Another cold but sunny and dry day? Dunno. Hope so. Yesterday went a long way toward drying out my remaining Christmas decor. I’d like to have today to dry out the rest. And not freezing all day would be nice. It was below freezing with frost on the ground and cars yesterday morning. I think I’ll sleep late to avoid that today.
Yesterday was my non-prepping hobby meeting day. It was nice to get together with everyone. Several people who I didn’t get to see or talk to last month at the potluck dinner were there Saturday. It was a good day to just hang out and talk a bit. No one can believe the incompetence displayed in Cali, and no one found the idea that it could be intentional at all scoff worthy. We’re at a point where anything could be true. Or all lies. It’s very disconcerting.
Afterwards I came home, napped for a bit, did some domestic bliss, and avoided doing any major cleanup.
Today I’ll be paying for my slackitude. We need to get the house back together and get my stuff sorted out. I’ll be talking with a new auction to sell some of my stuff, and hopefully getting some of it out of the house. W is starting to send my articles about the negative effects of clutter and disorder… and it’s past the point where I should have been more proactive.
So that will be a priority, once I actually get my thumb out and get started.
The reorganization of my office and workspace needs to continue too.
Lots of opportunities coming up to miss deadlines and fail to complete tasks…
But the stacking will continue, at least a little bit, and mostly ‘targets of opportunity.’
I urge you to do so too.
nick
Armin Shimmerman accomplished something significant on that series, effectively serving as Ferengi “showrunner”.
Canon established in “Lower Decks” has Quark becoming very successful franchising his bar using tech stolen from the Karemma to tweak the replicators. At the dawn of the 25th century, “current” timeline, Quark is still in business.
If Season One of “Picard” is still canon, then Morn eventually becomes a rival, with his own chain of bars.
Someone at Skydance has a special interest in “Star Trek”, maybe even Larry Ellison himself, and work to repair the damage of the Paramount+ series has been underway for a couple of years, even before the company bought Paramount.
I don’t think this interview was an accidental piece of honesty.
https://trekmovie.com/2025/01/01/section-31-actor-worried-fellow-fans-will-reject-movie-for-being-a-different-kind-of-star-trek/?utm_source=syndication
They’re worried.
Don’t fret about Michelle Yeoh, however. She got paid. $12 million if the circuating stories are true.
Yeoh knew.
At this point, the franchise could probably use a rest, but, while I doubt people want to see 1000 episodes of TNG, they do want to see the characters/actors who became their family watching the syndicated series in the 90s, before everyone gets too old for a few final big adventures while introducing new cast.
48 F and raining lightly. The varmints want to go out and then right back in. Very dark at 7 am.
I think that we should get rid of Daylight Savings Time period and stick with standard time. It is just getting light now at 730am.
@Alan
“When it was obvious that the fires were going to be bad, couldn’t TPTB have started filling the reservoir (he said not knowing the source of the requisite water.)”
Can’t tell from the available information. The reservoir was out of service for repairs from March 2024 to present. Hard to tell what the state of the equipment was.
The Palisades fire grew very quickly and they ran out of water late in the day. Also hard to tell what sort of internal communications might be in place in an emergency situation. You would think, given such exorbitant salaries, that the management team would be top-notch and made all the right moves if possible. The empty reservoir argues otherwise.
I suspect that at some point the previous head of the water department, who retired but not under any cloud that I’ve heard about so far, will be proposed to head the investigation.
You don’t depend on tourism for an income.
The water department probably didn’t know the state of the equipment with most of the permanent employees “working” from home via TeamViewer.
“We have top men working on it right now.”
“Who?”
“Top … men.”
48F and enough moisture from the sky to make the concrete wet. I don’t see any actual puddles though. Neighbor laid out moving blankets to dry overnight… they haven’t. (they were covering the beautiful landscaping plants in front of the house to protect from the frost)
——–
I watched STTNG every night with my roommate when I lived in the current fire zone. I came to hate some of the characters and story lines. Q. The borg. Both of the Crushers. I never loved Data or Lamar’s character. Riker got smarmy. Whoopie makes me throw up a bit in my throat thinking about that nasty hair.
With replicator and transporter tech, no body should be less than perfect. They are recreated every time thru the transporter… They’re like every liberal hypocrite, saying one thing and doing another, from the prime directive down.
And even though I liked some of the episodes, the writers got lazy and did about 10000 holodeck episodes where they could just write whatever story they wanted to.
In the end, I had no interest in any of the spin offs. I tried to watch DS9 but just couldn’t. The holodeck was a character for pete’s sake.
I think that constraints make for better stories and better outcomes, and they didn’t have constraints in the holodeck dreck, and nothing but artificial constraints in the lore. They had god like power and didn’t use it. Except when they did. Bah.
n
List of vehicles with Amazon’s Alexa built in…
https://www.amazon.com/alexa-auto/b?ie=UTF8&node=17744356011&tag=ttgnet-20
n
Amazon has a more extensive panopticon than Microsoft, with more alternative bandwidth available for their devices to “phone home”, but Redmond’s appeal to the C-suites is that they will consider the data to be the property of the customer … for a price.
Bezos, on the other hand, knows all and owns all.
I found it interesting that Zoom recently reappeared on all of the drone laptops at my current employer, including mine. The C-suite reserved their right to use Zoom, but the rest of us were forced onto Teams.
Newsom is slamming Trump’s claims about the wildfires. However, I have not seen where Newsom actually discredits the claims as being false. Or provides the real answer and response to the claims. Maybe the reports I have read just don’t want to include that information. The press is not exactly reliable with reporters that consider a 12 year education as going through the sixth grade twice.
@Nick
Your opinions of TNG pretty much line up with mine. I watched from the first broadcast episode, so the rot was slower to evolve and easier to overlook. When you see 5-6 episodes a week, it’s very pronounced.
The Barkley character was interesting up to a point. The dwarf Riker in Reg’s holodeck program was priceless, as was seeing Troi lose her cool over her counterpart. I don’t remember the exact year, but at some point mid-80’s the “Shut Up Riker” became a featured drink at hard liquor consuites.
Ensign Ro Laren was one of the most interesting characters but was not a regular and was written out in anticipation of a regular role on DS9 that she turned down (wonder if she regrets it now?)
The holodeck was atrociously overused. The best of those episodes IMO was the clash with Moriarty.
Really? Better check for accuracy Zuk,
https://althouse.blogspot.com/2025/01/i-talked-to-metas-black-ai-character.html#more
Where’s the AI jewish mom? Where’s the slavic cleaning lady? Or the armenian gangster? Of the gypsy fortune teller?
Where’s the spanish speaking 17yo mother of two, pushing her stroller to visit her friends still in high school?
FFS.
Sassy black and queer?
Why not indian doctor by way of the UK? Or engineer?
Why the freaking minstrel show?
n
More info on Quiñones and the Water Department, including this gem:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14272399/LA-water-chief-Janisse-Quinones-fire-hydrants-reservoir-failures-Palisades.html
That is the resume of someone who is used to check CIE boxes–female and minority (Hispanic) for sure, perhaps another LBGZYZ?
Her LinkedIn page shows this at the beginning of her San Diego Gas and Electric career (8 yrs 9 months):
Sr. Account Executive, Dec 2010 – Jun 2013 2 years 7 months
Energy Efficiency Engineer, Sep 2009 – Dec 2010 1 year 4 months
and the rest of her resume shows an average of about 1.5 years in the other positions she held at SDGE and other companies.
Education was 4-yr degree in Mechanical Engineering at University of Puerto Rico followed by MBA in Technology Management at Univ of Phoenix and MAS International Relations International/Global Studies at UC San Diego Scholl of Global Policy and Strategy MAS International Relations International/Global Studies.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/janisse-qui%C3%B1ones
IMO, a DIE hire all the way. Virtually impossible to change jobs and companies with that frequency and have time to learn the ropes, conceive and implement projects. Unless of course, you’re extremely talented, and recent events argue otherwise.
‘I Think That They Were Very Prepared’: FEMA Admin. Criswell on ‘Face the Nation’ on the LA Wildfires
https://redstate.com/smoosieq/2025/01/12/i-think-that-they-were-very-prepared-fema-admin-criswell-on-face-the-nation-on-the-la-wildfires-n2184247
“Very well Prepared” does not describe an organization that has a major reservoir off-line for months leading into wildfire season in L.A., it describes criminal negligence. Another DIE to terminate immediately.
The ATF has reportedly taken over the investigation. I have not seen any rational, and don’t know how their charter stretches to such. With less than two weeks until the inauguration, they can’t issue a whitewash report, so here’s hoping that early on Trump’s replacement will shut down any efforts to spin this as other than the self-evident disaster that it is.
Trump used the technical term “rake” when talking about clearing the undergrowth in the forest, and the press and CA officials had a field day.
yeah well, they are idiots. Mocking “known unknowns” as nonsense when it is a term of art in risk management. Inventing racial slurs out of thin air. Creating some sort of gay ‘tap code’ and yet dismissing the idea that child abuse is rampant in the halls of power. Spirit cooking.
no need to go on.
n
NB- heck, I’ve had to explain what “term of art” meant to MBA and PMP certificated managers.
Just used the Kurig to make tea and it felt like using the replicator.
Push a button and hot tea is in my cup.
n
Yeah, just keep it filled.
D1 gave W1 a Bartesian for Christmas. All you have to do is keep it filled – with tequila.
A lot of MBAs earned at a company’s expense from name schools remotely are “professional development” degrees, lacking any real academic standards.
I took a three semester PD C++ program at UW and got a lot out of it, but another student, a girl with an Art degree from Brown looking to move from Testing to Development at Microsoft, openly talked in the class meetings about the “ringer” she brought in for the weekly assignments.
So her real education stopped with the undergrad degree.
University of Phoenix. Please.
PE on the resume so points there, but I’ve seen those coached. The hard part, sometimes insurmountable, is getting the EIT in a lot of cases. That exam is a moving target and gets harder to pass the longer you are out of undergraduate.
She might have made a perfectly good engineer, but was grabbed and fast tracked thru the companies and promoted above her ability.
n
She is apparently a member of Tau Beta Pi, which only accepts the top 10% of seniors and top 15% of juniors in engineering. She must have been coached well enough to meet those standards. But, to be honest, as a former employee of Tau Beta Pi, there were some really intelligent, but stupid, people that are members of the organization. They had a lot of book intelligence but very little common sense.
Yes, to look good on government contracts where diversity was emphasized and prized over actual competence. I saw that a lot in Oak Ridge. A black, handicapped, female, was a valuable commodity and was recruited by many companies bidding on contracts. She actually did nothing on any of her positions in the companies.
The whole AI thing amazes me. It’s dang hard to train an actual human to a high standard, how do people expect to train up something that doesn’t have any of the life experience or wetware built in reactions?
n
Armin Shimmerman accomplished something significant on that series, effectively serving as Ferengi “showrunner”.
Canon established in “Lower Decks” has Quark becoming very successful franchising his bar using tech stolen from the Karemma to tweak the replicators. At the dawn of the 25th century, “current” timeline, Quark is still in business.
If Season One of “Picard” is still canon, then Morn eventually becomes a rival, with his own chain of bars.
Armin Shimmerman made his bones in Buffy in the Band Candy episode specifically when he kept on taunting Oz about his great hair.
You don’t depend on tourism for an income.
Screw tourism. The elementary schools around here start school at 715 am. It is dark right now. Permanent Daylight Savings Time would be much worse.
This vise was featured in one of my industry trade mags.
https://www.amazon.com/IQ-Articulating-8-Position-Woodworking-130ft-lbs/dp/B0CSPV92FY?tag=ttgnet-20
It’s pricey but not actually out of line for a high end vise.
n
Still dreary and wet out.
W does not seem inclined to get involved in taking down decor and putting stuff away. She’s reading the Carl books, and that’s more engaging than housecleaning.
So I’m watching auctions close while running youtube streams on the other monitor.
n
The elementary schools around here start school at 715 am
– they start then so they can use the same busses for the high schools with a later start time. This means they end too early for working parents to get them, which has led to a huge industry of “after school care” programs. More money out of parent’s pockets and into the education industry.
n
Private equity held the Kinder Care parent company for a while, pruned a bunch of costs, and then took the company public again.
One of the Chinese relations’ ongoing rackets involved holding the deed for the Kinder Care building in Redmond and then seeing how hard they could squeeze the lease terms for renewal every year.
Sure, Kinder Care could find other real estate, but not on that key corner for Microsoft, AT&T, and Nintendo employees.
My other connection to Kinder Care was that the Boy Toy of our landlord in Vantucky was a himbo who somehow worked as an accountant at … Learning Resources.
I think that’s the parent company’s old name.
Boy Toy and the landlord got married the week we left the Northwest. He waited until I was somewhere in the New Mexico desert to call me and break the news about keeping half of our deposit due to some water spots on the faux granite counter and stains on the ceiling near the exhaust of their ventless range hood.
The landlord never cooked anything beyond Hot Pockets in the microwave and Papa Murphy’s in the oven.
“The ATF has reportedly taken over the investigation. I have not seen any rational, and don’t know how their charter stretches to such.”
Turns out the ATF was also lead on the Maui fire, but the same question applies. The ATF under Biden has been a political organization run by a hack, so I expect that is the output. Quick question: How many fire investigators do they have and why would they have any at all? Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms only includes fire in cartridges and explosives, not grass, brush, and trees.
They are a wholly corrupt agency spun off by a corrupted and unConstutional agency (IRS) and are unConstutional themselves. They have no business existing, let alone providing cover for corrupt politicians.
n
“TDS Is Real: Biden Aides “Terrified” Trump Will Deny Him State Funeral”
https://discern.tv/tds-is-real-biden-aides-terrified-trump-will-deny-him-state-funeral/
The most incompetent and corrupt president in history wants people to love on him when he is dead ?
Hat tip to:
https://thelibertydaily.com/
“Mark Levin unveils the TRUTH about birthright citizenship Dems keeps hidden: ‘It’s not in the Constitution’”
https://www.theblaze.com/shows/levintv/mark-levin-unveils-the-truth-about-birthright-citizenship-dems-keeps-hidden-its-not-in-the-constitution
“The hullabaloo surrounding “birthright citizenship” is certain to escalate as the Trump administration begins preparing to carry out mass deportations.”
“Mark Levin says that the notion of birthright citizenship — the idea that if you’re born in the United States, you’re a citizen — is a sham and always has been.”
I have wondered about this often.
Anchor babies. A footnote in a Brennan/SCOTUS ruling. They all need to go. But, but, what about Dreamers that were hauled here by their parents? They ALL need to go.
The next time some PLT whines to you about the US dropping an atomic bomb on Japan, direct them here:
WW2 heroes reduced to skin and bone in Japan’s horrific POW camps: Harrowing pictures reveal ordeal of Brit troops… and the fearsome devices used to torture them
Then have them read up on Unit 731 and The Knights of Bushido. Fcuk Obola’s apology tour to Japan. The Japanese were brutal before and during WWII. FAFO.
The common interpretation of the 14th Amendment is that the “subject to jurisdiction” language covers birthright citizenship.
The Roberts Court isn’t going to touch the issue.
Biden will get about what Bush and Carter received.
If Biden wants a spectacle like Reagan’s California internment, that was planned and funded by private interests.
The common interpretation of the 14th Amendment is that the “subject to jurisdiction” language covers birthright citizenship.
The Roberts Court isn’t going to touch the issue.
I wonder what the people who wrote the 14th amendment thought when they wrote that phase. Seems to be a little undefined and imprecise.
It was for slaves not illegals.
=– If they had included my words in brackets, it would have been more clear. But it seems to me with even a cursory look, that it was meant to apply to former slaves THAT WERE ALREADY PRESENT.
n
also, that “subject to” phrase is probably there to except foreign nationals, ie citizens of other countries.
Tonight’s NA beer is Gruvi Mocha Moment Stout.
It’s not Guinness, being a bit thinner, but it’s definitely drinkable and probably the best dark NA beer I’ve had.
https://www.getgruvi.com/products/mocha-nitro-stout
n
“Biden’s FEMA Chief: California Was ‘Very Prepared’ For The Fires”
https://www.dailywire.com/news/bidens-fema-chief-california-was-very-prepared-for-the-fires
“FEMA Administrator Deanna Criswell claimed during an interview over the weekend that fire officials in Southern California “were very prepared” for the catastrophic fires that erupted last week — despite significant evidence to the contrary.”
Yeah, pull the other leg, it has a bell on it.
Sigh, another DEI hire.
The US Government also had people in the territories acquired from Mexico after the Mexican-American war and the Alaska purchase in 1867.
Plus, no one really had a good idea as to who was present or what was going on in Florida until well after the Civil War, even with statehood granted.
The Mormons spread all over the extended Utah territory as the US chipped away at their lands were another unknown.
The 14th Amendment was probably left vague deliberately, with the authors unable to conceive of a scenario where a President and willing accomplices in Congress would leave the southern border with Mexico undefended from an invasion.
The US Government also had people in the territories acquired from Mexico after the Mexican-American war and the Alaska purchase in 1867.
Plus, no one really had a good idea as to who was present or what was going on in Florida until well after the Civil War, even with statehood granted.
Just imagine what the USA will look like when we acquire Greenland and Canada. Of course, all of those people will automatically be citizens.
“LA millionaires shell out for $2,000/hour private firefighters as overwhelmed city abandons neighborhoods to the flames”
https://nypost.com/2025/01/12/us-news/la-millionaires-shell-out-for-2000-hr-private-firefighters/
“Desperate one-percenters are dropping small fortunes on private professional fire crews to protect their mansions as California’s most expensive wildfires continue to devour some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Los Angeles.”
This stinks to high heaven. The fires look to be planned. There is no way that the various governments can be this incompetent.
Is this the beginning of a coup in California ?
Watching an unrelated video, I noticed that stanley makes a version of the vise I linked earlier. Dunno if the IQ one is sturdier, since the Stanley is listed as a “hobby” vise.
https://www.amazon.com/Stanley-1-83-069-MaxSteel-Multi-Yellow/dp/B001HBS0I0?tag=ttgnet-20
It’s a 5th of the price though…
n
According to a woodworking friend and many video’s Stanley (mainland China) can’t make a wood plane acceptable out of the box for woodworking.
One adjustment screw, no moving parts, and they can’t (won’t) get it right.
Buy once, cry once.
Sitting here with a glass of nice bourbon, waiting for the B.O. launch. They’ve reset the clock, again, delayed the launch about an hour now.
Which is OK, it is a first launch, space is hard…
It is 25F out at 10pm local, so I went ahead and brought in the hummingbird feeder and filled and lit the pellet stove.
I’m headed to bed. I’ll see you all tomorrow.
n
I am still bingeing “Stargate Universe” on Pluto. All of the drug commercials are killing me.
Severe winds in south central Alaska today.
Much of east Anchorage lost power / still lack power. Lost the top half of a pedestrian overpass. Roofs ripped off houses. Many downed trees taking out power lines. Pretty nasty flooding from the warm temps, frozen ground, rapid mid winter thaw. A number of communities north of us hit hard.
We‘re fine. Only hitch was our Home Depot skeleton came off the garage roof rather violently. We haven’t lost power.
Folks have recorded winds over 100 mph.
Nasty.