Cool, but warming. It was 40F when I went to bed, and I expect similar temps this morning, but I also expect more warming later, and warmer nights. We still have snow on the ground but the streets are all clear and dry except in the deeply shaded areas. It’s supposed to get back to normal winter temps for us by the weekend.
Well, I didn’t get much done. I did auction stuff most of the day, and spent a lot of time messing about online, but didn’t do much actual work. That will have to change today.
I’ve got a lot of house clean up and putting away to do. My own domestic bliss has been piling up too. Thursdays involve a lot of kid taxi duties as well, so I should be busy but not productive. I’m getting kinda tired of being such a slacker. I just have a serious lack of motivation at the moment.
Oh well, I will try to keep plodding on. The stacking is the easy part.
I’m seriously down for the easy way right now.
nick
do the easy stuff. stack.
30F this morning. So I got that wrong.
Coffee is on the way though.
Coffee will make it all better.
n
When we dealt with Redmond at the Death Star, if we needed something, it was usually available if we sent a check.
If the check didn’t work, the boss bought a plane ticket for the skinny blonde manager wannabe with perky … assets … and a Lehigh CS degree.
I think that girl works for Square now, but I’ve heard stories about an AI company.
Gotta sell the monkey trick, even if it means doing it the old fashioned way.
I’ve discussed here before how Apple refused to help the Death Star and IBM put all of Big Blue’s employees on Mac OS X about a dozen years ago, declining to provide some developer assistance on a port of the NetClient to Apple’s OS platforms. Think about how much money would have been involved in that deal. It didn’t matter.
There is a NetClient for Mac OS X, but it does not have the SSL VPN IBM prefers for their employees in the field.
The NetClient for iOS is just a WiFi “dialer” unless that has changed recently. I don’t check on a regular basis.
Warming up slightly, now it’s 31F. Mostly clear sky and sunny, so it should get warmer.
n
the boss bought a plane ticket for the skinny blonde manager wannabe with perky … assets … and a Lehigh CS degree
One of those was part of the reason for my demise at the credit union. I was on the software vendor’s case all the time about issues. The company was used to dealing with clueless IT managers and someone with some knowledge was a thorn in their side.
She was the account manager for the CU and made a surprise visit to the credit union. She had a meeting with the CEO and CFO, flaunted her assets and an hour later I was gone. In reality she did me a favor. Two months later the CEO was fired because of the problems with the software vendor.
Imagine if you will, a critical file was not being backed up, such back up set up by the vendor. A disc drive crashes. A restore is done. Oops, three days of transactions are missing. All hands on deck entering checks, teller transactions, and ACH. It took almost a week.
Imagine if you will, getting a Christmas club check for the incorrect amount. Some members got more, some members got less. Embarrassing.
Imagine if you will, the software vendor running a script on the production CU rather than the test CU. All mortgage interest rates are now set to zero triggering notices to those with the mortgages. Embarrassing. Except one chap was a lawyer and considered the notice legally binding and kept his mortgage at zero. Probably cheaper for the CU to give in than fight the guy. Embarrassing.
Imagine if you will, statements with transactions from other accounts. The accounts were OK, just the printing process was screwed up. Embarrassing.
Imagine if you will, someone providing all the information about the dozens of issues to another CU that was considering the software vendor. I got a nasty letter from a lawyer threatening to sue me for a few million. I replied that I had all my notes, everything was factual and a lawsuit would make the information public. I never heard back from the lawyer.
Sun and Amdocs tried to have me fired at GTE.
Cisco and RSA attempted it at the Death Star.
I’m not doing the job if the vendors aren’t trying to have me fired.
Right now, I’m exposing some BS from the most valuable company on the planet as of this morning.
A warning about trusts.
My mother passed away in 1998 and she had set up a trust. No problem I thought. Everything she owed went into the trust and the trust was then divided into one half for me and one half for my deceased brother’s children – four sons.
The problem is that there are a number of small unclaimed property accounts that were unknown to me (the trustee and executor) and that didn’t appear until several years later. We just found another unclaimed property account for $568. To put the funds into the trust requires a claim for each with documentation, including notarized letters (for each claim, by claim number) from myself and each of the four children, stating that we are her heirs.
Most of the claims are for less than $100 (one is less than $10); the total is about $5000. A notary fee is $15 in California, where three of the sons are located. We will ignore the small claims where the notary fess exceed the claim amount, but this bugs me.
Problem: one of the sons is a druggie and doesn’t understand and does not want to understand what we are doing, doesn’t want to sign anything and “quit calling me about this”. We hope his mother will help us with this.
It could be worse. If the druggie was deceased (he has no will) we would have to prove that. If one of sons with children had passed away, we would need letters from each of my mother’s grandchildren via that son. Etc.
Unclaimed property accounts are a big hassle regardless of whether a trust is involved.
My deceased MIL’s husband was receiving royalties from some oil wells. Not much, $250.00 a year. After he died she went to get the royalties transferred to her. The problem was that the company that owned the leases is based in Minnesota and wanted probate done in that state. The cost was over $3K. The MIL let it go as not cost effective.
I decided I would try and pursue the money that has accumulated in the unclaimed property in Texas. Not the possession of the fractional portion of the wells, just the unclaimed dividends that have been paid over the years.
There is about $3K in unclaimed property in the state of Texas. Texas wants a description of the property to include the well number, geographic location and some other information to put in a claim. I also have to have the MIL’s husband’s will (which I don’t have) and a copy of her will (which I have).
The kicker is that to get the property description from the oil company I have to do probate in Minnesota. Last I checked the price has risen to $5K to retain an attorney, which is required by Minnesota.
Texas also wants notarized statements from his first wife, siblings and his children. They are all deceased so I would have to get death certificates for each of them. I have no idea where those documents are filed.
The will I can get at the Bexar county courthouse. What I cannot get is the property description or death certificates that Texas requires.
Texas gets to keep the money making the claim against the funds too difficult, and expensive, to justify pursuing the claim.
The Oscar nominations are out. None of the films up for awards are films I want to see. Too much DEI and weirdos. This will be another year where I will refuse to watch the Oscars and Hollyweird patting themselves on the back.
If the Academy is in a mood to make an anti Trump statement, “Emilia Perez” will sweep everything.
If they decide to dial back in the interest of helping save the industry, they will go with “A Complete Unknown” – a safe choice — with Sean Baker winning Best Director.
Baker made money for his backers with “Anora”. Hollywood needs to relearn how that works.
It was 29 F when I went to bed at 3 am last night. Cold !
A warning about trusts.
I don’t trust self made trusts. You really should not do a trust unless you have an incompetent inheritor or more than $10 million. Most lawyers or banks will steal the trust contents in an annual management fee.
I just found out that several states still have inheritance taxes such as Kentucky. Not estate taxes, inheritance taxes that start at around $30,000. Thieves.
“Alligators frozen in ice as temperatures suddenly plunge in Texas”
https://www.chron.com/life/wildlife/article/frozen-alligators-texas-20049449.php
“The reptiles had their snouts poking out of the frozen surface for air.”
“Unlike warm-blooded mammals who go into hibernation when winter comes, cold-blooded reptiles—which rely on external heat sources to regulate their temperatures—go into a similar state of inactivity known as brumation to survive frigid temperatures. When alligators brumate, their metabolic rate slows down and they become lethargic. However, unlike hibernating animals, alligators and other reptiles don’t fall into a deep sleep and will periodically emerge and move around on warmer days.”
Standard behavior for the millions of gators in South Texas. I love the word for it, brumation.
“It’s now officially Gulf of America. But does anyone care besides Trump?”
https://www.chron.com/gulf-coast/article/gulf-of-america-cruise-industry-20048857.php
“As Shakespeare once said, “What’s in a name?”
I looked yesterday and Google Maps still calls it the “Gulf Of Mexico”.
It is a perfect opportunity for the DOJ to sue Google for misinformation.
“Report: Lyondell to shut down Houston refinery starting this weekend”
https://www.chron.com/business/article/lyondell-houston-refinery-closure-20049900.php
“The Houston Ship Channel refinery will also begin layoffs.”
I worked at that refinery for a day back in 1988. I inspected their combined cycle 450 MW power plant with three Mitsubishi Heavy Industries gas turbines and a steam turbine. They had natural gas burners in their heat recovery boilers and could actually crank themselves up to 600 MW for us.
I also found out what a corncobbed gas turbine was when I pulled the tarp off a big piece of equipment much to the dismay of the plant manager. He was not happy that I found his shame and then he had to explain to me what they had done to prevent that from happening in the future.
I went back to the office and reported everything to our Senior VP. He was not happy that they had not bothered to disclose their corncobbing problem to us. But, he agreed with their plan to keep it from happening again so we decided to count them as reliable.
The USA is transitioning from crude oil to natural gas. The transition is hurting segments of the population as usual. We are down from 250 refineries in the USA in 1980 to about 90 now, not counting the tea kettles. A real oil refinery has the ability to process 200 molecular weight crude oil. Several of the Gulf Coast refineries can process 300 molecular weight crude oil from Venezuela or the Canadian Tar Sands. You don’t pump that stuff, you use a front end loader.
“A.F. Branco Cartoon – Kindred Spirit”
https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-kindred-spirit/
“A.F. Branco Cartoon – There is a huge reason the Deep State and the Military Industrial Complex don’t want Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence: She doesn’t want to play their multi-foreign war game. George Washington warned many years ago to beware of foreign entanglements.”
I thought it was Thomas Jefferson ???
This is why Redumblicans can’t have anything nice:
Pete Hegseth dealt huge blow as critical Republicans they’ll vote against Trump’s defense secretary pick
RINOs! Two of the biggest. Vote those two idiots out. Ostracize them. Ignore them. Deny them any spots on panels.
Because “Gulf of Turd World” was already taken perhaps.
“Police bodycam video: Florida cop fired after she shot man with his own gun during routine traffic stop”
https://www.theblaze.com/news/police-officer-shooting-florida-man-bodycam-video
“Newly released bodycam video shows the moment when a Jacksonville police officer shot a Florida man during a routine traffic stop. The cop was charged and reportedly terminated after the accidental shooting.”
Who made the decision to disarm the man ? They need to be fired too.
“Police bodycam video: Florida cop fired after she shot man with his own gun during routine traffic stop”
https://www.theblaze.com/news/police-officer-shooting-florida-man-bodycam-video
“Newly released bodycam video shows the moment when a Jacksonville police officer shot a Florida man during a routine traffic stop. The cop was charged and reportedly terminated after the accidental shooting.”
Who made the decision to disarm the man ? They need to be fired too.
BTW, the man was bleeding so badly from the shot from his own gun that entered his outer thigh and exited through his inner thigh that the police officers had to apply a tourniquet to keep him from bleeding out. Do you have a tourniquet handy ? I would not count on an officer having a tourniquet handy.
“Trump CLEANS HOUSE: Cans over 1,000 feds, then takes to social media to post ‘YOU’RE FIRED!’”
https://www.theblaze.com/shows/sara-gonzales-unfiltered/trump-2670978203
“Further, according to a Daily Mail report, insiders are claiming that “the purge includes nearly all officials at the undersecretary and assistant secretary levels — effectively gutting the department’s top two layers of career staff.””
“Politico also published an article announcing that Trump has already fired a four-star Coast Guard chief, Admiral Linda Fagan, who is the first top military officer to be terminated under the new administration, “because she was diverting resources away from training and border security and instead focusing on DEI initiatives,” Sara says.”
1,000 fired, 2.299 million to go.
Hat tip to:
https://thelibertydaily.com/
“Here We Go: Federal Judge Blocks Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Executive Order”
https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2025/01/23/federal-judge-blocks-trumps-birthright-citizenship-executive-order-n4936299
“Almost immediately after Trump signed an executive order affirming that the 14th Amendment does not guarantee birthright citizenship, legal challenges began, and by Thursday morning, a federal district court judge in Seattle wasted no time in weighing in, hearing arguments on the measure and swiftly issuing a ruling to temporarily block its enforcement.”
“The decision sets the stage for a contentious legal battle over the scope and interpretation of the Constitution’s citizenship clause, which will ultimately go before the Supreme Court to settle.”
This will be headed to SCOTUS eventually.
My wifes’s cousin in Chenago Falls, NY is happy that it got up to 20 F today. I cannot even imagine living at 4,500 ft elevation in New York State where it starts snowing in September and sometimes quits in May.
Memorial Day on the Oregon Coast always looks like a North Face catalog.
I remember Memorial Day skiing on Mount Hood at Timberline Lodge one year while we were there.
Maybe it was the last year. The kids used all of their snow days at school, and, as a result, we were stuck in Vantucky right up until almost the first of July.
BTW, if the name sounds familiar, Timberline Lodge is the hotel exterior seen in the opening of “The Shining”. The Lodge sits just below the year-round snow level, hence the name.
Hermione Granger Kagan has responsibility for 9th Circuit so an emergency injunction won’t be coming. The 9th Circuit will have to rule on the appeal, and that will set the precedent for the West Coast and Arizona until the full Court hears the case. Implementation of the EO could take a while.
When I went to the gym today, I first drove by the local Home Depot. I expected to see a parking lot free of non-English speaking vagrants, because I figured they would be in fear of ICE sweeps.
There were actually more of them than I’d ever seen before. A conundrum.
No sweeps? Just none here yet? Fewer shady contractors hiring wetbacks, thus leaving more of them to wait for work?
Bernie Marcus probably cut a deal with Trump before he passed.
Bernie was shameless when it came to pursuing a buck.
I saw a meme go by on X about how we should ostracize and shame people who deadname the Gulf of America.
I’ll add Mt. McKinley to that, too.
Haters.
suggested headline for the Babylon Bee:
Trump Order Mt. Denali U.S Quarters Recalled
“Report: J6 Committee Members Sought Sexual Favors w/ ‘Star Witness’ Cassidy Hutchinson”
https://headlineusa.com/report-j6-committee-members-sought-sexual-favors-w-star-witness-cassidy-hutchinson/
“’Multiple colleagues had raised concerns with the speaker’s office about the potential for public disclosure of ‘sexual texts from members who were trying to engage in sexual favors’ with Hutchinson…’”
“At the time, it wasn’t clear why Johnson was protecting Hutchinson, who was caught changing her testimony during the course of the Jan. 6 Committee hearings. On Thursday, the Washington Post revealed what may have motivated Johnson.”
You have got to be kidding me. This needs the light of day on these text messages and who they are from.
McKinley works, but I grew up in Florida. That body of water will always be the Gulf of Mexico.
I’m not going to shame anyone if they choose to call it something else.
SMS text message content doesn’t require a warrant.
Most of the time, the phone company will turn it over to law enforcement if they ask nicely.
Sometimes the carriers ask for a court order, which has a lot lower standard of proof than a warrant.
So that’s what Liz Cheney is afraid of.
“The United Nations continues to aid terrorists”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/beltway-confidential/3297141/united-nations-continues-aid-terrorists/
“As part of the most recent “ceasefire” that Hamas will inevitably break at some point, the terrorist organization released hostages Romi Goren, Emily Damari, and Doron Steinbrecher. Those three told an Israeli news outlet that they were held in a U.N. refugee camp at some point during their imprisonment. The U.N. Relief and Works Agency doesn’t police these refugee camps, but allows Hamas to run them as the terrorists see fit.”
“That is one part of the problem. In the absolute best-case scenario, the U.N. is sponsoring Hamas-run camps with no oversight whatsoever, to the point that Hamas is allegedly keeping Israeli hostages in those camps. This isn’t exactly a surprise: this would fit perfectly with Hamas’s use of Palestinians as human shields, especially with the terrorist group knowing that the U.N. would throw a global tantrum if Israel went into one of these camps to retrieve the hostages itself.”
“This also fits the U.N.’s conduct in and around Gaza. It was revealed by Israeli forces that UNRWA’s headquarters in Gaza was housing a Hamas military compound underneath. At best, UNRWA was so naïve and unaware of its surroundings that staffers asked no questions about the wires going down through the floor that were powering Hamas’s facilities. At worst, UNRWA was silently complicit in Hamas’s operations by allowing the group to operate under it as a human shield without saying anything.”
It is time for the USA to leave the UN. At minimum, stop paying for 30+% of the UN’s costs.
Could it be that an organization that supports terrorists is itself a terrorist organization?
“What to Expect in Windows 12: Leaks, Rumors, and More”
https://www.pcmag.com/articles/what-to-expect-in-windows-12-leaks-rumors-and-more
“More AI-powered features and a modular system design are just a couple of the leaks and rumors swirling around Microsoft’s not-yet-announced Windows 12.”
Now with more AI !
What if I do not want more Clippy 2.0 ? Too bad, eat this.
So that’s what Liz Cheney is afraid of.
She aligned herself with the devil and she knows it.
Fraud, soliciting lying in testimony, etc. Very not good for a supposed lawyer.
“PJM Grid Declares “Max Generation Alert” As Polar Vortex Unleashes Mini Ice Age”
https://www.zerohedge.com/weather/pjm-grid-declares-max-generation-alert-polar-vortex-unleashes-mini-ice-age
We have a long time until winter is over. When I was head of the maintenance scheduling of our 125 generating units at TXU, we waited until Feb 15 before we started moving units to overhaul status. We looked at all kinds of forecasts as our minimum unit downtime was two weeks and could easily extend to eight or twelve weeks if major damage was found.
For the natural gas units, that two weeks was just inspections, annual lubrication oil change, and replacing valve packing. For the coal units, we would swarm them with 3,000 to 4,000 guys and literally rip them apart, replacing the entire pressurized fuel handling systems every year, coal is both abrasive and corrosive. For the gas turbines, we would pull the combustion pots and look at the cracks in the metal with a GE engineer chanting over them.
Actually, that probably describes most lawyers and politicians. The real trick is not getting caught.
@JimB and the rest of the Hive: 😛
Returned home from my last visit with the eye doc. My new LAL lenses are sealed and I am really happy with the result. I can see without glasses for the first time in more than half a century. My doc for these newer tech lenses is a couple hundred miles from the smallish Idaho city where I live and I’ve been visiting him about once a month since last fall for the surgery, adjustments and follow up.
The whole project was completely pain free. The expense was the expense.
Thanks for the personal histories.
“THE ATF IS DEFYING PRESIDENT TRUMP” (from the GOA – Gun Owners Of America)
https://oneclickpolitics.global.ssl.fastly.net/messages/edit?promo_id=23371
“The ATF is defying President Trump’s Executive Order – which puts diversity hires on mandatory leave – by changing the title of its “Chief Diversity Officer” to “Senior Executive.””
“But we also need to use this moment to show President Trump that an already unconstitutional agency that would openly defy his orders on just Day 2 of his presidency should be ABOLISHED altogether.”
“Now that GOA has put the ATF’s lawlessness in the national spotlight, this is the perfect opportunity to rally support for HR 221, which has been introduced in the House to ABOLISH the ATF.”
The GOA has a letter to send to Trump if you want to.
In my opinion, the ATF needs to go away, they are a rogue agency. They have shut down hundreds of gun dealers in the USA over the last four years for minute bookkeeping errors.
Hah, I have an eye appointment tomorrow. Followup from when I thought I had a detached retina. I’d forgotten so it’s a good thing we made the appointment when I left the office.
n
>> The problem is that there are a number of small unclaimed property accounts that were unknown to me (the trustee and executor) and that didn’t appear until several years later. We just found another unclaimed property account for $568. To put the funds into the trust requires a claim for each with documentation, including notarized letters (for each claim, by claim number) from myself and each of the four children, stating that we are her heirs.
@Bob, was there a pour-over will as part of the estate?
Thanks for the kind words. My wife has now had her new LAL implants almost six months since all adjustments were completed. She tests very well, and says her vision is great. Light Adjustable Lenses seem to be the best option right now.
In other news, I have been lurking, often a few days behind. Life has been too busy, so I have not posted in a while. I didn’t want anyone to think I was gone for good. To catch up, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all here, and may the New Year treat all of us well. Thanks to all who make this place possible, and to all who make it so enjoyable.
Regarding RickH, I looked at some of his other sites in an attempt to find any activity. I could not find anything that confirmed recent activity. I hope he is well. I also presume a few here have ways to contact him for a welfare check, and have done so. We miss you, Rick.
While on the subject, the next most recent unaccounted member I can think of is DadCooks. I hope he is OK.
I haven’t heard from DadCooks despite some pings, but haven’t found anything bad either. He was dealing with health issues last time he checked in, iirc.
Most of us are of an age that anything can happen at any time…
I continue to hope for the best.
n