Cool and damp, maybe some rain today. It was overcast and damp all day Thursday, but never did rain. Today the forecast says “some rain”. I hope not much.
I looked at my posts and comments for the month around this date 4 years ago, and my lime tree was budding, the weather was similar, but prices for food were half. It’s very useful to have a daily journal to track what changes and what doesn’t. I felt like the lime had budded way early, and that $2/pound for pork on sale was reasonable. Checking allowed me to see that even “on sale” prices have doubled, and the weather is very much the same. Last year I suggested to D1 that she start a journal so she had something she trusted when the world tried to gaslight her. I recommend it to everyone now. Write down what is happening to you and around you. First person and contemporary accounts are valuable. Hand written hard copy is best, but anything you control is acceptable. Our memories are fallible and we adjust to accommodate our circumstances.
Didn’t get much done yesterday, I spent most of my day doing auction stuff online, and exploring my options for my new position in my non-prepping hobby club. I’ll be sharing some of that journey here too.
Today I’ve got a couple of pickups to do, which will involve some driving. I’m really hoping for minimal rain as I need to use the pickup truck and rain always messes up the freeways. There’s a three day weekend ahead of us, and I’ll be using it to do stuff around the house here. It would be nice to have cool, dry weather for that. Anything else will mean picking and choosing what I can do. Pouring rain means I’m working on ebay listings, or my new website project. We’re not going to the BOL because it’s GS cookie sales weekend. Support your local troops, it really helps the girls do things, even though the price has increased per box. It makes a difference in getting them out of the house and interacting with people. And it’s a great way for you to impact your community.
Which is a good thing.
Stack up all the things. You won’t regret it.
nick
Call the Duluth Trading Outlet in Belleville, WI and see if the hand cranked tablesaw is still available.
Everything was liquidated through that location, including store decor and fixtures.
I’m sure the catch is that you have to transport the saw. Road trip!
Locust Class.
A lot of people like that are here in Austin without a plan or real skills. The difference is in Thailand that you must work.
Imagine.
Cool and raining this am. Slow light drizzle but it’s been going on for a while. Ground is saturated already. Looks like there might be some sun trying to poke thru.
That would be nice.
n
Meet the Tesla CyberRustBucket:
Elon Musk’s $80,000 Tesla Cybertrucks are RUSTING after just two DAYS in the rain, driver claims
Seeing is believing, and, people lie, but LMAO!
I shouldn’t laugh too much. I still have a lot of TSLA in my IRA. The market is popping lately. What’s up?
Stainless steel…isn’t perfectly stainless. It is resistant to corrosion, not immune to it. Things like road salt, certain kinds of tree sap, and I’m sure other substances will lead to corrosion. We had a stainless steel plate hung on the wall in our previous kitchen, with spices stored in jars with magnets in the lids. It was unusual and practical, but the steel did discolor over the years.
That said, the CyberRustBucket photos I’ve seen online are mostly tiny flecks, pretty insignificant. If people wanted their cars to stay perfectly shiny forever, they had the option of paying for a clear coat.
WRT my hobby site,
no forums, no comments, my thought is to use a blog format to let the other people add content, ie. announcements mainly, just by adding a post to the main page. Picture galleries. Minimum of external links.
It’s supposed to be a “hi, this is who we are, what we do, and how you can do it with us” place for non-members, and somewhere members can find some resources we’ve generated, like photos of meetings, content of presentations, etc. The national org has all the hobby specific and general stuff people need, including forums, so no need to duplicate that.
I (and by extension they) don’t want to use anything that’s not widely available and non-proprietary. The “Sitebuilder” tool that was initially used has locked them to this host and isn’t maintained, so no mobile features, for example. I wasn’t kidding about it looking like geocities worst sites. Only the blink tag is missing. One of the page names was abbreviated so that the menu fit across the top of the site homepage.
I don’t have time or energy to be editing pages or updating static content after it’s built, but at some point someone else might… I want content creation to be by the President, or Secretary, and to be more like a blog post saying “hey all, I’m excited for our upcoming Regional Show, mark the dates on your calendar and click the links to the right to register.” Or “Hey folks, you missed a great presentation if you missed the last meeting. Our next meeting will be Saturday, the 32nd of Apollo, but you can see photos of the presentation in the gallery!”
(secretary does the photo upload to the gallery page…)
You can imagine what that sort of thing is like hand editing static HTML.
n
Added– this site is really only about 5 pages and the blog.
n
Jewish singer Matisyahu is forced to cancel shows in Arizona and New Mexico after anti-Semitic venue staff REFUSED to work – as left-wing anti-Israel groups take credit for disrupting his tour
– more ‘workers’ who think the company exists for their benefit… fire all of them.
n
the CyberRustBucket photos I’ve seen online are mostly tiny flecks,
– the auto detailer I like to watch on youtube routinely uses a foam that reacts with iron filings to show if there are any on the finish. Pretty much every car he details has flecks like those shown on the cybertruck, they are something in the air that settles on the finish…
n
A friend doing some app work trupied to get decent fiverr help a few years back … to say “bad experience” is to insult bad experience.
Incompetence and a complete inability to read and/or follow a specification, all filtered through late deliveries and complete ghosting of the unusable work.
The stories were funny to hear second hand, but I would hate to live them.
I looked into it a little several years ago because I had some stainless steel hardware that had some minor rusting and I was perplexed. It's one of those things you think you know a little about until you start looking into it more and then you realize how little you know. lol 🙂 There are many types of stainless steel. Some aren't even magnetic. Some are more or less corrosion resistant, some are more or less weldable, and so forth. Then there’s how they label it, 304 vs 314 vs 316 vs 18/8… 🤯
People can be tempted to use steel brushes & steel wool on boats to remove the dull aluminum oxide coat on booms and masts and repaint, but as soon as the sea air gets to the invisibly small small iron particles embedded in the soft aluminium it looks horrible.
The institutions are abandoning TSLA. Go look at the charts and numbers on Yahoo Finance.
Support broke in January, when the weather turned cold.
There could be a head fake jump in the price to sheer the sheeple like currently happening with DIS. Pay attention for the opportunity to take a reasonable profit if you are playing the individual stock in your IRA.
TSLA should be about beer money, not food money.
It still boggles my mind that there’s a national organization for Harry Potter Flash Mob Performance Artists.
We dress like Funco Pop versions of the characters…
n
Well, now I know what I’ll be doing this weekend. Heard a drip while running the tub…
There is a big puddle in the sand under my master bathroom tub. The drain or overflow has been leaking. So I’ll be dealing with that. Bugger.
n
“something in the air that settles on the finish…“
Lot’s of sources.
For one close at hand, look at the cast iron wear surfaces in your brakes.
>> I want content creation to be by the President, or Secretary, and to be more like a blog post saying “hey all, I’m excited for our upcoming Regional Show, mark the dates on your calendar and click the links to the right to register.”
“to register” implies a database with read, write, update, delete functions and associated input validation and error handling. Not an expert but surely covered by a WP module (or more – then ‘which to pick?’).
Do “View Source” on this page and consider how much CSS you know.
Ahh…get Rick to join your group! 😉
Re Cybertruck rust…drive directly from the pick up location to a reputable detaler and spend big bucks for a full detail and then full ceramic coating.
Stainless steel…isn’t perfectly stainless. It is resistant to corrosion, not immune to it. Things like road salt, certain kinds of tree sap, and I’m sure other substances will lead to corrosion. We had a stainless steel plate hung on the wall in our previous kitchen, with spices stored in jars with magnets in the lids. It was unusual and practical, but the steel did discolor over the years.
Several of the old Deloreans were painted with enamel paints after the owners discovered that stainless steel shows all fingerprints.
You should see stainless 4010 ? after it has been in steam boiler at 3,000+ F. We would always sandblast the soot and other crap off the insides during every annual maintenance outage.
Breaking … Navalny dies in prison… SloJoe “shocked”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/02/16/alexei-navalny-dead-russia-prsion/
Re Nick’s ‘volunteer website’ – I’ve got decades of experience in website building, including at least one decade in WordPress. If someone came to me with these requirements:
Here’s what I would do
There was an indication that you will be selling stuff on the site. Couldn’t tell if it was ‘physical’ stuff that has to be boxed and shipped, or what. But with a WordPress site, and a bunch of things to sell, WooCommerce is best. There’s a bit of work to set it up, especially if you need fulfillment and tracking and shipping add-ins. Payment via PayPal plugins.
If there are just a few items to sell/ship, you can do it without WooCommerce. Just set up a WP page for each product, and add a PayPal button (there are plugins for that) to take care of payments (you don’t want to store credit card info; best to offload that to PayPal). I set up some PayPal buttons for Jerry’s site using a plugin. The “Home Scientist” site is custom pages with PayPal buttons (although he needs to change to WooCommerce to make fulfillment easier).
Selling virtual products is easier. Fulfillment is more work. You can do it with simple PayPal buttons – the fulfillment (shipping, tracking, email support) is all manual work. WooCommerce lets you somewhat automate the shipping/tracking/email support/order verification emails/etc) but it more work to set up.
I recommend WordPress as it takes care of all the back end process of creating pages (HTML/PHP coding and more without WP). So non-geeks can, without much training or support, create the pages. (If Nick can do it …). The slideshow/images pages are easy to set up with the slideshow plugins – there are some good ones out there.
So, hosting costs about $80/year to start with. A basic hosting plan is enough. Comes with emails (you have to set up, but a web-based client to do the mail). Add WordPress (hosting places have a wizard to install). Pick out a theme (this takes a bit of time to find the right one).
Add plugins (some of mine for security), a PayPal button plugin (“WP PayPal” is one) and a slideshow plugin (“MetaSlider” or “Smart Slider 3”). Then create pages, add product pages with the PayPal buttons (set up the PayPal account), create the slide show pages, add a contact page (“Contact Form 7” Plugin or others) and the site is done.
During implementation, you’ll need to transfer domain name to the new hosting place. With that in place, use the hosting place WP install wizard. Find a basic theme and install that. Install the plugins. When you do that, set up a ‘under construction’ page as a placeholder for the domain (pluginsfor that, of course). Then set up the pages. Add slide show.
Tons of on-line help on how to do everything – https://www.wpbeginner.com/ is a good place to learn.
Once you get the hosting in place, doing everything might take a day or two – maybe 8-15 hours depending on complexity. Once the site is set up, maintenance is checking the site every 2-3 days for updates (which can be auto-updated), and updating pages; that checkup will take 10-15 minutes max.
At least, that’s what I would do if I was unfortunate enough to have someone ask me to do that. (Unless they were willing to pay for the process. Which I would charge about $1k for the above site work [excluding hosting/domain costs]. )
“Microsoft turns off “Show desktop” in Windows 11 by default to make space for Copilot”
https://www.windowslatest.com/2024/02/15/microsoft-turns-off-show-desktop-in-windows-11-by-default-to-make-space-for-copilot/
Jerks.
Does WindowsKey-D still minimize all windows and show desktop?
I worked at a GM dealer during the early ‘90’s, and rail dust was an issue. Older vehicles were less affected, but vehicles with base / clear paint were commonly in the shop for this. GM started putting heavy white cling plastic on horizontal surfaces to reduce the occurrence.
>> Once you get the hosting in place, doing everything might take a day or two – maybe 8-15 hours depending on complexity.
Good thing @nick just zeroed out his to-do list! 😉
Thanks Rick that’s exactly what I was looking for along with everybody else’s input. I thought you were traveling this week though. Oh yeah yeah time to go past my storage unit and get the plumbing stuff I need.
N
There’s also Win-M for minimizing everything.
“When you realize that, no matter how hard you try, you can’t win”
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2024/02/when-you-realize-that-no-matter-how.html
“This Newsweek headline says it all:”
“Russia Proposes Military Age Limit that Surpasses Country’s Life Expectancy”
Yup, the times they are getting tough.
The Greater Depression is coming.
“Flash Point” by Nancy Kress
https://www.amazon.com/Flash-Point-Nancy-Kress/dp/0142427462?tag=ttgnet-20/
A standalone young adult science fiction book. I read the well printed and well bound trade paperback published by Speak (Penguin) in 2013 that I bought from Amazon back in 2014.
After the economic collapse of the USA in 2029 (known as The Collapse), things got incredibly tough in the USA. The unemployment zoomed to 23 percent, social services like Social Security, food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, etc were halted. High Schools were converted to short terms and made non-mandatory. And the age of adulthood was dropped to sixteen across the country.
16 year old Amy got up at 4am and went downtown to the TV station to apply for the new reality game show, TLN’s “Who Knows People, Baby–You?” with hundreds of other young people. Amy and five others made the show which would make them rich, if they survived the making the show.
The author has a website at:
https://nancykress.com/
My rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 3.7 out of 5 stars (31 reviews)
Lynn
Meet the Tesla CyberRustBucket:
Elon Musk’s $80,000 Tesla Cybertrucks are RUSTING after just two DAYS in the rain, driver claims
Seeing is believing, and, people lie, but LMAO!
I shouldn’t laugh too much. I still have a lot of TSLA in my IRA. The market is popping lately. What’s up?
What do you expect for $100,000 ?
“A Threat to Starlink? US Confirms Russia Developing Anti-Satellite System”
https://www.pcmag.com/news/a-threat-to-starlink-us-confirms-russia-developing-anti-satellite-system
“Although the White House confirmed the threat, it’s unclear if Russia’s anti-satellite system will use nuclear weapons or is nuclear-powered.”
It will have to be a big system to take out over 5,000 satellites distributed across LEO.
“Former Dutch prime minister advances Western suicide”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/beltway-confidential/2859481/former-dutch-prime-minister-progresses-western-suicide-forward/
“In a twisted perversion of Romeo and Juliet, former Dutch prime minister Dries van Acht and his wife performed a legal duo euthanasia. Both were in failing health conditions and wished to part the Earth together. Their death practitioner, or “doctor,” agreed and killed them both, hand in hand, last Monday.”
That is just wrong.
The $80,000 Jesus Trucks are still pending?
I’ve seen a few around my neighborhood, but our main road is a shortcut to HPE and Dell for Colonists.
EMP.
Still Mike Turner is Raytheon’s chore boy for the F-35 in Congress.
“Centrists” are readying a new Ukraine bill. “Only” $66 Billion, including $47 Billion for Ukraine and $2 Billion for the MacDill CentCom freak show.
Of course, Raytheon/E-Systems is just across the Bay from CentCom, in the old Eckerd Drugs HQ campus.
I am not kidding.
Raytheon/E-Systems poisoned their original campus in St. Petersburg so badly that they abandoned the entire property and razed the buildings to the ground ~ 20 years ago.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/d2Df2bYf9m34kWe2A
I spent the day filling my dumpster. Lots of stuff and I’m not done. Must be strong…must be ruthless…my stuuuuuffff!
“Five Things You Need To Know About The New 2025 Camry”
https://www.carpro.com/blog/five-things-you-need-to-know-about-the-new-2025-camry
All 2025 Camrys are going to be hybrids. My buddy had a 2005 Camry hydrid, he loved it, he was a real estate agent and drove over 30,000 miles per year getting 45 mpg or better.
EMP.
If you EMP LEO then you EMP everything below. Somebody is going to be real pissed off.
Might as well start with 14,000 ICBMs.
Say what you will about tbe reasons for us supporting Ukraine, but the nascent New Russian Empire has been bled white while still in its short pants.
Yes, and the base price is going up … $9k?
The Altima will be the only vehicle left in the class with a normally aspirated non-hybrid 4 cylinder engine as of next year. The tradeoff is Nissan’s cr*p CVT transmission for that extra 3-4 MPG.
I just saw a review somewhere noting that the Jetta will go away totally. Sedans are an endangered species for now.
I will disagree. They went out on their own terms, when they wanted. Having seen what long term illness is for the recipient and the family, I think what they did is a good option.
AI data centers.
Switch.com is building a big one in Round Rock, not far from the cluster of business traveler hotels at I-35 and the 45 toll road.
3800 nuclear warheads.
David Stockman runs down the current nuclear arsenal.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2024/02/david-stockman/americas-towering-public-debt-spawn-of-war-welfare-and-wampum/
The whole point of 5000+ satellites is that you can’t take them out.
I can’t imagine the ruskies can do 10,000 of anything technological on a schedule and coordinated.
n
Doctors shouldn’t be killers. Too much conflict of interest for them, too much dilution of their oath.
If the state wants killers for the old and impaired (and they do) then it is best not to allow them to hide amongst actual healers.
Agreed. Let the recipients push their own button. There is no reason a doctor has to administer the injection. Or do like they do for executions. Three buttons, two non-working, only one working. No one knows who administered the fatal injection.
I will disagree. They went out on their own terms, when they wanted. Having seen what long term illness is for the recipient and the family, I think what they did is a good option.
I’ve gotta wonder, did he talk her into it ?
If they had any kids or grandkids, they are unhappy now. It is one thing to lose one parent, it is tough to lose both parents at the same time.
If you suicide by yourself, that is ok. If you take somebody with you, you just became a cult.
Doctors shouldn’t be killers. Too much conflict of interest for them, too much dilution of their oath.
If the state wants killers for the old and impaired (and they do) then it is best not to allow them to hide amongst actual healers.
The Star Trek disintegration booths are coming.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Disintegration_station
crap
I just wrote a book on stainless steels and got an internal server error
I should know better
beer time
Got back! Paul McCartney’s stolen bass is found and returned to the Beatle after more than 50 years
https://apnews.com/article/paul-mccartney-stolen-bass-recovered-beatles-e192765ddab258ac228be06268be9137
Think I’ll try for an early bed today. I’ve got a full day tomorrow… and I fell asleep in the waiting area at the chiropractor’s office. Girl next to me was having a “getting to know you” conversation on her phone. Must be a new dating partner, or potential. There was a lot of “you don’t know me, or my life, or my situation…” Single mom, real estate agent, claimed to work 10-7 but was in the Dr office at 5, claimed to be on a restricted diet and no alcohol because she is a body builder. Kinda soft an round to be a body builder in my estimation…
Doesn’t drink but she and all her body builder friends do a lot of mushrooms and other drugs, because “alcohol is the worst thing you can do to your body.” She spent ten minutes talking about microdosing…
All I could think as I drifted off was “Dude, RUN don’t walk.”
n
>> Doctors shouldn’t be killers. Too much conflict of interest for them, too much dilution of their oath.
If the state wants killers for the old and impaired (and they do) then it is best not to allow them to hide amongst actual healers.
Exactly why doctors won’t get involved with capital punishment by lethal injection.
>> Agreed. Let the recipients push their own button. There is no reason a doctor has to administer the injection. Or do like they do for executions. Three buttons, two non-working, only one working. No one knows who administered the fatal injection.
For executions, anybody can push the button (how about the victim’s family?). The issue is getting the necessary IV lines set up properly, but this is being done by prison staff who are not well trained in phlebotomy, especially when the prisoner is very obese. Stories of botched executions are not hard to find.
Stories of botched executions are not hard to find.
“The Green Mile” has Old Sparky becoming Old Smoky. Old Sparky never worked very well especially when they did not wet down the head cap or did not ground the legs to the Earth very well.
Firing squads usually were drunk or could not hit the broad side of a barn at 7 am in the morning.
The hangman’s noose required a certain expertise to break your neck when you fell. The hangman usually figured it out after a dozen or two.
Drawing and Quartering was horrible when they pulled your intestines out.
The headman’s axe really should be sharpened between each victim. The same with the guillotine.
Being executed really sucks.
All I could think as I drifted off was “Dude, RUN don’t walk.”
Wow, she was truthful ?
Dating in the present age is a freaking disaster. No wonder my 40 year old son hates women.
I keep on telling him to go to church and start dating there. I figure that gives you a 50 / 50 chance.
Dating always sucked, at least for us introverts. Still, it’s no reason to “hate women”: it’s no better from the woman’s side, just different. Whereas guys worry about meeting gold-digging bi-polar princesses, women worry about meeting domineering, macho losers.
Your church idea isn’t bad, if he’s religious, but there are also hobby groups. He should pick something that interests him, but also interests a lot of women. Cooking? Dancing? Go into it as a hobby, get to know the women as people first, then decide if he wants to ask someone out.
He has cookouts with his buddies weekly. They have formed their own home church. He does not like our church, the church he was raised in since he was five.
He was engaged to a girl he met in high school. When he joined the Marine Corps when he was a junior at TAMU, she broke it off. He told me the other day that she married a doctor and recently got divorced so they are obviously still in touch.
He was kinda hanging with a girl that he grew up with at church. She was bartending over in Houston, had sleeve tattoos all over her arms. He was being a friend to her. Unfortunately, she committed suicide a couple of years ago. She was a very nice young lady, her dad is heart broken. She was bipolar and listened to the voices one day. Her dad retired and moved to Arizona.
As I’ve noted before, the idiot husband of my wife’s Prog associate in Vantucky runs a “spirits” blog which I won’t publicize here, but he was very plugged into the Houston bartending scene on Twitter when I went researching about what exactly we were supporting at the cost of being unable to afford a house.
Really disturbing people. Lots of complaints about chargebacks – gee, ya think?
The idiot husband worked at the flagship Specs while his wife, the smarter (academically, at least) half of the couple attended med school at UH and residency at Methodist San Jacinto.
They were in Oregon having fled Texas after … something … happened in Fredericksburg.
Your son dodged a bullet.