And it’s still hot in Houston. Humid too. 100F this afternoon according to my truck, and 88F at 10pm. Humidity to match. Weather liars said it would be the same for a while yet. I’ll probably bemoan the cold when it finally gets here too, but I’m heartily tired of the humidity.
Did some stuff yesterday. Mainly poked at networking stuff at my client’s house. Frustrating. But got the xfinity fiber working. I have to go back and clean up the install, and swap some settings around so that xfinity is primary and the ATT fiber is secondary. He’s still got at least a month and a half to go on his ATT contract so we’ll run with a backup until then. xfinity still hasn’t buried the fiber, they just left it laying on the grass. Supposedly a crew will come back and underground it. I’m thinking a plow, but I don’t really know. I’ve got some firmware to update on various pieces of gear, and some other stuff to do as soon as it cools down a bit. I won’t work in the attic if I don’t absolutely have to with it being this hot.
Today I’ve got to pick up some metal cabinets I won, and do some other pickups too. Then I should hit Lowes and buy project materials for the BOL. And I should definitely run some stuff to storage to get it out of the house. Wife’s birthday celebration will be at the BOL this weekend but getting the house cleaned up will put her in a good mood. I’ve been sorta trying all week but things keep coming up. Happy wife, happy life and all that. The opposite is certainly true.
Last night’s dinner was put in the deep freeze back in 2020. I did a little moving and digging in one of the freezers, and dug it up. There is plenty more in there from that time, and even older. Keep it vac sealed, keep it deep frozen, and you can keep it a long time. I haven’t been very good at rotating…
But I have been good at stacking. I’ve even switched to just mostly replacing what we eat as I’m comfortable with the amount I’ve got stored. I DO need to do some extra replacement for spoiled cans, and stuff that failed, above and beyond what we’re using. And I’d stack more, but we are already way behind on rotating stock, and I’m frankly running out of space that is good for food storage. I’m still building up the BOL with new stuff though. It’s just here that I feel like I have to turn over some of the old if I want more new. Of course if I’m feeding more than just us, I don’t have enough. But that would be the case no matter how much I had.
Stack what you need, and then stack more, but try for balance with the inevitable entropy and a reasonable use budget.
nick
They voted for it. Corn Pop. Whitmer. Many more before them in Michigan and across the midwest.
Scranton Joe.
In Illinois, its the friggin’ Pritzker family. The common touch. And he thinks he can run for President.
75F this morning. It’s been enough days now that I’m sure of the shift. Fall is here whether we acknowledge it or not.
n
Just watched the possum on my attic cam knock over the rat trap bucket, and crawl in to (presumably) eat the two blocks of rat poison in there. Then he made a circuit of that part of the attic and headed for his entry/exit to the garage. He’s definitely using the soffit space to move around the perimeter of the house, and to get from the garage to the main house attic. I don’t want a poisoned possum, but he did it to himself. I REALLY don’t want a dead possum somewhere in the soffits or attic.
n
Maybe someone will develop a critter trap that attaches an Airtag.
Heh, my preferred band of indelible marker. The word Sharpie is like Kleenex or Xerox. The original is now the generic name for the competition.
I really despise stupid programmers and stupid websites.
I got an email (yes, it was from Chase) from Chase saying my information had been exposed in a data breach. Well, really, whose hasn’t? The link in the email takes me to their website. OK. I try to log in but I need a security code they will send me. But they want to text me or call me at my home phone even though I have provided my cell phone. Choosing the cell phone is not an option. The recorded voice that speaks the code is barely intelligible. Instead of giving one number at a time, they speak two digits at a time. Then to get to the option to repeat the number it is necessary to listen to a one-minute recording about fraud.
Once I get to my account on their website, there is no place to review the information on the breach. Nowhere to be found. If the information is there it is so well hidden that I am not clicking through 30 options in the menu to find the information. Logical places do not have the information.
What a bunch of idiots that have obviously never used their system.
Of course. It’s just window dressing to act like they’re informing you and then can deny any responsibility from there on out.
Ever since Spongey decided to not seek reelection he has generally been vacant from the news. There has been nothing in the last week where Spongey has made an appearance. I have not even seen him stumping for the Humper. It makes me wonder if his condition has really deteriorated to the point where he is almost mentally non-functional. That he is being hidden from the public so that the public does not know the real truth. (See “Dave” the movie for reference).
Remember, the same people who said Spongey was fully qualified, are now hiding him from the public. Instead their energies are being bandied around the Humper. The Humper has really done nothing during her 3.5+ years in office. As the border Czar she did nothing. As a district attorney she threatened to jail people without cause with just a stroke of her pen.
If it were not for the media being in her corner, she would be totally ineffectual at anything.
The Humper is threatening to use executive orders to get her way. The banning of guns by executive order is a direct violation of the constitution. The last I checked executive orders only apply to the military and government workers, not private citizen. not congress, not the senate. This indicates to me she has a complete misunderstanding of the constitution and the separation of powers.
I am no fan of the orange man either.
Harris understands the separation, but challenges to the executive order would take time to work through the court system. Look at how long it took to get the jab mandate overturned, ruining a lot of Christmas plans as job loss loomed for the “unclean”, and, for those of us who chose to remain part of the Control under any circumstances, almost literal gold stars pinned to our jackets and threats of Ze Kampfs.
Imagine how reluctant gun owners will be pilloried as any seizure order gets reviewed.
BTW, I’m still waiting for that knock on my door. We will see who rusts first.
However:
Always vote, even if it is for the lesser weevil. Use a clothespin on your nose if you must, but vote.
The LSM is pushing the Kamel Humper/schmWaltz line that they are the candidates for “joy and happiness.” There are no hard questions for them—just questions about her hair, how great their lives are, etc. tRump is Hitler, tho. The sheeple will buy this.
tRump/vAnce TRANCEtm 2024!
Not all of the sheeple but the Wine/Weed Moms who are going to decide this thing, yeah, they will buy it.
Newest Ebay Gold:
Unexploded Hezbooboo pager
Who wants to bet the TSA implements new draconian polices because of this (exploding pagers)?
I do, and it is sometimes really painful. I need a clothespin for one end and a cork for the other end to keep from fouling the voting both. It is sometimes extremely distasteful to vote. This will be one of those years.
Not that my vote really counts. The dimocrats will be doing what is necessary to have the Humper win. Not large scale as that too large to keep really secrets. But small issues in every precinct that add up when counted.
LBJ had dozens of dead people vote for him. Their names were on the voter rolls, in the exact order they appeared on the headstones in the local cemetery. This was long before large scale computer use and the rolls were largely manual and counted manually, then phoned in to the next level.
Al Gore did not carry East TN because I slammed him in the paper. I caught him giving lip service and not doing his job. Front page on the paper. Because he did not carry East TN, he failed to carry TN. Because he failed to carry TN, he failed to win the election and resorted to the Florida debacle. I like to think I personally caused him to lose. I actually doubt that was the real reason. But I did help him lose and like to think it was really my fault. It makes me feel better.
Learn to code. Yeah, how’s that working out? (sorry Greg.)
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13869105/warning-artificial-intelligence-replace-tech-jobs-layoffs.html
n
I don’t know if they will. The explosions are localized to the person with the pager, and are relatively small.
But I may very well be incorrect. The TSA may ban all electronic devices from certain countries. I think they aught to ban all people from certain countries from traveling to the U.S. Call me Raycist but they are doing it to themselves.
The TSA may ban pagers, but it would be a self-inflicted disaster for the TSA to ban cell phones.
The cost of the Florida debacle was the loss of Vote-O-Matic, a tamper resistant balloting system, and the rise of the touch screen boondoggles.
Vote-O-Matic stations and the cards were EBay gold.
Paging CowboyStu
Email and text sent
Banks, amirite? And politicians…
I’m more than fed up with the bank that holds my mortgage, as they have (since I bought this place); closed the Mortgage Center in the town I live in, so I have to drive 90 minutes to deal with them in person if needed; when I had an ATM fail to give me cash after withdrawing it from my account, refuse to take an official report without an in-person visit to my branch (again, 90 minutes away, so more cost in gas than I lost in cash); and most recently, after ‘investigating’ my property tax account to see if I indeed had a balance after the taxes were paid, transferred the wrong amount from that account to my main account, although I requested a specific amount twice. Also of note is that the original service request CANNOT be viewed or accessed from my online account after I send it, and their replies disappear after an unknown period, which is why a prior request and reply from 2 years ago is no longer in their system.
And I’d move my business except that our Fearless Leader TrueDough and his party changed banking regulations years ago so I can’t refinance at my present level of equity.
Some days make you wonder if anything will continue to work, or if it’s all collapsing under it’s own weight.
You have my gratitude for this and some other things. Maybe you should change your alias to StingRay!
There are a lot of “programmers” who are only marginally competent. My one stint as a manager, I had one guy whose productivity was genuinely negative, because the competent had to clean up after him. I wasn’t allowed to get rid if him.
The semi-competent programmers can, in fact, be replaced by ChatGPT. How? It is an incredible multiplier, especially for generalists who do a zillion different things. For a small company, one good generalist can now easily replace a host of mediocre specialists.
Anyway, think about other fields. Mediocre journalists are already gone. AI companies are experimenting with AIs controlling robots: In a few years, all sorts of physical low-skill jobs could be impacted. Stocking shelves? Janitorial services? Bar tending?
Hang on tight, fun times ahead.
Hey Rickh, my wife really like your “The RV Park Redemption (The RV Vigilante)” by Richard Hellewell. She gave it 4.5 out of 5 stars and is going to buy the sequel book.
https://www.amazon.com/RV-Park-Redemption-Vigilante/dp/B0CKDBG56L?tag=ttgnet-20/
She also is looking at your “The Forgotten Winchester” by Richard Hellewell.
https://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-Winchester-Richard-Hellewell/dp/1082219657?tag=ttgnet-20/
She asked me if I read your Light Blink books and I said yes.
The semi-competent programmers can, in fact, be replaced by ChatGPT. How? It is an incredible multiplier, especially for generalists who do a zillion different things. For a small company, one good generalist can now easily replace a host of mediocre specialists.
Anyway, think about other fields. Mediocre journalists are already gone. AI companies are experimenting with AIs controlling robots: In a few years, all sorts of physical low-skill jobs could be impacted. Stocking shelves? Janitorial services? Bar tending?
Do you trust AI robots not to beat you to death with the broom ?
The Tesla Bot coming out soon for $25K scares the you know what out of me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimus_(robot)
And it’s still hot in Houston. Humid too. 100F this afternoon according to my truck, and 88F at 10pm. Humidity to match. Weather liars said it would be the same for a while yet. I’ll probably bemoan the cold when it finally gets here too, but I’m heartily tired of the humidity.
Our 7pm 1.5 mile walks have been very uncomfortable. I rinse my head and shoulders, throw by dockers back on, and go back to the office until midnight or so. I take a real shower when I get home as I do not want to take three showers a day.
Who wants to bet the TSA implements new draconian polices because of this (exploding pagers)?
The plastic explosive is only three grams and is sealed in a container on the micro circuit board. Good luck building a detector as it was designed to not be detectable.
“BREAKING: 20 Supporters Seated Behind Trump Onstage Rushed to ER with ‘Blurred Vision’ and ‘Eye Burns’ After Rally in Tucson, Arizona”
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/09/breaking-20-supporters-seated-behind-trump-onstage-rushed/
Laser. There are some real scumbags out there.
Hat tip to:
https://thelibertydaily.com/
There are a lot of “programmers” who are only marginally competent. My one stint as a manager, I had one guy whose productivity was genuinely negative, because the competent had to clean up after him. I wasn’t allowed to get rid if him.
The semi-competent programmers can, in fact, be replaced by ChatGPT. How? It is an incredible multiplier, especially for generalists who do a zillion different things. For a small company, one good generalist can now easily replace a host of mediocre specialists.
Anyway, think about other fields. Mediocre journalists are already gone. AI companies are experimenting with AIs controlling robots: In a few years, all sorts of physical low-skill jobs could be impacted. Stocking shelves? Janitorial services? Bar tending?
BTW, we are seeing this in the crude oil and natural gas industries too. Severe employment drop in the last 2 or 3 years. When I sent out my release newsletter Monday night, almost two dozen came back as undeliverable, email unknown. This email was to paying customers only.
There were 15 million employed in oil and gas industries across the USA ten years ago. It was 11 million two years ago. I am SWAGging way below 10 million now.
I am thinking about a 50% price decrease to make us more competitive. We are just not getting very much interest anymore and I know that some of my competitors have dropped their prices way below mine to get business closed.
Thank you for passing along her kind words about the “RV Vigilante” books. I assume that she has/will leave a review on Amazon (it hasn’t shown up yet). Reviews are very helpful.
Hope she enjoys “The Forgotten Winchester”. That book starts out a bit slow, but the first part is there for a reason that becomes evident in the second part. It’s a Classic Western (in the ‘Louis L’Amour’ style). But I like the ending – and there are pix in the book of the actual discovery of the rifle.
Thanks again.
It’s like the self-driving cars. They are going to kill people in new and unusual ways. However, they will kill *fewer* people than people do.
Optimus as a fast-food worker may well beat a couple of customers to death with the soft-ice machine. Likely, those will be the customer that current workers *wish* they could beat to death. 😛
This operation has been an absolute triumph of military intelligence, planning and execution. However, one must note that it does violate the widely agreed rules of war, namely, not to booby-trap apparently harmless objects that civilians are likely to touch. Dad’s pager goes off, kid helpfully bri…boom.
Yes, Hezbollah operatives deserve whatever they get. However, an operation like this inevitably has a lot of collateral damage. On the gripping hand, so did fire-bombing Dresden and nuking Hiroshima. War is horrible, and humans spend way too much time on it.
Tough decision. Glad it’s you and not me. When we ran our little software company, I was a terrible marketer / sales person. In your case, you have a solid marketing
wifemanager. Maybe let her make the decision?I honestly ask: Is this codified somewhere, or simply a good rule-of-thumb?
The counterargument is that only members of a terrorist network were issued these devices, that these devices were specifically used for militant communications, and to that extent noncombatants were mostly protected, and the terrorist organization is not a signatory to any “rules of warfare” agreements. Notably, Hezbollah has fired over 4000 missiles with no regard to civilian casualties.
Here is a timeline of the achievments of Hezbollah. Given their American death toll back in the Reagan years, I’m surprised they still exist. You know, bombing a US embassy is an act of war.
xfinity still hasn’t buried the fiber, they just left it laying on the grass. Supposedly a crew will come back and underground it. I’m thinking a plow, but I don’t really know.
Shovel. They send a first year tech out to bury the cable. He / she / it will put the cable 4 to 6 inches under the ground. Xfinity has replaced two 300 foot cables for me over the last five years since they are so shallow. Hopefully number three is the charm.
BTW, we are seeing this in the crude oil and natural gas industries too. Severe employment drop in the last 2 or 3 years. When I sent out my release newsletter Monday night, almost two dozen came back as undeliverable, email unknown. This email was to paying customers only.
There were 15 million employed in oil and gas industries across the USA ten years ago. It was 11 million two years ago. I am SWAGging way below 10 million now.
I am thinking about a 50% price decrease to make us more competitive. We are just not getting very much interest anymore and I know that some of my competitors have dropped their prices way below mine to get business closed.
BTW, I have lost half of my customers since 2010. Most due to bankruptcy or death of the primary engineer. And not just in the USA.
Last night’s dinner was put in the deep freeze back in 2020. I did a little moving and digging in one of the freezers, and dug it up. There is plenty more in there from that time, and even older. Keep it vac sealed, keep it deep frozen, and you can keep it a long time. I haven’t been very good at rotating…
Are there any MREs that you can keep in a 140 F truck for a few years ? I keep a 24 bottle case of water and four Mountain House freeze dried meals behind the rear seat. I figure that in the worst case, one can just pour water in the freeze dried package and let it soak if you do not have a heat source. But a high temperature MRE would be better.
https://www.amazon.com/Mountain-House-Spaghetti-Backpacking-Servings/dp/B084NW22VS?tag=ttgnet-20/
I really get freaked out by this book, “Going Home: A Novel (The Survivalist Series)” by A. American, as I am more than 100 miles away from home at least once per month. Sometimes 200 or 500 miles away. That is a heck of a walk, especially if one has to walk through a large city.
https://www.amazon.com/Going-Home-Novel-Survivalist-American/dp/0142181277?tag=ttgnet-20/
Just watched the possum on my attic cam knock over the rat trap bucket, and crawl in to (presumably) eat the two blocks of rat poison in there. Then he made a circuit of that part of the attic and headed for his entry/exit to the garage. He’s definitely using the soffit space to move around the perimeter of the house, and to get from the garage to the main house attic. I don’t want a poisoned possum, but he did it to himself. I REALLY don’t want a dead possum somewhere in the soffits or attic.
Hey, what was that old wildlife adventure tv show that showed on Sunday afternoons ? Sounds like you have your own version of it.
Are you sure that the poison will affect the possum ? They are incredibly tough. The only poison that I think will affect them is the warfarin, the blood thinner.
“Bernie Sanders Preparing Resolutions to Block $20B in U.S. Arms Sales to Israel”
https://headlineusa.com/sanders-resolutions-arms-sales-israel/
Bernie, Bernie, Bernie ! You idiot, don’t you know that you will then force Israel to use Canned Sunshine ? By supplying Israel with arms, we give them options to use instead of Canned Sunshine.
I knew that Bernie was an idiot but I did not realize that he was as stupid as Joe Biden.
Of course if I’m feeding more than just us, I don’t have enough. But that would be the case no matter how much I had.
This is the problem. In some versions of a event, you will have to feed and arm your neighbors. You will never have enough.
I am no fan of the orange man either.
That orange man put three originalists on SCOTUS that are the only thing holding us back from savagery. Had SCOTUS not come up with some of their recent decisions about free speech and gun rights, we would be in Civil War 2.0 right now. Biden and his ilk are dictators and think that they can do anything that they want to do without Congress and the US Courts.
I figure that if the USA goes into Civil War 2.0 then the rest of the world will watch horrified, then go “solve” their own neighbor problems. WW III is being just barely delayed and many dictators want to to start it up right now.
My grandparents told me about living though WW II. The food rationing, the lack of new vehicles, the lack of spare parts like tires, batteries, oil, gasoline rationing was very difficult for four years. Plus fifteen million men in the USA were in the various armed forces. But we were a cakewalk compared to Germany and Japan where the countries were destroyed and starvation was common.
I mean besides terrorists and other ‘bad guys,’ who uses pagers?
Harris understands the separation, but challenges to the executive order would take time to work through the court system. Look at how long it took to get the jab mandate overturned, ruining a lot of Christmas plans as job loss loomed for the “unclean”, and, for those of us who chose to remain part of the Control under any circumstances, almost literal gold stars pinned to our jackets and threats of Ze Kampfs.
Imagine how reluctant gun owners will be pilloried as any seizure order gets reviewed.
BTW, I’m still waiting for that knock on my door. We will see who rusts first.
There are many people who consider any executive order banning any guns to be a start for Civil War 2.0. They have federal officers mapped out and are ready to execute them.
I mean besides terrorists and other ‘bad guys,’ who uses pagers?
Do doctors still use pagers ? They are almost guaranteed to work in emergency conditions as they are low bandwidth devices.
Maybe lasers, or maybe a chemical agent sprayed on the high-end vehicles in the rally parking area, near the cabin air intakes. It wasn’t clear to me if the effects were while attending, or after leaving the rally.
Also, you only try to discourage people if they’re doing something you don’t want happening and are afraid it will.
NB I reread the article, and some were affected there. So not chemicals on the cars (maybe).
“A.F. Branco Cartoon – Bad Connection”
https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-bad-connection/
“A.F. Branco Cartoon – Thousands of Hezbollah terrorists’ pagers and walkie-talkies are literally blowing up, killing and injuring hundreds. They were booby-trapped by Israel in an effort to fight against terrorism.”
I am sorry but that is funny because it happened to the bad guys.
Lasering innocent people in a crowd because the sanctimonious undoubtedly PLT is full-on TDS? How about removing one eyeball with a grapefruit spoon? Immediately.
There’s no doubt that the terrorists will complain to the Jew-hating EU courts about ‘splody military devices. Be too bad if a stray Hezbooboo rocket landed on the deliberating judges. Yeah, 100/200 km range rocket catches tailwind and travels 2000km. Just a fluke.
I’ve saved two major releases at work in the last few months catching AI mistakes right at the end.
And I’m not talking about complex tasks where the breakdowns happened.
The AI does my job about as well as an Elementary Music Education major from Baylor.
As long as the Monkey Trick lasts, I’m gainfully employed.
When it runs out of steam, everyone in tech will be in trouble.
My whole career has been a combination of “Chewed Out” and “The word … is ‘no’”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGHj_l11vPI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCgWzlxnqhc
You actually think that will work. I don’t.
Shovel. They send a first year tech out to bury the cable.
– it’s about 1000 feet or more, maybe 2000 depending on path… gonna take the new guy a while.
————-
Eye burns, yeah my first thought was infrared laser. I would be going over the video and pix of the crowd looking for it right now if I was involved. Green laser pointers put out a huge amount of IR, which is SUPPOSED to be blocked by a filter. One of the reasons the chinese green lasers are so dangerous, besides the crazy high power green light, is that they skip the IR filter, so you can laser someone with it, while not actually shining the green in their eyes. And your eye doesn’t perceive the IR so it doesn’t blink. Small diode lasers are common, and easy enough to get. Wouldn’t take much to get one from a laser printer for example. Build it into a phone, camera, or binoculars…
————-
The left is full of hate and envy. Blinding or maiming their enemies wouldn’t be an issue for some of them.
n
“Unbelievable F-15QA Advanced Eagle Stuns Crowd at RIAT with Stunning Display!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NUAjWlNCY4
That F-15QA has a full F-15I (Israeli) flight package to mimic a fifth generation aircraft. That pilot was flying in stall conditions several times ! The landing was unbelievable. I did not see any vectoring controls though.
I wonder if it has the Israeli avionics packages ? I severely doubt it.
You actually think that will work. I don’t.
I think that it will work just fine. After all, it is just a machine, it just runs programs.
The real question is, will it kill you while it is running its programs ?
Will it walk though you while taking stuff into the house ? Will it accidentally hit you while fluffing the sheets ? Will it run over your two year old ? Will it try to load you into the clothes washer because you are wearing clothes ?
“Elon Musk officially moves X headquarters from California to Texas”
https://www.chron.com/culture/article/x-twitter-hq-texas-musk-19777426.php
Bastrop ? Really ? That makes too much sense. Smithville would have been better though.
“Rising power prices could drive nearly half of US households to rooftop solar: Enverus”
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/half-us-households-adopt-rooftop-solar-2050-enervus/727008/
“Widespread rooftop solar adoption could change the type of generation resources that utilities need, according to analysis by Enverus Intelligence Research.”
Yup, I am thinking about it as I am paying 15 cents/kwh at my house now.
Whoever gave the most generous tax breaks.
Buc-ee’s is in Bastrop for a reason.
I’ve seen the plans to toll 71 all the way from the airport to the I-10 intersection. Eventually, the toll lanes on I-10 running west from Katy will intersect.
“Monster Hunter Vendetta (Monster Hunter International Book 2)” by Larry Correia
https://www.amazon.com/Monster-Hunter-Vendetta-Larry-Correia/dp/1439133913?tag=ttgnet-20/
Book number two of an eight book dark fantasy series. There are several other books that are spinoffs from the series, prequels and such. I first read this book in 2011. I reread the well printed and well bound MMPB published by Baen that I bought new on Amazon rather than find the book in my garage stash. I have all of the books in the series and am rereading through them.
Anita Blake meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer and turns into a guy named Owen Pitt. An accountant turns into a Monster Hunter after a close encounter with a werewolf in his office. Even somewhat reminds me of Owen Deathstalker. If you like Urban Fantasy, you will love this hardcore story. If not, oh well.
https://www.amazon.com/Deathstalker-1-Simon-R-Green/dp/1625672071?tag=ttgnet-20/
The story is sound, the concept is good, the good guys are imperfect and the bad guys are real bad.
And, I like Skippy. It just works that an Uzbekistan Orc can fly a Hind 24 with the best of them.
I also like agent Franks. Who would not like Frankenstein’s monster ?
The author has a website. Note, the author does not suffer fools at all and will write a 2,000 word essay on why you suck.
https://monsterhunternation.com/
My rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars (3,889 reviews)
Lynn
Driving home from a company “volunteer” event at the food bank today, I noticed that new billboards were up on US 183 advertising post-Fed 50 basis point HELOC rates at a local credit union.
The Juice is loose.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiiTlK-9tus
Finished book two of the Jane Yellowrock series. Still not sure I like it but I’ll give #3 a chance. It’s growing on me. The best part is that she doesn’t keep pulling new rabbits out of her hat. She’s learning, and growing, and we’re learning about her as she does, but she doesn’t just turn out to be the wannabe ruler of the world’s kid… with all kinds of secret majick to draw on.
n
The big problem with Slack is that the messages become the property of Salesforce.
The tolling company stopped using Slack once they learned that they could not obtain archived messages with sufficient proof of provenance to use to fire people. Microsoft is much more accommodating with Teams .
https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/disney-stop-using-salesforce-owned-slack-after-hack-exposed-company-data-wsj-2024-09-19/
Bastrop is closer to the Austin/Bergtrom airport than Smithville.
I watched Little Shop of Horrors tonight. Yeah, if it wasn’t part of a set of 10 movies it would be in the “trash pile” of DVDs going to Goodwill.
Well made movie. I just didn’t like it. I didn’t hate any of the characters. The constant singing was annoying. It was like drama class in college when they did Yankee Doodle Dandy. But thank god without the tap dancing. It was a long hour and a half.
I toted trash to Clyde’s today. Checked his house, it’s fine. I had plenty of trash, it’s been almost two months to almost fill one kitchen trash bag.. I cleaned stuff out of the pantry. I don’t need and will never use three boxes three quarters full of powdered sugar (the fine stuff with a bit of cornstarch) (powdered donuts!). Same for a few bottles of corn syrup. And pancake syrups and BBQ sauces. Plus a few bottles of Walmart catsup and tartar sauce…. It’s not bad stuff, just doesn’t taste right to me.
Discover Card has quarterly things where you can get 5% cashback instead of 1%. This quarter, ending this month, is 5% at grocery stores and Walmart, in-store or curbside or online.
Tomorrow’s plan is to get a few packs of the little bacon wrapped steaks. One is enough for me. Some tater tots or skinny fires. Fajitas. Milk Bones. And generally stuff not in the chip aisle that looks interesting.
Tomorrow’s movie should be good. Prometheus. Reads like it is a good movie. And then finally, I’ll start on Firefly.
I have plans. Not saying I have good plans. But, ya know?
The local wISP used Slack for a chat room for a while. I think the terms changed and if you had more that X number of people you have to pay.
So he switched it to Discord. Seems ok.
“The constant singing was annoying.”
That’s the problem I have with the soundtrack of life. Too much singing, and not enough ass-kicking guitar with cartilage-melting drums.
^^Amen.
I use powdered sugar for hillbilly donuts.
Rick Moranis is one of those guys you either love or hate. And Little Shop is one of those shows that you love or hate… It’s like a twofer… most of the people that came out of Second City and that improv group are like that.
I’ve never seen Prometheous but I’ve seen most of the others you’ve watched. Goonies is like a touchstone for my generation, and I watched Gremlins with oldest last year. It held up pretty well. I forgot that it was so graphic.
Loved firefly and the movies.
n
I watched Little Shop of Horrors tonight. Yeah, if it wasn’t part of a set of 10 movies it would be in the “trash pile” of DVDs going to Goodwill.
Well made movie. I just didn’t like it. I didn’t hate any of the characters. The constant singing was annoying. It was like drama class in college when they did Yankee Doodle Dandy. But thank god without the tap dancing. It was a long hour and a half.
I have never finished the Little Shop of Horrors. Just too weird for me.
Tomorrow’s movie should be good. Prometheus. Reads like it is a good movie. And then finally, I’ll start on Firefly.
Prometheus is good and scared the crap out of me.
Firefly is freaking awesome. I have watched the entire Firefly series at least three times.
We chickened out and decided to renew the flood insurance at our home. It was $930 for a year of $250,000 insurance for rising water. We almost had water to our house front door during Hurricane Beryl which was quite unnerving. The water would had to come up at least another foot to flood our home which would be an incredible amount of water.
That’s probably a good call. Increasing urbanization means increasing runoff, and it sounds like your area is developing quickly.
“Prometheus”
One line is really awful. You’ll know which one when you hear it.
You must have seen the Frank Oz – yes, as in Miss Piggy and Fozzy Bear — remake.
The original, made by Roger Corman in two days (!) and featuring a very young Jack Nicholson in a minor role is a classic.
If you want to see a very good Frank Oz movie, find “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels”.
Other Oz movies often in the clearance bin which you may or may not appreciate are “What About Bob” and “Bowfinger”.
Steve Martin was working out some anger in the “Bowfinger” script. The movie is brutally funny if you understand what was going on in Martin’s personal life at the time.
Even with paid Slack service, the messages remain the property of Salesforce.
It makes firing people over comments in the chat room kinda inconvenient. After more than a certain number of days, the messages are only available to the customer with a court order.
The tolling company was always looking for ways to fire people without incurring the increase in their unemployment premiums.
Yes on Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. NO on the girl boss remake.
n
I liked Little Shop just fine, but the stageplay is better.
I finally got around to watching the first non-musical movie version, and I liked it, too.
In the first movie and the stageplay, the characters come off as significantly less sympathetic. I view that as a good thing.
I heard a story that when she was doing the stage version in New York, Ellen Greene’s boyfriend once took a taxi to the theater with her, and pulled out her poofy blonde wig, and did a puppet show in the back seat.
He’s the puppeteer who built and operated the props for the stage show, and later worked muppets for Sesame Street.
Today is the anniversary of the death of one of my friends and mentors. He taught me a lot about working on the road, building scenery for photoshoots and touring, and running a crew. He went in for persistent stomach pain, and was told he had 6 weeks to get his life in order. He made it five.
Next week is the anniversary of another friend’s death. We hung out late nights at a dive bar, and he ran the hosting company that hosted my first ‘resume’ website. He called me out of the blue and we chatted for about an hour while I stood outside the State Surplus Store in Austin. I’m really glad I took the time, because 3 or 4 days later he was gone. He didn’t mention anything, didn’t sound sick, just died. His housekeeper found him. His business partner called me to let me know. He’d found my number in his call log. It’d been a couple of years since I’d moved away, and it was quite a shock.
There are a couple of others that fall in the next few weeks, so this is kind of a weird time of year for me.
I’ll light a tiny little fire in their memory.
n
Thank you for sharing your memories of them, Nick.
To be, and have been, the source of good memories for people we love is a good goal and a great achievement, I think. Not everyone can leave great works for posterity, but we can all aspire to give our friends and the people we meet good memories of us.
Think often of your friends, and try to be glad that you had them, more than sad they are not fully available to you at present. Who knows about the hereafter…
I hope my friends will light little fires for me.