And it’s hot again. Overcast most of yesterday,but still hot, and humid to match. Probably got more of that coming today. Now it’s really summer.
So I did some things. Drove around, met with people, put stuff in my truck. Took it out in various places. Moved some stuff around in the house. Put a thing back together for sale on ebay. Went out for dinner. We get a 25% discount because D2 isn’t here… which is one way of looking at it, I guess.
Because of reasons, detailed yesterday, I don’t have a new phone yet. My old phone battery is so swollen it pushed the back off my phone… it’s about twice as thick as it should be. Since I don’t want any fires in my pants, I think I’ll find an old phone to swap my sim to today. It’s seriously scary how swollen it is and I didn’t realize because I just thought something was wrong with the case. Yikes.
I did change my phone plan to a “senior” 55 plus plan. It’s $40/month instead of $72, and has unlimited talk, text, and data- although they can throttle me if the network is congested. I typically use 2-3 GB of my current 4GB plan per month, so unlimited won’t help much. I can add one of the kids on a second line, both will drop to $35, and the kid will appreciate the unlimited data. I wouldn’t have known about the plan if T Mobile didn’t send me a flyer for their 55+ plan, which prompted me to call ATT. ATT will just let you keep paying higher rates even if they have newer, cheaper plans. There are a couple of small differences, Autopay has to draft from a bank account instead of credit card, and I can’t get paper bills anymore. Despite the payment and billing changes, saving ~$360 a year seems worth it.
FWIW, if we change the ATT fiber bill to my name we’ll save another $18/mo because of the bundle. We’re currently on the cheapest and least capable plan, 1 gig a month for $89. Speedof.me says we’re getting 750/500 at my desk. The router test says 920/900. If there’s no reason not to change the names, I’ll get the fiber in my name and bring the savings to ~$500 a year. That’s worth doing.
Today I might have a pickup if I won anything from an estate auction. I’ll know if an invoice shows up in my email. There wasn’t anything when I went to bed. That’s good, because I’ve decided I’m spending too much time driving around picking stuff up. That’s where all my time is going and it contributes to me not getting stuff done. I can change that. I think. Dunno if I’m strong enough to resist the pull of a bargain. I’ll try to start limiting which days I do pickups.
It’s tempting to buy all the things, since I stack all the things, but ultimately I need time to assimilate some of the things, and to actually stack the things.
All while working to improve my situation… get to work!
nick
Optimizing internet/phone costs is well worth doing. We had stayed with the premium provider we used for business. But, really, why?
I started looking around a couple of months ago. Turns out that the same provider has a discount brand. Just as cheap as the knockoff services, but usng the premium provider’s infrastructure. Likely with lower priority, but I can live with that to save over 1k/year.
I switched my wife’s phone to Mint mobile a little over a year ago, went from just under $100/month on Verizon to $192/ YEAR. Crazy savings. Also was able to buy coverage for our UK trip and it was very cheap. I don’t have to worry about my son’s phone, as my dad pays for it (he wants to) and mine is provided by work. I haven’t had a cell phone payment for myself for at least two and a half decades.
——————-
Yesterday I started replacing all the light switches in the house to Leviton Decora switches. The bathrooms were already done when I installed timers on the fans, and the two styles cause minor OCD issues. I am not planning on replacing the outlets at this time.
Well that was enough to make things clench this morning.
The Colbert crazy continues.
I don’t think a better piece of real estate exists in LA than the location of the Writers Guild of America headquarters building at 3rd and Fairfax, catercorner to the Farmers Market.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/writers-guild-calls-ny-attorney-195629102.html
Contact the phone manufacturer if the battery is still the original cell shipped with the device.
They may replace the phone even if it is no longer under warranty.
On the positive side: If you decide to replace the battery yourself, that will make taking the case apart a lot easier 😛
That’s only half a joke – it is also true. I had the same issue with the tablet that lives in our kitchen, and having part of the case already loose made getting the rest off a lot easier. I used a heat gun gently to soften the rest of the glue. After that, followed a YouTube tutorial for the rest of the replacement.
Heh.
I am in the “replacing the 80s era Navajo white outlets with 2000s era Swiss coffee white outlets isn’t really necessary” camp myself. Just change the plates around them, it’s hardly noticeable…
Makes them easier to see, even.
Jimmy Kimmel Curses Out CBS Over Stephen Colbert’s Late Show Cancellation as Trump Claims he’s Next
https://thatparkplace.com/jimmy-kimmel-curses-out-cbs-over-stephen-colberts-late-show-cancellation-as-trump-claims-hes-next/
Dip them both is used fryer oil before popping them down the drain with a jug of Drano.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2025/07/18/minnesota-senator-nicole-mitchell-convicted-of-felony-burglary/85282895007/
Three hours of deliberations. Probably 179 minutes more than they needed, but there are minimums for parking validation.
Here’s hoping she reneges on her promise to resign, forcing the legislature to vote when they reconvene next January. An expulsion vote would require ⅔ majority and Tampon Timmie would have to schedule it at least 30 days out. But the Republicans could bollix the works by refusing to vote for expulsion, leaving her in the seat but unable to vote while she’s in prison.
Of course, that assumes that she gets sent to prison, which is not certain at all in the most corrupt state in the union.
Up and sorta moving. W and D1 left to retrieve D2 from GS camp… so I’m awake. Coffee should be ready to sooth my soul soon.
86F and at least partly sunny.
————
I’m almost ready to take the top off one of the fire safes (sized and shaped like a small briefcase, more ‘money box’ than safe) and put the LiON chargers in there. If I had a bunch of sketchy chinese drone batteries to charge, I’d definitely want them on a fireproof surface.
————–
In N Out burger is moving headquarters from Cali to TN. Her family too.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14920553/fast-food-chain-California-Gavin-Newsom.html
—————
and
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14920657/Air-India-pilot-final-words-plane-crash-mothers-death.html
Circumstantial evidence that the pilot did it… and some things ruled out but you have to get pretty far down into the article to read that.
n
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/07/just-30-injured-after-car-plows-through-crowd/
And the article is unclear about where the ‘shooter’ came from or really did.
n
Franklin is where Dave Ramsey runs his operation. My current employer also has an office there.
Texas is heading down the California road towards becoming a blue state.
Texas, like most states, is a red state with blue cities. Whether the blue city culture can dominate the state zeitgeist or not is the battle.
n
When the state surplus dwindles to the point that property owners finally learn what the property tax “reform” passed in 2023 is really all about, the cries will start for an income tax.
At that point, it will be Game Over in Texas.
Florida’s ticking time bomb is, ironically, the state’s unique homestead exemption.
They put us on camera without our permission…
https://nypost.com/2025/07/18/us-news/astronomer-ceo-andy-byron-and-hr-chief-kristin-cabot-put-on-leave-after-coldplay-kiss-cam-exposes-alleged-affair-report/
At that point, it will be Game Over in Texas.
– I don’t think so. Either people will accept it, or they’ll rally and vote for another change. Anything established by law can be changed by law, and frequently is. Usually to the detriment of the common man, but there you have it.
People will tolerate a lot, especially if the effects are very diffuse. For most people, property taxes are diffuse. They are buried in a mortgage escrow account. I doubt that 1 in 100 people could accurately describe their tax rate.
I pay property tax in three school districts, business personal property tax in another, and I couldn’t say definitively what my tax rate is. And my wife writes those checks every year, so for us it’s definitely not diffuse.
n
They put us on camera without our permission
– ha ha /munz voice. Don’t need it, and if they did it would be in the Terms on the ticket… or posted online somewhere. Don’t like it? Fight against Opt Out culture.
n
H/T divemedic
n
First Men in the Moon FTW!
Once The Club in Austin gets an income tax, they won’t give it up. Ever.
Apopka. That’s all I needed to know.
Bl*wjobs, both literal and figurative, are the coin of the realm in Corporate America.
Astronomer looks like they sell nebulous software with Hookers-n-Steaks marketing.
They were probably working the clients with busty girls pouring the shots of Pappy Reserve at a private event in town during SxSW.
Concert. Private event. Walk through the door and you’ve surrendered your right to privacy to the band and venue.
You only have privacy rights with regard to external media like TV stations or a newspaper covering the event. Then, waivers have to be signed for video or photos captured inside.
Trump is right. Kimmel is next.
Kimmel was “dark” the week we were in LA, even with “Snow White” only a week into its run at the Egyptian right next door to the “Live!” studio.
Fallon might be spared since “The Tonight Show” is an institution and currently falls under Lorne Michaels’ sphere of responsibility at NBC.
With NBC still unsure of when Michaels will retire, cancelling “The Tonight Show” would be “bad optics” for Universal, especially with a Fallon-themed ride in the Orlando park.
Seth Meyers should be nervous, however.
The Numbers Don’t Lie: CBS’s Colbert Cancellation Is All About Economics
https://redstate.com/joesquire/2025/07/19/the-numbers-dont-lie-cbss-colbert-cancellation-is-all-about-economics-n2191846
Oh-So-Sad Writers Guild Demands Investigation Into Colbert Cancellation, Calls It a Bribe to Trump
https://redstate.com/bobhoge/2025/07/18/oh-so-sad-writers-guild-demands-investigation-into-colbert-cancellation-calls-it-a-bribe-to-trump-n2191837
Offer them a chance to invest member funds in the show.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2025/07/19/that-astronomer-ceos-coldplay-concert-fiasco-just-got-worse-n2660582
https://nypost.com/2025/07/17/business/ex-employee-of-tech-ceo-andy-byron-claims-he-was-a-toxic-boss-before-coldplay-drama/?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=nypost&utm_source=twitter
That would be “upper upper midsection”
The WGA members dues payments go into maintaining the HQ building and expensed lunches at The Grove.
As with our visit to the Dike Road Bridge on Chappaquiddick last Fall, seeing that corner of LA in person in April was an eye opening experience even though we already had a dim view of the WGA and SAG from the strikes.
Oh, so *that* is what it is really all about.
Kimmel …
Fallon …
Seth Meyers
– I’m clearly not the target demo, since I only vaguely recognize Kimmel as a failed standup comedian, Fallon rings a bell, and no idea about Meyers. I have no idea what’s on TV right now as I haven’t watched anything other than a ball drop in 15 or more years.
We haven’t even had cable for years although I did rig an antenna so we could get news in an emergency. Now I don’t even expect news on TV, unless EVERYTHING else is down. And since they are vacuous talking heads with no real knowledge, if everything is down, they won’t have a script or content to talk about. The days of live local coverage are probably long gone.
n
No editorial bias at all….
Apparently the writer just associates pot smoking, gambling and abortion with Hollywood.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14908175/texas-new-hollywood-steal-la-movie-industry.html
Film and tv production is a great way to get out of town money spent in your city, but IDK if they’ll ever get the $150M per year back… that would have to generate a whole shiteton of sales tax at 8% to break even…
n
Someone should put up a string of “Hotel Californias” in Texas and advertise discounts to Californians. Preferably each with a deep ravine out back.
Decided to cut the grass in the back yard, but because my tasks are fractal…
The battery was fully charged because I made sure last week. BUT before I could cut the grass I had to raise the cut level, which meant getting and applying penetrating oil, since I haven’t moved that setting in years. AND since the grass is so tough I needed to sharpen the rusty blade, which I have never done since buying the machine. BUT FIRST I needed to find, and put the correct wheel on my grinder. AND plug it in. WHICH meant finding another outlet since the one I would use on the patio is dead… and I’ll leave off mention of getting out a new pair of safety glasses because my current pair broke.
Took an hour indoors to recover from the 20minutes of cutting in the sun and heat. I used most of it to start organizing my 3D print station area. And I need to get back to that now.
n
Just wiped and reset the kindle paperwhite I picked up for $15. Gen6, it’s pretty snappy. I think the paperwhite is dang close to the perfect ereader for most things. Could be a tiny bit bigger page, and some things with a lot of pix or color don’t work well, but for normal books, it is great.
n
Is Lumitool a Scam or Just Half-Baked? – Lumitool F28 Review (Lumitool F20 Successor)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szX1_w7rT-4
The reviewer may b inexperienced but the criticisms are valid.
Stay away. Not ready for prime time–maybe not ready for release at all.
Closer to home, for me, is: There are Hams that like to talk on the air, and Hams who like to build radios, accessories, and antennas. Some overlap, but most of the operators will eventually settle down on the building so they can talk, or run in contests, or do public service.
I’m a builder, not a talker. I’m only learning Morse code so I can operate the radios I’ve already built but haven’t ever taken out to the field.
It would be nice to get some of the easier certificates, like DXCC (worked 100 foreign countries/entities) or WAS (worked all states).
I use Visible for cell service. Verizon’s little brother, on Verizon’s network. $25/Month, unlimited data, tethering and hot spot (limited to one connection, but I have a wifi microrouter I can use as my one connection if I want to).
When I had a rural no-DSL, no-fiber farm, the tethering was important. I used it for the first time in over a year a couple weeks ago during an unplanned ATT outage. We even streamed our nightly NCIS over it.
The writer doesn’t know the history of abortion in Texas and didn’t care to research. Typical DM.
Also, Patrick was among the politicians in Austin who looked the other way while Texas Childrens Hospital prepared to do sex change surgeries on minors in this state.
As for weed, the Governor punted with the veto of the complete CDB products ban, and weed will be the primary subject of the upcoming special session. I’ll bet some kind of decriminalization is coming if not a step towards legalization.
SxSW alone is estimated at putting ~ $300 million into the Texas economy every year, but I don’t remember a huge breakout film originating there since “Baby Driver”, which was a product of Georgia’s tax credit program and made on a modest budget after Disney fired Edgar Wright from “Ant Man”.
Wright wound up on the better end of that situation than The Mouse, especially now that Kevin Spacey is no longer cancelled.
A big cultural festival isn’t the same as film production. You have a few dozen people for a few dozen nights typically. Rental houses and local crew receiving money adds to the total, plus local fees, and anything sourced locally, but a $50M production isn’t going to spend a 1/10th of that locally and the state only gets the sales tax, so 1/10th of that.
I worked in Hollywood, and I think building our local film and TV production capability is a good thing. It’s a lot cleaner than some other industries. I just don’t think we’ll get the $300M back in the next 10 years.
n
They finally left. The flooring dudes arrived about 10:30 and left about 4:45.
The hallway looks rather spiffy if I may say so. I had it installed running with the length of the hall, connected to the living room floor so there is no transition strip. Not crosswise, that would have been much quicker. There wasn’t a price difference so, what can I say.
He glued down the transitions into each bedroom. Said “this one doesn’t want to lay flat but I can nail it down but some people don’t like the nail holes”. Tiny thin nails. Hey, if the nail holes bother me I’ll find a brown crayon to fill the holes. That was good for a laugh. Little nails and then blue painter tape. I can remove the tape tomorrow but two days would be better. A project for Monday.
The underlayment is foam. R4 if you wondered. Thirty inches wide and forty feet long. The hall is about 20 feet by 40 inches. They pieced one side instead of trying to cut a ten inch strip from the roll.
They were going to throw the remainder away. What am I going to do with almost a half roll? No telling.
I gained another box of planks. Unopened plus two pieces. Now to find somewhere to stash two boxes plus one piece of flooring. Plus four full pieces of quarter round.
Did you know when sanding the floor with what looked like a giant angle grinder that the sawdust sets off the smoke detector? I didn’t know that.
The Corruption of Scientific Journals Continues Apace
https://hotair.com/david-strom/2025/07/19/the-corruption-of-scientific-journals-continues-apace-n3804929
As a friend of mine used to say, it’s time to nip this in the butt.
Letter to Nature:
It’s come to our attention that the head of the Springer-Nature editorial board is totally unqualified for the position. As a consequence, all federal grants going forward will expressly deny funding for Springer-Nature journals, and the Library of Congress will cancel subscriptions. If we need a copy we will borrow it from the bird cages at the zoo.
And stop publishing the AI-generated crap, or you will find yourselves testifying before a senate inquiry and wondering what real consequences will follow.
Very truly yours,
Senator So-Done-With-Your-Woke-Shit
Chef (Isaac Hayes, Jr.) leaving South Park–The Real Story
https://twitchy.com/aaronwalker/2025/07/19/isaac-hayes-iii-tells-us-why-his-father-quit-south-park-n2415903
@Nick; I think Kimmel got his “start” in comedy as the straight man on “Win Ben Stein’s Money”, a sort-of comedy/game show. As Stein’s straight man, Kimmel was decent. After that was the moronic “Man Show”, in which Kimmel proved that he had learned NOTHING about comedy from Ben Stein.
“Resigned”.
The internal memo probably said that Byron was going to spend more time with his family.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/19/business/andy-byron-astronomer-ceo-resigns
>>The internal memo probably said that Byron was going to spend more time with his family.
Maybe take in some concerts with the “family”?
It’s going to end up being a very expensive concert date…
n
Tiny little fire and some time by the water feature and I’m almost two hours late for bed. Book 4 in the series I’m reading is the payoff for the slightly below standard book 3.
n