Cool and damp, but maybe no rain. National forecast has us in the clear for a few days. And even though it ended up being a bit blustery yesterday, the sun was out. It’d be nice to have a couple of nice days…
I didn’t do anything at all productive yesterday, except fold laundry. Pretty dang slack. Whole house was in veg mode and I went right along. It seems to happen to me periodically, that despite pressing concerns and a list that only gets longer, I end up taking a day or two off. Could be that I’m still finishing out this last bout of cold or whatever it was. Pretty much everyone I talk to says they were sick last week or the end of the week before, or they’re still sick. Thanksgiving travel? Diwali? Or just seasonal colds? I’m no epidemiologist and I don’t play one on TV, but it was pretty mild, if widespread.
Today I’m back in the saddle with a couple of pickups, some stuff moving here or there, and some shopping to do. And maybe I’ll get a task or two off my list for home stuff. Certainly clearing space for the Christmas tree has been moved up my list, since it didn’t happen during the psychic shutdown yesterday. There are always pop up tasks that need attention.
I can’t imagine having to go looking for things to do. I know some people have that problem, but it’s inconceivable to me.
Well, do what you have to, do what you can, and do what you like. Body, mind, and soul depend on it.
And stack. ‘cuz that’s easy.
nick
Coffee has been sighted….
Sighted, ground, broth made, mixed with cream and sweetener, and about half down my gullet…
36F this fine day. Frost on grass, and the roofs, where it’s open to the sky. Sunny and clear. Made too much oatmeal for breakfast so I ate some. I’ll probably be asleep in the chair in 20 minutes.
Still, a fine cold crisp day so far. Our ‘leaf peeping’ has been spectacular this year. Vibrant yellows, intense reds, dark rich browns… but the frost will end that I think.
n
There is a person at the beginning of the self-checkout line that asks for ID. I have never used anything other than my CITI card (Costco branded) as it has my picture on the back. It may depend largely on the location and the amount of use/abuse by non-members when buying stuff.
I bought a suitcase pack the other day. A good price and $40.00 off. Two suitcases, a small one and a large one, in a box. I was unable to use the self-checkout when I tried. The helper said that items cannot be purchased at self-checkout. Strange I thought. He explained that what has been happening is that thieves have been opening the box, removing the suitcases, and inserting an expensive $500.00 air filter machine. Apparently it is a good fit in the suitcase box. They do this in the back of the store where no one is watching. Costco has them on video.
It would seem to me that if Costco has them on video, Costco should be able to find them at the video for the register, would know their membership number, and should be able to prosecute. I suspect for Costco it is easier from an image standpoint, and probably cheaper, to just absorb the loss. At a minimum Costco should block the card and ban the member for life.
I had to go to a regular register and the cashier inspected the seals on the box. I guess the person at the self-checkout that was helping me is not qualified to check the seals.
Uh, OK:
Elon Musk Says He is Willing to Endure Prison for Free Speech
“Free Speech” on X is a nothing-burger. I think he said that just to rile up the PLTs who think the First Amendment applies to anything they say it does. We just talked about what the 1st means about free speech. I’m sure some DumboWanker will try to convolute his statement into DISINFORMATION! since the 1st doesn’t apply.
Anything to distract from the disappointment that is the Jesus Truck.
Vlad is now killing anybody who leaves Ukraine:
Ukraine releases image of ‘traitor MP’s body’ and video ‘showing assassin lying in wait’ before lawmaker was shot dead in Moscow – as Kyiv issues warning to ‘criminals who have gone over to the enemy’
Vlad, The Impaler, Putin, tho.
I’m sure the US has/is killing more of our citizens (Hi, Obola), but now we are funding assassination in plain sight.
Shooting traitorous lawmakers…
Could we start with Liz Cheney?
“part way thru Hanukkah” – halfway through, actually. Today is the 4th day of the 8-day holiday. Hanukkah is a fun holiday; eating fried stuff. Fried chicken, latkes (potato pancakes) fried in oil, donuts. Any holiday that you can celebrate by eating donuts is a good holiday.
Liz Cheney is all the justification needed for my new proposed law to ban former lawmakers from the nation’s capital city. Representatives and Senators come FROM their states, and when they retire or lose their elections, they should be required to go BACK to that state. There are too many no-account grifters and schemers in D.C. that we should stop collecting them there.
There’s a bunch that aren’t even from the states they purportedly represent.
What’s this about Al Gore Jr.?
I don’t think it is a coincidence that Gore is in the news again this week with rumors that The Geico Gecko may buy Oxy outright.
IIRC, Occidental Petroleum stock is the cornerstone of the original Gore family fortune from Sr.’s holdings.
Of course, selling Current to Al Jazeera probably has Junior set for life.
Unless Tipper cleaned him out in the divorce.
What the actual f#kc?
a fashion show?????????????
The world has gone mad.
n
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12849795/Argentinas-firebrand-new-president-Javier-Milei-joins-lioness-partner-Fatima-Florez-opera-hours-inauguration-warned-nation-no-money-needs-shock-therapy.html
And he dresses up in superhero drag as his alter ego…
Pretty sure he’s not the only one who thinks this about the “Pope”
Jebus H. unpack the editorial additions to the factual part of that statement… and the editorial additions to the rest of the article as well for that matter.
Pretty sure he calls the Pope the antichrist and a commie because of more than his support for ‘social justice’ whatever that is.
Looks like he likes to eat and drink well, on a personal level. And Zelinski? is a black t shirt really appropriate to the occasion? Altho he and the new guy are both ex performers…
n
Absolutely. One of the best military sci-fi authors ever.
Definitely, right up there with John Ringo, Jerry Pournelle, and Marko Kloos. Almost as good as David Weber and Robert Heinlein. Almost.
Milei calls Pope Francis the anti-pope and a communist? So have I!
“Tesla tells early Cybertruck reservation holders to ‘prepare for delivery’”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-tells-early-cybertruck-reservation-holders-to-prepare-for-delivery-180428993.html
Got $120,000 ?
“A rational guide to America’s exasperating inertia”
https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/a-rational-guide-to-americas-exasperating-inertia-148522/
“The biggest problem is the government’s addiction to spending. Last year the annual budget deficit was nearly $2 trillion. Again. And there is no end in sight.”
“Right now, this very day, the US Treasury Department is set to issue a whopping $230 billion in debt. And tomorrow they’ll issue another $91 billion… for a total of $321 billion in just TWO DAYS.”
“I’ve written about this extensively, but I’ll keep repeating it because it bears repeating: spending is completely out of control.”
“Think about it: last fiscal year (which just ended on September 30, 2023), the US government took in $4.4 trillion in tax revenue.”
There is nothing rational about spending 45% more than you make on a consistent basis.
Why stop at spending 45% more than you make ? Why not 1,000% ?
Over The Hedge: Santa Uses Informers
https://www.gocomics.com/overthehedge/2023/12/11
No way !
Over The Hedge: Santa Uses Informers
– that is one of my issues with the Elf on a Shelf. It’s not just an innocuous new tradition, it’s normalizing the surveillance state. The elf watches all day, then reports back to Santa every night.
It’s an informer that you invite into your house.
n
Turning up your nose at food is a luxury that is increasingly coming under pressure.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12851609/paul-mccartney-heather-mills-administration.html
Expensive and optional fake products will be the first to be dropped when belts need tightening.
My belt’s not that tight and I have moved down a step with several products I used to buy, and cut potato chips out entirely except as a special treat. F’ing things doubled in price. For POTATOES. The one grocery staple that they practically pay you to take more of. 10# bag used to be cheaper than a 5# bag.
n
added- instead of blaming Brexit, maybe look at that staff roster… how much dead wood is being carried for reasons other than business? How many people were hired DESPITE not being fully qualified, because of some reason other than the success of the business? I’m betting a third or more. And all in the front office, and not out on the floor.
A lot of soup bowls are tied to that spending, and ending the printing press money would crater the housing market with much higher rates.
Because it’s not the potatoes. It the fuel that’s needed to grow, harvest and transport them. +Inflation.
Bidenomics really works.
“After state’s high court halts historic abortion ruling, Kate Cox leaves Texas to terminate her nonviable pregnancy”
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/12/11/texas-abortion-lawsuit-kate-cox/
“A judge ruled that Kate Cox was allowed to terminate her nonviable pregnancy, but on Friday night, the Texas Supreme Court put that ruling on hold.”
I have a problem with the state of Texas interfering with this woman’s nonviable pregnancy.
I suspect that this will hurt the conservatives in the 2024 federal elections.
https://www.usdebtclock.org/
Three guys out changing the pool pump. Paid installment 1 of the property tax.
Merry Christmas.
“Linux is getting its own Blue Screen of Death”
https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/7/23992512/linux-blue-screen-of-death-bsod-systemd-update
Blue Screens of Death for everyone !
“The quiet plan to make the internet feel faster”
https://www.theverge.com/23655762/l4s-internet-apple-comcast-latency-speed-bandwidth
Faster == Better ?
I stand by my belief that half of the white population aspires to be Rolf from “The Sound of Music”. The Elf on the Shelf plays to that desire.
Our Elf on the Shelf left our house demonstrably stuffed into in a garbage can, a precious childhood memory tarnished by Daddy’s fit of rage at my Mother in Law being stupid … again … compounded by the train wreck that was our life in Vantucky.
The four years in WA State will have my kids spending decades in therapy.
No, I didn’t leave, but I know a parent who did pack it in and return to Florida when she was fed up with the place, abandoning her kids and husband after her “it” moment — yes, a Mommy.
It happens.
“The future of our economy, if we don’t change course”
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2023/12/the-future-of-our-economy-if-we-dont.html
“To make matters worse, the Biden administration is spending money it doesn’t have as if there’s no tomorrow. The money it wants to send to Ukraine? It will all have to be borrowed, because our cupboard is bare. And what about the vast sums wasted on illegal aliens crossing our border?”
“Immigrants who illegally cross the border into Arizona are being handed $5,000 in good-as-cash gift cards, along with cell phones and costly plane tickets, all of which are being paid for by the American taxpayer, according to Arizona Sheriff Mark Lamb.”
““I was absolutely in shock when these agents came forward,” said Mr. Lamb. “I had known we handed out free cell phones and plane tickets, but to give out $5,000 Visa gift cards to people who break our laws and come into our country illegally when the average American is struggling to pay their bills is just tough to swallow.”
I had heard about the feddies giving money to illegal aliens but I did not believe it. How is this justified ? Did Congress authorize this money to be given to law breakers ?
So, not exactly vaporware. There’s something here so it’s Smokeware. Plus you get to buy new stuff like a new OS and a new router. That’s win for someone.
I have zero interest in gaming or video phone calls. With only one TV and the Roku playing Sling it looks like DVD or over the air. My Roku can do 4K but it’s smart enough to know my TV does not do 4K …. the magic of HDMI I suppose.
Between systemd and Wayland, Linux is fast becoming Windows.
There are alternatives to systemd, but IBM owns X.org and Wayland through the buyout of Red Hat.
X.org is deprecated.
“BREAKING: Tucker Releases Interview With Kid Rock; Watch It Here”
https://trendingpoliticsnews.com/breaking-tucker-releases-interview-with-kid-rock-watch-it-here-mace/
Man oh man, I love machine guns. Too bad they are so hard to get.
I argued against going with the monolith when systemd was proposed. Like every other dissenting voice, mine was ignored.
I don’t much care for Wayland, either, though it’s more a resistance to having it crammed down my throat than any specific objection that I can think of. (With the observation that my thinking at the moment is muddled because I got just 2-3 hrs sleep last night again.)
A former coworker who was also a Linux guy (in an office full of Apple schlurpers) fully bought into the changes because that’s what Redhat/Fedora were doing and therefore it was Good. I didn’t bother pointing out that he was just as much a NPC as the Apple fanbois whom he derided.
Wayland introduces security problems similar to Windows with shared buffers which aren’t present in X.
IBM is essentially Red Hat now, with all the good and bad that legacy IBM had to offer.
As I wrote within the last few days, that old IBM loyalty chain dies hard and every decision coming out of that company is touched by who the decision maker owes and who owes the decision maker.
I run Fedora on my home server because of inertia, but if you are deploying a Linux application in a commercial environment, RHEL was always my recommendation for longevity without a recompile until the IBM groupthink put the knife to CentOS and stiffed the cloners who offered binary compatibility but without support.
The last version of Linux NetClient I compiled was on CentOS 3 32 bit using the most current GCC I could build in the environment. Until IBM deprecated the 1024 bit RSA certificates, end users were still finding ways to make the application binaries work on recent RHEL flavors and even Ubuntu.
I think I was the last developer to build that Linux port. I suspect my management lost the source code after wiping my laptop out of spite.
How much worse than “Captain Jack” can “Doctor Who” manage in terms of cringe?
I give you “The Goblin Song”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXgnqGTOXTE
Disney.
BTW, Captain Jack is persona non grata in Cardiff these days. Some kind of “Me Too” antics on set involving the actor exposing himself.
It’s like after every bad decision, someone in that franchise utters “wait, hold my beer.”
I can’t tell if the comments are brilliant trolling or serious. If serious, well, the flaming meteor of death can’t get here soon enough.
n
I don’t think they wanted “The Gay” as much as they wanted “The Cringe”.
“The Gay” would have been to do a tribute to “Labyrinth”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRC1X3050jY
Bowie is forever the Goblin King, and Disney owns the rights.
Kicking the can… hoping things get better quickly.
– of course there is no reason to think things WILL get better quickly.
If you can’t make ends meet now, you won’t be able to make them meet later when you have the additional burden of loan repayment.
Start cutting ruthlessly.
n
>> Elon Musk Says He is Willing to Endure Prison for Free Speech
Tony and The Donald can be cellmates.
>> Bidenomics really works.
Is it just me or have most of the Dumbos already walked away from that phrase…KJP in particular.
Anyone have any recommendations from David Baldacci’s backlist?
I’ve read a couple and have not been impressed. He seems to write short series of 4-7 books about the same characters. I just finished End Game (2017), the fifth and apparently last of the Will Robie series. (I didn’t read the previous books in the series) I found the characters a bit underdrawn, some real anomalies in the use of technology, needless obfuscation in a vital “clue”, and either a lack of understanding of ballistics or something else.
The latter situation was this: five members of a motorcycle gang are taken down in a firefight by a professional sniper. The sniper is behind them in a building across the street, and takes them down non-lethally by shooting them in the ankle.
The cartridge used was 300 Win Mag. The exact bullet was not specified, but we’re talking muzzle velocities of 2500-3500 fps.
I would expect serious life-threatening injury from rounds with 4000 ft-lbs of energy out of the barrel, undiminished by flying 20-30 yards–single-shot amputation and likely death from hydrostatic shock.
The bikers appear a couple days later on crutches.
Increasing numbers of Americans are taking loans from their 401(K) accounts as they begin to feel the pinch of inflation.
More than a million workers – in need of short term cash to make ends meet – took a loan from their retirement account in just three months over the summer.
Yup, life is getting very expensive. We have spent some of the wife’s inheritance on capital projects this year and last. New driveway for the house, pay down the office mortgage by 50%, gutters on the house, surgery for the daughter, etc.
The latter situation was this: five members of a motorcycle gang are taken down in a firefight by a professional sniper. The sniper is behind them in a building across the street, and takes them down non-lethally by shooting them in the ankle.
The cartridge used was 300 Win Mag. The exact bullet was not specified, but we’re talking muzzle velocities of 2500-3500 fps.
I would expect serious life-threatening injury from rounds with 4000 ft-lbs of energy out of the barrel, undiminished by flying 20-30 yards–single-shot amputation and likely death from hydrostatic shock.
The bikers appear a couple days later on crutches.
Yeah, because they are walking on crutches due to the leg amputations. 300 Win Mag is serious round capable of taking down 300 lb animals with a single shot. There are some heavier rounds but not many.
Lotta people that write about stuff only read other people’s writing about that stuff.
I had an author (who I met and talked to IRL), who is a longtime cop and soldier, write about writing a scene where someone pulls the hammer back on a Glock… He knew it was wrong, but wrote the cliche’ first then thought about it being already established that the gun was a glock.
Lots of authors on the east coast writing for east coast publishers… not a huge gun culture there in NYC.
and most of their readers won’t know any better either.
n
Finished the “Partials” book. Liked it. It’s young adult, has a bit of violence, but no sex, and a teen girl is the protagonist. There are two sequels and a short available, so I’ll add them to my Christmas list. I’m not in a hurry.
Does anyone have an opinion about audible for audio books? Can I download and burn to a CD or is it streaming? I like listening to my CD based audiobooks while driving, and don’t like using my phone to do it. Does audible feel like a good deal?
I’ve been reluctant to sign up for another sub when I’ve already got XM, kindle unlimited, and whatever the wife and kids have for TV… XM is crazy money by itself across three vehicles.
nick
@lynn, that is one of the classic trade offs and arguments for renting- owning property comes with steady bills for stuff renter’s just don’t pay for. I’d still rather own than rent, but it does get to be tiresome.
n
Re audible, generally pretty good, I find I need to listen to a sample first to see if I like the reader as there are some truly awful ones out there. A bit of searching will find you a tool that lets you download the audible books as mp3s, it’s not something you can do with the audible sure or app
This. Not all conservatives are religious – maybe not even most. The religious right has been given too much free reign.