Hot and humid here in the swamp. Houston may be the City of Trees, but that’s not the first thing that comes to mind, the humidity is. And it looks like it will be both hot and humid for the rest of summer. It’ll all just be a matter of degree.
Started the day fairly leisurely in WDW, ended at home in Houston. Raining, hot and humid in both places, although Houston was worse. Flight and airports were find. Flying mid day and mid week helped. It was a no stress end to a long week.
FWIW, I don’t think I’m up for 5 days in a row in amusement parks, not with this weather anyway. 20K steps a day. No wonder I’m tired.
Home now though. Blessed be Blue Charmin…
Kids are now out of school and home with me all day. No science camps or daytime activities to suck up their energy, just the enhanced gravity well around the teenager’s bed. I should basically have the house to myself until noon at least…
And I better use some of that time wisely. Lots to do. Starting with a run to my auctioneer to drop off a truck load of stuff, I’ll also do some pickups. I’ve got some Dr visits to fit into the next week or two, and lots of cleaning up and selling of stuff. The list is long, and getting longer.
Plus, hurricane season has started. I need to do hurricane preps on top of everything else. Ay Carumba!
But first, some restorative sleep.
Later, more improvements, and more stacking.
n
I’m almost done teaching Java. For a couple of Android courses, I use Kotlin, which is kind of a Java successor. For a new functional programming course, I will be using Scala, which is also a dialect in the Java world.
Both Kotlin and Scala have fixed a lot of the things that annoy people about Java. In fact, the two are similar enough that I really wonder why they don’t get together and merge the best features of each language. Of course, that would mean loss of control for the evangelists of each language, so I suppose it won’t happen.
Still, it’s nice to be using newer, more modern languages. I just have the silly problem that they are so similar that I can’t keep the syntax straight in my head. ChatGPT to the rescue: what does X look like in Scala? What does Y look like in Kotlin? Oh, yeah, that’s right…
I use Xubuntu. XFCE gives a nbice, clean desktop. Ubuntu may not be sexy, but it is well-supported. My only complaint is their increasing use of snaps. That may eventually make me move.
Both are good, imho. Important today is an actual graphics card, and lots of RAM. I currently have (provided by the school) an HP. Not totally happy with it, because something isn’t quite supported by VMs and emulators – I have occassional, random crashes that shouldn’t happen. Nearly impossible to diagnose, and I have a main PC for most work, so I live with it…
Wonder if I can get the school to give me a new machine just before I retire? Hmmm…
I’ve been experimenting with a Realtek TV dongle to receive the ADS-B “Out” data since … 2012.
I also had access to an Ettus Research 1000 MHz SDR transceiver which really worked well to pull in the data around Portland.
Hot Skillz!
Scala vs. Kotlin also gets into the orthodoxy of functional programming vs. OO,
Go has been enough of a failure where I work that the language is banned for any new projects. However, the damage has been done.
Management would still like to press gang me into cleaning up the mess in the deliverables which are already under way. They act surprised that I don’t want the resume entry for the future.
I’m 56. Money talks. I want to be paid at least as much as the 35-ish female who created the mess lying about having the Hot Skillz.
I don’t think I’m long for this job after earnings last week made obvious that another layoff is coming.
That will pretty much be it for the career, but I thought that when I got fired from the tolling company.
I had a new job within a week.
I have to use my employer’s laptops on the job.
It isn’t a real secret where I work.
I’m typing on a ThinkPad right now.
The tolling company used HP because the sales office for HP in Vienna was in the same building as HQ for my employer.
I’m sure bl*w jobs were involved given how my management worked.
In Seattle, I worked in the Bank of America building on the same floor as Merrill Lynch Private Wealth Management.
Riding the elevator in the morning and evening, I saw a lot of ‘dress to impress” – expensive dresses, skirts, and knee boots. Very Seattle.
The women looked nice too.
If the HP cannot run Windows 11, you will have the excuse this Fall when Microsoft starts to sunset Windows 10.
The HP is probably a lease. Maybe even through the same sales office in Vienna as my former employer!
It looks like the theme is Bill Gates Seattle House.
https://www.fox35orlando.com/news/walt-disney-world-announces-new-cars-themed-land-magic-kingdoms-largest-expansion-date
The side facing the Mansion has to look “Upstate New York”, and they had a nightmare experience filling the lagoon for the submarine ride.
Experience ought to count for something. Of course, if you are more expensive, that makes it even harder to get a job as an oldie…
Was she working in a vacuum? Didn’t she have some sort of team lead?
Thinkpads are nice machines. Also some of the very few that have a trackpoint mouse in the middle of the keyboard. Whenever working in a confined space, those are pricesless. Touchpads are horrible, because I always accidentally touch them when typing.
From yesterday:
Nah, I got it the summer before his Freshman year. It has been a workhorse for him. I did spring for 5 years Pro Support and accidental damage. I got the cheapest NVME drive and 8GB or RAM and purchased aftermarket upgrades – way cheaper. I did a 16GB stick of RAM, so I’m going to bump him up to 32GB – around 30 bucks from Crucial.
I will note that I’ve seen the ruggedness of the Precision laptops decline a little. They just feel more fragile than they used to. If I ever need to get myself a laptop again, I might try the ThinkPad – haven’t touched one since they were actually IBM.
On a sorta-related note, I’m replacing quite a few hard drives in our storage at work. They are 8TB Seagate drives (some SATA, some SAS) in NAS’ that have been spinning since 2017! I’m putting in 20TB and 24TB Seagate drives. No I still don’t have enough space. Nobody can delete anything . Ever.
In Corporate America, female with a CS degree from even a mediocre school counts for a lot more than experience or ability.
In this particular case, the CS degree is from TAMU during the time when Stroustrup was department chair.
Of course that is complete BS since Stroustrup is a failure as an educator, as Columbia is about to discover, but his name still counts.
Plus TAMU. Texas.
Ah say, boy, you ain’t got The Ring. You ain’t one of them Teasips are ya?
TAMU has a bigger gold reserve than many countries, but the place is prone to brainfart spending as of late trying to top UT Austin.
LIke hiring Stroustrup.
Or Jimbo.
I can’t comment further without getting into trouble, but the T Series ThinkPad line is still solid.
I have a T470 and will have to consider a T14 replacement for Windows 11.
I compromised on salary with the tolling company, accepting a lower number for the “learning opportunity” of high octane C++ with a verbal promise of an adjustment to reflect my experience in a year or so of proving myself.
I proved myself, but the adjustment never came. Eventually, younger and less experienced showed up at higher paygrades.
Never again.
If it’s not asking to personal a question: what kinds of salaries are those younglings getting at places like…where you work? Six figures is clear, but what’s the first digit?
FWIW, I’m hoping the first digit is still a “1”, at least, outside of crazy expensive places like Silicon Valley. If you feel comfortable sharing the range of the second digit, that would be interesting…
@greg, in every field I know, there is a group that gets hired to come in and fix stuff when the normal process fails, or time gets too tight. My mentors, me, my friends, we were those guys for corporate training events and annual conventions and other entertainment or production events. There will always be jobs for people who can actually get things done. The trick is coming to their attention. We called it “steal this guy” when we spotted someone worth grabbing in the future. It was independent contract work, and very ad hoc, but if you knew how to find my boss, we’d come bail you out. It was a bit like the A team, with fewer weapons. We never got credit, never got long term employment, but we got PAID.
Done is good. Gone is better. Paid is best.
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Kinda overcast. Kids in bed. Wife at work. Coffee soon to be in the mug.
Time to start the day.
n
In government contract rich places such as Oak Ridge, TN, a black, handicapped, female, with a degree in anything useless is a prized possession. I knew of one such person, who knew her place, embraced it, and used it to her advantage. Companies looking for 8A contracts were competing for her as an employee. Who did nothing all day but was a valuable entity.
I worked with a lady on a contract in Oak Ridge. She had a masters degree in communications, but was employed by her contract company as a programmer. I was supposed to work with her on some internal programs, under her guidance. You see, I had no degree. But she turned out to be one of the most incompetent programmers I had met. My work blew hers out of the water in every aspect. It really pissed her off which gave me great pleasure and to which I really put in a lot of effort. After a few months she basically did nothing for a couple of years then her employee transferred her to another programming contract because of her skills.
But Oak Ridge was full of incompetent people on contracts because of the “buddy system”.
Currently 84F and rising, with sun poking thru clouds.
—
I’m getting caught up on some auction things, and currently having one of my ophthalmological migraines. It’s been a while since I had one. They are bothersome mainly because of the blindspots making reading very difficult.
n
A timewaster for the engineers and engineering-aligned here:
http://calculatoredge.com/
“Failed Economy”
https://areaocho.com/failed-economy/
“Yet when Elon Musk and DOGE found dozens of examples of wasteful spending, the members of both parties couldn’t find it in themselves to cut that spending. This is why Musk finally quit. His quote on Social Media was “I tried my best.” All it did was make him hated by half the country, while not doing a thing. The only thing you can conclude from this, is that the Republicans are just as crooked as the Democrats. They are all stealing us blind.”
“So what does all of this mean? It means that the nation’s economy, followed by its government, is going to collapse. I’ve been saying that on this blog for nearly the entire 18 years of its existence and was saying it to others for years before that. In fact, my econ professor in college, an avowed socialist, gave me low grades on a few papers for making those same claims in college papers.”
“Anyone who thinks that this fiscal ship can be righted is simply deluding themselves. This nation’s economic ship is going down like the Titanic, and the only question remains is what will replace it. History shows us that the new government will result in far less freedom and will be far more Orwellian, a result of the people who have lost their bread and circuses demanding that daddy government step in and restore their freebies.”
The Uniparty ain’t gonna do anything until the ship sinks.
Where was Elon during the debate on the “Inflation Reduction Act”?
You know, the big Corn Pop bill which extended the $7500 tax credit for buying an EV?
“Supreme Court Rules on Mexico’s Attempt to Blame U.S. Gun Manufacturers for Its Cartel Violence”
https://thelibertydaily.com/supreme-court-rules-mexicos-attempt-blame-u-s/
“(The Daily Signal)—The Supreme Court unanimously struck down Mexico’s challenge to U.S. gun manufacturers, holding that they cannot be blamed for crime and cartel violence south of the border.”
“Justice Elena Kagan delivered the unanimous opinion of the court. Justices Clarence Thomas and Kentanji Brown Jackson filed concurring opinions.”
“Kagan ruled that because Mexico did not plausibly allege that gun manufacturers aided and abetted gun dealers’ unlawful sales of firearms to Mexican traffickers, the Protecting Lawful Commerce in Arms Act bars Mexico’s lawsuit from proceeding.”
Just more lawyers being stupid to get a SCOTUS 9-0 ruling.
Also
https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/06/justices-reject-mexicos-suit-against-gun-manufacturers/
Where was Elon during the debate on the “Inflation Reduction Act”?
You know, the big Corn Pop bill which extended the $7500 tax credit for buying an EV?
Launching electric cars and space ships. Kind of a busy guy.
Musk needs to lay off the ketamine, Molly, etc. He looks as foolish as tRump. When you start claiming tRump wouldn’t have won without him, you know he is full of jealous shite.
If tRump beats the shite out of crimmigrants for 4 years, I’ll be happy. Cap off some more Dumbo slush fund boondoggles is gravy.
We all knew 4 years of tRump would be turmoil. The upside is he is crushing the Dumbo Party. He needs to start grooming his replacement so that person can finish the Dumbos off. Well, the Dumbo Party of today: woke, trannies, crimmigrant loving, losers.
????
We all knew 4 years of tRump would be turmoil.
Just wait until the next prez. These will be called the good old days. The next prez will have to deal with the money machine trying to speed up to 100,000 rpm and failing miserably, coming apart in the process and throwing hot greasy parts at all of us at high velocities.
????
—brainfart. 06052025 is a lot less interesting.
n
Well, yes & no.
Elon didn’t quit, his legal temp status expired at 130 days, and he had a lot of other stuff going on, including boards and stockholders demanding his return.
The country’s financial situation is parlous, but other countries are worse. Our credit rating is Aa1 for example.
Of all the BRICS countries I think only the Sauds have a rating above A. China and Russia are toast, Brazil & India are B’s or C’s.
I feel somewhat vindicated in dealing with my city water board over some issues.
About three months ago I woke up on Sunday with no water. A call to the non-emergency police number got the water board out to take a look. The water line to my meter from the main line across the road had failed. The city workers worked several hours to get it fixed.
About three weeks ago my water pressure was diminished. A call to the city water department and another break in the line was located and repaired. Three days later the line split again and was repaired. The city was going to pull a new line. Which they did two days later just before we left on the cruise.
I get home from the cruise and the water pressure is low again. This time the crack is in the fitting where my line attaches to the meter. The city replaced the meter, attached the meter to my line, and said all was good. Then I get my water bill. It was about three times normal.
All that water that leaked from crack, went through the meter. The city said the break was my problem. I argued and said all the work, four times, including up to the meter, had stressed the connection and the city caused the break and was responsible for the water and sewer. The city disagreed and said they would only reduce the sewer.
I argued again before the water board and explained to them what happened. The water board agreed with me and reduced my bill to the average of the last six months, excluding the time I filled the pool.
The city has these new digital wireless meters obtained by a grant from TVA. These meters are supposed to detect leaks. It does no good as there is no annunciation back to anywhere to say there is a leak.
Now I need to argue next month as the leak spanned a meter reading. This bill was for the days before the meter reading, the leak was not located and fixed until several days after the meter reading. At least precedent has been set when I talk to the clerk who thinks everyone is stealing water.
That high! I would have guessed low D or high F.
Musk, Divemedic, and others hoisting their sky-is-falling umbrellas need to get a grip. Trump came back from the politically dead to win again. Four months after taking office these guys want to give up? Pussies–they’d bitch because the Aegean stables still smelled after getting cleaned.
Smart guys, but I’m not sure they know the difference between a reconciliation bill and an appropriations bill. Maybe STFU and study. Or maybe just STFU and go die in a corner.
The most important budget priority is to get the Trump tax cuts permanently into law.
The lame-stream media and Democrats are getting shown up as the feckless c*unts that they are. Liars, cheats, and traitors. Keep showing and keep showing and keep showing. It is 17 months until the next election and we need to have bigger majorities and fewer whining RINO’s to get the real heavy-lifting done. If Paxton can keep Cornyn down 30-40 points in the polls he may quit before the primary.
Tell me that a country where Jake Tapper can’t make his book a best seller and CNN’s ratings are dirt isn’t a better place.
Tell me that having the Biden puppet-pants-crapping dementia fully exposed and under investigation isn’t a better country. Watching the rats turn on each other is going to make the Watergate hearings look like PTA.
Trump is going to have some losses.
Clinton talked Ukraine into going naked. Ukraine may be fatally mauling the Russian bear as it dies. No one will give an AF in ten years if Germany and France and Great Britain disappear down the WEF/islamic toilet. [ I remember a lot of Cold War talk about the plight of Latvia and Estonia, and other countries under Russian tyranny, but darn little about Ukraine except for their Easter eggs.]
“Supreme Court Rules on Mexico’s Attempt to Blame U.S. Gun Manufacturers for Its Cartel Violence”
Unanimous with Kagan writing the opinion.
Maybe a good sign.
Which has not been done, and the “Big Beautiful Bill” hardly begins to do.
I am supposed to be out of town for a long weekend, it is supposed to be 100F or so, so naturally the watering systems decided to crap out.
Some sort of critter turned the tomato watering lines into Swiss cheese, mice or rabbits or ground squirrels. I was working on that and then I realized that the bottom of the tree across the yard was kind of sparkly.
Apparently something chewed off and took away the entire bubbler end and line, so that the feed line has been spraying up into the tree and the rest of the trees on that line – naturally it was the first tree on the line – haven’t got any water at all.
I have an entire box of fittings, but not the one I need…
“Supreme Court Rules on Mexico’s Attempt to Blame U.S. Gun Manufacturers for Its Cartel Violence”
Unanimous with Kagan writing the opinion.
Maybe a good sign.
Everyone on SCOTUS hates other countries coming into the USA and trying to get money out of us.
Don’t worry, when Kagan’s pet lawyers show up for an imagined domestic slight, she will go to bat for them.
“I have an entire box of fittings, but not the one I need…”
There may be a natural law there waiting for you to generalize and put it into final form and attach your name.
Reminds me that I’ve misplaced my copy of Paul Dickson’s “The Official Rules”
‘2’ or ‘3’ isn’t hard in Austin, especially when stock grants are counted.
I never got beyond ‘0’ until my current job, and then only barely. I’m at 32 years in the industry minus the 7 wandering in the wilderness like Carradine on “Kung Fu”.
New hires will generally be ‘0’, but I know that a lot of degrees outside of CS or Engineering are considered at places like Atlassian or MongoDB, who have large offices in town and not just WeWork space.
(Mongo stock popped huge today so that one is on my mind.)
For me, where I currently work is about the 6% match on the 401(k), cash, no vesting, but I suspect that the Go developer was ‘1’ followed by a high number which would make the age difference an issue in HR if I played that card.
Another factor in Austin is “unlimited” vacation. That is common at a lot of startups and more attractive to younglings than a ‘1’ first number.
For Indians, Austin seems to be the hippest place in the US to be right now.
Of course, Austin is arguably the hippest place in the US to be right now so that has to be considered in the salary equations.
“…we want to pass the bill because if we don’t pass it, we’re gonna have on automatic $4.3 trillion tax increase on the American people, which will send our economy to the center of the earth.”
–Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA)
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2025/06/05/john-kennedy-on-bbb-n2658226
A little redundant. And I waited until I could use a personal machine so I wasn’t editing while squinting into my phone.
“Supreme Court sides with Catholic social ministry over tax exemption”
https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/06/supreme-court-sides-with-catholic-social-ministry-over-tax-exemption/
“The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that Wisconsin violated the Constitution when it refused to give a Catholic social ministry group the same exemption from the state’s unemployment tax that it gives to churches, religious schools, and some other religious groups. In a unanimous opinion by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the justices agreed with the Catholic social ministry group that the denial of the exemption constituted religious discrimination. “It is fundamental to our constitutional order that the government maintain ‘neutrality between religion and religion,’” Sotomayor emphasized. “There may be hard calls to make in policing that rule,” she wrote, “but this is not one” of them.”
Whoa, another 9-0 decision by SCOTUS !
“Commiefornia’s Gas Tax Nightmare: Democrats Force $8.44-Per-Gallon Future on Struggling Families”
https://thelibertydaily.com/commiefornias-gas-tax-nightmare-democrats-force-8-44/
“(Natural News)—In yet another assault on working-class Californians, the state’s Democratic supermajority has greenlit a staggering 50- to 65-cent gas tax increase under the Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS), set to take effect July 1, 2025.”
“Republican efforts to block the hike failed miserably in a 18-39 Assembly vote, leaving drivers to brace for what analysts warn could be $8.44-per-gallon gasoline by late 2026. This isn’t just another tax; it’s economic sabotage disguised as environmentalism, a reckless experiment that will cripple households already drowning in the nation’s highest cost of living.”
I have a prediction, this will be reversed. People will be driving 100 miles to fill their gas tanks in Arizona.
“The Courts Are Courting Disaster by Alienating Conservatives” by Kurt Schlichter
https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2025/06/05/the-courts-are-courting-disaster-by-alienating-conservatives-n2658158
“Of course, this raises the question of why we need courts at all to resolve questions about government powers. If it’s going to be just another political branch, that’s superfluous when we already have a legislature and an executive. What function does having a third branch, consisting of unelected people in funny clothes pretending to read legal briefs, provide? None. There’s no reason for it, and it deserves no moral deference. It’s just another set of politicians, and we ought to consider getting rid of the courts’ participation in such issues if we are not going to return it to its proper role. But in the meantime, we should accept things as they are. That means no more Federalist Society sissies, only hard-core conservatives. If the courts are just another political arena, I say we go full Maximus and fight to win.”
Yup, me too. No more Federalist Society sissy judges.
Kurt Schlichter wrote the series of books about the USA splitting into two countries.
https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-Republic-Kurt-Schlichter/dp/1539018954?tag=ttgnet-20
I paid $4.79/gallon in Palm Springs at the beginning of April, but that was the only time I filled the rental, the day before we flew home.
We went from Orange County airport out to Redondo Beach and back to Palm Springs on less than one tank. Throw in several trips down to Hollywood from our hotel near Universal.
$5/gallon would be fine if the tradeoff was that we could buy $40k V8 Land Cruisers like Australians.
I’ve been playing with the new router. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BFVQK2ZD?tag=ttgnet-20 I freely admit to not knowing what exactly what I’m doing. Is the problem me or is it because a $49 (seems cheap) dual wan router overloaded or is it all just a thing to do with dual wan connections?
It seems like a nice router. Easy to configure.
I’m going with the “I don’t know how to balance WANs”. Nevermind the wISP connection seems to be up and down and so sloooow when it is up e-mail times out.
Poking in the router settings has parts that go in circles. I get lost. Like Settings in Win11. From System Status there is Load Balancing. You can set Priority for the WAN connections. A lower number gets priority. Then you can set Weight. I think I understand that….. say both WANs always work solidly but one is slower or has a data cap. So the slower WAN gets a lower Weight.
But Router isn’t real smart. Bless it’s heart. No, really.
Now to General Settings. Load Balancing. It’s a bit different than above. You can mess with Ping testing to see if a connection is up. I tweaked the wISP connection. It’s been mostly down since says the router. I guess the pings are failing and Starlink takes it all.
But once in a while it all works and speed test is bouncing at 400mb down. Ok, my NanoBeams don’t exactly run that fast, but a peek at that peak once in a while is pretty cool.
I’ve set the ping on the wISP so that it’s mostly just Starlink. So much for dual-wan. I think, I don’t know, but I think the router has better ping times from the wISP when it is up and tries to use that connection. But the wISP is so slow lately that web pages time out. So I tweaked the ping testing for the wISP connection and now it is mostly just Starlink with an extra burst of speed once in a while.
I’m still figuring this out. Starlink is great. The wISP is paid for for a long time. I’m hoping to make both work together. Kind of hard to do when one connection is bouncing up and down. It looks like the router chooses the low ping connection… which lately is “fast” at 8mb down, if that, so pages and mail time out.
Easy fix: Shut up and unplug the Ethernet from the wISP connection. Give me another week and that’s what is happening.
I paid $60 for my ASUS with awesome firmware, but it must be discontinued since the current price is $120 from third parties on Big River.
If you absolutely must have a direct 1:1 replacement for obsolete hardware, they will make you pay.
ASUS still keeps the updates rolling long after they discontinue the hardware.
It’s been 94F and humid most of the day.
Took a load to my auctioneer. Talked about bringing him more next week.
Didn’t get much else done, other than catching up on auction stuff.
Starting to feel a little scratch in my throat and a little heat in my nostrils. Either my mom wasn’t quite over her crud, or I picked something up from someone else. Move vitamin D and sleep for me.
But first dinner.
n
Flooring! Flooring! Flooring! Flooring!
Say that like in History of The World. 🙂
Ok. So, the wall to wall carpet is getting up in age and it needs a good cleaning. I have a Hoover carpet cleaner, just saying. I dragged one of the leather Lazy Boys, a “gift” that they would be insulted if discarded, into the dining room a month or so ago. Huh. I kinda like the extra room in the living room. I dragged the other to the other side of the living room a few days ago. Rolled up the 35 year old area rug and toted it to the front deck. Did the carpet cleaning thing. Nice. Smells clean.
Then we had some rain and the humidity and whatever. It reeks of dog pee in the living room. Stench. Looks like the carpet cleaning wet years and years of dried pee. Not exactly the kind of aroma therapy I wanted.
But while I had stuff out of the way I decided the heck with this carpet. So, vinyl plank stuff happens tomorrow.
You know I’m here yakking instead of taking the stereo system apart. Right?
Right?
And a dose of Vit I.
Well, the tomato bed plumbing is, probably, OK. Done? Dunno, but out of time. Same for the protective cages.
Trees will last 3 or 4 days w/o attention.
I have a memorial service 400 miles away and need to start packing.
—–
Of course, now that it is hot out, there is a safety alert from Amazon about my Midea U-shaped window a/c unit, that I love: mold issues.
I am not sure if it is actually an issue here in the high desert.
And, TBH, I really don’t know: is mold really an issue, or just another moral panic stoked by lawyers?
“People will be driving 100 miles to fill their gas tanks in Arizona.”
People will be stuffing their trunks with 5-gallon and larger gas cans before they go.
The truly enterprising will put four empty 55-gallon barrels in the back of a van and make the trip.
The truly stupid ones will put the four barrels in the back of a pickup truck without a visual placard.
The really devious ones will come back with four barrels full of Willard water, make the CHiPS do an illegal search, and just happen to have cousin Ronnie the sleazy lawyer riding shotgun.
Replace the rear seat with a military grade gas bladder hooked to the fuel system.
Bootleg gas, FTW!
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Maybe like the third world, they’ll start illegally tapping pipelines. iirc there is one along I-5 that pokes out of the ground at fairly regular intervals.
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@paul, we really like the LVT planks we put in at the BOL. I was worried I’d hate the sound of the floating floor, but I don’t notice it. Looks great too, and easy to use the leaf blower to get the hair out of the house.
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Got the kid from her Thursday night thing.
I really am going to bed soon. I have my glass of airborne and I’m ready.
n
Maybe like the third world, they’ll start illegally tapping pipelines. iirc there is one along I-5 that pokes out of the ground at fairly regular intervals.
That is probably natural gas under very high pressure. That would be … unfortunate.
“The Hemi V-8 Is Back: ‘We Screwed Up,’ Says Ram CEO”
https://www.motor1.com/news/761717/2026-ram-1500-v8-hemi-returns/
“Order books are now open for the 2026 Ram 1500 with the 5.7-liter engine.”
Only in the USA would a manufacturer take an option off the market that is so popular that people are lining up to buy it.
My eye doctor, an eye surgeon, told me today that he wants me to have Selective Laser Trabeculoplasty (SLT) for my glaucoma. The decision is mine.
https://glaucoma.org/treatment/laser/slt
No more eye drops (if it works, 25% failure rate) and 24×7 drainage of the eye pressure. No real downsides that I can tell if it fails.
He has a brand new laser that can cut the holes in my eyes in 2.38 seconds that he is quite proud of. I suspect that the laser cost about a half million dollars since it has an optical targeting system.
I have had glaucoma for four years now. I am under control in both eyes with a score of 14 in each today using the Latanoprost eye drop drug daily that burns like a small fire for a minute and then works for 24 hours. If I skip a day then my optic nerve slightly deteriorates. I am at 85% in the left eye and 95% in the right eye. At 40%, your vision is severely affected and you are legally blind.
@lynn, conservation. Do what you can to keep what you’ve got. I don’t know the specifics of your situation or what is being proposed but if you already have degeneration, you probably need to act. I had LASIK before it was approved, and I don’t regret it, but my wife who had it years later had a much different experience than me with much better results. I guess that story is meant to say, do it if you have to, wait if you can. That stuff seems to be improving at lightspeed.
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go to bed 2 hours early, get up 2 hours early. Dammit.
n
Drank some airborne, I’m definitely feeling a cold or similar coming on, and headed back to bed.
n