Cool and windy again. Not supposed to be any chance of rain.
Had a pretty strong wind most of yesterday. Headwind all the way to Austin, when it wasn’t a cross wind knocking me from lane to lane. I used half a tank of gas pulling the empty trailer there, and only a quarter pulling the loaded trailer home.
And load the trailer I did. The pickup was at some type of testing company. They had a bunch of vehicles or cabs from vehicles, and they were doing something non-destructive with turning them upside down or something. In any case, the Ranger was basically sitting in the lot for the last 6 years. Lots of mold and mildew on the outside but the inside was pretty good, considering. We got it loaded up with ‘man-draulics’ and a little help from a couple of other guys doing their own pick ups. It is going to suit me fine as a parts vehicle.
There certainly seemed to be a lot of new construction going on outside the eastern side of Austin, along 290. Giddings looked like it was doing ok, and Brennam was better than the last time I was through there. Still a lot of vacant buildings along the route. LOTS of billboards with no ads on them except their own begging to rent them. I think there must be some data point for the state of the economy there.
Got home later than I wanted, power washed the new and old trucks. I’ll return the trailer today. The uhaul car hauler is very easy to use and well thought out. It’s also VERY WIDE. You need to pay constant attention to where you are in the lane. It worked a treat for me.
Today I’ll be doing stuff around the house. Mostly Halloween decor stuff if I’m lucky 🙂 but I’ll also be doing stuff in the driveway and patio to clean up after all the wind. It tossed LADDERS around. It blew down an acquaintance’s fence, right across the street from D1’s school. Lots of bigger branches and smaller trees were damaged too. I think it was more wind than I’ve seen here outside of a hurricane.
My antennas seem to have come through ok, and that’s a plus.
Time to get to work on meatspace stuff, and clear the decks for more stacking.
n
I think that Al Gore and Fauxi do not think that what they say is true. They tell lies so that they do well and they do not care whom they hurt.
Let me know if you need me to simplify that a bit more.
Well, Earth alone isn't closed because of the sun.
290 from 183 to I-35 isn't exactly the Garden District of Austin. Home Depot and HEB have development shops out there, but they're auxiliary facilities on the thought that Austin's software development talent pool is going to eventually achieve a California-style critical mass with skillsets unavailable anywhere else.
Dunno about that one. I've seen the resumes. Austin is definitely a Hot Skillz center, but the skillsets like what were required to really get the job done at my last employer are still in short supply. In the last year before I was fired, management simply looked the other way to fill empty seats.
The power supply on my home server started dying in the middle of a DNF-driven upgrade on Fedora. That's going to be a mess once I get the hardware issue resolved. The server won’t even boot right now.
Lesson learned. I’m going back to swapping between clean installs on ‘/’ partitions.
I did not skimp on the power supply either. It was seven years old, however.
Wow, 67F and 42%RH at 1030am.
Switching power supplies take a lot of abuse, especially the capacitors. The caps are a roll of aluminum foil, so if aluminum is expensive so are the big caps.
And everyone shaves the last mil of cost …
n
I purposely buy more power capacity than the server will ever need, but the form factor of the case limits the size of the power supply to the 2.5x4x5 SFX.
The server stays on 24/7 so seven years actually wasn't bad. It just sucks that the supply decided to die right in the middle of a Fedora upgrade.
What was Jerry's rule?
Never let a machine know you were in a hurry, or needed it?
😉
n
"The second law says that in a closed system…"
is essentially meaningless.
We just need a definition for "close enough to closed".
The way we handle the second law of Thermodynamics in engineering is to draw a box around a system and then calculate an energy balance and a material balance around the box. Material feeds and products are handled as streams into and out of the box. Energy is handled similarly. That is what my software does very well.
The problem with drawing a box around the Earth is that we do not know how much energy the Solar Wind adds to and takes away from the Earth. We have some fairly good guesses (we think) but, as Sol continues its journey around the fringe edge of the Milky Way, there is some serious mechanics and heating / cooling going on as Earth and its neighbors are dragged along for the ride. Plus there is also some other effects that we are not sure of at all, dust clouds that the entire Solar System is passing through. None of these effects are constant, they are all dynamic in nature.
Shut your heretical mouth, Lynn! The science is settled!
"Starlink Website Nixes 'Beta' Wording, Warns Chip Shortage Is Delaying Orders"
https://www.pcmag.com/news/starlink-website-nixes-beta-wording-warns-chip-shortage-is-delaying-orders
"The change occurs as SpaceX prepares for a nationwide rollout of Starlink before the end of the month."
Man, the chip shortage is screwing up everything.
Scanner has cops doing surveillance and a possible buy n fly on someone with "two switches."
Nintendo switches I presume?
Lotta effort involved, and at least two agencies. There HAS to be more to it than just that. They've got an informer with the guy, witnessed the exchange, and now they're following the buyer trying to develop probable cause to stop him and ID him.
Crazy amount of resources.
n
"Biden Wants To Give Separated Illegal Immigrants $450,000 Per Person"
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/biden-wants-give-separated-illegals-450000-person
"The Biden administration is mulling a plan to offer immigrant families separated during the Trump administration $450,000 per person in compensation, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter.
The payments – part of an inter-agency solution to several lawsuits filed on behalf of separated parents and children claiming lasting psychological trauma could amount to nearly $1 million per family, though 'the final numbers could shift,' according to the report."
We are so going down.
Probably an organized ring that the cops would like to bust. Snag the little fish and they start ratting out the big fish.
OLED Switch units are apparently still EBay gold.
UPDATE: The OLED Switch has only been out for a few weeks. I thought it had been out for a while.
Well, they did a traffic stop and search, but then the radios went silent. In real life, no voice over to explain anything…
n
"Live PD" isn't coming back anytime soon. Arguably, too much participation in the program cost the Williamson County Sheriff his job as well as an indictment for perjury, and that lesson isn't lost on the rest of the law enforcement community.
Wilco Sheriff is the real law enforcement that keeps a lid on things in North Austin. APD is useless unless you need the mask ordnance enforced at Sam's, as I witnessed at our local store last month.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10147447/Lincoln-Project-founder-refuses-apologize-trying-smear-VA-GOP-gubernatorial-candidate.html
So if you have one verified false flag event, how many more are there?
n
Ah, the investigation switched to another channel. Now they have an air unit involved too.
n
The Dems don't have the spin to cover the rape coverup in Loudoun County so here come the dirty tricks.
https://www.rt.com/usa/537632-gender-fluid-rapist-protected-virginia/
>> Like many laws passed by legislators, the laws are ill conceived and not carefully thought out by the legislators. Loop holes abound.
Good thing there are industry lobbyists and lawyers to find them!
>> Isn't Starlink the system that enables the car to tattle to the insurance company for not keeping your eyes on the road?
A quick search didn't turn up any references to their Eye-Sight safety system transmitting any data back to the mothership via Starlink.
If it does, they've kept it well under wraps.
https://www.subaru.com/engineering/starlink.html
Chip shortage. How convenient.
Tattgrrl, or more accurately her attorneys, speak…"Not Hannah's fault."
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/rust-armorer-hannah-gutierrez-reed-breaks-silence-153507790.html
No mention of the guns sitting unattended on a cart.
Says she was hired for two jobs but no mention of what the other (implied as more demanding) one was.
No safety training/meetings, yet she stayed around under those conditions.
WRT the Second Law of Thermodynamics: Among assignments, I was sent to the Delta II Lawn Vehicle progarm to work in the Propulsion Team. As such. I was in charge of preflight performance predictions rocket engine by computer simulations. This includes launches of the GPS II satellites. If the GPS units in your car is functionally correct, I made to fatal errors.
I agree with all Lynn's comments.
Oh-oh, correction: "Delta II Launch Vehicle"
Here is another thing that Lynn will understand. I designed, coded and performed computer analytical, transient performance using computer adapted steam tables.
Solar One: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Solar_Project
Here is another thing that Lynn will understand. I designed, coded and performed computer analytical, transient performance using computer adapted steam tables.
Solar One: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Solar_Project
Cool. I wrote and open sourced my own steam table software based on the 1967 ASME steam tables.
https://www.winsim.com/steam/steam.html
Here is another thing that Lynn will understand. I designed, coded and performed computer analytical, transient performance using computer adapted steam tables.
Solar One: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Solar_Project
I love the fact that "The Solar Project" has backup natural gas burners for startup, shutdown, and extension of the power generation day. One wonders how much of their power generation is actually from natural gas rather than the Sun. I suspect that 49.9% is a hard limit for them.
Sam's Club run today. Paper products area was completely stripped — not even Member's Mark.
Someone asked one of the staff about Halloween candy. The response indicated all of their stock was gone early this week.
Actually, I want to hear more about the Delta II Lawn Vehicle.
What's involved in computer-adapting the steam tables? Regularzing the intervals to make interpolation easier? Adjusting to fixed-point precision for the days before cheap floating point circuitry?
The PropTart's second job was Assistant Props.
n
I'll add that when I walked away from a production due to safety issues I was content to never work in the industry again. Happens that I did, but for and thru completely different channels.
Stopped in a thrift store on my way home from dropping the trailer off, and got the infloor heating mat I need for my bathroom remodel, NIB, $30. That's 90% off and about the only way I was gonna spring for heated floors.
n
I already have to rebuild my home server OS, and clearing out old game discs, "Tropico" wouldn't uninstall clean on my primary desktop's Windows 10 partition after doing a brief install to test the game. I'll have to consider a rebuild there as well.
Fortunately, nothing is out on the Windows 10 partition except BattleNet and Quicken
"While coal makes a comeback, reduced supplies stoke fears over electrical grids"
https://www.arcamax.com/business/businessnews/s-2588379
"PHILADELPHIA — Coal, a pariah fuel for climate activists, has made a quiet comeback this year in the post-lockdown economic resurgence. Coal stockpiles at power plants are getting so low that the regional electric grid operator, PJM Interconnection, has taken steps to prevent a system collapse this winter similar to Texas earlier this year.
PJM, based near Valley Forge, this month imposed new rules on power plants in 13 states and the District of Columbia to make sure electricity generators do not run short of fuel during a cold snap. The rules could force some coal generators to curtail operations to build up emergency reserves, increasing power prices already on the rise."
Been there, done that, bought a generator.
Hat tip to:
https://drudgereport.com/
What's involved in computer-adapting the steam tables? Regularzing the intervals to make interpolation easier? Adjusting to fixed-point precision for the days before cheap floating point circuitry?
I suspect that Cowboy Slim used the Fortran code developed by GE and Westinghouse that I based my steam tables on. "Formulations and Iterative Procedures for the Calculation of Properties of Steam" by R. B. McClintock (General Electric Co.) and G. J. Silvestri (Westinghouse Electric), The American Society of Mechanical Engineers, 1968. and "Some Improved Steam Property Calculation Procedures", McClintock and Silvestri, Journal of Engineering for Power, April 1970. From:
https://www.winsim.com/steam/steam.c
McClintock and Silvestri developed five equations of state to describe the five states of water that they built their software on. They were kind enough to release their equations of state and source code that became prevalent all over the industry.
I took their equations and built a common equation of state for my own purposes. I also converted the Fortran 66 code to C and rewrote all of the solvers to make them more robust. Plus I added a couple of new solvers such as a enthalpy and entropy solver that calculates the appropriate pressure and temperature with those two input.
Man, my coding style has really changed since the 1980s.
So, when are the progressive revisionists going to make the Atlanta Braves change their name to the Atlanta Pansies, the Atlanta Turtles, or something like that ? I am sitting here watching Astros and Braves play in World Series game 4.
https://www.cleveland.com/guardians/2021/10/name-game-why-the-cleveland-indians-changed-their-name-and-why-the-atlanta-braves-didnt.html
The Cleveland Guardians, really ?
Everything about you changed since the 80s would be my guess 😛
n
Donald Trump and Melania do 'Tomahawk Chop' at Atlanta Braves World Series game after Natives Americans called it racist: Former first lady is seen in public for the first time in MONTHS
n
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/venezuelans-turn-gold-nuggets-local-currency-implodes
–“you can’t eat gold”. No kidding. You can use it to buy food though, pretty much everywhere and anywhere when things get sporty.
n
I think kharma from Hank Aaron gives the Braves a pass.
@Lynn
Drawing a box around a piece of equipment in a refinery for a mass and energy balance can be “close enough” to a closed system to make effective calculations for operating and design decisions.
But what is the Second Law when the requirement for a closed system cannot be met? Does closed system even have a meaning, and if it does not, is there really a Second Law?
Seems we have a lot of questions to answer before we can even begin to make the determination.
In the meantime getting to “close enough” will have to do
–“you can’t eat gold”. No kidding. You can use it to buy food though, pretty much everywhere and anywhere when things get sporty.
The danger of gold is that the sitting President could simply rescind the EO vacating the gold prohibition and private ownership of negotiable forms (coins, bullion) would be banned once again until the courts straightened out the mess.
Of course, Congress could intervene, but if they haven't touched the issue in 90 years, don't expect them to start now.
Gold confiscation also set the precedent of the safe deposit boxes getting drilled.
Would the people put up with it now that they know what will happen?
n
Not a lot of gold was actually turned in under the EO back then, but I think the country has a higher per capita “snitch” population than it did in the 30s.
Things would have to be ugly for a President to try it again. While Congress has never clarified the Trading With The Enemy Act to prevent another EO seizure, they did give the public back the right to own gold in negotiable forms as long as those forms were not used as currency.
Ya foller me, Larry?
The courts would be busy.
The courts would be busy.
Woodchippers and backhoes too.
n
I'd expect a black market 10x as vicious, murderous and pervasive as the drug war. Gold bugs are pretty much by definition anti-government contrarians. Making it illegal just adds to the premium on value. Institutions insatiable hunger for that value will inspire heights of corruption well beyond the biggest of revealed money laundering schemes.
And then there is silver where half the market today is in industrial and anti-microbial applications.
>> And then there is silver where half the market today is in industrial and anti-microbial applications.
I lost all my rolls of Mercury dimes in the river.
And I certainly didn't find any dimes in a cigar tube, or any silver bars when we cleaned out my dad's stuff….
LOTS of silver, junk and collectible, going thru the estate and online auctions. Lots of card collections and comic book collections too. I don't think people sell off their collections when times are good.
n