So I hope it will be cool for most of the day. Should be reasonable, but … yesterday started at 65F but ended just under 90F. It was still nicer out than it has been. I’ll take it for today if that’s what I can get.
Hopefully none of our readers are suffering from Helene. If you were in the path of the storm, let us know what worked and what didn’t.
I got out of the house for a bit yesterday. Had some stomach upset that kept me home until after noon, but then I got out to do a pickup. I hit a local estate sale too. Guy was a bit of an audiophile, a bit of a photographer, and did some woodworking. I got an old Pexto hatchet, some circuit breakers, and a RAID enclosure… because the prices on everything else were crazy high. The sale was run by an english guy and his prices are never good. I probably wouldn’t have even stopped in if I recognized that it was him, even though it was only blocks from my house. The things I bought were not pre-priced and were things he doesn’t care about, so I got lucky.
Then I did my pickup, got the kid from school, and did some grocery shopping. Plenty of in store savings this trip. I had over $12 in coupons… Mostly I needed snacks for the kids’ lunches and sodas. Grabbed some fresh veg, and two chuck roasts that were on sale. Still managed to spend over $300. Push comes to shove, snacks and sodas will be on the chopping block. They are very expensive for what they are.
Today if the weather is nice, I’m doing outside work. I’ve got stuff to do in the garage, attic, driveway, and back yard. I’ve been putting it off for most of the summer and it looks it. Of course, if I catch whatever the wife has, I’ll be laying in bed, not working. That would suck.
I will have a better idea about some of my restocking after I re-stack and rearrange the stuff this time.
There is always something that needs to be re-balanced, or replaced.
Stack all the things111!11!!!1
And look at what you already have.
nick
Gavin, on leatherworking, I am going to have a crack at it too. I got a good deal on two leather “BBQ” aprons at the end of last season, but the straps are not in the configuration that I want for gubsmithing, so I’m going to have a crack at modifying them myself.
Off to Banggood.com for tools. My dear late father was briefly apprenticed to a cobbler as a young teenager. I have the leather knife he made out of an old saw blade as part of his apprenticeship work. One of my most prized possessions. I am looking forward to using it.
I was on the edge of the storm. We got a lot of rain. The wife and I were at Fall Creek Falls State Park when it hit. We were supposed to leave on Friday but during a break in the rain packed up on Wednesday and came home.
A lot of school activities were cancelled for homecoming week. Many local football games will be played today due to storms on Friday. I-40 into NC is closed due to part of the freeway collapsing. I-26 was a way to go around but that had a major collapse. Elizabethton is flooded. There is a dam that is in imminent failure mode and will cause more flooding. Western NC got slammed, hard. Most of the roads are impassable due to flooding and bridges collapsed. Boone NC where RBT used to hang his hat has major flooding. The town of Chimney Rock has been basically destroyed. Asheville NC is generally isolated as the roads in and out are blocked.
Yet the current administration continues to send billions of dollars to other countries. When a major disaster happens overseas the U.S. always sends money. Yet when the same happens here those other countries send a postcard. It is well beyond time for the U.S. to look after our own interests first. Stop sending money to countries that burn U.S. flags in protest. Take care of the homeless and veterans before sending billions to turd world countries. Fix out infrastructure before sending millions to other countries to fix their infrastructure. Quit spending money on illegal aliens and send them home. The U.S. is not the caretaker or piggy bank of the rest of the world’s problems.
Could let the Kamel Humper know that?
The U.S. is an incompetent international buffoon:
https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2024/09/27/houthis-attack-us-ships-in-the-red-sea-n3795104
The Iranians were the source of so-called “I”ED’s in Afghanistan decades ago. If we had reciprocated by defusing a few and using them in truck bombs outside of Iranian government buildings in Tehran the message would have been clear.
I’m hoping for Jimmy Carter to get recalled before Tuesday. There are a bunch of new residents in hell that he is responsible for, and he should be there to greet them.
No humidity, but we’ve been having quite the temperature swings up here in the high desert. It was 99F yesterday afternoon and 50F this morning at sunrise for a pleasant 50F differential.
I believe it’s predicted to be 105F on Tuesday.
I might do a Cowboy Stu and head up to Kennedy Meadows for a day, and bring the telescope.
https://www.science.org/content/article/research-misconduct-finding-neuroscientist-eliezer-masliah-papers-under-suspicion
The consequences of this type of fraud are many, but among the worst are the misallocation of billions of dollars of research money down useless ratholes, and the misdirection of the efforts of dozens of investigators, and perhaps even the entire field of research. The absolute worst, though, is the pursuit of false trails delays the finding of effective treatments by years and decades, and shortens the lives of people given ineffective treatments.
The strongest possible remedy is to investigate thoroughly, pull tainted papers, prosecute and imprison the perpetrators of the fraud, and cut off use of public funds to those indirectly involved.
Another reasonable action would be to change the FDA approval process so that merely being equally effective in treatment outcomes does not qualify a new drug for approval and the concomitant billions of dollars lining the pockets of Big Pharma while fueling the hyper-inflation of the costs of health care,
Better to learn about defending against the missiles now, in the Red Sea, fired by illiterates, than in the Persian Gulf, wielded by the Revolutionary Guard.
Persians are not Arabs, just like Venezuelans are not Cubans.
Finding a cure for many diseases is a career ending. Keep researching down ratholes keeps the paychecks coming. A cure for cancer would put millions out of work.
Dunno what it was at 7am, but it’s 79F now…
Up and drinking my coffee. #coffeesogood
——–
If at first you don’t succeed…
– except wife was at a trade show for the previous 18 hours, and didn’t eat the pork later… None of the rest of the family had bad stuff happen… “concrud” is more likely in W’s case.
———
@gavin, I have a couple of bins full of leather I got at thrift stores for projects. I’m thinking about making watchbands, as they are small and use small pieces. I’ve watched some vids about using the laser engraver to cut the pieces… I have purses, briefcases, wallets, portfolios, even women’s and men’s boots. An orphan boot is usually cheap. I got a lot of exotics that way. Lizard, eel, ostrich, snake, etc. I have a whole briefcase covered with eel that will work great for watchbands… Don’t forget to look at coats and jackets. A hole in the sleeve of a jacket won’t matter to the rest of the buttery soft lambskin material…. or the split grain. And for some reason, women’s skirts are a great source of suede… I’ve got dozens of colors. Fiebings dye (available on amazon) seems to be a very common choice among the pros that I watch. You’ll want an edge dressing too.
———
@ray, thanks for the succinct summary. Glad you made it home safe.
n
Fake hate. Guess those racists are too lazy to do the work themselves…
Texas judge is busted for orchestrating racist online threats that helped him win re-election
And seriously, who the heII votes for someone because they’ve been called names?
n
Moderna will need a new pandemic with “vaccine” jabs soon.
Mostly plant damage due to winds around this part of central FL. Although surrounding areas got more than 6 inches of rain, we only received about an inch in our microclimate. I’m actually going to have to water the gardens tomorrow.
I am really glad I spent the money having the giant live oaks cut back away from the house and thinned out. The winds flowed right through them, and we only got twigs in the yard. Well, that and about five hundred gallons of Spanish Moss that I am still clearing.
So many things.
The lipid hypothesis of heart disease. They’ve spent over 40 years trying to show how consuming saturated fat causes heart disease, and ignoring other approaches, like low carb. They can’t prove their hypothesis, since it’s completely untrue, but nutrition “science” has been fraudulently low fat/high carb for decades, to the point where the average person thinks of beef, eggs, and bacon as “heart attack on a plate”, when it’s actually the healthiest meal you could eat. The bad part of a double bacon cheeseburger is the bun…
Global warming. As if, in the history of Earth, there has never been climate change before.
Virology/pandemic response. You know, careful impartial studies of the past might show that the responses to pandemics are more damaging than the pandemics themselves. For instance, there’s a theory that overdosing on a new medicine called “Aspirin” killed many people, not the Spanish Flu, in the 1918 epidemic. And that masking was completely ineffective. And more recently, it would be nice to have a good study of ivermectin and hcq vs. the new, untried mRNA “vaccines”.
It would pay people to re-read Eisenhower’s farewell address, annually. He not only warned of the Military-Industrial Complex, but also:
Colonists. Regardless of the ugly prejudices that community has internally based on religion, caste, and geographic origin within the Subcontinent, they will vote for each other when one runs for office.
For now, however, politicians originating in the community are pretty bad at the game. Antonio Scallywag. Seriously?
The “Judge” concept needs to go away. Not all counties in Florida have “Mayors”, essentially the same thing, but the counties that do have that office are run by Dem machine politicians.
This is the underlying premise of the Laurence Sanders book “The Tomorrow File”. The top scientist in the USA has the President waiting outside his door.
n
Colonists
– that’s people voting their skin, which is understandable. But a sympathy vote because people supposedly called him names online?
n
What’s this about Fauci?
I think that if free enterprise wants to develop a drug that’s only as good as an existing drug they should be allowed to, just on general principles.
I believe the FDA already sometimes bans things when it’s drugs that are only as good, I saw something to that effect recently.
But “off-label” uses can be important, as well as costs, see: Ivermectin.
Another gift of power and oversight to the FDA would probably not be a good idea.
He may have been trying to broaden his support among Wine Moms or other ethnicities.
Look what this mean man, Antonio Scallywag, is trying to do to me.
Houston has a lot of first generation Chinese immigrants who usually despise Subcontinent.
BTW, Facebook knows what KP George was up to.
Just noticed that one of the traps in my attic was moved, but not triggered.
Watched 7 minutes of possum doing everything BUT entering the trap. He reached thru the wire, pokes at the bait (which is sitting in a foil ‘canoe’, tugs the cage to the side, looked at it from every angle, climbed on top… and then beats feet – presumably when the dog barks…
For as small as their brain must be, they are pretty clever.
n
I don’t know if you are talking about politicians or varmints. Or are they the same thing?
My Part D is with Aetna. It started around $6.50 a month. Went up a bit the next year. Last year it went to $9.80 a month.
For 2025 the annual deductible almost doubles. The prices you pay per prescription go up. A few things do go down.
I’ll be shopping during open enrollment because the monthly bill is going to $44.80. From $117.60 to $537.60 a year.
I take a couple of aspirin once in a while. I chew a Tums once in a while. I have no prescriptions nor any desire to pay $537 a year for something I don’t use but have “just in case”..
I’ll find a better deal. If not, I hope there’s no penalty for dropping Part D.
“charismatic and shrewd”
https://hotair.com/david-strom/2024/09/28/american-media-loves-terrorists-as-much-as-it-hates-republicans-n3795132
That’s also the phrase the Jew-haters in the AP wanted to use in 1945.
“Persians are not Arabs”
and there are no camels in Iran
Would it surprise anyone that 30 days before the Presidential election, the front page of the Daily Mail read:
“The President of the United States, with the backing of the CDC, and, in conjunction with the WHO, has declared the monkeypox virus outbreak a worldwide pandemic. Remain indoors! Do not venture out! You will contract monkeypox and die a horrible, excruciating death from pustules exploding inside of your brain. Heed this warning! VOTE BY MAILIN BALLOT! VOTE FOR THE KAMEL HUMPER! SHE IS THE ONLY CANDIDATE THAT WILL SAVE US ALL!
He smells the sweat from your hands on the trap.
https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2024/09/28/rfk-jr-drops-perfect-troll-on-cackling-answer-evading-kamala-n2179886
T-shirt time
That would require a real 10% death rate to work rather than a fudged projection. People would have to see the refrigerated trailers in the parking lots of the hospitals and personally know someone who died from the virus without the loved one being a member of a high risk group for death from garden variety flu.
Don’t insult varmints.
Varmints. Scallywag.
Public discourse is starting to sound a lot like a “Looney Toons” short.
I say, boy, whatcha readin’? Another one of them ‘long hair’ books?
Old school mole catchers used to bury their new traps in a dungheap for a few weeks to get rid of the smells of humans and manufacturing.
A bit of searching on YouTube will get you Jack Hargreaves’ “Old Country” programme where he watches the “Moley Man” at work. I remember seeing it as a child – I was struck by the tidbit that the Moley Man was rather deaf, but played cornet in the village band!
At least the “Looney Toons” characters used language with precision.
Compare Bugs Bunny wielding “poltroon” to the way “vaccine” was used in the last five years.
“Poltroon” is my favorite term for management at the tolling company. They were about as smart as Yosemite Sam or Elmer Fudd too.
Artist sues after US rejects copyright for AI-generated image
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/artist-sues-after-us-rejects-copyright-ai-generated-image-2024-09-26/
image here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%A9%C3%A2tre_D'op%C3%A9ra_Spatial
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midjourney
A area of law that is being challenged by new technology that will require a deep examination of the requirements for artistic “creation”.
In this case a text file of instructions to an AI tool might be considered simply a recipe. Likewise the processing of the AI-output image in Photoshop might be a string of commands considered a recipe. Recipes cannot be copyrighted under U.S. law. It is indisputable that much work can go into the development of a recipe, but the amount of work required for development is not a consideration in either area of law.
Computer software can be copyright protected. Could this creative process be considered software? Could the software output be copyrighted? If someone writes their own software to produce a visual image is that any different that using a pen or pencil to create a drawing? If someone else writes different software that produces an image that is very similar, is that infringement?
There are many, many questions that need to be explored, but it’s likely that there will be several half-assed attempts at extending intellectual property law along the way. And very likely that such will be driven by corporations for their own purposes.
“They were about as smart as Yosemite Sam or Elmer Fudd too.”
A couple steps down from Foghorn Leghorn.
There is no penalty. I don’t have Part D as the VA does my prescriptions. I believe that If you reapply for Part D you have to pay for the months you did not have coverage.
Boy, I say, boy, now pay attention to me, on this scale of smartness, where do Marvin the Martian and Daffy Duck lie?
>>And seriously, who the heII votes for someone because they’ve been called names?
And seriously, who the hell votes for Dumbocrats??
“Boy, I say, boy, now pay attention to me, on this scale of smartness, where do Marvin the Martian and Daffy Duck lie?”
A rich field of research.
The 100 Greatest Looney Tunes Characters
https://www.cracked.com/article_39714_the-100-greatest-looney-tunes-characters.html
requiring hours of cartoon watching.
sigh
Someone has to do it…
I started here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qojTeZAR468
Colonists will run for the nomination which is easier to get, regardles off their platform.
The point is to get the power and then use incumbency to keep it. They understand that much.
One Subcontinent candidate for Congress in our old district ran against our walking corpse Congresscritter in the Republican primaries several times despite promising implemenation of a radical “green energy” agenda once he got to office.
The walking corpse crushed all challengers since he drove the massive VA pork barrel complex in Temple along with the funding to build enough of I-14 so the brass retirees in and around Kileen could get to the clinic/hospital in Temple quickly.
Our street got moved to a new district before the last midterm election.
RIP.
The Escort was a revolutionary piece of EE work.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a62285837/mike-valentine-obituary/
And then the Passport.
The fuzzbuster was large and awkward, big and heavy. The escort was sleek.
Of course they were easy to steal, and it led to the rise of a whole new kind of smash and grab burglary.
I saw an Escort at an estate sale in the last month…
n
And in the history of the radar detector, we see the beginnings of technological tyranny in the states that attempted or succeeded in banning radar detectors. The people own the airwaves and their right to listen to them used to be unrestricted. A radar detector is nothing more than a single purpose radio receiver.
The bans established precedent and before you could recite the Preamble, we had bans on receiving wireless phone calls, scanners with blocked frequencies, bans on receiving over the air scrambled video, spectrum auctions, and all sorts of money grabs and restrictions on receiving radio waves.
added- I forgot laws against using scanners in vehicles.
n
Among other things, Starlink is the stalking horse for the final < 1GHz spectrum auction which will take away terrestrial broadcast TV and radio for that Pizza Box Dream.
My generation and their dreams. Look what pursuit of $20 Reeboks (in 1980 dollars) has cost us.
There are many times I’d like to have a cell phone jammer. They are legal in the UK and other Western countries.
Or, at least, were.
As for the scanners, too many politicians in the early-mid 90s got snagged by eavesdroppers. AMPS simply took the top end of the UHF spectrum, allocated two pieces of bandwidth to an incumbent and competititve carrier with control channels for each, and divided the rest into 10 kHz FM audio channels. TACS in the UK did something similar.
@greg:
It did indeed.
In UK, according to the Wireless Telegraphy Acts, as amended, you need a licence to receive anything at all by radio. This includes broadcast radio and TV. The TV licence (which now includes radio reception, they used to be separate) costs in the order of £150 a year, I misremember exactly how much, since my TV licence is paid by bank Direct Debit.You need this licence to watch any Live TV., and it ostensibly is used to finance BBC operations. You pay it even if you only watch commercial TV.
Licences to receive almost everything else are difficult-to-imposible to obtain, unless you have a licence to transmit as well, e.g. taxis. Because of this, scanning receivers are a grey area under the WT Acts. They are technically illegal, unless used only for broadcast reception, but the relevant law is mostly unenforced, so you will often see scanners in use at airports to listen to AirTraffic Control.
In the specific case of TACS I remember a case of (definitely illegal) monitoring that was prosecuted. This involved snooping on Princess Diana’s mobile phone calls to her alleged lover, a case popularly known, AFAIR, as SquidgyGate, for reasons involving the (leaked) content. The snooper was fined heavily, and may have spent time at Her Majesty’s Pleasure. This was an exception that proved the rule.
G.
Cell phone jammers are illegal in UK, as are almost all jammers, in line with the prohibition on transmitting without a licence.
G.
How do the authorities know a person is receiving a signal?
I’m sure the tech has evolved, but in the early days of totalitarian states like Nazi Germany and Britain, they had vans with directional antennas on top, mapping out all of the miniscule signals that are sent out by AM and FM receivers. In order to “collect the tax”, certainly not to control the populace.
The way signals are demodulated, your receiver has to have a local oscillator that heterodynes with the incoming signal from the airwaves to make it intelligible.
It would be interesting to see if I could design and build a receiver that didn’t emit detectably. Given how sensitive the RDF receivers have become, it couldu be a challenge.
Radio Direction Finding is a sub-hobby in amateur radio, and my club had a presentation on it a couple weeks back.
See also “Tempest”.
n
I just watched The Sum of all Fears. Ben Affleck. Morgan Freeman. Rated PG-13. 123 minutes.
It’s a keeper. Good movie. No cussing I remember, might have been a couple of “damn” in there but when the helicopter you are in crashes and rolls over a few times, well….
If I heard it right, Ben’s girlfriend, a nurse, was talking to a co-worker and was asked “how does he rate on the 1 to 10 scale?” “Oh, he’s a 12.” Made me laugh.
My dogs are funny. They don’t watch the TV. Wilma watched the TV when it was a 32″ Trinitron. Fido the cat watched TV. Nature shows were very interesting to both.
Then I bought the Vizio. Not a CRT. LCD with LED lighting flat screen. The dogs ignore it. I know they can see it, I’ve laid (lain ?) on the floor and the picture is just fine. Dogs, though, their eyes are different. Tonight’s movie had some noises that set Buddy to barking. He was in the kitchen, too. First time for everything. Which got Penny going. Bark fest for ten minutes. 🙂
I think I bought the movie from the “used movie” bin at the HEB. Because Morgan Freeman doesn’t make crappy movies. Same as John Goodman.
I looked at the Medicare site. If appears that if you delay or drop and then re-start Part D for your drugs, they get you. Supposedly the average monthly bill for Part D is about $35 a month. So they take that, divide and multiply, carry the one, round to the nearest 10¢ and well, when you sign up late or re-join, the missing months are added to the premium of your plan. Like not signing up for Medicare when you are eligible for SS.
Uh, I’d call that a penalty what with paying for months where you had no coverage.
But that’s me.
So I’ll need to jack around and find the cheapest plan to pay for drugs I don’t use. Crazy.
Can that still be done with the digital boxes? Combine that with all the other digital devices, computers, phones, WiFi? It would seem to be difficult to pinpoint the device creating the RF radiation, which digital does a lot. How would they differentiate between watching broadcast, streaming, or DVD?
It is designed to stop people from delaying until they get sick and need medical treatment or medicine. Sort of like you are trying to do with your coverage. Life insurance, limited coverage for two years. Flood insurance, no coverage for 30 days. Miss one day of auto insurance and the rates jump.
I could drop Medicare as the VA can provide coverage. The VA is a hassle and getting an appointment can sometimes take weeks. Getting the facilities here to take VA coverage is hit or miss. You don’t know until it is too late with contracted doctors at the ER. Then a really huge bill is in the mail with no recourse. In a Medicare hospital the contracted doctors have to accept Medicare rates and payments.
The wife and I got slammed years ago on her mammogram. The hospital chose a non-network doctor to read the x-rays. Rather than pay $50 weeks got stuck with $500. And it never applied to my deductible as the doctor was out of network. The hospital that made the wrong choice and the doctor basically said tough noogies. The rules have changed since that time.
Jack Ryan’s significant other in the books and 90s film series is Dr. Caroline Ryan MD.
Blink and you’ll miss her in “Hunt For Red October”, but Gates McFadden is the first Caroline Ryan, followed by Anne Archer in both movies starring Harrison Ford.
Using the jammer is illegal, but I remember people buying the boxes from the UK ~ 12 years ago.
Neal Boortz talked about buying one because he was annoyed with people’s behavior with the phones in restaurants, and that was before Android morphed into an iPhone-like slab.
Jam all you want but the first person to be injured because they couldn’t call 911 or their stock broker, or the nanny, will own you.
A jammer has to be louder on RF than the cell site, so it wouldn’t be hard to find.
n
My Texas Aggies beat the Arkansas Pigs XXXX Razorbacks 21 – 17. It was a great game in Jerry’s World.