Cool. Actually cool. 70F when I went to bed. Yesterday ended up being nice up here, cooler and relatively clear. I’m hoping for a cooler day today as I try to get some actual stuff done.
Saturday I got my CT scan then headed to the BOL. I did two pickups on the way. Another 100 gallon rain water collection barrel, and a metal cabinet. The barrel will stay up here, the cabinet too. I’ll bring a couple of cabinets home with me when I leave. It should make for better pantry storage than what I’ve been doing. I’m hoping that two of them are pretty much the same size, just for appearance’s sake.
I cut the grass when I got here, then spent some time fishing and talking with my buddy. He’s on a fixed income and the rise in inflation is putting a serious crimp on him and most of the people he knows. Things are trending downhill fast.
I also noticed three new “For Sale” signs on my way, closer to the BOL. I’ll have to do some looking around, but one was some land that had been in timber. They’ve harvested the trees, and it looks like they’re selling now. The others will take a bit of research. I see it as another indicator that people are trying to raise cash.
Hard times are here. The number of people noticing seems to be what’s increasing now.
Be alert for opportunities.
Stack what you need.
nick
The property tax “reform” bought some time for the real estate market, but land owners and developers will have to work fast. Plus the tax “cut” deal hinges on voters approving a change to the Texas constitution in the upcoming off-off-year election – likely due to what will probably be a low turn out, but not an automatic.
I have not seen the details of the ballot initiative.
They’re kinda-sorta sneaking this election out there in November.
https://www.wilcotx.gov/DocumentCenter/View/7483/2023NOVEMBER—COMPREHENSIVE-BALLOT—No-Margins?bidId=
Yeah, Proposition 4 is a hard ‘No’ from me, but that’s what the property tax “reduction” deal needs to have voters pass for the surplus giveaway to work.
Texas isn’t a Republican state anymore. Cr*p. I hate moving.
Well, yeah, but where ya gonna go? How many good places remain? Idaho? Utah?
So, phase 1 and 2 of the great shift to Idaho are done. Packing and loading the trucks and getting myself 1500 miles West.
I badly underestimated my SWAG for the volume required. Filled the first truck with boxes and half filled a second with the remainder. UPACK was happy to accommodate for a price.
Now, my concern is fitting it all into the new place and the off site storage locker. New place is 150 sq ft bigger, but still…
Moving stacks has a price.
The road trip went well. I80 is in remarkable repair. Hundreds of miles of like new pavement. Several 10 mile stretches of road work to continue the theme. Broke up my trip into 500 mile chunks. The Forrester was a champ, doing anything asked. Android Auto, cruise control, Sirius XM were great aids. CB was a disappointment, even with an antenna replacement. Totally unintelligible. Might be the external speaker which is buried under fragiles and heirlooms.
Took possession of the new place and have been prepping shelf units for the onslaught of truck disgorgement this week.
Was up late with some stomach upset, so I slept until I woke up. Only around 8 hours anyway, but it does make for a late start to the day.
Coffee is brewing, one little pod at a time. Takes three of them on the ‘tiny cup’ setting to make a decent cuppa joe. Breakfast is in the microwave.
82F and sunny. Nice day. Haven’t decided what work to do… I’ll let the universe have a vote.
@Nightraker, congrats on the move. Do some judicious sorting and maybe disposing while you re-stack. Put that system you thought about for years into place… It’s a great time to start over with some stuff. I spent a couple of years moving so often I used the box as a bedside table, and all my stuff fit into a Hyundai hatchback. My whole life was in cardboard and some tool boxes. Moving sucks but the re-start can be good.
n
Dunno if it made the news outside Europe, but the good weather has led to a total flood of illegals from Africa landing on Italian islands. In one case, one island now has more migrants than inhabitants.
The new sites normally allow comments on their articles. Not on this topic. Actually, they did at first, but every comment was “send them back, close the borders.” So, no more comments :-/
The iodine and contrast media are passing out of my body. Funny how a load of unusual stuff in your blood and GI tract can change things.
n
“The new sites normally allow comments on their articles. Not on this topic. Actually, they did at first, but every comment was “send them back, close the borders.” So, no more comments”
How about: Everyone over 12 works for food and shelter.
Old cars. They provide joy and epic levels of frustration at the same time. I had the 71 Corvette out a couple weeks ago and the brake pedal was soft. Well, it’s been a couple years since I’ve done a fluid flush on it. I’ve never had the calipers off. I decided now is the time. Also, the parking brake has never worked, so now is the time to tackle that as well. If you’ve done work on cars, you know where this is going…
I’m not doing a frame-off restoration, but hooo boy. Luckily, the cylinders on all of the calipers are in good shape. Just a lot of cleaning to be done. New flexible brake hoses all around, new master cylinder, caliper rebuild kits (pistons are good), and a complete new parking brake kit.
I did hit my first roadblock and broke a brass brake line block. It won’t delay me any more though, as I’m waiting on some other parts to come in too. I do find it interesting what parts are available from traditional sources (Napa, Autozone, etc) and what has to come from corvette specialty places. I can get everything to rebuild the calipers from Rock Auto except the piston springs. Those I had to order from a Corvette specialty vendor. I could have reused the old ones, but at this point, waiting a few days for new parts is worth it.
I plan on starting on the parking brakes while I wait for other parts. After I sit and stare at them for a little while longer, of course.
They have no education and no skills. Ditch digging is done with machines nowadays. There is literally nothing useful for them to do.
We’re still suffering riots from Eritreans. If they care that much about a country they left then they need to go back. Integrate or GTFO.
@ray:
Even with current systems, they can do that now. Just increase the polling rate from (say) once a day to once every 15 minutes. My supplier here in UK does that.
The electric meters in Texas are polled every five minutes.
Except they will never integrate. And even if they do, their integration does not add to society in any meaningful, measurable way. There is no magic dirt that will make them civil, civilized, nonviolent, cooperative, hard working, diligent, and intelligent.
That leaves GTFO.
I think he’s three kinds of crazy, but in some areas Vox Day is a shining beacon of truth.
Sink the ships.
Vox Day is a fruitcake. However, as they say about stopped clocks…
Western governments still haven’t come to terms with the Islamic edict to kill, convert, or extract tribute from the infidels.
The welfare state in many European countries is viewed as an acceptable method of extracting tribute.
The new cars are designed to last about 100,000 miles, mostly trouble-free, and that will be it for most of them.
You can nibble around the edges of that number taking care of the car, but the turbo charged engine on many will be the problem long term.
We had the Jetta around this weekend since my son was home from school, and when I got curious about the state of the air filter at 67,000 miles, I popped the cover off the box and found the original factory filter. WIX VW. Hecho en Mexico.
$20 at Autozone later, the engine seems to be happier. Not only was the old filter the factory original, but one of the folds of the filter had an abrasion hole which must have been done at the factory.
Saturday morning trips to the grocery store are dangerous.
I went out pre-breaksfast early to a first-day estate sale and was also under-caffeinated. Grocery store had the coffee counter going full-blast, but I was able to resist because my plan for late breakfast was facedown in a bag of pastries and a full pot of coffee. But the rat buztards also had the popcorn counter going full-blast, and thoughts turned to a big bag of fresh Chicago mix to go with my coffee…
and ruin my lunch…
and ruin my supper.
There was enough left that when I turned Superman in this morning and found the only two-part tv story on the schedule–“The Unknown People”, edited from
that eating the rest of the popcorn seemed the thing to do. I still fried four eggs and ham and made two sandwiches with cheese and sriracha on Dave’s Killer Bread toast.
I’ve seen the movie version but don’t remember the differences cited in the wiki article, so I may have to pick up a copy.
Went back to the estate sale today and picked up a large box of cd’s and dvd’s, cutting their second-day half-price even further to well-less than $0.50 each. I was feeling lucky after yesterday netted a couple of collectible indie-artist cd’s that will sell in the $40 range, and bought a bunch strictly on non-recognition.
The take included a large handful of Bob Dylan albums, many forgettable efforts from the barren years between 1976 and 1995. After his extraordinary burst of four albums in 19 months from June 1974 to January 1976 ( Before the Flood, Blood on the Tracks, The Basement Tapes*, Desire) his efforts remained flat for years, and I would be hard pressed to name more than one tune from that period. When I get these on the shelf I will take inventory, do a cross-reference with the compilations, and see if there is anything else worth getting before I do the deep dive. I don’t really expect to find much worth listening to during those years. Dylan has always been a huge seller, but the dirt cheap price of large lots of his cd’s on line reflects not just supply but the market evaluation that the quality was/is low.
*Released in 1975, but recorded in 1969, heavily edited by Robbie Robertson.
“Burn Rate (A Rachel Peng Novel)” by K.B. Spangler
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/099843177X?tag=ttgnet-20/
Book number five of a five book murder mystery fantasy series. This series is part of the A Girl and Her Fed universe with the web comic and several books. I read the well formatted and bound POD (print on demand) trade paperback published by Agahf Books in 2023 that I bought new on Amazon. I will order and read future books in the universe / series. The author has said that there will be a book six soon.
https://agirlandherfed.com/
This is the continuing story of the 350 surviving humans modified by the USA government into cyborgs. There were 500 of them in the beginning. There are still many issues with them, not the least in that the computers in their heads burn 1,000 to 2,000 calories per day by themselves. The public is still nervous about them since they outed themselves in the past year.
Rachel Peng, a cyborg liaison to the Washington D.C, police force, is trying to catch an arsonist and murderer. And this time it is personal, two of her fellow cyborgs were murdered in a fire. The mechanism of the fires is very strange, very controlled and very damaging. And Rachel cannot remember them dying for, all of the cyborgs are linked together and experience everything together. But she is burned and has a broken arm to go along with her amnesia.
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars (107 reviews)
@brad
If that were true then the Home Depot would not have hundreds of long-handled tools in stock in the Garden Department. There is a lot of raking, weeding, picking up trash, snow removal*, and other jobs to do. Some, it is true, can be better done by machines, and it may be more costly to put the unskilled to work doing some of it, but there is value in training them to show up on time and work., and the principle of getting nothing for free is an important one that we need to return to.
*Late 70’s and early 80’s set snowfall records for a lot of northern cities in the U.S. I had a friend who was near retirement who was put in charge of reducing the snow load on some commercial buildings. In those antiquarian times we required the able-bodied to work to qualify for welfare, so each morning he went to the job center, picked up a crew, took them to a roof and had them shovel it off. The desertion rate was better than half, and he bought a lot of gloves, hats, and for some people that actually worked more than a day, coats, and better footwear.
Roofing and drywall are two jobs that have been largely taken over by immigrants, legal and illegal, who are willing to work hard. These and many other projects have one thing in common: the lowest guy on the totem pole is unskilled and gets to lift and load. Actually, they have at least one other thing: they don’t tolerate slackers.
Back to the HD: they have a lot of stuff in 40, 50, 60, 94, and 100-lb bags as well as heavy sticks that need shifting in less than full-pallet quantities. What Manual can do so can Juan and Abbas and Sergie and Ibi.
If you can’t figure out how to do useful work, set up camps in the deserts and use a louis Sachar story as your operating manual.
As someone once noted, the demand for free goods is infinite. There are a number of corollaries, but one is that at some point the people who are working and being taxed to provide the free goods are going to reach their limit and solve the problem or lay down tools and get in line themselves. Or maybe not get in line but pick up something else and seek other solutions.
@ITGuy1998
Reminder: If your 1971 has been parked and not driven much, the brake fluid has been busy absorbing water and exposing all the parts in the system to moisture. You’re already replacing the flexible brake lines–as they age they become more permeable to air. Make sure the seal on the reservoir is good, otherwise changes in atmospheric pressure will exchange the air in the headspace and introduce moisture.
I might think to call PEC and ask this.
They swapped out the meters a long time ago. At least 20 years ago. I use to read the meters and send that in with a check. Now they draft checking.
Everyone over 12 works for food and shelter.
– only if you want to displace your own citizens. Look what Ted Kennedy’s changes to immigration policy did to the skilled trades. The unions are busted, the middle class is destroyed.
In TX the ‘no speak ingles’ crowd does-
-roofing (still under a white company for big or expensive jobs)
-framing (still under a white boss, usually)
-siding
-stucco
-drywall and mud
-paint (for anything general, and they do it poorly)
-tile (poorly)
-earthmoving
-landscape
-foundation and formwork
-rebar
They are in mostly labor roles in-
-plumbing
-electrical
-tree trimming
-sprinklers
White skilled trades are almost exclusively ex-business owners who only do high end and one off work.
These are the guys who used to be able to work 9 months, raise a family of 5-6 on one income, have a lake house, boat, snowmobiles or go carts, and maybe work on a hot rod on the side. They were the middle class. All gone now.
n
I’ve had a couple of complaints about the electric range. Twice now, “I had the big front burner just above LO and it heated like it was on High”.
The bacon is charred a bit? No problem, charcoal settles the stomach. Right?
I have had no problems with the stove.
Well. I’ve laid a hand on each burner and turned to the high side of LO (which is on the right side of LO) from Off. They all heat the same. That is, hot enough to get my hand off real quick. Let every thing cool and try from Off to Hi. Hand off quicker. All four burners act the same.
It’s something to watch. I suppose the control for the big front burner can be failing intermittently. Easy fix, just replace it. I suspect it’s more to do with someone’s vision not being what it was. But. I’ll pass on having that argument.
–
Anyway. From looking around here the last week or so, the critters that get by eating acorns during Winter are screwed. I see no acorns on any of the trees.
Fences. Poorly.
The two young white guys (!) who came out for the sprinkler company last week fixed the issue the fence company caused and caught another break on my side yard, near the property line, put there last fall by … a fence company.
In Florida ‘no speak ingles’ ran fiber for Verizon about 15 years ago.
The last Ted Kennedy Memorial 20 Year Immigration and Amnesty Bill is now nearly 20 years overdue.
Yep. That’s what I see.
When I insulated and sheet rocked the EDC, it looked good to me once it was painted. I got some teasing that my taped and floated seams look crappy…. “ya shoulda found a wetback to do it”. I didn’t know about sanding and re-coating then, so sorta lumpy. Yeah, no. Not gonna. I wasn’t good at taping and floating walls 30 years ago and I’m not any better. But, I did this. It’s mine.
I still think I did a decent job. I’m not at all embarrassed by my work.
I manage some sites for a non-profit (which also means that I work for free, but that’s OK). They have about 12 domains; most are WordPress, so management is easy. One is customized – a lot of PHP code – but that’s been working just fine for several years.
But email issues crop up – mostly related to DKIM/etc configuration issues. So have to contact the hosting place (BlueHost) to get them to fix things – easier for them to do it right than for me to muck around with it.
But the hosting account is also a VPS level, which means that I have to get deeper into the server; can’t do things with cPanel. It’s overkill for the sites, and expensive, so was also looking into changing back to a shared hosting account – to reduce cost and so that I can do things easier via cPanel.
Except now BlueHost doesn’t have any shared plan with unlimited domains – their max is now 5 domains. Urgh.
So I may need to look into moving all of those domains to another hosting place. There are others that still have unlimited domains on their shared plans – one is Dreamhost, where this place is hosted. Another is HostGator.
So, have to investigate those hosting places. Hoping that they have a “We’ll do the move” service. Not really looking forward to moving things, although I can do it (have done it before). It’s just time that I don’t really want to spend with all the other projects I have in the fire. Plus, planning on some travel for the next two weeks.
First world problems….
My alma matter did not beat Alabama last night, but the score was 10-3 for most of the second half, right up until the last 30 seconds, with Saban deciding to play keepaway on the last drive not intending to score until a stupid penalty made it too easy.
So much for the 32 point spread.
Jimbo has no excuse if he loses to Alabama at home.
From elsewhere:
***
ZeroHedge covers it.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/watch-tiny-italian-island-overwhelmed-7000-migrants-arriving-small-boats-within-24
Holy shit. The Italians are boating the invaders out to…
Wait for it…
Other parts of Italy.
Why in the name of anything and everyone are they not shipping these *insert six letter word* ‘s back to Africa? This was an act of war. They should have been greeted with machine gun nests. Not doubt the new arrivals will enrich the shit out of Italy for generations to come.
***
You have a big heart, and that’s comendable.
You’re also a professional, and worthy of being paid. Non-profits pay employees and contractors without jeopardizing the mission.
If you feel like the mission is worthy of donating your time, that’s one thing. But if the burden is excessive, you may want to re-evaluate that.
Thanks for the kind words.
Actually, they are not really non-profit, but all-volunteer (relating to suicide prevention), which is a subject close to our family.
So don’t mind the work – mostly it’s just maintenance. But moving to a new hosting place will be time-consuming. And other projects (like my fiction writing – three books are ready for publication) are also in progress.
Singer Maren Morris says she’s quitting country music because of ‘Trump years,’ claims ‘Try That in a Small Town’ is only popular to ‘own the libs’
https://www.theblaze.com/news/maren-morris-country-music-trump-try-that-in-a-small-town
The hip hop world eagerly awaits her.
@Nick
“only if you want to displace your own citizens”
I did mention Sachar.
@paul
“Not doubt the new arrivals will enrich the shit out of Italy for generations to come.”
Until the Christians are all gone.
What do you think they’ll rename Rome?
“”Been a long time gone, oh Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works?
That’s nobody’s business but the Turks”
n
I’m so slow up here that youtube won’t even load a search results page.
—————–
and I’m staying tonight. I’ve got stuff to do tomorrow.
Mower died right in the middle of mowing the HOA lot. I think it was low oil, as I added some and it started and I was headed up a steep hill when it died. Had to swap out the battery, as it has been dying for a while, and finally died completely. Fortunately (cough) I have one ready.
I also noticed while troubleshooting that the motor mount bolts are loose, so I’ll tighten those up before I get back to mowing. I have a feeling that this mower is not going to last another season. And also- when it rains it pours, right? Once I finish bushwhacking the HOA lot, I really should do maintenance on the mower deck. I’ve got new blades and bearings ready to go, just need to do it.
—————–
lake is down far enough that my irrigation pump inlet is out of the water. I’ll have to adjust that tomorrow too. Gotta get in the water to do that. I shut off the system in the mean time. Don’t want to run the pump for 5 hours without water. I hope it hasn’t been more than a day or two that it’s been dry.
——————–
chicken tikka masala for dinner. Costco ready to eat, with heat and eat rice.
n
Rolling Stone’s Biggest Beneficiary of Affirmative Action Award: Kanyeast
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_Stone%27s_500_Greatest_Albums_of_All_Time#Artists_with_the_most_albums
Nice night. Kinda chilly over the water. 69F and damp!
Dark sky, but a light haze, so no telescopes.
Sunday evening and night are my favorite times here, it’s very quiet.
I was listening to my audiobook so no reception report tonight. I’m going to have to get the patio heaters ready for the fall season, it would be nice to have something to take the chill off that wouldn’t be blocked by the burn ban.
Bugs were tolerable, although I did have a mosquito or two land on me. The drought has helped keep the population down, and the fish, birds, and bats do their part.
I haven’t seen as much wildlife as most visits. I did see a pair of hummingbirds, so I refilled the feeders. They were very interested in the red kerosene lantern hanging on the wall. They know that shape in red means dinner, so I put one of the feeders near it. Seems a bit late in the year for hummingbirds… but I do like watching them.
n
I am in downtown San Antonio at my natural gas convention. About a 1,000 people showed up for the vendor night. Another 1,000 will show up tomorrow and come and go through Wednesday.
At our peak, we had 4,500 show up in 2008 when natural gas hit $14/mmbtu. The market is barely hanging in there at $2.70 even though we are selling almost twice as much natural gas since 2008.
There are ten more LNG plants being built in the USA. Each one will increase the natural gas usage by 1%. Plus more and more power plants based on natural gas with diesel backup are being built.
The future is crazy. We need to get the crazy dumbocrats out of power.
BTW, the traffic on I-10 sucked this afternoon from Houston to San Antone. I-10 needs to be widened to four lanes right now. So many people have moved to Texas and the amount of commerce going down I-10 in 18 wheelers is unreal.
“BTW, the traffic on I-10 sucked this afternoon from Houston to San Antone. I-10 needs to be widened to four lanes right now. So many people have moved to Texas and the amount of commerce going down I-10 in 18 wheelers is unreal.”
When they start talking about light rail it will be too late.
@drwilliams, jebus wept. Kanye at number five? I can’t name a single song, and yet I can name multiples from almost everyone else on the list.
Crazy that Roxy Music made the list.
Interesting the way the fairly smooth bell curve gets all wonky with the dip for the 80s in the last survey. Something tells me there are shenanigans involved.
n
And kinda telling that they changed from having the respondents listing the “greatest” to “favorites”. I’ve got favorites that I wouldn’t list in a list of “greatest” or even “most influential” which is probably where the Nirvana came in. Freaking invented the “Seattle sound” that dominated rock music for a decade, but not really a “great” album.
n
added– the list is [sorta] alphabetical so Kanye isn’t really 5th, but dang, I really don’t think he’s gonna stand the test of time.
Ok, I am trying to read a 1.4 million word pdf on my phone. This not working. It cannot reformat its width.
@lynn, does the PDF viewer on your phone have a Reflow option? Try one that does. I don’t have any files on my phone to test, and just shut down the computer. IIRC, the native Android viewer or the MS Office viewer can handle that. It also might require text in the pdf that has no CRLF characters at the end of each line.
I HATE pdf files for these very reasons. IIRC, pdf ranked third or fourth in the competition to chose a universal file format. The fact that it won demonstrated the tremendous influence of Adobe in the early days. Just be thankful display Postscript didn’t gain any traction.
HP had some of the best text rendering on their HPUX workstations. Too bad they were short lived.