Hot, but maybe a tiny bit less if we’re lucky. It was only 83F at midnight and there was a bit of a cool breeze. The smart money is on HOT. Humid. Sunny. Again.
Well, I finished backfilling the patio area and leveling and compacting it. Did some more cleanup afterwards, moving dirt piles around and picking up debris. Skid steer was low on fuel, so I ran into town after dark. Now that I’m more comfortable and skilled with it, I’ve been keeping the revs up more often and longer, which makes a big difference in fuel consumption. I burned 5 gallons yesterday easy, and maybe a little bit more. This is more in line with what the interwebs suggested for usage.
Today I’ll be doing more cleanup and getting the place ready for people… then I’ll be heading to Houston to pickup a bunch of stuff I’ll need to continue working up here. I’ll be spending the night there, then coming back up. Wife and kids and some extra kids and maybe an extra parent will be joining me later for the weekend. So I better get some stuff ready, and get some stuff fixed.
I took a look at what I need to fix the laundry drain. I’ve got everything except the seal to the concrete tank, and a 2″ to 1 1/2″ reducer. Septic guy will come by next week to do the seal part. I’ll have to leave the hole open for him. I’ll work around it and do what grading I can.
I expect I’ll be doing plumbing and electrical on Friday, and no concrete breaking. Don’t know if I’ll do a lot of loud machine noise over the weekend, but I really don’t have much choice if it’s going to get done. I don’t want to extend my rental any more.
——————-
The community here does a big fireworks show for the 4th, and I believe they are doing it early, over the weekend. Not sure though. I’ve got decorations to put up on the dock, and several new flags to give to neighbors who might not have one, or who have a ratty one flying. We’ll have a front row seat for the show.
——————-
Take a minute or two to think about your water situation in the event of further decline. Many 3rd world places with intermittent or limited water use cisterns to store the water when it does run. That wasn’t something I mentioned last time. Get what you need to be secure with a supply of clean water.
Figure out your plan, then STACK!
nick
Perhaps I live in a banana republic (like the USA, no?). We have a 3000 litre rainwater cistern. We use the roof runoff to flush a WC, but could also switch over the washing machine to launder with rainwater. The water could easily be treated to make it potable in an emergency.
I intend to install a considerably larger cistern at the BOL when I redo the patio there. The 3000 litre one at base ran empty a couple of times over the past years with the long, dry summers we have been having. It has rained only once here since 9 May 2023, for example.
Eh, doesn’t mean much. My first kid would have turned 40 last year. I’m a few years younger than you and her mother was a year and a half younger than I. For that matter, one of my daughter’s 15-year-old friend’s grandparents are younger than my wife and I. (The family is Ukrainian, recently immigrated to the US. Each generation started having kids in their teens.)
I should rephrase: Doesn’t mean much unless your self-image is that you’re still in your 30s. In that case, 40-y-o offspring could be disconcerting.
I’m not jealous. I’m not jealous. I’m not jealous…
Yes, I’m well aware that state taxes are a major factor in the price at the pump and that I’m living in NYFS by choice. Bleh. As I keep saying, I’m basically waiting for a few people to die, then I’ll be more free to leave. Though my dad has been talking about moving to North Carolina or Tennessee or some such. He bought his land and built his house a few decades ago with the expectation of dying there, but NYFS’s progress to a full-blown totalitarian hellhole (“Progressives” hate it when I phrase it like that) accelerated over the past 15 years or so and he’s balancing his desire to get away from the commies with his desire to keep his land and house and shop.
Keep in mind that all of those books were likely fiction and that the authors were selling post-apocalyptic stories because that’s what the market wants.
Even a general-audiences non-fiction book on EMP effects is going to be mostly fiction. SFAIK, in the non-classified realm, there are no definitive results on how bad an EMP would be. There’ve been studies, and even more “analyses” based on theory rather than testing, but the results are contradictory. One of the problems is that EMP effects scale non-linearly and so they can’t properly be simulated in a lab. At the classified level there may be some better work but I wouldn’t trust even that; scientists working in the national labs aren’t any smarter than the rest. They have more data and some of it’s better and they may have more computer time, but their analyses go wrong just as often as anyone else’s.
The child whom my wife suspects might be mine is 36 this year.
The timing is really tight, but, as I tell my wife every time the subject comes up, even at 18, I knew better.
I have been on Medicare for seven years. I have a supplemental through Mutual of Omaha. I have not had any issues with either of the services. What Medicare does not pay, the supplemental does without any action on my part. There is a Medicare deductible that has to be met before anything is paid. Once that is done there is a deductible with the supplemental that must be satisfied before anything is paid. After that I pay nothing. I think both deductibles come to about $800.00 for the year.
I have part A, which is mandatory, and Part B. Part D is prescriptions which I get through the VA. The wife has Part A, B and D. There is a small premium for the prescriptions which the wife gets through Centerwell pharmacy. I can say the prescription coverage sucks as there is a lot of prescriptions that are in the upper categories and therefore the copay is significant. I pay about $7K a year even with the insurance. Without the insurance the cost would be over $12K a year. Drug companies are leaches.
The premiums for Medicare are taken out of my Social Security payment each month. The supplemental I have to pay with electronic transfer.
The general consensus of everyone I have talked with, including brokers, is that Part C really sucks. The only entity that benefits are the insurance companies. Coverage is limited to certain doctors and facilities. Getting something done is sometimes a difficult process with delays. Part C is for people with no money and no income.
Yes, I can dump Medicare part B and the supplemental entirely and save some money each month. I am supposedly covered by the VA. However, the VA is very difficult to work with and an ER visit to get the VA to pay may take a year or more. One such item the VA did not pay for two years and the bill got sent to collections for me. I had to really jump on the VA to get them to pay and get the collections rescinded.
We didn’t make it as far as we wanted into Tennessee last year, but what we saw of the place wasn’t encouraging when considering relocation possibilities.
Nashville felt like Austin. No homeless shelter in the middle of the downtown tourist district, however.
Well, at least for now.
I fly back into BNA in a week to pick up a car on a mad dash 24 hour trip.
One of the Chinese relations has renal failure and coverage through some combination of WA State Medicaid and unsupplemented Medicare. It isn’t pretty.
They have plenty of cash stashed to deal with the costs, but a transplant is a near impossibility with most programs concerned about being stiffed on the bill and post-op follow up without a significant third party payer involved.
Plus, supposedly, none of the kids went to get screened for donor matching which raises all kinds of red flags about post-transplant care.
All transplants are research projects.
I’m afraid that in even the reddest of red states, any large city is going to be blue these days. I remember Bozeman, Montana, in the 1980’s. It was distinctly purple, even then. Hippies and Gaia worshippers and college students mingled with the productive folk.
I just got back from a week in Spokane. What a change from 1987, when I moved from there!
They’ve come to accept a permanent homeless population downtown, and violent crime in Riverfront Park, and empty commercial properties. Coincidentally (I’m sure), dems are now fully in charge of not just the state, but the Eastern half of the state as well.
At least when I lived there, Tom Foley was aware he could only remain in office as a Democrat if he voted like a Republican on tax and gun issues. When he stabbed gun owners in the back in 1994 by voting for the “assault weapons ban”, he became the first incumbent speaker of the house ever to be defeated in re-election.
The 100% mail in balloting electing Governor Kirkland in 2012 was pretty much the end of competitive elections for state-wide office in WA State. At this point, it really doesn’t matter what the Legislature looks like; the Republicans will never hold the Governor’s Mansion again in my lifetime.
Sad:
https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/06/the-oceangate-disaster-a-submarine-captains-early-unofficial-assessment/
No way anyone with a particle of engineering background and the sense to check the company’s record would have set foot on that p.o.s.
I hope everyone involved gets blacklisted. They should have walked. Every one.
80F at 8:00. And humidity is the same. Oy.
Slept poorly. Sore. Back is not as sore though so that is a plus.
WRT Big Achoo, let him buy his kidney in china like everyone else.
—–
Between marrying late, and the grey hair, when the kids were in elementary school the other parents though I was a grandparent raising my kid’s kids. We’re not as different looking in middle school for some reason.* Hispanics are YOUNG parents. We’re two cultural generations or more from most of the parents at the kids school. I find it a bit hard to believe that I have a 14 yo, when the girl I was dating in college has a 36yo daughter and could have a 14 yo grand… ex-girlfriends aren’t supposed to have grandkids. 🙂
n
*that may be because of the nature of our middle school. It tends to attract high achievers and their high achieving parents- who probably waited longer to have kids.
I’ve been on Medicare for 3 years. I get the Tricare For Life supplemental as a retired Vet. No cost. I didn’t even know that until I retired. Typical goobermint skullduggery not being up front with your benefits. I haven‘t been sick since getting the Koof after our cruise a year ago.
Make sure you have a copy or know where to check your supplements formulary. Everyone is different. Don’t let your doctor prescribe some expensive name brand that has a generic on the listing. I can also get free drugs at any milspec pharmacy and med care on a space available basis.
The VA should take care of ALL Veterans instead of this income/injury based space available system. Another lie told to young military members.
We have the same problem here with the middle and high school while nearby schools in the same ISD sit half empty.
Subcontinent reallly knows how to work the bureaucracy, and it is often the mothers’ full time job since the wives’ family money typically buys the house. The problem comes in that they prefer new construction, often with unproven schools, and every loophole has to be explored to meet the desire for quality public schools while avoiding a “used” house.
At my kids high school, even the Army ROTC participation is cited as a reason for an zoning exemption if necessary.
Re: Old kids-my oldest son is 56, I have 21 grandkids and 22 great grandkids. Oldest great-grandchild (blood not step) will be 17 on July 3rd. Oldest step great-grandchild will make a great-great-grandfather very soon. I see myself as late twenty’s not late seventy’s. I know I’m old, but I just keep acting like I’m a 28.
Re: Buying dirt moving equipment vs renting. I bought a (2000 model year) Terramite T-9 backhoe over two years ago for $10,000. I had a place to park it – I parked my car outside. I’ve put several hundred hours on it and replaced or rebuilt eight of the twelve hydraulic cylinders. I didn’t understand that when a cylinder starts to leak fix it. I let some of them leak too long. When I tried to get those cylinders rebuilt, the cylinder walls had been worn away by the escaping fluid until it was ruined making a replacement cheaper than repairing the old old. Motor mounts broke breaking the radiator mounts also. Repaired those this month. Probably another $3000 total. I still will be able to get $10,000 for it if not more.
I’m not as coordinated as Nick and I have to think about every move I make so it is exhausting to operate. I had 20 small, 24 medium and a dozen large tree stumps to remove to build my shop and clear the parking area in front of it. Plus clear land for the septic field.
Re cables: As Jerry Pournelle said – it’s the cables. I lost the left channel on my music system. Tried small several fixes as I isolated it to the amplifier. When I started to replace it, I paused and first removed and then refasten all of the wires at the amp. Problem solved.
Outside of a duty-related injury, if they’ve been deployed to a combat zone or held a skill position which makes them subject to recall, yeah, provide the VA healthcare.
Real military jobs, killing people, breaking things, not driving a word processor … or running the snake torture at Gitmo.
And, no, snake torture neighbor wasn’t eligible for VA, and, even though she saw my wife’s partner in Florida on Tri Care retiree benefits, my spouse always made “El Diablo Blanco”* go to the base for care when no one else was in the office.
* What we imagined the Cuban locals working on base at Guantanamo called her. Flexible morality, almost albino, like Gary Busey in “Lethal Weapon”.
My back injury was not duty related. It was several of us goofing around at the lake and a stunt went horribly wrong. I was told when I left the service, I was not eligible for VA disability benefits because the injury did not happen on duty.
Turns out that was/is wrong. I don’t know if the requirements changed in the 20 years after I left the service, or if I was incorrectly told, or flat out lied to about benefits.
I do suspect my hearing issues were duty related from spending hours in those huge computer rooms where it was difficult to hear people speak when five feet away.
Yeah, that’s definitely duty related and something the VA should cover.
OSHA is just getting around to catching up with cooling fan noise.
I don’t sit inside our server lab for long. The ChatGPT box has six 1600W cooling supplies, which idle (no OS booted on the host) at ~ 500W each.
AI definitely isn’t green … or quiet.
Perfect application for a small nuclear reactor. I’ll probably get a visit from the goobermint for posting this. GLOBAL WARMING IS REAL!
Bah. The ChatGPT box has six 1600W power supplies which need cooling. I gotta quit multitasking and editing while waiting for builds.
One of my boxes got pulled for “extremely high level” management to use at home. Yeah, it was probably him, but he’s not living in the dorm room anymore.
The VA is now compensating me for the hearing problems. It took 15 years and two applications. The first got denied and I had to start over. This time I was prepared with statements from an ENT and my regular doctor. Even then it was a struggle as I had to file an appeal.
Part of the delay was my fault as I really did not understand how to work with the VA. A person cannot do it alone.
I should rephrase: Doesn’t mean much unless your self-image is that you’re still in your 30s. In that case, 40-y-o offspring could be disconcerting.
The wife tells me all the time that I act like a 14 year old. And yes, she is talking maturity.
We drove her Highlander to the concert last night since it parks much better in those skinny $20 spots than my tank. I threw my .357 in her console, she just rolled her eyes.
Speaking of large trucks, me and one of my guys just took my half size garage fridge over to his house in my truck. We were going to throw it in his Leaf but that was not happening without laying it down on its side, a big no no.
Their fridge died last week and the new fridge showed up with fork lift impression in the side. They refused it and are still living out of an ice chest.
Taking my lunch break. Been cleaning up piles of debris, mostly roots and concrete rubble. Putting stuff away, unloading the truck, getting the trash loaded.
I think I’m going to run the lawn mower in the back. There is still a lot of grass, and it’s too long. That should take about the right amount of time, then I”ll park the machines and head home. Well, to my secondary and to lowes.
n
This will likely come as no surprise to most of the commenters here: The rot has spread to Canada.
It’s nice you had a spare to loan.
When my fridge died, I went to Sears and bought the floor model. Lowes and Home Depot didn’t exist out here then. Because why should it take A WEEK to get a fridge from San Antonio when that’s at most 130 miles? Deliver the floor model this afternoon, ok? They did.
It’s been a good fridge overall. I’ve replaced the ice maker. And there’s a defrost thermostat thing that clips to the coils that failed so the thing iced up. $15 part.
My old fridge, they sure were eager to haul it away. I have a friend that was making noises about getting an old fridge to use as a smoker. I’m not sure how that was suppose to work. I wanted the shelving. So while my dead fridge was plugged in, because “lights”, I slipped and thumped the back wall. “Click” and it turned on. Defrost timer. That was about $30 and a trip to Austin. It’s worked fine ever since.
All a real long way to say their fridge might just need a $30 part and then they have a garage fridge.
Here is a video of the flying 1966 Corvair balloon car from the Bryan Adams concert last night. Just a big helium filled balloon that was totally cool.
https://www.tiktok.com/@bryanadams/video/7106847736091118853
All a real long way to say their fridge might just need a $30 part and then they have a garage fridge.
Their refrigerator compressor died. The new compressor is unobtanium and as expensive as a new refrigerator. He was putting ice in it for several weeks before he decided what to do. Then it totally died.
Over The Hedge: Working With Polymers
https://www.gocomics.com/overthehedge/2023/06/29
Yeah, sometimes a chemical engineering degree comes in handy. And of course there is the corresponding case, engineers make big messes when they screw up. Just ask me about my field engineering experiences.
Oh. Dead Compressor. That sort of changes things. I had an idea. 🙂
My first car was a Corvair. 85mph flat out in 1973.
Tempted to buy one as a backup no-smog-required vehicle. But I have so very many projects already…
Keep in mind that all of those books were likely fiction and that the authors were selling post-apocalyptic stories because that’s what the market wants.
Even a general-audiences non-fiction book on EMP effects is going to be mostly fiction. SFAIK, in the non-classified realm, there are no definitive results on how bad an EMP would be. There’ve been studies, and even more “analyses” based on theory rather than testing, but the results are contradictory. One of the problems is that EMP effects scale non-linearly and so they can’t properly be simulated in a lab. At the classified level there may be some better work but I wouldn’t trust even that; scientists working in the national labs aren’t any smarter than the rest. They have more data and some of it’s better and they may have more computer time, but their analyses go wrong just as often as anyone else’s.
Yeah, here in the west we do have two events to look back on. The Carrington CME event in 1859 that set the telegraph wires and poles on fire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event
And the Starfish Prime EMP nuclear test in 1962 where we tested five ??? nuclear bombs at very high altitude near Hawaii. The EMP knocked out the street lights and telephone systems in Kauai.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime
I just don’t think that any EMP will kill the car computers permanently. Those computers live in a hellaciously noisy continuous electrical storm already. I suspect that an EMP will cause them to lockup and maybe even lose their long term memory. But I expect the cars to restart after the EMP is over.
The Soviets did some serious nuclear EMP testing back in the 1960s also. Not much is known about the results.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Project_K_nuclear_tests
And Israel EMPed Syria in 2009 when they took out the nuclear reactor site that the Syrians were building. The EMP reputedly came from a specially built plane and crashed the electrical grid and missile defense grid in Syria.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Outside_the_Box
I’m enjoying the whining of the PLTs over the SCOTUS college/race admissions ruling. Apparently, there are six racisss mofo’s on SCOTUS. Note, Hispanic is not a race, but Asian is a race. PLTs don’t care about Asians, only Amish and not-a-race Hispanics (gotta pander for those votes). The ruling should have also applied to military applicants. How long has EO/AA been around? How has it affected college for the Amish and not-a-race Hispanics?
Ideological vote. The Wise Latina wrote the dissent as the only Lib in the minority who could put pen to paper without looking like a hypocrite.
Hermione Granger (Kagan for those who are new here) is white, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is married to … well, go look for yourself and decide. Make sure to read his family background.
I still believe that Comey-Barrett voted with the liberals on the loan repayment scam. She will write that opinion which should be out tomorrow if loan payments are to resume on Oct. 1.
You would have loved the German (ARD) main evening news report – this was first item. Plenty of clutching of pearls and viewing with concern. They also managed to bury the paltry fact that it was minority (Asian) plaintiffs calling for the admissions system to be colourblind and meritocratic.
“Dylan Mulvaney Breaks Silence, Attacks Bud Light For Not Showing Enough Support”
https://www.outkick.com/dylan-mulvaney-bud-light-reaction-instagram-video/
It’s back !
I was passed over for a raise / job promotion from File Clerk 3 to File Clerk 4 (or something like that) because they, for some reason, had need to hire a colored woman to do some stupid thing I was already doing.
I was doing it because it appeared useful to me and heck, I worked 7 to 4 and most days I was DONE by 11AM if I piddle farted around. 9:30 if I put my nose to the grindstone. So this gave me something to do for a couple of hours after lunch besides reading the two Dallas newspapers and the two Houston papers, and the Fort Worth paper and the San Antonio paper and the Wall Street Journal.
So I trained this “temp hire” how to do the “useful task” and they created a job opening. With a nice $400 a month raise doing just the “useful task”.
Nope. Honky Boy was passed over.
I had a meeting with my boss and his boss. And I pried it out of them that they had to hire a colored woman to make some kind of score. Ok, they got honest with me. I’m pissed but sort of cool with it.
She went out on maternity leave. What a surprise, she was four months along when they hired her. I knew this because we got along pretty good and we talked a lot about all sort of things. She did the “useful task” for almost three months. When she showed up. Because morning sickness and yo! And then maternity leave for a couple more months.
“Useful task” was not done while she was out having a baby. (It was a cute baby.)
They tried to dump her job back onto me. “Do I get a raise for this?” was answered with “No” and “No, ain’t doing it” was my answer.
I quit several months later. Raising emu and building fences and clearing brush didn’t pay much but it was a much better thing to do.
The plaintiffs were White Asians.
“How to shift an 18 speed Eaton Fuller Transmission. Down shifting explained on a loaded semi truck.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ach51aLn1eg
She shifts gears the way I do in trucks. Clutch on first gear only, match engine speed on all upper gears. Tough to match engine speed on light cars though so I use the clutch on those.
I read Pence brought his kneepads to worship Fuher Zelenski. Are we up to a $trillion spent yet.
A trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.
BTW, Scott Adams says that he expects Biden to get 400 million votes in the 2024 election. And anyone who doubts that Biden got 400 million votes is a Q-Anon conspiracist.
My first car was a Corvair. 85mph flat out in 1973.
Tempted to buy one as a backup no-smog-required vehicle. But I have so very many projects already…
My parents gave me a 1982 VW Rabbit diesel 5 speed when I graduated from TAMU in 1982. Not turbocharged. 78 mph max in 5th gear. 82 mph max in 4th gear. If you saw a hill, turn off the a/c. Got 42 mpg to 50 mpg on diesel which was about 8 cents/gallon cheaper than regular unleaded back in those enlightened days.
I just don’t think that any EMP will kill the car computers permanently. Those computers live in a hellaciously noisy continuous electrical storm already. I suspect that an EMP will cause them to lockup and maybe even lose their long term memory. But I expect the cars to restart after the EMP is over.
BTW, the Texas electrical grid (ERCOT) has not been down since the early 1950s. Nobody knows how to restart it if it does go down which almost happened in Feb 2021, Winter Storm Uri, when ERCOT managed to catch a falling knife as 400+ power plants went offline over a couple of hours on Sunday night. I know that ERCOT has plans and many of the power plants have black start capability. Most of the gas turbine power plants have 1 MW turbodiesel generators which can start almost any gas turbine.
One hopes that ERCOT can restart itself after a CME or EMP event. The amount of damage will hopefully be minimal. The last plan I heard from ERCOT is that they think that they could get the grid back up in three weeks.
No horse pee required, and those could run on used vegetable oil in a pinch.
Real German engineering.
The plans assume that the necessary personnel are actually where they are supposed to be in that kind of emergency and that someone from the state regulatory agencies is actually … regulating!
Meanwhile, down at the Capitol, Governor Abbott and Lt. Governor Patrick are spending the week in another special session p*ssing match over what is just temporary property tax relief.
The House backs Abbott. The Senate is voting with Patrick. Hilarity ensues. Nothing happens.
“ Robert F. Kennedy Jr Debates a Family Physician on Vaccine Safety During the NewsNation Town Hall”
https://twitter.com/TheChiefNerd/status/1674266437890744323
““They will not tell you that there’s any vaccine that has ever undergone a long-term placebo controlled trial prior to licensure…You can go to my website and see where the HHS says ‘yeah there are none.””
“We have a corrupt federal agency, the FDA, that lies to us, the doctors, and the rest of the government.”
Wow, RFK, Jr. will eat Biden alive if Biden consents to a pre-election debate.
Hat tip to:
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1674417393840590855
In 2011 when we had the bad tornado outbreak in North AL, must of the region lost power for 4-6 days, as some big transmission lines were taken out. If even a full day passed before a majority of people started leaving for areas north that were unaffected. I’d that happens in a bigger area, I have no hope for humanity,
Btw, we stayed, and it worked out as the weather cooperated greatly and it was mild while we didn’t have power (April). We made one target run the first day. We had enough food, it the run made those days more bearable. I’m better prepared now.
>> Just ask me about my field engineering experiences.
Well…since you offered, do tell…
>> No horse pee required, and those could run on used vegetable oil in a pinch.
Just pick out any of the stray Chicken McNuggets first.
>> One hopes that ERCOT can restart itself after a CME or EMP event. The amount of damage will hopefully be minimal.
Same as they do in the movies to boost a car – just reach under the dash, grab the two ignition switch wires at “random” and touch them together and BYU.
The world is a better place with him in it:
https://twitter.com/TheFigen_/status/1673709115049164800
@Lynn
In order to get the high efficiency ratings manufacturers put in a small compressor and work the hell out of it. So your $2000 refrigerator dies after 5 years, but it’s $10 a year cheaper to run. Never mind that a larger compressor would go for 10 years, cutting the effective cost of the refrigerator in half.
Can’t have freon depleting the ozone layer, so now we have cyclopentane in a device that attaches itself to the IoT and just happens to do double-duty as a remote-controlled bomb if control software is so designed.
Yeah, FJB says we worry too much.
Three thoughts on that:
I was expecting to see my own picture at the link but ok.
“I was expecting to see my own picture at the link but ok.”
I sent the ten cents to join your fan club but the promised photo was a silhouette with the height scale in the background still visible through the photoshop mask.
The only announced candidate Biden could beat in a debate is Trump.
Everyone else would keep their friggin’ mouth shut and let Corn Pop self destruct.
Huge Nebraska Solar Park Completely Smashed to Pieces by One Single Hailstorm!
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/06/29/huge-nebraska-solar-park-completely-smashed-to-pieces-by-one-single-hailstorm/
Headline is probably an exaggeration. Photo looks to be 80% (could be more) with some apparently getting hit a few dozen times.
The Verdict of Instrumental Methods
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/06/29/the-verdict-of-instrumental-methods/
As JEP pointed out, weather stations are sited at airports because temperature affects airplane lift and weight capacity. They were never intended to be representative temperatures for an area and certainly not a way to track long-term temperature trends.
I laughed when I read this:
I suspect the number of people reading this that know what that means exceeds the number in the Gang of 535 that would.
from an exchange on AoSHQ:
me: Sure I can. The English language is a rich resource and there’s no reason to be niggardly with words.
It’s a matter of perspective. In a zoo? In a wolf sanctuary? In a remote wilderness? In somebody else’s country, state, or at least well-fenced area? Sure.
In my backyard? Near my kids? Near my pets? Near my livelihood if I raise livestock?
Nope.
Cobie Smulders. Sigh.
Marvel is dying except for “Spiderman”.
“Inflation Reduction Act to cost US $1.2 trillion, Goldman Sachs says”
https://www.foxbusiness.com/energy/inflation-reduction-act-cost-us-1-2-trillion-goldman-sachs-says
“Supporters claimed the Inflation Reduction Act would cost $391 billion over ten years”
Wait, I missed this back in March. I distinctly heard Biden say in 2022 that the IRA was a free act, that it would not cost us a penny. Was he lying ? Of course Biden was lying, his lips were moving.
So, the Inflation Reduction Act is causing inflation due to high spending just as we conservatives predicted that it would.
As JEP pointed out, weather stations are sited at airports because temperature affects airplane lift and weight capacity. They were never intended to be representative temperatures for an area and certainly not a way to track long-term temperature trends.
We had NOAA weather stations at all of our 45+ power plants with our 125 generating units back in the 1980s. They were read by our 70+ year old gate guards every hour with their incredibly sharp XXXXX old vision. They were doing good to read the temperature within a degree. Every once in a while, they were 5 or 10 F off.
“The only announced candidate Biden could beat in a debate is Trump.”
When was the last time Biden stayed up until an evening debate time?
Baseball-sized hail driven by 150mph winds took out a solar electric facility in western Nebraska on Monday.
Today a storm system started around Omaha, swept across Iowa, and as it crossed the Mississippi the classic bowfront of a derecho appeared as it turned southwest and savaged property across Illinois and Indiana, leaving nearly half a million without power.
Corn farmers would like some rain without drama, please.
>> Just ask me about my field engineering experiences.
Well…since you offered, do tell…
I am fairly sure that I told most of them over the years here. I broke a lot of stuff in those five years as a field engineer. Of course, I can use the Nuremberg defense, I was ordered to do so.
In most of the cases I was told to run units to the maximum to figure out what was wrong or to test brand new equipment that we had just installed. And in most of the cases, it was already broke when I got there. I only got banned from a plant once by a plant manager and that was rescinded by his boss’s boss’s boss by 8 pm that night since I was doing a special job for him. I was informed that our Senior VP over 10,000 people and a $3 billion budget had called the plant manager at his dinner at home and chatted with him for a while. At the end of the chat they agreed that I was to move forward with my project post haste so that the Senior VP could get the numbers that he had been asking for that the plant was not able to get done in over a year.
When I got the numbers for our Senior VP three weeks later, he proceeded to call the president of Circle-Bar-W in Pittsburg and ripped him a new asshole. The president of Circle-Bar-W had just written our Senior VP a letter stating that he knew very well that we were their biggest customer (we spent $100 million a year with Circle-Bar-W) and that they would help us no matter what happened. Wrong. We were running our biggest Circle-Bar-W equipment at 10% over design (1.1 million hp instead of the designed 1.0 million hp) which caused the Tyler triplets to throw L-1 (last row minus 1) steam turbine blades every six months. Circle-Bar-W knew the problems that we were having but did not have any solutions for us. The president of Circle-Bar-W agreed to redesign the low pressure steam turbines to use a triple root instead of a double root, my suggestion that I stole from a Circle-Bar-W engineer. They upgraded all eight of the low pressure steam turbines for free over the next three years. In return, we agreed to pay the $200 million for the fourth steam turbine and generator that we stole XXXXXX borrowed from Circle-Bar-W in addition to our normal $100 million/year maintenance fees. We never did build that fourth generating unit because we used all the steam turbine and coal boiler parts as spare parts to keep the Tyler triplets producing 4% of the electricity in the Great State of Texas at our production cost of $9/MWH (wildly profitable for us and our customers).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westinghouse_Electric_Corporation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Lake_Power_Plant
To tell you how much the Tyler Triplets worked, the next summer after all three girls were upgraded, we managed get the 4,000 acre cooling lake up to 99 F by the end of the summer. We had a thermal limit of 100 F by the EPA even though we owned the entire lake.
We’re past the June worst of it, but many high temperature records in the Midwest in the summer were set in the early 1930’s, which was the no b.s. hottest decade ever recorded for those of us that know that hot occurs in the afternoon when the sun is doing it’s darnedest to cook you in your shoes, not in the middle of the night when decades of cement and asphalt have been added to enhance the UHI.
>> I bought myself a bunch of new books for my birthday. The wife noticed but did not make any snide remarks. My SBR bookshelf is full and has overflowed onto my nightstand with about 50 books on it.
50 books on your nightstand? Well, you guys do claim everything’s bigger in TX.
>> Wow, RFK, Jr. will eat Biden alive if Biden consents to a pre-election debate.
Not enough Adderall in all of DC to see that happen.
Will be a good laugh though to see Plugs not on the NH and Iowa Dem ballots and RFK take both.
https://www.newsnationnow.com/politics/2024-election/rfk-jr-iowa-new-hampshire-primary/
Ah, I see that another highly placed Russian fell out of a high window.
The pattern is so obvious that it must be deliberate. Toe Putin’s line, or you may also have such an “accident”.