Warm again, and damp, but maybe not raining… although we are still in the “could rain” area according to the national forecast. I didn’t see any rain yesterday, but it might have rained in other parts of town.
I got some stuff done. Stopped by my favorite gub store and dropped off some mags to consign. I picked them up at the state surplus store on my quick trip to Austin last week. Normally there isn’t much margin in them, but these were Kimber, and Kimber stuff is priced like it’s dipped in gold.
I did manage to hit Costco. F’me, prices are high. Charmin was $16-18 when I started shopping at Costco. It’s $30 now. Kleenex was $1 per box, now $2. What’s odd is what hasn’t increased. Australian lamb is the same price. Canadian maple syrup might even be a dollar a bottle cheaper. Spiral sliced ham is only up a little bit over the last 4 years, maybe 10%. Filling the Expy was a bit easier this week, 87 octane was $2.75. Rice is still up, and has increased a bit, and selection is way down. Christmas stuff has been in the store for a couple of weeks at least. Halloween candy was marked down. My tab for a cart that wasn’t even very full, and didn’t have meat, but did have a few heat and eat meals was over $500, and I passed on the TP.
—–
Wife and D2 were supposed to be doing Girl Scout things this weekend but bailed on it. D2 has things closer to home she wants to do, and my wife wasn’t super thrilled to be volunteering to do a bunch of work at camp anyway. When one of the other girls bailed that was enough to kill the weekend.
I’ve still got most of what was on my list to do today. I’m hoping to get more done without having to pick up kids in the middle of the afternoon.
We’ll see.
I don’t really see how you can go wrong stacking, in light of inflation, especially if you stock up when stuff is on sale. Even normal prices will probably look pretty good 6 months from now. NOTHING is cheaper than it was…
So stack.
n
Sergey Brin is playing with airships. God knows what Gates is up to these days, but it probably involves his needle fetish and/or “Pedo Island”-related interests.
While Brin is still on the Google payroll as co-Founder, Gates was effectively fired from the Microsoft board in 2020 when his sexual antics became too embarrassing.
The “shortage” in paper products during the pandemic did a lot of damage to the supply chain. Trees are a managed crop which take time to grow, and a lot were harvested early.
Honey Baked Hams were up there last year, over $100 for 10 lbs IIRC.
The in-laws are all in Austin this Christmas so if we get a ham to take to the nephew’s latest addition to his rental house “portfolio” – assuming we’re headed to the circus which I’d prefer to avoid — I’m not going Honey Baked.
Beyond the cost, the in-laws prefer their hams baked to the consistency of shoe leather and someone is always an infant about me preventing the “proper cooking” of the already smoked meat.
Kabuki. The fastest way to manipulate my wife is to make me out to be the killjoy in any festive situation.
BillyG looks like he is transitioning into a twelve-year-old girl.
I have some sad news to report.
I’ve started drinking coffee again.
I feel so cheap and useless. Just like if I enlisted in the Air Force.
My wife thinks BillG has something terminal just from looking at him. She’s rarely wrong about those things.
Maybe Gates has a twelve year old “blood girl”.
The only time I think “Silicon Valley” lived up to its writing room’s pedigree was the episode with the “blood boy”.
We’ll have to rebuild SAC if we want to prevent a nuclear war.
Khadafy was a wake up call to the rest of the world. Get nukes. Fast. Don’t plan on outliving the thing in the “Hillary” suit.
Could be worse. She could be putting together a Furry outfit. Or getting a full-body spandex superhero outfit.
One word: “Ink”.
I see a lot of it on the middle-aged Dem voter females living around here as of late.
That reminds me – early voting started. Not that it will do much good, but I do need to go vote against the property tax “reform” and “just a few pennies” school spending boondoggles.
Plus Warren Buffett’s generator slush fund.
@MrAtoZ
“I have some sad news to report.
I’ve started drinking coffee again.
I feel so cheap and useless. Just like if I enlisted in the Air Force”
Ridden by the caffeine monkey again. Enjoy.
That is probably a good thing. Stopping work immediately, full brakes applied, is like waking up suddenly. It is rude to the body and mind. Find something to do to keep yourself somewhat busy. I like subbing as I can choose my work days. If I don’t want to work that day, I just say no with no repercussions. I also do some mild computer support on the side, photography for sports. I don’t make money for the pictures but it is something to do. Well, I do sort of get paid by the yearbook staff. That money is given back to the school system in the form of a scholarship.
Money should not be the driving factor when retired, activity should be the driving factor when doing something.
Money is apparently not a factor for Millenials, Gen Z, and whatever is next. We are already into two generations of “bums”.
For those who like that sort of thing I should think it just the sort of thing they would like.
(Incorrectly attributed to Abraham Lincoln, so only predates current level AI by 160 years.)
Now that the student loan forgiveness question has been settled and payments resumed, they’re going to find financial religion real fast.
Anecdotally, I’ve had booking problems regarding our conference trip to Wisconsin next month, with touristy places suddenly deciding at the beginning of October to move up their Winter operating schedules by a couple of weeks. I doubt it has anything to do with weather and everything to do with cancellations.
Weekend getaways out of Chicago are probably being cut way back now that the snowflakes realize that they really will be expected to pay ~ $80 billion a year to fund Obamacare.
Pre-pandemic, the student loan paper was the US Government’s most valuable income generating asset.
We had to pass the bill to find out what was in it.
If you head way north, visit my hometown of Rhinelander, WI. “Home of the Hodag,” “Snowmobile Capital of the World,” and an all-around small town full of hicks.
Well, I feel better with a full 8 hours sleep behind my lids…
Kids are still out. D2 was amped on Dr Pepper from her party and got to sleep very late. D1 is a teen and prefers sleep to almost anything.
Sun is out and there is a bit of a gusting breeze. Dunno if it will stay nice, but I might finally get some stuff done outside.
Time for the sweet juice of the roasted bean…
n
We aren’t going that far north. That’s practically in Michigan.
I worked with a lot of UP folks at Jabil back in the 90s. I knew a week into that job that I needed to find another place to work.
Caffeine is an interesting drug that doesn’t affect me much. I love good coffee, but only drink it intermittently since retiring over 20 years ago. I don’t consume anything else that contains caffeine.
When I was working, it helped me wake up in the morning, but I could also drink it late at night and sleep well. Now, I wake up naturally, but still can have coffee late at night and sleep well. Nothing seems to interfere with my sleep.
We usually go out to Sunday brunch, and this is usually the only coffee I have all week.
I have read that caffeine is both a stimulant and a relaxant. That seems impossible.
The Manhattan Transfer – Java Jive
professor elemental cup of brown joy
n
@norman, you may find that you are more busy, and have less time to yourself now that you are retired, than when you were working… Seems to be that way for most of my friends.
n
WRT retirement – when I retired 10+ years ago, I made a conscious effort not to watch TV during the day, so I wouldn’t turn into a couch potato.
Did more stuff on the computer as a hobby. Lots of different websites over the years. Some are still around, others have ‘expired’. Currently have about 30 different domains/sites that I work on.
Then I started writing books. Now have 10 published books (3 published this month; a series). Working on the 11th book – a continuation of the series.
And still working on web sites and WordPress plugins. Minor updates to two of them yesterday that need to be uploaded after final testing. And one new plugin awaiting approval. The WordPress plugin approval process has really bogged down. Took two months to get the first pass through the new plugin. Had to make some minor changes to pass the ‘requirements’, and waiting for the secondary approval.
The WP plugin approval page shows 1020 plugins awaiting approval. That number has gone down a bit from almost 1300. But still much more than usual. The plugin approval team had a major personnel change – some longtime approvers retired (it’s all volunteers) – and the backlog increased from a typical under 50 to into the low thousands.
I’ve been alive forever. And I wrote the very first song.
Baby Shark, doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo
Baby Shark, doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo
Baby Shark, doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo
Baby Shark
Mommy Shark, doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo
Mommy Shark, doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo
Mommy Shark, doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo
Mommy Shark
Nick, I never liked swing music, but did like Manhattan Transfer in small doses; enormous talent and showmanship. That other chap, Professor Elemental, entertaining. Looked at some of his other stuff, and it is fun.
That reminded me of what some say is the very first rap (non)song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQNI1KfGXBA
It wasn’t even copyrighted as a song, instead as a lecture. Jerry Samuels was a talented writer and engineer. There was nothing else like it at the time. Thank FSM!
Professor Elemental has more than a 10 year run doing the character. He’s pretty dang clever. I like “Fighting Trousers” best, although the production values aren’t as good as a recent recording.
His newest stuff about ‘good dads’ is pretty funny too.
“Bring me my fighting trousers!”
n
Fixed it for you.
A similar song was in the opening of one of the “Frasier” reboot episodes I saw bits of this week.
I swear it was Daddy Shark, though, probably altered to avoid copyright problems.
No, “Frasier” isn’t the same without John Mahoney, Jane Leeves, and David Hyde Pierce.
Peri Gilpin and Bebe Neuwirth will guest at some point in this run of episodes however.
@RickH, been having an issue posting comments that hopefully you can advise if it can be fixed.
Issue is this: if I copy/paste some plain text from an earlier comment and then want to italicize the pasted text I long-press within the text which opens the (Android) contextual menu where I select Select All.
So far, so good, but now the issue; I next need to press the “I” on the Comments editor but can’t as the Android menu is still open, with focus, and aligned directly over the editor menu.
Either there’s a way to close the Android menu that I don’t know about or I need a way to scroll the selected editor text without losing the highlighted selection.
I can send you a screenshot if that would help.
Thanks.
@Alan – I only use my Win11 laptop to access the site, and haven’t tried entering comments on an Android device.
But you should be able to highlight the text then tap the ‘I’ choice on the editor menu bar.
Or, you could tap the ‘I’ choice on the menu bar, then paste in the text, then press ‘I’ again (to end the Italic area). That same process should work for other menu choice. This next paragraph was done with that process.
I did that process with this sentence. And now italic is off.
If you hear weather geeks talk about intensity of storms hitting Mexico or the Gulf states being a record, always note how they use the term “in recorded history”. There are a whole lot of wrecked ships at the bottom of the Gulf which testify to what happened with weather in that part of the world before the US Army moved into Florida in the early 1800s and started keeping track.
Get “Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History” by Erik Larson.
https://www.amazon.com/Isaacs-Storm-Deadliest-Hurricane-History/dp/0375708278?tag=ttgnet-20/
Awesome book about the unexpected cat 5 hurricane to hit Galveston in 1900. Turns out sharing a tree with rattlesnakes from the storm surge is fairly dangerous.
I got some stuff done. Stopped by my favorite gub store and dropped off some mags to consign. I picked them up at the state surplus store on my quick trip to Austin last week. Normally there isn’t much margin in them, but these were Kimber, and Kimber stuff is priced like it’s dipped in gold.
I’ve shot my friends Kimber .45. Smooth shooting with a very small double stack that somehow holds 16 rounds.
The left arrow at the bottom of the screen might work. Or type in [i] some plain text [/i] ??? Sub [ and ] for < and >
I hate typing on my phone. With one finger. Where’s my ctrl- c and v anyway?
On most screens, you can tap-hold and a ‘copy’ or ‘paste’ prompt will come up. You can sometimes highlight a block of text by moving the ‘triangles’ that appear at the beginning/end of the block to be copied.
Then Robert is your father’s brother.
One finger is all any American needs.
Some months ago I was driving The Child somewhere. Some other driver was being a jerk. When we managed to pull up next to him at a light, I told my daughter to flip him off. She normally declines, either because she knows I’m joking or because she’s much more polite than I. (A low bar.) This time, because the guy was such a jerk, she went to flip him off… except that he flipped her off first. Which was totally unjustified because I had been driving properly and not aggressively. (It’s a bit of a challenge to drive aggressively in a minivan which is older than my teenage daughter.) She and I both cracked up about it.
I’ll text on my phone. Swyiping is sorta cool… it can’t spell for sh!t, but. I do bank stuff, like depositing checks or checking my balances.
E-mail is just a check for new messages and then get into the Spam folder to empty that.
I have a 32″ monitor for a reason. Squinting at a little 5.x screen is nuts… and I’m supposed to watch movies on this?
I have two fingers. I have two hands.
Dictation, anyone?
“’FRIENDS’ STAR MATTHEW PERRY DEAD AT 54 …After Apparent Drowning”
https://www.tmz.com/2023/10/28/friends-star-matthew-perry-dead-dies-drowning/
Sad.
@alan, I will check on my phone, but it used to be there was a similar issue because android didn’t see the comment box as a text field, so wouldn’t open the correct menu. The comment form is a plug in editor that has a bunch of additional things going on, (like a parser, and formatting rules).
The most annoying one for me, and it’s something you guys would never see, is that the ‘post’ editor has mapped ctrl-i to something other than italics. Whatever it is opens a popup that I immediately close when I forget and automatically try to use keyboard commands.
All in all, it works surprisingly well, and that’s down to Rick’s hard work…
n
On my laptop, as long as you have started typing something in the comment box, Ctrl+I toggles the Italic button. Just like Ctrl+B toggles the bold button.
Should work the same in the post editor, which doesn’t use the same editor that is used for the comment box. In the post editor, depends on whether you are using the “Classic Editor” interface, or the “Block Editor”.
But you have to type something in the comment box (and I assume the post editor) first. Otherwise, Ctrl+I is intercepted by your browser to open up a new tab (at least, that’s what FireFox does). That’s how FireFox on my Win11 laptop works.
YMMV, of course.
On FFox the post editor opens ‘page info’ even though the cursor is in the text field. And I do use ‘classic’ that block view drives me nuts.
n
in the comment text box ctrl-i works as intended, switching to italics mode.
n
“Erdogan threatens to declare war on Israel and send military to Gaza in chilling warning”
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1829092/Erdogan-Turkey-Israel-war-Gaza
The Turkish president suggested in a speech at a pro-Palestine rally this afternoon that Turkey can “come at any night unexpectedly”.
And so much for Turkey’s NATO membership. And maybe buying Turkey a nuke or ten.
Yes. I wonder if substance abuse was involved.
I wonder if substance abuse was involved.
– he’s got a long history of substance abuse. And he has been looking pretty rough.
n
Apparently died in his hot tub.
This could be a bit worrying.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/10/united-states-freezes-export-civilian-firearms-ammo-90/
n
More uncomfortable questions are going to be asked about weapons the filthy Gazan murderers left behind.
This is rich:
UW Settles With Evangelist Who Called Out Trans Sorority Member
https://cowboystatedaily.com/2023/10/27/university-of-wyoming-settles-with-church-elder-wont-censor-transgender-debate/
That’s a novel carveout for a university.
First of all, there is no hint in the article of any such thing happening in this case.
Using my “Principle of Symmetry” yields:
“misbehavior by students, such as continuing to engage with others who do not wish to speak with them.”
My, my, my. I wonder if other universities have such a policy that might have been ignored in every case of the leftists’ heckler’s veto for the past two generations?
Best Matthew Perry scene ever. I have the DVD set for “Studio 60” because of this clip and the pilot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=el4d1TThZsU
Aaron Sorkin could even make a retread like David Selby look like a genius, but his material with someone like Matthew Perry delivering the lines was brilliant TV.
You *know* exactly what Perry’s character said to Sting but it was never shown on screen.
That’s also one of the best performances Sting has done of that song, and I’ve seen him do “Fields of Gold” live three times.
And Lauren Graham. Peak “Gilmore Girls”.
Riley Gaines calls for Eventbrite to receive ‘the Bud Light treatment’ for canceling her event
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/riley-gaines-calls-for-eventbrite-to-receive-the-bud-light-treatment-for-canceling-her-event/ar-AA1iUuD4
Really tired of leftist trash trying to control who gets to speak.
>> weekend is just two more days to work…
“That’s what weekends are for.” was a frequent retort at work (before I retired) when things were extremely busy…which was most of the time.
Should have said “No” more often.
>> @Alan – I only use my Win11 laptop to access the site, and haven’t tried entering comments on an Android device.
But you should be able to highlight the text then tap the ‘I’ choice on the editor menu bar.
@RickH, unless you get the positioning just right (usually takes like ten tries) between the Android floating menu (which has the Copy button) and the comment editor dialog box (which has the “I”,) trying to give focus to the comment editor by clicking the “I” results in the Android menu losing focus which clears the text selection before the paste happens.
>> Or, you could tap the ‘I’ choice on the menu bar, then paste in the text, then press ‘I’ again (to end the Italic area). That same process should work for other menu choice. This next paragraph was done with that process.
@RickH, yes, that works, except when it doesn’t, possibly because the text to be pasted contains some non-visible character(s)? Try pasting in the following text after clicking “I,” which, for me, never applies italics in Windows nor Android: Alan says:
WWP already has the tribute clip on the home page…
https://youtu.be/x5-wuiqXUnM?si=cV4Ls9UuK1ephYBc
And in my contribution to coffee themed songs
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TBHhT2rnIyM&pp=ygUSTmF6YXJldGggamF2YSBibHVl
Nazareth – Java Blues