Cool and damp, becoming warm and damp. Yesterday was another wet and dreary day that got nice by the end of the day. Today, it would be great to skip right to the “nice” part. Probably isn’t going to happen though.
Did my pickup after working with my buddy for a while. We’re tearing down a giant 3D printer, original cost about $300K, and it’s a beast. Solid steel plates 3/4″ thick. Solid aluminum 1″ thick. A framework made from doubled 80/20 aluminum extrusion, with additional steel bracketry. Every component is top of the line and heavy duty. A beast. They don’t make them like that anymore.
Lots of things aren’t made well anymore. The chinese disregard for intellectual property rights, safety, and quality, along with other factors, has driven a real race for the bottom. Some of it was driven by financial “engineering” in the US and EU, offshoring, cheap labor elsewhere, lax standards, and a willingness to base every decision on “cost”. But without a supplier willing to provide the cr@p, you wouldn’t have the result we have today, where it’s difficult to find good, when bad drives it from the marketplace. Thankfully, the chinese have not taken over the world yet, and we still have alternatives.
Consider quality in your preps. Longevity, repairability, durability. A chinese red dot sight might give you some extra capability for a while, but it’ll be nothing but an inert lump when you need it most. Cheap tools that break are a similar false economy. If you must buy cr@p, upgrade it as soon as you can. Or you’ll regret it later.
Stack some quality today. There are ways to get it at cr@p prices. (used mainly, but also in the ‘secondary’ economy I’ve been writing about for years.) You won’t regret having solid stuff when you are relying on it.
nick
(sorry this is late, I fell asleep in the chair at my desk and didn’t get it up until this morning.)
So I’m shopping for property. I contacted a realtor. I asked to see one of his listings.
He responded by wanting me to provide proof that I had enough money, either via pre-arranged financing or cash, to buy the property. He claimed it was a brokerage policy.
WTF? Back when I traded a lot of property, my experience was that realtors, all realtors, were hungry for opportunities to show properties.
Pound sand would be my nicest response.
Any realtor that doesn’t have a financier lined up for you is a joke. He/she/it is probably a n00b or freelance. Move along, little doggie. I’ve never had a realtor ask for proof of money.
When we bought our condo(s) and house, the first thing the realtor said was, “Do you need a financing recommendation.”
Yeah, realtors make their money actually “selling” properties. They should always have a back pocket full of banking options.
Ha, ha. The PLTs are rolling out “celebrities” in force. Scroll down to the bottom and watch Faux News on plugs’ lies:
Actor Jeff Daniels Hopes Flyover State Voters Realize Trump ‘Talks Down to Us’ Unlike Biden
Dumb and Dumber 3.
Throw in Luke Skywalker for 4.
Say, didn’t all those student loan forgiveness EOs fund Obola Care:
America LAST: Biden Opens Obamacare to DACA Recipients While 25 MILLION Americans Go Uninsured
I can only hope we get a POTUS that says FU, Dreamers. Alas, even tRump will probably let them slide.
Part sun and some breeze. Time for some coffee…
n
bTW lumps that turn out to be no big deal are still F’ing terrifying.
n
And hernias, unfortunately, don’t heal themselves. If surgery is required, see if robot-assisted is an option, recommended.
Mark Hamill lost the moral high ground a long time ago.
https://nypost.com/2016/09/11/hamills-pressured-me-to-have-an-abortion-nathan-hamills-ex/
Federal Student Loans issued since 2010 pay for Obamacare. That was when the program was nationalized to pass the “Affordable” Healthcare Act on reconciliation as “revenue neutral”.
Forgiveness of that paper would require a very complex act of Congress since the transaction would involve converting an asset to debt using Treasuries, something Corn Pop cannot touch with an Executive Order.
The paper was the largest US Government revenue generating asset pre-pandemic, the last stats pubished in 2018, far more lucrative than oil and gas leases, timber rights, or any other paper the Treasury holds.
Inflation report – See’s Assorted Peppermints, $16.95 at Nebraska Furniture Mart’s See’s mini store in The Colony in Dallas this morning.
I swear we paid $9.95/box during the Christmas season at the full line See’s store in Austin.
The Peppermints were unobtainium at Christmas 2022, which the store blamed on Covid.
Sure.
The candy was the only thing moving at the furniture store, which should concern the Gecko, especially this weekend with the shareholder events running in coordination with “Woodstock for Capitalists” in Omaha this afternoon.
To be fair, the weather was bad, and half of the food vendors set up for the event were waiting out the drizzle in their vehicles.
Hamill’s going to support the agenda.
Lucas voting his Disney shares to support The Weatherman may have been about more than just keeping Mrs. George Lucas on the Goldman Sachs board. The rumor on the fan sites is that Lucas may have cut a deal for creative input with Lucasfilm and possibly even a movie.
Lucas’ entire creative legacy has been trashed except for “American Graffitti” … and “Howard the Duck”
Yes, it is a big club, and you aren’t in it.
The references which used to list Mellody Hobson’s involvement with Goldman Sachs have disappeared. Hmm….
The Goldman Sachs’ website no longer has her listed as a board member.
Do it again, harder:
Hims and Hers loses $210 million in stock value after CEO says he is ‘eager’ to hire anti-Israel protesters
https://nypost.com/2024/05/03/us-news/hims-and-hers-stock-plummets-8-after-ceo-says-he-is-eager-to-hire-anti-israel-protesters/
Last name pronounced: “dum-dum”
So the Accounting and Legal departments at Hims and Hers are all Palestinian?
Once upon a time, in a very surreal phone call one afternoon when I still worked at the Death Star, I taught Al Jazeera’s IT people how to use VMware Fusion to run our Windows VPN on MacBook Pro which allowed them to handle email and video uploads securely while retaining the Apple Intel architecture for field editing chores.
A few of the surnames struck me as … shall we say non-Arab, but to that place’s credit everyone on the call put the priority on getting the job done right, IMHO more so than many US companies, and their IT people were among the sharpest I worked with getting problems solved with the VPN client.
@Greg, did you watch the Gecko?
Final thought of the posting day:
Variation on the Solar Power Satellite
Boost one SPS into orbit, long with enough computational hardware to use all of the power to mine bitcoin. Beam the bitcoin back to earth and buy more launches for more SPS and computational hardware. Rinse and repeat.
End result: Dyson Sphere
Um, Dyson Spheres are around stars, not planets, unless you meant that. Maybe between the orbits of Mercury and Venus. I don’t think that we have the materials required to withstand the energy of the sun yet at the orbit of Mercury. Probably some sort of ceramic metal hybrid.
There are quite a few SF books that talk about finding Dyson Spheres in other star systems, the last I read was by Dennis Taylor. It was the fourth book of the Bobiverse series. The first was Ringworld by Larry Niven.
https://www.amazon.com/Heavens-River-Dennis-Taylor/dp/1680682261?tag=ttgnet-20/
https://www.amazon.com/Ringworld-Novel-Larry-Niven/dp/0345333926?tag=ttgnet-20/
Sold out of PARA. Significant loss.
Reduced AAPL by 13%
Greg Abel should succeed him as CEO, responsible for both capital allocation and operations.
Everyone safe down there?
https://amp-cnn-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/05/03/weather/texas-houston-flooding-tornadoes?amp_js_v=0.1&_gsa=1#webview=1
It’s weird how this weather is divided into zones.
Near I-10 in the Katy area, we got a lot of rain, but no flooding.
Near the rivers and lakes up North of Houston, lots of problems.
Back in Harvey, I had water in my impassible street, but none in my house. I was trapped in my neighborhood for a few days. Lots of boat rescues, some within a mile or so.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2024/05/02/police-shoot-rubber-bullets-ucla-encampment-pro-palestinian-protest-digvid.cnn/
https://youtu.be/jYyBZE0kBtE?si=xrfZLrLNs8CIsyvB
No. I am in Dallas for the day. I did go out to Nebraska Furniture Mart to see how things were going in that part of the company, and the store was mostly dead which is kinda concerning.
This afternoon I scored a replacement Millenium Falcon toy for my son at a vintage store celebrating “May the 4th”. We were broke and prioritizing packing leaving WA State a decade ago, and his toy was missing too many pieces to justify moving so it stayed behind.
I figured I would fast forward through the Gecko presentation later this week.
@Lynn
“Um, Dyson Spheres are around stars, not planets”
As Earth orbit got more crowded they would start using the Lagrange points, construct a Ringworld as an intermediate, and ultimately work on a Dyson sphere.
If I wrote the book the discovery would be of the broken remains of a half-built system where the bitcoin hustle came to a screeching halt when the medium of exchange crashed an economy that had nothing left to exchange.
The evolution of flatware into the 17-piece place setting Victorian sterling silver monstrosities came about because silver was abundant and no longer very scarce.
Inside the Beltway around Houston, everything is pretty normal for after a big thunderstorm.. Maybe a few more branches down than usual.
The lake at the BOL is a couple feet above normal though…
n
I’ve been doing laundry. SO exciting. I’ve double washed everything with an extra final rinse. I think the machine is almost clean of Downy. The bed sheet’s final rinse on the second wash was clear enough to see the bottom of the tub. Still got an extra rinse cycle.
I ran the comforter on air fluff. That doesn’t get all of the dog hair. But it gets a lot.
The comforter is suddenly looking ratty. What the heck, I bought it for for the waterbed back in ‘82 or ’83. JCPenny crap. 🙂 So anyway. I have a closet full of stuff. Including many quilts. Yeah, I know Sister Aunt Mable June (fake name) made this quilt. Pushing 50 maybe 60 years ago? No idea. It’s been sitting in my closet for 20 years. What am I suppose to do with it? But use it?
Get it on the bed and well, it’s gets dirty, it gets dirty. Dog hair washes off.
I puttered through the kitchen today. The lids that snap on Corelle bowls? Trash. I’ve never used one. Over in the cupboard of plasticware? Much is gone. Including the Tupperware. I know where a couple of pieces came from but the rest? No clue. Bye bye.
Just a little bit a day. …. Right?
I’m trying to keep up. I’m not doing a good job of it for whatever reason.
It’s very quiet here. Shrug. I wish dogs could talk.
It sounds like you’re actually doing a great job of keeping up.
You may have your expectations set too high. There’s very little that has to be done today or tomorrow. Some things are urgent, but other than dog care, most of it can wait, and a little progress is plenty.
@paul
A lot of us grew up in smaller towns with JCP and Sears and no option or money for a big department store. A bed cover in use 40+ years later is a darn sight higher quality than the designer shiite that they sell now.
Back in the 80’s a fabric artist named Kay Fassett was drawing outrage because he bought vintage quilts and turned them into jackets and other clothing. Sharing a family quilt with Buddy and Penny sounds right to me.
So I’m shopping for property. I contacted a realtor. I asked to see one of his listings.
He responded by wanting me to provide proof that I had enough money, either via pre-arranged financing or cash, to buy the property. He claimed it was a brokerage policy.
He don’t really want to sell anything today.
Rural realtors are usually older and not quite as in a hurry. The number one realtor in Lavaca County (Port Lavaca) lived next to my folks for a long time. He maybe worked 20 hours per week in his 50s and 60s. But if you were serious, he would sell you anything.
I was reading about “ozempic face”–where the weight-loss drug has a side effect of disproportionately pulling fat out of the facial tissues causing general butt-ugliness and premature aging, and it wasn’t until some hours later that I realized the effect was similar in a way to the makeup used in the famous “Eye of the Beholder” Twilight Zone episode with Donna Douglas.
My first personal computer was the original IBM PC (model 5150?). It had the 8080 processor, 16K of RAM, and the operating system was Cassette Basic. (You young whippersnappers can look up those things to see what they are.)
The first upgrade I did was to install a 180K floppy drive and more memory on an expansion card. Played a lot of Zork then. Never did get all the way through the game. The next upgrade was for double-sided 360K floppy drive, then a 10MB hard drive. Got the memory up to 512K.
Was instrumental in founding the Sacramento PC Users Group, which eventually had about 2500 members – in second place for member count behind the Houston PCUG. I served as president of the group for many years.
The group monthly meetings were well attended. Bill Gates visited a couple of times. The group presidency got invited to Redmond a couple of times as guests of Microsoft (fully paid by Microsoft). The group published a monthly newsletter of up to 80 pages, initially using free copies of WordPerfect. Lots of free software and discounted software to the group.
The group has since disbanded. Not much use for ‘user groups’ these days. But, good times.
In lieu of real work, I’ve been trying to get stuff off the literal pile of things waiting for attention.
D2 has two of the modern super cheap “Victrola” record players, both without wall warts. Despite having a couple thousand warts of various sizes and flavors I was unable to find one to match… the hole is small but the center pin is TINY. I gave up and ordered 2 from amazon third party seller. The model was specifically listed for the psu… and of course it didn’t fit. The outer barrel is correct but the center hole is FAR too big to make contact with the pin. Return to big river with a “description is wrong” reason. This is the same sort of crap as I encountered trying to get a battery for my MiFi hotspot. The vendor lists every model made to get in search results, but the actual product doesn’t fit. The chinese are ruining everything and amazon has a serious issue with all the cheap chinese carp contaminating their results.
SO no record player for D2 today.
Moving on to an HP all in one pc I want to repurpose. Trying to bypass the user account password, using the normal trick with replacing utilman with cmd and then issuing net user commands … and it just doesn’t work. So I added a new user, and added that to the admin group, which worked. I’m waiting 10 plus minutes for that account to finish logging in. Win10 runs VERY SLOWLY on an amd low end chip with only 4 gb ram. It has a 1TB drive…
n
We had a small business specialist from the IRS visit our computer group in the early 1980’s there was a lot of interest in the tech community in generating income with a computer. When asked about hardware and software deductibility as a business expense, he explained that it was deductible if used a majority of the time for business:
business use hours per year/(24 x 365)
Until today I didn’t think M&M peanut candies could go “bad”… but they can sure start to taste stale. I guess I never had any stick around long enough, but D2 had some in her room she didn’t eat… no indication of how old they are, but could be from Halloween more than a year ago.
n
added- yeah, I’m still gonna eat them, they’re not THAT bad.
peanut oil can go rancid.
Abel and Ajit Jain will be part of succession, but Buffet has been vague on a third figure envisioned as taking the Gecko’s place as Chairman and the dispenser of Simple Homespun Wisdom (TM). The inside favorite used to be Bill Gates, but the relationship has soured in the last 10 years, and many of the stock holders fear that Buffett will leave the whole thing to his current wife to do with as she pleases.
Greg Abel is important as head of Berkshire’s Energy group. Buffett wants one more shot at running the Texas energy market before he expires.
Microsoft owns all of Infocom’s copyrights now through the acquisition of Microsoft.
What the “Ready Player One” movie omits which is in the book is the puzzle where all of Zork I must be played to get a clue for the next step. Kinda obscure for today’s audience, but seeing the white house and the dam onscreen would have been cool.
The Beard substituted a faitful re-creation of the ballroom scene from Kubrick’s “The Shining”. I’m not sure modern audiences appreciate that one much either, but ok.
Ajit Jain is much better at investments, having responsibility for directing Geico’s cashflow.
Berkshire may not acquire as many companies outright after Buffett passes, but even the Gecko admits the big opportunities just aren’t there.
Besides, Pilot/Flying-J renovations to take on Buc-ee’s, Kwik Trip, WaWa, etc will keep the company busy for a while
If the Windows 10 license isn’t 32 bit, I’d give it up. Fully patched, Windows 10 64 bit just doesn’t run well in 4 GB.
If you can’t expand the RAM, you can repurpose with Fedora 40 depending on the chip. An A-series AMD APU would be iffy, but something more modern might be fine.
Everyone safe down there?
https://amp-cnn-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/05/03/weather/texas-houston-flooding-tornadoes?amp_js_v=0.1&_gsa=1#webview=1
That is all on the east side of Houston. Houston is about 120 miles east to west and about 80 miles south to north. Yup, one of the largest cities in the world by square miles (just ignore those Indian cities).
I am on the far southwest side. The Brazos River elevation …. whoa … it is coming up. I guess that Hempstead, College Station, and Waco got more rain than I realized. The Brazos River has a huge watershed, all of central Texas.
https://water.weather.gov/ahps2/hydrograph.php?wfo=hgx&gage=rmot2&hydro_type=0
“Starlink Satellites Make Up 60% of All Active Spacecraft in Orbit”
https://www.pcmag.com/news/starlink-satellites-make-up-60-percent-active-spacecraft-in-orbit
“SpaceX now has nearly 5,900 Starlink satellites in low-Earth orbit, but it wants 30,000, posing potential safety concerns as space around the planet gets ever-more crowded.”
That is a lot of satellites, both today and future.
Satellites are small, but space is inconceivably vast.
If the Windows 10 license isn’t 32 bit, I’d give it up. Fully patched, Windows 10 64 bit just doesn’t run well in 4 GB.
8 GB ain’t much better for Windows 10 x64. 16 GB is the real minimum. 32 GB is very comfortable.
Satellites are small, but space is inconceivably vast.
“While most satellites circling Earth are in use, thousands are not. Slingshot finds that 3,356 satellites were inactive at the end of 2023, bringing the total number of spacecraft orbiting Earth to nearly 12,600. Considering that data, Starlink still makes up about 45% of all satellites, active and inactive. It’s also the largest constellation, or group, in lower-Earth orbit by a big margin.”
I see a business opportunity, dropping old dysfunctional satellites. You know, it could be called the Space Cowboys.
“The number of satellites in lower-Earth orbit skyrocketed in 2020 because of Starlink. The number of spacecraft launched into geostationary orbit further away from the Earth has increased too, but at a slower rate. As more satellites launch, it could become increasingly difficult and expensive to get spacecraft insured. Space insurance firms ate $995 million in insurance losses last year while only gaining about $557 million from customer payments, according to Slingshot’s report.”
Insurance is becoming a major part of everything.
“Bird flu’s wild range”
https://www.axios.com/2024/05/04/bird-flu-wildlife-mammals
And here we go again. So I guess that we will all locked in our homes for the first two weeks of November, just to keep the spreading down.
But, but, HSN sells systems with W11 (S Mode) with 4GB and the demos run fine. /sarc. They are also priced about 20% too high.
I also saw HSN selling an Apple iMac, the outdated Intel version, for $200 more than the new M3 iMac.
There are suckers everywhere.
I was able to add a new account w/admin privileges, and see what was on the pc. No bitcoin, no pron. about 8 different antivirus/malware things, a couple of those bloat or malware things that “speed up” windows, or do other dubious things. Some sort of searchbar alt web browser at the top. It’s so slow you can’t even open the desktop except in safe mode.
I’m nuking it from orbit as we sit here, full restore to factory.
AMD E2-7110 with Radeon R2 graphics according to the diagnostics.
Single channel of DDR3 memory, 1600mhz, 4gb
build date in 2016.
It’s a nice compact pc with a decent sized screen for something like media player in the garage or a dedicated SDR.
We’ll see how it runs when it’s “factory fresh” and I’ll open it to see if I can put an SSD and more ram in it. I’ve got both laying around.
Only bummer is it’s not a touch screen and that might doom it to the auctions…
n
“Ken Hoffman discovers the best burger of his life — and blasts Gordon Ramsay”
https://houston.culturemap.com/news/travel/burgers-sandwiches-hamburg-liverpool-gordon-ramsay/
“First, the best. And this isn’t just the best thing I ate in Hamburg last week. It’s a Top 10 of all-time for me, and possibly the single most incredibly delicious item I’ve ever eaten. Yeah, that wonderful.”
“It was the Dumb Texan burger at The Bird, a few blocks off the notorious Reeperbahn in the St. Pauli district of Hamburg. This is where a wild night of partying turns into hard day drinking. A few minutes’ walk away is the seediest sex-for-sale district in Europe. Hamburg’s walled-off prostitution zone makes Amsterdam’s red light district look like a Junior Miss Pageant.”
I would have never thought of putting a fried egg on a burger. Sounds interesting.
I was thinking about putting a burger patty under my breakfast fried egg just last week. We had cooked patties left over from the 13 yo birthday party, and I was out of defrosted bacon…
Egg on burgers is good!
n
The late lamented 59 Diner had an “Ultimate BLT”, which was a whole lot of bacon on a BLT, with an added fried egg.
I think there’s a lot of cases where adding a fried egg would be a nice touch.
>>It’s very quiet here. Shrug. I wish dogs could talk.
Yeah, they can’t… but they can listen and sense that you’re hurting. Some extra cuddles just might help.
On the other hand, the constant “a ball, a ball, oh that smells good, a ball, SQUIRREL!!!, a bird, look at me, oh so itchy, TREATS!!!!!, why no treats??, SKITCHES!!! – – – –
might get old after a few days…
The “I LOVE YOU!!!!111!!!11!!!11!!!” would be nice though…
n
The national forecast has more thunderstorms and rain for Texas tomorrow, shifting north into OK and above on Monday.
This from FEMA
Flooding – Texas
National Watch Center
Situation: In East Texas, additional rounds of heavy rainfall over already susceptible areas have resulted in scattered flooding, along with ongoing major riverine flooding. Several river gauges
north of Houston are forecast to approach or exceed their flood of record. Rivers will reach their highest flows over the next 1-3 days, with the highest impact locations seeing their crest within
the next 48 hours, but recession will be slow, as several rivers will remain above major flood stage through the middle of next week. The greatest flood threat will shift westward towards NorthCentral Texas and South-Central Oklahoma later today, but additional scattered showers and storms this weekend across East Texas may further delay river recessions. No major flood-related
impacts yet reported or identified.
Lifeline Impacts: (RVI DSAR as of 1:59 p.m. ET, May 3)
Food, Hydration, Shelter:
Texas:
▪ 9 ARC shelters open w/ 122 occupants across 6 counties
Water Systems:
▪ A boil water notice issued for several subdivisions around Lake Livingston in Polk County, TX
State / Local Response:
Texas:
▪ TX SEOC remains at Partial Activation (Severe Weather)
▪ Gov expanded the state’s disaster declaration to include 59 counties (TDEM as of 11:28 May 3, 2024)
FEMA / Federal Response:
Region VI is at Enhanced Watch dayshift only (0800-1800) today and tomorrow; RRCC is Rostered
▪ R-IMAT 1 remains deployed to OK; R-IMAT 2 is available
▪ Region is coordinating with HQ Response Geospatial Office on any potential imagery requirements
HQ:
▪ NWC is at Monitoring
▪ Response remains in close coordination with FEMA Region VI for any potential requirements; however,
currently there have been no request for FEMA assistance
The NWC will continue to monitor in coordination with FEMA region VI; with continued reporting twice daily
in the FEMA National Situation Report (5:00 p.m. ET / 3:00 a.m. ET) and the FEMA Daily Operations
Briefing (8:30 a.m. ET)
n
Crap, the 100+ year state prison down at Rosharon is going to get flooded again. There are 4,000 men in it (or used to be). They will probably be rolling the barred window buses in a day or two. It gets water in there at the minor flood level (43 foot) in Rosharon. We are past users at using old crap in Texas until the river takes it away for good.
https://water.weather.gov/ahps2/hydrograph.php?wfo=hgx&gage=rost2&prob_type=stage&source=hydrograph
I am glad we moved away from the river five years ago (we lived across the street from the levee). That move was on purpose after the flood in May 2019 with 17 inches of rain in just three hours. There is just too much concrete here in the swamp now. Has been since the early 1970s when Houston started expanding at 4% to 6% per year.
I’ve been doing that since 1967, when I worked as the #2 fry cook in a small town restaurant in Illinois. People thought I was weird then, too.
>> might get old after a few days…
Pitties (most of our pack) will watch you throw the ball then look at you ‘saying’ why’d you throw the stupid ball if you aren’t gonna go chase it??
Shocked I am, just shocked…
https://www.npr.org/2024/05/04/1249188864/nyc-columbia-city-college-gaza-protests-palestinian-campus
Through the acquisition of Activision. I had a long day of driving.