Warm and damp with overcast and weather in the distance. Possibly weather up close later on. It was 73F with a breeze when I went to bed, and had been for hours.
I spent Friday getting ready to come up here for the weekend. I did a couple of pickups, and took care of some things around the house. I hit Costco for gas, and Home Depot for plumbing supplies. Then I loaded up the truck and headed to the country.
All that messing around meant a late start, so today I’ll be mowing and getting stuff ready for guests. D2 is having some friends up for her birthday. It’s going to be loud. And I’ll probably do more host stuff than working on the place. I know there are a lot of burgers to be cooked at some point, and corn on the cob too.
I will be taking another shot at the irrigation intake line. I got a couple of flexible fittings and intend to get the inlet up out of the muck, and hopefully keep it out this time. Best case would be some sort of floating contraption, but Home Depot was out of the hose I need to make that work. We’ve been getting a lot of rain, so it’s not critical to have the irrigation working yet, but every time I mess with it without solving the issue there is something else that doesn’t get done. I’d like to be done with it for a while.
Had a nice little fire last night, and WRMI was booming in from Miami, loud as broadcast, until it just stopped around 1 am. Conditions changed somewhere between here and there, and that was the end of my listening for the night. Radio is fickle, which is why it takes practice, even for just listening. Tomorrow I hope to do some side by side testing with my faithful Radio Shack radio, and the two new Eton radios. Hopefully they will sound good and pull in the stations.
It all takes practice, and practical knowledge. It takes redundancy in gear and technique. You have to actually DO stuff to know what you don’t know. So get out and do. It will show you places you need to improve.
And stack of course, don’t miss out on that.
nick
I have two robot vacuums. One runs upstairs, one runs in the basement area. They both run twice a week.
The one upstairs in the main living area picks up an amazing amount of dog hair. It is a self-emptying vacuum into a bigger holding tank. It must be emptied at least every two weeks. The vacuum is surprisingly effective at cleaning. When we replaced the carpet there was no dust that had to be swept up. Every other time I have seen carpet replaced there is always dust under the pad that must be vacuumed. Not this last time since using the robot vacuums.
The one in the basement area is the one that surprises me. There is really very little activity in that area. My small office area and the guest apartment. Yet the vacuum continues to pick up a lot of dust and debris every time it runs. It’s holding tank needs to be emptied and the filter cleaned every week.
There really is a lot of dirt in a house and humans do shed a lot of debris, skin cells and hair.
R&D on the replacement for the F150 Lightning successor, the T3, is often cited as the reason for the hemorrhaging of cash, but $80,000 trucks, EV or IC, are not affordable vehicles absent the Fed buying the finance paper or, what I believe is coming, another Cash For Clunkers boondoggle, this time taking the still-serviceable early 2000s pickups off the road.
Yeah, T3. I doubt many left in Ford management have seen the Cameron movies.
Or “Tommy Boy”.
You can take a good look at bankruptcy by sticking your head up a F150 Lightning’s a** -er- tailpipe, but wouldn’t you rather take the accountant’s word for it?
Yeah, I doubt “Tommy Boy” gets many screenings in Dearborn these days.
Listen to Dan Aykroyd carefully.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16RuiTTQsus
TIme to cut the grass. I forgot that it was ‘community clean up day’ so I have to go chat with the fellas first…
79F with sun breaking thru clouds. Windy too.
n
Me too, and I’ve got 5 more to go.
WRTto Nick having evening fire at BOL: Did you get approval from Bumble Stumble Slow Joe?
According to the ads I’m getting, the current generation of robot vacuums are combo units that will mop and vacuum, as appropriate for the surfaces they roam over. Self cleaning, emptying into a base station, etc.
Makes me wonder if they can handle the pet accident situations that were discussed earlier.
My Roborock SV7 avoids dog turds no problemo. I’ve seen it when one of the weiners decided to shit right in front of it. Most of the major brands claim turd avoidance. There is even a YT channel that tests robovacs. Diarrhea and vomit are another story, so always check.
Ours claim that, but the mopping is useless. There needs to be some scrubbing action with the water.
“Turd Avoidance” is the name of my Traffic cover band.
US Citizen held hostage by Hamas:
US citizen appears as one of two hostages in new Hamas kidnap video in fresh proof that terror group have not yet killed him
plugs administration: Zzzz, “Hey, Bibi, it’s all you Jews fault for starting this.”
Why isn’t Palestine a new Walmart parking lot? Preferably made of glass. Throw in Iran for overflow parking.
“Little John-John draws better than that … and I think that something’s wrong with him.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBMQqt5hCHg
Does this mean that Camelot is dead? One can only hope.
What drones are changing (imho as a former USAF weenie) is air superiority. Used to be that, once you had air superiority, you could defend your ground forces. With drones, that’s no longer possible. That stupidly expensive F-35 can’t do anything about drones, except watch them blow things up.
The F-35 mission is Fighter Bomber. It is not for Close Air Support. The F-35 is a replacement for the F-117 and the F-16. The F-117 required way too many maintenance hours.
The only thing that might get after the drones is the A-10 and I doubt that. Really need a drone for Close Air Support against drones. Lots of drones needed.
>> Given that we have pets, this is one reason that we have no carpets, and no rugs. Just nice tiled floors (ceramic, looks like stone). With floor heating, they are pleasant to walk on even in the winter. The robot vacuum cleaners run automatically three times a week, which takes care of most of the pet hair.
If you have dogs, most likely you’ve seen the videos showing the unfortunate intersection of a robot vac and some pee or poop “accident. If not, GIYF
GIYF – Give It A Freaking Year ?
Most likely they are playing accounting tricks. Charging lots of R&D and whatever else they can to the EVs, in order to make the numbers look awful. Trolling for government handouts? Tax games?
R&D is expensive. The EVs are new from the ground up designs. Very expensive. Structural issues for the heavy batteries. Cooling issues for the batteries. Heating issues for the batteries.
Warren Buffet says that more than 10% R&D expenses in a business is too much. My business is 30% R&D.
Plus the marketing guys at Ford said that they were going to sell a lot more EVs at premium prices. A lot more.
US Citizen held hostage by Hamas:
US citizen appears as one of two hostages in new Hamas kidnap video in fresh proof that terror group have not yet killed him
plugs administration: Zzzz, “Hey, Bibi, it’s all you Jews fault for starting this.”
Why isn’t Palestine a new Walmart parking lot? Preferably made of glass. Throw in Iran for overflow parking.
The International Criminal Court is supposedly going to release arrest warrants for Bibi and his cabinet on Monday for War Crimes.
Approximately 30 F117s are still in service.
Much like the A10, the plane’s capabilities are unique and will be hard to replace.
That was one of the last truly great Skunk Works projects. Slide rules and plywood prototypes.
If you pay attention in “Top Gun: Maverick”, the skunk mascot makes several appearances in the opening of the film, on the tail of the test aircraft and the flight stick.
Anything was possible with 2% car loans available. Once the manufacturers got a taste of moving trucks for $40,000 with $500/month payments, the sky was the limit.
Why not $80,000?
I wonder if Buffet has actually run payroll or hired a low-level employee. Small businesses are the backbone of the country now. I remember him squawking about how his secretary pays more taxes than him. He lives off his capital gains/company largesse just like all billionaires. Yet, he won’t pay one more dime than what his battalion of attorneys says.
The wife is bingeing “24 Hour Flip” today. Pretty good show. Reminds me of “Flip Or Flop” in its first years when it was good.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27161150/
Approximately 30 F117s are still in service.
Much like the A10, the plane’s capabilities are unique and will be hard to replace.
I’ll bet that they are hanger queens.
Or ramp tramps.
BTW, GIYF used to mean Google Is Your Friend–used to . . .
Approximately 30 F117s are still in service.
Much like the A10, the plane’s capabilities are unique and will be hard to replace.
The F-117 is a subsonic light stealth bomber for the night, it cannot defend itself against a 3rd or 4th generation fighter. The F-35 is a much better plane being supersonic and a stealth fighter bomber.
The secretary’s tax rate is more Buffett schtick. She pays income taxes on a straight $200k+ salary where the Gecko takes home $100k a year plus whatever the company provides him in terms of security arrangements.
Most of Buffett’s taxes are long term capital gains from selling BRK-A shares.
When the F-35 works.
When the F-35 works.
All you have to do is turn the F-35 sensors from failure mode to warning mode. The availability jumps from 45% to almost 80%. Any time they are in wartime mode, the F-35 works just fine. Until it has a real break down at which point it probably crashes.
BTW, the F-117 has the same failures, it just does not have the sensors like the F-35 and F-22. All three planes cannot fly without the computer. The B-2 also.
The secretary’s tax rate is more Buffett schtick. She pays income taxes on a straight $200k+ salary where the Gecko takes home $100k a year plus whatever the company provides him in terms of security arrangements.
Wait, do company executives have to pay for company provided security arrangements ? That is not right, that is a legitimate company expense.
>> I wonder if Buffet has actually run payroll or hired a low-level employee. Small businesses are the backbone of the country now. I remember him squawking about how his secretary pays more taxes than him. He lives off his capital gains/company largesse just like all billionaires. Yet, he won’t pay one more dime than what his battalion of attorneys says.
In the abstract it’s called Capitalism. In reality it’s lobbyists making sure every last Congress-critter is dumb, fat and happy.
Kids had a blast today. I’m beat. Between mowing, gardening, and walking up and down my hill a dozen times, I’m worn out.
Still think I’ll grab a ginger ale and head down for some quiet time by the water… I may not do a head to head comparison of the new shortwave radios, but I think I’ll at least fire them up.
n
Just like the F-15 before it, the F-35 is what we call in German a “Wollmilchsau” – a single plane that can do anything and everything. The F-15 (on which I worked) had fighter variants, bomber variants, all-mission variants, and the brass fantasized for a while that it could replace the A-10. The F-35 fantasies are similar, and just as dumb.
The F-35 is definitely a hanger queen. Sure, you can ignore the warnings and fly with a partially broken aircraft, but that shouldn’t be necessary.
My personal view – which definitely doesn’t match any official policy – is that you need simpler, cheaper planes. Simpler: less maintenance, higher readiness. Cheaper: you could have a lot more of them.
I’m not even sure than can work. Drones don’t have much of a heat signature, and I’m sure there are versions with low radar signatures. Being small and coming in low, you aren’t likely to find them until they reach their targets (unless you can intercept the launch). Last minute direct fire weapons seem like the best option. Hammer’s Slammers style.