Cool and damp again, possibly upgrading to ‘wet’. It was off and on drizzle most of yesterday here in the swamp, so I sat and watched youtube vids instead of putting up Christmas decorations.
It was odd, not having an agenda for the day, once the decoration stuff went out the window. I did throw ingredients into the breadmaker so we’d have a fresh loaf. I went with the ‘oatmeal’ bread recipe that came with a breadmaker I never owned, and have used for a couple of decades. I think I got the recipe book from a friend, and the times don’t quite match any ‘maker I’ve ever owned, but they work fine. The oatmeal bread recipe is a favorite. Fluffy, chewy bread, no hint of the oatmeal in the taste or consistency.
Wife and kid2 outdid themselves with the dinner cooking and pies. I just had to cut and serve…
I did do some more sorting and cleaning and getting stuff ready for auction. Partly that was to clear space for the Christmas tree. Partly it was because it needed doin’. And I’ve been feeding DVDs into the computer to add to the ripped library. I found a box full that I had forgotten about and I’m getting back into the habit of feeding them in. I’ve still got several banker’s boxes to rip but they are not where I see them every day. I am finding a fair amount of duplicates as I go, but that’s ok, they were cheap. Getting them ripped means the media can go into deep storage and not be in the house.
I also did a bit of Friday of Color shopping online last night. I ended up buying a couple of things that were heavily discounted. Passed on the item that was only discounted slightly. I will put it on my Christmas list, and maybe I’ll get it. I don’t need it soon anyway (it’s a desolder gun, similar to the Hakko one that is the industry standard at its price point. I’ve wanted one for over a year, but can’t justify spending the money on myself, when my old bulb sucker works ok.) Not having a good solder removal tool makes it easy to put off doing repairs. I would like to eliminate some of the reasons NOT to do things in my life.
That is a goal for me in general for the coming year. Make it easier to ‘do’, than to ‘not do’. And of course to continue improving my situation. Doing things should help with that.
Join me won’t you? Get a jump on your New Year’s resolution.
Stack something. Get the stuff you need to do something that needs doing. And then do it.
nick
I didn’t cook a turkey yesterday. Instead, I coached The Child and a friend through preparing, roasting, and carving the bird.
The meal took place without me. My wife invited the other girl’s family, whom I can’t stand. And invited another family, one of her friends who lives nearby. And another family, who’s new to the area. And a handful of grannies. All Chinese, because of course. There was no room for me even with the extensions in the table. No chairs, either. Daughter and her friend also absented themselves because they’re American, regardless of parental citizenship, and Chinese have different table manners than Americans, including but not limited to concepts of basic hygiene. The girls didn’t want to deal with that and the nonstop yammering, and there wasn’t really room for them anyway. I made sure that the girls had something to eat and let them go upstairs into her room to play games in some semblance of quiet.
The Geico Gecko is going to challenge that business model catering to the EV crowd now that he has full control of Pilot/Flying-J and, in Texas, a slush fund to build generator capacity on the state’s dime.
We’ll see who has a deeper “moat”.
To be fair, The Beaver is shameless in exploiting tax breaks and other gimmies. The first store in Wisconsin was announced in … March ? … but Buc-ee’s is still in negotiations with all of the levels of government according to an article I saw while we were up there.
The article mentions the store in Alabama being the first Buc-ee’s outside of Texas. That location is one freeway exit removed from being in Florida, but DeSantis’ predecessor in the Governor’s Mansion, Sen. Rick Scott (RINO-FL) wouldn’t give on incentives.
There’s another saying I’d like to see come back into vogue: When the country suffers, the king loses his head.
King, President, whatever.
Shortening the puppet won’t solve the problems, not when the puppeteers remain hidden and the bureaucrats remain employed, but it won’t do any harm and it might serve as an object lesson for the others.
My final bill from the Illinois Tollway was $6, lower than the $8 I saw when I first logged into their web site to arrange payment. I’m not going to question it.
As inept as the management at the tolling company was at hiring and retaining skilled people, the competition continues to be worse.
With ORT replacing people in the booths, if the authority doesn’t have a clear plate image, they can’t bill transit through a plaza.
Yeah, I’ve lived that one. Americans are always surprised when they first encounter the problem, thinking that all Asians are like Japanese.
Thanksgiving was a power trip for Number One Boss Cousin when we lived in the Northwest. My wife always ended up making the food that everyone ate even though we were constantly fed the line, “The family members, like most Asians, don’t like turkey.”
Ha. You could have fooled me with the way they practically picked the carcass clean while it was on the big people table.
We always ended up at a rickety card table, even the year I brought a decent Costco table and chair set to Number One’s house.
Number One was married to a Caucasian, a practically translucent pale red head. I called her Weasley Wife.
Weasley Wife’s mother knew the score with Number One, however, and, from what I understand, had a signed notarized agreement from him stipulating how they (the Weasley Parents) would be included on vacations and holidays, with everything happening to Weasley Mother-in-law’s satisfaction … or else.
The Weasleys were never at the card table.
I don’t miss the Northwest. Number One is banned from my house now unless my wife has a really good reason, and, in nine years, she hasn’t managed to find one.
For SteveF. Presented without further comment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JY23g8bwQM
Picking on Buc-ee’s? The DM has to sell papers while it can. The “Death in Paradise” franchise might run all year-round soon. All winter at a minimum.
https://www.bbc.com/mediacentre/2023/death-in-paradise-christmas-2023
The “Doctor Who” 60th anniversary show on Saturday? That’s another franchise who chased Woke over a cliff.
Ah, “Doctor Who”. Catherine Tate is still great, but I’m not buying the transgendered girl as her character’s biological daughter.
Who else notices the immediate problem?
No, not mixed race. Donna’s (Tate’s character) husband being black is canon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt59CHiFZcA
After abandoning Doctor Who a couple episodes into Whitaker’s tenure, I watched her regen on youtube this week. I’ll give the three Tennant specials a chance, because it’s Tennant. I also really like Catherine Tate as Donna. I remain essentially spoiler free at the moment…
You’ll get Tennant, Tate, and what I’m sure will be surprise appearances. The final special has Neil Patrick Harris who is usually good in genre guest appearances, but I was suckered by Lenny Henry and Stephen Fry appearing during Whitaker’s run.
Sadly, John Barrowman’s Captain Jack will never appear on “Doctor Who” again.
including but not limited to concepts of basic hygiene.
– I was a bit shocked when eating at the table with chinese grad students in Shanghai, that everyone was just scooping mouthfuls from the lazy susan of dishes with the same chopsticks they were eating with…
And all the smoking at the table in restaurants, and the spitting the bones and shell fragments back onto the plate… 20something fully made up skinny hot girls, spitting food back onto the plate. Yuck.
n
Well, it would reduce the number of people willing to be puppets, and possibly force the puppeteers to step forward. Where they could be shortened.
While I am pretty much a total nerd, there are two things I have never seen: Doctor Who and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I occasionally think I ought to fix that, but at this point…nah…
Bright overcast and 61F this late morning. Household is still in bed. I’ve had my bacon, egg, and a bite of pecan pie. Coffee is about ¾ of the way toward solving all my problems.
I walked away from Dr Who after the “All Creatures ” guy. Watched a couple of eps from later, particularly one about adipose fat, and one with a crashing starship. Might have seen the weeping angels, they seem familiar. Lost interests, and I was a huge fan from the Tom Baker era, which I watched in highschool.
The spinoff in Wales was fun, but filled with teh gey. At least it was engaging. Except for the cybermen, I’ve always hated eps involving them. Beedy beedy beedy….
n
I have been there several times. Mostly to get gas as they are cheapest around. Any time I travel to the Smokies, Pigeon Forge, Gatlinburg or Dollywood I stop. Good car wash also.
Last time I was there something was odd with the jerky. Usually there is a large display case with a couple hundred pounds of various flavors of jerky. Generally good stuff, but expensive at $35.00 a pound. This time the entire display case was empty, no jerky anywhere. Seemed odd to me.
Teh Gey isn’t as bad as The Woke, which is who runs the show now.
As much as I’d like to see the program fixed, I’d prefer it not happen under the deal with Disney+.
The only way The House of Mouse gets fixed now is Bankruptcy, and that needs to happen as soon as possible.
So, there is a woman in our group who used to work for the company that is doing the skylights. She knows the products and volunteered to coordinate with all the owners. This was back in June or so. Final choices to be made no later than November. This takes time, because lots of owners are actually in Germany (these are their vacation apartments) and they aren’t here very often.
She forgot. We reminded her a month ago, and she still forgot. Now she is all insulted that we are accusing her of forgetting, because she’ll get right to it – after the holidays. We asked for a meeting, and she accuses us of harassing her.
According to Murderbot, people suck. It is not wrong.
I just finished Murderbot book 6 again. Near the end, one of the refugees picks up a discarded projectile weapon and shoots Murderbot in the back. Because, Murderbot is a SecUnit and very dangerous. Even though Murderbot had just rescued the refugees.
It may be Thanksgiving but my customers outside the USA are clamoring for software help. I spent two+ hours last night helping people in Brazil and Israel.
I have emails from Norway and Brazil today. No rest for the wicked.
@Lynn: I am just starting book 6. Poor murderbot, does seem to get shot a lot…
At a lot of places in the US anymore, hardly anyone in big business or government answers the phone between Thanksgiving and the observed MLK birthday holiday.
2024 is another year where Lunar New Year and Presidents Day happen in the same long weekend so the US down time may extend until Feb. 12 as in 2021.
God help us all if there is a freeze again in Texas on Presidents Day. Government will effectively close around noon on Feb. 8.
“TikTok Delenda Est” By Erick Erickson
https://www.creators.com/read/erick-erickson/11/23/tiktok-delenda-est
“On May 2, 2011, American soldiers raided Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan and recovered an undated letter to the United States. It was a propagandistic letter calling for endless wars against American imperialism. It circulated on several news sites including The Guardian. On the day Chinese dictator Xi Jinping met with American President Joe Biden in San Francisco, the letter began circulating on TikTok, a website controlled by the Chinese military.”
“Thousands of American kids began circulating and sharing bin Laden’s anti-American commentary. “Continue the war if you will. Justice is the strongest army, and security is the best way of life, but it slipped out of your grasp the day you made the Jews victorious in occupying our land and killing our brothers in Palestine. The path to security is for you to lift your oppression from us,” bin Laden wrote.”
“”This has left me very disillusioned, and I feel the same exact way I felt when I was deconstructing Christianity,” said one TikToker encouraging others to “go read it.” “In the last 20 minutes my entire viewpoint on the entire life I lead and have lived has changed. Please read that entire letter,” said another. “It is so mind-f—-ing me that terrorism has been sold as this idea to the American people… that this random group of people just woke up one day and suddenly f—-ing hate you,” another said, who went on to say, “the actions of 9/11 and those acts committed against the USA and its people were all just the buildup of our government failing other nations.” On and on they went — thousands of mostly young women claiming their eyes were suddenly open to 9/11 being justified and terrorism really being a noble resistance against an oppressor.”
Every time I see the word deconstructing, my antenna go up. To me, deconstructing is an incredibly bad thing and results in disaster.
xkcd: “Oceanography Gift”
https://xkcd.com/2859/
Randall is freaking weird.
Explained at:
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2859:_Oceanography_Gift
Murderbot came early to The Wisdom of Steve.
Got home at 4:05 pm; left on Nov 2th around 8:30 am. 6923 miles in 107.3 driving hours with an average speed of 64.5 MPH and got 27.9 MP’G. I usually drove near 10 MPH over the speed limit, probably 80% of my driving time was at 75+ MPH. I think my Fusion’s average of 27.9 if great for the speeds I drove. I also had a 600 pound engine in the trunk after I left Minnesota. Total cost for fuel, hotels and food was less than $2500. I was expecting it to be closer to $3000. I stayed at AIRbnb’s three different times and with friends for 3 nights.
@bob, glad you made it home safe.
n
THE MORNING RANT: Garbage Inflation Data – The Government’s Official Inflation Rate Includes a Laughable 34% Reduction in Consumer Health Insurance Costs Over the Past 12 Months
https://ace.mu.nu/archives/407177.php#407177
Add the BLS to the list. Zero budget and terminate for incompetence.
BLS has been BS for years. Shadowstats lays it out.
The crazy thing is that people play along. The released numbers move markets, even though people KNOW they are bogus. Good news is almost always revised down, and bad news up in the following months. They keep changing what they measure so historical records are broken, and they even changed the definition of what they do when they broke it too badly. And yet… the markets move.
It’s like soviet doublethink, you know it’s lies but you believe that other people will believe it and act accordingly so you have no choice but to act as if it’s true.
n
November 24, 2023
VIDEO: A pro-DeSantis PAC makes a well-targeted attack against Nikki Haley
By Andrea Widburg
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/11/video_a_prodesantis_pac_makes_a_welltargeted_attack_against_nikki_haley.html
Comments:
Haley has done nothing to impress me or earn my vote.
The hypocritical screeching at Vivek during the last debate, after Haley herself brought her adult daughter into the conversation earlier, made the likelihood of getting my vote near nil.
Given a choice between Biden/Kamala/Grusome and Haley, what matters if the latter gets us to hell five minutes later?
If it looks like a possibility, I may use the meme to make a sign and take it to a rally.
@Nick
We are not yet trained to ignore the preposterous as the Soviets were for generations.
The BLS incompetence is not fudging the figures, it is providing us with the absolute proof in one line that anyone paying for health insurance will recognize immediately.
I also had a 600 pound engine in the trunk after I left Minnesota.
Good weight in the rear for winter traction.
THE MORNING RANT: Garbage Inflation Data – The Government’s Official Inflation Rate Includes a Laughable 34% Reduction in Consumer Health Insurance Costs Over the Past 12 Months
https://ace.mu.nu/archives/407177.php#407177
Add the BLS to the list. Zero budget and terminate for incompetence.
The average per person health insurance cost for my business is going from $975/month to $1,075/month on Dec 1. That is not a reduction.
@Lynn: I am just starting book 6. Poor murderbot, does seem to get shot a lot…
I just figured out that Murderbot books #5 and #6 by publishing order are books #6 and #5 in chronological order. Book #7 (System Collapse) states this in the “Also By Author” section. And book #7 picks up where book #5 leaves off.
“The Left must get its violence under control. It’s not going to like the counterreaction.”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/fairness-justice/the-left-must-get-its-violence-under-control-its-not-going-to-like-the-counterreaction
“A word of advice from a historical perspective, for both parties: Get your people under control, embrace coexistence, and stop trying to “immanentize the eschaton” via violence. Because if you do manage to brute force the U.S. into adopting your preferred reality, the inevitable political counterreaction will be far worse than the thing you oppose today.”
“This isn’t a threat. This is begging.”
Melting ice reveals dozens of 7,000-year-old artifacts in Canada.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/11/23/melting-ice-reveals-dozens-of-7000-year-old-artifacts-in-canada/
A: They learned the technique from the settlers in Greenland
Article has link:
https://news.yahoo.com/melting-ice-reveals-dozens-7-221609873.html
to Miami Herald article with good photos.
At the bottom of that article are links to melting ice finds in Norway.
https://twitter.com/OntWtf/status/1728225379176079854
The last scene of the video showing the child being dropped on his head into the machinery has been deleted.
“The Best Philosophical Science Fiction Books” by Dan Livingston
https://best-sci-fi-books.com/the-best-philosophical-science-fiction-books/
I have read 9 out of the 27:
21. “Hyperion” by Dan Simmons
20. “1984” by George Orwell
18. “Childhood’s End” by Arthur C. Clarke
17. “A Canticle for Leibowitz” by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
16. “Foundation” by Isaac Asimov
15. “Dune” by Frank Herbert
14. “Stranger in a Strange Land” by Robert A. Heinlein
13. “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley
7. “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury
I have seen the movie versions of “Annihilation”, “The Giver”, and “Contact”.
“Biden Admin Preparing to Finalize Barrage of Methane Regulations”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/11/24/biden-admin-preparing-to-finalize-barrage-of-methane-regulations/
“The Biden administration is gearing up to finalize a host of emissions rules and regulations in the coming months, E&E News reported Wednesday.”
“The rules and regulations are all focused on methane, a greenhouse gas that is more potent, but dissipates more quickly, than carbon dioxide, and align with the administration’s commitment to attacking climate change with a “whole-of-government” response. The Biden administration is aiming to finalize the slew of methane regulations in the coming months ahead of the 2024 election, which would make the rules more difficult for a potential Republican administration to scrap should President Joe Biden lose, according to E&E News.”
They, the USA government, are going to put people in jail over this. In DC. After the first few go to jail, the rest of the natural gas producers will shut their businesses down. That is the goal of this.
Black Friday nuttiness has spread to Europe, even though Thanksgiving is not a thing here. Not as insane as in the US, but still – “Black Friday” sales were everywhere.
I never did understand shopping on a day like that. I once (once) had to pick up a forgotten gift from a shopping mall on Dec 24th. That was insane enough. The Black Friday madness? Why would you do that to yourself?
“Deconstruction” is a literary criticism technique popular among PLT academics, which they learn and apply far beyond analyzing books.
Which reminds me – our troll will be late resurfacing this December. Final exams run until Dec. 19.