Today we celebrate not the day, but the anniversary of our Independence from an oppressive and distant monarchy. The irony of our current government’s policies on taxation and control isn’t lost on me. Celebrate what we had, and could have again.
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Supposed to be partly sunny and hot today at the BOL. The local radio station said so. High of 94F and low of 74F. It was cooler than that when I went to bed. Several storm cells moved through the area while I was driving up and cooled everything down. The day that started hot and humid in Houston, ended up cool and wet at the BOL.
I did finally make it to the BOL yesterday. I got a bit of a slow start, but did get loaded up and on my way. Then it took 5 hours to do the ~2 hour trip. Traffic was nuts. At one point I moved 6 miles in one hour. And it was raining the whole time. The audiobook I picked up to pass the time turned out to be a woke piece of crep, unbelievable in its banality. It wasn’t the witchcraft fantasy the title suggested, but only a NYFC woke liberal recounting his life, and read by the author in the most ponderous way possible. He read every sentence as a series of phrases with a pause in between each one. Picture a cut rate, knock off David Sedaris and you will be close. I listened for over an hour because I couldn’t really believe it could be that bad. It was.
Today, I’ll mow when it dries out a bit. And we’ll put up the bunting and flags, if it isn’t raining. I may even put up some colored lights around the dock if I have time and the inclination. I’ll probably unload the truck too, although that can wait if I have Holiday stuff to do. Later we’ll eat, maybe be part of the boat parade, then in the evening we’ll have a front row seat to a really good fireworks show. Some people were testing stuff last night. The semi-pro stuff is really good.
We’re gonna turn money into noise and smoke!
It’s all part of being in the community. Stack up some community, you’ll need it.
nick
Decommissioned and flown to Space Center Houston, where it is on permanent display.
A Shuttle is not going to Houston easily. I remember an entire episode of Nova devoted to moving Endeavour to the California Science Center.
The NASA Administrator under the last Adminstration, Bill Nelson, was further along Dementia Trail than Biden when appointed after losing reelection to his Senate seat in Florida in 2020.
Nelson was the contractor cabal’s best friend, to the point that they arranged a Shuttle ride for him in the 80s.
An entire generation of NASA employees has spent half of their careers tied to the SLS soup bowl, building the vehicle and the infrastructure. The rocket may fly one more time and then the bureaucrats will spend the rest of their productive (cough) years peeling the tooling out of the three VAB high bays the program owned for the last 15 years as well as dismantling the three (!) launch towers currently rusting in Florida.
As Dr. Pournelle repeatedly pointed out, the agency is full employment for space geeks, and everyone working for the Federal Government has a sacred soup bowl to protect.
Don’t assume SLS is Florida pork either. The vehicle’s main assembly facility is in Louisiana, home of Speaker Johnson.
Big pork for Huntsville, AL too, Marshall Space Flight Center lives here…
Yeah, Katie Britt has stepped into Shelby’s shoes filling the NASA soup bowls.
That’s really old pork. Operation Paperclip stashed the SS rocket geeks up there 80 years ago to build the Saturn V under Von Braun, and the largess has been flowing ever since.
The jet engine guys went to West Palm Beach and built Pratt.
NASA only has … 30 … ? … flyable Shuttle engines to recycle into SLS. IIRC they are stashed and being refurbished at Marshall.
I’m sure whatever NASA builds next will go through North Alabama.
https://www.jalopnik.com/1901761/big-beautiful-bill-steal-space-shuttle-smithsonian/
Okay kids, raise your hand if you can point out any differences…
The shuttle, on the runway, is 122 feet long, 57 feet tall, and 78 feet wide.
The average interstate highway lane is 12 feet wide. Most interstates are 2×2 outside of major cities. The code-minimum interstate overpass height is 16 feet, the national average is only 20.
I have a sauz-all they can borrow …
Find the Nova special about moving Endeavor.
78F and rising. Light overcast. Damp as a fat girl’s thighs.
Bacon is in the pan and coffee is dripping slowly, so hooray for that.
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From what little attention I’ve given it, I’d bet that whatever porkfest hits Trump’s desk will bear little resemblance to what he proposed. Wasn’t that Musk’s main complaint? The Legislature is going to dick slap T and remind him that The Executive doesn’t write bills.
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Like the movie version of Starship Troopers, the title will have been the only thing they kept.
n
It just occurred to me that it would be fun to name a dog “Max von Fido”.
n
Living with Chihuahua’s for a month is a bit like a canine version of ‘50 First Dates’, they are utterly incapable of learning and retaining things.
My exercise in downloading a “snapshot” of my NAS backup from my BackBlaze B2 Bucket succeeded.
A couple of caveats you might want to know. B2 Bucket isn’t the same as a computer backup, which means you have to prepare a “snapshot” and download it (or pay for a drive) to get the documents. It took a while, but I got the “snapshot” downloaded. I didn’t realize it was a zipped file of the proprietary Synology Hyper Backup. That meant I had to unzip onto another drive (I have another bare drive dock). Then use Synology’s free Backup Explorer (version for Win/Mac/Linux) to view and restore files. It worked and I restored a couple of files to my Desktop. If you have a new Synology, you should be able to populate it with all your files.
Keeping about 2T on Backblaze’s Bucket (including nightly updates) is about $7/mo.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14875891/guadalupe-river-bursts-banks-drowns-people-disappear-texas.html
My wife’s cousin is safe in Kerrville, but lots of people aren’t. River came up ~30ft overnight. W is worried about all the campers and vacationers on the river for the holiday.
Despite the wall of water, the reservoir lakes it will dump into will not need to release any water because they are already very low.
n
Living with Chihuahua’s for a month is a bit like a canine version of ‘50 First Dates’, they are utterly incapable of learning and retaining things.
– I’ve had two dogs now that were half chihuahua, and the CAN learn things, they just prefer not to… they are basically cats in tiny dog bodies.
n
Here you go via Knuckledraggin…
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFOY0LY3EF8YKxvZYOKG_bQEWaZPoT6O4T65rjWbubxlsu_e7beV-O5gxO6IHQDqBW9mMcJN0jNfslc1Oz_XpXFrLpLiOtHknqQSScBJpCw2LWqiwqz50y4OLWdCc2nqHD4ElnC0nrGahu2A7s2qvmZ5pUR1k4Ln9SKScaJtOcJ97GAA8hyphenhypheno2jQmku0bU/s640/daily_gifdump_5033_58.gif
Oh, and have a great 4th!
Out futzing with the swamp cooler purge pump.
I thought I had enough of an air gap, but it was small enough to be filled up by debris and caused a siphon effect.
It is always something.
W says there are several sleep away camps that are popular with families from our part of Houston in the path of the flooded river.
The local facebook groups are making it clear that there are missing kids.
n
We are moving Dad to Hospice.
The gall stone removal didn’t happen?
More prayers sent for your Dad, you and your family.
I still wish him and your whole family the best.
My aunt died in February of 2022 at the age of 100. Her last two years were rocky, and we spent a lot of time visiting and helping her. I have forgotten a lot of detail, but she was in hospice a couple times, and hospice was actually a good thing that prolonged her life with better quality than conventional treatments. We were told that hospice has more latitude for treatment options, because the patient is not expected to survive. Seems counterintuitive, but in today’s bureaucratic situations, I suppose it is not surprising.
The other thing we learned was that slight changes to the staff, such as a newly assigned doctor’s specialty or a different treatment department, could make big differences. This might have been related to her institution, which was a Kaiser Permanente HMO. Don’t assume that all caregivers and departments communicate with each other.
I am still not a fan of HMOs, and my wife and I have never been a member of one. Mostly, however, this was a result of our remote location and nothing else. We have anecdotal evidence of both great and poor HMO results.
My point is, never just go along with what the bureaucracy dictates. As has been pointed out here, even nonprofit institutions do not have the patient’s outcome as their first priority. Some assistance by the family or another advocate can sometimes make an important difference.
I have noticed the term “soup bowl” here starting a couple of months ago, maybe longer. Early on, I saw some discussion, and figured it was just a new idiom for “rice bowl.”
Finally, I got enough curiosity to do some searching. I found lots of references to rice bowl, and almost none to soup bowl for the meaning of a jealously guarded resource, program, or budget.
Well, another (shallow) rabbit hole leading to a fun fact. Pedantic? Who me?
The gall stone removal didn’t happen?
No. We never could get his INR lower than 4 for more than a couple of hours. His INR has been as high as 19.
There are 20 gall stones in his abdomen blocking everything. His liver is running backwards and none of his natural clotting factor is going into his blood.
He needs continuous dialysys for a month or two to get his blood cleam enough for any surgery.
That program I found the other day to remove junkware from your phone? I bought it. Mostly to see what it recommends as Bloatware to remove in the levels above basic. $10.80 with tax. I used Paypal and spent some free money . I had that $42 from the Facebook settlement sitting there. I have cleared more than 400 MB off of the phone. So far. When you delete a program you have the option to save it. I have 400 MB saved on my PC. I don’t know how much space the un-saved programs used.
Some things it recommends removing are things I use. If I understand correctly Google Photos shows pictures that have been backed up to my so-called free 15 GB space at Google. Sure, so Google Photos is redundant. Sure, it wants to sell prints. I might buy a few prints someday. Sure, it uses 1.2 GB of space. But I like the “this day in history” feature. I can look in Gallery, my phone’s photo app, the pictures are there. Google Photos sorts the pictures into a themed slideshow. It picks the theme, I’m just looking.
Other things it recommends removing are things I use very seldom. Or I have never used…. but maybe I will someday want to edit a video right there on my phone. After I someday take a video. Options, right?
I found one that sounded good. Caller Name ID. Added to the phone by Verizon. I had disabled it a long time ago for some reason. On a second look, why not try it? It’s deleted now. I’m not paying $2.99 a month to get caller ID for my three or four weekly spam calls.
Something touched a nerve and my battery was draining quicker than normal. Wi-fi is off and yet used 8% of the battery. Oh, it’s our old sneaky friend. He hides at Settings / Lock screen & security / Location / Scanning. Yes, Wi-Fi scanning was turned on to “Improve location for apps and services by scanning Wi-Fi networks even when Wi-Fi is off”.
What part of “off” is difficult to understand? Probably designed by folks that have trouble with “shall not be infringed”.
The phone seems to run fine. Maybe a bit smoother. Like your PC after running defrag. I can’t really tell. But I haven’t broken anything. Yet. Bricking isn’t a fear.
I have a couple of spare phones. Both LG V20 like my phone. I have his as a third choice because the power button acts gummy. I have a new and never used beyond powering up to see if it works phone. The Spare.
I have noticed the term “soup bowl” here starting a couple of months ago, maybe longer. Early on, I saw some discussion, and figured it was just a new idiom for “rice bowl.”
Finally, I got enough curiosity to do some searching. I found lots of references to rice bowl, and almost none to soup bowl for the meaning of a jealously guarded resource, program, or budget.
I searched for “soup bowl metaphor.” Quora served up this:
A search for “rice bowl” yielded this from urban dictionary:
OTOH, searching for “soup bowl” on urban dictionary yielded results so gross I’m refraining from supplying a link. 🙁 Search at your own risk!
Paraphrasing The Princess Bride: “I do not think the phrase means what you think it means.”
Verstraten’s research was widely reported on in the early 2000s, a simple Google search shows. And it was not a study of the Hep B vaccine, but of all vaccines with thimerosal. Which has been removed from all vaccines for those under 6. And 6 years is well after signs of autism appear.
That inaccuracy is typical of what RFK and his ilk do. A pox on them.
I believe the term “soup bowl” bounced around the Death Star when I worked there.
The term “rice bowl” can be even more problematic.
After Sally Ride passed and the revelations came out about her being Kutyna’s source on the Shuttle O-rings issue during the Rogers Commission hearings, I saw “protecting the soup bowl” used on the Interwebz in reference to Feynman using his credibility to bring the problem public while preserving Ride’s retirement income doing speaking gigs.
Maybe distateful, but not gross.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Soup+Bowl
You were warned.
Well, I done did it.
The Ford dealership got in a new F-150 2025 Red King Ranch truck. It was what I was looking or about as close as I could get. The factory had sprayed the bed, black, not something I wanted. I would have preferred to do it at Line-X and have done it in red.
The trade-in for my old F-150 was reasonable. Based on KBB and other sites. I might have gotten more with private sale but I would lose the $1,743 tax rebate I got with trading in. Dealing with an individual on a sale can sometimes be risky when the check is found to be bogus six months later.
The dealer got it in on July 3rd, I bought on July 3rd.
It is the V6 Ecoboost Hybrid version with the power outlets in the back. Something I will probably never use. I had to get 4WD as that trim level does not come in 2WD. Neither does the Platinum trip that I originally sought. It seemed the difference between the two trim levels is about $6K and some badging with the Platinum costing more.
I can’t wait until winter and it snows so I can activate the 4WD. And stay home. I doubt I will ever use the 4WD.
There are so many options on this truck. I spent two hours this morning tweaking settings and I am still missing a couple of settings that I want.
There is no traditional starter motor. The hybrid motor is used to start the motor when needed. Coming down the hill into my little city the motor shut off completely and it was all electric. The A/C compressor is also run by an electric motor. When the motor is stopped at a stop light, the A/C is still blowing cold. The auto A/C has three settings for three different levels of auto. I have no idea what that really does.
The VA back pay turned out to be significantly more than I calculated. It is sitting in the VA queue to be sent to the credit union. It is the strangest feeling getting the money. Almost like I was a two champion on Jeopardy.
Did I get a good deal? Was I paying the dealer more than I should have. My research indicates maybe/probably not/ or maybe so. Ford employee pricing was ending in a couple of days so I needed to take advantage of that now. I loathe shopping for vehicles.
There was one hitch. The dealer, even fronting the loan application for my credit union could not pull my credit as the file from all three vendors are frozen. I had to unfreeze one to get the approval. Monday I have to go the credit union and finalize the loan with them.
The dealer gets a kickback from the credit union for doing the loan. I told the dealer I would pay the loan off in two weeks. The dealer asked me to at least do three payments otherwise their money from the CU gets cuts. TFB. I agreed anyway. But I will pay off almost the entire loan, leaving the last three payments. The dealer never asked which payments.
>>We are moving Dad to Hospice.
@lynn, sounds like you are doing what’s best for all concerned.
Stay strong.
I had the living room floor replaced. That interlocking plank stuff. I have a box of planks, minus one, left. Which annoys me greatly. Waste not, etc.
I’m going to call to ask about getting the hallway done. I really expect to feel raped by the price. But that leaves just bedrooms with carpet.
Earliest reference to “Rice Bowl” that I can personally remember is in 1966’s The Sand Pebbles, where Steve McQueen, AKA “Jake”, tries to do some work on the engine himself, and is told it is one of the native (Chinese) workers jobs.
In the book (which I admit I haven’t read in 40 years) I recall a scene: all the Chinese crew have left the ship and the small American contingent aren’t enough to keep it spic-n-span. They do keep the area just outside the captain’s cabin and the bridge and corridor leading there clean, so that he can pretend not to notice the general poor state of maintenance.
That’s actually a good thing, normally you want to keep a box of floor tiles, or roof shingles, just in case you have damage and need repairs.
I have a friend who had to have repairs done under his slab, and the beautiful 24″ stone tiles could not be matched. The insurance company wanted to go cheap, but he held their feet to the fire for five-digit replacement costs.
“Trump announces UFC fight on White House lawn to honor 250th anniversary of American independence”
https://www.oann.com/newsroom/trump-announces-ufc-fight-on-white-house-lawn-to-honor-250th-anniversary-of-american-independence/
Will Trump stand on the WH lawn with two machine guns blazing to open the festivities ?
Shades of the movie “Ideocracy”. Highly recommended.
@Ray: Congratulations!
Sounds like a gorgeous vehicle.
You know, he might be on to something: a Thunderdome style showdown between Zelensky and Putin would save a lot of lives.
I was watching the news this morning, Kyiv looked like London during the Blitz. I expect it’s just as pointless an assault as the original.
Yeah. I grok that. But this stuff locks together. I don’t think it is like saving a few ceramic tiles where one can dig out the old grout to replace a broken tile.
I could be wrong. Would not be the first time.
“Supreme Court Rebukes Rogue Judge for Defying Deportation Ruling”
https://resistthemainstream.com/rogue-judge-hit-with-devastating-news-amid-trump-immigration-battle/
Arrest the judge and charge it with impersonating a SCOTUS justice.
The comedian needs to get a clue.
Ping Ken for a welfare check…
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The Guadalupe flooding is really horrible. People are posting pics of their missing kids on FB with phone numbers to call if they are found.
W is particularly distraught over the little girls missing from one of the camps. As a troop leader doing camping trips with her girls, its an especially bad ‘what if’.
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We’re currently getting rained out. I got most of the yard mowed when a storm cell blew in. Lots of rain and wind, then it died down to just a steady rain. No fireworks tonight. Hopefully tomorrow will be drier.
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Tried to get out on the water during the afternoon, but the trickle charger was dead, and so was the battery. It was an old, weak battery which is why the charger was on it, We must have gotten a nearby lightning strike that killed it, because the dockhouse UPS is dead too, and I don’t think we’ve lost power this week. My alarm clock was still set…
W ran to walmart and bought a replacement. I have 3 deep cycle batteries and while two of them show 8v, the smart charger thinks they are full, so I believe that means a bad cell. The third was 2v. They are all 10 years past their date, but were holding charges. I think the heat finally killed them. Time to find some more batteries in the auctions, or start budgeting for new…
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I’ve got the garage oven heating up for a pork loin roast dinner. Time to put that in. Having the heat outside the house is really handy.
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@lynn, I hope they can ease your dad’s discomfort, and I hope he can return to health.
n
@Lynn: Hospice is generally the last stop on the life journey. Their job is to make the person comfortable and ease into the final rest stop. Most of them are very good at their job. I am praying for the best, which may be your dad passing on.
There is so much stuff on that truck I am still figuring it out. CarPlay is OK. Except for phone calls. The iPhone routes the calls to my hearing aids rather than the car system. That is an iPhone problem that I do not of a solution.
Cameras everywhere. Front (more than one), side, back. Backing up and the view on the screen is of the front, back and both sides as if looking down from above, plus the usual backup camera. Clever.
Drove down to Atlanta as I need 1,000 miles on the truck before towing. Went to our friend’s to see their remodeled bathroom. Of the 200 miles, 15 of those were electric only.
The truck now has a true oil pressure gauge rather than an idiot gauge in my last truck. I get temperature, and fuel level as non-changeable gauges. The two middle gauges can be configured to display different information, including a digital readout of coolant and transmission temperature.
Massaging seats, why yes, we have those. They will be nice on long trips although I did not use them on this trip.
The truck has BlueCruise, Ford’s auto drive feature. I turned it on and the screen displayed “Hands Off”, and I did. The truck did OK but I just did not feel comfortable. I felt like a passenger. The lane keeping is not perfect and there is a slight wandering I found annoying. I don’t think I will be using that feature. It might be OK in the wide open places of Texas, Wyoming, etc. but in traffic, nope.
I did use the dynamic cruise control. A big thumbs up for that option. I used that almost the entire trip and the truck would slow down for someone in front of me, then when I changed to an open lane, the speed resumed.
I do need to get non-polarized sunglasses due to the “Heads Up” display. It is dimmed or can disappear entirely if I tilt my head. Rather than get new sunglasses I will order new lenses for my Ray-Ban sunglasses. Much cheaper than buying new sunglasses.
The Max-Tow package includes a 36 gallon fuel tank. I only used a third of the tank on the way down, averaging about 23 MPG. The Miles-To-Empty takes a while to calculate. The gauge read 503 MTE, then several miles later, 514 MTE, stayed there for several miles and has since dropped quite a bit. I suspect it will adjust over a couple of fuel fill-ups.
Is that for me? I’m touched! Thank you, but we’re fine. In the “NextDoor” app, we’re in the HILL TOP Acres” subdivision, which might indicate our elevation.
@Lynn, wishing the best for your dad and all your family.
Our friends have a son that one of my son’s best friend. That son married a lady that had two kids, 9 and 5. I knew both of the kids and photographed them in sports in high school. The two boys become like real sons to our friend’s son and they thought of him as a father and grandchildren to our friends.
The oldest boy graduated four years ago and went through electrician prentice through the local union and got his journeyman license. He seemed to have it all together.
Today we learned that he shot himself intentionally and died. I have no idea why or what happened. Our friends are devastated as they thought of him as one of their grandchildren. I am stunned and shocked.
A sad day indeed.
@lynn, I hope they can ease your dad’s discomfort, and I hope he can return to health.
The hospice is there to help Dad move on to the next life in Heaven.
Dad never got better and got far worse. He stopped speaking on Monday. His kidneys shut down yesterday. The 3rd dialysys did nothing. He groaned all day today.
The ICU staff made a point to stop by and tell us that we were doing the right thing. The ICU doc said he would not subject his father to this.
The hospice will administer pain drugs and that is morphine to make him comfortable. He still has the ruptured gall bladder rotting in his abdomen. He still has 20 gall stones in his abdomen blocking everthing including making his liver run backwards.
We will meet again in the next life.
The Ford dealership got in a new F-150 2025 Red King Ranch truck. It was what I was looking or about as close as I could get. The factory had sprayed the bed, black, not something I wanted. I would have preferred to do it at Line-X and have done it in red.
DUDE !!!!!
I am jealous. Red too !
I expect a report every 5,000 miles of mileage, mpg, aches and pains, etc.
Oh, there is already one major ache and pain. The cost. That junk of steel was $74K.
It does ride a little rougher than my old ’14 F-150 although that may be subjective. I suspect the 4WD is part of that ride difference.
I have been lucky with the VA. I got a significant back-pay in March which came in time to replace the A/C and heating unit in the house. A proactive replacement as the unit was well beyond EOL and Murphy, being an optimist, the unit would fail on the hottest day when the A/C guys are backed up two weeks.
This major back pay, into six figures, comes at a time when I was thinking about a new truck. With employee pricing the cost came down on the new vehicles. The timing was good.
With this influx I will give my 10% to the church, blow a bunch on the truck, and stash the rest.
Fireworks have started… Five dogs plus five Thunder Shirts, so far so good!
yeah, fireworks started with the end of civil twilight here. The Chihuahuas are kenneled inside.
Because of the rain it’s really quiet here. I think I’ll go down and have a tiny little fire and read for a bit
.
n
On second thought, it’s already midnight and I need a shower. I yearn to go down because it’s only 74F and how many nice nights are there going to be this summer? The rain stopped and the moon is out…
but bed is also calling me. And that’s the best choice.
n
How do you open a safe when your dad is gone and your mother has forgotten the combination ?
Both mechanical and electric ?
I figured that I would grab my Browning Auto .308 that tried to break my shoulder in 1979.
Oh, there is already one major ache and pain. The cost. That junk of steel was $74K.
Only the frame is steel. The cab and bed are aluminum.
Dad is in the hospice in Victoria. $6,000 per week but Medicare is paying.
He won’t be there long, his breathing is very ragged. He is exhausted.
Mom is going to buy two lots in the Port Lavaca cemetary on north side of town that the hurricane storm surge does not reach.