Hot and humid, again, but maybe clear instead of partly cloudy. It was mostly clear Saturday, with some clouds, and a tiny bit of water from the sky. I wouldn’t have noticed but the grass and plants were wet when I did some work in the back yard.
That work was some tree pruning. I had done a bunch in spring, so it wasn’t too bad. I mostly touched up the new growth. I did some small pruning on the apple tree too. It currently has one apple the size of a racquet ball. That’s more than any other year, but less than I was hoping for with the blossoms all over.
I alternated outdoor and indoor stuff to try to keep cool. It was crazy hot in the sun. Most of what I got accomplished was organizing and cleaning in the ‘library’ or ‘toy room’. I had a bunch of filament and printer stuff all over, and I put it away in a sideboard cabinet. I finished putting together the cabinet too. It’s still a mess in that room, but I made a lot of progress on a non-critical task, but one that has been poking me in the eye and spirit for too long.
I did a bit of reading throughout the day as I was cooling down, and spent far too long sitting outside reading last night.
It doesn’t sound like a productive day but it actually was.
If you can’t stack, be working on improving your situation.
Today I’ll continue in the same vein.
n
It has been too long since I have posted anything, but I have been lurking…
Lynn, my condolences for your father’s passing. Most sons go through this, and I can’t think of a worse right of passage, especially for those of us who were close to our fathers. They will never be forgotten.
I need some advice from the hive mind here. I have decided to move to Windows 11 now instead of waiting until the last minute, as I have often done with earlier Windows versions. I decided this a while back, and since then have read about the W10 extension deals, but I am remaining firm, partly influenced by the folks here who have made the transition to W11 with apparent ease.
Both my wife’s and my production computers are too old to consider upgrades to support W11, so I have been casually shopping for newer hardware. I also convinced her to go back to a desktop. She never really liked the notebook form factor, and seldom used it as a portable. That meant she had a small screen attached to a poor keyboard. Although she knows she could plug in a bigger monitor and better keyboard, she would then have a kludge that offends her sense of neatness.
I have always bought new hardware for her, and for the last several years used refurbished hardware for myself. I have liked the refurbished computers so much that I have convinced her to give that a try. As Ray might say, I am frugal. Not cheap, no siree!
I also have found that researching and buying a well-designed factory built system takes a lot less time than researching the components to build my own.
A lot has changed since I bought my last refurb computer, though. First, I needed to catch up to the newer CPUs, GPUs, cases, and other stuff. This is pretty easy, but has been time consuming. There are a lot more choices now than a few years ago.
As “business users,” my wife and I do not need much computing power. I do a fair amount of still photography editing, but that has not been stressful on the hardware I have used. Her Dell i5 notebook and my HP Z series Xeon workstation have been reliable performers on W10, and more than adequate for our needs. I have mostly built systems and bought refurbs with enterprise level rather than cutting edge components, and have regretted the time or two I selected some flashier stuff. For my needs, reliability is more important than cutting edge performance.
The only subsystem I have not checked out so far is the graphics. I want to replace our 1080P monitors with something bigger and higher resolution, probably a UHD 4K, which will be 3840×2160. I might also want to be able to consider an 8K monitor when the prices come down. No dual monitor setups for us. I tried that for a while. Also, no games for either of us, so no need for frame rates higher than 60 Hz.
I will shop for the monitors later, because I have always taken a lot of time selecting monitors, and the current crop is so much more complicated. I see that 8K seems to require certain CPUs (NOT just GPUs,) so I need to select carefully.
I am leaning toward a discrete GPU, but wonder if that is really necessary. Also, I don’t know what brand to consider.
Same thing for the video output. Apparently, DisplayPort is superior to HDMI, but I wonder about any DRM gotchas if I want to watch streaming content. A while back, HDMI was apparently preferred over DisplayPort, but now that seems to be reversed. I don’t need audio in the same cable, because I always use speakers separate from the monitor.
Finally, I have previously ordered from Microsoft certified independent refurbishers. Now, I see recommendations to buy from OEMs like Dell, Lenovo, or HP. They have open box returns, buyer remorse used returns, overstock, scratch and dent, and lease returns that are reconditioned. Complicated. I looked at Dell, mostly because their products were the most results on Google searches. Lenovo didn’t seem to have many options, and HP might not be as good as they once were. I would bet someone here has an opinion on this.
Thanks in advance. I won’t be able to reply until Sunday evening.
JimB, I have had very good results with the Asus PN range of very small desktop units. I don’t know if they are available refurbished, but I would have a look if I were shopping.
Display Port vs HDMI. I have some very nice curved Samsung monitors that have connections for both. It might take a bit of searching on the Samsung site to figure out the exact model numbers.
Agree with your sentiments about our late fathers. I miss mine terribly.
@JimB
I have upgraded a number of friends and family over the last year to move to W11. I have mainly found the HP 280 range, ex corporate via eBay, to be good value for money, and have had no problems raised since the upgrades. The machines would not be used for gaming, and no one I know runs 4K monitors. My approach has always to buy what I need now, rather than adopting the ‘future proofing’ approach. When the future arrives, I simply buy what I need then – overall cost is less than trying to anticipate what you might need.
Just assume hanky panky at a tech company using Hookers-n-Steaks to resell open source software like Astronomy.
BTW, what is it with HR droids and Coldplay?
My friend’s ex-wife, “Chief People Officer” at [high end resort company] had Coldplay running at the house the last time we saw them together.
Even the great Richard Curtis (“Blackadder”, “Love, Actually”) observed it in the script for his “Yesterday”, but the girl’s profession is never specified. I’m assuming HR.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VgRuLQgeSE
Current MacBooks and decently spec-ed PC laptops will have DisplayPort and charging capability through a USB-C port, allowing the connection of keyboard, mouse, and external camera through a single cable to the back of the monitor with the right hardware choices.
You don’t have to buy an Apple Studio Display either. My current employer along with several others sell similar quality monitors with USB-C hub capability and at least two USB-A/3.0 ports for peripherals.
We have a single monitor solution set up for my wife in our dining room which quickly moves out of the way for dinners. Of course, the cr*p accumulation in our household starts immediately on any horizontal surface so I end up having to move a lot more than just the monitor and wireless keyboard/mouse combo.
You will need to spend around $1000 for the laptop, whether you go MacBook or PC. The $500 or less models will either not have the charge/display capability through the USB-C port or will compromise on resolution.
Eventually, even budget laptops will have the connection capability, but the Hecho en China vendors have a lot of components in warehouses to unload.
My personal Windows 10 laptop is a Lenovo Thinkpad T series, and I’m looking at another Lenovo for when Windows 10 goes EOL, making my T470 “obsolete”.
I don’t think it is a secret where I currently work. Think about that.
@JimB: Just a couple of thoughts: I don’t think a hi-res monitor really makes sense. My monitors are 2560×1440. These are 27″ monitors, and the pixels are invisibly small. If you go with an even higher resolution, a lot of default fonts and symbols are too small to see. You can adjust them, but that can be different for various applications. Alternatively you wind up telling your computer to artificially reduce the resolution – in which case, why have it?
Personally, I don’t think there’s a lot of difference between DisplayPort and HDMI, though I don’t know anything about the copy-protection side of things. The main thing is to make sure you have the right cables, because those can be expensive, and somethings tricky. For example, I have one cable that has HDMI on one end and DisplayPort on the other. It converts, but only in one direction, which turns out to be the wrong direction for what I needed. Expensive mistake.
I suggest getting a discrete GPU. Even if you rarely need it, something low-end or even mid-range is really not expensive.
Finally, get more RAM and disk than you think you need. Figure out what you’re happy with, then double the RAM and quadruple the disk. Apps are only getting bigger, and Windows is a known disk-hog.
@JimB
Consider moving to a Mac laptop. Get an external keyboard, monitor and mouse. Then use the system in Clamshell mode. Or get a Mac Mini which are really capable machines in a small form factor. The Dell monitors work really well with the Macs, as a certain person on here can relate.
I moved my wife from a W10 system that could not be upgraded to an iMac. There was some transition issues but were easily solved. The biggest advantage is the integration between the iPhone and iPad that my wife uses. She takes some pictures on her iPhone, or iPad, and by the time we are home the images are on her iMac. Text messages, WhatsApp, notes, all show up on all the devices.
For a couple of apps that I have that need Windows I run Parallels on the MacBook.
Yes, Apple stuff is expensive but seems to be well made. The biggest issue is probably storage and that can be really expensive. If more is really needed then a Firewire enclose capable of Thunderbolt 5 with a M.2 SSD is almost as the internal storage.
And contrary to popular belief there are driver issues. Even with stuff Apple sells. Their 1 Gig ethernet adapter will not run faster than 100 MBS because there is no drive for the chipset. The Anker adapter runs at full speed, Apple adapter, not so much.
Microsoft office apps (Word, Excel, etc.) can all be purchased to run on the Mac. Those can be had fairly cheaply from StackSocial.
No one has actually built one yet, but the RISC-V standard includes extensions for 128 bit computing
I’m sure Redmond is working on getting someone to produce a chip, planning ahead for Windows 15.
@JimB: I bought one of the little Win11 (supposedly) Beelink SER5 Pro mini pc’s, it is sitting in its box unopened, because I am purging both my offices right now and don’t have time for it:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CRKXMKDT?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_1&tag=ttgnet-20
If you want to try it out I could loan it and a 27″ monitor (I have three and only use one).
Apple’s laptops are now disposable. My guess is that they will start to deprecate the M1 gear when they release the A18-based laptops for the low end market at some point this year.
WalMart still sells the M1 MacBook Air with 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage, but that won’t survive the release of the MacBook … ? … with the iPhone chip.
I looked it up. The nice 27″ curved monitors I use that have both HDMI and DisplayPort connectors are Samsung model C27F398FWU. I have them in pairs on my desks, which is convenient, as I can set them up to show my personal PC on one side, and my work screen on the other, and easily switch both to “work” when I need to increase the screen real estate, to compare two documents, for instance.
My work laptop is a Thinkpad, connected via a single usb-c cable to a docking station, which provides power to the happy plus both HDMI and displayport connections for two monitors, keyboard, mouse and other USB stuff as needed.
Most laptops are now disposable. I had a Microsoft Surface Laptop. A really nice machine. Then one day it quit. Would not do anything. I went to the Microsoft store in Las Vegas (yes, Microsoft had stores at one time) and was told it could not be repaired. The unit was sealed with lots of glue. The only option was for Microsoft to offer me some money in trade on a new machine.
What I find I like about Apple is the support. There is a store not far from me where I can get access to support people. Some are really clueless but there is usually a bright spot somewhere. Plus they have a lot of access to support tools and phone support people.
The Apple Store close to me is always busy. 20 or 30 people in the store and 10 or more Apple people. I did visit the store in Las Vegas to pick up a 12South airplane adapter. It was the cheapest place as I got the 10% discount. That store was almost empty. Three people in the store, including me, and about 5 Apple people. Huge mall. I expected it to be busier.
That will be the demise of the M1 except for machines still in warehouses. Those machines will be dumped at very low prices.
Truth be told, the M1 or th A18 machine would suffice for most people. I don’t even come close to stressing my M4 Pro unless I am importing photos into Lightroom and Lightroom is busy building previews. The M series of chips are an amazing accomplishment by Apple.
The M series of chips will be around for a long time and any machine running the M chips will get long OS support. The only problem I had with my transition from the M2 to the M4 was with Parallels. Parallels 19 would not run on the M2. My VM would not load and creating a new VM did not work. That forced me to upgrade to version 20. I don’t know what changed between the M2 and M4 that caused the issue. May be nothing more than Parallels greed.
MeTV finally decided to give “Kolchak: The Night Stalker” a rest but replaced the series with “The Adventures of Superman”, which doesn’t really fit the 12AM ET/11 PM CT timeslot between “Star Trek” and “Lost In Space” unless you consider the surreal circumstances of George Reeves death.
The old Bill Bixby/Lou Ferigno series “The Incredible Hulk” would work there if they wanted to go the superhero route, but I’m sure payola from Warner was involved to promote the new “Superman” movie.
The continued sales of the M1 Air are about how many SoC modules Apple has left in warehouses. The production story for the A18 MacBook is that the chassis design will be reused.
Apple will cut off the M1 in 2027. The Intel Macs are all deprecated and no technial justification exists for ending support other than a desire to see the machines go away.
The regulars here would take a laptop to Vegas, but most people are there to do the things that “stay in Vegas”.
Or so they think.
My friend’s divorce lawyer always starts with a forensic accountant going over the “ladies only” trips to Vegas. The fallout from the analysis in his case included getting the judge recused/replaced when a connection to the wife was established from the credit card transactions.
The Nashville Apple Store not far from the Ryman had a few customers when we visited three years ago, but the CBD table the store allowed to set up out front had more actual buyers from what I could tell.
I think it is a matter of not wanting to support two different chip sets in the OS code. There is little reason for Microsoft to stop support for W10.
Our last day in Las Vegas, a Sunday. we stayed in the hotel except for the walk to McDonald’s for breakfast. We were tired from all the walking and there was nothing we wanted to do, or see, that justified walking in the heat. I took a couple of naps in fact.
I take my laptop on all my trips. It will go with me to Germany in August. I take it with me when we take our RV trips. Yeh, I am a weird nerd.
H&I Runs 4 30-minute episodes Saturday mornings and another 4 Sunday mornings, for 8 per week. The entire run only produced 104 episodes (2 26-episode seasons and 4 13-episode seasons), so the complete series only takes 13 weeks (¼ year).
MeTV will have a similar problem with quick turnover.
Walker Texas Ranger has been cut back to 1 episode per week day and now totals 12 episodes per week. Previously they had 3 per weekday, for a total of 22. With 203 episodes in the series, their turn rate is now 17 weeks, down from 10.3.
I use H&I as OTA entertainment on my kitchen tv. I am increasingly turning to another channel due to overexposure,.
All of the above, btw, is justification for picking up the series you like on DVD. If the ota broadcasts pause, the used DVD prices will probably increase.
Windows 10 still has the legacy loophole in graphics drivers which makes the platform the OS of choice for piracy of the streaming platforms. Windows 11 was all about making Hollywood happy by closing this loophole as well as enforcing secure EFI boot and certain minimum GPU hardware for optimal media playback in a browser-based player.
Look for the streaming services to drop Windows 10 support real fast once the OS leaves mainstream support later this year.
Firefox and Chrome won’t be far behind.
Apple hasn’t closed the door on Intel or even PowerPC. I’ve even heard stories out of Cupertino where they compile for Risc-V, but none of my Apple employee friends confirm/deny this.
AI servers running AMD or Nvidia GPUs still involve an Intel CPU and interface chipsets. We make an AMD CPU alternative, but that sells like the proverbial ice water in Alaska.
ARM CPUs? Yeah. Sure.
If the monkey trick doesn’t run out of steam soon, Apple or a licensed third party will have to produce an AI server with AMD GPUs and support running the model software in MacOS if for no other reason than to make Wall Street happy.
Margins on the AI servers suck, however, and Tim knows that.
I’m sure you’ve seen the stories in the financial press about the analysts visiting our campus this week to get a first hand look at what’s going on in the building. The execs want the stock price up since, for most of them, the current number doesn’t even cover the taxes on the share grants given out in March, and we’re one of the two X.ai vendors of choice that Elon admits to publicly.
Levi Strauss and Folgers we are not in this gold rush. The people panning for the gold are still making the money.
I have this for a PC: https://www.newegg.com/neosmay-ac8-jasper-lake/p/2SW-006Y-00003?Item=9SIBDYFHWZ7094
Out of stock or discontinued. I paid $319 for the first. The other two were $279 each. Thay come with Win11 installed.
NO FANS !!!!
Actually, I have three. I liked one. Bought another. The someone started saying “I’d like a new PC. Oh well, my PC is just fine. Nevermind.”. So I bought another. I mostly just look stupid. I mounted it on the back of his monitor. That cleared a lot of clutter off of his desk.
They simply work. No problems other than Win11 stupidity. Most of that is simply hiding settings and the almost constant nagging to get a Microsoft Login account. I don’t want to login to my PC and I sure don’t want anything to do with “cloud storage”.
There is what looks like a nicer model: https://www.newegg.com/p/2NR-02JX-00021?Item=9SIBDYFKA06406 $329. Looks pretty good to me.
HSN is selling HP laptops, Celeron processor, 8 GB of memory, 256 GB SSD hard drive, 15” for $649.00 with their useless add-ons. They have sold 10,000 of them today. PT Barnum was right.
“Kolchak” only had 22 episodes in addition to the two TV movies made by Dan Curtis.
The long repeated run of the series and movies on MeTV was the combined result of ABC opening their Dan Curtis vault and Universal wanting all of their horror properties out on the air ahead of the legacy Monsters section of the new theme park opening a few months ago.
“Superman” is weird in that timeslot. MeTV will need a better solution once the payola ends.
The BluRay of the “Kolchak” series went out of print this year which is somewhat surprising. That series influenced 50 years of TV and the impact still resonates with David Chase remaining active.
Watch a few episodes of “Kolchak” or the first TV movie, and “A Christmas Story” is a lot more surreal, especially the marathon screenings.
Carl Kolchak in Hell. 🙂
Fred Silverman cancelled “Kolchak” as one of his first moves when he became head of ABC after building CBS in the early 70s. Silverman’s excuse was that he didn’t like sci fi.
The fallout from “Kiss Cam Gate” continues.
One of my regular YouTube channels had an interesting tweet from Tampa International Airport which was quickly pulled yesterday but not before a lot of damage was done.
All you need to know about Tampa is in that tweet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zU3E5uSvduI
Geeky and Neon nail it with that “starter wife/husband” concept. In my experience, X-ers are awful about this, both the men and women.
WNBA Players Decide That Becoming Even More Insufferable Is the Right Play
https://redstate.com/bonchie/2025/07/20/wnba-players-decide-that-becoming-even-more-insufferable-is-the-play-n2191864
The WBNA is a disgrace.
Caitlin Clark’s agent should explore playing in Italy or some other country for a couple of years, with a clause in the contract that let’s her walk if the league does not enforce rules against flagrant fouls.
Then let’s see if Angel Reese can carry the league, like she carried the ball down the court, hand well below the center line, in a recent publicity still. It’s too bad salaries aren’t higher–that might attract a few third-rate NBA players to switch genders and show how much LeBron and the rest of the boys are supportive of their “sisters”.
The state just spent $47 Billion to stabilize the housing market over the next two years, including $24 Billion of the state surplus, and $300 Million is only 3-4 Texas high school football stadiums.
“Hey, look, I think I see Harrison Ford over there!”
Seriously, locally, Lockhart has seen a big jump in tourist interest since “1923” premeired. Come for the Harrison Ford spotting, stay for the landmark BBQ restaurants.
Mr. JimB, I replaced my MacBook with an M4 Mac Mini hooked to a dock, monitor, Apple inputs. I’ve traveled with it using my XReal VR glasses and a folding mini keyboard/trackpad. A little clunky, but it works if you have to travel. I can also connect my iPad as a monitor with an HDMI input dongle.
Speaking of travel, we are in Seattle for our Amtrak Cascades train ride to Vancouver. This AM they emailed the train had to drop so many cars there is no Business Class left. We are all getting on an Amtrak bus for the trip to Canada. Thanks, Amtrak, and F You.
Don’t book that train in Winter, when mudslides close the tracks northbound to Everett.
Southbound to Vancouver, WA aka Vantucky is where the Cascades went off the rails within the last decade when Amtrak was pushing the schedules too hard and the train was moving too fast for a curve.
The Cascades is popular with Canadians buying big ticket items in Portland to take back to BC.
Seriously, locally, Lockhart has seen a big jump in tourist interest
–yeah, stuff like that falls under “economic impact”, which is pretty much whatever people giving away tax money stretch it to.
Localities and states give tax breaks and “do your thing here” money to all sorts of businesses from car assembly plants, to warehousing and cross dock facilities. At least the entertainment industry is fairly low impact.
Places that have built film and tv production into the local economy can’t just give away money, there has to be the pool of talent locally to support production. That’s catering and fancy portajons, to local stunt people and other workers, to rental houses full of lighting gear/cameras/lenses, all the way to friendly airports and a culture of accommodating the needs of production companies.
The San Diego Film Commission, which had as its sole reason for existing the support of the film and tv production in San Diego, mostly focused on hotel room night stays. It’s easy to track and assign “economic impact”. Plus there is a huge “hospitality” industry they can leverage off of. They did publish a directory of local industry labor and services, but that was about it.
FWIW, I don’t think they should be spending the money on stadiums either.
n
I stayed up even later than I wanted to reading. Then slept in a bit.
Moving now and have breakfast in me and coffee in the mug. It looks hot out. Sunny.
Wife is just returning from getting a new iphone, and D1 will get the old one. D1 broke her phone. Looks like we’re all spending money on changing our phones.
Good thing there’s money earmarked for unusual expenses.
n
It’s 96.8F outdoors. Ye gads.
n
#&””&@&)-/:-& Xfinity.
Austin has the talent and infrastructure going back at least 50 years, including modern studio facilities and at least one animation studio.
At the tolling company, the parking lot immediately adjacent to our building downtown was known as “the murder lot”.
When I asked about the name, management informed me that “NCIS New Orleans” came into town early in their run and filmed a crime scene in “the murder lot” because they needed a location which looked very different than their home base production city and wanted to get the scene filmed cheaply with infrastructure to do it quick.
Apparently, using “the murder lot” opened a lot of doors for the city. Bakula and the “NCIS” crew weren’t there for the party and passed along positive feedback to other productions.
No word on what “NCIS” did with the homeless who live around the perimeter of the lot.
Lynn, my condolences for your father’s passing. Most sons go through this, and I can’t think of a worse right of passage, especially for those of us who were close to our fathers. They will never be forgotten
Thanks to all !
My son is staying in my bedroom and I am staying in dads bedroom. I keep on expecting dad to come through the front door and demand his bedroom back.
On this day in 1969 I watched something special on TV.
I did too. Along with 49 other grunts, and one drill instructor, watching on a 9″ B&W TV in the middle of the night while participating in USAF boot camp.
I don’t think with today’s arsenal of people at NASA and the queer culture we could get to In-and-Out burger three blocks aways from NASA in Houston in under 10 months.
@JimB, all my W11 desktops (and laptops) have been from the Lenovo Outlet Store. Absent the “Refurbished” label on the bottom, the ‘used’ items I’ve bought all have looked brand new. One caveat, many of the outlet stock is small quantities so if you find something you like, don’t wait too long to decide to buy it.
…which was filmed at a secret location in Area 51 in Nevada.
Now, excuse me while I attend the “Flat Earth Society’ meeting, which is in the ‘Conspiracy Theory’ building in Roswell, NM. It’s a Zoom session, so I’ll also be using my VPN connection…
I opened the house this morning. It had the smell of that last bit of a stick of incense where the incense is gone but the stick smolders a long moment. It’s not a bad smell. However a stick of incense has never tripped the smoke detector.
House smelling like a roasting beef or turkey or oven-fried chicken, no problem. Scorched sawdust isn’t bad, the house could and has smelled worse….
I’m not a fan of the fine dust in the house. It’s going to take a while to clear an explosion of something just a tiny bit coarser than baby powder. Because of course I had the a/c cranked down a bit and so of course it spread the dust throughout. Whine. Whine.
They were suppose to install on Friday. He showed me pictures of his Thursday job that ran way over time wise. Because the homeowners got picky because “the wood grain colors don’t match”. So they had to go through EVERY box to inspect and approve what was installed.
I asked if they were flaming but nah, straight couple. Acting with that stupid attitude like gals or guys drawing attention. Both each together accepting or rejecting every single plank of flooring. Crazy people. They looked normal by hair coloring in the pix.
I sort of get it, the flooring isn’t cheap. However. I can buy the stuff and install it myself. I can. Check out my dining room floor covered with parquet wood as one example.
But after I buy the little table saw they hađ and various other tools that makes it all easy, all a one time use for me, the up-charge for labor from buying the flooring at HD or Lowes and doing it myself isn’t at all that extreme.
Hey, it’s supposed to look like real wood. Sure, there is pattern repetition because it’s not real wood. I haven’t seen any faces yet, that’s a plus for me. So you can install actual real wood planks and deal with the varnish and waxing and splinters and eventually covering it with carpet like other old folks do in their old houses.
Yep. I need to mop the floor. I hate mopping. Tomorrow after I remove the tape. 🙂
I asked “how does it work if a plank in the middle of the room goes bad?” He said “it all comes up”. Yeah, I imagine that 20 year warranty is worth only the paper it’s printed on.
One more crazy thing. The a/c kicked on just as I was falling asleep and it wasn’t loud. I mean, the carpet and runner rug are out of the hall and the noise seemed about the same.
Interesting.
By the way. My stereo sounds great with the new flooring. It’s “clear”. Not crazy treble. Not muddy. Best I can say, it’s like wearing a good pair of Koss headphones.
But with six channel surround happening.
And Buddy the Beagle snoring on the sofa….. how better can it get?
Ted Kennedy’s press conference happened on the 19th.
Not Subcontinent?
The wives usually provide the house money through their dowry and they are beyond picky.
My plumber will not go to an address inside the city limits of Austin anymore.
Greg
3I/ATLAS is an interstellar comet discovered on July 1, 2025, and is believed to be one of the oldest comets ever observed, potentially over 3 billion years older than the solar system. It is currently traveling toward the sun and is expected to make its closest approach in late October 2025
https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/comets/3i-atlas/
Is the Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS Alien Technology?
https://avi-loeb.medium.com/is-the-interstellar-object-3i-atlas-alien-technology-b59ccc17b2e3
Keep an eye out for a deal on A21’s “Stop Making Sense” restoration BluRay.
Atmos 7.1 audio.
A21 doesn’t even sell a US region DVD.
WalMart had the disc back at Christmas.
“Capricorn One” is on Tubi.
Tubi has a really good print too, made when director Peter Hyams recut the film for home video/cable to get a PG rating rather than the original R.
What a slice of 70s mega cheese, but Hyams has a great cast.
Including OJ in his first movie.
Did Microsoft outsource the DoD IT to mainland China?
https://www.battleswarmblog.com/?p=66084#respond
And Buddy the Beagle snoring on the sofa….. how better can it get?
– I don’t know how much better, except for throwing in belly rubs or rubbing the softy flopping ears… but I know that it would be a lot worse with snoring sounds coming from both ends…
n
We all know that the world is really a disc held up by four columns, carried on the back of a turtle.
n
BTW, there are techniques for repairing the floor in the middle without tearing it all up, but they probably cost more. W has taken up the floor in a couple of rooms at the BOL because of mistakes or unknown needs, and then put it back down. It’s vinyl plank snap together floating floor from Lowes. Looks real nice. The softness of the vinyl reduced the “pocketa pocketa pocketa” sound of walking across a wooden floating floor.
n
A skilled tech or a good woodworker should be able to replace a piece in the middle of the floor without to much trouble. Giving a new piece the appropriate wear is fairly easy. Compensating for UV fade might take some art.
WATCH: Jewelry Store Owner Thwarts a Robbery Attempt With One Warning Shot
https://redstate.com/jenniferoo/2025/07/20/jewelry-store-owner-thwarts-a-robbery-attempt-with-a-warning-shot-n2191886
Twenty would-be thieves un-ass and then re-ass a few seconds later.
Pity we don’t get to see the security footage, too.
Balderdash. Things like this probably drift through the solar system every decade or so since forever, but we’ve never noticed them before 2010 or so. We have better telescopes and better detection systems, and we’ll start seeing more and more of these as our systems continue to improve.
The best “warning shots” are aimed at the center of mass. Never waste one, especially when there are 10+ goblins.
And the legality of a “warning shot” is suspect at best, and completely illegal in many places.
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Never point a loaded weapon at something….
I am just now reading through your comments about my computer shopping. There are some good ones, but it is late. I will have more to say tomorrow. Thanks.
The right to defend your property, possibly at the expense of the thieve’s life, seems completely necessary in some situation. Certainly there, with an entire horde descending on you, it should be absolutely legal to just shoot them. He was lucky they ran away – it could have easily gone the other way.
Something similar for the huge number of rapes committed throughout Europe, largely by Islamic migrants. Prosecute them, and sentence them to removal of the, um, biological equipment used for rape. All of it. They can sit down to pee. Might just work as a deterrent.