Cooler and wet. Supposed to be in a thunderstorm area today and tomorrow. We’ll see.
I got almost all the tree trimming done that I wanted to. There’s still a lot of small and medium sized dead stuff in the oak, but I shortened and lightened the main branches, especially the ones over the house. I usually do that before hurricane season, so with the cooler weather, and a pile of debris waiting for heavy trash pickup, it was a good time to do it. I will say that my pecs are sore from yesterday’s sawing…
Then it was time to cook dinner for the birthday girl. She wanted “a 5 course meal” starting with grilled skewered chicken hearts, soup, grilled pork ribs, chocolate dipped strawberries and marshmallows, and finally birthday cake. So that’s what we did. Pulled from the freezer, cans, shelves (cake mix), and fresh strawberries. Wife made the cake, I decorated it. We all ate it! A good time was had by most, as older sister was a tiny bit frustrated about not getting enough attention. Boo hoo. Her birthday is next month.
Amazon says my hard drive will be here in a day or so. The slippers I ordered on the same ticket will be delayed. HD = critical and priority, slippers = no need to ship so soon. Except that I need to wear shoes, all the time. If I walk around the house barefoot, I get foot, leg, knee, and back pain. The Dr Scholls have a thick sole that conforms and supports my foot. Good thing I ordered early and my current ones have a little life left. Maybe I should order an extra pair.
Yesterday felt like a continuation of the weekend. Today feels like work.
And so I better get something done.
Stay in, stay safe.
n
Just heard a talking head say that
a) Migrants and undocumented workers in the informal job market are hard-hit by the current economic problems
b) This results in reduced remittances being sent “home”
c) This has dire impact on their “home” countries and their families back “home”
d) Consequently it’s up to the developed nations to do something about this, everything from increasing direct aid to the recipient countries to regularizing the status of the undocumented workers and letting them get regular employment
How about … no.
I didn’t catch the talking head’s name. A man, not old, with an American-sounding accent. Too bad. I’d like to look up some info on him so I can mock him more thoroughly.
Gavin I think. (wants to give a $1000 to each illegal in California)
Heh. No, it wasn’t Noisome. I’m pretty sure he was a professor, probably in economics or international relations or some such useless degree.
According to Forbes,
The Predicted Coronavirus Catastrophe Hasn’t Arrived In Sweden. What’s Next?
What if they threw a pandemic and nobody came?
They’d gin up another crisis as an excuse for grabbing money and power.
Well 24+ hours since I filed a complaint with Amz Pay over a $100 donation to the UN fund that I didn’t make but no response. Well maybe after my bank’s rejection of the debit I’ll hear something. I’m guessing the ACH system might take another 24hr to get back the rejection the bank was due to process last night.
AMZ does have prominent display of charitable donations that can be made but I have no clue how they came up with mine. I sure as hell would never give the un money.
On a related note, don’t you just love how a merchant can charge your card the same day, while a refund can take a week or more to process?
Throw in *Check21*. The banks still take their sweet time clearing a check. We get large biz checks from schools all the time. If we didn’t have an *Angel* at Wells Fargo, half of the amount gets held for 10 days. It shouldn’t take 10 days to clear a large check. 24 hours. That was part of C21’s purpose, sending digital images instead of snail mail paper.
It may not have been Screwsome, but he does want to monetarily assist illegal crimmigrants. (Kind of a redundancy.)
Oh hell they put holds on checks on the same bank. Deposit a check in the ATM and it gets scanned. You know they place a hold on the funds on the writers account but they won’t give you credit until at least the next day. The only way is to go into the bank and cash the check then deposit back in to yourself. I never use a walk in teller and fortunately don’t need the funds right away but it still pisses me off.
The “shortage” of meat is now NO MEAT. The wife went to our two usual grocery stores this morning and both had absolutely no fresh beef or pork. The “butchers” at both said they have been told to expect no meat for the foreseeable future and chicken and fish are now being limited.
The other shoe has dropped.
I guess we will have to “eat cake” for the near future. Thank you, goobermint, for ruining my golden years.
On an entirely unrelated note, has anyone watched the old Thunderbirds series? From a production standpoint I’m really quite impressed with it. The camera work, the lighting, the writing, and the editing are just as good as or better than a lot of the stuff today. In addition there’s the added bonus of seeing the creativity behind all the model work. I really miss that.
I caught _Thunderbird 6_ last night, a movie I can’t recall seeing even as a kid, and have now watched a few of the series. I remember Stingray and the execrable _Space 1999_ but I haven’t seen some of the Andersons’ other productions. Any suggestions as to which I should catch next?
Space: 1999 was so bad, the only explanation is that it was deliberately bad. Viewed in this light, it was a work of genius and excellence.
The “shortage” of meat is now NO MEAT. The wife went to our two usual grocery stores this morning and both had absolutely no fresh beef or pork. The “butchers” at both said they have been told to expect no meat for the foreseeable future and chicken and fish are now being limited.
The other shoe has dropped.
Self fulfilling prophecy. People went out yesterday in a panic after the shortage stories appeared.
With 25% of pork and 10% of beef processing offline, it’s not surprising that there are shortages. Remember that this process is VERY time dependent. You make your slot, and then clear the hole, or you don’t. The farmers have been maximizing feed, etc for the last month or more to hit their peak condition for sale. They may have moved their herd to a finisher, who needs to move the herd on to make room for the next herd that is already contracted. And now for 100% of the farmers in the affected area, there isn’t anyone to sell to. Meanwhile, everyone downstream of the processor has continued to flow their inventory out to stores. Where it sold. Now for 100% of the wholesalers and distributors in the affected areas, there is nothing to buy, and then to ship onward.
There are probably cold storage warehouses with frozen meat, but I’d bet not a lot. You would typically like to have sold most of your inventory before the next season starts, so you can turn over all the product in your storage. If so, they’ve been selling down their inventory, waiting for this season’s meat to roll in. And it’s not rolling in.
When we get food recalls, you might have noticed that dozens of ‘store’ brands are affected, in all different parts of the country. That’s because of the regionally centralized nature of the processing. Only a few high volume very specialized plants serve each market.
At one point, we were shipping animals (or carcasses) to china to be processed and returned to the US for sale. I just noticed recently on the packaging that my meat said, grown, harvested, and processed in the USA, which implies that there are products that aren’t.
Welcome to the JIT, Lean, six sigma’d, MBA, stock price driven supply chain.
n
There are probably cold storage warehouses with frozen meat, but I’d bet not a lot. You would typically like to have sold most of your inventory before the next season starts, so you can turn over all the product in your storage. If so, they’ve been selling down their inventory, waiting for this season’s meat to roll in. And it’s not rolling in.
We had freezer burned “fresh” meat from both Sam’s and HEB around Christmas. My guess is that those warehouses were emptied a while ago with the swine flu problems in China impacting production before the Coronavirus started.
“Self fulfilling prophecy. People went out yesterday in a panic after the shortage stories appeared.”
–why didn’t you?*
and it REALLY doesn’t take much to buy out the store, you don’t need busloads of people filling their carts, you just need a few people to pick up a extra package. There isn’t any slack in the system. Paul can be more specific, but our HEB gets three deliveries a day and stocks constantly. Even missing one of those three is going to result in empty shelves. The sales tracking systems can work in almost real time, and inventory costs money, so you don’t want any excess in the store.
n
*generic ‘you’ , and for that matter, we were talking about coming shortages last week and even before that…..
Welcome to the JIT, Lean, six sigma’d, MBA, stock price driven supply chain.
Don’t forget NIMBY-ism. Cities jumped at the chance to shed their meat packing districts and rendering plants.
–why didn’t you?*
…
*generic ‘you’ , and for that matter, we were talking about coming shortages last week and even before that…..
Limited freezer space, and both of the adults in our household work in “essential” services, still clocking more than 40 hours a week.
Plus this smells political and media-driven. If we’re wrong, we have a stash and start getting creative. Though, for a start, it means that we’re directing time and energy away from our jobs, and, in my wife’s case, exacerbating a medical care shortage.
(Wait until the doctors aren’t paid for March. At my wife’s old job in WA State, those checks would go out about now.)
Austin and San Antonio had a month of “gas shortage” three years ago that we dealt with, but most people know what to do with gasoline. The same goes for TP. A lot of the population has no clue what to do with fresh meat unless it is ordered from a menu featuring a clown’s face and arrives fully cooked to a safe temperature between two pieces of bread.
Sadly, a lot of the panic buying will get thrown away.
The media wanted this shortage at the grocery stores for the optics of people fighting over the last package of hot dogs at WalMart, but I don’t think they believed it applies to them since they eat in restaurants.
Home Depot will process refunds for return items on credit and debit cards immediately. If they can do it, so can others. But playing the float game is more rewarding to the merchant.
Just got back from Costco. The hamburger box was completely empty and people were standing around like vultures waiting for the butcher to drop a package. I did pick up some frozen chicken strips. Seemed to be plenty of those.
The companies that process meat are intentionally shutting down to jack the prices up. Once prices get to where the packers want the price there will be plenty of meat for everyone. The companies are just taking advantage of Covid-19 to close as they have an excuse rather than “just because we are unable to gouge”.
Just turned on the teevee and saw the Blue Angels AND the Thunderbirds flying together to salute the various first responders and medical personnel up and down the Eastern seaboard. This should be a lesson. When we are hurting and working hard to overcome a tremendous problem, we should afford to take some time out to see something, anything, inspiring. I can’t think of anything more inspiring.
Let the naysayers (none here!) carp about this. I think it is great.
“Plus this smells political and media-driven.”
–whether manufactured or organic, the result is the same, no meat in the stores. Assigning blame is comforting, but unless you’re willing to shoot the instigators, it won’t get more meat into the store….
“The companies are just taking advantage of Covid-19 to close as they have an excuse rather than “just because we are unable to gouge”. ”
— if there were price controls in effect, or we were in a deflationary spiral, I’d be right there with you on this, but there aren’t any controls (other than vague ‘no gouging’ rules) with no evidence of deflation yet. If the plants miss the ‘harvest’ of meat, they miss all those sales too. How much would the price have to rise to make it profitable to lose a month of regular sales? How long would the higher prices have to stay in effect? Spreadsheet jockeys? Are their balance sheets, outstanding loan obligations, etc capable of withstanding a month or more with no in-flow? All of their fixed costs and many of their variable costs will continue… and because of all the MBA bs, most operations run pretty close to the bone most of the time. In other words, I’m not buying it as a conspiracy theory.
n
“I did pick up some frozen chicken strips. Seemed to be plenty of those.”
–if there are warehouses full of frozen meat, it seems likely that processed foods are what’s normally stocked. They are the least likely for a consumer to check an expiration date, and least likely to show effects of prolonged storage.
n
Not entirely true, but still suspicious. Our Tyson beef processing plant (Pasco WA) and a Tyson pork processing plant in Iowa have been closed due to a majority of their workers testing positive for COVID-19 (using a test that is not at all accurate but suits the gooberment’s agenda).
If anyone does not believe that the gooberment is taking this opportunity to manipulate the entire “economy” then bless your heart.
To see what CDC has to say about meat processing workers and Covid,
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/organizations/meat-poultry-processing-workers-employers.html
n
“If anyone does not believe that the gooberment is taking this opportunity to manipulate the entire “economy” then bless your heart. ”
–since the government is people, and the vast majority of people are venal and stupid, poorly educated, and unmotivated, ESPECIALLY the people drawn to government, it might be a stretch to say they ARE manipulating. I’ll stipulate to TRYING TO manipulate, if you limit the statement to “some” people within the government…
and I’d say that they have been continually pushing since the ’30s in a general way, but that very few specific things have advanced their agenda in any dramatic way. The 17th amendment might be a good example- they stole the States’ voice in Congress, but who could have predicted the rise of the mega-powerful long term Senators and the rise of influence of big time corporate money?
n
“Plus this smells political and media-driven.”
–whether manufactured or organic, the result is the same, no meat in the stores. Assigning blame is comforting, but unless you’re willing to shoot the instigators, it won’t get more meat into the store….
The instigators expect to see their usual weekend brunch spots opening on Saturday in a lot of states.
The 17th amendment might be a good example- they stole the States’ voice in Congress, but who could have predicted the rise of the mega-powerful long term Senators and the rise of influence of big time corporate money?
Predicted? That’s exactly why the 17th amendment was passed.
Hearst Media was front and center in that effort.
OMG, I watched Invasion: UFO last night! Popped on the torrents. Another one by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. The models and manipulation are great. A made for TV movie. I watched, and loved, a lot of their TV shows as a youngster. Supercar was a favorite.
The fetishy Moon suits and purple wigs in I:UFO were designed by Sylvia.
Perfect for Mr. Greg!
I get your point, but it also demonstrates the incredible efficiency of shipping. My old example used to be computer chips, but carcasses are much lower value by weight or volume. I have read (a long time ago) that it only costs about a penny to ship a can of tuna halfway around the world. Might still be true.
Let the naysayers (none here!) carp about this. I think it is great.
I will not only carp, but I will gleek and fleer as well! 🙂
Noisy damn things! I hated them in San Francisco and the very day I moved to Seattle they followed me, I kid you not.
@MrAtoz
So, you’ve been using the Atavachron® again, eh? Thanks for the tip.
Perfect for Mr. Greg!
I watched the Andersons’ “Space 1999” but never got into their other shows.
Our big independent had the whole ITV syndication package in the 70s. “Space 1999” and “The Muppet Show” received prominent timeslots, but the other series were given short shrift, buried late at night or early Sunday morning.
I don’t think it was malicious, like the way the Fox station in town buried “Siskel & Ebert” in the late 90s, but the shows had a more limited audience.
@Nick – Someone recently clued me in about the “TRUMP” building site in Chicago and the significance of those big letters at that point in the skyline shot from the Michigan Ave. bridge. The Sun-Times building used to sit in that spot.
–if there are warehouses full of frozen meat, it seems likely that processed foods are what’s normally stocked. They are the least likely for a consumer to check an expiration date, and least likely to show effects of prolonged storage.
Consumers don’t check the expiration dates, but some of the privately held chains like Wegmans’ and Publix have generous return policies and picky customers which allowed them to build names associated with quality. The buyers for the chains will know and a financial risk assessment done for anything going on the shelf considered even remotely marginal.
Except that I need to wear shoes, all the time. If I walk around the house barefoot, I get foot, leg, knee, and back pain. The Dr Scholls have a thick sole that conforms and supports my foot. Good thing I ordered early and my current ones have a little life left. Maybe I should order an extra pair.
Me too. Because I stupidly bounce off things in the house and break toes. I seem to walk into the kitchen island repeatedly, at least once a week. Does not matter which house, it is me. I wear Birkenstock sandals religiously now. And the dog likes to chew on them too (not good !).
MrAtoZ you beat me to it. I was going to recommend UFO. Great 1 season show. Good models and interesting character story arcs through the whole season. Set far in the future: 1980!!.
xkcd: Coronavirus Genome 2
https://xkcd.com/2299/
Randall is going somewhere with the genome but I cannot figure it out to save my life.
Explained at:
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2299:_Coronavirus_Genome_2
Those puppet shows creeped me out. Starting with the king and queen in Mr Roger’s Neighborhood, but also Punch and Judy, and the weird Lamb-y sock puppet….
I NEVER watched the puppet shows as a kid. I did watch Space:1999. The woman with the lumps instead of eyebrows was a mix of creepy weird and sexy which confused the ehll out of me as a boy.
n
What was the show where they were driving a vehicle across a post apoc USA? White sorta van like thing, six wheels? Ramp. wedge shaped front end? Kinda oval in cross section? Not finding anything with the googles.
n
The rain started about an hour ago. Dreary.
n
“The first time they sent me to the gas chamber” by Simon Black
https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/the-first-time-they-sent-me-to-the-gas-chamber-27711/
“The first time I was sent to the gas chamber was in late July 1996.”
“I’m not being dramatic– that’s literally what they called it.”
“I was 17 years old… a brand new cadet at West Point undergoing my first summer of basic training.”
This is an article about leadership. Tough leadership. The kind of leadership not being used in the USA today.
Just ignore his advertising.
What was the show where they were driving a vehicle across a post apoc USA? White sorta van like thing, six wheels? Ramp. wedge shaped front end? Kinda oval in cross section? Not finding anything with the googles.
“Damnation Alley”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damnation_Alley_(film)
Great movie with George Peppard and Jan-Michael Vincent.
I NEVER watched the puppet shows as a kid. I did watch Space:1999. The woman with the lumps instead of eyebrows was a mix of creepy weird and sexy which confused the ehll out of me as a boy.
Catherine Schell as Maya!
I believe she is Lady Catherine but not British royalty. Hungarian? I remember that she was in a lot of TV and movies from the 60s and 70s, including a “Pink Panther” movie and the “forgotten” Bond movie with Lazensby.
The producers of the BBC’s recent “Dracula” coaxed Schell out of retirement to put in a cameo in the middle 90 minute segment of the series. Normal eyebrows. Sadly, it seemed like most of that performance was discarded.
“Dracula” is not for everyone, especially not the kiddies, but we had fun with it.
If you aren’t sure if it is for you, wait for Sister Van Helsing (sigh, yes, but she is cool) to drop the money line for the first segment, during the Q&A with Harker as to what happened at the castle. You’ll know it when you hear it.
@lynn, it was similar to that vehicle, only white and sleek. I def remember it being a series TV show, probably a ripoff of the movie. I think they had a lab in the vehicle as well as living in it. Don’t think it had the tri-wheel setup, I remember big balloon tires.
n
it was similar to that vehicle, only white and sleek. I def remember it being a series TV show
A kid’s show? I vaguely recall something like The Ark??? Might not be the title.
Alas, both gone now.
Long Live Airwolf!
“Dom, give me turbos!” My chopper buddies still laugh at that one. Better than “Blue Thunder” when they cut in the silencers on the choppa.
@~jim, I think you are on to it, the Ark sounds familiar…
n
YES, Ark II.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ark_II
n
“It is sometimes incorrectly reported that the Ark II was built by Dean Jeffries, who constructed various fantastic vehicles for science-fiction films and television. These include the Landmaster for the film Damnation Alley, with which the Ark II is sometimes confused. ”
And they had a monkey. Every show in the 70s had to have a monkey or a midget.
n
archive.org has the complete UFO series. I’m going to try a download and see how it looks.
And they had a monkey. Every show in the 70s had to have a monkey or a midget.
Sid and Marty Kroft put Billy Barty in everything they did (or so it seemed) in the 70s. They were way ahead of their time, and, arguably still are.
Monkeys sell tickets. If memory serves, “Every Which Way But Loose”, made in 1978, is still Eastwood’s second highest grossing film ever.
Or a chimp.
B.J. and the Bear.
archive.org has the complete UFO series. I’m going to try a download and see how it looks.
If you’re really bored, archive also has the complete “Computer Chronicles” run, donated by Stewart Chiefet. The names appearing on the show over the run on PBS make the donation an incalculable gift to history. Kinda surreal to watch John McCarthy still very much in the thick of things in the 80s, and co-host Gary Kildall is the person who you really have to thank for MS-DOS, including the 5.0 version which introduced meaningful memory management above 1 MB, an attempt to suppress DR-DOS.
McCarthy’s original Lisp paper still amazes. Sadly, he spent the last decade of his life dealing with dementia, just as computers became powerful enough to implement his ideas.
https://web.archive.org/web/20131006003734/http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/recursive.html
In case you’re wondering, there is no Part II.
Archive.org also has the un-MST3k-ed “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians”. Kiddie safe, but you may regret bringing that flick into your house. The theme is much worse than Sacha Baron Cohen’s “I Like To Move It Move It” from “Madagascar”.
Or a chimp.
B.J. and the Bear.
Greg Evigan’s pennance for participating in “A Year At The Top”, the series where Norman Lear finally went too far pushing the TV envelope.
“Go drive a truck with a monkey co-star. Then come back and talk to us.”
I liked Fireball XL5 when it was first run in the US. I think it is available.
And of course, there is the musical homage to those shows, “Team America” by the South Park guys. “America, F— Yeah!” Not safe for kids. Language. Marionette sex. and Kim Jong Il is “ronery.”
I had to look those two up to verify they are real. You, of course, wouldn’t kid me. Learn something every day. Some days.
Yes, noisy, but, as some of us say, the sound of freedom, or what is left of it for us plebians. I have ridden motorcycles since before I had a driver’s license (I hope there is a statute of limitations,) and have sometimes struggled to comply with the noise laws. In the old days, it was easy: just don’t make lots of noise at certain times and in certain places, and the cops were cool. Legality didn’t matter much. Nowadays, they are getting technical in some jurisdictions. Fortunately I don’t go to any of those, but I still regard it as harassment. I do like quiet, but once in a while…
Anyhow, a magazine crew was reviewing new bikes many years ago. They went out of LA to find a quiet spot, and settled on a little used road near Palmdale to conduct their measurements. They were making measurements, when a military jet flew nearby, but still miles away. They said their meter didn’t go high enough to measure it. Now, think about the square law. Vehicles are measured at 50′, and the jet was miles away. He was running straight pipes 🙂
Another great Zelazny novel written a decade before the movie.
Back in the days when SF was something more than a SJW mutual masturbation society.
Damnation Alley
Another great Zelazny novel written a decade before the movie.
I know I read the book but I just cannot remember it whatsoever. Whereas I rewatched the movie in the last decade and can remember many sections of it. I loved the killer cockroaches.
I have learned not to wait to pull the trigger. Which is why I have plenty of toilet paper, N95 masks, pork, and chicken.
Mention of monkeys reminded me of the Trunk Monkey commercials. I see there are new ones. Everyone needs a Trunk Monkey!
One of the KEY lessons learned from many disasters here was, if you think it’s time, it’s probably PAST time. ACT.
That brings up the importance of deciding on triggers ahead of time, and then actually acting when the trigger event occurs. I decided to isolate on the first person to person transmission in our area. And that’s what I did.
When I made my first “last” Costco run, I was surprised by how many masked people there were, and that was in early March. WAY more local preppers than I thought. I reported here that some stuff was already gone, and I got the last or almost last of a bunch of other items. I should have gone the day before, felt strongly I should go, and yet didn’t. That day I was feeling desperate to go, and almost missed out on a bunch of stuff I really wanted.
I’ve been ruminating on it since, and a couple of things stand out. There are many texans here on this site, which for years has been strongly focused on prepping. I think texans are probably significantly OVER represented in fact. Give our place in the path of hurricanes, maybe that makes sense, or maybe it’s from the earlier tech focus and HP/COMPAQ/Dell/TI? So I guess I can expect a higher level of preparedness among Texans in general if this site is any indication, and I shouldn’t have been surprised to see others doing the same thing as me with the same timing.
I’m also surprised that some of you guys are a bit less prepared than I expected. And I’m a bit surprised how many of you were moving house at the same time! Which puts a crimp in prepping for sure. I don’t have a good feel for how often people move in general, but we’ve got a bunch of people here that did, all at approximately the same time. That points out that disasters don’t know or care about your current state of readiness.
I’m no exception to that either, in that I’ve had what, 3 or 4 things bite my butt here that I should have had taken care of long ago, but put off. Things I KNEW would bite me, but could be addressed under normal conditions without too much trouble. Except that now we’re anything but normal, and they could have been a big deal, or put us at increased risk while dealing with them.
Hmm, some more thoughts in there somewhere, but now I better feed the lions….
n
Give our place in the path of hurricanes, maybe that makes sense, or maybe it’s from the earlier tech focus and HP/COMPAQ/Dell/TI?
Careers at those places haven’t existed for Americans in more than a decade, easily a whole generation if you consider how brief a lot of tech careers really are.
I was in grad school with the guy who designed most of Compaq’s laptops going back to the mid-90s, prior to the HP merger. His career stopped going so well after the buyout, and the university cut him a break with a PhD program slot and a faculty position when we graduated. 16 years idle, essentially, not much older than me.
I make exactly what I did at the Death Star a decade ago. There was no negotiation since both sides knew I was making my 1998 salary at CGI.
Made a Costco run today. Needed to get a UPS for the wife’s computer. The one that was being used now fails to power up. The surge sockets have power, the battery protected sockets have no power. No amount of coaxing will get it to power up. Considered a new battery. That is $35.00 at Batteries+. A new UPS is $34.95 at Costco.
While waiting in line the circus barker at the door stated that effective May 1 all customers in Costco must be wearing a mask. No mask, no entrance.
There was a line, took about 5 minutes to get through. Supplies seems normal except for ground beef. Aisle stacked with paper towels, limit 1. Did not go back far enough to check the toilet paper.
Give our place in the path of hurricanes, maybe that makes sense, or maybe it’s from the earlier tech focus and HP/COMPAQ/Dell/TI?
Careers at those places haven’t existed for Americans in more than a decade, easily a whole generation if you consider how brief a lot of tech careers really are.
I suspect about half of the oil patch is looking for new careers at the moment. I am wondering if we can hold this whole thing together to make it to the other side of the crude oil and natural gas bubble explosion ? The other side of SARS-COV-2 ? I have not had a full paycheck in over a year. I do not expect a full paycheck ever again. My income from 2018 to 2019 dropped 25%. I suspect that 2019 to 2020 will be another drop of 25%.
My father expects property values in Texas to drop 25% this year. Too many people are hitting the streets and going to file bankruptcy. We went through this back in 1986 in Texas. Half the banks died, it took years for property ownership to get settled out as people left homes and moved into vacant homes, assuming the mortgage (no doing that anymore). It was really bad.
I’m also surprised that some of you guys are a bit less prepared than I expected. And I’m a bit surprised how many of you were moving house at the same time! Which puts a crimp in prepping for sure. I don’t have a good feel for how often people move in general, but we’ve got a bunch of people here that did, all at approximately the same time. That points out that disasters don’t know or care about your current state of readiness.
Yup, moving really hit my inventories of paper and water. Bulky items. And my pantry items. Where I made the mistake was gradually building back up rather than going to Sam’s Club and spending $2,000 all at once.
But we have not touched the long term food. It is all still there in the new used house and the bug out place. Right now, we are in the end of the beginning of this MZB apocalypse. The second wave will be coming in a couple of months. I hope that it is a fizzle rather than a big long blast.
I am really happy with our move though. And I do not have to worry about flooding and being locked into our neighborhood. And my daughter is doing better now, last year we had to give her three intravenous iron transfusions so she could breathe. I don’t have to worry about having 30 minutes to get her to an ER for a whole blood transfusion so she can breathe. But, if it suddenly becomes necessary, it is a better place for being able to run her to an ER.
While waiting in line the circus barker at the door stated that effective May 1 all customers in Costco must be wearing a mask. No mask, no entrance.
There was a line, took about 5 minutes to get through. Supplies seems normal except for ground beef. Aisle stacked with paper towels, limit 1. Did not go back far enough to check the toilet paper.
I guess people can figure out what to do with ground beef. I imagine the ERs are going to see a lot of E Coli, though.
Mask kabuki is gonna get real old, but I only see it going one of two ways — we’ll either have to wear a mask full time in public forever -or- a critical mass of people will get fed up with the control freaks and refuse to enter places requiring masks regardless of local ordnances or lack thereof, forcing the issue.
The people on the beaches in Kali aren’t wearing masks. A double f-you to Nuisance.
Caused major issues at the bank where I worked. Caused me to seek other work. People with stock in the bank lost it all. One person I knew lost $400K, his entire retirement.
I suspect about half of the oil patch is looking for new careers at the moment. I am wondering if we can hold this whole thing together to make it to the other side of the crude oil and natural gas bubble explosion ?
Yeah, we see the resumes in Austin. We’re about two hours from Katy at the office so, certainly, a commute-home-on-the-weekends gig like I did in Seattle for a few months.
The oil is still there and EVs as mass market cars are not going to happen now. Assets will be sold for pennies on the dollar, and new dumb money will replace the old chasing the shale “miracle”.
The Saudis and the Russians can’t keep it up either. In the mean time, oil suitable for diesel and thus agriculture comes into the country on the cheap.
1/10 ounce gold. 1 barrel oil. 1 bushel wheat. That doesn’t stay out of balance for long.
My father expects property values in Texas to drop 25% this year. Too many people are hitting the streets and going to file bankruptcy. We went through this back in 1986 in Texas. Half the banks died, it took years for property ownership to get settled out as people left homes and moved into vacant homes, assuming the mortgage (no doing that anymore). It was really bad.
Texas was well under control in 2014/15, when we bought our current house, but something happened to the appraisal laws and lending standards after that time frame. Something changed in a big way that reversed all of the rules designed to prevent the problems of the 80s.
1/10 ounce gold. 1 barrel oil. 1 bushel wheat. That doesn’t stay out of balance for long.
That’s a cool way of putting it. The joker in me wants to ask its equivalent in kilograms of rice.
If I had to give way to conspiracy theories my personal take is that the scare was engineered to cause deflation putting the dollar squarely on top of the hill and screwing the Chinese out of their trade balance in the process. Of course it’s all theory…
In technical news, time for another Fedora upgrade since 30 will go end of life shortly.
I’ve been pretty happy with 31, but the 32 beta left a lot to be desired. Hopefully, the final release fixes the problems.
GCC 10. Already?
https://betanews.com/2020/04/28/fedora-32-linux/
Texas was well under control in 2014/15, when we bought our current house, but something happened to the appraisal laws and lending standards after that time frame. Something changed in a big way that reversed all of the rules designed to prevent the problems of the 80s.
It is called fracking. The combination of directional drilling and fracking has been way more successful than George Mitchell ever dreamed it would. We have enough crude oil and natural gas to last in the USA for 200 years. We may have enough for a 1,000 years. The problem is that many companies have jumped on these two items and have been going gangbusters to great success. So much success that it pushed the price of crude from $125/bbl (2008) to $13/bbl (today). And the price of natural gas from $14/mmbtu (today) to $2/mmbtu (today).
And that success has forced the other two players in the world market, Saudi Arabia and Russia, to have a world price war. And as in all world wars, lots of uninvolved players got shot too.
Texas was well under control in 2014/15, when we bought our current house, but something happened to the appraisal laws and lending standards after that time frame. Something changed in a big way that reversed all of the rules designed to prevent the problems of the 80s.
Oh, another thing. 5% down mortgages are back.
But, the problem is the 50% job loss in the oil patch. You just cannot decimate a 15 million job industry across the USA and have it not affect other sectors. And then there is the job loss due to the SARS-COV-2.
We are screwed financially for at least two years. Maybe four years.
Wanna be President for those next two to four years ? It ain’t gonna be easy. The next horseman could be the devaluation of the USA dollar.
I’ve really be wanting to purchase and buy this book, “The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047”. But, I’ve been too scared to.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/006232828X/?tag=ttgnet-20
I did read this book about the devaluation of the USA Dollar, “Buck Out”. The financial shenanigans were bad enough in it.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1514666979/?tag=ttgnet-20
I read the cops are investigating “Fish Tank Cleaner” lady. Maybe she murdered her husband. If true, the MSM can claim tRump murdered him. Impeach!
1/10 ounce gold. 1 barrel oil. 1 bushel wheat. That doesn’t stay out of balance for long.
That’s a cool way of putting it. The joker in me wants to ask its equivalent in kilograms of rice.
If I had to give way to conspiracy theories my personal take is that the scare was engineered to cause deflation putting the dollar squarely on top of the hill and screwing the Chinese out of their trade balance in the process. Of course it’s all theory…
Given my choice between a $1.00 product made in China and the same $5.00 product made in the USA, I’ll take the USA variant. I don’t like slave labor which is most manufacturing facilities in China. But, I’ve got that $5.00 in my pocket. Ask me on the day when I’ve only got $1.00 in my pocket, you might get a different answer.
And the way things are going, that $1.00 product may move to Vietnam. We in the USA need tariffs against everyone.
“I read the cops are investigating “Fish Tank Cleaner” lady. Maybe she murdered her husband.”
–there was something fishy about that story from the beginning….
n
Huh, the one thing I thought would get the most comments, and no one has reacted to the fact my 9yo precious little girl loves to eat grilled chicken hearts?
n
Did you take her to one of those Brazilian grilled meat joints once upon a time? Best chicken hearts evah.
Hey! It was no more fishy than that Juicy Smollet guy…
Almost exactly our situation. We donated a lot of our canned goods and paper products when we moved expecting plenty of time to restock. When I saw what was coming in Feb. we made two $1000+ Costco runs. Filled up on paper products and frozen meats. Hit Aldis for flats of canned vegetables. We’re burning through the canned stuff pretty fast. The potatoes I put up in our cellar in march have fared well but the onions didn’t last. We did move all our LTS supplies but have only dipped into the rice so far. We packed it in 2017 with oxygen absorbers and can’t tell it from fresh.
Went to the range last week and was shocked to find there’s a shortage of 9mm and. 223. None to be had and no explanation. I watched them sell the last box of 357 ammo. What’s up with this?
The Russians are getting hit in other ways too. Five years ago they owned 90% of satellite launch market, that’s hundreds of billions, but today American firms own over 80% cutting Russia out of lots of income and leverage.
Massive new gun sales, and mostly to newbies, due to them realizing that if the cops are sick, and the prisons are being emptied, they’re on their own….
And for ‘clued in’ people, there is the expectation of civilizational collapse, race riots, or civil war… which drove a slipton of sales. That last day before the lockdown in Houston my buddy’s store looked like an empty storefront. EVERYTHING was gone except the fixtures.
n
“Did you take her to one of those Brazilian grilled meat joints ”
–no but that’s where I got the idea. I was at one in LA that had turkey hearts, and MAN O MAN were they good. So I grilled some chicken hearts for myself, once upon a time, and got the kids to try them. Littlest one LOVED them. Can’t get enough. Probably at 20-30 on her birthday. I just hit them with garlic salt and skewer them, grill until cooked, and eat like popcorn!
My dad used to saute the hearts in butter and chopped onion for a weekend afternoon treat. I’d always sift thru his homemade soup and scoop out the hearts. I love them any way I’ve had them cooked. Eating them grilled was a new idea, and a tasty one.
n
(and I had a pound or two in the freezer for just such an occasion.)
They claim he told people to inject Lysol. Anything is possible.
He’ll be the first president to be impeached twice if he gets re-elected. Maybe 3 times.
precious little girl loves to eat grilled chicken hearts
I love the darn things and I wish I could get a get a container of them from Foster Farms the way I do chicken livers.
Reminds me of when I got a beef tongue from an open air abattoir in India. The butcher looked at me like I was crazy, and so did everyone else until they tasted my curry… 🙂
Come to think of it, I’ve tried to convince a friend down there to raise snails but he’s never gotten the nerve.
They claim he told people to inject Lysol. Anything is possible.
Never spitball in public. We come up with crazy ideas to get things done that would horrify our customers if they heard the discussions. We never follow through with the really bonkers approaches … most of the time.
There are therapies that never got study money in the past but are now getting second looks. Trump probably got a briefing on one of those and only half-heard the concept.
Study money is highly political, especially if it impacts the established players getting their “beaks wet” in the healthcare rackets. When my son was born premie, no one had done the study about fluorescent lights and premature infant retinopathy out of fear of GE, but every neonatologist knew the theory, including ours. The ward at our hospital was lights out except spot lighting and sun lamps, and … sooprise! … retinopathy rates were lower.
My dad used to saute the hearts in butter and chopped onion for a weekend afternoon treat. I’d always sift thru his homemade soup and scoop out the hearts. I love them any way I’ve had them cooked. Eating them grilled was a new idea, and a tasty one.
I suspect heart is in the sausage at Franklin’s. Generally, the food is as good as the line indicates, but the sausage has something funky going on.
@~jim, for any kind of entrails or parts, you need to hit the grocery in the ‘economically disadvantaged’ part of town. Ox tail, tripe, chicken stomach, gizzards, hearts, liver, feet, unsmoked ham hocks, real casings for sausage, all the good stuff is in the low end locations. I haven’t tried a carniceria because my spanish isn’t that good, and I don’t trust the hygiene, but the HEB in my neighborhood has everything in the list above in the meat cooler. They also rarely have Choice grade meat, and never Prime….
n
My daughter, here in SA, gets marinated flank stead at a Mexicale butcher shop. Lordy B Gordy is it tasty. Grilled a couple of minutes on each side and sliced.
That, combined with the fact that Trump doesn’t attend many briefings or read his briefing books leads him to do his spitballing in front of the press. Making him sound like an idiot. He needs to do his damn job.