Cooler, but still clear. Pretty dang cold out in the country yesterday. Had to wear a jacket outside. It was nice for my time in the attic, but pretty chilly otherwise.
Spent part of the day in my client’s attic chasing wifi issues. Had to slither on my belly a couple of times to get through some small areas. I’m really glad the insulation was the fluffy white kind and not itchy fiberglas. Found a bunch of mostly dead gear. Not surprising really, given the heat and the lightning. I know the local electronics store had replacements on the shelf last week so I should be able to have them replaced without issue, but the configuration part might give me fits.
If I think about it today or tomorrow, I’ll do an online pickup order and lock down the WAPs I need.
This morning D2 and I will attend my hobby meeting, while my wife and D1 venture to a distant city in Texas and camp overnight in cabins. They’ll be ‘showing the flag’ at a family gathering of some aunts and cousins who don’t usually get to Texas. After my meeting, we’ll go to an open house for incoming students at the middle school, then an auction pickup (stuff for her) and talk about my sale, lunch, the prep for D2’s basketball game, and then the actual game. It’s gonna be a busy day.
It’s also a lot of out and about, which is actually making me a bit nervous. Oh well. Compare and contrast with other locations. . .
I would have preferred to sleep in for a few extra hours, but meatspace baby.
Stack some things, but also refresh your spirit, you’ll need it later.
nick
That won’t work. I’d just give it to the local volunteer ambulance company or fire department and he’d end up subscribed to their list.
59F and 99%RH. Coffee is in order… and something to eat. And a shower. and wake the child….
Ugg this getting up and being part of a community is a lot of work on a Saturday morning.
n
If they were going to do another "Dick Vermeil has a crazy idea" movie, why didn't they call Greg Kinnear? The general consensus is that he nailed Vermeil of the 70s in "Invincible".
Too young? Busy? Non-PC?
It looks like "Underdog" glosses over the beating the Tampa defense delivered in the NFC Championship game in 1999, instead focusing the drama on Ray Lewis and the Ravens the game before.
The one upside to the game for the Yucs? Trent Dilfer was gone the next season.
We'll he'd be subscribed. I didn't specify to what…
We have over a foot of fresh new snow here. Kind neighbours have cleared most of our footpaths along the public road, so only a bit to do myself now, as I had to spend the morning working. Going to dress up warm and take a walk with Mrs Denis in the falling snow, then shovel the remaining bits… then perhaps a wee Glühwein after that!
Walking at night in falling snow is about the only thing I miss about cold. The sound of the world is unique.
n
After last February, I'd rather not see snow again. I thought Vantucky was inept about dealing with winter storms, but, unlike Austin, the power stayed on and trucks still rolled through the unplowed/unsalted streets.
I was only half paying attention to the local Faux News last night, but they had a file footage reel of Robert Francis campaigning and people from his new organization talking about getting out the vote. Funny how something like that always seems to run on days with cold mornings as of late.
I thought I had built my home server with a WD Black carrying a five year warranty, but it turns out I used a Seagate with the intent of replacing the drive three years ago when the two year coverage expired.
I was very lucky. The Seagate endured way past the warranty period.
The WD Black in my primary desktop has always run noisy and hot. That was probably why I optend for something different in the server, which runs in a corner of our guest room/office.
The Seagate has never seen Windows, FAT or NTFS. Ext4 Linux and dedicated swap. That might also be a factor.
https://leadstories.com/hoax-alert/2021/08/fact-check-there-is-no-evidence-to-attribute-quote-anout-tolerance-to-dostoevski.html
It's been shared across the internet for months, but Google and others have carefully represented the search results so that a crack investigative journalist:
working in her jammies from home, can make a phone call and ask someone in Canada, then write up her
"No, that's not true"
conclusion and have it blessed as authoritative by a bunch of snotty nosed SJW working for pale sweaty billionaires who are working to deliver 1984 to all of us except themselves.
None of which matters a flying poke at a rolling donut, because it's all designed to bury the essential truth:
We are already there.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/01/07/uahs-earth-system-science-center-records-considered-unreliable-and-harmful-by-google/
Time sink for today if needed. Basketball pictures.
http://www.raymondthompsonphotography.com/OSHS
This will be the last year for this crappy, short court, bad lighting gym. School is going to be rebuilt hopefully with LED lights.
Home from my meeting, coffee and many donuts properly disposed of (by eating.)
Nice to see people although turnout was about the lowest we've had in the past year. Maybe because the second saturday is very early in the month this year. Even I felt like it was supposed to be next week.
Time to switch trucks and do some more errands.
n
Don't think that will work either – SteveF is not a subscriber. Although you can try it. Might take multiple attempts.
"Subscribers" cannot approve blocked comments. Only the 'admins' can. Of which there are three: Nick, me and someone else to be named later.
But notifications of a blocked comment only go to one person. And only sometimes; it's not consistent.
An email to me will usually fix it, though.
If it's making them longer, what else is it doing, and how?
–in a sane world, anything that messed with the reproductive cycle in any way would be immediately stopped until investigated and determined not to have any ill effects.
WTF is more fundamental that reproduction? Or more sensitive to disruption?
Maybe now they will further investigate all the anecdotal reports of increased miscarriage and still birth.
n
and if it's found to be the cause, then the firing squads can be arranged.
Which vaccine?
The demographics of the clotting problems with the J&J vaccine make me wonder if cigarettes were a factor in a similar way that smoking causes deaths due to clotting when mixed with birth control pills — rare, but it happens.
Pfizer wanted 75 years to prep records released to the public regarding their trials. A judge just gave them eight months.
The response definitely won't be a "shaman" standing in the well of the Capitol wearing a Native American headdress and "rioters" snapping selfies.
It will be a *real* riot.
Still, the source is The Mail, and it is still cold/dark in the UK. “Death In Paradise” started its regular episode run last night.
Most commonly referred to as an unindicted co-conspirator.
Virtue signalling, duh.
My daughter's has been messed up since her mother and grandmother got the Moderna shots. Just another data point which would no doubt be hand-waved away as "anecdotes are not data", but "where there's smoke there's fire" is common wisdom for a reason.
Let's just muddy the 'Crud count' numbers a bit more…
https://nypost.com/2022/01/07/many-nyc-patients-hospitalized-with-covid-admitted-for-other-reasons/
Now at basketball. Pouring rain outside. Been kinda misty most of the day, but now it's really coming down.
.n
No rain here. Single digits (Fahrenheit) at the house until at least mid-morning; not sure when because I went up into the mountains where it was barely above 0F until at least 0830 (when I got out of the car and didn't have a thermometer handy) and was still in single digits in the late morning.
In related news, I learned that the tires on my new used vehicle, while perfectly good on dry road, don't quite cut it if there's any snow on the road. No accidents on the way up there but there were a few exciting moments. The new used vehicle now has new used snow tires. (From the guy at the shop's wife's former car, which got new tires for this Winter and then the transmission fell apart. Normally I'm skeptical of claims like "they have only a hundred miles on them" but the tires are practically new to look at. Reminds me of the time I bought new snow tires for my wife's car, then it started acting up and she sold it for about $25 more than the cost of the tires, and the guy bought the car only because it had new snow tires.)
Nothing better than a wood stove to warm your back on a cold day.
We had an EarthStove. Actually made here, in Burnet. After 25+ years of hauling fire wood, making a couple of trips in August to Lampasas for firewood, stacking it…. 35 or so cinder blocks side by side an inch or so apart in a row with a couple of eight foot T posts on each end, stacked about 7 feet tall… yeah. And then hauling wood to the house through the winter.
Nope. We have a pellet stove now. Turn it on, turn it off. Almost no ash to deal with. The weakness is if/when the electricity goes out for a week or so.
Price of pellets vs wood is almost the same.
I'm not "mid 30 pushing 40" anymore.
I thought I had a dead Squezebox. Tried a different unit and after being stupid for a while, I figured the power brick was bad.
So I went to eBay for a replacement. I bought two. I need one but I seem to be short one.
eBay says a shipping label was created on Dec 30. Tracking showed nothing but "waiting for package". I contacted the sender and they are re-sending. Cool.
Checked the tracking today and all of a sudden its gone from California to Las Vegas. And the seller shipped another package.
Oh well. They'll check the tracking on the original order before dropping the replacement order off at the Post Office or I'll send them a check for the amount. An actual paper check in an actual envelope just to skip giving PayPal a cut.
What the heck. Need one, buy two. End up with three spares. I'm cool.
Which reminds me of the time (25 years ago?) I sold an ancient F-250 to a guy for $400. Turns out he just wanted the nice(r) chrome rims, he put his own good tires on those, then turned around and sold the truck to someone else in a town nearby for $450. We still see it around occasionally.
I had a pellet stove in a former house. It had a really old heat pump, and didn't work well in the winter (this is near Sacramento CA; so not really that cold).
So got a pellet stove, and really liked it. Put out a lot of heat for the main rooms. Easy to fill and clean the minor amounts of ash.
Yeah, no heat when the power is out, but that didn't happen often in my neighborhood. But you can get a pellet stove with a battery backup for power outages. Doesn't take much battery juice to run the fan and the pellet auger, I'd suppose.
I'd put one in the current house, to replace the existing propane fireplace, but we don't use the fireplace at all. The living room with the fireplace has cathedral ceilings up to the 2nd floor, so it never provided any useful heat in the living room area.
The new heat pump we got last year (a Trane; their most efficient model) works good enough, even when it is 20F outside. House has double-pane windows and insulation, so minor heat loss from there. Even at 20F, there is some heat coming out of the forced air vents; temp seems to be 90-98F out of the vents. Works good enough.
Home from the game, we lost, 10-6 iirc.
Rain stopped and water drained, and you'd hardly know.
I bought a completely trashed porsche 914 that had been abandoned behind where I was living in 1986. I hot wired it to see if it would run. It did, but died after about 10 minutes. Took it to a mechanic and he said it was fixable, so I asked around until someone told me who owned it.
He was happy to sell it to me for $50. I had my big motorcycle accident a month or so later, and decided I didn't need a project, since I was on crutches. Sold it to a guy for $300 who just wanted the engine to rebuild for his racer… and that was the only thing on the car that wasn't trashed. The removable top would sell for a few bux, I'm sure. Frame was broken. It had a sub-frame installed to hold everything together, so I jacked up the middle of the body and stuck 2x4s between the frame and the subframe to hold it straight enough that the doors would close.
That was the only vehicle I've ever made money on. Might be the only sports car ANYONE has ever made money on! 😛
n
"“Unreliable and harmful claims”: This website has been demonetized by Google", January 7th, 2022 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D."
https://www.drroyspencer.com/2022/01/unreliable-and-harmful-claims-this-website-has-been-demonetized-by-google/
"DrRoySpencer.com has been demonetized by Google for “unreliable and harmful claims”. This means I can no longer generate revenue to support the website using the Google Adsense program."
"From a monetary standpoint, it’s not a big deal because what I make off of Google ads is in the noise level of my family’s monthly budget. It barely made more than I pay in hosting fees and an (increasingly expensive) comment spam screener."
Hat tip to:
"UAH’s Earth System Science Center Records Considered Unreliable and Harmful By Google"
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/01/07/uahs-earth-system-science-center-records-considered-unreliable-and-harmful-by-google/
@StevF
"Normally I'm skeptical of claims like "they have only a hundred miles on them" but the tires are practically new to look at."
I'm sure you know, but the manufacturing date is provides a cross-check of sorts:
Look for the string of numbers on the sidewall after DOT. The last four digits are the date coded as:
wwyy
where "ww" is the week of the year and "yy" is the last two digits of the year.
Judge Gives FDA Eight Months Instead of 55 Years to Release Pfizer Vaccine Data
https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/01/judge-gives-fda-eight-months-instead-of-55-years-to-release-pfizer-vaccine-data/
POURING down rain here, thunder and lightning too. 1.6 inches in the last 40 minutes or so. The street is filling up.
There is a lot of water in the drainage system from the rain this afternoon. There will probably be downstream flooding…
n
… not to mention the tornado watch in your area Nick
After Friday late in the day, news on Saturday lets them publish to cya but not emphasize the news… https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10381131/Number-children-five-years-old-admitted-hospital-skyrockets.html
After the sensationalism in the first paragraphs, there is a pretty nice wrap up.
"Rate" is increasing, so I wanted a number, not a rate.
https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2022-01-07/cdc-record-number-of-kids-with-coronavirus-are-hospitalized
emphasis and […..] mine.
With increased testing, as they look, they find.
n
Tornado watch? I didn't get anything on my phone…
n
Now we're at 2.40" in the last hour. That will def lead to flooding downstream. The severity has decreased a lot in the last few minutes.
n
Just looked at the radar map and most of it is past me. Still have some severe looking stuff training across Mr Lynn's house and headed right for me… but it is greatly reduced from what already passed.
Wife and D1 are somewhere near Kerrville and it's clear and cool where they are. Nothing on the radar at all for them.
n
Huh, despite being in the path, Mr Lynn's area rain gauges are 0.3 to mine at 2.4.
https://www.harriscountyfws.org/
Oops, just had a power flicker. Might lose it yet.
n
added — in fact , my neighborhood and surrounds have the highest rainfall in the last 12 hrs for all of Harris County.
Where we were playing basketball this afternoon has 3.44 inches in the last 12hrs.
n
Now 3.7, and I'm at 3.28 and it picked back up. It looks like areas to the north and west of me are getting a lot less. That's good for me, since they are upstream from us. Waterflow in general is from NW to SE across downtown Houston and out to the bay.
Channel status is all green for now, but everything from the three little triangles in my 'hood to the south east will be going up from now thru morning.
https://www.harriscountyfws.org/GageDetail/Index/2253?From=1/9/2022%2012:20%20AM&span=12%20Hours&r=1&v=surfaceBox&selIdx=0
That is the area of my neighborhood that ALWAYS floods, hence the sensor position. And it's over the bank…
n
added– 00:25 an the map just updated to show red for near me, and downstream. Expect to see the yellow high water warnings start moving down toward the bay…
4.37 inches for the last 12 hrs at my house when it mostly stopped around 2am. Street still flooded. Normally, I'd take a rake and walk down to the storm drains and make sure they were clear, to give the street the best possible chance of draining. I decided to see if anyone else would do it this time. So far, nope.
n