Less hot, still humid. Definitely “Fall” weather coming, but still plenty hot in the afternoon. I barely broke a sweat cutting the grass yesterday. That was a nice change.
Spent the day catching up on auction stuff. It’s funny how it goes in waves. Sometimes I see a ton of stuff I need/want. Sometimes there is little. Sometimes you see an item in a several unrelated auctions, sometimes you go years without seeing a particular thing. There are a few things I’d still like to get more of.
Generators. Solar panels, charge controllers, inverters, and batteries. Water treatment. Unfortunately, EVERYONE wants those things at the moment. Same for wind generators, building materials, and construction equipment. There’s always something more to stack. Especially when you have as many projects going on as I do.
Plan today is pickups. I only got a few items but they are at different auctioneers. So I’ll be making a big loop today. Organizing storage would be good too.
Wife is still work from home, but both kids should be back in class today. That should cut down on my distractions. Suddenly time is flying by again. I’ve got foundation guys starting in about two weeks, if everything stays on schedule. I should be meeting with them on site to do their final walk thru before starting any day now, but I haven’t heard from them. Add that to my list for today, I guess.
Speaking of lists, make some. Think hard about what you still need to get to help you through bad times. Make an actual list. Then work on getting those items or skills. Small engine repair? 3d Printer? Gardening class? Roto-tiller? Couple of acres in the country? Canning jars and lids? Seeds? Fertilizer? Goats? You know your needs better than I do. Do what makes sense for you and yours.
And stack the stuff high.
nick
70F and only 84%RH this morning. Sun coming up. Looks like a nice day.
n
I have a bad habit, that I AM trying to avoid, of doing “gotcha’s”. I don’t usually mean it, and I try to re-word my messages to soften the impact. Rather than concentrating on a minor point that may be in error, I try to affirm most of the statement, but point out the error.
Others may wish to do the same.
@clayton, the ‘gotcha’ is used in variation for a number of the items on the Internet Argument Checklist, and its corollaries. Forex, “skim until offended” is essentially a gotcha…
n
@Nick: Understood. There is a slight possibility that an Gotcha offender may not realize the faux pas. I know I have missed it before. Sometimes a gentle reminder is enough to make the conversations much more amicable.
We have to try, right? 😀
I’ve only seen two on here that intentionally use the gotcha tactic. We know who they are.
Minor bit of excitement yesterday. I was working form home and the old dog begins barking. His hearing is still exceptional, and can hear a car pull up when he is in the back part of the house. I glance out my office window and see a cop in my yard. Backstory – google fiber has a temporary cable from the pedestal across the street to my house that is waiting to be buried. We say good morning to each other, and he asks what the cable is for? I tell him. I asked him who called him out, and just said one of my neighbors. This is what makes me hate people. A neighbor can’t just ask me what the cable is for. Nope, have to call the cops. He was obviously irritated for having to come out for something like that. He just said ok and left.
I do have an existing work order in with google to have the cable buried. I was extremely tempted to not call them back to check on the status. Let the cable lie there for a year. But in the end, if something happens to it, I lose net access, so I called. I also let them know the police were called about it. I was told it would be handled “real soon now” to quote Dr. Pournelle.
This has prompted me to go ahead and get a security camera system. I ordered this yesterday and it will be here Friday: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1685485-REG/dahua_technology_n484e62b_8_channel_8mp_nvr.html
I’ll at least get a camera pointing out my office window to watch the cable that day. I also left a nice message on the neighborhood facebook page. I’ll find out eventually. My wife is friends with all the ladies who know everything going on in the neighborhood. The idiot will talk to someone. They always do.
Anyone know what “helium mining” is, entails, why someone would want to participate, etc??
I am afraid to look too hard and fall down a rabbit hole this morning. It LOOKS like a wireless mesh network, deployed by individuals, who somehow earn crypto for providing a node or hotspot on the network.
I”m suspicious of why someone would use it, who can see traffic on it, etc.
If I get the concept, using a reward to get people to build out a network seems like a brilliant idea, but I feel like I’m missing something.
The whole thing only came to my attention about 20 minutes ago.
n
My rule of thumb is that about half of the white population in the US, Canada, and Western Europe is waiting for their “Rolfe” moment, as in Rolfe, the little sh*t with the whistle in “The Sound of Music”.
A lot of wannabe “Rolfes” anticipated the possibility of mandatory Covid vaccinations being their chance to shine and ended up disappointed.
Look for the neighbors still wearing masks.
When we had our lot in Florida, the moment the grass got more than ankle high, the old guy across the street who was about $500k under water in the $275k appraised house he spent over $750k building, would email/phone code enforcement. Things were worse when we had the house in the HOA.
So murder someone and get out in 2 years? We can cure insanity now?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11213731/Werewolf-killer-stabbed-65-year-old-50-times-poses-dating-apps-easy-going-adventurer.html
I’m sure he’s fine now, what could possibly go wrong?
n
From Nick:
I think that most of the He comes out of the ground while mining CH4 and then it is separated. If so, once Plugs stops all CH4 production, there will be no more He. Consequently, all balloons will be H2 filled.
Yes, there is a huge helium mine in Kansas. It is intermixed with natural gas. My customer models the separation process, which goes back to WWI, in my software. It involves cryogenic helium, very very cold.
But I don’t think that Nick is talking about the lighter than air molecule which is also used is superconducting (no electrical resistance) processes.
There are so many cryptographic scams going on today that I cannot keep track of them anymore.
I asked him who called him out, and just said one of my neighbors. This is what makes me hate people. A neighbor can’t just ask me what the cable is for. Nope, have to call the cops. He was obviously irritated for having to come out for something like that. He just said ok and left.
Just like Gladice Krabitz ? on the old Bewitched TV show.
Yeah, this helium mining is something to do with mesh networking and crypto mining… the map shows nodes in my neighborhood, but they haven’t updated in almost a year. Don’t know if that means the nodes are gone, or if the map data isn’t up to date.
It LOOKS like you install a little box that is both the node and a mining rig, and get crypto currency for keeping it turned on. It looks like you might make $1 per day.
n
Yeah, this helium mining is something to do with mesh networking and crypto mining… the map shows nodes in my neighborhood, but they haven’t updated in almost a year. Don’t know if that means the nodes are gone, or if the map data isn’t up to date.
It LOOKS like you install a little box that is both the node and a mining rig, and get crypto currency for keeping it turned on. It looks like you might make $1 per day.
n
Sounds like a scam to me.
My neighbor has $10,000 of crypto mining machines in his garage. He grosses about $1,000 a month performing etherium mining. At least he was on July 4 when I last talked to him about the mining. He spends $200 to $300 a month on extra electricity for the two mining machines. He is having problems keeping the machines cool in the garage so he has big fans blowing 100 F on them. Still looks like a scam to me.
Dilbert: Dogbert Explains ESG
https://dilbert.com/strip/2022-09-15
Yes ! And Dogbert is not exaggerating, in fact he holding himself back for once.
@Lynn: wonder what your neighbor is doing now, since Ethereum just transitioned away from mining. Some miners are trying to keep a mining-fork alive, but initial indications don’t look promising for them.
The as-of-today new procedure doesn’t need miners or their crazy electricity usage.
BC: Planetarium
https://www.gocomics.com/bc/2022/09/15
Oh my. Turtle might get wet when it rains now.
Ah, the HOA president posted a very passive aggressive note on facebook to remind everyone that “this page is for sharing information and not for negative or finger pointing comments”.
So I replied back that I 1. didn’t name any specific person, and 2. nobody has any authority over anyone else. All homeowners are equal.
I’m not a fan of HOA’s in general. Ours is mild compared to most, though the current president is a little intoxicated with power.
The box probably port scans your network among other things while it runs inside your NAT firewall. It probably also establishes an SSH tunnel to take advantage of open RDP-enabled systems.
Poorly configured IPV6? You’re hosed.
Everyone thinks they’re going to score that tenbagger and cash out before the haircuts start happening. People get involved with HOA leadership when they start to get concerned about property values being affected by “curb appeal” of the neighborhood and other HGTV-fueled nonsense.
I’m not sad to see the rise of “cord cutting”. Basic cable did terrible things to the suburbs, arguably one of Pournelle’s “Cultural Weapons of Mass Destruction”.
To get out of this mess and have the US remain a first world nation, everyone is going to have to accept haircuts to some extent.
To get out of this mess and have the US remain a first world nation, everyone is going to have to accept haircuts to some extent.
I took a $60K haircut on the last house. I’ll pass on that again.
I just don’t think that real estate is going to go down in Texas. Too many people flooding in looking for a place to live.
“GPU Mining for Ethereum Ends as ‘The Merge’ Completes”
https://www.pcmag.com/news/gpu-mining-for-ethereum-ends-as-the-merge-completes
“However, miners are already eyeing two other cryptocurrencies as an alternative.”
I’ll have to ask my neighbor what he is doing. His wife hates the mining machines in the garage due to all the box fans blowing on them so he may have killed them.
Since I’m generally interested in the crypto world, and someone (Lynn?) mentioned Helium, I just spend an hour reading about it. The sales pitch is that you put a radio node in your window to provide coverage. You then gain financial rewards when people transfer data over your node.
The crypto part is secondary. It looks mostly like they tacked that on to ride the trend. It really boils down to having people pay you for bandwidth. All the crypto aspect does is add in hype and speculation, because you are paid in HNT (their coin), which – who knows – might go up in value. Or down, but we won’t mention that.
Here’s the catch: While there are a lot of nodes installed, it isn’t a full mesh network. The nodes appear to connect to your Internet. Certainly there are a lot of places (like where I am) that – while there are a couple of nodes – are basically isolated islands. So even if the nodes communicate with each other, the long-haul is you reselling your Internet service. Which is almost certainly a violation of your ToS.
What isn’t quite clear to me, is how you communicate with the nodes. Is that standard WiFi as well, or a separate radio module? Anyway, there newest innovation is to provide 5G-nodes, so they are hoping to get people to use it for their phones. The nodes are pretty expensive, though, and apparently the total data sales for the entire network are currently measured in four digits (i.e., under $10k worldwide). So, not yet a get-rich-quick scheme, at least, not one that works.
Re: house prices – I think there will be ‘squiggles’ of house values, but the overall trend will be increasing prices.
Some minor corrections (maybe 5%) short term, but long-term house prices will increase. Some areas more than others. But I don’t see a big downturn that will make a significant change in pricing.
(IANAR – I Am Not A Realtor – or financial advisor – just my opinion)
“El Paso joins Gov. Greg Abbott in busing migrants to New York City”
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/08/26/el-paso-texas-bus-migrants-new-york/
“The Democrat-led city sent 35 migrants from Venezuela as New York officials have complained that Abbott’s busing is straining city services.”
El Paso is now hiring their own buses and shipping illegals out.
“$4,408,452,000,000: Federal Tax Collections Set Record Through August”
https://www.cnsnews.com/article/washington/terence-p-jeffrey/4408452000000-federal-tax-collections-set-record-through
“(CNSNews.com) – The federal government collected a record $4,408,452,000,000 in total taxes in the first eleven months of fiscal 2022 (October through August), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement.”
“That was up $525,658,170,000—or 13.5 percent–from the then-record $3,882,793,830,000 (in constant August 2022 dollars) that the federal government collected in the first eleven months of fiscal 2021.”
Don’t cry for Uncle Sam.
Hat tip to:
https://www.drudgereport.com/
Give ‘em “sanctuary city” until it hurts.
Maybe it’s past time for someone to do an audit on all of the “homeless” programs that seem to be more of an employment program for woke hipsters with useless degrees than a way to get people off the street.
Texas has now bussed more than 10,000 illegals to NYC, Washington DC, and Chicago. All of their mayors are crying crocodile tears.
Only 7 or 8 million to go !
I had to laugh today during our morning check-in call when one of the employees, newly arrived from overseas, went off in response to someone voicing the possibility of the company introducing a “hybrid” work week model where we will have to be in the office three days a week.
“This is unreasonable. I can’t hire someone to watch my child for just three days a week in Austin right now.”
The stock has been punished as of late. It is very public knowledge that most of the company is performing poorly in the eyes of Wall Street except for our division.
I doubt my house is worth the $800k market value that the last property tax trim notice indicated with comparables to support the number. After my experience selling in Florida, I don’t adjust the value on my net worth balance sheet beyond the appraisal number the bank got as part of our closing eight years ago.
I had to laugh today during our morning check-in call when one of the employees, newly arrived from overseas, went off in response to someone voicing the possibility of the company introducing a “hybrid” work week model where we will have to be in the office three days a week.
“This is unreasonable. I can’t hire someone to watch my child for just three days a week in Austin right now.”
Wow. Somebody has unrealistic expectations there.
The stock has been punished as of late. It is very public knowledge that most of the company is performing poorly in the eyes of Wall Street except for our division.
I did not know that your employer had gone public again. Is the namesake still involved with the company ?
>> What isn’t quite clear to me, is how you communicate with the nodes. Is that standard WiFi as well, or a separate radio module? Anyway, there newest innovation is to provide 5G-nodes, so they are hoping to get people to use it for their phones. The nodes are pretty expensive, though, and apparently the total data sales for the entire network are currently measured in four digits (i.e., under $10k worldwide). So, not yet a get-rich-quick scheme, at least, not one that works.
Like the real estate “experts” who really make their money selling their seminars and their books, maybe selling the nodes is where the money is to be made? Is this off-the-shelf hardware or something proprietary? Don’t forget the money that was made in Bitcoin mining by people arbitraging the high-end video cards.
Um…aren’t they supposed to be working at home? Not caring for their kid? Sure, the occasional interruption is no problem, but it sounds like they’re talking about a small child who needs continuous care. They need to have childcare anyway, 5 days a week.
That said, I think (hope!) that requiring people to go into the office for tech jobs is a dying trend. Despite management claims that water-cooler talks are somehow useful, the fact is: they aren’t. People contact me by email, and it is massively more efficient. Those meetings that are unavoidable have remained almost entirely virtual.
Our school doesn’t particularly care what we do. Since I have to travel quite a distance to get to the school, I stay the night in a hotel when I have to come in for more than a day. I was in the office yesterday and today, because the lectures are starting. I’m in a big, open-plan office that seats 20-25 people. I was the only person there both days. People are not coming back.
Which means that it’s time to re-think office space. It’s beyond silly having a huge space, filled with expensive furniture and tech, sitting empty. While hot-seat desks sound unpleasant, they would make a lot of sense. Two or three nicely equipped spaces, used by whoever just has to be physically present. Plus maybe some lockable storage for personal things that people want to leave in the office.
This may also be the death knell for physical business mail. I’m in the office for the first time since June, and I don’t have a single piece of mail, not even junk mail.
It is called daycare.
The child is pre-school age from what I hear on the calls.
They don’t have a house yet but they are looking. That demographic insists on new construction, which is driving the growth of Austin in the only direction possible – N/NW towards Burnet.
I wouldn’t be surprised. Although: the Helium page lists quite a number of manufacturers, so any direct profit would have to be through license fees. Oh, you also have to pay fees to Helium-central, to register a new node. $50 total, if I recall correctly. Since there are more than 900k nodes, that’s not pocket change.
Also, once they latched onto the crypto trend, the founders probably minted themselves a nice starter-set of coins for free. If they were really smart, they sold off a lot of that during the hype phase. Helium is currently selling for about 1/10 of its peak.
>> “This is unreasonable. I can’t hire someone to watch my child for just three days a week in Austin right now.”
Many people in dual-income relationships have basically one person work to maintain benefits with a large chunk of their take-home pay paying for child care, if they can find it.
Yep, Ray has it. This is all a camel nose under the tent for .gov censorship by paper pushing bureaucrats. Or as it’s called on Facebook, “Fact Checkers”.
Our school doesn’t particularly care what we do. Since I have to travel quite a distance to get to the school, I stay the night in a hotel when I have to come in for more than a day. I was in the office yesterday and today, because the lectures are starting. I’m in a big, open-plan office that seats 20-25 people. I was the only person there both days. People are not coming back.
Which means that it’s time to re-think office space. It’s beyond silly having a huge space, filled with expensive furniture and tech, sitting empty. While hot-seat desks sound unpleasant, they would make a lot of sense. Two or three nicely equipped spaces, used by whoever just has to be physically present. Plus maybe some lockable storage for personal things that people want to leave in the office.
This may also be the death knell for physical business mail. I’m in the office for the first time since June, and I don’t have a single piece of mail, not even junk mail.
Google uses hot seat desks and hot seat computers !
When my son interviewed there he was going to manage about 30 programmers in a bullpen. It looked like a disaster to him.
BTW, Google is calling him back. He has told them to pound sand.
Yeah, Americans know the drill. We lived it at our house.
Back when HEB issued pay checks, before direct deposit was required, there were several women cashing their checks at the Business Center and they would comment that they “can pay the daycare”.
Me? I’d ask “Why are you here? When your take home pay is just enough for day care and gasoline and a case of beer (or about that left over) every week?”
Sure, working gets you out of the house but… hey, what’s wrong with being a housewife and eating bon-bons all day? Kids are fun, teach them stuff.
Teach them how to read. And write. And, oh, how to make bon-bons and cook supper, too.
Added: Mom did the housewife thing. She did some Avon and Fuller Brush and Tupperware while Dad was in ‘Nam. Around ’65 to ’66. That all went away when Dad came home.
After all us kids were out of school, she went to school. Got her Masters. Great fun to call her Massa Mommy.
I managed to get Windows 11 installed on my ye olde ThinkPad 420 yesterday/today.
No special hacker software with the possibility of trojan infection. Just two lines added to the registry at a critical point in the install.
I even managed to get a partition installed with an offline account not requiring authentication through Microsoft.
Too busy for now. I will have to play with the system over the weekend.
The idea is that the programmers are thrilled to have “Google” on the resume. It isn’t an incorrect line of reasoning in a lot of cases, but the “bullpen” desks and other ways the companies cheap out does not generate a lot of long term loyalty.
The number one “innovation” to avoid IMHO is “unlimited” vacation. In the words of Admiral Ackbar, “It’s a trap!”
The open desk area office concept is creeping in at my current employer, but the Engineering building where I show up for the occasional “all hands” meeting has retained the 80s-style cubes, and management has no plans to allow those to leave the building.
@Obi-Greg
You do these things so I can be relieved I don’t have to.
The driveway announcer has been acting odd. Reading the directions says it will repeat the announcement chime after 30 seconds if the batteries are low.
It’s a Dakota Alert 2500-“some random letters”.
So, I don’t know if someone leaving is tripping the chime and then re-tripping by moving after the gate opens or if the batteries are low. I don’t hear double chimes when someone comes home.
Then again. The directions say the batteries last about a year and a half with little traffic. Little Traffic is not defined. I rummaged around in save e-mail and I bought the thing in October 2017. Blink. Might be time for new batteries.
The trees and brush have grown. I think I can find it.
Rick H says:
Whenever I’m getting spam texts and calls wanting to know if I’m interested in selling my house, then I KNOW that housing prices are still heading up. Back in Cacafornia, I was getting 2-3 business cards A WEEK tucked into my screen door, assuring that I could get top dollar for selling my house. And we DID get a very good price when we sold, 2 years ago.
Now, we’re getting a couple of texts a week, and some calls, asking what I’d take for my house. My answer has been “2.5 million”, for a house I paid $300K for, two years ago.
I get calls from the Ford dealership where I purchased my 2014 F-150 truck some 8 years ago. They say they will offer me top dollar.
I tell them that I paid $54K for the truck. If they want to buy it, I will accept $50K as a starting offer. They respond that is crazy. I tell them that is what the truck is worth to me. If they want it, pay what it is worth to me. The decline and hang up.
Two or three weeks later I get the same call from the dealership, different lot-lizard. As if they think a new lot-lizard will make a difference.
@Ray – got the same “we’ll buy your car back” from the local dealer about a year after I got the used 2019 Highlander XLE. They offered me about the same price that I paid for it ($34K). I purchased it in July 2020.
But I bought the 2019 model as the 2020+ did not have an openable rear window (only the entire tailgate opened). That was a design change with the new ‘generation’ of Highlanders that started in 2020 model year. That was the main feature needed, as I have to put the wheelchair lift on the tow receiver when we travel. When that is installed, I cannot open the tailgate. The openable window there is useful to get to stuff in the back.
Those calls came a few times for a few months, but haven’t gotten them lately. Might have been tempted if the rear window hadn’t been disabled.
The Highlander now has about 52K miles. Very happy with it. Gets about 24-25mpg. Comfortable for the long trips (10-14 hours) to see the grandkids.
If you aren’t far from a ferry that goes downtown, you own desirable real estate with “hybrid” or full office work weeks returning at a lot of companies.
So to finish the story, the person who called the cops about the cable across the road outed himself. It was the hoa president’s husband. You can’t make this stuff up.
Just filled up my truck at our local Shell. 22.7 gallons at $68.00. $2.999 per gallon. Enjoy while you can, the price may be going back up soon. Or not, my prognostications are worse than usual.
Filling up near the office yesterday, right off I-35, the woman about to fill her vehicle on the other side of the pump asked, “Didn’t the sign read $2.89 a few minutes ago? That’s why I stopped but now regular is $3.29 and the sign has changed.”
I responded, “I’m getting ethanol free. I wasn’t paying attention. Plus I work in the building over there and pulled into the office on fumes.”
The Orange Man for all of his faults did get cars. The ethanol free gas continues to flow.
@Lynn
Biden’s million barrel a day depletion of the SPR hits six-months at the end of Sept., with the reserve lower than it has been in 40 years.
Winter forecast for third year of La Nina is above average. You know how that worked out last year.
How’s the heating oil stock compared to historic levels? Homeowners in general haven’t refilled after last season because prices haven’t come down. Oil is $90 compared to $60 a year ago, and they are facing +$1.00 higher if they buy now and don’t wait.
My bet is we see oil go back up over $100, gasoline ^$1.00, and fuel oil to record highs, all before the mid-terms. But any increase is going to goose inflation. After this week’s disaster with FJB doing a victory dance in the Rose Garden to music only he could hear, next month is going to be nucking fuggly.
The “good” news is that the natural gas supply won’t be strained much drying corn this year, because the corn harvest will be 8% lower than last year. The bad news is that the world is also going to find out how the harvest in Ukraine looks.
And unless Russia restarts the natural gas pipeline, Europe is going to freeze this winter.
I wrote this:
“Do you have your local greenies identified and a plan in place to dry them down for alt-fuel use?”
and then thought it would make a good scientific paper.
Without going to the back of the envelope, I’d strongly suspect that a case can be made for green house gas reduction through the lowering of population by harvesting greenies. Their preferred pie-in-the-sky energy solutions are not only not-green over their lifecycle, but are heavily loaded with greenhouse gases generation up front to build the infrastructure to harvest a diffuse resource. Repurposing a bunch as fuel should have a net-positive effect.
The irony, of course, is not only that all of the destruction of the economy by the green zealots has only a theoretical effect out in the 7th or 8th decimal (i.e., nonexistent) of CO2 increase, but that the wholesale immigration of the skill-less from the third-world to supply gardeners and nannies for rich progs and labor for rich contractors let’s them buy gas-guzzling trucks and SUV’s that they could never buy in their native countries, with an impact on CO2 that is probably 100X the above reduction.
Sadly, a straight-up effort at honest modeling of these two effects would probably be limited to the Sacramento Bee for potential publishing.
Without going to the back of the envelope, I’d strongly suspect that a case can be made for green house gas reduction through the lowering of population by harvesting greenies. Their preferred pie-in-the-sky energy solutions are not only not-green over their lifecycle, but are heavily loaded with greenhouse gases generation up front to build the infrastructure to harvest a diffuse resource. Repurposing a bunch as fuel should have a net-positive effect.
It is about half of the population skewing past the middle at 40 or so. Generally the older people are, the more they realize that their leg is being pulled.
The irony, of course, is not only that all of the destruction of the economy by the green zealots has only a theoretical effect out in the 7th or 8th decimal (i.e., nonexistent) of CO2 increase, but that the wholesale immigration of the skill-less from the third-world to supply gardeners and nannies for rich progs and labor for rich contractors let’s them buy gas-guzzling trucks and SUV’s that they could never buy in their native countries, with an impact on CO2 that is probably 100X the above reduction.
I have been yelling for a while now that the greenhouse effect is maxed out at some amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. It may be as low as 30 ppm but could be higher like 100 ppm or 200 ppm. There are very few chemical reactions that do not have saturation limits and the socalled climate scientists do not take this into account.
The other problem is that our lungs do not work properly when the CO2 is less than a certain amount, either 170 ppm or 190 ppm, I cannot remember. By my reckoning, 450 ppm is barely above that minimal amount.
How’s the heating oil stock compared to historic levels? Homeowners in general haven’t refilled after last season because prices haven’t come down. Oil is $90 compared to $60 a year ago, and they are facing +$1.00 higher if they buy now and don’t wait.
The amount of crude oil in storage in the USA, not including the SPR, is about 6% lower than last year. Plus the amount of distillates (gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, heating oil, etc) is less than last year since we are shipping about six ??? million barrels/day to Europe from USA. Since Russia is basically shut down, Europe is sucking up all of the excess distillates from the world. Japan is restarting ten ??? nuclear power plants at the moment but who knows how many will start after being shut down for eleven years.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/japan-hopes-restart-4-more-nuclear-reactors-by-winter-2022-07-15/
This winter is going to be a disaster. We are in the calm before the storm.
We will be fine here in the USA as we produce 50% more than our needs. Europe and Japan are going to be in trouble if they have a hard winter.
I cannot figure out how to run this Fortran to C++ FABLE conversion tool on Windows. They made a Windows port back in 2015 but I have not been able to find the files so far. I really hoping that I do not have to build a linux box.
https://github.com/cctbx/cctbx_project/tree/master/fable
The problem is that the FABLE tool is actually part of another software package and it is written in Python. It seems that some of the initialization files are missing.
Sorry, I forgot to mention the original site for FABLE:
https://cci.lbl.gov/fable/
The “good” news is that the natural gas supply won’t be strained much drying corn this year, because the corn harvest will be 8% lower than last year. The bad news is that the world is also going to find out how the harvest in Ukraine looks.
And unless Russia restarts the natural gas pipeline, Europe is going to freeze this winter.
The number one usage of natural gas in the USA is electric power generation due to retired coal and nuclear units. Conversion to LNG and shipped outside the USA to Europe, China, Japan, Brazil, Spain, etc is number two and rapidly rising. The USA uses about 30 tcf (trillion cubic feet) per year which is increasing at 5% per year due to population and fuel switching. Another 1.8 to 2.0 tcf of natural gas is being converted to LNG and shipped out.
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/natural-gas/use-of-natural-gas.php
There are six natural gas pipelines from Russia to Germany. Nord Stream 1, Ukraine 1, Ukraine 2, Georgia 1, Georgia 2, and Nord Stream 2. I believe that all of them are now shut down.
Mar-a-Lago Raid: Judge Rejects DOJ Request for Partial Stay, Appoints Special Master
https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/09/mar-a-lago-raid-judge-rejects-doj-request-for-partial-stay-appoints-special-master/
@Lynn
The saturation is in the radiation filtering that is done by the CO2 molecule, not in a chemical reaction.
Saturation and CO2 forcing are quite complex and controversial. All sorts of opinions and models to prove them. Lot’s of fun reading.
The two biggest things to keep in mind:
1.The models have been refined for more than 40 years. They have no predictive power. (If your model shows that the temperature of the middle atmosphere should be developing a hot spot, but measurements show it is not there, then the equations underlying the model are incorrect and your model is crap.)
2.None of the green weinie fantasies has a basis in truth. No restrictions on fossil fuels will have the slightest impact on what happens to atmospheric concentration. There is no “sustainable” power generation from solar and wind. Electric vehicles* are driven by fossil fuels, just out of sight.
*Electric vehicles are really high-performance rich-boy toys designed to substitute acceleration for sexual inadequacy. All the wet dream fantasies of Beach Boys and Jan and Dean combined. Ford is sure that they can sell $120,000 big black F-150’s that weigh 6500 pounds and will kill anything it collides with except a 9,000 pound Humjob EV or a Teslame Superdupertruk to take buyer’s minds off their small flaccid penises. Silicone didn’t do it, massive bags of salt water doesn’t do it, so why should a ton of lithium?
>> *Electric vehicles are really high-performance rich-boy toys designed to substitute acceleration for sexual inadequacy. All the wet dream fantasies of Beach Boys and Jan and Dean combined. Ford is sure that they can sell $120,000 big black F-150’s that weigh 6500 pounds and will kill anything it collides with except a 9,000 pound Humjob EV or a Teslame Superdupertruk to take buyer’s minds off their small flaccid penises. Silicone didn’t do it, massive bags of salt water doesn’t do it, so why should a ton of lithium?
Sounds like my 3,900 lb, 147 hp Nissan LEAF that I bought used for $21K doesn’t get me into the club…and my wife drives it most of the time.
The ISPs at our home and BOL each use part of the bandwidth of their broadband modem/router (for which we pay) to provide a “free” WiFi node. The idea is that we, as subscribers to the ISPs’ services, allow that, and we can in turn connect to such nodes in other places when we are out and about. I have never once connected to such a node, and part of the reason I am installing my own WiFi routers is to be able to turn off the radios on the ISP boxen, including their “free” nodes, in particular because each of them is located in a basement, so the coverage is virtually nil and they are just a source of electro-smog for us. I will lose access to other “free” nodes, but since I have never used one, that’s no loss to me…
More than twenty years ago now, when the licences for the first 3G networks were being auctioned off by European governments for obscene amounts of money, I proposed to people in the decision-making chain that the monies raised could sensibly be used to lay public glass fibre cable to every residence, provide public broadband connectivity at cost, and include public WiFi nodes at each endpoint. That would have cost less than the income raised, and would have given the digital economy a major boost, while obviating the need for 3, 4 or 5 G networks in urban areas. Nothing ever came of the proposal; I presume my suggestion in the public interest collided with baksheesh from the telcos and the need to use the money to conceal gaps in the public finances.
These days, the governments are still moaning about the lack of digital savvy and the low level of broadband connectivity of the population. Surprise!
Pretty sure ours does as well. The ISP’s WLAN. It’s useless anyway, because it WLAN doesn’t penetrate the floors of our multi-story house. I have a set of Orbi access points, with one on each floor.
What’s also annoying is that, after every (automatic) firmware update, the ISP’s WLAN gets turned back on. Once I turn it off, it ought to stay off.
After the most recent update, they also enabled IPv6 and started allocating IPv6 DHCP addresses. I’ve thought about transitioning, but there’s no real reason to do so, the security concerns are completely different, I’m sure some of our devices won’t support it, and I just don’t feel like dealing with the chaos. Turning that on automatically seems dangerous.
my ATT FTTH periodically turns their version of free public roaming access back on. They also opt me in for marketing surveillance, and change the DNS to their service which spies on all requests and offers placed ads and ‘suggestions’ for mistyped URLs.
I try to never reboot that box.
n
@brad:
Yes. I used to have an upstream connection via BT, here in UK. I also got an (non-optional) BT Sport streaming service that I did not want, but that’s a subject for another rant.
Anyway, the “guest” wifi was implemented in the (BT-supplied) router, and like all ISP-supplied hardware, it didn’t do things I wanted, and did do (not well) things I didn’t. But hey, it’s free with the connection, and no modem rental fee.
But, luckily, I prefer to use a third-party router, so I could avoid all such shenanigans. Once I found the magic numbers to get my router to talk to BT’s upstream hardware, that is. This is permitted, indeed your (UK) ISP is required to do it. They are not required to support A.N. Other router, but they have to provide login details, and permit use.
That was a couple of years ago. I’m now with a different ISP (crazily enough, a wholly-owned subsidiary of BT) and my connection (at the same speed) is about a third cheaper, probably because no Sport.
For the avoidance of doubt, I use a Draytek 2860, and it Just Works, except when the upstream link falls over (which is quite rare)
I’ve turned off all facilities for my ISP (whoever it is) to alter settings in my router. It’s mine, dammit!
G.