Warm and windy. 70F and blowing 10-15mph when I called it quits last night. Probably the same today.
So no slash pile got burned while I was up here. Some nice fires in the pit were had. It was actually pretty nice on the dock last night. Fire was small and I put the screen cover on it. The wind was blowing steady with the flags fully straight out. Despite that it wasn’t chilly, so I listened to the radio for a while, then when the small fire was out, I came in.
Got my plumbing goal done. Didn’t get to the hose bib, so we don’t have any working at the moment, but we don’t have any that will freeze either. Seems nuts to worry about freezes, but we could still get another before Spring is really sprung.
Some more time in the attic and too much time crouching behind the tub and in the closet have me sore in places that haven’t been sore in years. Do not like, can not recommend. On the other hand, I’m getting pretty quick with the pex, once everything is ready to actually start putting it together.
Looking at my mug in the mirror I realized I didn’t have a razor up here. That’s an oversight I’ll correct next time.
Today I’ll do some smaller chores, put things away, maybe organize a bit, then it’s homeward bound. Stuff is piling up there too. AND I need to start pulling stuff for the hamfest. I need to decide if I want to rent a trailer. I’ve got a bunch of stuff and want to blow it all out. Usually I stack my pickup higher than the cab, and I always leave some stuff behind. This year I’d like to clear a bunch of stuff out and don’t want to play ‘truck tetris’ fitting it all in place. I’m thinking there will be some really good bargains. Motivated seller.
I’ve been reading the “Laundry” series by Charles Stross. I’m enjoying it a lot. Finished the first 5, started the sixth. He’s got a gift for jargon, and a razor sharp eye. Book five involves a scrum and agile programming along with his normal skewering of management buzzwords and the latest trends. Since in his universe magic is really just applied math, usually through computation, things go terribly wrong for our group of quants. Plenty of pop culture and SciFi fandom shoutouts too. Fun.
The world as we know it is rapidly changing. The pace of change is accelerating too. And while it might not end soon, SOME PARTS undoubtedly will. Hard to know WHICH parts and how it will affect anyone specifically. Preps will help though.
Keep stacking.
nick
Differential enforcement is a problem, too, but I was complaining about carve-outs written into the law. In NYS, cops are specifically excluded from seat belt laws, fiddling-with-devices-while-driving laws, and a number of firearms laws. I might accept some of them while the cops are on duty, eg using the two-way radio while driving, but they apply to off-duty cops as well. (Unless they’ve been changed in the couple years since I last looked into them; possible but not likely.)
WRT Batteries:
Most people know about NiCad batteries. Do not leave them on a charger or you will destroy them.
NiMH do not have this issue and I don’t know of any handling or charging restrictions.
Lead-acid batteries used to be very reliable and difficult to damage. I understand that the batteries are no longer as robust in an effort to reduce cost and weight (CAFE has many things to answer for!)
Li-Ion batteries have a LOT of different chemistries but the following guidelines generally apply. YMMV, Past performance is no guarantee of future profits, I didn’t sleep at a Holiday in Express:
Some manufacturer’s build their battery packs with excess, or reserve, capacity. This means that the charge-discharge rate is lower than the raw numbers would indicate and the 80% capacity will occur later than you would expect. Tesla does this, and I suspect other automotive battery packs are similar. I have read that Tesla’s packs my have a capacity as much as 40% higher than the published rating. Other reports are as low as 120% of rated capacity. The exact chemistry of the cell matters.
Garmin pulls that stunt every once in a while. Will route us off the interstate, across the intersection, then back on the interstate. I know it’s wrong so I ignore the routing. Was consistent for some time in Chattanooga but has since stopped. Seems most likely an error in the maps.
My iPhone and MacBook charge to 80% and hold overnight. Then sometime before 6:00 AM will finish the charge to 100% at 6:00 AM. The Apple Watch just charges to 100% any time it is on the charger. The iPad charges to 100% when it is on the charger. My Surface Laptop also charges to 100% any time the charger is used. Camera batteries the same.
The two Apple devices seem to be the only ones with charging intelligence beyond a simple charge to 100% and hold.
And in other news. Running Quicken in Parallels has produced a problem. W11 has access to the MacBook folders. That is where I was storing the Quicken file as it is easy to transfer from OneDrive. Quicken starts and says the file is on a cloud media and asks if it should continue. I click yes and the file opens. When I attempt to do the online update, Quicken just hangs and has to be force terminated.
I moved the file from the MacBook folder to the folder inside the virtual machine. Quicken no longer complains about the location of the file. Quicken will now do the online update properly.
Within W11 under my profile folder, there are now two “My Documents” folders. One is the documents folder on the MacBook, the other is the folder inside the virtual machine.
Some difference in operation which can be easily resolved. Nothing to stop me from carrying a single laptop on my upcoming trips. The MacBook allows integration with my Apple devices, runs W11.
The Surface Laptop only runs W11. Doable on the trips but the MacBook will serve me better. The battery life on the MacBook is exceptional, much better than the Surface.
Xiping is headed to Moscow in the near future. I wonder what China is wanting to do ?
72F and partly cloudy. 78%RH.
Still sore, no surprise there. Doing things.
Haven’t seen my fisherman friend yet. That’s odd. Saw his dog, but not him.
————
whatever china wants or does, it won’t be for our benefit.
n
Buy oil. Sell weapons.
China believes in the Golden Rule — “He who has the gold makes the rules.”
Russia may not have as much gold as it used to, but the country has a lot of oil and gas which needs to go somewhere.
The Chinese are making noise about the Nord Stream explosion needing to be investigated. Humiliating the US on that one is just icing on the cake.
My Ultra will charge though the night. It looks like it will space out the charge based on my habits. Tapping and holding on the “charge circle” allows you to charge to 100% as fast as possible.
Liar In Chief, plugsy McSpongeBrain The Last:
Honorary black Puerto Rican Joe Biden’s amazing youth just got even more incredible (literally)
Next he’ll say he grew up in my home town. Black church going, Jew, Puerto Rican, Italian, Pole, lunch bucket totin’ liar.
tRump, tho.
Our Vegetable In Chief:
Obama: ‘Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f**k things up’ – Putin suspends New START nuclear treaty
US: plugs goes to Kiev to give more of our money to Füher Zelensky.
Russai: We’re leaving START.
China: US is asshoe.
>> WRT Batteries:
Thanks Clayton…content cut, pasted, saved and dropped into the appropriate folder. Which by the way I’m doing more often these days, given a “bad” decision on the Section 230 case, being heard by SCOTUS this week, could make just a bookmark to this valuable info worthless. Could force these discussions ‘underground’ or to end completely.
Quoting @nick above:
This popped up in my morning news feeds wanderings:
Three litters of rabbit kits. Two deaths. 21 kits at the moment. Moved three from the 11 kit litter to the three kit litter. I may move two more so all does have seven kits. The does in the past have not shown any stress or rejection of kits I move around.
Two deaths were from doe hanging out in the nest box and sitting on them. Not typical behavior, experienced doe. I have a warming pad in the nest boxes because it’s 15° F. I moves the kits to the back of the nest box. If doe persists I’ll unplug the heater and take the chance of losing them to cold. Or I’ll “shelve” them. ”Shelving” is the practice of removing the nest box and kit to a safer environment, and putting nestbox/kits with doe twice a day for nursing. It’s a bit if extra effort and time management but not a huge deal.
Moose in the backyard this morning had the dogs wound up. A lady was kicked in the head by a moose while walking her dog earlier this week. Unprovoked other than presence of dog (which is sufficient if not deliberate provocation). Stitches. Fortunate. Good Samaritan witnessed the attack and got the woman and dog out of danger.
Family visit continues to go very well. It’s been a true delight to have time with them. I’ll be quite sad when everyone disperses. What a joy to have time with them, though.
A Møøse once bit my sister…
No realli!
Sorry. I have Python on the brain this week.
We had the same issue approaching Chattanooga from Nashville this Summer, but with Waze. I-75 down to Atlanta from the border must be a train wreck at Thanksgiving.
For a while, Garmin gave really freaky directions from Tampa to the Port Everglades area. Friends who moved to Florida from New York/New Jersey and were unaware trusted the navigation through Belle Glade … once.
Was it a deer or a moose that destroyed the car in “Tommy Boy”?
It has been a while, but I need to run the flick again for the kids now that the Farley family has a sequel running at Ford.
Three weeks?!?
I opened a can of Keystone ground beef yesterday. Why not use some of this stuff? I like the stuff. It’s just ground beef with a pinch of salt. I tossed in some taco seasoning and black pepper while it was heating.
Meanwhile, I had a can of refried beans heating, thinned with a bit of jalapeno pickle juice.
I built an enchilada “lasagna” in a round Pyrex cake pan. Covered and fridged until later today.
Gave the dogs a couple of teaspoons of each in their dog food. They acted like it was the best thing they ever ate.
We had tacos last night. I have a cup of meat and about a half cup of refrieds in a bowl. I’ll do something, make chili or spaghetti sauce in a couple of days.
Such excitement over here. Wee!
@nick, please check your a-o-l email when you have a minute. Thanks.
Once again, let’s blame the defendant and his “big-city” lawyers. I guess for some reason the DA wants the defense to have even more grounds for an appeal based on her continuing disparaging comments…
https://www.npr.org/2023/02/20/1158370706/alec-baldwin-rust-shooting-charge-downgraded
(Emphasis added.)
Maybe the DA in Killer Baldwin’s case thinks she can get a jury amenable to her. Any more screwups and the case will get laughed out of court. A fine is probably coming and that is all.
I need some hive mind input.
I’m looking at independent pet insurance like lemonade.com. I have the newest doxie, Obadiah, on a basic plan at our Vet, Banfield. But, that is not transferable to other vets (Banfield seems wide spread).
Any recommendations or ideas?
All his books are worth reading. Yeah, he’s a lefty Scots nationalist, but he keeps his politics mostly out of the books, but when they do appear they are pretty low key.
As for one of the charges against Baldwin being dropped, his attorneys were probably right. It was an ex-post-facto law if applied to him. Lots of people are making this out to be some kind of scam by the DA to help him, but she really had no choice.
See, the thing about having grabbed attention, grabbed money, grossly overclaimed what you know, and outright lied for three years is that your credibility is totally blown. Not the Icahn School of Medicine in particular, but essentially every tentacle of the medical business, most government branches and agencies, and every major media outlet is implicated in the lies and manipulation that have been revealed.
Oh, and the deaths. Can’t forget about the deaths.
I signed up with https://manypets.com/us/ when we got our first golden earlier this year. I got the accident & illness plan, along with the wellness plan. I did the wellness plan as more of an experiment. I’ll tabulate everything after a year and see if I continue it. I’m going to sign the second golden up for accident and illness only shortly.
I’m approaching it as a medium-term gamble. I will probably keep it until the dogs are three. Long enough to make sure there is nothing chronic. I will self-insure from that point forward.
The last time I went to Ft. Worth, well, I know how to get to Ft. Worth. I don’t need the GPS in the phone or the truck’s version telling me to turn here and there from my house.
It’s pretty simple. Get on US281, go through Lampasas and stay on US281. When you get to Hico, make a choice. Turn left and stay on US281. It’s a pretty good road up to I-20. Or turn right, go a couple/three blocks and turn left. Up through Glen Rose /is/ pretty country. Hilly and twisty and lots and lots of one lane with marked no passing, speed limit is 70, but you get blocked by idiots in their Caddy and other expensive versions of a Jeep Cherokee going 60, maybe, downhill if you are lucky. Plenty of DPS too.
When you get to Hico, there’s a cafe at the intersection called the Koffee Kup Kafe. I went there once, I saw no one wearing hoods. It was ok but nothing special. Storm’s in Burnet has better food.
I turn the GPS when I get near the target.
US281 to San Antonio is right about 100 miles from here to the airport. Not a bad drive.
If you are going to Dallas, make a right turn in Hamilton, catch 22 and you’ll end up on the north side of Hillsboro a couple of miles before I-35 turns into I-35W and I-35E. Skipping all of the I-35 crap from Austin to the split is worth a few extra miles.
“F-150 Lightning production restart may drag as Ford battery supplier is wary of industrial espionage”
https://www.notebookcheck.net/F-150-Lightning-production-restart-may-drag-as-Ford-battery-supplier-is-wary-of-industrial-espionage.696389.0.html
I guesss that they saw the movie about Ford stealing the variable speed windshield wiper technology from the inventor.
Of course, if their battery catches on fire randomly then Ford would be advised to come up with their own battery design.
That was Ford? I added the option to a few cars (no Fords) along with cruise control about a hundred years ago. Good times, lots of fun shopping at Pep Boys and Western Auto.
Cruise attached to the turn signal arm. Wiper delay was a box mounted at the bottom edge of the dash…. except for the ’85 Cavalier Type 10.
>> I need some hive mind input.
I’m looking at independent pet insurance like lemonade.com. I have the newest doxie, Obadiah, on a basic plan at our Vet, Banfield. But, that is not transferable to other vets (Banfield seems wide spread).
Any recommendations or ideas?
We had (don’t recall the company) many years, and dogs, ago but dropped it in favor of self-insuring. One reason was the variability of health as our pack grew and shrank. Another was keeping up with the paperwork as, at the time, everything was pay up front, fill out the forms and mail in and wait for a check. We still self-insure (currently four dogs, all shelter rescues) and save where we can through self-vaccinations (here we can do everything via Tractor Supply except rabies), vetco.com for rabies and heartworm testing, the humane society clinic where applicable, and self-care as my wife was a vet tech for 20 years. The best tip I can add is to find a vet that’s “old school,” i.e. one that will examine and treat the immediate symptoms and not bug you that Rover should really have the xyz vaccination that’s advertised on TV amongst all the latest and greatest human medications. We’ve had a few out of pocket emergencies, but my SWAG is that we’re ahead of the game money-wise over the long term.
Ford is working on their own battery tech and plant, but they believed that they had to beat Tony’s Jesus Truck to market with an identical price point.
During the pandemic, everyone had $100 for the deposit thanks to Trump/Biden Bux.
Of course, $40k was always a fantasy number.
Bad things happen when Blue Oval rushes the pipeline. Cough … Pinto … cough.
Ford Pinto last manufactured in 1980. Maybe they have improved a bit since then? It’s been over 40 years….
>> Ford Pinto last manufactured in 1980. Maybe they have improved a bit since then? It’s been over 40 years…
Let’s see…there’s…
Fix Or Repair Daily and Found On Road Dead
@Alan – also old homilies… .they’ve probably also been around more than 40 years.
First On Race Day!
@rick, institutional knowledge/culture/OUR WAY of doing things dies very slowly, if at all in the BigCorps. You got all that momentum from union work rules, quality circles, and training the inhouse designers and engineers.
My experience working on projects with Ford/lincoln/mercury is that they are a massive and slow to change culture.
You’d hope that the good parts carry over while the bad parts get left behind, but IDK if that actually happens.
n
Activate The Hammers of Bob!
Tommy Boy believes he has too many engineers right now.
https://fordauthority.com/2023/02/ford-employs-25-percent-more-engineers-than-needed-farley/
@greg, I missed that, got it now.
n
Got home ok. Some traffic in the usual places. Fewer idiots than usual.
It got pretty warm this afternoon especially in the sun. Wind never stopped blowing steady 8-10 would be my guess.
Crawdad traps were untouched. Nothing likes my dog’s food I guess. I’ll bring up some hambone next time.
Spent about an hour chatting with a neighbor I hadn’t spent any time with. Good folks.
n
The Focus transmission problems could have easily bankrupted the company, but at least the cars didn’t burst into flame. They just stopped moving.
The Pinto was a very rushed three year pipeline, with Iacocca determined to introduce a sub $2000 compact car rather than importing the Escort design from Europe … as the company did 10 years later.
More on Ford…
https://jalopnik.com/ford-is-trying-hard-to-stop-being-ford-1850139540?utm_source=jalopnik_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2023-02-21
“Take Hyundai, for example, which sold cars that were very bad for years in the United States, before getting better and overhauling its brand and, nowadays, being one of the most respected automakers out there.”
Hyundai? Seriously?
Fix Or Repair Daily
Had a co-worked who yammered on about that at length until one day he lunched his Chevy and I had the pleasure of responding that at least mine could be fixed.
That homily was old in the 1960s.
Activate The Awesome Hammers of Bob!
Tonight at 10 on your St. Louis TENGA station.
Hmm, seems like the newsroom at that station has an unhealthy obsession.
https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/education/ksdk-apologizes-again-for-role-in-kirkwood-high-school-lockdown/article_471de79c-76dd-5e47-b840-0b5412078beb.html
Ah, TENGA, hopefully you won’t change after yet another corporate divestiture.
@Greg – the TENGA link seems to be behind a paywall.
Yeah, the site doesn’t like ad blockers.
https://www.timesnewspapers.com/webster-kirkwoodtimes/news/breaking/lockdown-at-kirkwood-high-school-prompted-by-reporter-testing-security/article_84fa8164-b887-520a-b274-14060a38c9cf.html
@rick, load the page, turn of scripting, (one button press in ublock origin) and reload from the ublock menu.
Other ad blockers are probably similar.
That doesn’t work everywhere, sometimes the story doesn’t load either, but it did in this case.
Reporter caused a lockdown by penetration testing a school.
n
I actually got a sunburn standing in the driveway talking with my neighbors. Hope they didn’t.
n
Pink man pinker nao!
Real redneck. Represent!
n
>> Hyundai? Seriously?
Well…compared to say, Kia? Or maybe Zil??
I owned an early hyundai. They were cr@p. There was a lot of room for improvement. Sold it to one of those rip off used dealers. Pulled all the tricks on me, even counting out cash on the desk to convince me. Little did he know I was desperate to sell it before it stopped running… one of the very few times I did ok on a car sale.
n
I worked with a guy who owned a Kia which lost the engine a few years after buying new. The dealer scrounged and found a junkyard replacement to honor the terms of the warranty. The car ran great after that, but I think that reflects well on the dealer and the small town (Temple, TX) mechanics more than the manufacturer.
Hyundai has the 10 year warranty and some people find comfort in that.
The same station reported the “White people getting stupid with guns … again” story which the troll linked.
To be fair, other outlets had it, but TENGA probably put it on the national wire, where our friend picked it up through his local station’s web site.
The Tampa TENGA station was outrageously biased and had a resource sharing agreement with The St. Petersburg Times. Ironically, the station was briefly owned by Jacor, corporate ancestor of ClearChannel/IHeartRadio, just prior to Gannett during the consolidation shuffles in the mid 90s.
Recently, Kharma caught up with this pinhead, the lead anchor at Tampa TENGA for more than a decade.
https://www.theledger.com/story/news/state/2019/02/08/wtsp-anchor-reginald-roundtree-fired-after-internal-review/6043740007/
Good riddance.
Our Spring semester started this week. Redoing some stuff in existing courses, and I suddenly have a three new courses to prep over the next two semesters. Prepping a new course is a lot of work, so three of them, bleah…
As part of the prep for one course, I spent yesterday trying to work on an example project, basically the backend for a web project. The adventure started with the fact that I haven’t directly used a database server in years, although I have one running for a couple of services. So my cryptic notes like “admin password is the usual”…um…what was “the usual” back when I set it up?
Then, I unwisely thought I’d make the project something vaguely useful, so I decided to have it download real-time data from our solar system and save that in the database for analysis. The manual even (sort of) tells you how to do that. Sort of…
For those who don’t want the sorry details, skip over the next two paragraphs…
The monitoring device (SolarLog) offers a JSON interface. They tell you that one particular POST-query will deliver a set of current information. And it does. But it turns out that you have to be careful what HTTP headers you include – if some headers are present, it doesn’t work. Why? Who knows…
But that query only delivers the basics, nothing more. You can monitor the network traffic of the device’s own web interface and see it sending lots of other queries that allow the web interface to display more info. Yet, somehow, those same queries don’t work from my program: sometimes they deliver nothing, sometimes they deliver “access denied”. All of this is, of course, totally undocumented.
Long story cut short: what I expected to be a couple of hours of work wound up eating the whole day. Sometimes tech is frustrating…