Hot. Very hot. Yes, and sunny too. My brains are baking in my skull when the sun hits it. Not much breeze either, and a lot of humidity. Summer in Houston, oh joy. And that was just yesterday. Today should be more of the same, but without the rain in the night.
I did get some stuff done. I picked up the chest freezer. Cleaned it, got it plugged in, and even moved some stuff into it. Of course it’s sitting in the driveway, not in the garage. I got about half the stuff out of the way. I’ll get the other half today. Did I mention it was hot and sunny? That slowed me down dramatically. I need to finish clearing a path to get the old fridge out, and the freezer in.
After that, I’ll move some drawers and shelves out of the way and move some metal cabinets in. They will be my new pantry. I’m tired of rats cr@pping on my canned goods. The drawers hold mostly supplies that I don’t need easy access to, so I should have moved them a long time ago. The shelves were my second tier of food storage after the kitchen pantry… some will remain, but the rest of the stuff will go into cabinets. It will stay a lot cleaner that way. Dunno what I’ll do with the drawers. They are still in good condition, and the stuff in them still needs to be stored, but I don’t have any place in mind yet.
Or my cunning plan could go to heck in a wicker basket. My wife might want me to go with her when she takes the kids to GS camp. There is a guy that has a boat for sale… and I am not involving myself in that transaction. She really wants a boat. I’ve already got enough stuff on my plate. I was willing to find one through my sources, but the universe wasn’t cooperating. We bid on one this week that looked great but it had a reserve higher than anyone was interested in bidding. Ditto for the three person SeaDoo. So she hit the internet and found one that looks nice and is in the right range of features, size, age, and cost. It’s got crazy low hours and was kept inside. Classic story of boat ownership- buy it, pay to store it for years, use it very rarely. I’d like to think that we’d put a couple of hours a month on a boat at least…not a couple per year.
This falls under the part of the rules where the BOL has to function as part of our lives, even if the big bad never happens. I’d like a boat too, I just don’t want to spend the money. It should be a good thing for the kids, and give them more to do while we’re up there.
In the mean time… I’ll keep plugging away at this pile of stuff here, there and everywhere. Change is progress, right? Sometimes you have to re-stack your stuff to remember what you have.
And then stack some more.
nick
Boat. Noun: A hole in the water into which one throws money.
One doesn’t want a boat. One wants a friend or relative who needs help on their boat!
In my case, that is a sibling, one of whose yachts spends most of its time standing on a dockside adjacent the Mediterranean. I have a standing invitation to use it any time I want. Haven’t managed to yet, but I will get a round tuit eventually.
Good luck with your boating, Nick and family!
I saw a lot of RVs stacked on the lots between Austin and Dallas a couple of weeks ago where inventory was pretty thin at the same time last year.
People selling the toys will get hungry for the cash, but I don’t think we’re there yet.
78 F and clear as a bell on the west side of Fort Bend County. Gonna be hot today, probably 98 F.
“If it flys, floats or flirts: rent, don’t buy”.
As someone who currently owns a hole in the water I can attest to this.
BOAT: Break Out Another Thousand.
I owned a boat for almost 40 years. I had two of them, a 18 foot 140HP I/O runabout and a 22 foot 340HP V-Drive tow boat. Biggest issue on both boats was propeller repair. A couple hundred dollars each time and I generally borked a prop once a year. I also had the props redone at the start of the season.
The V-Drive propeller was the worst. The prop was actually a soft metal designed to bend to protect the drive train. Hitting a fish at speed would bend the prop. The runabout was a stainless prop that was a little more durable.
The runabout was an inline four from GM that is ruggedized for marine use. The tow boat was a V8 from GM, again, ruggedized for marine use. The engines are almost always under a heavy load. Cooling was really important for the engine and especially that hot exhaust which was a water jacketed manifold.
There was also the yearly tuneup, fairly minor. On both boats it was necessary to replace the fresh water pump impeller every couple of years. That is something that should NEVER be run dry. If the engine turned, so did the fresh water pump. It was necessary to hook up a fresh water supply. Without water the impeller would quickly burn up.
The runabout required the lower unit oil to be changed at the same time as the impeller. To get to the impeller the lower unit had to be removed and it was easy to change that oil at that time.
The towboat was fuel injected with most of the engine functions computer controlled. I even had cruise control on the boat that used a speed sensor in the water to keep the boat at a constant speed relative to the water.
Fuel needed to be ethanol free and even then marine fuel stabilizer needed to be added to the fuel.
Yes, it cost money. But no more than any regular hobby or leisure pursuit. People here pay $20K for a 4-wheeler, $1K for a gun, multiple $K a year on fishing supplies.
Spend money on what makes you happy, provides enjoyment, and just deal with it.
Why is burning a FAQ flag considered hate speech and a crime, but burning a U.S. flag is considered protected speech?
It only hit 104F yesterday, but it is 85 pF at 8am now, today is going to be a scorcher.
Unless the t-storms roll in.
86F with sun and blue sky, fluffy clouds, and dew on the grass…
I’m gonna sweat balls today.
————-
WRT boats, having a place on a lake a boat makes some sense, especially with kids entering their teens. When you look at the actual number of hours of use, it’s nuts to spend so much money on it. 52 weekends a year, couple hours on the water per visit, and you’re using it 50 hours if you make it to the lake even half the weekends…
People pay crazy amounts for a few hours a year use. Bass boats get a bit more use, hours at a time, but unless you are a pro or committed amateur, spending $80k is nuts. Ocean fishing gets you more hours per use, but still how many days can you go out?
I had a project boat. It never got in the water. Fortunately I paid very little for it, and spent little on it. I was thinking of a running boat with a lot of filth from sitting around, that needed normal maintenance but sells for a huge discount… but I don’t need any more projects of any kind. Even if we buy this boat or a similar boat, it will trigger a bunch of work on my part, mostly related to the dock. The slips and lifts were sized in the mid70s or early 80s. Even small boats are bigger now. It may not fit.
The dock needs a lot of rebuilding and repair, so maybe any changes get rolled into that, but it will still be work.
I know that in my heart I am not committed to buying a boat or jetski, because one would have fallen in my lap if I was. That’s just the way my life works.
n
Having used Ubuntu for a couple of decades (I think), I have stumbled over a few problemettes recently with my Ubuntu 22.04 main system, with me disagreeing with SNAP. So took time out this past week to put together a parallel system with Linux Mint 21.3. All the problemettes disappear, with me being much more comfortable with the application installation process and updating.
I am very comfortable with the Ubuntu interface, whereas the out the box Mint interface is more Windows like. I can make it work. So looks like I will move all my data over to the new Mint system in the near future.
I run Linux Mint on several systems at home, but I hate the Cinnamon interface and usually install the MATE version.
Another Ubuntu variant worth looking at is Pop! OS from System 76. I use that to keep an old MacBook Pro Santa Rosa machine (mid-2007) usable.
Apple gave up on those laptops even before officially pulling the plug with OS support.
Right now, Pop! OS is slightly behind, still based on 22.04 LTS, but they are promising big things for the 24.04 release, including a new desktop written in Rust.
If nothing else, we will finally see if Rust is anything more than Hot Skillz syntactic sugar on top of C++ in a production environment.
@Nick
Have you considered a small sailboat or a couple of kayaks?
The PLT string pullers behind the curtain are starting to tug Biden’s strings to pull him off-stage:
https://redstate.com/bonchie/2024/06/23/snipes-finally-gets-around-to-fact-checking-the-entire-basis-of-bidens-presidency-and-libs-are-big-mad-n2175840
Snopes has bween an apologist for the left for years. When a sitting Democrat president loses them over a bald-faced lie that they could have fact-checked before the election, it’s a pretty good indication that the knives are out for FJB.
If Joe wants to be the candidate in November, he’d best stand up and say the POTUS ain’t gonna de-bait no convicted felon. Otherwise, no matter what his performance, their is going to be a lot of lefist pearl-clutching about his “sudden deterioration”.
Have you considered a small sailboat or a couple of kayaks?
– I looked at buying a sunfish, but it had been modified and was 6 inches longer than the limit for untitled vessels. IDK what it is with boats and missing titles, but unless you are the owner who lost it, they are very hard to get in Texas.
We’ve got a half dozen kayaks, there was a string of auctions where they went very cheap.
n
Big Mike is coming.
A Black democratic candidate has to deal with the Democrats embrace of illegal immigration, which is devouring resources once penciled in for the black demographic. The demographic is aware of this.
Michelle is probably their best bet to sew up the black vote, but her slowness to announce suggests a skeleton in the closet big enough to give prospective backers pause.
Trump could counter with a Black or female VP.
“Tesla Dies During Heatwave, Toddler Trapped Inside”
https://resistthemainstream.com/tesla-horror-grandmothers-shocking-discovery-about-toddler-in-car/
“A woman in Scottsdale, Arizona dealt with an absolutely horrifying and life-changing experience after her Tesla was rendered non-functional due to a battery failure.”
“Renee Sanchez indicated that she may no longer be a fan of Tesla after she put her 20-month-old granddaughter in the car seat in preparation for an excursion at the Phoenix Zoo.”
““And I closed the door, went around the car, get in the front seat, and my car was dead,” she explained, according to KPHO-TV. “I could not get in. My phone key wouldn’t open it. My card key wouldn’t open it.””
“Sanchez called 911 to seek help for her toddler, prompting Scottsdale firefighters to respond to the scene.”
“And when they got here, the first thing they said was, ‘Uggh, it’s a Tesla. We can’t get in these cars,’” she said of the firefighters. “And I said, ‘I don’t care if you have to cut my car in half. Just get her out.’”
“As Sanchez’s granddaughter sat in the baking vehicle, firefighters moved to smash the window with an ax.”
This is not acceptable. I am noting that a number of vehicles are not openable if the vehicle battery fails. It is not just Teslas. I am hearing that there are batteries in some vehicles that are separate from the engine battery. If this smaller battery fails, these vehicles cannot be opened and are dangerous.
An easily identifiable unlocking system must be installed on all of these vehicles for if the battery fails. Or, the vehicles must be destroyed. They are too dangerous. It is being submitted that Mitch McConnell’s sister-in-law drowned when she could not get her Tesla door to open after accidentally driving into a lake.
The slowness suggests that the money people on the Dem side would not be comfortable running a campaign based on outrage and settling scores.
Good God, man, don’t you understand? Patents are at stake and that means licensing revenue for the Real Life Stark Industries as the other manufacturers want their vehicles to be just as kewl.
Don’t question Musk. He’s taking us to the stars before it is too late and what are a few lives lost or laws broken in the process if the money is put to work towards meeting that lofty ambition.
As for McConnell’s in-laws, based on how I can imagine my wife’s Chinese relations reacting in that kind of situation, I don’t hold Tesla responsible for what happened.
“No, wait. Don’t break window. We can still pull car out of lake and sell. So she dies. She’s old.”
Guess how the offspring of the aunt dying of kidney failure are rationalizing their decision not to get tested for a tissue match. Uh-huh.
This is not acceptable. I am noting that a number of vehicles are not openable if the vehicle battery fails. It is not just Teslas. I am hearing that there are batteries in some vehicles that are separate from the engine battery. If this smaller battery fails, these vehicles cannot be opened and are dangerous.
Preach it!
A Black democratic candidate has to deal with the Democrats embrace of illegal immigration, which is devouring resources once penciled in for the black demographic. The demographic is aware of this.
Michelle is probably their best bet to sew up the black vote, but her slowness to announce suggests a skeleton in the closet big enough to give prospective backers pause.
Trump could counter with a Black or female VP.
Ben Carson is going to be Trump’s VP.
I realize you’re being sarcastic, but I’ll have to disagree with you.
I’ve spent my whole life waiting for D. D. Harriman to appear, and instead watched NASA fritter away our future on things like Muslim outreach or celebrating female computers. I expect many lives to be lost in the actual conquest of space, as opposed to the piddly playing around we’ve done so far.
Almost a hundred men died in the late 1800’s building a milestone of engineering,the Eads bridge. Not exploring a new world or wilderness, but building a bridge. Groundbreaking technology, to be sure, but full of risks they didn’t fully understand.
No great exploration is without risk, and as long as the risks are voluntary, I say let’s expand human knowledge and reach.
You may hate him, but he knows how to play the system and get things done. Go ahead and wait for someone more acceptable to come along, if you wish. I haven’t got enough years left to wait, and frankly, the Earthworms are ruining this place.
Humans need more room, and not to have all our eggs in one basket.
https://www.wikihow.com/Open-Tesla-Door
There is a latch on the inside too.
There are lots of unsafe vehicles. If it’s a known issue, and in the case of the tesla doors, it is, there isn’t any excuse for the fire rescue to not know.
I’m just link dumping because I DON’T CARE. WW3 is around the bend, and someone doesn’t read the manual for their “spaceship” car?
See many Audi 5000s? Pintos? Edsels? There are remedies and they work.
n
My Nissan Frontier has a keyhole on the driver’s door. It’s mechanical. Turn the key to unlock the door, turn it again to unlock all of the doors. Locking doors works the same. I think it’s a neat feature to have when your key fob goes dead.
You need a mechanical connection because how else are you going to pop the hood to replace the battery?
As for the “cool” of un-locking and starting your car with a phone app, go right ahead. Phone battery goes dead or you drop and break your phone, now what Mr Cool? You walk home?
I bought a key for my truck on eBay. Yeah, it has the chip. Don’t care at all about having it programmed into the truck. I had it cut at Lowes and bought a magnetic hide-a-key box. Because I KNOW some fool will leave his phone and keys in the truck while messing with an umbrella and hit the lock button on the door. I see him in the bathroom mirror several times a day.
I saw somewhere an item that said Big Mike isn’t eligible to be Prez. Born in Bermuda. No, nothing about his parent’s citizenship.
But like Her Nibs said, “at this point what does it matter?”
https://www.wikihow.com/Open-Tesla-Door
There is a latch on the inside too.
This technique does not apparently work when the vehicle is locked and the door battery is dead. That is the root failure.
I was first told of this problem a year ago by a ME prof at BYU. He had a eight ??? year old Model S with 66K ??? miles on it locked in his garage with no idea how to get into it. He tried the technique of attaching a battery to the terminals hidden in the front bumper but the vehicle would not unlock. He was not sure that he had connected the external battery to the terminals properly.
It is possible to start keyless start cars when the key fob battery is dead. Hold the back of the fob against the start button. Many people do not know that.
Opening doors, from the inside or outside, with totally dead batteries, should be shown by the dealer when the car is sold.
My Highlander, probably Rick’s and Lynn’s also, has a tow eye hook that screws into a front opening, exposed by prying open one of the tabs on the front bumper. It used to load the vehicle on a flat bed tow truck. The hook is located in the spare tire well. Unfortunately, the rear hatch cannot open without a battery requiring contortions to gain access.
When I had my Highlander towed because the alternator shorted, destroying the battery, the tow driver knew about the hook. The service advisor guy at the Toyota dealership that received the vehicle, had no idea such an item existed on the vehicle.
My Nissan Frontier has a keyhole on the driver’s door. It’s mechanical. Turn the key to unlock the door, turn it again to unlock all of the doors. Locking doors works the same. I think it’s a neat feature to have when your key fob goes dead.
My 2019 F-150 has a keyhole on the driver’s door also. The tailgate has a keyhole too. No keyhole in the passenger door though. Works like a champ to unlock the vehicle with my ignition key.
The Ads on Amazon Prime SUCK ! And I refuse to pay extra to get out of them.
I am on s1e8 of Battlestar Galactica (2004). Awesome, awesome, awesome ! Starbuck is water torturing the cylon to get the location of the nuclear warhead hidden in the fleet.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2024/06/23/the-gaza-war-has-ruined-pride-month-n2640834
A small number of activists marching the parade off the cliff.
Opening doors, from the inside or outside, with totally dead batteries, should be shown by the dealer when the car is sold.
The Grandma had borrowed the Tesla from her son to take the grandchild to the zoo. Grandma had never been trained on the exotic effects of door battery failure and how to recover from same. This is crazy as the problem and the recovery are different for each vehicle.
We have a proven mechanism for unlocking a vehicle. You put the ignition key in the driver side door keyhole and unlock it mechanically. Works like a champ and every one knows how to do it.
Has Mark Sheppard shown up yet? Maybe that is much later in the series.
Sheppard followed up “Battlestar Galactica” with a very cool two part “Doctor Who” appearance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeVlCUFDc6w
No, sadly, they never revisited Nixon and Canton.
No. Eligibility is not a question mark with the former First Lady.
Both parents trace their family history in the US to before the Civil War.
Big Mike is arguably more eligible than B*to, whose family “only” goes back four generations in the US after emigrating from Ireland, mostly in Texas but with a minor detour through Georgia.
“The Mexican Bobby Kennedy”
The passenger door of the BMW X5 rental we had in Wisconsin would not open in response to the outside door handle on the coldest morning of our trip. The door did open when I reached over and pulled the inside handle.
Later on, after the temperature warmed up, the outside door handle on that side worked fine. Still, “fly by wire” for everything on that vehicle made me wonder about the longevity, especially since those are Hecho en South Carolina and is the model I used to see broken down most often in our part of Austin.
I assume the crowd leasing the BMWs moved on to Teslas. I’ve only seen one of those on the side of the road where the X5s used to go splody, and when I discreetly looped back around to get a picture, the EV was gone.
Saw my second cybertruck on the road Friday. It was going the other direction on the highway, so I couldn’t tell if it had been painted or wrapped, but it was partly orange.
n
You can thank Uncle Nanny for the power door locks on even the most low end vehicles. Self locking power locks are the only way they could keep the doors from flying open in the rollover test.
n
Seems like Tesla should send a PSA to fire departments everywhere. Combine it with a “ludicrous speed” demo” and it could pay for itself.
There are lots of unsafe vehicles. If it’s a known issue, and in the case of the tesla doors, it is, there isn’t any excuse for the fire rescue to not know.
The fire rescue has a fairly simple solution for just about any difficult situation. A fire axe through a window or a roof can fix many problems.
Later on, after the temperature warmed up, the outside door handle on that side worked fine. Still, “fly by wire” for everything on that vehicle made me wonder about the longevity, especially since those are Hecho en South Carolina and is the model I used to see broken down most often in our part of Austin.
Aren’t all new vehicles since 2015 ??? totally fly by wire and totally computer controllable ?
Doesn’t the cybertruck have “bullet proof” glass?
n
Well wife was out in pool and started yelling at me. Space X launches a Falcon 9 from Vandenberg with Starlinks. Very hice show across the southern evening sky, very viewable from our back yard.
Whew, what a long day. And I didn’t finish so tomorrow borrows some of today’s length…
But the old fridge is out, and the new freezer is running and has stuff in it. It’s not in place in the garage because it’s 2 inches too wide to fit the hole left by the fridge…
That will get remedied when I move the cabinets into place. At 98F in the shade it was just too hot to do heavy lifting while the sun was out, and there wasn’t enough time with me moving slowly and taking cool off breaks.
Them’s the breaks.
Back at it tomorrow.
n
I’m just link dumping because I DON’T CARE. WW3 is around the bend, and someone doesn’t read the manual for their “spaceship” car?
“Why it’s too late to stop World War 3”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/why-too-stop-world-war-120000865.html
“Imagine, for a moment, that the Iranian government announces it has developed a nuclear bomb and threatens to use it on Israel. The United States reacts with the threat of military intervention, as it did in 1991 and 2003 in Iraq. Iran signals that it will not tolerate a third Gulf war and looks for allies. American forces mass to enter Iran, which orders national mobilisation. Russia, China and North Korea express their support for Iran, and Washington expands its intervention force, bringing in a British contingent. Russia enters the game, raising the stakes in the expectation that the West will back down. A nuclear standoff follows, but with tense and itchy fingers on both sides, as leaders gamble on the risk of not striking first, it all ends in disaster. The Third World War begins with an exchange of nuclear fire, and the rest, as they say, is history.”
I would build a bomb shelter if I could but the ground water table is too high around here. Plus I am only 30 miles away from an interceptor base and a quarter of the operating refineries in the USA.