Cool to start, hot later, and damp the whole time. Like yesterday. Extra damp, with actual moisture from the sky in the afternoon. That’s what we got, and what we’ll probably get again.
I did manage to solve my client’s issues yesterday, and fairly expeditiously at that. Two cable issues, one dead input port, and some changes to control programming, along with some network work and the troubleshooting effort, so just like old times… kinda satisfying actually to have clear problems and clean fixes.
Didn’t get a whole lot else done though. Office stuff mostly, some small bits of domestic bliss. Cut my hair. Looks good to me. No one else seems to notice. Cut an inch off my beard. Ah, the life of excitement and intrigue.
Today I will probably do pickups. I won a new irrigation pump for the BOL and a couple of small things. Pumps are $350-450 so picking one up cheap makes sense. Most of the auction lots I was outbid, but not by much. Prices are down, or there is a lack of bidders. Time to consolidate what I have.
And stack that stuff high!
Like all y’all, right?
nick
People want to believe. The white population is just as guilty as the immigrants from the low trust societies.
I actually saw $20 Reeboks at Sam’s earlier this year. Mission accomplished, X-ers.
Of course, reaching that goal required trashing domestic sneaker manufacturing, bankrupting the national sporting goods chains, and even putting the future of the 150 year-old FW Woolworth aka Foot Locker into doubt, but, yes, for a couple of hours that afternoon, one could actually walk out of a mainstream retailer in the US with brand name Reeboks for $20 and even have coverage from a return policy when the inevitable happened within 30 days – seams ripping, odd smell, etc.
‘merica!
@paul – If you still have “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”, watch it again and pay attention to the scene’s in Oshmans.
Every Sunbelt mall had one of those back in the day … along with the organ store.
Autocorrect sucks.
There was a period in the early 80s when you couldn’t buy quality no matter how hard you looked for it, or where. at least it seemed that way to me as a young man.
————-
72F and the sky is lightening. My foot hurts so, pressure change? Front moving thru?
503 errors seem to be back to normal. For now.
n
As usual, more to the story. Upgraded to Capital Murder.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15064465/texas-homeowner-shot-boy-ding-dong-ditch.html
Bad decisions all around.
n
So far, we’ve heard only one side of the story.
re the little turds who were screwing around, being an annoying little piece of crap doesn’t warrant being killed, usually, but I wish to point out that an awful lot of people in this nation are under the impression that they can FA endlessly and never have to FO.
Up yours you German toilets with the two level of flush. You have met your match. You really need a third, higher level option. Enough said.
PSA:
If you collect a dozen tomato worms you picked off your tomatoes and put them in a small plastic tub for the neighbors chickens: make sure the lid is on tight and that is out of reach of your very inquisitive house cat.
‘Investigators’ will allege a lot of things.
That said, back in the day farmers used rock salt as the first round. Generally did the trick.
Dude, you should have two down votes by now. LOL.
Gah, I’m trying to do my shipping on USPS.com and after creating 4 labels the damnable thing won’t allow me to pay and print them. I keep getting an error from the site.
n
In the news:
Wary Of Gasoline Shortage, California Pauses Price-Gouging Penalty On Oil Companies
‘Pause”, not repeal.
I’m sure this will make the CEO’s and CFO’s of companies with hundreds of $billions at stake go full in on business in California.
Had to log out, then back in. Printed 4 copies before I got the combination of source tray and paper orientation correct. Good thing I chose to save them as pdf and then print, rather than print from the website.
n
Going thru the pile o stuff on my plate, my buddy left several old laptops in his shop when he moved. An Acer atom based small lappy booted up in 32bit win7 just fine. 32Gig hard drive and 2 gig of ram, and it’s easily fast enough to be usable.
I’m thinking about trying popOS on it, but since the battery won’t hold a charge, I’ll probably just put it to the side now. I guess they did ship them with something more than win98 on them.
n
I don’t disagree, but sometimes tech is really frustrating. For example: we have a “guest” computer with both Win10 and Ubuntu on it. I booted it into Ubunto for the first time in a few months, and the display was stuck on 800×600. Nothing I could do would change it, so I ultimately nuked the partition and installed a newer Ubuntu version.
Or, I have a neighbor, and her Firefox seems to randomly corrupt all of its cookies. I went over for the third time yesterday, and decided – that’s it – I spent 1-1/2 hours cleaning up the whole computer, nuking the Firefox cookie database entirely, uninstalling bloatware, disabling autoruns, etc.. Will it help? Time will tell.
So much of what seems to go wrong just…shouldn’t.
True enough. That said, shooting a kid for ringing your doorbell is just a little bit much. If you’re going to wait for him, just hose him down. Or maybe have a bucket of rotten fish entrails handy.
2 GB with Pop! OS won’t be usable.
Also, the EFI may be 32 bit even though the Atom supports x86_64, and you will have to prep the boot image.
@Ray Thompson
Hard to believe a country famous for beer and brats doesn’t have a higher option. Maybe a key combination?
BBQ in Central Texas originated from the German immigrant traditions.
Well, some of the replaceable batteries for laptops are just enclosures for AAs. Might see if it’s something that you can do.
But if you’re just using it as a server for something then wall power might be fine.
I used to use Puppy Linux on the Abit BP-6 dual Celeron’s. Worked fine in 128(256?)Mb. Snappy, even, compared to Windows.
What is it about sisters-in-laws ? One of them emailed me this morning and said that I was not doing a good job keeping her notified about my mother. I so want to reply “get off your ass and drive down there yourself to see what is going on”. She is the wife of my bipolar brother who has been a total pain all my life. I suspect that she is bipolar also.
The other sister-in-law called me at 11pm one night in San Antonio while dad was in the hospital there in July and told me I was a “fXXXXXX idiot” for not getting dad into hospice soon enough to meet her schedule.
@Lynn
My eldest sister has poor health and declining. My siblings and I have a fortnightly 40 minute Zoom where we catch up with one another, including my sister who enjoys listening and occasionally contributes.
Another approach: when I had my Melanoma diagnosis last year, I set up a page on my website with all updates associated with progress, which I advised anyone interested in status to review before asking any other questions. It continues to be updated for anyone interested.
BC: Floods
https://www.gocomics.com/bc/2025/09/04
Yeah, high ground is nice during a flood. Been there, done that, lost over a thousand SF/F books in The Great Flood of 1989.
Did that flood have anything to do with Ray needing a third level of power boost on the toilet?
Twice. It was a good day in Munich.
Went to an outdoor beer garden somewhere just outside of Munich for dinner. I had roast duck for the first time and it was quit good. The bill for the four of us, and the two youngens’ was about $200.00. Food is expensive here.
There were a lot of people as the place was very large. People in Germany like to sit outside and eat when the weather is nice. It was just starting to rain as we left and there is quite a storm outside currently. It is supposed to rain all day tomorrow so we will be confined to the apartment.
My eldest sister has poor health and declining. My siblings and I have a fortnightly 40 minute Zoom where we catch up with one another, including my sister who enjoys listening and occasionally contributes.
Another approach: when I had my Melanoma diagnosis last year, I set up a page on my website with all updates associated with progress, which I advised anyone interested in status to review before asking any other questions. It continues to be updated for anyone interested.
A fortnight is 14 days. I knew it was some time period but not exactly so I had to look it up.
You are assuming that I want to talk to these people. Several of them are crazy. Several of them are poor due to continual bad decisions. Several of them are assholes and want me to do things for them.
I have zero time and energy. I am running four businesses and they run me hard. Spending time here is relief.
Plus, I am lazy and do not want any more tasks.
I have been to Port Lavaca every week except two weeks since the middle of June, 120 miles away. I stay any where from 2 days to 5 days.
I want my mother to be able to go to church and some family to spend a couple of days with her. So usually it is me as the others are too busy, including the jobless ones.
I did manage to solve my client’s issues yesterday, and fairly expeditiously at that. Two cable issues, one dead input port, and some changes to control programming, along with some network work and the troubleshooting effort, so just like old times… kinda satisfying actually to have clear problems and clean fixes.
Is this equipment outside ?
True enough. That said, shooting a kid for ringing your doorbell is just a little bit much. If you’re going to wait for him, just hose him down. Or maybe have a bucket of rotten fish entrails handy.
One of those Byrna guns would have been applicable in this case.
It is 100 F outside right now. The dog days of September always suck.
That’s a bad sign, if a place infested with the likes of MrAtoz is better than your IRL life.
But I know what you mean. “Several … want me to do things for them” is why I choose not to have friends and have the minimum possible to do with most kin and most neighbors. No, the fact that I took apart and fixed our clothes dryer does not mean I’ll fix yours, and especially not for free because “We’re friends and neighbors, aren’t we?”. No, I’m not going to drive you, your mother, and your sister-in-law and your three very large suitcases to JFK airport (about 3 ½ hours from here, if NYC traffic isn’t too bad) just because I drive a van. Catch a short flight from the local airport down there.
It would be different if it were a two-way street but it never is. Partly that’s because I hardly ever need anything from anyone, except rarely to use my dad’s shop for work beyond what I can do in my driveway, but mostly it’s because “friends” are suddenly busy when I do ask for help. Neighbors who aren’t bashful about asking for eggs don’t think they can handle opening the coop in the morning and closing it in the evening to give me the chance for a day trip. (In the case of the coop, I ended up opening it myself at about 0230, when I left, and closed at when I got back home at 2200 or so, taking a minor risk that a coon or something would get in.)
“Costs of Care”
https://areaocho.com/costs-of-care/
A million dollars for five days of care.
Addendum to the above:
“If you want something to get done, give it to a busy man.”
Like poverty, the inability to get anything done is usually a choice.
Mr Ray must be jet-lagged. He so missed the opportunity to make that “turd option”.
The Germans do have that third option. It is a toilet bowl with a shelf on it, called a “Flachspüler” (literally, a “flat-flusher”). If one’s leavings are too massive for the plumbing, one can remove them by hand in a bucket…
It is 100 F outside right now. The dog days of September always suck.
My truck said it was 104 F driving back to the office. Of course, hot concrete, millions of cars, etc.
I am getting my right eye cataract removed on Oct 7. I will get a distance lens at that time.
My sister-in-law has been banned from holiday dinners at my house since 2008.
Last Thanksgiving, she tested how things worked at my household by showing up at her son’s home in Georgetown, my wife’s nephew, with her ex-husband in tow, thinking they would get fed.
Yeah, I despise the ex-, Big Papi, even more so that wasn’t going to happen.
And, for the record, again, lest you think I’m being raycissss, Big Papi is the whitest man I know in terms of skin color and ancestry.
“Cursed Number”
https://www.xkcd.com/3137/
Yes, that is New Math.
Explained at:
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/3137:_Cursed_Number
“Do it!”
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-it.html
“I note with satisfaction that the Epstein “victims” are threatening to release the names of those who victimized them.”
Yes, do it !
My sister-in-law has been banned from holiday dinners at my house since 2008.
Last Thanksgiving, she tested how things worked at my household by showing up at her son’s home in Georgetown, my wife’s nephew, with her ex-husband in tow, thinking they would get fed.
Yeah, I despise the ex-, Big Papi, even more so that wasn’t going to happen.
You lost me. Why do you care who shows up at your nephew’s house?
Germany is a net food importer and has been for ages.
The US appears to currently be a net food importer, unless it isn’t. The data is inconsistent and I can’t be bothered to dig into it. It is pretty clear that the US is no longer a strong food exporter, though.
They thought that we would give in and invite them to our house or, at the very least, take the turkey over there.
We went over to the nephew’s house after dinner and took a pie.
I prefer to be addressed as a parasite.
Is this equipment outside ?
– mostly not. In this case, there is a NEMA enclosure at the gate which has an outlet, two PoE injectors, and a 4 port switch inside, with a short pole and an ubiquiti Nano AC5 point to point wireless link strapped to the outside. That had a switch inside that got nuked in a previous storm, which I shared here.
The other end of that link is under an eve on the house.
The rest of the gear is mostly in a rack in a closet, except for the endpoints. There are 4 TVs that are technically ‘outdoors’ but are under patio roofs.
Lightning, EMP, and voltage problems are the major cause of issues. It’s out in the country and the utility decided to save the money instead of putting the ground wire along the top of the poles like they do here.
Heat, the destroyer of capacitors, is also an issue in the long run. Plus stuff is built to such a low standard, with every conductor slightly undersized, minimum spec on every component, connectors without adequate plating, no surge protection onboard, thin boards, no metal shielding, etc…
Labor is his biggest cost for most of the stuff, I get $500 to install a $350 TV. Of course I do more than one and usually do troubleshooting or other work during that visit, so it works out to less per task, unless I go past 4 hours, then it goes to $1000. It averages to around $1K of expense per month, labor and materials.
n
“Neighbors who aren’t bashful about asking for eggs don’t think they can handle opening the coop in the morning and closing it in the evening to give me the chance for a day trip.”
Much less willing to help mucking it out a few times a year.
You need a higher class of neighbors.
Nah. I clean the coop every couple weeks. The coop itself is fairly small, 12 sq ft or so, including the three brooding bays. I keep a good layer of straw (cooler weather) or wood chips in it and pull it all out when I move the coop and run, putting the dirty bedding in the compost pile. I pull the trays out and hose them down and let them dry and hopefully somewhat sterilize in the sun if the weather is good and I’m not too rushed or lazy. And I hose off the roof of the coop and their tire and perches most times, too.
No argument there. “Yuppie scum” doesn’t seem to be a term in vogue any longer, but most of the neighbors are yuppie scum who could be drowned with no significant loss to the world. (Normally I would say “to the species” but I decline to acknowledge most of them as members of the same species as myself.)
I did my federal & state taxes today, less than two hours start to finish.
Accepted by the state & feds in another 2 hours. Money back too!
Since I’m retired and this is exactly the same as last year it was actually pretty easy.
I had until October because Los Angeles County has a disaster rating, but I got a notice from the county that they’re trying to do an end run around our statwide property tax increase limits (#!3%!) by incorporating the entire county into a “ special parcel tax initiative” , and I needed to have it done to get a waiver for avoiding that.
@SteveF
“Nah. I clean the coop every couple weeks.”
I wasn’t expecting that you would be wanting help every time, just a willingness to lend a hand some times.
Back in the day the bull was confined in the fall and released n the spring to do his duties. Cleaning out the bull pen was rite of spring, for some strange value of right. I had a favorite 5-tine fork and blessed the front-end loader bucket that we could fill at ground level and then in turn did the heavy lifting into the manure spreader.
It was always a good idea to do a careful check on the 5-buckle overshoes before starting…
“Kirk Cameron: What Would Jesus Think of ICE Raids?”
https://rumble.com/v6yii98-kirk-cameron-what-would-jesus-think-of-ice-raids.html
Interesting. Yes, Jesus liked a nation of laws.
Hat tip to:
https://thelibertydaily.com/
I have a feeling that Jesus, the guy who kicked the establishment in the @ss and overturned their money lending, would not be happy with the vatican 2 hippy dippy commie infestation of the church, and what they did to his story.
n
They thought that we would give in and invite them to our house or, at the very least, take the turkey over there.
We went over to the nephew’s house after dinner and took a pie.
Did your nephew have a turkey ?
Or did they do Chinese ?
Duck?
What, Christmas Story is not culturally accurate?