Cold and wet to start, chance of rain later. Hopefully warming up too. It was nice yesterday, getting too hot for long sleeves and long pants. I was pouring sweat while tending the burn pile.
I got a bunch of things started, but nothing done. Today I’ll wrap up several of the projects, hopefully. I’ll certainly start some too.
Springtime chores were not even on my list but have to be addressed. Stuff like clearing debris from planting beds while everything is still dead will be much harder if I wait. There are a bunch of things that need pruning too. And the normal everyday maintenance like painting and cleaning should be happening… but might not this trip. There’s always something. And always something more when that’s done.
I took the time out to chat with several of my neighbors anyway. Meatspace is IMPORTANT. I got more comments about working hard from a guy I have barely met, which is gratifying. People are watching and forming opinions. I’m working hard to make them good ones. My wife has been more in contact with a different group of people up here, so I’m hoping were covering all the bases. So far, all the guys I’ve talked to have been very like minded, but then this is Trump country, and a country boy will survive.
The inlaws are hopeless though. Grandma blamed Trump for not building the wall, FFS. Hinted that the girls need to get out of Texas for college “so they’re not indoctrinated”. And she’s pushing her nonsense diet advice “you need more carbs for energy” on the girls. When pressed last night she did the typical thing of first blaming Trump, then jumping to another issue when I refuted anything. Grampa just keeps his mouth shut now. He must see it, but can’t admit it. They are born and bred, east coast kennedy liberals.
I’m trying mightily to maintain my civility, but it’s a good thing they are going home mid week.
————-
If it’s not raining today, I’ll keep working on stuff. Always keep improving. At least try.
And stack of course, that can’t hurt.
nick
DST has revealed how much daylight we were burning. Suck it up, buttercup—you don’t need daylight to drink coffee. Get two cups in ya and enjoy the dawn.
Reading between the lines in the article and others on the agreement published over the last couple of years, in most areas, the phones will use the T-Mobile 5G network. The Starlink terminal probably also becomes a 5G mini tower using unlicensed spectrum.
Of course the article mentions the tech being able to carry traffic for WhatsApp.
I’m still not sure how to read the conversation. Some members of our group are going to be very unhappy.
Our division makes money but the company, along with the rest of the industry, is in the tank otherwise. A lot of bad deals were cut in tech during the pandemic on the thought that Sickness Kabuki was the new norm.
I’ve been to two big weddings. Big as in expensive, lavish affairs. 50K+ spent easily. Both have ended in divorce. Of course, other couples with smaller weddings have divorced too, but it just seems to up the odds the more expensive the wedding is. Maybe it says something about the bride-to-be’s mental state?
When my wife and I got married, we set a budget of 5k (in 2001). That covered everything except the rehearsal dinner and photographer (Dad paid for that), the wedding cake (MIL paid for that – she wanted a cake made by a locally famous place, we had no objections), and the reception venue, which was free as we had it in the in-laws back yard, which was beautiful. Still together after 22.5 years. Oh, and the 5k included the wedding dress, which was $500.
I think the cost for our wedding was about $500.00 in 1975. Venue was our church, cake made by a relative, MIL and wife made the dress, photographer was a friend who charged us the cost of film and developing, food was mostly made and donated by relatives, flowers by another friend.
Our rings were $450.00 for all three, and we still have them, diamonds in her engagement ring of course, diamonds also in mine and her wedding band. That $450.00 was a months pay back then when I was in the USAF.
We were poor then and were for many years. We sacrificed much in the younger years. We are now comfortable relative to a lot of people. But we still scrimp and watch costs. It is a hard habit to break.
I’m still dealing with the standards of the third world with our siding replacement. This is nearing three weeks since the job started.
Plenty of Texas schools will train them to be proper liberals, public universities too.
UT Austin tops my list.
This my is not a Republican state anymore, and the cancer originates in the capital metro area. Income Tax will be on the November 2027 ballot.
Bacon is in the pan, but the coffee machine is blocked by a mother in law who can’t make anything more tech than a pencil work reliably. She should be clear of it soon. There’s only 3 buttons on it, but, well, this time the water was out. And she even brought her favorite K cups, so it’s at least SIMILAR to what she uses every day.
Sunny and bright, 66F, looks like a gorgeous day.
Hope the world doesn’t burn down while I’m enjoying the day.
n
I’ve seen it argued that divorce is a luxury. That is, poorer couples are more likely to stay married out of financial convenience (in the case of stay at home moms and housewives that don’t work the feminists would call it “financial abuse” or being held as a “financial hostage”). Rich couples can just say f*ck it and go get a nice apartment and hire a lawyer.
Our wedding was low key, seeing as we went to a justice of the peace, followed by a nice lunch with a few family members. We had an earlier dinner at a fancy restaurant, with more family members. I don’t remember the price, but total cost of everything was probably $2k or so. We were just coming out of our “poor student” days, so we had a bit of spending money.
It’s just one event – not worth impoverishing yourself. I do not understand people who spend tens of thousands on a wedding. Like one of my cousins in West Texas: 700 guests, and she was basically broke, so her parents had to dig into their retirement savings to pay for it all.
In some cultures, and increasingly in the US, the wedding is a status symbol for the parents and not for the couple. It’s more about some upper middle class dad trying to show off how much he could spend on his daughter’s wedding to all of his friends. I’ve been to some weddings like this where half the guests are friends of the parents not friends of the bride and groom.
Of course, unmanned drones are completely changing the picture. The operators sit safely behind the lines; the drones are cheap and expendable. Even 30+ years ago, I saw presentations on how much simpler and better an airframe would be if it didn’t have to carry a meat-sack. The USAF brass (pilots all) were already fighting that vision tooth and nail. Back then, it wasn’t quite possible. Now it is becoming reality.
The USAF is backing off drones all of a sudden. The rumor floating around is that somebody (cough Iran) got into the satellite control network for the drones. All they did was block the signals but all the drones in the area went off mission and into waiting mode.
With a meat sack, the flying objects will complete the missions. With a computer, who knows ? With an AI, that scares the you know what out of me. Did no one watch the terminator movies ? Or Battlestar Galactica (Cylons).
Reading between the lines in the article and others on the agreement published over the last couple of years, in most areas, the phones will use the T-Mobile 5G network. The Starlink terminal probably also becomes a 5G mini tower using unlicensed spectrum.
Yeah but you get out in the sticks, away from the interstates, there is no 4G or 5G network.
Unless, like you say, the antenna will become a wifi / 5G tower. So regular phones will be able to talk to the local starlink antenna / tower. Interesting.
5G uses unlicensed spectrum, but it doesn’t utilize the WiFi protocol.
TMobile also has PCS from Nextel and whatever was left of Clearwire bandwidth after Sprint got done digesting them.
Clearwire was the last attempt at fulfilling the Pizza Box Dream. They had a nice clean chunk of sub 1 ghz bandwidth IIRC.
I seem to remember someone recommending some low cost wireless freezer monitoring hardware but I wasn’t able to find the post. Does anyone have units they are happy with that they can recommend?
I believe it was this one that I ordered in august 2022, per recommendations here, still working:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07B9N71VC/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1&tag=ttgnet-20
MrAtoz, it may interest you to know that I “sweet Summer child”d someone else, elsewhere. He was, to say the least, not happy. His response was rather amusing, though it could be taken as fighting words if one were so inclined.
When my wife and I got married, we set a budget of 5k (in 2001). That covered everything except the rehearsal dinner and photographer (Dad paid for that), the wedding cake (MIL paid for that – she wanted a cake made by a locally famous place, we had no objections), and the reception venue, which was free as we had it in the in-laws back yard, which was beautiful. Still together after 22.5 years. Oh, and the 5k included the wedding dress, which was $500.
Our budget (ha !, the two of us had no money being both college students) was about $2,000 of our parents money in 1982. We had well over 300 people show up at our church. Maybe 500, it was a lot of people. My wife got a wedding dress base for $60 and fixed it up herself. I think we (our parents) actually spent $4,000 at the end of it with the two cakes, the $100 for our preacher, $200 for our church, and $400 for the photographer. We spent $600 driving over to Disneyworld with gas, meals, motels, and tickets, I know that because that is all the cash I had, no credit cards back then, and I got back home with $20. Dad loaned me a company car for the trip as mine would not make it.
https://www.winsim.com/1982_lynn_pam_wedding.jpg
5G uses unlicensed spectrum, but it doesn’t utilize the WiFi protocol.
Starlink antennas already have wifi in them (default configuration). Plus an optional ethernet plug that I use to connect the Starlink to my triple WAN mux box, my Peplink 30.
These days, $600 might cover tickets and enough Lightning Lane passes for two people to have an okay one day experience in the park (singular), but it would depend on the time of year.
Looking at some of the discussion from yesterday:
I wonder how hard it would be (and how much it would cost) to convert those Cessnas into armed drones, and how much the weight would be affected by removing all crew support and replacing it with the controllers, fuel and weapons to make them an effective remote platform. And use the erstwhile pilots as drone operators, not as expendables. For that matter, convert a bunch of retired jet trainers to armed drones. Like, say A-10s, F-15s and F-16s sitting at Davis-Monthan? I think cheaper and quicker than building out new airframes.
Godzilla Minus One. Although, the mission was one-way.
LOL. Probably an Air Force puke.
He had been talking about how inflation is really very low since Biden infested the White House (that’s my phrasing, not his) and that Trump is a liar for saying that inflation has been up to 50% in the past three years. He cited statistics provided by the US federal government as proof of his point.
And then flipped out when I suggested shadowstats for an alternative number, or simply compare his grocery bill between now and January 2021.
“The “10x engineer:” 50 years ago and now”
https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-10x-engineer-50-years-ago-and
“How has parts of the classic book on software engineering, ‘The Mythical Man Month,’ aged with time, and is it still relevant half a century on – or does it belong in a museum, alongside floppy discs?”
That is a lot of support people.
“The US Economy Looks Good On Paper – Here’s Why It’s Actually A Disaster In Progress”
https://alt-market.us/the-us-economy-looks-good-on-paper-heres-why-its-actually-a-disaster-in-progress/
“One of my favorite false narratives floating around corporate media platforms has been the argument that the American people “just don’t seem to understand how good the economy really is right now.” If only they would look at the stats, they would realize that we are in the middle of a financial renaissance, right? It must be that people have been brainwashed by negative press from conservative sources…”
“I have to laugh at this claim because it’s a very common one throughout history – It’s an assertion made by almost every single political regime right before a major collapse. These people always say the same things, and when you study economics as long as I have you can’t help but throw up your hands and marvel at their dedication to the propaganda.”
“One example that comes to mind immediately is the delusional optimism of the “roaring” 1920s and the lead up to the Great Depression. At the time around 60% of the US population was living in poverty conditions (according to the metrics of the decade) earning less than $2000 a year. However, in the years after WWI ravaged Europe, America’s economic power was considered unrivaled.”
My son continually says that we will call the coming time period “The Greater Depression”.
Hat tip to:
https://thelibertydaily.com/
“Missile and drone guidance systems: the old is new again?”
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2024/03/missile-and-drone-guidance-systems-old.html
“Russian forces in Ukraine appear to now be using so-called first-person view kamikaze drones controlled via a physical fiber optic line rather than a wireless data link. This configuration offers a control method that is immune to radiofrequency electronic warfare, but that also imposes certain limitations on how the system can be employed.”
Yup, drone systems are very subject to jamming. Not good when they are on the next continent.
My former USMC son liked the TOW missile for its firepower but not the two mile ??? long tether. That meant that the squad could not fire and run.
“Fired by Pfizer: Former Harvard Professor Was Dismissed From CDC Committee for Promoting a Non-mRNA “Vaccine””
https://thelibertydaily.com/fired-pfizer-former-harvard-professor-was-dismissed-cdc/
“In the article, Kulldorff reveals that in 2021, he was fired from the CDC’s Covid Vaccine Safety Working Group not because of any supposed “anti-vax” skepticism, but because he disagreed with the decision to pause the Johnson & Johnson Covid vaccine.”
““I was fired from the CDC Covid Vaccine Safety Working Group—not because I was critical of vaccines but because I contradicted CDC policy,” he writes, adding that he was also fired from his Harvard faculty position for opposing Covid mandates.”
“Kulldorff cited a study showing that there was no evidence the adenovirus-vector vaccines (which includes the J&J shot) were causing blood clots in elderly people. Kulldorff took to writing op-eds and speaking out on social media to make the appeal that the J&J injection should remain available in a marketplace where the only other competitors in America were Pfizer and Moderna. The two mRNA Covid shots have become notorious for links to blood clot issues.”
“Nonetheless, all of the Covid shots were scams. To this day, there remains no functional vaccine for the Wuhan sniffles.”
“Federal Judge Strikes Down California’s One-Gun-a-Month Law”
https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/federal-judge-strikes-down-californias-one-gun-a-month-law-5605857?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=TheLibertyDaily
“It doesn’t meet requirements outlined in U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, he writes.”
Cool.
And does Nuisance look like Lurch Jr. ?
“SpaceX Launches 46 More Starlink Satellites Into Orbit”
https://www.pcmag.com/news/spacex-launches-46-more-starlink-satellites-into-orbit
“Nearly 6,000 Starlink satellites are now orbiting Earth. Elon Musk says the newly launched satellites can collectively process 4 Terabits of data per second.”
Ho hum. Another day, another event free SpaceX launch into LEO.
Wait, this was a dual Falcon 9 launch. Impressive.
We are living in the future.
VROOOM!: President Biden Was Making Car Sounds During the Special Counsel Interview
https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2024/03/12/vrooom-president-biden-was-making-car-sounds-during-special-counsel-interview-n3784550
Works best with a borrowed ‘Vette and a borrowed woman.
The 10x engineer gave up and quit ~15 years ago.
The static analysis from the typcial C/C++ compiler is much better now than even a decade ago thanks to the LLVM vs. GCC rivalry. Even Microsoft’s garbage compiler got better by cribbing from the open source projects.
The 10x engineer gave up and quit ~15 years ago.
Hey, I am still here. You are still here.
The traceroute through Starlink to my website in Pittsburg is interesting. Looks like Starlink does not name their satellites. And it only went through Starlink to Dallas from here and from Dallas to Pittsburg on the ground.
C:\dii_16\shr\THRMO>tracert winsim.com
Tracing route to winsim.com [216.92.179.57]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms balance-664d [192.168.0.1]
2 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 192.168.1.1
3 30 ms 36 ms 30 ms 100.64.0.1
4 34 ms 25 ms 26 ms 172.16.251.16
5 42 ms 54 ms 55 ms undefined.hostname.localhost [206.224.64.244]
6 40 ms 54 ms 47 ms undefined.hostname.localhost [206.224.64.237]
7 54 ms 62 ms 54 ms ae19.cr8-dal3.ip4.gtt.net [65.175.1.41]
8 103 ms 126 ms 126 ms ae5.cr1-pit1.ip4.gtt.net [141.136.107.254]
9 99 ms 111 ms 126 ms ip4.gtt.net [173.205.47.214]
10 * * * Request timed out.
11 64 ms 71 ms 65 ms winsim.com [216.92.179.57]
Godzilla Minus One. Although, the mission was one-way.
Hey, my B-52 Navigator Uncle explained to me in 1983 that the KC-135 tankers were suppose to give the B-52s everything that they had in fuel and ditch in the Bering Straights or over the North Pole if the bad day came. He was serious. His B-52D (and several others) took 3 or 4 trips a week from Fort Worth to Fairbanks in the 1970s and 1980s just to keep the Russians on edge.
In 1980 ?, his B-52D (no reverse thrusters on the jets like the H model) blew the brake hydraulic lines on landing at 80 mph and ended up in the 300 foot deep lake at the end of the runway. They lined the lake with MPs every 100 feet all night until they could get the crane and divers in to pull the plane out of the water the next morning. The B-52D had a “special” on it. He never clarified what a “special” was. Or how many they had on the plane.
very special
The ‘Vette was Scranton Joe’s even if the origin story changes daily.
I’m not smart enought to be a 10x engineer. I moved to Vantucky almost 14 years ago.
“Tom Doherty Wins Heinlein Award”
https://www.heinleinsociety.org/tom-doherty-wins-heinlein-award/
“Tom Doherty, founder of TOR Books and Chair of Tom Doherty Associates, publishing under the Tor, Forge, Tordotcom, Starscape, Tor Teen, and Nightfire imprints, is the 2024 winner of the Robert A. Heinlein Award. The award is bestowed for outstanding published works in science fiction and technical writings that inspire the human exploration of space. This award is in recognition of Mr. Doherty’s work in bringing the inspiring books of hundreds of authors writing about our future in Space to public awareness.”
Cool.
“Shoot and scoot”, unless the slang changed.
One of the nice things about the TOW is that the launcher could be offset by up to 100 yards (? – from memory) from the control unit and the operator. The optics on the newer model (coming in just as I was getting out) could be detached or maybe could use a periscope, so the operator could be completely under cover, a hundred yards from the missile going off. That was useful because the missile is very slow compared to the speed of a tank shell. If the tank crew was alert and the TOW missile had to go a half mile or more, the tankers had time to shoot a couple-three shells at the launch point.
All that is from training with the system (using simulators, of course), not from using them in combat. I’ve never for-real faced anything heavier than a pickup with some armor plates and a crew-served weapon in the bed. “Technicals”, they were called, for no good reason. (A few explanations are floating around but they contradict each other and there’s no convincing reason to think any is true.)
Or a teenage babysitter, if your standards are low and she’s dumb enough to be impressed by a fool in a fast car.
I used to be a 10X programmer (qualitative, not actually measured). Probably well higher now, on account of the flood of bozos polluting the field. I can’t even call them lumpenprogrammers, as they don’t rise to that level.
I’m not smart enought to be a 10x engineer. I moved to Vantucky almost 14 years ago.
So ? I’ve known lots of programmers and engineers to do crazy things. An engineer I worked with bought a very used Ferrari 308 GTB in 1986. He then found out how much that 4 cam V8 cost to maintain. And learned how to tune eight carburetors.
And you have two kids to put through college. You will be working longer as we jump through these 15% inflation years for each of the next ten years.
I’ve successfully avoided signing my retirement away for Parent PLUS loans to pay for Savannah College of Art and Design.
The younger child was accepted at a decent Texas school recently and told she could make do with that or cash the 120 credit hours of prepaid Florida university tuition.
The only other out-of-state option we were willing to support was the Dairy program at UW Madison. She didn’t want any part of that.
Just like on “Magnum PI”.
I would buy this set if it included “The Lads”.
https://www.playmobil.com/en-us/magnum_-p.i.-ferrari-308-gts-quattrovalvole/71343.html
Before Christmas about 12 years ago, Lowes was running some great sales on Kobalt tools, and socket sets in particular.
I liked their small ratchets, and IIRC they put this set
Kobalt 63-Piece Standard (SAE) [AND Metric] Mechanics Tool Set
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Kobalt-63-Piece-Standard-SAE-Mechanic-s-Tool-Set/3830797
on sale for about twenty bucks. I bought five–two as gifts and three to keep in vehicles under the seat so I would have the exact same go-to kit in each vehicle as the first resort before going to the big tool box in the trunk. Told a friend and he did about the same thing.
I was feeling pretty good until I grabbed it one day and tried to use it. This review nails it:
A 1/4″F square to 1/4″F square adapter would be the best solution. I’ve never had one. Every time I am reminded and look, all I can find is either grossly overprice ($25 today) or discontinued (Gearwrench, allegedly).
A single piece can be accommodated in a spare corner of the case. A three-piece kludge cannot without disassembly, which increases the tool-loss vapor pressure by pt3 and blood pressure by a similar factor.
I had a moment when I found a Kobalt 8-pt socket that would do the job:
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Kobalt-Standard-SAE-1-4-in-Drive-8-point-1-4-in-Shallow-Socket/5001206719
but, again “Out of stock”.
So, screw it. Went and found a spare 1/4×6″ extension. Craftsman. fits between two rows of sockets. Good enough. Just need to stick a recycled disk drive magnet to the case to hold it in place.
“Is The Soaring Cost Of Living Stressing You Out? U.S. Households Are Spending An Extra $11,434 Per Year Just To Maintain The Same Standard Of Living”
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/is-the-soaring-cost-of-living-stressing-you-out-u-s-households-are-spending-an-extra-11434-per-year-just-to-maintain-the-same-standard-of-living/
“According to CBS News, on average U.S. households must now spend an extra $11,434 per year just to maintain the same standard of living that they were enjoying when Joe Biden first entered the White House…”
“But the government continues to insist that inflation is low. On Tuesday, the Bureau of Lying Statistics told us that prices have only risen 3.2 percent over the past 12 months…”
“Virtually everything that Americans spend money on regularly has skyrocketed during the Biden administration. Just look at the price of gasoline. It is now 60 percent higher than it was during the last presidential election in November 2020…”
“The massive tsunami of layoffs that we have been witnessing just continues to roll along. For example, on Monday we learned that John Deere will be laying off 150 workers at a facility in Iowa…”
Lots of bad headlines out there …
Godzilla Minus One. Although, the mission was one-way.
Hey, my B-52 Navigator Uncle explained to me in 1983 that the KC-135 tankers were suppose to give the B-52s everything that they had in fuel and ditch in the Bering Straights or over the North Pole if the bad day came. He was serious. His B-52D (and several others) took 3 or 4 trips a week from Fort Worth to Fairbanks in the 1970s and 1980s just to keep the Russians on edge.
BTW, my uncle understood (but left it unsaid) that his B-52 was on a one way trip to Russia too. First, they did not have enough fuel to get back to the USA. Second, the Russian Interceptors would have a field day shooting down the B-52s. Just like our Interceptors shooting down the Russian Bear planes.
From the Hur hearing…
So I can try, “But officer, I have no idea how the car was going 90. I’m old with a bad memory…?”
Long day and late night but all is well.
Finally headed to bed.
n