Warm and moist, but should be clear. In fact, should be clear for the next couple of days. There was enough heavy mist yesterday that the concrete got wet for a while. There might have even been some actual drops at some point. It was nice by late afternoon though.
I did inside stuff, auction stuff, and domestic bliss all day. Had a bit of back pain, so took it easy, even laid back down for about an hour. Wife was working from home as she is sniffly and feeling poorly. Spent some of my online time researching and ordering parts for stuff that needs to be fixed, or needs something for a project to continue. I have a bad habit of looking up the parts, but not buying them right away, and then the project falls further down the list as time goes by. I’m trying to not do that, hence the parts ordering…
I need to hit the HEB too, but today is mostly going to be auction pickups. I’ve got a big list at the first place, and a longish drive to the second. Kid wants me home to get her after practice, so I have to watch the time and the traffic.
————
I’m sitting here and one phrase is going through my head as I contemplate the wider world. I’ve been debating even mentioning it, but in the end, this is what I’m thinking.
Sh!t’s gettin’ weird, yo!
Yeah I’m thinking in memes. But it IS getting weirder. It’s a frenzy building, which usually leads to some sort of explosive release. I’m not looking forward to seeing how weird it can get before it breaks. When it breaks it will be broken for a while.
48 hours isn’t gonna cut it. 48 days probably won’t. We’re resilient and creative, so 48 months might be enough, depends how far down things go before they head back up. Could be 4 to 8 years…
Zeitgeist is saying “world war”, “massive terror attack”, “civil war” — no voices predicting peace and good times. Internalize that and prep for it.
Stack.
nick
Nor do I. However, forcing insurance companies to take everyone and to charge them the same rate had the inevitable (and intended, IMO) effect of raising the rates for the healthy, who’d previously gotten that coverage at a lower rate. The same goes for the elimination of catastrophic coverage plans, which had been a good deal for the young and healthy.
Hmm. I wonder what could be the cause?
The only surprise is that the suicide contingent wasn’t able to keep the truth completely locked down.
And John Roberts deciding that voters should live with their “foolish” political choices rather than depending on the Court to bail them out of the Obama mistake.
Or Republicans in Congress not exercising a much bigger majority and the power of the purse.
Of course, people believed “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.”
Fools. I’m personally responsible for teaching about 10,000 people in three states about what a lie that was. Making healthcare a right enslaves the providers — and their families — to the system. I am *not* subsidizing your healthcare.
A lot of Republicans know better but then they look at their personal financial situations and want to believe the lies are possible.
53F and light overcast.
I’m up with coffee in the cup.
n
Oh, that question has been on my mind for a little over 3 years now. This doesn’t directly affect my son. He used to use both Humalog (fast acting, used before meals) and Novolog (slow acting, once daily) but now, with the insulin pump, only uses Novolog. Btw, I know I’ve said it before, but if yo know someone with Type I diabetes that isn’t using an insulin pump, do everything you can to encourage it. It truly is life-changing. Amazing technology.
As far as building up a reserve, it is possible. He has a 3 or 4 month cushion of insulin. 2 months of that is at our house, with the other at his place. He rotates out the oldest (at our place) on visits. Doing more than that can be risky. Insulin loses effectiveness as it ages, and with higher temperatures.
There is an older type of insulin, Novolin, which can supposedly be purchased without a prescription. The dosages don’t match up with the modern stuff, and it’s less effective. I’ve been meaning to go to Walmart and see if I can actually buy it. If I can, I’ll work on getting a years worth built up, and then trash the oldest monthly with a new purchase. I’ll also get the conversions worked out so we know dosages ahead of time. This would be for an end-of-the-world scenario only, which for a diabetic is no availability of their prescribed medication. A true grid down scenario does not have a favorable outcome.
Besides insulin, needles need to be stocked, as well as test strips (both glucose and ketone), which also expire.
@ITguy, thanks for the info.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/watch-huge-bridge-baltimore-collapses-after-container-ship-strike
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/baltimore-implodes-police-force-collapses-only-three-officers-patrolled-major-district
Baltimore is in trouble, and so are we.
n
“I have a bad habit of looking up the parts, but not buying them right away, and then the project falls further down the list as time goes by. I’m trying to not do that”
ayup
A technique that is useful to me is to just do it now if it’ll take less than two minutes. Don’t put it into your to-do list, just do it. Don’t recall where I heard it; it was at least twenty years ago.
Related: Don’t spend an hour trying to save two dollars. Your time has some value, in general and especially if you have a to-do list longer than your arm. (If you would otherwise just spend the time goofing around on Facebook or WeChat, then that time is worth about nothing and you should instead try to save the two dollars.) Place the order and move on to the next thing.
I remember Dr. Bob discussing how to solve this years ago. The answer: free/cheap clinics. Anyone could go to one, but you could not sue for any reason. If you have the money, buy private health insurance.
They would have to be subsidized via tax/charity, but staffed by those new up and coming doctors and nurses that don’t have to be certified. Think DEI. The lines would be out the door because IT”S FREE!
I read there is a rule that cargo ships have to have a tug escort near the bridge just for this case. I guess the tugs weren’t there? I can’t imagine driving over that bridge in the middle of the night and plunging into a cold, watery grave.
The original Sunshine Skyway bridge at the mouth of Tampa Bay partially collapsed in 1980 due to a very similar accident.
The iconic picture from that accident is the car which skidded to a stop just a couple of feet from the edge.
The articles I read here noted that the lights were out on the ship, so it may have suffered some sort of internal breakdown. Loss of power, loss of rudder, drifting with the current?
Not that that helps in any way…
I woke up a couple hours ago, couldn’t sleep. Stumbled across the YouTube live stream of a camera that caught the collapse.
Man, that wasn’t good.
Scrubbed the feed back. You can see the lights on the ship go off, on, off, over a period of time. See vehicles traveling over the bridge as the unlit ship approaches.
Those poor buggers.
That port handles a lot of traffic. The ripples aren’t going to be good.
re: insulin
This is little help for Type I diabetics, but for insulin-dependent Type II’s, a change to the ketogenic diet can dramatically reduce or even eliminate your need for insulin.
The quacks at the ADA are still, so far as I know, advocating lots of carbs in your diet. And their disease “management” plan is basically for doctors to keep an eye on their patients over time, manage the insulin dose, and watch the patient’s progressive spiral into depths of disease, disability, and amputation.
In spite of the fact that many patients could put their diabetes in remission via diet alone.
re: Obamacare
I worked on EHR (Electronic Health Records) systems for 15 years, and in that time personally observed the intended (but not advertised) effects of government initiatives. Admin expense of medicine went way up. Government control of treatment went way up. Doctors’ ability to work independently of big corporate practices went way down. Treatment options were reduced, because of corporate and government control, Big Pharma influence, and “Standard of Care”.
This was all happening before Obamacare, but that was really the turning point that wrapped it all up.
I recall a passage in Lucifer’s Hammer where the leader of the survivors group had to choose between killing a sheep for Insulin to keep a Nobel Prize winner alive, and the future utility of a live sheep.
The sheep lived.
The day before we left on our trip the clothes dryer quit. Error code F01. We had to go to a friend’s house to dry the clothes.
Today I tackled the project. The prospect of paying $700 to $1K for a new dryer was not a pleasant alternative. A quick search of the internet showed the code was a failed control board. Another search showed the price of a new board as being $400. For that I would buy a new dryer as this one is 16 years old. Ugh.
Some more searching and the most common problem with the control board is a failed solder connection to the control board. That connection carries a lot of power and over time heats up and fails. When I removed the assembly, the cover showed black smudges where the connection had just catastrophically failed. The magic smoke was long gone. I soldered a wire to the connection and jumped that wire over to the intended destination on the control board bypassing the board connection and the trace on the board.
The wire fixed the problem and now the dryer works. It saved me the cost of a new control board, perhaps a service call, and certainly the cost of a new dryer. All for a couple hours of work. The major part of that was moving the dryer and accessing the innards.
I’m sitting out with the birds, working at the computer while they do chicken things. The red hen just jumped up to see what I was doing and then started pecking at the keyboard. No doubt she was attempting to send the message “starving chicken has never been fed in entire life please send worms” but she was foiled because I use a Dvorak keyboard layout.
Video with AIS details of the MV Dali incident: https://youtu.be/N39w6aQFKSQ?si=HHO-_LX1TL5NSAyd
Wow, youtuber has the best coverage.
n
https://hotair.com/david-strom/2024/03/26/wuhan-ii-colorado-biolab-a-ticking-time-bomb-n3785377
You could call this “Standard of Not Care”:
The better images you will see from the Tampa Bay bridge collapse today as background came from either the Clearwater Sun – driven out of business by the Church of Scientology – or the Tampa Tribune – bought from Warren Buffett cheap and shut down by the St. Petersburg Times.
The Times dropped the ball that morning on coverage. Ironically, that reporter became Chairman for the whole operation. The Dilbert Principle in action,
I re-read this page:
https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/127176/wifi-drains-battery-even-if-its-off
I had already turned Location off everywhere I found it. Nope, that card game doesn’t need my location.
Turn Location on. Go to the Location settings. Tap Mode. Choose “Device sensors only (GPS only). Turn Location off.
You have to have Location turned on to get to the setting.
Wi-fi usage since last charge is now zero. Instead of 20% of the battery used when the phone is laying on my desk after a couple of days. I don’t need the card game or Google or anything else constantly checking my location with wi-fi or cellular.
After doing this on my phone when I turn Location on, I get two pop-ups. First is “Location Consent”. Agree to that to tun on Location using GPS.
Second pop-up is “Improve location accuracy?” Disagree to this or it turns on scanning for location with wi-fi and cellular and GPS. Even with Location turned off, scanning with wi-fi seems to stay on.
It only took me a year to figure this out.
It worked for me. Went from A1C of 7-8 with insulin and other drugs to 5.5 with no meds.
YouTuber? Sal Mercogliano is a retired Merchant Marine captain and frequent blogger about maritime commerce issues.
Baltimore bridge collapse – with video of the ship striking the bridge and it’s subsequent total collapse.
https://www.fox13now.com/baltimore-bridge-collapses-after-ship-collision-sends-cars-into-water
Video also here – suspect you can find it at many sources https://www.facebook.com/watch?v=7768561466496265
I wonder if the Baltimore pilot, the ship’s captain, and the ship’s owner are carrying a billion dollars of liability insurance ? That bridge probably has $100 million of steel in it alone at the current prices. They are probably calling Fluor Daniel right now.
I read there is a rule that cargo ships have to have a tug escort near the bridge just for this case. I guess the tugs weren’t there? I can’t imagine driving over that bridge in the middle of the night and plunging into a cold, watery grave.
This happened to the Padre Island Bridge in 2001 with a tug boat and several barges. Several cars drove off the bridge in the middle of the night. Eight people were killed.
https://www.ksat.com/news/national/2024/03/26/key-bridge-collapse-brings-haunting-memories-of-queen-isabella-causeway-tragedy-in-texas/
I remember Dr. Bob discussing how to solve this years ago. The answer: free/cheap clinics. Anyone could go to one, but you could not sue for any reason. If you have the money, buy private health insurance.
They would have to be subsidized via tax/charity, but staffed by those new up and coming doctors and nurses that don’t have to be certified. Think DEI. The lines would be out the door because IT”S FREE!
We had those free clinics in Oklahoma and Texas back in the 1960s and early 1970s. I can remember getting all our shots and sniffles taken care at them. They went away when all of the hospitals got ERs.
That isn’t the end of the story. The entity or entities who end up with control of Epic Systems after the founder Judith Faulkner dies will control medicine in the US, with power dwarfing any large hospital, group practice, or insurance company.
Epic is privately held and Faulkner is 80 this year.
I have some interesting inside info I picked up in Wisconsin about Epic last November, but I was maintaining op sec until the end of that week. More later. Gotta go get the Exploder!
“Another tragic mistake that took an innocent life”
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2024/03/another-tragic-mistake-that-took.html
“I’ve said several times before that if you’re carrying a firearm in a pocket or purse, it needs to be in a holster to avoid things catching in or on the trigger, which might cause a tragedy.”
“Well, it just happened again.”
Amen.
“8 states are planning to BAN the sale of gas-powered cars entirely – after Biden unveiled ambitious plans to phase them out by 2032”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/yourmoney/cars/article-13237051/ban-gas-cars-biden-evs-states.html
“According to personal finance site Money, California was the first state to adopt the Advanced Clean Cars II rule, which will put a complete ban to new sales of gas-powered cars by 2035.”
“Plans in the state, which is run by governor Gavin Newsom, specify that 35 percent of all new car sales will need to be zero-emission by 2026, rising to 68 percent by 2030.”
“Rhode Island was the most recent state to join the list of states pledging to ban the sale of gas-powered cars, joining Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon and Washington.”
“According to the site, the District of Columbia has also made the commitment.”
I would get out of these states and/or DC. Oh wait, these are also high crime states that ban you protecting yourself.
YouTuber? Sal Mercogliano is a retired Merchant Marine captain
– meant it in the best possible way, my favorite weather nerd is It’s Ryan Hall Y’all on youtube. He has a better setup and better coverage of storms than the majors.
Subject matter experts with passion have been unleashed by youtube, whatever their politics might be… in the case of youtube, and especially music, I’m going with hate the sin, love the sinner.
n
I hate small 2 stroke engines. And the appliances they’re in.
Just sayin’
0x49 trips around El Sol. Another year – another day. Going out to dinner with family to Brazilian steakhouse. Yum!
WA State and Oregon have a gun/hunting culture outside of Seattle and Portland.
As Spring Break starts rolling in schools in those states, I’m seeing a lot more WA State plates driivng around North Austin/Round Rock, probably potential transplants looking at houses or apartments.
Memorial Day is the silly season for houses actually changing hands.
@dkreck, congrats, I did 58 years sometime this month..
n
Get Woke Go Broke would have eventually destroyed Hollywood, but the film and TV nerds on YouTube hastened the process.
The Legal Mindset channel has been the place to find the latest on Disney vs. DeSantis since no one in the mainstream media will stray far from the party line that The Mouse is winning.
I love small 2 stroke engines. And the appliances they’re in.
Just sayin’
Couldn’t resist, respectfully 🙂
I have two motorcycles and a chainsaw. In the MCs, both old motocrossers, a 2-stroke engine gives very good response with low weight. 4-stroke bikes struggled to keep up for at least a decade, forced upon us by emissions regulations. The chainsaw is light weight and powerful. The MC engines are simple, but use sophisticated sonic tuning to increase volumetric efficiency, and reed valves to broaden the torque curve. The Yamaha R?-350 street bike had a (two?) catalytic converter, and probably was cleaner than 4-stroke bikes with none. The Japanese manufacturers only equipped US destined bikes with cats, and later simply refused to import them to the US. They remain popular in many countries today.
If you don’t like their tendency to foul spark plugs, that is long gone. My MCs, a 1973 and 1980, have solid state capacitive discharge ignition that has never failed to fire them reliably. The chainsaw has a conventional magnet-flywheel-points ignition, and I haven’t had any trouble with it. Those different types of ignition have different philosophies. The CD uses very steep rise short duration sparks, which can jump through fouling. The magneto uses higher energy multiple sparks that prevent fouling at the expense of shorter plug life, a small tradeoff for a small engine. You will remember touching either one. Same for the ignitions on modern cars.
Oh, and synthetic oils also prevent fouling.
dkreck says: 26 March 2024 at 19:43:
Nick Flandrey says: 26 March 2024 at 19:54:
Oooh, you guys are making me seem old, Where is CowboyStu when I need him?!
P.S. Seeming is not believing. 🙂
Epic Systems sent a speaker to the medical conference my wife attended in The Wisconsin Dells at the beginning of November. R&D at the company is starting to experiment with connecting various AI chat bots to the EMR system and letting the software have the run of medical records to see what will happen.
Later, at the reception following the last session for the day, after the Epic Speaker found out who I worked for and my job responsibilities, we had an off-the-record exchange of information up to the limit of what our respective NDAs would allow. Apparently, Epic was a customer.
Good artists copy. Great artists ship.
In addition to AI experiments, Epic has become a silent partner in Microsoft’s ownership of Nuance, providing the HPPA-certified crypto which allows the Dragon Ambient eXperience (DAX) app to be used in clinical settings for dictation.
Also, reading between the lines, that would make Microsoft the odds-on favorite to acquire Epic once Judifh Faulkner dies.
At the end of the exchange of info, I asked the speaker if he was tired of “Good Day Sunshine” (Faulkner opens her daily morning address with the song).
He asked if my management still believed that the best course for Apple in 1995 would have been to liquidate the company and distribute the cash to the shareholders.
Touche.
One thing I did not realize until near the end of our trip to Southern WI is that the Epic Systems campus is open to the public, including the weirdly themed common areas and various restaurants.
Next trip. Epic and the SC Johnson Wax building.
@dkreck, congrats. I’m right there with you.
@dkreck – congrats on surviving another rotation. Right behind you.
Not sure who that old guy is in the mirror I see each morning. My mind doesn’t think I am that old, but the creaky bones sometimes remind me.
I love small 2 stroke engines. And the appliances they’re in.
Just sayin’
I love two stroke diesel engines, once they are warmed up and not throwing a gallon a minute of unburned diesel out the twelve inch diameter stacks.
BTW, most if not all railroad, submarine, locomotive, and really big ship engines are two stroke diesels. They run at 300 rpm and start at 1,250 hp each. The really big ship engines and nuclear power plant diesels are up to 30,000 hp each.
We had two of the Fairbanks Morse submarine diesels at the first power plant I worked at in Colorado City, Texas. We started them once a week after lunch on Wednesdays and ran them for a hour, note that they did not have electric starters, they used compressed air to start. I learned quickly to park the vehicle of the day 200+ feet away from them or else get covered in raw diesel. It does wash off fairly easily with soap and water though.
https://www.fairbanksmorsedefense.com/solutions/engines
I got to work with five 2,500 hp locomotive supercharged V-16 GE two stroke diesels for a day. We were trying to black start a 300,000 hp steam boiler in Jacksonville, Texas and things were not going well. We finally got the sequence down after me and another engineer started pulling 4,160 volt three phase breakers out of the switch gear so we could get the 3,500 hp boiler feed pump started that pulled 8,000+ three phase amps for 45 seconds as it wound up to 3,600 rpm. We tripped it several times on low amps from the diesels when they started tripping off on high amps.
I just found out that we had a attempted home invasion around the corner from my home last night. The robbers tried to break in but could not get past the doors and windows but the people were inside watching them and taking video.
The robbers then moved down the street and got into that house but the owner and his family were gone to HEB.
Video does no good. The first house called the sheriff and the deputies ran the vehicle plate but it was a paper fake. The second house called the sheriff when they got home.
I am fairly sure that had I been in the first house that I would have stuck a 12 gauge out the door and shot the vehicle since they had it parked facing the the front door.
Not good, not good.
Baltimore bridge collapse – with video of the ship striking the bridge and it’s subsequent total collapse.
https://www.fox13now.com/baltimore-bridge-collapses-after-ship-collision-sends-cars-into-water
Video also here – suspect you can find it at many sources https://www.facebook.com/watch?v=7768561466496265
I wonder if the Baltimore pilot, the ship’s captain, and the ship’s owner are carrying a billion dollars of liability insurance ? That bridge probably has $100 million of steel in it alone at the current prices. They are probably calling Fluor Daniel right now.
“Titanic law could help ship owner limit liability in Baltimore bridge collapse”
https://www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/titanic-law-helps-ship-owner-limit-liability-in-bridge-collapse
Hat tip to:
https://drudgereport.com/
“Of Claws and Fangs: Stories from the World of Jane Yellowrock and Soulwood” by Faith Hunter
https://www.amazon.com/Claws-Fangs-Jane-Yellowrock/dp/0593334345?tag=ttgnet-20/
Book number two of a two book series of short stories of dark fantasy published by Ace in 2022. The book is part of a very large series of books (20+) about Jane Yellowrock, Cherokee Skinwalker, and/or Nell Ingram, Earth Sprite. I suspect that there will be more short story books in the series.
If you like the Jane Yellowrock books, you will like this book. I would not start the series with this book, I would start with “SkinWalker”.
My rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars (1,292 reviews)
Lynn
“Nobody Wants to Buy The Future: Why Science Fiction Literature is Vanishing” by Simon McNeil
https://www.typebarmagazine.com/2024/03/24/nobody-wants-to-buy-the-future-why-science-fiction-literature-is-vanishing/
“A recent Washington Post article indicated that only 12% of the reading public were interested in reading science fiction. A perusal of bestseller lists for science fiction shows an even more alarming truth: the science fiction books that do sell are a shrinkingly small number of reprints, classics and novels that had been adapted into movies.”
Science Fiction is moving into indie. Fantasy is moving into romance. Neither is going away.
SF went woke, and they are going broke. Look a the hugo list for the last 10 years or more.
People love SF, they just don’t love the dreck being foisted on them.
n
I’m up too late reading the sequel to “Into the Real” by John Ringo and Lydia Sherrer, “Through the Storm”. Got to a stopping point so I’m going to bed.
It’s good SF.
n
SF went woke, and they are going broke. Look a the hugo list for the last 10 years or more.
People love SF, they just don’t love the dreck being foisted on them.
n
Yup, most of the old school style SF is going Indie. Self published books, etc that will never be considered for a Hugo or a Nebula award.
The last good Hugo winner was “Among Others” in 2012 and it was a mixed SF and Fantasy book mostly about 1960s and 1970s SF/F books. I like it but I am an outlier.
I’m up too late reading the sequel to “Into the Real” by John Ringo and Lydia Sherrer, “Through the Storm”. Got to a stopping point so I’m going to bed.
It’s good SF.
n
I have yet to read the first book in that series. It will never be considered for any awards because John Ringo wrote that BDSM series, “Ghost”, that broke into romance and sold way more than a million copies. Lots of jealousy there. He put up a article once saying that he never had to write another book since he earned so many royalties off that book.
You know how you tell a good book now ? It is still in dead tree print after five years.
Robert Heinlein and Harry Potter are the only SF/F series that I know of that the first printing was 100,000 copies or more. I remember the excitement for every Robert Heinlein book, book stores would have a stack at the front of the store. Harry Potter did that too, even more so with million book printings in hardback.