Cool and clear. Maybe cold and clear to start. No clouds to hold the day’s heat in… And there was a little bit of heat in the afternoon. I took my jacket off. Long sleeve shirt over a T was fine, even in the sun, but adding the windbreaker/rainshell made me a bit sweaty.
Did my errands. Went by my secondary to drop stuff off. Did pickups on the way. Went to Lowes and got a faucet (which was on sale, hooray!), and eventually made it to my rent house to replace the leaky faucet. That took an extra half hour due to me misplacing a rubber washer, and some corrosion on a nut. It was straightforward, but I was still laying on my back under the sink with my hands above me.
I don’t know how I ever got anything done without a headlamp. Since I started working at the BOL, I’ve been using a headlamp whenever I work. The extra illumination can make the difference between squinting and reading comfortably, and it makes so much work so much easier. Whether it’s working under the cabinet or just casting my own shadow on the electrical outlet, the light makes it better. I don’t have a specific recommendation, but the new ones are small and the batteries last a long time. Get something that uses normal AAA batteries, so you can change them and keep working without waiting for a recharge.
In the evening, D1 went with a friend to a basketball game in another district, and I had to pick her up at 9pm. That blew the chance of decorating the tree. That has now slipped to today. This is the latest we’ve ever been with getting a tree set up. Maybe because we did the one at the BOL it took the urgency away. Dunno, but I like a natural tree and colored lights in the house and it will be great to get this one ready.
Today I’ve got a nearby pickup. It’s a present for W, and some stuff for my hobby, and some preps. I’ve got to go to the store and get one of the things W asked for, and I might get something off D1’s list too. D2 has a big pile already. Then I just need to wrap presents, and I’ll be good to go. If I get there, it will feel nice. I’m usually wrapping on Christmas Eve…
I’m still adding to the stacks. The pace has slowed, as the stacks piled up, but there have been some great opportunities lately, and I’m taking advantage. Keep your eyes open, and someone else’s misfortune might be your gain. And then you can stack it up…
nick
(the pattern started with the date, then the first group of digits and the last group doubled while the middle two groups incremented by 1 each. That made the missing digit the 6 in 256.) (all those base 12 doublings were irresistible.)
Pretty horrible attack in Magdeburg. Crazy Saudi guy runs over dozens of people in a Christmas market. Amazingly, apparently only two were killed, but lots were injured. There are lots of strange aspects:
I just read the comments from yesterday about silver. I also received my order of silver rounds from Texas Precious Metals. One ounce, four nines fine silver 2025 Texas Cowboy round…and they look good! I bought 35 and used ACH direct from my checking account for less than $35.00 each.
https://texmetals.com/p/2025-texas-silver-round
Axel Springer? As we’ve touched on here before, they are “influenced” by the CIA.
Of course, when I impugned the integrity of “Insider” publications, I was accused of practicing “Gish Gallop” by one of the cabal that posts as the troll from time to time.
Which reminds me — Fall Commencement at God Forsaken Blue State U was Wednesday.
Winter solstice today, winter has begun.
Even here in California it’s notably cold: I was working in the garage yesterday and kept a wool shirt on until almost 10am, it barely hit 70F.
Once assembled I just piled stuff onto them, the garage is much more spacious.
The shelves should be fastened against the walls, eventually, but it is already an improved work area.
——
The Mr. Coffee died overnight it seems, I used it yesterday, about 5 years old.
45F sunny and clear. It’s CHILLY.
—–
Saw the vehicle attack on the Christmas Market last night but the particulars were still being sorted. There are a lot of “ex” muslims (no such thing btw, to be so they would be declared apostate and instantly killable by the faithful) who are really “lapsed” or just plain sinners, who seem to want to counter their sins with martyrdom. That would be my bet in this case.
I wonder if the chicks in Germany with the “welcome refugees” hand made poster still feel the same way? Or if they accept any blame for current conditions?
—–
@edh, if the coffeemaker is completely dead, the most likely cause is a blown thermal fuse, which is about $2. Search youtube for your model to see a fix. If it’s a cheap, basic one, replacing it is probably in order. Goodwill always has plenty… Just avoid the Cuissenart copy of the Kuerig Duo, that thing is a POS.
You should be able to use your backup method for a while… you have a backup for such a critical piece of gear, right????
n
Added– back in the early 90s when I was staying at my parents house for a while, I looked thru one of my dad’s firefighting books. At the time, the number one cause of house fires was automatic drip coffee makers. I unplug mine between uses. Seems they would overheat, the thermal fuse wouldn’t work, and they would get hot enough to start fires. The manf. used to recommend unplugging between uses, despite the clock on the machine, and the timer functions.
n
n
Oh, Yes. This was my only drip machine, but I have a k-cup machine and its backup.
And a simple percolator for camping.
It’s a simple B&D unit, and I had noticed that it was taking longer and longer to make the 7 cup serving.
The light for being plugged into the wall works, and the hour set button and lcd display, but no other buttons. And no heating.
I will hit Walmart or Lowe’s tomorrow morning for a new unit, when I’m shopping.
I wonder if the robots in Germanyworld will finally wake up and teach the Muslim tourists the lesson about the violent delights having violent ends like in “Westworld”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Z-UFN20jvw
Eh. Maybe not.
Still, messing with a population with a proven genetic talent for xenocide on a mass scale is dangerous.
Even if the rest of the series fell apart, Season 1 of “Westworld” is still some of the best TV made in the last 20 years. The visit to Samuraiworld in Season 2 is also fun.
And the Season 2 trailer, of course. “I gotta be me …”
You’ll have to find DVDs. HBO Max dumped “Westworld” as a writeoff.
Too much too little too late .. to every be trusted again…
The article goes on to list the major issues and events. Which were all noted HERE at the time, and if we can freaking see them, then surely the “layers and layers of editors’ and experts could. And they allowed it to continue, while occasionally tossing off a comment or observation that they could use later to CYA.
n
Trump tho.
Biden isn’t Bad Daddy. He’s the dim bulb handsy long time boyfriend who Mom won’t marry because that would mean the alimony checks from Bad Daddy would come to a screeching halt.
Gotta have gas money for the ‘Vette.
My last workplace before retiring had very strict fire rules. Coffee makers were common, and were always placed on metal tables, with all combustibles cleared a safe distance.
At home, if a coffee maker needs to be placed on a wooden surface, a commercial (thick) aluminum cookie sheet can be a reasonable precaution. We never leave a home coffee maker unattended while running. Even better, we have preferred the kind that drips into a glass thermos-style carafe, then turns off. The coffee stays hot for several hours with no power needed. The coffee maker is unplugged between uses.
I don’t trust thermal fuses. Before LEDs, I had some neat little fluorescent nightlights. Twice, at end of life, the internals burned a hole in the plastic housing. That might have been caused by the thermal fuse. Nothing bad happened, but it could have ignited something combustible if nearby.
Don’t forget automotive battery chargers. Put them as far as possible from fuel lines. The most popular brand, Battery Tender, has caused car fires in the past. Has there been a redesign?
>> Is any retail besides Walmart, Costco, Kroger, and HEB going to survive ?
The free, no minimum, curbside pickup should keep Target in the mix as long as they maintain that perk. Very popular here, sometimes all the designated spots are full.
I’d also include Publix and Trader Joe’s as survivors.
P. S. Emergency run to Costco today for W2 who didn’t realize we were almost out of the Kirkland cauliflower crust (gluten free) pizzas. Store was less crowded than a normal Friday afternoon. The parking lot was a different story. The snowbirds are here in full force. Thankfully the god-daughter drove and waited in the car near the entrance.
Most of the grocery stores will survive because people need food NOW and they all take EBT (electronic benefit transfer – food stamps) cards. And when the EBT card runs out for the month, they take Mastercard, Visa, and Discover. And when the credit cards max out, they take cash. I can’t tell you the number of times that I have seen this at HEB and Walmart. When Amazon starts taking EBT cards, the grocery stores will be hurt, maybe real bad.
We will find out about Target in the new year. They got into the grocery game late and it has hurt them since then.
It was 40 F last night and I want to be a snowbird. But I can only go 30 miles south and end up in the drink.
The MSM is trying had d to blame this on the AfD (the right). Which makes zero sense.
This turd was in Germany illegally for 10 years. When he was finally “found”, he claimed asylum, because he claimed to be an ex-muslim. Real reason? Saudia Arabia wanted him for rape and other crimes. Germany refused to hand him over.
A shocking number of people buy the story that he was an AfD fan. Crazy but true.
“Our writers pick the 26 best science fiction short stories of all time”
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2460679-our-writers-pick-the-26-best-science-fiction-short-stories-of-all-time/
“We asked New Scientist writers to pick their favourite sci-fi short story. From H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine to Octavia E. Butler’s Bloodchild, via stories from George R. R. Martin and Ursula K. Le Guin, here are the results”
Nice list ! Great starting place ! “The Time Machine by H. G. Wells (1895)”
I have read at least half of these stories. BTW, I call them novellas, not short stories.
Amazon subsidiary (for now) Whole Foods takes EBT.
The grocery stores will be in big trouble when McDonald’s can take EBT.
The 25 Most Obnoxious Quotes of 2024
Is it just me, or has it become acceptable nowadays in supposedly polite circles to sprinkle your utterances with f-bombs?
Freefall: Sam the Squid is on the Menu
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff4200/fc04155.htm
That is a very unusual menu.
I was passing by Baugnez today, and there was a commemoration of the Malmedy Massacre of 17 December 1944 taking place. Some US and Belgian military managed to look very smart indeed despite pouring rain and a biting wind.
Spare a thought for those who were murdered that day, their loved ones and descendants.
I regularly hear words used in “polite” discourse these days that would have had my sainted Mama washing out my mouth with soap. I can’t help feeling that recourse to vulgarities is a sign of an inadequate vocabulary.
“10,000 Amazon Workers Go on Strike Ahead of Holiday Rush”
https://www.pcmag.com/news/10000-amazon-workers-go-on-strike-ahead-of-holiday-rush
“The strike comes after workers demanded better pay, better hours, improved work conditions.”
“The Teamsters say this is “the largest strike against Amazon in US history.” Amazon tells CBS News it doesn’t expect it to impact its operations; the company employs 1.5 million people in its warehouses and corporate offices.”
Seems like everyone is going on strike. Can we get Congress to go on strike ?
“Asking for a Friend”
https://areaocho.com/asking-for-a-friend/
“What caliber for monkeys who are infected with a deadly virus and escaped from a research lab?”
I think that 5.56 mm to 6.5 mm should do just fine.
In the movie Ladyhawke, “Sir, I talk to God all the time and he has never mentioned you.”
Is it just me, or has it become acceptable nowadays in supposedly polite circles to sprinkle your utterances with f-bombs?
I regularly hear words used in “polite” discourse these days that would have had my sainted Mama washing out my mouth with soap. I can’t help feeling that recourse to vulgarities is a sign of an inadequate vocabulary.
Then most of society today has an inadequate vocabulary as many of my acquaintances casually use f-bombs in all conversations.
“Bad Estimates of Solar Activity and Temperatures Undermine Climate Change Projections”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/12/21/climate-change-weekly-529-bad-estimates-of-solar-activity-and-temperatures-undermine-climate-change-projections/
I have been saying this for a long time, the energy produced by Sol is not constant. Only fools and the uneducated so-called scientists wrongly claim that the energy produced by Sol is constant.
The measurement of the average temperature of Earth has wide error bars on a daily basis. Somewhere between +- 0.5 C (+- 1.0 F) to +- 1.0 C (+- 2.0 F). To claim that this measurement has five significant digits is beyond foolishness. Real scientists and engineers know much better.
“New Study: Greenhouse Gasses Are Saturated, Not Causing Warming”
“In a recent study published in the Journal of Sustainable Development, Michael Simpson from the University of Sheffield, points out that the goal of hitting net zero emissions is a political one, that was undemocratically adopted by the U.K. government. It is not grounded in science.”
“Simpson’s study goes through the chemistry and physics of greenhouse gases, arguing that there is no climatic reason for reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases to net zero. Even if that goal is politically possible, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O), are saturated in the atmosphere. As a result, per Simpson, “[a]dding to or removing these naturally occurring gases from the atmosphere will make little difference to the temperature or the climate.””
I have been saying this for a long time. Very few chemicals have infinite saturation in complex mixtures such as air. Yet, several so-called scientists have told me me that saturation is infinite for all things. My experience differs from such proclamations.
the list includes my pick, the Burning Chrome story, with Johnny Mnemonic a close second, but it pays too much homage to the woke Tor authors, just like the modern Hugos.
the nod to chinaboi, jemison, et al is telling. If those asked truly think those authors are the pinnacle of sf, they are hugely under-read.
SF used to be PRIMARILY short stories.
I’d name some but I’m having trouble keeping the shorts separated from longer forms in my head.
Anything in Children of Wonder would probably be better than the 3 body guy.
n
I’m a big fan of the f bomb, as a fan of George Carlin… it’s pretty versatile. OTOH, I’ve got a vocab that puts grad students to shame. I rarely get to USE it though.
n
Except in traffic when some idiot deserves to be reminded of his mother’s sexual habits along with a visual indication involving the middle finger. Then it just feels good.
I quit reading New Scientist a long time ago. I doubt it’s gotten any better, which means it’s not likely that the writers have the writing ability or the technical background to be good science writers, and extremely unlikely that they are well-read enough in science fiction to contribute to such a list. The latter is obvious from the list itself.
Science fiction wa around long before Gernsback coined the term. Poe, Verne, and Edgar Paige Mitchell were early contributors, working more with rough concepts in the days before radio (and particle physics and computers and satellites) brought science as technology into everyday life. Burroughs Barsoom stories pre-date Tarzan. Tom Swift predates Burroughs, and scanning the titles of the first series gives a pretty good idea of cutting edge tech.
As a genre at least 150 and arguably creeping up on 200 old, it is nonsense to write a list with such a title. Editors such as Moskowitz, Congklin, Greenburg and writer/editors such as Asimov, Ellison and others had the background and experience to make credible tries fifty years ago. Barron’s Anatomy of Wonder (1976) is a seminal reference work, and it’s doubtful that any of the NS writers have ever heard of it, much less own a copy. It’s also evident that they have no idea what defines “short story”, “novella” or “novellete”.
The list of 26 is about evenly divided between stories long-recognized as worthy of “the best” and feminist/new age drivel. (Indeed, see: https://interestingliterature.com/2021/10/best-science-fiction-short-stories/)
For every one of the latter, I can name more titles of the former that would easily crowd them out (Kuttner, Cordwainer Smith, Laumer, Vonnegut, Ellison, Simak, Niven, etc.). Better to define a more-recent, less “super” survey, like “The 26 Best Less-Than-Novel-Length Science Fiction Selected by Our Internet Age Sciency Writers”.
Cuts two ways.
If I inform someone they are suffering from “recto-cranial inversion with central organ cluster lodged in posterior orifice” the modern public school graduate is not going to comprehend as well as “you have your head up your a$$”
I think there is also an effort to seem “authentic”. it usually fails with me, particularly if it is a woman speaking.
>> https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14186907/fire-hydrant-wealthy-homeowners-california-wildfire.html
hey @nick, fire hydrants at the BOL? Or is it ‘throw a FD pumper truck’s intake hose into the lake?’
>>I’m a big fan of the f bomb, as a fan of George Carlin… it’s pretty versatile.
In my top five Carlin bits. I also like “It’s okay to prick your finger but not to finger your pr!ck.”
To me the f-bomb is so ubiquitous that many people just ignore any offence intended.
I bug W2 about language all the time as she has an MFA in English. Sometimes small objects are thrown my way.
@alan, no hydrants. There was originally a plan to install hard lines to the lake at various places on the road around the loop of the subdivision, but it never happened. 30 vertical feet from the road to the water is pushing it for a pump…
WRT small objects, they are better than small animals!
n