The water is warmer than the air… and the air got pretty hot. I think we were well into the 90s, but I was working on the sprinklers during the hottest part of the day and didn’t check. Nice breeze though. Today should be the same.
I got some stuff done. I found a bunch of sprinkler heads, a couple of valves, and some broken pipes. I unloaded the truck and got both freezers going. Both had very minor dents on a bottom corner, and both work fine so far.
Today I’ve got a couple of things I’d really like to get done. I’ve got a handrail for the dock steps to install. I’ve got a toilet tank flush valve to fit/alter/install as it runs for a few seconds every hour. I’ve got to check my crawdad traps. I checked them about 2 hours after putting them in, and one had a fish… no bugs though.
The lake mussels are edible if not super tasty.
Brats are better.
Some other small things to do, then head back to Houston in the evening.
Wife and D2 are having fun and getting a workout learning to sail.
Saw one shooting star last night. Moon is coming up very late so we had a nice dark sky. Shortwave wasn’t booming in, but there were a lot of stations on the air.
Had a nice chat with a neighbor. Unfortunately a young adult broke his neck diving off the HOA dock next to my property the day after we were up here last time. EMS response is two of the neighbors until the red bus can get here. It took 25 minutes. By then my neighbors had him out of the water, on a backboard, and stable. Not a neighborhood kid. Tresspassing in fact, as the dock and boat ramp are clearly marked for residents only.
It does demonstrate that we’re pretty far from help if you need more than our Volunteer Fire Department and one local nurse can do. I told her that if I’m here there is an AED in my truck and a bleeding control kit. I’ve got to build another trauma bag for up here though. That just moved up the list. We missed the accident by one day.
Stack some stuff. Then stack some more stuff. Then start making more stacks in different places.
nick
“Unfortunately a young adult broke his neck diving off the HOA dock next to my property the day after we were up here last time.”
I pray the young man heals and learns from the experience. Permanent injury is a big price to pay for a relatively minor bit of stupidity.
As heat and low rainfall lower water levels, I’m afraid we’re going to have more such accidents.
77 F here at the homestead in Fort Bend County. And almost clear as a bell, no rain forecast today.
Had a church group meeting last night at the home of a friend, good times. One of my friends brought a Honeybaked Ham. Awesome as usual, I had forgotten that we had one of their stores in Sugar Land. My wife made a large banana cake with cream cheese icing, i brought one third of it home. I may have to finish that awesomeness off myself.
I broke my upper back while diving into shallow water. One of those “Hey Bubba” events that went horribly wrong. Back in early 1974, Canyon Lake in Texas. Really hurt. Crawled out while my friends were laughing not realizing what had happened.
Ambulance trip to New Braunfels where I was stabilized. Then a long ambulance ride to Wilford Hall on Lackland AFB. A dismal facility that was used as a model facility for the VA facilities. A really horrible facility. Overcrowded, ancient machines, lack of staff, staff that did not care, food that sucked and arrived cold, beds that were uncomfortable. A model VA facility only run by the USAF.
Stuffed in a room with seven other injured people, such room only designed for four people. Constant activity and I was under strict orders to not get out of bed. The urinal was made out of top grade bell, as in ringing, material. Every time I tried to pee it was like a massive alarm clock being sounded. Followed by comments from others. Instant bladder seizure.
It happened on a Saturday. Come Monday about noon I finally saw a doctor. Yep, two full days, 48 hours, before ever seeing a doctor. I begged the doctor to let me go back to the barracks. He at first declined but I really wanted out of that place. He finally relented when I said my friends would bring me food and help me with things. I was placed in a neck and shoulder brace that was clamped around my head. Kept that thing on for almost two weeks.
I was given two options. Surgery to fuse the vertebrae and it was a risky surgery, or just leave the injury alone and it would fuse on its own. I chose the second option.
I was darn lucky I was not paralyzed. Three vertebrae were crushed shortening my height by about ¾ of an inch. Since the injury did not affect my job I was allowed to stay in the USAF. I was also lucky the bottom of the lake was sand and not rocks.
To this day it still bothers me, some worse than others. Manageable. Gets me disability from the VA, which I was lied about when I left the service costing me 20 years of benefits. The VA is not your friend
Never dive off anything without verifying the depth of the water personally. My father in law claimed to have broken his back diving in Chesappeake Bay when he was a private in the Army.
That’s still concerning because he felt comfortable accessing the property.
That reminds me – I’ll have to look at my father-in-law’s estate papers to see where he bought retirement land in that part of Texas along with several of his friends.
One of the group was the defendant in one of the most heinous cases of child molestation in Orlando history, barred from entering Orange County in Florida for life.
Uuuuuggggghhhhh x 5.
A Hellish experience:
My extended family has been thrown into a hellish nightmare. My nephew and his wife, who live in Boston, just had their two sons taken from them in the middle of the night by CPS.
You are armed, right? No fcukers would ever take one of my kids without a fight. That at least puts it in the news.
We verified the depth. Plenty of water. The stunt went wrong, the distance to the deep water was not reached resulting in encountering the shallow water. That and the inability of me to correct my entry to avoid my head.
Uh:
Transgender woman who impregnated 2 inmates removed from N.J.’s female prison
Wait until this happens in our military. Do both get maternity leave like Buttplug?
July 17: The Coolest Day of the Year
Thank you, Mr. Carrier!
88F, 45%RH, mostly sunny. We did have some scattered showers move thru this morning but not enough to even get pavement wet.
I’m a bit stiff and sore, but less than I expected. Just being here is a workout with the hill, and I must be getting in better shape. I get lots of steps in, and that seems to be the modern substitute for exercise. 🙂
—-
re: strangers using the HOA boat ramp, it’s possible he was a friend of a friend to one of the kids who grew up in the area, neighbor thought so. The ramp isn’t secret, and you can see it from the lake side so in the past it has been an issue that people didn’t want to wait for the public ramp and used ours. THere is a gate which is supposed to be locked with a code and chain, but usually isn’t because it’s easier for everyone. That may change.
I’m sure there will be a lawsuit. Judges up here are unlikely to favor tresspassers.
I hope the HOA has the insurance paid up.
n
It’s a sign of how easy life is, that getting off her ass and walking around a bit is viewed as a stretch goal.
I was talking with an electrician a week ago about grounding and bonding in a sub panel. Not supposed to tie ground and neutral together in a sub panel. Checked my panel in the mower shed and I did it correctly, neutral and ground on separate buss bars. I never did any google searches or otherwise looked up grounding buss bars.
Today I get an email from Amazon of something I might be interested in purchasing. A buss bar for ground wires. That means my phone was listening (an iPhone) and sent that information to Amazon and who know what else. I have Amazon on my iPhone and I suspect that is the culprit that was listening. I have denied Amazon permission to use the microphone, but knowing Amazon I would not be surprised if their app is ignoring that setting or somehow bypassing that setting.
Cretins. Amazon, Google, they are just flat out evil in the amount of data they collect without permission.
The culprit is most likely whatever devices the electrician was carrying.
There is no love lost between Amazon and Apple. As long as the walled garden continues, apps running on the iPhone have to get past Apple’s detailed analysis before going live in the app store, and Apple is going to pour extra scrutiny on Amazon since Lab126, Bezos R&D organization, regularly poaches Apple employees, going as far to set up a recruiting desk in an office tower within visible range of One Infinite Loop shortly after Steve Jobs died.
All bets are off the moment the courts force Apple to open iOS to “side loading” binaries. Facecrack was even caught experimenting with establishing a VPN back to the mothership when they offered side loaded beta copies of their iOS app under the Enterprise developer license, all Internet traffic routed down the tunnel.
It’s not just the Zon and the googles that are collecting and sharing information. Just about every web site (except this one) you go to is collecting your search/reading views, and can (might) use that browsing to send you marketing information.
I suspect that you used or searched for the terms somewhere else (not just talking about it). And that ‘somewhere else’ shared data with Zon, who sent you the info.
Fact of life. Browsing shows your interests. Advertisers use and share that information.
You would have to go full-on ‘off-grid’ to get away from that. And that is not a reasonable thing to do.
or hide your true searching in a sea of false misdirection.
I price check auction items constantly so my “recommended based on your search history” is crazycakes both on ebay and amazon.
Life insurance companies used to use “lifestyle” information when underwriting. Stuff like magazine subs, especially for risky hobbies, professional associations, etc. They were sued and stopped discriminating against gays (they were using stuff like sharing an address with an unrelated male, naming an unrelated male on a life insurance policy, working in entertainment or FOODSERVICE to flag for homosexuality, and subsequently risk for aids…) I wrote a research paper about it.
I can’t even imagine how detailed a report they could generate now if they wanted to.
Flip side, how do you create a false ID without all the digital spoor of modern life? A .gov or even a good private investigator would know almost instantly once they looked. We’ve had some links here before about some companies that provide the ID maintanence services for the .gov fake IDs. It’s a full time job.
Throwing up your hands and saying “get used to it” is a bit like laying back and thinking of england. There are ways to minimize it and you should try.
n
Exactly! All of my web searches for “how many marbles can you safely put in your nose” and “is peeing on your HOA president’s car a felony” are misdirection, nothing else.
Our HOA President in Florida would steal water any way he could.
Urine? He wasn’t picky. Right from the source, it was sterile.
>> The VA is not your friend
Is there anyone from the gooberment that’s our friend?
“I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
I have not personally verified, but members of the sf community (David Weber, Brad Togerson) are discussing the death this morning of Eric Flint.
“Iconic Houston hot dog restaurant’s last Inner Loop location quietly closes”
https://houston.culturemap.com/news/restaurants-bars/07-11-22-james-coney-island-jci-grill-shepherd-location-closed-shuttered/
Dadgum, that is what is happening to the James Coney Islands here in the Houston area ! Hopefully they will reopen, even in their smaller footprints.
re: devices listening
Last week I was told an incidental story about a friend of a friend that is a Breyer horse collector, and had a successful first experience with an online auction.
An Apple iPhone and iPad were in the office connected to my wifi. No other internet connections.
Two days later I noticed an internet ad for Breyer horses. And then another.
I have never seen one before, and yes, I would have noticed and wondered WTH caused such to pop up directed my way.
Caspers Company, the big McDonalds franchisee in Tampa sold all of its Mickey D’s locations back to the parent company.
Caspers was one of the original franchisees, the deal cut by Ray Kroc himself.
Sam’s Club run today. The meat section was looking fairly normal …. as long as you didnt see the new price tags.
Chicken thighs $1.39, a 40% markup from last time I bought a tray … two weeks … ? … ago.
Briskets which used to go for ~ $50 were $65+.
Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup up well over $1/can. I used to buy 12 for $9.99.
“Telemundo Reporter Confirms Woman’s Domestic Relationship in Ohio Child Rape Case – Mother is Pregnant by Her Child’s Rapist! (VIDEO)”
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/07/telemundo-reporter-confirms-womans-domestic-relationship-ohio-child-rape-case-mother-pregnant-childs-rapist-video/
Getting crazier by the day.
H-Mart run too today. Rice $44 per 25 lb bag.
The same size/brand was $37 when I topped off the bins in May.
Almost all of the Asians in the store had masks on today, and APD was just inside the door, sitting on a stool watching the crowd just like in the early days of the pandemic.
I walked in sans mask but didn’t get stopped … for now. The store is just inside the city limits of Austin proper but actually located within Williamson County. Even if Travis County reimposes masks, our worthless RINO “Judge”, the Right Reverend Bill Gravell, has been exposed as a hypocrite so many times now that he won’t reimpose a mandate and risk losing reelection in November.
I also saw a Solar Winds developer swag T-shirt on an Indian girl pushing a cart in front of me walking towards checkout. Someone still buys that cr*p?
And Solar Winds has developers in Austin?
What kind of rice?
I paid $35/50# for jasmine rice at Sam’s when it came back after a two-month absence. Up from $28 earlier in the year. it’s gone up another buck since.
I am by nature a bit private by nature, but probably only a little compared to some here. I have also been interested in various search techniques ever since I started playing with DOS command line searches of the contents of ASCII files. I never did any rigorous learning, but just had fun.
One day, I decided to do a Google search for some things I thought I had never searched for before, using my everyday browser, Firefox, with minimal ad suppression. Sure enough, those items started showing up in advertising on sites I frequent daily, such as weather sites. No surprise. Then, I made up some unusual terms and did Google searches using a Private tab, or whatever it is called in FF. These were not added to my weather sites, and did not appear in my Google search history. This should be expected behavior. Of course, my ISP keeps those searches.
I am not sure that this proves anything, and it was a few years ago, before some of the more egregious browser spying started. I do know that when I started using the Brave browser on the same phone about four years ago, it suppressed almost all ads, so using a private tab was a no-test. Still, I have often (but not always) used a Private tab in FF and now Chrome when searching for stuff I simply don’t want remembered. It seems to keep my search history, especially Google, less cluttered. I do like the Google search history, because I no longer tend to bookmark sites, and just typing some fragment usually brings up what I searched for a while back. Very convenient.
I have always said that I will never put something on any networked device that I would not want to be public knowledge. I try to stick to that, but it can be difficult. The biggest area for potential compromise is business transactions, where lots of entities are just open sieves regarding security. The legal profession is especially bad in this regard. I have had folks send me private information in open email. When I scolded them, they told me that there is a standard disclaimer in every email that protects the information. NO!!! They have no clue. They don’t understand that once the horse is out of the barn it can never be returned.
That is why I have no sympathy for lawyers who have their phones compromised by law enforcement, and then complain it is the LEOs’ fault. No, that information should never been put on something as easily compromised as a cell phone. I don’t care how secure a phone is, that is all out the window when the XXX agency can force its owner to give them access.
>>“Telemundo Reporter Confirms Woman’s Domestic Relationship in Ohio Child Rape Case – Mother is Pregnant by Her Child’s Rapist! (VIDEO)” <<
I see a potential sitcom developing here. Todo en la Familia ?
*****
I’m very happy with AdGuard.
https://adguard.com/en/products.html
*****
CLASSIC BRITISH COMEDY (Ealing Studios, et al.)
https://www.bitchute.com/playlist/TL65ddqd3ppr/
Friend of mine purchased a used computer. Probably 20 years ago. I did a quick scan of the hard drive and found out the computer used to belong to a lawyer. Found legal documents and tax returns. I told my friend to contact the people whose documents were on the PC and explain how their lawyer released their private information. He should suggest to the clients to file suit against the lawyer.
My friend instead contacted the lawyer and told the lawyer what happened. The lawyer had traded in the PC under the assurance the data would be wiped. My friend told the lawyer that he would destroy the information.
I would not have been so kind.
I wonder what the standard of care was 20 years ago. The lawyer selling the computer probably did not have the expertise to wipe the drive, so he’d have had to rely on a technical specialist to do it. Was there any professional expectation that he would take the computer to a bonded or certified shop for destruction or preparation for resale?
“S&P: Chronic Copper Shortages will “Short Circuit” Net Zero 2050”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/07/17/sp-chronic-copper-shortages-have-killed-net-zero-2050/
“Copper is so central to transitioning from fossil fuels to sustainable energy, says a report from S&P Global, that worldwide demand is likely to double by 2035 from 25 million metric tons to 50; no matter the scenario, S&P said it’s unlikely the world will be able to meet it.
“The record-high level of demand would be sustained and continue to grow to 53 million metric tons in 2050 – more than all the copper consumed in the world between 1900 and 2021,” S&P Global said.”
One gets the feeling that not a single engineer or accountant has taken a look at the 25% BEV, 50% BEV, or 100% BEV worlds from a supply and production viewpoint. BEV = 100% battery electric vehicle, no ICE (internal combustion engine).
<rant>
Why hasn’t AI reached the point where it can remove the ‘I don’t know’ answers from under Amazon.com’s product review Have a question? section?
</rant>
Farts contribute nothing, and only smell like roses to the issuer.
They’ve done the math. A whole lot fewer people will privately own vehicles. That’s the goal.
MaaS. Mobility as a Service.
>>Was there any professional expectation that he would take the computer to a bonded or certified shop for destruction or preparation for resale? <<
In 2002 when I had my computer shop I served a number of attorneys, law firms and judges. Even back then, a reasonable man would have taken steps to secure contents of a discarded drive. All 500 Mbytes, lol.
I usually did so by disassembly and saving the magnets, but occasionally I’d take them to the Exploratorium and run them through the giant magnets they had. 😉
Excellent point. I used to securely overwrite a few people’s hard drives, with the caveat that the drive would not withstand forensic scrutiny. For that, I would offer to physically destroy the drive. No takers. Of course, drives were more expensive in those days. No drive I have ever used has escaped my custody intact. I learned from some of the best.
And lest anyone think I have no respect for attorneys, that is dead wrong. I have known some who were excellent. Not one had any real computer expertise, and I didn’t expect that. They probably knew how to find experts. Life is a gamble.
One last point. Data security is a many-faceted subject. All it takes is one slip, as evidenced by numerous famous cases. I truly wish there was some sort of better way, but by definition there isn’t. I have learned that the biggest mistake is the assumption that one knows enough. Be humble, and learn. Better, be very careful. Yeah, that is still not enough.
Work gets in the way of <> security.
>>I have learned that the biggest mistake is the assumption that one knows enough. Be humble, and learn. <<
Are we talking doctors, lawyers, or ourselves? <grin>
Everyone accuses doctors of having big egos, but the problem is that their egos are not big enough to say “I don’t know.”
So they puff up their ego by quoting
consensual science, a social convention which saves face.
Which is more important: saving face or saving the patient?
All. <Smirk>
+1000
>> Why hasn’t AI reached the point where it can remove the ‘I don’t know’ answers from under Amazon.com’s product review Have a question? section?
Maybe Jeff finds them amusing.
@JimB
“No drive I have ever used has escaped my custody intact. I learned from some of the best.”
Exactly.
I prefer to slag them, or at least cook them on a bed of hot coals to well above the point where themagnetic coating on the disks is so thoroughly distorted that it would take a major effort at t anational lab to even attempt reading data. Note that this is well below the Curie point.
Some years ago there was a presentation at one of the conferences one a project that tried to develop protocols for destroying hard drives within 60 seconds of getting a door knock by a “three-letter agency”. They were not very successful. I highly suspect that SSDs are more amenable to the thermal, chemical, or explosive methods that were tried.
The takeaway from that project is really this: “Don’t put your super-secret spy data on storage that is inside the CPU case”
I think the real problem with computer/data security is the balancing act between “secure enough to be safe” and “accessible enough to be useful”.
When I was working in IT, I tended to err towards the former, but frequently came into conflict with those that erred towards the latter. What do you do when one of the board members insists that he MUST be able to access his brokerage account on his work Blackberry through the work firewall, because he doesn’t want to use his personal Blackberry for anything finance related? Punch the most tightly restricted, selective hole in the firewall you can that lets him do what he wants, and hope that a specific vulnerability for that port and traffic combination doesn’t come along, amirite?
“What do you do when one of the board members insists that he MUST be able to access his brokerage account on his work Blackberry through the work firewall, because he doesn’t want to use his personal Blackberry for anything finance related?”
If you’re the senior person making the decision, if and only if the other board members sign off on it, after you ask senior counsel for opinion that signing off on it does not bork their insurance coverage for certain events or violate their fiduciary duties.
Then go find another job, and on the way out when they ask you to re-sign your CDA, tell them to shove it, break it off, and rotate it.
ADDED:
Yeah, if more people in that position were pricks, we wouldn’t have millions of people lose information in a data breach and get fifty cents each and some kind of free data monitoring for a year.
Liberalism is a disease
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/07/the-victim-speaks.php
that is willingly embraced by the infected. There is no excuse for contracting it, keeping it, or spreading it.
Eric Flint remembered:
https://usdaynews.com/celebrities/celebrity-death/eric-flint-death/
Eric Flint remembered:
https://usdaynews.com/celebrities/celebrity-death/eric-flint-death/
I have read about ten of his books, mostly the 1632 series. He was an excellent book writer.
“Sniping In Ukraine”
https://www.americanrifleman.org/content/sniping-in-ukraine/
“The Russian invasion of Ukraine has seen a proliferation of snipers—equipped with a variety of rifles—on both sides. Here, one of the world’s foremost authorities on the subject of military sniping takes a look at the combatants, along with their arms and ammunition.”
Wow, sounds like keep your head down at all times.
My position was ‘de-funded’ less than 90 days later, so I had to do just that. That was my last official IT job, although I’ve gotten tapped for IT related issues in several other jobs since then.
Jasmine. Three Ladies brand.
Our late host and I used to debate this point, but we have experienced bug problems with the warehouse club rice.
“Trudeau’s Nitrogen Policy will Decimate Canadian Farming”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/07/11/trudeaus-nitrogen-policy-will-decimate-canadian-farming/
““However, nitrous oxide emissions, particularly those associated with synthetic nitrogen fertilizer use have also grown significantly. That is why the Government of Canada has set the national fertilizer emissions reduction target, which is part of the commitment to reduce total GHG emissions in Canada by 40-45% by 2030….””
“This is a tacit admission that any attempt to lower admissions by reducing nitrogen fertilizer will consequently lower crop yields over the next decade, hurting the Agriculture sector and, more importantly, hurting farmers.”
“On April 1 — the same day he gave himself a raise — Trudeau decided to go ahead and jack up the carbon tax by an additional 25%, consequently increasing the price of practically everything.”
Oh Canada !
So once again, the thing that the left says never happens happened…
n
Home safe and sound. Used more gas than I’m used to. I had filled up at Mobil at $3.88 which was 20-40c lower than anyplace else. I wonder if it had more alcohol, to lower the price…
I didn’t notice any signs, and it wasn’t E85 by mistake.
Still, poor mileage.
Traffic was light. It’s cooler here with the sunset, at 85F now. I’m beat.
n
@Greg Norton
I’ve never had a problem with the Makers Mark Jasmine Rice, but a lot depends on transit andstorage before and after purchase
Southwest flight attendant awarded $5M after firing over abortion stance
https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/southwest-flight-attendant-awarded-5m-after-firing-over-abortion-stance?dicbo=v2-7b23575a3606c97d7d870be1609bc615
Be interesting to follow this.
Well shoot, I just discovered that my driveway is hosed. My driveway is thirty panels up to 10 foot long by 12 foot wide. Four cars wide at the garage, 125 feet long with a bridge at the street. No steel whatsoever, just concrete panels poured on the ground.
The drought has exposed that ants have totally hollowed out under the panels. There are spaces under the panels up to six inches deep. The panels are cracking and rotating. From some of the panels to the next panel is up to a three inch rise.
I am filling the hollow spaces under driveway with water right now to see what happens. I would like to see the panels settle back into their places. I don’t think that things can get worse.
I was quoted $1,250 per panel two years ago. I suspect the cost is higher now.
That is so not cool. They ended Bosch: Legacy – Season 1 on a cliffhanger. I am guessing that season 2 will be out in 2023 ?
I would like to see a crossover between Amazon’s Bosch and Netflix’s The Lincoln Lawyer that is not a flashback. I guess that is not going to happen.
>> I didn’t notice any signs, and it wasn’t E85 by mistake.
What, you want a big neon sign “Lousy Gas But It’s Cheaper!”
🙂
>> That is so not cool. They ended Bosch: Legacy – Season 1 on a cliffhanger. I am guessing that season 2 will be out in 2023 ?
Season 2 has been confirmed but no release date announced yet.
Btw, have you seen Yellowstone? Think Succession set on a cattle ranch. Recommended.
Hot indeed, in certain areas. London is expecting 39C today, which is a record. Not so bad here – we’ve been in the mid- to upper-20s, sometimes hitting 30C. The advantage of altitude. Going down to the valley is an immediate increase of 5-6 degrees.
I’m working in the garden about 2 hours each morning. Making decent progress on the next terrace (dry stone wall) for the veggie garden. Since the rocks were delivered last week, I should make pretty rapid progress. Might be done by the end of next week, though a lot depends on the weather holding dry.
Outside of the forests, everything has gone brown here. We’ve had one decent rainfall in the past two months or so. Not totally unheard of, but still a long dry spell. We can expect water restrictions to kick in any time now. A bit of rain would definitely be welcome…
Say what? No warrant? They don’t get into the house. They come with the police, well, the police also need a warrant.
Something about this story doesn’t really add up. If this really happened as described, the family needs to lawyer up yesterday.
That sucks. Steel is a different issue – it might not be necessary, if the road had a foundation. But it sounds like whoever poured the driveway left out the necessary foundation of crushed rock, which would have prevented ants from carrying off all the dirt.
I’ve been quoted $26 per square foot. for finished driveway concrete. I need 7500 sq ft. Not happening -0 I don’t have $195,000.