Hot and humid in Houston, as it should be. Keeps the weak-willed away. And boils your brains in your skull… hats, very important down here. It was 109F in the sun at my home weather station when I got back at about 530pm. It cooled down pretty quickly after that, but it was still pretty dang hot at 83F when I went to bed. And today should be similar.
Started the day at the lake, wrapped up the stuff I had in process, and headed home. Wife and kids were still laying flooring when I left. They didn’t quite get the bedroom done. Progress is being made, just not on the big structural things.
So today I’ll be catching up. I’ve got a bunch of pickups I put off when I had the koof. I’ve got home stuff that needs doin’. And I’ve got business stuff to arrange too. Seems like twice as much work is waiting after a vacation than before.
Oh well. If I wasn’t already busy, I’d invent some more stuff to do.
And I need a Costco run. Several of my staple items are on sale this period, and I’m running lower than I’d like, so I need to restock.
I’ll probably get another bag of rice, or flour, or salt… and some canned goods. Gotta stack.
Kids like to eat, and so do I. So I’m stacking food. I need to look at tires and oil changes too, and a brake job. And I have a dentist appointment coming up. Gotta get me into the body shop as well as the vehicles…
Use the time wisely. Or foolishly. But use it. Don’t just let it slip by. (stack stuff)
n
That’s me. I have the 2000. The Pro model looks like a significant redesign. Since it can take 6 200W panels, the charging circuitry must be better. It looks like Jackery took to heart all the complaints 2000 owners sent to them. I notice you can’t buy my model on their site and has not been available for 1.5 years. I couldn’t find the manual and there is no info on the solar connectors. If they went proprietary again, I would NOT recommend the Pro. You can’t buy replacement cables. You have to make your own cables unless Jackery sends you one after begging.
My 2000 hasn’t crapped out yet, maybe they upgraded the charge controller.
I didn’t know this:
“Truckpocalypse” Begins in California This Week as 70,000 Truckers Forced off the Roads Due to Democrat Idiocracy
Isn’t this what they did to rideshare, basically, you can’t be independent. This is crazy. I wonder what the results will be.
87F and 74%RH with full sun this am.
House is quiet. Kids still sleeping. Dog still sleeping. Not me though, I am up at the crack of brunch! Leaping onto my pile of jobs…
Sorta. Got to get some coffee first.
n
“Truckpocalypse”; AB5 passed the Cacafornia legislature in 2019, so this has been a long time coming. I’m surprised it has taken this long to impact truckers. Lorena Gonzales, the pro-union author of AB5, is a stupid woman who was unable to foresee the inevitable effects of her stupid law.
HOBOTECH on YT has a good review of the 2000P (I missed it since I’m stuck with the 2000 and can’t afford an upgrade). A lot of better features, but, as HOBOTECH points out, Jackery still uses a non-standard solar input (he sells adapters), to try and force you to use their panels. Also, not the latest battery chemistry, but using LiOn keeps the weight and size down.
Also, HOBOTECH hilariously flashes up for a second or two “the failed Jackery 2000.” LOL, tell me about it.
So was it “conspiracy theory” when people were saying he’d do this?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10983315/Oil-U-S-reserves-head-overseas-gasoline-prices-stay-high.html
‘cuz if so, it’s another that ended up being true. Or was it just commonsense, based on seeing what this administration does and has done?
And which will it be when they send our grain overseas to starving africans, leaving citizens to starve at home?
n
Plus the $60 billion we’ve dropped on Ukraine. So far.
–gee, ya think?
n
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10985907/Queensland-indigenous-paramedic-Joel-Hartgrove-speaks-horrible-reactions-face-tattoos.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10986061/She-twerks-people-Queer-Rhode-Island-state-senator-raises-eyebrows-raunchy-video.html
Democrat Rhode Island state senator, 28, is slammed for posting video of herself TWERKING upside down and encouraging people to vote for her
—- no words.
n
Pearls Before Swine: PSA for Birds
https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2022/07/06
Yup, a parakeet is not going to cut it. But a mad vulture though, look out !
xkcd: Mouse Turbines
https://xkcd.com/2641/
Wow, it has been 40 years since “The Secret of NIMH”. I can remember watching the movie with my kids on VHS back in the 1980s.
Explained at:
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2641:_Mouse_Turbines
https://birdsarentreal.com/
Plus the $60 billion we’ve dropped on Ukraine. So far.
Actually, most of that $60 billion is being spent here in the USA with Raytheon, Honeywell, etc to replace all the high dollar stuff that we gave them. Apparently we have now given the Ukrainians over 1/3rd of our weapons in storage.
We did have some good payback on the missiles that we gave them with American specialists to sink the Moscow missile cruiser and the other Russian ship that we sank in the Black Sea.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61103927
So was it “conspiracy theory” when people were saying he’d do this?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10983315/Oil-U-S-reserves-head-overseas-gasoline-prices-stay-high.html
‘cuz if so, it’s another that ended up being true. Or was it just commonsense, based on seeing what this administration does and has done?
And which will it be when they send our grain overseas to starving africans, leaving citizens to starve at home?
Biden is a fool.
BTW, we have been shipping a half million to a million barrels per day of light sweet crude oil out of the Permian Basin using the deep water port in Point Comfort, TX to Italy for over a year now. An Italian billionaire must have light sweet crude for his Italian refinery and he is limited on what he can now get out of Syria due to the civil war destroying the crude oil port and pipelines. The Italian guy is fighting to convert the Point Comfort to an ultra deep port (64 feet deep) via dredging so he can bring his Panamax ships directly into the port instead of lightering them ten miles off shore.
“Warren Buffett–backed BYD surpasses Tesla in global EV sales a decade after Elon Musk doubted the Chinese company’s technology”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/warren-buffett-backed-byd-surpasses-073803913.html
“BYD sold 641,350 new electric vehicles in the first half of this year, compared to Tesla’s 564,743, company filings show. Sales at BYD are also growing at a faster pace than at its American counterpart. In the first six months of 2022, BYD sold 486,771 more cars than it did in the first half of 2021, representing an increase of 315%. Tesla, meanwhile, sold 178,693 more vehicles in the first half of this year compared to last, a 46% year-on-year bump.”
“However, the companies’ sales don’t represent an apples-to-apples comparison. Many of BYD’s car sales are plug-in hybrids and use gasoline engines to supplement battery power. Tesla, on the other hand, exclusively sells fully electric cars. China counts both types of vehicles as “zero-emission.””
That is a lot of electric cars.
Tata sells a lot of cars too, but I wouldn’t knowingly ride in one…
China doesn’t make stuff that lasts very long. I’m curious about how many are still on the road in 5 years.
n
“July 2022 Postage Price Changes”
https://faq.usps.com/s/article/July-2022-Postage-Price-Changes
The first class forever stamp is changing from $0.58 to $0.60 on July 10, 2022.
I didn’t know this:
“Truckpocalypse” Begins in California This Week as 70,000 Truckers Forced off the Roads Due to Democrat Idiocracy
Isn’t this what they did to rideshare, basically, you can’t be independent. This is crazy. I wonder what the results will be.
I suspect that SCOTUS decided to let the people in California lie in the beds of their own making. IMHO, forced unionization violates at least two of the parts in the Constitution: association with whom you want to and interstate commerce.
“Switching to efficient, electric HVAC appliances could save Oregon $1.1B through 2050, study finds”
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/oregon-efficient-electric-building-appliances-synapse-heat-pump/626604/
“In Oregon, a switch to sales of only zero-emissions residential heating and cooling appliances by 2030 could nearly halve climate pollution by 2035 while increasing electricity demand from homes and buildings 13% by the middle of the century, according to a recent report from Synapse Energy Economics.”
Heats pumps are cool until it gets real cold, then they do not work very well. They still work, they just don’t work very well without backup strip heaters.
“Uvalde officer asked permission to shoot gunman outside school but got no answer, report finds”
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/07/06/uvalde-school-shooting-robb-elementary-report/
“An Uvalde police officer asked for a supervisor’s permission to shoot the gunman who would soon kill 21 people at Robb Elementary School in May before he entered the building, but the supervisor did not hear the request or responded too late, according to a report released Wednesday evaluating the law enforcement response to the shooting.”
“The report by the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center says authorities missed other opportunities to stop the gunman before he killed 19 students and two teachers in Robb Elementary.”
If you are a police officer and waiting for the boss to get off the toilet before proceeding, you are hosed.
I rarely visit the New York Times website and when I do I always delete my cookies. I did so this morning after a single visit.
WTF are they doing with 6½ Mb worth of cookies?
The Old School Marm Roberts cornerstone judicial philosophy for his Court. It cuts both ways.
“Nancy Pelosi’s Italian job”
https://spectatorworld.com/life/nancy-pelosi-italy-swimsuit-vacation/
“The House Speaker’s campaign war chest is raising eyebrows”
Oh my eyes !
Hat tip to:
https://www.drudgereport.com/
“US Wants to Further Restrict China’s Access to Chip-Making Tools”
https://www.pcmag.com/news/us-wants-to-further-restrict-chinas-access-to-chip-making-tools
“China could lose access to ASML’s Deep Ultraviolet photolithography technology.”
“China already faces restrictions on the most advanced chip-making tools, but the US is attempting to go further and block access to older chip technology, too.”
I did not know that we were blocking any technology sales to China.
That’s twice today we’ve been abused with things you can’t unsee.
(ok I sayw that twerk on Tucker last night)
Oregon doesnt get really cold in the areas where most of the population lives, but the state is heavily dependent on importing electricity from neighbors with more flexible attitudes towards coal fired power plants such as Idaho and Wyoming. Even Canadian provinces.
The state used to publish real time stats about power consumption and the origins of the electricity. I’ll try to dig it up for the nitpickers.
Yes. Hypocrisy in Portlandia. I’m shocked. Shocked!
The Google Fiber guy is here. Said no problem putting the fiber switch in the linen closet.
Will post about it all when it is done (and working).
Tata sells a lot of cars too, but I wouldn’t knowingly ride in one…
China doesn’t make stuff that lasts very long. I’m curious about how many are still on the road in 5 years.
n
I wonder how many total electric cars are on the road after five years ? 90% 75% 50% ???
Looks like ERCOT hit a new instantaneous peak demand today, 77,265 MW at 1630. Went through it with well over 4,000 MW of spinning reserves. There was 9,000 MW of solar and 11,000 MW of wind turbines.
https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards
I had to take on a challenge over the last few days. A charity whose IT I support has been using a free hosting service for nearly 10 years without any problems. In recent weeks, their email was increasingly being bounced (rejected). I looked into it, and it was all to do with SPF, DKIM, PTR and rDNS. It would appear that major email recipients are increasingly tightening up on checking email they receive. The hosting service was bought out last year, and I adopted my normal strategy of, if it’s working, leave it alone. So now I had to engage with the new hosting service. Three levels of access, their Dashboard, WHM and Cpanel, with elements seemingly manageable at mutiple levels!! I sought assistance from the service, despite the free service providing no support. The support I got would appear to be ‘overseas’ and not responsive or good quality. I struggled with them and their multiple levels of access over a couple of days …. got agreement from the Trustees …. found a new free charity hosting service …and moved the web site and email all over to the new service. Problems now appear to be resolved! Once access level – control panel – to all the elements that are manageable – does not appear to be as comprehensive as Cpanel, but enabled me simply to do all I needed to do. Hopefully I can get my dull – do nothing – life back.
Welp, I bought a new a/c unit. Can’t complain, the existing unit is a month shy of 12 years. I forget what I paid, it was plenty, I remember that. The owner’s manual has the energy label, 10.5 EER.
I’ve watched the electric bill out there creeping up the last couple or three years. But today, it’s still set on 81F as always and it’s 89F in the room. Spraying water on the coils did not help.
Frigidaire. Appropriate for an air conditioner.
I shopped for a couple of hours. Too many unknown brands. They may be fine, I don’t know. Too many stupid web sites with the middle of page filled with “other products you might like” and “other folks bought this”.
STOP IT! I want to see efficiency ratings and warranty information. I DON’T want to see mini-splits or 5000 BTU units or 18,000 BTU units. Just show the 10,000 units. Annoying as heck.
Actually, a mini split heat pump would be neat but add on a couple of hundred for the a/c guy to come connect the lines and that buffalo nickle in my pocket is getting noisy.
I almost bought this at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B092KGS2J2?tag=ttgnet-20 and wait, it’s used? It’ll arrive on Tuesday?
Yah, no. Home Depot. Same thing, new, delivered to my house on Friday. For an extra $9. And it’s new, not someone’s problem they returned. 15 EER.
It doesn’t heat. I don’t need that. Two freezers and a fridge takes care of that. A space heater on a baseboard thermostat set at 55F handles the rest.
My internet is back up:
My Spectrum cable internet went out last Friday around noon. After doing my own reboots and testing cables, I called the help desk. I was talked through all the things I already knew and did. No luck. The cable modem on-line light just flashed. The help desk said I would need a tech to come by. That was scheduled for Tuesday the 5th. The tech came and started checking starting with the basic stuff. Then checked the signal on the inside cable drop. Plenty. He said there might be interference on the coax. We went to the outside drop and got the same. He then went to the neighbors yard where the aggregate for the local houses is planted. Signal was good, but he decided to run new coax to my house (that was actually buried this morning). He then checked the drops in reverse coming back in the house. He rebooted the modem (twice) and got the same flashing on-line light. The main office couldn’t ping the modem. He replaced the modem (my thought he should have done first) and rebooted the new one. Internet was back up and giving about 400+/22-, my usual speed.
During the wait, I signed up for Google Fiber last Friday afternoon. Install was today, and yesterday (and this morning) a team came and buried the fiber, turned it on at the curb and at the box on the side of the house. They went right in the yard gate and put in on the wall about 10 feet in instead of running it around to the other side of the house where the power, coax, phone, etc enter the house. The tech called early and came by about 2:00pm today. I asked him if he could put the fiber switch in a small linen closet. No problem. He was in the attic a minimum of time and mounted the switch in the closet. I used an extension cord from an outlet just outside the closet for power. I’ll put a tap in the closet in the coming days to make it pretty. I rolled my network cart over and plugged my switch into the Google Mesh and all is hunky dory.
Fiber down/up is about 800+/400+. My VPN is double and gets about 400 down. Sweet! I’ll run everything with the fiber through the weekend. If it’s good, I’ll cancel Spectrum. That will be another mess as they try to talk me out of it with price drops, etc.
Yeah, mail administration has been a pain for a while. It’s been 10 years since I’ve had to deal with any e-mail system for a living, and I hope to keep it that way. I do still do some gyrations for my personal e-mail, though I can see that ending sometime in the foreseeable future.
Speaking of e-mail, a while back, I think it was mentioned here too, google stated they were completely dropping the free legacy workspace hosting accounts. You had to convert to a paid service to keep it. It seems they changed their mind just a little. If you use it for non-commercial use, you can keep it as a free plan. Even though I’m not actively using mine at the moment, I went ahead and converted. If I decide to finally stop running my own exchange server, I’ll move mail back to gmail – there is no better spam filtering.
Speaking of IT challenges (and volunteer webmasters) – Dr. Pournelle’s site moved to a cheaper, non dedicated server last night. With the much-reduced visitor volume, the cost of the dedicated server and IP address was no longer needed. The new hosting plan will save the family a few bucks each year.
The family still wants to keep the sites active, so continue to pay for hosting.
The move by Bluehost moved all the files OK, but I had to adjust the htaccess file to get the main site to point to a subfolder. Normally, the main site of a shared hosting account is in the public_html directory, but I like to move it to a sub folder because that makes the directory structure of add-on domains a bit cleaner. For some reason, the BlueHost move put in a standard htaccess file, which broke most of the Pournelle sites.
All is better now. The main content is still there (all the old files (mail, etc), although they are sometimes a bit messy, and not all links are good (internal and external) due to the age of the content.
The Chaos Manor site and the new Science Fiction site are still working. The Pournelle family occasionally posts on the Science Fiction site.
The family has just about got all of the Chaos Manor house contents cleaned out of storage (plus the existing storage that Dr. P had). His library of books and papers is going to the University of Charlotte (I think that is right) where they will curate them.
In the meantime, I continue my work on my various self-publishing-related sites for authors. I started working on two new ones this week; still in progress. Creating/maintaining/updating web sites is an activity I enjoy. Marketing those sites is not my forte, though.
And preparation of the house for the daughter’s family (husband/wife plus 5 kids 3-11; the 3 year olds are twins) continues. They arrive Friday for a week. We have planned visits to the small hands-on aquarium in Poulsbo, a half-day whale watching excursion for the older ones, plus trips to the beaches to throw rocks in the water and look for crabs. And other activities yet to be determined.
A friend stopped by today. When Fine Young Cannibals started playing on the cd changer, he asked “Whatever happened to FYC?”
I told him “They got fed up.”
Winning: Noted COVID Response Critic Alex Berenson Reinstated by Twitter Following Lawsuit
By Bob Hoge | Jul 06, 2022 6:00 PM ET
https://redstate.com/bobhoge/2022/07/06/winning-noted-covid-response-critic-alex-berenson-reinstated-by-twitter-following-lawsuit-n589889
>> “Warren Buffett–backed BYD surpasses Tesla in global EV sales a decade after Elon Musk doubted the Chinese company’s technology”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/warren-buffett-backed-byd-surpasses-073803913.html
“BYD sold 641,350 new electric vehicles in the first half of this year, compared to Tesla’s 564,743, company filings show. Sales at BYD are also growing at a faster pace than at its American counterpart. In the first six months of 2022, BYD sold 486,771 more cars than it did in the first half of 2021, representing an increase of 315%. Tesla, meanwhile, sold 178,693 more vehicles in the first half of this year compared to last, a 46% year-on-year bump.”
“However, the companies’ sales don’t represent an apples-to-apples comparison. Many of BYD’s car sales are plug-in hybrids and use gasoline engines to supplement battery power. Tesla, on the other hand, exclusively sells fully electric cars. China counts both types of vehicles as “zero-emission.””
That is a lot of electric cars.
Roughly 47% of BYD’s production is BEVs with 53% being PHEVs. Tony’s still in the lead.
@Paul: 15 Seer isn’t bad. You should see much better than 10.5/15 improvement in your bill since the old unit was failing.
i looked seriously at 27 seer mini-splits, but the payback for 4x the cost would put me in my late 80s.
Ended up getting at 15 seer Midea.
I’ve been getting my 2.4gHz appliances back online. They resisted, but with a thorough beating, they complied.
In case you missed it
The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest winners for 2021 are…
https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2021
Oh my.
n
I’ve half joked for years that systemd was Linux trying to be Windows, and then I saw this today.
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Systemd-Creator-Microsoft
A huge hack of systemd is half of what I believe will be required to move Windows onto a Linux kernel.
The other half is a true Wayland Compositor. IIRC, IBM/Red Hat owns Wayland.
“Windows 11 Version Detection” by Shao Voon Wong
https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/5336372/Windows-11-Version-Detection
Another typical hack by Microsoft. Programmers have to look at the build number to decide if they are running Windows 10 or Windows 11.
Just another episode in “Heritage of the Master Programmer”
Fun with manifest files continues.
Splittin’ the uprights from one yard:
https://twitter.com/TheFigen/status/1544006617406005248
File under “The dog that didn’t bark”:
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/who-more-than-6000-monkeypox-cases-reported-another-emergency-meeting-set-2022-07-06/