Cold again, and clear, but windy. It was pretty chilly yesterday whenever the sun wasn’t hitting me. And it got very unpleasant around 7pm. It’s not quite as bone chilling at midnight, but cold enough to promise cold for today.
I did a small repair to my Ranger. Swapped some parts from the parts truck to the driver. The plasticized “rubber” over the cruise control buttons fails and crumbles. I’ve replaced them with NOS once, and now with the ones that have been sitting in the donor vehicle for the last few years. They are already failing, but I soaked them with silicone spray. It seems to help, for a while.
Did some ‘domestic bliss’ (cleaning up around the house, laundry, shopping, etc.)
Got the CO2 pistol out and did some target shooting in the yard. It’ll put holes in stuff, and dent sheet metal. I remember meaning to do a lot more work with the airguns, but then we bought a BOL… was nice to do some trigger pull work.
Collards made it through the freeze and cold spell, nothing else did though. Time to start planning for gardens, here and at the BOL.
Bid on some pavers for the BOL. Didn’t win them. They would have made a good short term solution for hardscape around the house after I remove all the broken concrete. They went for more than I was willing to pay. Something else will come up.
Today is a trash run, and auction pickups. If I can, I’ll drop some stuff off at my auctioneer. That will clear some space at the house and in the storage unit. That would be a Good Thing ™.
I’ll be stacking some stuff, and organizing, and generally getting ready. All y’all should be doing the same.
nick
51F and only 86%RH this morning. Still dark, but supposed to be sunny and clear.
We’ll see!
n
The weather liars tell you that the sun will come up?
… And you believe them?
Law of averages in those communities east of LA, some of which are 75+% Asian.
Plus lots of money from Fentanyl and human trafficking.
Getting weirder out there.
Well I received my gas bill by email this morning. $320 which is more than double my usual winter bill. Not a surprise as this would include some very cold weather and lots of use of the gas logs in the fireplace around Christmas not to mention big brother. We were warned. I really can’t blame SoCal Gas. Well when they ban all the gas appliances here we’ll be using electric. Now that’s a real bargin in California.
Six years ago. New crisis. Never let it go to waste.
Sorry, I for one ain’t buyin it.
I’m still snickering!
So the actual number of layoffs in tech is much bigger than I thought.
“With more than 200,000 tech layoffs in the past few months—affecting employees at Twitter, Amazon, Facebook-parent Meta, and now, Google,”
https://layoffs.fyi/
That is a lot of people who will be pretty f’d when the bennies run out, because by then, no one will be hiring.
n
plugs’ Ticket-Punched SpokesIdiot says wut:
WATCH: Biden’s Press Secretary Blames Republicans for Higher Gas Prices
The commies took over without firing a shot. Blatant gaslighting and the LSM says nothing. The sheeple just keep on bleating.
We are doomed. Not only is the end nearer, it is just around the corner.
Still heavy mist here, not quite rain, but everything is getting wet.
Dang it.
n
Just got a burst of rain fall by the SA airport. Now, just drizzling.
3M today.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/2023-layoffs-3m-slashes-2500-while-gemini-reportedly-cuts-10-of-its-staff/ar-AA16j4Pn
I wonder at what point Our Benevolent Leaders will acknowledge that we’re in a depression? When lobbyists start getting laid off?
Six of the ten wealthiest counties in the country are around DC, and the Ukraine gravy train keeps the money flowing to the contractors based in the region, with Boeing looking to join the party, relocating their HQ again in the near future.
Wait until the Boeing layoffs start in Everett. After the 747 line shuts down, the remaining models at that facility could be built anywhere.
“If the CPSC Would Ban Gas Stoves, Imagine How it Would Treat Guns”
https://www.nraila.org/articles/20230123/if-the-cpsc-would-ban-gas-stoves-imagine-how-it-would-treat-guns
“The Consumer Product Safety Commission, the federal agency dedicated to saving the world from lawn darts and toy magnets, has been in the headlines recently. This time the busybodies at the CPSC are out to protect Americans from well-prepared meals, by banning the ubiquitous gas stove.”
Ev-ery-thing’s coming up classified, For me and For you…..Classified documents are found in Mike Pence’s home: Former VP’s lawyer says batch of a dozen files have been handed over to the FBI
Let’s get Shrub and Obola in on the action.
Another goobermint agency trying to write laws. Our Congress is dead meat. May a chip break of the FMOD and hit DC.
FMOD = flaming meteor of death
We got an extreme storm alert, then a tornado watch. Our ISD is sheltering in place, whatever that means in this context. Some rain here, occasional lightning. No big deal.
n
Lock up the Classified Documents that you should not have brought home so that they will not get blown away.
The only classified documents that I have are Hillary Clinton nudes. If they aren’t classified, they should be. “Burn before reading” would be appropriate.
Oh, man, I will take those off your hands. Just the thought gives me goosebumps.
I need something to scare away the squirrels.
Good night, who pissed off the rain gods ? It is coming down hard. I got soaked running the 10+ feet from my truck to the office front porch.
The office front pond runneth over. The back pond looks like it will be running over soon too.
@Lynn – I took a look at the weather radar in your area a bit ago. That’s some big storm, and lots of lightning around Katy. Must be noisy out there!
“Revealed: how US transition to electric cars threatens environmental havoc”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/24/us-electric-vehicles-lithium-consequences-research
“By 2050 electric vehicles could require huge amounts of lithium for their batteries, causing damaging expansions of mining”
Usually economics solves problems like this. But with the USA gooberment subsidizing everything in sight, things will get dicey.
Hat tip to:
https://www.drudgereport.com/
“The Gordian Protocol (1) (Gordian Division)” by David Weber and Jacob Holo
https://www.amazon.com/Gordian-Protocol-David-Weber/dp/1982124598?tag=ttgnet-20/
Book number one of a four book science fiction time travel series. I read the well printed and well bound MMPB published by Baen in 2019. I have the second book in the series and will read it soon.
Raibert Kaminski is a historian with a time machine, the Transtemporal Vehicle Kleio (TTV), traveling back from the Great Library of Alexandria in 30 BCE back to his native time in the 30th century CE. The Kleio is a space ship 160 feet long built around the time machine with built in 3D printers and materials that can replace any part except the temporal wedge. The 30th century historians are stealing all of the books and scrolls before the great library is sacked and burned. But the Kleio encounters a massive time storm on the way back and on the other side of the time storm, everything is different.
David Weber has a good website at:
https://www.davidweber.net/
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating 4.3 out of 5 stars (615 reviews)
“Justice Department sues Google to break up its advertising empire”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/justice-department-sues-google-to-break-up-its-advertising-empire-180708969.html
“The U.S. Department of Justice and eight states filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google (GOOG, GOOGL) on Tuesday, seeking the breakup of the company’s online ad business.”
“5 reasons why thermal storage may finally be set to take off”
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/energy-storage/5-reasons-why-thermal-storage-may-finally-be-set-to-take-off
“You don’t need a battery to store energy. A class of technologies known as thermal storage can do the job too, and it even has some potential advantages over lithium-ion batteries. The long-overlooked thermal-storage category could play a critical role in easing the strain on the grid brought on when too many people use their air conditioning or heaters at the same time — an occurrence that is becoming frighteningly common in the face of increasingly extreme weather. ”
Thermal storage is usually high maintenance.
“They finally figured out how to lower inflation!” by Simon Black
https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/they-finally-figured-out-how-to-lower-inflation-145346/
“The bold solution that our courageous policymakers have come up with is to change the way inflation is calculated. So rather than actually stop the destructive things they’re doing that are actually causing inflation, they’re simply inventing a new way of calculating it. It’s genius!! The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced that, beginning this month, they will calculate the Consumer Price Index (the CPI, which is one of the key benchmarks of inflation) in a different manner.”
Rain has paused or slowed down to nothing. Gauge says 1.39″ so far. Some of the creek and watershed gauges should be interesting…
n
In order to sell the all EV future, various levels of government must make sure that the masses continue to believe that they will all cruise to work in Tonymobiles and Jesus Trucks at ludicrous speed rather than the glorified golf carts which most people will actually end up driving.
The glorified golf carts currently sold in China and coming soon to the US utilize less exotic battery tech since they have much more limited speeds/range.
“Norway maintains strong gas supply to Europe”
https://www.offshore-mag.com/pipelines/article/14288606/norway-maintains-strong-gas-supply-to-europe
“Norway’s gas trunkline systems operator Gassco exported a total of 116.9 Bcm through pipelines to countries in Europe last year.”
Norway has an incredible amount of natural gas. They have twelve ??? LNG liquefaction plants running now. Their crude oil production has dropped from a peak of three million barrels per day in 2001 to the current half million barrels per day.
I did some printed pictures for the local high school. Composites for the football team, what the coach wanted, 11×14 printed. The basketball coach wanted prints with backgrounds and overlays, so I did those, 24×36 printed. I had them printed at Walgreens which actually does a very good job at printing pictures. Much better, in my opinion, than Walmart.
Here is a link to the 12 created images. https://www.raymondthompsonphotography.com/Seniors
The school will give the pictures to the seniors at the sports banquet in a couple of months.
Above, I asked when Our Lords and Masters would admit that we’re in a depression. Better, a depression with high inflation. This news suggests that the answer is “Not yet”.
Of course, those won’t work for the US because, other than those who live in big cities, we routinely travel much farther than do Chinese or Europea…
Ohhhhh…
See also: 15-minute cities.
“Ransomware victims are refusing to pay, tanking attackers’ profits”
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/01/ransomware-victims-are-refusing-to-pay-tanking-attackers-profits/
“The drying up of payouts is forcing attackers to hunt bigger game and re-extort.”
I am so sad for the attackers.
“Not Cheap: Paid Version of ChatGPT Costs $42 Per Month”
https://www.pcmag.com/news/not-cheap-paid-version-of-chatgpt-costs-42-per-month
“However, the paid version offers even faster response times and will provide users uninterrupted access to ChatGPT even when traffic is high.”
Really ?
“Former Vice President Mike Pence discovered classified documents in Indiana home”
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/vice-president-mike-pence-discovered-classified-documents-indiana-home
Idiot. He should have followed the rules: burn, shovel, shut up.
“Was it worth it? America has suffered 300,000 NON-Covid excess deaths since 2020 — as experts blame lockdowns and delayed healthcare for spike in drug overdoses and firearm fatalities”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11671593/America-suffered-300-000-non-Covid-excess-deaths-2020.html
“Dr Steve Hanke, an economist at the Baltimore, Maryland, school, found the strict Covid protocols in early 2020 saved 10,000 lives across the US and Europe.”
No, it was not worth it.
WRT chatbot/skynet, about ¾ of the articles I find when searching for help with specific problems read as if they were written by this bot. Someone had monetized this, or something like it. Scrape legit sites, auto-rewrite, search engine seo, harvest clicks.
and what do you know? It stopped raining and the sun came out. 52F.
n
I think there would be a market for the more limited EVs in this country, especially if priced below $10,000, but the vehicles would be secondary transportation or kid cars.
With the traffic around here before and after school, a trip to the high school is 40 MPH at best even on the main highway.
Hope all you guys in the Houston area are safe.
Microsoft will make access to the necessary hardware resources available on demand via Azure.
Otherwise, companies are starting to wake up to the true costs of The Cloud compared to buying servers form my current employer and hiring an admin vendor.
I haven’t seen anything from AWS or Google on their plans, but I assume they will follow Azure’s lead.
We had almost an inch of rain today. No run off. The dogs had no interest in going out. Buddy finally wanted out at noon and he didn’t waste time sniffing around or eating grass. It’s just a cloudy 45f day with gray skies. Penny has gone out a few times and she doesn’t tarry.
Just poking around on the ‘Net and landed on eBay. My truck is loaded. As far as I know, the next level of trim has leather seats, a moon roof, and power seats for driver and passenger. And a fancier rear mirror that can store a couple of garage door opener codes. I’m good. I don’t care about leather. I put a sunroof in my Volare and while it was a fun project and nice to vent cig smoke, a sunny day would cook you. Power seats? Meh. The manual adjustments are almost good enough, I just need to add some washers to raise the backside because I want a little more down tilt on the seat.
That rear view mirror? You’re not going to swap the mirror. The connector is different.
What else can I do? Pinstripes? Nah. I don’t drive at night so LED trim lights are pointless.
Oh! An electric brake controller! You can buy a wiring harness for about $15 that plugs in to the truck’s wiring. Which is nicer than slitting a wire bundle open to tap into wires. Then what brake controller? Do I go with the $60 unit? Or the $140 unit? Then I had a thought. Truck is rated to tow 6500 pounds or so and what trailer do I have with electric brakes? None. We sold the travel trailer.
Oh well.
Back to Plan B. Clean the heck outta the windows and do RainX. But not on the windshield.
It would help if I could type.
Yeah, Covid. Trump, tho.
It’s not you. Blame the gizmo that gives you a ps2 keyboard and mouse into one USB port.
I mean, I know the X button on my keyboard needs an extra hard press. Been like that for a couple of years. But the random letters while typing are a “is my keyboard that I’ve used since Win95 going bad” or “am I going retarded”.
I’m blaming the gizmo.
Somewhere in Downtown Clearwater, FL, SeaOrg is burning the midnight oil formulating the plan…
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/24/entertainment/oscar-nominations-list-2023/index.html
“Everything Everywhere All At Once” is an interesting flick. I haven’t seen any of the others.
I’m missing something. I have the OBD gizmo and it Bluetooths to my phone with no problem. Simple.
New PC has Bluetooth. I haven’t figured how to connect the phone. It looks like it is working but it doesn’t work.
New PC has wi-fi. Phone can do a wi-fi hot spot. I can’t make it work. It looks like it’s working but it doesn’t.
I can use a cable to share files and tether and charge the phone at the same time.
Some kind of Public or Private Network thing I suppose. I would like to be able to turn on BT on both the PC and phone and be able to toss a few pictures from phone to PC. Maybe even slowly share cell phone internet.
and what do you know? It stopped raining and the sun came out. 52F.
We got 5 to 8 inches of rain out here in the boonies. We’ve got water running off everywhere. About a quarter of my house property (1.2 acres) is covered by water ponds. Some of my neighbors lots are half covered by water.
There was a large tornado touch down in Pasadena, Texas. Apparently massive damage.
https://www.click2houston.com/news/local/2023/01/24/see-videos-photos-from-confirmed-tornado-in-deer-park-structural-collapse-in-baytown-and-damaged-homes-in-se-houston/
and
https://abc13.com/houston-weather-forecast-today-texas-rain-storm-predictions-temperatures/39346/
>> I’m still snickering!
Wouldn’t that be “Snickers”ing?
>> I really can’t blame SoCal Gas. Well when they ban all the gas appliances here we’ll be using electric. Now that’s a real bargin in California.
Gas appliances ban will be “planned” to coincide with wide availability of the Jesus Truck.
Can you say ‘rolling blackouts?”
No, but I can say “regional blackouts following cascade failures”.
Re Hillary nudes… I’m reading Bill Quick’s book “Lightning Fall” and I just got to the part where not-Hillary and not-Bill are in the situation room.
I’m enjoying it so far.
>> plugs’ Ticket-Punched SpokesIdiot says wut:
WATCH: Biden’s Press Secretary Blames Republicans for Higher Gas Prices
They should just cancel these pressers. All she’s good for is to spin the spinner she’s got hidden in that binder and see which version of “no comment” she rattles off. “I’ve got nothing to preview” seems to be one of her favorites. How much can we save if we just can her? Oh wait, she’s in a “protected” class. Sigh…
My back-of-the-envelope calculation is that just 100,000 EV half-ton trucks from all of the manufacturers charging nightly in this state will erase the reserve margin ERCOT likes to maintain in Texas during the Summer months.
Summer 2024.
Our idiot San Antonio mayor was on TV tonight talking about shutting down the last coal plant in town. He stated with a straight face that doing so would improve the reliability of the local grid. He offered no explanation of where the replacement power would come from or how it would be more reliable. He was also disappointed that San Antonio had to be connected to ERCOT.
The idiot anchors on KSAT asked no difficult questions and it seemed like their questions had been prepared so as to make the mayor sound like he knew what he was talking about.
It’s scary how stupid these people are. I remember when journalists took pride in asking the difficult questions. Those days are long gone.
Time to buy another generator.
The “Afflict the comfortable” half of the journalists’ self-back-pat was false at least since FDR days. Whether this was because FDR and his fellow travellers had broken the backs of any journo who dared to ask tough questions of Democrats or because by the 1930s the institution had largely gone over to the Communists, I don’t know, but Republicans or conservatives could be grilled and no one else. These days, straight White conservative men can be grilled but no one else..
Our idiot San Antonio mayor was on TV tonight talking about shutting down the last coal plant in town. He stated with a straight face that doing so would improve the reliability of the local grid. He offered no explanation of where the replacement power would come from or how it would be more reliable. He was also disappointed that San Antonio had to be connected to ERCOT.
https://www.axios.com/local/san-antonio/2023/01/24/cps-energy-san-antonio-close-spruce-coal-plant
Um, ERCOT might have an opinion on this change. Even CPS’s planned conversion of Spruce 2 from coal to natural gas (counts as renewable since 40% of natural gas is hydrogen which burns to water) could affect reliability of the grid.
On the other hand, coal has gotten expensive since there is only one supplier bringing coal trains from Wyoming to Texas, BNSF (Warren Buffet).
I wonder how the idiot mayor feels about the nuclear power electricity that is partially owned by CPS and comes to his house. Is he the type that turns off the lights and sits in the dark, conserving his breaths and not producing CO2 as humans do every minute ?
Carbon is the building block of life. These idiots grown tiresome.
I think you mean CPS. The plan seems to be to replace reliable base-load plants with “renewables”. I fail to see how this will prevent a repeat of Feb 2021, when solar and wind just stopped and then a cascade of other outages occurred.
I think you mean CPS. The plan seems to be to replace reliable base-load plants with “renewables”. I fail to see how this will prevent a repeat of Feb 2021, when solar and wind just stopped and then a cascade of other outages occurred.
I fixed CSP to CPS. Thanks for telling me.
ERCOT proudly weathered a 74,000 MW morning at 6 am in December 2022 using around 50,000 MW of natural gas and diesel units. There was no solar as the sun was not up yet. The wind turbines provided less than 10,000 MW out of the 25,000+ MW installed. The rest of the power was provided by nuclear (5,000 MW) and coal.
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/12/23/ercot-power-winter-weather/
Shutting down any of the coal and natural gas power units in Texas is just spitting into the wind and then wondering where the moisture is coming from.
Utilities have an obligation to serve no matter what the demand is. That last 2 to 5% of demand is fairly expensive and requires expensive on-site fuel storage, operators available when needed, and maintenance scheduled for low usage time periods (changing filters to rebuilding turbines, etc).
@Ray Thompson
Outstanding work. The seniors probably don’t realize how fortunate they are.
Wow, the Pasadena tornado derailed a train.
https://www.wunderground.com/video/top-stories/train-flipped-houses-wrecked-after-tornado-storms-rip-through-houston-area
Shutting down any of the coal and natural gas power units in Texas is just
spittingpissing into the wind and then wondering where the moisture is coming from.Fixed it for you.
@Lynn
Another Ponzi scheme based on tax credits and obscene peak rate schedules, whose largest effect is hastening the heat-death of the universe.
@Lynn
It worked once, why not again? Seniors didn’t take up arms the last time the goobermint figured out how to devalue the dollar and screw them, so why not do it again?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/01/24/the-copper-conundrum/
Yeah, lithium. Copper, tho.
Only a matter of time before the Dimowits want to ban private ownership of pre-1983 pennies.
@fjenkins – thanks. The worst stuff moved thru south of me. I mention micro climates frequently, and while we probably don’t have actual dictionary meaning climates, there is distinctly different weather “south of I 10” and north of I 10. It looks like the worst weather was south of 10 this time.
n
Okay, some good news.
There’s over 55 billion tons of copper dissolved in the oceans,
and over 60 billion tons of lithium.
Extracting them will take 1.1 bazillion joules of energy , destroy the atmosphere, and raise the earth’s surface temperature above that of Venus.
Greta is all in on the plan–no CO2.
Decorative and functional:
https://twitter.com/TheFigen_/status/1617920557449904128
Bringing in numbers, engineering knowledge, or simple logic is violence, literally hate speech violence, against the feelz crowd. To the camps with you!
“Idiot” and “San Antonio mayor” are redundant.
Geesh, it is still Nirenberg.
At least Austin didn’t remove the term limits on Adler. Not that Adler didn’t try.
Wow, the pix from the SE side of town are crazy. Really demonstrates that you need some preps stored offsite too.
n
People were still working on the 23rd. One day later would have been a problem with the Federal holiday set for Monday, December 26th.
>> In order to sell the all EV future, various levels of government must make sure that the masses continue to believe that they will all cruise to work in Tonymobiles and Jesus Trucks at ludicrous speed rather than the glorified golf carts which most people will actually end up driving.
Then there will also be the luxury golfcarts.
D2 just asked me to play Meatloaf, Paradise by the Dashboard Light so she could sing along. #dadwin!
n
$15k is a lot different than $100k.
Even in the era of Joe Bucks inflation, $50k is such an artificial number for a mass market vehicle, enabled by 2% loans and F&I room antics which were unsustainable.
Golfcart, schmolfcart.
Who’s first with the railgun option?
Then there will also be the luxury golfcarts.
That there is a three wheel motorcycle. No crush zones, no seat belt, no collapsing steering wheel, no beams in the doors, no engine slides under the vehicle in a forward crash, no strong pillars for rollover, etc, etc, etc.
>> “Former Vice President Mike Pence discovered classified documents in Indiana home”
‘But they told me that the gun wasn’t…oh wait, that was that Baldwin guy…but anyway all the boxes were sealed with 3M packing tape, you know, the good stuff…what’s that, oh they just laid off a bunch of people, huh, that’s on Joe too…and a Corvette, wow, no no, still drivin that ole ’94 C10 pickup…anything else you wanna chat about, maybe that silly January 6th kerfuffle?
https://thehill.com/homenews/3828757-discovery-of-classified-docs-clashes-with-pences-previous-comments/
>> D2 just asked me to play Meatloaf, Paradise by the Dashboard Light so she could sing along. #dadwin!
“American Pie” for the encore!
>> That there is a three wheel motorcycle. No crush zones, no seat belt, no collapsing steering wheel, no beams in the doors, no engine slides under the vehicle in a forward crash, no strong pillars for rollover, etc, etc, etc.
Just minor details…pay at the first window…oh yeah, did you want fries with that?