Cold and wet. Again. Or at least cold. Chance we might have another dry day like yesterday, with wind and sun. But we are definitely headed toward much colder. Because, it’s JANUARY and the middle of winter. Even in Texas.
Despite a nap, I did manage to get stuff done yesterday. I did a drop off at my auctioneer. I went by my storage unit and got some stuff out. Ran the kid to her things. Even stopped at a regular Goodwill store with her and got some T-shirts for her, some nice Allen Edmond shoes for me, a couple of LPs for resale, and a piece of artwork that is worth more than I thought. Case of beer money, nothing huge, but it definitely didn’t look like anything more than a pop culture print. I mention it mainly because I’ve said there was little left in the stores worth buying, but yesterday I got lucky.
I also met another pipe enthusiast. The guy in front of me at checkout had a pipe rack in his cart. I mentioned it, and it turns out he was buying for himself. Young guy too. Transitioning from cigars to pipes… which seems to be the path a lot of commentors on the youtube pipe channels are taking. It’s cheaper, smells better in a room, and there are cultural aspects that I’m trying to sort out… but it’s definitely a growing subculture.
————-
One interesting aspect of my shopping trip was D1’s reaction… She’s like “you just talked to that guy, and had a conversation and now you exchanged phone numbers? How does that happen so fast?? He volunteered his number and offered to buy something from you!” (guy was interested in seeing the pipes I’ve been working on to flip) “and then you had a chat with the cashier about California and the places you used to live and found out where she lived, how long she’s been here, and all that, just like that???” “Is that how it is for adults?” “How do you make friends so quickly??”
Well, I didn’t make friends, I made contact with people that COULD be turned into friendships… if I was looking I guess I could have further pursued the cashier (female), and I’ve already exchanged a couple of pipe related texts with the guy. I didn’t do anything weird or tricky, I just said “hi” in a way that engaged them for a couple of minutes, and had a brief friendly chat. I found a shared interest, pipes, and living in California, used that to make a few remarks, and let them make a few back. Friendly chitchat, nothing out of the ordinary or unusual… “making conversation” is what it used to be called. Except that I guess it IS out of the ordinary for kids today, and maybe for adults too. The phone number exchange would have been business cards just a couple of years ago, or if the guy was closer to my age, but it is easier for one person to just send a text to the other person’s phone, and then get a reply. It occurs to me that it’s the third time in a month that I had a younger person share contact info with me that way.
I wasn’t always able to just have a quick interaction with people like that. I had to work at it for a long time and specifically in work and business settings. That helped in non-business stuff too, and now I just do it. Could be because I sit at home alone so much of the day that I make up for lack of in person contact by trying to connect for at least a moment with others when I have a chance. Or it could be that the things that kept me from doing it in the past are no longer important to me. Not caring about some things can be very freeing… And if you have a lot of interactions, each one has less “weight” for lack of a better word- less of me is at risk in each one. In any case, it is definitely a skill that can be developed. Given that we live in the world, getting along with other people in it is something I think is important.
And it’s part of what I mean when I say “Meatspace baby!” When push comes to shove, who you know and who knows you is going to be vitally important. Heck it’s important now. Almost everyone I know had gotten jobs by word of mouth or through acquaintances, not through job boards, or services. Most people like to help out people they know and like. Most opportunities come when someone decides to share something… If your interpersonal skills are weak, it’s time to work on them. We are all going to need all the help we can get to get through the bad times.
Stack up some skills, and widen your circle of casual contacts. You never know what might come your way.
nick
G’morning!
Disney-philes:
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPQoaF7CrOlC_d-dxdOK-Difr5BU0gDf8R1Qtgk2Ga3BGbGgoYM1xAwrOVYm1n1WBMR-tDtNdzyKbtpugT0ekqxTz-h_TliEXEctCVAKNRB2KLBZ82JHGrDwGqeadF9rL9-bkxWfNSjFbNx-ysXcxZw1xGkjowHqc65uZN_0TJPx5QsfmA8j9I6mIpGhiS/s1334/902.jpeg
And, ain’t it true:
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5HRr9UVdXwGQGLl4vrnaFOTLbgefWuSZmGPc7hdDh-9SV_2Rj2aMJ8-s3MdiZUicjIv3LQ2zFn_hiSWAqbtTVnqQesGRx2JdImy7vMfLqeopvHD5VZ5Y0dJ-PdTyjoX8ep4-gk_jKzg5iWhlATTO3xzGYraqmafOxn7PMOHyFjS9Dq8A-sioHl1vFp94t/s1032/908.jpeg
I had almost the same reaction recently from my nephew, aged 9. “How do you just talk to people like that?”
I thought it was just him, but your comment today makes me wonder whether kids more generally are not learning how to make small talk. I have also been seeing reports that substantial numbers of young adults are incapable of making eye contact and/or maintaining a conversation at job interviews. Too much screen time, and not enough live interaction with humans?
It’s grading season, and sometimes you don’t know what to think. I have a set of four students who turned in essentially identical solutions for a project. The project is really just accumulated programming exercises from throughout the semester. Well, one student did try to hide the copying, by translating variable names from German to English.
The thing is: It’s almost always the lousy students do this kind of thing. When two (or, in this case, four) solutions include the exact same weird problems and errors, you’d have to be pretty blind not to notice. Of course, half the students didn’t turn the project in at all. Which presumably means that they did not do the exercises. Which almost certainly means they will fail the final exam.
I am seriously tired of being the “bad guy”. I’ve played this role for 20 years now, because it’s important and someone has to do it. One-and-a-half more years to go. That’s the cool thing in my little part-time gig at the trade school: My funny little course has no grade. It’s purely for the students’ enrichment, and purely their loss if they don’t participate. I’m looking forward to doing more of that kind of thing after retirement.
The Raptor Encounter at Universal Orlando is a lot more intense in person than it seems watching on YouTube. Highly recommended if you are ever in the area.
You look at the puppet and think it isn’t any different than the big rat down the freeway, but then the subwoofer in the character’s neck pumps it up to ‘11’.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0QJ1qy9Uu8
Disney spent 30 years ripping off Jurassic Park with the “Dinosaur” ride at Animal Kingdom, but they announced last Fall that they are giving up and replacing the reptiles with Indiana Jones.
No word on Fleabag. Now that would be scary for small children.
Nimarata doesn’t need to be VP either IMHO, but the primaries are for vetting and establishing the candidate’s Kenny Boys.
The party needs a statement about the future running with Trump given his age is up there with Biden.
Incitatus shouldn’t be the future of either party.
The other reason to stop at Universal Orlando – the train illusion is brilliant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8-ys4FQ3nw
I knew some guys that wore a cartoony creature suit that was used for advertising at a trade show. Big thing, about 8’ tall inflated by a blower in a backpack. They were short in the rotation one day and asked if I would be interested in taking an hour shift.
They demo-ed it and explained that by pushing on the costume in front of your face you could make it appear to be falling on someone a few feet away. Instant gut reaction even when you knew it was coming.
the train illusion is brilliant.
– I agree. That bit of immersion impressed me, both in concept and execution.
————-
Huh, not cold today, just cool. 55F when I got up, and warming. Sun is shining and the sky is mostly clear too.
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Brain damaged slobs are not what we need in the halls of power.
————-
We do need someone in the halls, someone who can make huge deals, because sooner or later, we’ll need someone at the table to represent our interests.
————–
Women are vicious. Never met a man who would look at that woman’s picture and think what the women thought. Or that would have said “oh jeez, you need to photoshop that.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-12949725/Larsa-Pippen-SLAMMED-heavily-edited-bikini-photo.html NSFW if you work in a modern corp, which is crazy considering that it’s from an article in a ‘pretty close to mainstream’ pub.
n
Pelozi’s nephew wants to kick the can down the road…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12949705/California-budget-deficit-gavin-newsom-proposed-cuts-energy.html
And it will slide further into third world status… as the death spiral continues.
n
Well, I am almost 60 (SHEESH!) and I feel that way. Of course, I AM an engineer.
Grabbed back what had been grabbed…
n
The states are going to get another bailout.
Too much private pension and 401(k) money is invested in California real estate and tech companies to let the place pay the price for their stupid political decisions over the last 30 years.
The tech companies could relocate, but where? Texas is headed down the same road as California, and I speak from firsthand experience interviewing that the tech talent pool is not as deep in Austin as portrayed in the media.
I took D2 to the premiere when she was 9. We both loved it and it was the first movie I remember a large applause (when the first dinos are revealed). D2 just turned 40 and we still reminisce about JP.
The bytecode doesn’t lie.
I had a professor in grad school require a similar project. Source code printouts and example runs had to be organized into a single document with comments about each assignment, printed, and bound professionally.
The “Death in Paradise” regular season won’t start until February this year, which probably pushes back “Beyond Paradise” and the announced Australian spinoff.
DM has to sell the papers while it can.
I didn’t even have to look that far. Everything from formatting to mistakes was identical. Just the names had been changed.
Meanwhile, Disney leaves “Rise of the Resistance” in ‘B’ mode in Orlando instead of fixing the problems.
Super Mario is coming, along with his friend Donkey Kong.
You know, I had forgotten about the applause, we did that in my theater as well, the first time.
Someone had finally brought realistic dinosaurs to the big screen.
“Jurassic Park” hit just as client-server got humming, and for the rest of the decade, until Y2k really kicked into gear, selling software on a Unix platform meant validating on SGI and offering a port to the platform. Every C-suite wanted those workstations to play with even though the OS was complete cr*p and, at times, porting the software difficult.
These days, SGI is a museum piece. Literally. The HQ building Jim Clark built is home to the Computer History Museum.
SGI was gone by the mid-00s.
I remember that, in particular, CenturyTel — now CenturyLink — was really into SGI and the plantation masters -er- execs got whatever they wanted in Monroe. Those guys loved the dinosaurs in that flick and had to have that gear in their offices.
CenturyTel. “Moist” is not a word which should describe a data center. At least we knew SGI exceeded their operating humidity specs.
More lies FauXi told us:
Fauci’s Latest Admission About His Unscientific COVID Measures/Mandates Will Piss You Right TF Off
Mr. “I’m science” lied right to our faces as a public servant. Cut that pension off now! Throw in face diapers, gain of function, and “I didn’t fund Wuhan” and prison time should be added.
For most of the 90s, I knew how to hard crash Irix (SGI OS) from a user account privilege level running a binary which executed about a dozen lines of C code.
I don’t remember if SGI tried to have me fired back in the day. Maybe.
SillyG’s were the workstation of choice for my sooper-secret almost last milspec job in M&S. I wasn’t coding anything, but ran the SillyG’s during war-gaming around the World.
When I started with the company doing what ended up being my last real career, we supported visualization on SGI exclusively. They were actually the ones who sold our product as part of their solution to large scale visualization. Pretty dumb to be dependent on one company like that.
Boss man started to explore partnerships with HP and the new linux clustering, while riding out the clock on his patents, but that mostly p!ssed of SGI without leading to a ton of new business.
At one point, I knew a lot about getting our stuff to work with Onyx and deskside onyx. TWO displays were easy. Three? still very hard to do three overlapped and blended displays for a nice 120 deg wrap around. The answer the market came up with seems to be really wide and curved single displays, and two display systems.
Video bandwidth is still a limiting factor.
n
I’m sure the military bought a bunch of them even though HP was the mission critical vendor of choice.
Irix would crash if a developer looked at it funny, and the compilers were worse than the OS.
We would cross compile our software with GCC on a Sun server until the Sun salespeople sprayed around enough hookers and steaks on management to abandon GCC on their OS. I left the job not long afterwards.
When Jurrasic Park was released, there was an audio file of the ‘dinosaur roar’ available. I got the file, copied it to a co-worker’s computer after he had left for the day, and set it as the startup sound. Then set the volume to max.
Almost fell off my chair laughing when he started up his computer the next morning. He jumped at least a foot.
Good times.
>> Well, I didn’t make friends, I made contact with people that COULD be turned into friendships… if I was looking I guess I could have further pursued the cashier (female),
And you COULD wind up singing soprano in the church choir.
Well, I was 55 years old when I discovered that my 35 year marriage was over, so you could end up looking for companionship when you least expect to. In my case, W1 became WLast.
I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. Except the judge in my divorce; I hope she suffers every indignation I did, doubled.
I also met another pipe enthusiast. The guy in front of me at checkout had a pipe rack in his cart. I mentioned it, and it turns out he was buying for himself. Young guy too. Transitioning from cigars to pipes… which seems to be the path a lot of commentors on the youtube pipe channels are taking. It’s cheaper, smells better in a room, and there are cultural aspects that I’m trying to sort out… but it’s definitely a growing subculture.
My Dad stopped smoking a pipe in 1968 ? 1969 ? 1971 ? when the Surgeon General report came out. He would be grading papers at his desk in the house (he was a prof at OU) and smoking a pipe. The whole house would smell like it.
The post office finally delivered my first draw from my 401k. The check is dated Jan 2, the meter/postmark says Jan 4. A week from Boston to Burnet seems a bit long.
$1000 with $200 held for taxes. It’s going to be a very fine tax refund.
The check is on State Street.
State Street isn’t uncommon
Anyone who thinks their 401(k) is “safe” at Fidelity and not involved with ESG needs to read their mailings more carefully.
That may or may not be true.
Prepping fail: my backup truck would not start today due to excessive cold (-31C). My primary was already down due to a coolant leak and overheat. I guess I’m destined to work on vehicles in the cold this afternoon.
I’m shocked. Shocked!
https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/11/business/hertz-tesla-selling/index.html
That’s c-c-cold! I was exposed to that just once, and it made me want to never experience it again. The car wasn’t happy, either, since it had been outside all night. Normal lows were -23C, which is OK for a well maintained car with proper oil for those winters, but -25F, similar to what you have, was just too much for it to crank.
That was when I was in Iowa. A friend there had come from Fargo, North Dakota where it was even colder. Back then (1960s) they parked in a garage and took the battery in the house. Nowadays, battery heaters are available, and probably work well. They are inexpensive, and only draw about 25 watts. If your temperatures are consistently -31C, and no garage, then an engine heater would help starting plus be much easier on the engine. You probably already know that. I solved my problem by moving to a much warmer climate, but we still get below freezing. Fortunately, daytime in good wx is often sunny and up to 16C.
As for working on the car with the coolant leak, I have warmed such cars up a little before starting work. Also wore lots of warm clothes, but you also know that as well. I also “borrowed” a friend’s garage. Finally, those propane heaters Nick mentions are wonderful. I have worked outside with one on each side of me, and that works well.
Judging from the time of your post, you must not be in Canada. I spent my early years just north of Canada, in the Detroit area. I always hated cold and wet.
The next few days of weather look “exciting”. We won’t be grilling chicken on the grill on MLK day for sure.
Dog walks may be brief, it’s up to them. Sunday is looking like a high of 33 and windy. Monday is high of 28 and windy. Brief walks work for me.
Heck, it’s the middle of January and I’ve yet to light the pellet stove. There have been past years where I lit the Earth Stove and started toting firewood in mid-October.
I have my faucets wrapped. I’ll get the hall bath sink dripping on Saturday. Same for the sink in the EDC. I’m cool.
All the yelling about “we gonna die from climate change” is funny.
Not much about rain. So it’s going to be a dry cold. How’s that compared to a dry heat, well, shrug.
I had a classmate in college who came from Alaska. His family used an old 4wd Willy’s in the winter with studs on the tires. They didn’t bother with coolant, but had to keep a heater under the block at night to keep the oil from congealing. He seemed to really appreciate Southern California and Pomona.
It has been a relatively warm year in the california high desert, mid 20s at night. I have been running the pellet stove from early December I think, when I arise to a bit before noon, maybe 6 hours a day at most. There have been only two or three nights when I lit it in the evening before bed or during an old mans nocturnal visit to the w/c..
They are predicting 19F tonight, so this may be one of those nights.
I lived in Southern Oregon for my teen years. It was cold in the winter, and wet. Barely above freezing and raining. We still had to work outside and sit on a tractor or bulldozer. Keeping dry was always a challenge as cold clothes against the skin was miserable.
One thing I discovered during those winters was panty hose. I wore a pair on a dare. I discovered they were great for keeping warm and keeping wet clothes off the legs. That thin layer provided by the panty hose was enough for a boundary layer of air and kept the cold clothes off the legs. The torso was protected with a rain coat. Rain pants were a real nuisance and generally leaked where they cracked.
Rain protection has improved dramatically in 55 years with Goretex and other water repellant fabrics. I doubt we would have had them as they would have been ruled too expensive by my tightwad aunt and uncle.
Unseasonably warm here, even for a January Thaw. Rained a lot a couple days ago and got half of the cardboard in the chicken run wet but I threw it away and replaced with the extra I had on hand. Prepping! They’ve enjoyed getting out, eating worms on the driveway, scratching for whatever they can find (not much), and snuggling into the little pits they’ve made in the mulch around the front flowers and shrubs. They’re still declining to use the dust bath and the heated roosting rail that I got them, the ingrates. They also keep throwing most of the straw out of the coop, not realizing that it’ll help keep their fluffy little butts warm when the temp drops again.
Daughter is being a PITA, just typical teenage angst and self-pity, I think. Wife is being a PITA, staggering from one incompetency- or inattention-caused disaster to another. I understand that the clot shots messed with her brain (more accurately, greatly worsened existing traits) but the responsible, adult thing to do would be to work out systems of checklists and notes to avoid constantly forgetting things. Mother-in-law is being a PITA but I don’t blame her at all. She’s upward of 1000 years old and was already showing signs of senility or dementia or whatever, then the clot shots did a number on her. I’m blaming the clot shots because both wife and m-i-l were badly impacted almost immediately after their second shots, both show signs of strokes in brain scans, and m-i-l had the characteristic long, stringy clots pulled out of her blood vessels.
So, anyway, just another day of fun, Chez Furlong. I’m still getting everything done that needs to be but it’s wearing at me. Oh, and something amusing: the dentist’s office checked my blood pressure for whatever reason when I went for a cleaning a week or two ago. It’s pretty high. Not hypertension or dangerous, but high. The dentist suggested that I probably ought to get it looked into and then let it drop, while the dental assistant was continually nagging me about it. Considering that the high blood pressure is almost certainly caused by unrelenting stress, does she really think that nagging is the best approach?
I don’t remember specifics, but there is a link between gum disease and cardiac issues.
The dentist’s office has to document that they talked to you. For a lot of men, until something bad happens, the dentist is the limit of contact that they have with professional healthcare of any kind and the liability attached.
IIRC, his dentist was who found Warren Zevon’s illness.
My dentist’s recommendation to see someone about the blood pressure is how I ended up on three hypertension meds.
That, the firing, and the new job working on a project with the biggest dollar amounts attached to IT hardware I’ve ever seen in my career of 30 years.
Get it checked out.
My dentist checks BP when you get in the chair. Mine must have been ok, since no one said anything.
Back in the day, my dentist WAS my primary care physician, as I had no insurance and he was willing to write what I needed if I needed something. Had to fix the broken tooth, could let the aching knees wait…
———-
First time tech support told me to open up a $120K projector and start poking around inside, I was very nervous about costs. By the time I got to the job with 16 of them, I was inured to it. As long as I’m not writing the checks, and I have clear direction, I’ll just go for it. Working with large heavy one of a kind materials, that you can’t touch without damaging them, well THAT was stressful.
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@steve, I think I picked up an automatic coop door in the last box of amazon returns, interested?
n
Aw jeez, saw this coming…
– history certainly rhymes.
n
Dumbocrats, the party of war.
I just had another exam for the VA for my TDUI claim. I have been to about a dozen of these exams. As part of these exams the examiner has to ask if I have any suicidal thoughts or intentions. I also get asked at any VA clinic appointments.
I also figure my chances for TDUI are about as good as SteveF becoming a liberal pacifist.
“Author Chuck Tingle uninvited from Texas book festival over mask”
https://www.chron.com/culture/article/chuck-tingle-tla-conference-18600608.php
“The Texas Library Association has since apologized and re-extended its invitation.”
You have got to be kidding me. This guy writes trash.
“Ep. 63 When do the architects of the COVID catastrophe go on trial? We asked Alex Berenson.”
https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1745581351498060019
Alex Berenson sounds like he knows what he is talking about.
TDIU, not TDUI.
“Afternoon update on the Arctic front: Here are the three main things we’re watching”
https://spacecityweather.com/afternoon-update-on-the-arctic-front-here-are-the-three-main-things-were-watching/
“As promised, we’re providing a p.m update on the cold weather we’re anticipating that will arrive in Houston, beginning Sunday. We’ll be doing twice-a-day updates through the weekend to keep you abreast of what’s happening—this is a fairly dynamic situation, and the forecast is changing as a result.”
I don’t play with the hardware. I have a very important software process which interacts with a twitchy vendor component and must run perfectly on the assembly line every time.
If I had to guess, we are the only OEM with this particular process automated.
$120k. Multiply by four.
– IDK Fernandez’s immigration status, but if you look at the sex offender registry, there are a whole lot fewer white faces than we’ve been trained to expect. Note the steps that were taken leading to his ID and arrest…
And this —
They pulled a pic of the car off the bus camera.
The area in question is a wealthy demographic, the school is one of the “good schools” in the district.
But diversity is our strength.
n
That’s a busy mall with a lot of people going through the bathrooms during operating hours.
As long as we’re talking (complaining?) about the weather …
Here on the Olympic Peninsula (WA), a bit of snow to go with the very low (for us) temps. About 2″ at my place, and lots more east into Seattle up into the Cascades.
And temps this weekend – next couple of days – low 15-20F, high 20-32F. Right now (7:20pm PDT) it’s 23F, with forecast low overnight of 18F.
Went to the mailbox about an hour ago (one of those multiple metal locked boxes out on the street) and the box appeared to be frozen shut. Nothing urgent, so will deal with it tomorrow. Just a few bills, circulars, and the usual (and ever-present) scrapbook supplies. (So many scrapbook supplies…..<sigh>…..)
“But diversity is our strength.”
My diversity is 9mm, .40, and 5.56.
@RickH
Reminding you and everyone else to watch for slippery ice when you’re walking.
Older people don’t bounce as well. Please be careful.
Mag chloride is marketed as “pet friendly” ice and snow melter, so you might have a local source at one of the chains. Both mag and calcium chloride are very hygroscopic and will pull moisture out of the air (which is why calcium chloride is marketed as “Damp Rid” for closets in lower levels), so the containers come with tight-fitting closures and should be kept sealed between uses.
Made two chicken pot pies tonight, and baked the second pan of lasagna in the still-warm oven.
Something psychological about having warm meals ready for the frigid weather forecast for the weekend.
Something psychological about having warm meals ready for the frigid weather forecast for the weekend.
– true dat!
Like putting some stew or a chuck roast in the crock pot…
yum.
n
n
@JimB
Actually… I work evening shifts, so I’m not usually mobile until 11AM, work starts at 3PM. And the main failure is that I’ve got a battery heater, and a spare block heater to install, but haven’t gotten a round tuit. Hopefully in the very near future. I’m still fighting with my usual ride, trying to get an ice or air block out of the cooling system so I can top up the coolant and resume driving it.
“Federal Appeals Court Strikes Down Joe Biden’s Attempt to Regulate Dishwashers and Washing Machines”
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/01/federal-appeals-court-strikes-down-joe-bidens-attempt/
The Dictator is getting frustrated.
n
Yea Coasties! The sometimes forgotten, but Always Ready service. Water rescues are always dangerous.
Good luck, Gavin. Keep yourself warm.
Whatever you do, don’t try that Willys trick and run it empty. Modern engines don’t take kindly to that, even for a short time.