Category: open thread

Cold and windy, but probably clear. I brought my citrus trees back inside last night. It was 40F and dropping, and got to 37F at midnight. Probably wasn’t going to freeze, but the little potted trees weren’t doing well outside.

Got the Christmas decor down, and I’ll put it way today. Some of it was still a bit damp, and I want it dry before storing it.

Got a couple small things done, but sleeping to 11 kinda kills half the day, and it was really too cold and windy to do the outdoor work I was hoping to do.

So we’ll try again today.

Supply chain from China is getting bad again. Port congestion isn’t better. I’m seeing toys show up in the overstock auctions, maybe they’ve arrived too late? And the latest wave of ‘stay at home’ workers is messing up schedules everywhere.

If you need it, stack it.

nick

Cooler, but still clear. Pretty dang cold out in the country yesterday. Had to wear a jacket outside. It was nice for my time in the attic, but pretty chilly otherwise.

Spent part of the day in my client’s attic chasing wifi issues. Had to slither on my belly a couple of times to get through some small areas. I’m really glad the insulation was the fluffy white kind and not itchy fiberglas. Found a bunch of mostly dead gear. Not surprising really, given the heat and the lightning. I know the local electronics store had replacements on the shelf last week so I should be able to have them replaced without issue, but the configuration part might give me fits.

If I think about it today or tomorrow, I’ll do an online pickup order and lock down the WAPs I need.

This morning D2 and I will attend my hobby meeting, while my wife and D1 venture to a distant city in Texas and camp overnight in cabins. They’ll be ‘showing the flag’ at a family gathering of some aunts and cousins who don’t usually get to Texas. After my meeting, we’ll go to an open house for incoming students at the middle school, then an auction pickup (stuff for her) and talk about my sale, lunch, the prep for D2’s basketball game, and then the actual game. It’s gonna be a busy day.

It’s also a lot of out and about, which is actually making me a bit nervous. Oh well. Compare and contrast with other locations. . .

I would have preferred to sleep in for a few extra hours, but meatspace baby.

Stack some things, but also refresh your spirit, you’ll need it later.

nick

Hot and humid, both sides of the Gulf. Hopefully clear for our flight. Yesterday was clear until late afternoon then we got some thunder, wind gusts, and a spattering of rain. Other places got slammed.

Spent the day doing odd jobs around the house we’re staying in. I touched lighting, doors, camera, cabinets, and network so it was a pretty long day. Felt good to get a bunch of stuff done.

I didn’t get a hurricane kit built to stash here. I only had my mom’s car for a very short while, and needed to get materials from Home Depot during that time. I never did make it to the grocery store either, my wife or my mom grabbed what we needed while they were out anyway. I might get a chance to run out this morning, but that will depend on the state of our cleaning and packing.

We have an afternoon flight, and there are still things I’d like to get done before leaving. We won’t be trying to fit another attraction in though. We need to leave this place cleaner than we found it, and that will take a bit of effort. Totally worth doing though, and doing well.

As nice as it is here, I’ll be glad to be home later today.

I’ve got a lot of selling and cleanup to do, and there is always more stacking, skill building, and relationship maintenance to do. Gotta get busy…

n

Today the weather should be the same as the last few days. Like yesterday was, until late. Around 10pm there was some distant lightning, and the temp dropped more than 10 degrees F. No rain before I went to bed though.

Went to the Bishop Museum in Bradenton today. Typical small local museum with a planetarium, and this one has two rescue manatee juveniles on display. Some nice displays about ancient Florida and the native people, flora and fauna through the ages. Some artifacts and stuff from the modern development of the area are also on display. We spent between 4 and 5 hours there, and actually I could have spent a bit more. I did go back to watch the manatees for a second time. I was alone with them for 20 minutes, which was pretty cool. Museum was requiring masks, and was handing them out if you didn’t have one. There were not a lot of other people there.

Ice cream and food rounded out the day.

Until I wanted to share my videos with my family by sending them from my Samsung phone to the Samsung smart tv. That USED to be easy and entirely local. Now it’s not. Now it’s all tied up with their grand scheme of one app to rule them all and harvest all the data. Their trust in automagic setup is both unwise and unfounded. NO manual setup exists, so even within the app, and within the restrictions, I STILL couldn’t get it set up to share some pix. Samsung, your Smartthings are DUMB, and your software and design people suck. You owe me 2 hours of my life back.

Simpler is better. Small tools that do one thing well beat out large tools that do LOTS of things poorly, or fail to do any of them at all. That was the whole POINT of apps in the beginning. People have forgotten that, or have been coerced to make changes to better harvest the digital effluvia of their users, so that it might be sold and resold, instead of doing the job the users want done. This is bad.

There are things that demand complexity, that are by their nature complex. Save complexity for those things, and in everything else, look for simplicity. Apply this to everything, from the systems and habits you build your life around, to the scenarios that drive your prepping. Solve the simple things, and you will probably have solved most of the complex along the way.

And stack. Because an empty belly makes everything worse.

nick

Weather here is pretty much exactly the same forecast for the whole week, and so far, hot and humid is right, chance of rain is wrong. Probably today we’ll get some rain because I’m scheduled to do outdoors stuff.

As long as you aren’t in direct sun, and can get any air movement, it’s not bad. As long as…

Today we’re going for a mangrove swamp tour on kayaks. I will report back.

I have no opinion of the activity in question, yet. I’m really hoping it’s not in the sun.

I have my slow mini laptop here, and a relatively slow internet connection, so I haven’t been reading much news, or visiting my normal “heads up” sites, so feel free to link anything important here.

There is a whole lot of ongoing stuff that I’m just not seeing any reporting on and that makes me nervous. What is reported is bad enough.

Let’s all keep our eyes open and heads on a swivel, metaphorically and actually. Something’s brewing.

And with that cheering thought, I’m off to the swamp to look at the underside of trees, and water!

Keep stacking, ya know ya wanna…..

n