Still here and it’s a bit muggier and a bit warmer. Might get some actual rain. We did get a light misty drizzle at various points yesterday, and the sun poked through for just long enough to get a glimpse of the eclipse if you were ready for it. I wasn’t.
I wasn’t particularly effective yesterday wrt working my lists… That’s a problem I’ve been having lately and I’m not sure of the cause. I just lack motivation some days. I did advance a couple of projects, and made some small progress on outstanding issues. I was feeling a bit sore from all the string trimmer use in the back yard, but that’s just an excuse. One of the things I did get fixed was the vacuum breaker/backflow preventer repair for the sprinkler system. I need the sprinklers working so I can have a garden, and so my yard doesn’t deteriorate further. We’re starting to be the shabbiest house on the block as more people move into the neighborhood and renovate. I’m convinced we’ll look like a time capsule if I don’t allow W1 to paint all the brick white or grey. Grey and black are very much the palette of the times.
WTF is it with the Simpsons show accurately predicting the future?? Remember the episode where the school took all the colors away? I drove past a line of parked vehicles the other day, and for three blocks of tightly packed vehicles there was not one car or truck that was brightly colored. Champagne and a dark blue were the closest things to different- white, grey, silver, black, and blue so dark it looks black dominated. Every parking lot is the same. Occasionally an older sports car will stand out, or a dark red vehicle will catch the eye. And it’s not just cars, all the new housing is mostly variations on black and white and grey. Color has gone out of peoples’ lives. That is a profound indicator of the times and mindset, I believe.
Hard times are here for a whole lot of folks, and they think they will be getting harder. No one is buying bright color, when they are feeling bad about the future. The local exception is all the low rise apartment complexes here. They are re-branding and painting themselves with muted versions of bright colors– “south of the border” colors. They are renting to illegals, and it must look like paradise to them. (New spanish names for the complexes, and signs about being “zero deposit communities” are the ‘tells’.) I’m adding the changes in product colors to my ‘indicator’ list, as a symptom of mood and zeitgeist.
Yep, we’re already on the downward slope. It can slow, or accelerate from here. My feeling is “accelerate”. Dramatically. Afterwards, people will say “who could have seen it coming” or “it happened so suddenly”. But people DO see it coming, and the seeds were planted years ago. I expect that people will adjust and tolerate for a while, as the lily pads slowly double and double, until the pond is half covered… and that last doubling, when the pond is suddenly completely covered will be the point most of them finally react. There will be hurt, and surprise, and anger. Feelings of betrayal. And violence as people lash out. Someone will harness that. Someone will direct that anger. It’s going to be ugly on a scale not seen in a LONG time.
Are you ready for that? Stack some more things. Have someplace to go if you have to leave. And pray that I’m wrong.
nick
“…we’ll look like a time capsule if I don’t allow W1 to paint all the brick white or grey…”
Resist the urge. Be strong.
I live in a beautiful red-brick house a previous owner of which stupidly painted white to go along with the then fashion. Now I have to paint the house periodically or it looks shabby. I am hoping against hope that I can get away with not painting it again. If I’d had my druthers, I would have had the paint sand-blasted off, but money was too tight when we bought the house, with all the costs of non-aesthetic renovation work.
In the early news this morning, the oral pleadings have opened in Nicaragua’s allegations of “genocide” against Germany at the ICC in the Hague for supplying arms to Israel.
This is a funny one; the Nicaraguans know so little diplomacy that they informed Germany of their complaint not through diplomatic channels but by email. The Germans only became aware of the complaint when a Russia-friendly journalist at a press conference pointedly asked the foreign minister about it.
If I were a Russian dictator, and I wanted to discombobulate the government of a country which is the largest manufacturer of arms in western Europe, would I lob a couple of millions to corrupt pols in banana republics to instigate nuisance litigation? Of course I would…
I think the same of lawyers advertising on TV. All promising big payouts (with 4 point type disclaimer at the bottom) if they are allowed to turn your wreck into a check.
Only the US and New Zealand allow the ads on TV.
Side effects: death.
First, Asian and, now, Subcontinent tastes. They have the jobs which allow them to afford cars. Family money provides the houses.
Houston and Austin are being colonized.
72F muggy and glowering skies. Looks ugly, but chances are it will clear.
n
Subbing today. Little snot rags. Little respect for authority and just want to push the limits. For the seniors this last six weeks is basically meaningless. Grades have been turned for scholarship and college applications. Spring has sprung and the natives are restless.
The best episode of “The Simpsons”, “You Only Move Twice”, is eerily accurate in its predictions, including megalomaniac billionares with agendas to alter the world order.
The “Marge vs. The Monorail” episode is a close second. Plus it features the late Phil Hartman performing what is considered one of his career highpoints, “The Monorail Song”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDOI0cq6GZM
And, before I forget, both episodes were made on Conan O’Brien’s watch.
Would it be possible to sand-blast the paint? Painted brick not only looks dumb. As you said, you have to keep painting it.
A one-time investment to remove it might be worth the cost…
Be careful with that: there are many differing values of soft to hard brick. I had a neighbor attempt to remove the paint from his giant brick Victorian manor when I lived in one of those kinds of places. Wherever the pressure washer was focused, a not-so-neat line was carved into the side of his house. It took him months to get it repaired properly.
It can also do a number on the mortar. Especially on very old brick (the kind where the mortar is so old you can almost scrape it out with a fingernail). Take a sandblaster or pressure washer to that and you may end up repointing the entire thing. On a new(ish) brick wall, go to town. 🙂
I’m convinced we’ll look like a time capsule if I don’t allow W1 to paint all the brick white or grey. Grey and black are very much the palette of the times.
One of my neighbors just painted their brown brick 5,000 ft2 two story with white paint. It now looks like a huge white pile of dog crap. It needs another coat or two because the white paint has the brown brick leaking through. It looks terrible. And if they do add another coat, they won’t, it will still look terrible compared to the nice brown brick it had before.
Once they’ve added enough coats it won’t allow hardly any air or moisture through and the paint will be peeling off the brick that much sooner. The trick with real wood and masonry is too use as few coats as possible.
I’m not going to sand- (or other media-) blast our awful white paint, but thanks for all the thoughts on that.
Aside from the risk of damaging the underlying brick and pointing, which ought to be eminently controllable, if one were to use an intelligent blasting contractor with correct technique and an appropriate medium, the cost of blasting it would far exceed the cost of painting it one more time, and I don’t anticipate still having the house by the time it will need the painting after that.
I do heartily wish that it had never been painted, however. It doesn’t look awful, but the red brick would have been so much nicer, and it wouldn’t have needed periodic painting, which is a waste of time, money and resources. Fortunately, the paint is pretty much the only thing I don’t like about the house. In fact, if I could just pick this house up and put it back down in the location where I hope/intend to spend my twilight years, I would do so. As it is, I am keeping an eye out for a nice plot on which to build a senior-sensible new house to my own design requirements. Everybody needs a long-term plan.
The graytone fad has been around long enough that it’s likely on the cusp of being passé. I would be hesitant to go that route. 10 years ago? Sure. Today? Nope. Frankly, the current female obsession with everything inside and out being some shade of gray has gotten so predictable that it may meet the modern slang definition of “basic.” There you go, tell W1 that gray is basic. 🙂
Yah dont say….
– bunch of smarmy east coast liberals lost me when I realized they were a bunch of smarmy east coast liberals. IE years ago.
n
Well darn. Lost out on the big solar equipment auction. Stuff just got too expensive. Everyone was looking for a bargain, so there were a couple of early lots that ended up going for the least, while everyone hoped prices would be lower later. They weren’t.
There were still bargains, but outside my budget.
n
Ok, headed out.
n
The “journalist” no longer needs NPR to fill his soup bowl. How convenient.
As my friend scolded me about pushing back against HR enforcing the jabs: Its their livelihood.
So, the older 2018 Mac mini needs more storage.
I am wondering if there is still an advantage to spinning platters over SSD’s for external (usb) storage?
It used to be that SSD’s had a reputation that they would lose data, is that still true? This is mostly archival stuff, speed isn’t of the essence.
—–
Sitting here waiting for Turbo Tax to call back … somehow it’s duplicated all my IRA’s several times over…
My M1 Mini and older Intel Mini both use SSD for macOS and some storage. I haven’t had any problems.
I need a lot of storage for archival stuff (biz and pers), so spinning platters are much cheaper. I went with a NAS for accessibility and redundancy. I also have one of those stand alone drive holders where you can stick in a bare drive. I have an 8TB drive in it and backup mostly TV shows and movies to it now and then. You could even swap out drives for redundancy. Spinning drives on Amazon are cheap.
The M1 is my Apple TV server and runs apps 24/7.
Saw the eclipse yesterday. It was a life changing event and I’ll never see the world the same again.
… Or that’s what I’d say if I were a brain-damaged crystalina.
Weather turned out to be perfect, there and then. Somewhat cloudy before and after but just some wispy cirrus clouds at the moment. We had a combination of welder’s glass (shade 12), purchased eclipse glasses, and cheapie cardboard give-away glasses, more than enough for everyone. Daughter got several good pictures with her iPhone 12 (?), without the glasses but fiddling with the phone’s settings. The others took pictures with their phones, just using regular settings with welder’s glass or the paper glasses, and got junk pictures. Hur-dur, I no brain. Phone brain for me. I was going to try with a (non-phone) camera but the thing must have been resting on the power button or something because the battery was flat dead, having come down from fully charged earlier that day. No problem.
The drive up, a nominal 2 ½ hours from our house, wasn’t too bad. Lots of cars but mostly moving. One bad snarl-up caused by three idiots driving into each other and taking out one of the three lanes and causing slow driving in the middle lane. There were a few other slowdowns for the usual no visible reason.
The drive back, though… Ken called it exactly right. The interstate was very badly snarled for over 100 miles, with the clot advancing southward at several miles per hour. We took state roads and a couple county roads, which took almost six hours, but apparently still faster than the interstate. Google Maps and a GPS app that one of the girls had were projecting that going down the interstate would take 15 hours, I think, though I’m not sure how much to believe that. The side roads shouldn’t have taken that much longer but quite a few others made the same decision. This included a large number of cars with out-of-state plates, many of whose drivers either poked along at well under the speed limit on the sparsely lit roads though the foothills or drove like maniacs, tailgating, hopping ahead by a car at a time wherever they could, and causing a couple accidents. Complicating the matter was the fact that if you have a van mostly filled with young women, there is a very high chance that, in any half-hour period, one of them will be whining that she has to pee. And all of the fast-food restaurants and convenience stores had very long lines for very limited facilities. At least an hour of the six hour drive wasn’t actually driving, it was me sitting in the van, drumming my fingers while half of the girls were standing on line -siiiiiiigh- Was I tempted to say to hell with them and drive off? Well, it would be a lie to say that I wasn’t.
Total cash outlay wasn’t bad. A tank of gas and some food I got because I think it’s rude to bring a crowd of girls in to use a store’s bathroom without buying anything. The chicken strips, fries, and sodas sure disappeared quickly, considering that “no one was hungry”. Oh, and the eclipse glasses and welder’s glass. I’m not sure about the glasses (I don’t think I’d trust the protective qualities of plastic which had been exposed to the sun for the duration of the eclipse plus the before and after time) but I have plans for the glass.
Well, taxes are done, I owe a little, but nothing to cry about. Looks like my withholding wasn’t done properly from one old IRA, (?? pretty sure it was ok last year?), I will have to address that for this year.
Glad I talked to the nice lady at Intuit, glad my voice held out – bouncing back from my head cold I guess.
@MrAtoZ: thanks for the info!
Steve, I’m glad you had a good trip. Our eclipse here was a bust, for weather.
I would blame Waze, which often routes people onto side streets and back roads.
Due to one of our consultants needing emergency surgery, I have to fly to Vegas on Thursday and then drive to Long Beach with D5 and program supplies to help out.
And, as I’m getting ready for the trip, our heat pump condensation drain failed somewhere. I thought a dog peed by the inside unit, but after taking the cold air return vent off, the floor was covered with water. Dang it! The automatic valve looks OK, so a line is plugged or broken somewhere. A tech is scheduled to come out. I just don’t know enough to monkey around inside the unit drainage lines. I have one of those floor-drying fans blowing into the return hole. The water looks like it stopped dripping when I manually released the drain, but I have a “Homer” bucket under where it was leaking JIC.
One of the things I picked up today was an “access control” covid kiosk… it looked like a tablet on a post. I was hoping for an off the shelf tablet inside a security shell. Spent $1. Got it home and plugged it in, and android booted to their app, which used a camera to show my face, a thermometer to read my body temp, and software to determine I wasn’t wearing a mask.
I opened it up and there’s a single board computer inside, and it’s all custom kit bashed together. The board is a common and cheap IOT-3288x which is used in kiosks and door lock access control…
It’ll go in the junk box for some time in the future when I might get to play with it. Nice screen and touch sensor, and the camera and temp thing has potential…
n
“Sci-Fi Classic ‘Earth Abides’ Greenlit as TV Series Starring Alexander Ludwig”
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/earth-abides-tv-show-alexander-ludwig-1235859909/
“MGM+ is doing a new take on George R. Stewart’s post-apocalyptic novel with showrunner Todd Komarnicki.”
This will probably be cool.
@MrAtoz: I’m in Huntington Beach just off Warner Ave by about 1.5 mi, west from Pacific Coast Highway, which intersection is about 10 mi south of Long Beach.
And, as I’m getting ready for the trip, our heat pump condensation drain failed somewhere. I thought a dog peed by the inside unit, but after taking the cold air return vent off, the floor was covered with water. Dang it! The automatic valve looks OK, so a line is plugged or broken somewhere. A tech is scheduled to come out. I just don’t know enough to monkey around inside the unit drainage lines. I have one of those floor-drying fans blowing into the return hole. The water looks like it stopped dripping when I manually released the drain, but I have a “Homer” bucket under where it was leaking JIC.
Wait, do you not have a drain pan with a secondary drain piped to the outside under your unit ?
This is the inside portion of the HP, which is on the ground floor. The condensation drain runs from that unit through the slab and outside. I am going to put a water sensor under it and leave the “Homer” bucket. A secondary drain would have to be pumped up through the attic and out, too much of a hassle.
“Revolt in 2100 & Methuselah’s Children” by Robert A. Heinlein
https://www.amazon.com/Revolt-in-2100-Methuselahs-Children/dp/B0073AOTZ2?tag=ttgnet-20/
A two-fer science fiction book with a standalone first novelette and the second novelette being the first story about Lazarus Long. There are also two short stories between the novelettes, each loosely connected to the novellettes. I reread the well printed and well bound MMPB published by Baen in 1999 that I bought 20+ years ago.
The following stories are in the book:
1. Revolt in 2100 – the revolt in the USA against the religious prophets who had seized power in 2016 and established a theocracy
2. Coventry – set after 2100 about a man who refused to follow the normal behavior with other citizens and was exiled to Coventry with the other behavioral problem people and the remainder of the theocracy believers
3. Misfit – the first story about Andrew Jackson Libby, the inventor of the Libby-Sheffield FTL (faster than light) star drive
4. Methuselah’s Children – the first story about the Howard Foundation for long life and Lazarus Long, and their hijacking of the New Frontiers generation ship and fleeing the Solar System with 100,000+ members of the Howard Families
All four of these stories are contained in other Heinlein anthologies and standalone books, most notably “The Past Through Tomorrow: Future History Stories” by Robert A. Heinlein.
My rating: 6 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars (6 reviews)
Lynn
Memory lane today.
Drove from Texas to Indiana to get good weather for the eclipse. That worked.
I have business in Southern Illinois Thursday., so I had time to kill today. We drove to my Alma Mater, walked around the campus, and then ate pizza at Papa Del’s, one of the places I went 50 years ago as an undergrad.
The pizza didn’t live up to my memory, although it was quite good. In my memory it was food from the gods.
The walk around the campus was interesting. My girlfriend was kinda freaked out. She felt skeevy being so old and walking around all these youngsters. I got an endorphin rush remembering my 4 years here and seeing how much the campus has grown. This was my home for 4 really good years of my life.
I noticed more students of Asian heritage (or actual Asians; who knows?) than I remember, and fewer blacks and hispanics than my years there. Plenty of white kids. It makes me wonder if they switched from affirmative action to merit-based admission policies. Or I just picked a random day with that appearance.
There were at least 6 guided tours going on. I figure it’s “visit the campus day” for a bunch of high schools in the state. The last one we saw was explaining the Alma Mater statue by Lorado Taft.
“Senator Kennedy Confronts Biden Judicial Nominee, Nancy Maldonado, ‘Why is Your Record So BAD???’”
https://rumble.com/v4ofur9-senator-kennedy-confronts-biden-judicial-nominee-nancy-maldonado-why-is-you.html
“In all of the District Judges, your record is the worst. Please explain that to me.”
I love Senator Kennedy ! ! !
Hat tip to:
https://thelibertydaily.com/
@Lynn
I hope they don’t woke it up. Chances are better playing the lottery.
@lpdbw
The gods are half a century older and get up twice a night to pee. What did you expect?
Have you had a bottle of the beer you favored when you ate the pizza? If so, did you spit it out?
I drank both kinds of good beer, free beer and cold beer…
n
Freaking Gateway Pundit is getting more frantic every day.
FFS, it’s methanol.
ALERT: Highly Poisonous Substance that Can Cause Coma and Blindness Discovered in Hand Sanitizer and Aloe Gel – Voluntary Recall Underway
You can buy it by the gallon at Home Depot and use it on rags to clean stuff… don’t drink the hand sanitizer, ffs.
n
Now I’m even more confused. I think this woman forgot they were moving and opened the door to step out.
if the door opens in, how did she get “sucked out the door”? And WTH does “trying to secure the passenger side” mean?
n
I don’t think the Airstream trailer (and just about any other RV trailer I have seen) entry doors open inward. They all open outward.
But, being in a trailer while moving is not the wisest thing to do. It could (and perhaps did, in this case) qualify for a “Darwin Award”. At the very least, failure to RTFM.
Tragic, in any case.
“Revolt in 2100 & Methuselah’s Children” by Robert A. Heinlein
https://www.amazon.com/Revolt-in-2100-Methuselahs-Children/dp/B0073AOTZ2?tag=ttgnet-20/
A two-fer science fiction book with a standalone first novelette and the second novelette being the first story about Lazarus Long. There are also two short stories between the novelettes, each loosely connected to the novellettes. I reread the well printed and well bound MMPB published by Baen in 1999 that I bought 20+ years ago.
Excellent ! I just got schooled on Reddit. “Revolt In 2100” is also called “If This Goes On”.
https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?28087
Here is a much better review for Methuselah’s Children by Jo Walton:
https://reactormag.com/pulp-adventure-and-nothing-wrong-with-that-robert-heinleins-methuselahs-children/
And another 180+ MB patch is heading up to my website over Starlink at about a half MB per second (fast !). This is version 16.19e. We are a patchy software.
Drunk pack of teens FA, and FO. Death and severe injuries follow when they surround and abuse a guy.
Watch the video and put yourself in a similar situation. What would you do?
In Texas the individuals are all responsible for the mobs actions when it comes to defense, and there was clearly a disparity of force.
From what’s been reported, seems to me that a bunch of drunk assholes picked the wrong guy to F with.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13289025/nicolas-miu-wisconsin-stabbing-apple-river-testimony.html
n
BTW, when performing the download check over Starlink, I get anywhere from 0.5 to 1.5 MB per second downloading the 182 MB exe from my website. That is 30 to 90 MB per minute.
At home, I get 2.0 MB/sec over my 300 mbps Comcast / Xfinity cable connection. That is 120 MB per minute.
I have 300 mbps on Spectrum, and WiFi downloads of Linux isos to my laptop run ~ 30 MB/sec if no one else is doing anything on the link.
When was the last time you upgraded the cable modem?
In San Marcos/New Braunfels during Summer, the safe assumption is that everyone on the river in a tube of legal age is drunk and dangerous.
The tube rental shop has a bar in the parking lot.
Avoid the scene altogether.
>> WTF is it with the Simpsons show accurately predicting the future?? Remember the episode where the school took all the colors away? I drove past a line of parked vehicles the other day, and for three blocks of tightly packed vehicles there was not one car or truck that was brightly colored. Champagne and a dark blue were the closest things to different- white, grey, silver, black, and blue so dark it looks black dominated. Every parking lot is the same. Occasionally an older sports car will stand out, or a dark red vehicle will catch the eye. And it’s not just cars, all the new housing is mostly variations on black and white and grey. Color has gone out of peoples’ lives. That is a profound indicator of the times and mindset, I believe.
Or an indicator of the vehicle’s location. Here in the SW desert, where summer temps easily top 110 F, white is by far the most popular color, followed by silver and beige. Black cars are not rare, but not that common either.
>> Every once in a while I’m exposed to unfiltered media, and the number of drug ads is astounding to me. Also, the seriousness of the potential side effects, often for drugs treating annoyances rather than life threatening conditions blows me away.
Not sure if it would decrease, or increase, the number of TV drug ads, but I agree with RBT’s position – any drug, except some of the more potent antibiotics, should be available OTC. It would though, probably necessitate a separate Darwin Awards category.
When was the last time you upgraded the cable modem?
Five years ago. Seems like yesterday. It is a Surfboard SB8200 DOCSIS 3.1.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07DY16W2Z/
Or an indicator of the vehicle’s location. Here in the SW desert, where summer temps easily top 110 F, white is by far the most popular color, followed by silver and beige. Black cars are not rare, but not that common either.
40% of cars and trucks are white. I have a white 2019 F-150, a white 2019 Highlander, and a red 2008 Highlander.
We hit 105 F here in the summer routinely. 110 F on rare summers. 113 F in the summer of 1999, Labor Day.
The only bad time to have a white vehicle is in four feet of snow on the ground, like in Colorado. We don’t have that problem here.
>> Be careful with that: there are many differing values of soft to hard brick. I had a neighbor attempt to remove the paint from his giant brick Victorian manor when I lived in one of those kinds of places. Wherever the pressure washer was focused, a not-so-neat line was carved into the side of his house. It took him months to get it repaired properly.
A clueless DIYer can cause lots of havoc with a pressure washer – breaking house windows and stripping the paint off your car to name a few.
>> Helena said that while her mom’s death was ‘pure accident’, the design of the trailer suffered a ‘significant safety oversight’ due to the door opening inward and not outward ‘against the wind’.
From what I recall, due to the limited floorspace, most travel trailer doors open outward.
The Airstream Classic ($191,500) travel trailer door hinges on are the outside in this site picture. Therefore the door opens to the outside.
https://www.airstream.com/travel-trailers/classic/
There has got to be more to the story than we’ve heard so far. Airstream is certainly going to act to protect their brand, but they’ll have to be very careful.
I’m almost ready to bet money that she opened the door on purpose, but even then, you have to push pretty hard against the wind to do so… too many things don’t make sense in the story.
n
-and yet the picture, credited to the state police, shows the door hinges on the outside, which means the door opens out, which is suggested by the phrase used to describe the mechanics of the woman’s accident. And I remember clearly our camper doors opening out, and needing to be careful of the awning…
Something ain’t right.
n
Doors open out, sure, but that’s not the point. Do they open towards the back (like a normal car door), which means that wind will tend to hold the door closed? Or towards the front, so that – if opened while moving – the wind will rip the door open?
Some of the pics I found online look like the doors open to the front. Seems like a massive design flaw, because (allowed or not) people will be in those trailers while they are moving.
I take back 10% of the bad things I said about the late doctor.
It sure looks like Airstream fouled up on the door design.
Even so, she shouldn’t have been there, shouldn’t have let her daughter be there, and shouldn’thave messed with the door at all in transit.
The trailers are so aerodyhamic, I wonder if the Bernoulli effect would suck the door open if it wasn’t properly latched, even if Airstream had put the hinges on the other side..
Sounds like a worthy test for a wind tunnel.