Sun. July 14, 2019 – got some things done, still more to do

By on July 14th, 2019 in Random Stuff

I’m sure it’s hot and humid, but I’m cool and comfy in my bed. I LIKE air conditioning. If the collapse happens, I’ll miss AC an awful lot.

Got through yesterday and got a couple of things done. Monthly non-prepping hobby meeting. Grass cutting. Garden weed and water. We had the hamster funeral in the late afternoon, just before the rain, and the kids made concrete ‘stepping stones’ with decorations for headstones.

I tried to get the petcock installed on the rain water barrel I bought at auction some weeks ago, but despite a box full of plumbing fittings, I couldn’t come up with the right combination of hardware. I KNOW I have other hose bibs somewhere, but I couldn’t find them yesterday. I know I must have the right adapter somewhere, but I keep the plumbing supplies in the garage attic, and I just couldn’t spend much time in that heat looking. I’ll try again today if I have time.

Both girls are going to Girl Scout sleepover camp for the week. Part of the day will be devoted to driving them there, and getting ourselves back. Maybe we’ll go out for dinner…

Meanwhile, weird stuff going on. NYC blackout, guy shot outside detention facility, crazy people running around…

I’m putting this up in the queue and heading to bed, see you all later.

n

47 Comments and discussion on "Sun. July 14, 2019 – got some things done, still more to do"

  1. mediumwave says:

    Happy Bastille Day, mes amis!

    Say what you will about the French in general, the French Foreign Legion is awesome.

  2. ~jim says:

    I got a laugh out of ten things to know by the time you’re thirty.

    Learn the rudiments of cooking! I can’t tell you how many people can’t make rice, or decently fry an egg. And turning a burner on “Hi” doesn’t make food cook faster! Ye Gods, it’s like thinking setting the AC to 65 will cool a room faster.

    Learn how to sew a bit: replace a button,hem your pants, whipstitch a frayed edge. Ironing goes faster if you find someone to show you some tricks, too.

    Get a good squeegee and learn how to use it. Not that hard, and any window-washer loves sharing ‘secrets’. Will save a million hours over the course of a lifetime.

    How to lay a fire. How to splice wiring. How to putty a window — okay, I’m showing my age there…

    (How to use a card catalog?) Ha Ha, any more?

  3. dkreck says:

    ICE Raids starting today and the dems, libs, SJWs and other crazies are going nuts.

  4. SteveF says:

    dems, libs, SJWs

    Some category overlap may be noticed.

    MrAtoZ had the winning suggestion for skills: get a job. Related: how to keep your job. More broadly, how to get an income without being a freeloader on family or society.

  5. Greg Norton says:

    ICE Raids starting today and the dems, libs, SJWs and other crazies are going nuts.

    I’d be surprised if there were any actual raids reported.

  6. dkreck says:

    Other news, probably not much noticed outside of California or even much of the state, Gov. Nuisance has fired the top state oil regulator. Complete nonsense but he and rest of his gang wish to kill of the oil industry here because it’s evil.

  7. Greg Norton says:

    Other news, probably not much noticed outside of California or even much of the state, Gov. Nuisance has fired the top state oil regulator. Complete nonsense but he and rest of his gang wish to kill of the oil industry here because it’s evil.

    CA still produces a lot of oil, and my annual reports from Chevron-Texaco have a San Ramon mailing address. The state certainly likes the tax revenue from the oil industry.

    Also, I’ve got to double check, but I believe that EVs roll for free on our projects in CA, with the nasty fossil fuel cars paying the tolls to support the roads .. well, if the toll tag isn’t in the gardener’s name.

    The maid arranges land line phone service for $12/month.

  8. MrAtoz says:

    At Chelsea Market eating and wandering. NYC reminds me of Seoul, the same shops every five feet selling the same stuff.

  9. Nick Flandrey says:

    Smells like hot garbage and piss?

    n

  10. MrAtoz says:

    Even the Marriott does.

  11. Nick Flandrey says:

    Yep, there was a BIT more to the story…

    “The man was identified by officials as 69-year-old Willem Van Spronsen of Vashon Island, who made headlines last year when he assaulted a police officer at a similar protest in an attempt to free another protester. He was found with a collapsible baton and a knife, leading to criminal charges according to the Seattle Times.

    At approximately 4 a.m. Saturday morning Tacoma Police responded a call about an armed man outside the the privately run Northwest Detention Center. Police say Van Spronsen was tossing lit objects at vehicles and buildings, which set one car on fire. He is also said to have attempted to ignite a propane tank unsuccessfully. ”

    “According to Deb Bartley, who knew Van Spronsen for around 20 years, he was an anarchist and an anti-fascist. She thinks the attack was intended to provoke a fatal conflict, according to the Times. ”

    n

  12. Greg Norton says:

    Yep, there was a BIT more to the story…

    There always is within the dystopia. I would have been more surprised if it was just random crazy like “A Florida Man …” stories.

  13. Greg Norton says:

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7245955/Florida-doomsday-preppers-face-sexual-physical-abuse-charges-women-kept-slaves.html

    That’s definitely “A Florida Man …” kind of crazy.

    The “armpit” of Florida. They make gunpowder for the Army IIRC.

    Or used to. Maybe that got outsourced to China too.

  14. lynn says:

    From @nick yesterday:

    In his Freehold series, Michael Z. Williamson writes about ways to counter DNA sniffers and similar (as yet) fantasy tech. He’s doing some interesting thinking, he has teams of saboteurs destroy earth’s economy and kill millions by attacking infrastructure. Take away the SF window dressing, and there is good stuff there for a defender. *cough*

    n

    added- Freehold is onsale free for kindle atm

    https://www.amazon.com/Freehold-Book-Michael-Z-Williamson-ebook/dp/B00BEQLTZY/?tag=ttgnet-20

    Oh, it is even better than that. You get get any tortured electron version of “Freehold” for free:
    https://www.baen.com/freehold.html

  15. lynn says:

    I’m sure it’s hot and humid, but I’m cool and comfy in my bed. I LIKE air conditioning. If the collapse happens, I’ll miss AC an awful lot.

    Oh, it is worse than that. AOC and her friends want to take air conditioning away from us. Says that we are destroying the planet with it. Of course, nobody understands that more energy is spent heating our homes and work spaces rather than cooling them.

  16. Ray Thompson says:

    AOC and her friends want to take air conditioning away from us

    But not from them.

  17. Ed says:

    Well, 100F and 8% RH here in the high desert. Swamp cooler is hanging in there on ‘low’. I’ll have to turn it up to high in late afternoon I suspect.

    There was a booth outside the supermarket this morning, with a petition for rent control. Remarkable.

    The Antelope Valley has been a red district in a blue state for years, that will change soon.

  18. mediumwave says:

    AOC and her friends want to take air conditioning away from us.

    Just a reminder that the USA has survived brushes with socialism in the past: There was the perennial presidential candidate Norman Thomas and the Progressive Robert M. La Follette.

    The difference between then and now is that both Norm and “Battlin’ Bob” had some intellectual chops. If either were alive today they would likely be horrified at the batshit-craziness of AOC and her posse.

  19. mediumwave says:

    Yep, there was a BIT more to the story…

    Antifa Activist Identified as Man Armed with Rifle Who Tried to Set Fire to ICE Center

    The scary thing from my perspective is that the guy amassed 69 years of interacting with the real world and yet remained so ideologically obsessed. Surely, reality must have impinged on his ideological bubble at least once during all that time.

    Added: I suppose it’s possible that he had a terminal disease and decided to go out in a “blaze of glory” …

  20. Greg Norton says:

    The scary thing from my perspective is that the guy amassed 69 years of interacting with the real world and yet remained so ideologically obsessed. Surely, reality must have impinged on his ideological bubble at least once during all that time.

    Pretty typical for WA State based on what I observed. Plus add in the occupation “folk singer”. He was probably bitter going back to the Reagan administration, and legalized weed brought his bitterness to a boil.

  21. Nick Flandrey says:

    Currently 104 and 48%RH in my driveway. Just got home from dropping the girls at camp. I hope their weather is good for the whole week.

    Digging a small hole yesterday has messed me up all day today. And I got a little bit overheated looking for that plumbing piece, so I’m still a bit dehydrated today. I think I’ll make what little is left of today and “indoor” work day.

    n

    We’ve been headed socialist since FDR and the new deal.

  22. Nick Flandrey says:

    “He’s probably been bitter since the Reagan administration. ”

    –he’s probably been bitter his entire life.

    ‘n

  23. Nick Flandrey says:

    @ed, when I lived in Tempe AZ I had a swamp cooler. Dang thing would freeze you out of the house at 3 am. And it was next to useless during the monsoon season… But it did work well during the day, and was cheap to run.

    I prefer the cool dryness of AC. I even like the smell of big commercial units. I used to go to the book store in Pasadena just to smell the AC.

    n

  24. paul says:

    I found the source of the weevils in my pasta. Wild bird seed, that I had forgotten about, in 3# coffee cans. One of the lids split apart.

    So that’s tossed. Not the cans, the contents. Plus about 25 pounds of spaghetti, etc. If the zombies were on the way, I’d eat it. You boil it, add extra coarse grind black pepper, drown in spaghetti sauce. In the meanwhile, I’m going to stay with “fresh”.

    I found some Auguson stuff I had forgotten about. That needs to go on the shelves where I can see it and think about how to re-package for daily use. For example, I opened a can of cheese powder and it’s now a brick.

    Odds are that I’m not going to be incubating or hatching eggs, of any kind, any time soon. I think I’ll seal up the machine to keep the inside clean and put it in the barn. That will make a nice amount of space.

  25. Nick Flandrey says:

    @paul, I’ve linked to the cheese powder I use and like. It doesn’t cake up even a year after opening. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008GG9ZS8/?tag=ttgnet-20

    I use their cream too, and I have their powdered sour cream, and butter, but haven’t used them.

    My canned freeze drieds are really just insurance. I expect they’ll sit on the shelf for years, so I don’t worry about repacking them.

    It’s good that you are actually doing stuff, keep it up!

    n

  26. Nick Flandrey says:

    we had a huge infestation of bugs and I couldn’t figure out why. I noticed them all over the bed, looked in the bedside cabinet, and found one of those ‘buckwheat’ pillows. One that you are supposed to heat up for pain relief, or used under your neck to avoid stiffness. Whatever was actually in that thing, there was a HIGH percentage of some sort of bug too.

    n

  27. ayj says:

    I went to Chelsea Mkt on my last trip to NY, I cant believe that local people goes to it, and they say it is cool
    well……

  28. lynn says:

    “Leave the US, Trump tells liberal congresswomen of color”
    https://apnews.com/728ada1e918a482c9e9b1f3e24937caa

    “WASHINGTON (AP) — Starkly injecting race into his criticism of liberal Democrats, President Donald Trump said Sunday that four congresswomen of color should go back to the “broken and crime infested” countries they came from, ignoring the fact that all of the women are American citizens and three were born in the U.S. His attack drew a searing condemnation from Democrats who labeled the remarks racist and breathtakingly divisive.”

    I love the fact that Trump meets them on the battlefield of ideas and tells them to leave the USA if they are not happy here. No other previous repuglican president has ever done this.

    And to double down, Hilary is not president !

    Hat tip to:
    https://drudgereport.com/

  29. Ed says:

    @nick, Yeah, it took some getting used to the swamp cooler. Useless in monsoon season as you say. But I no longer get nose bleeds from the dryness, so that’s a plus.

    The new-to-me place doesn’t have mechanical central air, just a swamp cooler on the roof and a couple of 12,000 BTU mechanical window units.

    At night if the humidity spikes I can fall back on one of the window units.

    I haven’t actually tried it, but I think I could run the roof cooler off of the little inverter generator, even on propane. Nice in a grid down situation. Though I don’t know how the water district pressurizes the system, come to think of it.

  30. lynn says:

    Over The Hedge: sunglasses deicer
    https://www.gocomics.com/overthehedge/2019/07/14

    No wonder the electric bills are so high for air conditioning !

  31. Nick Flandrey says:

    Denninger sums it up nicely, wrt power outages, deliberate or natural….

    https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=236341

  32. Greg Norton says:

    The “stranglehold” of single family homes. SJWs on the march. The problem is that Austin is probably next.

    https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/07/11/housing-crisis-single-family-homes-policy-227265?utm_source=pocket-newtab

  33. lynn says:

    My USB Logitech mechanical keyboard on my home pc is generating “Power Surge on Hub Port” message several times a day since it got wet during the 17 inch deluge at my house back on May 7. This is a Wins 7 x64 Pro pc.
    https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Backlit-Mechanical-Gaming-Keyboard/dp/B01CDYB8AG/?tag=ttgnet-20

    Is my keyboard toast ? I have yet to do everything suggested here:
    https://appuals.com/fix-power-surge-on-usb-port/

  34. SteveF says:

    Starkly injecting race into his criticism of liberal Democrats

    The Pres didn’t say anything about race, from what I see in the AP article and a bit of other research. The only mention of race came from the Democratic operatives with bylines, almost as if they were obsessed with it. Say… what’s the term for someone who’s obsessed with race?

    We’ve been headed socialist since FDR and the new deal.

    Since the earlier Roosevelt and the progressive wave he rode, unfortunately. However admirable he might have been as a man, TR was a dumpster fire as President.

  35. Greg Norton says:

    Apropos a past discussion..

    My (mostly) open source phone runs LineageOS with Firefox installed using an APK downloaded directly from Mozilla. The rest of the software is from FDroid.

    The big problem with LineageOS is that they drop support for older phones faster than they add support for newer hardware. I’ve reached the point with my phone that I have to build the OS myself from source once a month to keep up with the Android security bulletins.

    I’m really wary paranoid with the phone so if it isn’t available on FDroid, I do without. The experience isn’t stellar but the phone provides the basics.

    My daily carry phone is an iPhone SE. I can live with the compromises involved for the added utility.

  36. Greg Norton says:

    –he’s probably been bitter his entire life.

    I don’t want to offend anyone who grew up there, but it is possible if the guy never left the dystopia. My wife’s father’s siblings who never left (the sisters) are resentful of those who did (the brothers).

  37. mediumwave says:

    We’ve been headed socialist since FDR and the new deal.

    Since the earlier Roosevelt and the progressive wave he rode, unfortunately. However admirable he might have been as a man, TR was a dumpster fire as President.

    True dat. He was after all the first President to propose universal health care.

  38. Greg Norton says:

    Since the earlier Roosevelt and the progressive wave he rode, unfortunately. However admirable he might have been as a man, TR was a dumpster fire as President.

    The last 20 years has seen a significant amount of revisionist history about Teddy Roosevelt.

    We saw a lot of it in Tampa, where one of the most prominent drinking clubs -er- social organizations is the Rough Riders, a TR themed group who you will always see at the Gasparilla parade. In the late 90s they started a serious membership push for new blood, and, at any dinner event we attended with other physicians around our age, inevitably one person would pipe up, “I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately about Teddy Roosevelt and I’ve been thinking about his Presidency …”

    Oh, please, not another one. So, does the $900 wool Rough Riders uniform itch in the worst possible places? That’s what we really want to know. 🙂

  39. SteveF says:

    The last 20 years has seen a lot of revisionist history about Teddy Roosevelt.

    Painting him in a better or a worse light? I’m pretty well unaware of what the man on the street thinks of him (except that it’s probably nothing, on account of not knowing anything about him except maybe Mt Rushmore).

    I recall nothing at all of what my (public) school teachers had to say about him. If they said anything it was probably admiring because he brought in a bunch of the Progressive agenda, which bore a strong familial similarity to the CPUSA agenda, and most of my school teachers were firmly in the Socialist/FDR/LBJ camp.

  40. Harold Combs says:

    Heavy rains and cool weather here in Memphis. Didn’t hit 80f for the first time since June thanks to Barry.
    Started the day sick with stomach bug, spent far too much time on the loo., recovered by noon.

  41. Nick Flandrey says:

    @harold, those sorts of things are almost always food poisoning. So is the “24hour flu”.

    I used to be a connoisseur of sorts of food poisoning, getting poisoned about 5 times a year on average. Eating 5-600 meals in restaurants per year will do that.

    Glad you’re feeling better.

    n

  42. Greg Norton says:

    Painting him in a better or a worse light? I’m pretty well unaware of what the man on the street thinks of him (except that it’s probably nothing, on account of not knowing anything about him except maybe Mt Rushmore).

    Painting Teddy Roosevelt as more Prog, definitely, coinciding with “compassionate conservatism” rolling out in FL and TX with the election of the Bush brothers as Governors.

  43. mediumwave says:

    Edmund Morris wrote a very readable three-part bio on TR. It’s been a number of years since I read it, but IIRC it emphasized the personal over the political. Highly recommended.

  44. mediumwave says:

    THE REAL AMERICA:

    Once again, the press and media are emphasizing division. But I took the weekend semi-off for a family reunion in the mountains, and driving back I came on an awful multiple-fatality accident just after it happened. (Fortunately, by the time I dug my trauma kit out and got to the scene, there was an actual paramedic on hand — just another passerby, but with a lot of skills, a great kit, and a couple of buddies who seemed to know what they were doing. Not that it mattered in the end, as the accident — a high-speed median-crossing headon — left no survivors. …

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