Cool and damp this am. It did clear out nicely last night, but got chilly too. 53F when I went to bed. Today should be clear, but forecast is actually partly cloudy, 20% chance of rain. I’m hoping for clear.
Did the recap of yesterday in late comments. Did a bunch of stuff despite the rain. Caught 2 fish! Saw some birds I’d never seen before. Bright orange Baltimore Oriels, and some pink finches, either Purple, Cassin’s, or House varieties. I couldn’t see the crests to be certain. Pink! Saw the usual blue jays, cardinals, and the other drabber birds that are always around too.
Peaches are still on the tree growing. They are visibly bigger than last week. I hope whatever ate them last year misses them this time. It would be nice to actually get a few.
Today should be cleanup, a few minor tasks, maybe some planting. I’ll try to get together with the tree guy today too, and if it’s dry, I’ll mow the lawn again before I leave.
We’ll be up with guests next weekend, so I have to leave the place “move in ready.” Easier to do without a dog and two kids hanging around.
The best prep I did this week was learning more about fishing and in particular, fishing this lake. Stacking up knowledge and skills. Worth every minute.
nick
I’m first!!!
Brag, brag, brag.
We drove by the abandoned Austin Fry’s location yesterday evening.
The building still sits empty without any sign that the situation is going to change soon.
I forgot that Big Lots shared the same parking lot. They’re circling the drain right now.
Commercial real estate is ugly. The shopping center is roughly equidistant between Dell and Apple with HPE just around the corner.
I’m frist!
It is sunny and part cloud… cool to cold though. Got laundry folded. Got coffee in the cup. Tree guy is still trying to find a time today to come by so that is good…
I realized that I don’t have any rain gear for the kids up here. Nor do I have any office supplies. If we “lived” here, we would have scotch tape, staplers, post it notes, mailing envelopes, stamps, correction fluid, etc. Gonna have to make up a small office box. And watch the sales for more rain gear.
n
Tree guy just scheduled for 1230 today. That’s one thing on my list.
n
I had a problem with my credit union. When I checked my accounts yesterday there were two check cashing transactions on my money market account. I did not cash any checks and they should not have been against my money market account. Something is not right.
Off to the CU this morning. I had to get the branch manager involved. The checks were cashed in Lafollette where I have not been in 8 months. Turns out the teller just looked the person up by name, never verified the individual, never asked for the account number, did not ask for my security word, and used the wrong account. Multiple violations of procedure. A receipt was not given to the individual, so my account number was not provided.
The branch manager in Lafollette reviewed the video of the transaction and the teller will be given a significant education in how to handle transactions. All the procedures in place to verify the individual were not followed by the teller.
And in other news I terminated my 18-month certificate early, six months interest penalty which amounted to $42.00. I transferred that money into a 12-month certificate paying 4% and will get the penalty money back in 11 days at the new rate. If anyone has any older certificates of deposit it might be worth looking into cashing them out into another certificate for a much better interest rate.
That’s scary. You shouldn’t have to constantly check your accounts for unauthorized activity. That cashier doesn’t need re-training, they need a different career.
It will be interesting to see how things settle out over the next couple of years. I was talking with a woman yesterday who said that her company has forced everyone to return 100% to the office. Stupid, insecure management. The head of our department was like that. Immediately after Covid, he demanded people return at least 50% to the office. He was widely ignored, and is now retired.
If it can be done from home, there is absolutely no reason not to allow it. Managers will just have to adapt to judging people by productivity rather than by butts in a chair. Which they should have been doing in the first place.
Younger son’s company requires 1 day a week in office, and otherwise it’s your choice. That seems a sensible compromise, and it has let them massively reduce their office space. I look at my office (a big, open-plan room), and it is rarely more than 20% occupied. Give people a cabinet for their personal stuff, and shared desks. Massive downsizing possible.
So, yeah, commercial real estate is suffering. Where’s that tiny violin???
I check my accounts daily. I get email alerts on my credit card transactions.
It seems like this Spring is cool throughout most of the Northern hemisphere. Of course, annual variations are entirely normal, but if it were a warm Spring, we would hearing about the climate catastrophe.
Instead, the latest panic article I read was going on about the melting Antarctic ice sheets. Some small credit: way down at the bottom, they did note that Antarctica as a whole is actually gaining ice. But we still need to panic, because some specific, localized ice sheets are melting.
The panic article before that was the one that said a cool, rainy Spring would lead to increased wildfires. To make that stretch, they are reckoning that the rain will lead to more plant growth, providing more fuel to burn. You just can’t win…
We go through those scenario’s every year here in California now. To blame things on an “Act of Gaia” provides political cover for the massive mismanagement of the forests for the last half century.
I added the new Apple Card savings account to my AC. To work, you have to let it sweep all your card cash back into the account daily. 4.15%. You can also transfer money in. I believe it is a 3-day withdrawal period with no penalty.
So Plugs’ 2024 announcement will be released via video rather than live.
This is because:
A) So he can appeal to young voters who only get their news via TicTok
B) So he can do multiple takes until he gets it right
C) So they can edit out the parts where he snores too loudly
D) So he doesn’t have to answer any questions from the the press
E) All of the above except A
And in LSM news:
Fox News and Tucker Carlson “agree to part ways.”
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/3966300-tucker-carlson-and-fox-news-part-ways/
Don Lemon fired by CNN.
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/3966447-don-lemon-out-at-cnn/
Murdoch’s new squeeze probably is woke and got him to drop Carlson.
The local Fox affiliate was my morning weather channel. Tonight they get an email—I’m editing them out of my tv’s. Stupid by association is still stupid.
“If it can be done from home, there is absolutely no reason not to allow it.”
One problem is that many jobs are not 100% from-home compatible on a day-to-day basis. Whatever the remainder is, it falls to someone in the office to pick up the slack. I’ve yet to hear of any company restructuring pay to reflect that someone is doing 95% of their job and someone else picked up their 5% plus another 5% and a 3%.
“Hi! This is Henry-at-Home! I need someone to look up a shipping file”
“Sorry, no one available. You’ll have to come in and do it yourself.”
My favorite story so far is the county gov receptionist who is working from home. Sold the house in town and moved to the stix.
OTOH, if there are 20 people total, one can be in the office and his job is to do the paper file lookups. The other 19 do their jobs and share the 95% of the other guy’s job which had been to do whatever they’re doing. Each person is doing the same total work and the same total work is getting done.
There’ll always be some people who prefer to work from home and some who prefer the office. Perhaps the job titles and responsibilities can be partitioned along those lines: Accounts Receivable Clerk, remote and Accounts Receivable Clerk, office.
In the US, productivity would fall off a cliff.
They keep doing takes and upping the Adderall drip until they get a coherent announcement. If the dosage gets too high and Biden develops the shakes like my former management, they’ll shoot him with the Marlon Perkins tranq gun and start over tomorrow.
Verdict from the tree guy matches my expectation. As does the neighbor’s warning that he’s not the cheapest guy (but he’s good and worth it.) Says he’s got 85 jobs booked, but most are flexible and he’ll work around my schedule.
@ray, that’s good advice to look at rates. In a rapidly changing environment, we all need to step up our frequency of re-evaluation…
WRT work from home, IF I was still with canadian bigcorp I would definitely want the office staff from our group in the office. Every project was a group effort, and there were real advantages to having the group co-located. Also, they could walk down the hall to the production area and check on stuff. Also couldn’t build systems and do staging and design validation from home. Anyone involved in producing real things needs to be physically near those things.
n
If the reports I saw this weekend are accurate, Carlson used the ‘C’ word to describe a woman in a corporate email.
That’s the kiss of death for your career in the age of the Outlook/Teams panopticon where everything is recorded and nothing ever gets thrown away.
I got in trouble at the tolling company once because I said that a female support staff member needed “to be on top of it” referring to a problem in the field in a private chat to another employee. Fortunately, we were on Slack at the time, not Teams, and, in addition to privacy complications, Slack considers (or at least did) all recorded data such as chat transcripts to be their property, requiring a court order to retrieve any records.
Yeah, they were just looking for something at that place to avoid paying the unemployment from a personality conflict termination.
The only thing that surprises me about Tucker and FOx is that he lasted that long. Fox hasn’t been “right” politically for a long time, if ever. More right than the rest, but that changed when the ownership changed. They exist as a boogey man for the left. I can’t tell you how many times I hear about “Fox viewers” or “people that get all their info from Fox” or some slur on conservatives related to Fox. NO ONE on the far right that I talk to even WATCHES Fox. Don’t know what their viewership numbers are, but I bet at least half of them are lefties looking for talking points.
Carson was the only good thing on the network, and I only ever watched clips online. They tolerated him because he brought in the views, until they decided it wasn’t worth it. I expect them to decline rapidly at this point with other big changes coming.
n
Any email is an excuse not the reason.
n
For some reason Boeing management cones to mind.
At the Investment Banks the Managing Directors want their minions in the office and at their beck and call.
In my early days in IT, before the extensive off-shoring and WFH, in-person collaboration was the norm and plenty of whiteboard markers were worn out. And these were the ‘pre-odor free fire markers 🙂
For some reason Boeing management cones to mind.
I regret that I have but one up-vote to give to that statement!
“We’re done with “gradually”. We’ve now reached the “suddenly” part”
https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/were-done-with-gradually-weve-now-reached-the-suddenly-part-146899/
“The main thesis, quite simply, was that the US was in decline. And whenever I spoke at events, I used to talk about logarithmic decay, saying: “As a civilization in decline, you never really know quite where you are on the curve. You could be way over here on the horizontal line, at the very beginning of the decline… or you could be standing on the precipice about to hit the vertical slide down.””
“Well, now we have a much better idea of where we are on that logarithmic decay curve. Because these ideas about the national debt, inflation, social security, social conflict, etc. are no longer theories. Nor are they even remotely controversial. Just last week, US Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy said in a speech that “America’s debt is a ticking time bomb”. Social Security’s looming insolvency is now openly discussed in Washington and regularly reported in the Wall Street Journal.”
Dadgum it, I hate “suddenly” stuff. Big heavy parts tend to fly off in all directions at high velocities when suddenly happens. Don’t be there when the suddenly happens, be part of the team that assesses how to fix everything.
And I was very surprised when Chile nationalized their lithium industry this weekend. Chile is the calmest country in South America. To me, that means that Chile sees a huge storm on the near horizon and is battening the hatches.
“Fox’s settlement with Dominion unlikely to cost it $787.5M”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/foxs-settlement-dominion-unlikely-cost-120054140.html
“Fox Corp.’s $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems over defamation charges is eye-popping, but the ultimate cost to the media company is likely to be much lower.”
“Telling it like it is”
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2023/04/telling-it-like-it-is.html
“How did we arrive at this world where everything is racist? And if everything is racist, then nothing is racist, and the word has no meaning, which would mean we’ve truly arrived at a colorblind society. Why is this affliction, this sick obsession with race and racism mostly isolated to the United States?”
Because the other first world societies are pretending that race does not matter to the point of societal disaster (England, Norway, France, Germany, etc). And the second world societies (China) are busy killing everyone in China who are not Han Chinese.
“A widow who lives in an overpopulated future gets a visit from a government agent. | The Exit Plan”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzIGMJBOMRU
Oh my goodness, shades of Logan’s Run.
“I’m not a stranger, I’m with the government”.
“Tesla Installed Almost as Many Batteries in First Quarter as It did All of 2021”
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/tesla-installed-almost-as-many-batteries-in-first-quarter-as-it-did-all-of-2021-1.1909855
“Tesla reported Wednesday that it deployed a record 3,889 megawatt hours (MWh) of storage in the quarter, up from 2,462 MWh the prior three months and a 360% increase from the first quarter of 2022. The amount almost equaled 2021’s total of 3,992 MWh. Tesla credited some of the growth to increased production of the Megapack, the company’s biggest battery, at its factory in Lathrop, California, and said “many” more Megapack factories would follow.”
That is a lot of batteries. But New York is suppose to install 80,000 of the Megapacks by 2040. The NY numbers do not jibe with reality.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/04/23/another-non-reassuring-report-on-new-yorks-energy-future/
New York is going to install 80,000 battery units at 150 MWH each for $37,500,000 each by 2040. Does anyone have $3 trillion to give to them to pay for the battery units ?
“Soylent Green is people!”
The network TV version of the pilot for “Buck Rogers” removed a very sly “Soylent Green” reference, among other problems, but the version that airs on MeTV restores everything which appeared in the test screening release except the Bond film-style opening credits.
“Soylent Green” is a must see if you haven’t done so already. If nothing else, you’ll appreciate the “Buck Rogers” gag.
“Biden’s mortgage plan: 2008, but with an inflation crisis”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/bidens-mortgage-plan-2008-but-with-an-inflation-crisis
“Starting next month, President Joe Biden will borrow from the middle class to pay for homeownership for the financially unreliable. In the name of “equity,” the majority of the mortgage market regulated by the Federal Housing Finance Agency will make prospective buyers with good-to-great credit scores pay more to fund reduced interest rates for those with bad credit scores.”
I’ve seen this movie before, it did not go well then.
“Biden Family Took Tens of Millions from Entities Directly Connected to the CCP, China Military, and Ukraine”
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/04/biden-family-took-tens-of-millions-from-entities-directly-connected-to-the-ccp-and-china-military-and-ukraine/
“1. The Hunter Biden laptop investigation and related criminal actions have been ongoing for more than two years and Merrick Garland and his gang are slow-walking the investigation. The latest IRS whistleblower has evidence to prove this.
2. About 9 Biden crime family members have been on the take.
3. One ‘suspicious activity report’ flagged by a bank is bad, the Bidens have perhaps 250 of these reports.
4. Estimates of this really corrupt activity is in the tens of millions of dollars.
5. Entities included in the list are from Ukraine but also entities directly connected to the CCP and Chinese military.”
You and I would have been placed in jail a long time ago for this influence peddling.
My wife’s nephew thinks he’s going to become a rental house tycoon playing games with borrowed money and his off-base housing allowance from the Army before resigning his commission and moving on to his next career as a Veteran quota hire tech manager.
I lived that movie in Tampa dealing with the Colonel Bat Guano neighbors.
The one upside to the WA State misadventure is that me selling for market price in late 2010 burned all of their fantasies about $1 million stucco cr*p shacks.
All it takes is one clean sale — no foreclosure, bankruptcy, etc. — to set the comparable in a market.
I imaged my primary desktop’s hard drive to a new 2 TB WD Black and put the duplicated storage into the desktop build I’ve been working on since Christmas.
All of the important operating systems on the copied drive booted and loaded drivers for the new motherboard/CPU combination. So far, all of the pre-installed software seems to work on the Windows 10 partition, and activation with a new serial number went perfectly.
I wasn’t worried about the Linux partitions as much as Windows 10.
Windows 7 is the only one I won’t try. I know that core dumps on new hardware.
If I don’t see any problems, the 14 year old desktop is going to get put in the closet and eventually sold off for parts on EBay.
Hitting the road. Home in a couple of hours.
Got the blueberries and some of the dewberries planted (with a fish part under each for fertilizer.)
Wrapped up everything else.
I’ll be hitting some rush hour traffic, but I won’t be too late.
n
Someone’s throwing around mathematical terms without knowing what they mean.
A logarithmic decay is “suddenly, then gradually”, the opposite of what the doofus was talking about.
>> In the US, productivity would fall off a cliff.
Does it really have that far down to go? I imagine more layoffs are to come and that can “improve” the numbers.
>> “Biden Family Took Tens of Millions from Entities Directly Connected to the CCP, China Military, and Ukraine”
Hey Kevin, still waiting for the House investigation that was supposed to start on ‘Day One.’
Corporate America wouldn’t care if the unproductive people stayed home, but saying that openly would p*ss off the productive portion of their workforce, leading to a real “Great Resignation”.
It was the issue even the Old School Marm, Chief Justice Roberts, recognized when weighing whether the give the C-suites cover with the large employer jab mandate last year. Schooling the masses about their “foolish” political choices in that case would have sent the economy over the edge.
I was working for McDonnell Douglas when Boeing bought it up. I wasn’t very happy at the time, but no negative affects up to my April 2007 retirement.
Still doing OK and had my sixth Covid 19 vaccination today; I’m not quitting, yet.
In which of your three arms?
Neither of three arms, in my tongue. Can’t talk now, but can type.
Getting the shots in your tongue shows that you have no taste. I think you speak with forked tongue.
>> That is a lot of batteries. But New York is suppose to install 80,000 of the Megapacks by 2040. The NY numbers do not jibe with reality.
Does anything that Tony says jibe with reality? Well maybe his 10-Qs, but as has been pointed out here, SpaceX ‘splodions’ seem to magically coincide with the quarterly earnings releases.
>> That is a lot of batteries. But New York is suppose to install 80,000 of the Megapacks by 2040. The NY numbers do not jibe with reality.
Does anything that Tony says jibe with reality? Well maybe his 10-Qs, but as has been pointed out here, SpaceX ‘splodions’ seem to magically coincide with the quarterly earnings releases.
I see 3 or 4 Teslas driving around here daily. They are a real thing.
As far as the Tesla 150 MWH Megapacks, that 80,000 installed by 2040 is claim from New York, not Tesla. Since the $3 trillion cost is twice the annual GDP of New York, either the Megapacks have to drop in price significantly (at least a magnitude), or NY is not going to meet their goal.
NYFC full of bluster and posturing?? Oh noes! Yeah, I don’t believe a word of it. Start writing checks and taking delivery… then I’ll believe you bought some.
Made it home, traffic wasn’t too bad.
n
@Nick
More likely they’ll get federal grant then non-delivery after skimming and diversion.
Speaking of, does anyone want to join me in bidding to replace a federal agency’s database system? Judging by history, no work will be needed once the contract is awarded, just regular status reports painting a rosy picture until delivery is expected. Mo’ money, mo’ money, mo’ money!
I need to travel to Spokane, WA for some stuff about my brother’s estate in the last half of May.
I lived there from 1977 to 1987 and I have been there on my brother’s business a few times since 2016, but given what I saw in downtown Houston this last weekend and the horror stories I hear about the increase in homeless all over, I wonder if this hive mind has current first- or second-hand information.
What’s the current level of comfort in Spokane, crime-wise?
Part of my business will require dealing with tenants who don’t know me from Adam, and selling or transporting valuable property, which may mean some time carrying a sum of cash.
Stupid WA state doesn’t honor my License to Carry, and apparently it’s because Texas has reciprocity with Washington but only for residents with permits, not non-residents. Can’t get a non-resident permit in under 60 days.
I’m off to the googles now, but I ask here first.
@SteveF, regarding the DB system project. Sounds good to me.
Tucker Carlson was a big improvement over his predecessor. I rarely watched O’Reilly, but did watch some of Tucker’s shows. The miracle of a DVR with the ability to skip parts of no interest.
One thing I hated (really, HATED) was Tucker’s use of the term democracy when referring to our country. I can’t trust anyone who makes such a basic mistake, or who uses the term maliciously. To me, this is comparable to the Goebbels himself speaking.
I guess it is only fair to say I don’t expect much from the popular reporters who masquerade as journalists. All of them say or write things that demonstrate their ignorance or contempt.
@SteveF
If we need an office I know a young man who would make a great office manager. He’s autistic, and if anyone ever comes looking they would have a hard time getting acknowledged. Took me almost six months.
Oh, that’s evil genius right there. You could probably even get a federal subsidy for his wages.
n
And with that, I”m outta here.
n
>> NYFC full of bluster and posturing?? Oh noes! Yeah, I don’t believe a word of it. Start writing checks and taking delivery… then I’ll believe you bought some.
Don’t believe a word that comes out of the mouth of the Dumbocrat Mayor of NYFC. He follows in a fine tradition of corrupt politicians that have held the office before him.
I expect we’ve all experienced the people who hang out at the office, always chatting, never actually doing any work. Just because they’re in the office, doesn’t make them productive. But they’re everyone’s buddy (or they think they are), so they too rarely get called out.
With WFH, that doesn’t cut it anymore. managers have to actually earn their keep. Instead of counting butts-in-chairs they will have to evaluate what work is getting done. Poor productivity won’t be rescued anymore by telling great stories at the water cooler.