Hot hot hot… Last time I looked it was 97F in the shade yesterday, and it got hotter. And I was in the sun most of the afternoon anyway.
I wore a big straw hat, my cool vest, and had a fan blowing on my head. I also drank a lot of electrolyte replacement drink.
It was still hot, and I was soaked to the skin all day.
Still don’t have a dumpster arranged. WTF is it with people? I would have moved on if there was a choice. I’ll try again today.
Running earthmoving equipment is fun. If not for the heat, I’d be having a ball. As it is, I’m still enjoying it.
Today is concrete breaking. I would like to keep digging but I need to know if the concrete will come out and how much work it’s going to be, that was the primary goal for this week after all. And maybe if it’s as brutal on the body as youtube suggests, I’ll switch to digging later anyway. In any case, work will happen. Even if aspirin is involved.
Stacking up some skills! And improving my situation.
5 stars, definitely recommend.
Stack something this week.
nick
First post. Doubt I will get up in the middle of the night to do this again. but I’ve done it once now . You all on the eastern end and on vacation have a real advantage over us west coasters with regard to being first. Have a ball with the toys Nick, and a good day to all.
@Nick
“Even if aspirin is involved.”
I usually take 2x200mg Vitamin M (ibupofen) before starting the work.
Hope you have the impact-damping gloves.
Summer. The people with the “work from home” jobs in the company have to take the kids to soccer practice and day camp.
Actually delivering the dumpster is not a WFH job. No one wants to do that anymore.
I know. Shhh, dude, there’s day trading to be done.
Those fun-loving Amish “teens” are at it again:
Teens attempt to light dynamite inside Philadelphia Fresh Grocer
The easiest way to get a book into Calibre:
Go to your “manage devices” tab in your Amazon account.
Select “more” for the book you want to download
Select “download to PC” and whatever Kindle you want to download for
Download to your PC desktop
Open that folder, find the .azw file and drag and drop on Calibre
It’s important to know which Kindle you downloaded for, that is what the DRM plugin will work with. (you can add multiple Kindles to the plugin if you have more than one.)
I posted some month’s ago, the Calibre DRM plugin went out of date and won’t install, but, an industrious group updated it and it works fine. Search this journal for my post. If you can’t find it, email me at zotarm “at” gmail.com and I’ll send the link to you.
Every book I buy for Kindle, I download and shove into Calibre. I convert to epub and put it on my iPad Mini, which is my primary reader (once again). I keep my library on my Synology NAS. Cloud accessible.
If you torrent your book (hey, you alread own it), MAKE SURE YOU USE A VPN! You can find a lot of books on the zlibrary site. It’s an onion site, so you’ll need a TOR browser. DRM will already be removed.
Does a Blackhawk count?
80F this fine day, and heavy condensation on the windows. That means ‘high humidity’ fo’sho’…
Eggs cooking, bacon on the plate, and some homemade banana bread to go with the coffee.
——————-
@drwilliams, I take anti-inflammatory meds every day, can’t stack more. So I use aspirin or tylenol (since I don’t drink alcohol) for minor pain relief. I feel ok this morning. We’ll see how that lasts on the machine.
——————
I believe I saw a fox last night. That’s a new one for my list up here. Long, skinny, fluffy tail that almost reached the ground ending in white… looked like a fox to my, def not a dog.
It was 86F and 90%RH when I went to bed, but the breeze off the lake was cool. All praise to Mr Carrier, for making the South livable.
n
Yes, I did do the steam locomotive experience. Awesome, once.
Well I finally have a dumpster scheduled for delivery tomorrow.
I will have to move some material twice but at least I know it will be leaving site eventually.
n
Does a Blackhawk count?
– I”m not sure that even something as powerful and cool as a blackhawk could make a quiche eating aviator a heavy equipment operator ! 😉
It has to be at least as cool as my 1/5th size excavator….
n
{grins and runs}
Those mini excavators were all over Korea. I always wanted one just to dig holes in my back yard. Take that you weiner dogs!
“Banging” was heard on the surface over the Titanic wreck. What a way to go. It will take a miracle to rescue them. Never make a deep dive in a junkyard submarine. What were they thinking?
They were following the modern wisdom of putting their time and money into building memories. Because memories are much better than a piece of land you own or getting out of debt or some foolish thing like that.
When we lived in Vantucky, the local quarry ran a “dozer days” event as a PR move, where kids were given a chance to sit behind the controls of the heavy equipment and see the machines in action.
Unfortunately, during the four years we lived nearby, as was common with all similar free events in the Portland Metro, the “dozer days” PR morning turned into *Dozer Days*, a major day-long event with Disney-like likes to try the machines, food vendors, shuttles to/from overflow remote parking, and a “diamond dig”.
So much for the kids having fun and getting a little dirty.
So my first question is where do urban yout’s get the dynamite?
In Philly?
Certainly not my area of expertise, but couldn’t the submersible have been somehow tethered to the mother ship exactly for a scenario such as this?
I’m sure you could technically tether the sub, but that introduces other risks.
Over two miles of a cable strong enough to hoist it to the surface.
The risk of fouling the cable on the wreckage, and traping the sub down there.
The risk of the cable separating, and the weight of two miles of cable dragging the sub down.
Extra cargo capacity and cable handling equipment and stowage of over 2 miles of cable.
Navigation coordination between the mother ship and the sub. If the ship drifts, it could drag the sub along. Also management of the spooling out and spooling in process. Risks of excess weight and fouling if you spool out too much cable, retarding submersion if you spool out too little. Probably, the pilot wants to control the ascent to the surface for decompression, and you don’t want the hoist operators to override that.
All of these problems have solutions, but they are complicated.
@nick – congrats on picking out the longest day of the year to work outside in the sun! There will be lots of sunshine today.
WHY did they do it, the “Titanic” submarine expedition? Adrenaline junkies. Do something few people have ever done before, like Mt. Everest. Or at least, few people have SURVIVED doing, ALSO like Mt. Everest.
Will they survive? It would take a miracle. They knew the risks, and accepted them.
Well Amazon just surprised me. I bought three APC 1500 watt APSes almost a month ago. One for the house computer stuff, one for the wireless modem, etc. & TV, one for the shop computer stuff (computer, router modem, etc.).
I have been trying to see get the shop stuff to work but with no success. Sometimes it would but but not always. I finally isolated the problem to the new UPS but it too worked sometimes but not always. Yesterday afternoon I got my wall plug tester that is used to verify that your wall plugs are wired correctly and found that while the surge outlets are OK, the neutral wire for Battery outlets is not wired. I spent almost a month figuring that out. The extension cord I used for the modem and gigabit switch (which I wanted to place where I could see them) only used two wires.
When I called Amazon they routed me to a woman who did not even know what a UPS was. (I asked her and she admitted not knowing was it was.) They are sending me a replacement and I can dispose to the bad unit as I see fit. Bet I can fix it…
I’ve experienced that several times in the last year with Amazon. The most surprising item was a blood pressure monitor, where they made me jump through all kinds of hoops with multiple reps to get the refund and then, after clearing the last hurdle, told me to trash the device.
Never forget, however, that Amazon knows exactly how much money they’ve made from you since their proverbial “Day One”, and if that number reaches a negative which their algorithms project will never return to positive territory, they will shutter your account. It is rare … for now … but it has happened.
Also, return fees are coming at Big River as AWS fades in relevance as a Hot Skillz.
Taking my lunch break. The big hole is dug. I need to clean it up and level it, etc with the skid steer but the majority of the excavation is done.
The skid steer they delivered this morning has an enclosed cab and air conditioning. I was so ready for that! but I just got a call that they sent the wrong one and will swap it out tomorrow. Big swear words…
It was overcast so I decided to work on the hole with the excavator and save the skid steer for later when it was hotter. Mrrrr. I’m gonna use the heII out of it this afternoon.
One the other hand, I”m saving money on fuel as they are delivered full and they better not charge me for fuel use given the issues.
They have got to be losing money with the extra deliveries. Normally they charge ~$250 each way.
I better get busy enjoying that air conditioning.
n
We have Somfy shutters on the windows. In addition to simple remotes, there’s a central hub that let’s you control them via app. More importantly, I can use it to control them via OpenHab (open-source home automation software).
The hub lost contact with the shutters. Lots of time on the phone, many things tried. Diagnosis: the radio module must be dead.
Hub no longer available. New product, completely different protocol. I order it. Even my account has to change – must create new account with different email address.
I do that, then follow the setup instructions. Which are (a) unclear, and (b) take many tres to get them to work. Among other things, because shutters are ties to the old hub, the two hubs must communicate with each other.
Despite numerous attempts, only 7 of 9 shutters make the transfer. Weirdly, all this has woken the dead radio module up, at least partially. So now, both hubs sort of work. I need to find my hat of patience, and call the support line again…
Oh, new protocol, so OpenHab doesn’t know how to talk to the new hub.
“Tesla Hacker Cracks Code, Finds Secret ‘Elon Mode’ That May Show What Driving In The Future Will Look Like”
https://www.thestreet.com/electric-vehicles/tesla-hacker-cracks-code-finds-secret-elon-mode-that-may-show-what-driving-in-the-future-will-look-like?puc=yahoo&cm_ven=YAHOO
“This hidden iteration of Tesla’s FSD technology operates the car in a different way than the currently available versions of the software.”
It is buggy even for Elon.
“World Made by Hand” by James Howard Kunstler
https://www.amazon.com/World-Made-James-Howard-Kunstler/dp/0802144012?tag=ttgnet-20/
Book number one of a four book apocalyptic fantasy series. I read the well printed and well bound trade paperback published by Grove Press in 2009 that I bought new on Amazon. I have ordered the second book in the series.
In this alternate reality, oil well fracking was not invented and the world started running out of crude oil in 2008. Then somebody popped off a nuclear bomb in Los Angeles and somebody popped off a nuclear bomb in Washington DC. And the world slowed down and the USA moved back to the 1800s over the next several decades. We were back to times that the flu and encephalitis killed significant portions of the population. This book is set roughly in 2030 or 2040. The book is a page turner with short three to five page chapters.
The town of Union Grove, New York has decayed significantly over time. No cars, either buy a horse or walk where you are going. No electricity and the farms are worked by hand now. The population is maybe 20% of what it was at the turn of the century so there are houses standing empty all over town. All of the older people remember cars, airplanes, antibiotics, and air conditioning but the young people don’t.
The author has an active website at
https://kunstler.com/
Warning, the author’s website is fairly crude.
My rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.3 out of 5 stars (1,098 reviews)
“WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday accused Amazon.com of enrolling millions of consumers into its paid subscription Amazon Prime service without their consent and making it hard for them to cancel, the agency’s latest action against the ecommerce giant in recent weeks.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-duped-millions-consumers-enrolling-141223359.html
“The FTC sued Amazon in federal court in Seattle, alleging that the company has “knowingly duped millions of consumers into unknowingly enrolling in Amazon Prime.” In a statement, Amazon called the FTC’s claims “false on the facts and the law.””
I agree with this, you have to dismiss a dialog every time you checkout from Big River.
“Living in a crime-ridden society”
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2023/06/living-in-crime-ridden-society.html
“With religion in decline – the aging of congregations everywhere would convince a man from Mars that it’s strictly for the nursing-home set – internal constraints are declining as well. The predominant ethical question is no longer “Is it wrong?” but “Can I get away with it?””
“Last for today, we’ve permitted ingress to these shores by millions of savages. Yes, I mean that as it appears: hordes of persons with no conception of right and wrong. Many of them don’t even ask “Can I get away with it?” They see; they want; they take – and woe betide the decent citizen who uses force against them. The “authorities” are nearly always on the savages’ side.”
“I agree. I carry a gun whenever I leave the house: and even when I’m at home, I’m never far from a loaded gun that I can use to stop a home invasion style robbery. They’re few and far between where I live, but that doesn’t mean that a wandering criminal looking for a target of opportunity may not stop by my residence. If he does, I hope to make him regret his choice of victim.”
OFD used to post the occasional link to Kunstler.
Always remember that Kunstler has books to sell when reading that site.
I think Kunstler has a nice cottage industry feeding the fantasies of the people who envision themselves as the “warlords” in the post-SHTF future.
At times, I wondered if my wife’s prepper patient in Florida was a fan. He definitely seemed to have plans for our part of the Tampa suburbs post-SHTF, including what would become of my spouse.
To paraphrase “Supertroopers”, he got that gratis medical care in him, and he got all antsy in his pantsy.
The IRS suspected a fishing boat owner wasn’t paying proper wages to his Deckhand, so they sent an agent to investigate him.
IRS AGENT: “I need a list of your employees and how much you pay them.”
Boat Owner: “Well, there’s Clarence, my deckhand, he’s been with me for 3 years. I pay him $1,000 a week plus free room and board. Then there’s the mentally challenged guy. He works about 18 hours every day and does about 90% of the work around here. He makes about $30 per week, pays his own room and board, and I buy him a bottle of Bacardi rum and a dozen Budweisers every Saturday night so he can cope with life. He also gets to sleep with my wife occasionally.”
IRS AGENT: “That’s the guy I want to talk to – the mentally challenged one.”
Boat Owner: “That would be me. What would you like to know?”
Always remember that Kunstler has books to sell when reading that site.
Always remember that Kunstler has LOTS of books to sell when reading that site.
Fixed it for ya.
I don’t agree. This is bottom feeding lawyers.
Yes, they do push Prime with “a free month” and then $X.xx per month. You have to click the proper button. I don’t see the offer every time I check out. It’s just another step of the check-out process. They also usually default to charging for shipping and you have opt in to get free shipping.
Heck. Why have Prime? My new whatever shows with the same speed as when I had Prime. For example, place an order on Monday, Prime promised delivery on Tuesday, and it shows up on Wednesday or Friday. Why pay the $136 or whatever a year?
They don’t make it easy to quit Prime. It’s about four screens deep as I recall.
Hey, maybe use an actual PC instead of the messy mobile version of the site on your phone?
“Today is the summer solstice, and it will sure feel like it—but Thursday could bring some rain showers”
https://spacecityweather.com/today-is-the-summer-solstice-and-it-will-sure-feel-like-it-but-thursday-could-bring-some-rain-showers/
“Good morning. The Sun reaches its northernmost extent today in the sky, giving those of us in the northern hemisphere our longest daytime of the year. For today, sunrise came at 6:21 am, and sunset is not until 8:25 pm. More precisely, our day length will be 14 hours, 3 minutes, and 31 seconds. That’s in contrast to our shortest day of the year, on the winter solstice in December, when the day lasts just 10 hours, 14 minutes, and 2 seconds.”
“Ginni and Clarence: A Love Story”
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/clarence-thomas-ginni-thomas-marriage-love-story.html
“How they saved one another, raged against their enemies, and brought the American experiment to the brink.”
Interesting.
Hat tip to:
https://www.drudgereport.com/
I think Kunstler has a nice cottage industry feeding the fantasies of the people who envision themselves as the “warlords” in the post-SHTF future.
I am hoping to be a wizard should I be able to find enough blood pressure medicine past the first year or two. However, Kunstler does not have a good feeling about modern drugs being available in the post-SHTF future.
https://www.amazon.com/Engineer-Funny-Mechanical-Civil-Engineering/dp/B07KWM9HPX?tag=ttgnet-20/
Part of my Newegg order arrived today via UPS leaning the package against the fence on the other side of the cattle guard. I found it before the neighbor’s horses.
The Logitech keyboard and mouse set look nice. Keyboard has a good feel. Pretty nice set for $18.
The new PC and drive cases come tomorrow. UPS again. As long as I beat the horses….
The X key on my old AST keyboard has decided to work again. I shook the debris out a couple of weeks ago and gave it a couple of on edge whacks and shook it some more. What is that stuff? I don’t eat here and I wash my hands.
New Moa has a Gateway USB keyboard. I should have two. I can’t find the second keyboard. Stuff happens in 10 years. Probably gave it to someone or it’s shoved in the spare bedroom closet with beach towels and quilts and stuff like that. Anyway. old Moa had an AST keyboard just like my keyboard. So I have a spare. 🙂
The only reason I have Prime right now is because I can get it for half price thanks to my college student. You can have that for 4 years. Once that is done, I’m done unless something substantial changes to make it worth it.
Here on the Olympic Peninsula (“somewhere opposite Mutiny Bay, WA” if you want to look it up), our stats are:
My bedroom window faces directly east. The morning light starts early. I start hiding under the covers early.
When SHTF, I don’t want to be a warlord but I plan on getting at least three concubines
… because basic necessities will be in short supply and most people will be miserable, but I have supplies and I’m tough and capable, and it just doesn’t seem fair that I not be miserable, too.
Does a Blackhawk count?
Are we talking about the 4 ton helicopter or are you identifying as a Blackhawk today ?
I have three pills now, but the upside of a post-SHTF future is that demand for ChatGPT boxes will be signficantly lower. I may not need the medications.
Certainly, the crazy customer requests should slow down.
And if I’m shivved by some ignorant wannabe warlord who doesn’t understand exactly where the sacrifices got made for that medical license and skillset over the course of 34 years, then I don’t have to worry about where I’m going anymore.
Skippy’s getting a shallow grave.
Enjoy the “civilization”.
Get to da choppa!
Does a Blackhawk count?
Are we talking about the 4 ton helicopter or are you identifying as a Blackhawk today ?
Make that six tons, 12,500 lbs empty weight. The dude is a beast.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_UH-60_Black_Hawk#Specifications_(UH-60M)
My former USMC son thought Blackhawks were the cats meow, nobody tried to shoot at him while he was in one. He did try to wave one off from their FOB one night, the pilot landed his Blackhawk on a 8,000 gallon fuel bladder, full of course. The Blackhawk won. There was 8,000 gallons of JP8 all over the FOB.
Rick, I was up early enough to let the chickens out at 0505 local. They get restive if the coop isn’t open shortly after it gets light.
In theory I could make a frame to attach the timed, electric door to the coop, which would let me sleep later. In practice, it just doesn’t fit and it’ll be several hours’ work to make a frame to let it fit, hours I’m having trouble finding. Besides, I needed to check the food and water and to see if the blasted raccoon was either trapped or had found a way into the run. (Having a forest in the back yard has a drawback or two. The stinkin antlered forest rats eating our fruit trees is another.) And besides that, I wake before sunup anyway.
Enjoy the “civilization”.
Given the number of almost daily murders in Fort Bend County nowadays, I am becoming disenchanted with our “civilization”.
Likewise. Can’t tell you about piloting them, but riding as a passenger was more fun, so long as the pilot felt like playing. OTOH, on Huey’s, we passengers rode facing outward so we could see better and would be able to shoot if anyone was shooting at us.
We’re starting to get some of that. No actual requirements that I know of but there are twin concerns of our customers’ jobs going away because of AI and thus our services no longer being required, and AI-powered scams or other threats to us and our customers. This is caused angst amongst those who are not in the engineering department, and they outnumber us handily.
I made this image a few years ago. More true now than it was then.
I believe I saw a fox last night. That’s a new one for my list up here. Long, skinny, fluffy tail that almost reached the ground ending in white… looked like a fox to my, def not a dog.
There are foxes in Port Lavaca, TX. Back in April or so, I was watching my parents four bird feeders at dusk. A genuine real fox walked up and started eating bird seed. About 2 or 3 minutes later, 2 raccoons walked up on the east side of the swimming pool. And then 2 raccoons walked up on the west side of the swimming pool. Your basic flanking maneuver. Ms. fox took off in the only direction left to her (I think it was her, very petite).
OFD used to post the occasional link to Kunstler.
I knew that I knew Kunstler from somewhere.
Somebody recommended this book to me recently, I forgot who though so I do not know who to thank.
En fuego!
https://nypost.com/2023/06/21/disney-woke-diversity-chief-latondra-newton-quits/
APS UPS fixed. Disconnected it, removed the battery. Removed the six screws holding outlet sockets on the back – the only screws there are. Everything looked correct. One connector on the board without a wire.
Went to another matching UPS did the steps above. The connector without the wire had a blue wire that went to the outlet plugs. Returned to the bad unit and found the blue wire disappeared under the board. Lightly tugged on this wire and it came out. Connected it to the board, reassemble the UPS, reinstalled the battery and it is now working fine.
NOTE: I have no issues with getting a free APC UPS. I spent pat least twenty hours trying to get my wireless network operating as it should.
We went to Newport, OR for the 4th when we lived up there. Fireworks didn’t start until ~ 10:45 PM.
The night I made my final escape from the Northwest, also around the time of the Solstice, it was still kinda-sorta light peeking above the horizon when I took one last look in the rearview mirror at Baker City receding in the distance, sometime around 10 PM-ish, as I headed east towards Boise.
A week ago yesterday, I went out to dinner with friends in Spokane. We stood outside talking for a while afterwards, and they had to leave to pack for a trip in the morning. It was bright, sunny, and 9PM. I had no idea it was that late.
I remember the long Summer days when I lived in Spokane. I also remember the short, dark, dreary Winter days, in a windowless office, where I never saw the Sun at all.
Summer in the desert…when the water faucets switch from Hot & Cold to Hot & Warm.
Summer in the desert…when the water faucets switch from Hot & Cold to Hot & Warm.
Our fresh water pipes are three feet under ground. The cold water switched to warm water this week.
Foxes; My sister in law claims that a fox is “dog hardware running cat software”. We have a couple in our “back acre”, along with a couple of dozen deer. Back before the big freeze of Feb 2021, we used to have possums and at least one armadillo, but I don’t think they survived the freeze.
> “World Made by Hand” by James Howard Kunstler
> https://www.amazon.com/World-Made-James-Howard-Kunstler/dp/0802144012?tag=ttgnet-20/
From
https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/comments/14fg8fm/comment/jp0zsvq/
If you want a similar tone and themes, read Ken Liu’s Staying Behind.
https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/liu_10_11/
“Save her for what?” Carol is suddenly furious. She does not move. “This is a play, a joke, a re-enactment of something that never was. Did you go to your prom on a bicycle? Did you play only songs that your parents listened to when they were kids? Did you grow up thinking that scavenging would be the only profession? Our way of life is long gone, dead, finished!
“What will you have her do when this house falls apart in thirty years? What will she do when the last bottle of aspirin is gone, the last steel pot rusted through? Will you condemn her and her children to a life of picking through our garbage heaps, sliding down the technology ladder year after year until they’ve lost all the progress made by the human race in the last five thousand years?”
Cold water? Comes out of the refrigerator. We have a well, and a 2500 gal above-ground cistern, so when the weather gets hot, the cistern heats up, too.
>> More precisely, our day length will be 14 hours, 3 minutes, and 31 seconds. That’s in contrast to our shortest day of the year, on the winter solstice in December, when the day lasts just 10 hours, 14 minutes, and 2 seconds.”
Hmm, last I checked our days are 24 hours… as in 24x7x365.
Yeah, water and ice in the fridge door. The dogs get the tap water with a handful of ice cubes tossed in. The puppy (ten months) gobbles the ice cubes like they’re candy.
Alan says:
The Earth spins 360 degrees in 23 hours, 56 minutes. But in that time, the Earth is moving along in its orbit at about 67,000 miles per hour, so it takes another 4 minutes of rotation to get to the point that the Sun is in the same spot.
>> The town of Union Grove, New York has decayed significantly over time. No cars, either buy a horse or walk where you are going. No electricity and the farms are worked by hand now.
Does the author explain how a waterwheel affixed to the shaft of a permanent magnet electric motor is no longer a rudimentary generator?
Well I got rained out.
with 2 hours of sunlight remaining, it got DARK and scary. Huge lightning. Massive thunder. Wind blowing the rain horizontally. Came in quick and has stayed with some minor variation.
I will get to see how my new hole drains (it doesn’t).
Neighbor fed me again. Plate full of homemade fried chicken with baked beans. Really good.
I’ll tell anyone who asks, running the machines sure beats running a shovel and a wheelbarrow.
n
Sun poked out for sunset … Tops of trees are golden while the sky is dark and the wind is howling.
n
You Southerners are so cute. Ours are at least six feet down. This house’s pipes are seven feet down where they enter the house; don’t know how deep the main in the street is. And the water is painfully cold in the depths of Winter.
Actually, I’m kind of surprised that yours are three feet down. I’d think that one foot would be more than enough to prevent freezing. Are they deeper so that people can drive small dump trucks over them? In case the topsoil washes away if the river floods?
My first wife and I stayed with her aunt in northern Alabama for a week almost 30 years ago. I helped by taking care of a lot of home repair that she couldn’t do herself and couldn’t afford to have done. (And which her useless, freeloader son, who lived about a hundred feet away, couldn’t be bothered to do.) As a Northern mountain boy, I was baffled to see the water supply pipe buried so shallow and the shut-off valve just covered by a plate sitting on the ground and turnable with a pair of pliers.
Or why bicycles don’t work? Sure, they might have to be hard-wheeled, but it would still beat walking.
Or why the mountains (literally) of coal can no longer be pulled up and used to power steam engines?
I haven’t read Kunstler’s novels but I’ve read enough of the ilk to suspect that I’d be throwing it at the wall within a few chapters. So many catastrophe/post-apocalyptic/general ruination books seem to assume that the idiot pills were passed around by the boxload. There’s no other good reason for the people in the ruined world to not be able to piece together something from the ruins. Is this because the author is going for the effect and decides to ignore everything which doesn’t support it? (Rule of Cool, but inverted.) Is it because the author isn’t handy enough to cobble something together himself and can’t imagine that anyone else would be? (I’m sure that that’s the case with a few of the authors I’ve edited. And 100% of them got huffy when I pointed out that a real-world experienced machinist would be able to make a working steam engine from scraps and hand tools, or whatever would solve the sticking point in their story.)
The Earth spins 360 degrees in 23 hours, 56 minutes. But in that time, the Earth is moving along in its orbit at about 67,000 miles per hour, so it takes another 4 minutes of rotation to get to the point that the Sun is in the same spot.
Now that is real SCIENCE !
>> The town of Union Grove, New York has decayed significantly over time. No cars, either buy a horse or walk where you are going. No electricity and the farms are worked by hand now.
Does the author explain how a waterwheel affixed to the shaft of a permanent magnet electric motor is no longer a rudimentary generator?
The author said that they were so busy watching society die and people die that nobody wanted to do anything of account other than the absolute minimum. The dentist made laudanum out of growing opium and accidentally gave too much to a friend who passed away while he was grinding his tooth cavity with a 100 rpm foot petaled drill. Having Los Angeles and DC blown up really freaked people out for a long time. Gasoline and diesel were available for a while at a steadily increasing price going into the tens of dollars per gallon. We were headed that way in 2008 until well fracking suddenly became available.
And the electricity would come back on for while then shut off for a long while, rinse and repeat. So by the time it was totally gone, they did not have any gasoline / diesel for the generators, etc. The local Lord up the valley had a wind machine built by his serfs to make 5 kw. And the town’s “fresh” water supply was gravity fed until the pipes wore out.
Or why bicycles don’t work? Sure, they might have to be hard-wheeled, but it would still beat walking.
Or why the mountains (literally) of coal can no longer be pulled up and used to power steam engines?
The roads were crap with huge potholes since nobody maintained them. Easier to ride a horse. And since no one was monitoring the dams, the bridges were getting washed out.
When DC got nuked, so did the surrounding states. Nobody wanted coal that glowed in the dark.
And 100% of them got huffy when I pointed out that a real-world experienced machinist would be able to make a working steam engine from scraps and hand tools, or whatever would solve the sticking point in their story.)
Here is the problem. Jerry Pournelle used to say that the dark ages were not when the people failed to have things, the dark ages are when people even forget that they had things. We don’t make many things here in the USA any more. It has been that way for a long time. We don’t know how to make things now, we would have to relearn all that.
I agree, the book went too far. The lack of crude oil, the nuking of Los Angeles and DC, the total failure of the supply chain, no antibiotics and no anesthetic drugs, and the diseases flowing rampant through society are a lot to take in a 30 year period. The society literally crushed back to year 1800 in the time period from 2010 to 2030 / 2040. I mean, the author has the population dropping by 80% in that time period. Too many things went bad in a hurry.
Solstice is bittersweet as it heralds the inexorable slide into long dark dark days.
Today our sunrise was 4:21 am and sunset is 11:36 pm.
We are overcast and raining. Were it clear the sky would not truly darken. Light enough to read a book.
This week we bought a 2006 A Liner, Expedition trim with the double dinette floor plan. No toilet, no AC, no outdoor shower. Pretty much everything else. I’m at a bit of a loss though. It doesnt -need- anything repaired. A first for me and a trailer.
And then we had a beautiful sunset, wind is still moving pretty good, but the temp dropped to 74F. Feels like it’s rising again though.
n
This week we bought a 2006 A Liner, Expedition trim with the double dinette floor plan. No toilet, no AC, no outdoor shower. Pretty much everything else. I’m at a bit of a loss though. It doesnt -need- anything repaired. A first for me and a trailer.
Nice. Wait, no toilet, no shower ? That takes all the fun out of camping. You don’t need an a/c in Alaska like you do here in the South.
https://aliner.com/campers/expedition/
Don’t worry, something will probably break on the road at the least opportune moment.
As I mentioned at least once before, I toured a farm more than 40 years ago that had never hooked up to the grid. The owner was in his 80’s. He had several ca. 1930’s/40’s Winchargers that connected to a bank of Bell Telephone central office batteries, solar heat, and some limited solar electric. Woodburners, too. He had an old Chevy running off of methane from a pile of chicken manure.
In Flint’s 1632 series the local power plant and IIRC some stock of coal came along in the time displacement. Convenient. Part of the story was their planning for a measured transition back to older technologies. 2-liter pop bottles became valuable liquid containers.
The Ford Model T was designed to run on farm alcohol. Not much actually happened with alcohol fuels as gasoline became more readily available,
One of the biggest problems over time would be rubber. No substitute for car tires and a lot of other things. Frankowski devoted his sixth book in the Conrad Stargard series to the quest for rubber. Henry Ford spent the equivalent of tens of millions of dollars trying to establish rubber plantations in Brazil during the late 20’s/30’s to break the British monopoly on rubber. A persistent concern today is the limited genetic diversity of the rubber plant and the susceptibility to disease. We have thermoplastic rubbers but nothing rivals the utility and the wonderful natural complexity of the molecules in natural rubber.
The general population has no idea how dependent their lives and lifestyles are on modern farming productivity based on machinery and fertilizers. A post apocalyptic world with 90% of the people gone that does not plan for the return of older farming methods is not going to survive when the canned and frozen food runs out and most of the population has to be producing food. In a world with any sense the debacle in Sri Lanka would already be taught in schools.
ADDED: One of my favorite replies to people who think that modern technology is superior and computers are king is to give them the patent number for the twine knotters in a 1948 John Deere 14T baler and tell them to study it overnight and explain the operation the next day.
In Flint’s 1632 series the local power plant and IIRC some stock of coal came along in the time displacement. Convenient. Part of the story was their planning for a measured transition back to older technologies. 2-liter pop bottles became valuable liquid containers.
I liked the railroad steel rails being used for ship armor.
“And 100% of them got huffy when I pointed out that a real-world experienced machinist would be able to make a working steam engine from scraps and hand tools, or whatever would solve the sticking point in their story.”
The real-world machine shops are pretty much converted to pushing buttons on the CAD/CAM. The best expertise in a pinch would be the retired guys with a Bridgeport in their garage who are building attachments and replacement parts for their old tractor. Absent cracking a casting, the old machines can be kept running for a long time if fuel is available, long after the new ones lock down fro unauthorized repair attempts.
Fair point. I was thinking of my uncle or some of the older machinists I’ve worked with, who could make anything with the non-computer-controlled lathes and presses and what-not and who could, I’m sure, accomplish the same with muscle- or water-powered tools (albeit with much pissing and moaning).
Not that any of this matters. We’re all dead, even if we refuse to admit it.
https://coldfury.com/2023/06/21/humanity-ends-no-one-notices/
https://www.dailypundit.com/dailypundit.wordpress/2023/06/21/humanity-ends-no-one-notices/
Killing off a large percentage of people would take A LOT of stored knowledge and experience with them. And the number of truly smart people that can act on their smarts is small and would suffer losses too.
Someone online looked at current world population and did math for why certain places wouldn’t bootstrap into the 20th century and it was because there weren’t enough smart people. Because they can’t just be smart, they have to have knowledge and opportunity, ie they aren’t sex toys for warlords, or picking tobacco. And you need a critical mass so that your smart hardware guy is there with your smart software guy.
——————-
wrt machinists, there are a lot of hobby machinists out there, with well equipped manual shops. But they mostly need electricity, and they have to be somewhere they are needed/wanted and have the time to work on stuff, not just survive.
There are guys who collect ‘hit and miss’ engines (what used to power any small machines on the farm) and gas powered washing machines and all kinds of stuff. But they have to have survived the big bad, and be with the right people, WITH their thousands of pounds of antique horse replacement.
——————
You can’t just ‘fall back’ to 1890 because the infrastructure that made life possible in 1890 isn’t there. No mail order catalog, general store, saddlery, iron monger, implement manufacturers, wagon builders, wheelwrights, chandlers, weavers, loom makers, feed stores, blacksmiths (biggest sellers- hinges and nails.)
There comes a point where you say, Why make electricity? What do we use it for? All that stuff isn’t there, and you don’t need power…
I think we could fall pretty far, pretty fast. Take out the knowledgeable guys, take out the conveniences that give us free time, and take out a few critical parts for complex systems, and they go down.
n
Remember the scene in “Jannisaries” where the science-y soldier is copying out the log tables from his calculator before the batteries die?? Yeah, stuff like that, only no one realizes they should until after the batteries are dead.
n
(‘course, that’s why I have a library, if it survives, and is where someone needs it.)
Firestone and Ford also partnered with Edison on research in Florida with mixed results. The artificial rubber from Goldenrod wasn’t economically viable during peacetime.
https://www.edisonfordwinterestates.org/what-to-see/laboratory/
Reinventing civilization: A couple of years ago, Amazon offered the entire series of “Foxfire” books in paperback. I bought the set. A LOT of them are “How to use leather”, and “how to make tools”.
@SteveF
“Fair point. I was thinking of my uncle or some of the older machinists I’ve worked with, who could make anything with the non-computer-controlled lathes and presses and what-not and who could, I’m sure, accomplish the same with muscle- or water-powered tools (albeit with much pissing and moaning).”
I had a conversation recently with a business owner who has some custom tooling that was made 40 years ago. Fifteen years ago he consulted with a modern machine shop with a very good rep about making another. The shop owner took some measurements and admitted that they probably could not get the same tolerances.
Last fall I visited a small business that makes tooling to produce medical devices. Top-top-tier. His contracts include 24-hour call for any problems, ever. He has a few dozen employees, but he IS the business. He said that he’s probably shutting down in five years because he has no one to take over. He has good employees, but at his skill level machining becomes an art. He got where he is doing what he does through years of taking the hard stuff and doing it 100% right.
The biggest disaster in the history of this country is the failure to recognize the strategic value of manufacturing and maintain the educational infrastructure that it takes to supply the skilled people to run it. The second biggest is allowing the creation of a primary and secondary school system that does not educate and encourage students to maximize their abilities.
Even though it’s probably the best night I’ll get for sitting on the dock with a fire, I’m headed to bed. Guy is gonna be here in the morning to swap out my machine yet again. And I really do need to work in the cooler part of the day.
n
@Nick
“Remember the scene in “Jannisaries” where the science-y soldier is copying out the log tables from his calculator before the batteries die?? Yeah, stuff like that, only no one realizes they should until after the batteries are dead.”
Yup. I remember when charging calculators and taking an extra battery pack to a final was SOP.
Now, thanks to the unsung genius who created the production line for amorphous solar cells we have calculators with LED displays that fire right up after being in a desk drawer for a decade.
Remember Starman Jones saving the ship when the astrogation tables he had memorized were the only avalable “copy”?
The “Feynman Lectures on Physics” has a chapter on deriving the tables by hand using successive square roots of ten, which leads to calculating trig functions as well.
Feynman ran the number crunching at Los Alamos, and his work there still influences design of math circuitry in modern computers.
The Pentium divide bug error bugged me for months until I remembered where I had seen those numbers before. I dug out my copy of Feynman, and, sure enough, there they were.
The Interns at Intel taping out the Pentiums failed to connect a couple of bits in the log reversal coming out of the divide circuit.
If you are building a library to resurrect civiliztion, “The Lectures” should be there.
The CalTech bookstore still has an abbreviated Feynman section with copies … hidden behind the display for “The Big Bang Theory”.
The cafeteria looks nothing like it does on TV, BTW.
And, before I forget, I would skip Feynman’s favored “Calculus Made Easy” text, also at the CalTech bookstore, for Leithold’s “The Calculus”. Leithold was at Pepperdine across town.
@SteveF
Darn. Why couldn’t the time of The Great Raping and Pillaging have started when I was a bit younger? I’m still looking forward to putting the unbelievers to the sword and the deserving up against the wall, but I’ll need a nap before trying the rest…
“If you are building a library to resurrect civilization, “The Lectures” should be there.”
Along with the rest of his works.
For sheer enjoyment I’d recommend “Safecracker Suite” and the other audio projects available from Ralph Leighton.
The Witch gets payback on the Dems.
https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/2023/06/21/luna-censure-schiff-house-trump-russia/
“Real Rideshare Ride with 0 Human Input on Tesla Full Self-Driving Beta 11.4.4” (Elon Mode)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMKpNPd8LIY
Tesla is building a 100 Exaflop AI machine for training FSD using video (Dojo)
https://twitter.com/teslaownersSV/status/1671660163751895041
“And 100% of them got huffy when I pointed out that a real-world experienced machinist would be able to make a working steam engine from scraps and hand tools, or whatever would solve the sticking point in their story.”
The real-world machine shops are pretty much converted to pushing buttons on the CAD/CAM. The best expertise in a pinch would be the retired guys with a Bridgeport in their garage who are building attachments and replacement parts for their old tractor. Absent cracking a casting, the old machines can be kept running for a long time if fuel is available, long after the new ones lock down fro unauthorized repair attempts.
At the first power plant I worked at 1982 to 1985, I told the maintenance engineer that something was wrong with the steam hotwell pumps on Morgan Creek SES #6 (500 MW net). I had been assigned to figure out why #6 could not reach full load anymore, it was installed in 1968 and hit 550 MW (net) brand new. He grunted and said he would take a look if we had the time in our upcoming two week overhaul. Well, our two weeks turned into three months with disaster after disaster so he pulled both pumps.
These were six stage vertical pumps, each rated to pump two million lb/hr of water from 0.1 psia (vacuum) to 150 psia using 100 ??? hp electric motors. When we pulled them, the lower three stages were missing (eroded away due to cavitation) and the pump shafts were severely damaged and getting ready to fail. Maintenance Engineer called the manufacturer and they told him six months which was unacceptable. So, we built two new complete pumps using our big lathe, the 16 foot long by 5 foot diameter swing. Took our senior machinist guy about a month. New shafts, new bowls, new seal rings, new impellers. No drawings, just the old pumps that he took measurements from, working 70 hours per week. Try that with one of these CAD/CAM systems. We bolted everything in place and they worked great.
The “Feynman Lectures on Physics” has a chapter on deriving the tables by hand using successive square roots of ten, which leads to calculating trig functions as well.
Feynman ran the number crunching at Los Alamos, and his work there still influences design of math circuitry in modern computers.
The Pentium divide bug error bugged me for months until I remembered where I had seen those numbers before. I dug out my copy of Feynman, and, sure enough, there they were.
The Interns at Intel taping out the Pentiums failed to connect a couple of bits in the log reversal coming out of the divide circuit.
I still have the test in my software as it affected us severely. Some of the virtual machines trigger it for some reason.
The biggest disaster in the history of this country is the failure to recognize the strategic value of manufacturing and maintain the educational infrastructure that it takes to supply the skilled people to run it. The second biggest is allowing the creation of a primary and secondary school system that does not educate and encourage students to maximize their abilities.
The lack of good electricity in this country for processing and pumping clean potable water will kill off half of the population within a year due to diphtheria, cholera, and all the other goodies in nasty water.
Outside at 11:30 (23:30) here in Haltern Germany and it was still light enough to play cards. Woke up at 4:15 this morning and it was more than light enough to drive without headlights.
I was in Norway during the late spring one year. There was no real darkness, just very dim for only a couple of hours. In winter it was the opposite and dark most of the time with only a few short hours of what seemed like twilight.
When I was on the farm in Southern Oregon the extra hours of daylight were welcome as more work could be accomplished.
Light/Dark extremes such as that would be difficult for me to handle on a full time schedule. I suppose I would get used to it over time and it would be normal.
We will do some shopping here today. My Nike Air shoes started squeaking, again. Happened to two pair of shoes purchased about two years ago. They were relegated to lawn mowing duty. I bought a new pair two months ago. Those started squeaking badly on this trip and was really annoying. When I passed a shoe store in Austria I bought new shoes. Very comfortable and very light. I may buy another pair while I am here today. Nike will be getting a nastygram.
We will also get ice cream in the town plaza. Such ice cream dishes very fancy and looking exactly like the menu. Good stuff.
Yesterday was Phantasialand. The roller coasters were awesome. I suspect they could not be built in the U.S. due to sue happy lawyers. Lots of stress on the body.
Prime example were some bumper cars we used several years ago. Such items in the U.S. only allowed to travel clockwise, no excessive bumping, very boring. In Germany it was a free for all. Bumping encourage, start at opposite ends and go for each other. Some hard knocks. In the U.S. such activity would have lawyers salivating as they gathered in crowds around the venue. In Germany, suck it up buttercup, you chose to ride, not our problem.
Friday we travel to Cologne (Köln) to spend the day with an exchange student that we hosted as a welcome family. We still took her with us on our trips to various places and consider her one of our exchange students. Will make the journey by train, Halter to Essen, Essen to Köln. We have been there before so just visiting and a long lunch.
Some pictures at: https://www.raymondthompsonphotography.com/Europe
Enjoy.
@Ray
I always enjoy your photography. You’ve got a good eye.
——
A photographer spent most of the June 10th FastCAT (100 yard dash for dogs, CAT stands for coursing ability test) event on her belly taking pics. My youngest dog had a great time, I think I mentioned on her second run she ran the 100 yards in a bit over 13 seconds, or about 15 mph. Not bad for a breed missing ⅔ of their legs.
I had a little trouble getting SmugMug to cooperate with copying the link to my girls picture. You should see a white chested, black Cardigan Welsh Corgi flying down the track
https://lauraatwood.smugmug.com/Fast-CATS-June-2023/i-rB3HGTr
The other pics from the day were great also.
Swiping backwards will show the other two pics of my girl.
Vet visit for the older golden today. Vaccinations, checkup, etc. It’s funny how a vet is like Costco – you can’t get out of there without spending around $300. It used to be $200, but I’ve had to adjust up for inflation…