Hot and humid, with rain in the forecast for the next few days, possibly followed by a hurricane. Hooray. Rained all day yesterday, off and on, but mostly on. Grass did not get cut.
Did office and auction things all day.
Grabbed the younger child to help with dinner, and we made pork roast, smashed cauliflower baked with cheese, and baked carrots with brown sugar and marshmallows. And crescent rolls from a tube. Along the way we talked about cookbooks, measuring, spent time with proper knife handling, and worked the math so that everything was ready at the same time. And it was all delicious. She was very proud of herself, and I was too.
I mentioned that I would have some observations about traveling last week, but that would be original content, and this post is recycling what I wrote in a comment at Bayou Renaissance Man. It was half about wuflu, and half about what comes next. That’s the part I’m recycling because, I needed to get to bed.
I asked the commentors there —
If you* haven’t made changes in your life because of the last 15 months, WHY NOT? What does your pantry look like? Your medicine chest? What about your gun cabinet? Have you evaluated the sources of information you expose yourself to and then made conscious choices about which are reliable? What about the people you share your precious and fleeting life with?
If you believe the lockdowns were political and coercive in nature with no medical benefits, how has that changed YOUR LIFE? What are you doing with that information?
If nothing has changed for you, if your estimation of what the next couple of years hold for all of us hasn’t changed, you are going to be just grist for the mill. If all you’ve done is mutter and wear your mask under your nose in protest, you are so far behind the curve you might not be able to catch up, but I think you should try.
————–
Prep so that the restrictions, shortages, and price fluctuations have less effect on you. Order your life so that you aren’t dependent on .gov, or your single source of income. Reduce your dependence on outside income period. Build relationships that will sustain you and limit the ones that will drain you. Reduce the number of ‘handles’ your enemies or just those who would manipulate you, have to pull on. Stop wasting time and energy on things that don’t improve your ability to get thru the hard times that are already here, and will continue to get worse.
Looking backwards, past the point where it provides you with guidance to move forward (ie. learning from mistakes), is not a survival trait. Focus on getting thru what’s coming.
* general ‘you’
———————-
And that’s it boys and girls, moms and dads, children of all ages. Learn some lessons from this past year, and ACT. Even if it doesn’t get worse, but only stays exactly the same, you should be doing some stuff differently than you were. Hopefully, you have some stacks of stuff, some skills, and some friends. If not, get going. If so, keep going. Stack it high.
nick
I got the privilege of reactivating one of my Windows 10 PCs today. The Office Administrators new PC (the one with the Intel 480 GB SSD failure) refused to activate.
Was this a new activation?
The license should be locked to the CPU now.
I’m working from home now. That’s about it for changes. I already had a lot of food in stock; I have more now than in Feb 2020 but that’s a minor quantitative difference. I gave away some ammo (to relatives who didn’t have enough) but that situation is otherwise unchanged. I already knew that all levels of government were filled with liars, thieves, and tyrants; it’s become more obvious but no real change there.
I’m kinda joking when I say this but kinda not: I am the paragon of the American man. I’m capable and self-reliant and distrustful of government. I’m helpful to neighbors and don’t want much to do with large organizations. The past year and a quarter show clearly that the American man is right, that the government and corporations are not to be trusted, and that the world needs more of us.
By the way, I’m still looking into rooftop solar for the house. Some resistance from the wife, who thinks that we won’t save enough money to make up for the installation cost (probably true) and that we don’t need to worry about the utility power going out because it’s reliable.
I cannot wrap my head around her inability to realize that, just because things have been good recently, we can’t count on them being good in the future. She should know this, having grown up under the goddamn communists, who cut off her family’s food rations when her father, a high communist party functionary, was on the outs after a power struggle. But no. Back in March 2020 she bitched at me about buying a bale of toilet paper and flour and canned goods because we already had enough … but she was glad to have the stuff when the lockdowns were announced the next day and then the shortages started. You’d think she’d have gotten a clue but it didn’t work out that way.
I posted on arstechnica (yeh, I know, self abuse) about the Wester Digital issue where drives were remotely factory reset. I stated that connecting a backup drive to the internet is stupid and ignorant, that backup devices should be air gapped and stored offsite. The post has gotten nothing but down votes. Helps explain the sorry state of IT where sites gets compromised and has no valid backups. Clueless people who have no rational or critical thinking skills. Got their IT degree from a liberal college with courses taught by instructors who have never had a real job.
Snot-nosed Millennials. They want instant everything. IoT to the max!
I posted about two weeks ago, Judson ISD here in SA was hit with ransomwear. They are still down. The FBI said not to pay the ransom. Still no email, calendars, contacts or PC use for them. They seem to have control of there servers, but still purging at the PC level.
If I were hiring, I’d consider chatting with the candidate and finding out if they’d commented on Slashdot, Ars Technica, or Reddit in the past ten years. If yes, most likely move on to the next candidate.
In theory, I don’t care about employees’ politics or social beliefs. In practice, a lively presence on Reddit or the fact that they volunteer their pronouns are stigmata of a useless employee.
LOL meme:
Vegas shooter
We’ll never know for sure.
I posted on arstechnica (yeh, I know, self abuse) about the Wester Digital issue where drives were remotely factory reset. I stated that connecting a backup drive to the internet is stupid and ignorant, that backup devices should be air gapped and stored offsite. The post has gotten nothing but down votes. Helps explain the sorry state of IT where sites gets compromised and has no valid backups. Clueless people who have no rational or critical thinking skills. Got their IT degree from a liberal college with courses taught by instructors who have never had a real job.
Now that everyone is a made member of the WFH mafia, breaking it will be extremely ugly.
The “dudes” understand what they’re doing with regard to security to some extent, but they don’t care. They don’t want criticism at a place like Ars because management may read comments there and set new policy after researching further. God forbid that accessing some sensitive information requires going to the office or financial justification for a seat license on a VPN server.
My wife got a rundown of the new GameStop economics from the employees at one of the nearby stores when she stopped with my kids the other day. One staff member pointed at the nearby apartment complex and described how there was a guy who lived there temporarily who worked as a developer for a big company remotely but spent about half of his business day in the store, waiting for limited supply items to arrive to feed his side hustles in PS5s and graphics cards as well as intercepting anyone with a used game or system to sell.
My wife asked, “Where is he now?”
“Meeting, but he schedules those around the times he knows the Fedex and UPS drivers show up here.”
And it isn’t just millenials. The best man at my wedding, who works *for a Wall Street clearing house* just told me how half his income comes from day trading lately. “I’ll quit if they tell us we can’t trade beyond mutual funds or they make us return to the office where my web use will be monitored.”
Working for the clearing house, he knows why it isn’t a good idea to let the employees trade individual listings outside of funds. Their systems know where every stock share in the US market is actually held at any given moment. He doesn’t care. Everyone for themselves. This won’t end well.
Did you read the quotes? Mien Gott! Teh stupid, it burns!
I wonder if he checked for the #2 thing they try to steal: The Owner’s Manual. They can go for $100+ on the secondary market.
If I were hiring, I’d consider chatting with the candidate and finding out if they’d commented on Slashdot, Ars Technica, or Reddit in the past ten years. If yes, most likely move on to the next candidate.
In theory, I don’t care about employees’ politics or social beliefs. In practice, a lively presence on Reddit or the fact that they volunteer their pronouns are stigmata of a useless employee.
At the last job, management’s management’s management (You foller me, Larry?) was a regular on Reddit under a pseudonym. Shortly before my termination, I was told, “He can’t stand you. Never has from day one.”
St. Edwards grad. I’m assuming left wing spoiled trust fund baby. Poster child for Reddit/Twitter.
What you really should find out is if they’d commented here.
Well well well, we got a break in the rain and the sun is out. If it dries up a bit, the front lawn MIGHT get cut after all…
n
What is Reddit? 😉
I’d planned to mow my lawn on Friday, or else over the weekend. Didn’t get to it for a variety of reasons, mostly annoying. When I finished work mid-afternoon yesterday I got out the mower, mowed about 100 linear feet, and then -gwoosh!- It wasn’t quite a cloudburst but it was pretty wet out there. Maybe this afternoon if it doesn’t rain. Forecast is currently either “rain expected” or “should be clear”, depending on which weather site you check.
I spoke with a recent college grad who said they were told to delete ALL social media accounts before starting their job hunt and leave them deleted until they found work and had been employed a few months. Google search stalking job candidates is fairly common nowadays, so college career services offices are just having graduates delete everything. Typically, there’s little to lose as most of those services will allow you to “delete” your account then reactivate months or years later with no loss of content.
One thing I used to do when I was on social media was as soon as I started a new job I looked up all of my coworkers, everyone in my chain of command, and the HR types on social media and blocked them and their spouses. After I left the job I would unblock them and friend-request the ones I wanted to stay in touch with.
Google search stalking can be misleading too. Search novices just type someone’s name into google and as long as the match appears to be in the general geographic area or seems to have the same background (technology or whatever) they assume they’ve found the right person and then proceed to use what they’ve found in their decision making process. When I lived in Oklahoma there was another person with my same name living in Oklahoma that was also a programmer. I have pretty uncommon surname. I wonder how many times employers and others thought they were sleuthing me online when really it was the other guy or vice-versa (I feel sorry for that other Chad… lol). Since then I’ve discovered a couple of others with my name across the country and don’t even get me started on how many times I’ve tried to use one of my go-to aliases/handles when registering with a new site/service just to discover someone else is already using it. Moral of the story? Don’t assume the person you just googled up is the person you wanted to google up no matter how sure you are that it’s them. There’s a LOT of people in the world.
They actually had training where I work for hiring managers and explicitly told them to NOT look up any candidates online. I presume for anti-discriminatory reasons as they may learn that person’s religion, race, veteran status, sexual orientation, family status, etc. in the process and allow it to influence their hiring.
The company HR department may not be searching directly but their investigation company will. Then they get a report that has been sanitized of the illegal discriminatory stuff, but still keeps the stuff like “does keg stands on weekends”, marches with activists, wears plaid and sensible shoes….
n
I spoke with a recent college grad who said they were told to delete ALL social media accounts before starting their job hunt and leave them deleted until they found work and had been employed a few months. Google search stalking job candidates is fairly common nowadays, so college career services offices are just having graduates delete everything. Typically, there’s little to lose as most of those services will allow you to “delete” your account then reactivate months or years later with no loss of content.
My wife attended a conference about five years ago which included a presentation that advised male medical students to not allow themselves to be photographed crossdressing in public, even for Halloween, unless they self-identified as being somewhere on the LGBTQXYZ spectrum. The speaker predicted that within 20 years, straight men in dresses would be the equivalent of blackface in terms of social acceptance, even for fun.
And this was *before* the KKKlansman Governor in Virginia’s med school yearbook picture surfaced.
Love him or hate him, Fred’s on to something here:
Blackness Fatigue: Enough Is Too Much
Well that sucked. Got the mower out to the front and it started raining. So I jammed thru the little bit I had left to do, and the skies opened up. Got it done, got soaked. Didn’t get to do my neighbor’s abandoned property.
The new owner has started work on the property across the street. That was the neighbor who’s wife died the night before the freeze, and who was being cared for by his brother thru all that… he moved into a facility nearer to his son, and sold the house. Never hit the market, $250K sale, total gut job to do it right.
n
rain stopped, 1/4″ so far.
The company HR department may not be searching directly but their investigation company will. Then they get a report that has been sanitized of the illegal discriminatory stuff, but still keeps the stuff like “does keg stands on weekends”, marches with activists, wears plaid and sensible shoes….
HireRight and similar.
The services are how companies skirt the Federal regulations that the only subjective information they are allowed to disclose about a former employee is whether the individual would be considered for rehire. They also prevent an employee from hiding a “for cause” termination in the future.
The services are effectively the employers’ response to Glassdoor, a non-economic means of forcing an employee’s hand to sign a severance agreement with a mutual non-disparagement clause, which are increasingly common, in the hope of preventing a negative review of the company by the employee online.
(If you think Glassdoor, etc. are anonymous, you are kidding yourself.)
The last job presented me with a really ridiculous severance agreement which included a couple of months of COBRA and two weeks salary to sign a waiver of my ADEA (age discrimination) rights and a mutual non-disparagement clause. I refused to sign, but I could afford to do that, even if it meant the end of my professional career at least as far as traditional employement goes. A lot of people can’t.
I don’t write about everything I’m up to with regard to the previous job, but lets say that attempting to get the ADEA waiver was probably a good idea on their part.
I got the privilege of reactivating one of my Windows 10 PCs today. The Office Administrators new PC (the one with the Intel 480 GB SSD failure) refused to activate.
Was this a new activation?
The license should be locked to the CPU now.
Yes, It was activated the day before with the old cpu and the new hard drive. The PC crashed on office administrator twice in the morning and I invoked the “replace everything in sight” rule. New motherboard, reused the new hard drive from the day before, new cpu, new case, new power supply, new cpu cooler. It has not crashed since then but it kept on annoying her with must be reactivated messages. We did not even have to reload Windows 10 Pro x64 on the hard drive (a WD 1 TB SSD). It just started up, rebooted a couple of times, and was good to go.
Total scam. If not, why did Californication gov pass law mandating rooftop solar on all new residential buildings?
Also, if saves money, why did two solar companies refuse my terms of 100% guarantee of 20% savings over local utility?
We are getting our second frog choker of the day. I would like to store some of this water for August but don’t have the facility.
We’re currently getting thunder, but have mixed clouds and sun, no rain… 90F with 70%RH
n
@lynn:
aka Trigger’s Broom.
G.
Well, I’ve commented on Reddit. Only in a few video game topics, either asking or answering questions. I avoid any political commentary on social media that isn’t locked down. And my accounts are locked down.
The solar roof plans pitched by the door-to-door guys are indeed scams. Anyone halfway savvy can smell them a mile away.
I don’t care about saving money, though of course any savings wouldn’t be sneered at. I’m interested in continuing to have electricity if the grid goes down, whether because of weather, politics, or civil war.
Total scam.
The solar roof plans pitched by the door-to-door guys are indeed scams. Anyone halfway savvy can smell them a mile away.
I don’t care about saving money, though of course any savings wouldn’t be sneered at. I’m interested in continuing to have electricity if the grid goes down, whether because of weather, politics, or civil war.
I would make them show you a demo system. One where you can walk over to the meter base / circuit breaker panel and throw the main breaker OFF. If the lights even flicker then walk away.
As it happens, my wife knows someone with a Tesla system, not too far from here. I’ll see if we can go over and if I can do exactly that.
Take a look at battlebornbatteries.com and then watch the video with Rick Harrison of Pawn Stars. He’s got millions, of course, but that’s what you should be looking at. You would probably build it modular and just add panels and batteries. I’ve seen a YT vid of a guy who solar’d his work shed and buried a large propane tank with gennie at the side for power/ac. Sweet setup. Harrison’s bug out is in OR and has hydro power, too. Bastard.
Harrison’s bug out is in OR and has hydro power, too. Bastard.
That part of OR favors succession but is still subject to the whims of Salem. The two SW most counties were fighting a tax war with the state government over funding 911 response after midnight when we left Vantucky.
Essentially, outside of Coos Bay, in the unincorporated areas, if you dial 911 between midnight and 6AM, you are not getting a response. Or, at least, that’s the way it did work seven years ago. Things may have changed since then, especially under Governor Brown, who has way more testosterone than Kitzhaber ever did.
SW OR is very remote, and the part where Harrison’s place is located can even be warm (70s) in the Winter when the rest of the state generally has 50s and rain. In Oregon!
Again, though, the big downside is the authoritarian state government. I believe OR is planning to do vaccine passports.
“https://spacecityweather.com/eye-on-the-tropics-atlantic-continues-buzzing-with-low-end-activity/”
https://spacecityweather.com/eye-on-the-tropics-atlantic-continues-buzzing-with-low-end-activity/
“Welcome to another edition of our weekly tropical outlook. The last two hurricane seasons have been full of many quick developing, lower-end storms. Some folks deride the National Hurricane Center for “wasting time” naming these things, but if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, whether bloated, thin, short, tall, round, square, or what, it’s still a duck. And that’s why we have added another storm since last week.
If you blinked, you might have missed Tropical Storm Danny yesterday, but it formed off the coast of South Carolina, made landfall and weakened to a depression within about 12 to 18 hours. It wasn’t quite like Imelda, and its fast forward motion will keep it from becoming a Carolina or Georgia version of Imelda, but it went quickly, and it came from an area I didn’t even mention a week ago. So go the tropics.”
Nothing to see here, just move along.
Love him or hate him, Fred’s on to something here:
Blackness Fatigue: Enough Is Too Much
https://www.unz.com/freed/blackness-fatigue-enough-is-too-much/
Whoa, Fred Reed is still alive !
“The Mountains of Mourning-A Miles Vorkosigan Hugo and Nebula Winning Novella” by Lois McMaster Bujold
https://www.amazon.com/Mountains-Mourning-Vorkosigan-Winning-Novella/dp/1612421857/?tag=ttgnet-20
Book number five of a sixteen book space opera series. However, some people call this a military science fiction series. There are several other books and short stories in the Vorkosigan Universe. This series won the Hugo and Nebula awards for best series in 2017. I reread the well printed and well bound POD (print on demand) trade paperback originally published in the “Borders Of Infinity” book in 1996 where it won a Hugo and a Nebula. BTW, this book is actually a novella, not a novel. I am working my way through the wonderful Vorkosigan series slowly and have reacquired the rest of the books in the series already.
What do you do when faced with a tough situation ? Do you strive to solve it ? Or do you walk away ? Miles has been tasked with solving an infant murder in the back area of their lands by his father the Count.
My rating: 6 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars (17 reviews)
We’re currently getting thunder, but have mixed clouds and sun, no rain… 90F with 70%RH
n
I’ve got four feet of water in the front ditch again. That was definitely a frog choker (east Texas slang for 3 to 6 inches of rain, in fact dangerously close to Louisiana slang).
“SCOTUS: PennEast Pipeline can use eminent domain on state property”
https://www.ogj.com/general-interest/government/article/14205999/supreme-court-says-penneast-pipeline-can-use-eminent-domain-on-state-property
“The US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that a pipeline company can use federal eminent domain authority to build a pipeline across state-owned land and private lands where easements have been granted by states.”
“The divided court followed no standard ideological lines. Roberts’ opinion was joined by Justices Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, Stephen Breyer, and Sonia Sotomayor.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote a dissent, with support from Justices Clarence Thomas, Elena Kagan, and Neil Gorsuch. She argued that states did not surrender their right of sovereign immunity from private lawsuits when they ratified the Constitution.”
Interesting split.
Whoa, Fred Reed is still alive !
He’s been out on Unz for a while. Something happened to his domain which I’ve never seen explained properly.
Fred doesn’t quite get that debate will be over for at least a generation once BLM gets its pretty white coed martyr. Good home, shot by a white male cop. “That could be my (grand)daughter!”
They would have had that icon already if schools had resumed as normal last Fall — one upside of the mass hysteria is everyone stayed home … unless they were playing football or involved in another activity which required an in-person presence on campus. No one was sufficiently bored that taking on cops seemed like a good idea.
I am apparently a famous hockey player, but there is also another CS prof with the same name.
Payback is long, so no, it probably doesn’t make sense for most people. We did it anyway, partially out of principle, partially because we plan to get an EV. Free fuel tips the balance, although tying the charger intelligently to the solar will cost extra.
Total scam.
The solar roof plans pitched by the door-to-door guys are indeed scams. Anyone halfway savvy can smell them a mile away.
I don’t care about saving money, though of course any savings wouldn’t be sneered at. I’m interested in continuing to have electricity if the grid goes down, whether because of weather, politics, or civil war.
BTW, what are you paying for electricity at your home ?
My dad was reading an article about California electricity yesterday. In the article, they said the average Californian is paying 18 cents/kwh now and they forecast the rate to go up to 30 cents/kwh by 2030. The article mentioned Texas and forecast that we are going to have the same rate of inflation.
Your governor in New York state just killed a very cheap nuclear power plant. It will take a couple years but the replacement cost of that power is going to be high, very high.
https://nypost.com/2021/04/28/get-ready-for-blackouts-after-cuomo-foolishly-killed-the-indian-point-plant/
“Thanks to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s anti-nuclear vendetta, Unit Three of the Indian Point Energy Center in Buchanan, NY, will permanently shut down this Friday, one year after its sister unit was forced to close.
The premature shutdown of the 2,069-megawatt nuclear plant perfectly encapsulates the governor’s green-energy madness. He has forced the closure of the highly reliable, low-cost and emissions-free source of 10 percent of the Empire State’s electricity — and 25 percent of Gotham’s power. In its place, he will — eventually — offer high-cost and intermittent offshore-wind power, as well as solar.”
Went online to check and renew my GMRS radio license, and it’s been expired since 2013! I rarely use FRS or GMRS but I got the license so I’d be legal. Hams are big on being legal, even when outside the ham bands, and the only way to use the ‘closed’ GMRS repeaters in my area is to have a valid license. Not that I ever bothered to set up the repeater freqs, because they also wanted to know what kind of radio I was using, so I wouldn’t be using one of the dirty illegal baofangs…. and that’s all I had. I’ve got some other GMRS radios, and I think they are type compliant, that can do repeaters. Most of the blister pack radios can’t.
Anyway, $70 lighter for 5 years of coverage.
n
Spend part of last week in hotels and swore the king-size bed in the hotel was smaller than our kind-size bed at home. I typically don’t notice when traveling alone as I have the whole bed to myself. However, when traveling with my wife I always suspected this, but this time it really annoyed me. So, I researched it. Sure enough. In addition to King (76×80) and California King (72×84) beds there is also a Hotel King (72×80). The Hotel King is 4 inches narrower than a standard King and, while it doesn’t seem like a lot, it will throw off your sleeping geometry with your significant other when you lose those 2.2 square feet you’re used to having. Damn them!
My dad was reading an article about California electricity yesterday. In the article, they said the average Californian is paying 18 cents/kwh now and they forecast the rate to go up to 30 cents/kwh by 2030. The article mentioned Texas and forecast that we are going to have the same rate of inflation.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/06/25/blackouts-loom-in-california-as-electricity-prices-are-absolutely-exploding/
“According to data from the Energy Information Administration, the all-sector price of electricity in California last year jumped to 18.15 cents per kilowatt-hour, which means that Californians are now paying about 70% more for their electricity than the U.S. average all-sector rate of 10.66 cents per kWh. Even more worrisome: California’s electricity rates are expected to soar over the next decade. (More on that in a moment.)”
My Dad’s prediction is that most of the businesses will leave California. I agree with him.
I haven’t been having to mow the past couple weeks, because we haven’t had a drop of rain for 28 days. They’ve been predicting rain since Sunday, and finally, earlier this afternoon, we had a sudden downpour. Lasted 15 minutes, 1/4 inch!
Now the sun is shining again, and I’ll have to mow on Friday or Saturday.
Re researching job candidates online. I never searched their names. What I did was ask them about their hobbies and their volunteer work. People who were active online were usually eager to tell me about it, and gave me URLs to look at. Sometimes, their self-identified content helped get them the job. Other times, it just confirmed that they weren’t the best candidate.
As to volunteerism, It was interesting to learn how they defined “volunteer work”. Quite a number never did anything for free, but considered “a workday/event for some cause at their employer’s behest and scheduling for which they were given PTO” or who were “paid by some benefactor for their time to travel and attend a particular cause-event”, to be “volunteer work”. It didn’t influence whether or not they got the job, but it was good to know in advance who was generous with their time, and who would only work when paid.
People who had interesting hobbies to fill their time away from work, that had nothing to do with volunteering or causes, often made good employees for me.
“Elon Musk’s $50K TX house is a humble prefab home that can be towed by a Model X”
https://www.teslarati.com/elon-musk-50k-house-texas-pictures-video/
“Tesla CEO Elon Musk has mentioned that he now lives in a ~$50K house at Starbase, Texas, where his private space company, SpaceX, is manufacturing its Starships. Based on images of the home, it appears that the Tesla and SpaceX CEO is indeed living modestly in a prefabricated housing unit that’s only about 400 square feet.
Teslarati recently received a tip noting that Elon Musk’s housing unit in Starbase, Texas is a Boxabl Casita, a foldable, prefabricated home designed for quick installations and maximum affordability. A 20×20 unit such as the one that Elon Musk reportedly owns is priced at only $50,000, less than the cost of a Model Y Long Range Dual Motor AWD. The Boxabl Casita is durable, too, being made of concrete panels and steel. It could be installed very quickly and transported easily, as well, with the home being light enough to be pulled by a vehicle like a Model X.”
Musk is making me feel bad about myself since I live in a 3,300 ft2 house and am contemplating adding a 1,000 ft2 game room where I can hide.
One of the comments, “Is this the new Tesla Homes ?”.
My Dad’s prediction is that most of the businesses will leave California. I agree with him.
Some will, but most tech companies will stay in The Valley. Don’t underestimate the appeal of the place being exclusive.
Deposited auction checks, asked Centerpoint energy to replace my service drop, filed a lost and found with Sarasota airport (left a bag of batteries, chargers, and cables at TSA when they took it out of the bin to re-run it…), filed a tax penalty protest, and moved some other paper around too.
Sun’s out, so I cut back my grape vine while the puppy did his business.
I’m far behind on some stuff….
n
Musk is making me feel bad about myself.
Do you really believe that?
Musk is rumored to have a big house here out in the Hill Country, probably the area around Bee Cave that looks like Northern California, out where “All right, all right, all right!” lives along with other Hollywood money.
My wife’s patients who are on the construction crew at the Tonymobile factory say he’s there every day.
The more Tony is at the factory site, the more frequently the crew personnel visit my wife for stress issues. 🙂
Austin VA is right around the corner from the site.
I see more stories about Boca Chica with Gwynne Shotwell’s name prominent as of late. She’s the adult in the room at SpaceX who truly runs things.
Lynn asked
Lynn quoted
We’re paying more than that. I’d have to go into the website and dig around and grab a calculator to figure out what we’re actually paying per kWh, but the generation rate is higher than 18.15 and then there are costs on top of that.
Back when Enron and Greyout Davis and the blackouts were in the news — and this was so long ago that I got most of my news from the local newspaper and the radio — there was a lot of weeping and wailing about the rate hike that Californians had had pushed on them against their will. Many Californians couldn’t afford to run their air conditioners with the new high rates. They were paying 8.9 c/kWh, IIRC, a huge jump from what they’d been paying.
Wait, what? How much?
I had been paying 9.4 and it had just jumped to 10.5 and was going to go to 11.0 in a few months because the power company needed more money to pay for long-put-off maintenance or something. (All numbers are from memory and are qualitatively right even if not factually correct.) All of a sudden my sympathy for the poor, poor Californians evaporated. And, on top of some of the highest electric rates in the continental US, I had to pay for gas to heat my house seven months every year, also at some of the highest rates in the nation.
Those are close to fighting words. That scumbag is not my governor. He’s the governor of the parasites and of whoever’s paying him outside of his official salary.
But, yah, he’s doing everything in his power to ruin the state. You’d think that it was blind ideology combined with tone-deafness and incompetence, but the decisions are so monotonic that it’s hard to view them as anything but deliberate.
I hope it takes off. I could see a 5 acre lot with one for me and a dog, and another as a workshop.
another as a workshop.
–wouldn’t a pole barn or metal bldg be cheaper?
n
the all-sector price of electricity in California last year jumped to 18.15 cents per kilowatt-hour
We’re paying more than that. I’d have to go into the website and dig around and grab a calculator to figure out what we’re actually paying per kWh, but the generation rate is higher than 18.15 and then there are costs on top of that.
You might be able to save money with solar power then. But you live way north of here so your solar incidence may not be good.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_irradiance
Right. But, as repeatedly noted, saving money is not the motivation.
A generator would surely be cheaper up front, but it lasts only as long as the gasoline (or propane) does and I was looking for resilience in case of big problems.
“Ken Hoffman crunches the numbers on Elton John’s big upcoming Houston show”
https://houston.culturemap.com/news/city-life/06-28-21-elton-john-houston-show-minute-maid-/
“As we reported last week, tickets for Elton John’s final concert ever in Houston, November 4, 2022 at Minute Maid Park, will go on sale to the general public at 10 am Wednesday, June 30 at the usual Ticketmaster locations.
Get ‘em while you can. There have been several pre-sales for groups like the Rocket Fan Club and American Express cardholders. Tickets already are available on the secondary market for as much as $4,300 for floor seats.”
Over a year away and the hype is high already.
“another as a workshop”
–wouldn’t a pole barn or metal bldg be cheaper?
Walking the trails in March, I noticed that the Cabbage Key Inn had a new building from this company installed on the island as air conditioned office space for the reservations workers and on-site servers. The pieces must be light because anything that goes out to that island arrives by small boat with a shallow draft.
https://www.metallic.com/
Airlifted by helicopter was another possibility. The building wasn’t much bigger than commercial AC units I’ve seen installed on building roofs that way.
@Lynn
“We are getting our second frog choker of the day. I would like to store some of this water for August but don’t have the facility. ”
One of the home imp shows did a segment on house that had a rainwater storage system with large (10,000 gallon?) tanks. Probably 5-6 years ago. Seems to me there was a system in a FHB article, too.
Here’s a link
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/23/an-update-on-my-solar-power-project-results-show-why-i-got-solar-power-for-my-home-hint-climate-change-is-not-a-reason/
to one of the articles Anthony Watts wrote about his solar roof installation.
Over a year away and the hype is high already.
My son has his own copy of “Rocketman” and wants to go, but that’s out of our price range.
Farewell tour? Yeah, right.
“Rocketman” is highly sanitized but worth the time if you are a fan or simply remember the era.
Make it a double feature with “Yesterday” and have patience with the second flick. It spends most of the running time in the shallow end of the pool and then goes very deep in a scene that is arguably a Richard Curtis career highlight if not the best thing he’s ever written.
And Curtis wrote “Blackadder”!
I got the privilege of reactivating one of my Windows 10 PCs today. The Office Administrators new PC (the one with the Intel 480 GB SSD failure) refused to activate.
Was this a new activation?
The license should be locked to the CPU now.
Wait, is Windows 10 pulling a serial number off the cpu ?
On the topic of prepping, carrots are a good crop that can just be left in the ground until needed in some climates. This article is exhaustive but condensed “everything you need to know”:
https://electroverse.net/grow-your-own-carrots/
Here, my garden is solid clay with great lumps of flint all through it. Regular carrots don’t do well, but I’ve had good harvest of those little short round ball-shaped carrots in past. Such carrots are a lot of trouble to clean, but would be an alternative if no regular carrots were available.
It took me a few minutes to get that and I’m a Brit. Ok, 7 hours – I read it at lunch and just re-read it now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56yN2zHtofM
Theseus’s ship. A thought experiment 2500 years old.
Turns out my wife’s friend doesn’t have a Tesla (or Solar City) roof installation nor a Tesla PowerWall nor any battery system. She sells power to the utility company during the day and uses power at night, and borrowed money through the installer to get it put up. I’m assured that this isn’t the same scam as everyone and his brother was running a few years ago though I can’t for the life of me see the difference.
Wait, is Windows 10 pulling a serial number off the cpu ?
I thought that Intel turned the serial number retrieval back on, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.
I used the Windows API CPU ID function as part of my hash for random number seeding back when I wrote VPN software. Maybe the numbers weren’t so unique after all, but I pulled so much other data about the state of a Windows machine that it shouldn’t be a problem.
Forget about TPM 2.0. The CPUs will be the biggest hurdle:
https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-clarifies-stance-on-windows-11-minimum-system-requirements/
They are now considering Intel 7th Gen. That is far-far-away from my workhorses that are Gen3 and Gen4.
I did buy an SP7 this week that should be ok. With a third of the price discount I just couldn’t say no to replacing the SP3. 🙂
FUD is going to lead to panic buying decisions and drive prices down on the secondary market. Good time to keep an eye out for deals, including a backup computer.
“Divided court leaves eviction ban in place”
https://www.scotusblog.com/2021/06/divided-court-leaves-eviction-ban-in-place/
“The Supreme Court on Tuesday denied a request by a group of Alabama real estate agents to block a federal moratorium on evictions that was imposed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Justice Brett Kavanaugh provided the key vote to leave the moratorium in place, joining Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s three liberal justices. Kavanaugh wrote that, although he agrees with the real estate agents that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention exceeded its authority when it issued the ban, he nonetheless voted to leave the ban in place because it is scheduled to expire soon.”
Are you freaking kidding me ? This is a clear taking of private property for public use, a violation of the fifth amendment if I have ever seen one. The landlords are not getting paid !
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
Oh well, there is always the Indian way of getting tenants out of your property. Four large guys with baseball bats.
In Hindi goonda, from which sprang our word goon.
And now you know. Page Two…
Are you freaking kidding me ? This is a clear taking of private property for public use, a violation of the fifth amendment if I have ever seen one. The landlords are not getting paid !
The Roberts Court is consistent about not interfering with “foolish” political choices. Kinda surprising about Kavanaugh, but he sits in the swing chair. I think it is interesting how the chairs shape the Justice and not the other way around. Kennedy and Powell in that chair were both swingers … if you will excuse the word choice.
The Court’s term ends tomorrow. The decision going the other way couldn’t be delayed until Tuesday and would have made for an ugly scene in places like Mobile this weekend.
The moratorium ends in a month, but don’t expect mass evictions then either.
Oh well, there is always the Indian way of getting tenants out of your property. Four large guys with baseball bats.
Indian? There is a long tradition of that in Alabama.
Clarence Thomas takes the calls for that Circuit District during the recess.
I worked for a construction company in chicago in the mid 80s that did rehab projects, ie gentrification. If you didn’t leave when they were standing outside the building, you would burn to death…. several of the guys would tell a story and laugh about the ones who didn’t believe they’d do it, and waited until the fires were lit to bail out the upper story windows, and how funny it was to watch.
That was also the first time I saw bribery of an official, and when the demolition contractor didn’t get paid, he sent some guys in the night to knock down all the work we’d done to that point…
Also the first of many shootings that happened within 100ft of me…
and the first time I saw union thugs threaten a work site.
n
Oh, and my sometimes boss murdered an employee by beating him to death with a hammer.
Good money though.
n
Scanner has the cops working vice tonight… lots of arrests. Also a fugitive task force wrapped up someone they’ve been looking for.
n
@Mark W:
Thanks for that. I knew the quote as a text citation, not that it derived from “Only Fools and Horses”. You learn something new every day.
G.
Microsoft digitally signs malicious rootkit driver:
The moratorium ends in a month, but don’t expect mass evictions then either.
The eviction moratorium will be extended each month until the crisis is over. Maybe in 2030.
Wait, is Windows 10 pulling a serial number off the cpu ?
I thought that Intel turned the serial number retrieval back on, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.
I used the Windows API CPU ID function as part of my hash for random number seeding back when I wrote VPN software. Maybe the numbers weren’t so unique after all, but I pulled so much other data about the state of a Windows machine that it shouldn’t be a problem.
You know, I would not put it past Microsoft to temporarily enable the CPUID instruction, grab the cpu serial number, and turn the CPUID instruction back off.
BTW, my DiskId32 software has been slowly disabled by Microsoft. Both of the back doors that I used 20 years ago have been closed, one in Windows XP and the other one in Windows 8. And Windows 10 fixed the flipped bits in the disk device driver that I use to talk to the hard drive.
https://www.winsim.com/diskid32/diskid32.html
@SteveF
“…though I can’t for the life of me see the difference. ”
There is a difference. The return however depends a lot on your current useage, we had a lot. Twelve plus years ago we were nearly always in third tier pricing because I was working from my home office, a 27′ trailer running a 24/7 workstation and large CRT graphics monitor plus heat and air in addition to our home use that included multiple HEPA filters for my wife. Even at solar prices back then it paid to buy our own system (yes, every other way is pretty much a scam). It took nearly 7 years to pay for itself, while making even payments to the bank instead of yo-yo seasonal peaks, and then free except for relatively small administration/access fees to PG&E. Our last true up for the year before moving was less than $1.00. Wish we still had it, especially with prices going up.
Slow day today: the semester is over, exams for my courses haven’t happened yet. Time to catch up on lots of niggling little things, like sorting out the stacks of paper on my desk.
Windows 11 – joy, bliss. I sincerely hope I can just refuse the upgrade. I’ll keep Win10 installed on one partition as long as this computer lives. I only use it to run InDesign or Acrobat – that happens probably about once a year. When the computer dies, I’ll lose access to those applications. Tragic.
@Jim: Reddit is a collection of discussion groups (“subreddits”). Each groups has a theme. For example, Conservative is where US conservatives hang out, Switzerland is an English-speaking group about Swiss topics, Dogs is about dogs, etc..
I do read Reddit, though I rarely comment. There are a couple of local groups that are useful, and otherwise it’s for entertainment (cute pet pics, etc.). The political subreddits, of course, are one big dumpster fire: so woke they’re hallucinating. Easy enough: don’t go there. It’s the same for the Ars Technica comments section: I rarely read it. Slashdot and Soylent, on the other hand, sometimes have interesting comments.
We pay about $0.24/kwh, and $0.16/kwh off-peak. Power we produce, we get paid $0.06. Most of the electricity charges are not for power, but for net-usage, and various other fees.
Our solar is tied to the net – we don’t have storage, so we can’t run independently. Prices for that are dropping, but not yet where I’m willing to pay the price. Rumor has it that the next generation of cars may be able to also serve as house storage batteries. For people like us, who are mostly at home, that would be a nice emergency solution.
Indian? There is a long tradition of that in Alabama.
Sawed-off shotguns in some places.
Eh, not that much overall. At the prime rate (3.25%) , for 18 months, the interest is about $160k. And they do have a bunch of upfront costs that have to be paid. There are a lot physical items that the premium packages include that have to be made and prepositioned. But it is a bit of a scam to sell so far in advance.
As for it being his final tour, it probably is. He’s not young, has a LOT of money, and can (and probably will) do another residence at a LV casino. His last one was pretty lucrative.