Cooler to start, but plenty hot later. Forecast says we’ll be in the clear after all the rain we’ve gotten, and I’m sure that will make the air hotten… or something like that. Rained gently off and on all day Sunday, so I stayed indoors and puttered.
I spent some time looking at laptops to find something to use at our upcoming convention for power point. I have a stack of lappys but one won’t boot, one has a black screen, one battery doesn’t charge… one is an atom based wimpy POS, and the others are win7 with ppt 2007 installed. I might have to use my new toughbook…
I did some more cleaning and organizing. I can now mostly walk in an L shape in my office… I pulled out two 3 foot stacks of books to take to the BOL and put on the shelf there. I’ve got another 6 foot to take there next trip too. I have a huge pile of stuff to take up there this week. I probably won’t be able to fit it all in the truck, but I’m going to try. It’s also been almost two months since I took anything to auction, so there is a bit of a pileup of that stuff too. I’ll get to it eventually.
Today I have some hobby stuff to do, then pickups, then send the females off to the east coast for a family visit. I’ll eventually head to the BOL but I have stuff that has to get done first.
There is always something that has to get done first…
Oh, and I have to hit the Lowes for materials before heading up too.
It’s a great life…
Stack some projects so you can keep yourself busy. And stack the stuff you need to do the projects. You’ll be glad you did 🙂
nick
Try to see “Deadpool & Wolverine” before all the best cameo appearances are spoiled.
The film is all about cameos and ripping on the current state of the culture as well as Disney, Marvel, and Hollywood in general.
It probably won’t age well except the tribute to the 20 years of Fox Marvel movies made prior to the Disney purchase of the brand which plays with the credits.
Here in the US, the Musk funded Gina Carano lawsuit vs. Disney advanced to Discovery a few days prior to the film release.
I thought that a lot of the people into that hobby were Linux and/or open source fans.
I haven’t used PowerPoint to create a new presentation since grad school. Fifteen years.
The copy I have installed on my primary desktop and Windows 8 partition on my MacBook is part of Office 2007, but I only use the Word in that package to run a final clean up pass on my resume to make sure the *.doc format is uber compatible with anything an HR department may have to read that type of file.
I’ve been working on the resume lately. 🙂
I would love to know what TMC paid Cubby Broccoli’s heirs to have a Land Cruiser defeat a host of Land Rovers on-screen in the latest Bond movie…
Today is the first day of my annual holidays, and I am busier than a one-armed man hanging wallpaper. So much for rest and relaxation… Ah well.
I sometimes use the term “busier than a one-legged soccer goalie”.
I can get one channel of the Olympics in 4K on my TV using Xfinity. I don’t notice any difference in the regular HD broadcasts. My TV indicates it is receiving 4K based on the resolution.
I am not interested in the Olympics this year. The hype over gymnastics and that Biles person does not interest me. Some of the games in the Olympics are strange. I watched 5 minutes of the fencing foils. Almost as boring as golf. I then saw 5 minutes of table tennis. Why, just why is that an Olympic sport?
None of the sports interest me. Basketball will receive significant coverage in the US as will gymnastics for the reason above. The athletes are good of that there is no doubt. It is just boring to me.
I also feel the same about the winter Olympics.
So, you won’t be watching the new “Breakin’” category? I’ve been waiting since the 80’s for that. I’m also waiting for the beer pong category.
Someone asked yesterday about the size of the Cybertruck bed. I wish I could find comments by someone who actually owns one. According to specs, it is a 4′ by 6′ bed. However, the front portion appears to be underneath the rear window, so not entirely usable.
Up and at ’em, Atom Ant!
Up and caffeinated and headed out to meet some folks.
Sunny and clear, getting warmer by the minute.
n
Talk about Olympic atrocities, I tuned into a Women’s beach volleyball match and horreurs one of the teams was wearing long pants instead of the usual bikini bottoms!
Probably had Grizzly Adams legs.
I did see that skateboarding is now a summer Olympic event. And the participants fit the part of a skateboarder. Badminton is an amazingly fast sport requiring quick reflexes and some knowledge of the other team.
I don’t like sports that depend on judges’ opinions. Too much personal bias. Stuff I think looks like crap gets a high mark and little things that count I cannot see except on slow motion. I may be biased because I remember the Olympics gymnastic of the 60’s and 70’s where the Russian judges would score their comrades high and the U.S. low. The bias was obvious and should not have been tolerated. I suspect it still happens, a lot. Those female gymnasts are so small I think many could fit under the seat in an airplane and still have room for an iPad.
I like watching swimming, but I’ve given up trying. The amount of commercials are so obscene, it isn’t worth the effort. Plus, with the time difference, every website plasters the results before the events are shown.
Alternative theory: The LGBTQXYZ running the Olympics was offended by anything visually appealing to cishet males so they forced them to cover up.
Good theory, probably better than mine. I would still be afraid to look closely and will have to rely on your expertise.
Remember when the long jump was called the broad jump? Or maybe that was a California thing from my (much) younger years.
I attended a week-long training class for OnBase near LAX in 2008. There was a nearby tourist beach and pier, a trolley that only cost a dollar, and a beach volleyball tournament going on.
I spent every evening there after class when I was supposed to be studying. The scenery was breathtaking.
I still managed to get near-perfect scores on the tests.
OnBase is fantastic software, and they charge accordingly.
It is 99 F in my backyard. Big change from the 82 F max since Beryl.
We got another 4 to 5 inches of rain yesterday. The weather witch doctors say that we are going to be dry and hot for a week. I do not believe them.
We have had more rain this year so far than last year total. We are drenched and our water retaining ponds are full. Again.
I heard somewhere that they were given a choice in outfits this year. Though, I must say, Olympians can do pretty well with endorsement deals after the Olympics, but any beach volleyball endorsements are probably only going to those in bikinis.
Rain, eh? I think we just had a small earthquake here.
EdH; You’re in California? Yeah, a 4.9 22 km ENE of Barstow.
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/?extent=33.16974,239.3042&extent=36.76089,246.14319&range=week&listOnlyShown=true&baseLayer=terrain&timeZone=utc&settings=true&search=%7B%22name%22:%22Search%20Results%22,%22params%22:%7B%22starttime%22:%222020-01-03%2000:00:00%22,%22endtime%22:%222020-01-10%2023:59:59%22,%22minmagnitude%22:2.5,%22orderby%22:%22time%22%7D%7D
But you should be used to those by now.
Heh, yeah, it wasn’t much. Slow day.
I spent some time looking at laptops to find something to use at our upcoming convention for power point. I have a stack of lappys but one won’t boot, one has a black screen, one battery doesn’t charge… one is an atom based wimpy POS, and the others are win7 with ppt 2007 installed. I might have to use my new toughbook…
Entropy sucks. And it increases with need …
Talk about Olympic atrocities, I tuned into a Women’s beach volleyball match and horreurs one of the teams was wearing long pants instead of the usual bikini bottoms!
I saw that the Egyptian volleyball team is wearing hijabs.
I did some more cleaning and organizing. I can now mostly walk in an L shape in my office… I pulled out two 3 foot stacks of books to take to the BOL and put on the shelf there. I’ve got another 6 foot to take there next trip too. I have a huge pile of stuff to take up there this week. I probably won’t be able to fit it all in the truck, but I’m going to try. It’s also been almost two months since I took anything to auction, so there is a bit of a pileup of that stuff too. I’ll get to it eventually.
The BOL will have corridors soon too …
My negotiation with the wife to add another bookshelf to our bedroom is not going well. I should have used the do it and beg forgiveness approach. It may not be too late.
If the Olympics gymnastics are not quite your thing, the latest season of American Ninja Warriors is now streaming.
If the Olympics gymnastics are not quite your thing, the latest season of American Ninja Warriors is now streaming.
I finishing Battlestar Gallactica (2004) and am now bingeing The Walking Dead. I am up to Season 9 where they start moving to the beach for more food (fish) and safety as the canned food is running out for the scavengers.
I don’t like sports that depend on judges’ opinions. Too much personal bias. Stuff I think looks like crap gets a high mark and little things that count I cannot see except on slow motion. I may be biased because I remember the Olympics gymnastic of the 60’s and 70’s where the Russian judges would score their comrades high and the U.S. low. The bias was obvious and should not have been tolerated. I suspect it still happens, a lot. Those female gymnasts are so small I think many could fit under the seat in an airplane and still have room for an iPad.
I did not know that Simone Biles is 4’8″. Apparently she has a serious problem with people thinking that she is a child.
https://www.chron.com/sports/article/simone-biles-wall-street-journal-error-18417124.php
“Texas Crude Oil Pipelines Are Full to the Brim and Getting Worse”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/texas-crude-oil-pipelines-full-171511090.html
“Demand for the limited pipeline space comes at a time when the US is producing more crude oil than any other nation, with output set to hit a new record next year. The Permian region, one of the top producing shale basins in the world, accounts for nearly half of all US oil production. While output is set to keep growing, it will be difficult for that incremental output to reach international buyers without ample pipeline space.”
Yes, they have turned several natural gas pipelines into crude oil pipelines. And building more of both at millions of dollars per mile.
We are blessed with abundance. But my business would be doing much better with crude oil at $150/US bbl instead of $75/US bbl. And natural gas at $8/mmbtu instead of $2/mmbtu.
The employment in the hydrocarbons industry in the USA has crashed from 15 million to 10 million. I am going to a engineering conference in September where they expect to have 1,750 attendees instead of the 3,000 that showed up 15 years ago.
“Photo enforcement cameras have 5.5 lbs of copper in them”
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2024/07/memes-that-made-me-laugh-220.html
And they burn really well when you drop an old tire around them and fill it full of gasoline. I saw that the last time I was in Germany.
And the USA national debt has reached a new milestone, $35 trillion.
https://usdebtclock.org/
and
https://headlineusa.com/united-states-national-debt-reaches-35-trillion/
This is why I think that Social Security will be means tested in the not so distant future. Medicare too.
“The Dukes Of MAGA”
https://rumble.com/v58uodx-dilley-meme-teams-the-dukes-of-maga-is-the-best-meme-of-this-election-cycle.html
ROTFLMAO.
Burqinis. I’m not kidding about the name, but the spelling varies.
The Cooter’s Place museum/store in Nashville was right next to the hotel where we stayed two years ago. If you are a fan, it is a “must see”, but I’d suggest going before the owner, Ben Jones, Cooter himself, passes.
Up until Charlottesville, that show was on the edge of becoming a huge cultural phenomenon again.
The Cankles as Boss Hog? I would think the Humper would be a better choice.
“Tesla jumps on replacing Ford as Morgan Stanley’s ‘top pick’ in US auto sector”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-jumps-replacing-ford-morgan-153627664.html
“(Reuters) -Tesla (TSLA) shares jumped nearly 6.3% on Monday after Morgan Stanley named the most valuable automaker its “top pick” in the U.S. automotive industry, replacing Ford (FORD).”
“The brokerage said Tesla’s energy business could potentially grow to be worth more than the company’s auto business in the future, as investors were likely to focus on firms that address climate change-related issues.”
“It also expects Tesla to take a more dominant position in the market for zero-emission vehicle credit revenue – for which it recognized around $2,000 per unit in the second quarter – as legacy automakers pull back on their EV expansion plans.”
It’s so helpful when one has a question but everyone quits work at 5pm. Eastern time. I bet that’s super special for folks in California.
Anyway. I started to pull a grand a month from my 401k. With his retirement and whatever amount of SS that is taxed, we’re below having to pay anything. Just for the fun of it I Googled a bit. I don’t know…
Married filing jointly or Surviving spouse is $29,200 for the standard deduction. I think that goes up about $1500 if over 65.. I suppose I’ll file as Surviving spouse for this year. For some reason.
He had 4 months of retirement pay. About $4400. I’m drawing $12,000 from my 401k. Now toss on that nice surprise of the $25,000 retiree death benefit. It totals $41,400. Add a few hundred for interest from t-bills and savings. A rough total of $42,000. Deduct the surviving spouse amount, I’m at $12,800 for income. I think. It’s all vague. It all goes in circles.
Anyway. It’s a one time hit I’ll have to pay. I think. I might be thinking too much.
I’m going to go feed the dogs.
ZeroHedge:
Former President Donald Trump will sit for a voluntary interview with the FBI regarding the probe into the assassination attempt against him at a campaign rally earlier this month, according to a special agent on July 29.
“Never talk to the feds”. – M. Stewart
Dogs are fed. It’s easy to make them happy.
I bought the set of movies Alan suggested. I have downloaded all 25, 103GB. I paid $21 and change with sales tax.
Does VLC play the movies? Does Firefox? (corrupted file) Does a movie on a USB stick play on the Blu-ray player? Nope, nope, and nope.
I have to use the Win11 “Movies and TV” program. Which, yeah, I have a 32″ monitor with exceptionally crappy speakers.
Looks like I wasted $21. I could mess around and see if one of the laptops will work and connect it to the 55″ TV and have Rumble Rama Audio. But, nope. Too much clutter in the living room.
For example, one file is named “Justice League_SMID9039CE0A-0100-11DB-89CA-0019B92A3933.mp4”.
Oh, I had to create an MS account to buy the package of movies. I haven’t re-booted my PC. I would not be surprised if I had to log into my unwanted MS account to watch a movie.
Oh well. I’m cool. 🙂
My office Windows 11 Pro x64 1 TB M.2 32 GB PC just locked up tight. The screens were still active but the mouse and keyboard were frozen. I had about eight or ten things going including writing the backup for last weekend that failed to complete and two Excel spreadsheets. I hope that this does not become a common problem.
I had my home Windows 10 x64 Pro PC WD 2 TB internal backup drive fail over the weekend. All of a sudden it has 200+ KB of bad sectors. Since bad sectors tend to propagate, I am going to ditch it. I have an old 4 TB backup drive in a drawer here at the office so I am going to steal that and see if I get a good backup at home.
You cannot file as surviving spouse unless you have a child, or childs (sic). You will more than likely owe some money to the IRS. Not knowing how much SS you get, I estimated about 36K for the year, and that would make $5K of that taxable income. The big unknown is how the death benefits will be reported. Generally, death benefits are not taxable. If they are you will get a 1099 with the taxable amount.
If you are under 65 the standard deduction is $13,850, 65 or over it is $15,700.
My quick calculations, using some faked numbers and guesses, you may owe $700 or so to the IRS.
You may want to go online to one of the online tax entities that does the simple stuff for free. It may not work with your income sources but you might be able to get an estimate before the end of the year. This will allow you to pay estimated taxes and avoid penalties if you wind up owing a lot.
The IRS may require that you send in quarterly tax payments next year if you severely underpay. That boundary is about $1,000. My aunt got involved with a less than ethical lawyer who sold all her investments producing significant capital gains. She got slammed with a penalty from the IRS for failing to pay enough during the year and was forced to pay quarterly the next year. She got all the quarterly payments back in a tax refund the next year.
It may be wise to consult with a tax accountant this tax year. The money spent may be worth it to get it all correct and keep the IRS out of your life.
If your partner had investments that grew between his death, and the probate of the will, there will be tax on those benefits. The estate will have to pay taxes using a form 1040I. The estate will also have to acquire a unique tax ID as the SS number of the deceased is no longer valid. That acquisition is fairly easily accomplished online.
I just tried a couple of mp4 files on a USB stick and the Sony Blu-ray player just played. As expected. I tried one of the movies on the same USB stick and the little circle of dots swirled around and then froze.
Yeah. So MS made mp4 some kind of proprietary file, evil.
He had 4 months of retirement pay. About $4400. I’m drawing $12,000 from my 401k. Now toss on that nice surprise of the $25,000 retiree death benefit. It totals $41,400. Add a few hundred for interest from t-bills and savings. A rough total of $42,000. Deduct the surviving spouse amount, I’m at $12,800 for income. I think. It’s all vague. It all goes in circles.
I am thinking about retiring. I told the main business board of directors that last week and got the big eyes. It is just my father and my middle brother. My father thinks that I should work until at least 70. But he retired when he was 59. He still works peripherally. Our other partner passed away in 2020 and his wife does not care about the business.
I am 64 now. I have been working full time or working part time and going to school since I was 14. 49 years in June.
I think that I have enough assets but it is very hard to tell. I am figuring on Social Security and Medicare being means tested in the not so distant future so those will not be there. I also figure that the real inflation is going to be 30% per year. Yeah, no middle class by 2030.
My wife is very against me retiring. The problem is our disabled 37 year old daughter, she is very expensive. Very difficult to work up a budget.
Niels Bohr said: “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future!”.
There are no investments. We were never that clever. Or had enough spare money.
Just his retirement and SS. And my SS and my 401k draws.
His retirement was $1100/month. SS $1900/month.
Me? SS around $950/month. Plus $1000/month from my 401k.
Did not see that tidbit anywhere. There are kids but they are years out of the nest.
Do I do two tax returns this year? One for the dead guy and another for me? If so, why is there a Surviving Spouse option? We are/were over 65.
The 25 grand death benefit is withholding 10% for taxes. My 401k withholds 20%.
I know I’m going to have to pay. Once.
Thanks, Ray.
If you filed jointly in the past then you should only have one return. The extra for my MIL was due to the investments and was actually the estate filing, not the MIL.
Death benefits are usually not taxable as it is not income. You may get that 10% back.
I thought that was Yogi Berra.
Berra, like Bohr, was a Copenhagenist after all, and once said: “when you come to a fork in the road – take it”.
Morgan Stanley is #5 on the list of institutional shareholders of TSLA, owning $9.3 billion worth of the stock according to Yahoo! Finance.
Lining the retail sheeple up for shearing.
Geesh, Vanguard owns $25 billion worth.
MP4 must have some kind of protection mechanism as part of the standard. Interesting.
Windows 11 was all about making Hollywood happy by closing the loopholes in the driver stack which the pirates use to bootleg streaming services.
See what Handbrake thinks about the file before totally giving up, but VLC covers just about everything without encryption.
re: estate tax returns
If there’s probate, and maybe if not, there’ll be a tax return just for the estate. The taxes due might/can/could flow down to the heirs as K-1’s. But in general there shouldn’t be much taxable income for a modest estate.
My brother’s estate had some real estate deals pending, and we got hit by this.
There may be some senior services out there that will help you with the taxes. Most big cities and counties have senior centers with resource lists.
I think it might be a good idea to get pro help this one time. The IRS has no sense of humor. Or justice.
When the war gets going in earnest, no one, and I mean no one, will be interested in climate change.
————-
Pretty dang hot, and very humid here. I took my second shower of the day before going to dinner with my sibling…
————
n
Morgan Stanley only owns $584 million worth of Ford stock.
Ray: I filed a joint return for the tax in year in which my wife died.
When the war gets going in earnest, no one, and I mean no one, will be interested in climate change.
Which war is that ?
Any of them. All of them.
I can’t decide how to rank the choices. War is coming though, I’m 95% sure of that.
n
I predict there will be 2 state funerals before election day. And a non-stop orgy of MSM eulogies for 2 brave Democrat men who bravely gave up power when it was time. All headed up by our first Black Female president, who can act somber and thus avoid cackling.
I’m not sure FJB is still alive. They could be waiting for the best time, like after the Dem convention, to uplift Kamala and get his body out of the fridge. Also working aroundh Carter, who seems to be taking his time.
Silly Carter. Doesn’t he know Kamala needs him to go already, so they can camp out on his corpse?
Well, there’s Venezuela. Which could become a civil war down there, and who knows how that would spread.
What will FJB do there? Send troops and weapons to support the commie? He already sent money a couple years ago.
I thought that was Yogi Berra.
Berra, like Bohr, was a Copenhagenist after all, and once said: “when you come to a fork in the road – take it”.
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/niels_bohr_130288
“The Wise and the Mad (Futanari Saga)” by Francis Porretto
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/107049948X?tag=ttgnet-20/
Book number three of a four book science fiction series. I read the well printed and well bound POD (print on demand) trade paperback that the author self published on Amazon in 2019 that I bought new. I have purchased the fourth book in the series and will read it soon.
This may be the weirdest science fiction series that I have ever read. And I have read thousands of science fiction and fantasy books over my many years. The series is a very interesting take on what the future genetic engineers may bring us. This is fairly along the same lines as the avian children in “When the Wind Blows” by James Patterson, the protomolecule in “Leviathan Wakes” by James S. A. Corey, or the dinosaurs in “Jurassic Park” by Michael Crichton but uses a more shocking mutation to get the author’s point across.
This book is set in 2030. A neurophysiologist who developed a technique using nanobots to change a person’s desires has been requested by the Catholic church to develop a method to tell what a person’s sexual desire is. The homosexual community in the USA is very agitated and demonstrates in front of the clinic. A homosexual advocacy group is suing the neurophysiologist to get control of her nanobot desire change method. There is no sex in the book but some implied sex. The sex slaver who was cloning Futanaris and raising them to be sex slaves has committed ritual suicide in Japan.
In the Futanari Saga Universe, 100 to 200 Futanaris are naturally born every year. They appear to be male at birth but become mostly female at puberty. Many are murdered or ostracized by their families. The author’s definition of a Futanari is female appearance, female size, and XX chromosomes with male genitals instead of female genitals. Yeah, you read that correctly as this does not match the Wikipedia definition of Futanari that I looked up. But, somebody has cloned Futanaris and raised them as incredibly expensive sex slaves.
The author has an active website at:
http://www.libertystorch.info/
My rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars (12 ratings)
Lynn
Biden was alive and shuffling around the LBJ Library today in Austin.
https://www.fox7austin.com/news/joe-biden-in-austin-to-deliver-keynote-address
Please. Venezuela has been waiting 25 years for a US intervention which never happened.
The country’s elite have decided to stop wasting their time with Republicans and shifted to working the Dems, particularly in South Florida where the party is locked out of real power at the state level for at least a generation.
There are always wars and rumors of wars.
When I was in the Navy, shortly before I retired, I was attending a briefing at the SCIF at Subic Bay. One of the briefers mentioned, as an odd point, that in the previous week there had been no organized conflicts, and that this hadn’t happened ever before that he could remember. A whole WEEK with no wars! No revolutions, no insurrections.
So, yes, war is coming. Probably a second American Civil War, and we should start numbering them; “CW”, 1861-1865, and “CWII”, Real Soon Now.
If war and conflict are the natural state of man, we’re overdue for a big one.
n