Hot and humid, chance of rain… but probably not. Just like yesterday. SOMEONE got rain, but not me. In fact it was hot and sunny most of the day.
Did some errands yesterday. Went to the grocery store. Baby formula and mexican sparkling water were both limited quantity and empty shelves. Canned veg is still just the basics, but there are a couple more choices than last time. You can get french cut green beans and mixed vegetables now…
The best part was that USDA Prime sirloin beef was on sale. <$6 /pound and <$7 depending on whether they took off the cap before packaging. I bought all I could afford and fit in the freezers. Saved $100 according to the receipt, and there weren’t any other sale items. In fact there was a real dearth of sale items in the store. Small avocados were $1.09 each, and “big” were even more. The “big” are the size “small” used to be, and “small” are tiny. Limes that used to be 6 for $1 are 50c each and have been for some time. If it wasn’t provably hard to keep the dang trees alive, I’d be looking for another lime tree. And I wish I’d planted avocado 10 years ago, although it probably would have frozen too.
Buy it when you see it and stack it high.
Today I’ve got a pickup for my non-prepping hobby, one for some plumbing supplies, and one or two I’ll put off ’til next week with personal stuff or stuff for the house. Then I’ll load the jon boat back on the truck, fill the bed with more stuff for the BOL, including more freezedried buckets, and two flats of canned veg. I also bought some yeast packets to put with the flour in the buckets at the BOL. I’d forgotten about that. Then at some point we’ll head back up to the lake.
There’s plenty to do here, and more there, so something will get done.
It just might not be what I PLANNED to do.
Stack it while you can.
n
You’re forgetting the Furry rumors. Though, I’ve been told that it is an off limits subject in Texas on both sides of the political aisle.
The Dems haven’t run a sane candidate for Governor as long as we’ve lived here.
Ours is the Texas school board which had parents arrested for disrupting a meeting regarding masks. They even rehired the Superintendent with questionable extracirricular activities who signed the arrest order.
Previously, I didn’t pay attention to the school board elections beyond their occasional super secret bond issues for nonsense, but I am voting to get rid of the problem members in November if given the opportunity.
Whew…we’ve been talking about adding onto our patio in the backyard. I had someone come out and give an estimate – concrete patio, finished surface roughly 8″ above grade, even with existing patio. $11,000. That’s $26/sq ft. For concrete and labor. No way. I don’t know if that’s what the going rate is, their “we don’t really want this job but if they will pay this we’ll do it” price, or something else. Regardless, I’m going to get a couple more quotes. The likely option is I’ll do it myself. The first choice is a paver patio, but I don’t even want to see the price of having someone do that as it is much more labor intensive. I did some quick estimates, and I can do one for around 7k for materials and equipment rental. If I’m going to, I need to do it this summer as I lose my free, err, captive labor this fall to college.
Added: Of course, if I were Fat FIRE, I would just blindly write a check without thinking…
So after some more math, and looking at some concrete pricing estimates found online, it looks like that is around the going price. Around $7500 delivered/installed/finished for concrete alone. Wow, concrete is expensive now.
@Ray Thompson, Thank you! I just ordered two sets of them, with the “150 watt power inverter” as the tools. I nearly chose one of the fans, but then realized I can just plug the fans we own into the power box.
I could use a new drill/screwdriver but couldn’t figure out what I need from the offerings. I only use it for small repairs around the house.
@Alan, thank you! Good to know, but we don’t use those kinds of devices. Paul tried talking to his phone “Hey, Google” and it always gets it wrong, so he gave up. Ran into the same problem after his first stroke with Dragon Naturally Speaking… it just could not understand him.
@drwilliams, thank you for the updated info on Jeff Smith. I really appreciate it. We loved his cookbooks – especially the American one and the Three Ancient Cuisines one. Paul used to make his biscuits. Maybe I’ll look at replacing them 🙂
I’m calling BS. He’s got a personal thing with someone here.
Wow it is nice here this morning: it’s raining! It rained yesterday all through the morning, then cleared up in the afternoon. Sometime in the night another storm came in and it’s been a nice slow easy rain ever since. So wonderful, and we’ve needed it so badly.
Re: concrete costs
Cement production is energy intensive with high consumption of natural gas.
National Donut Day
is it possible to eat too many donuts, or is it a moral responsibility to eat at many as possible?
Do filled bismarcks count? Asking for a friend.
Thanks for the tip on the Ryobi batteries. I have a single 4Ah battery and it lasts forever. I used it with the screwdriver tool on a recent week long project upgrading data center equipment and it was still at 3 out of 4 bars on the battery at the end.
Do you put it back on the charger after that to top it off, or wait until you’ve used all the power before recharging? And does it hold a charge while sitting on the shelf? Ive never used these. The battery in our old electric drill runs down in the closet, so I always have to charge it before I can use it.
In the Bastrop HEB, the small avocados were about $1.00 each last Sunday. Limes are $.35 each – a year ago they were 5/$1.00.
I always top off. There’s a lot of misinformation out there on lithium batteries. People seem to think they behave like NiMH or NiCd.
You can’t overcharge a consumer lithium ion battery – the charge controller won’t let you do that. And if you did, it would catch on fire, which doesn’t happen. Cycles is what kills LiIon batteries. So if the battery is good for 300 charge cycles, you can fully discharge and recharge 300 times, or 25% discharge and recharge 1200 times.
Better to keep it fully charged IMHO so the voltage is higher and the tools work better.
LiIon’s hold charge really well. Even after a year it should have 75% of the charge, maybe more.
Yeah, I should have added the /sarc tag.
I blame the Millennial obsession with avocado toast. 🙂 Damn hipsters.
Definitely not scones. As Bruce Willis brilliantly laid out.
80F and only 76%RH this sunny day.
If a “bismark” is a jelly filled donut, then it counts. If it’s baked, no!
That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
n
Jelly? No!
Bavarian creme.
New a guy that took a biz degree and went into the pastry biz. Made some good donuts, but was doing better with his “perverted pastries” sideline (think anatomically correct and bavarian creme). Would have cleaned up if the internet had been available.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/elon-musk-slash-tesla-jobs-has-super-bad-feeling-about-economy
ah, here come the windfall profits taxes. wasn’t it someone here predicted them last week? or maybe it was John Wilder.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/biden-admin-considering-proposal-tax-oil-gas-windfall-profits
Watch: Dem Rep. Yells “Spare Me The Bullshit About Constitutional Rights” During Gun Debate
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/watch-dem-rep-yells-spare-me-bullshit-about-constitutional-rights-during-gun-debate
–they’ll be yelling the same thing when they try confiscation. Or shut down assemblies. Or control free movement. Or steal your food, or business, or bank accounts.
True for one, true for all.
n
Thanks! I’ll feel better keeping them fully charged.
Can we tax the government for their windfall profits? If a tax on gas (or lumber or anything else which has seen price jumps) is “12 cents per gallon”, government profit is no doubt down because consumption is down. However, many taxes are as a fraction of price, meaning that with 87 octane up 110%, government profits are up. Why should they be allowed to reap the windfall?
Can we tax the government for their windfall profits?
I upvoted, but on further reflection, and understanding how stupid .gov accounting is, I am having second thoughts.
By their accounting, they could tax the .gov windfalls, and then have millions that they would consider extra revenue, which they’d spend on illegals or censorship or transgenders. Money that doesn’t exist. I mean, they create money out of thin air all the time, but Democrats would actually believe that tax money was real.
Re: Concrete
We replaced our short two car driveway, front walk w/ two steps, and two sets of stairs (one ½ width of house, other full width).
Took two trucks of concrete (I believe components are locally manufactured) and a dozen big strong dudes. A full two days of prep, jackhammering and carting away old drive, and pour day was about eight hours. The crew worked HARD. Most of their non-trivial equipment was rented. They don’t have a central shop and I believe all the employees were related.
They left a couple of annoying ‘clean up‘ things incomplete. The concrete job itself is good and I anticipate it lasting many years with minimal care.
About $8,000. I expect the same job would be 50% – 100% more this year
At Tesla? What profits?
You’re still talking about a stock with a P/E of 96.
The current share price is gambling, pure and simple.
“Going Home: A Novel (The Survivalist Series)” by Angery American
https://www.amazon.com/Going-Home-Novel-Survivalist-American/dp/0142181277?tag=ttgnet-20/
Book number one of an eleven book apocalyptic fantasy series. I reread the well printed and well bound trade paperback published by Plume (Penguin) in 2013 that I bought new on Amazon. This is about the fourth or fifth time that I have read this book. I have purchased and read all the first ten books in the series. I do not know if I am going to buy the eleventh book in the series yet. These apocalypse books seem to auger in after a while.
The author has a prepper dude walking home from Tallahassee to Orlando in Florida after a USA wide EMP event. He travels mostly by foot over 200+ miles with a 60 pound backpack of goodies that he had in his car (food, water, night vision goggles, sleeping bag, poncho, tarp, small stove, two guns and ammo).
He uses his SweetWater filter to get drinkable water for him and his companions since he only started his trip with two gallons of water and a half dozen MREs. Basically, the author feels that a lot of people will lose their inhibitions when all the conveniences of modern society go away as the prepper dude has to kill three people in the first 50 miles.
The author has a website where people talk about his book and prepping in general. Lots of discussions about what to take on the road with you if you have to walk home from somewhere.
http://angeryamerican.net/
My rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars (3,048 reviews)
If you are going to have concrete slab work done make your approval of the mix specification mandatory, and get help if you are not familiar.
If you have winter freeze/thaw, air entrained concrete is needed for exterior use.
I am headed 120 miles southwest to Victoria, TX to go see the new Top Gun with my 83 year old father. I suspect that the movie will be awesome. And that we will not get an exclusive showing this time.
You can’t overcharge a consumer lithium ion battery – the charge controller won’t let you do that
– there is an important caveat here. This only applies to well designed and well executed batteries and charge controllers. There are a great many that are not well designed and the batteries die very young.
I have no experience with Ryobi, but extensive experience with DeWalt. Dewalt batteries last a long time, both run time, and longevity. you can kill them with ONE overuse though.
When your tool stops working, change the battery. DO NOT wait then run it some more to squeeze all the juice from it. I killed a brand new 4Ahr battery doing that. It was never the same. Lithium batteries are damaged by over discharge.
And based on what I see in the auctions, 20v Black&Decker batteries SUCK. I’ve got half a dozen dead packs out of a dozen. YMMV of course.
n
Dewalt is owned by Black and Decker., but the battery tech is entirely separate. B&D has a long history of SDBTAS batteries: Versapak, VPX, etc. And every step the consumer gets stuck with the tools.
Suck Dead Bunnies Though a Straw
Pariah pilgrimage: Biden to beg Saudis for more oil in person
Maybe borrow kneepads from Kneepads?
Please, can he just trip and tumble off the jetway? And take Jill?
never thought I’d see a president suck more than Carter.
Right. All I can say is I’ve had the Ryobi over 2 years, the battery stays charged and still has amazing capacity. I don’t use it often, but it’s always worked well.
Lithium batteries do not recover from over-discharges. Never do that! There are other topics. Lipo vs LiIon; effects of full charge for extended periods; storage voltage; fast charge vs slow charge; etc. The short version for good gear is – fully charge it and don’t worry.
>> Please, can he just trip and tumble off the jetway? And take Jill?
And that leaves us with Kamel at the teleprompter. Needs more planning.
That’s not the worst possible outcome. If nothing else, it would take the gloss off of the “first female President” label and tank the chances of any number of candidates who have no selling point aside from a uterus.
How much would it piss off feminists if the first female President was a transwoman instead of a cisgender woman? They couldn’t complain about it without losing their “wokeness,” but they’d all be secretly inwardly raging.
I’ve written a couple of fiction books, as you may know. But I’ve never been good at marketing them. This is indicated by the fact that my total sales on the books are in the low two digits. (And many of those sales were from me.)
Writing is hard. Publishing is easy. Marketing is harder. But I liked how the books turned out.
I follow several FB groups for self-published authors. Some authors are having good success with ‘book trailers’ – short videos (commercials) – about the books. They post these videos on FB, and TikTok, and Pintrest.
So I decided to make a video about “The Forgotten Winchester” book. (It’s a Classic Western based on the real discovery of a Winchester Model 1873 found in the Great Basin National Park in Nevada . It had been leaning against a pinion tree for over 130 years.)
I tried out several video editing programs (free, because I am cheap): ShotCut, KdenLive, Open Shot, and MiniTool MovieMaker. They all have their strengths, but the one that I like – and ended up using – was the MiniTool MovieMaker. Has all the features needed for simple video editing.
I grabbed a free audio track (license allows the usage), and added it to the video. Some tweaking – and several hours of work, and the (probably) final version is here: https://www.theforgottenwinchester.com/videos/Winchester-55.mp4 . In case you are interested – and have about a bit over a minute to take a peek.
Next step is to promote the book a bit on the various social media sites.
It is best to store lithium-ion batteries in a “cool place,” removed from anything that discharges them. The ideal state of charge is 40%, but this is less important than low temperature. How low? Just avoid freezing. A refrigerator would be as low as I would go. 70F is probably good enough. A hot garage would be bad. How bad? Dunno.
As mentioned, avoid deep discharge. Cycling from 100% to 25% will avoid over discharge damage.
Battery University is the best single source on batteries, but can be a time sink. Also, some info might be out of date.
https://batteryuniversity.com/articles
More practically, we are at the mercy of the battery and charger system designer. Most consumer stuff is designed to get the highest capacity out of the battery, for obvious reasons. This comes at the expense of long life. Product obsolescence may mean that a cell phone battery might only have to last two years.
I have a camera that is 12 years old, still uses the original batteries, and they seem to perform as new. I keep them somewhat below 80%, and in my basement. The camera still can take hundreds of pictures before the battery needs recharging. I must be doing something right. (Sample size = two.)
I bought that book, a printed copy no less. 🙂 The promo is good, it would make me interested in the story.
I don’t see that happening in my lifetime. The Dem party is a coalition of special interests, many of whom find the whole transgender movement to be BS, starting with a decent-sized chunk of the African Americans voting block, specifically the church-going older women the Progs depend on to turn out and vote against their own best interests every election.
Paid $400 to fix my A/C Wednesday. It cooled for the next 2 days.
Got back from errands today. Broken again, in a completely different way.
Techs can’t get here until tomorrow at 9:00-11:00. They’re slammed.
90 degrees inside.
How did people live in Houston before air conditioning?
Edited to add: Why did I come back home from Colorado?
Just got back from seeing the movie. Went to the 12:40 showing, theatre about half full. Recliners, with heat. Excellent movie. I will be purchasing the movie when it comes out on iTunes. You will not be dissappointed.
Just a flat out good movie, good flight scenes, good dog fight scenes, technology is correct as they even got the brake release on the rudder pedals correct.
A couple of predictable spots, some stuff that took place would have resulted in Maverick’s immediate grounding and removal from flight status in the real world. But in this case it just makes the story better. Some homage to the prior movie with a few scenes. Noticeable difference in quality between the two films.
My EGO battery chargers will discharge the batteries to 20% after 30 days of no use. Caught me by surprise at the beginning of summer as the run time on the weed trimmer sucked on all the batteries. After that I learned to remove the batteries from the chargers and reinsert about a week before I need to use the batteries.
Because it is home?
P.S. I call wherever I currently live “home.” I remember once living in a place where locals meant home to be one’s birthplace. Confused me.
Hmm, might be a new chemistry variant I am not aware of. As always, the manufacturer knows best.
The OpenGL of the terrain in the attack simulation is a very accurate mid-tier tech rendering of ground using 1m *.pgm files as a source, to the point that I was wondering if someone found my code doing exactly that, which I wrote about a decade ago for Graphics class, and was later plagiarized by the other grad student in the section while faculty either helped or looked the other way.
Its out there. I won’t provide a link, but it isn’t hard to find.
To answer the question in advance, I was a university employee as a TA that semester, and anything I developed was the property of the school.
Think so? Think again. Checks are horribly insecure. Don’t think so? Send me a check, drawn on your account, for $1.00. I will give you the $1.00 back by writing you a check.
In two days I will have your checking account drained. It will then be up to you to prove you did not write the checks. In the meantime the bank will not return the funds to your account during your attempt to prove you did not do the checks. The bank could also decide you did not take appropriate steps to protect your checks and not return the money.
Debit and credit cards are different. If you dispute a transaction the financial institution must return the funds during the dispute. The financial institution must also prove you did make the transaction. Basically the proof responsibility is the opposite of checks.
I use credit and debit cards exclusively. I pay the balance each week and pay no interest. I also get cashback from two of the cards. Using the cards is quicker than using a check by a significant amount.
Bills, such as utilities, are done with a bill pay service. Some accounts use ACH/EFT, others the bill pay service prints the check and pays the postage.
Be very careful before calling the kettle black. Sometimes you are just looking in a mirror.
So now you stoop to name calling. When the argument is lost, name calling is the only option left. As for me, I am done responding to you. I should have known better. It’s like mud wrestling with a pig. We both get dirty, but the pig likes it. So you can oink all the way home.
OK, groomer.
I may be a “hillbilly” with a “cr*p” education, but carrying student loan or other forms of debt in order to be “Fat FIRE” at current PE ratios is textbook innumeracy.
>> OK, groomer2.
>> OK, groomer.
See, I knew the exponent would confuse him. Gotta stay with the simple math…
So after some more math, and looking at some concrete pricing estimates found online, it looks like that is around the going price. Around $7500 delivered/installed/finished for concrete alone. Wow, concrete is expensive now.
Just wait until they start putting the CO2 recovery systems on the concrete plants. Those will jack the price up of concrete big time as they are Chemical Engineer full time employmen projects.
How did people live in Houston before air conditioning?
– mostly they didn’t. Houston’s population grew after the invention and adoption of a/c. Many of the older areas of Houston have 3 phase power to homes because it was more efficient to run the a/c on that.
Prior to that, you built specifically for the heat, sleeping porches, windows for cross breeze, high ceilings, pier and beam construction (air flow under the house helps with cooling), large overhangs to shade walls, plantation shutters, porches for outdoor social space, etc.
n
@rick, nice job on the commercial. Only thing I’d tweak would be making the “available at amazon books” reveal go faster.
n
Gas prices leap to nearly $10 a gallon at California station after smashing record highs nationally amid Bidenflation
Prices have surged to nearly $10 a gallon at this Mendocino station, as costs continue to climb to amid unprecedented inflation. The numbers are the highest recorded in US history.
Captive market. Plus holiday week.
Californians did it to themselves.
Well, I’m a Chemical Engineer with a BS degree and I see it as a fraud.
WRT to NaN’s comment, I am also a hillbilly redneck. From youtube: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=7fr3K9ccdLM
Writing is hard. Publishing is easy. Marketing is harder. But I liked how the books turned out.
I follow several FB groups for self-published authors. Some authors are having good success with ‘book trailers’ – short videos (commercials) – about the books. They post these videos on FB, and TikTok, and Pintrest.
I have one YouTube video on my website. I would like to have a dozen videos. Or maybe two dozen videos.
I use Handbrake for the video production.
Top Gun: Maverick was awesome. 4.5 out of 5 stars. Lots of attributions to the first movie. The piloting and planes was simply awesome.
The theater was half full for the 2pm showing. First time I had more than 10 people in the theater in over two years.
Re; gas prices in Mendicino, CA –
The GasBuddy site reports a price of $9.63 in Mendicino, CA. But there is only one station in that town. Looks like a bit of price gouging, even for that remote area (or a political statement; that area is very red). Not a typical price compared to the surrounding areas.
Mendicino is south of Fort Bragg, CA, in a pretty remote area. Fort Bragg prices are about $5.93 to $6.06. The same distance south of Mendicino reports $6.99. But the areas south (and north) of Ft Bragg on the coast are really remote areas.
Prices in CA are about $1.00 more per gallon than here in the Olympic Peninsula, WA.
Captive market. Plus holiday week.
Californians did it to themselves.
Shipping costs for a remote community. Many of the pipelines have been shutdown due to age and liability concerns. So they are trucking in fuels from Southern California or Washington state.
That doesn’t explain why prices in Ft Bragg (10 miles north of Mendicino) are around $6.00/gallon. Or the prices in the town near Whitesboro, CA (8 miles south of Mendicino) prices are about the same as Ft Bragg.
And I’d suspect those places are getting their supplies from the Santa Rosa area (about 100 miles from Mendicino). Probably the same source as Ft Bragg to the north.
The Mendicino station is gouging. Or making a political statement. Or really doesn’t want to sell gas. IMHO.
I took advantage of the Ryobi offer and got 2x4Ah batteries, a charger, and the inverter for $99 at my local Home Depot, which had around 20 of the battery/charger bundles in stock. Oddly, the inverter wasn’t an option to buy online.
I did a few quick tests. My existing fully charged battery was at exactly 20V, which indicates a 5S battery with average cell voltage of 4.0V, a little under the fully charged 4.2V.
The new batteries were at 16.4V, or ~3.3V per cell, which is pretty low, storage voltage usually being around 3.6-3.8V depending on the chemistry.
All in all a pretty amazing deal for $99. I’ll keep the batteries fully charged in case of a power blackout. The inverter is only good for 150W, enough to run a laptop, and usefully, has 2x 2.4A USB ports.
I’ve been out to Ft Bragg a few times for work. Beautiful place, but super remote and a LONG drive from SFO.
Fleecing the tourists.
Gas probably arrives via barge to some point along the coast, maybe even Mendocino itself.
A quick googles shows that Mendicino probably gets it’s gas from the Redwood Coast Fuels company, which (according to their web site):
They have a distribution office in Fort Bragg. Mendicino is just down the road.
Gouging.
“Apple’s Space Ambitions are Real” https://www.cringely.com/2022/06/03/apples-space-ambitions-are-real/
Apple is buying Globalstar and is putting satellite radios into iPhones ?
I am not sure if this is true or not. The Cringe’s reputation, whatever it was, has dropped precipitously lately.
Still 80F.
Loaded the truck and will head up to the lake tomorrow. Wife and kids are not coming.
The load is boat and infrastructure- mostly stuff for the dock, and a couple of pieces for the woodburner.
All the scrapes and scratches on my arms from last weekend’s work are itchy as a mofo and driving me mad. I think I will try some hydrocortizone cream. I don’t think I’ve ever used any before…
Did not get the grass mowed. Maybe the wife or kids will do it while I’m gone.
.
.
.
.
Hah! yeah, not likely.
n
Limit was two packages, but I got 93%c lean ground beef yesterday for $1.97/lb; about 7.5 lb now packaged in ½ lb increments in the freezer. It involves using the Safeway app with a limit of one offer per household. I may see if my separate phone app will get through the system, or whether their system tracks the address as well as the phone no.
>> I may see if my separate phone app will get through the system, or whether their system tracks the address as well as the phone no.
If it’s early in the sale try phone numbers 111-111-1111, 222-222-2222, etc. I have yet to not have one work.
@CowboyStu
I am also a hillbilly redneck
Some of the finest people I’ve known are hillbilly rednecks. I aspire.
@ Jenny,
As you probably noticed, the skin on my face and neck is truly red.