Cool and damp. That time of year. Winter, I think you call it up north. 60F when I went to bed so ‘cool’ not ‘cold.’ It turned into a very nice day yesterday and I’m hoping for the same today.
Got my trailer rental returned. They had the wrong trailer assigned to me, and that one got returned on time, which left me with a completed reservation, and nothing to turn in. They got it straightened out. Didn’t take long.
Hit the Goodwill on my way home and witnessed a full on scrum over some comic books. They ended up wrinkling and ripping them as they fought to grab as many as they could. Savages. What value there might have been was lost in the fighting. The one I spot checked was only 99c plus shipping, and after witnessing the fight, the cashiers were not inclined to discounts, so the comics would have been 3/99c. Not much profit at that rate. There might have been some valuable books in there, but I didn’t join in. I did swoop in afterward and pick up a board game that is selling for $65 – 75 and a SCSI adapter in the box that should sell for about the same, maybe a bit less. I’ll let them fight over pennies.
Came home and did some ‘domestic bliss’ stuff around the house. More of that today and maybe some plumbing… or head to my storage unit to take advantage of the clear weather.
Sold one of the freezers to my fisherman buddy. That leaves the two with more damage to be sold. Maybe I’ll pick those up today. Or maybe I’ll do vehicle maintenance. Or not. We’ll see. I’ve got to do a Costco run too. A whole bunch of stuff I buy is on sale this month so it’s time to add to the stacks.
Had a good conversation with D1 about how the media lies, how they have been lying, and how to look at an article and a picture critically. She also expressed some concern that with all the illegal invaders, maybe white people (us in particular) would get forced out, or made into the slaves this time around. I told her that even if we had to die surrounded by piles of spent brass we’d never be slaves. And to watch for them seizing the guns, because they take the guns when they want to do something to you that you would shoot them for trying…
Conversations are getting interesting.
Stack it high, sporty times will be very difficult to avoid.
nick
Getting things wrong is probably not a problem with either protoplasmic or silicon intelligences. The deciding factor is how they came by the wrong information or belief, whether they acknowledge the possibility that they’re wrong, and what they do about it.
Depending on the answers, I may not consider them to be intelligent after all.
Definitely not intelligent. I’d be perfectly willing to deny their humanity. Mulch them, biodiesel them, or use them as organ donors, for all I care.
I thought casings from a semi-auto needed to be micro-stamped to be traceable?
– microstamping is a tech that doesn’t really exist yet despite California’s desires. What leaving brass behind does do is expose a number of things…
The imprint of the hammer or firing pin on the primer is not random. How not random I’d bet a good lawyer and expert witnesses could argue, but they do use it as an identifying factor.
The extractor leaves marks on the cartridge that are unique, so they can match a cartridge to a particular pistol.
You might have left finger prints on the casings when you loaded them into the magazine.
The casings have brand and caliber info on them, that can be used to narrow down where t hey came from, and if you have matching ammo when they come for you, you’re hooped.
Better not to give them all that info in the first place.
n
60F and the air is saturated. Bacon is cooked and the muffins are headed for the oven… children are still not up.
n
With a category like comic books, Goodwill has gone through the pile and separated the truly valuable from the relatively worthless ahead of time.
Thanks to Disney and Warner destroying the superhero comics with Woke, no shortage exists of people with the expertise who used to work in indie comic stores.
My wife and I half joke that the last decent Marvel store in the US will be Universal’s shop in Orlando just to twist the knife in The Mouse. “In perpetuity” are the terms of the contract.
Meanwhile, the Manga section at Barnes & Noble seems to get bigger every time we visit.
Goodwill has gone through the pile
The cashiers at the Outlet are learning from the customers (mostly from the resellers) that some stuff is more valuable than other stuff, but 90% of the workers at Goodwill are there because of reasons… and while they are not dumb, they are limited in some way, experience, motivation, chemical use…
n
While on the subject of The Mouse …
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/disney-to-employees-work-in-the-office-four-days-a-week/ar-AA16ao7X
We haven’t been ordered back to the office full time yet, but judging from the reaction anytime the subject comes up in our group meetings, the big issue will be child care costs for the employees who accepted low salary offers over the last couple of years just to get their foot in the door.
Welcome to Austin!
Gotta love aviation speak…
“… the system experienced an anomaly, ending the mission prematurely.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/virgin-orbit-shares-after-air-launching-satellite-mission-fails
n
People are somewhat aware with comics thanks to 50 years of Boomer “Mom threw my Superman #1 away cleaning out my room” stories but jewelry still takes more expertise.
Pokemon was throwaway for a while, but I don’t see binders at dealer tables at the anime shows anymore. If the dealers have cards, they are out of sight.
Same with Nintendo 64 and Game Boy cartridges.
Interesting position at a subcontractor
The best one I’ve personally heard was how working from home “compromises the provenance of the synergy of the creative paradigm”, delivered by the recruiter at the place I worked for briefly in Seattle.
That mess started a decade ago this month. Time flies.
AFAIK, I’m OK. Almost an inch since 11 PM. Probably skipping morning dog walk but going out in Jeep for gas and store stuff. Post back in a while.
Well. That’s interesting.
n
“if you have matching ammo when they come for you, you’re hooped.”
The Feds bullet alloy analysis bs was discredited years ago after ruining countless lives. About the best they can do now is “same manufacturer, same type” but no more “same batch”.
I forgot to mention there was heavy fog this morning. Still is light fog, which is unusual to say the least.
n
AI is beyond insanely hot right now.
ChatGPT could pass the classic touring test with absolutely no problems.
I wonder if Lynn can ask ChatGPT to convert Fortran to C++ for him. Now there’s a test for you!
As opposed to ZI in the current Sponge Brain administration.
@lpdbw: Yep, likely autocorrect. Or my brain thinking one word, and my fingers typing a different one. I certainly thought I had typed “Turing”. If anything would cause it to “fail” the Turing test, it is the fact that the text it generates is too good. No typos, like “touring” instead of “Turing”. The factual errors are irrelevant, because people make factual errors all the time.
When I was playing around with it, there were some things it didn’t want to answer. But apparently, it’s pretty easy to get around the blocks. This wasn’t one of my questions, but that of a colleague asked it how to make explosives. It refused, but it was willing to write a scene for a book, where one of the characters explained the process. What impresses me, is that it understands that sort of indirection. Not just “tell me X”, but “tell me X in the context of Y”.
I really think this is going to be the beginning of a huge paradigm shift. I am not pleased that Microsoft is considering buying a huge proportion of OpenAI – big companies have too much power to buy up – and then screw up – new technologies.
Microsoft’s game may be to provide the necessary resources to run the software through The Cloud and give Azure a competitive edge over AWS.
Possible DNA?
Wouldn’t the cartridge heat up to the point that the DNA was destroyed?
The case of the killer in Idaho is interesting in that it seems one of the Ancestry-type companies provided a family member’s match to the DNA on the knife sheath, which led to the suspect via cross referencing other databases.
IIRC, Ancestry has an opt out clause, but some of the competitors don’t.
Not the first case cracked by using online DNA databases. Several old cold cases come to mind, although the details escape me.
n
For me, it isn’t as much about the race of the deceased as it is the extensive neck tattoos that were the giveaway about his level of positive contribution to society..
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/hero-customer-who-shot-armed-robber-houston-taco-joint-ordered-face-grand-jury-soros
>> What leaving brass behind does do is expose a number of things…
Thanks @nick, leaves me with some thinking to do, perhaps rebalance the stacks a bit.
>> https://www.zerohedge.com/political/hero-customer-who-shot-armed-robber-houston-taco-joint-ordered-face-grand-jury-soros
Once again we see that CCTV is ‘everywhere’ and quickly turned over to LEO. Not to mention the plethora of doorbell and cams.
@greg, yep, just finished reading the article. POS pled down on a previous fatal armed robbery, got out 7 years early, beat his girlfriend and went out robbing while on parole.
The ‘going before a grand jury’ happens to everyone. All the cases like this go to the grand jury.
Kim Ogg has to go. I’m pretty sure if there was fraud in Harris Cty elections, she was a beneficiary.
n
Quickbooks sent me the following email reminder of how plugs and the PLTs are screwing the gig economy:
This is how the Dumbocrats are raising taxes on the poor.
And remember it all started with ‘going after deadbeat dads’.
n
I’ve played around a bit with ChatGPT. We are seeing the first generation of a game-changing technology. ChatGPT could pass the classic touring test with absolutely no problems. Its replies are better than you would get from probably 80% of the population. Of course, it has been carefully programmed to always identify itself as non-sentient. That’s good, because otherwise you would have no way to tell.
Turing Test.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test
I highly recommend The Imitation Game movie. But the ending is incredibly sad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Imitation_Game
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11619415/PICTURED-Robber-30-armed-fake-gun-killed-Houston-restaurant-vigilante-Criminal-bond-assault-grand-jury-decide-hero-customer-46-protected-shooting-face-charges.html
– DM hates guns and defensive gun use. But they do more and better reporting than almost any US based org. Look for the editorial comments in the ‘reporting’. “Vigilante” being the most obvious, but the references to the dead felon’s weapon are just as bad.
n
Current storm has put 1.5″ rain down here in Huntington Beach and I am OK, so far.
Prediction map showed a lot more for dkreck’s area, IIRC.
>> What leaving brass behind does do is expose a number of things…
Thanks @nick, leaves me with some thinking to do, perhaps rebalance the stacks a bit.
Just another reason why I moved to revolvers. The primary reason by and far is my dadgum wrists are shot from writing software and slinging a 20 lb sledgehammer for 47 years.
Kim Ogg has to go. I’m pretty sure if there was fraud in Harris Cty elections, she was a beneficiary.
“Mealer, other Republicans challenge results of last November’s elections, claiming voter suppression”
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/houston/article/alexandra-mealer-challenge-election-result-hidalgo-17698850.php
“In an 11th-hour push ahead of a Friday deadline, more than a dozen unsuccessful Republican candidates filed lawsuits in Harris County challenging the results of the November election, including County Judge Lina Hidalgo’s opponent Alexandra del Moral Mealer, who lost her race by around 18,000 votes and conceded the contest the following morning.”
And
https://abc13.com/harris-county-district-attorney-election-investigation-what-happened-in-during-problems-with-voting/12459839/
I wonder if Lynn can ask ChatGPT to convert Fortran to C++ for him. Now there’s a test for you!
No joke. The Fortran character strings to C++ characters strings are killing me. I am at 69,000 lines of F77 code converted to C++ now.
It is really hard to write complicated software when your head is pounding with the Koof.
>> https://www.zerohedge.com/political/hero-customer-who-shot-armed-robber-houston-taco-joint-ordered-face-grand-jury-soros
Once again we see that CCTV is ‘everywhere’ and quickly turned over to LEO. Not to mention the plethora of doorbell and cams.
And HD CCTV is common now. The newest 4K CCTV cameras are awesome.
I sure do hope that this guy gets no billed. He is a hero. I don’t care if he did a head shot or not.
My senior range instructor emphasized over and over again that taking a head shot meant that you would be charged with murder in most states. And then on the next practice session where we put two in the chest, he would scream “head shot, he has body armor”. We all complied.
“The ‘best job in America’ pays over $120,000 a year —and offers a low-stress, healthy work-life balance”
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-best-job-in-america-pays-over-120-000-a-year-offers-low-stress-healthy-work-life-balance-and-its-workers-are-in-high-demand-11673327726?siteid=yhoof2
“Drumroll, please. With a median annual salary of $121,000 — based on BLS data and salary ranges from other sites, including CareerBuilder — the best job in America is software developer. Software developers writes code to build and improve computer applications and programs.”
I don’t know any software developers making $120,000/year. I love the work though.
From the Internet Storm Center newsletter:
Sorry you’re a f**ktard, Dan.
No committee chair for you.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/01/rep_dan_crenshaw_gets_slapped_down_in_the_house.html
Rain has stopped for now. At 11:30 rain possible has dropped to 19%. Twenty-four hour rainfall is .71. Lot more north of here.
I may have to pump some out of the pool. almost to bottom of deck overhang.
The article is very revealing on his education. RINO.
In the shite you can’t make up department:
BRUTAL thread of 21 blatant lies Biden has told (some more than once) an enlightening MUST-read
plugs = good liar, tRump = BAD liar.
At least plugs lies consistently.
The story about receiving the Corvette seems to change every time Biden opens his mouth.
Got $9.8 million ? “Tom Petty’s Oceanfront Malibu Beach Getaway Pops Up for Sale”
https://www.dirt.com/gallery/entertainers/musicians/tom-petty-house-malibu-1203607418/tompettyhouse_mb15/
Got my gas bill for the cold snap. 78 hundred cubic feet for $120.00. About twice of last January. February is typically my high usage month where last year I consumed 110 CCF. Gas has gotten noticeably more expensive.
Do not recall anyone posting this:
one-year delay in $600 reporting threshold
https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-announces-delay-for-implementation-of-600-reporting-threshold-for-third-party-payment-platforms-forms-1099-k
My post from above. Sort of says this:
Drwilliams:
Yes, I saw that. I also saw that the new House wants to prevent the hire of 87K IRS agents. Personally, I’d hire 87K Border Patrol agents instead…
>> This is how the Dumbocrats are raising taxes on the poor.
And how the Red
WaveTrickle hurts. Without veto-proof majorities in both chambers it’s likely we’ll have gridlock the next two years, starting with the IRS defunding bill that Kevin* got passed yesterday and now won’t even be considered in the Senate.*@Greg, open to nickname suggestions.
Does that price include the Bunn coffee makers?
A lot of rock history happened in that house.
Does that price include the Bunn coffee makers?
A lot of rock history happened in that house.
Is that the house where the fan broke in and set it on fire and trashed all of his Grammy albums ?
Nope, that is not the house that a “fan” set on fire that inspired the song “I Won’t Back Down”:
https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/tom-petty-lost-everything-arstonist-targeted-home.html/
>> Got $9.8 million ? “Tom Petty’s Oceanfront Malibu Beach Getaway Pops Up for Sale”
House needs some updating, but you’re paying for the oceanfront property and the views. Last I checked the Jesus Truck will be available before anyony figures out how to add more beach to the Malibu coast.
McCarthy is just McCarthy.
Holding the House is still important.
>> I don’t know any software developers making $120,000/year. I love the work though.
@lynn, do you mean that they make more or that they make less?
>> I don’t know any software developers making $120,000/year. I love the work though.
@lynn, do you mean that they make more or that they make less?
Less. Way less. $60K to $100K here in Texas.
Of course, Greg probably makes $250K/year since he works at the Big House.
Apparently, some rectum orifice has plugged my email address into several nefarious sites. Advertising multiple items of questionable interest to anyone that is not a sleazeball (leave it alone SteveF). May have even been a company that sold my email address to some harvesters who then distribute that email address at a small fraction of a penny.
I don’t know if the unsubscribe links actually work, or just confirm the email address is valid. Some of the sites are just an image and the unsubscribe link is not clickable without clicking the entire image, which I refuse to do.
It isn’t uncommon to see that kind of money for C++ development talent right now.
The tolling company was Austrian and ridiculously cheap, but they hired “Senior” people into my group at $100k+ pre-pandemic.
It looks like the NYC bridge/tunnel tolling project proceeded BTW. They’re crowing about finally finishing the installation in the latest press release on the website. Surface streets of Lower Manhattan are next.
Ha! No.
I do ok there, but the real benefit is that HR takes the employee surveys seriously and works to nip the kinds of stupid that happened in other places I’ve worked since grad school. Heck, college, if I stop to think about it. Plus up to 6% of salary match in cash, no vesting, going into the 401(k).
If I made that kind of money, I never would have been able to hide from my laptop during the down week between Christmas and New Years.
The closest I’ve ever come to the big money is when I left GTE in 2000, my manager cashed a $50,000 insurance policy against my departure from the company and hired a contractor making $100 hour to “school” me on who was the boss. Two weeks later, after the guy walked in to “the boss’s” cube, dropped his badge on the desk, and said, “No one can do this job,” I received an unofficial back channel inqury about what I would want to return via a friend.
“$100/hour … and an options level promotion.”
Yeah, I didn’t get that one.
And then this:
House Republicans will now vote on ABOLISHING the IRS and replacing a national income tax with a consumption tax – after voting to strip agency of Biden-backed $72billion in funds for 87,000 new staff
Dr-ea-ea-ea-m, Dream, Dream, Dream…
At least we can dream. It would be nice to at least see a Fair Tax bill passed in the House. Yes, gridlock for two years. Better than unbridled spending. Wait a minute, Redumblicans spend just as much.
If you’re trying to damage my self esteem or something, you’re going to have to try a lot harder. I have a teenager. A mouthy, irreverent, disrespectful teenager. (Most of those adjectives are probably unnecessary.)
Just the one teen, which feels odd after so many years. The girl whom we took care of when she was little now lives with her mother since the divorce and the mother doesn’t want her coming here. (Because my wife and I are spies for the police and are trying to frame the mother so she’ll be arrested. The mother has spent time in a funny farm. It doesn’t seem to have helped.) The girl who lived with us for a chunk of a year has moved away with her family; for a while it looked like she’d be staying with us when they left but that’s not how it happened. She was quieter the last couple times I saw her over the holidays. Don’t know if that’s because she’s a bit older and growing up or because they’re drugging her half into a coma. (That was one of the reasons I offered to take her in permanently. She’s a mostly good kid and doesn’t need zombie drugs just because she mouthed off to teachers a couple times. As is so often the case, middle-class suburban parents think that mouthiness and not doing homework are the signs of a seriously disturbed youth. Yah, right. Is she on meth? Pregnant? In a gang? Gotten arrested for grand theft auto? Get some perspective, people.) The miscellaneous other kids who came over as a refuge from over-controlling parents have reconciled with their parents and now come over just for the occasional goof-around day or sleepover.
@MrAtoz:
RedumblicansPoliticians spend just as much.FTFY.
G.
Compared to the last two years, I would consider “gridlock” to be a substantial improvement.
Even Matt Gaetz is going to vote for bloated Defense budgets and Ukraine pork. The Florida 1st is heavily dependent on military spending, all the way from Pensacola to Fort Walton Beach.
I told one place it would take a quarter million a year to get me to take a job. This was close to thirty years ago; the rate would be higher now.
That was for one of the GE companies. I’d been brought on as a contractor to “just finish up” an automation project that someone else was “a week from finishing” two weeks before the deadline when he “got a really good offer he couldn’t turn down”. As I’m sure most of you can guess, the project was a disaster, needing to be redesigned from the ground up because he hadn’t designed anything, just ad hocced as things came up. Managers had been happy because things seemed to work when he demoed features but those were carefully scripted demos, closer to a slideshow than to a demonstration of functionality. Documentation consisted of a page of bullet points, written in his last hour on the job; lack of documentation included lack of requirements, which was a managerial screwup.
So, anyway, I took the contract – at a normal hourly rate because I had an unemployed wife and a baby and needed a steady income – and pulled off a miracle and got the thing working in about four months. (Contrasted with I think almost a year for the other guy to do almost nothing.) Four months of miserable working conditions, several idiot full-time GE employees interfering “to make their mark”, several others interfering because they were trying to help but were idiots, deliberate interference from the woman who was the house expert on the old mainframe system and didn’t want it to go away, an interrogation by an arrogant, know-nothing cost-cutting expert who demanded that I tell him why my job shouldn’t be terminated right now (and was annoyed when I told him that I didn’t care either way), threatened assault by my office mate, and all the rest of the anti-productivity nonsense that you can imagine. I wrote no documentation, per managerial directive, so when I left that contract they really wanted me to stay. No thanks, I don’t need the money that much.
House Republicans will now vote on ABOLISHING the IRS and replacing a national income tax with a consumption tax – after voting to strip agency of Biden-backed $72billion in funds for 87,000 new staff
Dr-ea-ea-ea-m, Dream, Dream, Dream…
At least we can dream. It would be nice to at least see a Fair Tax bill passed in the House. Yes, gridlock for two years. Better than unbridled spending. Wait a minute, Redumblicans spend just as much.
Abolishing the IRS will never happen. What will happen is that we will end up with both the Income Tax AND the consumption tax.
@MrAtoZ
It does, it just doesn’t put the red flag on the change.
https://www.samsclub.com/p/members-mark-supermarket-play-center/prod23190897
You too can teach the little ones how inflation raises grocery prices as you jack up all the prices on their items.
True. It would put a lot of people out of work, including the IRS agents, accounts, and tax lawyers.
Don’t we already have that tax in the form of sales tax for the majority of the states?
Don’t we already have that tax in the form of sales tax for the majority of the states?
What is your point ? I am fairly sure that most of the so-called first world has federal income taxes, a federal consumption tax (renamed as a value added tax), and state consumption taxes. Quite possibly state income taxes too. That way they get you both coming and going. After, the children’s free health insurance is not going to pay for itself.
>> Dr-ea-ea-ea-m, Dream, Dream, Dream…
This is nothing but Job #2 for all politicans – getting reelected in 2024. “See folks, look at this long list of bills that us good-guy Repubs passed for the benefit of you deserving
schlubshard-working Americans…only to have those mean, nasty Dems cast them aside like yesterday’s newspaper.(Ohh, Job #1? Lining their pockets via whatever means necessary.)
I had the “Fair Tax” book around here until Neal Boortz retired. The legislation for that plan involved a sunset provision requiring a repeal of the Income Tax Amendment within seven years or the consumption tax could not continue.
Darwin Awards nominee:
My question is, did he weigh her before or after?
https://wtop.com/dc/2023/01/internet-records-show-husband-of-missing-massachusetts-woman-searched-for-how-to-dispose-of-a-body-sources-say/
Spent the afternoon going thru my storage unit and getting stuff ready for auction. Found some Yu Gi Oh cards and some Magic the Gathering, and of course some pokemon…
The Yu Gi Oh might be worth some money. There are 18 first editions from 1996, and a bunch of cards from 1996 including some with special features. There is one that I can’t find the combination on ebay or google… I’ll let my auctioneer figure it out.
The pokemon are ordinary, except one, which was torn in half. I pick up the partial cards when I see them and look to see if a tragedy occurred. Yep, this card in great condition is a $100-600 card. Too bad someone tore it in half. I gotta wonder WHEN it was destroyed, and if it made it all the way to the bins before dying….
I guess we’ll never know.
Bakugan cards have some value too, huh. Thought that was a knockoff brand. I’ll have to start picking them up as well. At $1.20/pound cards are a no brainer.
n
You too can teach the little ones
_ I tax the kids on their earnings.
n
State sales tax, income tax, and the various property taxes used to be fully deductible until Trump and the Republicans capped the deduction at $10,000, the tradeoff being the much higher personal exemption.
I’m not going to complain since we went from net payers every year to small refunds, but as our property taxes climb towards that cap, it is something to consider when thinking long term.
800 yards from my front door is the City of Austin, and property taxes there are easily $14-16k for the same size house as mine.
I think my 2001 Solara is done. The car broke down on my son tonight and we had it towed home.
Starter motor cranks, but the car doesn’t turn over. I’ll look in the engine compartment when it is light out tomorrow. 22 years. 209,000 miles.
Sounds like a broken timing chain/belt.
I think my 2001 Solara is done. The car broke down on my son tonight and we had it towed home.
Starter motor cranks, but the car doesn’t turn over. I’ll look in the engine compartment when it is light out tomorrow. 23 years. 209,000 miles.
Wow, same mileage as my 2005 V8 5.4L Expedition. It broke one of the two timing chains. Still ran on four cylinders but was a you know what to get started and keep running. No engine vacuum so only manual brakes.
Southern California is trashed. “Two killed after tree falls on car and mom and daughter are rescued from huge sinkhole as powerful storms batter California: Massive boulders cleared from roads as Montecito residents – including Meghan Markle, Oprah and Ellen – are told to evacuate”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11618147/Boy-5-swept-away-death-toll-climbs-14-Californias-raging-mega-storms.html
Hat tip to:
https://www.drudgereport.com/
The sinkhole picture with the SUV laying on its side at the bottom is unreal.
@greg, if you can see into the engine, or worse, thru the engine, it’s probably done…
n
We just had the belt replaced in the last few years, but I will take a look when it is light out.
The car has been making noise in the area of the alternator/water pump for months. A neighbor recommended his local mechanic around Thanksgiving, but work has been beyond insane so I didn’t make it a priority.
Noma, the supposed “best restaurant in the world” is closing.
Dinner and wine is approximately $750 per person–table of four $3k plus tip.
For that kind of money I can raise a steer–finishing on corn and oats–have it butchered to my specification, cover the amortized cost of a freezer, buy the electricity to run it, pay the amortized cost of a good charcoal grill, buy the charcoal, and feed those four people beef for a year.
The exact outcome depends on portion sizes and appetites, but a family of four could pretty much eat dinner every night, and have enough money left over to buy the beer, wine, and some good sippin’ bourbon.
I see the CPSC (or is it the CCCP?) is looking to take my gas stove, although Trumka, Jr. is trying to back pedal.
Which brings me to my insight for the evening:
We go through the roster of public servants, top-to-bottom, and ask every one a single question:
“Have you dined at a restaurant with three Michelin stars in the last two years?”
All those answering in the affirmative get fired. (I almost said terminated, but then I’d have all sorts of questions about how much of a sporting lead they get, if any, and it’s not worth the debate.)
Don’t ask about my definition of fired.
Firestone quoted a new engine when I took it in there to look at the water pump/alternator noise.
They said that the engine had a bent rod which was causing the noise, but I couldn’t hear anything from the block poking around with a large screw driver held up to my ear. The alternator was definitely noisy.
Wine adds up. Victoria and Albert’s on the Disney property in Florida came back from the Pandemic closure charging $375 per person with wine pairings starting at $200 additional charge.
Starting.
IIRC, the restaurant is the only “Five Diamond” establishment in Central Florida, but, still, Disney?!?
If the car is done, it will be a sad day. The Solara has been the antithesis of my experience with my 93 Probe, which was done by the time Y2k hit even if it still ran … sorta.
One of the happiest moments in my life was rolling up the onramp for I84 eastbound in that vehicle out of Baker City, OR eight years ago, heading for Boise, and realizing that was the last time I was going to see any part of Oregon in my rearview mirror for a long time.
A lot of my adult life was spent in that car, good times and bad.
>> The sinkhole picture with the SUV laying on its side at the bottom is unreal.
Look at picture #8 – boulder took out the entire roof of a car – hopefully no one was in it.
Maybe a stupid question, coming from someone out-of-touch with the US tax system, but…who notes that you received payments of $600 or more, and how do they tell? Even if your bank is responsible for reporting this, for all they know this is money passing between family members or friends.
I probably don’t want to know the answer. Surveillance-state at its best…
That’s…strange. When one reads about Silicon Valley salaries, they are much higher. Of course, so is cost of living.
Still, for any big city, I would expect a junior to start at $60k or $70k, and for a senior to easily earn $120k or more. Salaries here are higher that that, but so is cost of living.
Honestly, that would be a good idea, if implemented as VAT. Sales tax is a poor substitute, because all of the tax lands on the individual consumers and none on companies.
However, more important would be a balanced-budget amendment with actual teeth. Which is…unlikely. Both parties like to spend, and like the pork too much to every really restrict spending.
My wife and I have visited restaurants on that level twice. The first time was…interesting, and I’m glad we went. The second time was: why are we spending money on this?
It’s not food, but art on a plate. Honestly, not particularly enjoyable to eat. As much as anything, the experience reminds me of the one architect we talked to about designing our house. He wanted to express himself by building a house how he imagined it. Our interests and requirements were unimportant compared to his artistic vision.
Call me a barbarian, but art should serve the interests of the customer, not the ego of the artist. Apply that to all fields of art: food, painting, sculpture, music, whatever. Needless to say, artists find this view offensive, because they just need to get their super-insightful artistic vision across, and the customer should willing pay for it…
FAA has just screwed itself. They were about to fine SWA millions of $ for their cancelled flights and now their computer had a meltdown and they cancelled thousands, How can they now fine SWA for the same lack of maintainability?