Cool, warm, sunny, humid, and probably all in the same day.
Yesterday was another gorgeous day, once the sun came out. I was able to get some stuff in the driveway dried out, between the breeze, sun, and slightly lower humidity. I’m hoping for more of the same today.
Citrus continues to grow, added about 3 inches of dirt to the potato towers, and I think my other planting is still ok. Damn tree rats dig in the garden, but I think the mounds I built were undisturbed.
I did some moving and cleaning in the garage, and brought another 3 flats of cans out of the dark and into the light…. and then scrubbed them. Thoroughly. Something is eating the poison block in my rat bait, after it sat there for a month unmolested. I’ll have to put some extra bait out and refresh the block. I really don’t want any rats at this point. Too much food out.
Which brings up the conundrum, do I take an opportunity to restock? Or do we just get a bit more hardcore and start with powdered milk, liquid eggs, and mostly canned for fruit and veg? For that matter, I’d like to get more meat in the freezer, despite the increase in prices. And by more meat, I’d like about 30 or 40 pounds. I’d really like more, but don’t even have the room for that much. I normally have 6 dozen eggs in the garage fridge, 10 pounds of ham, anything I haven’t broken down and frozen yet, 6 pounds of shredded cheese, a bit of beer and wine, soda, bread etc. and most of that is gone. Looking in the freezer, I’m short chicken and steaks too.
Does it make a difference if I can get it delivered or curbside, and don’t have to go into the store? Yes, I think it does from an isolation and disease risk point of view. But it certainly costs more and selection is limited.
Both my wife and I have work obligations outside the house this week. My main customer has a bunch of issues that need to be resolved in person. My wife has to make a site visit for a project. If we’re breaking isolation anyway, shouldn’t we restock too? Or should we just minimize our exposure, do the job and get home?
It all depends on how you judge the current risk of infection, the long term outlook for the economy, availability of product, inflation, deflation, and other variables too. Simply staying home and getting hard core on eating preps is the easiest and least risky choice. UNLESS things are going to be worse in 2-3 months. Re-stocking buys another couple of months beyond that point.
Decisions. Risk. Reward.
Dinner was spaghetti noodles, frozen meatballs, the last of the leftover ribeye roast, and surprise! leftover birthday cake from the bottom of the freezer for dessert.
Stay in, stay safe.
nick
I’m at that point, too.
I think I’m going to resolve it by taking the risk of restocking, on the fresh meat, at least. We’re seeing a drop in active cases – for the moment, I don’t expect it to last unless that Israeli doctor with his 72 day course of the disease theory is right – so this lull probably is the least risky moment in the past several weeks. We’ve probably got a two week to a month window before cases begin to shoot back up and the real hysteria (and fresh risk) gets ratcheted up again.
I’ve got lots of PPE and know how to use them. But I’m really worried about the next year in terms of issues beyond The NewHan Plague involving supply chain interruptions/collapse, international conflicts, and the emerging new world we’re all staring down the barrel of.
The economic system really worries me. It’s been on a ventilator since at least 2007, and probably going back to the dot.com bust. No, it hasn’t been the greatest economy evah since Trump was elected. It’s been an example of shoot Granny up with enough crystal meth (courtesy of your local street corner Federal Reserve), and she’ll even dance for a while…until she drops dead.
I can’t get around that it’s Cheyne-Stokes breathing I hear nowadays coming from that direction. So I’m preparing for that as best I can. And that means topping everything off again during this upcoming lull, and even adding to it if I can find the space.
I plan to go to Sam’s Club and buy a couple boxes of canned food. Aldi, too, if they’re not really low. A big supply of flour and a couple bricks of bread yeast if I can.
I’m not worried about getting sick myself; I have a very robust immune system and I judge the risk as less than hurting myself doing the yard work and carrying furniture on the stairs and such. My mother-in-law, though, is a significant concern, with my wife and daughter between the extremes.* When I got meat and stuff last week I had my daughter wipe everything (except the fresh produce) down with Chlorox wipes before we put it away, while I showered and threw my clothes into the washing machine.
I am concerned about disruption. I’m pretty sure the US will muddle through well enough. We have plenty of resources, most importantly a core of practical men who know how to grow and make things and who are getting fed up with the metrosexual elites sneering, giving orders, and screwing things up. However, I expect shortages and shooting as things shake out and the parasites find that we’re tired of them. I want to stock up. To continue prepping, that is to say, with a more specific threat in mind and in the face of increased cost and decreased supply at the moment.
* And I have no idea about our houseguest, the son of a friend who was going to college nearby and needed a place to stay when the dorms closed in March. He keeps to himself and so far as I know hasn’t gone anywhere since coming here.
I don’t understand. My 2006 requires an ignition key with an RFID chip to run. Using a key with no chip will operate the starter, but the engine shuts down after less than a second, with a security error light in the cluster. That is the security “feature.”
Now starts the Kourt Kabuki. The SCOTUS needs to hear and, definitely rule, tRump can stop immigration. Also, time to crack down on illegals. Sanctuary cities don’t get a dime, and, the State they are located in, don’t get a dime. Don’t cooperate with ICE, you don’t get a dime.
My trucks are too old to have chipped keys. I remember when they came out though and all the downsides were well predicted.
Huh, almost no reaction at all in the press to Trump’s no more immigration announcement. Weird. I expected frothing and “nation of immigrants”, “diversity is our strength”, “human right!” headlines.
n
@markW, @lynn some answers on yesterday’s page.
Huh, almost no reaction at all in the press to Trump’s no more immigration announcement. Weird. I expected frothing and “nation of immigrants”, “diversity is our strength”, “human right!” headlines.
Everybody needs their stimulus checks, even the media. I know that The Times in Tampa is going to receive money.
Plus, from what I understand, an exemption is being worked out for the slave labor -er- guest worker programs like H1B.
Remember our lovely neighbors? The ones who have (and continue) to cause so many difficulties with the access road to our new house?
I just got a perfectly polite email from them, asking when they can start construction of their sewage line across our property. Carefully forgetting that we withdrew our offer to allow that, as a direct result of them being such charming people. They’ll have to hook on elsewhere.
They tell us that they are coming out on Friday to discuss this in person. Coincidentally, we are now planning a long hike that will keep us away most of that day.
We had planned to fill our extra freezer with a half a beef in February for emergencies, but dealing with my wife’s health issues always put that on the back burner. Now our contact we met at a local diner has disappeared and no commercial butcher will speak with us.
Put MIL in the OKC hospital yesterday. After multiple doctors and rural hospital visits her pain was only getting worse. Unbearable. So she decided to take the chance of a city hospital. She’s received multiple diagnoses from everyone she’s seen. The big hospital is agreeing with her original diagnosis of kidney problems.
This puts a strain on us as we have to take her multiple nasty dogs and visit her place every day to check on her outside dogs and donkey. Not prepared for this.
@harold, that really sucks. I hope she improves, so that you guys can deal with your own issues.
If it continues for a while, can you get the animals to your place or a neighbor’s? That would eliminate some of the hassle.
n
Or, horizontally drill it across. IIRC, if you don’t have mineral rights, then you don’t “own” what’s under your lawn. I may just be recalling that from an old episode of Shark (They suspected a guy had buried his murder victim in his yard, but didn’t have sufficient evidence to dig up his yard looking for the body, so they came in from the street and since nobody owned the mineral rights as long as they stayed under the grass it was the government’s property and they could search it without warrant.) lol I’m sure someone from oil country knows better than me.
Nope, they can’t cross our property without convincing a judge that they have no reasonable alternative. Even if they can do that, which is unlikely, they would have to pay us “full compensation” for the use of our land. It would be at least several thousand dollars.
We were originally trying to be nice neighbors, and offered this for free. They decided to be a PITA about our access road, so…screw ’em, no more nice.
@brad
Karma!
@ech thanks!
Yep, totally normal times….
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8241065/Bodies-delivered-Philadelphias-medical-examiner-office-PICK-TRUCK.html
Completely normal to transport dead people wrapped in sheets and moving blankets, stacked in a pickup truck. Completely normal to STAND on them while unloading.
n
@Brad: Good for you.
I did the same to the TV cable company. They were running their lines along the power line easement using the power company’s poles. The easement runs across my property. One of their cables was drooping too much from the number of cables and the weight. I asked them to raise the cable. They said nothing they could do.
I go outside one day and they are running a new cable. I tell them to stop as they cannot cross my property. They disagree. I call the police. The police agree. Shuts the entire crew down for the day. Next day a manager comes out and explains they would have to completely re-engineer the line if they have to go a different route. I tell him too bad. The police officer tells the cable boss that if they cross my property the cable boss will be arrested and charged with trespassing. The entire crew had to leave.
I then send a letter, registered return receipt, that gives the cable company 30 days to remove their line from my property. Unless they are willing to give me ALL their services, now and in the future, for free, the line must be removed.
The counter with they are allowed to use the easement they got from the power company. I checked. Power company cannot grant easements for other utilities on their poles. The cable company has no easement across my property. I tell the cable company you now have 20 days to remove the line.
Cable company counters with they will put a pole directly in front of my house. I inform the cable company that the city determines pole locations for the cable, not the cable company. Put in the pole and the city will have it removed. I tell the cable company you now have 10 days to remove the line.
Cable company says they will move the line and then deny me service as I would be too far from their lines. I inform the cable company that it is against franchise rules to remove service from an existing customer due to infrastructure changing. Doing so will cause the lose of the franchise. I tell the cable company they now have two days to remove the line. On the third day I will take a saw to the line.
On the last possible day the cable company arrives and puts in a pole across the street. They have to stretch their existing lines and pull slack from several poles on the route. As I was watching them from my front yard the crew boss comes over and tells me that the relocation cost them $25,000.00. I tell him I don’t care, you are trespassing so get off my property.
This had not been my first run in with the cable company over their lines. This time I won, again.
In my prior job we did some aerial cable. It can take 6 months or even a year to get the easement.
It surely would have been much cheaper for them to counter with “free tv and internet for life at this location” rather than move the lines. The actual cost of those services is effectively zero after the install.
I may just be recalling that from an old episode of “Shark”.
I remember when “Shark” was cancelled, shortly after Obama secured the nomination in May 2008.
Having both Jeri Ryan and James Woods on the payroll with The Chosen One headed to the White House was too much even for CBS.
I did the same to the TV cable company. They were running their lines along the power line easement using the power company’s poles.
Filed for future reference.
At our current house, we have underground power so AT&T tunneled along our back property line a few years ago to install fiber, killing several trees in the process, including a neighbor’s big oak which easily knocked $30 off my monthly AC bill until it died.
Mineral rights are touchy in Texas, similar to water rights out west mean you don’t automatically own the rain pouring off your own roof. Since we don’t own mineral rights for the property our house sits on, AT&T was able to tunnel after securing permission from the HOA.
Payback is I’m the only house on the block with copper service, and that isn’t changing until we move.
That was my thinking thus my offer. I found in the process that any lines attached to power poles, unless explicitly granted on the property map, are actually trespassing. The owner of the property can have them removed or force relocation. In my case the only easement across the property was for the power company, no others. The power company is renting their poles for others to use but cannot sublet the power company’s easement.
It was only about a 20 foot section that was about five feet over my property. This was due to the location of the poles and the lines cutting over the property where the road curves. My issue was the cable was hanging about 10 feet off the ground over my property. The distance between the poles and the number of cables was causing a significant sag. It placed height limits on what I could drive through my second entrance to the property.
They tell us that they are coming out on Friday to discuss this in person. Coincidentally, we are now planning a long hike that will keep us away most of that day.
Passive-aggression will only engender more hostility, as I’m sure you know. Being a gracious guy, invite them over for a drink and extend your permission “hoping it can be done with minimal disruption” and extend the wish you can remain good neighbors. It will require that you both bury the chips on your shoulders in the resulting trench but should make life easier in the long run.
I would like to see a simple and accurate test like the flu test that can be run in a couple of minutes with you standing there.
Abbot already has that. It was mentioned in the press release you linked to.
This antibody test adds to Abbott’s existing COVID-19 molecular tests that are already being used – our m2000 lab test and our rapid, ID NOW point-of-care test.
The ID NOW system is the size of a large toaster, costs $12k or so, and is widely used for flu tests in doctor’s offices, ERs, and doc-in-the-box locations.
The first test for the big analyzer is an antibody test. The ID NOW test is a virus test and takes 15 minutes or so. But a machine can only do one at a time.
Cool ! I had the doc-in-the-box flu test the first week of March when I had the horrible cold. It took about 10 minutes or so and they charged me $45 for it. I did not understand that they added a SARS-COV-2 test to it also. So you have to cook that stuff, who knew ? And she ran the cotton swab all the way to the back of my skull.
“Study: Rate Of Coronavirus Infections In LA Up To 55 Times Higher Than Confirmed Cases”
https://www.studyfinds.org/study-rate-of-coronavirus-infections-in-la-up-to-55-times-higher-than-confirmed-cases/
“LOS ANGELES — Confirmed coronavirus cases only tell a portion of the story in any area, but a new study out of Los Angeles County has come to a startling conclusion. Based on the first round of antibody testing, 4.1% of the county’s entire adult population has already come into contact with the virus and developed an antibody.”
“After adjusting for statistical margin of error, that means anywhere from 221,000 to 442,000 local adults in Los Angeles have been infected by the coronavirus. That number is 28 to 55 times higher than the 7,994 confirmed COVID-19 cases in LA at the time the study was conducted earlier this month.”
So, another point stating that the rate of infection throughout the general population is much higher than previously thought. And that the rate of serious complications is much lower than currently thought.
I am beginning to smell a rat. I am not there by any means yet, but watching “The Blacklist” has taught me that there are conspiracies around every corner. And the shadow government is still trying to take us over.
Hat tip to:
http://drudgereport.com/
When dealing with rational people, yes. Brad has shown they are anything but rational. Helping them out would not make them behave with civility later on.
* And I have no idea about our houseguest, the son of a friend who was going to college nearby and needed a place to stay when the dorms closed in March. He keeps to himself and so far as I know hasn’t gone anywhere since coming here.
My wife’s sister’s houseguest from Italy in January has gone back to Italy. She was their second exchange student from a couple of years ago. The Italian consulate rented a plane to take back all Italian citizens in Dallas two weeks ago. The plane went to Rome and then she had to take a long train trip to get back to northwest Italy. My wife’s sister was willing to keep her for a year or two, she is the daughter the SIL never had.
The economic system really worries me. It’s been on a ventilator since at least 2007, and probably going back to the dot.com bust. No, it hasn’t been the greatest economy evah since Trump was elected. It’s been an example of shoot Granny up with enough crystal meth (courtesy of your local street corner Federal Reserve), and she’ll even dance for a while…until she drops dead.
I won’t argue with you. In fact, I might even suggest that the economy has been in trouble since Desert Storm in 1991.
“Turn the other cheek” and “forgive and forget” simply train assholes that they benefit by being assholes.
Over The Hedge: Sharing the Quarantine House
https://www.gocomics.com/overthehedge/2020/04/21
Oh my. That place does not appear big enough to have a decent Twinkie supply. And how do you nail the front door shut (see videos from Wuhan Province) ?
Dilbert: Dilbert goes into quarantine
https://dilbert.com/strip/2020-04-21
This is tragic for Dilbert, not Dogbert. He will be up and close to all of Dogbert’s scams.
And one of the comments is awesome:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ab72e674155179259e37e4167bb3aaa1a176d197b5037c4ea933cab8a22d7e34.png
“Competing Editorials Today:”
“America Needs to Get Back to Work” by a Cat
“Why Not Work at Home Forever” by a Dog
My trucks are too old to have chipped keys. I remember when they came out though and all the downsides were well predicted.
My 2005 Ford Expedition had a chipped key. My son’s 2003 F-150 had a chipped key, it started halfway through the 2003 production year.
I won’t argue with you. In fact, I might even suggest that the economy has been in trouble since Desert Storm in 1991.
Black Monday 1987. We haven’t had a real bear market since then. Or a real market of any kind.
When dealing with rational people, yes. Brad has shown they are anything but rational. Helping them out would not make them behave with civility later on.
In fact, due to their past behavior, I would assume that they would be more aggressive in the future.
And I wonder if their new sewer line will lie under Brad’s new driveway causing it to prematurely fail ?
Helping them out would not make them behave with civility later on.
The alternative is to continue acting like kindergarteners. Perfectly acceptable if you’ve got nothing better to do.
“Refineries face shutdowns as fuel demand drops”
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/Refineries-face-shutdowns-as-fuel-demand-drops-15204768.php
“WASHINGTON – Oil refineries around the country are scaling back fuel production, amid a coronavirus pandemic that has caused a record drop-off in gasoline and diesel demand.”
“With engineering limits on how much they can throttle back their plants, some refineries might soon have to shut down all together, as motorists stay home in the weeks or months ahead and the limited storage capacity for transportation fuels nears capacity.”
At my last count, we had 102 refineries in the USA. We had 250+ refineries in the USA several decades ago. We may lose another couple of dozen refineries if the gasoline and diesel demand does not come back quickly. BTW, all refineries are potential Superfund sites, they convert them to tank farms and buy distilled product elsewhere so that conversion does not happen.
Shutting down a refinery for any appreciable length of time (2 to 3 days) requires blowing steam through the piping to clean out the heavy (asphalt, etc) portions of the crude oil. Not trivial, dangerous, and can cause unforeseen events.
“Is Private Equity Having Its Minsky Moment?”
https://t.e2ma.net/webview/e9rnyc/a584088e1280dfd4568a0d8110d89662
“It’s Michael Milken’s Economy”
“In 1993, economists George Akerloff and Paul Romer wrote a paper on the conjoined two crises of 1980s finance. The first was mass junk bond defaults late in the decade, and the second was the savings and loan crisis of deregulated banks going bankrupt en masse as they engaged in an orgy of self-dealing and speculation. The paper was called Looting: The Economic Underworld of Bankruptcy for Profit, and in it, they described how financiers can profit by destroying corporations, using a particular strategy. “Our description of a looting strategy,” they wrote, “amounts to a sophisticated version of having a limited liability corporation borrow money, pay it into the private account of the owner, and then default on its debt.”
“What Akerloff and Romer were basically talking about was a legal version of the bust-out scene from Goodfellas. In that movie, mobsters took an ownership stake in a restaurant they often frequented, and then used the restaurant’s credit to buy liquor, which they would move out of the back and sell at half off. When the restaurant’s credit was all used up, they burned the restaurant to the ground to collect the insurance money. It was an intentional bankruptcy, a theft from creditors by those who had control of the restaurant and did not care what happened to the asset in the end.”
“A bust-out requires the ability to borrow from someone, so that you can steal from the people lending you money. This is also true for its white collar cousin. So the trick, for both the mobsters, and the white collar looters described by Akerloff and Romer, is to find a way to borrow money. I’m reminded of this paper, and the bust-out scene in Goodfellas, because I’ve been trying to understand what is happening with private equity as the Coronavirus induces a massive, if short-lived, shock to our economy.”
Ah, an article for the conspiracy theorists.
Hat tip to:
https://veritasecc.com/
That reminds me, got to get 2032 type batteries for my 2006 Jeep GC chipped keys.
Big changes to any existing system are always dangerous.
n
Wife is coming to terms with what this will mean if we stay isolated for a few more months. She asked me if I had an inventory of food. Nope. She expressed interest in menu planning. PLEASE YES!
So anyone who has a cherished family recipe for corn fritters, forex, I’m willing to give it a shot. Or really anything that uses canned corn and canned peas in different ways.
n
Ham, corn, and potato soup: uses a couple cans of creamed corn for a gallon of soup. The recipe calls for fresh milk but powdered might work, especially if you add lard or cream to the recipe. Recipe on request.
My truck is an early 2002 Dodge. /If/ it had the factory security system, I would have keys with chips.
The owner’s manual says up to 8 RFID keys can be programmed. Key fobs to operate the doors remotely have a limit of 4.
If I don’t have a working fob/transmitter I need a DRB III tool. So having a couple of spares seems a good idea.
It’s an interesting mess.
Epidemiologists have been very clear from the beginning that the infection rate was much higher than the tests indicate. Same for the true fatality rate being much lower. The stupids on TV and at the papers must be too dense to listen. I heard one of the MDs that did the Stanford antibody study of Santa Clara county in CA on a podcast and he was pretty sure then that this will end up being worse than a bad flu season and with many asymptomatic and mild cases.
https://ricochet.com/podcast/ricochet-podcast/the-one-we-did-on-video/
On a smaller scale, this sounds like what was done to Sears.
Just for the record, GM used “chipped” keys starting with the 1986 Corvette. It was called VATS for Vehicle Anti Theft System, and was put on most of their cars shortly after. It was commonly called a chip, but was actually a chip resistor. There were fifteen different resistor values, and the car would only accept one. As the cars aged and the keys and locks wore, problems developed. Just another maintenance headache.
Insurance companies are the driving force behind vehicle anti theft systems. Every factory anti theft system I have seen (and I have not seen too many) relies on preventing the engine from running. This actually discourages joy riders, but that’s about all. Some thieves target older, popular cars and pickups for their parts; they know how to defeat factory systems and drive the car away. They ignore cars that are too hard to defeat, but that still leaves lots of cars. Google top ten most stolen cars. You might be surprised.
The only way I know to defeat drive aways (other than a locked garage) is to use a device that allows the car to be driven, and then cuts off the ignition or fuel a few minutes later. It’s not perfect, and there will still be break-in damage, often thousands of dollars.
Serious thieves target higher end cars. They usually haul it away with a tow truck or inside a closed truck, often in broad daylight. Their trucks often are made to look like a local dealer or service shop. Neighbors might see the act, but don’t report it because they think it is legit. Once the car is gone, you either won’t get it back, or wouldn’t want it.
Fortunately, I have never lived in nor much visited places where cars are stolen a lot, but if you do you should give serious thought to how to prevent theft. That is beyond me. Like being secure from computer exploits, this is a serious game, and the bad guys only have to win once if you are the target. You have to win every time they try.
You probably already know this, but if the “chip” is an RFID device; it is entirely passive, and gets its power from the car. The battery only powers the remote control part. You will be able to use the key to unlock the door and start the car. That is actually a good, fail safe design, but still a nuisance.
I have another word for it, but this is a family friendly site. Or, maybe it depends on what kind of family. 😉
Well, I /was/ trying to be polite and not offend the ladies. It is all a cluster of perhaps not much fun. Still interesting though.
I have another word for it, but this is a family friendly site. Or, maybe it depends on what kind of family.
Well, I /was/ trying to be polite and not offend the ladies.
Thank you ! I have been working on my language for 38 years. Coincidentally, I have been married for 38 years. She does not like it when I say things. Or use bad language.
When I went to get the mail today, It looked like someone had been testing the integrity of the parcel locker doors at the box.
Before the county cut a road through to the H1B subdivision to make the commute down to Dell and HPE easier, we were fairly isolated from the mess on US 183 and the public transit center that includes buses and light rail to/from Downtown. Now, anyone from those areas has direct access, and the transit options include bike racks.
Corn fritters? No idea. Perhaps there is a recipe on the box of Jiffy Mix.
Mom made them a few times. A lot of work and clean-up for the effort. Much easier to just feed the kids a can of corn. 🙂
I’ve had corn muffins with corn kernels. Like oatmeal cookies with raisins. Pretty good. Esp, when hot with a slather of butter.
Peas? In stew.
Though maybe Pea Fritters can be a thing? At your house, not mine.
Dad was born in 1923 or so and told stories about picking up coal along the RR tracks. He ate dang near everything. And inspected our bone scraps. Didn’t leave much for the dog there. But not so much about peas…. ditto for canned “mixed vegetables”.
Dad was born in 1923 or so and told stories about picking up coal along the RR tracks. He ate dang near everything. And inspected our bone scraps. Didn’t leave much for the dog there. But not so much about peas…. ditto for canned “mixed vegetables”.
My kids won’t touch the canned peas, and that is the one vegetable our Sam’s never ran out of over the last month. I don’t care one way or another, but I prefer to keep things in our stash that we eat regularly.
Pea fritters?! oh my!!
Had corn fritters, and liked them, but that was in restaurants, so no home cleanup. Remember restaurants?
So anyone who has a cherished family recipe for corn fritters, forex, I’m willing to give it a shot. Or really anything that uses canned corn and canned peas in different ways.
The wife makes me “corn fritters” every Saturday morning. Bisquick, unsweetened soymilk, vanilla, and Green Giant super sweet corn. I put on Black Raspberry jam (from HEB) and live the good life.
https://www.greengiant.com/products/detail/green-giant-steamcrisp-super-sweet-yellow-white-whole-kernel-corn-11-oz-can/
and
http://www.stdalfour.us/MarketDetail.cfm/product/21/
Yes, I am spoiled, why do you ask ? According to the wife, I am horribly spoiled.
And she puts peas in just about everything. Pastaroni, Egg Fu Young, etc.
I’m going to tempt fate tonight. A bag of frozen ravioli that says to boil for 3 or 4 minutes and then sauce. Yeah, no. Ravioli in the pot, a can of spaghetti sauce, maybe a can of tomato sauce, some black pepper. Let it simmer for a while.
What the heck. At worse it will be like overcooked Chef Boyardee.
Thus my quandary. I pulled out of the market in early march and am sitting on a boatload of cash wondering which way to jump. Deflation / Inflation / StagFlarion ??? Always looking for an investment opportunity but properties here are badly overvalued.
The economic system really worries me. It’s been on a ventilator since at least 2007, and probably going back to the dot.com bust.
Thus my quandary. I pulled out of the market in early march and am sitting on a boatload of cash wondering which way to jump. Deflation / Inflation / StagFlarion ??? Always looking for an investment opportunity but properties here are badly overvalued.
I read an article that predicted the housing market was going in the doldrums over the next two years. Then the author really went out on limb and predicted that housing prices would double over the next few years.
Kinda makes me want to rent my house for sale right now and then sell it in five or six years. But I am contracted to list it until June 30, 2020 right now.
I think it’s WAY too early to think about investing or reinvesting. So much is unsettled, and there are going to be BIG losers coming soon.
n
My wife made a corn salad which was nice. It’s very summer-y.
Had canned chicken and mole’ made into enchiladas. It was really good. Wish I’d tried it earlier, I could have bought more. It goes to my old advice to cruise the “foreign” aisle at the supermarket, or to occasionally shop a market you don’t normally shop. Huge chunks of the world don’t have refrigeration, so there are many foods packaged for those markets that we might not normally see. Those are great preps, because they’re shelf stable, and add variety.
n
Overcooked Chef Boyardee? It’s bad enough to begin with.
Tonight I had leftovers from the Italian deli. Spaghetti with meat sauce and some pickled tongue (yes cold beef tongue in vinager oil and garlic – my fav side)
hcombs, look to invest in what people are spending money on these days: porn. As I understand it, most movies are put together on a shoestring budget and on average they earn better than big-budget Hollywood movies.
Less controversially, maybe look into investing in some filmmakers. When I looked a bit into it some years ago, after being approached about writing a script, I found that the tiny-budget films often earn quite well, relative to investment. You just need to filter out the art-house types and go for the guys who intend to make a profit and to be able to scrounge up a bigger budget for their next movie. Several active commenters on this site know more about it than I do.
(I turned them down because the money was too low for the time involved. If I’d been a fresh graduate with an English or film degree and no job it’d have been great. As it was, I was working as an engineer, moonlighting as a programmer, writing for tech magazines, and single-parenting. Writing a screenplay for a schlock movie would have been interesting but would have cut into money-earning time, and I needed all I could get.)
I think it’s WAY too early to think about investing or reinvesting. So much is unsettled, and there are going to be BIG losers coming soon.
Disney at 100 is still … Fantasyland!
Costco at 300? IBM at 116?
Wall Street scared the sh*t out of everyone and got their money.
Turn off Cramer. Even under normal circumstances, he should have been fitted for an orange suit a decade ago.
“The Mandalorian season 2: release date, Baby Yoda, Darksaber, Ahsoka Tano and what we know”
https://www.techradar.com/news/the-mandalorian-season-2-release-date-darksaber
“The Mandalorian season 2 has an October 2020 release date”
October ? October ? Really ? Want now !
About halfway down the page is a picture of George Lucas and guess who.
I think it’s WAY too early to think about investing or reinvesting. So much is unsettled, and there are going to be BIG losers coming soon.
Disney at 100 is still … Fantasyland!
Costco at 300? IBM at 116?
Netflix is 430 now. I bought mine at 46. Again, I did not buy enough !
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/NFLX?p=NFLX&.tsrc=fin-srch
I almost sold half of my stock in December but Fidelity reloaded their database and lost my sell order. I never put the sell order back in.
That makes up for the rest of the crap that I own. XOM (Exxon) for instance.
About halfway down the page is a picture of George Lucas and guess who.
Disney will have to decide what fetish properties they want to keep on a much more restricted cashflow with football TV contract renegotiations coming and sharper competition from Universal in Orlando on the other side of the 50th anniversary Disney World celebration.
The Fox library is history. Lucasfilm wouldn’t surprise me. George buys it back and lets Favreau and Dave Feloni run things.
Disney+ gets “The Princess Bride” next month. I’m trying to figure out which money lines they’re going to censor. I’m still scarred from Disney Channel’s screening of “Real Genius” circa 1990 or so.
“Math For Common Core Grads” by Aesop
http://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2020/04/math-for-common-core-grads.html
“So, seriously, what’s the CFR on Kung Flu?”
“If you line up bloggers (for but one example) end to end on that question, they’ll point in all directions. Or will they?”
“Let’s try working backwards.
There are currently about 42K dead, as of this morning.
(That’s the speedometer you have. Live with it.)
If the CFR was “just the flu, bro”, that would require that to have the same CFR as annual flu (0.1%), 42,000,000 would need to have been infected thus far. That’s about 13% of the US population, nearly 1 in 7.”
I must be stupid because I am still having trouble with his math. BTW, CFR = Case Fatality Rate.
Anyway, Aesop is still predicting a CFR of 3.0%. That is rather serious. And he thinks that only 4% of the USA population has been infected to date.
“So
a) this manifestly has a CFR one helluva lot higher than “just the flu”.
b) if this has only infected 4% of the country, the death toll has the potential to multiply by as much as 25 times more. (Or, stop anywhere between now and 1M dead.) That’s current case to worst case, if it’s actually infected 4% of the country (i.e. ±13M people).”
We really need to test the entire country, right now. Line up !
And Aesop has definitely shutdown the comments. And I love his essay on comments for his site.
“Comments are fully moderated, due to both copious amounts of Nigerian Wonder Cure Spam, and a few hyper-obnoxious keyboard commando jackholes desperately in need of a good ass-whupping. Comments are appreciated. If you somehow labor under the misapprehension that free speech applies everywhere, try this experiment: put on a ski mask, go to your next door neighbor’s house, urinate and defecate on his living room floor in front of him, and call him a m*****f****** @$$hole, then see whether you receive an award from the ACLU, or an ambulance and police car, who stop momentarily to help collect your teeth.”
There is more.
@lynn, he just worked the math backwards. Here’s our known condition, which CFR makes sense to match that known condition? And he gets ~3%. Then he cross checks it against the assumptions in the Stanford study and finds the numbers don’t match reality.
Read it again, he skips a bit just before talking about the stanford study but he makes sense.
WRT comments, He turned anymouse comments back on for ONE POST and they exploded with trolls and sh!tflingers again. So he nuked the whole thread and locked comments down to “team members” only. So far, no one else is a team member (although I keep checking my email….)
It’s a shame because there was one commentor from Houston that really had an inside track on the status of our response, both initially and ongoing.
Heck, for years I never read the comments here because my experience of online commenting was universally bad and I’d stopped reading comments anywhere. Then one day I did, and it changed my life (at least the daily online part.)
n
Well, I tried something new.
Instead of going into Costco and dealing with all the people, and touching all the things, I’ve signed up for instacart shopping service. I went thru the online choices, filled a cart with 26 items, and spent $585 to get it all delivered here tomorrow. ONE person to deal with and no contaminated spaces. I will have to do something with HEB to get the veg and fruit that I won’t buy at Costco, but that can wait. I’m good on most durables and canned, so it’s mostly fresh meat, eggs, and dairy. I threw a bag of sugar and one of flour on the cart too.
Supposed to arrive tomorrow, so more after that…
n
@Jim: “Passive-aggression will only engender more hostility, as I’m sure you know. Being a gracious guy, invite them over for a drink and extend your permission”
I agree with you. And we tried. For months, we tried. December was our last attempt: we had a mediated session, run by the head of the local building commission. Our neighbors demanded $5k for their troubles, we agreed, just to have peace. At the end of the day, the mediator sent out the protocol.
Our neighbors rewrote the protocol, added in stuff we never even discussed, and demanded that we sign their version.
That was the end. They are pure narcissists, out to take people for everything they can. It’s not even that I object to their sewage line, but it would be another opportunity for them to try dirty tricks. Probably they’d try to find some way to make us pay for part of their installation.
F*ck em. I will never interact with them again, beyond the absolute minimum required.
Anyhow, we won’t be here on Friday, and I’ve warned the foreman on the building site about the impending visit.
As I said above. Now, I won’t say that I’m a fount of wisdom, but that’s only because I’m so modest.
@SteveF: Ok, I’ll say it “you are a fount of wisdom”. Also modest. Fountly modest? A modest fount?
Find a good investment advisor. Don’t try and do it on your own. Getting lucky is not a good strategy.
While I have lost money on paper during the market downturn I have been well protected from significant losses. My advisor indicated that I am in better shape than most people and that if all his clients were in the same position he could sleep well at night. Some of his clients had their own ideas of what to do with their money. For me I just went along with his advice. He has all the information, understands the information, went to a lot of schooling to understand the financial tools available.
I made a mistake in 2008 based on someone else’s advice. Cost me several thousands of dollars. Not going to happen again. Back in 2000 my uncle gave me several shares of Enron stock. At the peak, just before the crash, it was worth a little over $25,000.00. I was happy. Then it crashed. I only lost paper money as none of the money was any that I invested. A co-worker who had a lot of shares in Enron was adamant I should by my more. He invested $20K more in Enron. He lost it all. I did get some money from the settlement, a check for $0.02. I never cashed the check and kept it as memorial to bad investing decisions.
Seems like you had more troubles than your neighbors. I would have told them to pound sand. In my opinion, from what you have written over time, you have done more than was required. In your position I would do exactly what you are doing. Ignore them and do not allow any of their services to cross your property.
Know what one of the bottlenecks is? Cotton swabs. To do the test properly, you need a special density of cotton swabs with a long shaft to get to the back of the nasal cavity. Israel just had to suspend their entire testing program because the swabs they got in from China are defective.
Shhhhhhocking!
Put on your tinfoil hat. /rant on/
When are you folks going to realize that “testing” is not going to solve the problem?
All the tests are totally unreliable. Only the companies that have conjured them from the mud and the politicians and politicos “believe” them. As I mentioned a day or two ago the only 100% accurate test is on a dead body. The WuHuFlu was created to be “untestable” and to be constantly changing so as to avoid any sort of “cure”.
Isolation and facemasks are pure placebos.
It’s way past time to let Darwin have his day and release this ogre.
In my little corner of the Peoples Republic of Jay Inslee, small businesses are starting to revolt and open. The companies that provide lawn maintenance and other home services are among the first. Hospitals want to get back to business as usual, treating those who really need it and making big bucks off those that don’t need it.
There is nothing that justifies the cessation of our Constitutional Rights. And if you don’t think we have lost our rights then please leave.
Take off your tinfoil hat. /rant off/
Common sense and critical thinking. Get back to it.
Evidence?
@ech
Not always required around here….
I don’t know who that “ech” guy is, looking for evidence around these here parts. We’re talking about conspiracies, and a well-run conspiracy won’t leave any evidence. q.e.d.
See also Mark Twain: “If it is a Miracle, any sort of evidence will answer, but if it is a Fact, proof is necessary.”