Ho ho ho, it’s hotter than Hades, and sweatier than a linebacker’s jock. And it was the same yesterday too. Even sprinkled a bit of rain, but it ‘didn’t stick’. Just enough to have me scrambling to get stuff in the back of the truck covered.
Other than that scramble, I hid indoors and did cleaning and paperwork. Found a partial tub with stuff from the ‘bins’ so I sorted that too. Doesn’t feel like I got much done.
Today will be more active, one way or another. I’ve got a couple of pickups, then I’m headed to Lowes to get what I need for the BOL. Don’t know if I’ll head up today, but that is the plan. The other thing I’m waiting for is my irrigation supplies from amazon. I’d really like to take those with me too.
Can’t decide at the moment what to do. Guess I’ll play it by ear, and hope the stars align.
I’d like to keep moving forward with improvements at the BOL. If I can’t, I’ll keep working on stuff here. I have decided to rearrange my stored food to get it into the garage, and off the shelves on the patio. I still want it near to hand, but I want it in cabinets, not just on the shelves. So I’ll be bringing two metal cabinets back from the BOL when I come back. I’ll have some rearranging to do in the garage first, but I think this will work out better. I don’t need all the food to be accessible at the same time and I need a better way to protect it from rats and rust. I’ll have to move some drawer units and some shelves on the wall, and relocate some tools and supplies, but it makes sense to have the food closer to the kitchen, and the rarely used supplies deeper in the garage. It was not on my radar at all, or my list of things to do, but since I’ve packed it all in milk crates and cleared the shelves, this would be a good time to do it. It will make my wife happier to have the stuff off the patio. And that’s important too.
Take a look at your stacks. Do they still serve you? or would a change make more sense. Is the stuff you are stacking the right stuff for your current situation? Have your tastes or needs changed? Don’t be afraid to correct or revise. It’s not wasted effort if it results in being better prepared.
Make a plan, then stack it up.
nick
Used Tesla Model 3. That’s just asking for trouble IMHO.
A lease will be trashed from Ludicrous Speed runs, and a private owner parting with the car after less than two years would be a red flag to me.
In addition to not paying their electric bill directly – “I’m saving money on gas!” – no one uses their trip odometer anymore.
And even if they did, the Smug in Colorado is pretty bad. Someone buying a used Tesla isn’t going to want to see objective proof that Tony is lying -er- exaggerating.
Simple test — top off at the “supercharger”, note the range number, put 50 miles on the odometer driving normally, and then check the remaining range again.
Doh!
One diagram showed that it was the heated seats but with a 30 A fuse. Replacing the fuse in the right place wasn’t a priority this week until my kids complained that the rear door lock motors were dead when their friends tried to get in the car.
God forbid they have to manually pull the door handle on the inside temporarily.
OTOH, I thought maybe something important was on the circuit, and the motorcycle heroes out of the local Sheriff’s substation have been running registration traps at least once a week on the corner since the Governor signed the law which started the clock ticking on the inspection stickers.
I got stopped for an expired sticker about a month ago, and the hero started nitpicking while writing the ticket, “Where are your glasses?”
“The sunglasses are prescription.”
I had a paid sticker which I had just received in the mail which I pulled out of the pocket of the door so I grudgingly got a warning.
My wife’s nephew bought his Maverick on a private deal from an employee at a dealership who had owned the truck for less than a year, the previous owner claiming he didn’t know the cargo capacity would be so limited.
I got the impression that’s how all of that truck model got sold in anywhere close to new condition where he lives right now, which is why he went that route.
Turbo or hybrid, a used one is a dice roll to me with more than a thousand miles or so on the odometer, especially given the Hecho en Mexico origins and Ford’s problems assembling *anything* correctly right now.
OTOH, when I asked if the trim level was the turbo, the response came back, “No, its EcoBoost.”
Okay.
First on the play list this morning is The Eagles.
Randy Meisner left the building.
The softball coach at the local high school died suddenly last night. He was overweight by a lot and smoked. I suspect a sudden heart attack.
He was well liked as a teacher. He was well liked as a coach by the players, parents, opponents, referees, other coaches. My son had him for a teacher and I have photographed his games for 20 years. He will be missed by many.
Never bet against Chipzilla.
Windows is not going ARM in large numbers with the large players dependent on Qualcomm’s garbage chips or whatever they can get out of an Asian licensee of the architecture to implement the platform.
HP isn’t “HP” anymore, and the other PC vendors let Intel and Microsoft do their R&D heavy lifting.
And ChatGPT doesn’t run on AMD … for now.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/27/intel-intc-earnings-report-q2-2023.html
Well, I’m up, fed, and making progress on the ‘caffeinated’ part.
Still don’t know my plans for the day.
But we’ll figure something out.
Sunny and humid, middling hot so far.
n
LOL. A friend here bought a used Tesla and didn’t like it. He took a small loss and finally sold it today. I told him about the report on Musk hiding mileage complaints. He brushed the sweat from his brow at that. Sold it to some young “sucker” just in time.
Cue the opening “da, dum, da, dum” from Jaws:
Scientists discover the ‘most mutated Covid variant ever’ lurking in a patient in Indonesia
We’re all gonna die part Deux! The science says so.
Homo manatee say wut:
Beloved Florida Manatee Hugh dies at aquarium after suffering fatal injuries caused by mating with his brother Buffet
Sure he did. Does anybody else smell an agenda?
Florida Man … atee!
n
It is certainly possible in that part of Florida. A lot of weird, quiet money has settled along the SW coast ever since I-75 pushed south from Tampa and across the Everglades in the late 80s/early 90s.
Mote Marine goes back to when I was a kid, but I have no doubt that the donor base and agenda has changed over the last 30 years.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-forces-niger-assessing-situation-after-coup
– oh gee, another coup in Africa.
Anyone care?
n
Beyond the drone base noted in the article, Uranium.
WTAF:
Biden will STRIP military commanders of their power to prosecute sexual assault, rape, and murder cases in huge upheaval to Pentagon chain of command
Further pussification of the military. Soon our military will resemble our public schools: zero tolerance and nobody is responsible for anything. Automatic justice for any crime. Another EO that has to be reversed ASAP. I’m sure this is for the trannys and whiny wimenz.
Who is going to prosecute these cases? The DOJ? Talk about a fiasco in the making.
Have I mentioned I’m so glad I’m retired from the United States Army? Tin-Hut (that’s where an officer takes a sh!t).
The article mentions the Vanessa Guillen case. Something bad is going on up at Fort Hood – or whatever they call it this week — and I doubt that’s the only place it is happening around the country.
First on the play list this morning is The Eagles.
Randy Meisner left the building.
So both Randy Meisner and Don Felder claim to have thrown the first punch during the concert in 1977. Don Felder said that he and Glen Frey were throwing beer bottles at each other during the concert in his autobiography.
https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/the-eagles-randy-meisner-fought-with-bandmates-rejected-fame-lost-wife-freak-accident-before-death
https://www.amazon.com/Heaven-Hell-Life-Eagles-1974-2001/dp/1681626519?tag=ttgnet-20/
“Why visiting Houston’s Third Planet is a rite of passage for comic book geeks”
https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/houston-comic-books-third-planet-18173811.php
“Predating the ‘Star Wars’ franchise, Third Planet is one of the oldest comic book stores in the United States and has been called ‘the Louvre for nerds.’
I haven’t been to Third Planet in several decades. I used to ride my bike over there monthly back in the 1970s. My mom found out and forbade me from riding there (about four or five miles from our house) since we had a serial murderer killing teen boys in our section of Houston. I went anyway, you can’t tell a young teen boy anything.
My wife and I just got back from a trip on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Encountered a Tesla going very slow, uphill, flashers on. I suspect his battery charge was getting down to nothing and he was going slow to conserve what is left. There are no charging stations on the Blue Ridge Parkway. My guess was he eventually needed a tow. That whining sound the driver hears in ears, is his wife.
My wife and I just got back from a trip on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Encountered a Tesla going very slow, uphill, flashers on. I suspect his battery charge was getting down to nothing and he was going slow to conserve what is left. There are no charging stations on the Blue Ridge Parkway. My guess was he eventually needed a tow. That whining sound the driver hears in ears, is his wife.
All electric vehicles need a generator on a trailer. Or, just knock out the back window and install one there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHhf223jGIE
Whatever happened to the F150 Lightning’s “generator disguised as a toolbox” concept. Did Ford ever produce any of those?
Driving down from Nashville to Austin, I stopped once for gas in the VW in Little Rock.
The coolest part is that I didn’t want to stop in Temple an hour from home, and when I pulled out of the gas station, the range number in the VW said I could get home with 20 miles to spare.
At the end of the trip, when I pulled into my driveway, I had 60 miles of range remaining.
And I still had to stop in Temple at Buc-ee’s to pee – fringgin’ water pill – but I did not fill the car.
Today is “National SysAdmin Day”. Just so you know.
Please send cash only. Thanks.
“Mission to Methone” by Les Johnson
https://www.amazon.com/Mission-Methone-Johnson/dp/1481483889/ ?tag=ttgnet-20;
A standalone science fiction book, no sequel or prequel. I read the well printed and well bound MMPB published by Baen in 2019. I doubt that there will be a sequel but, one can only hope.
In the year 2065, space scientist Dr. Chris Holt and his team are searching the asteroid belt for likely candidates for space mining. They have already brought back a few asteroids and a small comet back to Earth orbit for mining. But at the edge of the asteroid belt, their solar sailed robot explorer finds a derelict spherical spaceship about 400 feet (120 meters) in diameter. So the USA and European Union send a four person spaceship to investigate the derelict. And the Chinese send their own spaceship. But the Caliphate of Iran and Pakistan send a nuclear weapon to destroy the derelict.
The author has a website at:
https://www.lesjohnsonauthor.com/
My rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 3.9 out of 5 stars (86 reviews)
“REVIEW: 2024 Toyota Grand Highlander Platinum” by Jerry Reynolds
https://www.carpro.com/vehicle-reviews/review-2024-toyota-grand-highlander-platinum
“The Grand Highlander is longer, wider, and taller than the regular one, and the real plus is the additional room in the 3rd row and the cargo area.”
“Under the hood is a 2.4-liter turbocharged 4-cylinder that is putting out 265-horses and 310 pound-feet of torque. It is mated to an 8-speed automatic, and my tester is all-wheel drive. FYI, it also comes in a hybrid, and the Hybrid Max, which I have loved in the Crown, the Tundra, and the Sequoia. The Hybrid Max is more about horsepower than fuel economy.”
“Fuel economy is 21 in town and 27 on the highway and it will tow 5,000 pounds.”
“This is a pre-production model so I don’t have a window sticker, but Toyota estimates MSRP to be $54,880.”
Interesting.
SysAdmins are still around? I thought they all learned Node.JS and became DevOps.
Biggest mistake the last job made – other than James Clapper on the board – IMHO?
Architecture decisions got turned over to the DevOps guy without any other opinions/experience considered. Hot Skillz!
Whatever happened to the F150 Lightning’s “generator disguised as a toolbox” concept. Did Ford ever produce any of those?
No idea. I’ll bet that Ford patented the idea more as a defense than anything else.
The Economic Cost of Houston’s Heat: ‘I Don’t Want to Be Here Anymore’
At some point in the last few years, I saw an article about someone patenting the idea of putting a Supercharger on a truck with a generator as part of a startup to create a new franchise business for EV charging.
Patents and marketing.
Ford marketed the F150 Lightning as a fetish item, following Tony’s lead, but now their entire line up consists of fetish vehicles with the possible exception of the Edge and commercial trucks.
Maybe Tommy Boy missed his true calling making sex toys. I always said my father-in-law should have taken his AT&T retirement small business grant and opened an adult video store or a strip club.
Now, The Twins and I are going on an “Urban Spelunking” trip there in August. Thanks for the post, Mr. Lynn.
You can now add the following to your Jase Case:
You are going to need those erection pills to repopulate the Planet after the Barackalypse.
Extra space is nice. But the rear window doesn’t open (the entire tailgate does). They took that feature away starting in 2020.
Which is why I bought the 2019. I often need to put a powered chair lift on the back of mine, and doing that blocks the tailgate from opening. The window opening in the 2019 is helpful to get into the back.
There is a swing-away powered chair platform available, but I don’t have one. I could add that extension to my current Hamar lift at a cost of $700+ (plus time/effort/cost to install), but the rear window opening capability negates that need.
In the meantime, I get a consistent 25-26mpg. Including on the 6000 mile trip from here to TX last may. Since there is only the two of us, the middle and rear seats are usually folded down.
Comic book stores are in serious trouble unless they’re stocking manga these days.
Barnes & Noble’s comeback is currently manga driven. They made serious inroads into the market emerging from the pandemic, even in towns with genre-specific stores and/or Kinokuniya.
I want to see “Sound of Freedom” to see what all the Dumbo critics hate about it like: hysteria, fake, no pedos in Hollyweird, not widespread, etc.
All you have to do is go to any airport. The walls, every toilet stall on the inside door, and digital displays all have a “don’t let trafficking happen, call this number…”.
So, while Hollyweird (especially bigshot execs and PLT critics) says human trafficking is minimal, our goobermint says it is a big deal.
Who’s right?
I gotta wonder if Disney is looking for a buyer for Marvel as part of Crazy Bob’s fire sale, hence the article in the Chronicle.
Hearst is financially tied to Disney through their 20% ownership of ESPN.
If that sucker is going down, Hearst will lose a lot of money.
Maybe it is just something different. Hollywood can’t stand that happening.
When Netflix put “Knives Out: Glass Onion” in theaters for Thanksgiving weekend, every single showing at the local Alamo was sold out, and the theater cancelled other movies to add screens.
Believe it or not, “The Haunted Mansion” is also a big seller there this weekend.
“The Haunted Mansion” strikes me as the kind of mediocre stuff Disney used to put out and still fill theaters because the parents still trusted the brand. It may just work this time.
Plus, the trailer had that “Clue” vibe when Disney got serious and stopped trying to market it on seeing Rosario Dawson’s … assets.
I created a slideshow video of some of the images I have of the softball coach that passed away. I will be posting the video on Facebook.
https://www.raymondthompsonphotography.com/MattHeaddon.mp4
It is 6:40 seconds long. I have permission for the music. I paid the composer $30.00 for license to use the music as many times as I desire.
Toyota wants a piece of that Grand Wagoneer pricing action, but they can only ask so much for a Highlander.
@RickH
“Please send cash only. Thanks.”
Darn. It’s a short week and all I could find was a stamp and a buy-one-get-one coupon from Cracker Barrel.
Does it come with blow-out panels on the hood?
Following his heart transplant, my father-in-law seriously bottomed his blood pressure to the point of requiring hospitalization – his last – mixing generic Viagra, aka Sildenafil, with nitro against medical advice. The theory is that he obtained the pills from a web site, but no one is quite sure.
Helping heart patients like my wife’s father do an end run around the cardiologist with online prescriptions of that med is a big business no one talks about.
Ray the link doesn’t work…
Yes, I know there was a mistake in the video, specifically the person’s name. So, I had to remove it and do it correctly. Sigh.
https://www.raymondthompsonphotography.com/MattHeadden.mp4
So here you go with the corrected link and video. I may be quick but I do poor work.
No Cracker Barrel in WA State. I’m surprised they even opened in Oregon, but the only location left is Medford.
That expansion attempt didn’t last long.
Medford is kinda-sorta “red”, but there is still a lot of blue because of The Britt being only eight (?) hours from San Francisco.
A serious gap in the Tesla supercharging network on I-5 used to be centered on Medford to the point that the Chinese relations living in San Carlos wouldn’t brave Grant’s Pass in their Model X for Thanksgiving if the temps on the weekend before or after the holiday were projected to be below 40 degrees.
It looks like Target stepped up in Medford and allocated land for a supercharger station, but the stretch between there and Yreka will still introduce range anxiety in cold weather at 51 miles.
I doubt the lack of charging stations in the area has as much to do with politics as it does that Medford is the HQ of the big Lithia group of car dealerships and a major employer in the region.
Tony wants to put Lithia and the other dealers out of business.
“Maybe Elon Musk has a point”
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2023/07/maybe-elon-musk-has-point.html
I am in favor of two terms and you are out. If the President is limited to two terms, why not all federal offices ?
Toyota wants a piece of that Grand Wagoneer pricing action, but they can only ask so much for a Highlander.
I have bought my last Dodge. And my last Chevy.
The Economic Cost of Houston’s Heat: ‘I Don’t Want to Be Here Anymore’
I am going for a 1.2 mile walk outside here in 45 minutes when the sun goes down. You are welcome to join me and the wife.
I haven’t been to Third Planet in several decades. I used to ride my bike over there monthly back in the 1970s. My mom found out and forbade me from riding there (about four or five miles from our house) since we had a serial murderer killing teen boys in our section of Houston. I went anyway, you can’t tell a young teen boy anything.
Oh my goodness, Elmer Wayne Henley is still alive ! He participated in the murder of 28 teen boys less than a mile away from our house in the early 1970s. I heard all the commotion and rode my bike over when they were digging the dead kids up out of his backyard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmer_Wayne_Henley
“Would You Trust Tesla’s Self-Driving System? Read This!”
https://www.carpro.com/blog/would-you-trust-teslas-self-driving-system-read-this
“Tesla’s self-driving system has been criticized repeatedly over the years. One group calling for a ban on Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software is The Dawn Project, a nonprofit group founded by Dan O’Dowd. It’s campaigning to get Congress to ban it.”
“Last year, The Dawn Project launched a nationwide TV ad campaign to highlight the dangers of the system following its testing (MotorTrend reports Tesla sent the group a cease-and-desist letter regarding the videos calling them “defamatory.”) The group also ran a Super Bowl ad this year as part of its campaign against the technology.”
I have seen the weight that you can buy off Big River ? to simulate a driver’s hands on the steering wheel. That is just wrong.
$600 for an outside pizza oven ? Are you kidding me ?
https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-pizza-oven/
>> Please send cash only. Thanks.
Sorry Rick, I gave my last dollar to @SteveF.
If they’re for real with the temperature, yeah. That rig seems awfully light, however.
I can get my grill up to 750-800 degrees for pizza, but that makes me nervous, especially we’ve cooked chicken recently and the grease fire starts.
Fortunately, we like to do deep dish which requires a rock solid 450 that the grill with a stone makes simple.
>> At some point in the last few years, I saw an article about someone patenting the idea of putting a Supercharger on a truck with a generator as part of a startup to create a new franchise business for EV charging.
Already available in China for the Nio.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRWNxsK6KOk
Kinda light at the moment – just bought groceries, stuff for the chickens, and welding supplies. How about I send you a chicken? The rooster isn’t much more annoying than a teenage daughter.
Oh! How about I send you a teenage daughter. I’ll bet you’re missing having kids around. This would be the cure for that ailment!
“Mission to Methadone” would be a lot more intersting.
I can easily believe that the government set up program to address the problem of child trafficking and that the continued budget and more importantly the continued salaries of those in that office depend on “raising awareness of this critical problem” regardless of the actual scale of the problem. I wouldn’t count those messages as indicating anything more than tax dollars being poured down a rat hole.
Good on ya.
I don’t rely on royalties and other payments for paying my bills or anything, but it still annoys me somewhat to see others using my words or images without even attribution, especially when they’re used to make someone else money. In the past I sent a few people messages noting that they were using my work blah blah blah. If I got any response at all, it was along the lines of “I found it on the internet so it’s free to use.” That’s not exactly true, but there’s no point in arguing with the fool/liar and the money value wasn’t nearly enough to be worth pursuing.
That still puts you one up on most of my coworkers, who are slow and do poor work, if they get to it at all without multiple reminders.
Working from home can work (for some types of job, at least) so long as the workers are professional or management holds the workers to performance standards.
My employer’s management mouths the words of “freedom to work from home, with the responsibility to meet expectations” but they don’t follow through. I don’t know if that’s because the CEO is a nice guy (and he really is) or because most of the department heads put protecting their people from consequences over getting the job done or some other reason, but a good chunk of my co”work”ers make me wish that we worked together, on site, just so that I could walk over and yell at the slackers. My preference is to treat everyone as if they were professionals and to assign tasks or request information once and then let them work without nagging… but I am also cognizant of the value of motivational decibels.
Well, thanks, but then you started talking about ‘human trafficking’, and I got worried. So, no thanks.
Besides, I would have to clear out a ton (or more, literally) of scrapbook supplies to make room for her. The supplies currently take up most of the two bedrooms and a loft upstairs. Plus there’s more downstairs that hasn’t been put away yet.
The amount of scrap-booking material might be approaching Nick’s stacks in his house. But, so far, no ‘secondary location’ for them yet.
Gotcha covered: https://www.budgetdumpster.com/seattle-wa-dumpster-rental-washington.php
But I know what you mean about project or crafts supplies piling up.
There are a COUPLE of term limits that we need to impose.
First, we need to limit how long people suck on the government teat. Starting from age 20, anybody who wants to run for public office needs to have spent at least half of their adult life working for a paycheck with a PRIVATE enterprise. By age 40, the candidate must have spent at least 10 years in the private sector. Government SERVICE isn’t supposed to be a lifetime career; serve the nation for a FEW years, and then go back to the farm.
Second, there are 330 million people in America; we shouldn’t keep electing the same losers, from the same loser families. No candidate may run for ANY Federal office who is a close relative (spouse, partner, parent, grandparent, sibling, 1st or 2nd cousin, child or grandchild) of any President, VP, Governor or Senator. No more Kennedys or Shrubs or Clintons or Romneys or Cuomos. We need NEW “elites”!
No retirement plan for elected officials and their staff other than social security.
No unions for government employees including teachers and other school employees.
“Mission to Methadone” would be a lot more intersting.
You know, it is actually Methonē with an macron over the final e. But I am not smart enough to figure out how to generate that character and neither is Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methone_(moon)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macron_(diacritic)
BTW, one thing that I failed to mention in my review was that I had no idea that Methonē is a cool egg shaped moon of Saturn that was discovered in 2004.
@Ray
“I may be quick but I do poor work.”
Fast. Good. Cheap.–Pick any two.
Besides, I would have to clear out a ton (or more, literally) of scrapbook supplies to make room for her. The supplies currently take up most of the two bedrooms and a loft upstairs. Plus there’s more downstairs that hasn’t been put away yet.
No, no, no ! You make the new teenage daughter clean out the scrapbook supplies when she shows up.
@SteveF
https://www.dmca.com/FAQ/What-is-a-DMCA-Takedown
No one yells at my current employer, which is quite a switch in environments I’ve seen in my career.
Problem employees are dealt with FAST, however, and we just went through the annual employee survey process. Last year’s survey results in my group probably cost the manager his job.
N.J. family reaches $9.1M settlement after bullied girl dies by suicide
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/07/28/mallory-grossman-bullying-lawsuit-settlement/
I would be very careful to put that money where it could not be reached by any legal action.
Then I would go after the school officials and the parents of the bullies with personal lawsuits.
I would reserve a healthy chunk to go after the bullies themselves when they reached legal age. I would use every creative way I could think of to make their lives hell, screw them over in every way possible, destroy personal relationships, and etch their names in the silicon of the internet. I’d hire people to follow them, sit next to them on buses and fart, and park next to them in parking lots so they couldn’t get in their cars. I’d put up security cams for their neighbors in return for access to the cams pointing over the fence. I buy them prepaid cremation plans and send them the announcement with a “Best Wishes, Don’t Take Too Long” card. I’d get them treatments from Canadian pharmacies for every vile disgusting disease know to man, and have some snot-nose teenage hacker put copies of the invoices on the internet and make them front-page search results. I’d hire people to come up with really nasty ideas, and give prizes for the best practical jokes played on them every month.
And I’d start a foundation to help other parents who wanted to share the pain.
If there was such a thing as transpecies, “feathery” wouldn’t be a bad thing:
https://twitter.com/TheAlgOfDope/status/1684130608346435584
If there was such a thing as transpecies, “feathery” wouldn’t be a bad thing:
https://twitter.com/TheAlgOfDope/status/1684130608346435584
You know, seagulls are thieves. And the gull on top is stealing a ride.
Like the German guy said, geweldig. Awesome.
Hey…is that Cracker Barrel coupon still up for grabs?