Slightly less hot today, but clearing with less chance of rain.
Kids start a full day of normal classes today.
After the late start yesterday, I got some stuff picked up. Went by the Habitat reStore looking for stuff for the BOL. The southside store used to have a great selection of doors, but they were pretty much all gone. Their tile selection was meager too, and it used to be extensive. Most of what they had appeared to be from a closed Ace Hardware. The whole reStore system is dependent on donations, and it looked a bit sparse the last couple of visits. Could be there is less slack in the system, could be people are being more careful so they don’t have excess to dispose of, or it could be people are buying the store out…
The thrift stores are looking a bit sparse too. And I noticed a couple of closed strip joints, and in my neighborhood, a closed pawn shop. I think things are probably worse than they look economically. The closed auto dealerships and especially the little used car lots are another bad sign. Even one of the big Ford dealers is still spreading cars and trucks out to fill the lot.
Today I’ve got fence to fix at the rent house, and a few more plumbing items to find for the BOL. I’ve got stuff in deep storage that I need for there as well, including the pex compression tools I bought years ago, well in advance of need. Later I need to get to the bank and have my septic permit application notarized so I can get it to my contractor this weekend. Septic is the only thing you need a permit and inspection for at my BOL. While that might make some things easier, remember that the inspection is to protect you, the building owner. It’s another set of eyes to make sure your contractor is doing the work to minimum standards.
I did notice that Lowes had 2×4 studs for just under $5, which is down from just under $8 not too long ago. The reported record number of home buyers walking away from their contracts and the slowdown in home sales might be contributing to that. Make of it what you will, but rising home prices make people feel good (owners and sellers) while falling prices make them nervous. Some price lowering in general should help with inflation, but if it is really the beginning of deflation in the non-core sector, then bad times are right around the corner. I mean, worse times. Given the recent increase in crime and violence, and in costs, I’d say we are already in bad times.
There is still food in the store and stuff to buy, and generally if you want to work you can. That can change, and if it does it will change rapidly. Preps are a cushion against rapid change, especially when it’s for the worse.
So stack it up.
nick
Only 77F this morning but saturated, and feels nasty. Plus, got bitten by a mosquito as soon as I walked outside. They don’t normally bite me.
Bus was only 7 minutes late from their planned arrival, and a bit early from their “adjusted, real world” time. Kids almost missed it. Since it came from the opposite direction, they changed something in the routing.
Route planning is complicated. There are whole branches of math and CS dedicated to it. IDK what our district uses, but it mostly works, especially after settling in for a week or two. Which describes our school district in a nutshell, mostly works.
Stuff to do today, but I think I’ll let it warm up a bit. Saturated at 80F actually feels better than saturated at 77F….
n
Thanks for the dewalt recall link. I have one of those model saws, but it’s not affected.
n
I wouldn’t worry too much about that. Housing prices in desirable areas (really everywhere, here too) have gone through the roof in the past few years. A correction is overdue.
Inflation is the bigger concern. While it seems especially high in the US, it is hitting everywhere. Crazy government spending during the past two years has an effect, despite whatever fantasies the politicians may believe. High levels of inflation devalue savings and incomes. Members of the 1%, of course, are well insulated against any ill effects.
My wife and I stopped by the local reStore last Saturday. I had been once before a couple years ago. I know each store is unique as it relies on donations, but geez. The store was loaded with junk. Junk vanities and countertops. Most lighting I saw had some sort of issue, and even if there was something we liked, the price was ⅔ of new, with some sort of issue. The previous visit I was looking for a solid core door for use as a workbench top. They had them, but no cheaper than I could get from Home Depot. I passed.
Huntsville’s local housing market isn’t scorching hot, but it’s still way above warm. I talked with a lady in our neighborhood who is renting. Builders are still requiring escalation clauses in new house contracts. Availability of houses for rent is extremely low. I don’t see the escalation clauses ever going away. Home builders are kind of like car dealers…
New houses are being built everywhere. In 5 years we will overload our local road infrastructure (just our immediate area, many parts of the city are already there). I know of at least 10 big apartment complexes being built – all of them 500 – 1000 units. With the big defense dollars continuing to roll in, the boom won’t end soon.
No.
Aside from the annoyances, I do like their system and the way everything works together. Having a MacBook Air, iPad, iPhone, watch, Apple TV and iPad it all works together. Wife has an iPhone and iPad.
The integrated calendar that I can easily share with my wife. Events either one of input into the calendar can be seen on each of our calendars.
The camera on the iPhone 13 PRO is one of the best cell phone cameras I have ever used, and I personally think is the best of any handheld phone.
I get messages on my iPhone, iPad, and watch. Pictures taken on my phone will show up on my Mac and iPad. I can easily send movies from my iPhone or iPad to the Apple TV.
The home automation stuff works quite well, home automation being something Microsoft does not have.
I continue to use Windows because I have used the Microsoft system since DOS 2.0 and up through Windows starting with Windows 3.1. I am familiar with the system. I have applications that are only available on Windows.
I like MSOffice more than I like the Apple products. Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom work better on Windows than MacOS. Which may be more of my familiarity than actual fact. Quicken sucks on a Mac as Quicken was designed for Windows and ported to Mac. The port did not come across well in my opinion.
There are annoying things in both ecosystems.
As for Linux, I have found nothing that works as well as Windows or MacOS. What applications out there as a replacement is just really annoying and poor quality. Support is generally really bad.
I think Quicken was written for DOS and badly ported all the way up to today. The print process is painful.
n
Quicken and QuickBooks both strike me as full of crappy legacy code. My wife used QuickBooks for some years, and it was very clear some some parts of the system used floating point numbers – which produce rounding errors with decimal arithmetic. Clueless programmers, but apparently no one ever cleaned it up. The tax authorities here found the cumulative rounding errors “interesting” – they sometimes added up to $hundreds at the end of a business year.
Speaking of thrift stores, a friend picked up a nice standing/sitting platform for me. Unfortunately it is too heavy for the hollow core door I use as a desk top. I will need to get something more robust.
Another project.
This (carrying it in through the front door) inspired me to replace the battery in the garage door remote outside, it hasnt worked in a while. Still didn’t work after that. I may need to reset the code.
Another project.
Which reminded me to re-align the door’s electric eye, so that I don’t have to override the safety by holding the close button. No go. No sign that there is any IR beam. So, a new emitter/receiver set to buy and install.
Another project.
Of course, given all these problems at the same time, maybe the controller board is fried in the garage door opener?
And so it goes with 30yo houses and systems…
It was. I started with the DOS version. Windows was done before Mac. Nothing was learned as the Mac version is worse.
For those of you thinking of hacking (your own) car, Linux geeks in particular:
https://programmingwithstyle.com/posts/howihackedmycar/
I think the sheer perseverance of the author is the most striking thing.
I have used Quicken since almost the first time it arrived. At one time I was beta tester for Quicken for Windows, one of their first versions, and I found several problems. The most striking was the use of 16-bit integers when some of the numbers would overflow badly. Not only were the numbers off there was some concern about what damage the overflow did to other entries. For finding this I was awarded top beta tester and some early HP handheld personal assistant device, itself being worthless. I cannot even find it on the web.
For awhile after using Quicken I started using MSMoney. I liked the product and found it much better to use than Quicken. I abandoned Quicken for several years. It is sad that Microsoft abandoned MSMoney. It would have provided competition and forced Quicken to make a better product.
When Microsoft abandoned MSMoney I went back to Quicken for Windows. I had to export thousands of transactions from MSMoney and import them back into Quicken. It took a couple of days. And reinforced my sadness at Microsoft abandoning a good product.
At one point I had 25 years of data in my Quicken file. The file was huge. I could report on all the money my wife, and I, had spent at Walmart over the prior 25 years. It was, ahem, startling.
When 2020 rolled around I decided having transactions that far back was useless. So I stripped all transactions prior to 01/01/2010 from the file. Quicken has a way to make it relatively easy. I am now left with 12 years of transactions and the file is much smaller.
At one point Quicken was up for sale. There were no new versions, no updates, nothing for a couple of years. I think someone eventually bought it or it was revived internally. Now there are updates every few months.
What I really don’t like is the change in pricing. I download transactions and quotes every day. To continue to do that I have to pay a monthly subscription. Subscription runs out and no more downloads.
I do not use Quicken’s bill pay service. My credit union provides that service at no cost. Using the CU I also have local support. Such as that one time the bill payment was sent to the wrong entity causing me a late fee. The bill pay service paid the late fee without question. I was able to accomplish that by physically going to the credit union which would be impossible with Quicken. Probably have to talk to someone name Ralph with a heavy Indian accent.
Manfred Mann could have made a top ten song out of that
That guy’s hacking story was pretty interesting.
Lock and unlock thru the gui = not good in my book. Few people or organizations are going to bother with stealing kias, but you know the other makers do something similar.
Ford, forex. Someone linked to making changes to Ford firmware or configs but I can’t remember who or when. I’d like to have my power mirrors fold in when I exit the truck. That isn’t an option at my trim level. Perfect example of something an end user might want to config.
n
Intuit decided to focus on “The Cloud” and bought Mail Chimp. Quicken was spun off to “private equity”.
QuickBooks remains part of Intuit. God only knows what the strategy is there.
Good night, I just got my home insurance bill. $5,339.00 for the next 12 months for my 3,300 ft2 one story home with a 1% deductible. Is this part of a national trend due to the riots and inflation ?
And yes, the vertical line from top to bottom on my home pc monitor is still there. I pulled the cable and blew out both ends. I suspect that I need to get busy and build my new home pc.
Some price lowering in general should help with inflation, but if it is really the beginning of deflation in the non-core sector, then bad times are right around the corner. I mean, worse times. Given the recent increase in crime and violence, and in costs, I’d say we are already in bad times.
But, but, but, they passed the “No More Inflation” bill yesterday. Today they are borrowing a trillion dollars to pay for it. What could go wrong ?
BTW, on those 87,000 new IRS agents, get ready for a bunch of undertrained people to start auditing you. My IRS field auditor friend is a “certified field auditor trainer”. He says it takes him three years to train a new auditor and then they make incredible mistakes for another two years. So, looks like we are going to have five years of hell with the IRS. I regularly go through hell with the IRS as a small business owner. They ask us the same question over and over again, just different agents.
Interesting. Oxygen from water in microgravity:
https://newatlas.com/science/chemistry-oxygen-water-magnetism-microgravity/
@lynn:
I just paid my annual homeowners with AAA. $1,186 for a two story, 1,900 ft2 house. We were first owners moving in 55 years ago. (Mail Code 92649)
Storm claims in your area are probably to blame.
Weren’t the flood maps redrawn recently?
The existing agents are p*ssed off about the jab mandates combined with being forced to return to the office at least three days a week.
They just started processing the 2021 tax returns in Austin.
Confucious say: “What go up must come down.”
@Nick
Kias are popular targets for thieves.
THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED!!!
https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2022/08/17/astronomers-looking-at-webb-what-if-the-big-bang-didnt-happen-n490341
paging Sir Fred
Try to figure out where ‘space’ came from makes my head hurt.
If there was a ‘big bang’, where did the stuff that went ‘bang’ come from? What was there before? And where did the ‘before the before’ come from? How did it all start? And what was there before the ‘start’? Etc, etc.
Speaking of space, there are reports that my area in northern WA state might see the “Northern Lights” tonight and tomorrow night (Wed/Thurs). Will have to wander outside late tonight to see. If I can remember to do that.
WRT flooding, I’m at 0 ft above MSL and 1 ½ miles NW from the ocean. However, with a new howsing project started building about 10 years ago, I guess that some governmental agency had them build up a 10 ft berm between their tract and the ocean, and its location also precludes ocean flooding from my neighborhood.
Storm claims in your area are probably to blame.
Weren’t the flood maps redrawn recently?
Yes, lots of new roofs in our area since hurricane Ike in 2008.
My house is in flood zone X. No problems. But I do have flood insurance which cost $680 this year for $250K of coverage.
THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED!!!
https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2022/08/17/astronomers-looking-at-webb-what-if-the-big-bang-didnt-happen-n490341
paging Sir Fred
Who is Sir Fred ?
Wow, I had an illegal user of my software in Tunisia today. I don’t see that country very often.
@Lynn
rank choice voting
Sounds like a violation of the one person, one vote mandate to me.
Yes, it certainly does. That is the logic used by conservatives refusing to rank. I understand their position. There was a lawsuit on the basis of jungle primaries violating the Republican party closed primary. Our judicial system is notoriously left leaning so we are unlikely to gain any traction with lawsuits.
The logic presented was that it’s a way to avoid run offs.
The reality is conservatives are hosed.
Our thrift shops started jacking their prices about five years ago.
Our ReStore changed locations two or three years ago. Everytime I go in the prices are higher. I used to be able to pick up a decent used door for $10. Same door today is anywhere $50 – $100, with no logic I can discern to the scale used. More junk vanities, etc, than in past. Not many bargains there these days. I used to regularly bring home ‘precious treasures’, those days are gone.
I found a great documentary on World War II. It’s a lot of facts but slowly presented, along with great black and white footage. Didn’t cover much that I already didn’t know but it refreshed my memory for dates and names. The title makes it sound about Winston Churchill, and although it revolves around him it’s more about the war and his role in it.
https://www.amazon.com/Winston-Churchills-War/dp/B09K39VHFS?tag=ttgnet-20
More likely the new increase has to do with 2017 (Harvey?) and the freeze fallout.
I don’t think the carriers ever considered that they would have so many burst pipe claims in Texas, especially within 50 miles of the coast.
My current project is testing all of my sites’ (about 25) contact pages to make sure that the email is received from each contact page. (Most of the sites use my ‘FormSpammerTrap’ code – which blocks spam bots.) To do my testing, I have to go to each individual site. So I needed a way to open up all those testing URLs at once.
I found a great site to do that https://url-opener.com/ . Turn off your popup blocker, then paste in a list of URLs, on separate lines and/or delimited by commas. Click the button, and they all open in new tabs.
Great tool! I have a spreadsheet of sites with URLs I need to test, and just copy from that column into the above site, and all URLs are opened in new tabs. I could save them in a bookmark ‘group’, and open them all at once from there, but if the list changes, I have to edit/update individual bookmarks.
Since the spreadsheet contains my list of URLs to test, the above site is a great help. Much faster than clicking on each individual site link.
Did you also know (at least in FireFox) that you can select multiple tabs, and refresh them all at once? Shift-Click each tab, then hit the refresh icon or F5.
“Oil industry gears up to tap U.S. climate bill for carbon capture projects”
http://gasprocessingnews.com/news/oil-industry-gears-up-to-tap-us-climate-bill-for-carbon-capture-projects.aspx
I really do not like these carbon capture projects. They are capturing CO2 (and other gases) and injecting them into a waste well. The pressure that they are using today is 2,000 to 5,000 psia. They are talking about going to 10,000 psia. This is just an accident waiting to happen if you ask me. As time goes by and people forget, or ignore fences and warning signs, somebody will mess with these wells.
@Lynn
Sir FredHoyle, leadind
When we lived in Florida, we would see at least one story a year about a meth head Walter White wannabe who was killed attempting to tap one of the high pressure ammonia pipelines that run between Port of Tampa and the fertilizer plants located inland. Those lines have no lack of warnings and fences, but, unfortunately, due to the high water table – everything south of Ocala/Gainesville is technically a swamp – the pipelines could only go so deep and remain easily accessible.
>> I think Quicken was written for DOS and badly ported all the way up to today. The print process is painful.
Good thing I don’t have enough money to need Quicken 🙂
>> Try to figure out where ‘space’ came from makes my head hurt.
If there was a ‘big bang’, where did the stuff that went ‘bang’ come from? What was there before? And where did the ‘before the before’ come from? How did it all start? And what was there before the ‘start’? Etc, etc.
And where does ‘space’ live? Is there a Dead End sign somewhere? And if you keep going, do you fall off the edge?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq_bjaI0NTo
>> That guy’s hacking story was pretty interesting.
Lock and unlock thru the gui = not good in my book. Few people or organizations are going to bother with stealing kias, but you know the other makers do something similar.
Kia, meet John Deere…
https://jalopnik.com/new-jailbreak-code-for-john-deere-is-here-to-liberate-1849423413
https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/15/23306650/def-con-hacker-john-deere-tractors-run-doom-right-to-repair
And how long before all the gubs have PCBs inside?…ATF agent: Sorry Mr. Jones but those 50 rounds of ammo you shot at Fred’s Range last Tuesday at 10:20 AM are not approved for that rifle, please put your hands behind your head…
(I guess “ATFE” hasn’t quite caught on with the field agents.)
10,000 psi gas is enough pressure to take off a limb, IIRC. I certainly don’t want to work with that kind of pressure.
It has been suggested that we can use gaseous hydrogen as a fuel. One estimate put a 300 mile range fuel tank as requiring 10,000 psi hydrogen. Some people thought that was acceptable. Of course they were also OK with filling your car with liquid hydrogen.
Some people are stupid.
Some people are stupid.
Most people are stupid. ( about something)
N
YUUUP, I agree. In an area NW of LA called Porter Ranch, there is under ground storage of CH4. Then it starts leaking out and all the local residents go nuts, screaming about sickness and calling attorneys about suing the gas utility. I can’t see under ground storage as any better.
>> Ford, forex. Someone linked to making changes to Ford firmware or configs but I can’t remember who or when. I’d like to have my power mirrors fold in when I exit the truck. That isn’t an option at my trim level. Perfect example of something an end user might want to config.
Get a VW and a VAG-COM, quite interesting the level of control it gives you…of course the function has to be available in the vehicle but not enabled, but for available functions it allows a lot of configurations. S1, who is a VW fanatic, needed it when he swapped the taillights on S2’s Jetta from US incandescent bulbs and housings to European LEDs. He went on one of the VW forums and found a guy in the next town that had a VAG-COM and did the needed configuration change so all the LEDs worked correctly (a few more LEDs than in the US-spec lights).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCDS_(software)
And then there’s this from BMW…
And how long before all the gubs have PCBs inside?…ATF agent: Sorry Mr. Jones but those 50 rounds of ammo you shot at Fred’s Range last Tuesday at 10:20 AM are not approved for that rifle, please put your hands behind your head…
My American Rifleman magazine just had an article on California requiring microstamps on every bullet fired from a gun in the future.
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/california-bill-aims-jumpstart-microstamps-handguns-76628368
“SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Gun control advocates are making a new attempt to force the gun industry to comply with California’s unique law requiring individual identifiers on all bullet casings, a mandate that has been toothless since it was approved in 2007. ”
Yep.
I think it’s like in “Horton Hears a Who”, where it is revealed that the Jungle of Nool (and Earth as a whole) is just one speck, like Whoville, among numerous others, floating in space.
Which also boggles my mind (which is easily boggled)…
Assuming that a normal distribution is statiscally appropriate, 50% have IQ’s from 0 to 100 and the other half from 100 to 200.
To early for me to mention my position on the “bell shaped curve”.
10,000 psi gas is enough pressure to take off a limb, IIRC. I certainly don’t want to work with that kind of pressure.
It has been suggested that we can use gaseous hydrogen as a fuel. One estimate put a 300 mile range fuel tank as requiring 10,000 psi hydrogen. Some people thought that was acceptable. Of course they were also OK with filling your car with liquid hydrogen.
Some people are stupid.
10,000 psia in a four inch diameter pipe will take your head right off if the pipe plug misses you.
I have had customers modeling hydrogen vapor at 13,500 psia in a 1.0 ft3 tank in my software. And CNG (compressed natural gas) tanks at 6,500 psia.
Do not store these vehicles or tanks inside a structure. If they start venting or leaking, the structure will have an issue, usually fire.
Plus some of these high pressure waste wells have been associated with small earthquakes in Oklahoma.
You can’t believe how stupid these Californication gun control politicians are, about 20 out of 200 on the IQ chart.
About 40 years ago, buying 22 lr bullets at a K-Mart, I had to show my driver’s license and sign a ledger with my name and address. Do you think that after removal of a bullet from a victim that an investigator went to all the stores that sold such and examined the logs?
>> My current project is testing all of my sites’ (about 25) contact pages to make sure that the email is received from each contact page. (Most of the sites use my ‘FormSpammerTrap’ code – which blocks spam bots.) To do my testing, I have to go to each individual site. So I needed a way to open up all those testing URLs at once.
@Rick H, did you ever get my message from your Mutiny Bay site?
I’ve been having issues with the contact forms on all my sites (I’ve got about 30 sites).
Have had issues with MX settings for the add-on domains, forwarding issues (all mail to a site contact form is supposed to be forwarded to my personal account for my convenience), gmail marking messages as spam (fixed by adding a filter to not do that), TXT record issues. Delivery delays, and more.
Issues have been happening on multiple domains. Multiple chats with support. Some issues were host-related, and some things I had to fix on my end.
Been spending the last two+ weeks on it. Testing, updating everything, making sure contact form code is updated on all sites. Still testing things today. Some sites are working, but not all of them. I think the MutinyBay.net site is working, but still testing.
So, nope – haven’t gotten the message yet. Send it directly to my rhellewell(at)gmail(dot)com address. That one works.
Sorry for delays. Been a real hassle trying to fix things.
“NASA’s moon rocket moved to launch pad for 1st test flight”
https://apnews.com/article/astronomy-space-exploration-science-moon-d485e0eb7e238dd872325fe5d31e736c
“CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA’s new moon rocket arrived at the launch pad Wednesday ahead of its debut flight in less than two weeks.”
“The 322-foot (98-meter) rocket emerged from its mammoth hangar late Tuesday night, drawing crowds of Kennedy Space Center workers, many of whom were not yet born when NASA sent astronauts to the moon a half-century ago. It took nearly 10 hours for the rocket to make the four-mile trip to the pad, pulling up at sunrise.”
“NASA is aiming for an Aug. 29 liftoff for the lunar test flight. No one will be inside the crew capsule atop the rocket, just three mannequins swarming with sensors to measure radiation and vibration.”
“The capsule will fly around the moon in a distant orbit for a couple weeks, before heading back for a splashdown in the Pacific. The entire flight should last six weeks.”
They’re surprisingly high tech in Tunisia. Among other things, when the government fell as part of the Arab Spring, it was revealed that they had extremely sophisticated web traffic interception capabilities, on the order of one of the more sophisticated Gulf states like Qatar or Saudi.
I know that the VPN software I worked on was key to Al Jazeera reporters getting their stories out of Tunisia and avoiding arrest when all of that mess happened a dozen years ago. I taught their IT how to use VMware Fusion on their field editing workstation Mac laptops so the reporters could send/receive Outlook mail and transmit video securely in the “Club I Don’t Get It, Infidel” countries.
One flight then full employment for another generation of NASA bureaucrats as the SLS tooling gets pulled out of the three high bays in the VAB not leased to private interests along with disassembling the three (!) launch towers, one of which is still under construction IIRC.
Should be good for more than a decade of full payrolls at Kennedy.
The insurance thing…
Last “potential bill” from the county jacked the value of the house $120,000. We’re locked, tax wise, what with being old and homesteaded.
What is gonna be interesting is to see what USAA does to the house insurance.
No. I’m not paying more. We have $X income. I’ll drop the the house insurance in a heartbeat before giving them an extra grand a year.
Ian Dunbar is the father of modern puppy training classes. He periodically offers free webinars. This one is tomorrow and will be excellent.
Free live webinar about teaching your dog to reliably come when called tomorrow (Thursday Aug 18) at 3pm Pacific Time.
Live-streaming
Dunbar Academy Facebook Page (https://www.facebook.com/doctoriandunbar)
and
Dunbar Academy You Tube Channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/DunbarAcademy)
Can’t we have all politician’s IQ tattooed on their foreheads?
IQ score ranges IQ scale Interpretation of IQ score % of population
above
130 Very gifted 2.1%
121-130 Gifted 6.4%
111-120 Above average intelligence 15.7%
90-110 Average intelligence 51.6%
80-89 Below average intelligence 15.7%
70-79 Cognitively impaired 6.4%
Storm claims in your area are probably to blame.
Weren’t the flood maps redrawn recently?
BTW, this is a $474 increase from 2021.
And home insurance does not cover rising water.
There was an interesting case that I never got the resolution of. A homeowner on Brays Bayou in Houston got flooded during tropical Storm Allison. They had a gasoline can in the attached garage which leaked most of the gasoline into the flood water in the garage. The water heater in the garage had a pilot light. The garage and the house burned to the ground.
ERCOT hit 77,971 MW demand a little after 4pm. There was 4,000 MW out of 34,000 MW of wind turbines and 7,000 MW out of 12,000 MW solar. The price momentarily went up to $893/MWH.
https://www.ercot.com/
The peak demand this summer hit just above 80,000 MW on July 20, 2022.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/ERCOT-breaks-demand-record-for-11th-time-this-17317722.php
“Wednesday also marked the 11th time this summer that demand broke the all time record. Before this year, the previous record was set on Aug. 22, 2019, with 74,820 megawatts used. That record was first broken June 12 of this year, and was most recently broken Tuesday with 79,621 megawatts.”
That is an increase of 5,180 MW demand from 2019 to 2022 which approximately follows population growth. We are going to need a lot more gas turbines in Texas.
>>What is gonna be interesting is to see what USAA does to the house insurance. <<
I occasionally misread headlines, sometimes with humorous results. I read this as ‘horse insurance’ and after a few seconds got thinking, Can you insure a horse?
Well of course you can, but how does it work and how does it differ from human health insurance?
(And on a related note, how do you fit one into a cat scanner?)
ADDENDUM:
I bought one of those Chromecast thingamajigs from Walmart for $14.88. Seems to work fine. Never had one before.
>>Free live webinar about teaching your dog to reliably come when called tomorrow <<
I’ve heard of dogs named Colin, Fido, Penny, Buddy, etc., but never Tomorrow…. <G>
I will definitely log into my dormant Facebook account to see that. Dog training and horse whispering are fascinating examples of truly basic psychology which can even be applied to children.
Reminds me of a terrible trick to get your kids to brush their teeth. When they start falling out, tell them that was because they didn’t brush when they were younger… just think of the money they’ll save over the next 60 years!
Jenny, thanks for the link. I’ll be sure to watch it. And I’ve been meaning to ask you in all seriousness, do chickens play? Dogs do, humans do, ferrets do, cats do, horses do. Do chickens? I’m not asking what constitutes play. Just the facts, m’am.
ADDENDUM:
Come to think of it, I think crows play. I used to live across from a grain silo in Seattle. The bald eagles would hang around because they would catch the rats, and the crows would hang around for the excess grain. But they would also pester the eagles, sometimes mercilessly. It certainly looked like play to me.
More bad news from retail
– I know I’m making choices I wouldn’t have made 3 years ago. Of course I have a lot of extraordinary expenses to counter right now too.
n
Well damn!
MY lap top which I have not used in a month or so is in BitLocker recovery loop.
I have never used BitLocker and am not certain what it is. I do know I don’t like it.
I suspect I’ll have to reinstall windows on the laptop. I think I backed it up when I got it this last Spring. I know it has Windows 11 on it. It came within Windows 10 and then upgraded itself a few weeks later.
Bummer
@Lynn
Sorry for the botched reply earlier–phone froze
Sir Fred Hoyle was a leading proponent of the steady-state theory of the origin of the universe. He coined the term “Big Bang” for the alternative explanation that has been accepted as “proven” for more than 50 years.
JEP mentioned him regularly, often in discussions of panspermia. He took a number of controversial positions, and a careful reader of the internet records, particularly wikipedia, shows evidence that his contributions have been purposefully downplayed. It’s petty that the wiki of steady state theory does not link his name to his bio page. It’s also petty that most of the time his name does not included the title he earned.
That he was denied a share of the Nobel Prize for nuclearsynthesis in not petty, and it’s worth noting that part of the reason is attributed to his public reaction of distaste for the exclusion of Jocelyn Bell from the NP for the discovery of pulsars.
He is also known for Hoyle’s Fallacy
which JEP quoted several times.
>> I really do not like these carbon capture projects. They are capturing CO2 (and other gases) and injecting them into a waste well. The pressure that they are using today is 2,000 to 5,000 psia. They are talking about going to 10,000 psia. This is just an accident waiting to happen if you ask me. As time goes by and people forget, or ignore fences and warning signs, somebody will mess with these wells.
That’s when they call in Jack Bauer.
re: hydrogen storage
Compressed gas tanks are unnecessary and unsafe sabsent the discovery of inertron (DC comics reference). Feasibility of storage using metal hydrides at safe pressures was shown fifty years ago, with fast charging times.
>> It has been suggested that we can use gaseous hydrogen as a fuel. One estimate put a 300 mile range fuel tank as requiring 10,000 psi hydrogen. Some people thought that was acceptable. Of course they were also OK with filling your car with liquid hydrogen.
Hey, I know where we can get some used Ford Pintos in good condition for the prototypes.
During our trip to Tennessee, we had to stop in a Target in a fairly high end-looking section of Nashville, and the entire store was trashed, with none of the employees seeming to be in a big hurry to do anything about the condition of their workplace.
In contrast was the Party City next door, which had a full “all hands” re-merchandising operation underway switching the focus of the displays from Summer to Halloween on the last night of July.
tidbits (more like fried pork rind bits in this case) on Liz Cheney from an AoS collection:
https://thefederalist.com/2022/08/16/liz-cheney-is-no-martyr-just-another-rich-entitled-member-of-the-d-c-establishment/
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/08/11/records-liz-cheneys-net-worth-ballooned-much-600-percent-during-her-time-office/
Swamp Creature, the origin of which was a single act that not only resulted in Liz Cheney, it resulted in Dick Cheney’s career path, sans the military service that he would have had without the conveniently timed pregnancy of his wife.
Alternate world : Bush wins in 2001 but without Cheney reigns as Bush-wimp. No afghan invasion. Colorless mouse can’t make a decision, loses election in 2004 to Kerry, who reigns as just another privileged white boy, faceplants, and gets replaced in 2008 by…
>>130 Very gifted 2.1%<<
I have always wondered how the bell curve is shaped under the Mensa 2%. I doubt it’s a bell anymore. More like a sperm, think…
Lynn:
Fred Hoyle was the guy who mockingly gave the concept of a sudden, explosive appearance of the universe the name “Big Bang”, because Hoyle believed in a “steady state” universe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hoyle
@~jim
…play… Do chickens? I’m not asking what constitutes play.
We have had a small flock of chickens for twenty plus years. The birds come and go. Some are clever, some, well, not so much. The clever ones engage in a wider variety of novel behaviors. Some of those behaviors resemble play but are also related to food acquisition.
I don’t generally make pets of the food animals. I like them, I feel affection for them. I also have a great deal of respect for their intricate and interesting innate and learned behaviors. Animals are awfully cool and I do them no favors anthropomorphizing them.
But – Is it play? It has seemed so on occasion.
Chickens are cool critters. They have a finite repertoire of behaviors that get combined in some surprising ways.
Seems to me that there’s a link between curiosity, intelligence and play. Chickens are curious and smart, but they don’t play. Piglets are curious and smart and they play but the adults, not so much. Elephants, at least the Asian variety IMX, are curious and smart and the babies play, but the adults — not so much.
Elephants are really weird and spooky smart. (I’ve been around them enough to know) They suffer us like the Ents did in Lord of the Rings, the book.
Parrots and parakeets are pretty smart but I don’t think they engage in play. Or do they? Anyone with firsthand experience?