Cool but not freezing, and warming later. I think it got into the mid-60sF yesterday. I saw at least 63F on a sign… And it was sunny and clear for most of the day, with some overcast later.
I took a bit longer to get out of the house than I’d hoped, but I did get out. Did the missed pickup in the morning, then two more in the afternoon in Stafford. Lots of new building, new infrastructure, and new power transmission lines going in in Stafford. Lot of empty lots waiting for new homes and businesses. But judging by the political campaign signs, it’s a subcontinent stronghold with subcontinent in all local offices. I’m not interested in being governed by subcontinent.
Speaking of new transmission lines, they are upgrading the lines through the greenspace/right of way in my area. This is the second time in a couple of years. Everywhere I go they are putting in new transmission lines. Texas is spending the money needed for growth.
Later in the day I put up some of the new Christmas lights I picked up, and put out a few more inflatables. I think I’m probably done with outdoor decor. I might work on low lying fog, and get out the snow machine to do at least one night with snow effects. I’ll put out something interesting to blow the fog and fake snowflakes around if I do.
Today I’ve got two or three pickups. I need to do some more stuff around the house and at the shop too. Maybe I’ll wrap some presents. It could happen. I need to assess where I’m short in the present department. The problem with buying all year is forgetting what you have. I suspect I have too much for D2 and not enough for D1. W is now taken care of with a couple of smalls, and a new macbook.
Stacking up good times, and canned goods. You can do it!
nick
Wednesday. Sol is up before me for a change, so I must have slept late. Good morning!
Lots of petty administrative stuff to do today, all things that had been delayed by work, and which need some attention now I am on holidays.
Read the water meter, check how much propane is in the tank, cancel a landline phone subscription, order some gub stuff online, pay a few bills, take a load of stuff for recycling, write a few Christmas cards, hang some shelves, install some batteries in gadgets, make soup, etc. etc.
No rest for the witless. Wishing you all a wonderful Wednesday!
Online auctions are dangerous.
I wanted a used gubsmithing book, and ended up with ten books (OK, the books were in a lot that happened to include the one I wanted) and four brand-new hunting garments. All excellent value compared to retail prices (MRSP for one of the tweed jackets is more than the total of my purchase), and the book, which is not available retail, is hard to find and expensive second-hand. Still, over 500 bucks in one fell swoop. Ouch!
Ah well, two of the garments are high-end items that should fit and please W1, and the other two might fit me, and will certainly fit a sibling or a friend if not me. Stacks – I got ’em (if the parcel reaches me).
So, auction is paid for, pharmaceuticals ordered from the chemists, some overdue paperwork done and eliminated. I think I have earned myself some breakfast…
Wife wanted to know what the dog does when we’re gone, so I bought my very first indoor camera, since it was on sale for stupid-cheap. Set it up – very painless. The dog will be alone this afternoon, so we’ll see. Personally, I expect him to sleep the entire time, but who knows…
Reiner’s politics set the tone in the household that led to his demise, but now is not the time.
The ruckus serves as a distraction from what the Orange Man is up to in Venezuela. Even Shrub wasn’t dumb enough to indulge the expats fantasies.
the practical problem is that too many of the recipients will not work effectively. You will have to supervise them, and even then they will do as little as possible.
The principle is important, but the actual implementation is likely to be too costly.
— yeah and jobs for the unskilled are not exactly laying around right now.
—————
60F and everything is wet. Don’t know if it’s heavy condensation, or if we got some rain.
Coffee is started. Kids are moving.
—————
Scanner is hopping this morning. Must be ICE because one guy reports being threatened by someone that “there’s a price on your head and today is your day to find out.”
They are working downtown today.
n
People don’t understand how auctions work. And then they go broke.
New auction on hibid, fairly local, guy has a bunch of cop dash cams listed. No one is bidding but me, and I bid $5 open on several pieces of wireless networking and mobile PoE switches. Just when I think I won, he removes the whole auction. Like it never existed.
I don’t think the bidding platform allows that. You can do minimums, you can set your opening bid, but you can’t take your ball and go home.
I know the guy had unrealistic ideas on what he should make because he listed the retail prices for all the gear in each lot. You never get retail, unless it’s unpapered guns or ammo, or silver.
n
Dogs sleep 12-14 hours out of 24, so you’re probably right. On the other hand, maybe he will be busy day-trading and watching cat turd pr0n…
Beedy beedy beedy, what’s up Buck?
RIP Gil Gerard
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-15391001/gil-gerard-dead-buck-rogers-cause.html
Never one of my favorite shows, we still watched it because it was SF.
n
The most obvious way to save money is give Julie the boot, unless she gets a big payout…
250 staffers at $100K a year. Could there be that much deadwood to cut?
n
Looking at that again, one staffer for every three restaurants. That’s $30k per location in profit kicked up the chain to corporate for the staffer.
Or one part time position in each restaurant.
Better to have an extra waitress than some staffer in corporate management.
n
A real change in weather: overcast, 61F and winds gusting to 37F this morning.
We should be back to our regular pattern tomorrow, but the long range forecast is rain around Christmas day.
Goodbye, Buck Rogers. See you in the 25th century…
Did you not see Erin Gray? Beedy, beedy, hubba, hubba, Wilma!
Online Classifieds are dangerous.
i’ve been mildly wanting to upgrade my old Canon T3i SLR camera to the last version, the T8i, for a while (yes the new mirrorless would probably be better but I’d have to buy all my lenses again).
While looking at the Cloudy Nights classified ads (no reason, I have enough astronomy gear for two or three people) someone posted that exact model so I went ahead and bought it last night.
Generally I like to handle things like this in person but I’ve had pretty good luck with the CN classifieds. The person selling it has been on the site for a number of years. And I hate driving down to LA just for that.
So I’m rolling the dice and hope I don’t get scammed.
$100k?
$250k each salary and benefits at a minimum.
Graduates of “good” schools like Taco Julie.
Bill Clinton hot tubbing wing man during the first failed term as Governor in Arkansas.
The uncensored pilot is an interesting piece of TV sci fi history, but you need to find the right DVD box set to see it.
Bits and pieces of the first season are worth the time as well.
It’s been 15 years since I was in the workforce. A senior engineer made very low $100Ks. I thought I was being generous, since anyone they can cut is not essential to the continuation of the company…
You’re saying that even useless check box hires are in the $250K range now?
Drs and lawyers don’t make that.
n
Never a favorite, or even regularly watched, show for me. But my first custom notification tone on my phone (for texts) was Twiki.
It made my boss smile every time I got a text near him.
Oh, my sweet Summer child! Your naivete is so cute!
Popularity games, office politics, and butt-covering play a significant role in firings and layoffs. I suspect that they play a greater role than objective productivity measurements.
I’m sure BillG watched every episode from his bathroom.
The movie came out in 1979, the year I entered the US Army. Gray started the spandex craze of the 80’s. I’m sure she inspired ST’s tight female uniforms of 7/9, T’Pol, etc.
I liked the series a lot until they introduced “Hawk”. Oof, that was weird.
RIP Gil.
A graduate from a “good” school ticking boxes at a HQ of a Vanguard/Blackrock subsidiary like Cracker Barrel? 5-10 years experience? Figure upper $100s salary, RSU grants, and benefits.
Obamacare lets them skimp on benefits and get away with it, but a low 100s salary doesn’t put a Tonymobile in the garage speaking realistically.
And don’t forget the garage. I wouldn’t qualify for the mortgage on my wife’s nephew’s 1400 sq ft stucco sh*t shack up in Georgetown, TX much less my current house right now.
More sedition:
House Dems Introduce Resolution to Force Military to Stand Down Against Designated Terrorist Orgs
tRump needs to start by recalling Kelly to Active Duty and court-martialing him. It won’t be hard to find a jury of his peers to find him guilty of sedition, conduct unbecoming, etc. A lesson must be taught.
The PLT Dumbo’s are trying to control the President (only tRump: see Rules for Radicals) by making any use of the military only by an “Act of War” as determined by Congress. It will never pass. The President’s “100,000 power” allows him to call up a force of 100,000 of any combination to deal with any situation he deems necessary. We studied the shite out of this at Command & Staff College.
Our SpecOps troops would be retired since they could only be deployed when the Dumbo’s pass an “Act of War”. Hello, bin Laden. I guess Obola (or any Dumbo POTUS) would get a pass.
The FUSA is teetering on the edge of destruction if action isn’t taken to expunge commies, crimmigrants, and moo-slims from the country.
The Constitution of the United States is probably the most important document produced by Mankind, ever.
This popped up in my YT feed. MrAtoz might find it amusing: The Fat Electrician Reviews: The Apache Helicopter
Ah. One of the biggest VA bennies. We couldn’t get a mortgage on our new/used home in Vegas without that bennie. Current VA bennies go up to $1 million, but you need SOME income to get that amount on a mortgage. Still, $1 million. I set up my IRA annuity to have enough income for life to cover the current mortgage+. Pensions, SS, and occasional work give us a good life. We earned it. You wanna grift for life, you’ll live in a PRC and eat soy. Enjoy. The way the Dumbo’s want to run the country will end up with the grifters IN the soy.
Awesome video. He nails it. The military exists to kill, crush, destroy, and eat dead babies, period. That is why I love the new SecWar even if he is doofus at times. We should deploy Apache squadrons along our border with Mexico. Tell President Sheinbaum if we see any cartel activity 1 kilometer south of the border, it gets a 30mm up it’s azz. Oh, wait, Congress would have to declare and “Act of War” if the Dumbo’s get their way.
Popularity games, office politics, and butt-covering play a significant role in firings and layoffs. I suspect that they play a greater role than objective productivity measurements.
– by definition anyone that they cut isn’t critical if the company survives. 660 restaurants won’t fail no matter who they cut, too much inertia.
Granted that taco julie is in charge, and sees the DIE hires as critical, the other bosses will be cleaning house. Not everyone making the decisions will be incompetent.
I note that their choice is not “extra waitress” or “region 6 diversity evangelist” but “neither.”
And I’m saying this after leaving a company (that still exists) because they thought I was easily replaceable, but within 6 months they had to close the group I left… turns out I was critical to that group, just not the company. I’m sure the President and CEO still sleeps well on a pile of money despite his “f#ck that guy” attitude.
n
There is never a time to accept constraints that your enemies do not.
The receiving end of asymmetric warfare is for chumps and losers.
Yup.
You waited until the babies were dead. -scoff- That’s why the ground pounders think the aviation wing is so soft.
Note that demographic warfare is asymmetric warfare and must be treated accordingly.
Note also that leaders who facilitate and encourage the destruction of their own people are traitors and must be treated accordingly.
Eh, there’s wiggle room about the definition of critical. I take a much looser definition than “corporate dissolution”.
Auto repair place called, looks like there is some damage to the drive train. Bearing, and axle were mentioned. I’m headed over later to see with my own eyes.
Now I need to get some pickups out of the way.
n
You assume that management wants to continue operating a publicly traded restaurant chain.
I believe CBRL is being prepared for private equity to dismember the company selling the better real estate assets and leaving the rest to rot in Bankruptcy liquidation.
I took a bit longer to get out of the house than I’d hoped, but I did get out. Did the missed pickup in the morning, then two more in the afternoon in Stafford. Lots of new building, new infrastructure, and new power transmission lines going in in Stafford. Lot of empty lots waiting for new homes and businesses. But judging by the political campaign signs, it’s a subcontinent stronghold with subcontinent in all local offices. I’m not interested in being governed by subcontinent.
It is not just Stafford, it is all of Fort Bend County. They run everything now.
This is why I want to leave Fort Bend County. Between the muslims and the subcontinent, already at 40% of the FBC population, they will turn this into a hellhole. The bureaucracy increases are amazing. And the muslims are preying on each other.
“Houston chemical giant slashes workforce as Gulf Coast operations shut down”
https://www.chron.com/news/article/houston-westlake-chemical-plant-layoffs-21247906.php
“The company will layoff hundreds this month amid several Gulf Coast facility closures.”
“In a Dec.15 presentation to investors, Westlake Corp. said its Performance and Essential Materials segment had been pressured by low market pricing due to overcapacity of certain products and an increase in low-priced Asian exports, according to the Houston Business Journal.”
The chemical plants in Asia with their slave labor are sending their cheap plastics to the USA. This needs to stop.
“Houston’s Grand Parkway surges southeast with $1.96 billion expansion”
https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/transportation/article/houson-grand-parkway-expansion-21247876.php
“From League City to Alvin, Houston traffic is getting a makeover.”
“The Texas Department of Transportation is moving forward with plans to extend the 60-year-old highway, a massive 180-mile loop designed to circle the Greater Houston metro area. After years of piecemeal construction, the southeastern stretch is now taking shape: Section B‑1 will add roughly 14 miles from FM 646 in League City down to just south of FM 2403 near Alvin. The expansion promises a faster, more direct route around the region and relief for some of Houston’s busiest roadways.”
I live outside Segment C which runs from I-69 (TX 59) to US 288. We desperately need Segment C now with the new 40,000 homes being built in the next 10 years here. The entire segment C will be elevated so it will be incredibly expensive.
https://www.txdot.gov/projects/projects-studies/houston/sh99-grand-parkway.html
This popped up in my YT feed. MrAtoz might find it amusing: The Fat Electrician Reviews: The Apache Helicopter
All of a sudden, I am getting cool model railroad videos in my Youtube feed. But I never searched for model railroad builds.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/5jRMtmDe8Ng
“PROJECT: HAIL MARY – Final Trailer (2026) Action, Sci – Fi | 4K | Most Anticipated Movies”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpKWOIXjP0M
“Humanity’s last chance is drifting alone in the dark. In PROJECT HAIL MARY (2026), a lone astronaut awakens on a silent spacecraft with no memory — and discovers he may be the only one who can save Earth from extinction. Based on Andy Weir’s bestselling novel, this final 4K trailer delivers intense action, breathtaking visuals, and a gripping sci-fi mystery that spans the stars.”
Super cool ! Read the book now.
Said something about Kamala pulling a train, maybe.
About 11 years ago, when my elder son was about to graduate with a BS in ChEng, he had a handful of job offers. The one which really interested him was with 3M in Minneapolis. The one which offered the most money was a petrol company near Houston. He asked which he should take, in light of his student loans and his desire to not be in debt. I advised him to take a job he’d enjoy, not to chase the paycheck. I didn’t know about the coming drops in petrol employment and hadn’t considered at all the volatility of the industry. I was thinking solely of steering him away from decisions I’ve made or been forced to make, going after the biggest paycheck because I was sole support of a family and a mortgage bank. All in all, I think that advice worked out pretty well. He’s been at 3M for 10 ½ years, enjoys it, and is well paid.
“”At the beginning of the credit destruction cycle””
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2025/12/at-beginning-of-credit-destruction-cycle.html
“Former Wall Street money manager and financial analyst Ed Dowd of PhinanceTechnologies.com warned in September we were at the “Beginning of Panic Rate Cut Cycle.” Since that prediction, the Fed has cut interest rates three times. Looks like Dowd called it correctly.”
“So, when does the panic kick in? Dowd says, “The panic kicks in when there is some sort of banking wobble or stock market wobble, which is in the process of setting up. Private credit is the first to show problems. We had Tricolor Holdings (subprime auto lending bankruptcy) go poof. We had First Brands (bankruptcy) go poof. This is all private credit. We have had other lenders like PrimaLend (bankruptcy) starting to go poof. Private credit is just like subprime. It not a very big part of the Jenga credit chain, but it’s enough to start a daisy chain of knock-on effects. So, this is where we are, at the beginning of the credit destruction cycle. We are seeing consumer credit card delinquencies nearing all-time highs, auto loan delinquencies and, next up, we will be seeing mortgage delinquencies. People stop paying their credit cards first, then their auto loans and stop paying on their homes last. As the layoffs accelerate, and we are already seeing more high-profile layoffs at Amazon, UPS and you name it, once those begin, we will be seeing higher delinquency rates.””
“Dowd sees much lower prices for homes. Dowd says, “There is a distinct problem between homes for sale and homes sold, meaning there are a lot of people wanting to sell their homes and not a lot of people buying them. The inventory continues to grow. . .. The only way this clears is through price. The price of homes is going lower. We had an overbuild in multi-family housing because of the illegal immigrants. Those deals are going sour and rolling over. Rents are coming down. . .. It’s all slowly going the wrong way, and it will become a mainstream topic in 2026.””
Predictions are hard, especially about the future. I keep on hearing that house prices are going to drop significantly but I have yet to see beyond a 5% to 10% drop.
20-30% of the people physically in the continental United States are not citizens. A third of that portion is illegal aliens. A remedy to the housing shortage is easy in concept but appears to be impossible in practice.
Off Base Housing allowance and VA loans distort the market, but only within a reasonable commuting distance of Fort … Hood … today’s name? The real damage around here is from Obama’s first time home buyer credit and all of the capital and debt being deployed to pursue the sex robots.
The Texas property tax “reform” is also delaying the day of reckoning.
My wife’s nephew overextended himself, counting on a Vet quota landing him a tech manager job here despite his Journalism degree education.
The only way he gets out now is to find another military family to rent the place or buy him out.
The problem for the nephew is that his discharge date happens at the end of the year.
“DOE orders 730-MW TransAlta coal plant in Washington to keep running”
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/doe-transalta-centralia-emergency-order/808123/
“The Department of Energy could issue similar emergency orders for at least five other coal-fired power plants set to shutter at the end of the month, according to Earthjustice.”
I do not understand what is going on here. Do the grid operators not care that their grids are becoming unstable ?
The politicians get a gold star from the lefties while they import electricity from coal fired plants in Idaho and British Columbia.
Centralia. 100 years ago, the American Legion hung union thugs from the bridge across the river in the center of town. Fast forward a century, and everyone’s income is from a government job, Native American casino, Great Wolf Lodge, or cooking meth.
In case it sounds familiar, my wife’s father’s family’s home town is Centralia, but it is also the hometown of the McCaw family who built Cellular One, one of the core building blocks of modern AT&T Wireless.
“Trump declares Maduro’s government a ‘TERRORIST ORGANIZATION,’ orders ‘BLOCKADE OF SANCTIONED OIL TANKERS’ into Venezuela”
https://www.oann.com/newsroom/trump-declares-maduros-government-a-terrorist-organization-orders-blockade-of-sanctioned-oil-tankers-into-venezuela/
“Trump argued that the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, whom he finds to be an illegitimate leader, is using oil from “stolen oil fields to finance themselves, drug terrorism, human trafficking, murder, and kidnapping.””
Huh.
No one who currently owns a house wants to give up the possibility of their property becoming a tenbagger investment.
Here in Texas, an increasing portion of the state surplus is dedicated to property tax “reform”, essentially the state government paying down the local tax bills so the plates don’t stop spinning.
When the plates stop spinning, everyone gets a haircut on their house prices.
My neighbor paid about $100k and 30 years later is hoping for $620K.
Should double every 7 years at 7% iirc, so he’s actually behind if it was an investment.
———–
Def some bent stuff in the rear end. I will call my insurance and see what’s what. I’m pretty sure I have full coverage. It wasn’t much more than liability on a 20yo vehicle.
I love the truck but it’s starting to need constant money.
n
CBRL has always been a lie, created by a marketing exec for Shell as part of an effort to sell more gasoline.
As long as the food was relatively decent and consistent, a lot of people driving through a strange town in the South bought into the lie.
Even “Uncle Herschel” was Corporate America, an exec at Martha White Flour.
I could see 600 restaurants disappear quickly.
Chi Chi’s peaked somewhere around 200 in the mid-90s and was gone a decade later.
10 years to double at 7% appreciation, but $620k requires a household with a monthly take home of $20k to qualify without any games for the best rate possible so he’s dreaming.
OTOH, it looks like the Fed will start running the presses again, possibly including mortgage paper so who knows.
I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I state that I am the reason IBM could not issue MacBooks to all of their employees like they announced would happen ~ 13 years ago.
No viable version of NetClient on Mac, no MacBooks for IBM employees.
I thought that my partner, Weed Head, would have come up with something after I left, but I guess sobering up was too much to ask. He works elsewhere now.
BTW, management at my current employer finally realized that something needed to be done about the salary inequity in our project. I’m getting an adjustment, but we’ll see at what cost.
Go has been a dumpster fire. If I’m on mop duty, it is time to find something else to do with my life.
I’ll take ”Things You Can’t Say About Your Wife” for $800.00, Alex.
I bought myself an Apple Watch Ultra 3. My old watch was three years old and was showing some age. Battery did not last as long, minor scratches. Apple gave me $125.00 trade in and the VA discount helped. I bought a different band than what was available with the watch package in the store. Is it worth it? Probably not, but I wanted one, so there.
A new Ranger is the size of an F150 from 20 years ago with a price tag to match.
Even if Ford decided to do something in the body-on-frame truck segment, development would take 4-5 years, and the dealers would take advantage of production ramp up to screw the buyers just like they did with the unibody Maverick.
@greg, add in the tracking and driver assist stuff and those are the reasons I want to keep my old truck running.
n
If I wanted a full size pickup, I’d have bought one years ago.
n
Wasn’t Hawk’s actor banging Cher at the time?
I remember something like that.
Gil Gerard was set up to be the “Big Bad” of Shane Black’s “Nice Guys” film series, but that franchise never got beyond a single film.
Black wants one last shot at that ring of producing a better sequel than the original, something few writer/directors accomplish.
Black’s “Lethal Weapon 2” was the last film to pull it off, but Richard Donner altered the ending, where Riggs dies on screen, opting to let the market decide the franchise’s fate.
I don’t think that there was ever a “bad” “Lethal Weapon” movie, but Hollywood will not give Gibson the “Lethal Finale” he wants at this point.
Now do Rust, at least as applied to Linux kernel and GNU utilities. I especially like how there was a recently-revealed (and patched) critical security vuln because of unsafe memory practices in super-safe Rust.
The company that I left at the end of 2021 was gone within a few months. Not sure how many, as I didn’t have perfect visibility into the balls they were dropping and the website didn’t go down for most of a year, presumably when the annual payment wasn’t made. The proximate cause of my leaving was the clot shot mandate but I’d been thinking of it for a while because they very clearly didn’t value me or what I did, either monetarily or in understanding or appreciation. I didn’t pitch fancy machine learning “investigations” and hype them to the nontechnical CEO or end users, I just cleaned up the code everyone else wrote so that it ran reliably, and scrubbed dirty data, and kept the servers going, and updated the licenses and API keys of the cloud services we needed, and all the rest of the technical work which kept the place running. Easily ignored, and devalued if noticed, because everything Just Worked. Until I left.
The closest you will get to a Ranger in better shape than what you have right now is a Frontier from about a decade ago. Even then, the truck will probably have rack issues eventually.
Once Ford took the Explorer off of the Ranger platform in 2011, they were free to turn the line into codpieces like the F150 using T6, which is a full size truck platform everywhere else in the world.
I saw my eye surgeon today, it has been two weeks since my left eye surgery. It has been eight weeks since my right eye surgery. I got distance vision in both eyes with Clareon single vision lenses.
My glaucoma eye pressure was up to 25 after each of the surgeries, it was 17 today for each eye, back in the normal range.
My distance vision is 20/20 in my right eye and 20/25 in my left eye. I use +1.25 readers for working on the computer and +2.00 / +2.50 readers for reading books, depends on how much light I have.
My red-green vision has gotten way better. 20 years ago, I thought that I was becoming color blind, it turned out that the cataracts were affecting my color vision.
I am very happy with things. I was -7.25 diopters in the right eye and -4.75 diopters in the left eye with -0.75 diopter astigmatism before the astigmatism laser correction and lens replacement. I now drive without glasses, my F-150 dashboard is a little fuzzy but the only thing that is hard to see is the odometer since the numbers are so small.
Lotta scanner activity tonight. One group is trying to find a vehicle, they are getting pings off one tower, and it hasn’t moved, but they can’t find it.
The other group mentioned there was a flock camera at a certain location so they’d be able to see if someone had passed it.
A third group seems to be baiting car thieves or burglars.
busy night
n
Firefox on my “road” laptop has been unreliable for about six months, as more Rust has crept into use in that code base.
I’ve posted the link to the video a couple of times where no less than Brian Kernigan disses Rust, made at a Unix user group meeting within the last year.
I already had problems getting work as a “kernel” developer. Now, since I don’t have Rust experience on my resume, I’m really hosed.
Before I walked out without notice, I developed a system for the company in Seattle where they could point a RHEL 6 virtual machine at their kernel driver Git repository and my code would spit out an ISO image of RHEL 6.2 with the driver pre-installed, ready for writing to a CD or USB key to do either a clean install of the complete product — a secure high-end router — onto a hard drive or upgrade of the existing install, selectable by Kickstarter menu.
Of course, I’m not a kernel developer. My reward for developing the system was demotion to tester.
After I walked out, the contract recruiter was fired in a week. The CEO who was banging her was shown the door within a month. The company ended up absorbed into … Nokia … ?
Nick, what you want is a keitora. Light, small, easy to park, usually inexpensive. You might be able to find one with a “delivery truck” back to give both vertical room and protection from weather.
Propellerheads.
https://www.phoronix.com/news/First-Linux-Rust-CVE
BTW, management at my current employer finally realized that something needed to be done about the salary inequity in our project. I’m getting an adjustment, but we’ll see at what cost.
Go has been a dumpster fire. If I’m on mop duty, it is time to find something else to do with my life.
Congrats on the adjustment.
Can you translate the Go code to C++ ? I doubt that Go has made the jump from hobbyist to professional development language yet.
I am beginning to think that the only safe development language is C now. Even C++ is a little scary.
My problem with Fortran is that Fortran has made the jump from professional to hobbyist development language now. That means that any project longer than say 50,000 lines of code will have problems with compilers and linkers as there are few projects that large so the tool developers never see the problems.
Said something about Kamala pulling a train, maybe.
Note to self: Do not google “pulling a train” ever again.
Lord and Miller’s first live action film since “21 Jump Street”.
That could go one of several different ways. Disney fired them from “Solo” but then had Ron Howard working out something weird with regard to his daughter via Emilia Clarke and then inserting Thandie Newton into the project, probably at the studio’s request.
“Solo” should have been simple. Han and Chewie hanging out, having adventures. One last hoorah for Peter Mayhew and passing the torch to his successor. Instead, it ended up a late Ron Howard career indulgence.
“21 Jump Street” was a far more interesting film than it deserved to be so who knows.
If you enjoyed the Fox series, you want to see “21 Jump Street”. It is not a reboot but a continuation and a richly deserved proper conclusion for several characters’ story arcs.
Lord and Miller were probably in career purgatory for the Johnny Depp appearance and respect shown.
“ERCOT Faces Higher Winter Storm Power Outage Risk Than in 2021”
https://texasscorecard.com/state/ercot-faces-higher-winter-storm-power-outage-risk-than-in-2021/
“Experts say increased electricity demand and a stagnant number of reliable power generation sources are to blame.”
“A data center boom in Texas has added to a surge in electricity demand, while the number of dispatchable power generation sources—such as natural gas and nuclear—remain roughly the same. Intermittent power generation from wind and solar rely on specific weather conditions to function that do not always align during winter peak demand conditions.”
“Battery storage mitigates the intermittent supply but is costly compared to dispatchable natural gas, and its stores are depleted quickly.”
“State programs created following the 2021 winter storm provide corporate handouts in the form of low-interest loans and tax breaks in order to incentivize dispatchable generation. Yet, according to the report, only 2.3 gigawatts (GW) of natural gas capacity has been added compared to over 25 GW of solar and 16 GW of battery storage.”
The ERCOT dispatchers caught a falling knife in Feb 2021. I would not count on them doing that again.
I am hearing a minimum of three weeks to reestablish the electric grid in Texas if it goes down. No one really knows since the grid in Texas has been up since the middle 1950s when North and South Texas separated.
Winter starts on Sunday, Dec 21, the shortest day of the year.
The chicken I seasoned yesterday to cook today turned out pretty darn good. Penny and Buddy the Beagle approve heartily. We will be eating well for the next several days.
All of the new curtains have been washed. Still some wrinkles. I don’t care enough to mess with ironing. The curtains look nice. If the panels were say, 18″ wider, the curtains would look better. The spare bedrooms seems to be a couple of degrees F warmer. As hoped.
The sliding door in the living room is 6 feet wide. Standard patio door. I extended the curtain rod 10 inches past the trim one each side. To be able to fully open the view. A pair of two panels looked sparse. I added another pair. So, uh, 54″wide times four to cover six feet of glass plus some overlap on the walls. Looks nice. Feels warmer.
Tonight’s movie was Grease. 40th anniversary edition with blah blah blah director comments and other useless noise. Hey. if the movie is any good I don’t need the director and folks explaining it to me.
Anyway. I’d almost forgotten how pretty Olivia was. And John Travolta? Has blue eyes? Corny movie. Would be better if most of the guys, “Seniors in High School” didn’t have 5 O’clock shadows. Maybe they all flunked three grades. Good music though.
Starlink has shipped the Mini. FedEx. When it arrives? Dunno, FedEx has a tracking number but no package yet. It’ll arrive whenever and be dropped at the property line.
You haven’t been in a high school lately. Many of the senior boys have beards. A couple of girls too.
I was shaving when I was a junior in high school.
LOL, I didn’t shave regularly until I was 19.
There are a lot of heavily bearded kids at D’s high school. It’s disconcerting.
But the actors in Grease were all WAY older than their characters. There was an article about it recently, maybe on DM.
The chicken sounds nice. I made prime sirloin steaks on the grill tonight, forgetting that W has a business dinner, and D1 is babysitting. D2 and I couldn’t eat even one of the small steaks. It will get eaten, just not tonight. Frozen in 2022. Still delicious.
—————–
I’m bidding on a big three phase 208v gennie on a trailer tonight. It’s a diesel, and hasn’t run in a while so it is a risk.
—————–
Did some small things. Sorted recent pickups. Opened an IR emitter for the cams and had to find a wall wart for it. I think it will go to the BOL. While I was at it, I tested and replaced the wart for the IR emitter in the front of the house. It’s been dead a while so it was long past time. The temporary cam to cover that area is older and needs supplemental IR to really look good at night. The flood makes a huge difference.
I hooked up the old school stereo and speakers I put in the library/toy room/3d printing studio. The speakers are modern, but the amp is vintage. Sounds good with an ipod driving it.
Moved a couple of things.
——————–
Truck has some damage after all. I’ll end up talking to my insurance tomorrow. Might not be worth the claim if they want to total it. I think I have comprehensive. IIRC it was cheap for the Ranger.
——————–
Some real talcum powder just arrived. I ordered a tub of it from amazon. It’s aimed at the indian market as a body enhancer for hair styling, a paint thickener, and a lubricant. As long as it clogs the pores on my arms to keep the attic insulation from making me itch, I’m happy. Cornstarch is NOT the same. The GoldBond body powder I use is not as effective as the old talc formula. I’m chafed and it’s the first time in decades. I might have to mix some talc into the bottle.
Enshittification of everything.
n
Stockard Channing was 33 when she made “Grease”. Rizzo is a woman, not a girl.
ah, it’s over $2000 and while it’s still cheap, 48KV, on a trailer… it’s too rich for me.
n
Good Lord, Stockard Channing is 80.
She had success later than most. Her first lead role was in “The Girl Most Likely To…”, and that didn’t happen until she was 28.
When I caught the flick late one night in the mid-90s, I was struck by Ed Asner playing Channing’s character’s kinda-sorta love interest. Isn’t her character supposed to be a college student?
I thought I was the only one who saw that film until I saw an interview with Channing doing publicity for “The West Wing”, and when the reporterette asked what is the film she gets asked about the most, the immediate response was “The Girl Most Likely To…”
I haven’t seen all of the movies, but I’ve certainly seen my share of cult classics.
Joan Rivers wrote the script. The film is a *dark* comedy and semi autobiographical for Rivers.
Some real talcum powder just arrived. I ordered a tub of it from amazon. It’s aimed at the indian market as a body enhancer for hair styling, a paint thickener, and a lubricant. As long as it clogs the pores on my arms to keep the attic insulation from making me itch, I’m happy. Cornstarch is NOT the same. The GoldBond body powder I use is not as effective as the old talc formula. I’m chafed and it’s the first time in decades. I might have to mix some talc into the bottle.
Talcum power is a known cancer causer due to the old supplies of talc having asbestos in them. New supplies apparently do not. Women used to be encouraged to put talcum power on their hoohaws to be “fresh” and the talcum powder, with asbestos, went up into their ovaries. Lots of lawsuits against J&J.
Lots of lawsuits against J&J.
– settled without admission of guilt, or real evidence of causation iirc.
n
“Here’s a Crystal Clear Message to Anti-Gun Leftists”
https://rumble.com/v735k0g-heres-a-crystal-clear-message-to-anti-gun-leftists.html?mref=8g74p&mc=1tbdj
Preach on, sister !
Hat tip to:
https://thelibertydaily.com/
Lots of lawsuits against J&J.
– settled without admission of guilt, or real evidence of causation iirc.
There are dissected women’s ovaries with asbestos in them. How did the ovaries get asbestos in them ?
Dunno, didn’t know there was actual evidence. Modern talc says “does not contain asbestos.” I’ve been powdering my behind for 3 decades without issue. It works as a skin lubricant. Cuts chafing to zero. Gets rid of what we called “gig butt”. In fact we called Gold Bond, or GB, “gig butt powder”. And the menthol feels nice too.
n
No. Ditching the existing Go code would be a political problem even though the company banned it from internal projects moving forward.
I was just in a meeting this morning where we pitched our servers to a large potential customer, and I had to be prepared to defend one of our advantages being a thin layer of C code to do a specific task.
Evidently, the competition’s code takes twice the time mine does to complete the same job.
C++11 has its uses. Closures and a standard shared pointer template are gifts from the development gods when doing REST interfaces.
If I can’t find the class covered in my C++11 version of Josuttis book on the Standard Library, chances are it isn’t that much of an improvement.
I will give Boost the MultiIndex template, despite it being challenging to use properly.
I’ve only done a couple of implementations, but, wow, did that save a lot of code.
Also, the current hot Linux IPC is DBus, and that really calls for object-oriented MVC code to implement services.
DBus client code can be done in C, however.
If I can’t find the class covered in my C++11 version of Josuttis book on the Standard Library, chances are it isn’t that much of an improvement.
https://www.amazon.com/Standard-Library-Tutorial-Reference-2nd/dp/0321623215?tag=ttgnet-20
I have the Becker C++ Standard Library book. It has done me well.
https://www.amazon.com/Standard-Library-Extensions-Tutorial-Reference/dp/0321412990?tag=ttgnet-20
Of course, Pete Becker wrote much of the original STL. And he well tolerated my screaming XXXXXXX loud emailing at him even though the real problem was in VC++6. Or was it VC++ 2005 ? I have slept too many times since then.
Dunno, didn’t know there was actual evidence. Modern talc says “does not contain asbestos.” I’ve been powdering my behind for 3 decades without issue. It works as a skin lubricant. Cuts chafing to zero. Gets rid of what we called “gig butt”. In fact we called Gold Bond, or GB, “gig butt powder”. And the menthol feels nice too.
TMI.
DBus is reinventing the Unix sockets wheel.
Of course, now that we’ve built some experience with the old school technology, the propellerheads want everything to go across a Unix socket.
VC++ 2005. VC++6 predated the Bankruptcy of SGI and was pretty much C++98.
C++03 brought in the Standard Library.
Microsoft is usually behind on new editions of C++.
Apple, on the other hand, had C++11 support in the iPhone as soon as the ink was dry on the standard. iPhone development got interesting with iOS 5 with C++11, ARC, and Grand Central Dispatch in lieu of threads.
Gold Bond is useless anymore. Ammons isn’t what it used to be, but it is better than Gold Bond.
I’ve also used Boogie Bottoms spray diaper rash cream when I needed something in Florida on a trip and CVS, the ony chain store permitted on Sanibel Island, did not stock Ammons.
The problem with Boogie Bottoms is that the sprayer clogs before the bottle is completely empty.
Welcome to Elysium, brother.
Ruh-roh. The balanced fund I call “cr*p money”, where I stash dividends, capital gains, and interest all year until tax time took a 6% dump this afternoon following the market close, lowering my annual return rate to 8%.
A REIT is the largest single component in the fund.
Microsoft dividends had just come in last week which pushed my cost basis pretty high.
Not that I’m worried, but I don’t run an insurance company.
Maybe the Geico Gecko has the right idea of retiring in two weeks.
I had good results in Singapore with Snake Brand Prickly Heat Powder. It seems to be pretty highly mentholated.
Thursday. Dark. Good morning!
@nick
Product liability lawyer enshittification.
@greg, I will give a bottle of the Ammons a try, but it says it’s cornstarch too, but maybe the zinc oxide will provide the smearing lubrication…
I am not willing to try cornstarch to fill the pores in my skin to keep the fiberglas insulation itch at bay. It’s too uncomfortable. I’ll use the indian talc.
———
anyone have a takeaway from Trump’s speech?
———
I was sitting out having my tiny little fire and reading when there was a flash, bang, and the power blinked all up and down the street. I think someone popped a transformer. I didn’t see continued arc flashes or flames lighting the sky so I didn’t go looking for the problem. No sirens either. It looked and sounded like it came from where all the cranes are parked while they pull in new transmission lines.
My computers all rebooted. I really need to dig out the path to the machines and get the new UPS in place. No point having it if it’s not in use.
———-
Time for a shower and bed.
n