Another sunny and clear, but chilly day went by, and another is forecast for today. It was a good day to be outside at a swapmeet, but once the sun went down, it was a good day to be inside…
And that was the major activity of the day- swapmeet! It’s one of those permanent setups, with indoor booth space, covered booths for rent, and just open places for people to come sell their crep. Lots of choices from new mattresses, facials, produce, tools, vinyl, clothes, souvenirs, etc, including yard sale stuff, and just about anything else you could think of. I picked up a few antique and collectible things to bring home. If I was at home, I would have grabbed a few more items too. Had a nice cuban sandwich for lunch, and then we headed home.
Spent the rest of the day playing cards and games, reading, eating, and more games. A good day.
Today we’ll do some of the same, then at some point head to Tampa to fly home. I hope to be sleeping in my own bed tonight. Then the kids will soon be back in school, the new year will really get started, and I’ll fall even farther behind on my list… but that’s life.
Stacking up the good times, the memories with family, and time with the kids. That’s enough for the moment.
nick
Parenting tip: Get a paternity test for your kid. Carry it around with you. Then, whenever she does something stupid, look at her, take out the test and look at it, look at her again, and say “Dammit!”
You probably know that European coffee is a lot stronger than American coffee. With that in mind, the recipe here would be: pour half-a-cup of coffee. Then add the whisky. Keep adding it until you can see through to the bottom of the cup. You may need to get a bigger cup 😛
We’re just finishing a nice bottle of Talisker.
That’s great and all, but as Scott Adams wrote: this is making people “think past the sale”. THe judge shouldn’t be talking about the sentencing before the hearing. By doing so, he is stopping people from asking if the charges make any sense in the first place.
I wonder if Trump will appeal?
Which he didn’t, not even a little bit. Will he be any more successful this time?
– – – – –
Somewhat related: It’s interesting that Musk is mixing up politics in both Germany and the UK. His endorsement of the AfD, and his criticism of the UK prime minister are creating lots of interesting waves. What’s particularly hilarious are the politicians protesting his “foreign interference”, when they were not shy at all about expressing their opinions of Trump vs. Harris.
Austria looks like it may wind up with a right-wing government after all. That’s what the voters decided, but the old parties were trying to find some coalition – any coalition – that could stop it. Unless they can quickly cook up a technicality, “remigration” may be on the menu for 2025.
Which reminds me of an odd article I read about the US. Apparently, Congress was voting on whether illegal immigrants who committed sex crimes should be deported? Huh? Illegal immigrants exist because existing laws are not enforced. This isn’t anything for Congress, it’s the job of the executive branch to enforce existing laws.
“Landsman” is getting good reviews for its non-woke portrayal of the oilfields. Anybody seen it?
I don’t watch broadcast tv until it has been out for 10 or 20 years now. That way I can binge it forwards and backwards as much as I want.
Says the guy who is bingeing “Law and Order” on Hulu right now. And Stargate Universe on Prime? for the 3rd or 4th time.
Musk is pissed off at the world because he cannot sell Starlink in Canada or the UK until their governments give permission. Should happen around 2035 or so when the bureaucrats finish studying it.
65 F and very dark at 7 am. Suppose to be 30 F in the morning.
No.
If we’re lucky, we will be spared a nuclear war.
Maybe the CAFE will be dialed back so Dodge can sell Chargers with V8 engines again.
The same Eurocrats that have a BetaMax VCR still flashing 12:00. The peak of their technology understanding.
Uh, american coffe? both words doesnt mix (the real word is maridar) forgive me, it is a relic worst than imperial units.
I know nothing about German politics, but Nigel Farage as Prime Minister in Britain has seemed inevitable since his victory speech on the night after the “Brexit” vote.
I hesitate because you can get a demagogue, but my inclination is that ANY mixup in the sclerotic body politic is a good thing. Particularly if it destroys power structures and renders the whole thing less capable of messing with us.
———-
I have coffee, banana bread, eggs and bacon on board now, and I’m feeling almost human…
———-
Most of the people are at the dog beach with the newest member of the family, a 40 pound puppy.
We’ve got a few hours still before heading to the airport.
BUT HEY! Winter is apparently coming and air travel is a mess. Hopefully that nonsense is all north of us, like the weather, and we’ll be headed home on time. If not? Well there is not much I can do about it.
n
added- @lynn, you asked about blowout kits and TQs, Any CAT style TQ from a reputable seller like North American Rescue, or SkinnyMedic (if you want to support small business) should do. And I put the Blow Out Kit together in a small bag. The equivalent is something like a “patrolmans kit” or a “pocket trauma kit”. Smaller than a IFAK, only essentials for bleeding control. I put it in my carryon, and in my range bag.
TQ, quick clot, chest seal, gloves, pressure bandage.
I also have a trauma shear, small pen light, and a big bandaid (which I carry because my dad used to get bleeding scrapes when his thin skin bumped something. They were always bigger than normal bandaids would cover. IOW, the biggest bandaid, like cell phone sized.)
Our current “binge” is NCIS. We’re about halfway into season 2.
And by binge, I mean about one episode a night.
Going down internet rabbit trails, I looked up Sasha Alexander, and it made me wonder what it’s like when she visits her in-laws for Christmas. What a room full of actors and directors that would be.
Carlo Ponti Jr., Eduardo Ponti, their mom Sophia Loren.
Don’t get too attached. Bellisario drove that cast hard in the early days, and not everyone was up to the task.
At a certain point, Mark Harmon asked the network to intervene or he wouldn’t renew his contract.
BTW, keep an ear out for “Quantum Leap” references during the first season, establishing that all of the “NCIS” shows are part of the same storytelling universe.
(Bellisario’s “Magnum PI” is arguably not part of the same universe since Tony exhibits an encyclopedic level knowledge of Magnum’s Hawaiian shirts in one script early on.)
The … 200th … ? … episode even riffs on what ended up being the “Quantum Leap” final episode after NBC pulled the plug on the afternoon of the final first run broadcast.
Tony even drops an “Oh boy”.
She said she left NCIS due to the brutal schedule. She ended up on Rizzoli & Isles, which is not a bad series.
I’m binging NCIS: Orleans. NCIS and Origins are still going. On hiatus until Jan 27.
Dean Stockwell does show up on “NCIS: New Orleans”, but, sadly, not as Admiral Albert Calavecci.
I’m thinking of adding a small, under counter electric tankless in the master bath. It’s at the far end of the house, and we never get hot water before we’re done using the sink. Getting instant from under the sink, that then stopped heating the water when the hot water finally got there, seems like a good solution. Recirc isn’t possible with instant unless we added a tank. We even looked at doing that as a hybrid system be decided on simplicity.
My parents have a electric instahot at their main kitchen sink, plugged into the sink grinder electric outlet under the sink. It is bloody hot almost immediately. I keep on burning my hands there every couple of months.
I watched enough of NCIS when it was broadcast so major character transitions are not an issue.
Not to mention all the spoilers I saw going down my rabbit trails.
20 years ago I was in a different place in my life, and (re)watching them I’m coming from a completely different perspective.
I still don’t get all the pop culture references. I wonder if I’m somehow blind to them. I always had similar issues trying to get allusions in my literature classes.
Weird. In the middle of watching a show, the HDMI cable apparently failed. High-end cable, too. Surely it’s just wires, though, no active components?
It will be a pain to replace, because it runs through a conduit to our beamer, and the HDMI plugs barely fit.
Long HDMI cables have “booster” chips in them for the signal.
Yep, active equalization and balancing, they also carry power.
n
Gonna head to the airport soon. Only a short delay showing so I hope we’ve missed out on most of the disruption and delays.
n
added- @lynn, you asked about blowout kits and TQs, Any CAT style TQ from a reputable seller like North American Rescue, or SkinnyMedic (if you want to support small business) should do. And I put the Blow Out Kit together in a small bag. The equivalent is something like a “patrolmans kit” or a “pocket trauma kit”. Smaller than a IFAK, only essentials for bleeding control. I put it in my carryon, and in my range bag.
TQ, quick clot, chest seal, gloves, pressure bandage.
I also have a trauma shear, small pen light, and a big bandaid (which I carry because my dad used to get bleeding scrapes when his thin skin bumped something. They were always bigger than normal bandaids would cover. IOW, the biggest bandaid, like cell phone sized.)
I do have a kit in each vehicle, “Adventure Medical Kits Adventure First Aid Medical Kit 2.0”:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002K66484?tag=ttgnet-20/
Looks like I need to add some “EVERLIT Israeli 6 Inch Emergency Bandage Compression Trauma Pressure Wound Dressing Sterile Vacuum-Sealed Packaging for Bleeding Control, Medical Trauma Kit, Gun Shot, First Aid IFAK” to each vehicle.
https://www.amazon.com/EVERLIT-Emergency-Compression-Vacuum-Sealed-Packaging/dp/B086994M1Y?tag=ttgnet-20/
Plus a set of each for my backpack.
@Nick
Safe travels all.
When I was doing the broadcast I had a cable(s) fail. One of the three short 6” cables that looped on the back of the modulator failed. One week the broadcast signal was good, the next Sunday it was not so good. I checked every signal path in the equipment rack. The signal was excellent to the modulator. Out of sheer luck, ignorance, desperation, I decided to replace the three short cables. It fixed the problem. How do three short coaxial (RG59) cables, that are never touched, never moved, fail?
@ray:
Poorly terminated, ab initio?
I encountered this probably 15-20 years ago, at EMPLOYER’s rebuilt first facility. Broadcast TV, certainly in UK and probably worldwide, is kept in sync by distributing a reference signal, colloquially known as “black-and-burst”. This is true even in pure digital facilities. That black-and-burst distribution is a single point of failure, as was proved in the incident I’m describing (badly).
The symptom was black to air, but with sound, on about half our outputs (about 10 at the time, IIRC). It took a while to trace, but it was eventually found to be due to a badly-crimped BNC coaxial jumper cable, which looped the B’n’B signal across the inputs of multiple video distribution amplifiers, meant to distribute the B’n’B to the many devices needing it. This meant that a number of those DAs lost input, as did all the devices downstream of them.
The coax jumpers were custom-built by professional wiremen, manually crimped, and there were probably multiple thousand crimped BNC connectors across all the euipment in the facility.
We had other connector problems as well, mostly due to tarnished plating on nickel-plated BNC plugs.
G.
I doubt it. The cables had been in use for 15 years that I know about. Factory jumpers, well crimped. I suspect oxidation or whiskers after all those years.
More Carvana shenanigans…
https://hindenburgresearch.com/carvana/
I don’t know about the UK, but I can get Starlink here in Pierristan.
I don’t know about the UK, but I can get Starlink here in Pierristan.
Huh, the article I read recently said that Starlink was not legal in Canada and the UK.
I am now wondering what the date on that article was. Apparently Starlink was made legal in Canada four years ago.
https://x.com/ISED_CA/status/1324790429947174913
X Users Have a Good Laugh at Arrogant Lefty Who Thinks Farming Is a Job Anyone Can Do
“There is no one more ignorant and stupid than a Leftist with an advanced degree.”
https://twitchy.com/amy-curtis/2025/01/05/anyone-can-farm-wed-be-fine-if-they-all-disappeared-possum-reviews-n2406169
The post on X in the thread is an image:
One ignorant rant on X does not necessarily mean that a lot of people share the same opinion, but I’ve heard enough similar sentiments over the years to know that there are a lot that do.
I don’t know anyone that inherited even half a “shit ton” of land from any earlier generation. All the farmers in my family and the ones I know personally started with no land or a small amount of land and worked, often holding a regular job in addition to farming. so their work week was a lot more than the sub-40 hours per week that the crybaby barristas in the cities think should bring them a “living wage”.
Drawing coffee is a job for teenagers, students and single-parents re-entering the work force. Ditto anything lower than a building manager at a fast food restaurant. And a lot of other jobs. None of them could trade jobs with a farmer–they don’t have the work ethic or the skill set.
Google will tell you how to do basic things like build a barbed wire fence, and YouTube has a lot of good instructional videos that show the tips. Good luck translating that into a straight hundred yards of properly set posts with four or five wires tightly strung. Then there’s bracing the end posts, corners, and gates…
What gets passed down in the family, or to the hired help, is the knowledge. How to use the tools, run the machines, time the planting, fertilizing, weeding and harvest. When the hay is dry enough to bale, and how to troubleshoot the knotter that keeps breaking the baling twine. How to pay attention to that PTO shaft that will take a sleeve and an arm in the blink of an eye.
Every year the city folk scheme to make it more expensive to farm, and every year farmers retire and aren’t replaced, and the big farm corporations grow.
What’s obvious is that the person writing the post and a lot of other same-thinkers will never figure it out.
Cue Don Meredith.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/canada-pm-trudeau-announce-resignation-014243980.html
“Germany Already Rationing Energy…”Avoid Using Electric Appliances Until After 11 A.M.!”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/01/04/germany-already-rationing-energyavoid-using-electric-appliances-until-after-11-a-m/
“Recall that Germany’s green energy masterminds decided that it would be best to decommission the country’s fleet on nuclear power plants, and to produce weather-dependent power with wind farms operating in the north of country, and then supply it to southern Germany via power transmission lines. There’s on problem with the masterplan from the green masterminds: the wind doesn’t blow all the time and so shortages result and rationing becomes necessary!”
And those same masterminds are wanting to convert the USA to the same type of electrical grid.
@Lynn
“And those same masterminds are wanting to convert the USA to the same type of electrical grid.”
They’ve already started.
We need the demonstration project:
Pick the city, build the fences, cut the interconnections, and let them show the world that the “green” generation inside the fence is all they need.
And none of this fossil-fuel generators for “vital” services. Hospitals, yes. Everything else, no, government, hell no, unless inside the fence includes the necessary to make biofuel.
We need the demonstration project:
Pick the city, build the fences, cut the interconnections, and let them show the world that the “green” generation inside the fence is all they need.
And none of this fossil-fuel generators for “vital” services. Hospitals, yes. Everything else, no, government, hell no, unless inside the fence includes the necessary to make biofuel.
I worked the last three years of my career at TXU in economic dispatch from 1987 to 1989. Before that, I had no idea that we spent $2.3 billion per year of our annual income of $4.3 billion on fuel. I was floored. We had a bunch of base load units and several peaking units (125 power generation units in all).
That $2.3 billion in annual fuel usage was millions of tons of coal, several hundred billion cubic feet of natural gas (almost a trillion cubic feet of natural gas), five to ten million gallons of diesel, and two to five million gallons of #6 fuel oil (old bunker C fuel oil). We produced 40% of the electricity in Texas.
All of our power plants were supercharged hot rods from 25,000 hp to 1.1 million hp (not including 60+ emergency diesels from 1,500 hp to 2,500 hp). The efficiency ranged from 20% (peakers) to 30% (base load units). This fleet was built from 1952 to 1987 when I was working at TXU for over $8 billion dollars capital cost in 1987 dollars.
Replacing this type of technology is not casually performed. Yet, these masterminds with their oh so wonderful spreadsheets think that they can replace all the systems like this across the USA with a few solar panels and windmills. All subsidized by the USA government which is contributing to incredible deficits.
The USA is built on cheap energy on demand at any time by the users. The replacement system will not be cheap nor will it be as flexible or as reliable.
Home safe. Uneventful flight with only a little turbulence coming into Houston. We boarded about ½ hour late, arrived late.
The plane was 100% full.
Traffic to the airport was very light in Florida. No traffic coming home, at 11pm.
It’s a chilly 39F and windy here, and 33F with 5mph winds and 52%RH at the BOL on the dock.
Chilly willy.
Time to get ready for bed. A nice warm bed.
n
The plane was 100% full.
Every plane I have been on in the last three+ years has been full. I swear they are hawking tickets in the gateway. However, I have usually seen people at the gate trying to get on the plane that are flying standby. I guess that the people who do not get on that plane that day will fly on the next plane.
BTW, why would you ruin either scotch or coffee by combining them???? Ewww. BUTTERSCOTCH might be nice, and lots of other alcoholic beverages would pair nicely with the bean broth, but scotch??
n
Now I’m running away to bed!
n
“Meanwhile in Texas ….”
https://www.reddit.com/r/texas/comments/1huj8zv/meanwhile_in_texas/
“Just seen a snowflake !”
Oh dear. I was going to beat a dead horse by linking to Jerry Pournelle’s observation that 90% of computer failures are due to the cables, but the Chaos Manor site is not responding. I hope the family has not decided to let it lapse.
To be fair, that is one specific region in southern Germany. OTOH, it is definitely true: overcast weather and lack of wind has led to massive imports, and the network in the north literally cannot carry enough power to the south.
Switzerland’s hydropower lakes are a lot emptier that usual at this time of year, because we’ve also been exporting a lot of power to Germany. Here’s the laugh: the new agreements negotiated with the EU would require Switzerland to stop using hydropower, because – somehow – this is unfair competition for the EU electricity producers. That’s the green revolution for you, right there.
That’s ok, because the new agreements will not pass the popular vote. Even if they weren’t brain-dead stupid, they wouldn’t pass. The Swiss government has pissed people off by keeping the agreements secret, and only publishing carefully edited summaries. Almost no one will vote for a cat in a sack.
Brad, you’ve been among German-speakers too long! 🙂 The English idiom is “a pig in a poke”.
Happens to me all the time too.
The new German word for “there is no wind or solar energy” is “Dunkelflaute”. It is so excellent that it has come over into English too. I think we will be seeing it a lot.