It started out reasonably warm, and then got reasonably hot. Not scorching, but hot enough that I tried to stay in the shaded areas most of the day. Didn’t manage it when I was doing all the grass cutting though. I was seeing low 100s most of the afternoon and evening.
So after getting a bit crispy weed whacking and riding around on the mower, and blowing all the debris off the concrete driveways, patio, and various other hardscapes… I switched to playing with water to try to get some more areas covered by sprinklers. Some of it went easy, some, not so much.
I found several breaks by backfeeding the area I wanted to get working. One was a buried valve that had been leaking for some time. The retaining wall above it had sagged at that point, so it must have been years. In the same hole I found a drainage pipe completely filled with a 5″ root. Takes a while for a 5″ root to grow. There was another broken drainage pipe right next to it, but it only has dirt and stones in it. I might try waterjetting it, but I don’t know where it comes from or where it goes. Probably joins the other one that ends up in the lake. That might be a case of letting sleeping dogs lie.
Old boy ran several valves for zone control of his irrigation system, but he buried them near the zone and ran the control wires to the valves. Most installations have a manifold with valves in one place, and then run the zone pipes from there. I guess he thought running more conduit and wire was easier than running the water pipe. Seems nuts to me. And both control and supply are run willy nilly, without any logic that I can discover.
I’m a fan of DIY, and I’m sympathetic to “making do” and “making it work” and even “I know it’s not exactly right but it’ll last long enough..” but there are GOOD REASONS for doing stuff the way other people do it, and the way code requires it. NOBODY buries valves in the middle of the yard. Repeatedly. They might cluster them in the little hand hole boxes, or the big boxes, but they aren’t designed for direct burial. They need service and attention, which is difficult if you have to dig up the yard to find them. And if they leak, you won’t know it (as he and I found out.)
Systems should be ‘discoverable’ meaning someone else should be able to figure them out later, based on what they can see, and what the system does as they manipulate it. They also need to be maintainable. And if there is a standard, formal or informal, they should follow it as much as possible. The parts are designed to fit together and make it easier to use them in a standard configuration.
From a prepping standpoint, you might not be there! All your preps do no good if whoever is there can’t use them. From starting a generator, to running a water filter, or operating a solar system, or even accessing your secure storage (physical or cyber), make sure your systems are documented, discoverable, and maintainable. If you hide stuff, SOMEONE else should know where. If you have stuff, someone else should know it’s there somewhere. You don’t even have to be dead. You could be stuck somewhere else and your family needs your preps. You could be sick, or incapacitated, or on the run…
I admit that I’m deficient in this area. My wife could start and run the gas gennie. When I switched it to propane, she got a tour and demo, so she knows it’s different, but she hasn’t had to run it. She knows there are food, medical, cooking, and water supplies, but might not know the extent. She knows where to look though, and she knows how to use the individual pieces, or the instructions are on the gear and she’s used similar. I’m even starting with the kids, showing them where stuff is, and what it’s for.
Ideally, there is time to train everyone on everything, but in reality, even if they are willing, and you are willing, there always seems to be something more critical, or desirable that takes priority. If SHTF happens, their focus will change, and hopefully you’ll be there to walk them through it then. REALLY HOPEFULLY you never have to use any of it. We know that chances are, you’ll use some of it at some point though.
So stack it up. But also make sure you aren’t the nail that is missing from the horseshoe..
nick
Fixed it for you.
Any given Sunday … or Saturday …
https://www.wsj.com/sports/football/deion-sanders-colorado-coach-prime-tcu-10bcbb75
The hookers and steaks getting cancelled in Fort Worth isn’t nearly as surprising as what happened in Waco.
The Texas State stadium mostly exists for NFL teams to use as a bargaining tool for new $2 billion stadiums.
I wonder when the first $200 million high school stadium happens in Texas.
Hey, my Aggies won and thats all that counts. Even if it only was New Mexico.
We ain’t talking about the Astros. Although, one has to remember that all MLB teams are superstars.
76 F and gonna be a hot one this afternoon. Maybe just 100 F. I may go see my 82 year old uncle this afternoon on the Northeast side of Houston as he is not doing well after a fall. He spent three weeks in rehab after getting a dozen stitches in the back of his head. This is the former Navy fighter pilot with 4500 carrier landings. Getting old sucks.
It is 63 miles to their house through traffic infested tollways. Google says 70 minutes each way, probably 100 minutes. Houston is freaking huge with 8 million people running around everywhere, a giant ant hill.
Jimbo is still on the hot seat.
Keep an eye on Tom Herman at FAU. He’s there cheap thanks to UT alumni generosity, and TAMU alumni already had him out to College Station once this year.
Getting fired from UT may be a new NCAA coaching badge of honor. We’ll see how Ole Miss does once basketball season starts with the team led by the last coach fired in Austin.
Which one? TN or TX?
University of Texas at Austin.
Coach football here, and doesn’t matter if you compile a winning record, prevail in a couple of decent bowls, and develop a since-proven pro level QB, the “Texas Exes” (alumni association) place priority on National Championships and, failing that, winning the shiny metal hat at the “Red River Classic” at the Texas State Fair.
I’m guessing that the hookers wear the hat at the bacchanalia celebrating wins.
Lose and the orgy doesn’t happen.
Tom Herman may yet have the last laugh, however.
Tampa Bay has a bad stadium location and the lowest payroll in baseball most years. Plus Wander Franco.
The sad irony is that the stadium itself is new-ish and isn’t a terrible place to watch anything. It worked great for hockey for several years.
Same at TN. Except TN has been through some disastrous coaching choices. The last ex-coach, Pruitt, decided many NCAA rules did not apply to him. Lots of level 1 NCAA violations. Enough that the university was able to completely stop paying the coach.
At TN a winning season used to be beating Florida. Now the nemesis is Alabama, and partly Kentucky. If there is not a winning season, appearance in the SEC championship, or beyond, the alumni will be screaming for a new coach.
Payton Manning is now working as a professor at the university. They hired him in a heartbeat. Two people walk on water, God and Payton, except Payton never gets his feet wet. The parting of the TN river just to the right of the football stadium is next on the agenda.
Tried to sleep in, at least stayed in bed dozing. Damn dog. Lazy kid.
88F at 11am, not horrible. Hot in the sun though.
Think I’ll drink the rest of my coffee on the deck.
n
Coach football here, and doesn’t matter if you compile a winning record, prevail in a couple of decent bowls, and develop a since-proven pro level QB, the “Texas Exes” (alumni association) place priority on National Championships and, failing that, winning the shiny metal hat at the “Red River Classic” at the Texas State Fair.
SEC coaches have learned, you get long contracts so you get paid.
The next generation of Mannings, Arch, Payton’s nephew, is at UT Austin this fall.
This puts a lot of pressure on “Seven Wins Steve” Sarkisian to get reasonably close to a National Championship this year or else get the hook before the school moves to the SEC next year.
Sarkisian has an unfortunate history of crumbling under pressure due to alcohol issues. He spent all of last year as “Fired Coach Walking”, with Gary Patterson in the building as interim-coach-in-waiting.
Patterson built TCU into the dominant program it was … until “Neon Deion” hit Fort Worth yesterday and stunned the college football world.
Archie told Payton and Eli to avoid ending up in Louisiana lest they end up compared to his own legacy.
The long standing rumor in Florida is that Archie also told Payton not to play for Spurrier, hence the choice of Tennessee over Gainesville.
I believe that. Spurrier was probably the most hated coach in UT football. Then Lane Kiffin, Butch Jones, and Jimmy Pruitt both said “hold my beer” and the rest is history. The first two had to have their contract paid out, the last chap not a dime.
Now that Spurrier is no longer at Florida, beating Florida as an arch rival is no longer such a big deal. Alabama, and Nick Saban have migrated to the top of the list of arch rivals. People in TN cheer for TN and any team playing against Alabama.
I have been to three games in Neyland stadium. A lot of adults act like children, which I guess is OK at a football game. Bench seats were narrowed from 24″ seating lines to 22″ seating lines. Gave the stadium enough seats to beat Michigan, for a while. It probably does not matter as the clowns in the front rows stand, which requires the rows in back of them to stand, until all the bench seats are standing. Extra points if the seats are in the sun and it is still summer in TN. Not enjoyable for 3+ hours with the exception of half time.
Then it is the mad rush to the few bathrooms available with a huge slate wall slanted to a drain for a urinal. Bubba the drop out next to you at the urinal is trying to show off his manly urine stream from his tiny pee-pee and splashes three people on either side.
There are no drinking fountains and people are not allowed to bring in their own drinks, such as water. Instead a small bottle of water can be had at the extortion stands for $6.00, $8.00 for a larger bottle. A crappy reject from Sonic hotdog is $10.00, a hamburger that was cooked three days ago is $12.00.
But each home game the stadium manages to pack in 80K+ fans in orange and white who think their team winning is just magical and will cause fairy dust to fall that will make them richer, smarter, younger, and restore three of their missing teeth.
“Bubba the drop out next to you at the urinal is trying to show off his manly urine stream from his tiny pee-pee and splashes three people on either side.”
Non-standard facilities.
I used to work with a guy named Dave that claimed that on his first visit to the state fair (ca. 1930’s facilities) he walked in, did his business in the trough, then turned around to find everyone looking at him. Fella walked in from the adjacent rooms, which had the stalls and the urinals, and proceeded to wash his hand at the long sink. Dave exited quickly, walked a block to the another washroom, and washed his hands.
Years later I read Feynman’s autobio and his story about peeing in the sink. Had to laugh out loud.
Electric vehicles catch fire after being exposed to saltwater from Hurricane Idalia
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/09/03/electric-vehicles-catch-fire-after-being-exposed-to-saltwater-from-hurricane-idalia/
Nothing to see here–move along unless you have s’mores.
Been there, done that. It was at a high school wrestling match. A round apparatus with water running into it from several nozzles, about the right height, seemed reasonable. I came close to getting beat up by the other wrestling members of the school.
Shamelessly borrowed from AoSHQ:
The Saturday Night Joke
A young Texas kid grew up wanting to be a lawman. He grew up big, 6′ 4″, strong as a longhorn, and fast as a mustang and he could put a bullet thru a bottle cap at 40 paces.
When he finally came of age, he applied to where he had only dreamed of working: the West Texas Sheriff’s Department.
After a series of tests and interviews, the Chief Deputy finally called him into his office for the young man’s last interview.
The Chief Deputy said, “You’re a big strong kid and you can really shoot. So far your qualifications all look good, but we have, what you might call, an “Attitude Suitability Test”, that you must take before you can be accepted. We just don’t let anyone carry our badge, son.”
Then, sliding a .40 Caliber Sig Sauer P-229 service pistol and a box of ammo across the desk, the Chief said, “Take this pistol and go out and shoot:
• one illegal alien,
• one lawyer,
• one meth dealer,
• one used car salesman,
• one Muslim extremist,
• one pig-lib democrat bastard, no, wait… make that two!,
• and a rabbit.”
“Why the rabbit?” queried the applicant.
“You pass,” said the Chief Deputy. “When can you start?”
PLEASE NOTE: I am shocked, no, SHOCKED! that anyone would even joke about gunning down a poor defenseless bunny.
Archie played for the Saints in the same era Spurrier played for the bad 49ers teams of the early 70s before finishing his career with the Tampa Bay Yucs. I’ve never heard the whole story, but the dislike dates back to that era.
A Florida alum would know the drama. I didn’t go to Gainesville
With a .40 caliber? The shreds would be too small to make Hasenpfeffer!
I am not. Here, “defenseless” cottontails and jackrabbits can do a lot of damage. We call ‘em rats with cotton tails and rats with black tails, respectively. Except, no respect. They are vermin.
Tonight I wanted to cook a couple of chicken leg quarters on the grill. Being lazy, rice in the rice cooker. I have some boneless thighs. Nope. I have some drumsticks. Nope. I didn’t look in the little deep freezer.
In the big freezer I found a package of two thighs. Sealed with my old handy dandy Daisy Seal a Meal.
Dated Sept ’10.
They look fine. If they are weird, back into the fridge until trash day. Plan B is slicing and frying a can of Spam.
I’m not hungry. Too hot to eat. I’d be happy with a can of oil packed tuna, un-drained, splashed with some plastic lemon and hot sauce along with a chunk of cheese and a few saltines.
Rabbits don’t bother me. They can’t get into the garden unless the gate is left open and they can’t reach the fruit trees and don’t eat anything else that we care about. Squirrels annoy me only when we have bird feeders set out in the Winter.
The stinkin antlered forest rats, on the other hand… They killed one of our fruit trees and severely damaged several others, a few years ago during a bad Winter. They did their best to destroy one species of decorative shrub by our front door. (Ditto for most of our neighbors. The builder standardized quite a lot about the houses, down to the placement and species of garbage tree out front and the shrubs along the front of each house.) They smashed the compost bin. They pulled down part of the fence around the garden one Winter, just to eat some shriveled vines well after the harvest. They constantly raided the bird feeders and pulled several apart (though I was able to repair them). I’ve been thinking about getting a crossbow. Why? Oh, no reason…
re the bird feeders, The Child and I noodled around ideas for an Arduino-powered deterrent mechanism to position near the feeders in the trees. Sonar range finder to activate the active defenses, paired with maybe a magnetic detector to disable them. Flashing lights, siren and, for the piece de resistance, a punching arm with a boxing glove, matched to a camera to get the deer’s AAAGGH! face. We came up with what would be needed for sensors and servos and such. I’m sure I could build all that to work at human-comfortable temperatures. Something that would work reliably at 0F would be a bit of a challenge. (Or work at all; the Arduinos that I have would need a heated enclosure to keep them warm enough to operate.) Bottom line, it was more work than we were interested in.
I looked into placing a post outside the window where my daughter eats breakfast. Suspend the feeders and The Child can watch the birds during breakfast and sometimes other meals. That ran into difficulty because of the placement of water supply line, sewer line (closer to the supply line than it should be), an electrical line, and the roots of the aforementioned shrubs. Other ideas for placing bird feeders where they’d be visible from the dining room window, above the reach of deer, difficult for squirrels to raid, and not too inconvenient to fill, have all run into various problems. It seems that there should be a solution but it’s eluding me.
Of course, I could always give up on figuring it out and suspend the feeders to arms attached to the rail on the deck behind the kitchen. It would be easy to do, I already have everything I need, and Grandma would no doubt enjoy watching the birds all day. But it feels like giving up …
Beautiful day here. Mid eighties and breezy. Sunny, of course. Yesterday was unusually cloudy, but mostly clear today. No rain, but humidity is high, about 25%. That is on my newfangled indoor-outdoor temperature-humidity instrument. It claims good humidity accuracy, but I haven’t tested that.
I usually want the wet bulb temperature to check the performance of our evaporative coolers, so I use a two stage wet bulb thermometer affair that I rigged up. It is accurate, but requires manual operation, so is not very convenient. After measuring the wet bulb temperature, I have to look up the RH using a psychrometric chart or one of the online calculators.
It is hard to measure less than 10% RH with good accuracy. Meteorologists use an instrument with a cooled mirror that measures dewpoint, then calculate RH. These instruments are prohibitively expensive. I have never seen one under about a thousand dollars. Note that there are newer instruments that use solid state sensors. These can cost under $100, but are not very accurate below 10% RH. Our RH is sometimes below 5%.
Another fascinating fact about our climate is that refrigeration air conditioners seldom produce any condensate. The reason is that the cold coil (evaporator) is regulated to slightly above freezing (usually 40 F or higher) to avoid icing. Our dew point is usually below that temperature.
A trick to increase performance of auto AC is to install a switch to bypass the anti-frost control. This can be quite effective to speed cooldown, but depends on the system design, caution advised. Older Chrysler cars used an evaporator pressure regulator valve that effectively overcooled the evaporator for about the first ten minutes of operation. Some newer cars can do this in other ways, but I have never seen them in operation. I have seen air temperatures below freezing with 1960s Chrysler and GM cars. Wow!
I had an interesting afternoon Saturday at the Ford dealer.
I negotiated a price, including the inevitable “Let me go talk to my manager” phase, and we agreed on it.
I was sitting in the finance office deciding if I want extended warranties or not, when the sales manager came in with my salesman in tow. It seems that the truck I was buying was already sold by another salesman. While I was being sold add-ons, they completed the paperwork in the finance office next door.
Apparently, they have a system for pending deals, and it removes the keys from the “for sale” rack. The other salesman screwed up.
My salesman was upset, and the sales manager was falling all over himself to try to make it right with me.
So I’m getting the identical truck, same color and options, also from their loaner program but with fewer miles, with another $500 knocked off. I just have to wait for Tuesday when it comes back.
Speaking of warranties, am I overly-cynical to assume I’ll have some expensive repairs in the future, with all the tech these days? Ten speed transmissions, electronic control modules, transfer cases, complete glass cockpits, etc. have me thinking.
Ford? It’s a crapshoot lately with them. F150 is solid. Personally, I’d skip the extended warranty.
You are not overly cynical. Watch both of these videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANxhQ4wUiMQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUkFsuilVD0&t=774s
I am a fan of Tony DeFeo; don’t judge him by just one video. Use the first video as an introduction to the second. I am not familiar with the second site, and quit watching after my curiosity wore off. It appears this is an extreme example.
That said, I have heard some extreme stories on the Car Wizard web site, and he usually doesn’t service cars until after their warranty expires: a few years old. He is a good diagnostician, and says there is a trend. The newer cars have more problems. It is not brand related; all makes and models are affected by increasing complexity, the desire to make them cheaper and sell them for more, and rushing to keep up with increasing government regulations.
I would suggest not keeping any new car long enough to start finding problems. How long is that? Not sure. I used to work at the other end of the spectrum: I bought older cars, and ran them until they were uneconomical to maintain. I do all my own work.
Not sure you were looking for this kind of advice.
Speaking of warranties, am I overly-cynical to assume I’ll have some expensive repairs in the future, with all the tech these days? Ten speed transmissions, electronic control modules, transfer cases, complete glass cockpits, etc. have me thinking.
I skipped the extended warranty on my 2019 F-150 4×4. I decided to roll the dice. No a single problem so far with 37K miles.
I do get hard shifts occasionally. Especially from reverse to forward.
Whew, long hot day.
My neighbor came over after church so I started the electrical project. Replace one panel, move it from inside to outside, re-connect the circuits, remove a downstream fused disconnect, and move the GFCI for the dock and dockhouse to the panel.
Got some of it done. Finished getting at least the dock and the shed with the fused disconnect powered up. Got some work to do in the workshop (where the panel was) tomorrow.
Somehow I confused the incoming feeders with the feeders going out to the shed. Had to swap them around in the dark by the light of a headlamp.
I plead heat and moving slow because of it, for not completing what I needed.
Don’t know what the wife’s excuse for not getting the bathroom back together will be. I didn’t help enough? Wasn’t my project! She put the same floating floor we’ve been using in the rest of the house in the master bath. I think it’s a recipe for mold if even a little water gets under it. I’m certain that either the shower or the toilet will eventually end up putting water under the floor. Then it will have to come out. Oh well, it does look nice.
I may get the shortwave out, or listen to the radio, but it’s currently 84F and that is a tad on the hot side for my tiny little smokey fire, and the radio. I may just stay in the house and read. I’ve started the Murderbot series and like it so far…
n
@SteveF
“…getting a crossbow”
If you are serious I have a recommendation that might help.
“It seems that there should be a solution but it’s eluding me.”
Make a base out of an old steel wheel and added a concrete block for weight.
Stop first.
Stop first.
Not bad advice.
Now it’s 86.5F and I’m going to shower and read.
n
Stop first.
Not bad advice.
Of course, I have mentioned that I drive my truck like I stole it.
There is more than one reason why I am on my third set of tires.
“Property Owners Who Don’t Comply with New Energy Rules May Face Prison”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/09/03/property-owners-who-dont-comply-with-new-energy-rules-may-face-prison/
“Property owners who fail to comply with new energy efficiency rules could face prison under government plans that have sparked a backlash from Tory MPs.”
“Ministers want to grant themselves powers to create new criminal offences and increase civil penalties as part of efforts to hit net zero targets. Under the proposals, people who fall foul of regulations to reduce their energy consumption could face up to a year in prison and fines of up to £15,000.”
I am shocked and not awed. These people are the supreme Karens of all time. They want to control everything of everyone else’s lives.
>> Speaking of warranties, am I overly-cynical to assume I’ll have some expensive repairs in the future, with all the tech these days? Ten speed transmissions, electronic control modules, transfer cases, complete glass cockpits, etc. have me thinking.
More often than not, you only need the extended warranty when you don’t buy it. I bought it for my Nissan LEAF because “EV” and because I could afford it not rolled into my loan. The warranty is directly from Nissan and is pro-rated refundable if it hasn’t expired if I sell the car. I would only buy one if it was directly from the manufacturer. Have heard too many horror stories about 3rd party warranties. The whole warranty contract is one page – other than a list of a dozen or so wear and tear items, everything else is covered with no exceptions, just take it to any Nissan dealer service department.
Appropriately, YMMV.
>> I am shocked and not awed. These people are the supreme Karens of all time. They want to control everything of everyone else’s lives.
Good thing we came out on top back in 1783.
As much as anything, insurance is about peace of mind. You pay an insurance sum you can afford, and you don’t have to worry about possible repair bills that might be painful. And if the insurance expires without you having used it? You had the peace of mind for all those years.
That’s how we felt about life insurance: as long as we had kids at home, we carried term insurance. Now that the kids are independent, we don’t. All those years of paying insurance? We were paying to not have to worry…
Buildings tend to be old in the UK: Around 20% of owner-occupied houses were built before 1920. Around 80% were built before 1980. The houses may be well-maintained, but renovating them to modern efficiency standards would be insanely expensive, or even impossible. The politicians proposing stuff like this are – as usual – out of touch with the reality of life for average citizens. They have plenty of money, what’s the problem?
I thought some more about extended warranties. Here are some more thoughts.
As mentioned by someone else, I would only get a warranty from the manufacturer, never a third party.
I looked into extended warranties a few times, both for myself and for friends. In all cases, we were looking to cover cars bought used. This is critical because with older cars it is possible to see failure history. With a new car, you have to look at the components that have been used long enough to generate failure history. This might not be possible, and would prevent a fair cost analysis.
The other reason I didn’t get an extended warranty was that these were limited to only something like a few years or 80k total miles, way too soon for most serious problems to show up. I kept cars for a lot longer than an extended warranty would cover.
Finally, I sometimes wanted a warranty only on a major item such as a transmission. The only way to get this was to buy a comprehensive warranty at a high cost. That cost was more than a factory rebuilt transmission would cost, even with installation, a waste of money. I can eat the lower cost of parts like a power window regulator or a radiator. Many people can do their own work to replace these, and the parts are not very expensive.
In all cases, I decided or recommended against a warranty. In my small sample size, it was a good decision.
Another aspect few people consider is that an older car might not be worth keeping in excellent condition. Sometimes it is better to demote it to less critical use and add another used car. I have had cars I would not take on out of town trips, but were fine for local driving. Some of them lasted many years. These secondary cars saved the good ones from some wear and tear. I used to live in the rust belt, and saw cars that died early deaths from corrosion and accidents. They were junked with good interiors and drivetrains.
See, these decisions can be a lot more than simple cost analysis. As for peace of mind, that is a factor too. Just put an estimated price on it. I have friends who lease cars. They justify the extra cost by having a new car every few years.
The other reason I didn’t get an extended warranty was that these were limited to only something like a few years or 80k total miles, way too soon for most serious problems to show up. I kept cars for a lot longer than an extended warranty would cover.
The last vehicle I had, a 2005 Ford Expedition EB, I put 210K on it and a rebuilt Ford tranny for $4K at 190K. She blew a timing chain at 210K and I gave her away to my painter buddy for free. She was burning a quart of oil every 800 ??? miles so she needed a rebuild of the 5.4L V8 three valve. Thunderbolt quoted me $5K for the rebuild here in Houston so I let her go and bought a 2019 F-150 4×4 for $40K plus TTL.