Monday November 27, 2017

By on November 27th, 2017 in personal

It was 35 degrees, sunny, and breezy when I took Colin out at 7:30.
Not much to report. I went to see Bob yesterday foe a couple of hours.The nurse told me he had been up all night Saturday which why he never really did wake up while I was there.

28 Comments and discussion on "Monday November 27, 2017"

  1. nick flandrey says:

    If nothing else, your presence keeps the staff aware of your ongoing care and concern.

    Keep the faith,

    n

  2. Denis says:

    Continuing best wishes to you both!

  3. nick flandrey says:

    Well, my drywall mud isn’t quite dry yet. Guess I’ll be doing some other stuff today. HUGE pile to choose from….

    n

  4. ech says:

    Best wishes to RBT and BRT!

    Got home last night from Lincoln, NE. Traffic was heavy, but not too bad until north of Buffalo on I-45. A wreck closed the interstate. Took us an hour to go 2 miles, by which time the wreckage was gone, just a skidmark was left.

    Now we have to clean the apartment and turn in the keys, then unpack the boxes with the master bath stuff. The remaining work on the house is waiting on the kitchen cabinets, carpet, and front door to arrive.

  5. nick flandrey says:

    Don’t install the front door until you are living there, it is a very high theft item in Houston.

    n

  6. SteveF says:

    Where “living there” means “lurking there, with a 12ga., with the lights all out and no car visible, looking like the house is empty”.

    Then, when someone opens the door to steal it (and anything else they can pry up) you can ventilate them and get blood splatters on the door. And then, final step, you put a nice label on the front door: “This is all that’s left of the last burglar.” Is it true that’s required on all dwellings in Texas, or is it just an optional thing?

  7. nick flandrey says:

    Entirely optional. The poster size images of flat screen tvs and cash sitting out on the dresser are also optional but recommended.

    n

  8. Greg Norton says:

    Is it true that’s required on all dwellings in Texas, or is it just an optional thing?

    Don’t try it in Travis County (Austin Metro). That part of Texas is rapidly becoming California.

    I’ve posted here before that, after the last Cannonball Run attempt pushed the record below 30 hours with the help of an online map provider, Austin was among the first places in the country to institute $500 fines for touching your phone for any reason, not just texting.

  9. Ray Thompson says:

    Austin was among the first places in the country to institute $500 fines for touching your phone for any reason, not just texting

    Except for the LEO’s who can be seen using their phones all the time while typing on their laptop. Honk at them because they are drifting into your lane will get you pulled over and a stern warning about unnecessary use of the horn. All while they are checking your registration, license and insurance and then looking in the car through the windows for anything they can consider suspicious.

    Had I not honked the officer would have struck my vehicle. In all such cases the officer is not at fault and I would have been charged with the accident. Does not matter the actual true circumstances. The officer would lie to save his butt of that I am certain.

    Also notice that as an officer approaches your vehicle they will touch the rear taillight or fender of the vehicle. This is to establish their presence at the vehicle by leaving DNA. I really want to grab a large booger when I sign a citation to establish my presence on the ticket book.

  10. nick flandrey says:

    @ray, dashcam….

    n

  11. Ray Thompson says:

    @ray, dashcam….

    I now have a dashcam. The event was a couple of years ago which spurred my decision to acquire a dashcam.

    I made several orders with Amazon this last Thursday. Individual orders at different times. I now see that Amazon has combined those orders into a single shipment. Obviously they grouped my orders together and are shipping from a facility that has all the items. One item I did order was shipped separately. I guess it was coming from another facility.

  12. Ray Thompson says:

    Had my audit with the IRS. Met the agent in their office, pleasant person. After looking at my return they made the statement “I wonder why you are being audited”. Examined the return again, said there were no issues as all was correct.

    I really suspect the agent I reported set me up for an in-person audit. Not so much to find anything but to cause me some inconvenience. A “get even” approach to prove they are in charge.

    My returns are simple. Most complicated parts are dividends and interest but that information and specific forms and blocks to enter the data are provided by the entity distributing the dividends. Quite easy to do with TurboTax. Some medical deductions, property tax, sales tax on the Highlander for the year that was audited. No crap for the obuttwadcare forms.

    I now wonder if the agent I reported will see the results of the audit, realize that they did not get enough revenge, and plan something else nefarious.

    It wasn’t my first audit, hope it is my last as my next returns will be even simpler.

  13. nick flandrey says:

    As a public service I issue this reminder:

    You should have replaced all you smoke detector batteries when the time changed…

    Check and replace your batteries in you GUN SAFES! I use Gun Vault individual safes for a couple of different things. Went to open one today and I got sad beeps. Not enough juice. Had to get the key out and change the batteries.

    If you’ve lost your key, I can tell you where to drill one small hole and open the classic Gun Vault. Put a machine screw in the hole after and no one is the wiser. Just sayin’…

    n

  14. lynn says:

    “After 30 Years, Alarmists Are Still Predicting A Global Warming ‘Apocalypse’”
    http://dailycaller.com/2017/11/25/after-30-years-alarmists-are-still-predicting-a-global-warming-apocalypse/

    “Of course, human civilization has not collapsed, despite decades of predictions that we only have years left to avert disaster. Ten years ago, the U.N. predicted we only had “as little as eight years left to avoid a dangerous global average rise of 2C or more.””

    Wake me up when something real happens.

  15. nick flandrey says:

    “Wake me up when something real happens.”

    Gonna do a Rip Van Whinkle waiting for that….

    n

  16. nick flandrey says:

    Anyone else remember the computer press speculating if there would ever be a “sub-$1000 laptop”?

    Fry’s Cyber Monday has a sub-$100 lappy. Granted, it’s basically a POS by modern standards, 12.5″ screen, Intel quad core, 2Gb mem, 32Gb solid state storage, but it’s running windows 10. That’s pretty much the spec for the little ‘deck of cards’ pc I got for my dad. Runs web apps and plays streams just fine…

    n

    (can’t link, personalized offer, OPSEC ya’ know….) EpiK, list is $179.

  17. Ray Thompson says:

    it’s basically a POS by modern standards, 12.5″ screen, Intel quad core, 2Gb mem, 32Gb solid state storage

    About 50 times better than my first PC for which I paid over $3K about 28 years ago. Absolutely amazing.

  18. lynn says:

    I just bought one of these for the office manager, the wife, to take on the road with her when needful. “ASUS ZenBook Flip UX360CA 13.3″ 2-in 1 Touchscreen Laptop, Intel Core m3-7Y30, 8GB, 256GB SSD, Windows 10”
    https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B075DHGBG5/

    Now I need to get a hot spot wifi from Verizon.

  19. SteveF says:

    one of these for the office manager, the wife

    And for the boss, an Etch-a-Sketch.

  20. lynn says:

    And for the boss, an Etch-a-Sketch.

    Nah, a keypunch machine.

  21. Miles_Teg says:

    Ray/everyone else, any recomendations for a dashcam?

  22. RickH says:

    What about re-purposing an old smartphone to take video? Add a 64G microSSD card, and use the camera app? (If you have an old smartphone laying around.)

  23. nick flandrey says:

    tuning around the SW and ham bands, and some are actually open. Been a while since I got anything but noise. Got Cuba and TN of course, but also have a ton of hams on 80m.

    Still pretty high background noise level but I’m at least getting something.

    I’m using my (new) old Kenwood TS440s that I got in the recent large ham equipment lot. Nice to actually hear some stuff, and I’m just using my random length wire antenna.

    There are a couple of things I like about this radio, but there isn’t any direct freq entry. I do like the continuous coverage and you can just spin the dial and cruise thru all the bands. Moves faster when on AM than LSB, which is what you want. Noise reduction options are pretty thin though, without any DSP or really any filtering at all….

    Vintage gear. It’s cheaper, and still works.

    n

  24. Marcelo says:

    It seems scrap metals should be going on the up in the future. 🙂

    BHP expects to deliver $2.2b in cuts in next two years:
    https://a.msn.com/r/2/BBFQATy?m=en-au&ocid=Money

    and they say that copper, specifically, seems it will have limited supply with respect of future demand.

  25. nick flandrey says:

    Either from increased demand, or reduced supply, I’ll be glad to see prices for my junk increase 🙂

    n

  26. brad says:

    Dashcam – I don’t remember the brand, but I some time ago I saw a review of an combined navigation/dashcam device. Since I want a dedicated navigation device (smartphones, even in holders, are crappy in comparison), I thought this was a good combo. It also serves to disguise the dashcam aspect. A quick Google – could well have been a Garmin device.

  27. Ray Thompson says:

    Ray/everyone else, any recomendations for a dashcam?

    Nope. Just find one that works and is specifically a dashcam.

    What about re-purposing an old smartphone to take video?

    Possible. However a true dashcam will lock the recording immediately when it detects a crash. A cell phone will not do that function. You can also get dashcams that will have a front and rear view. A true dashcam will also recycle the storage space when the space gets full and overwrite the oldest video segment. Dashcams will record in segments where it will close one file and start another recording. Thus a trip of a couple of hours may have a dozen or segments. I think cell phones will not allow continuous recording and shutdown the recording after a set amount of minutes.

    In this I would recommend a true dash camera designed for the purpose. You can leave it in your vehicle.

    As to whether you get a dashcam with GPS and video is up to you. With GPS you don’t get travel directions, you get coordinates recorded with the video so there is no dispute about a location of an incident. I have heard of cases where defendants have claimed the video was faked and was taken in another location.

    There are combined units that are a true GPS unit and have a dashcam included.

    Is one such device from Garmin.

    The devices can be valuable. My brother was in an accident where the other driver claimed my brother ran a red light. My brother had a green light. There were no witnesses and it came down to “he said, she said” when the police arrived. My brother said nothing about the other driver’s claim until the other driver had signed the accident report. At that point my brother just happened to remember his dashcam and showed the video to the officer. My brother’s light was clearly green. The other driver was not only charged with the accident but lying to the police, filing a false police report and attempted fraud. The other driver’s insurance paid and what happened to the other driver my brother has no knowledge. I suspect nothing.

  28. lynn says:

    “There are combined units that are a true GPS unit and have a dashcam included.

    Is one such device from Garmin.
    https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/p/552032

    $269 at Amazon.
    https://www.amazon.com/Garmin-DriveAssist-Camera-assisted-Notifications-Activation/dp/B01N1TW0A4/

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