Hot and humid, maybe a chance of some cooling rain. It did that yesterday afternoon. Rain pouring down cooled everything, but the humidity stayed high. Then the sun came back out. Today has potential to go either way.
I did less than I wanted to yesterday. Kid stuff will do that, interrupting my scheduled activities. I did get one pickup done. Not much else besides auction stuff. I did stop at the autoparts store and get replacement tail light bulbs. The old one I’d used temporarily failed too, so it was time to stop in and deal with it for real. Changed both sides as that is what makes sense… and bought an extra pair for next time.
Today I’ve got pickups for a few useful things, some for home, some for the BOL garden. I’ve got to ferry the kid and one of her friends home from their activities in the afternoon. And I’ve got to do some of the stuff that is piling up. It’s easier said than done though.
Especially when I’m weak and would rather read a new book… which kept me up far too late last night.
Reading is fundamental, right? And most of us read for “fun” and find great pleasure in losing ourselves in other worlds for a while. Still, I have a rule about not reading for pleasure during the day, because I’d not get anything else done. Broke the rule yesterday, and got nothing done.
Part of me wanted the break I guess. Still, I’ll have to stack twice as hard now đ
And resist the call of the story.
Stack. Work. Interact with people.
nick
Find the âYou Only Move Twiceâ episode of âThe Simpsonsâ.
Best episode ever and a thinly veiled slam on BillG at the height of his power.
âHank Scorpioâ has bits of the other tech CEOs of that era, but Gates was the target.
A one ounce silver round with verifiable provenance from a place like Sunshine Mint tracks the cost of a case of Charmin Blue fairly accurately without the storage problem.
We keep multiple cases in the garage along with other paper goods since Covid, but how much TP do you really want at home?
Seriously?
Once the property tax âreformâ expires here in Texas and the tax increases hit the property tax bills in 2026., I’m sure we will do better itemizing even with the limitation on the SALT deductions.
Of course, it won’t be long after the trim notices get mailed before the masses demand âfairâ taxation in this state and we will have to seriously think about getting out. I believe income tax will be on the ballot in Fall 2027.
Yeah. I keep 4, with the 4th being the one we pull from. That also happens to be the amount that fits nicely on the floor in our master bath towel closet. The exception is I’ll buy a 5th before the start of school and at Christmas break, but those get delivered to my son’s apartment.
CNN reports that the government says consumer prices are up only 3.3% from a year ago. I think a decimal point slipped. I think it is more like 33% based on what I have been spending. Especially on groceries and eating out. I suspect the feds factor in prices that have not changed much to keep the number lower as they need to fool the sheeple. They probably use the Costco hotdog in their calculations. In real spending I am probably spending 20% more overall than I was a year ago. My spending habits have not changed that much.
Maybe not the hot dog, but the rotisserie chicken is a possibility.
Shadowstats shows the current government numbers vs the 1990 and 1980 metrics:
http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts
Roughly 7% or 11%, year over year as of May.
@Nick
âItâs my feeling you need the potatoes or bread to soak up some of the fat from a meal like the brisket⌠and it gives you something to soak up the delicious juice with.â
when I grill steaks and let them rest, the balance of the precious juices go on my baked potato. Only need a little butter.
@Greg Norton
Absolutely right.
The real number is probably much higher.
The Feds stopped printing the key money supply figure – the only true indicator – sometime during the 90s.
Inflation only comes from printing press money.
Cautionary tale:
I live in a large town adjacent to a major metropolitan city with extensive suburbs.
A few months ago a smoke alarm when off somewhere in my apartment building, and kept sounding. The alarm turned out to be coming from an apartment two floors below me. I pounded on the door, got no response. I called 911 from my cell phone, expecting to get my local emergency services.
Instead, I got 911 for the neighboring major city. After hearing my address, they transferred the call to emergency services for a small city twenty miles away. After they heard my address, the call was (finally!) transferred to my local emergency services. That whole process took about ten minutes.
My local fire department showed up (at the correct address) about five minutes later. The resident of the apartment with the (still) sounding smoke alarm responded to the fire department’s pounding on his door just before they started to break it open.
The issue turned out to be nothing more than something burning in the oven. Why the resident didn’t silence the smoke alarm himself is something I still don’t know.
Takeaway: Be cautious how much reliance you put on use by emergency services of your cellphone GPS. Knowing the street address got help to me faster than I think would have arrived otherwise.
âTwo is one, and one is none.â
RIP NBA Icon Jerry West, 86
https://dailycaller.com/2024/06/12/nba-legend-jerry-west-logo-los-angeles-lakers-dead-86/?pnespid=56N4Gj5ba74cy.6et2_6CJCBokP2D8JpIfGx2Lps8ANmAdfOjzcThAruy3AJbs0BWahqWKSL
91F in the driveway. Driveway is north side of the house, but open to the sunlight.
————–
Staying up reading wipes out my whole day.
————-
Time to get out of the house and do some things.
n
bought an extra pair for next time.
â while I was standing in the store, looking at the sales display, I looked at the LED versions. Even though they were from Sylvania, same as the trad version, they said âOff road use onlyâ on the packaging. The trad version says âapproved for on road useâ. I’ve noticed in the past that a lot of âupgradesâ to vehicle lighting are not approved for on road use, even though they are headlight replacements, or tail light assemblies.
With Sylvania, it’s probably just not wanting to jump thru a regulatory hoop, but with a chinese HID headlight kit, I’m assuming it is non-standard cr@p that will probably fail or give the popo a handle to manipulate you withâŚ.
n
Rob Braxman presents his thoughts on supposed new âfeaturesâ coming to Windows, and on hardware:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnG66fHKRw0
Some of Robâs stuff is thought-provoking, and this is one. Not a how-to, but a caution. Beyond the Windows OS and other platforms, hardware changes that might be coming could make choice of an OS irrelevant. There was never much privacy with computers, connected or not, but the trends are not good. See, for example, what has happened to new cars.
I am interested in your thoughts on this.
I agree. In my remote location, I have heard that 911 is not yet set up to work well with cell phones, whatever that means. Our sheriff department suggests that a landline works best, because they use calling number ID to query a database, similar to the way the fire department does. That seems old fashioned to me, but in the couple times I have used my landline to call 911, the responder immediately knew my location, and confirmed it before proceeding. I used my cell phone once while at the site of a highway fatal accident, and the responder asked me for my location, and then couldnât find it. I had to give a detailed description before I could get any information.
The conclusion it to know your environment. That is hard if you are not in a familiar location. Another conclusion is to not rely on quick response, which means you should call well in advance of need. No, just kidding, but some self-reliance is always a good thing to have.
I understand that many dispatchers in rural areas can understand locations in latitude & longitude.
Just know how to look up your lat/long on your phone!
Nick, LED replacements for incandescent tail, turn signal, or stop lights are not advisable. The optics were designed for a small source (filament,) and the LED is usually a cluster of emitters, so larger. The result will be bad. You would be better off to stay original, or upgrade the whole fixture. Finding a quality conversion fixture, even for popular cars, is next to impossible.
As for headlight bulb replacements, even most over the counter halogen bulbs are inferior to the OEM bulbs. They might be brighter and work well, but they almost always have a shorter life, often just 10% of OEM. The blue tinted ones are the worst. There is no free lunch. So far, LED and HID conversions have similar optics problems as I described in my first paragraph.
Daniel Sternâs site:
https://www.danielsternlighting.com/tech/lights/lights.html
is not updated very often, and contains a lot of advice only appropriate to a few of us, but is still worth a look. Scour it for the good information. He is critical of a lot of the lighting we are stuck with, but only offers suggestions for older cars with replaceable fixtures.
Fortunately, some of the newer cars have better lighting, but just some. Buying a high-end car is no guarantee. I drive under difficult conditions, dark two lane highways with oncoming traffic. Some of my cars have good lighting, but I wish more of the oncoming traffic did. When adding driver behavior, It is getting worse, not better. Hopeless.
âBREAKING: IDF Eliminates Senior Hezbollah Official; Highest Ranking Officer Neutralized Since Oct. 7â
https://redstate.com/margaret-clark/2024/06/11/breaking-idf-eliminates-highest-ranking-senior-hezbollah-member-to-date-since-oct-7-n2175354
âReports are emerging that the IDF hit a significant Hezbollah target in Lebanon on Tuesday afternoon.â
âAccording to the reports, an Israeli strike in Jouya, in southern Lebanon, killed at least four Hezbollah officials. At least one of the members was a high-ranking field officer.â
Excellent !
âSpaceX sued by engineers fired after accusing Elon Musk of sexismâ
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/spacex-sued-engineers-fired-accusing-170404815.html
“The plaintiffs cited a series of tweets by Musk, several of which reference his penis, including one from 2022 telling the former CEO of YouTube âif you touch my wiener, you can have a horse.””
Elon, Elon, Elon. This is not cool.
âGameStop raises $2.14 billion as it capitalizes on latest appearance of ‘Roaring Kitty’â
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/gamestop-raises-214-billion-as-it-capitalizes-on-latest-appearance-of-roaring-kitty-170309526.html
âGameStop (GME) raised almost $2.14 billion as it capitalized on the recent stock rallies spurred by the online reemergence of influential retail trader Keith Gill.â
With $4 billion in the bank, Gamestop ain’t going nowhere.
Here’s POTATUS, once again claiming he taught a 2nd Amendment class, telling us the goobermint outguns you MAGAts. A big FU from plugs to the Constitution:
Unity President Again Tells #2A Supporters Their Guns Are Useless Against Govt’s Weapons
Tyranny in a nutshell.
Most cell providers have a way to input your home address so any calls from the phone will have that location show for the 911 people. Of course, that does no good if you’re not at home.
My understanding is that 911 notification from the watch with fall detection will send the GPS coordinates of the watch to the 911 center. It is a text message as part of the 911 contact. I think.
Gamestop is still dead chain walking. 254 PE.
That is yet another business crippled by the resumption of student loan payments taking $90 billion a year out of the economy.
Gamestop makes more selling stock than video games.
âThe origin story of the Windows 3D Pipes screen saverâ
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20240611-00/?p=109881
So cool !
You know, I am getting tired of the constant reboots that Windows 11 x64 Pro requires. Last night, I left a job running on my office pc that takes about 24 hours to finish. Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, ignored the job that I had running in a Command Prompt window and rebooted my office pc, killing the job run at about half complete. So I had to restart the run today from the beginning.
I do not want to stop the reboots due to zero day exploits. But, the reboot process needs to respect the jobs that I have running in Command Prompt windows.
Sigh.
@Lynn ⌠have you looked at the Automatic Update options? (“Windows Update”, âAdvanced Optionsâ )
Several options in there to determine when/if updates are done automatically. Including one that says âask me before restartingâ after updates are installed. And another that specifies âactive hoursâ where restarts will not happen.
âOakland man, 77, is arrested for murder after shooting dead one member of burglary gang who broke into his home wielding crowbarâ
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13522375/Oakland-man-77-arrested-murder-shooting-dead-one-member-burglary-gang-broke-home-wielding-crowbar.html
The homeowner has been arrested and charged with murder of the burglary suspect.
Typical California. Criminals have more rights than homeowners.
Rain has started. Gentle but huge drops.
Got the kid from her thing, picked up from two auctions.
Have to take the other kid to a thing later.
———–
Finished the latest Wen Spencer Tinker book. It’s not as well written as usual. Lot of info dumps, and the writing just isn’t compelling. It does wrap up a lot of complicated story lines, and bring things to a good conclusion, while still leaving lots to explore if she wants to continue writing in this world. Definitely worth reading if you are a fan of the series, but maybe wait for the actual release. The eARC only has a few typo issues, missing or doubled words/phrases, etc. Fewer than many release novels I’ve read actually.
————–
I’ve been using VLC to stream one of the cams I have in the attic, and it just crashes or closes randomly after a few hours. Dunno if it’s bugs or by design, but it’s annoying.
I’ve gotten used to stuff NOT crashing at random. What a change, and very gradual. I can’t remember the last time I saw a bluescreen crash. Of course MY computing environment doesn’t change much over time, as it’s win8, and win7 for the most part.
n
@lynn, that oakland story caught my eye too. There is more going on there than reported in that article. The accomplice was charged with felony murder (which made the public outcry initially), and the homeowner’s gun came back stolen. The home owner might be a bad guy, robbed by other bad guys. That shouldn’t reflect on his ability to defend his home from armed invaders but I’m sure it does.
n
Musk tweet from 2 years ago? And it’s only a problem now? He likes to taunt people he thinks are pedos, so I’d like to see the context and timeline around the tweet.
n
aol’s spam filter is usually very good, even a bit over aggressive wrt email newsletters and the like. It let two different scam emails through today both having to do with invoices or automatic payments for antivirus.
Someone made a breakthru re getting past the filters.
n
Someone made a breakthru re getting past the filters.
ChatGPT.
I am getting them too so they are coming through the Gmail Postini filter too.
The ultimate spyware for corporate laptops.
Microsoft has made serious headway vanquishing challenges from Slack and Zoom by offering the C-suites and, in particular, HR staff new tools to make firing people easier.
AI is about firing most of the employees who do the white collar work at big companies.
Well, I recall two of those in the county in which I live (Orange County) and neither homeowner was charged. The prosecutor realized a local jury would never convict.
Sony bought Alamo Drafthouse?!?
Alamo could have survived the pandemic under the original ownership, but the management adhered to the agenda even if it meant marching off a financial cliff.
Good Germans all. Austin has many with their symbols of party allegiance always at the ready within arms reach.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/sony-pictures-is-buying-alamo-drafthouse/ar-BB1o6SmY
âWhat REALLY went wrong with Billy Ray Cyrus, 62, and Firerose, 35? All the signs couple were headed for a split for MONTHS before he filed for divorce – from their shock social media silence to ‘rift’ with daughter Mileyâ
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-13521997/billy-ray-cyrus-firerose-divorce-signs-miley-relationship-history.html
Uh, Billy Ray, are you trying to be David Allen Coe ? That may not be a happy life at the end.
For those who complain about the disruption caused by Windows updates, too bad we don’t have desktop Android. Android updates DO cause a restart, but everything open before is open after the restart. This seems to me the best user experience.
It is also possible to delay the update for a while.
âŚand there is an option in Windows Update Settings to do exactly that – re-start all open apps after the restart. Works well. (Just happened to me today when I did the update.) It may not restart a process running in a CMD window, though.
I’ve noticed that the latest Firefox version will automatically restore your open tabs when you restart it (after a normal close) and after an update.
RickH, I’ll have to try that. I want the files I had open to also be open, of course
Is there something special about hanging a quilt on the wall? I figure mounting some kind of curtain rod should do. Something thick like a wooden closet clothes bar. Or something smaller but pad the bar. Then drape quilt like a bath towel on a towel bar.
I have at least two quilts hiding in the spare bedroom closet. I have to dig in there to see. I know I have a lot of towels to get rid ofâŚ. we don’t have a boat anymore.
Anyway, they’ve been in the closet for 22 years, at least. They were made if I remember correctly, by ladies now dead about 45 years.
MacOS will restart after installing an update. Usually a box displays that says the system will restart within a minute, and it does. Regardless of what is running. A long Lightroom export, ka-poof. Although Lightroom does reopen, the export does not restart.
I get annoyed at application updates that insist their icon shortcut belongs on the desktop. And their dialog windows should always be visible obscuring other windows.
I think it is just app developers in general, who think their shirt(-r) is valuable, or are too clueless to understand there are other application besides theirs.
âOracle Java police start knocking on Fortune 200’s doors for first timeâ
https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/10/fortune_200_oracle_java_audit/
âExpansion of compliance activity follows per-employee licensing changeâ
Here come the Oracle Java Police again, looking for licensing income for using any Java applications in your business. Oracle failed at Google and Microsoft but, they want every person in the world to pay them every year for a Java license.
I have at least two quilts hiding in the spare bedroom closet. I have to dig in there to see. I know I have a lot of towels to get rid ofâŚ. we donât have a boat anymore.
Anyway, theyâve been in the closet for 22 years, at least. They were made if I remember correctly, by ladies now dead about 45 years.
I used to have a quilt made by my paternal grandmother and her sister. A good thick queen size quilt with patchwork hand sewn all over it. Carefully stored in a closet for 30 years. Disappeared over a decade ago.
I went over to son’s house one day a while back and went by his bedroom door. Wait, there is my Harshberger quilt on his bed ! I ask him where he got it, he calmly admits lifting it from our house as no one was using it. I grumbled and let it drop. Sneaky, sneaky, sneaky.
IBM used to ban Java for internal applications running on the corporate laptops out of concern that Larry Ellison would try monetizing the ecosystem to pay for the Sun buyout ⌠geesh ⌠almost 15 years ago.
They’re certainly not selling much in the way of Sparc/Solaris these days.
Now you know what happened. It’s not sitting in a closet for silverfish food. I call it a Win.
My Win11 box tells me it needs to reboot. Then it leaves me alone. I re-boot when I ‘m ready. Moa? Darn thing reboots. I need to find the setting and turn it off.
Firefox is a pain. On Moa it downloads the update in the back ground. Which is fine. What’s not fine is when I want to look at the settings on the router and the freaking browser âupdatesâ which makes a couple minutes of my life turn into ten minutes.
Yeah, do the background updates, tell me, and STFU. I’ll reboot or apply the update when I want.
Look, I have a router to filter and firewall stuff. I’m not running naked on the Internet.
My biggest gripe about Windows Update is the lack of information. What are we updating here? Oh⌠a new version of .Net? What uses that?
âSupercapacitors Are About To Blow Past Batteries as the Kings of Powerâ
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a61016235/supercapacitors-batteries-kings-of-power/
Call me when you put one in a Tesla.
RTFS, as usual.
On the Windows Update screen, look at the âUpdate Historyâ item (third on the list, click the box). There’s a list of all of the updates, each with a âlearn moreâ to get details about that particular update.
My experience with VLC is that, if something is running, power management is ignored, and update, too. W10 set to download updates in background, notify me that it is ready but wait for me to click on âgo fer itâ.
Ah, PM, never change.
We can use them to propel our under water trains in the tunnel from New York to Paris.
What is that? Anyway, clicking on More Information use to be useful. Now it seems to all be âwe did somethingâ.
âRTFSâ = old computer tech support (“Help Desk”) saying: âRead The Fricking Screenâ. (It used to be âRTFMâ, for âRead The Fricking Manualâ.
But there aren’t printed manuals any more – they are all online, so you gotta read the fricking screen.) Very useful FLA (Four Letter Acronym, along with others).
Lots of funny old tech support stories from the âold daysâ. (My involvement in computers dates back to 1982. Spent 23 years with the same local government organization in various computer support areas before I retired.)
My favorite is âDo you have the box your computer came in?â I actually used that in a job interview – and got the job. Even though I was 62 at the time.
When I look at the âUpdate Historyâ on my system, there is a whole list of updates, sorted with most recent on top. Each item on the list has a link for âMore Infoâ. Which takes you to a web page that explains everything. Sometimes including videos about the update.
But then you have all of Google’s spyware to deal with instead of Microsoft’s.
Where I suspect Microsoft is heading with Windows is a immutable OS similar to IBM’s Fedora Silverblue experiment with atomic system updates and applications running in containers, distributed via a Windows equivalent of Flatpaks.
But that’s AFTER the update has been installed. There’s no way to see what update is currently being installed, or what the NEXT update will be. Remember, Micro$oft sometimes cripples Windoze functions with âupdatesâ.
But I see âPending Updatesâ section on the Windows Update screen (if there are updates pending; that doesn’t show if there aren’t any pending). Those are updates that have been downloaded but not installed yet.
RTFS.
And there are other places to get information about released but not installed updates.
@paul
Depends on the construction, value, size and weight.
If you hang it from an edge, all of the weight pulls on the stitches holding the quilt together along that edge. That can permanently deform the quilt, and cause stitches to break.
Safest way is to bast on a muslin backing with a sleeve along the hanging edge. The quilt is supported by the backing, and none of it bears the full weight.
I had a family quilt hanging for more than ten years that way. Used a 1-½” dowel through the sleeve on the back and supported the ends with two of the large 3M Command hooks.
@Lynn
Show me the video when a rifle round is fired through it.
While parked next to a hydrogen filling station.
âThe future’s so bright, I gotta wear shadesâ
Star Wars Is Now Lesbian Space Witches
Lia Thomas won’t be in the Olympics and may be looking for a new career.
Off hand I’d guess that a story about using The Farce to swim through space to mumble, mumble, mumble would be about as successful.
I haven’t been interested in any of the Star Wars stuff since the one with all the clones. I couldn’t make heads or tails of the story. Who’s clones were they? Who grew them? Why? Which side did they fight on and against who? None of it made any sense.
(and I don’t care enough to have you spend your precious life telling me what it was about, spend the time hugging your kidsâŚ) My life will not be enriched by knowing.
———-
I should go to bed.
n