Cooler than Houston, but still gonna get hot. They must have had some rain up here, there is water in the birdbath… I found the one T storm cell in Houston yesterday. It was over La Porte. It hammered them just before I got there to do a pickup. Lucky for me, it was leaving just as I got there. I only got gentle rain after being pounded for 15 minutes.
I got home, finished loading up the truck, kicked kid into shape, and headed up, only 2 hours later than I’d hoped.
I’ve got stuff to do today, so we’ll see what actually gets done. I think it will depend on the heat of the day.
One task, get the freezers installed and cooling down. That means unloading the truck. I better get to it.
Stack some things that you need to stack some other things.
n
I’ve finally gotten my wife to like and use the self-checkout. Dunno how it works elsewhere, but here you take an item off the shelf, scan it with a handheld scanner, and put it in your shopping bag. On the way out, the scanner transfers the data to a payment console. Pay and leave. No fuss, no muss, and a lot faster than going to a cashier.
Here in UK, we have both – the self-scan stations, and the handheld carry-it-with-you scanners. Depends on the shop.
It’s all big supermarkets, I suspect mom-and-pop shops can’t afford the tech.
G.
And I need to call the AA out, again. (that’s AAA to you Yanks) The battery in my SEAT is dying, due to maltreatment (by me) – leaving the amateur rig switched on when I park. I have a fix – once I extract digit and install it. I’ll report back when that’s done.
Gotta do this today – there’s a rally west of London that I want to attend tomorrow. 20 mile drive, each way. That’s quite a distance, for me.
G.
Hoo boy:
Thing 1 & Thing 2: Biden’s trannies tag team the French Ambassador’s residence…
We are the laughing stock of the World. They should have brought our military trannies, too.
Musk responds to Twitter request for expedited trial: https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2022/07/15/elon-musk-responds-to-twitters-request-for-an-expedited-trial-n483170
If you read the excerpt from Musk’s court filing, it seems that Twitter did not supply information in a timely fashion.
Judge grants expedited discovery in states First Amendment case against Biden administration https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/07/judge-states-will-get-expedited-discovery-on-biden-admin-collusion-with-big-tech-to-censor-conservatives/
LOL:
NYFC how to survive a nuke
They have got to be kidding. Hey Putin, please use a big enough nuke to completely level NYFC. Who came up with this Shiite.
The only self-checkouts locally are simply check stands where we have to do the same work an employee does at the other stands. The customer has to remove each item from their cart, scan it, set it aside and reach for another, then bag them all up after paying.
The first ones here were at Home Depot, a home improvement store. Then Walmart, and now grocery stores.
I don’t use them. But I do see people standing in line for the self-checkout, even when the lines with traditional checkers are shorter, because people are creatures of habit. So, now the self checkouts are busy enough that they no longer save time for the customer if the store is busy.
To each their own, I guess, but I enjoy chatting with the store clerk when checking out. I know many of them, so it is a nice social part of my shopping.
Palate cleanser for Mr. Ray:
In ‘unprecedented’ move, Northern Arizona U. to require FOUR diversity courses to graduate
Tell me Universities only exist to make money.
Oh, calamity. They are watering down the prestigious degree from NAU.
The point of MAD was deterrence as Dr. Pournelle pointed out many times. No one sane contemplates fighting even a “limited” nuclear war.
Unfortunately, people like my Bat Guano neighbors in Florida are running things now. To them, a nuclear war is no different than sticking a corn snake in a bag and placing it over someone’s head down at Gitmo. Psychopaths.
Butto:
Beto O’Rourke raises record amount in race for Texas governor vs. Greg Abbott
I don’t think he can beat Abbott. No matter how much money he says comes from “all over Texas.” We know where the $$ comes from. Go ahead and waste your money, commies.
Rolling blackouts this Summer, no matter how brief, will be the end of Governor Abbott. The widespread perception in the state is that nothing got done about the grid, and Abbott dithered about ending the mask Kabuki last year.
As late as January, Austin PD was still running passive aggressive mask enforcement within the city limits at the big stores near our house. Record murder rate within the city limits in 2021? If it saves just one life …
Masks are mandatory at work again starting Monday. This insanity will never end.
Which state?
We’ll have masks back in Texas if Robert Francis wins the Governor’s Mansion, possibly sooner if the Texas Supreme Court sides with the “Judges” and decides that power to impose mandates lies at the county executive level.
The Good Germans here are prepared for a return to ze good old days, ja, vit armbands -er- masks out of sight but never more than a arm’s length out of reach.
Alabama. Our company is very left leaning.
Redstone Arsenal has reinstated the mask mandate as well.
My 2019 Ram came with a (very tall sidewall) 18” rim donut to match the 20” OEM tires. The original tires were so bad that it was used several times.
I bought 5x new 20” tires, and a 20” steel rim after verifying (by crawling under the vehicle with a tape measure) that a full sized spare would fit.
The new tires are somewhat more aggressive and cost me about 1mpg over the OEM.
I’ve saved the donut, if I do a long trip over unimproved roads i will take it along as a spare to the spare. Two is one and one is none…
Masks have nearly disappeared here. Even in crowded public transport, which is the one place I think they should stay.
We’ll see what happens in the Autumn…
Odd, isn’t it, how “if it saves just one life”, “out of an abundance of caution”, and the precautionary principle are used only in furtherance of government power, to justify laziness, or to encroach on freedoms.
Yeah, you have a dingbat RINO Governor who farts dust.
I’m not going to gripe too much, however, since I got out of a traffic ticket two years ago when traffic court in Mobile didn’t want to discuss why the troopers who stopped my car July 4th weekend, with “the cases” surging, approached the vehicle sans masks, hands on weapons, with the rookie hanging back in my blind spot while his lead talked to us through the passenger side window.
I’ve always believed masks are pointless, but I didn’t pass up the opportunity. May the RINO win reelection.
84F and 73%RH, sunny beautiful day.
I saw a lot more masks at the store this week than in past weeks. The current version is sweeping thru the population. It is mostly a cold, but people are terrified of getting it. Unless they’ve had it. One of my auctioneers has had it 3 times? Maybe 4 now.
I use self check for one, two items. Otherwise the cashier is almost always faster. For one thing, they can use the gun to scan a whole bunch of items in the cart (where the store is set up like that.) I’ll face the UPC codes out in a whole cart worth of stuff at Costco, and they can scan 20-30 items in seconds.
D1 is discovering that when I say “make SURE you have what you need for the weekend’ I don’ t mean ‘count on your memory of what is at the BOL, and then don’t pack spares. I’ll relent later but for now she’s looking at a box of adult tampons and wishing she was dead. 🙂 Bonus points because there were no pads to bring from home because ”We’re out”. Oh, when did you start running low? When did you communicate that? Now she’s wishing I was dead. 🙂
There are some things I leave to my wife to stock, like the girls’ shampoo and acne preps. And feminine protection. Someone didn’t prep.
n
It sounds like Europe will have bigger problems to deal with in Autumn, as the temperatures start to drop and the gas doesn’t flow from Russia.
Maybe a war is the only way out for a lot of those countries’ “leadership”.
We’re all going to die from
MonkeyGaypox.Game over, man, game over.
I’m never leaving the house again.
How many shots/boosters will you need for this one. Another freebie?
I got hungry while binging out S01 of ST:DS9 last night. I thought I’d make a hamburger helper. No defrosted burger and didn’t want to take the time. Mmm Chicken Helper: no canned chicken. Tuna Helper: no tuna. Shucks, I’ll just make some Mac n Cheese. None left. Three of those microwave Macs. So I made all of them, threw in a can of Keystone Turkey I’ve had since the ‘demic started. Some Adobo and Tabasco and I was topped off.
The Smallpox vaccine is 75% effective against Monkeypox, and a treatment regimen exists. A real, gen-u-ine non-experimental vaccine also exists targeting the specific virus. Actual prevention. Imagine!
Also, I believe Monkeypox falls under the quarantine protocols for Smallpox, which require sick people to keep their happy a**es at home by law.
Either way, there isn’t any reason for Monkeypox to get out of hand unless the authorities want it to happen. At this point, however, people aren’t scared silly about contracting the disease like they still are with Covid.
Just stay out of the bath houses and you will be fine.
And spare me the “Bath houses don’t exist anymore” spiel.
Cooler than Houston, but still gonna get hot. They must have had some rain up here, there is water in the birdbath… I found the one T storm cell in Houston yesterday. It was over La Porte. It hammered them just before I got there to do a pickup. Lucky for me, it was leaving just as I got there. I only got gentle rain after being pounded for 15 minutes.
I got home, finished loading up the truck, kicked kid into shape, and headed up, only 2 hours later than I’d hoped.
I’ve got stuff to do today, so we’ll see what actually gets done. I think it will depend on the heat of the day.
I am concerned about your BOL foundation leveling. Does anyone want to do the job or is your foundation in such horrible shape that nobody wants to mess with it due to the potential of making it worse ?
My 125 foot driveway is getting way worse with the drought. I have had three more of my 10 foot long by 12 foot wide panels crack and break in half. This is in addition to the five broken old panels. One of the new panels is my bridge over the ditch. I have been able to confirm that there is no steel in my driveway whatsoever.
I also have a problem with my large office building. I can no longer get the back door open. That back corner is sagging and there is a 50 foot crack in the brick. I need to find somebody to lift the corner of my building. Having a back door is an important fire escape.
@lynn the foundation leveling is straightforward. Getting the hill to stay in place seems to be the problem. The first guys weren’t too concerned but I can’t get them to call me back.
Some of the “retaining” walls are 6-8 ft high, with no structure except stacked block. No water control, no ‘dutchmen’ no anchors, no reinforced soil, nada.
—
in other news, in a half hour of looking from the shore I grabbed 4 huge and one medium fresh water mussels. I put them under my dock where I can get them again. I think I’ll be having some steamed mussels with my cheeseburger tonight. No reason for the coons to get them all.
Water level is LOW. This is the perfect time for me to backfill thedamaged areas of my bulkhead. Too bad I didn’t know that. Next week is camp all week so I can’t come back up either.
It’s always something.
n
@lynn the foundation leveling is straightforward. Getting the hill to stay in place seems to be the problem. The first guys weren’t too concerned but I can’t get them to call me back.
Some of the “retaining” walls are 6-8 ft high, with no structure except stacked block. No water control, no ‘dutchmen’ no anchors, no reinforced soil, nada.
Oh man, that is worse that I thought. When we lived in Carrollton, TX, there were retaining walls all over the place. Several streets had a retaining wall two to three foot high between each house as the bottom of the street was a hundred feet lower than the entrance of the street. After ten years, most of those retaining walls were sagging as they were not actually tied to piers or anything. The homeowners were having to remove the retaining walls, put in 30+ foot deep piers, and build new retaining walls.
I forgot to mention that I had the concrete raising guys out to fix my driveway when I bought this house three years ago. It did not work. The 10 foot by 12 foot panel that was in three pieces is now in eight pieces. The real problem is my bridge panel needs to be raised a foot. In order to do that , we will not have use of the driveway for about a month and have to park on our two lane no shoulder country road. The wife and I can do it but the daughter cannot walk that far. So I am thinking about putting in a U first.
Water level is LOW. This is the perfect time for me to backfill thedamaged areas of my bulkhead. Too bad I didn’t know that. Next week is camp all week so I can’t come back up either.
My office front pond (½ acre) is down by a foot and about three foot deep now. The office back pond (one acre) is down three foot and is about three foot deep now. The whistling duck family with nine half grown babies is walking over the cracked mud into the pond now. They still love it even though the deer and all the birds in Fort Bend County are stopping by for a drink.
xkcd: Minkowski Space
https://xkcd.com/2646/
I see why I have not read of Minkowski Space in my science fiction books.
Explained at:
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2646:_Minkowski_Space
I mentioned my ThermoPro thermometer here a while ago, and some were interested. Here is a sale:
https://buythermopro.com/flash-sale/?gclid=CjwKCAjww8mWBhABEiwAl6-2RURbe6RVOD6cD9A4oEi28GjCaAoZMDypRJvImmxCnJoUR2rb9xQC0xoCujsQAvD_BwE
“Now until July 18”, which means through Sunday? Hurry!!
I do think they have some good products, in spite of the one I have. To be fair, my TP-63A is good, just not as convenient as a wired unit that runs on 120VAC. Remember, I hate battery powered stuff, and avoid when it makes sense. 😉
It sounds like Europe will have bigger problems to deal with in Autumn, as the temperatures start to drop and the gas doesn’t flow from Russia.
Maybe a war is the only way out for a lot of those countries’ “leadership”.
Germany just leased two ships with LNG tanks and LNG vaporization systems. The ships are the size of USA aircraft carriers and hold a BCF (billion ft3) of natural gas each. They are hoping to get these ships to tide them over through the winter.
The ships cost eight billion euros each ! That does not include the LNG. The lease was three billion euros.
https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/germany-releases-e3bn-to-acquire-floating-lng-terminals/
Even at parity with the dollar, that’s a lot of euros.
n
No drought here. Bonus: all the dry lakes are at normal levels. 😉
You are either a hard taskmaster or a good teacher. I can’t decide.
I can say that whenever I learned something the hard way I tended to remember it. OK, you did say you will relent later. Hopefully enough time for the idea to sink in.
“Even at parity with the dollar, that’s a lot of euros.”
And Germany alone probably needs about ten of the LNG tank / vaporization facilities. Maybe twenty. I am SWAGing here.
I would think that this comes under the failure to prepare for the edge case. Instead, they put all of their preparation into the Russians.
“NY Times FINALLY Admits a Year After Gateway Pundit that the Experimental COVID Vaccine May Affect Menstruation”
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/07/ny-times-finally-admits-year-gateway-pundit-experimental-covid-vaccine-may-affect-menstruation/
Not good. What else does the Koof vaacine do to us ?
Regarding spare tires, I think I have stated this before. A friend had a new Toyota minivan with run-flat tires and no spare. He was driving in the isolated northern parts of Nevada when he had a problem. He limped in (run-flats are limited in speed) to a rural tire shop, thanking his luck. He was told the tire couldn’t be repaired, and a replacement run-flat had to be ordered for next day delivery. He spent the night, plus a lot of money for a new tire, and was on his way.
He later bought a full size spare. There was no place for a spare in that car, so he jerry rigged a tiedown inside the rear of the passenger compartment. Made a conversation piece for passengers. Did I mention he had been a farmer? I never saw that installation, but could imagine, having seen what some farmers do to their equipment.
Get used to no spares. They are an endangered species, and so are the places to store them. Even donuts will disappear to save weight and improve EPA gas mileage, which is heavily biased to stop and go for the city rating. If I drove long distances regularly, I would get a full service spare and figure how to carry it safely.
Safely? My dad was a body designer for the auto industry. He told stories of how spares sometimes were not secured in the kickup (over the rear axle, a popular place for spares in sedans) of the trunk of cars. In even a minor accident, they would go right through the rear seatback and sometimes kill people. Word for the wise.
I had a spare tire, full size, when I drove through Superior Dry Lake north of Opal Mtn.
>> And spare me the “Bath houses don’t exist anymore” spiel.
So what, next you’re gonna tell me that all those Asian massage places don’t only give massages?
I’ve always made sure the spare in the trunk was bolted down. It just made sense.
I bought three remotes for my TV. They sent one. I’ll see how that goes.
Cheapo remotes and why not? The original remotes run about $40 each and fail just like the one that came with the TV. The silicone or whatever buttons get oily and that seems to insulate the little carbon looking things from making contact. Actually, the only reason to have the Original Remote is because the buttons light up and it’s some kind of universal remote… but the codes don’t work a damn thing I have and I’m not going to sit and program each button.
The pulse/oxymeter Lynn linked to arrived today. A day early. Neat gizmo. Nice packaging…. As in a glossy cardstock little box with some foam padding VS in a zip bag in a padded envelope. Nice product presentation.
Different fingers read differently. Fingernail up or down has a effect. The little finger on one hand says 98 palm down but 100 palm up. Another finger says 96 either way. All close enough I suppose. I’m guessing it varies with temperature. My hands and feet are cold at the moment. Mr. Heat Pump is kicking it with the new fan capacitors.
>> You are either a hard taskmaster or a good teacher. I can’t decide.
I have two sons but from talking to friends it seems raising daughters is a bit more of a challenge.
One father shared this as his daughter was in her teens. “When you have a son you only have to worry about one p***s, but with a daughter you have to worry about all of them.”
Uuuuuggggghhhhh…
>> Bonus points because there were no pads to bring from home because ”We’re out”. Oh, when did you start running low? When did you communicate that?
https://youtu.be/6oMdKb0KqcI
“SOS: Spaceship Titan! (Perry Rhodan #34)” by Kurt Brand, translated by Wendayne Ackerman
https://www.amazon.com/SOS-spaceship-Titan-Perry-Rhodan/dp/B0006XDOFO?tag=ttgnet-20/
Book number thirty-four of a series of one hundred and twenty-six space opera books in English. The original German books, actually pamphlets, number in the thousands. The English books started with two translated German stories per book and transitioned to one story per book with the sixth book. The German books were written from 1961 to present time, having sold two billion copies and even recently been rebooted again. I read the well printed and well bound book published by Ace in 1973 that I had to be very careful with due to age. I bought an almost complete box of Perry Rhodans a decade or two ago on ebay that I am finally getting to since I lost my original Perry Rhodans in The Great Flood of 1989. In fact, I now own book #1 to book #103, plus the Atlan books.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Rhodan
BTW, this is actually book number 42 of the German Pamphlets. There is a very good explanation of the plot in German on this website of all of the PR books. There is automatic Google translation available for English, Spanish, Dutch, Japanese, French, and Portuguese.
https://www.perrypedia.de/wiki/Raumschiff_TITAN_funkt_SOS
In this alternate universe, USSF Major Perry Rhodan and his three fellow astronauts blasted off in a three stage rocket to the Moon in 1971. The first stage of the rocket was chemical, the second and third stages were nuclear. After crashing on the Moon due to a strange radio interference, they discover a massive crashed alien spaceship with an aged male scientist (Khrest), a female commander (Thora), and a crew of 500. It has been over ten years since then and the New Power has flourished with millions of people and many spaceships headquartered in the Gobi desert, the city of Terrania.
Thora has directed the Titan to wait at a specific planet for their hyperspace translation suppressor to be installed after the Ganymede brings one out from Earth. Otherwise the huge Arkonide positronic brain can find out where Earth is at. The planet is supposedly a dead planet but there are people and other creatures there also. And a huge spaceship graveyard.
One has to remember that this book was written in German in 1962 and translated to English in 1973. Many items that came about in the 1970s and beyond such as cell phones are not reflected in the book. However, commercial aircraft commonly traveling at Mach 3 are not available to the public as talked about in the book. Niels Bohr’s saying “Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future” comes to mind.
Two observations:
1. The publisher should have put two to four of the translated stories in each book. Having two stories in the first five books worked out well. Just having one story in the book is too short and would never allow the translated books to catch up to the German originals.
2. Anyone liking Perry Rhodan and wanting a more up to date story should read the totally awesome “Mutineer’s Moon” Dahak series of three books by David Weber.
https://www.amazon.com/Mutineers-Moon-Dahak-David-Weber/dp/0671720856?tag=ttgnet-20/
My rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 5 out of 5 stars (2 reviews)
I’ve posted before about my father-in-law’s sex tape, which takes place in the back room of one of those massage places in Florida, the kind Robert Kraft liked to frequent.
I may have even posted a link to the “therapist’s” web site at some point, but I’ll refrain from doing that moving forward. She’s still in business – I just checked. No sense in promoting further deterioration of the community.
I’m going to pull a muscle so that I’ll have a reason to go to the local massage parlor.
Uuuuuggggghhhhh…
Boys just seem to be able to just find trouble or trouble finds them. Girls are hormonal and if you say the wrong word, watch out.
I had a spare tank in my 1982 VW Rabbit Diesel. It went where the full size spare tire went. So the spare tire lived in the “trunk”. The original tank was 11 gallons, the spare tank was 10 gallons. I drove 35 miles one way to work back then and was concerned about running out of diesel in west Texas. I ran out of diesel once and found out that the diesel pump was self priming. Me and the guy riding with me pushed the car about a ¼ mile to the diesel truck stop in Roscoe, TX, I filled her up, and she started up after 10 or 15 seconds of cranking. He never asked for another ride home with me.
No, you don’t have to pull a muscle. They pull your muscle for you. Or flog the mule.
@Lynn
When you need it, you need it.
I’ve been retro-fitting full-sized spares into vehicles for more than 30 years. If the donut is in a well, chances are that a full-size tire and wheel will fit diameter-wise, but stick up an extra inche or two.
I also carry a 24″ breaker bar with an impact socket to fit the lug nuts, a hydraulic jack, two chunks of 4×4 for wheel chocks, a 1’x2′ piece of OSB to go under the jack on a soft shoulder, and a new in package 6’x8′ tarp.
Oh, yeah, and FLASHLIGHTS
https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/07/german-climate-militants-glue-themselves-to-berlin-autobahns-cause-massive-traffic-jams/
DROP THE BLADE ON THE SNOWPLOW AND SCRAPE THEM OFF.
Caffeine Activates the Colon and the Intestines
https://henryshouseofcoffee.com/blogs/blog/why-does-coffee-make-you-poop
Caffeine activates both ends. Obviously a mystery that needs millions of dollars in research money to chai-sucking pointy-haired liberal nitwits who will generate bad data to confirm their a priori assumption that carbon dioxide is produced and ozone is destroyed and something must be done immediately to prevent the dirt people from destroying the earth.
Working on prepper guide: How to Cook Liberals and Extend Your Supplies
Please send recipes. No lentils.
“death disks”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRAPK5R_u5k
Meh, the cooking aspect should be no problem. Season and cook them like pork.
The bigger problem is whether it’s safe to eat someone who’s gotten the clot shot, any variety. I’ve asked several times in several places and not gotten an answer.
@SteveF
Remember the low-temp requirements for transport and storage of mRNA vaccines? nucleic acids degrade at low temperatures.
Cooked meat should not be a problem.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1328878/
That may explain the cannibal fondness for stew.
The Johnson & Johnson shot is adenovirus based, the same tech used to vaccinate domesticated animals against rabies.
People gluing their hands to the pavements; I’d just rip them off, and leave the skin there. Stupidity is SUPPOSED to hurt.
I have a recipe for seagull, which should work as well for “long pig”.
Take a seagull, and a rock about the same size. Drop both into a pot, and boil them until you can stick a fork into the rock. Then throw away the seagull and eat the rock.
very similar to the recipe for lutefisk, except in the end you eat the clean pine board.
Alcohol is never good for people under 40, global study finds
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jul/14/alcohol-is-never-good-for-people-under-40-global-study-finds
Stupid wanker. Make that public policy and publish his bleedin’ address.
Cooked some freshwater mussels for dinner. They weren’t bad, but not tasty like saltwater. I did only boil them and dip in salted butter. I ended up only eating the one. The other 2 (they were giant) will go in the crawdad trap tonight. Next time I’ll go for some smaller ones.
Headed down to the lake for a fire and some shortwave listening.
n
https://thehardtimes.net/culture/backyard-wrestler-sustains-lifelong-injuries-for-17-youtube-views/
Without alcohol women would not find this guy attractive and he would become a hopeless drug addict or inept attempted mass shooter.
“Climate Alarmism Not (Manchin feels the breeze of energy freedom)”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/07/16/climate-alarmism-not-manchin-feels-the-breeze-of-energy-freedom/
“The climate crusade is fueled by deficit spending both in removing wind and solar and EVs from the tax code and by limitless spending by the U.S. Department of Energy. So it was extremely positive when Senator Joe Manchin III (D-WV), head of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, renounced his support for the climate provisions of Build Back Better legislation under debate. A $555 billion global warming subsidy bill was in the works, throwing good money after bad.”
And a bunch of ranting and raving.
You know, if Manchin does not have security, he needs to get some.
>>https://thehardtimes.net/culture/backyard-wrestler-sustains-lifelong-injuries-for-17-youtube-views/
Without alcohol women would not find this guy attractive and he would become a hopeless drug addict or inept attempted mass shooter.
Just add him to the pot with the sesgull.
The bands weren’t booming, but there was some DX… and a nice fire in the pit.
Saw one shooting star…
n
Now to the land of Nod.
n