Hot, humid, hot and hot. Sun supposed to be set on Broil today. So humid yesterday that you sweat through your shorts just standing still. The sun was so hot, my feet were burning in my black sneakers.
Did my pickups and loaded the truck, and eventually got up here. Where it was hot and humid.
There are some issues with my equipment order, so I’m only getting the mini-excavator today. If the part comes in, I get the skid steer tomorrow. And while communicating all that we discovered that my extra bucket was interpreted as “just send one bucket” so hopefully that is now straightened out.
I still don’t know exactly what I’ll be getting but I’m pretty sure it won’t be what the website showed in pictures. Oh, it’ll be the same “class” but probably not as nice or new. I will start practicing and doing what I can with just the excavator, and maybe doing some scoring cuts with the concrete saw in preparation for using the breaker. Life’s an adventure.
At least most of the concrete breaking is in the shade.
Tree guy might be able to come on next Monday or Tuesday.
I stopped at the store for some food before heading up. HEB had some canned smoked tuna clearanced for 50c/ can. They had several flavors so I bought about 30 cans. Beef was crazy high. They had bacon in stock though.
Has anyone else noticed an unusual number of ‘out of order’ gas pumps? Seems like every station has one or more nozzles with bags over them now, and for the last couple of weeks. It seems to be getting worse as I’m seeing it at more stations, and I’m seeing more nozzles out of service at each station. No gas? or just can’t keep the pumps running? Weird though, whatever it is.
Maybe an indication of an issue coming our way. Might want to increase your storage a bit. Typical prepper guidance is one full refill of your vehicle, or a week running your gennie. I think that’s good advice if you have somewhere safe to store it. And it is now hurricane season for those in the affected areas.
Speaking of, Tulsa got clobbered by weather, not ‘tornadoes’ but crazy strong winds tearing the place up with widespread power outages. I looked for some news to link, but didn’t see anything national. I’ve got friends there and it’s really messed up.
BTW, if you can’t or don’t have a gennie, at least get an inverter that you can hook to a car battery. A 1000w inverter will run your freezer no problem and probably your fridge too. It’s a bit inefficient to sit in your car for an hour just to use the inverter, but it’s less wasteful than losing a freezer full of meat. No gas, no mess, and small package that could save your food. Add a deep cycle battery and a battery charger/maintainer for normal times, and you don’t even need to run your car if the outage is only a day or two. Just don’t leave the inverter connected when you aren’t running it.
There’s always something you can do to improve your position. Stack it up.
nick
Sign, first post, again.
In Haltern, temperature is higher, about 80F, so not as comfortable as the other locations.
No real plans for the day, just relax. Tomorrow is https://www.phantasialand.de/en/theme-park/
We have been before many years ago. Lots of new roller coasters including Taron, one of the top rated roller coasters in the world. No loops, just lots of movement. It will be a long day tomorrow.
Black Rock, State Street, and, increasingly, Vanguard mandated the ESG consultants at companies where they had influence in the C-suites, either through ownership of large blocks of stock or outright seats on the board.
If you say to yourself, “I don’t have money at Black Rock, and I’ve never heard of State Street,” chances are you are not paying attention to the prospectus mailings you receive from your IRA and 401(k) administrator. Sometimes, even with a big name on the door, they’re just shuffling paper and collecting a fee in return for the use of the “safe” name.
I’m looking at you, Fidelity.
401(k) plan administrator selection is another C-suite “hookers and steaks” sales deal.
We’ve been sold down the river by the class who occupy those offices in the building.
A friend whose wife finally cracked the corner office code admonished me once during the pandemic, “It is their livelihoods.” Yeah, until his wife got hooked on edibles on a ‘ladies only’ weekend in Vegas and filed for divorce, seeking to keep all of her ESG 1099 consultant money for herself.
It is frightening to think how close Yoga Pants with otherwise worthless paper from “good” schools came to getting the power to mandate jabs.
BTW, my friend’s post-separation advice to anyone who will listen is to keep the edibles out of your house. He cites Paulie in “Goodfellas” as his new inspiration when running his household from this point forward.
I’ve seen a lot of poorly maintained pumps for a while, going back at least a decade. At first, it was just receipt paper not being refilled, but, post-pandemic, I see broken pumps.
Gasoline sales is a very low margin business with all of the money being made in the store. Even Buc-ee’s has backed off wrangling the customers at the pumps to prevent loitering since they’ve become a mass culture destination.
Inside the store, of course, the policy is still “No Loitering”. Keep that Brisket Station moving.
If the pumps are this bad now, what happens in the all EV future where the chargers are more complex and involve high voltage.
David Weber and the Honorverse: The first 6-8 books were just amazing. After that, well, his plot was finished, and he had to find some way to extend it. So he did (with the Solarian League), but the books were definitely not as good anymore. Then that plot ran out, and he started writing stuff all around the fringes.
Much as I liked the core books, eventually one wants to move on…
– – – – –
The Titan sub visiting the Titanic: this wasn’t it’s first cruise by any means, but – precisely for that reason – material fatigue is a real possibility. Seems likely that it either imploded or sprang a leak, which comes to the same thing. The pressure at that depth is unforgiving.
Honestly, the SAR operations are pretty pointless. If no one made it back to the surface, at that depth, there is nothing that anyone can do.
– – – – –
Sure, daydream about what it might be like to be a cat, but actually dressing up and expecting people to pretend with you? Nope. You can dream anything you want to dream, as long as it doesn’t affect others.
There is a distinction between pleasant fantasy and mental illness.
Yoga Pants in HR departments should not have power to mandate medical procedures any more than the Texas Legislature should have the power to levy income tax.
Look what’s become of the Governor’s – and many Legislators’ – campaign promise to lower property taxes.
Yeah, I’m not buying the kabuki playing out on the local Faux News every night.
Local news isn’t local anymore. Should be considered for oppo research purposes only. Search for ‘local news supercut’ if you don’t already understand why. (general ‘you’)
Up and got a call from the delivery guy, he’s 30 minutes out.
80F and dripping this am.
Coffee bacon and eggs are good though.
n
Bastrop, TX at 7:30 AM was 83F and humid. Stepping back into my 78F AC felt cold, and I was just outside for a minute or so.
Already gotten 1.5F warmer.
Sunny too.
n
See also: transgenderism, 67 genders, anthropogenic global warming, communism, diversity-inclusion-equity, religion, …
Well, the cab isn’t airconditioned. Poor me.
n
Time to go to work
n
I was once admonished by a co-worker at the tolling company to keep my opinions about Furries – people who identify as animals – to myself lest I incur the wrath of members of the subculture here in Texas, which seems to be centered among very wealthy alumni of one of the state’s most prominent universities.
Furries show up at any geek culture events here, even the retro video game shows.
@nick
I did see your email and replied same day. Hopefully received and not spam filtered.
Trying to finish up veg garden projects. Energy has been too low to tackle processing my 19 growouts. Last night heard screeching. Three of the growouts were fighting so those went into the freezer instead of relaxing in front of a movie. I’m getting faster and in consideration of mosquitos and hour of night I used a step ladder as my hanger and did them in out walk out basmentally instead of outdoors. So much nicer.
Interesting side note. At four months old the carcass weighed no more Thani typically see at 10-12 weeks old. They’ve been eating their heads off. An expensive waste of resources. Their hides were nicer than at 10-12 weeks, however I don‘toften tan. It’s a lot of work for a product that is borderline mediocre even when done well starting with best quality for that species. Rabbit hide is fragile compared to most, what it’s got going for it is availability.
LOL:
Republicans rip Hunter Biden’s ‘slap on the wrist’ for tax and gun crimes: GOP says president’s scandal-plagued son’s plea deal to likely AVOID jail is just a ‘distraction’ from alleged $10million bribery scheme
What Would A Dirt Person Get?
xkcd: Bookshelf Sorting
https://xkcd.com/2791/
Who needs book bindings ? Shameful, Randall, shameful.
Explained at:
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2791:_Bookshelf_Sorting
LOL:
Republicans rip Hunter Biden’s ‘slap on the wrist’ for tax and gun crimes: GOP says president’s scandal-plagued son’s plea deal to likely AVOID jail is just a ‘distraction’ from alleged $10million bribery scheme
What Would A Dirt Person Get?
80 years to life.
>> If the pumps are this bad now, what happens in the all EV future where the chargers are more complex and involve high voltage
There are several Blink brand public chargers (Level 2 only) in our vicinity, pairs of two in three different locations. Did a recent drive-by of all three locations and found four of the six with the cords missing, the fifth with the screen severely damaged. The sixth appeared to be functional but was blocked by an ICE vehicle, not unexpected as the charger was in the parking lot of a busy strip mall in a spot right near the stores. Things are much better if you use Tony’s Superchargers.
Realize that the plea is the important first half of the eventual pardon which will eventually get issued assuming that Biden doesn’t assume room temperature before the ink is dry on the court paper.
The Biden family will get thrown under the wheels of the bus if Corn Pop passes before signing the pardon. McCarthy will want something to throw the conservatives in return for scheduing a VP vote in the House. Otherwise, he faces a “vacate the chair” vote as soon as soon as the vote goes on the calendar.
A “Dirt Person” would have been Hut Hut Hut-ed and “accidentally” shot by the heroes after they kicked in the door and mistook a cold beverage in his hand for a gun.
This despite all of the firearms being locked in the safe at the moment of entry, something their surveillance and local police told them in advance.
And ERCOT is having problems. The forecasted peak this afternoon is 81,000 MW (1,000 MW over the previous summer peak) and the available power generation is 82,000 MW. Rotating blackouts for all !
https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards
Solar is making 12,118 MW and wind is making 8,633 MW right now, pretty good for them. One of the nukes tripped off over the weekend and is coming back online slowly. Four of the coal units are down, not sure about the natural gas units. We are depending on 60+ year old racing cars for generation of half of our electric power, our luck is going to run out some day.
More on redundancy……
Most of the paper envelopes that I receive from credit card and loan companies say that I have been “Preselected” or “Prequalified” for …………….
I wonder if I will ever be “Postselected” or “Postqualified”?
Sheer nonsense!
@Nick
“Well, the cab isn’t airconditioned. Poor me.”
Do you have one of the tool ecosystems that has a hobsite fan? A bit on the spendy side, but worth it when you need it.
The 1,000 MW margin is only 50,000 Jesus Trucks.
Maybe less. I’d have to rework the numbers in my head.
Next Summer for sure.
UPDATE: 52,083 Jesus Trucks plugged in and charging is 1,000 MW at 19.2 kW per truck.
And those are the figures for the F150 Lightning on a 240 V circuit at home. No word on Tony’s Jesus Truck and/or a Supercharger yet.
My upstairs AC unit is on 77 and my downstairs is 76, following the schedule.
“365”
So off on February 29th’s?
Round off error.
97 F and 8% RH here in the SW desert – time to attempt a few items from the to-do list.
@drwilliams, I’ve been collecting 12 v fans, call em “trucker fans” in case of hurricane, and to use with swim team if needed. I brought 2 with clamp on clips, one with a cigarette plug. Excavator has an outlet, so I’ve got one fan blowing on my head.
Taking a break to hydrate and eat.
I removed several stumps already. Mostly for practice, but one was blocking access to the patio. Filled a couple of holes and am practicing grading. I am almost to the point where I mostly use the controls without thinking.
It is hot!
n
My to-do list is overwhelming. This wouldn’t annoy me so much if almost all of it weren’t fixing problems caused by other people or taking care of things which need to be done but aren’t something I wanted and aren’t anything that benefit me. I’ll give The Child a pass for much of the past week’s time-consuming things because she wanted to go a number of graduation parties and of course can’t drive herself. (Yet. This summer, assuming that she stops screwing around and studies for the test to get the learner’s permit.)
That’s a 99.726% uptime rate. Check your Terms of Service; you may be entitled to a refund! Contact Lawyers Now!
“We’re Not Finished”
Please pardon the following URL but I do not know how to change it.
https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/were-not-finished/
“Outside of that ghastly edifice, Robert F. Kennedy is making a determined flanking move, an end-run near the sidelines. The Democratic Party in all its florid and mendacious lunacy is pretending to not notice him, especially their praetorian news media that is the vector for America’s mass mental illness. Mr. Kennedy put it so simply in April when he announced a run to preside over the stupendous mess that is our government. He said his mission is an experiment to see what happens when you tell Americans the truth. Hold that thought. How long has it been since you thought anything like that was possible?”
Supposedly, Bobby Kennedy Jr. is going to run as an independent if he does not win the democrat nomination. That means that he will be killed by illegal immigrant soon.
@lynn – highlight a word, then click the ‘link’ button. Enter the URL there. The word will be the link, rather than the URL.
“The incompetent society: lessons from South Africa”
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2023/06/the-incompetent-society-lessons-from.html
“South Africa is heading into the southern hemisphere winter with the prospect of the country’s worst-ever power cuts – up to 16 hours a day. The roots of the problem lie in poor management, corruption and sabotage.”
“South Africa’s recent electricity woes – with regular lengthy scheduled blackouts – have had a knock-on effect on the supply of water.”
No potable water and no power, sounds like our future here in the USA.
I just lost power at my house. I can work for a few hours since the WiFi and router are on UPS.
Credit where it is due: Let us not forget Stalinism and the Greens.
Credit where it is due: Let us not forget Stalinism and the Greens.
I blame President Andrew Jackson. He championed the change of voting rights from only land owners in the USA to all men.
https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/elections/right-to-vote/the-founders-and-the-vote/
Oncor shows this as an isolated outage, 66 customers, which is exactly the same count as the outage on February 1 of this year which cut power to the house for nearly 12 hours.
Power restored.
The lights and AC came back on shortly after I heard chainsaws from somewhere nearby.
A lot of people still haven’t adequately dealt with their trees following the freezing weather this year.
>> I just lost power at my house. I can work for a few hours since the WiFi and router are on UPS.
Hmm, what if there was a commercial building with desks that had big diesel generators that you could go to to keep working??
>> I just lost power at my house. I can work for a few hours since the WiFi and router are on UPS.
Hmm, what if there was a commercial building with desks that had big diesel generators that you could go to to keep working??
Very few commercial buildings have generators big enough to serve all the clients in the building. Most of the generators are just big enough to serve the deluge water pump(s) and emergency lighting. Definitely not the a/c unit(s) nor all of the lighting nor all of the client electrical stuff (computers, etc).
Live in (aka play) stupid NYFC, win stupid prizes.
https://reason.com/2023/06/20/hes-facing-life-in-prison-for-owning-firearms-without-a-license/
If he’d been living in a ‘Constitutional Carry’ state there’d be no unlawful possession charges.
>> Very few commercial buildings have generators big enough to serve all the clients in the building. Most of the generators are just big enough to serve the deluge water pump(s) and emergency lighting. Definitely not the a/c unit(s) nor all of the lighting nor all of the client electrical stuff (computers, etc).
True in many cases, I guess I spent too many years working in buildings that had data centers co-located where some UPS lights and power were available.
Yeah, I could head to the campus. I may go tomorrow.
They want some of us back there at least three days a week, but they aren’t mandating on the level of “or else …” right now because that would get complicated and ugly with exceptions being granted to special interests which are questionably legal.
Also, no employer wants to play “or else …” games in Austin right now.
Power is out again. Same 66 customers per Oncor. 8:30 estimated restoration.
Greg Norton says:
SOMEBODY needs to do a better job of repairing that spot.
This state invented “swimming naked” in the Buffett sense of the term. Some of the neighbors were really prompt about addressing their tree issues this Spring, but most weren’t.
What’s old is new again. Old school Eckerd Drugs stores used to have metal gates like this at the entrance, and exiting required walking past two cashiers.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12216335/San-Fran-supermarket-installs-metal-exit-gates-stop-shoplifters-raiding-groceries.html
Look on the bright side: If it were December you’d be in the dark shining your FLASHLIGHTS!
“metal gates like this at the entrance”
Needs to be connected to the electric fence power supply.
Committed capacity – Demand = 2960MW right now.
That doesn’t seem like much, especially with solar about to drop from 3.2GW to 0 in the next hour or two.
(Edited for correct solar numbers, not the old data on one of the capacity pages)
$5000/MWh right now. Nice time to be a generator.
A billion here, a billion there:
Pentagon says accounting error provided an extra $6.2 billion for Ukraine
Remember when Senator Rand wanted precise accounting with Ukraine expenditures, and, was pooh-pooh’d.
McConnell doesn’t really want the majority right now, one of the reasons being that Rand Paul would have committee chair power.
This isn’t exactly news to anyone familiar with Florida politics, but Barbara Lagoa may sit on the US Supreme Court one day, possibly even in Thomas’ seat, so the Post is going to insinuate something sinister.
I have no doubt that Benny Crump had his own secret committee and list of nominees for the sock puppet to nominate had the Dems prevailed in 2018.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/gov-ron-desantis-used-secretive-panel-to-flip-state-supreme-court/ar-AA1cN0Un
Hi RickH,
I just noticed that URLs are creating new webpages in my browser again when I click on them. Thanks for the fix !
You’re welcome.
But I didn’t do anything. That feature has been there for years.
I suspect there’s a setting in your browser that got changed.
Power is out again. Same 66 customers per Oncor. 8:30 estimated restoration.
They put in a temporary fix earlier. Now they are putting in the permanent fix.
We really expect too much out of our electrical distribution network. It is just a big daisy chain with many single points of failure. Reminds me of the old 10-base2 ethernet network.
McConnell doesn’t really want the majority right now, one of the reasons being that Rand Paul would have committee chair power.
It is about a decade too long for McConnell to retire.
The alternative was Rick Scott, RINO-FL, and my personal issues with Scott are separate from my belief that he has no business being Republican Leader.
Had a shower and dinner. Feeling tired and full.
Got a big hole dug… not done, but a good start. I have a baseline for how long it takes now. And how much fuel the mini-ex burns. 11 hours give or take, half a tank. Course I don’t know the tank capacity…
And they are swapping out the mini-ex tomorrow when they finally deliver the skid steer. This one only has a toothed bucket, no smooth like I asked and paid for. Their extra buckets use a different attachment system.
Current mini-ex (digger for our cousins) is a Kubota. Even though it’s very worn and tired, it’s easy to use and powerful for its size. I got a lot of digging done.
Also got the concrete saw running to cut out a piece of driveway that ran the wrong way. I’ll bust it up and remove it later. Saw cuts like butter.
I am still occasionally getting my hands crossed up and getting unexpected movements, but I’m instinctive operating about 85% of the time. That should improve with more time in the seat. The joysticks are much easier to use than the old control system.
EVERYONE should have a chance to run heavy equipment at least once in their life, even if it’s the small version. It’s pretty dang cool.
I’m off to an early bed.
n
Nah. Another temporary fix. The lights came back at 8:15 and just went out again with no time estimate for restoration. Maybe now they’re installing the permanent fix.
Same 66 customers. The houses across the street have lights.
Whoever didn’t trim their trees needs to be flogged.
The electric coop in Bell County had actual rotating blackouts tonight according to what we saw on local Faux News shortly before we lost electricity again.
I’m lost. I’ve installed Calibre but don’t understand it. I have a several Kindles and I want to save my books where Amazon cannot take them away from me.
My Kindle App on the PC only sees a couple of my books. My old Kindle that died had dozens and the Kindle Library shows 563, but my PC’s Kindle program only sees a few.
I have told Amazon to put some books on my PC but I can’t find them. I can see the kindle directory but their doesn’t seem to be any books in it. There and some weird file name extensions I’ve never encountered before such as apnx, azw, lpr, res, voucher and phl. When I click on these files I’m directed to the Microsoft store to download various apps (programs).
I thought Calibre might help with that but it doesn’t seem to find Kindle books on my PC. Calibre found a “book” B004GEAMV8 EBOK but when I try to open it I got the following error message: “calibre, version 6.13.0
ERROR: Loading book failed: Failed to open the book at C:\Users\bob\Calibre Library\Unknown\B004GEAMV8 EBOK (6)\B004GEAMV8 EBOK – Unknown.azw.”
Tonight is my third attempt with Calibre.
The electric coop in Bell County had actual rotating blackouts tonight according to what we saw on local Faux News shortly before we lost electricity again.
ERCOT only got to stage 1 today. No blackouts.
However, the REA in Bell County could of had overloaded transformers or something along those lines. Those big three phase 345,000 volt to 69,000 volt autotransformers are superexpensive (tens of million dollars each) plus a 18 month to 24 month lead time. We use to keep three of them on 18 wheeler lowboys back in the 1980s for our 200,000+ square mile system that is now called Oncor. I got to see a lower rated one up close and personal when it melted down at our plant in Colorado City. We calculated that it pulled over 2,000 MW when it was melting for 45 ??? seconds.
Bob Sprowl, you have some learning curve to climb.
For removing DRM, you’ll need to install a Calibre plugin and then enter your kindles’ ID. See https://www.cloudwards.net/remove-drm-from-kindle-books/ .
Depending on how new your Kindles are, you might be able to read the files downloaded from Amazon (.mobi, .azw) or might not (.kfx). In the latter case, install an older version of Kindle for PC, enter its ID into Calibre, download the books there, and then add to Calibre. You’ll need an older version of the PC software because the newer pulls down .kfx. (Because Amazon doesn’t want you doing this.)
Worse come to worst, pull down a torrent of your book. You’ve bought it and shouldn’t have only a license to sometimes read it, revocable by Amazon at any time for any reason or no reason, so don’t sweat the technical legality.
Finally, look into getting your books from sources other than Amazon. Smashwords is my preferred digital book seller, but there are others.
>> EVERYONE should have a chance to run heavy equipment at least once in their life, even if it’s the small version. It’s pretty dang cool.
https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/texas/article/Construction-site-theme-park-in-North-Texas-lets-11139144.php
https://digthisvegas.com/
And there are others…GIYF
But real men drive trains: https://dr.nnry.com/pages/engineerDiesel.php
IIRC @Ray may have done this?
And there are others…GIYF
Google hasn’t been anyone’s friend for at least a decade!
Bob Sprowl and SteveF: I’ve kept an older Win7 laptop with an older Kindle for PC program for just this reason. Unfortunately, the older Kindle/PC will not download the new Kindle format. That broke earlier this year, and I don’t know of a way around it.
For the Kindle/PC app, when you look at the book list there is a sync/download icon on the left side that will get your books from Amazon onto the PC, so you’ll at least have them available in the Kindle app. The older books will still download in the older Kindle/PC app even if the new format is rejected. Apparently if the book was created/purchased before the change earlier this year, it’s still in the older format.
I don’t know if Calibre has a DeDRM plug-in that can undo the new Kindle file format. The older plug-in works fine for the earlier formats. There are instructions available on the web for installing and using the Calibre DeDRM plug-in.