Hopefully a bit cooler and dryer today, after yesterday’s rain, but I’m not holding my breath. Or my breadth. I’ll be doing stuff width my fellow enthusiasts… and part of that will involve unloading trucks, so I really hope for cooler and dryer.
As I mentioned, it rained on my yesterday. All day there were threatening clouds, but I didn’t believe it ’til it was smacking me in the face. I did get one pickup done of stuff I’m hoping to just flip this weekend. I also gathered in some of my hobby stuff. It was on my last stop that the rain came.
Now I’m actually behind where I should be with loading my stuff and the stuff I promised to bring.
I’ll have to scramble this morning from the minute the kids are out the door. And I won’t be checking in during the day, probably, so let’s hope today isn’t the day the hammer drops.
This weekend I’m in meatspace. We’ll see what the crowd feels like and what they’re thinking. It’s important to listen to a bit wider and more diverse group than usual. Gives a reality check. And I like to share my hobby with other enthusiasts.
Not much prepping or stacking, but maybe some simplifying and some earning.
One can always hope.
And stack. In case the hope don’t float.
nick
Cooler and – hopefully – wetter here. We really need a bit of rain, but it keeps missing us. Other areas, just a few miles from here, have had plenty.
This. Which reminds me that I really need to update our offsite backups. On-site backups happen automatically, in two different ways, though I do check them periodically. Offsite is, or course, a manual process, and I tend to get lazy about it…
– – – – –
The trade school I teach one course for has asked me to sub one day for another teacher. Not sure what I’m supposed to be doing – that will hopefully get clarified. First year students, I would normally see them in my course in March.
After we left the state, my wife’s former office in Florida did something bad implementing EMR to the point that a bunch of patient records were simply lost without explanation. For about a decade, the diversity hire office manager and/or staff answered inquiries about records with the response, “The doctor took the records to Texas.”
Yeah, IQs in the medical field really are that low.
Yes. Living the Taco Tuesday Stucco Sarcophagi Prisoner lifestyle!
EBay has Hecho en China colonoscopy kit if you really want to save a buck.
With the F150 Lightning and Tesla Jesus Truck, I have no doubt there will be temptations among Show Ya to try homebrew battery remanufacturing along with the after effect of abandoned cells in remote locations all over the country.
Most of the Ford C-MAX hybrids are no longer functional because of the hypermiling idiots ruining the electrical systems playing games they learned about on YouTube. I used to work with a couple, and they’d pull out the phallus measuring sticks at the office every morning – “I’m at 50 miles no gas used.” “50. I did 60 but I blew half the fuses last night.”
Looking at the projected demand curve, ERCOT will be in trouble again tonight.
Things will definitely be sporty next summer. Every 100,000 Jesus Trucks use 2,000 MW for eight hours daily and it will be campaign season.
When do the masses learn that ERCOT has the switch to their smart thermostats?
Mah truck comes first, son. This is Texas, not Commiefornia.
Up and moving, food and coffee going down the hatch…
Kids are headed out the door, and then my day really gets started…
n
Milliways, Tony? Seriously?
Forget fiddle. Musk plays his target audience like a friggin’ Stradivarius.
https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-supercharger-diner-permit-approved/
I don’t think much of Trump. However, I have to give the guy (or his publicity team) credit. Get a mug shot taken – disaster? Nope – turn it around, and start marketing it. His expression in the mug shot is pure gold.
The R’s have Trump and the 8 dwarves as candidates. Assuming the D’s run Biden, it’s entirely believable that Trump will get elected. Pretty crazy situation…
The first thing I thought when I saw the mug shot last night was the line/meme widely attributed to Chris Rock following the first arrest
“Arresting Trump is like arresting Tupac … He’s gonna sell more records.”
That mugsot is made for a CD cover. Someone coached him.
I also thought of the “Tapeheads” ending with one of the coolest 80s “in” jokes ever placed in a flick:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyKzdvZU3pg
“Remember what we did to Jello Biafra?”
Jello Biafra won the moment he shot that scene.
I’m definitely feeling the pinch. I’m not the average consumer. I actually save money. But I’m telling you, prices are insane on just about everything. I’m currently getting quotes to replace both heat pumps. Average quotes for both are running in the mid to high 20k’s for a 15 SEER 5 ton and 1.5 ton. Crazy. Trane and Amana for those wondering. I’ve got a Carrier person coming by today to compare (that’s what current units are). I do have one quote from a smaller local guy for both Amana units for 18k. I’m researching the business now and he seems to have a good rep. Lots of padding for the bigger places to cover all of that overhead…
Plus, the hvac industry is another of those industries that has a lock on the market (like realtors). Not impossible, but very difficult to get the equipment yourself (and only certain brands) and even those brands that are available won’t honor warranties if you self-install.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/08/was_new_yorks_2022_general_election_valid.html
I would suggest a test: Pull a random sample of 100 of those multiple viters, put them i cells with 24-hour webcams, and see if they vote in the next election. Let them know that if a fraudulent vote appears in their name when they ciuld not possibly have cast it, that they will be staying in jail until their trial. See if they have anything to say.
If a lawyer shows up to represent them, waterboard them both.
Speaking of inflation, what was it like in the last big inflationary period of the early 80’s? I was in elementary school, so I have no idea. Were the price jumps this bad?
More important question – How long does it take to train a ground crew?
The spare parts load alone could cost as much as the plane. Plus techs in powerplant, airframe, avionics, survival systems, equipment, etc. I bet Fūhrer Zelenskyy wil have to pay for that.
Corn Pop will just add the parts invoice to the next Ukraine spending bill.
Ground crews will initially be US Air Force or other NATO. The learning curve is too long.
The Turks spent a decade learning to service the F16, and my USAF crew chief friend who was in on the training said that they were the sharpest Allied military people he’d ever taught going back to the 80s.
The military was bought off in the last DoD bill with a generous new off-base housing allowance among other perks going directly into the soldiers’ household bottom lines.
With $1 Trillion annual defense budgets and the printing press in the basement of the Eccles Building, many things are possible.
I paid $9500 in April for contractor grade Trane two tons with conventional AC and a gas furnace.
Roughly SEER1 15. I don’t know what SEER2 was off of the top of my head. Maybe 13.3.
More important question – How long does it take to train a ground crew?
Too long to be of any use.
So there are at least a few possibilities.
(1) It is an Air Force never actually intended to be used. Basically an “Air Force in Being”. The probable purpose would be to back up the Ukrainians at the bargaining table.
(2) Corruption. Whether on the part of the Ukrainians, NATO, or both, lots of people just want in on the military money gravy train.
(3) Making nice to the Americans. With Germany sitting this one out and reneging (again) on the defense spending obligations, and de-industrializing, the need for a strong backing American presence is essential for Europe (particularly if Russia wins in a non-Pyrrhic way).
p.s. Or a combo of all of the above, there are a lot of actors here.
LOL! tRump’s mugshot is frickin’ awesome! I’d vote for him just for that.
Did anybody watch the debate or tRump interview? I didn’t and am sure I missed nothing, nothing!
Everyone on the Ukrainian side with a vested interest in the war is on the take. I used to feel bad for the service people carrying out Corn Pop’s orders, but I’ve learned in the last few months that they’re “wetting their beaks” in the racket as well – they’re just not “made men” below the rank of Capo -er- General.
“Soldiers” by several legal definitions.
In general, no. Inflation is the result of the government expanding the money supply to cover the treasury auction shortfalls, currently running $1 Trillion a year, and the Fed was not trying to keep the housing market from cratering by buying a bunch of the mortgage paper with more printed money in addition to the Treasuries.
Treasuries were real investments 30 years ago, not liquidity instruments for which the borrower pays a fee for the service like they are now.
3-4% 30 year fixed mortgages are an artificial construct, unequaled at any point in history. 8%, like where we are headed now, was a dream rate circa early 80s and soon will be again unless the Fed decides to turn the currency into toilet paper.
The R’s have Trump and the 8 dwarves as candidates. Assuming the D’s run Biden, it’s entirely believable that Trump will get elected. Pretty crazy situation…
Biden is going to write a blanket pardon for Hunter and the rest of the his family that took bribes. Oh yeah, and for himself too. Then he will skate out of town leaving Kamala in charge to keep from being impeached.
Nuisance will be at the top of the dumbrocrat ticket in 2024.
I’m definitely feeling the pinch. I’m not the average consumer. I actually save money. But I’m telling you, prices are insane on just about everything. I’m currently getting quotes to replace both heat pumps. Average quotes for both are running in the mid to high 20k’s for a 15 SEER 5 ton and 1.5 ton. Crazy. Trane and Amana for those wondering. I’ve got a Carrier person coming by today to compare (that’s what current units are). I do have one quote from a smaller local guy for both Amana units for 18k. I’m researching the business now and he seems to have a good rep. Lots of padding for the bigger places to cover all of that overhead…
I just got a 4 ton Ruud 16 SEER heatpump for my office building installed for $16K. The dadgum digital thermostat was $400, it has a 6 inch touchscreen and is fully programmable. It wants to phone home to mama but I am not letting it connect through my three wifi systems.
Did anybody watch the debate or tRump interview? I didn’t and am sure I missed nothing, nothing!
I watched the Carlson – Tucker interview and so did over 20 million of my friends. Musk is crowing about the bandwidth on X that they had zero problems with. Advertisers are watching and I am hearing Budweiser frog ads all over the place.
Things will definitely be sporty next summer. Every 100,000 Jesus Trucks use 2,000 MW for eight hours daily and it will be campaign season.
When do the masses learn that ERCOT has the switch to their smart thermostats?
Mah truck comes first, son. This is Texas, not Commiefornia.
All the rednecks I know, and I know quite a few, are down on EVs right now. Most of them want hybrids like me.
The Frogs are back? I wonder how long before Spuds McKenzie reappears, the original transgender Bud Light party animal.
The first thing I thought when I saw the mug shot last night was the line/meme widely attributed to Chris Rock following the first arrest
“Arresting Trump is like arresting Tupac … He’s gonna sell more records.”
That mugsot is made for a CD cover. Someone coached him.
Trump did not have the number one TV show in the 2004 to 2015 for nothing. That was his parade and he executed it with precision.
The Frogs are back? I wonder how long before Spuds McKenzie reappears, the original transgender Bud Light party animal.
Just listen to old people’s radio, rock and roll from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. FM 107.5 and 106.9 here in the Houston area, the Eagle.
https://www.houstonseagle.com/
All the rednecks I know, and I know quite a few, are down on EVs right now. Most of them want hybrids like me.
My dad is trying to buy a new hybrid right now. The waiting list is a year long.
Plug in hybrids are going to be plugged in every night. People I know who own them get fascinated with the fuel economy displays in the “infotainment” system, and it becomes a strange game with a lot of owners to see just how long they can go without buying gas.
The Pizza Box Dream dies hard, and now it extends to firing the gas station as well as the power, phone, and cable companies.
Block the MAC at your firewall.
>> First year students, I would normally see them in my course in March.
If attendance is down in March you’ll know why.
Any subbing questions, ask Ray.
Speaking of inflation, what was it like in the last big inflationary period of the early 80’s? I was in elementary school, so I have no idea. Were the price jumps this bad?
Worse. From 1970 to 1980, the house prices tripled. So did the car prices. Gasoline went from 27 cents a gallon to 99 cents a gallon. Food too.
The wife and I had a 14.875% mortgage on our first house in 1982. Texas first time buyers discount too.
Block the MAC at your firewall.
I am double NATed. It has to have the 15 digit password for one of the Wifi units. Not gonna happen.
It is freaking weird though. It is a color 6 inch screen and has a four foot proximity sensor to turn the screen on. Makes me feel weird every time I walk past it.
“Thousands of Old Wind Turbine Blades Pile Up in West Texas”
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/sweetwater-wind-turbine-blades-dump/
“Officials in Sweetwater say an out-of-state company has made their town a dump for the seldom-seen trash created by renewable energy.”
“The Sweetwater piles are also at least partly the indirect result of a rule clarification the Internal Revenue Service issued in 2016. Before then, a wind farm could collect valuable federal tax credits for only its first ten years of operation. But the IRS determined that it would restart the clock on the credits if a wind farm “repowered” its turbines—replacing most of their equipment with newer parts. So, despite the expected two-decade lifespan for turbine blades, wind farms across Texas and other states began replacing many that remained in good shape years early.”
Good night !
True.
I bought my system from https://www.theacoutlet.com/ Goodman four ton 16 SEER heat pump system. At the time, same thing as Amana. $3777.0 delivered. Back in 2012. Outside unit, air handler, 10K of electric heat, and coolant lines.
I installed it, from taking out the old to having it ready for the a/c guy come and connect the freon lines. Which had to be done to have a warranty. The guy offered me a job.
It was a fun project.
Maybe there’s a setting to turn that off.
Not the you feeling weird. 🙂 That’s well…. ya know, but so the screen doesn’t turn on.
“Doctor Who” fans see it as Trump doing Peter Capaldi’s eyebrows.
“The first thing you will notice about the Doctor of War is he’s unarmed … For many, it is also the last.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDyQ4e_shm4
I’ve thought about doing that. I bought a mini split for my garage from https://hvacdirect.com/ and installed it myself. I flared the lines, pressure tested, everything.
That attic is hot now though, and it’s worth spending some money to have others do it. Just not too much.
Scott Adams @ScottAdamsSays
https://twitter.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/1695161965944205512
“Challenge accepted.”
“1. The national incompetence crisis is part of it.
2. ESG, CRT, DEI poisoned the melting pot.
3. The Internet is a mass brainwashing tool.
4. TikTok is a Chinese weapon. Congress doesn’t understand it.
5. We have no (functioning) president or Commander in Chief to say no to the worst excesses.
6. Our education system, by accidental design, teaches the young to be stupid and is the main cause of systemic racism.
7. Climate change and the Ukraine war are primarily money-grab concepts that arguably have some basis in reality.
8. TDS is a real mental health issue in a country that is rapidly descending into madness as everything we thought was true is proven false.”
Quote Cernovich
“I don’t understand this moment we are living in. I’m not sure anyone does.”
“REVIEW: 2024 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon 392 Written by Jerry Reynolds”
https://www.carpro.com/vehicle-reviews/review-2024-jeep-wrangler-rubicon-392
“Total MSRP on this Wrangler is $95,945.”
“Fuel economy is not good as expected, but that shouldn’t be a factor. It will do 13 in town and 17 on the highway, or so they say. I suppose it may do that if you drive it the way you are supposed to.”
“The acceleration is insane. Stomp on it and the frontend raises, not unlike a boat while under heavy throttle. The big Jeep squats in the rear and it just flies. The exhaust system is just an added bonus.”
If you can afford the MSRP (this won’t be discounted), you can afford the gas.
Party time…
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/25/gop-houston-republican-national-convention-2028-00113008
Overpriced. That is still a Jeep, not a G Wagon.
Stellantis has to make up the hit to the bottom line for the loss of the Charger and Challenger, which still sold extremely well.
It lights up so the camera insides get a clear shot. Then it calls home on the cellular data network.
more tinfoil please…
Big River tracking said a package was going to be here from 5:15 to 8pm. Now it says 8:30 to 10pm. I’ll be in or almost in, bed by then.
Yeah, I’ll see you tomorrow. No problem.
They usually show around 4:30. I guess the truck broke.
Another point source of 2.4 GHz radiation inside the house at a known location, which can be used to count occupants from sensors at the curb.
Big River tracking said a package was going to be here from 5:15 to 8pm. Now it says 8:30 to 10pm. I’ll be in or almost in, bed by then.
Big River says that they put my #4 book of the Jean Johnson series in my mailbox today.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0425256499?tag=ttgnet-20/
Now I will have to decide if I will read that or go to my planned reading of Greg’s hated book, Seveneves. A number of people recommended Seveneves to me of Reddit/printSF.
https://www.amazon.com/Seveneves-Neal-Stephenson/dp/0062334514?tag=ttgnet-20/
Talked with a woman today who had a new Jeep. Don’t know what model; gate was up so a largish piece of exercise equipment could be slid into it. She was bragging about how much it could hold. Which is true, but my 2006 minivan holds more and cost a lot less. I forbore to suggest that she could save money for the car payment by cutting back on the food budget; she was, after all, buying exercise equipment so she probably suspected that she was plus-size. (About five feet tall and might have outweighed me, and I go almost 250.)
Killed one of my spare roosters yesterday. Grandma needed to make “medicinal” soup to help get over last week’s mini-stroke and needed a chicken, the fresher-killed the better. I suspect that the “medicine” is closer to superstition than to science but it probably won’t hurt anything. I chose the dumbest of the roosters, who was also the smallest and the most bullied by The Rooster. I broke his neck and cut the head off (because wife, M-i-L, and the other granny they brought in to help didn’t want to have him looking at them) but refused to do anything else. (Too lazy to pluck feathers, plus those of us who aren’t government employees have to actually work to earn our paychecks.) Despite their bold assertions, it was pretty clear that none of them knew what they were doing for the defeathering and the gutting, but it eventually got done. It’s good that I was the one to kill him. Setting aside the squeamishness of everyone-who-isn’t-me, they’d have bungled it and tortured the poor thing to death. I’ll stick with the policy I’ve held for 45 years: I’m willing to kill almost anyone or anything but I’m going to do it cleanly.
My Ecobee thermostat does the same thing. It has a small touch screen to display the settings and also allows the settings to be changed. I mostly change the settings on the App on my iPad. I also get operation history of runtimes. I have five remote sensors in the house that are set to be used at different times of the day. In the daytime the thermostat ignores the bedroom temperature. At night the thermostat only listens to the bedroom temperature.
I have the system set to automatically change the temperature at 11:00 PM and 7:30 AM. Cooler or hotter depending on the season. The system also knows we are not home and adjusts the temperature higher, or lower depending on the heating or cooling, to save some energy. I can let the system decide we are home and adjust back to the normal levels or get on my phone and tell the system we are almost home and go back to normal settings.
Since my system had no “C” wire and could not get current to the thermostat, I had to install a special module in the air handling unit that provides “C” wire on another one of the leads somehow. I only have a 4 wire cable, “C” generally requires 5 wire cable. It does work.
When we go on trips and have someone stay in the house I lock the thermostat so it cannot be changed. This is done because one time we had someone stay in the house and when we got home the house was quite cold. The thermostat had been set to 65f for the entire two weeks we were gone resulting in a large electric bill. This was in the month of July.
The power company does not have access to the system, yet. Who knows what the future holds.
I do have a box attached to my panel that the power company owns. They can remotely shut off the water heater and pool pump. Or could. There was a problem in the module where the water heater shut off and would not come back on. The power company came within an hour of me calling and replaced the module. They failed to change the serial number of the main board in their system so now the box basically does nothing.
“Chickity China, the Chinese Chicken.
Have a drumstick and your brain stops tickin’.”
My in-laws will put just about *anything* into their mouths on the premise that it either promotes long life or increases sexual potency. Most of it is made up if I had to guess.
I’ve been 4 wheelin’ for about 55 years in the Mojave and other Ca. deserts, the Sierra Mtns, SW Utah and northern Az. First 4WD was a Chevy Blazer, then a ’88 Jeep Cherokee and now 2006 Jeep Grand Cherokee with a 5.7 L Hemi.
Yes, I will be the judge of all the 4WDs and their capabilities. Oh yeah, 4WD touring and camping very near to where JimB lives.
The big problem with “Seveneves” is that the book is essentially unfinished. You’ll see.
And The Wise Latina maps the future of humanity. Well, at least a third. Again, you’ll see.
I would hang a picture over that thermostat; the picture would have a metal (or foil) layer and be grounded.
Pretty much my thoughts.
This from the same guy who brought us the three volumes of the intricately detailed Baroque Cycle.
One of the reasons I bought the Ram 1500 four-wheel-drive was to do some Boonie camping and light off-paved-road stuff to dark sky observing sites.
The failure to start the other day, because there was some light dust on the ignition proximity sensor for the key, has me really rethinking this. I know how to fix this particular issue, but if a another issue comes up in the middle of nowhere it would be bad. So perhaps a “rolling iPhone” isn’t the correct vehicle.
How far back to become reliable? An antique Willy’s? A friend once told me that buying a CJ-7 – that someone else had tricked out but didn’t actually use – was the way to go.
@Lynn
“If you can afford the MSRP (this won’t be discounted), you can afford the gas.”
It’s Jeep. There may be a few out there that aren’t total Pieces of shiite, but not because they don’t try.
They pronounce it properly south of the border.
@paul
“I guess the truck broke”
I saw a broke-down River Barge earlier this week. Backed up a slope in a driveway, must have forgot the parking brake. When I saw it it had one front wheel on the drive and the other in the ditch, grounded between, and the driver was carrying packages to an unmarked SUV under the watchful eye of a laughing constable.
While on an errand to Fedex today, I pulled into a parking spot next to a Nissan Leaf with Oregon plates.
Oregon to Austin is a long, hot drive without stopping for charging every few hundred miles, three days of hard road time. Someone is either a masochist or had one of the carrier services bring the EV down.
SteveF; Jewish grandmonthers have fought centuries of plagues with chicken noodle soup. It really is a miracle cure.
Whelp, Big River showed a few minutes ago. What a jerk. He never looked up and he had to toss the package onto the porch table to take a picture. Yeah, did not set the package down. Or hand it to me. I seriously can do without the negro talking and dreadlocks and the BS he was talking.
On the plus side, I didn’t smell him.
Anyway. I ordered some t-10 bulbs? The almost 6 inch long tubular bulbs. LED. Standard socket. I screwed up. I would swear on stacks of bibles the china cabinet used 4 bulbs of that size. Nope. It has 25w bulbs with 7 watt night light bulb bases. Complete with the the fake “flame” shape of the bulb.
So I had a brain fart. The new light bulbs will not go to waste.
I bought a box of ice cream sandwiches on sale today 12 for $4.
Up front in the piehole stuffer case by the register a single is $3. Same size, with the only difference that the up-front version has a pretty wrapper that you can peep off in one piece. In the box the paper is so thin and delicate that if you could peel it off in one piece it would have once guaranteed you a guest spot on Johnny Carson. The main difficulty is the seal, which seems to use the same tech that Airbus uses to bond structural panels.
Now I’m thinking that a YT video might be fun.. 12 treats and 12 creative ways to get the wrapper off, counting from 12 up to 1. I have an idea using a ginsu knife for one, a blowtorch for another, and duct tape (of course), and if I can find an ice cream novelty company exec I already have the bamboo skewers for a solid #1 candidate, but I need 8 more..
ADDED: Trying to work LOx in somewhere…
Killed one of my spare roosters yesterday. Grandma needed to make “medicinal” soup to help get over last week’s mini-stroke and needed a chicken, the fresher-killed the better. I suspect that the “medicine” is closer to superstition than to science but it probably won’t hurt anything. I chose the dumbest of the roosters, who was also the smallest and the most bullied by The Rooster. I broke his neck and cut the head off (because wife, M-i-L, and the other granny they brought in to help didn’t want to have him looking at them) but refused to do anything else. (Too lazy to pluck feathers, plus those of us who aren’t government employees have to actually work to earn our paychecks.) Despite their bold assertions, it was pretty clear that none of them knew what they were doing for the defeathering and the gutting, but it eventually got done. It’s good that I was the one to kill him. Setting aside the squeamishness of everyone-who-isn’t-me, they’d have bungled it and tortured the poor thing to death. I’ll stick with the policy I’ve held for 45 years: I’m willing to kill almost anyone or anything but I’m going to do it cleanly.
Youtube video ? I need to learn.
“Someone is either a masochist…”
Stop right there. They have thirty days to re-register, so they stayed in OR this long. Did you see a barefoot guy in a hair shirt?
“I’m willing to kill almost anyone or anything but I’m going to do it cleanly.”
Once you start there are just too many opportunities. The standard con sign used to be “You kill it, you eat it.” but they made you peace bond the edged weapons so they weren’t serious.
Oregon doesn’t have sales tax and the Leaf looked new. Maybe they’re trying to game the registration system in Texas.
100% of it, rounded to the nearest percent. Possibly to the nearest hundredth of a percent.
My brother has a stock response any time I share with him the latest idiocy from someone in my wife’s or M-i-L’s circle. “For supposedly intelligent people…”
I cannot fully wrap my head around the fact that individuals with (supposedly) high intelligence can unquestioningly believe what appears to be nonsense with no evidence to back it up. All I can do is acknowledge that culture has a very strong effect on individual personality and worldview. In particular, I am a product of the European Enlightenment, which sought rational explanations for natural and human phenomena. China never went through anything like the Enlightenment. All the nation and the individuals can do is latch on to surface elements which resulted from the Enlightenment, without embracing the gestalt mindset which made them possible. I wonder if this is why they invent and create almost nothing, and instead can only copy and attempt to incrementally improve others’ inventions. I’ll have to give this some more thought; the realization hit me only as I was typing the first sentence of this paragraph.
Another thing that makes no sense to me is companies which don’t use their products themselves, the way ordinary consumers would and the way extraordinary consumers would. The fact that an alleged work truck might shut down because of stinkin dust tells of a design team which has never worked a day outside of an air conditioned office.
How to break the neck cleanly? How to defeather? How to gut? I doubt that YT would allow any of those, though I could be wrong. You can find text descriptions. Per internet expectation, at least half of what you find will be other than good advice.
Ain’t it the truth. Everywhere I look, I see someone who is not of benefit to the species, nor useful to any purpose that I can fathom.
Conditions accepted! Do they have barbecue sauce for sale on site or do I need to bring my own?
The line is:
You find it! You stun it! You cut it! As big and as thick as you want it!
Only at Mel’s Char Palace!
whew, long day. Did my volunteer duty. Got 80% of the attendees in and situated. Got my own stuff in. Sold a bunch of stuff at what were clearly VERY CHEAP prices. My spiel this year is “It’s not my collection on display, it’s not a museum. I’m here to sell so make an offer.” It’s been working so far. Paid for my tables in the first 10 minutes.
Hard to figure net, because I either didn’t pay individually for the items or it was long enough ago that I can’t remember. Hobby has to be self financing, so the money all goes back into the same envelope it comes out of.
Early start tomorrow, as some people will be arriving and I need to be there for that, then a full day of show floor. D2 will be there to help. The old guys love her.
I’ve only had good chats about economics or culture with a couple of people but they feel pretty much the same as me. Things are bad and getting worse, especially prices. I’ll have more after the next couple of days.
—————–
Seveneves- yeah, I didn’t care for it much. It does point out one thing about how one chooses to avoid or deal with a major event, the people who don’t do what you did will have some strong opinions about you.
Def not his strongest work.
n
Stephenson has been off since “Reamde”.
“The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.” stayed coherent, but he had a co-author on that one.
I didn’t finish “Fall; Dodge In Hell”.
I’ve only had good chats about economics or culture with a couple of people but they feel pretty much the same as me. Things are bad and getting worse, especially prices. I’ll have more after the next couple of days.
I still think that we are living in “the good old days” for another couple of years before the financial apocalypse of the USA. A lot will depend if the next President of the USA is a conservative or a liberal.
People definitely do not have as much free cash now as they did a couple of years ago. But I have not seen house prices start to seriously fall yet. I do have a relative trying to sell their 6,000 ft2 mansion inside the Houston 610 loop for low seven figures. They are getting ready to take it off the market since they were going to buy a smaller house to move into but they refuse to take a loss on the house.
I’ve only had good chats about economics or culture with a couple of people but they feel pretty much the same as me. Things are bad and getting worse, especially prices. I’ll have more after the next couple of days.
Peter and some guy named Deninger think that the housing market is tanking now, “Is “work-from-home” why the housing market is tanking?”
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2023/08/is-work-from-home-why-housing-market-is.html
References: “Real Estate Disaster”
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=249517
“The unwind on this is going to be ridiculously vicious; if you think 2008/09 was bad go back and look at the top-line changes over the two years .vs. the last two of the bubble again. This distortion was three times as bad on a national average basis and double what we saw in many areas during the 05-07 bubble years.
Everyone always tries to tell themselves “oh that can’t happen again.”
Well, you’re right. It won’t happen again.
It’ll be three times as bad as it was last time and it is coming whether you like it or not.”
Deninger is not wrong. The coming financial apocalypse in the USA will destroy real estate.
Houston and Texas, and Florida are not the rest of the country. Just like we were mostly ok in 2008, I have a strong suspicion we are WAY better than most places. I can’t imagine prices are up in Chicago. My sibling had a chance to buy a better condo, with a lake view in the same building and took it, but a whole lotta people are selling and moving out. It was already becoming the “glass city” with empty buildings a few years ago. Can’t be better now.
Plenty of articles in DM about celebrities selling off a property or home at a big discount off asking price. If the high end of the market is soft the rest will follow.
On a marginally related note, I think we have new tenants. We did have to accept that they have 2 dogs (and we relaxed our size limit.) Pretty sure my wife is asking for a professional cleaning when they leave, and a bigger deposit. They already volunteered to put down more, so the cleaning service should be the only sticking point.
There is new building and upgraded infrastructure going in everywhere I look.
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There is new building and upgraded infrastructure going in everywhere I look.
The new retail centers are now costing $500/ft2 to build. That does not include the land but it does include the six parking spaces per 1000 ft2 of building space that is now required by the model city code. I am wondering what interest rates the landlords got. Most have commercial mortgages that change each month with the Federal Funds Rate.
The new houses cost $200/ft2 to build. That does not include the land. The builders are cutting every corner they can and don’t care that you can tell. Things like trim boards are absolutely disasters.
The new interstates are costing $10 million per lane mile. They are converting 400 lane miles of US-59 in Fort Bend County and Wharton County to 800 lane miles of I-69. That is $8 billion for 100 miles of interstate. The cost is so high due to all of the elevation required since the new roads must be 6 ? 8 ? 10 ? 15 ? feet above the flood plain and the elevation change is limited to 5% so the truckers only have to downshift twice.
The thing I don’t like about hybrids, is the complexity. You have all the fluids and moving parts of a gasoline engine, plus all the bits and pieces of an EV. Higher maintenance costs are inevitable. If someone wants to use gas, get an efficient gas-powered car.
If someone went so far as to get a plug-in hybrid, they they really should have just gotten an EV, and been done with it.
Don’t laugh – our heating system does exactly that. It was “free” monitoring for the first two years (and there actually was an early problem that they detected). Afterwards, we were supposed to pay $600/year for continued monitoring. Screw that – it’s sure to be fully automated, so that was a nutty price. Plus, I figure the “infant mortality” phase is over and done with. But who know if it still phones home anyway?
There is a weird Chinese (asian?) tendency to believe in crazy stuff. Ground elephant ears boiled over a wood fire during full moon… I exaggerate, but seriously, it’s like they can’t shake themselves loose from medieval superstitions.
My mother’s remedy was “milk toast”. Dunno if that’s a known thing, but buttered toast (with a bit of sugar?) soaking in a bowl of warm milk. Writing that, it doesn’t sound good, but to small-kid-me it was a treat…
Elder son has a t-shirt “Bubba’s Roadkill Cafe: You kill it, we grill it”.