Last night I said to my wife “Well, we got thru another week without getting in a war, despite everyone’s best effort…”
Guess not.
57F and thunderstorming here this AM.
I’ve got my club meeting for my non-prepping hobby this morning, so I’ll be back later.
n
Here in the Memphis area thunder storms and heavy rains moved through starting about 3am. Kept me up off and on till the worst moved on around 6am. Temps in the 60s and rain expected all day, sometimes heavy. Our neighborhood lake is pouring over the spillway and the boat ramps are underwater. Dreary day to be outside. Nothing planed except writing my IRS checks to post Monday. I HATE quarterly payments.
Still cold with occasional spotty ‘moisture from the sky.’
Rain gauge says .65″ last night. That agrees pretty well with what was in the buckets, but seems really light for all the drama. Currently 55F.
Club meeting went well. Nice to do something outside of my normal stuff with people that have a shared interest. And there were donuts!
n
TERF war
Ya gotta pay close attention to keep track of who’s what among the players.
@Greg, I am heading your way to Austin tomorrow. I am attending a natural gas and liquids industry conference, the GPA Midstream annual conference. Around 2,000 to 2,500 people. The wife is not going because the daughter is not doing well and, “Austin is boring”.
https://gpamidstreamconvention.org/
Nuke ’em from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure.
n
Hmm…..how many conspiracy theories will be spun from the news that Art Bell has died?
See https://www.reviewjournal.com/local/local-nevada/pahrump-based-radio-host-art-bell-dies-at-72/
Nuke ’em from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure.
I am obtuse today, nuke who from orbit ?
Nuke these–
“Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs), who believe that transwomen should not be given the same rights as those born female, and transgender activists.”
Both sets.
n
I just got an invitation to attend my 40th high school reunion. They got the price down to $60 per person this time (the last time was $250/couple at our local Marriott). Still too rich for me for a high school that I only went one year to.
I went to my 5-year. Never went to another. I’m not a social animal, and I don’t feel the need to reminisce with people I didn’t really like in the first place. If I wanted to talk to folks, I wouldn’t have stopped in the first place.
“I don’t feel the need to reminisce with people I didn’t really like in the first place.”
I’ve never gone. I’m not the person I was back then. I had a falling out with the only person I’d really like to see years ago over his cheating on his wife.
I just got back in touch with another guy, who I’d lost track of.
Most of my friends were not in my grade and wouldn’t be at the reunion anyway. I think if they are going to do it, they should have a couple year window on each side so you can attend the year with most of your friends.
But anyway, never was high on my list of things to do. If I somehow do feel like it, I just re-watch Grosse Point Blank for all the reasons not to.
n
My 50 year is next year. They will hold the reunion in June, timed to the Rooster Crow in Rogue River OR. Big event for a small town. Same as the Moonpie Festivel, the Cornbread Festival and the Biscuit Festival all of which I have attended.
The lady that is driving the event has managed to locate all the people from the graduating class. A tremendous accomplishment helped by the web, FB, and various contacts. Of the 66 people in my class 10 are deceased for various reasons.
I attended the 10 year reunion with my wife, the 20 year by myself, the 30 year with my wife, son and his friend. There was no 40 year. They decided to have a 50 as this will probably be the last gathering, forever. Many attended school in the system for all 12 years, all of us were in high school for the four years. Fairly common in small communities.
I mostly attended the reunions as an excuse to head back to where I grew up.
Last reunion was at the local pizza place, Abby’s Pizza, and the former math teacher from the school attended and paid for all the pizza. He was a good teacher, concerned about the students learning. He stated after our class left things started going downhill with micro management and kids that just sucked. He changed jobs and started selling saw blades, the big monsters, to sawmills.
Art Bell dead, and the article has a misspelling and a transcription error. So much for “real newspapers.”
Never listened to his show, but it features in one of John Ringo’s books, and is def a part of pop culture (for a certain age group, like Paladin Press (which is also gone.))
n
Well the cable company has been robo calling to inform us we will be upgraded to all digital TV. That means turning off the analog channels and each tv requires a cable box we get to rent. I have six tvs. I’m gettin upgraded – good and hard.
I told the 1,000 lbs of chlorine guy today that I was not going to make an environmental exemption for him on my standard leasing contract. So, I suspect that he is going away. Oh well.
I also emailed with my warehouse tenant who told me that he is keeping less than 100 lbs of chlorine at the warehouse. He buys 1,000 lbs of chlorine at a time but he stores the needed chlorine at each pool. Smart. I told the former prospect that he should consider doing the same.
I suddenly realized that any environmental items might violate my current commercial mortgage. I am getting ready to refinance that commercial mortgage as the interest rates are rising and my mortgage balloons this year. One requirement for the refinancing is a environmental statement from me that I do not have any environmental issues. Anything that I know of will require a new $4,000 environmental inspection of my property. I already paid for that six years ago and do not want to do that again. If they see anything that they do not like then they start taking soil samples and your price starts doubling or quadrupling in a hurry.
Sigh, this stuff is tough. You really need to watch your six nowadays. And your three and your nine. I have a sneaky suspicion that once one becomes known to the TCEQ, that stigma will never go away.
Same as the Moonpie Festivel, the Cornbread Festival and the Biscuit Festival all of which I have attended.
I sense a common theme here, food !
I love small towns. They usually stick with the important items.
I went to my high school reunion about 2.5 years ago with my bro and sis. Almost all the people I met and talked to were friends of theirs, not mine. Still glad I went though. (Left that school at the end of 1975.)
The IRS put my income tax refund in my checking account on April 9. I filed on March 31, they accepted the return in 30 minutes. The IRS does seem to be doing a good job on their automation and such.
“Episode 23: Scott Adams critiques Zuckerberg’s testimony”
http://blog.dilbert.com/2018/04/11/episode-23-scott-adams-critiques-zuckerbergs-testimony/
I am not enjoying Scott Adams new audio blogs. However, they are way different than his written blogs since more of his personality comes through.
I was an avid fan of Art Bell, didn’t believe it all but he was the best talk radio host IMHO, because he was an excellent listener and knew how to get the most out of his guests. The death of his wife, Ramona, absolutely destroyed him. His escape to the Philippines and marrying a child bride showed a dark and perverse side to him, that led to his downfall. I believe we will hear that he took his own life and that not all was well in the Bell household.
R.I.P. Art Bell
@Greg, I am heading your way to Austin tomorrow. I am attending a natural gas and liquids industry conference, the GPA Midstream annual conference. Around 2,000 to 2,500 people. The wife is not going because the daughter is not doing well and, “Austin is boring”.
Wow. Everyone has a conference at the JW Marriott this year. My wife attended one at the hotel a few weeks ago. Their convention booking people must have been very aggressive on pricing since it is a brand new venue.
I see your wife’s point about core Austin, but you could have put her to work waiting in line at Franklin’s. 🙂
Our power went out last night around 10 and wasn’t restored until just before dinner time today. I have to catch up on taxes and a year of paper tomorrow, but I should be downtown all week if you pop free for lunch.
I work across from The Driskill, a couple of blocks from the Marriott. Email is the best way to reach me — gregnorton AT gmail dOt com or gregnorton AT att dOt com.
“Episode 23: Scott Adams critiques Zuckerberg’s testimony”
Zuckerberg was coached to act like a dork. Everyone buys it after “The Social Network”.
Heck, Sorkin himself may have been part of the prep team. His script about the origin of Facebook made a primetime soap retread like David Selby look like an acting genius.
The “Lean In” twit never would have got away with that performance.
But anyway, never was high on my list of things to do. If I somehow do feel like it, I just re-watch Grosse Point Blank for all the reasons not to.
John Cusack and Steve Pink don’t work together enough IMHO.
Find “High Fidelity” for a double feature. Jack Black will spend the rest of his career trying to find a script as suited for his talents as that movie, his first quality supporting role.
Jack Black will spend the rest of his career trying to find a script as suited for his talents as that movie, his first quality supporting role.
He was brilliant starring in “Bernie”. Based on a true story from East Texas. He should have been nominated for an Oscar, but it was a comedy.
@nick
Reunions – meh. I learned from my mother’s lesson. She went to her 20 year, against her better judgment, only to find people hadn’t grown up and remained jerks.
The only person in my grade I’d like to see died in her 20’s. I’ve been receiving messages and invites about my 30 year. No desire whatsoever. I didn’t like most of them then, the few I bump into on social media are foreign to me. Sounds like an exercise in torture.
Grosse Point Blank is brilliant and a favorite date night movie in this house.
I generally file by the middle of February and within 5 to 6 days the refund is issued.
Nope, I disagree. Got an obviously automated letter a few days ago stating I did not report income. I did, non-employee compensation. IRS says it was not reported as self employment income thus I am on the hook for taxes on the amount. Their system did not look at the exact difference between what I reported on line 21 verses what their computer system indicates what was reported. All that was looked at was what the IRS systems thought was a shortfall the overage was ignored entirely.
I will be in Cedar Park for three days next month to attend the wedding of the daughter of our friends. Wedding is located at Blissful Hill located in Spicewood TX. First a stop in Bryan TX to visit wife’s brother, then wedding, then San Antonio to see MIL, then off to the Houston area to visit a couple of other family members, then back to TN.
Will be taking the middle route on the outbound this time using I-20. I-40 west of Memphis has more trucks than cars and really sucks for traveling. One truck doing 61.3 MPH passing another truck doing 61.25 MPH. Get stuck behind the cretins for miles. Coming back will the southern route via I-10. Got to watch the arrival in Louisiana as the speed drops from 75 to 65 and the I-state is line with LA state troopers to catch the unaware. A real gold mine for LA fines.
Man, it is cold in the house this morning. 48 F outside and 67 F inside. This is not our normal weather for April anymore, if it ever was.
One truck doing 61.3 MPH passing another truck doing 61.25 MPH.
I see you rounding up there. The passing truck is going 61.26 mph. The truck being passed is going 61.25 mph.
You sure are running to Texas every year. I guess that you just can’t stay away.
Very interesting comment on this article, “Cloudflare bets on ARM servers”.
http://www.osnews.com/story/30263/Cloudflare_bets_on_ARM_servers
“We think we’re now at a point where we can go one hundred percent to ARM. In our analysis, we found that even if Intel gave us the chips for free, it would still make sense to switch to ARM, because the power efficiency is so much better.”
As a software supplier using Windows, that sends a shiver up my back. We may have to port to a cloud solution even though I think that the user experience will be way less than the Windows solution. Form over substance, form over substance.
Got an obviously automated letter a few days ago stating I did not report income. I did, non-employee compensation. IRS says it was not reported as self employment income thus I am on the hook for taxes on the amount. Their system did not look at the exact difference between what I reported on line 21 verses what their computer system indicates what was reported. All that was looked at was what the IRS systems thought was a shortfall the overage was ignored entirely.
One of the Obolacare nastyisms was that it changed the definition of non-empoyee compensation. I think that it was only for very high earners though. I sure do hope that you did not get caught up in some weird corner of that.
We went to the wife’s 25th high school reunion in Abilene, TX. The wife’s BFF (best friend forever) and her husband were there so we had a good time together. One of their friend’s showed up with husband #4 who was approaching 70 (they were 43 or so). He had quite a bit of money so it was obviously lets do it for the money time.
“We think we’re now at a point where we can go one hundred percent to ARM. In our analysis, we found that even if Intel gave us the chips for free, it would still make sense to switch to ARM, because the power efficiency is so much better.”
As a software supplier using Windows, that sends a shiver up my back. We may have to port to a cloud solution even though I think that the user experience will be way less than the Windows solution. Form over substance, form over substance.
ARM and AMD still can’t touch the raw performance of Intel, especially in floating point calculations.
“The Cloud” runs on a lot of interpreted language platforms which aren’t all that efficient but make a rapid release cycle easy to outsource. Despite the strides made by Microsoft and Oracle with JIT tech, the big players need a lot of cheap, low power silicon to run the various VM platforms for a billion users.
We went to the wife’s 25th high school reunion in Abilene, TX. The wife’s BFF (best friend forever) and her husband were there so we had a good time together. One of their friend’s showed up with husband #4 who was approaching 70 (they were 43 or so). He had quite a bit of money so it was obviously lets do it for the money time.
Lemme guess — the woman with husband #4: RN?
The #1 thing we learned with my father-in-law’s passing is that Texas law is remarkably flexible about nurses messing around with patients for the money.
I work across from The Driskill, a couple of blocks from the Marriott. Email is the best way to reach me — gregnorton AT gmail dOt com or gregnorton AT att dOt com.
My bad. My AT&T account is gregnortonAT att dOt net.
I haven’t had a dOt com address with the Death Star since 2010.
I agree with Mr. DadCooks on Art Bell. He let his life go down the dumps after his wife died. I used to listen on the commute from San Antonio to Fort Hood on Monday’s early. I think Dad and I posted before we bought the deluxe CD set of his schtick.
I remember he did a cameo on the X-Files, also.
@MrAtoz said:
Yes, I have the deluxe CD set and boxes full of his shows on cassette tape.
I do hope “they” keep playing his “Somewhere In Time”. It’s on Saturday evenings here and I rarely miss an episode.
I firmly believe that there was a lot of bad blood between Art and sNoory. sNoory is just way too over the top with how big of pals they were. That host last night, Connie something, was the absolute worse. She acted as if she and Art had regular sessions of wild crazy sex. The “guest” was also the absolute worst, he could get his facts straight let alone the Titanic/Olympic conspiracy theory . He was one that Art would have shut down and said “we are now going to open lines”.
Too bad too many of Art’s “friends” turned out to be “fair weather”. I am sure he was hard to deal with, but true friends stick around and help a fellow out and Art sure needed a sympathetic ear.
Spousal unit goes more than I do. She flies there at least once a year and then we also drive there once a year. MIL is getting old and is doing what old folks do as they age. Stubborn as all get out.
GPS failure.
I am fairly certain the IRS will make certain that they win even though they are not correct. I am standing my ground on this one including going to court if necessary. All income was reported properly in spite of the IRS saying I under reported by $14K. The IRS has messed something up big time. I refuse to be bullied by the IRS. (visiting hours are Tuesday and Thursday, 10:00 – 14:00)
…..doing what old folks do as they age. Stubborn as all get out.