Tues. June 15, 2021 – getting jammed up

By on June 15th, 2021 in dogs, personal, WuFlu

Hot and humid. Maybe rain, maybe not. Yesterday we hit 107F in the sun. We didn’t get any rain either despite being well into the T-storm area on the national map. Same forecast and map for today, so we’ll see what the weather liars come up with today.

It was hot yesterday, and sunny. I stayed inside. Got my expenses all split and categorized for my taxes. That sucked up most of my day. I still have mileage to total today, pay my business personal property tax, and then I’ll be done with my bit.

I’ll be poking at my NVR today too. We’re going out of town all of next week and I won’t be here to restart the software after dotnet pukes daily. The cams will record to their onboard microSD but they only have a couple of days recording space. It sucks that I got the linux part running well but the MS part pukes. The initial install had it reversed. That has been my experience with Linux since the beginning though, stuff will work without issue, then will break completely. Something changed when I did the reinstall/ upgrade, and while it fixed the linux issues, it broke the MS side of the software. SOOOOooo don’t want to be messing with this.

I’m also beginning to think I won’t get the pallet auction started before I leave. That would push it back another 10 days. I need to get it moving forward. I’m going to have to drop the kids at the pool and work during the hottest part of the day. Or I miss my chance and everything slips another 2 weeks. Jeez. I feel like I’m trying to swim in peanut butter.

Nothing like getting some momentum going and then shutting everything down for a week.

Puppy is doing well. Transitioning him to a new food, made in Texas, no grain, and real ingredients. He gobbles it up. He gets so excited about food, or toys, that he pounces like a cat, runs around and falls over, like he just forgot to balance. His little tail waving in the air just kills me. It’s great to just play with him for a while.

In fact, I’m going to start the day with some puppy play time.

And then I’m going to clear some room to stack some more, because even if I’m having trouble making forward progress, any little bit is better than none.

Keep stacking, even if it’s just a little bit.

nick

117 Comments and discussion on "Tues. June 15, 2021 – getting jammed up"

  1. Ray Thompson says:

    crazy, how much security the Americans brings along

    It is just as insane here. When Obummer came to my area, specifically Clinton TN, all the major roads that the president was going to travel on were closed two hours before he used the roads. The road from Clinton to Pellissippi Highway, Pellissippi Highway to the airport, Alcoa Highway to the airport, and of course the airport itself. The interstate, I-40 a major north-south and east-west route, was closed while his caravan traveled over the interstate. He made the journey on the roads about 6:00 PM. You can imagine what the closures did to normal rush hour traffic by closing many of the major commuter routes.

    I got stuck in the mess. A normal 35 minute commute took two hours. Protestors were not allowed with a 1/4 mile of where the president was located by creating exclusion zones. In a feeble attempt to show the government allowed freedom of expression all protestors were restricted to a specific area, not visible by the president or press. No one was allowed to stand alongside the road on any of the presidential routes.

    The caravan consisted of 50 or so local police, city, county and state. Not counting the number that were blocking access to the presidents route. Then the presidents caravan which consists of security, dozens of vehicles including in front and in back of the presidents limousine, a couple of vehicles with medical personnel, vehicles with reporters favorable to the president, staff vehicles, etc. I would guess the procession consists of no less than 100 vehicles.

    When I was stationed in Hawaii in 1973 then president Nixon made a visit to a military installation on Oahu. Other side of the island from Hickam AFB. I worked in the cargo building so was able to see the arrivals at Hickam AFB. Several days before multiple planes arrived with support staff and vehicles. Those planes were parked in a secure area guarded 24 hours a day. The plane that carried the president’s limousine had extra security. The loading and unloading of those vehicles involved much security and military vehicles with many weapons.

    For several days when I would arrive for work there was a secret service agent guarding the secure cargo cage. In that cage were the ramps used to load and unload the president’s limousine from the plane. Those ramps, simple structures, were guarded 24 hours a day until the limousine was loaded and departed.

    I saw the same guy every morning when I arrived and when I left. I don’t know if he ever left his post during the day to eat or take a leak. I guess there was a change of guard sometime in the evening and morning. I tried to talk with him once and he told me to move on or I would be arrested.

    I was on Andrews AFB in 1970 when Nixon arrived from somewhere. I was able to get a picture of Nixon leaving AF1. Security was not quite as tight as the security on Andrews when the president was on base was significant. But not nearly as much as exists today. The security is even higher now than it was back then. The isolation of the president from the real world is at an extreme level.

  2. Nick Flandrey says:

    80f and 80%RH at 800

    And sunny.

    n

  3. Greg Norton says:

    More power grid fun in Texas this week. The situation has probably been anticipated for some time out in Taylor at ERCOT HQ.

    Whether or not he deserves the blame, rolling blackouts will be the end of Governor Abbott’s chances for reelection.

    https://www.fox7austin.com/news/ercot-issues-conservation-alert-texans-asked-to-safely-reduce-electric-use

  4. JimB says:

    I have mentioned here before that I had a friend, now passed, who worked in DC during the Truman Administration. Said friend walked to work, and encountered president Truman several times while Harry was on his morning walks. No visible security. A few times he was close enough to say good morning. Once, while they were walking in the same direction, Harry even engaged him in conversation. It was brief, but my friend said no one kept Harry isolated on those mornings. My friend was a down home type originally from West Virginia, and really appreciated those times.

    Whether or not I agree with Harry’s politics or policies, he was the real deal. It was also a very different time. DJT was the closest we have had to Harry’s personality. Some of his motorcades had the public on the sidewalks waving, and he waved back.

    All that said, security is hard. Wouldn’t want to be involved in it. One slight oversight could be tragic. Remember how Reagan was shot in spite of heavy security.

  5. Nick Flandrey says:

    Finally a tiny mention of the deficit.

    JPMorgan’s CEO Jamie Dimon says his bank is stockpiling cash because there’s a ‘very good chance’ inflation is here to stay after rising 5% to highest level in 13 years

    Jamie Dimon said on Monday that he expects higher rates and further inflation
    He said JPMorgan is prepared it because the bank has been ‘stockpiling’ cash
    Dimon said the bank isn’t buying Treasuries or other investments because of the risk that surging inflation will see the Federal Reserve increase interest rates
    The consumer price index rose 5 percent in the 12 months through May, which is the highest year-on-year increase since August 2008
    The Biden administration and some experts are convinced the current spike in consumer prices will be transitory
    Others, however, have warned the effects of rising prices could be ‘devastating’ and that Biden’s $6 trillion spending spree could supercharge inflation rates

    Deutsche Bank, however, issued a stark warning on inflation amid news of the 5 percent rate.

    ‘Rising prices will touch everyone. The effects could be devastating, particularly for the most vulnerable in society,’ a report from the bank said this week.

    ‘Few still remember how our societies and economies were threatened by high inflation 50 years ago. The most basic laws of economics, the ones that have stood the test of time over a millennium, have not been suspended.

    The report expressed concerns that huge deficit spending by Congress as well as the Federal Reserve’s loose monetary policy could supercharge inflation rates.

    ‘The current fiscal stimulus is more comparable with that seen around WWII’ when deficits ran 15 to 30 percent of GDP for four years, the report said.

    ‘While there are many significant differences between the pandemic and WWII we would note that annual inflation was 8.4%, 14.6% and 7.7% in 1946, 1947 and 1948 after the economy normalized and pent-up demand was released.’

    ‘Monetary stimulus has been equally breath-taking,’ the report added of the Federal Reserve, which has flooded the economy with money through bond purchases.

    ‘In numerical terms, the Fed’s balance sheet has almost doubled during the pandemic to nearly $8 trillion. That compares with the 2008 crisis when it only increased by a little more than $1 trillion, and then increased another $2 trillion in the subsequent six years.’

    ‘We worry that inflation will make a comeback… An explosive growth in debt financed largely by central banks is likely to lead to higher inflation.’

    n

  6. Nick Flandrey says:

    It’s really strange how they’ve been reporting about the guy’s
    ‘agony’. That is not how these things are typically reported. The emphasis is always on the perp.

    Second juvenile suspect is arrested in connection with shooting that left 25-year-old IT worker to die in agony and injured 13 others in downtown Austin

    A second juvenile has been arrested in connection with a mass shooting in Austin on Saturday that killed one and injured 13 others
    Police had previously arrested another juvenile in connection with the shooting that killed 25-year-old Douglas John Kantor
    It remains unclear what charges they face
    Investigators believe the shooting began as a dispute between two parties and the victims were caught in the crossfire
    The fatal shooting comes amid a rise of mass shootings across the country

    Jeremiah Roshaun Leland James Tabb, 17, is now being charged with aggravated assault as an adult.

    He was arrested without incident Monday while attending summer school at Harker Heights High School in Killeen, Texas, the Austin Police Department announced.

    He said investigators believe the shooting began as a dispute between the two parties, with those struck by bullets caught in the crossfire.

    n

  7. pecancorner says:

    Re presidential security. We lived in Midland, a couple of blocks from Laura Bush’s parents’ house.  When GWB was governor, he took walks around the neighborhood, alone, on their visits. My son & friends met him a couple of times, and he talked to them, posed for pictures with them. When he became president, every so often my son would come home and say “The president is coming, because we saw the Secret Service.”  There were never any announcements or road closures or such.  But he didn’t take walks any more.

    Of course after 9/11, going to the Midland Airport felt like one was in Beirut: heavily armed military everywhere.

  8. MrAtoz says:

    So if you try to investigate leaks, and you want to look at Dems or reporters, you get fired. But make up sh!t about Reps and attack conservatives, spy on Presidential candidates, and you get promoted.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9684855/Justice-official-resigning-amid-uproar-Dems-subpoenas.html

    Banana

    The FUSA is filled with sheeple and crimmigrants. They don’t care. ProgLibTurds like Stretch will rule in office until they croak. The only salvation is CWII or if people wake up to the travesty PLTs are dumping on us.

  9. MrAtoz says:

    This nonsense in the schools did not just start. It has been going on for at least 50 years. Maybe 60 years. Two freaking generations and then some.

    As the Late, Great, Mr. OFD said: The commies took over without firing a shot.

    Critical Race Theory must die a quick death. At least tRump got it out of the military. Until plugsy McSpongeBrain brought it back. Another quick death.

  10. JimB says:

    Nick, when you mention the temperature in the sun, how do you measure it? I know there are various methods. Here are a couple of links concerning Wet Bulb Globe Temperature.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_globe_temperature

    https://ksi.uconn.edu/prevention/wet-bulb-globe-temperature-monitoring/

  11. Greg Norton says:

    It’s really strange how they’ve been reporting about the guy’s ‘agony’. That is not how these things are typically reported. The emphasis is always on the perp.

    Watching the coverage last night, I came to the conclusion that the point with reporting of the incident is to scare the h*ll out of the white Dem female voters who live in the suburbs around me. Harker Heights, outside Killeen, represents the future growth boundary of the Austin exburbs as Number One Sons seeking new housing push development NW, along US 183 and TX 195, eventually meaning both will be toll roads.

    The local Faux News last night did concede that the two parties who actually exchanged gunfire knew each other, but they emphasized that most of the injured and one fatality were “innocent” and, via photographs, all white. With the pics of the other critically injured individual recovering from surgery, they did not say the words “white hispanic” but that was the implication.

    In the short term, there is a lot of political power to be gained by frightening the suburbs north of Austin. Williamson County, and, by extension, Dell, will probably get its own Congressional district in reapportionment. And the gun control crowd hasn’t had a good white-on-white shooting in many media cycles — apparently even the little weasel David Hogg weighed in on Austin through Twitter.

    I didn’t hear “IT worker” in previous descriptions of the deceased. The Faux News had a picture of the guy at his graduation from one of the UM fringe campuses. My gut says something is off there.

    Sixth street is bad, m’kay.

  12. SteveF says:

    Nick, when you mention the temperature in the sun, how do you measure it?

    I put a thermometer into a solar oven. It hit 350 here a few days ago.

  13. Nick Flandrey says:

    I have the accurite weather station that Costco sold for years, and it’s mounted in full sun.

    I moved it to the south side of the house last year? Before that it was on the “hot” side of my house, above the driveway. It was probably an accurate representation of the temps ‘in my driveway’ which is how I’d report it, and what was relevant for me working in the driveway.

    It’s probably still too close to the roof, and getting heat off that as well as the direct sun. I haven’t connected it to weather underground because it may read hotter than actual, but it’s useful for me because I’m out in the full sun.

    I always add the qualifier when I mention it, because of the probability it’s high.

    I have another sensor in the shade, but it’s too close to the house (sitting on the brick windowsill) and gets leakage from the window, and the thermal mass of the brick. It is def not a good general temp.

    I have other sensors in various places but only three channels on my display, and the batteries have all died. I was thinking last night about replacing the one out in the shade of the yard. That would probably be the most accurate for the “actual” temperature.

    Although, when I look at the weatherunderground map, with weather stations turned on, they show a range from 87F to 91F in the one mile surrounding me. I’m currently showing 87F.

    I should drive around and see how the stations are located… the one I was looking for, that I know is away from structures, roofs, heat sources, etc. isn’t reporting today.

    I’m a bit surprised how many connected stations there are in my area.

    n

  14. Nick Flandrey says:

    If you put KTXHOUST3227 in the search/favorites bar on the wunderground map, with weather stations turned on, it will get you near my neighborhood.

    n

  15. Nick Flandrey says:

    From FEMA

    Key Updates
    ▪ Confirmed US COVID-19 Cases: 33,292,045 (+98,365)
    ▪ Confirmed US COVID-19 Deaths: 597,343 (+2,541)
    ▪ Total vaccine doses administered: 310,645,827 (+7,793,910)
    ▪ People fully vaccinated: 144,919,339 (+5,170,678)

    so 1 in 10 people had wuflu.
    Better than 1 in 3 has been “fully vaccinated”.
    My experience from talking to people is that for every one person tested positive, there are maybe 4 that never bothered getting tested.
    We MUST be getting very close to herd immunity, if we’re not already there.

    There is some overlap between those who’ve had it and those who are vaccinated, and there is some degree of overcounting those who had it (bad testing), as well as a degree of UNDER counting (never tested). Halve one, double the other, any big adjustment you like, and we’re still getting close.

    OF COURSE, there is still the whole issue of getting it despite being vaxxed, and getting it again despite having had it. (because “it” keeps changing)

    Never the less, barring some extraordinary event, this should be winding down to background noise soon.

    n

  16. Mark W says:

    Better than 1 in 3 has been “fully vaccinated”.

    I’ve read estimates of 2x to 10x who had the lurgy and didn’t report it. Pretty much everyone has either had it or got at least one shot.

    Anyone else notice they are naming the variants Greek letters now? First “China virus” was racist, then “Indian variant” wasn’t racist, and now it must be racist as they are renaming the variants so as not to mention the country of origin.

     

  17. Greg Norton says:

    Whether or not I agree with Harry’s politics or policies, he was the real deal. It was also a very different time. DJT was the closest we have had to Harry’s personality. Some of his motorcades had the public on the sidewalks waving, and he waved back.

    Truman didn’t lose his nerve like Trump did.

    My grandfather did the complete tour in Korea from the earliest days of that “police action” with MacArthur, and Grandpa always said Truman firing MacArthur at the time was a serious constitutional question that is downplayed in the history books.

  18. JimB says:

    I brought up temperature measurement because I had to relocate my outdoor thermometer for a while. I also bought a new wireless sensor because my old reliable made in Nebraska wired thermometer was slowly failing. I have a location that is shaded all day and exposed to air circulation, and have used it for more than 30 years. Moving to another location changed things, but I didn’t have the time to sort out calibration vs location. Now the new wireless thermometer is in the original location. It still reads a little high, but I will have to deal with it later.

    I have thought about making one of those little wooden boxes the wx pros use, but don’t need another project. I will admit that a wireless sensor is convenient, but batteries, ugh.

    Eventually, I want a POE sensor and some way to automate the recording, but everything I have looked at is not what I want. I really want a simple wired sensor that is accurate and cheap, because I want about 10-20 or them for various needs. The only one I have found that didn’t cost a fortune required too much DIY, including writing software. For me, that is a time sink that makes it not worthwhile. And, wx stations are not what I want. I only want to monitor temperature, including immersed in water.

  19. Ray Thompson says:

    I notice that the super spreader events that fake Fauci warned of doom and gloom did not cause any issues. The media was played again by Fauci. Suddenly his face is absent from daily news.

  20. Nick Flandrey says:

    FauxXi pissed off someone in the ‘club’. Maybe someone related to someone had a bad vaccine event, or someone got really sick, or someone just got tired of being played.

    That’s my interpretation of FauxXi’s seeming fall from grace.

    n

  21. Nick Flandrey says:

    @jimB, my first thought is that you want something along the lines of a 1-wire temperature sensor. That would indeed mean a project though. There are probably completed projects out there that could be copied, I think Nuts and Volts magazine ran stories about implementing something similar to what I think you want. I believe their archives are online.

    n

  22. lynn says:

    Nick, when you mention the temperature in the sun, how do you measure it?

    I put a thermometer into a solar oven. It hit 350 here a few days ago.

    I assume that is 350 K. Or is it R in your neck of the woods which always seems to be cold ? But surely not C or F.

  23. lynn says:

    I have a new Microsoft News App that shows local news, local weather, and USA news on my Windows 10 PC at home. I did not ask for this … I feel like a Trojan and somebody just left a gift horse outside the house. I wonder if I should shoot my PC now.

    And if you click on one of the news stories, it brings up Microsoft Edge with the article. Spy !

  24. Greg Norton says:

    I have a new Microsoft News App that shows local news, local weather, and USA news on my Windows 10 PC at home. I did not ask for this … I feel like a Trojan and somebody just left a gift horse outside the house. I wonder if I should shoot my PC now.

    And if you click on one of the news stories, it brings up Microsoft Edge with the article. Spy !

    The long standing rumor has been that Microsoft will turn the next Windows into “free as in beer” software, similar to how Mac OS X is upgraded for 7-8 years after a Mac purchase, but with development in Redmond supported by ads rather than proprietary hardware sales.

    Windows is just one of several operating systems I use at home. If I’m not on my work MacBook Pro, I spend most of my time on a POS Dell 4GB laptop with current Fedora making the hardware usable.

  25. Alan says:

    Windows 10 Support Ends on October 14, 2025

    They are also signalling to Corporate America that VB6 app support sunsets on that same day.

    We’ll see. Ending VB6 will be *tough*.

    Micro$oft has a long history of omitting the asterisk whose explanatory text says something like *-except for our big corporate customers if they bring bags of $$$, for them support ends much later.

  26. drwilliams says:

    The pamphlet for the Boy Scout weather merit badge used to have instructions for building a Stevenson Screen.

    Traditional whitewash has different thermal properties than other coatings, which affects the measurements.

  27. Nick Flandrey says:

    Ok, trying to update my linux mint based nvr. Last time it showed me a bunch of updates available (notably dotnet 5 stuff) which I “unchecked” as I didn’t want to install them.

    Now I do want to install them but they don’t show up when I run Update Manager, and
    ‘refresh’. Is it hiding stuff I previously declined to update? If so, how do I see those choices again so that I CAN update them?

    I went thru all the menu choices in Update Manager and couldn’t find anything that seemed to work. All I was shown were updates to chromium and imagemagik

    n

  28. Greg Norton says:

    Micro$oft has a long history of omitting the asterisk whose explanatory text says something like *-except for our big corporate customers if they bring bags of $$$, for them support ends much later. 

    I prefer the Microsoft approach to that of Apple, where, at times, the support isn’t available at any price.

    When I worked at the Death Star, we spent the better part of a decade trying to get Apple to provide assistance with porting our VPN product to the Mac, and even when it became a priority for IBM and lots of money went on the table, the rude, French (I know, redundant) Security Lead for the Core OS products at Apple gave us the face push.

    Later, after I left, I sat across from the Lead at lunch one day while he laughed about denying us the information. Of course, by that time, I had figured out the secrets he wasn’t willing to share, and he almost did a spit take when I told him exactly how to implement the Mac equivalent of the Linux /dev/tunX.

    “What about the prefix? [smirk]”

    “You mean the code that tells you if the incoming packet on the stream is IPv4 or IPv6 but isn’t self-explanatory? I know about that too.”

    [chirping crickets]

  29. Greg Norton says:

    I went thru all the menu choices in Update Manager and couldn’t find anything that seemed to work. All I was shown were updates to chromium and imagemagik.

    Open a console and try running

    $ sudo apt-get update

    $ sudo apt-get -s upgrade

    The -s argument to apt-get tells the program to “simulate” the upgrade but not actually do any installs, listing all of the packages which would be updated/configured without the argument.

  30. Nick Flandrey says:

    it thinks it’s up to date and offers no packages.

    I know there were ms dotnet packages I didn’t update last time I ran it, and I don’t see them as an option. I don’t see any packages as it thinks I’ve updated and upgraded.

    the only result from the -s upgrade command was a message about some stuff (flash related looks like) that could be removed and a note how to do that with autoremove.

    n

  31. TV says:

    There is another problem. One of my friends was born and raised in Canada. Last year, she brought her 89 year old mother down to Texas for the winter. Her mother did not have health insurance for the USA. She stayed for six months minus a day. If she had another stroke they were going to throw her on a plane to Canada.

    Public health care in Canada is health care “IN CANADA”. It does not travel. Canadians know they have to buy health insurance if they travel outside Canada. One presumes the cost of 6 months of medical coverage for an 89-year-old with a heart condition was either prohibitive or coverage was unavailable due to a “pre-existing condition”. Her est bet was to buy coverage with medical evacuation. Treatment before evacuation could still have bankrupted them.

    Since I don’t have any health problems (beyond the folks who think I am nuts, and who am I to argue?), I just purchase medical travel insurance. Well, I have 30-days out-of-country coverage as a benefit from my employer (my employer sells travel insurance), so purchase is a stretch. When (once I think) I was out-of-country for more than 30-days, I purchased coverage. Canadian “snowbirds” (those who travel south for winter, typically Florida or Arizona) make arrangements for health coverage and some of that may include coverage of pre-existing conditions. I have never looked closely at the details. Six months minus a day is the maximum a Canadian can stay as a visitor in the USA without a green card.

  32. brad says:

    All that said, security is hard. Wouldn’t want to be involved in it. One slight oversight could be tragic. Remember how Reagan was shot in spite of heavy security.

    There’s probably no going back. However, needing that kind of security says something very fundamental about a government. If a government makes so many enemies, especially among the domestic population, it really has lost any legitimacy.

    JPMorgan’s CEO Jamie Dimon says his bank is stockpiling cash because there’s a ‘very good chance’ inflation is here to stay

    Huh? But then they shouldn’t be stockpiling cash. They should be buying stuff: stocks, real estate, anything that will appreciate right along with inflation.

    The consumer price index rose 5 percent in the 12 months through May

    That’s a joke, of course. The CPI has been tailored to hide most inflation. If they say 5%, it was much, much higher. I’m still betting on 50% actual inflation during Biden’s first term. If Corona weren’t bad enough, his administration is spending money like water.

  33. lynn says:

    I have a new Microsoft News App that shows local news, local weather, and USA news on my Windows 10 PC at home. I did not ask for this … I feel like a Trojan and somebody just left a gift horse outside the house. I wonder if I should shoot my PC now.

    And if you click on one of the news stories, it brings up Microsoft Edge with the article. Spy !

    The long standing rumor has been that Microsoft will turn the next Windows into “free as in beer” software, similar to how Mac OS X is upgraded for 7-8 years after a Mac purchase, but with development in Redmond supported by ads rather than proprietary hardware sales.

    Microsoft still makes 20% of their gross revenue from Windows. That is a cash cow for them and they will not give it up lightly.

    Apple and Microsoft have very different business models. Apple makes their money from hardware sales and add-on software sales. Microsoft makes almost all of their money from software sales.

  34. Nick Flandrey says:

    But then they shouldn’t be stockpiling cash. They should be buying stuff

    –he’s saving it because he thinks interest rates will rise, and he’ll have better stuff to spend it on. Doesn’t make sense to me.

    n

  35. lynn says:

    All that said, security is hard. Wouldn’t want to be involved in it. One slight oversight could be tragic. Remember how Reagan was shot in spite of heavy security.

    There’s probably no going back. However, needing that kind of security says something very fundamental about a government. If a government makes so many enemies, especially among the domestic population, it really has lost any legitimacy.

    It is just not the internal crazies, it is external crazies also. I remember all too well when the Palestinian dude shot and killed Bobby Kennedy in California in 1968. He would have beaten Nixon in the fall election.

  36. Nick Flandrey says:

    Part of doing taxes is opening some boxes and folders that are pretty old, and got mixed in with current stuff.

    I found a folder of comics I cut out and had on my wall in high school. There were also some quotes I’d put up. This one was in there.

    Earth
    by  John Hall Wheelock (1886-1978)

    “A planet doesn’t explode of itself,” said drily
    The Martian astronomer, gazing off into the air.
    “That they were able to do it is proof that highly
    Intelligent beings must have been living there.”

    There was also a whole series of Funky Winkerbean revolving around a new thing, a game called Space Invaders….

    n

  37. lynn says:

    But then they shouldn’t be stockpiling cash. They should be buying stuff

    –he’s saving it because he thinks interest rates will rise, and he’ll have better stuff to spend it on. Doesn’t make sense to me.

    n

    Don’t worry, he has a spreadsheet that an underling made proving it to himself.

  38. Nick Flandrey says:

    Microsoft makes almost all of their money from software sales.

    –does that consider gaming? I’d bet that $65 games have more profit in them than Office suites…

    n

  39. Nick Flandrey says:

    Or maybe the gaming is rolled into software?

    n

  40. lynn says:

    The consumer price index rose 5 percent in the 12 months through May

    That’s a joke, of course. The CPI has been tailored to hide most inflation. If they say 5%, it was much, much higher. I’m still betting on 50% actual inflation during Biden’s first term. If Corona weren’t bad enough, his administration is spending money like water.

    Shadowstats says 9% inflation right now.
    http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts

  41. lynn says:

    Microsoft makes almost all of their money from software sales.

    –does that consider gaming? I’d bet that $65 games have more profit in them than Office suites…

    n

    Reputedly, every Microsoft loses $200 or $300 on every XBox sold.

    Bill Gates at one point said Office was the most profitable thing they sold. And that was when they sold only 100 million licenses a year.

  42. lynn says:

    From FEMA

    Key Updates
    ▪ Confirmed US COVID-19 Cases: 33,292,045 (+98,365)
    ▪ Confirmed US COVID-19 Deaths: 597,343 (+2,541)
    ▪ Total vaccine doses administered: 310,645,827 (+7,793,910)
    ▪ People fully vaccinated: 144,919,339 (+5,170,678)

    so 1 in 10 people had wuflu.
    Better than 1 in 3 has been “fully vaccinated”.
    My experience from talking to people is that for every one person tested positive, there are maybe 4 that never bothered getting tested.
    We MUST be getting very close to herd immunity, if we’re not already there.

    And I had some variant of the covid in Feb 2020 before you could get tested.

  43. Greg Norton says:

    the only result from the -s upgrade command was a message about some stuff (flash related looks like) that could be removed and a note how to do that with autoremove.

    Yeah, Flash is done as far as the major browser vendors are concerned.

  44. lynn says:

    “#AbbottFailedTexas trends as ERCOT asks 29 millions Texans to ‘conserve energy’ – again”
    https://www.chron.com/weather/article/Greg-Abbott-Failed-Texas-ERCOT-power-outage-16248080.php

    Yup, @Greg you are right, they are going to try to pin the ERCOT failure on Abbott.

    Abbott got snookered by the so-called experts at the Texas PUC and ERCOT. Watch out for MBAs and their wonderful spreadsheets, they will take you down a pretty road, and then dump you in a swamp when at least one of their suppositions blows up.

    It is easy to make electricity from 32 F to 95 F. Below 32 F, things unexpectedly freeze up and trip your butt offline. Above 95 F, things get hot and trip your butt offline. And if you are offline, you are sucking power from the grid instead of generating power for the grid. Plus you have to figure out what froze up and fix it. Or, you have to clean your heat exchangers because the Texas Fresh Water Mussel growth explodes above 95 F and plugs all those cool looking heat exchangers. Man, I do not miss standing in the 110 F sun and rodding out heat exchangers with a 20 ft piece of steel rod while dispatch is screaming for more power.

  45. Greg Norton says:

    Reputedly, every Microsoft loses $200 or $300 on every XBox sold. 

    Back when Microsoft and Sony developed a lot of custom software, that was probably true, but the two big platforms are just disguised PCs with AMD 3d graphics anymore.

    My home server runs an A6-9500E, which I bought a few years ago for $50 and is fundamentally the same core CPU as a Sony PS4.

    AMD gives the chip away for free if people call tech support for certain problems such as out-of-date BIOS on a motherboard when attempting to run a new Ryzen series chip.

    If the game machines are still losing money, the BluRay license is probably the culprit. For Sony, it is funny money internal shifting, but Microsoft would have to license the disc format and playbach tech.

  46. dcp says:

    “A planet doesn’t explode of itself,” said drily
    The Martian astronomer, gazing off into the air.

    “Where’s the kaboom? There was supposed to be an Earth-shattering kaboom!” – Marvin the Martian.

  47. JimB says:

    /rant Nick, I had similar problems with updates in Linux Mint. Never did solve them. I changed my MO to install every update as soon as I saw it. If I didn’t, about 20% of the time Mint would fail to resume from Hibernate (suspend to RAM.) I tend to have a LOT of things open, but I never leave any unsaved changes, so that wasn’t an issue, however any files that Libre Office had open had to be “recovered.” That always worked, and I never lost anything. Closing everything I had open, installing, and restarting was a big disruption, but better than having this happen unexpectedly. Restarting wasn’t always necessary, but I never had a prompt to restart like in Windows. If I failed to restart when certain (?) things were updated, the system would eventually lock up. I think the update process in Mint is a big bag of hurt. Several other distros I have tried did not have this problem. /rant off

    I use Hibernate whenever I shut down for the day. It is nice to just pick up where I left off the next time I turn the computer on.

  48. lynn says:

    “Texas Nature Trackers: Texas Mussel Watch”
    https://tpwd.texas.gov/huntwild/wild/wildlife_diversity/texas_nature_trackers/mussel/

    “Freshwater mussels are one of the most imperiled groups of animals in the United States. Texas hosts more than 50 species of native freshwater mussels. Because scientists have only recently become aware of the severe decline in mussel populations, some species may have become extinct before their decline was even documented. Currently, 15 mussel species are listed as threatened at the state level. Six of those 15 species are now Candidate for listing under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Your observations of Texas freshwater mussels can help us gain a better understanding of the distribution and status of these invertebrates.”

    Are you freaking kidding me ? The only worse for mankind than fresh water mussels is mosquitos. Fresh water mussels are the bane of all plants since they get pumped in from a fresh water lake and grow in the heat exchanger tubes, eventually causing the cool water flow to drop to a trickle.

  49. lynn says:

    “Crude Oil Jul 21 (CL=F) is 72.14+1.26 (+1.78%)”
    https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/CL%3DF?p=CL%3DF

    Crude oil will be $100 by Labor Day ! The traders are trading and the world is still short a million barrels per day of crude oil.

    Laissez les bons temps rouler ! (Cajun for Let The Good Times Roll !).

    Lord, please give us just one more oil boom. We promise not to screw it up this time like all the previous times.

  50. pecancorner says:

    There is another problem. One of my friends was born and raised in Canada. Last year, she brought her 89 year old mother down to Texas for the winter. Her mother did not have health insurance for the USA.

    For those with Medicare, it is my understanding that Medicare also does not cover people when traveling outside the USA, with very few exceptions.  So an American traveling to Canada would also need to buy extra coverage, wouldn’t they?

  51. JimB says:

    I have a new Microsoft News App that shows local news, local weather, and USA news on my Windows 10 PC at home.

    Just right click the Taskbar, select “News and interests” and select “Turn off”. You can get it back any time by selecting one of the other options.

    I like a “peaceful” PC with as few notifications as possible. I keep my speakers turned OFF, so it is also silent. Same for my phone, but phones seem to take a LOT more tweaking to achieve this. And some things on my phone turn their own notifications ON, which annoys me no end. When I work on my wife’s phone, it is a cacophony of alerts, mostly visual, some audible. When I ask her if she wants this, she always asks me to turn them off, but she doesn’t know how. Some take a lot of sleuthing. Part of this is that I always have my phone’s ringer set to Vibrate, but that won’t work for her.

  52. Mark W says:

    Rush hour again today. ERCOT is at 68202MW with 3605MW in reserve.

  53. JimB says:

    @jimB, my first thought is that you want something along the lines of a 1-wire temperature sensor. That would indeed mean a project though. There are probably completed projects out there that could be copied, I think Nuts and Volts magazine ran stories about implementing something similar to what I think you want. I believe their archives are online.

    Yes, indeed. That’s what I found. The sensors seem very good, and the guy who implemented his own used a kit for the controller. That looked good as well. Still, it needs a lot of work. Be nice if I could simply buy what I want. I remember Nuts and Volts, and may look it up.

    Small parallel. When I was an electronics hobbyist, I did a paper requirements design for an auto dash. Boy, it was great! So much work I never considered building it. The cars of the last ten years have some of this. One rental I had about five years ago was very impressive. All things come to him who waits! That doesn’t help my old cars. I did buy and install a Zemco Compucruise Car Computer back in the early 80s, mostly for the cruise control. It worked well.

  54. Nick Flandrey says:

    ok, my linux issue…

    it looks like my previous update did in fact install the updates that I had UN checked for install. So nothing got skipped after all, so nothing is out of date.

    google is worse than useless, but after 5 or more variations I finally got search results that were at least for related issues. 2 years out of date, but related.

    Lot of linux forum mods saying “you shouldn’t tell him to do that” and “RTFM”.

    Nothing about what I thought was my problem.

    So the issue of the crashing daily remains, and I suspect from my problems installing ispy the second time, that it isn’t using the newer dotnet stuff anyway, because during install it was looking for a hard coded version number.

    I guess I’ll poke some more.

    n

  55. lynn says:

    I have a new Microsoft News App that shows local news, local weather, and USA news on my Windows 10 PC at home.

    Just right click the Taskbar, select “News and interests” and select “Turn off”. You can get it back any time by selecting one of the other options.

    I like a “peaceful” PC with as few notifications as possible. I keep my speakers turned OFF, so it is also silent. Same for my phone, but phones seem to take a LOT more tweaking to achieve this. And some things on my phone turn their own notifications ON, which annoys me no end. When I work on my wife’s phone, it is a cacophony of alerts, mostly visual, some audible. When I ask her if she wants this, she always asks me to turn them off, but she doesn’t know how. Some take a lot of sleuthing. Part of this is that I always have my phone’s ringer set to Vibrate, but that won’t work for her.

    Too late, the wife saw the new news app and likes it for the weather in the taskbar.

  56. Greg Norton says:

    So the issue of the crashing daily remains, and I suspect from my problems installing ispy the second time, that it isn’t using the newer dotnet stuff anyway, because during install it was looking for a hard coded version number.

    The system reboots or the NVR software stops while the system continues running.

  57. lynn says:

    Rush hour again today. ERCOT is at 68202MW with 3605MW in reserve

    Welcome to the new normal.

    I’ll bet that ERCOT is now wanting all of those coal power plants they threw away in the last five years. At least 5 GW (5,000 MW) of generation.

  58. lynn says:

    There is another problem. One of my friends was born and raised in Canada. Last year, she brought her 89 year old mother down to Texas for the winter. Her mother did not have health insurance for the USA.

    For those with Medicare, it is my understanding that Medicare also does not cover people when traveling outside the USA, with very few exceptions. So an American traveling to Canada would also need to buy extra coverage, wouldn’t they?

    And a http://www.medjet.com subscription to get you back to the states in a hurry.

  59. lynn says:

    “Jon Stewart Hijacks Colbert Show With Lab-Leak Rant, Liberal Twitter Explodes”
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/jon-stewart-hijacks-colbert-show-lab-leak-rant-liberal-twitter-explodes

    “”I think we owe a great debt of gratitude to science. Science has, in many ways, helped ease the suffering of this pandemic, which was more than likely caused by science,” Stewart said after Colbert asked how he was feeling about the scientific response to COVID-19.”

    “”Do you mean perhaps there’s a chance that this was created in a lab?” asked Colbert, adding “There’s an investigation.””

    “”A chance?” shot back Stewart – kicking the door open.”

    “”Oh my god, there’s a novel respiratory coronavirus overtaking Wuhan, China, what do we do? Oh, you know who we could ask? The Wuhan novel respiratory coronavirus lab. The disease is the same name as the lab. That’s just a little too weird, don’t you think? And then they asked those scientists – they’re like ‘how did this… so wait a minute, you work at the Wuhan respiratory coronavirus lab. How did this happen?’ and they’re like ‘mmmm – a pangolin kissed a turtle?’ and you’re like ‘no… the name of your lab! If you look at the name! Can I… let me see your business card. Show me your business card. Oh – I work at the coronavirus lab in Wuhan. Oh, cause there’s a coronavirus loose in Wuhan. How did that happen?'”

    Jon Colbert may be a lib but he ain’t no dummy.

  60. Greg Norton says:

    Jon Colbert may be a lib but he ain’t no dummy.

    Jon Stewart. Where was he a year ago?

    Stewart was the Letterman heir apparent until Dave was fired and all the comedians who owed their careers to Letterman and/or Carson ran away from the gig.

    A lot of the same comedians have been conducting what I can only describe as “apology” tours over the last year on the possibility that at least one of the late night chairs would need a replacement host this Spring, but I don’t remember Stewart sniveling on the level of Conan or Howard Stern.

  61. JimB says:

    Hibernate (suspend to RAM.)

    Suspend to disk. Oops. Too busy ranting. 🙂

  62. Chad says:

    When I was stationed in Hawaii in 1973 then president Nixon made a visit to a military installation on Oahu. Other side of the island from Hickam AFB. I worked in the cargo building so was able to see the arrivals at Hickam AFB. Several days before multiple planes arrived with support staff and vehicles. Those planes were parked in a secure area guarded 24 hours a day. The plane that carried the president’s limousine had extra security. The loading and unloading of those vehicles involved much security and military vehicles with many weapons.

    I used to do these regularly when I was in the USAF. They’re called Phoenix Banner missions. You fly the President’s and Secret Service’s vehicles and comm equipment to wherever he is visiting. Secret Service were pretty cool with the aircrew. I’m not sure how they were toward everyone else on base. We carried the President’s limo and black Suburbans with us on our C-5. Secret Service fly along and nobody is allowed to be in the cargo compartment with the vehicles without a Secret Service escort (though they tend to stand off to the side and only half watch you anyway). If you pop the trunk on the President’s limo it’s filled will several velcro patches of the various airlift squadrons that have hauled their stuff.

    It’s probably still too close to the roof, and getting heat off that as well as the direct sun. I haven’t connected it to weather underground because it may read hotter than actual, but it’s useful for me because I’m out in the full sun.

    I saw an article a few years ago that as many as half of those home weather stations installed and connected to a weather service are installed incorrectly (too close to ground, too close to a building, downwind of dryer vent or chimney, in direct sunlight, etc.). What they really need is user-driven certifications. Make some weather nerds superusers and let them do drive-by inspections before certifying somebody’s weather station. Works for lots of similar things. Though, rural users may wait forever for someone to give their weather station a thumbs up.

  63. lynn says:

    Jon Colbert may be a lib but he ain’t no dummy.

    Jon Stewart. Where was he a year ago?

    Stewart was the Letterman heir apparent until Dave was fired and all the comedians who owed their careers to Letterman and/or Carson ran away from the gig.

    Sigh. I screw everything up now.

  64. JimB says:

    Because scientists have only recently become aware of the severe decline in mussel populations, some species may have become extinct before their decline was even documented.

    If a species becomes extinct, and there is no one there to notice, did a woman hear a sound? 😛

  65. Nick Flandrey says:

    @greg, the software pukes. there is an error message about dotnet and a seg fault, or bo>virtual failed, or occasionally something else>virtual failed. Paraphrasing.

    restarting the software works every time, until it stops again. It’s usually about 24 hours until it dies again.

    n

  66. Nick Flandrey says:

    Where were all the flockers who made the easy joke, kept silent, or supported the attacks a year ago?

    Buyer’s remorse setting in?

    n

  67. Greg Norton says:

    Where were all the flockers who made the easy joke, kept silent, or supported the attacks a year ago?

    Buyer’s remorse setting in?

    Of course.

    Yeah, Biden. Trump, tho …

    1
    1
  68. Ray Thompson says:

    Medicare also does not cover people when traveling outside the USA

    Very true. Unless on official government mandated travel. Travelers insurance is recommended when traveling to any foreign country. A day trip to Canada or Mexico (a country to avoid) probably not required. A major medical issue will be at the travelers expense. For some countries the prices are not too bad. But encounter something that requires a medical evacuation flight home and a person is looking at upwards of $100K just for the flight. Add in any medical support staff, say a nurse or two and it jumps to $150K.

    Travelers insurance will cover any medically necessary procedures and a flight home if medically mandated. The coverage will also reimburse for any lost portion of the trip.

    When a person is younger such coverage is probably not such a big deal. As one gets older the coverage becomes highly recommended. I am at that age and my next trip to Europe in 2022 will include travelers insurance for the spouse and I. Price is based on the cost of the trip. In our case the plane tickets making the cost about $300.00 to $500.00. The higher priced amount includes up to $1 million evacuation cost and includes paying 75% of the trip cost for cancellation for any reason.

  69. Greg Norton says:

    @greg, the software pukes. there is an error message about dotnet and a seg fault, or bo>virtual failed, or occasionally something else>virtual failed. Paraphrasing.

    restarting the software works every time, until it stops again. It’s usually about 24 hours until it dies again.

    Does the software run on a dot Net runtime provided by Microsoft or through Mono, the dot Net freeware impelementation?

    Supported dot Net 5.0 on Linux is relatively new.

  70. Nick Flandrey says:

    Huh, I just found out that my non-prepping hobby comes with a museum membership– that is good for admission at hundreds of other museums and science/tech centers thru the ASTC Travel Passport program. https://www.astc.org/membership/find-an-astc-member/passport/

    There is a 90 mile exclusion from your home museum and your home address, but it looks like there are 6 facilities within a short drive of where I’ll be next week in Florida. It also says that many will extend the free admission to family.

    If you have a museum membership, you might have an unexpected benefit while traveling…

    n

  71. Mark W says:

    Where were all the flockers who made the easy joke, kept silent, or supported the attacks a year ago?

    Trump said he had seen evidence that the leak came from the lab. He was then asked how did he know and he responded that he wasn’t allowed to say. It would seem from that, that he was shown evidence by some intelligence organization.

    That was spun into “Trump’s an idiot” or “Trump guessed” etc etc.

    No one in the m5m will ever admit that Trump was right.

  72. CowboySlim says:

    It does not travel. Canadians know they have to buy health insurance if they travel outside Canada.

    Like driving into Mexico.
    When I go down for an afternoon, I go to AAA and buy a one day policy from a Mexican insurance company.  For a weekend, I buy three days worth.

  73. paul says:

    Several days ago someone somewhere was complaining mightily about the latest Firefox.  Gonna stomp off and change browser or whatever.  I forget the who and where.  Might have been me.

    I found this:

    https://www.ghacks.net/2021/05/09/how-to-fix-the-firefox-89-user-interface/

    Pretty simple.

    Change a couple of setting in about:config to True.

    Download a couple of  CSS files.

    Open about:support and click the button next to Profile Folder to open your profile in Explorer.  Easy.  Or dig around in exploder and find it yourself.  Same same.

    Toss the two CSS files into the “chrome” folder.  Make the folder if it’s not there.

    Restart Firefox.

    There you go!  Clicking the bookmarks button shows a more compact list, none of that “let’s size the list to the height of the screen and have a few items roll off so folks have to scroll” stupidity.

    Right-click on the toolbar and select Customize Toolbar.  At the bottom in Themes you can tell it to use System Theme and wa-al you have buttons for tabs.

    It’s not exactly the same but it is better.

     

  74. Greg Norton says:

    There is a 90 mile exclusion from your home museum and your home address, but it looks like there are 6 facilities within a short drive of where I’ll be next week in Florida. It also says that many will extend the free admission to family.

    I wouldn’t recommend MOSI in Tampa. They’ve been in trouble for most of the last decade, and the bulk of the museum complex is shuttered.

    I thought that the place would have been demolished already, but my alma matter across the street still doesn’t have alumni and community support for the football stadium which has been planned for the site since I graduated *thirty years ago*.

    I don’t know anything about the Glazer facility, and the family with their name on the building own the Yucs, PR from back in the “Rah” Morris bargain basement coaching days.

  75. CowboySlim says:

    Follow up:  I go to AAA to buy Mexican auto insurance.

  76. paul says:

    Air Fryers seem to create a lot of chatting. I looked on Big River and it’s just too many choices.
    What size do I need to cook six Gorton’s Fish Planks and half a bag of Ore Ida french fries at the same time, a cookie sheet’s worth? Is there such? Two liters and 6 liters for size tell me nothing useful.

    I hate to run the oven when it’s +90F. 96 a couple of minutes ago. I can use the air fryer outside. I’ve put the crock pot on the back porch, the cats and dogs ignore it.

    Perhaps the best thing is to replace the range hood with a model that will vent through the wall.    Like the travel trailer had.  A very low blower speed and opening the kitchen window an inch for air.  A model of hood that isn’t full of dimming halogen lights you can control with a phone app.

    Like, cheap, not $600. Grin.

  77. ayjblog says:

    @lynn, only you could remember Reaumur

    @Nick, as said, Linux is teh eternal recompile your kernel or something similar, is the flashlight of OS

  78. Greg Norton says:

    There is a 90 mile exclusion from your home museum and your home address, but it looks like there are 6 facilities within a short drive of where I’ll be next week in Florida. It also says that many will extend the free admission to family.

    I forgot to add that The Bishop Planetarium had really excellent shows back in the day, but I’m not sure how well that facility has aged. The stoners in my high school always spoke with deep reverence of the “Pink Floyd: The Wall” laser show.

  79. lynn says:

    “Swiss Voters Reject New Climate Taxes”
    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/06/14/swiss-voters-reject-new-climate-taxes/

    “According to the BBC, “Voter rejection undermines Switzerland’s entire strategy to comply with the Paris Agreement. Today’s results are a devastating blow for environmentalists.”.”

    But, but, but, the Swiss are woke and care about the environment. Right ?

  80. pecancorner says:

    Air Fryers seem to create a lot of chatting. I looked on Big River and it’s just too many choices.
    What size do I need to cook six Gorton’s Fish Planks and half a bag of Ore Ida french fries at the same time, a cookie sheet’s worth? Is there such?

    Paul, I think what you want is called a “convection oven”.  They make portable ones:

    ” Extra-Large Capacity; Fit Two 12 Inches Pizzas, Two 9 Inches X 13 Inches Casseroles, or Two Cake Pans ”

    https://www.amazon.com/Hamilton-Beach-31103DA-Countertop-Extra-Large/dp/B07B9WFRQ3/ref=sr_1_8?dchild=1&keywords=Large+Countertop+Convection+Oven&qid=1623794345&sr=8-8&tag=ttgnet-20

    (Rick or someone please fix the link to allow the proper Amazon Associates Referral. Thank you 🙂 )

  81. Nightraker says:

    I’ve been using an Oster Convection Oven for the past 5 years for pizza, fries and some baking.

    https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00OXSR486/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1&tag=ttgnet-20

    I like the knobs on Pecancorner’s better but can’t complain about the Oster in use. Gas is included in the rent here, so the electric oven isn’t the main machine most of the time. I had a Breville model before the Oster but the control panel with LCD screen got wonky. Not recommended.

  82. lynn says:

    “You Can Run Doom on a Chip From a $15 Ikea Smart Lamp”
    https://www.pcmag.com/news/you-can-run-doom-on-a-chip-from-a-15-ikea-smart-lamp

    “Software engineer Nicola Wrachien demoed his creation in a video that shows the chip running a memory-optimized version of Doom over his custom hardware.”

    I don’t understand why people are doing this …

  83. lynn says:

    “Adding a Russian Keyboard to Protect against Ransomware”
    https://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram/archives/2021/0615.html#cg2

    “A lot of Russian malware — the malware that targeted the Colonial Pipeline, for example — won’t install on computers with a Cyrillic keyboard installed. Brian Krebs wonders if this could be a useful defense:”

    “DarkSide, like a great many other malware strains, has a hard-coded do-not-install list of countries which are the principal members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) — former Soviet satellites that mostly have favorable relations with the Kremlin. Simply put, countless malware strains will check for the presence of one of these languages on the system, and if they’re detected the malware will exit and fail to install.”

    You have got to be kidding me.

  84. lynn says:

    “The Texas Power Crisis Didn’t Have to Happen”
    https://www.asme.org/topics-resources/content/the-texas-power-crisis-didn-t-have-to-happen

    “As a state with significant portions in semi-arid climate, we here in Texas prepare the grid for the hot summer afternoons when air-conditioners run full-blast. And there are plenty of them. But the state experiences Arctic fronts more often than Texans care to admit. These cold snaps are produced when the jet stream, a high-altitude wind that generally blows from west to east, develops large sinusoidal wobbles that pull warm, semi-tropical air north and plunges cold, Arctic air south.”

    “In a recent February, cold fronts marched slowly southward, bringing cold temperatures into Texas. As the freeze swept across the state, natural gas demand spiked, since nearly 40 percent of Texas homes are heated with gas. Electricity accounts for the other 60 percent or so of residential heating, gas fuels about half of the state’s electricity generation. At the same time, the cold temperatures caused freezeoffs at wellheads, processing facilities, compressor stations, and other equipment for the natural gas system. These freezeoffs occur when water that is produced alongside oil and gas freezes, clogging or damaging wells, pipes, and other equipment. As a result, supplies for natural gas started to drop at the same time that gas demand to heat buildings and drive turbines at power plants was spiking.”

    Good analysis. However, it did not cover the cost to fix all of these problems which is in the tens of billions. For instance, each natural gas well head probably needs to have a building around it. But, said building will need to be vented for safety. Expensive.

  85. Greg Norton says:

    “You Can Run Doom on a Chip From a $15 Ikea Smart Lamp”

    I don’t understand why people are doing this …

    Technical challenge. Most modern web pages download more data and libraries than the total capacity of the install discs for Doom.

    Now I’m wondering what’s going on with the lamps that they need so much processing power.

  86. RickH says:

    @Pecancorner

    (Rick or someone please fix the link to allow the proper Amazon Associates Referral. Thank you )

    Wrote a plugin several years ago that automagically puts the desired Zon affiliate codes on all links. Even if another one is there – it will get replaced by the desired one. It’s the “Amazonlinkenator” !!

    One of the first WP plugins I wrote. I’ve got ten of them now. I use them on all of my sites. All work just fine.

  87. Nick Flandrey says:

    I don’t understand why people are doing this …

    –because they can is part of it. There is also a segment of population that thinks they should be minimalist and does similar projects to point out bloat.

    And I too wonder why a lamp would need that much processor. Indeed, why ANY processor at all?

    n

    added- wireless dimming and color mixing.

  88. Nick Flandrey says:

    ““The Texas Power Crisis Didn’t Have to Happen”’

    –yeah, a lot of things “didn’t have to happen” but do. I’d rather turn all of AZ into a prison so we could lock up the people who should be locked up (found guilty and sentenced but let out to commit more crimes and ruin more lives). It would cost less to fence AZ than stop all bad things from happening.

    n

  89. Greg Norton says:

    “The Texas Power Crisis Didn’t Have to Happen”’

    No one wanted to give up that supersized holiday weekend so all the responsible parties just crossed their fingers Thursday afternoon and went home.

    Something similar happened in 2020 with Lunar New Year weekend at the early stages of the pandemic response in the US. Saturday was the holiday, but everyone was gone where I worked on the Friday before.

  90. pecancorner says:

    (Rick or someone please fix the link to allow the proper Amazon Associates Referral. Thank you )

    Wrote a plugin several years ago that automagically puts the desired Zon affiliate codes on all links. Even if another one is there – it will get replaced by the desired one. It’s the “Amazonlinkenator” !!

    One of the first WP plugins I wrote. I’ve got ten of them now. I use them on all of my sites. All work just fine.

    Way cool!  That’s neat! 🙂

  91. ~jim says:

     

    Renton man charged with homicide after selling fentanyl pills to a Bellevue woman

    Wow, this is just so wrong. Am I missing something, or would he be equally culpable if he’d sold her a can of Drano and she snorted it?

  92. ~jim says:

    Now I’m wondering what’s going on with the lamps that they need so much processing power.

    Climate change. It takes mega CPU cycles for the photons to navigate and dodge all the extra CO2 in the air.

  93. RickH says:

    Bitcoin ‘mining’ takes lots of cheap electrical power. One place they have congregated is China.

    Now, reports are that China is kicking most of them out. So they need a new home. A place with low energy prices, little reculation, and encouragement from political leaders.

    So where are they heading? According to this report – https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/15/chinas-bitcoin-miner-exodus-.html

    Texas.

    Despite a lack of reserves that caused dayslong blackouts last winter, Texas often has some of the world’s lowest energy prices, and its share of renewables is growing over time, with 20% of its power coming from wind as of 2019. It has a deregulated power grid that lets customers choose between power providers, and crucially, its political leaders are very pro-crypto – dream conditions for a miner looking for a kind welcome and cheap energy sources.

    “You are going to see a dramatic shift over the next few months,” said Brandon Arvanaghi, previously a security engineer at crypto exchange Gemini. “We have governors like Greg Abbott in Texas who are promoting mining. It is going to become a real industry in the United States, which is going to be incredible.”

  94. RickH says:

    Re: weather stations: I also have an Accurite station that I bought from Costco 6 years ago. Still works, although I had to get a replacement console/display (free)…and they didn’t want the old one back, so now I got two.

    Hooked up to WeatherUnderground via a free software (can’t remember the name of it).

    Placement is on a 8 foot metal pole about 30 feet from the NW corner of my house. Provides accurate temperature readings. Wind readings are not optimal due to the location – the house blocks wind from the SW, which is the primary location. But my house sits at the edge of a small hill, so there really isn’t a better place for it. It’s good enough for me.

    Right now, KWAPORTL19 reports 65F/85%RH, with intermittent light showers. Much cooler than my current location, which is 106.5F/15%RH, sunny, south winds 5-10mph.

  95. Marcelo says:

    Next week Microsoft will announce the new version of Windows and it will be version 11 indeed .

    Best preliminary views I have seen so far are in Thurrott that did upgrades and clean installs. Of those, this one should do:

    https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-11/251954/windows-11-a-few-more-screenshots

    The more I dive into Windows 11, the more it’s obvious that this is literally just Windows 10 with a fresh coat of paint. At least for now.

    And although the news are in many tech sites, Ars has zilch on it. They really need to get a guy covering Windows in there. They might as well come clean and change the name from Technica to Advocacy…

  96. Marcelo says:

    Well, what do you know, it seems that making a battery happy it charges really fast. Next we will be making silicon happy so it works faster as well…

    Yazami believes that this technique helps “to make the battery happy” and consequently increases the speed of charging as it improves the battery’s resilience.

    https://www.neowin.net/news/breakthrough-tech-makes-car-battery-happy-fully-charges-in-10-minutes/

  97. Nick Flandrey says:

    Um,this is getting kinda serious.

    All the leaders of the free world, and some of the un-free, and all the spies for the un-free now know, without a doubt, from seeing it with their own eyes, that Bidden isn’t in possession of his full faculties, and that he’s not in charge.

    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/apparently-confused-biden-goes-silent-after-fielding-question-about-putin

    Our CINC is drooling, our military is woke, our ships crash into other vessels, when they can ship out at all, and everyone in the US is divided and navel gazing…

    Right on time with the ~70 year gap between major conflicts.

    n

  98. JimB says:

    I’ve put the crock pot on the back porch, the cats and dogs ignore it.

    Uh, please forget my request from a few months ago to let me visit for dinner. Whatever you made then sure sounded good, but now… 🙂

    On a more serious note, you wrote (yesterday or recently?) about a Spanish rice concoction you made. Although I claim to not be a cook, I used to make something similar when I was single and practicing survival cooking. I based it on my mother’s unwritten recipe. Always hit the spot on a cold winter’s day, and the leftovers were good for quite a while.

  99. Greg Norton says:

    “You are going to see a dramatic shift over the next few months,” said Brandon Arvanaghi, previously a security engineer at crypto exchange Gemini. “We have governors like Greg Abbott in Texas who are promoting mining. It is going to become a real industry in the United States, which is going to be incredible.”

    All together, now:

    All right, all right, all right!

    1
    1
  100. Mark W says:

    One of the San Antonio TV stations, KSAT, decided to interview a Democrat state rep about the power situation tonight. He got so much wrong. Didn’t mention dependence on renewables as a contributing factor to outages. Stated that Texas had no interconnects to “the national grid” – it does, and there is no national grid anyway. Said we would have to “disappoint our oil and gas friends”, implying that they aren’t needed to provide power.

    A complete idiot.

     

  101. JimB says:

    I’d rather turn all of AZ into a prison so we could lock up the people who should be locked up (found guilty and sentenced but let out to commit more crimes and ruin more lives). It would cost less to fence AZ than stop all bad things from happening.

    Rethink that. I have a friend who lives near Tucson, worked his whole career in explosives, and doesn’t like Texans. He would come after you, and you would not be happy.

    OK, all of that is true except the part about not liking Texans. He doesn’t like anybody. 🙂

  102. JimB says:

    A complete idiot.

    Perfect. At least he is not incomplete.

  103. Marcelo says:

    Sprinklers not included…

    Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit

    https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/06/starlink-dish-overheats-in-arizona-sun-knocking-user-offline-for-7-hours/

    “Dishy will go into thermal shutdown at 122F and will restart when it reaches 104F.” Martin decided to give the dish a little water so it could cool down. He pointed a sprinkler at Dishy, and once it cooled enough to turn back on, “I immediately heard YouTube resume playback,” he wrote yesterday.

  104. JimB says:

    Marcelo, regarding Rachid Yazami’s quick charging, there is lots of work being done in this area. The most interesting to me is an Israeli company that might be StoreDot. It could be another, because StoreDot’s web site looks different from when I looked at it a year or more ago. Their implementation back then was a chemical cross between a super capacitor and a battery. They claimed at least one large prototype stationary installation. They also claimed their product could be used in cell phones. Charge times of around five minutes were claimed for small “batteries.”

    One problem with really fast charge is the need to move a LOT of energy quickly, which of course means very high power. One way to do that is to use capacitors. Another is to have a large connection to the grid, not possible in residences. Someone mentioned how much power a Tesla Supercharger needs. I just looked it up, and a version 3 needs 250 kW. That’s a lot of power.

    Another take. To charge a 70kWh battery in 10 minutes would take 70x(60/10) = 420kW, not counting inefficiencies and other losses. That’s about 500A at 480VAC three phase. Impressive indeed. Got grid?

  105. JimB says:

    Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit

    Uh-oh. Today’s high was something like 109F. I will be watching this issue before I send in my $100.

  106. JimB says:

    I remember designing military radio equipment to work over the -55 to +125C range in the 1960s. It can be done, but it might be expensive. I doubt components such as microprocessors and supporting chips are designed for such high temps. We used tantalum capacitors.

  107. Nick Flandrey says:

    Cops working drugs tonight on the scanner. THey’ve been surveilling a “rap studio” as people come and go. One of the occupants was seen wearing body armor. Put a “big black duffel bag in the jeep”… and they’re following the vehicle waiting on a marked unit to make a traffic stop.

    Air support is grounded by the weather, so they’re all nervous and amped…

    Just pulled the target vehicle over.

    Grabbed three guys, and now they’re all going home for the night, just like that.

    That is how it is supposed to work, not like in New Mexico when the deputy got killed at the side of the road.

    n

  108. drwilliams says:

    @Paul

    I didn’t do any research, just took the recommendation of a family member:

    https://www.samsclub.com/p/ninja-foodi-9n1-digital-air-fry-oven-convection-toaster/prod24963075

    These are probably out of stock because they were on sale $30 off in the last flyer.

    Heat up is about a minute. I cooked 1/2″ diced potatoes the other night for 11 minutes. The heat into the kitchen is negligible. If you put it on the counter you might be putting less heat into the house than if you put it on the porch and go in-and-out a couple times.

    A 12″ frozen pizza fits. I have yet to try trimming a 16″ Papa Murphy’s.

  109. Ray Thompson says:

    Wreck on I-40W. Happened at 5:30 AM. Interstate was closed for 6 hours. Fatal. Car hit a motorcycle. Video from the traffic helicopter showed a 12×12 tarp in the middle lane. According to the news the rider was thrown from his machine then struck by several vehicles. A semi truck was stopped at the scene. I suspect the tarp was covering smashed body parts with lots of smearing. The long closure was probably to scrape body parts and rinse the highway. Gruesome.

  110. drwilliams says:

    Media Panics Over Mounting Opposition to Critical Race Theory

    The best evidence that the resistance to CRT is gaining and posing a threat to Democrats is that the mainstream media is trying to marginalize and demonize the movement the way it attacked the Tea Party

    Posted by William A. Jacobson Tuesday, June 15, 2021 at 08:17pm 14

    https://legalinsurrection.com/2021/06/media-panics-over-mounting-opposition-to-critical-race-theory/

    The article mentions Nicole Solas, a parent in Rhode Island. Her school district threatened to sue her and hired a public relations firm to smear her after she insisted on asking questions about CRT.

    https://legalinsurrection.com/2021/06/update-smear-of-mom-nicole-solas-was-prepared-by-public-relations-firm-hired-by-south-kingstown-ri-school-committee/

    If you ever get into a serious conflict with “professional educators” it’s very instructive to get copies of their PhD thesis. Aside from being 99 and 45/100’s percent b.s. (more pure than Ivory Soap), these people are usually not original thinkers and close inspection sometimes reveals that inartful copying has crossed the border into plagiarism. Very useful.

  111. Nick Flandrey says:

    Ok, done with my tax record keeping. Over to the wife, and then on to the CPA…

    n

    Wrote a check for ~$1000 for business personal property. Two years, and interest and late penalties. On a bunch of stuff I paid tax on when I bought it. That is the one thing I find unfair and offensive about taxes in TX.

    n

  112. Nick Flandrey says:

    More inflation reporting, this time with monetary policy mixed in…

    The Fed views a controlled amount of inflation as good, because it encourages spending and business investment, rather than hoarding cash. —-ordinary people call this “saving”.

    But out-of-control inflation can be dangerous, eroding the spending power of consumers and hitting low-income families and elderly pensioners the hardest. —–ALL inflation does this, by design

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9690281/Wholesale-prices-jump-6-6-fastest-rise-record.html

    n

  113. Nick Flandrey says:

    Bit of radio observation tonight, my shortwave, on a random long wire antenna (mostly horizontal) was mostly unreadable on 4.840 and 5.085 mhz tonight, but my ham radio on a vertical was very readable on both. The programs are out of the Nashville area.

    Most nights the antennas have very similar performance (on receive.)

    Little bit of ham action on the upper end of 40 meters, couldn’t copy callsigns so I can’t tell where I was hearing them from. They were coming in ok, if a little low. Not much noise on the band.

    n

  114. lynn says:

    I got my two new WD 1 TB SSD drives delivered today so I went after the office managers dead PC today.
    https://www.amazon.com/Blue-NAND-1TB-SSD-WDS100T2B0A/dp/B073SBQMCX/

    Turns out that her Intel 480 GB model 535 SSD had fragged itself. Enough so we could not get it to boot anymore. We put it into two other machines which refused to talk to it and wanted to initialize it. I then put it into a USB enclosure which is usually very forgiving. No go. So tomorrow, me and my hammer will finish trashing the drive.

    I pulled all of the office managers stuff off the main file server’s online backup drive. Since it uses the Administrator account, it grabs everything off every drive in the office. Except write locked files, of which there is not that much starting at 10pm. Her drive has all of our management documents, advertising, and software manuals going back to the 1980s. I was able to recover it all. Plus her email. Tomorrow I will reload her Office software, her scanner, and her Go To My PC.

    This has been a real labor so far. We have upgraded five PCs to Windows 10 Pro x64 and to Act! 2021 for Workgroups. Tomorrow I have to make an executive decision about our accounting PC since it only has 6 GB ram and a spinning hard drive. It may be time to slide a new box in there with 16 GB ram and an SSD but the accounting software scares me. The last time I touched it was a disaster.

  115. lynn says:

    We got 3 or 4 inches of rain this afternoon and the outside temperature is 71 F right now. The ditch in front of my house has two feet of water in it. The ponds at the office are overflowing again. All of our rain this year has been in deluges. No soft gentle sprinkles for us !

  116. brad says:

    Swiss Voters Reject New Climate Taxes

    Well, it was a huge package of stuff, including lots of new taxes. Ask the population if they want a bunch of new taxes? Be surprised when they say “no”. I am actually surprised that only 51% said “no” – it was closer than you might expect.

    Air fryers

    Aren’t these just convection ovens? Don’t most ovens offer convection anyway? Maybe I’m out of touch with the US market, but here that’s normal. What am I missing?

    We have governors like Greg Abbott in Texas who are promoting mining.

    Unless they are willing to sell power for 2-3 cents/kwh, mining no longer makes financial sense. Given the hardware investment, the miners aren’t going to just want to take excess power “once in a while” – they’ll want power available (this is a wag) probably at least 12 hours a day.

    Starlink dishes go into “thermal shutdown” once they hit 122° Fahrenheit

    Uh-oh. Today’s high was something like 109F. I will be watching this issue before I send in my $100.

    Don’t forget that the dish has to be out in the open – so, in the sun – in order to work. Most things that might cast shade (like trees) will also interfere with the signal. So it isn’t even the ambient temperature, but the temperature in full sun that counts. So, basically the entire US South is out of luck in the summer.

    Maybe one could find a light material (nylon? canvas?) to use for a shade, that wouldn’t mess up the signals. The supporting frame might be a problem…

  117. Nick Flandrey says:

    Keep plugging away Lynn. Maybe the accts package has migration tools now?

    There are ways to both passively and actively cool radios. If it becomes an issue that limits uptake, they will redesign the radios. It should also be possible to shade them from the sun without blocking the view of the sky, the shade just needs to be between the sun and the radio. Also, yeah, lots of radio transparent materials out there that could shade, especially if they didn’t have to meet all kinds of standards (like something provided by starlink will).

    n

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