20
“I never claimed to understand real estate. ”
–everyone with any interest in real estate or development or urban “planning” needs to read Edge City by Joel Garreau. It’s a bit dated but it lays out how development gets done in the real world. The ‘rules of thumb’ are particularly enlightening.
In the case of new subdivisions consisting of dozens of houses crammed together in the middle of a big empty field– the developer pays for utility installation. He wants to minimize his cost for water, sewer, roads, etc so he crams the houses close together to make the part HE has to eat cost less. It’s as simple as that.
n
https://www.amazon.com/Edge-City-Frontier-Anchor-Books/dp/0385424345
Arlo and Janis: The Parking Lot Pas De D’oh
https://www.gocomics.com/arloandjanis/2020/09/21
Yup, I have had to go back to the truck many times for my face diaper.
For a true bug out retreat, I’d want a lot more land and a lot further out. Remember that one of the requirements of my prepping style is to not make irrevocable decisions (except in the most dire of circumstances, my motto is ‘there is ALWAYS another choice’).
Most of the time TEOTW doesn’t come. So ‘vacation home’ rather than ‘bunker in the woods’. It is well outside urban areas, yet close enough to actually get there. It’s away from the hurricanes (most common threat to me). The locals are solid folks (from what I can see.) Those things are all on the plus side.
The lake is more likely to go dry than overflow, it’s a dammed creek system. There are clearly drainage issues visible in the many culverts, diversion curbs, french drains, and erosion gullies on many of the properties. There is hill above the lakefront lots, and that water goes thru, over, and around the lakefront lots. This particular lot has a diversion curb across the driveway, but no creeks, culverts, or gullies and no evidence of water intrusion into the house.
n
The Bishop has spoken ! Obviously his constituents are filling his ear and probably making threats.
Mittens opens the door for a few Dems in trouble to vote ‘yes’ for the Payola seat vote, usually a unanimous approval.
Mittens is also hedging his bets about the possibility of Barbara Lagoa being named to the seat. Bernie learned the hard way that blanket disrespect towards the Cuban American community in Florida is still political suicide.
A ‘no’ vote for Legoa wouldn’t be the end for Mittens with the community, but he would need a good reason beyond his Daddy issues.
I’ve long suspected that Trump intends to lift the Embargo as his “Nixon Goes To China” moment in the second term. Nominating Barbara Legoa and saving Barrett for the “Roe” seat would reinforce my suspicions as well as signal what his internal polling is telling him about his chances of winning.
We lived on a lake in our previous home in Mississippi. My wife was worried about flooding till I showed her our house was about 4 meters above the level of the spillway and a good two meters higher than the dam. Spillways are your friend but you really really really want to be above the dam because spillways can fill with trash and brush.
Update: we too were on the downhill side of the road and would get water flowing in a heavy rain. The house had a great french drain on the uphill side that directed water away from the house and down to the lake
“Postal Workers Can’t Deliver Ballots, if Democrats Keep Shooting Them”
https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2020/09/postal-workers-cant-deliver-ballots-if-democrats-daniel-greenfield/
Hat tip to:
https://thelibertydaily.com/
“A.F. Branco Cartoon – Short List”
https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-short-list/
“There is probably a good reason Biden hasn’t made public his list of Supreme Court justice nominees this close to the election. Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2020.”
That is a great SCOTUS list for Biden. Stacey Abrams, snort !
HARRIS Biden 2020 !
“Bayous overflow as Beta threatens to dump up to 20 inches of rain on Houston”
https://www.chron.com/news/houston-weather/article/Houston-rainfall-could-reach-20-inches-as-Beta-15586880.php
“Tropical Depression Beta, which officially made landfall late Monday night, continues to dump rain over parts of Houston, prompting more watches and warnings for flash flooding Tuesday morning.”
“Much of our area is under a flood warning until further notice as Beta’s rain bands pummel areas south of the city. Some parts of Greater Houston have received upwards of 10 inches of rain in the last 24 hours, according to the Harris County Flood Control District.”
Uh oh, I’ve seen this movie before and it did not work out well for Houston.
I’ve gotten around ten inches at my house and my office. My front pond (1/2 acre) is overflowing and the back pond (1 acre) is almost full for the first time in almost a year.
I’ve been monitoring Alaska MLS daily for the last couple months. Finding a lot in Anchorage that is over 1/3 acre is tough. I have been watching this one. We drove past. The house is enormous, I found references to it being a private care facility for older folks years ago. Some renovation has been done, as you click through the pics you think, ‘huh, not so bad, we can do that’, then you reach the tragedy hall.
We are considering it. We have mad skills between us. But lately we have been feeling very old. Might be a bit much.
A 2 acre lot in Anchorage would be amazing. Plus it’s already (mostly) fenced. Plus it is horse property. One aspect we would have to seriously consider is the increase in property taxes once the house was repaired. My preference would be to tear it down and put in a 1,400 sf ranch.
Click through the pics at your own risk. Tragedy hall is scarring.
https://www.alaskarealestate.com/Search/Property/PropertyDetail.aspx?cid=l8X8N5hobtt2P5lZWQMtmg==&li=ouy1/HNwekQ9SHfxprTNuQ==&esf=MA
Yup, that house looks like a burner downer. Probably some bad wiring in there too.
My goodness. Isn’t that convenient.
That is a great SCOTUS list for Biden. Stacey Abrams, snort !
Don’t laugh. I’ve seen that name floated elsewhere with regard to that seat by radical Dems.
The problem is that Plugs owes Abrams nothing, and it is still the Payola chair. *Some* Republicans should support the nominee even if they are RINOs.
Obama. Guaranteed.
That is a great SCOTUS list for Biden. Stacey Abrams, snort !
Don’t laugh. I’ve seen that name floated elsewhere with regard to that seat by radical Dems.
The problem is that Plugs owes Abrams nothing, and it is still the Payola chair.
Obama. Guaranteed.
Nah, Obola don’t want to work that hard. He likes his all guy month long surfing trips too much.
@Jenny – if you are serious (or semi-serious) about that house, make sure that a full inspection with a qualified inspector (including electrical) paid for by seller is a contingency on the deal.
The ‘Tragedy Hall’ like that would be an advantage. All the internal wiring and ceiling is exposed, so any fixing is much easier than tearing down interior wall. And makes electrical/structural inspection easier.
The thing that struck me was the pitch of the main house roof. Wouldn’t the snow loads be an issue with that pitch?
Exterior yard cleanup not a big deal. If you have skillz (and it is apparent that you do), getting the house habitable might be within your abilities. As long as the very thorough home inspection didn’t show any major problems.
I know all of these things because I have watched “This Old House”. (And redid my kitchen – electrical, plumbing, etc ; had a cabinet guy do those and counters – years ago.)
“AOC’s terrorist propaganda video”
https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/aocs-terrorist-propaganda-video-28912/
“I have a feeling this is how Al Qaida used to recruit suicide bombers. And any ‘normal’ American (i.e. not a sitting politician) would probably end up on a watch list if they had broadcast that same message.”
“AOC went on to say that this fight, the struggle, the ‘peaceful protests’, the occupy movements, “are tools that we are going to have to use for the rest of our lives. . . this is not over. We win in November– I’m sorry to tell you, you’re not going back to brunch. . . . that’s not happening. There is no going back after November. Gear up.””
Yup, this is a call to civil insurrection. Sounds like another candidate for the firing squad.
Nah, Obola don’t want to work that hard. He likes his all guy month long surfing trips too much.
Recreating the tidal pool scene from the opening credits of “Magnum PI”.
That exact spot where the scene was filmed will be Obama’s private beach soon.
I wonder how long it will be before he moves into the corner office at the Ilani Palace, just like Jack Lord’s Steve McGarrett.
And people say I watch too many movies and TV shows.
Speaking of the list…
https://thefederalistpapers.org/opinion/hillary-rbg-joke-liberals-arms-furious
“people say I watch too many movies and TV shows.”
–is that even possible bro? I mean some people don’t stream on their phones while watching the TV, but those sorts of people are LUSERS, am I right?
n
Didn’t someone here have a similar problem with their interwebs crashing at the same time each day? Maybe an old TV, or alarm clock causing it? A light on a timer? The morning microwave water for coffee?
More reason for Shot Girl ™ to go buh-bye with redistricting. The clip with her and Chuckie earlier shows how desperate the Dumbos are. Stretch is the Speaker, but Shot Girl ™ is speaking with Chuckles?
HARRIS/biden 2020
“people say I watch too many movies and TV shows.”
–is that even possible bro? I mean some people don’t stream on their phones while watching the TV, but those sorts of people are LUSERS, am I right?
I don’t stream media on my phone, not even music.
Most of my movie and TV watching takes place on the ancient Sony WEGA 37″ tube TV we have in our family room.
If the TV was not connected to the cable system there also had to be some really poor shielding somewhere in the broadband system. Close to the house causing the interference. That TV also had to have some really poor shielding.
More likely is the TV was spewing lots of interference out of the cable connection through shorted capacitors or other shielding designed to keep signals out of the input feed.
If the TV had been connected to an antenna I suspect there were would have been some radios knocked off line. Maybe even send launch codes for Russian missiles or homing signal for French submarines.
Didn’t someone here have a similar problem with their interwebs crashing at the same time each day? Maybe an old TV, or alarm clock causing it? A light on a timer? The morning microwave water for coffee?
In Vantucky, our rental was located across the street from a Coast Guard commander’s residence, on a direct line of sight with the local base at Portland Airport. Whenever she was home and talking to the base on her low band radio, my tube monitor would go crazy to the point that I had to eventually ditch the monitor in favor of an LCD.
Even the LCD monitor would act up until I bought a monitor cable with a ferrite core on each end. God only knows what the RF did to my head, usually located not far from the monitor for multiple hours per day.
I guess the reverse is possible, with tube TVs interfering with RF, but, remember, in the UK there is a TV tax enforced by roving antenna trucks so it isn’t in the state’s best interest to have electronics properly shielded.
The UK had tube 16:9 HDTVs IIRC.
On a side note, I don’t know if Coast Guard radios are supposed to be encrypted, but the interference pattern on my tube monitor sure looked like analog audio to me. Vowels. Consonants. “Uhhh”. I never got curious enough to record the signal and attempt to analyze it, however. I guess I really didn’t want to know.
Didn’t someone here have a similar problem with their interwebs crashing at the same time each day? Maybe an old TV, or alarm clock causing it? A light on a timer? The morning microwave water for coffee?
I also posted previously about our daily problems with the cable modem here in Austin during peak power demand times in the early afternoon in Summer. We weren’t experiencing rolling blackouts, but the modem was extremely sensitive to power fluctuations. The solution was to put the modem and main router on a low VA APC UPS. I haven’t had a problem since, and when we do get a power outage, the WiFi stays up for several hours — really convenient when working from the house during Covid this year.
Non standard home made construction, badly failed roof – there is a reason all that sheet rock and insulation is gone…
If I was an inspector, I would be done as soon as I saw the Visqueen covered roof. No need to get out of the car: “here is your inspection; it fails”.
Unless you can get it for the lot value minus tear down expense – I would let someone else have it.
@ray:
This is a Welsh village, with a population of perhaps 400, so it’s deep in the boonies. The refrain there would be “What is this cable of whch you speak”, since, even in major cities, cable TV, a la Comcast et al, is by no means ubiquitous. Most of us get our TV OTA, and it’s digital – but not the same digital as yours.
OTA includes terrestrial and satellite transmission – satellite is almost exclusively Sky (a Murdoch tentacle) although the 5 main terrestrial broadcasters get free carriage from Government must-carry rules.
Broadband in such places will be ADSL, and often slow ADSL, which is quite likely to be knocked out by a burst of static from a TV directly connected to an antenna. Remember, ADSL is carried on phone wires, which are often old, lossy, frequently not well-balanced, and never screened.
I say “quite likely to be knocked out by a burst of static”, since the reverse is also true – DSL interference with amateur radio is common, albeit under-reported and under-investigated. OFCOM (our equivalent of your FCC) is just as lackadaisical.
G.
@greg:
We did. I had one, although it wasn’t HD. 24 inch diagonal, and a 2 person lift. Serious glass. Passed it on to #2 daughter for her second year at college. We didn’t have HD in the UK at the time.
G.
Bah, my Erector from the 60s has a motor that pulled my windmill, car and trucks. Give me nuts, bolts, a chain, a motor and lots of segments and panel sections and I will be 100 times more pleased than toying around with little plastic fudged thingies that just snap on.
OTA includes terrestrial and satellite transmission – satellite is almost exclusively Sky (a Murdoch tentacle) although the 5 main terrestrial broadcasters get free carriage from Government must-carry rules.
Comcast wrested control of Sky from Murdoch/Fox.
If you are a “30 Rock” fan, Comcast is lampooned as Kabletown, who bought NBC from GE/Sheinhardt Wig in one of the series’ long plotline arcs.
We did. I had one, although it wasn’t HD. 24 inch diagonal, and a 2 person lift. Serious glass. Passed it on to #2 daughter for her second year at college. We didn’t have HD in the UK at the time.
PAL was still better than NTSC, with more lines and non-smeared color.
Color NTSC is a beautiful hack of the mathematics, designed to be backwards compatible with 50s TV, but it is still a hack.
And Tom Cruise will be one of the first three space tourists that will be going to the ISS in October on a SpaceX Dragon capsule. I would have expected Elon to be amongst the first. There is still one undisclosed seat. Maybe it will be his to use.
Otherwise he is just waiting to be the first to go to Mars. 🙂
Broadband in such places will be ADSL, and often slow ADSL, which is quite likely to be knocked out by a burst of static from a TV directly connected to an antenna. Remember, ADSL is carried on phone wires, which are often old, lossy, frequently not well-balanced, and never screened.
AT&T Uverse in the US still attempts to provision HDTV on bonded ADSL lines in certain older neighborhoods where they don’t deem the investment in fiber to be worthwhile. Channel switching actually takes place outside the home in a nearby climate controlled curbside box.
The scheme works about as well as you imagine. My former corporate masters are shameless.
The management currently in charge of the Death Star are legacy PacBell who directly inspired “Dilbert”. The shame of it is that the glory days of the strip are long past just as life is imitating the art in a huge way.
Bah, my Erector from the 60s has a motor that pulled my windmill, car and trucks. Give me nuts, bolts, a chain, a motor and lots of segments and panel sections and I will be 100 times more pleased than toying around with little plastic fudged thingies that just snap on.
More pleased perhaps, but probably nowhere near as awed:
LEGO Technic MKII V8 Pneumatic Engine – Insane 2200 RPM! LPE MOC – w/ Instructions
That is 60 years gone by. We should be building our own spaceships to tinker by now…
And if you really like to tinker I would imagine that a 3D printer would be the thing to go nowadays. I would gift my child one of those and let him exercise many other parts of his brain apart from the awe factor.
(I seem to have strong views on this one. 🙁 ).
The small resin printers are awesome for the money. There are small filament printers too, but my understanding is that it takes a lot of tinkering around and often a bunch of hardware upgrades to get good filament prints from cheap printers. The resin is dead simple. Cons for the resin printer, the resin is nasty and pricy, and the build volume is smaller than filament tends to be.
n
If you go to the Black Magic Craft channel, he gets a resin printer, and starts being sponsored by a company that offers subscriptions to downloadable models. The models are aimed at the tabletop RPG gamers, and look really nice.
The other guy I linked, Luke Towan, also uses a small resin printer in his modeling. He does truly awesome things with it (in the context of his models.)
n
It has been a really chatty day today 94 posts and counting. Wondering what the high watermark is? (If there is any.)
[Just to waste more of your time and disk space.]
Huh, she’s a hypocrite. Whodah thunkit?
n
And if you really like to tinker I would imagine that a 3D printer would be the thing to go nowadays. I would gift my child one of those and let him exercise many other parts of his brain apart from the awe factor.
If I were a tad younger I probably would have a 3D printer, but as it is I already have way too many interests and, despite being retired, nowhere near enough time to pursue all of them.
While tinkering I ran across the concept of the Mecanum wheel and was able to construct some imperfect proof-of-concept versions using those “little plastic fudged thingies that just snap on.”
Here is a vastly more sophisticated implementation of mecanum wheels than I was able to create: Mecanum Car : LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3
@marcelo, comments per day tend to fluctuate. I was concerned about some slow days so I went and looked at days when Bob was still here. There were slow days then too.
I think on average, comment count was a little higher at least during the last year than previous years.
Comment count now is generally higher than pre-lockdown. I think more people here are sitting at their computer all day. I know I make more comments when I’m sitting here doing other things.
I do try to have some sort of discussion starter in my opening post. Doesn’t always work out, and sometimes I thought I was being provocative, but not one commentor mentions the thing I said. Weird.
n
Went and did my auction pickup. Localized deep puddles on the streets didn’t surprise me. Didn’t see any real flooding in my area, but a lot of bayou flooding is happening elsewhere.
n
Huh, she’s a hypocrite. Whodah thunkit?
‘Defund the police’ activist Alyssa Milano calls 911 to report gunman on her $2.5m property and receives huge 7-car, one helicopter response – only for it to be a kid shooting squirrels with an airgun
n
They believe that only special people deserve police protection. And you and I are not special.
— Of COURSE he’s buying votes.
n
btw, I’m really starting to get pissed off at the special and indeed PREFERENTIAL treatment for criminals.
From the same article
–should I hold my breath for him to support restoration of 2A rights as well? No?
n
In the early 80s I was building a wide area network for my company encompassing their remote warehouses in Reno NV, Harrison AR, and Lincoln NB using Datapoint equipment. It worked amazingly well except that on Fridays at around 6pm when we tried to run remote backups, the connection to Lincoln would drop. It was so bad I flew out there to troubleshoot. I worked with AT&T to test line conditions. Everything was great until about 5:30pm and then signal just went to noise. I traced the line where it ran through the building then out to a pole in the parking lot. I noticed a pickup parked next to that pole. Walking over I saw a quarter wave whip CB antenna on the bed. I knocked on the door and asked if he was using the radio. The driver looked up from his Super Cobra CB and said “yeah, I get together with my boys every Friday after work to plan the weekend”. I then expressed interest in his radio. He boasted that he had boosted the transmit strength from the legal 5 watts to almost 30 watts. There was the answer.
No, no, no.
Greg used Harold’s white lithium grease to hold up the soap dish.
I patched the hole temporarily with Flex Paste. Sigh.
I want to meet the people who fabbed that boat for the commercial. A fiberglass hull would be a lot less work and mess.
Is Bloomberg trying to buy the Florida vote? Billionaire pays off more than $20m in debt for 31,000 felons so they can vote in the state where just 537 votes decided the presidential election in 2000
As for the rest of the $100 million, a little walkin’ ’round money goes a long way in some parts of the state. Plus the Reverend says the church can always use a new roof.
The ’90 US Senate vote was even closer than the often cited 2000 Presidential race in Florida. The irony is that the winner, Senator Connie Mack, was reelected in 1996 by an insane margin running against Hillary’s brother, Hugh Rodham, a candidate so bad even the other Senator from Florida, fellow Dem Bob Graham, wouldn’t endorse him.
I do some 3D printer tinkering making parts for a hobby. Sometimes it works out great, other times it’s a disaster. Filament quality is a big deal. It’s very satisfying when you get a good print.
@Jenny: “Never take counsel of your fears.” – Andrew Jackson
But do your homework, too.
There’s a guy on the Cloudy Nights classifieds that has a filament printer, Dr. Benway.
He makes bits for telescopes: finder mounts, bahtinov masks, etc. Low volumes of lightly lightly loaded parts, seems like an ideal market positioning
“3D printed in durable PETG filament.”
@Jenny: The house itself is one of those overly complicated things designed by someone with no clue. Just a few things that struck me, flipping through the photos:
– Walk in the front door of the MIL apartment, fall down the steps. That’s a big living area with a weird corner cut out for the needless stairs and the coat closet. Seriously dumb design.
– Really weird changes in the ceiling level in the kitchen, not least because they had no clue how to deal with the stove vent.
– More weird ceiling messes in other rooms – look at the “family room” – what were they thinking? And the stairs: we can’t be bothered to make the stairs look nice, so let’s toss a wall in. Uninviting and impractical.
– The “half bath”: We have a huge house, so let’s put a toilet in a closet where it doesn’t even fit.
“Tragedy hall”: Someone was getting ready for a renovation (or maybe fighting water damage?) but quit after ripping off all the drywall. Less bad than it looks, but it still needs professionals – I sure wouldn’t tackle that as an amateur.
There aren’t any photos where I can see the exterior wall construction very well, but the walls look pretty thin – not a lot of insulation for a cold climate.
It’s a lot of house, badly designed, and in poor shape. If you like the property, I’d tell the real estate agent that you’ll pay the price for the property, but nothing more.
When I worked in network management in the early 00’s we had a major client with about 1500 cookie cutter sites, migrated from a variety of dial-up, DSL and a few cable modems to an across the board frame-over-atm architecture. I handled a lot of those migrations. We had a ‘problem child’ store whose network dropped randomly within an hour of opening or within an hour of a power outage. After maybe three weeks of getting the line tested, the router tested, and the onsite POS machines and cash registers checked, I finally convinced the AT&T tech checking the line to do us both a favor and snoop around in the store. He found a network drop from the back room to the front of the store included a ‘service loop’ of spare wire… creatively wrapped around the ballast for a fluorescent light to keep it out of the way. An unnecessarily large service loop, maybe 15-20 feet. So whenever the register/POS setup on that particular drop was active when the lights were turned on, the router rebooted. Not entirely sure why, but when he cleaned it up, we didn’t hear from that store again.
@varied
2 acres tragedy hall house. Alaska has a lot of “Frankenstein-houses” built on over decades. Tragedy hall looks like one of those. If we got serious about it (2 acres! In Anchorage!) I’d get an estimate to bulldoze it before we committed. I suspect the best thing that could happen to it would be to be put out of its misery. Whether by electrical fire (aluminum wiring?) or planned demise.
I think it’s priced for what the agent thinks the value of the property. I expect a developer will buy it, bulldoze it, rezone and subdivide it. That’s sad because it was probably one of the early homestead parcels.
I would still like to view the house, morbid curiosity if nothing else. If we wind up moving (court is literally still out on that) I’d like a little land, with more land the farther we go. In Anchorage realistically we aren’t going to be able to afford more than a third of an acre without something akin to tragedy hall. 30minute commute we can probably get 1/2 – 1 acre with some elbow grease. An hour commute we can gat a couple acres. Or take a pay cut switching jobs in our 50’s. That seems like a bad plan.
Ideally we (the core neighborhoods) will emerge triumphant from the legal battle on AO 2020-66 and this house Hunt will have been no more than a pleasant diversion.
@greg:
You’re right, I’d forgotten. In my defence, I spent 18 months working at $ky before being passed over for promotion and leaving, in 1990.
Again, true. Benefit of hindsight. And because of the increased line count, I was of the opinion for quite some time that we didn’t need HD anything like as much as you Yanks.
But, of course, anything new and shiny will help sell new kit. This was, I think, a triumph of marketing over substance. And we still have the nonsense of 720(-i or -p, it matters not) being sold as “HD Ready”
G.