Cold, then warm. Sunny and clear for a while yet. If we get rain over the weekend, it’ll be a wet Christmas, but until then, the national forecast is showing us in the clear. Yesterday was like the day before, and today is supposed to be the same. It’s great.
Did stuff around the house in the morning, then got D1 from school. They are having finals and early dismissal this week, and are off starting Thursday. The parent pickup line is a lot shorter at 12 noon, than at the end of the day. I’m pretty lucky to have the freedom to do it.
Spent the afternoon doing pickups, then spent more than an hour with my auctioneer going over the last sale and what we want to do for the next ones. Short pause for the holidays, then back into it. That’ll do. My items were almost a quarter of the lots last week, which is risky for him, and he makes less money selling my stuff than he does selling his own. His auctions are usually a mix of consignment stuff, like mine, and stuff he’s sourced, and often estate stuff that wasn’t enough for its own stand alone sale. The work of listing and fulfillment is the same no matter the source, so his profit is a mix of how well he gauged the market for my stuff, and his stuff, and the ratio of the two. It’s easier when it’s all his, so including consignment stuff is doing me a favor, in some senses. I guarantee if my stuff didn’t sell for decent money, he’d stop doing it.
FWIW, clothes, books, and the occasional vintage piece are my highest ROI. I’m VERY selective in those categories though, so I expect them to sell. I don’t pick up clothes unless there is something special about them. (Allen Edmonds mens dress shoes, or Lucchese boots, vintage or designer, technical outdoor wear…) Books are old, and usually have a local interest. Plus, I’m getting them at the bins for 50c each. Don’t have to sell for much to make crazy ROI on a 50c item. I shoot for $10-20 for books, and sometimes score with $100 or more. Got $420 for one… I had a designer beanie hat sell for $47 last week. That was probably a 10c purchase… The trick is to either hit more home runs, or increase volume if I want to increase my top line.
Balanced against that is the problem that buyers are paying less than they were a year ago. They just don’t have the cash. If you are selling something they don’t really need, and you are competing with food and rent, you’re going to have a problem. I’M going to have a problem. On the other hand, if you have stuff they need to buy anyway, and it’s cheaper than other retail outlets, you should do ok. As a buyer, those are the places you need to be looking, as I’ve said many times. The secondary economy is going to save you money, and might have stuff you need that you can’t get elsewhere.
One other mitigating factor for me is that people are often willing to spend on their collections or hobbies, justifying it as an affordable splurge. As long as it’s affordable. Markets are complex.
And I see that once again I’ve gotten off into the weeds with my particular situation. I didn’t intend to end up there again.
Did I mention I fixed my garage fridge? That’s a bit more ‘prepper’ content. Food storage, self reliance, fixin’ stuff… It was just some ice build up behind a cover blocking the fan, but it was making a gawdawful noise and wasn’t keeping as cold as it should… and it just started sometime yesterday afternoon. Took the cover off, sprayed everything with the Rain-X DeIcer I mentioned last week, cleaned up, and put it all back together. Success.
But it’s always something….
Stack what you can, find a side hustle.
nick
That’s almost always the case, whether the tech people were explicitly told to do something badly (“I think it looks better this way”, “Use that cheaper capacitor to save a nickel per unit”, “Because I said so”) or the tech department is filled with losers (usually because of “diversity” but sometimes because of nepotism and sometimes because of a broken hiring process which can’t distinguish between superstars, lumpens, and bozos).
Bidens. The measurement is tenths of the national economy (“10% for The Big Guy”).
Yes, if your time is valued at $0/hr.
The Colorado decision was deliberate. The state court wants to be overturned so the Dems can campaign on packing the US Supreme Court as part of an agenda for a righteous Jesus Candidate should one emerge in the next eleven months.
The 14th Amendment has very narrow language in the applicable section, and the widely held interpretation is that the prohibition does not apply to a President.
They have top men working on it now. Top …. men.
Unfortunately for us, that isn’t until Jan. 29th at 10 AM. Three sections of freshmen, no upper division course to break up the monotony like the Bible class palette cleanser last semester.
No Bidenbux. Those numbers are imaginary constructs which make the math easier to accept, similar to the square root of -1 or the small epsilon (“then a miracle happens”) in computational theory.
10% to The Big Guy
3% to seniors.
And I believe one will emerge once the walkin’ ’round money distribution in South Carolina is over.
There are worse ways for the political beat “reporters” to spend January than living on an expense account in Savannah. They’ll even schlep over to The Lady And Sons for “supper” at least once even though they helped bring the owner down. Hypocrites.
And, of course, they’ll go see The Statue.
Iowa or New Hampshire? In January? God forbid.
I’m still puzzling over the banner of Moochelle’s face above the entrance to the UW Milwaukee Panthers arena during that first week of November, with what seemed like half of the school buses in Wisconsin and Northern Illinois parked around the city one morning. Something is up.
53F sunny and clear. Kids and wife out the door. COFFEE in the cup.
————-
3% for seniors– yeah, one of the big motivations to cook the books about inflation, COLA to SS, and all the other people who get COLA too. I wonder what every point costs across all the recipients? Someone is doing that math, you can count on it.
————
n
I guess the troll was active yesterday and The Hammers of BobTM took care of it?
Cool. I didn‘t even see one post.
The Kamel wants the same deal The Mooch gets: money for nothin, chicks for free.
$100K+ for any appearance.
$200K+ to meet and greet.
$300K+ for word salad keynote.
All about the bucks.
Yup, the Puppet Masters want the living corpse. In two years, plugs will be invalid. The PMs won’t have to worry about him wandering around sniffing kids, word salad comments, and falling.
A palate cleanser for Mr. SteveF:
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul Creates Commission on Reparations
I wonder how many $$ millions they will come up with? I’m sure they will include those who identify as Black.
San Francisco was proposing $5 million each, but they had to shutter their Reparations office this week due to … budget cuts!
Along with forgiveness of all debt, guaranteed income of $97K a year, housing for $1 a year, and some other items. More leaches on society. Make them lazy and worthless. What a legacy to leave to the “youngn’s”. Just some gold teeth, hair extensions, and a gold iPhone. Give many of them $5 million and within six months they will be broke with nothing to show for the free gift. Many have no money management skills which contributes to remaining poor.
I, nor anyone else, should be responsible for events that happened four or five generations, 250+ years, in the past. American Indians are owed more than any slaves from Africa. If a group has not been able to rise above poverty, in the U.S., in five generations, that is not a problem of the system. It is a problem of the individuals.
There are so many programs currently available for black people there is no reason they should not excel. Except with the programs the recipients have become jaded and fail to see that effort is needed. Give someone something for nothing and the expectation is they can get something for nothing.
The politicians proposing such reparations are doing nothing but attempting to buy the black vote. Financially what is being proposed is completely impossible. Yet the people who would be the beneficiaries of these reparations are too stupid, too ignorant, too foolish with money to fully understand that such reparations are not possible.
If San Francisco wants to bankrupt themselves, fine. Just do not provide any federal bailout money. If New York wants to bankrupt the state, fine. Just do not provide any bailout money. Let the entities fail, miserably. Close them down and sell the assets for scrap.
I liked being a student – it was seriously a great time – but I still remember taking my last ever final exam and thinking: “I’m done. No more finals, ever”. I may still go back and audit some courses in my dotage, but I certainly don’t need exam stress ever again.
I am on my dotage now. I have a hard time concentrating on code now. I can throw out several hundred lines of code in a week now (used to be a day). Then I am burned out for a week. We will see what today does as I found a nasty bug in the Gibbs Free Energy Minimization Reactor last night. Replicable on my Windows 11 PC and my Windows 7 PC. One of my guys is looking at it now.
I hated being a student at University. I took 17 to 19 hours per semester so I could graduate in 4 years. And I did even though I changed from Chem E to Mech E in my sophmore year. Me and the binge and purge known as Organic Chemistry did not get along. In reflection, I should have taken 13 to 15 hours per semester like eveyone else and graduated in 5 or 6 years.
Any regional government entity that goes bankrupt should be dissolved, i.e., closed and its laws revoked.
The next highest government entity takes over and provides very limited services (police, courts, water and sanitation) with taxes limited to current costs. No schools, no health care, minimal road repair. No new pensions offered.
Previous pensions are scaled to the lowest one with the top one being no more than twice the lowest regardless of time employed and salary earned.
@Lynn
From the stories I hear STEM degrees are worse now. Add another fifty years of advancement and then add the internet into the mix.
Chemical reaction mechanisms are a lot more complex. Or at least the study thereof. Organic chemistry lab now involves synthesis and same-day product analysis.
Design classes are largely computation based.
There is no longer a school day—it’s all day with papers and exams due at midnight, quite often into the weekend.
The graduate student programs are even more dominated by foreign students, who will get their advanced degrees without incurring debt, get government waivers to work, become diversity hires, and dominate the middle management ranks.
If I were giving advice to a high school grad right now it would be to find a an aptitude for a trade, work hard on people skills, save up some money, and try to find a one-man shop with an owner who is in his fifties and looking for a retirement solutions
Non-thesis CS Masters degrees at state universities are diploma mills for “Visa Lotto” winners. Their families suck up the cost of the international tuition with the hope that the offspring land sponsorship during the two year grace period to find a permanent sponsor allowed under the current rules following graduation.
Non-research MSCS is so corrupted, I won’t take anyone seriously who didn’t graduate from their program with at least a GPA of 3.75. A GPA of 3.0 is essentially a “Gentleman’s ‘C’” average in grad school.
How much is because there is more technical material to learn because of advances, how much is because the obsolete stuff hasn’t been filtered out and therefore occupies time, and how much because of increased requirements for liberal arts/social science cruft occupying the schedules?
Here’s one for @Ray. Monday’s Caleb Hammer victim -er- audit subject.
Navy vet. 6 years. Disability with VA healthcare. Stripper.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dtJOiYDYsY
As far as my son goes (Sophomore in Aerospace Engineering), I think a lot of it is the added fluff of liberal arts/social sciences. He took a ton of AP classes in high school, and tested out of almost all that stuff. He only has to take two humanities courses over his 4 years – everything else is STEM related. He knocked one humanities out last year and I think will take the other one his senior year. It definitely helped him this latest semester to not have to take any junk classes. He had his hands full with Statics, Physics II, Calc II, and his business class.
Next semester will be fun – Diff equations, fluid mechanics, algorithm dev, and a business class.
Why go that far? Any pensions due from the government entity that went bankrupt are just forfeited. No one gets anything.
And the last 10 years of people that ran the entity into bankruptcy should be placed in prison and all their assets, along with the assets of spouses, seized. Look for any money or property transfers to other family members in the last 10 years and have that money clawed back from the recipients.
Make the bankruptcy sting, hard, on the people that caused the problem.
Algorithms as in using the MIT Press CLRS text?
Is that part of an undergrad MechE program these days?
It isn’t a terrible idea, but the O notation calculations can be rough if they decide to go old school and hit that Stats prereq.
Take it from Charles Leiserson, the ‘L’ in CLRS. Yeah, he’s a jerk, but he has a point about the prereqs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPyuH4qXLZ0&list=PL8B24C31197EC371C
We have some of that. A friend of mine runs a masters course. Enrollment goes up every year. The school earns good money from foreign students. Fail someone? Have a reputation for high standards? Nah…
More of an intro to programming class. My son thinks they use C++, but he’s not 100% sure. Here’s the course description:
He technically should have taken it last year, but switching from Mech to Aero has mucked the order up a bit. He’s ok though, and only needs to take Linear Algebra this summer to stay on track and not be missing any prerequisites.
Ah. We called that “fundamental algorithms”, and used Knuth’s text. Back in 1974.
For my MSCS classes, we called it “algorithmics”, and there was lots of big O notation involved. And recursion, and induction. That was in the 1990’s.
That is a really weird mix of topics.
As you say: a jazzed up description for intro to programming. Trying to take the pain out, by promising some pretty graphs.
Tennessee Suing BlackRock Over ‘Misleading’ ESG Strategy
https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/12/tennessee-is-suing-blackrock-over-misleading-esg-strategy/
First day after Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, he announces that all funds earmarked for the corrupt Colorado state government will be sequestered until they clean up to the same standards the U.S. requires of banana republics that use phony candidate “disqualifications” to interfere with elections.
And also, it’s just a coincidence that no child of a Colorado Democrat has been approved for student loans, or passport. And no, being on the no-fly list is just a coincidence, too.
No big deal for me, I graduated with a BS in Chem Eng. Then switched two weeks later to Aero when the job offer was with Douglas Aircraft. Then retired 45 years later having worked airplanes, manned and unmanned spacecraft, and rocket launching. If your GPS devices work, then I made no fatal errors as I worked on launching data for the GPS satellites and they are all in their specified orbits.
How much is because there is more technical material to learn because of advances, how much is because the obsolete stuff hasn’t been filtered out and therefore occupies time, and how much because of increased requirements for liberal arts/social science cruft occupying the schedules?
Most of the Chemical Engineering programs have dropped fossil fuels from their curriculums. Because, fossil fuels cause Global Warming XXXXX XXXXXX Climate Change XXXXXX XXXXXX Climate Disruption and cannot be ethically studied by the young populace. Just ignore the fact that half of the Chemical Engineering jobs deal with natural gas and crude oil.
So what exactly do two semesters of Organic Chemistry study these days? Meth production?
Don’t laugh. When I had to assemble an “evidence” PC for a Forensics class in grad school, I showed my wife a digital copy of “Uncle Fester’s Guide”, the underground bible on making meth, and she said the science in the book was for real.
I wiped that file as soon as I was done with the project.
My wife was offered a free ride to a PhD in Chemistry at one point during undergrad.
Maybe there is an untapped market out there for your software.
>> I wonder how many $$ millions they will come up with? I’m sure they will include those who identify as Black.
I once wore a black turtleneck in sixth grade, how much can I get for that?
You can get laughed at.
Even if we never burned another drop of fossil fuel for energy or transportation, we’d still need it for PETROchemicals, ie, most of the useful stuff we touch every day. In fact it was part of the worldbuilding for Lawrence Sanders “The Tomorrow File” that it was too precious to burn as fuel, and most of it was reserved for making the stuff to make stuff…
F’ing schools have lost their minds.
n
Even if we never burned another drop of fossil fuel for energy or transportation, we’d still need it for PETROchemicals, ie, most of the useful stuff we touch every day. In fact it was part of the worldbuilding for Lawrence Sanders “The Tomorrow File” that it was too precious to burn as fuel, and most of it was reserved for making the stuff to make stuff…
F’ing schools have lost their minds.
The Universities went crazy about 30 years ago. TAMU was late to the game, it only started there ten years ago.
One of the Universities here in Texas graduated a hundred Bioengineering students a few years back one semester. Not a single graduate got a job, all 30 or 40 jobs across the USA were already filled.
There were fifteen million jobs in the oil and gas industry in the USA back in 2008. I am hearing that we are down to ten million jobs now. Still the number one employer in the USA. But they are telling the kids that all of those jobs are going away by 2030.
“Warner Bros Discovery and Paramount CEOs hold exploratory merger talks”
https://finance.yahoo.com/m/4494c1ac-7ed2-34a6-93a1-3efcf05ca1c8/warner-bros-discovery-and.html
What do you get when you merge two dogs ? You get two dogs.
“Plant-based resin could make wind turbine blade recycling cheaper and simpler: NREL”
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/plant-based-resin-could-make-wind-turbine-blade-recycling-cheaper-and-simpl/702994/
“National Renewable Energy Lab researchers found that plant-based resin is easier to break down than the traditional epoxy used in turbine blades and outperforms it in stress tests.”
Note to self: Do not stand under a wind turbine now that they are going to use Elmer’s Glue on it.
Streaming doesn’t make either studio any money.
Big Tech ruined Hollywood, but the genie is out of the proverbial bottle now. The audience now thinks that they’re entitled to a studio’s entire catalog on demand for ~ $15/month.
My generation is still chasing the $20 Reeboks.
Apparently, Warner is the closest of the major studios to Bankruptcy, which is kinda surprising considering the franchises they hold which haven’t been run into the ground.
Right next to Super Mario, Universal has a third Harry Potter themed land under construction in Orlando.
“Elon Musk Teases ‘Mod Package’ That Turns Cybertruck Into a Boat”
https://www.pcmag.com/news/elon-musk-teases-mod-package-that-turns-cybertruck-into-a-boat
“’Mostly just need to upgrade cabin door seals,’ Musk says on X.”
All I want to know is, does my insurance cover me if my $120,000 truck becomes a submarine ?
And, do I need to get a Marine license for my truck ?
About that… Last Friday night I drove up to pick up my daughter and some other kids up from a classmate’s Last Day of School Party. I missed a turn (no sign at the intersection, as I determined on the return) so I pulled over, pulled out the GPS, and took direction from that. Well… It really didn’t want to direct me to Sam’s house. It repeatedly told me “0.3 miles and turn left on X street”, when I was passing X street. When we got to Sam’s parents’ house, it said “you’re here” at a house about a quarter mile away. I did manage to get it worked out by seeing the occasional street signs and then asking for the neighbor’s directions after pulling into their driveway, but the GPS was just barely more help than none at all. Took me 40 minutes or so to make my way about two miles, which was inconvenient because Sam has several much younger siblings and the parents really wanted to get everyone in bed but they couldn’t because five guests were still there.
This was in cow country – literally; Sam’s family owns a hundred head of dairy cows – but I’m not sure that should matter. The roads haven’t moved in quite some time, probably not since the GPS constellation went up. I know there are errors, some deliberate, in the maps, but they should have been mostly straightened out by now.
So, ol’ Cowboy, did you misplace the decimal point on your slipstick? Are some of the satellites off by about 0.3 miles?
Most of the university petrochemical or nuclear engineering programs that were part of larger chemical engineering programs 40 years ago are no longer. No programs = no BS graduates, and no graduate degrees. The knowledge nonetheless resides in industry, mostly as computationally-based practice rather than ethereal theory. If a need for new programs of either type develops expect that the faculty would be initially seeded with industry veterans with 20-30 years experience, headed up by a transfer PhD ChemE who had the paper and could be the figurehead, but wasn’t really qualified to teach. There’d be a renaissance of ten years or so to get some awesome classroom instruction before the credentialists took over.
“New ‘coffee badging’ job trend has some business leaders on high alert”
https://nypost.com/2023/12/18/business/new-coffee-badging-job-trend-has-some-business-leaders-on-high-alert/
“First, there was the trend “quiet quitting,” in which workers did the bare minimum on the job just to get by — and now, say workplace leaders and experts, there’s “coffee badging,” another form of employee protest.”
““Coffee badging is when employees show up to the office for enough time to have a cup of coffee, show their face and get a ‘badge swipe’ — then go home to do the rest of their work,” said Weishaupt.”
Some of the new working conditions are horrible. My son interviewed at Google a couple of years ago for “team leader”. His “team” was quartered in an open area with long desks with several computers on each desk. No personal area and the computers were first grabbed each day, first used. The noise was amazing so everyone wore headphones. He got asked back for a second stage interview and told them no way.
@Lynn
Note the: “easier to break down”
Show me three years of accelerated testing in Q-LAB QUV and Q-SUN Xe-3 (UV and salt-spray) and ten years actual at South Florida Testing Service and at least one other facility.
Or wait twenty years or more for ASTM to develop a standard and then for epoxy-composites only.
One failure of an installed plant-based resin blade and the residual value will crash. Second failure value approaches zero, or even negative.
The only way it happens is a government subsidy for the first installed test units. But why spend taxpayer money? Just make epoxy blades hazardous waste and the cost of removal and disposal must be covered by a mandatory project bond.
I used to go to trade shows and pick on one manufacturer’s group:
They: “We have a twenty year warranty!”
Me: “How long have you been in business?”
They: “Five years”
“Tesla Model X – Trans-Siberian Orchestra Easter Egg”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBtKSTW5CD8
ROTFLMAO.
I had no idea that Teslas could open and close their doors themselves.
All of the buildings where I currently work are getting remodeled along those lines.
Our floor is the exception. We are the only part of the company making real money.
Salt water and those batteries do not mix.
>> “Elon Musk Teases ‘Mod Package’ That Turns Cybertruck Into a Boat”
Distract, distract, distract…
>> “New ‘coffee badging’ job trend has some business leaders on high alert”
First time I worked from home was a remote 3270 session on a suitcase-sized Compaq PC with dual 5 ¼ floppy drives and a green screen. This was initially for prod support, prior to that we had to drive to the office if there was a time-sensitive issue.
Maybe some public firings of people who refuse to return to the office might ‘adjust’ some attitudes.
Not to mention that many companies are happy, for now, with three days in, two days remote.
A different ending for Apollo 13 in another universe:
https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/taylor-varga-worm-luna-varga.32119/page-1530#post-13134524
And look what is waiting for somebody on Mars in another universe:
https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/taylor-varga-worm-luna-varga.32119/page-1771#post-19301630
First time I worked remote from home was logging in to a mainframe with a portable terminal.
Built-in modem, acoustic coupler and thermal paper.
Found it in a closet about ten years ago. Not sure if it went to another closet or got recycled.
The ‘Cop City’ Ballot Initiative is Being Reviewed by a Court (Its Chances Don’t Look Good)
https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2023/12/20/the-cop-city-ballot-initiative-is-being-reviewed-by-a-court-its-chances-dont-look-good-n600453
Great opportunity for police night sniper training.
I’m a little bit confused why they are so focused on the atl training facility. Would they prefer the cops don’t train? What about the thousands of other training facilities? Are they fine with those?
n
Congress Investigation Into Harvard to Include Plagiarism Allegations Against President Claudine Gay
https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/12/congress-investigation-into-harvard-to-include-plagiarism-allegations-against-president-claudine-gay/
It was reported elsewhere earlier in the week that when Gay was dean she oversaw the expulsion of 20 students for plagiarism.
Seems that NECHE is between the rock and hard place. If they try to excuse Gay they risk a congressional finding that they are no longer a qualified accreditor.
Harvard has already tried to make excuses, and the hole is getting bigger. They have congress with an effective threat to make them ineligible for federal funding, which would include student loans, research grants, and who knows what else. Do they love Gay that much?
Regardless of what Harvard does, congress should make note of the list of Harvard academics that defended plagiarism and declare them academically dishonest and ineligible to receive federal funding.
You can believe that ex-Harvard students who got the boot for plagiarism are watching and discussing lawsuits with their attorneys.
And some uncredited sources in Gay’s work are outside the Harvard orbit and it would not be surprising to see them respond to the attempted coverup with some legal action.
Add in the donor revolt and the public protests that are starting to come from non-DEI faculty who are rightly sick and tired of academic b.s.
“Would they prefer the cops don’t train?”
Yes. And that’s $90 million that should go to the oppressed peoples.
And they cut down trees!!!
Harvard has an enormous endowment. IIRC they don’t have to collect tuition from anyone, for decades or more, if they don’t want to… of course all that money wants to stay as money, and grow, not be used to educate kids.
Since they racially discriminate against some students, and are no longer rigorous (most of the kids get As, far more than common sense would allow) it’s long past the point where they lost their accreditation.
n
and now I’m off to bed. Very tired today.
Been there, done that. Wasn’t particularly popular. Also tended to sink when the bilge pump failed.
Yup, according to the stupid consulting firms, this is the “future of work”. Pretty much what they did to our working space. I’m told that the office looks “so much neater now”. Yeah, that would be because people can’t leave stuff on their desks anymore. Which is a huge part of the problem for those of us actually working, as opposed to gawking.
It seriously sucks. Fortunately, professors and instructors can work from home whenever we don’t actually have lectures. Given my Spring schedule, today may be my last day in the office until next September. Of course, our collective absence will probably be seen as retroactive justification, as in “they didn’t really need desks and personal areas after all.”