Cool and wet. REALLY damp. The sun does dry things out by about 4pm, but before and after that, it’s wet. On the plus side, it’s mid 70s to low 80sF during the day, and the sun is hot when it pokes through. In other words, pretty dang nice weather.
I spent yesterday trying not to do too much. Working on networking seemed like ‘too much’. Ate, played games, ate. Did some piddlefarting around. Split some firewood. Did some very small tasks on the dock and in the dockhouse.
Took the boat out for a spin with W driving. Pleasantly, it started right up. W changed out the fabric of the bimini top and I looked at some future small tweaks.
There is corrosion on some of the electrical system, I should install the isolation battery switch, a nav light wasn’t working (and now I need spare bulbs and fuses), and other small things.
Boats and boat related stuff are a whole ‘nother pile of stacks, tasks, maintenance, and knowledge. Yes, pretty much every aspect of life and prepping is, and here we went and added this whole new branch to the tree labeled “Boat stuff”. There is some overlap with “dock stuff” and “fishing stuff” as well as the more general “property on a lake” stuff. It adds capability too, and fits with the dual use nature of my prepping. Anything I do can’t negatively impact our everyday lives, and should have a dual use- normal life and prepper life.
I don’t always get it 100% right.
But I try.
Stack the usual, but try something new too.
n
Hello. It’s probably Saturday morning in that weird liminal slice of space and time between Christmas and New Year that German speakers call “zwischen den Jahren” (lit. “between the years”).
It is like the human-scale manifestation of quantum reality. We are both particle and wave, a person in some kind of temporal and temporary Schrödinger’s cat’s box.
The normal rules and routines somehow don’t apply. Christmas cookies are no longer strictly rationed, as they were before the big day, and there are so many leftovers in the house that no-one needs to cook unless they want to. Work and other obligations can mostly wait, except feeding the chickens, children and other pets.
There is time for luxuries and fripperies. Lighting a fire, reading a book or three, watching a movie, munching a cookie or a slice of cheese, taking a walk, playing with boats*. Writing a letter to a distant or close friend, or maybe a book. Trying a new recipe, or even creating one. Fixing a few little things, but not starting mammouth projects. Nick calls it “piddlefarting”, which is about right.
Perhaps it is time to find out about breakfast, and to run a few errands, now that (most) shops and businesses have reopened. Or perhaps not. Perhaps it is time for a snooze.
Whatever you do, or if you do nothing, have a good day. Maybe write a word here to say you are alive and well, or alive and ill, or happy or sad or all of the above. Live in the liminal.
* “There is corrosion on some of the electrical system”.
Dielectric grease is your friend for boat electrics.
Mornin’ all, I haven’t posted for a while so thought I’d do a quick check-in, hope that’s ok.
Just ended my second year of retirement, one oddity is that my brain still wakes me up in time to go to work
Year has been spent doing IT support for my wife’s (small) indexing company and our local theatre group. My wife is going to be winding up the company over the coming year so that work should disappear and we should be able to do more trips in our little campervan.
Also been working with a local group that refurbishes laptops (mainly) for disadvantaged kids & people moving out of homelessness. We usually install Linux Mint Cinnamon or XFCE for lower spec machines – it’s amazing what it’ll run on, best so far has been a dual-celeron with 2GB RAM – not going to be playing games on it, but, it’s perfectly adequate for surfing, email, writing etc.
Coming up on the anniversary of my return to shooting (after a 50 year!!! gap) with my Gamo Phox air rifle and Weihrauch HW40 pistol (unfortunately no real boomsticks as this is the UK), it’s been great learning to shoot again and the people at the club are very friendly.
Wishing you all a happy and unalarming new year.
The dealers have their place in the system, but the manufacturers lost the ability to keep the dealers in check via financing floor plans and consumer loans post Covid.
Car paper was too easy to get until Tricolor imploded.
QE awaits with the new Fed chair, however. Easy paper will be key to building the infrastructure for the sex robots.
https://redstate.com/rusty-weiss/2025/12/26/tim-walz-called-out-over-viral-video-of-mn-daycare-tied-to-millions-with-no-kids-and-a-misspelled-sign-n2197519
Walaz is a lying mentally unstable ChiCom front and AG Ellison is a race-baiting leftist whose primary activity has been to join other leftist AG’s in filing lawsuits to impede the president’s agenda.
Trump should cut off the flow of federal tax dollars to MN until he can install direct federal oversight of the disbursement of every cent.
Glad to hear from you, Norman! Welcome back to the shooting fold. Boomsticks can be organised if you don’t mind hopping the channel…
Best wishes.
https://www.motortrend.com/reviews/2025-toyota-imv-0-pickup-truck-first-drive-review-japan-mobility-show
We wants one, Precious! Looks like the ideal basis for building a modern shooting brake.
Walz needs a real financial audit, including the accounts that are except from Federal and Minnesota election reporting requirements.
Up and at ’em, Atom Ant!
Back is a bit sore today. 72F and partly sunny. 81%RH.
Coffee is brewing. Kinder let the dog out but went back to bed. W has been awake and cleaning out her inbox using her shiny new macbook. Piddlefarting around. *
@norman, good to hear from you. The pest control guys I watch on youtube do incredible shooting with air guns, but they’ve also got suppressed 22cal rifles when needed. I would like a high powered air gun to play with.
I think I’ll have some leftover french meat pie for breakfast. Or maybe pecan pie. Some sort of pie…
n
*piddlefarting around isn’t my phrase but one that someone else on the webz uses. I stole it because of it’s perfect evocation of what it is. Drifting from one small and mostly avoidable task to another, no rush, no deadline, and no desire for real work 🙂
Add “SCUBA stuff” to “boat stuff” and “gub stuff” to get “pre-charged pneumatic airgun stuff”.
You’ll need a bottle and some way to fill it or have it filled. It starts off with a manual pump, but that gets old really fast. Lots of piddlefarting around with high-pressure connectors and hoses. Advanced cases graduate to high-pressure compressors, which quickly get you into “compressor overhaul and rebuild stuff”.
“pre-charged pneumatic”
– ah so that’s what the “PCP” stands for…
I have a compressor that is supposed to be purpose built for them, it was in an auction cheap. Of course it could be returns fraud and be the old broken one the person returned while keeping the new one.
For my welding stuff, I’ve got bottles of compressed air, and dry nitrogen…
n
Meat pie won the day.
There is a strong and steady breeze out there. It has the flags standing out fully.
I’m debating starting my day or laying on the couch and reading…
n
Indeed. Not amphetamines.
Not sure if your welding compressed air will be at sufficiently high pressure for PCP. Do not under any circumstances attempt to use bottled oxygen.
I am not aware of any reason not to use compressed nitrogen gas, other than it being more expensive than compressed air.
PCP compressors tend to be cheaply made, with the result that rings, o-rings and other seals soon fail. Servicing them is beyond the skill level of most people, so “broken” ones turn up a lot. Many can be rendered operable with some know-how and careful work.
What you really want is a name-brand SCUBA compressor, such as those used for dive shops or fire-brigade stations. Not cheap new, but you might know a guy who finds things at auctions…
Why not embrace the power of “and”?
Suggestion: You’ll need energy to do anything. Start your day with a slice, by which I mean a quarter, of pumpkin pie or whatever you have. That will make you drowsy, so lie on the couch and read for just a few minutes. If you end up passing out and sleeping for a few hours, well, no one could have predicted that, right?
@denis, indeed, one of the local fire departments had a SCBA tank compressor in an auction. It was several years ago, and it didn’t go cheap. Some things there is a lot of competition for and prices end up high.
PCP air guns are not as big a thing here, where you can just get a real one and probably cheaper too, but I bet if I go looking I’ll find them. There definitely seems to be a hobbyist subculture involving them in the UK and surrounds…
n
My Subie came with lifetime oil changes, no extra charge, but Subie dealers are all supposed to have no-haggle prices. They will honor car shopping services by USAA and Costco.
Pellets, BB’s, or AirSoft can be a stupid cheap hobby, training, pest control armory in the US. Of course you can spend a fortune on a German wundergub Single shot manual pump or CO2 powered replicas of popular firearms marked with Orange barrel tips helps avoid confusion.
OTOH, there was a multi jurisdiction rollout for the apartment building I once managed circa 2000, when some boys took a BB rifle into the underpass drainage ditch and some Karen called in a “man with a gun”. I led the SWAT team thru the nether regions of the building and knocked on the door of the young resident. Cleverly and fortunately, he didn’t answer.
That 2 story, 50 unit, 1969 building had a Christmas morning fire days ago that took out at least 2 units. With all utilities disconnected, the Red Cross seemed peeved no displaced resident took them up on their shelter facility. Other officials bloviated the grandfathered lack of a sprinkler system. No injuries.
Recovery will be an agonizing process but insurance should be good for it.
Never forget:
Sadistic human experiments inside Japan’s notorious WW2 Unit 731 where PoWs were infected with plague, raped and buried alive are brought to life in ultra-violent Chinese movie
I will watch this movie with subtitles. I was aware of Japanese atrocities by junior high school by reading the Knights of Bushido.
When Obottom went on his apology tour to Japan ’cause we dropped the atom bomb on them, I knew he was truly a doosh. I hope his fugly library crumbles around him.
Never forget.
Driven, to a large extent, by the fact that they are not – yet – highly regulated.
I fully expect the Starmer Socialists in the UK to assimilate airguns to firearms soon for prohibition, confiscation and licensing purposes. They are already assimilating (low regulation) shotguns to (high regulation) rifles for those reasons.
Where you are, the demand/incentive for airguns is not so strong, as most of what an airgun will do well can easily and more cheaply be done with a simple rifle and the correct choice of .22 lr, long, short, colibri, snake-shot, and other readily-available loadings. PCP is kind of a poor, expensive and troublesome substitute.
Getting around city ordinances that prohibit discharge of firearms occurs as one advantage of air power.
I got this for Christmas:
SixNeedler Needle Gun
With extra needles and CO2 carts. Now to find some critters. Can I dip the needles in poison?
“The normal rules and routines somehow don’t apply. Christmas cookies are no longer strictly rationed, as they were before the big day”
How do you ration something that is gone! Asking for a friend.
How do you ration something that is gone!
– pretend it’s available, but it really isn’t. Insist that people can’t get it because they aren’t worthy of it. Like all the unfilled tech jobs.
n
>>BTW, “Tulsa King” is awesome.
@Greg, we stopped TK after S3,E2. Just seemed that the quality had gone down. Maybe we should give it another try.
Spoiled too much by Vince Gilligan I guess.
There is an interesting story about those. The inventor specifically designed them to fall below whatever projectile energy threshold would put them in the regulated weapons category in his home country of Germany.
While his commercial samples were still with the testing authority for type verification, the government changed the law, overnight and specifically to include his invention in the regulated category.
Now he is selling them overseas, since his home market was denied him, arguably unlawfully. I wouldn’t be surprised if he litigates the matter, but he needs some sales first to get the funds for that. You can find his channel on YouTube for the gory details.
Do you have a dart frog?
>>Spoiled too much by Vince Gilligan I guess.
Speaking of VG, we finished Season 1 of Plur1bus last night. Really well done. Can’t wait for Season 2. Not to miss for BB and BCS fans.
“What’s in the crate?”
I don’t know Rust so I’m not qualified to be a Linux Kernel developer according to Corporate America.
The President of the Mathletes doesn’t know Rust either, but she’s got paper from a “good” school and cut through three semesters of Calculus like a hot knife through butter. Of course *she* is qualified.
For people my age working in tech, our whole careers have been spent getting rejected for jobs because we lack some irrelevant Hot Skillz which the suits deemed important.
My favorite experience of this type was when I was fully qualified as a iPhone developer with a deployed app on my resume but was rejected for work on other apps by Corporate America because I lacked hands on C# skills to fix the server back ends which were typically developed overseas.
Joerg Sprave’s YT channel is awesome.
I also read that the US version is more powerful.
Jim Butcher is releasing the next Dresden Files novel in Jan. It’s only been 5 years. I don’t read the short stories, or his other books, or his son’s book. I guess he ran out of cons to grift off.
Costco’s auto program is not a shopping service like USAA. It is a marketing service for the dealers.
I used USAA plus a military discount plus three years 0% financing for Vets, but that was back then.
Butcher has a lot to wrap up in only a couple of books. He said it was a 20 book arc way back at the beginning.
Trad publishing is slow.
Even though the quality is a bit less, I like the independents that are churning out dozens of books because if I like the series, I want to read more of it. I’m frustrated with the pace of trad writers.
n
I’m loving “Backyard Starship” byJ.N. Chaney and Terry Maggert. I just finished book 13, book 31 comes out next month. They do about 4 a year plus other series, spin-offs, and their own books.
Another Christmas present:
OLIGHT O’Pen 3
My new daily carry. I still love my Fisher Space Pens and Olight Arkfeld U.
Our gun club also shoots .22 ‘real guns’ but getting and keeping a license is becoming more & more onerous, so I haven’t bothered. We also have a bunch of members with shotguns.
The club provides a scuba tank for recharging our rifles and pistols, my rifle will do about 50 shots on one filling, enough for a 1.5hr session. My pistol is a single stroke manual piston so I can shoot as long as I want . I have a foot pump which I ‘could’ use to fill the rifle, but, my back says ‘Enough!’ after I’ve pumped in about 10 shots worth. 🙂
I have some bad habits with the pistol that I’m trying to cure myself of, the main one is rushing the shot my brain says ‘….I’m pointing at the target…shoot….shoot…now…hurry up!’ and then I ‘snatch’ the shot and land a hit on the paper, but. without consistancy.
Try concentrating exclusively on your breathing instead of what you are seeing:
Breathe in through your nose while raising the pistol to the target, as perceived through the rear sight.
Breathe out a little, stop actively breathing.
Perceive your front sight is stable.
Press the trigger.
Breathe out through your mouth while lowering the pistol.
Regulating your breathing oxygenates your blood, lowers your pulse and also gives you an innate sense of timing, which makes it difficult to snatch at the shot.
dominus deus
exaudi nos et misere
exaudi, dominus
dona nobis pacem
et salva nos a hostibus
salva nos, deus
dominus exaudi nos
dominus misere
dona nobis pacem
sanctus, gloria
dona nobis pacem
e dona eis requiem
inter ovas locum
voca me cum benedictis
pie jesu domine, dona eis requiem
dominus deus, sanctus gloria
According to Google Translate:
Lord God
Hear us and have mercy
Hear, Lord
Grant us peace
And save us from our enemies
Save us, God
Lord hear us
Lord have mercy
Grant us peace
Holy, glory
Grant us peace
And grant them rest
Among the ova place
Call me with the blessed
Pious Jesus Lord, grant them rest
Lord God, holy glory
I have a couple of airguns, nothing special, but I’d still like to sight them in.
A few months ago, I asked at my gun club if I could shoot airguns. The staff had to find a manager to make a ruling, and they said no.
I can shoot everything from .22 short to .30-06, and 12 gauge slugs, and probably .454 Casull, but no airguns.
I may make an appeal to management to revisit this.
“Among the ova place”?
Try “among the sheep” or “with your flock”.
When a mother realizes that her daughter is retarded.
The only reason I can think of to disallow airguns at a regular range is if there is a risk the pellets wouldn’t make it to the backstop, but would instead lie around on the floor as a slipping/tripping hazard. My local indoor range disallows shotshells for that reason, but shotgun slugs are ok.
“To Turn the Tide (1) (Make the Darkness Light)” by S.M. Stirling
https://www.amazon.com/Turn-Tide-Make-Darkness-Light/dp/1668072637?tag=ttgnet-20/
Book number one of a two book science fiction series. I read the well printed and well bound trade paperback published by Baen in 2025 that I bought new from Amazon in 2025. I have ordered the second book in the series which will be released in trade paperback on May 5, 2026.
This book is dedicated to “To Janet Cathryn Stirling, 1950 – 2021, dearest of all.”.
In 2032 AD, a history professor who is a retired USA Army officer, and his four graduate students fly to Vienna, Austria, to see the new machine for artifact verification that the Professor’s scientist friend had built. However, the tensions between Russia and the European Union are at an extreme high.
As the scientist is showing them his new machine and apologizing for his deception, a large nuclear weapon explodes in the skies above Vienna. In fact, hundreds of nuclear weapons are exploding across the European Union and Russia. Right before the nuclear bomb explodes above Vienna, the scientist activated his new machine, a working time machine. There was already a ton of materials ready in place for the journey back in time. During the nuclear explosion the machine activates, sending the scientist, the professor, the four graduate students, and the ton of materials back to 165 AD in the Roman province of Pannonia Superior. This is the first chapter in the book.
I must admit that I enjoyed brushing up on my Latin while reading the book. Salve, salve ! Ave Imperator ! ! !
The author has a website at:
https://smstirling.com/
My rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars (1,597 reviews)
Lynn
Pellet stove update:
Been busy with other things, but a quick web search at my goto pellet parts place says a replacement control board is about $500, though they haven’t one in stock. A refurbished board is $300 & the old one as a ‘core’ … there are none of those available either. Add 11.25% tax for my locality.
These are relatively simple items, discreet analog circuitry from the 1980s, dpdt switches & sensors & resistors. People have built them from scratch. It kind of calls out for an Arduino conversion.
A nice ComfortBilt HP22 or HP50 unit is attractive though. Thermostat controlled, auto-lighting, quieter. Everything 35 years newer.
I hope you are all enjoying “the days between the dates” as I am; it sounds like you are.
I had a brief migraine episode today. I get the ‘aura’, primarily visual, sometimes auditory, but only a sense of pressure somewhere in the back of my head rather than a full blown headache. The visual aura is much like a kaleidoscope in a ring superimposed on my vision. Fortunately it only lasted about 20 minutes.
In case I’m busy or distracted, may you all have a grand new year, and all the best for the year ahead.
@Gavin: Yikes.
At some time in my 40s they stopped for me, so there’s hope.
A Merry Christmas to you and yours.
I wrote an email to the range manager, and already got an answer.
No air rifles.
He claims that with their steel backstops they had issues with ricochets and removal of the pellets.
I’m skeptical, but it’s their range, and their rules. I won’t make trouble for them. I’ve seen some of their clientele, and they have their hands full keeping people from shooting the ceiling…
It makes me happy that the partitions are bulletproof.
I wrote an email to the range manager, and already got an answer.
No air rifles.
He claims that with their steel backstops they had issues with ricochets and removal of the pellets.
I’m skeptical, but it’s their range, and their rules. I won’t make trouble for them. I’ve seen some of their clientele, and they have their hands full keeping people from shooting the ceiling…
It makes me happy that the partitions are bulletproof.
My Dad bought me and my brothers a steel range shooting box when I was a teenager. We kept it on a table in the long hallway upstairs. We had a single shot air pistol that I still have. We would shoot that pistol all the time until my mother yelled “cut it out” up the stairs. My brothers had to be careful walking out of their rooms, my room was to the right over the garage.
I’m loving “Backyard Starship” byJ.N. Chaney and Terry Maggert. I just finished book 13, book 31 comes out next month. They do about 4 a year plus other series, spin-offs, and their own books.
https://www.amazon.com/Backyard-Starship-J-N-Chaney/dp/B09GCSHXGD?tag=ttgnet-20/
I have been tempted but the dead tree POD trade paperbacks are kinda expensive. Wow, 31 of them now.
Dinner was half a boneless lamb roast. I usually cut them in half before I bag and vac seal them so they are around 3 pounds. This one went to freezer camp in 2023 and it was delicious. I stuffed garlic chunks inside, covered the outside in garlic, salt, and pepper with some dried rosemary and roasted in the oven for about an hour. Perfectly done, medium rare to rare. I put some small potatoes and onion wedges tossed with the same spices on the tray to bake, and they came out delicious too. W added sauteed brusselsprouts and we ate like kings.
Better than kings.
Funny thing is, the costco lamb from Aussieland has been essentially the same price for years. There must be something going on with exchange rates to cancel out the inflation. Canadian maple syrup too. Dunno, but I am glad, because we like lamb as a nice change of pace.
—————————-
Had a big ol fire tonight, and then a tiny one. I’ve been piling some pruning cuttings in our big fire ring and W wanted s’mores tonight, so a little accelerant and we had a bonfire.
S’mores were tasty and the kids ate a pile of marshmallows.
Then I retired to the dock to read for a bit while the kids went back up to spend time online with their friends and W went to bed.
It was pretty clear, with orion and Jupiter clearly visible until about 1130, then it got hazy and most of the stars vanished. It’s 68F and 94%RH. That, plus a breeze, equals ‘chilly’.
I’m looking forward to a hot shower and bed.
——–
W is loving her macbook, and was surprised that it worked seamlessly with her dell dock. I told her I’d consulted my cabinet, and they told me what to get, and that it would work. Y’all came thru like champs so “Thank YOU”!
Now I think I will head to bed.
n
Oh, and to add a data point, canned whipped cream, HEB brand real cream, was just fine even 1 ½ years past best by… Unopened and in the fridge the whole time.
n
@EdH
I’m doing it backwards: Mine began in my 50’s, but haven’t gotten to be more than a nuisance so far. Although periodic headaches did let me discover a really odd medication response. If I take ibuprofen for severe headaches, it doesn’t actually dull or eliminate the pain, but gives the sensation of pushing the pain into a bubble which feels like it’s outside my head, leaving my head feeling entirely hollow. I did do some googling but never found anything with similar symptoms, so I took the Stooges’ medical advice (Doc I broke my arm in two places! Dr: Well don’t go to those places then) and stopped using ibuprofen.