Cool but damp morning, turning into rain later. Or something like that. We never did get the rain yesterday although we had a lot of gusty wind, and broken clouds.
Took almost 200 pounds of scrap steel fencing from the BOL to the scrap yard. Got 16USD for it. That’s 4 gallons of gas. Had to be removed and disposed of anyway, so why not recover some value from it?
Did a pickup and hit the Habitat for Humanity reStore on the north side of town. They had a couple of doors I can use, some cabinets that might work (although it’s a bit early to be looking at cabinets), and some other stuff the would end up at the BOL. I also grabbed a vintage turntable, a Garrard Lab 80, to part out. I should be able to use the proceeds to buy some other stuff for the house. It is case-less and lid-less so it makes more sense to part it than fix it. Plus, I don’t need any projects. Running, it would be a $500 turntable. The parts will easily make back the $10 cost and put me squarely in profit. You never know what you’ll find.
Didn’t get to costco or the grocery store, that has slipped to this morning.
This afternoon, I’ve got some more pickups, mostly stuff for the BOL, some stuff for here, and a couple of general preps.
WRT the water dripping from my ceiling, my wife is talking with yet another HVAC contractor about doing the update. And she called an electrician about getting the hot water heater permanently set up. So much stuff to do. All of it takes time, money, and attention.
If you’ve got a list of things to do, or fix, or upgrade, you should probably start that process. The wait times for parts or product are getting very long, even for commodity items.
And if you haven’t started stacking, you should. Anything you already use is a good starting point. Build from there.
nick
and if I failed to mention it, or you missed it, Barbara is home and doing well, getting ready for the next step on the road to recovery.
n
Thanks to Covid, people are now used to meeting virtually. But sometimes I still wind up with physical meetings. Now living in a fairly remote village, that means a lot of travel time. This afternoon, I have a 1 hour meeting, with 2 hours of train travel to get there, and another 2 back. Ah, well, still worth it to be living in the mountains 🙂
Y'all were talking about taxes yesterday, and what they're spent on. Sometimes one really doesn't understand the priorities. There's a bill coming up here, to provide support for Swiss movie makers. A stupid idea on its face, but it turns out: Swiss movie makers are already subsidized with Fr. 120 million per year. WTF?
We have a neighbor who is an artsy type, and like organizing "cultural" events. For example, he's arranging a painting exhibition next month. Being around him has opened a window into the artsy mindset: They live off of subsidies. He has no trouble getting money from local companies, from the Swiss lottery, from the town government, from everywhere. Why? Why should people subsidize art? If it's worth seeing or experiencing, people will pay for it. If it's not attractive enough for people to pay for, it doesn't deserve a subsidy either.
Most art is a hobby, and should never be a profession. How many people play in garage bands? How many people sketch or paint? Participate in a local theater club? Like to carve? or cook? arrange flowers? take pictures? Nearly everyone has some hobby that could be considered "art". The sheer entitlement of wannabe professional artists is pretty incredible.
I spent the first part of my career in the "arts" and have a Bachelors Degree in Fine Arts. It's an industry like any other. It wants subsidies and protections, has patron saints and sinners.
At a certain level, support for the arts is a status symbol BECAUSE of the pointlessness of it. You can spend ridiculous amounts of money on something that has no intrinsic value, while very publicly virtue signaling.
That said, I think there is a public benefit from support for the arts and artists. Humans are story tellers and are moved and motivated by story. The issue I have is that lefty progs have taken over the role of gatekeeper and comptroller, and thus to a large extent they determine which stories get told, and how.
As an exercise, ask yourself if NYC is better off with a Times Square full of theaters, restaurants and tourists, or the Times Square of my youth, full of drug addicts, sex shows, hustlers and pimps? Which reality brings in more tax money and provides more "good" jobs?
n
They're going to take a shot at getting rid of DeSantis now.
Disney is in serious trouble outside of attendance at the parks in Florida.
Whether or not The Mouse succeeds in scoring political damage to DeSantis with their latest tactics, Little Marco is more vulnerable. The Senator's most likely Dem opponent, Val Demings, represents a special court-created Congressional district covering the theme park areas in Orlando so one guess as to where a bunch of her money originates.
National wires. Florida Man Does Something Stupid, Film at 11.
https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/national-international/walt-disney-co-denounces-floridas-dont-say-gay-bill-now-a-law/2906897/
You're either a Disney person or you're not. I've been to Disney World and I've been on a Disney Cruise. I've seen the people that are into Disney (like really into Disney) and no behavior on the part of Disney corporate will ever destroy those people's zealotry. I'm glad it brings them joy, but as an outsider it's a bit weird to observe. The kids you can shrug off. It's the "Disney Adults" that disturb me.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/german-states-outlaw-letter-z-displays-ukraine-asks-world-criminalize
–outlawing letters of the alphabet now.
n
Yeah, Disney is an obsession for many. Full disclosure, we (myself, wife, and son) went to Disney World 3 times in 5 years – 2011, 2013, and 2015. It's a lot of fun when the kids are a certain age our son was 7 on his first trip). We know people who take 3 or 4 trips a year there (and they live in North Alabama, not Orlando). I don't understand, but if it makes you happy, fine.
Disney used to put out an excellent product in the parks. Clean, inviting, and great atmosphere. We are going back this June – one final visit before our son goes off to college. I've read quite a bit of bad press about the state of the parks, but the wife wanted to do it so we'll go. Luckily, she is the trip planner, and is laying out the fastpass strategy. It's more challenging than the original system, or even the old fastpass system, but she seems to have a good plan.
The only thing we won't be able to do this time is our tradition of hitting all 4 parks on the last day, due to the park hopping restrictions.
2nd and 4th amendments? Not important – it's for child safety.
https://californiaglobe.com/articles/sen-portantino-authors-bill-to-force-parents-to-disclose-guns-in-the-home/
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/wear-warmer-sweaters-government-minister-advice-germans-coping-soaring-energy-costs
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/germany-scrambles-ration-gas-after-refusing-make-payments-rubles
–maybe start burning reichmarks in the furnace…
n
Yuck. Slow light drizzle just went to hard rain. I've got a bunch of driving to do today, and it would have been nice to use the pickup. I'll have to jam everything into the Expy instead.
n
Disney is developing and applying a whole bunch of virtual queuing theory simultaneously this year. At some point, park hopping like the old days will return based on how much money the guest is willing to spend for the privilege.
It is all about the money now.
I’d say they reached the “all” point within a year or two of Roy’s death. Technology has just let them continue to refine the science of money extraction.
Over the last decade, Disney has aimed much higher in terms of the demographics they want to target, and virtual queuing could turn a day at the parks into a $300 per guest ticket without a lot of fuss. The trick is to maintain the illusion that if not paying for one or more extra spaces in lines — essentially what happens with the Genie — a guest can still see a couple of marquee attractions in a day if they are willing to sacrifice the time.
The only big money crowd that I've ever seen The Mouse decide wasn't worth the hassle was Indy League fans, to the point that the racetrack is gone.
Which reminds me — Gay Days should be back this year so that ups the ante with the attempt to get "Don't Say Gay" repealed. The event week is very big money.
The wife now has three serial numbered implants. A molar tooth implant, a silicone breast implant, and a eye lens implant. I got the card for the eye lens yesterday from the surgeon. She is suppose to have a folder somewhere for the implant cards.
The cataract surgery went well yesterday with two complications. The first was her lens capsule was at the back of her eye instead of the front of the eyeball. So he had to insert the new lens by feel as he could not see the capsule due to the depth. I have no idea how many cataracts he has done but he did nine yesterday and nineteen on Monday, he is 66 years old. The second was she got nauseous so they gave her a motion sickness patch in recovery which she removed this morning. When they do the left eye they will start off with the motion sickness patch. No throwing up after the surgery as the eye will clench the new lens.
I took her to see the surgeon this morning and her new lens eye is 20/40. It should get better over time. She elected for distance, not reading. She is a little beat up from him have to fish around in her eye socket. They also marked the right eye three times with a sharpie for verification but it is not coming off easily. Oh well.
"Bruce Willis, diagnosed with aphasia, steps away from acting"
https://www.chron.com/news/article/Bruce-Willis-diagnosed-with-aphasia-steps-away-17041900.php
"NEW YORK (AP) — Bruce Wills is stepping away from acting after a diagnosis of aphasia, a condition that causes loss of the ability to understand or express speech, his family announced Wednesday."
Willis has a impressive catalog. Until the last five years or so. My favorites are "The Sixth Sense" and "The Fifth Element". And of course the best Christmas movie ever, “Die Hard”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Willis_filmography
"SpaceX to Double Starlink Satellite Count Within 18 Months"
https://www.pcmag.com/news/spacex-to-double-starlink-satellite-count-within-18-months
"SpaceX is aiming to double the number of Starlink satellites in orbit over the coming 18 months, which promises to let more people subscribe to the satellite internet service."
"CEO Elon Musk tweeted about the goal on Monday. “Expecting over 4200 Starlink satellites in operation within 18 months, which is ~2/3 of all active satellites of Earth,” he wrote."
"“SpaceX Falcon team is making excellent progress – aiming for 60 launches this year,” Musk added in a separate tweet."
That is a lot of satellites and launches. SpaceX looks like a real business.
"Pulp Fiction". Willis took home $800k despite being the headliner. People will still watch that flick 100 years from now.
Based on his last SciFi movie that I purchased, "Breach", his acting career was already over. That was one of the worst movies I have ever seen. The special effects looked like they were done by a high school class learning CGI with most of them getting a "D" or lower. The acting was terrible, the plot was terrible, the characters were terrible. A real waste of electrons.
And that is the most positive review I have seen of the movie.
"CDC Tells Johnson & Johnson Recipients to Get 2 mRNA Shots For Greater Protection Against Covid"
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/03/cdc-tells-johnson-johnson-recipients-get-2-mrna-shots-greater-protection-covid/
"Even combining a Johnson & Johnson vaccine with a booster of either Johnson & Johnson, or one of the two messenger RNA vaccines, wasn’t as strong as three shots of the messenger RNA vaccines in preventing emergency room visits or hospitalizations, according to the report."
That is a lot of shots.
"Pulp Fiction". Willis took home $800k despite being the headliner. People will still watch that flick 100 years from now.
I have never seen "Pulp Fiction" past the beginning. I just could not get into the movie. Too violent.
"Biden's proposed budget includes nearly $45B for climate and clean energy, a 7% increase for DOE"
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/biden-proposed-budget-2023-climate-doe/621168/
"President Joe Biden on Monday proposed a $5.8 trillion budget for fiscal year 2023 that includes $44.9 billion for clean energy, electrification and other programs to help cut greenhouse gas emissions and prepare the U.S. for the effects of climate change."
A billion here and a billion there adds up to a lot of bucks.
For the first time in 2 years, I took an airplane today. Houston Hobby to St. Louis.
Wow. From 2010 to 2014 I was a traveling consultant, and the awful service, kabuki security theater, and great unwashed traveling public made an impression on me. But I put up with it because of the paycheck, and the perks of airline status (upgrades/lounges/frequent flyer miles).
Add in ridiculous mask drama, easily offended counter people, and my fellow passengers who look like they'd fit in better on the Greyhound, and I just don't think it's worth it any more. My blood pressure spiked at the upsells, TSA crap, unnecessary serpentine paths, semiliterate TSA drones, mask Karens,
I only flew up because I don't want to miss too many classes at school, and I needed to be up here for a few days. In the future, I'll bite the bullet and drive to see my kids instead of flying.
To consider flying again, it will be trips over 1000 miles or over oceans.
I like the quote where Elon was responding to someone asking about Russia shooting down the Starlink satellites that Ukraine is utilizing and he said something to the effect of, "I think we can launch them faster than they can shoot them down."
It is all about eliminating the control group the population who have not had any contact with the mRNA technology.
The VA used to have a stash of Johnson & Johnson, and my wife said that suddenly disappeared.
Yup. My wife's father is in Southern CA, so we fly out there once a year. It's not horrible though, since we fly out of HSV and land at SNA. Security at both of those airports isn't too bad – at least nothing like LAX, ATL, or MCO.
Flying in general is just a terrible experience, for all the reasons you mentioned.
I snarkily posted a couple of months ago it wouldn't be long before boosters were quarterly. I read the CDC and FDA are quietly pushing a 5th booster.
Soon you will report to the Public Residence Cluster distribution center for your weekly soy rations and COVID booster.
You Sir, are incorrect.
The folks pushing this stuff live somewhere.
They are out-numbered.
I have a stupid question.
My PC is a Gateway DX4860. i5-2320 CPU @3.00GHz. 6 GB of RAM has seemed to be enough. Win7 Home whatever x64.
My USB system has gone funky. It can charge my phone but no data. I don't really care a huge amount about UPS status. But hey, that little USB hard drive isn't useful at the moment. Never mind that if my ISP craps their pants I can't tether my phone. Yeah, the phone can do a wi-fi hotspot but my PC doesn't have wi-fi.
I have a wi-fi USB thingy but, yeah. The Kindle has a larger screen than the phone….. E-mail and annoying y'all will just be a bit more difficult. 🙂
And also, waking from stand by is hit or miss. It just works or it comes up with the monitor saying no signal. Pull the power (faster than the power switch) and Windows is resuming…. sometimes with a working mouse and keyboard, often not. Pull the power cord again and "windows didn't shut down properly". After the fussing everything works fine.
Back to Stupid Question. I need to open the box and perhaps blow out some dust (there was almost no dust when I swapped the rust out for SSD a few years ago) and re-seat all cards and connectors. Might be the cure. If not, what if I buy a new PC, another i5, and just pull the Win10 or whatever OS spinning rust and swap in my Win7 drive.
? Other than perhaps a problem with video drivers and having to call MS saying I replaced my motherboard. ?
That's us.
Here's them: But but but we have nukes and fighter planes!
No. Intel and AMD stopped supporting Windows 7 a few years ago, and new-ish (Kaby Lake?) CPUs will refuse to boot a Windows 7 partition and often core dump to intimidate the user. At one point, there was an unofficial patch from someone at Microsoft to band aid the problem, but I don't know whether that still works. Even if it does, you will need a new license unless you just replace the motherboard with another LGA1155 (?) and recycle the CPU/memory. Microsoft knows.
If you open the box and you see a spare PCIe x1 slot, you can buy a plug in USB 3.0 card with its own power connector which will bring your PC up to fairly current USB standards with working ports.
If you have *two* PCIe x1 slots, you can add 802.11 AC or better WiFi on the cheap.
The downside of the plug in cards is that they will not work until drivers initialize under the OS. You won't be able to boot from the USB drive or do a network boot from the WiFi connection.
I use a USB 3.0 card in an older Q6600 machine which is my primary desktop. It works great.
This is how dumb ProgLibTurds are:
Disney’s Raven-Symoné tells TODAY there should be a ‘Don’t Say Straight’ bill as well
Disney to boot.
More like:
Here's them: We control the Baby Yoda stream going to your house.
Disney rebooted "That's So Raven" and "The Proud Family" recently.
Watch the first episode "The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder" at your own risk. You will want to vomit.
Well, technically, I don't want teachers talking about their own "families" nor about the students' families in class. It is unprofessional and absolutely immaterial to education.
When I was in elementary, and in Jr High, and frankly in High School, the only way I knew whether or not a teacher was married or single was if we knew the teacher outside of school. And we did know a LOT of them outside of school, went to church with them, or my parents or grandparents knew them, etc. Even so, they didn't talk about their husbands or wives or children or girlfriends or boyfriends. And they didn't talk about our parents or siblings or families.
In fact, they didn’t talk about their private lives at all, nor did we. There wasn’t time. We were learning and talking about the actual subject matter.
This.
I really don't care if someone is gay. Or straight. I don't care about anyone's sex life – straight or gay. All of this nonsense is about power for a small group of people. The masses that are jumping on the bandwagon are just people looking for another way to draw attention to themselves. They are being used by those they think support them and don't even know it.
Got it. I'll call straight people Normal.
SNA AKA John Wayne airport? I live about 12 miles NW and my daughter lives about 1 mile S.
IIRC, the bill covers talking about any "adult situations" along those lines.
It would also preclude discussion about how Andrew Gillum spent the first weekend of quarantine, 450 miles from his family home in a hotel room on Miami Beach with meth and a male hooker.
The noise is amplified today because DeSantis is calling the Legislature back into session to draw new redistricting maps after vetoing the last set.
>> I snarkily posted a couple of months ago it wouldn't be long before boosters were quarterly. I read the CDC and FDA are quietly pushing a 5th booster.
For many of the immuno-compromised this will be jab number five. Let's just put it in the water.
>> Got it. I'll call straight people Normal.
Not to be confused with Norml.
Yes sir. Father-in-law lives in Laguna Woods.
"'Tesla Made Many Workers Millionaires:' Elon Musk Takes Swipe At UAW After $2.2M Scam At Labor Union"
'Tesla Made Many Workers Millionaires:' Elon Musk Takes Swipe At UAW After $2.2M Scam At Labor Union (msn.com)
"CEO Elon Musk took a dig at United Auto Workers (UAW), a key North American labor union, following reports that a former official has pleaded guilty to charges that he embezzled more than $2 million in union money."
"What Happened: Musk said on Twitter that, unlike the UAW, Tesla has made many workers millionaires via stock grants, adding that the difference is “subtle” but important."
"Musk took another, more direct swipe at the UAW in a separate post, saying the labor union’s slogan should be, “Fighting for the right to embezzle money from auto workers!”"
Dude !
Elon better have some really good personal security. For himself and his harem.
n
Scanner has undercover doing a take down on a dope dealer. He's a felon, with a kilo of meth and a pistol. They are pretty sure the traffic stop will turn into a chase and have air support on tap.
n
Another Osprey crash
One soldier feared dead and two others are rescued after Osprey aircraft crashes into Atlantic Ocean off Virginia coast
Two people have been rescued with one still missing after Osprey helicopter crash off Virginia coast on Wednesday night
One of the reasons I like Daily Mail is the way they follow up on stories to the end.
-rich guy got off.
n
Re millionaire stock trader's reduced sentence:
Deep in the article:
–have we learned nothing from movies?
n
–the guys at Blackrock may be predatory opportunists, but they aren't dumb….
just one more data point.
n
Burst of wind turbine electrical generation projects in Wyoming:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/03/30/wind-turbines-out-west-part-1/
This Part 1 article on the permitting process is a downer: Basically, if it gets that far the system is rigged to screw the opposition.
If you click on the link below the first photo, it takes you to a straightforward analysis done by the same author in 2013.
I've made late-night drives through an area with a concentration of wind turbines. I'd recommend the visual and auditory experience to everyone, and note that I know of no metropolitan area in the U.S. that permits more than the odd wind turbine (mostly associated with post-secondary education) within it's geographical boundaries. If they're so wonderful why don't the city folk get to enjoy them up close?
>> AI could replace human military commanders in making life or death decisions on the battlefield, DARPA suggests
DARPA is working with decision makers to train algorithms to make decisions
The idea is that humans have a bias and can disagree, slowing down decisions
AI can be trained from the start, based on best practice, to make fast decisions
The technology is still at the early stages, but DARPA hopes for a wide roll out
Wait, wait, what's that rolling towards us? Yes, yes, it is, it's the new Tony-Tank!
with FSD of course!
I would not be in the slightest surprised to discover that Musk has a few "rods from God" in orbit, and that he has discretely made that fact known to the usual purveyors of novichok fragrances.
At least, that's what I would do…