Only if the weather is clear. I have to load up the pickup truck, and I don’t want everything to get wet. It’s supposed to be clear. Yesterday we were supposed to get hammered with rain, and we didn’t. I’m not counting on clear, until I see it. The weather liars lie without consequence.
That said, we did get rain, just not much.
I did a bunch of stuff yesterday. Lots of driving. Client, pickups, kid taxi service, you name it. It was a tight schedule but I made it to everything. I could have spent a couple of hours at my clients, and I might have actually solved the issue instead of just replacing gear. Turns out, most of it lit up, but there is still a problem as the stuff in the attic doesn’t show up on the network… Could be the link at the attic end, or the port on the switch in the rack could be smoked. That is a troubleshooting visit for another day.
I finished the day at home topping up fluids in my trucks. For some reason the Ranger is low on radiator juice. Dunno where it goes, but some went. That is the one fluid I don’t usually stock either, so I’ll have to buy some. Washer fluid got topped up, wiper blades got changed, and the oil was checked. I don’t spend much time or effort on vehicle maintenance or cleaning, but I don’t want them overheating and blowing up either. So it tends to happen in spurts, usually prompted by something needing attention. I had a thought that D1 would help me and it would be a teaching moment, but she was busy at a friend’s house. It will happen, eventually.
I am hoping to load up the truck and head out later today. I want to sleep in a bit, and get a slow start. I may even try to hit one of my ‘next week’ pickups on the way, if possible. It’s nice to combine trips and some of the stuff I won should got straight to the lake.
Wife’s plan for the day is car shopping. She’s ready for something new, and to pass the minivan to the kid. I’ll wish her luck. Her car and what she does with it is something she handles and I stay out of. It’s better that way.
Some might call it division of labor, but I call it ‘minding my own business and staying out of trouble.’
I’ll spend my time and energy on something else, like stacking.
nick
I had the same problem here. When we moved into this house, I subscribed to Xfinity. After a couple years, they started enforcing the data caps. I switched to a Comcast business account. It was essentially the same price and no data caps. I stayed with that for several years, until Google fiber became available.
Jeb!, the Bush brother who was Governor of Florida, got in political trouble near the end of his lame duck term for asking the same rhetorical question in the run up to one hurricane event.
If you can’t see any signs of seepage of coolant on the engine or around hoses, it would be worth your effort do do an oil change yourself and see if you have coolant leaking into the oil. You might have a head gasket starting to go.
“We have top men working on it right now.”
“Who?”
“Top … men.”
Cue John Williams.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/03/27/cia-ark-of-the-covenant-resurfaced/82686919007/?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
Again, politics is downstream of culture, but the general public no longer cares.
Yesterday was spent clearing out the master bedroom so I could finish repairs on the ceiling from the water leak last year. I had to sand and do final touch ups on the repairs and then paint. I really don’t like painting ceilings, but it’s done.
The ceiling fan was due to be replaced, and I had a new one I ordered from Home Depot. Installed it and the stupid thing was out of balance. Seriously out of balance. So bad that I was worried it would cause damage to the box and ceiling. I grabbed the wife and we went to Lowes to pick out a replacement. Got it back and installed and the motor on big sounded like a big transformer.
By this time I was inventing new words. I took the fan down and tossed it and the box into the car (it just fit in the back without having to disassemble). Exchanged it at Lowes for another one and yeah, this one make noise too at high speed but is quiet on medium. At that point, I just said good enough and left it. I’ll run it for a couple years.
I know Greg has mentioned before about the quality of Lowes/Home Depot fans, and I’ve seen it too for years. My question is, is there a quality manufacturer out there any more? I don’t mind paying more. We run the bedroom fan at night the entire year.
Added: It looks like bigassfans now does smaller residential units too. Anyone have experience with those?
“Top men.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fdjf4lMmiiI
The Beard typically doesn’t shoot the final scene of his movies going back to “Jaws”, but I don’t think he was avoiding an upset crew with “Raiders of the Lost Ark”.
Pihole is running on a Rasberry. So, yes to your question. GUI ala web page interface and command line for software updates.
I just had a thought. Win11 has screwed up my network by wanting a password or just refusing to connect. So it doesn’t matter if I could figure the correct path to either machine from the Pi. // or \\\, whatever, it’s not going to work right now.
I figured something like c:\a1\myhosts.txt should work once I get the slashes leaning in the right direction.
The LAN is working. The Slimserver works from here without a password and it’s on Moa.
I have a Big Ass Fans Haiku-L in my home office. If you follow their directions exactly and pay attention to make sure that the blade number matches the correct position, the fan mechansim will balance itself once in place.
What I don’t like about the Haiku is that the light cannot be turned on/off separately by a second wall switch. First world problems.
The Haiku also has a slight “swish swish swish” noise when running, but I got used to it. The fan is arguably too big for the room, which was probably built as the “nursery”, a home feature which was en vogue with builders 30 years ago.
I made a Lowe’s brand fan work well enough in our upstairs great room last year when a new Hunter Classic purchase turned out to be a Hecho en China disappointment and priority was being able to turn on/off the light spearately from the fan.
When installing the cheap a** fans, use a torque screwdriver with the same setting on all of the screws attached to the blades. The setting should be light enough that the grommets are lightly squeezed but still have some play.
I get some transformer noise from the Lowe’s fan, but I don’t spend a lot of time in that room.
Bernie Marcus and his minions ended Hunter as a brand that means much. One of many such “innovations” in home improvement retailing which also ruined Schlage, Delta, and many others.
Rot in hell Bernie.
Windows 10/11 systems have an FTP server which can be enabled in Windows Settings → System → Optional Features.
I think it is okay for light use. At the tolling company, our in-house plate cameras ran embedded Windows, and we installed the FileZilla server as part of the default build because the Microsoft server was unreliable when using the Ftp standard “cd” command with relative file paths.
I don’t think you will encounter that problem.
If your home network is still IP4 and behind a NAT, you can safely run the server without SSL.
Put the single file in its own directory and serve that path with the ftp process to be safe.
I think the Raspberry Pi will automount a USB key if you do sneakernet. Run “mount” from the command line after putting the USB key into the socket, and the drive should show up in the list in a place like /run/media/xxx.
@Lynn
I went through this with Xfinity in February.
Got an email about Feb 23 in when it hit 75%. Didn’t pay that much attention. Hit 90% two days later. No flipping way. Xfinity site sucks. customer service sucks. Logged in and found monthly usage, which was consistently 25% for previous year. Discovered it was inviting me to initiate some sort of procedure for my modem. Did that. Tried to find phone number to talk to tech. Not just no. got on chat. Flipping bots. They could not point me to info on usage by device. Offered Unlimited. I told them I was paying too much already. They offered unlimited for an additional $2 a month.
Problem went away with modem maint (firmware update, corruption, misalignment of planets?).
Q for Starlink users: How hard is it to talk to tech?
BTW, Xfinity is not a close second to Microshaft. Computer woke up again this morning and started thrashing the hard disk. ctl-alt-del. Took 2-3 minutes to open. Image of programmers is early 1960’s suborbital monkey with electrodes in his skull.
Opera out of control, again. It doesn’t play nicely with 200 windows open. Killed the app.
I’ve been going into the OS and killing apps for thirty years. I have 16,000 times as much RAM and a CPUthat is, what, 1000 times as fast? (yup, 2^20 is 1.046 x 10^6) All larded up with shiite that makes it no more functional.
Drove around hell’s half acre to pick up a couple of small auction lots yesterday. Spent $14 plus $20 in gas. One lot had a brace, complete set of auger bits, and an egg beater drill. I’m putting together a chest of crash tools. If the grid goes down I’ll have better things to do than try to charge aging lithium batteries off of Chinesium solar power.
Weather coming in.
Microsoft sent Windows development to Bangalore IIRC.
These days, the developers over there loves them the Monkey Trick something fierce. I’ve seen the code in our product, and everything of the current generation will get sent to “BDC” in the near future.
This won’t end well.
A quick check around the news today tells me the Dumbo’s are still going with the tRump is a Hitlerian-Nazi trope. I hope the “Rules For Radicals” just push the same lie over and over is not working on the sheeple. I hope the sheeple have woke up and are seeing the manipulation and it won’t work anymore.
I laugh at greaseball Newscum trying to move to the “center” using his podcast. It won’t be long before the Redumblicans start ads with Newscum’s greatest hits. I look forward to the Dumbo debates in 2028. Shot Girltm, Commie Sanders, J. Crock-O-Shite, etc. It will be fun watching who denigrates who the most.
76F and overcast, but not much in t he forecast.
I’ve been up for a while but the coffee and breakfast egg burrito is just now happening.
——
Q for Starlink users: How hard is it to talk to tech?
– haven’t had to, yet.
——
D1 is studying the start of WWII in school. She insisted that the NAZ! party was “fascist” not “socialist”. National Socialist German Worker’s Party, also known as the Nazi Party was most def “socialist”.
She was surprised to learn that Stalin killed all those people… the school is calling the russian revolution one of the leading causes of WWII so they are looking at it. School is not talking at all about the socialists running the US at the time, and parroting the idea that they saved the US from the great depression.
D1 and I are going to have some more discussions on the subject.
—
I am pretty sure I’ll head to the BOL today. Forecast for the area is clear tomorrow. I really need to take a load of stuff up there.
n
re: Realtors
Gateway Pundit changed their site and uBlock isn’t blocking some elements now. I used the ‘element zapper’ a couple of times, but the ads keep coming back. Why are the ads for the nastiest stuff?
n
We bought the BOL without an agent or realtor. It was never listed so they sold without one too. We did use a lawyer and escrow service, iirc.
We used our friend as a buyers agent (was a real estate agent at the time) to buy this house. We’d looked at around 60 before finding this one. Friend was very patient.
I don’t recall how my wife bought the rent house, but it was probably agents on both sides.
HAR.com is a very useful tool, and I’m glad it exists.
n
I got all 4 of my exterior Eufy cameras installed and one interior camera place. The outdoor cameras are battery powered with solar recharging, the interior is line powered. All the cameras connect to a base station over WiFi. Local recording so no monthly fees. I may get two more cameras to monitor the side yards. Arlo and Waze are going to the dump. Arlo wanted to start charging for local recording. Nope, not happening. up yours, Arlo, may your company go under. Wyze I never really got those working properly with motion detection, batteries needed occasional recharging, and quality was not that good.
I already pay taxes in three school districts and two counties. I wish they were better stewards of my money. The DOGE thing is opening peoples’ eyes to the possibility that they don’t actually need more money every single year, and I think that’s gonna apply locally too.
Lot of grandiose plans will need a bit of pruning. I hope.
I just wish that they did a good job of educating ALL of the kids instead of just the smart kids with two parents.
It blows me away how much money the schools spend on athletics.
My baby is making me corn fritters and turkey bacon. I have foo foo sauce in my coffee. Diet schmiet.
And I dropped another pound down to 247 today. The wife is envious.
Last item on the list for the bedroom is to replace the smoke detector. I went ahead and replaced all 8 in the house since they were roughly 10 years old.
Fatal stabbing in SW Houston.
When seconds count…
Suspect accused of killing man in office was frustrated with his refugee status, prosecutors say
https://abc13.com/post/abdul-niazi-murder-suspect-accused-killing-man-office-harwin-drive-was-frustrated-refugee-status-prosecutors-say/16096024/
The suspect has been identified as 37-year-old Masiulla Sahil. Investigators said he admitted to the brutal stabbing because he was upset with how long it was taking to get his refugee status approved.
Exactly who we DONT need to be fast tracked for refugee status.
n
xkcd: Terror Bird
https://xkcd.com/3069/
So that is what Big Bird looks like underneath.
Explained at:
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/3069:_Terror_Bird
Big Bird Xray
“Head On” by John Scalzi
https://www.amazon.com/Head-John-Scalzi-author/dp/1509835105?tag=ttgnet-20/
Book number three of a three book science fiction murder mystery series. I read the well printed and well bound trade paperback published by Tor in 2018 that I bought new from Amazon in 2018. I do not know if there will be any more sequels but I would not be surprised if one or two more books in the series pop up.
Chris Shane is a Haden. And an FBI agent. In fact, he is the most famous Haden. Hadens are the paralyzed survivors of the Locked In virus.
The book is set a quarter century after the Haden’s Syndrome pandemic. Most people experienced flu-like symptons and moved on. A very unlucky one percent emerge “Locked In”, a fully awake and aware state but unable to move and without any response to external stimuli. There is no cure.
But, the Hadens have threeps. Threeps are robot-like bodies that the Hadens can remote control and receive sensory information from. The threeps bodies are good enough that a new sports league has been created for them, the Hilketa sport using swords and war hammers. And a Haden player has just died during a game.
John Scalzi is an easy read. He writes a lot of dialogue and his books flow well. This is my twelfth ??? book of his to read and I have enjoyed them all. In fact, Scalzi’s writings remind me very much of Robert Heinlein’s writings.
My rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars (I could be talked into 5 stars)
Amazon rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars (3,878 reviews)
Lynn
I finished the day at home topping up fluids in my trucks. For some reason the Ranger is low on radiator juice. Dunno where it goes, but some went. That is the one fluid I don’t usually stock either, so I’ll have to buy some. Washer fluid got topped up, wiper blades got changed, and the oil was checked. I don’t spend much time or effort on vehicle maintenance or cleaning, but I don’t want them overheating and blowing up either. So it tends to happen in spurts, usually prompted by something needing attention. I had a thought that D1 would help me and it would be a teaching moment, but she was busy at a friend’s house. It will happen, eventually.
Probably a head gasket leak. If so, it will get worse with a white vapor out the exhaust pipe. And then overheating as it consumes all of the radiator fluid one day. Some people just keep a jug or two of water in the vehicle to top it off.
BTW, Looks like a bunch of 29 March posts have been spirited away to 28 March.
Agreed. I have liked a lot of his stuff. The major exception was his Fuzzy Nation.
H. Beam Piper’s Fuzzy series were some of my favorite books as a pre-teen, and Jack Hollow was a character I admired. I hated and despised Scalzi’s version of Jack Holloway – as did everyone in the book at the finish.
Well, astronomy tonight officially cancelled, winds and clouds. Too bad.
I have things to do tomorrow, but maybe I will head out to the SE desert later this week.
Maybe hoist a beer to CowboyStu while I am at it.
Sun is out, it’s hot and damp. I am still home. Went to the Lowes and my chiropractor. Bought stuff for here and the BOL. Bought stuff I forgot to put on the list, so that was good.
Still, not really feeling it. Kinda down for some reason.
Meh. I’m a moody little biatch…
n
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-14543671/rachel-zegler-snow-white-hollywood-woke.html
— people, I know you have mortgages, and your kids need shoes, but FFS, you ENABLED them to get away with it.
You sold them the rope they hanged you with…
n
“You sold them the rope they hanged you with…”
OTOH, if you meticulously document your contributions, and put the records away in a drawer, the time might come when you want to pull them out.
Disney management doesn’t care anymore.
Liberal friends in Florida who are AP holders want DeSantis to intervene now, before the river gets drained.
Last year, he was De Satan.
Dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria.
I enjoyed the Piper stuff.
About 10 years ago I read the Sword World series, heard they were in the public domain, and considered writing one myself.
But my characters would never go along with my carefully prepared plotlines and synopsis, haring off in completely different directions, and developing their own personalities. It was like herding cats, so I set it aside.
It occurs to me that one could make YouTube shorts now.
The Mouse is Jonesing for another hit of that Deadpool vs. Wolverine cash.
Ok, James Marsden and Rebecca Romjin are in shape for another flick, but Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan?!?
I though McKellan was dead.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/avengers-doomsday-cast-announced-1236172556/
Just cooked and ate a picanha roast (the sirloin cap) so I don’t think I’m headed up tonight. I might still head up tomorrow, and come back Monday.
I just am not feeling like it. I have learned the hard way not to force the issue when I feel like this.
n
https://legalinsurrection.com/2025/03/the-fear-in-higher-education-isnt-new-the-groups-who-fear-have-simply-flipped/
An excellent post by Williams Jacobson, with receipts.
I would note, explicitly, that unlike the anti-conservative and anti-semitic reign of terror, the current actions are entirely within the law.
And note the last sentence above: “they will try to repeat history if they gain the power again.”
No mercy. Not one iota. Columbia may have a new president but there were a lot of other people involved, some of which were named in the leaked call transcript. Out, all of them, and make it know that if they land in academia again they will be bringing a perfectly legal bright spotlight with them.
And Columbia has a board that was equally complicit. As I advocated before: Take the first $400 million off the table–it is gone forever. Put another $400 or 700 million or and even $1 billion in cuts on the table. To misquote a famous stateman: “You don’t have any f***ing cards.”
The rest of them have had plenty of time. Start with $1 billion.
“Biden: The autopen years” by Ann Coulter
https://www.swoknews.com/opinion/biden-the-autopen-years/article_e5c59dda-34ee-5203-9842-dd26dcc6eb1c.html
“Of all of President Trump’s zany ideas — making boring, self-righteous Canada the 51st state, we take Gaza, Perkins Coie lawyers banned from federal buildings — his claim that Joe Biden’s pardons are invalid because they were signed with an autopen is a winner.”
I think so also.
I went through this with Xfinity in February.
Got an email about Feb 23 in when it hit 75%. Didn’t pay that much attention. Hit 90% two days later. No flipping way. Xfinity site sucks. customer service sucks. Logged in and found monthly usage, which was consistently 25% for previous year. Discovered it was inviting me to initiate some sort of procedure for my modem. Did that. Tried to find phone number to talk to tech. Not just no. got on chat. Flipping bots. They could not point me to info on usage by device. Offered Unlimited. I told them I was paying too much already. They offered unlimited for an additional $2 a month.
We’ve been hitting 90 to 98% every month for six months. I swapped the 2K TV in the living room for a 4K TV a month ago and I think that pushed us right over 100%. Plus a 31 day month and the wife really loves 4K programs. We run 3 TVs (2 of them 4K, yes the Rokus are 4K also), 3 PCs (one of them gotmypc 8 hours a day), a laptop, and 3 phones on wifi. Lots of intertubing all the time.
Q for Starlink users: How hard is it to talk to tech?
Starlink has a tech line to talk with ?
IDK if ATT fiber has a cap. I don’t recall one, and I’ve never received any messages about it.
The kids stream, I stream, we must use a bunch of data.
but not now, now I’m headed to bed.
n