Cold and wet. Rain on the plain, and the plane, and the horse’s rein for that matter……
Monday was mostly cloudy, misty drizzle, and occasional patches of nice. Temps were in the 60s most of the day.
Fairly early in the day heavy trash came and picked up the 11 bags of leaves and dead grass that I raked so the soreness from Saturday and Sunday’s exertions was worth it. But I am sore.
I am really feeling every dumb thing I’ve ever done and every thing that ‘made me stronger’ over the years in weather like this. Cold and damp when you have a ‘weather’ everything is no fun. One of the reasons I live in a warm sunny place is that cold HURTS. Cold DAMP hurts too.
Enough b!tching though, I’ve led a charmed life and wouldn’t be who I am today without the scar tissue and missing bits… I did learn a couple of months ago that if I want to be productive, I need to continue taking my maintenance meds though. 55 used to be OLD. Now it’s barely middle aged. Except on cold damp mornings. And when the NSAIDs run out.
Grid down lots of things will run out. Even in a long slow collapse, many things that are easily obtainable today will be hard to get. In my mom’s living memory, citrus fruit in winter was a luxury. Getting a single orange on Christmas was a very special treat when she was young. I remember as a kid getting a case of oranges or grapefruit from sales guys trying to bribe my dad at Christmas. A nice box of fruit was still an impressive gift for people of his generation well into the 1970s. That wasn’t that long ago.
War adds another level of privation and suffering.
The thing to keep in mind is that none of this worst case, or even ‘bad’ case is impossible. And on a long enough timeline, it’s inevitable. Humans haven’t changed. Physical laws haven’t changed. Things tend to continue on, mostly the same, until they don’t. Then it all changes and usually very rapidly.
When that happens it’s important to keep in mind that ‘nothing lasts forever’ and most people will get through it. That should be your goal, it’s mine- to get through it, whatever it might be.
Flexibility, preparation, strength, determination, knowledge, ‘tribe’, and stuff. That will see you through.
Stacking is the easy part. Get to it.
nick
48F and drizzle this morning.
n
I noticed in the video the water was very calm. Get out in the middle of a lake where some fool in a large boat has the trim and speed set in maximum wake mode and the outcome may not be so pleasant. One of the critical items of marine craft is the center of balance. That point must be kept as low as possible and should never exceed the starboard or port sides of the craft in any condition for which the craft is designed. That motor home looks to have a high center of gravity. There is just not enough mass in the drive train and tanks to lower that center. Add in the holding tanks which are just big floatation bladders and the outcome in any location with a two foot wave from the side and that beast is going belly up.
Insurance will require that plates reflect the home address of the owner. I am surprised that CA allowed a HA plate on a vehicle in CA. Those greedy clowns never miss a trick to get money.
My brother retired from the CA highway department and receives retirement from CA. He moved to Idaho and CA wanted to tax his retirement money. He was not the only one. CA wanted to tax anyone that was receiving retirement money from CA and was not living in the state. Their argument was the money was earned in CA, same as having a job, and thus was CA taxable. That got shot down fairly quickly by the courts.
Now CA is attempting to tax people with lots of money that leave the state. Tax them for 10 years on a sliding scale.
Or tell them “Backstroke”.
That’s what I think. Removing 1/2″ from each roll allows more rolls to be sliced from those huge rolls that come from the paper presses. A sixteen foot wide press roll, loss 1/2″ from each cut and that quickly adds up to two additional role slices. a 12%+ increase in production by only changing the cutting blades and the packaging machines.
These people, presumably saved hundreds or thousands of dollars over the last 4 years, patting themselves on the back for being smarter/cleverer/better informed than all the chumps paying full price for electricity. NOT ONE DIME of taxpayer or rate payer money should be given to them.
When you gamble, you sometimes lose. Gamble long enough, and it’s almost a certainty.
Swing voters in the suburbs of Austin, Dallas, and Houston. If they’re held to pay pennies on the dollar, Republicans will be in even more trouble state-wide next year.
We worked *hard* for this.
The lawsuit from the Texas Attorney General was inevitable but a bit late and obvious CYA from Paxton.
https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/texas-attorney-general-ken-paxton-sues-griddy-over-skyrocketing-energy-bills/2566519/
900 sq ft apartment and they sign up for Griddy? What are they doing in there? Mining Bitcoin?
I never received a Griddy flier, but the Just Energy pitches were hardcore Prog language arriving in my mailbox 800 yards from the Austin city limits. Gotta wonder who was running those places and their politics.
UPDATE: Clinton ties at both Just and Griddy.
https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/texas/state-bureau/2021/03/01/griddy-electric-bills-spiked-during-freeze-explanation/4549742001/
Now CA is attempting to tax people with lots of money that leave the state. Tax them for 10 years on a sliding scale.
WA State has a capital gains tax in the works right now. Usually that doesn’t find a lot of support in Olympia, but never let a crisis go to waste.
That state with any form of income tax would go the California route in a heartbeat. We only just unwound my wife’s partnership in the Vantucky clinic so I’m concerned. I also have exposure in the last decade from the stocks I sold so we could eat and pay rent up there early on, all of the proceeds funneled through Bank of America or a WA chartered credit union.
https://kuow.org/stories/wa-democrats-push-for-capital-gains-tax-in-a-year-when-tax-doesn-t-seem-like-a-bad-word
Texas take note. An income tax is not supposed to happen in WA State either.
Linux – still not ready for prime time on the desktop.
When an OS can’t report or figure disk space properly, there is something deeply wrong with it, and it’s not to be trusted with anything non-trivial.
Something in my mint install gets convinced the disk is full, (leaving aside that there are 3 disks, NONE are actually full, but somehow the count exceeds a marker for capacity somewhere and the whole thing pukes) and then anything that queries the OS for available disk space gets told “NO, full up! Can’t have any!” and then the crashes start.
As evidence that it’s messed up I offer that ‘Disc Usage Analyser” and “whatever the file manager is that you get when you click on the folder icon on the taskbar” give wildly different amounts for used and free space when run seconds apart. And that both report different amounts when run after a reboot than before, when NOTHING significant has changed.
Also, that I get a “low disc space” alert, but either tool shows TB of unused space in the file system.
It’s STILL more stable with my NVR software than windows, but it’s not fully baked either. File and disk ops are BEDROCK for an OS, and should never have issues (IMO).
n
File and disk ops are BEDROCK for an OS, and should never have issues (IMO).
QFT. In my many Linux distro test installs, I never had your exact problem, but did have a few others, enough to make me worry. Plus, my five+ years using Mint uncovered many small problems. One was that my root partition filled up with update remnants. This caused a seemingly unrelated problem that took some hours to find. It was a setting that kept all the update files instead of deleting them after installation. That setting should have been opposite by default, but wasn’t. The solution seemed obvious in retrospect. Imagine my frustration.
Still, desktop Linux has touches of brilliance that kept me coming back for more frustration, but the real straw were the applications, many of which are really not ready for prime time. Like many colleagues, I will probably keep a Linux box around to play with, while using Windows for production. Close, but no cigar, IMO.
@Ray; You’re correct, except that the California DMV went into lockdown shortly after the WuFlu hit, and hadn’t re-opened before I left. And the PREVIOUS owner had lived in Hawaii.
LOL! More of the dumbest generation. The COVID’rs:
City Student Passes 3 Classes in Four Years, Ranks Near Top Half of Class With 0.13 GPA
Lynn, regarding your garage door opener, don’t forget my earlier post that the receiver might be the culprit. Older units have add-on receivers, but yours probably has it integrated with the main circuit board. If you like the mechanicals, consider adding a new external receiver, especially if the opener can be operated by a simple normally open pushbutton. Way easier than changing the mechanism.
There are many posts and videos that will likely address your exact opener. Yeah, another thing that requires time. If you don’t want to take the time, a whole new unit isn’t that hard to install, as another post mentioned recently. Good luck.
…some time this month I will complete my 55th orbit without an obit
I am really feeling every dumb thing I’ve ever done and every thing that ‘made me stronger’ over the years in weather like this. Cold and damp when you have a ‘weather’ everything is no fun. One of the reasons I live in a warm sunny place is that cold HURTS. Cold DAMP hurts too.
Enough b!tching though, I’ve led a charmed life and wouldn’t be who I am today without the scar tissue and missing bits… I did learn a couple of months ago that if I want to be productive, I need to continue taking my maintenance meds though. 55 used to be OLD. Now it’s barely middle aged. Except on cold damp mornings. And when the NSAIDs run out.
You surely know it isn’t the YEARS, it’s the MILES. 🙂
You probably know this, but it is important enough to repeat: experiment with the major types of pain relievers. Some work better than others, and some are safer than others. An arthritic friend did this every few years, and sometimes found better results. Things that didn’t seem to work a few years ago later worked better than others. Maybe WE change. Maybe.
Chronic pain is one of the worst issues, and well worth addressing.
I’m taking Meloxicam daily. It stops 90% or more of my chronic back pain. It doesn’t do anything for me for joint pain though, and my knees are starting to ache again a decade after my surgery.
It limits the type and amount of additional pain relief or management that I can take though.
Funny thing- for a lot of the world meloxicam is thought of as a vet med. Works well for me, and the side effects aren’t noticeable, if there are any. It’s funny because of how preppers often talk about having a stockpile vet meds, and here I am, prescribed one.
n
Dr Suess a birthday gift
https://dailycaller.com/2021/03/02/dr-suess-books-cease-published-racist-imagery/
I wonder how the previous owners accomplished that little feat. Most states require the vehicle to be registered and insured in the state where the vehicle will be primarily used. They might have been in a little bit of trouble with insurance refusing to pay if they got into an accident.
I tried registering my aunt’s car in WA state and get insurance. Registration had expired and I needed to drive the vehicle for a couple of days to sell the vehicle. I was told no on the registration because I did not live in nor was I licensed in the state. Insurance company said no insurance because the vehicle was not registered in the state where I lived nor was I licensed in the state of WA. I called my insurance agent and he could do nothing but said I was probably covered under my insurance but was not certain about the registration and the laws of WA state.
So I drove the car anyway and just hoped. If I had been caught I probably would have been arrested for theft as I could not prove I had permission to drive the vehicle and none of my information matched the vehicle. I got the car sold which was what really mattered.
Get into an accident and everything has to match. License, registration and insurance. Unless extenuating circumstances such as moved within the last 30 days or being in the military.
Someone snookered CA as the registration on an RV would have been expensive. HA was probably much cheaper.
TN has no income tax on wage earnings. TN does have this nasty little Hall Tax that taxes any interest or dividends about $2,500.00. Interest from TN state bonds and state credit unions are exempt. That has punched me in the gut for several years.
TN declares that ALL income, SS, earnings, etc. must be counted. They are vague on payments from the VA which are federal tax exempt. I had one person say they must be counted, another says no. Both from the tax office. The VA’s stand is that NO VA benefits are taxable by any entity. But having dealt with the state and my aunt’s VA benefits the state seems to think otherwise.
What I don’t like in TN is that everything except medical is sales taxed. Even food which is wrong in my opinion. The state even requires sales tax on food purchased with state issued debit cards. The state is taxing themselves on money the state has paid. But I think that is mostly to avoid embarrassing people using the state issued debit cards because not taxing them would make them stand out to cashiers. Which they do anyway as some items are flagged not covered when checking out and must be paid separately. The career welfare leaches know which items to avoid. I see them at the store, two carts, one welfare, and one self pay. They make themselves obvious. Then on the way out stop at the lottery machine and buy $100.00 in lottery tickets.
My simple reminder as it relates to money; of any sort: currency, coin, bank accounts, stocks, bonds, your buried treasure, Bitcoin/etc, physical and electronic assets of any kind, and the shirt off your back–the gooberment knows it all and will take whatever they want whenever they want.
And to think we fought a Revolution over a tax of 3 pennies on every pound of tea.
It’s STILL more stable with my NVR software than windows, but it’s not fully baked either. File and disk ops are BEDROCK for an OS, and should never have issues (IMO).
IIRC, one of your mounted drives is NTFS. That file system support wasn’t fully baked in the version of Ubuntu which the developers used to build Mint 19.3, and I have my doubts as to whether it is stable even now.
@nick; I presume they add a suffix or some other identifier so the plates on each vehicle are unique?
eg W5XYZ -1 and W5XYZ -2
I tried registering my aunt’s car in WA state and get insurance. Registration had expired and I needed to drive the vehicle for a couple of days to sell the vehicle. I was told no on the registration because I did not live in nor was I licensed in the state. Insurance company said no insurance because the vehicle was not registered in the state where I lived nor was I licensed in the state of WA. I called my insurance agent and he could do nothing but said I was probably covered under my insurance but was not certain about the registration and the laws of WA state.
When we lived in Vantucky, Oregon residents attending WA schools was a hot button issue, particularly in the Evergreen district, where we lived, and Vancouver Public Schools which had a “free” alternative magnet Chinese immersion program to Portland’s private TIS, The International School, $18,000/year tuition IIRC.
Enforcement was typically done via monitoring of license plates at the school entrance since WA State law requires a household’s vehicles to have in-state registration within 30 days of enrolling the kids in school. As a result, lots of games got played with the plates, especially by parents of Number One Sons looking to avoid tuition at TIS.
The Chinese immersion magnet program got so hot that most of the student body was Number One Sons, limiting the neighborhood kids to about 1/3 of the capacity of the school and forcing a lot of busing even among students living within walking distance at homes paying the taxes to support the magnet school.
Mittens got a visit from the same folks who tuned up Harry Reid.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/03/mitt-romney-black-eye-stitches-fall-weekend-knocked-unconscious/
Look for him to be ‘taking more time to be with family’ sometime in the near future.
n
Nah, it was the opposite people, the conservatives in Utah. Reid got a visit from the liberals in Nevada.
https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/texas-ag-hits-electricity-provider-griddy-deceptive-practices
“Griddy passed skyrocketing energy costs to customers with little to no warning, resulting in consumers paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars each day for electricity,” the statement said.
“Griddy misled Texans and signed them up for services which, in a time of crisis, resulted in individual Texans each losing thousands of dollars. As Texans struggled to survive this winter storm, Griddy made the suffering even worse as it debited outrageous amounts each day. As the first lawsuit filed by my office to confront the outrageous failure of power companies, I will hold Griddy accountable for their escalation of this winter storm disaster,” said Paxton. “My office will not allow Texans to be deceived or exploited by unlawful behavior and deceptive business practices.”
–without knowing anything about griddy or their TOS, or contract terms, they’d have to have very dumb lawyers indeed to have “misled” anyone. I’d be willing to bet money that there is a clear statement in the contract that rates can go up, and might go up a lot.
One Texas resident was slapped with a multi-thousand dollar power bill. She said:
“I’m not exactly sure what I’m supposed to do – should I take from my 401K? Should I get a loan?”
Maybe customers with variable-rate plans should get into the game of hedging? Or perhaps, for starters, at least keep an eye on power rates…
–um yeah, if you are looking around the table and you don’t see the sucker, the sucker is you…
These people, presumably saved hundreds or thousands of dollars over the last 4 years, patting themselves on the back for being smarter/cleverer/better informed than all the chumps paying full price for electricity. NOT ONE DIME of taxpayer or rate payer money should be given to them.
When you gamble, you sometimes lose. Gamble long enough, and it’s almost a certainty.
n
You hedge on Griddy by moving your business to http://www.energyogre.com . Period.
And Nick is right, nobody on Griddy should be bailed out.
Nah, it was the opposite people, the conservatives in Utah. Reid got a visit from the liberals in Nevada.
The Elders tuned up Mittens as a reminder of who is really in charge of his seat.
Could be Romney’s “bros” at Bain Capital too. IIRC, several fast food chains are undergoing financial strip mining in their private equity portfolio, and a big minimum wage increase would be a problem for them.
I think “Dunkin'” or whatever Dunkin’ Donuts calls themselves these days is under Bain now.
“Terra Wind”
https://camillc.com/terrawind/
“The Terra Wind is a first class motor coach that is as comfortable on the lake as it is on the land with a highway speed of up to 80 mph and up to 7 knots on the water.”
“The Terra Wind shown is approximately $1.2 million.”
You know, a real prepper would have one of these.
With $1.2M would a ‘real prepper’ instead perhaps want:
An MB Sprinter-based Class B 4WD motorhome – well equipped at 250K;
towing an off-road 4 wheeler – 10K;
and at an accessible location, a fast, maneuverable powerboat (if a water escape is warranted) – 40K;
900K in supplies, including gold and silver?
Yup, I was being horribly sarcastic. Who can afford a $1.2 million motorhome ?
If you have to bug out and cross a lake, go around. If you have to cross a river, find an interstate bridge. Or a state bridge. Or if extremely desperate, a railroad crossing.
In fact, if you are bugging out, you will have a plan of a path to where you are going. If you do not have a plan, then you have already failed.
In David Palmer’s awesome fiction book, “Emergence”, he talks about crossing the USA after a horrible pandemic with a 99.9% fatality rate. Not easy to do with all of the vehicles scattered around the place.
https://www.amazon.com/Emergence-David-R-Palmer/dp/194881806X/?tag=ttgnet-20
I would have a crew cab 4×4 pickup that you trust to go 5,000 miles on a nice trip with plenty of resources (gasoline, warm food, canned food, hotels, etc). Or a 1,000 miles on a horrible trip with very limited resources. Unless, you plan to bug out to your home.
Obvious fiction. The real world has the USA going through a horrible pandemic with a 99.9% survival rate.
but provide less product
Here in UK, we call this “shrinkflation”.
wholesale price of energy can vary by multiple orders of magnitude over such a short time
It’s entirely by design, as a way of managing demand, and means that the generating companies can try to restrict supply at peak times. Of course, the ultimate consumer doesn’t see it, so it doesn’t really work.
Cool term !
The only way to limit people from using any kind of a resource is to install a circuit breaker. Just like all of the markets have installed a circuit breaker to limit selling or buying.
The best way to limit electricity demand is to install a remote activated 15 amp circuit breaker between the meter and the main panel breaker at all of the home and businesses. That way the minimal emergency services can be performed at a home or a business but no high demand equipment will work. Some lighting, a refrigerator, maybe even a small window unit. Nothing else. And if tripped, the remote activated breaker will need to automatically reset after a given period of time, a minute or ten. Probably will cost $2,000 to $5,000 per installed meter. Not cheap !
the USA after a horrible pandemic with a 99.9% fatality rate
Obvious fiction. The real world has the USA going through a horrible pandemic with a 99.9% survival rate.
Yup, I added the word “fiction”.
“And yes, the USPS Parking Lot is a Gun Free Zone.”
https://gunfreezone.net/and-yes-the-usps-parking-lot-is-a-gun-free-zone/
I am very, very, very disturbed by this. By just driving on the Post Office parking lot with a gun in your vehicle, you have just committed a federal felony.
See also:
https://www.uslawshield.com/post-office-parking-lots-it-wont-be-a-merry-christmas-if-youre-in-jail/
I am amazed. I ordered a dead tree book from Amazon last night, they printed it in Coppell, TX (300 miles north of here) and just delivered it to me ! The Print On Demand book says printed in Coppell, TX on March 1, 2021. The price was $13.95 plus sales tax for the trade paperback.
“@nick; I presume they add a suffix or some other identifier so the plates on each vehicle are unique?
eg W5XYZ -1 and W5XYZ -2”
nope. not that I’ve seen or heard about.
n
Parents that drop off, and pick up, their kids from school face the same issue. The pickup area is generally school property and having any weapon on school property is a felon. Having bullets, or empty shell casings, a fishing filet knife, can land a person in jail. I carry a small pen knife, a Swiss knife, the smallest, on my keychain. I could technically be arrested for having that on my person while subbing or photographing a school sporting event. Fortunately the police here are somewhat reasonable, know I have the knife, consider me an adult and ignore the issue.
” “And yes, the USPS Parking Lot is a Gun Free Zone.”
https://gunfreezone.net/and-yes-the-usps-parking-lot-is-a-gun-free-zone/
I am very, very, very disturbed by this. By just driving on the Post Office parking lot with a gun in your vehicle, you have just committed a federal felony.
See also:
https://www.uslawshield.com/post-office-parking-lots-it-wont-be-a-merry-christmas-if-youre-in-jail/ ”
—Might as well carry inside at that point. Hang for a sheep…
–also could be the reason I started dropping Priority Mail at the UPS Store…
n
And remember, like the ban on guns in school, the post office was worried about EMPLOYEES shooting up the place, not customer/citizens. The schools were worried about TEACHERS getting shot, not students. Funny how the focus can change completely to the opposite but the law remains.
From my ISP:
“MUST READ, IMPORTANT UPDATES”
Hmm. What to say? I know! NO!!!
I’m just a customer. Dealing with the FCC isn’t my problem.
Added: I’ve used a wISP since 2001. The ISP of the day (they sell, they merge, I change provider) has never asked for my ID.
“The pickup area is generally school property and having any weapon on school property is a felon. ”
–not in TX. The statute defines ‘premise’ as the occupied buildings, so you are ok on grounds. I carried my Benchmade clip knife at school all the time. No one ever said a thing. The rodeo allows knives too, while banning guns under the rules applying to ‘professional sporting events’ and ‘school sponsored educational events.’
n
The best way to limit electricity demand is to install a remote activated 15 amp circuit breaker between the meter and the main panel breaker at all of the home and businesses. That way the minimal emergency services can be performed at a home or a business but no high demand equipment will work. Some lighting, a refrigerator, maybe even a small window unit. Nothing else. And if tripped, the remote activated breaker will need to automatically reset after a given period of time, a minute or ten. Probably will cost $2,000 to $5,000 per installed meter. Not cheap !
The Nexia thermostat on my downstairs AC system has a “Demand Response” menu entry with a current status of “not activated”. I strongly suspect an HVAC remote cutoff switch capability under control of ERCOT is coming, and that is the reason the manufacturers and installers push the variable speed systems requiring proprietary thermostat protocols.
I keep the Nexia off of the Wifi to the point that I had the techs out to wipe its memory when I made the mistake of allowing the thermostat on my home network once and caught it port scanning my network devices.
“Smart Meters” often trade lower rates with the ability to use ‘remote load shedding’. IE- turn you off remotely. That would never be weaponized against citizens though…
n
My central air has a smart-ish thermostat controlling a variable speed blower. Outside unit is just two speeds. T-stat is not Internet capable.
If it was, hey, I’m smart enough to block the MAC address in my router.
“Smart Meters” often trade lower rates with the ability to use ‘remote load shedding’. IE- turn you off remotely. That would never be weaponized against citizens though…
n
I think that just about every meter in Texas is a Smart Meter now. Getting a old school meter is impossible just because they have to send out a meter reader to read it every month.
I wonder if the Smart Meters have the capability to reduce load. If so, they should be using it for extreme weather events.
Enough b!tching though, I’ve led a charmed life and wouldn’t be who I am today without the scar tissue and missing bits… I did learn a couple of months ago that if I want to be productive, I need to continue taking my maintenance meds though. 55 used to be OLD. Now it’s barely middle aged. Except on cold damp mornings. And when the NSAIDs run out.
Just wait until you hit 60. I have severe arthritis in my lower back and knees. They hurt all the time now and when that front came in Monday I just wanted to lay down and die.
UPDATE: Clinton ties at both Just and Griddy.
https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/texas/state-bureau/2021/03/01/griddy-electric-bills-spiked-during-freeze-explanation/4549742001/
Griddy should have hedged their electricity costs. I have no idea how that they would have done that.
Battlespace preparation
n
Lynn, regarding your garage door opener, don’t forget my earlier post that the receiver might be the culprit. Older units have add-on receivers, but yours probably has it integrated with the main circuit board. If you like the mechanicals, consider adding a new external receiver, especially if the opener can be operated by a simple normally open pushbutton. Way easier than changing the mechanism.
There are many posts and videos that will likely address your exact opener. Yeah, another thing that requires time. If you don’t want to take the time, a whole new unit isn’t that hard to install, as another post mentioned recently. Good luck.
So last night, I get home at 10 pm and it is 52 F outside and in the garage. The GDO remote works fine from 125 ft away where I stop to get the mail from my mailbox at the beginning of my driveway. This morning it is 68 F outside and 60 F in my garage. The GDO remote does not work to close the garage door. This is not a bad cold solder joint.
New Genie screw drive next year. Or maybe this fall when it gets cold. The GDO is 22 years old, something gonna break on it soon.
All ILLEGALS. The presidents Open Borders policy is turning deadly fast.
Dr Suess a birthday gift
Loudon County Public School (LCPS) District in Virginia announced in February that “Dr. Seuss and his books are no longer the emphasis of ‘Read Across America Day’ in Loudoun County Public Schools,” a day that coincides with Dr. Seuss’ birthday on March 2, according to the FOX affiliate in Charlotte.
https://dailycaller.com/2021/03/02/dr-suess-books-cease-published-racist-imagery/
This cancel culture is gonna kill us all.
And we taught our kids to read with Dr. Seuss books. They loved reading those books, “The Cat in the Hat”, “Are You My Mother ?”, “Green Egg and Ham”, etc.
My Costco has lottery gift cards – $90 for $100 worth of tickets.
From my ISP:
“MUST READ, IMPORTANT UPDATES”
MASTER SUBSCRIBER AGREEMENT UPDATED – As of January 1st, 2021 our newly revised Master Subscriber Agreement has been published and adopted by all of =redacted=. As we grow we are adopting a more standard model of telecommunications company. With that in mind, our biggest policy change is coming in the form of obtaining a valid copy of a government issued ID (Drivers License, Passport, Military ID…etc). Because we are now directly engaging with the FCC in order to obtain officially licensed frequencies, we are subject to Homeland Defense Laws that require us to collect a valid government issued ID.
Hmm. What to say? I know! NO!!!
I’m just a customer. Dealing with the FCC isn’t my problem.
Added: I’ve used a wISP since 2001. The ISP of the day (they sell, they merge, I change provider) has never asked for my ID.
Hurry up Starlink !
And everyone is requiring photo id from me nowadays. When I bought my new phone from Verizon last year, that started with a photo id event. And I have been a Verizon business customer for over 20 years.
xkcd: Leap Year 2021
https://xkcd.com/2431/
I know a guy like Black Hat.
Explained at:
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2431:_Leap_Year_2021
NO WAY would I drive a $1.2M motorcoach into the water…
I noticed in the video the water was very calm. Get out in the middle of a lake where some fool in a large boat has the trim and speed set in maximum wake mode and the outcome may not be so pleasant. One of the critical items of marine craft is the center of balance. That point must be kept as low as possible and should never exceed the starboard or port sides of the craft in any condition for which the craft is designed. That motor home looks to have a high center of gravity. There is just not enough mass in the drive train and tanks to lower that center. Add in the holding tanks which are just big floatation bladders and the outcome in any location with a two foot wave from the side and that beast is going belly up.
Can you imagine buying insurance for that beast ? Any sane insurance company would exempt the RV from water immersion coverage.
BTW, that RV has a 350 hp Cat motor and 6 speed Allison automatic in it. I would say at least 10,000 lbs for that pair alone. Maybe 15,000 lbs. Fairly low and fairly heavy. Hopefully the fuel, potable water, grey water, and black water tanks are low also. Very low. And I note that some of the pictures show pontoons.
Griddy should have hedged their electricity costs. I have no idea how that they would have done that.
The management crossed their fingers hoping to make it to either an IPO or selling out to someone bigger.
“Gov. Greg Abbott announced the end of the statewide mask mandate Tuesday.”
https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/mask-mandate-ends-business-open-15994001.php
“He also announced that businesses can soon open at 100 percent capacity March 10. In a speech to the Lubbock Chamber of Commerce, Abbott declared that “state mandates are no longer needed” following promising COVID-19 numbers over the last few days.”
“Any local order mandating masks is no longer valid, Abbott said. A local county judge may order restrictions if regional COVID-19 hospitalizations reach 15 percent.”
Well, this is going to make that crazy man in the White House mad. And our County Judge who was hiding in his office during the great freeze.
https://www.fbherald.com/community/state-rep-rips-county-judge-for-inaction-during-freeze/article_30807256-987d-5e85-a198-647860501c47.html
and
https://fbindependent.com/was-kp-george-fiddling-while-the-county-was-freezing-p14650-1.htm
This cancel culture is gonna kill us all.
And we taught our kids to read with Dr. Seuss books. They loved reading those books, “The Cat in the Hat”, “Are You My Mother ?”, “Green Egg and Ham”, etc.
Old school “Babar the Elephant” published in the 60s would make Wokester heads explode just halfway through the first book alone.
“Here’s how CPS is paying $1 billion for the natural gas used during February’s winter storm”
https://www.chron.com/weather/article/CPS-Energy-paid-1-billion-for-fuel-amid-winter-15993691.php?IPID=Chron-HP-Trending
“CPS Energy said it owes $1 billion for natural gas and fees due to the winter storm, as reported by Diego Mendoza-Moyers for the Express-News.”
“CPS officials said they plan to fight the charges and seek funding to pay the bill. However officials also approved plans to take out a $500 million bank loan to pay half the bills and spread the cost out over several years.”
“The report said Texans would pay $50 billion for electricity for the week of Feb. 14 compared to $4.2 billion the week before.”
Live on the spot market, die by the spot market. And this is why the electricity cost shot up so much, the natural gas spot market priced in some pretty good profits by jumping the spot market from $3/mmbtu to $600/mmbtu. Some of that jump was justified due to their usage of expensive ethyltene glycol ($10/gallon) and methanol to keep the natural gas from freezing up at the valves and such.
BTW, CPS is the city of San Antonio, TX.
Hat tip to:
https://www.expressnews.com/business/eagle-ford-energy/article/CPS-Energy-looking-to-seek-500-million-loan-to-15989704.php
“CPS owes about $800 million to natural gas suppliers that sold the fuel to the utility during the storm at sky-high prices.”
“The utility is also on the hook for $200 million in charges from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state grid operator. ERCOT ordered CPS and other Texas utilities to conduct “rolling outages” beginning early Feb. 15 to prevent the statewide power grid from failing.”
“Before the storm, CPS had been developing a plan to shutter several of its coal- and natural gas-fired power plants and invest more in solar power and high-tech energy storage. CPS estimates the clean energy initiative would cost ratepayers on average as much as $12 a month extra on their monthly bills.”
“Last week, Gold-Williams said it would be “challenging” after the storm to seek a rate increase to pay for the shift to green energy while also asking customers to pay off the hefty gas bill.”
And shut down the reliable power units to swap to unreliable and MORE EXPENSIVE so-called green energy.
Well, this is going to make that crazy man in the White House mad.
Plugs already went offline (or whatever they call it) for the day.
I wonder how Abbott would respond to Biden imposing a travel ban to/from Texas. If the stories are true, Biden had to back down after floating that trial balloon with DeSantis for Florida and receiving a negative response along with a few f-bombs and threats of using the FL National Guard on the borders of the state.
Scranton Joe isn’t a JAG lawyer from Harvard Law like DeSantis, but Abbott is going to need Federal help if Texas ends up on the hook for the power bills from the storm. And God only knows what the Legislature will be up to before adjourning which will require political capital from Progs.
“In wake of storm, high natural gas prices, CPS likely to slow shift to renewable power”
https://www.expressnews.com/business/eagle-ford-energy/article/CPS-Energy-looking-to-seek-500-million-loan-to-15989704.php
“If CPS customers shoulder the hefty cost of last week’s gas purchases, telling them “to get ready for, potentially, rate increases to retire units early, I think, is going to be challenging,” Gold-Williams said.”
“In addition to the Spruce plant, CPS is looking to decommission several aging natural gas plants. To replace the electricity they generate, the FlexPower plan calls for building 900 megawatts of solar power, 50 megawatts of battery storage and 500 megawatts of “firming capacity,” or power available whenever demand is high.”
So to cover the 900 MW of solar power, they need 500 MW of natural gas fired gas turbines. If, the firming capacity is gas turbines like I think that it is. And that 500 MW is not gonna cover those 900 MW of solar panels, they will have another extreme weather event and find out that they need more gas turbines.
Scranton Joe isn’t a JAG lawyer from Harvard Law like DeSantis, but Abbott is going to need Federal help if Texas ends up on the hook for the power bills from the storm.
Nah. Unless you mean the federal bankruptcy court. The bankruptcy of The Brazos Cooperative (Bryan and College Station and all of central Texas) is going to pull every single entity in Texas into the bankruptcy, ending up with ERCOT. There are $50 billions of dollars at stake here for the five days of the extreme weather event and ERCOT cannot eat very much of the bills before they go belly up too.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/brazos-electric-power-cooperative-bankruptcy-texas/
“Brazos Electric Power Cooperative, which serves 16 distribution member co-ops that cater to more than 1.5 million Texans, said Monday that it accumulated $2.1 billion in bills during the severe cold that hit Texas between February 13 and 19.”
“Last week, the city of Denton sued ERCOT over $207 million in electricity bills it incurred during the blackouts.”
There is only one way to fix all this and that is a bankruptcy court. Every single entity in Texas will be shoved into the bankruptcy or be forced to deal with it. Bankruptcy judges have almost infinite power to force people to do things.
My biggest annoyance with cancel culture is how much everyone is so damn two-faced about it. Cancel something they like and cancel culture has gone too far! Cancel something they hate and, well, they got what they deserved. Cancel culture isn’t going away until people are as upset about the shit they hate being “canceled” as they are about the stuff they love.
Well, this is going to make that crazy man in the White House mad.
Plugs already went offline (or whatever they call it) for the day.
I wonder how Abbott would respond to Biden imposing a travel ban to/from Texas. If the stories are true, Biden had to back down after floating that trial balloon with DeSantis for Florida and receiving a negative response along with a few f-bombs and threats of using the FL National Guard on the borders of the state.
The South with Texas would secede from the Union in that event.
I was at the grocery store yesterday and there is now a Charmin Green “Ultra Gentle.” We’re Charmin Red “Ultra Strong” users in our house (there’s a funny joke on I think Family Guy where they talk about weak toilet paper and making sure you clean the poop from under the nail of your middle finger when you’re done wiping with the weak stuff… lol). We, including the females in the house, find the Charmin Red sufficiently soft. I’ve been a Charmin user since I was a kid using what my parents bought. They guy I shared a bathroom with in the USAF dorm used to laugh at me for buying “fancy” toilet paper. I turned my wife into a Charmin user too (she was one of those “what looks soft and is cheapest” types). I don’t mind being a toilet paper snob. 🙂 lol
Luxury toilet paper is one of those things that the economic engine of western culture makes possible.
speaking of, by my ‘trade magazine index’ of economic activity ™, we are F’d. Machine Design magazine, a wide circulation ‘trade’ magazine is down to 48 pages. It was 68 last month iirc. It was double and triple THAT before 2020. Several of the more limited interest trades I get have combined two complementary publications, or gone 100% digital. Photonics World seems to be the exception but it could be that they just have longer lead times and the slowdown hasn’t shown up yet.
n
Not sure what iOS has but my Android phone has Google call screening. For any number that rings without recognizable Caller ID I just tap “Screen Call” and Google answers the call, reads a screening message, and if they don’t hang up records a voice to text response which I can check. 90% must already know the screening message as the hang up before it ends. About 2% are legit calls and I call them back at my convenience and the rest are still spam but they leave a message, which sometimes leads to humorous transcript.
One theory, if you have the time and patience, is to answer the spam calls and go out of your way to keep them on the phone as long as possible before finally hanging up.
When I see one of those ginormus motorhomes on the highway I always wonder how easy it could flip onto its side if it had to make a swift evasive maneuver or had a tire blowout going 80 mph.
Let’s see how cities and businesses react. Can a biz now go mask free? Can a city impose a mask mandate? I expect not much of a change since no biz wants to be known as the Killer Kovid site.
Come on, HEB, drop your mask mandate.
Mostly those tanks are never full. Especially the grey and black water tanks unless the unit has been off grid for some time. Those tanks would be floatation bladders contributing nothing to the below the water line mass.
Or when they ask how is your day or how you are doing, go overboard. Tell them about the festering, puss filled, foul smelling wound on your ass that continues to defy healing. Tell them how you had to go to the ER because maggots were found in the wound. Make them retch.
My kids love the Uncle Remus stories.
Cancel culture is doing a great job of removing symbols of black brown and red people from white people’s lives.
Sports teams, breakfast, every meal with butter, etc. pretty soon you won’t see a POC on any packaging at all…. a world where whitey doesn’t have to see a filty red on his food, or a black woman at breakfast… I wonder if that isn’t the end goal of the highest echelons…
Kinda like men encouraging women’s sexual liberation increased the number of available sex partners 10 fold and by increasing supply, lowered the cost to essentially zero. How awesome is that? WAY more sex, and more extreme sex every day, because ‘everyone should watch porn’, and the more degrading the act, the more empowering it is… or something.
n
(the observations are serious, but the presentation is not, in case anyone was confused.)
There’s been increasing research with younger Millennials and older Gen-Z’ers males where they think ED drugs are totally normal. Their repeated exposure to unlimited hardcore porn at an early age (like most repeated exposure to things that trigger large amounts of dopamine) has basically made them psychologically numb to sex in the traditional sense. Having vaginal sex with one woman is just not enough to turn them on anymore, so they need pharmaceutical assistance. The problem isn’t limited to males as females are almost as porn addicted as the males are and are as equally unaroused at sex in the traditional sense. We’re moving toward a society that prefers porn over the real thing.
Let’s see how cities and businesses react. Can a biz now go mask free? Can a city impose a mask mandate? I expect not much of a change since no biz wants to be known as the Killer Kovid site.
Come on, HEB, drop your mask mandate.
Costco will support the Dems agenda and use their political muscle to force Walmart/Sam’s to do the same thing. HEB still has storm-related problems to fix.
Abbott left an out for the “Judge” in each Texas county to reimpose a mask order if hospitalizations spike. Count on Travis County and Austin Public Health to cook the books to maintain status quo.
I think he’s at least 2 to 6 weeks too early. I expect a spike in April.
Ditto for the local Walmart.
I might be weird but I tend to shop with a list. At least a list in my head. And while shopping my list I find other stuff. I can’t wander the store? I don’t find “I neeeed this” stuff.
I refuse to wear a face diaper, I’m not sick and I’m not spreading anything. Not even BO.
I’ve worked retail for almost all of the time I’ve worked. Tittie or crotch sweat soaked money never made me sick. Spread the money out to dry. Wash your hands! Sheesh, at HEB being in Cash Control, I’d have to wash my hands before I could go pee. Never got sick.
Cash money is astoundingly filthy. Do not lick your fingers for traction, just blow steam from your mouth… fog your fingers like you are about to clean your glasses.
I understand the theory. I’ve seen it work. Never worked for me. I’ve never been into one night stands. Just not.
Add in that if she gets pregnant you’re on the hook for the rest of your life paying child support, yeah, def staying with the four sisters on thumb street.
If we are going to have a spike “whenever”, let’s just get it done.
Two weeks of lockdown to start and then masks and now a YEAR later? Where are all the dead homeless folks?
I think he’s at least 2 to 6 weeks too early. I expect a spike in April.
Roman Catholic/Protestant Easter is the next “FOMO” holiday for some demographic groups, which will probably result in some kind of spike two weeks later, but the gatherings will be at homes in which, realistically, a judge’s order for distancing will be regarded as an interesting suggestion.
Two weeks of lockdown to start and then masks and now a YEAR later? Where are all the dead homeless folks?
According to my wife, the homeless who get sick in Travis County are housed at the Crowne Plaza in Downtown Austin, complete with room service.
No word on Baby Yoda streaming, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
“Where are all the dead homeless folks?”
–I previously posted a link to article about that very issue, they are dying now. You have to be pretty tough to survive on the street, and reasonably solitary, and they are reluctant to come to official attention, so initially they weren’t reflected in the official number in any great measure. Funny that with cold weather they were a lot more willing to be seen by medical staff and the number of sick and dead increased.
“Add in that if she gets pregnant you’re on the hook for the rest of your life paying child support,”
–not so much anymore. In the black community, the number of unwed mothers is somewhere between 70-80% iirc. Even in the white community, especially poorer communities, the sperm donor isn’t around or contributing officially if he is. That’s what I meant be “decreasing the cost”. You used to have to get married or face social consequences. Then you had to at least pay support. Now, not so much.
n
New York Times unleashes this Orwellian headline:
Officials ALARMED at a return to normal ?!?!
Got this from our district
n
another example of the decline in communication. There is a “to” missing from this headline.
TX and MS TO lift… in a week. Not today.
n
My favorite Golden Book as a kid in the 50’s was “Little Black Sambo”. I loved the ending where the tiger chased his tail around the tree till he turned into butter.
Heads would explode today …
We could have used the corpses last week. Throw them in the biomass boiler like cord wood.
I believe they will chicken out and keep masks, SD, and if the unions get their way, remote “hello, fellow dumbshits” learning. What’s to review? No restrictions, use your own judgement in your biz/school scenario. Your tax dollars at work: teachers sitting at home getting full pay and benefits, while your children become the dumbest generation in generations. The lowest infection rate, highest recovery rate, the most draconian restrictions. This is the goobermint’s wet dream come true. Break out the soy rations.
LOL!
FBI Director Christopher Wray refuses to confirm the cause of Officer Brian Sicknick’s death to Congress
The narrative isn’t falling in place, yet. Surely the ME’s report is done? It is going to be two months this week. Why isn’t Congress, DC, and the family screeching to High Heaven for the report?
Old school “Babar the Elephant” published in the 60s would make Wokester heads explode just halfway through the first book alone.
My favorite Golden Book as a kid in the 50’s was “Little Black Sambo”. I loved the ending where the tiger chased his tail around the tree till he turned into butter.
Heads would explode today …
I can remember going to Sambo’s restaurants. And Big Boy restaurants. And I enjoyed the Babar books.
I wonder what these marching morons think about all of the old Tarzan movies filmed in Florida back in the 1930s with Johnny Weissmuller ? Those were cool. And Jane was hot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzfmnGMlzFA
I can remember going to Sambo’s restaurants. And Big Boy restaurants.
Sambo’s became Village Inn. They were still around in Florida when we left.
Big Boy is still hanging in too, including the landmark restaurant in Burbank where the Beatles ate.
Oklahoma hit it’s Covid peak Jan 9 2021 – after that it’s been dropping like a stone. We are currently equal to our infection count in early June. Given this trend, we will be under 100 new active cases in a week. Some communities have extended their mask mandates into May but actual mask usage is dramaticaly declining. Once the Covid Emergency is over I can go back to charging late fees on the Storage Units.
And, yeah, why are National Guard troops still in DC? Why is there a wall around the Capitol? Pussy Governors should recall all their troops now! Tear down that wall
Mr. Plugs, Ms. Camel, er, Stretch!“Entrepreneurs Look to Small-Scale Nuclear Reactors”
https://www.asme.org/topics-resources/content/entrepreneurs-look-to-small-scale-nuclear-reactors
“The SMR company closest to exiting the R&D “valley of death” is Oregon-based NuScale. The company has been refining its Power Module, a 60-MW reactor plus steam generator, pressurizer, and control rods, all designed to fit in a 76 ft. by 15 ft. containment vessel, for the past decade. Unlike the site-built gigawatt-scale behemoths, such as unit could be built in a factory and shipped to wherever it might be needed.”
I keep on seeing articles about SMRs. And nothing ever happens.
OK, the price of 1.x acre lots in my neighborhood has gone crazy. The latest 1.28 acre lot just hit the HAR for $385K. That is almost as much as I paid for my 1.2 acre lot with a 3,301 ft2 house and 1,200 ft2 garage just a year and a half ago.
https://www.har.com/homedetail/1222-port-gibson-ct-richmond-tx-77469/2401466
There are less than 100 unbuilt lots left in our 528 lot neighborhood. I’ve got two houses going up just a block away from my house. I think that I would rather buy a lot in El Campo, TX and build a house there for the future when the cannibal hordes start roaming Houston.
To quote one energy expert on the Glenn Beck show recently. Nuclear will not succeed because in the US, regulatory barriers have been erected to make the price uncompetitive. The technology is there for small and medium scale, fail safe, sealed nuclear units that would require replacement and refurbishment every 10 or 15 years. But government has built so many barriers to GREEN Nuclear that it won’t happen.
Babar has been deprecated for quite a while.
Here on Southern California Edison, smart meters are ON-OFF only. To add an extra circuit with limited power capacity would require at least one additional wire from the meter to the electrical panel. I realize some meter panels are incorporated into the electrical panel, but mine is not. The two are several feet apart, connected with a conduit. It would be possible (almost anything is possible) to stuff another small wire through that conduit, but not all such setups would be that easy. It would also require either a special panel for the light loads or controllable breakers for the heavy loads. The complexity and cost would grow accordingly.
The best way to proliferate such a scheme would be to offer incentives to those who join. Making it mandatory would open a can of worms. This is how the air conditioner program works. A customer voluntarily signs up for remote control, with at least two options for lower rates. The outdoor unit’s compressor is controlled by a small box that uses SCE’s network to receive a signal to turn the compressor OFF for typically fifteen minutes each hour when there is a need. SCE uses their own network, because not all homes have Wi-Fi. That also makes hacking more difficult.
NuScale has a contract for a multi-reactor plant from a utility. They had their first design approved by the NRC. But, they decided to up the output to 60 MW, so they need to redo the approval. They will submit next year, approval in 2024.
OK, the price of 1.x acre lots in my neighborhood has gone crazy. The latest 1.28 acre lot just hit the HAR for $385K. That is almost as much as I paid for my 1.2 acre lot with a 3,301 ft2 house and 1,200 ft2 garage just a year and a half ago.
How much is construction per square foot?
The problem with paying too much for land is converting the construction loan when everything is done. We struggled with that for seven years with a piece of property in Florida before finally unloading the lot when prices started to recover.
Just wait until you hit 60. I have severe arthritis in my lower back and knees. They hurt all the time now and when that front came in Monday I just wanted to lay down and die.
Sorry to hear that, Lynn. I said that it’s not the AGE, but the MILES, but should have added genetics and afflictions. Your family certainly has experience with those. I remember you remarking that before medical advances you would have been long dead, so there is that.
I have had relatives who have lived healthy lives to about age 70, and then declined abruptly of sudden onset problems. Since I am 75 and still in pretty good health, I live each day without much expectation for the next. We all know what eventually happens, and we hope for something after. Although we sometimes complain, at least we are able to complain. We also have the ability and means to improve things. Over time, most people did not.
OK, the price of 1.x acre lots in my neighborhood has gone crazy. The latest 1.28 acre lot just hit the HAR for $385K. That is almost as much as I paid for my 1.2 acre lot with a 3,301 ft2 house and 1,200 ft2 garage just a year and a half ago.
How much is construction per square foot?
The problem with paying too much for land is converting the construction loan when everything is done. We struggled with that for seven years with a piece of property in Florida before finally unloading the lot when prices started to recover.
Construction is running $130/ft2 to how much of a hit can your wallet take ?
None of the banks are loaning money for lots anymore since the land debacles in 2008. Only completed homes.
There is a logjam of bank foreclosures that have been building since the CDC stopped foreclosures. Who knew they had that power? My son is starting a property restoration business to work with the banks rehabbing foreclosed homes for resale. He filed his corporate papers yesterday and today was contacted by two national banks who wanted to sign him up for rehabs in our state. He has to get company insurance and (I think) bonding before they will do the contract. Once things open up, a Texas Fed. Judge has declared the CDC order unconstitutional, the rehab business is set to take off. I am investing some in his enterprise but the big issue will be finding reliable employees. In Mississippi you can find illegals in ready hire pools on many street corners but not here in Indian Country. BTW, the illegals in MS are generally hard workers and know the basics of construction.
I keep on seeing articles about SMRs. And nothing ever happens.
NuScale has a contract for a multi-reactor plant from a utility. They had their first design approved by the NRC. But, they decided to up the output to 60 MW, so they need to redo the approval. They will submit next year, approval in 2024.
I would say that they are not that serious then. Probably waiting for a better time to release the SMR. If they were serious then they would have released the approved design TODAY.
I have a unit on my pool pump and hot water heater where the electrical provider can shut off the system. Max of four hours at a time. It required installation of a special box which the electrical company provided, installed, and maintains (had a circuit board fail). No special wiring from the pole so apparently the signal comes down the regular power lines. No special line to the box so the signal is picked up off a hot wire. They paid me $75.00 to have the box installed. A one time rebate.
I have reached that milestone. But am actually fairly healthy except for the weight. I would rather die happy at 75 than be miserable until 85. And that happiness involves food so that is my decision. That’s what I tell my doctor. At this point life is too short to sweat the small stuff. My family history indicates a severe mental decline starting about 77 to 79 and worm food by 85. Ideally the brain and body should crap out at the same time or within a few months of each other.
@hcombs – your son is making a good bet on his rebab business. Good plan! That would be a good plan for just about any area, I’d think.
Regarding construction costs – lumber prices have skyrocketed, so that is putting upward pressure on home building. Prices increased partly because of the ‘cooties’ affecting the lumber workforce, and tariffs on incoming lumber from Canada.
Home selling prices are skyrocketing also. Several neighbors have sold quickly (under a week), with prices above asking price. My house selling value has increased by about 20% in the past year-ish. So there could be a big profit on selling – except that I’d have to pay the inflated prices for new housing, so no real net gain. (Plus the hassle of packing and unpacking, including the 250+ scrapbook paper container, each containing about 2-3 inches of 12″x12″ paper. And all of the other scrapbooking supplies.)
But I think that the housing market is due for a big correction, especially when foreclosures are allowed. There’s going to be a bunch of those, which I think will reduce the upward pressure on house prices.
Always intrigued by the design engineers that design the industrial machines that package goods, especially foods. My Lipton Tea, for example, is in a folded bag, stapled shut, with a string attached, wrapped around the teabag and inserted into a slit and then inserted into the envelope which is then sealed. Not to mention getting them into a box. Would be cool to see that assembly line. I enjoy the TV show How It’s Made
@nick; what version of Windows does the NVR software require? Will it run on a fully updated Win7 install?
@nick; talk to your pain doctor (if you’re seeing one) about low-dose Naltrexon for chronic pain. I know several people getting good results with it.
@Alan
Noticed that show is now available on the DiscoveryPlus streaming channel. They aren’t making any new ones, but I also enjoyed (and wondered) about the design/build of those manufacturing lines while watching it.
Got to be an interesting field to be in. I have enough trouble designing web sites to work – takes tons of software changes to get things right. And then one change screws up something else that used to work just fine. Can’t imaging the troubleshooting of errors on an assembly line as it is being designed/installed.
“Sol Survivors” by Ken Benton
https://www.amazon.com/Sol-Survivors-Ken-Benton/dp/1710990813/?tag=ttgnet-20
Book number one of a two book fantasy apocalyptic series. I read the well printed and well bound trade paperback POD (print on demand) self published on Amazon in 2019. I ordered the second book in the series dead tree book from Amazon last night, they printed it in Coppell, TX (300 miles north of here) and just delivered it to me ! The Print On Demand book says printed in Coppell, TX on March 1, 2021. Which, I am reading now.
The Earth gets two days warning of a major solar flare event of a magnitude not seen before. The protagonist and his girlfriend with a couple of other people take off from Washington DC to his off the grid house in Tennessee through 500 miles of chaos, dead modern cars, dying cities, thieves and murderers, and martial law across the USA.
After the solar flare passes and destroys most electronics and the electrical grids, it is noted that the sun has changed somewhat. People are now less sensitive to the sun and continue the normal pattern of working during the day and sleeping at night. Other people become very sensitive to the sun and nocturnal, sleeping during the day, and awake during the nighttime.
The author has a website at:
http://survivaltales.com/
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.2 out of 5 stars (84 reviews)
Home selling prices are skyrocketing also. Several neighbors have sold quickly (under a week), with prices above asking price. My house selling value has increased by about 20% in the past year-ish.
We are seeing that in south Texas also. I do not have a single house for sale in my 428+ house neighborhood.
@Lynn
Thanks for answering my earlier question. I haven’t hunted down the graph for January, but I’m guessing the information is incorrect, either mispoken or misquoted.
Still don’t understand how “spot market” is a magic wand defense against “price gouging”.
Time to be transparent as hell: I’d suggest the architects of the spot market who failed to include a cap be given 24-hours before their personal information is made public.
How much ethylene glycol or methanol are used and where, exactly do these toxic substances end up?
How much ethylene glycol or methanol are used and where, exactly do these toxic substances end up?
I have seen EG circulation systems for the natural gas wellheads mostly at 10 gpm with a 8,000 to 12,000 gallon tank. Natural gas will hold about 4ppm of ethylene glycol so it will slowly dissipate into the natural gas to be burned in gas turbines, steam boilers, or residential furnaces and stoves. MeOH is much much much more soluble in natural gas, I am not sure how much as it depends on the NG temperature and pressure. My software can tell you though.
Once things open up, a Texas Fed. Judge has declared the CDC order unconstitutional, the rehab business is set to take off.
That’s assuming that the evictions will actually happen. I have my doubts.
This just in … Oklahoma state House has passed a bill that would allow the state attorney general and legislature to declare federal laws and executive orders issued under Democratic President Joe Biden as unconstitutional
Of course there’s more to it but it’s basically a finger in the eye of the current administration. Is it constitutional? Is it enforceable? Who knows? We my find out.
Still don’t understand how “spot market” is a magic wand defense against “price gouging”.
Time to be transparent as hell: I’d suggest the architects of the spot market who failed to include a cap be given 24-hours before their personal information is made public.
The spot market is a very loose euphemism for any short term contract to buy natural gas of less than a year ???. There are hundreds of sellers such as Exxon, Shell, Chesapeake, Kinder-Morgan, etc, etc, etc. There are thousands of buyers: cities, power plants, pipelines, utilities, etc. The entire business is a huge mish-mash. Transactions are sometimes publicized, sometimes not. There are no limits, it is the wild west.
Construction is running $130/ft2 to how much of a hit can your wallet take ?
None of the banks are loaning money for lots anymore since the land debacles in 2008. Only completed homes.
Unless the houses in your neighborhood are going for $900k, anyone buying a lot for $380k and dropping $400k in construction is going to be underwater for a long time. And, yes, they will need cash.
I consider us to be lucky that we got out of our property with just a $20k *tax deductible* loss. The guy across the street dropped $600k in property and construction costs in a neighborhood of homes that ended up post-bubble worth $300k tops, most closer to $200k
“why isn’t the family screeching to High Heaven for the report? ”
–they are. His mom doesn’t believe the ‘beaten with a fire extinguisher story.’ Why don’t we have official word of the identity of Ashli’s killer?
@alan, I was running the software NVR (iSpy) on my main pc, win 8.2 patched and up to date. It took every cycle available once I got past 8 cams, and the version was deprecated for win10 and linux versions that were server and web browser based- a whole new architecture. I tried a win7 core i3 machine and it couldn’t keep up.
on win10 (the new architecture) was buggy and crashed all the time although the old version would run within limits. It runs very well on linux mint 19.3 (the recommended version) but MINT seems to have issues.
Their new version is much more efficient and can handle many more cams at the same time, in higher rez and frame rate.
I was hoping that being on linux I could just get it running, tune it to do what I want, and then seal the box and run it as a dedicated machine that didn’t need any hands on intervention. That hasn’t worked out, quite. As long as I deal with the disk usage issues, the NVR software runs, until mint chokes on something, usually a disk full message.
n
Got my 1st COVID shot. They did something different and interesting. Place a sticky membrane over the injection location. Doughnut shaped with sticky foam in a circle. Injection was made through the membrane.
” anyone buying a lot for $380k and dropping $400k in construction is going to be underwater for a long time.”
–this is why all we get are low ball offers for our rent house. There is a maximum selling price for a house on the lot given the location, and between the land, and construction, there isn’t enough of a profit for the square ft you could build.
Now, in the neighborhoods around my live in house, 1 acre lots are selling for $1M that would have sold for $300k 4 years ago. The developers are putting 8-12 units on that acre and getting $400k each. They could put up to 22 units if they can find the green space/permeable surface to counter all the hardscape. It all comes down to ratios. how much of the lot can be built, how much the sq ft costs, how many sqft you can build, sale price… They do things like act as the realtor, that saves them money. Build one or two on spec then take that profit to build more without loans. then do it again.
Lot cost per sqft, building cost per sqft ($130), selling price per sqft ($250-280). you can see the lot cost limits the profit or even if it’s possible.
n
“@nick; talk to your pain doctor (if you’re seeing one) about low-dose Naltrexon for chronic pain. I know several people getting good results with it.”
—is that an off label use? It looks like it’s normally used for addiction treatment.
n
If I was still “MR IT” I’d cobble up a quick chron job to keep your drive clean. It’s really not hard especially as you know where the files live and the names/extensions. But honestly, after 50 years as “MR IT” minding everything from IBM 360/40s to the Sierra series and just about every flavor of home grown and commercial PC, I have had enough. No more coding, not even shell scripts. Not even PERL and I dearly LOVED PERL in the 90’s making it do amazing things. No more. Before I retired I bought a HOT gamer PC, three 24 inch monitors and all the trimmings expecting to indulge myself in my spare time. I haven’t even turned it on. Sigh. The passion is gone.
“I’d cobble up a quick chron job to keep your drive clean.”
–that is one of the differences between a commercial NVR in a box and the software implementation. The settings for managing saved video files are opaque and poorly done. On a box, you mainly just choose continuous overwrite, and move on. Or set hard limits for each camera and do continuous overwrite on each cam separately. No easy way to do that in iSpy that I can find. If I don’t notice the video drive filling up, the same OS that nags me about running out of disk space when there are 8TB left will blithely fill the drive. The software then writes 0byte files, until I notice. between the 10 cams, that can mean 70K files to delete, most with 0 byte size.
n
So far my DVD ripping project has done 210 disks. I’m faster some days than others. That’s a lot of disks with about the same still to go.
n
–more poor language skills…
–NOT A LANDFILL. Is a patch of OCEAN. OCEAN! and it’s not too hard to figure out where the trash was coming from, that part was obvious and NOT US. Just survey the trash…
n
Now, in the neighborhoods around my live in house, 1 acre lots are selling for $1M that would have sold for $300k 4 years ago. The developers are putting 8-12 units on that acre and getting $400k each. They could put up to 22 units if they can find the green space/permeable surface to counter all the hardscape. It all comes down to ratios. how much of the lot can be built, how much the sq ft costs, how many sqft you can build, sale price… They do things like act as the realtor, that saves them money. Build one or two on spec then take that profit to build more without loans. then do it again.
Are they putting townhomes on those 1 acre lots ?
No more coding, not even shell scripts. Not even PERL and I dearly LOVED PERL in the 90’s making it do amazing things.
I still like coding, but I can’t deal with a lot of the people anymore. Way too many compromises in skill in the name of “diversity”, especially in tech hubs.
The new job has a good group of core developers spread across nine time zones from Eastern Europe to PST/PDT. Maybe that is the future.
I like Tcl. I dusted off those skills this week when we needed a server process to emulate a really expensive piece of big data software that really does nothing but archive the data sent in HTTP Post requests.
Maybe we are transitioning away from having larger lots in many areas, especially around urban areas.
As new-built housing expands, lots are getting smaller due to increased land and building costs because of the increased demand? Not to mention governmental regulations. And the influx of now-remote workers, instead of commuting workers.
So I drove the car anyway and just hoped.
Most states will grant a temporary transport permit that might have helped you, but maybe not in your case, because you did not (?) have ownership papers.
I used this once when I was an Iowa resident and bought a car from the manufacturer in Detroit. Iowa granted the permit for a trivial fee. It allowed me to avoid Michigan sales tax. I would not have been able to register it in Michigan because I was not a resident. Worked really well.
California will grant a temp permit for no fees to drive an unregistered vehicle for inspections or practically any reason. It is easily granted, and prevents the kind of trouble you mentioned. We are not even allowed to trailer a vehicle on a public road if it needs to be registered. If caught, the hassles can be bad and expensive. These permits are very handy when picking up an out of state vehicle, as all (but verify) states recognize it. However, using a closed trailer avoids a lot of “curiosity” stops.
@lynn, yeah, call them townhomes. Single family but only 6 inches apart, 24ft wide, 3 stories, filling every sqft of lot. All built the same. I assume different interior finishes, but maybe not even that.
n
@lynn, yeah, call them townhomes. Single family but only 6 inches apart, 24ft wide, 3 stories, filling every sqft of lot. All built the same.
Little Boxes
This is the kind of thing they are developing on those 1 acre single house lots…
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/9555-Neuens-Rd-B-Houston-TX-77080/2073850425_zpid/
n
Nice zip gun showed up at a Cali school… along with an IED…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9318569/Live-bomb-fuse-homemade-gun-elementary-school-Sacramento.html
n
And hadn’t lied about driving for Uber, DoorDash, Jimmy John’s, etc.
Got to be an interesting field to be in. I have enough trouble designing web sites to work – takes tons of software changes to get things right. And then one change screws up something else that used to work just fine. Can’t imaging the troubleshooting of errors on an assembly line as it is being designed/installed.
That was part of my early career: transition to production of electronics equipment, mostly mil spec radios. It is actually pretty easy if you have the right people.
We had teams of people who worked with the developers late in the design effort. These people were very good at taking the prototypes and developing workflow for production. It helped that every design team had engineers and techs who knew how to design producible hardware. Note that all of this was low volume, high touch-labor work.
I always wanted to work on high volume automated production. This is found in any industry that manufactures more than about 100k units/year, depending on complexity. They used to use hard tooling, but increasingly there is overlap with flex tooling, such as robots.
Getting a line up and running is a careful process. Fixing problems is much easier at this stage than after the setup people move on and the line starts running. The fury of a production line is something to behold, especially when things go wrong. The $/minute cost can be scary. Seeing everything go smoothly is exhilarating.
Just like setup people, there are the maintenance and operations people who watch over the operating line. They study trends and change things that wear and fail. One of their most important skills is clairvoyance. 🙂
Got my second COVID shot Monday. So far, less reaction than the first. The first one gave me a little arm soreness after about 24 hours, and the second one did about the same. The first one gave me a mild headache for a couple days. So far, no headache. Barely any noticeable fatigue from either.
My wife had more reaction, but mostly a headache lasting three weeks. She also had moderate itching at the injection site. She called her doc, who said this was not unusual, and suggested some topical stuff that helped the itching.
Both of us got the Moderna vaccine from the local Savon pharmacy in Albertson’s. Albertson’s of California had a web site set up for appointment scheduling and paperwork. It worked perfectly and quickly, and the appointments were as expected. We know several others who had a similar experience. Our local hospital is the only other vaccination site in our area, and they were only taking voice mails. My wife called them as soon as they were taking calls, but never got a call back. They had trouble getting Pfizer vaccine, and there were reports in the newspaper that some people who managed to get the first shot got the second one late due to a shortage. The hospital is not known for their administrative effectiveness.
Yes. It has had a few studies for chronic pain but they don’t support its use.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-dose_naltrexone
Have you tried Voltaren? My wife had some relief for her knee pain with it. It’s now OTC in the US.