Hot and humid. Again. And again. 85F to 95F or higher, and then maybe some rain… because it’s humid and there are likely to be threatening clouds. Ah, summer.
Did a couple of pickups yesterday. Both kids took care of themselves, leaving me to do my stuff. I went slow, and mostly felt ok. My head is still a little swirly and I’m not feeling super strong. The heat is taking some out of me too. Still, I can function.
So that is what I’m looking at today too. Some stuff with my local auctioneer, if I can swing it. A doctor appointment for the kid. Maybe some phone work for me because I need to make a couple of appointments too. And I need to get D1 on my AAA card, and do some other business stuff. Bill paying? Yeah, maybe that too. And some listing on ebay. I need to break the log jam of not listing, and build some momentum.
This cold has derailed whatever momentum I had left after vacation interrupted stuff. Life. Overrated.
Oh well. Better suck it up and do some stuff. Summer will be gone before I know it.
Stack something for hurricane season.
nick
Lots of resources exist online for fake hip/butt padding as a DIY project, but the silicon genitals are probably a new thing enabled by De Minimis packets.
Unlike the suspected Castro Jr. you have a Mech Eng degree from a decent school and run a business.
There is room for doubt with Wee Pierre.
He survived the trip to Mar-A-Lago to get the word that he was done, but a hit on the causeway there would have been embarrassing for law enforcement at all levels in Florida as well as Trump’s ex-Mossad security detail.
The PBI airport sits at one end of the causeway with Mar-A-Lago at the other end. The Palm Beach Sheriff’s HQ complex is not far from the airport on the same road.
The Furries I see at cons are big into padding, but DIY for that crowd is supposedly like a rite of passage like homemade Stormtrooper armor among the 501st Legion set.
Which reminds me – Robert Francis is touring the state holding town halls, possibly getting ready to run for Senate again.
Paxton leading Cornyn in polls this far out is not a good thing.
I believe it. Streaming pays very, very little to your average musician. I assume big names get more money. OnlyFans – I don’t get it. Sure, hetero guys like seeing nekkid women, but there is so much free content out there – why would you pay? So, no, also not a lot of money in that…
There was a case here, earlier this year: A woman sent nude photos privately, someone else got ahold of them. She claims they were stolen. More likely, her boyfriend stupidly shared them.
Anyway, some lovely person used AI to make more, and I think even to make videos, and opened an OnlyFans account in her name. So she is an unwilling porn star. The Swiss police say there is nothing they can do, because everything is registered to some shady place abroad.
Waiting for more info. The guy dropped out of the school, and maybe he was bullied. However, at 21 years old, that was years in the past. There has got to be more to the story…
LOL Gruesome is on TV crying tRump started the riots in LA. If that is all the Dumbo’s got, they are finished until a new crop of sheeple are born.
The US music industry committed suicide with Spotify.
Beyond $20 Reeboks and The Pizza Box Dream, my generation worked to set the music free.
Morons. Of course many view John Hughes films as an accurate reflection of our high school years even when they experienced otherwise.
BTW, I didn’t catch it before the screening this weekend, but “Dogma” has a great slam on John Hughes and something people have long suspected about his sudden rise to fame.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJQ_QUFwRzs
As for OnlyFans, everyone wants to be Amouranth, who has a thriving career as an influencer and sells her … well, go do the research yourself.
What I don’t understand, for small bands and musicians: why bother with Spotify? The money is nothing, and I don’t suppose they get a whole lot of publicity. Just…don’t. Have concerts. Sell CDs. Sell downloads. Sell swag.
There’s a nice, local band here (Wintershome). Folk music, lyrics in English, they mostly play to tourists, but the music is nice. They are on Spotify, and I do listen to them there sometimes, but I also bought their CDs.
If someone(s) want(s) to pay $100 a month to see me naked, sign me up. It beats my National Bancshares monthly retirement.
Well, that was strange.
Yesterday the TV would not turn off and remain off. I would turn it off, and within a few seconds it would turn back on. The Xfinity remote wasn’t working to control the TV so I paired the remote, again, and again. Nothing was working consistently. The red LED on the bottom was blinking like the TV was getting a signal from somewhere.
I changed the batteries in the remote. I threw the remote away and got another. (Xfinity gives them away for nothing). I paired again, and again. There was still the problem. I removed all the other remotes from the room. The LED was still blinking like the TV was getting a signal.
The soundbar was also not working. It would turn off with the TV, then back on when the TV turned itself back on. I tried everything I could think of doing. Nothing seemed to work. I just unplugged the TV and went to bed.
This morning everything is working normally, just like it always. I did not have to do anything to make it all work this morning. I did look around to see if Rod Serling was hiding anywhere.
The experiment with MacOS 26 and IOS 26 continues. Some stuff seems OK. The “liquid glass” looks better on the iPhone than on the MacBook. Some stuff is like “WTF” was Apple thinking, or not thinking. I found out that changing the tint or color of icons on the iPhone will cause the phone to get significantly warm for several minutes. That changing apparently takes a lot of CPU as currently designed.
For the most part everything that I do seems to be working. The real app developers have apparently found problems. Stuff that used to work, is now broken. Not new stuff, existing stuff, the some clod programmer at Apple looked at, decided he/she/shim did not like it, and changed it or made it “pretty”. A stupid method.
The LaunchPad (Mr. ATOZ knows this) really sucks. Stuff moves around and now launching requires a double click. The LaunchBar seems OK at this point.
The menu bar is now gone and is replaced by the menu items. It does give the screen the appearance of more space but it also blurs the boundary between the work space and the menu. I am not certain I like it. Especially with the notch still there which now looks even more obnoxious. The menu bar at least partially hid the notch.
There are several items that are “What Was Apple Thinking” that to me seem really stupid. But you know what, Apple never asked me. Maybe they should have. Us old farts coming from Hollerith cards and 80×24 Green CRTS can provide useful input. DOS was good enough back then, it is good enough now.
Open a terminal window and type “wish” to start the Tk interpreter. Let me know what you see.
It is now possible to customize folder icons on MacOS. The color can be changed and Emoji’s added. I wish that the folder icon would behave like Windows and show a preview of the first 1 through 4 files. That really helps with image files. And the icons rather than a blue blob, now look like a folder with a small tab on the upper left.
I did learn a valuable lesson on my W11 virtual machine that I run under Parallels. Once that virtual machine is created, and activated, make a copy on a thumb drive of that virtual machine file. Stash it somewhere and occasionally copy the fresh version. Having to recreate the virtual machine requires a new serial number than what was used before. Someway, somehow, Microsoft’s digital tracking thinks a new virtual machine is a new machine on the same box.
I called Microsoft activation line and explained what happened and they made my activation key work again.
I am also now running weekly Time Machine backups on the MacBook. I never really have in the past as there was nothing on the machine that was not stored somewhere else. I have discovered that with Time Machine I can go back several versions of a file if necessary. I had to do that once and it was handy although not life changing if I could not have done that recovery.
My cordless pool vacuum arrives today. It will be interesting to see how well it works on the pool with the weird design of the pool.
I got a crash and burn screen saying the app terminated unexpectedly. MacOS survived.
That sucks.
Tcl/Tk have been deprecated for a while, but Apple doesn’t have the stones to pull the plug.
I will have to try it on my wife’s Intel MacBook Pro when it updates to MacOS 26.
Apple execs need to walk out of their quarterly cleansing retreat and find that the human/ machine interface has been changed for their rides, starting with the new “butt-crack recognition system” that unlocks the doors and the handy relocation of the brake pedal and rear view mirrors to the trunk by the near uncluttering algorithm. ”
Well, If I was a pro weather liar, I’m sure I’d say something like “The front we expected moved in sooner, and brought significantly cooler temps than we predicted.”
It’s 72F and pounding down rain. Full on t storm with gutter and street filling rain.
——
I’ve eaten, and coffee is in the mug. I was having crazy detailed and coherent dreams before waking. I was in a city, on the street, with my kids, and crowds of street people were swarming them and us. Buildings, people, movements, interactions, all fully realized. Creepy.
——
MS hasn’t made any changes to my win8 install in a long time. It still looks and works just as I expect it to.
Just saying.
——
Same goes for my mint install for the NVR.
——
I’m feeling a little better, still a bit “off” though. Coughing is still intermittent, but can be brutal.
I guess I’m working on indoor stuff today.
n
Nick, looking at the San Antonio weather radar, I see that the storms that hit us about 1AM are now hitting you. We’re now at 74F, but only got about ¾ inches of rain, so we still need more.
Windows 8 support ended a while ago. Unless you have a paid support contract with Microsoft, you won’t see any updates.
I wouldn’t suggest running Windows 8 on a laptop in public, but on your home network behind a NAT, you are probably fine indefinitely.
My Fedora stalls haven’t seen any big interface changes in the last five years. At least not that I noticed.
That version of Ubuntu under the Mint might be EOL.
you won’t see any updates.
– and that is how I like it.
I don’t do anything “in public” except on the phone.
What I haven’t given enough thought to is that the kids DO. And they click on anything. While their school lappys were pretty well locked down, their iphones are on my network, and their new personal computers are too.
We were using Circle as a net nanny, but it stopped working and W did not tell me. I think I need to do some updating and major changes to my home network.
I’m thinking vlans, guest wifi, etc. Keep the kids and any IOT off my core network.
It’s very easy to have everything in the same bucket so that everything is reachable and shared, but it’s probably very foolish. The kids’ devices shouldn’t be trusted at all.
n
>>There are several items that are “What Was Apple Thinking” that to me seem really stupid. But you know what, Apple never asked me.
Change for the sake of change. “New and Improved”
iPhones are not a problem unless Apple has to permit third party app stores or, God forbid, side loaded apps.
If the PCs are Macs, you are probably fine there as well.
Well this sucks….
https://www.latimes.com/obituaries/story/2025-06-11/brian-wilson-dead-beach-boys
The first song that popped into my head was the Barenaked Ladies’ “Brian Wilson”, not a Beach Boys track.
RIP troubled genius.
Now Mike Love can claim he wrote all the songs. Insecure ashho
Well this sucks….
https://www.latimes.com/obituaries/story/2025-06-11/brian-wilson-dead-beach-boys
Yup.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/brian-wilson-beach-boys-dead-1234810073/
Totally awesome songs like
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apBWI6xrbLY (Good Vibrations)
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHRJCcCYAF4 (My 409)
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwgGuadsqyo (Little Deuce Coupe)
Unlike the suspected Castro Jr. you have a Mech Eng degree from a decent school and run a business.
No, the three businesses run me. I just steal XXXXX take money from them.
“Newsom & CA Lawmakers Take Funds from Police to Fund Rioters”
https://www.independentsentinel.com/newsom-ca-lawmakers-take-funds-from-police-to-fund-rioters/
“California State Rep. Carl DeMaio is fighting for Prop 36 which stiffens penalties for serious crimes (see below). What he is getting from Gavin Newsom is the opposite. Gov. Gavin ‘Pomade’ Newsom and California Democrats just released a budget that cuts law enforcement. To make matters worse, it gives those funds to groups behind the violent Los Angeles riots.”
Get out of California now. It is going to get way worse.
Hat tip to:
https://thelibertydaily.com/
Coming soon to Texas.
Coming soon to Texas.
I hope that you are wrong. Just remember, we have lots of guns in Texas and are not afraid to use them. I have been inside people’s homes that could outfit an entire company.
Now cannons and grenades, we are short on those.
“Follow The Money”
https://areaocho.com/follow-the-money/
“The riots in LA are being sponsored by Socialist groups, the Democrat Party using USAID money, and the Chinese Communist Party. If true, this is a blatant insurrection. If Trump really wants to get his lame duck on, he should put Federal investigators on to exposing this, so he can make the case to declare California and Oregon as being in a state of insurrection.”
“Any Americans caught accepting or donating money to the cause should then be arrested and charged with insurrection, and that includes the Governor AND Maxine Waters. Wouldn’t having them barred from office under the 14th Amendment be ironic? It’s self executing, after all. Isn’t that what they were saying for years?”
Yes, what DM said.
“Impossible”
https://areaocho.com/impossible-4/
“I was told that mass shootings only happen in the United States, because of our lax gun laws.”
DM is on fire today !
“War Brewing? U.S. Prepares for the Departure of All Nonessential Staff From Bahrain, Iraq, and Kuwait Embassies”
https://thelibertydaily.com/war-brewing-u-s-prepares-departure-all-nonessential/
Is the entire world on fire ?
The pix of the shooter look like Trans or non binary issues on top of the isolation, to me.
No history of SSRI use so far. Where is dad though?
N
Is the whole world on fire?
Yes.
Time of great change, global realignment. Lucky us.
N
Coming soon to Texas.
BTW, when Trump finishes deporting the 40 million illegals in the USA, Texas will look way different with 10 million less people in it. I suspect that many of the Asians in Texas are illegals.
“Trump Unveils Plan to Scrap Power Plant Pollution Controls”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-unveils-plan-scrap-biden-181309433.html
“(Bloomberg) — The Trump administration revealed plans for repealing mandates that force power plants to curb greenhouse gas emissions, representing its most significant action yet to reverse policies combating climate change.”
The proposal by the Environmental Protection Agency, which could be finalized later this year, is being coupled with a plan to ease limits on mercury and other toxic air pollution from the facilities.”
Carbon Dioxide is not pollution, it is the river of life.
“Trump tariffs live updates: Bessent suggests pause extension, US-China trade framework takes shape”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/live/trump-tariffs-live-updates-bessent-suggests-pause-extension-us-china-trade-framework-takes-shape-200619261.html
“Earlier on Wednesday, US and China agreed to a framework and implementation plan to ease tariff and trade tensions on Tuesday. President Trump signaled his approval, saying the deal was “done” pending sign-off from him and Chinese President Xi Jinping.”
“Trump said the US would impose a total of 55% tariffs on Chinese goods. Yahoo Finance’s Ben Werschkul reports, citing a White House official, that Trump arrived at that figure by adding together an array of preexisting duties and not any new tariffs.”
“Another blogger gets it”
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2025/06/another-blogger-gets-it.html
“I’ve written often about inflation and its dangers in these pages, possibly so much that some readers have wandered off to read something more entertaining. Oh, well . . . can’t please everybody.”
“Now Francis Porretto does some calculations, and comes up with an interesting answer.”
Yup, that is about the average real inflation rate that I am seeing over the last 30 years. Horrendous.
“Talen to sell Amazon 1.9 GW from Susquehanna nuclear plant”
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/talen-amazon-aws-susquehanna-nuclear-data-centert/750440/
“Talen Energy has entered into a 1,920-MW power purchase agreement with Amazon Web Services to supply data centers in Pennsylvania from the independent power producer’s majority-owned Susquehanna nuclear power plant, the company said Wednesday.”
“Under the PPA, Talen’s existing 300-MW co-location arrangement with AWS will shift to a “front of the meter” framework that doesn’t require Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approval, according to Houston-based Talen. The company expects the transition will occur next spring after transmission upgrades are finished.”
Yup, the data centers are stepping in front of the retail customers since they are 24×7 power needs. By doing this, the data centers are cutting their power cost in half by getting rid of the T&D (transmission and distribution) charges.
BTW, as far as I can tell, we are going to have thousands of SMRs (small modular reactors) across the USA in 20 years. SMRs are so much cheaper than the old huge base load nuclear reactors since they do not have containment domes.
Microsoft cut a deal to reopen the undamaged reactor at Three Mile Island.
Duke Energy still has a license to run nuclear reactors at Crystal River in Florida. The only way new reactors wouldn’t happen there is if the cancer that is The Villages creeps closer to the coast.
The new seat of Republican power in Florida is The Villages.
“Now cannons and grenades, we are short on those.”
As far as you know.
Toronto will open a black-only homeless shelter
https://torontosun.com/news/local-news/black-mandated-homeless-shelter-on-way-city-hall-confirms
What do you bet that crime statistics on individual shelters will be mysteriously unavailable?
>>BTW, as far as I can tell, we are going to have thousands of SMRs (small modular reactors) across the USA in 20 years. SMRs are so much cheaper than the old huge base load nuclear reactors since they do not have containment domes.
Plus, they can all be run autonomously by
monkeysChatGPT.BREAKING: David Hogg OUT at DNC
https://hotair.com/headlines/2025/06/11/breaking-david-hogg-out-at-dnc-n3803706
Annulled to previous vote 294-99 for being white.
File suit, David, please.
The problem with that Mint version long term will be the flaky NTFS driver.
I built a Docker image of that version and ran it on Windows a few years ago as a science experiment. The image was big but it worked.
“Abbott Deploys National Guard To San Antonio Ahead Of Wednesday Night ICE Protest”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/abbott-deploys-national-guard-san-antonio-ahead-wednesday-night-ice-protest
“Setting himself in stark contrast to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has ordered a contingent of National Guard soldiers to San Antonio ahead of protests against the apprehensions of illegal aliens planned for Wednesday night and Saturday.”
“”Peaceful protests are part of the fabric of our nation, but Texas will not tolerate the lawlessness we have seen in Los Angeles,” Abbott’s press secretary said in a Tuesday night statement. “Anyone engaging in acts of violence or damaging property will be swiftly held accountable to the full extent of the law.””
It is getting real out there.
I was bored one day a month or so ago and looked at Facebook Marketplace. Some wacky prices there. Today it recommended a tiny house.
I’m not in the market, I was just looking. I saw a couple of Starlink systems. Used. One was bought in Italy. So it needs a US powercord. Only $1200. The other Starlink was “marked down” to $600.
I paid $448 with the added wall mount and sales tax for a new system. And no need to drive to Killeen.
I spotted a sale for 140 movies. DVDs with 25 BDs. Marked down to $180. That seems like a good deal. I looked to learn more about the seller. Cool! The discs were re-listed four days ago for $150.
I’m meeting her at a gas station tomorrow. Looking at the pictures, I have a couple already. Who doesn’t have Top Gun? There are several more I’ve heard of but have not watched.
Looks like a good variety. Good price, too.
The Barenaked Ladies in their prime performing “Brian Wilson”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_jRuZauBoU
Ironically, depression and drugs ended the musical genius of collaboration of Stephen Page and Ed Robertson which produced the song along with many others, ending with … sigh … the theme to “The Big Bang Theory”.
Much like “The Beach Boys”, you can still see “The Barenaked Ladies”, but without the magic of Page and Robertson.
Finally, SOMETHING I was ahead of the curve on! We abandoned Cacafornia 5 years ago.
It’s been getting worse for years. I left in 2003…
n
Did auction stuff this morning. Then the afternoon was spent taking D1 to the dr office to get checked out after her fainting episode. No one seems particularly worried at the moment. Blood work will answer a couple of simple questions. A referral to neuro will rule out anything major.
Dinner was some 2 year old steaks from the freezer. They were delicious.
Trying for an early bedtime as I still feel sick.
n
– “rising debt COSTS”
free money is over. as predicted, lots of big borrowers are having trouble rolling over their fat piles of debt.
It’s gonna get worse.
n
Finally, SOMETHING I was ahead of the curve on! We abandoned Cacafornia 5 years ago.
My father interviewed at Berkeley and Cal Davis for a professorship in 1963. My mother says they got a bad vibe from California and chose OU instead.
– “rising debt COSTS”
free money is over. as predicted, lots of big borrowers are having trouble rolling over their fat piles of debt.
It’s gonna get worse.
I guess that the tide is going out according to Greg.
– “rising debt COSTS”
free money is over. as predicted, lots of big borrowers are having trouble rolling over their fat piles of debt.
It’s gonna get worse.
My son still maintains that the housing market is going to drop by at least a half across the nation. There are way too many houses sitting empty being held by Zillow, etc.
“Is America Vulnerable to a Ukraine-Style Drone Attack by the CCP?”
https://www.theepochtimes.com/article/is-america-vulnerable-to-a-ukraine-style-drone-attack-by-the-ccp-5867854?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=TheLibertyDaily
“As a new form of warfare develops, the United States is especially vulnerable to large-scale drone attacks, according to multiple experts.”
Eeep !