Forecast says “clear” for the next two days at least. Monday started out very gusty, with spatters of rain while I was putting the kids in the car, but it soon cleared up. Today should be clear all day, but I’m sure it will be humid and hot.
Because I’ll be doing some work in the attic. HVAC guy came yesterday and did whatever poking around he needed to do to get the job actually started. I’ve got a feeling it will be about 80% of what we want, it’s costing more than the luxury system quote from two years ago, and I think the work will be pretty haphazard. BUT, he got the unit we needed, and the approved ductwork, and the system has been patched and babied along for two extra years past its failure point. I NEED to get new stuff installed. And for that to happen, I need to clear space in the attic for them to work. That will be … difficult and a pain in my sweaty backside.
On top of that, I have the normal weekly stuff to do, and I am supposed to be taking stuff to auction today and tomorrow. Which probably will not happen if I’m in the attic all day.
I did get a few things done yesterday. Did a billable half day of work for my client. AT&T has pushed all the conduit to his property, they just need to get fiber in it, and make the final several hundred foot push to the house. It looks like they hope to light up the rest of his neighbors too at some point. There are lots of drops along the way to his house.
More food got put away. The $2/pound pork loin got turned into three roasts, and one got eaten for dinner. The others joined their piggy friends in freezer camp. I opened a can of cajun style lima beans as a side, didn’t tell anyone what they were besides “beans” and not only did they get eaten, my wife actually called them good. It must have been the butter and bacon crumbles.
Also got 40 pounds of flour into buckets. 20 pounds per 5 gallon bucket, a paper plate, and a couple of hand warmers to eat the O2. Those buckets will go to the BOL. My wife notably didn’t say anything about the 40 pounds of flour sitting in the living room until I could pack it. I think she’s coming around to the idea of shortages. It would be hard not to given the news and predictions from every direction. Yet there will be people crying that ‘nobody told us’. I’M telling you, there will be shortages, and some people are going to be very hungry, both here, and pretty much everywhere else. Dust Bowl, Great Depression, soup kitchen levels of hungry, only without the civility of a homogeneous society. That last point should be top of your mind too.
Ammo prices have come down slightly and availability has increased. I’m even seeing sales on large quantities. Some places have complete uppers for sale again too. If you’ve been waiting, this is as good a time as any.
ATF has new rules ready to go into effect. We may be facing whatever comes with what we’ve got. And something bad, really bad, is coming. The DHS created a department to police thought and word. That’s how far we’ve come, and the direction we’re going. They didn’t ‘float a trial balloon.’ They created it and staffed it. Just like that. With no lead up or indication ahead of time. Once we’re on a war footing, even the token resistance from conservatives will be stifled in the name of the war effort. It’s all happened before, it can happen again.
So stack it high. And hide it well. You’ll need it.
nick
75F and 94%RH this fine day. Probably gonna be hot and humid.
n
Memorial Day silly season approaches.
My Master Bedroom shelf system mess continues.
Who sells 1.75 x .75? Is that some kind of millwork for cabinets?
Unfortunately, that’s what Geezer used behind the brackets when he half-a**ed the last repair. Again, architect. The shed has numerous weird wood pieces left from various repairs and he tried to abandon a 900 lb column in the back yard when they moved out.
The failure this time wasn’t in the wood pieces, however, but the head of one of the truss screws supporting the shelf/rod bracket. Sheered right off at where the screw emerges from the wood at one spot and the whole thing came down. Hecho en China I imagine, but not enough got used to compensate for the lower quality of the replacement vs. what was probably used 25 years ago.
Met gala… circuses.
EBT … bread.
n
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/clorox-shares-fall-profit-outlook-slashed-amid-inflationary-woes
–many more price increases already planned for Clorox products, no matter what the world does.
n
The Ghost of Scalia is rocking back on it’s heels. Leave it to The States. Kalifornia will have another ‘King of’ under it’s belt.
Is there any doubt the SCOTUS leak is from the ProgLibTurd side? That person must be quickly found and punished. Maybe even an impeachment. The PLTs do get sloppy.
Sold to the highest bidder.
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2022/05/03/09/57342473-10776823-image-a-47_1651566398400.jpg
n
looking at the photos from the “Met Gala” those are some profoundly unhappy people. Cindy Crawford’s daughter, and her date being one of the few exceptions.
n
It’s a 1 x 2 of some kind. Maybe furring strips or common board or whatever they are calling it these days. The trouble with those kind of closet brackets is sometimes the attachment is strong enough, but the brackets themselves fail from weight.
Clothing is very heavy, and we all own so much of it. It’s a challenge to get closets strong enough to carry the weight. Ours isn’t pretty but is somewhat stronger: wooden side wall brackets holding 1 ¾” wooden closet dowel.
Kind of the same problem with pantries, especially for canned goods. It doesn’t take long to have 200 lbs dragging on a couple of screws. For that reason, my canned goods are in a purpose-built pantry in the laundry room with wood support around all three sides holding up ¾” plywood shelves. I put wire shelves in the actual pantry with anchors, but I only store boxed packages, condiments, and such, there. The cans would pull those wire shelves off the wall in a hurry.
Isn’t it warming up in the UK yet?
I just got caught up on my “Death in Paradise” backlog, but that ended two months ago.
@greg:
Not so you’d notice, barring the occasional day. As I type, my phone is reporting external temperatures of 15C. Where that’s measured is unknown to me.
And Auntie’s schedulers are living in a world of their own – they persist in scheduling a couple of episodes of an archive series, and then dropping it on the floor. This probably applies to the commercial channels as well, I just don’t follow them.
get-iplayerfor the win! And no, that is not a fruity thing, despite the name. The Beeb’s catch-up service is called iPlayer, but the TV version is not available outside UK.G.
“Death In Paradise” always airs in the cold/dark weeks after Christmas, when people need the distraction. If that isn’t available, schadenfreude provided by the Daily Mail’s US bureau will do nicely.
As a European, I should have known that.
Also, re the sheep comments yesterday, don’t confuse Northern Ireland and Ireland. Depending on context they are either separate areas or one contains the other.
Our closets are similar.The female half of the previous homeowner couple was a wedding planner. It looks like she had Geezer remove a few brackets from the Master Closet at some point, with the goal probably being to store wedding dresses anywhere they had space.
I need to go look at Lowe’s for the lumber, brackets, and screws at lunchtime. That seemed to be their go-to place to buy everything.
Habitual nudism can help to declutter your life. #FollowMeForMoreLifeHacks
Habitual nudism can help to declutter your life.
—and dramatically reduce the number of gifts you’ll have to buy at Christmas time…
n
I’m greatly enjoying the ProgLibTurd implosion over the SCOTUS leak. They haven’t even ruled yet. Will there be blood in the streets, PLTs? Will the filibuster die? Will the SCOTUS get ‘packed’? The PLTs don’t even understand The States can do what they want. There is a rumor on SM that the Redumblicans are planning to ‘outlaw’ abortion. SM is dumb.
Do you mean continuously for 7 years?
WRT NaN’s comments: When those type comments are made about me, I do not feel badly as a result. To me they demonstrate the stupidity of those who speak negatively of me. The more negative typifies greater stupidity.
@Greg
Who sells 1.75 x .75? Is that some kind of millwork for cabinets?
“It’s a 1 x 2 of some kind”.
As @pecancorner said. If it’s rounded over on the edges it’s a furring strip for sure. If it’s square it could be either a fs or a 1×2. With closet loading I’d look in the hardwoods to see if they had 3/4×1-3/4 (hardwoods are actual dimensions). Or a wider board that could be ripped if you had access to a tablesaw.
“1×2” is .75 x 1.5. I don’t know if that changed in the last 20 years.
No rounded edges and the wood doesn’t look like it was ripped by the original installer.
The wedding planner’s office closet upstairs had all of the hanging rod’s braces removed, and when I needed a peculiar thickness board to put the braces back positioned properly to avoid a similar disaster to what happened this weekend, I ended up finding the right thickness in the picket fence board selection.
Eight years later, the rod hasn’t budged.
Off to Lowe’s at lunchtime.
So I have these inspection cameras, really they are “searchcams” but they work great for looking in a hole, or a tank, or duct, or above a ceiling, etc. They use a rechargeable lead acid battery pack. I have one battery pack, and about 10 of the cams, and I used it to test them all way back when I picked them up.
But the pack has died. I opened it up and there are 6 cells inside, and they are 12$ per cell new. That’s a bunch of money to rebuild the proprietary packs. A replacement pack on ebay is listed for several hundred dollars. Because they were intended for use in critical service in a harsh environment they have a keyed, screw on locking connector instead of a simple barrel connector, or something else ‘normal’.
I decided to build an adapter cable with the mating locking connector at one end, and “something” at the other, like lugs to connect to a SLA gel battery, or a barrel connector that fits the converter I have for my dewalt lithium batteries. They should be a lot easier to sell if they don’t need the proprietary battery pack, and I will keep one for myself.
The connector is about $18 new when you add up all the components. Jeez. Ebay to the rescue. Still not cheap but a lot better.
I am spending the time now because I need one of the cams working to look in some holes at my BOL… and if I buy one, I might as well buy 10 and finally sell the excess cams…
Everything I do is fractal.
n
Do you mean continuously for 7 years?
—probably. That’s my problem with the new septic systems, they need power, pumps, chemicals, etc. They are not a hole in the ground anymore.
My drip system will have hundreds of feet of pressurized hose with a drip nozzle every 2 ft, buried only 6 inches deep. The idea is that grass or other veg pulls the water to the surface to be evaporated, rather than percolating down to the water table.
The other option was a sprinkler system that sprays the yard every morning so the water can evaporate.
Problem is that in Houston, it doesn’t necessarily evaporate and you have dogs and kids getting wet with the output of your septic system, which is SUPPOSED to be ok, but no thanks.
n
Ok, everything is ordered. Now to do some real work.
n
Also on NI, an interesting thought experiment. Estimate the number of sheep in NI. Remove 1 million.
Now calculate the number of farmers who go bankrupt as a result of lower income or trying to switch to a different type of farming. Bear in mind that in much of NI you can only grow grass, sheep or cows and you can’t switch to cows because of the methane “output”. Calculate the increase in retail price of mutton. Calculate how much taxes go up to pay for additional government inspectors, and the associated admin staff, to enforce the changes.
Calculate the actual decrease in the rate of global warming, accounting for other farming methods that the farmers may switch to, and which may require more use of fossil-fuel-powered machinery.
Probably a stupid conspiracy theory.
The dogs yap but the caravan moves on.
Do you mean continuously for 7 years?
The septic tank aerator compressor has been running continuously for 24 years !
Except the Texas Freeze in Feb 2021. It got a four day vacation.
Someone, JimB ?, recommended “Biz” for the laundry, I bought a bottle. Washing dish towels? They come out clean now. Almost as white as new and the pushing toward rancid grease smell is gone. Using bleach doesn’t do that.
I gave up using Downy. The stuff was turning into a gel in the bottle before I used even half. Cleaned the washer. The deposits were waxy.
So I’m adding a shot of Biz when doing laundry. The water looks filthy. Filthier than usual. The rinse water isn’t anything to brag about. But how dirty are t-shirts? I think the Biz is cleaning the Downy from my shirts. They come from the dryer just as soft as can be. (say that like Gomer Pyle. gawlee!)
Just a boring day over here doing laundry.
Rats. The dryer just finished. I hate folding clothes.
“Stone Dogs (Draka #3)” by S. M. Stirling
https://www.amazon.com/Stone-Dogs-Draka-S-M-Stirling/dp/0671720090?tag=ttgnet-20/
Book number three of a five book alternate history military science fiction series. I read the well printed and well bound MMPB published by Baen in 1990 that I bought used on Amazon. I read the fourth book in the series recently and am now back tracking. I have ordered a used copy of the fifth book in the series even though it is a collection of short stories by various authors.
Wow, just wow at the damage and loss on alternate Earth. There is a rumor that Jim Baen rejected this book six times before Steve Stirling persuaded him to publish it as is. Yes, the USA loses the battle for Earth. But, did they ?
After the American revolutionary war, the British loyalists in the colonies mostly escaped to Canada. But in an alternate timeline, those 90,000 British loyalists were exiled to the southern tip of Africa at the direction of George Washington from 1783 to 1786. They took over the Dutch colony of South Africa as other unwanted groups joined them and merged into their slave holding culture. They eventually called themselves the Domination of Draka.
By 1948, the Domination of Draka is 40 million free peoples and 1,000 million slaves XXXXXX serfs, one half of the people on the planet Earth. They have spread throughout the entire continent of Africa to Egypt, the middle east (Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia), Turkey, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, and they have just completed taking Italy and then Germany. The rest of Europe fell quickly. They have used their incredible mineral riches to develop and purchase the best weapons in the world. And they have nuclear weapons that they used to destroy the German armies, not understanding of the dangers of fallout on their own armies.
“Service to the State” is the typical saying from one Draka citizen to another citizen. Their reply is “Glory to the Race”. These sayings exemplify all you need to know about the Draka. Their goal is to subjugate the entire human race. The Domination has subjugated the entire continents of Africa, Europe, and most of Asia. The only areas not subjugated are North America, South America, Australia, Great Britain, India, and Japan, The Alliance of Free Democracies. The Domination and the Alliance are in a cold war with spying and underground activities that go along with such while the Domination is putting Europe to the yoke.
Several people have criticized the pace of the technological achievement between the Domination and the Alliance. Specifically the intense space race with orbital forts with gigawatt lasers in the 1960s, lunar colonies in the 1970s, and Mars colonies in the 1980s. And all kinds of space warships and asteroid belt mining in the 1970s. Sounds accelerated to me also but the Domination is a much more difficult adversary for the USA instead of the Soviet Union.
The prolific author has a website at:
https://smstirling.com/
The five books of the series are listed at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Domination
My rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 3.9 out of 5 stars (26 reviews)
@paul
Waste of time to fold socks or underwear.
If you are folding shirts either start hanging them or look on the Youtube for instruction on making a folding guide out of cardboard. Makes it wicked fast.
Arlo and Janis: Sunrise is like Sunset in reverse
https://www.gocomics.com/arloandjanis/2022/05/03
No ! There is no such thing.
I don’t fold socks or underwear. All of my socks are the same. Just grab two. Check where the holes are at the toe end and put on the appropriate foot. And who actually cares if your underwear is wrinkled?
I had a plastic thing to fold shirts with. Missy decided it was a good thing to teeth on.
“Dilbert Presents Black Character, Gets Dragged”
https://www.dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2022/05/03/dilbert-presents-black-character-gets-dragged/
“This week Scott Adams introduced the first Black character in his Dilbert comic strip.”
New modem arrived. Installed and speeds tanked from 700+ Mbps to less than 100 Mbps. Talked with Xfinity and they could not resolve. Hooked computer directly to the modem, speeds were back to normal. Seems the issue is in the router. I decided to change the (previously working) cable between the router and the modem using the cable supplied with the modem. Speeds are back to normal. The two foot cable that had the slow speed is running full speed between the router and the computer so the cable is good. The cable supplied with the modem has a metal jacket around the plug. I guess the modem has a way to check for that type of cable. Strange.
@paul
Rats. The dryer just finished. I hate folding clothes.
I don’t fold so much as wad and shove onto a shelf.
I used to have a single color of sock. Then several somebody’s gifted me socks. All different colors.
Socks shouldn’t require effort. I woukd be better served following my daughters lead and call my mismatches ’style’.
Going with the low bidder for the furnace install seems to have worked out. Something like $8k less than next lowest bid, passed inspection, and there was no trouble or push back about fixing a couple minor things that cropped up. They did tidy work, wasted no time, hot things are hot where they should be, cold things likewise cold.
Electric mesh fence arrived to protect the chickens. Their coop and run are in the front yard because I can’t figure out how to move it to backyard with my available resources and competing priorities. Setting up the net was a piece of cake BUT it’s twice as long as needed so not yet electrified. I need to find my bucket of fence parts so I can cut it in half and reattach the conductive bits. Real soon now.
I also need to add a cage to the rabbitry, or eat an adult, to make room to split the current litter. This is self inflicted pain from choosing to keep a doe from the prior (delicious) litter.
Stayed up late attaching castors to chrome shelving units. Wow. Why did I not do this sooner? Wheels are good. Younger dog kept me company and we played fetch between wheels. If she thought my late night was foolish she kept her opinion to herself. Another reason to love dogs.
Did I mention the cherry Seagull guitar I was drooling over was -finally- gone, after 11 weeks, when I weakened and decided to buy it? The clerk must have thought I was nuts when I started laughing. I spied a Godin A6, electro/acoustic, that was gorgeous and WAY too much guitar for me. Texted a pic of it to my guitar / pro musician friend. He brought his pawn shop A6 Godin to Sunday dinner and I spent an hour or two playing it. Nice guitar. Went back to look at the one in the store. Gone.
More hilarity. I don’t think I’m supposed to buy a guitar right now -laughter-
“This Two-Inch Diamond Disc Could Hold a Staggering Billion Blu-Ray’s Worth of Data”
https://gizmodo.com/quantum-computing-diamond-disc-could-store-billion-blu-1848853029
Here we go again. 25 exabytes if we can just get past the problems.
Perhaps you have discovered a new talent. Ask the store for a
kickbackcommission.@dcp
Perhaps you have discovered a new talent. Ask the store for a — commission
Nice – Caught me with a sip of coffee -laughter-
I don’t think I did that. My wife uses OxyClean but I don’t think Biz. She is at a meeting now, or I would ask. As for your improved result, I think she also rotates detergents occasionally with good results. She volunteers at a thrift store, and often washes filthy or dingy items using some strong stuff, but OxyClean has been her favorite for years.
While we are on the subject, I used to mix equal parts of Wisk (also one of my wife’s favorites) with any petroleum solvent, such as naphtha or diesel fuel. I would add that mixture to water at about a 1:10 ratio and use it to soak auto parts clean. I later refined the formula to use diesel and one of the 409 type surfactants, also diluted with water. For heavy grunge, I would use the surfactant-diesel mixture undiluted as a first wash, with the diluted mixture in a parts cleaner bath for final soak.
Cleaning auto parts is always a challenge. There are wonderful commercial concoctions, but they are expensive and sometimes corrosive. Also, the cleaning solution is a lot less important if you can heat the mixture, and then rinse with very hot water, or even steam.
“Golden Pass LNG Said ‘on Schedule’ for 2024 Start-Up”
https://www.naturalgasintel.com/golden-pass-lng-said-on-schedule-for-2024-start-up/
I am not sure but I think that these will be LNG Liquefaction plants #21, 22, and 23 in the USA. That is, the large LNG plants that can liquefy one billion cubic feet of natural gas into LNG each DAY. The going rate for natural gas in the USA is just under $8/mmbtu. The going rate for LNG outside the USA in Europe, India, China, Pakistan, Japan, etc is $23/mmbtu. Plus shipping.
Engineer Definition Tshirt
https://dhktshop.com/engineer-definition-5834?s=hanes-5250&c=Black&p=FRONT
Oh man, I want one of these.
Cleaning auto parts is always a challenge. There are wonderful commercial concoctions, but they are expensive and sometimes corrosive. Also, the cleaning solution is a lot less important if you can heat the mixture, and then rinse with very hot water, or even steam.
And the really good ones are cancer causing. Such as Benzene.
“Ohio Senate primary election results: J.D. Vance win GOP race, will face Tim Ryan”
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2022-primary-elections/ohio-senate-results
“J.D. Vance, the “Hillbilly Elegy” author and venture capitalist, won the GOP primary after earning former President Donald Trump’s coveted endorsement. He will face Rep. Tim Ryan, who won the Democratic primary.”
Interesting. I have seen the movie on Netflix that Ron Howard made of his book but I have yet to read the book. I suspect that he will be RINOish but that would be expected for Ohio.
>> It must have been the butter and bacon crumbles.
Even shoe leather can be tasty with enough butter and bacon!
Know The Enemy (Part 417):
The best argument that the draft decision was leaked by a progressive
John Sexton May 03, 2022 9:20 PM ET (HotAir)
Left the links in.
@Lynn
Homer Formby’s original formula wood refinisher: Acetone, toluene, methanol and dichloromethane. Like the song says: Mix it up right here in the sink. One of the reasons I always check out the garage chemicals at estate sales.
>> And then we have an additional round of pricing scheduled for July.
Notice the nuanced language – “pricing” instead of “price increases.”
http://myplanetmyrules.blogspot.com/2022/04/gotham-city-for-reals.html
English, a language rich in imagery.
Truly not sure what is means, but I think Trump was the only President in the last 100 years to leave the office fatter than he entered. Most of them leave as wasted, shattered old men.
n
>> (a) go on 150-298 golf outings
From the same site, and not far behind: “President Obama is said to have golfed more than 300 times during his 8 years in office”
P.S. looks like obamagolfcount.com is available if you’re interested.
plugs entered the office as a wasted, shattered old man.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/05/tight-race-reported-ohio-senate-primary-j-d-vance-leads-josh-mandell-18-reporting/
n
Amazon is evil. And a complete time sink.
For whatever reason, I wind up doing quite a lot of the low skill humble home maintenance tasks.
I came home, and was interrupted in my toilet usage by the sight of brown awfulness in the bowl. It was dreadfully clear the toilet wasn’t operating according to spec. I’ve spent most of my life cleaning poo, so no biggie. Grabbed our horrible plunger and got to work. Cleared the bowl with a minimum of fuss.
Somewhere in the garage we have three decent low effort plungers. Can I find any of them. Nope. So I’ve got this useless sink plunger doing doodie in the bath. Since some of my best beloved’s can’t regulate how much tissue they use when they do their business, and dare not touch a plunger lest they burst into flame, I plunge the toilet every few weeks.
Anyway. I jumped on Amazon to order something better than what we’ve got and because I just am not going to have time in the next week to swing by a hardware store. Because entering a hardware store I have this weakness – I can’t find my way to the item I need and exit without oohing and ahhing over the cool stuff. No such thing as a ten minute trip for me. It’s an illness. Probably I should seek treatment.
I thought, I’ll grab a plunger on Amazon. Quick and dirty, a little evil, but done in five minutes.
Nope. It’s a sinkhole.
Did you know that you can buy a plunger decorated to look like a golfing putter? Or a toilet seat wrapped in deep shag carpet? Or tabs to fasten to the seat so you need not dirty your delicate appendages by lifting the toilet seat by your digits? How about a gamified smiling poo?
Good grief.
@MrAtoz
Your avatar is making me grin. I’m not very nice, I guess.
John Ross died 04/29/2022.
https://gunfreezone.net/john-ross-is-dead/