Cool, but warming, and humid. Possibly getting cold tonight. Yesterday was just like Friday- other than being moist, it was a beautiful day. It’s a mild end to a mild year for us.
I arose late, somewhat sore and stiff, ate and did very little. I spent several hours working on a puzzle while W put Thompson’s Water Seal on the teak furniture. She sanded the top surfaces last visit. They look much better. Teak is pretty sturdy but it does benefit from maintenance.
I did manage some other very small tasks, and made dinner, so it was a pretty relaxed day.
We still haven’t decided if we’re headed home today, or tomorrow. I’ve got more small stuff I can do, and W wants to just do relaxing things and enjoy the place a bit. The only real reason to head home is D2’s plans and it might be easier to drop her where she wants to go on the way home tomorrow. (She wants to visit a friend who has a lakehouse on another sorta nearby lake.)
I’ve been pretty good about not thinking of all the things piling up on my lists. Mostly. Still, it niggles.
I have been taking notes about some stuff that needs to be bolstered here, or replaced. I let that slack off for a bit, but some basic stuff needs refinement. I really really need some secure storage here… and to sort out the networking.
But that’s for another day. Stack what you can, while you can. And stay frosty.
nick
Sunday. Sunny, blue sky, snow on the ground, but not on the roads. Temperature in the sun a mite above freezing. A nice day to go for a long walk.
Have a good day!
USB-C dock capability and widespread third party comptibility has been the “killer app” for Apple since the laptops became disposable around a decade ago.
Apple also had Intel’s Lightning/Thunderbolt tech first but the potential of that beyond supporting multiple docked displays has never been fully explored by Cupertino for some reason.
If I wasn’t a Nazi about expiration dates on food items in the house, we would be overwhelmed in the kitchen/pantry area by the hoarding compulsions of the other members of my household.
Every trip to HMart or another Asian market usually results in five or six items coming home which will never be consumed, and every time I see the face of Bob on a Bob’s Red Mill product, I know it is something that I will eventually trash.
Bob is a complete b*stard IMHO, but his expiration dates are mercifully short.
What’s been really disturbing lately is that the offspring who have inherited the seemingly genetic compulsion from my inlaws keep tidy and clutter free living spaces away at school while regarding the house with a different standard for “clean”.
The hoarded item count is probably closer to one or two from the Asian market trips, but I’m currently looking at a big lot of cracker products from a Japanese market in California which got hauled home almost a year ago and have never even been looked at in that time.
I also know see a bag of similar product from the grand opening of Teso Life in Dallas which was nearly two years ago.
The running average isn’t good. Unfortunately, expiration dates on the Asian food aren’t obvious.
Except for Apple’s own USB-C to ethernet 1Gig adapter. It will max out at 100Mbps. Apple MacOS does not have the correct drivers for the chipset in the adapter. Apparently most of the people that buy it don’t know, don’t care, or have slow wired internet to begin with. I sent mine back with a nasty note which was probably never read.
The Anker 1GB adapter works just fine with Apple and at full speed.
I do have a OWC Thunderbolt 5 hub through which I connect the ethernet adapter, a USB-A backup thumb drive, a USB-C Time Machine backup, and the portable external monitor. Probably overkill as TB4 would have worked just fine. The hub works well. A little larger than I would like. Probably a standard OWC case and they just change the guts and cutouts.
My Dell monitor works well with the MacBook using a USB-C to DisplayPort cable. I just hooked it up as an experiment and don’t need to do that anymore with the portable monitor I received for Christmas. The portable monitor only needs one cable for power and signal from the MacBook. A 60 watt cable will not work, but a 240 watt cable does work. I don’t think the monitor needs that much power but I don’t have any other cables between 60 watt and 240 watt.
Yeah, that was the book I used last week to point out POD books are being killed. $25 for a POD? No, thank you. Maybe you can find a used one or a library copy. I like the dialogue and the development of the universe.
I deal with USB-NIC connections from our system to the AI hardware for certain management functionality, and the reliable speeds of those connections depend on proper initialization of the chipset by the vendors’ hardware.
One vendor handles the initialization properly while the other does not, requiring some tricks at the Linux device initialization level on my side to get the connection to run at rated speed.
I’ve never played with OS X device initialization, but I imagine something similar is possible. Apple should provide a proper driver, however.
I have two Plugable Gigabit USB adapters, one USB 3.0 and the other USB-C. They just work with Mac, Windows, and Linux.
I don’t need my ticket to Elesium punched.
Four years ago, when management could not get me actual AI hardware to play with, I worked out configuration of the USB-NIC connections using the Plugable USB 3.0 adapter and my “road” laptop which only runs Linux.
Sniff. Elysium. Sniff.
We all make mistakes in life.
OWC has been working on Thunderbolt/Lightning almost as long as Apple.
Lenovo has been working on that connection type for a while as well. My T470 ThinkPad has Thunderbolt in theory, but it is pre-standard hardware.
I have a new T14 Gen 6 ThinkPad which will replace the T470 as my “Windows” laptop, but I haven’t had a chance to try it with the docks we have at the house.
Yeah, Lenovo. I don’t think it is a secret where I work. Think about it.
SLOOOOWWWWW start to the day.
73F and grey, although there are scattered bits of blue in the sky. wind is steady blowing…
——–
wrt expiration dates on grain products, I bet Red Mills doesn’t run the grain thru the gamma radiation machine. Short expiry means customers have less chance of the bag sprouting an invasion of bugs and taking over the cabinet.
I once had one of those buckwheat neck pillows hatch and it filled the bedroom with bugs. Super gross.
——–
D2 was up playing pool in the garage at 2am, with a friend on her video call. Kids.
No one else is out of bed but me.
I’m enjoying my coffee, had an egg, and groton on english muffin. A great way to start the day.
n
I’ll bite. What is “groton”?
Suspect the answer will be “everything you touch!”
Very slow day here too. Lots of lounging around, reading and listening to music. W1 went for a long walk, and informs me she wishes to ski tomorrow. Also informs me we have a dinner reservation for this evening. Mmm.
Zelenskyy is meeting Trump. I hope they can find a way to stop the war.
Iconic French Actress and Activist Brigitte Bardot Dead at 91
https://www.ttgnet.com/journal/2025/12/28/sun-dec-28-2025-another-day-between-the-years/#comments
Famous for being famous.
@denis
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/213554/gorton-french-canadian-pork-spread/
Wife’s family and apparently most of the people in the area she grew up in pronounce it “cah-tahn”
Holiday treat.
n
Oh, I got the r in the wrong place. Gorton.
n
Bob’s Red Mill was based in Portland when we lived out there.
Bob sold the company to the employees, but I‘m not sure if they sold it to private equity since then.
I doubt they use radiation either way.
Thanks, Nick. Now I of course recall that you mentioned this in the context of meat pie not so long ago. Sounds a lot like “rillettes de porc” in France.
Dinner was nice. I had grilled medallions of pork fillet with Spätzle (little egg noodles) and a creamy sauce, followed by apple-cinnamon fritters and ice cream. Comforting cold weather food, but I should, and probably will, skip breakfast tomorrow.
Goodnight!
California ‘wealth tax’ proposal has its billionaires preparing to flee
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/12/california_wealth_tax_proposal_has_its_billionaires_preparing_to_flee.html
Hard to have much sympathy for the billionaires who are perfectly fine living in a socialist paradise until their ox gets gored.
But you have to wonder what it would cost for a little push back. Say, buy the houses next to all the Democrats in the legislature. Put a group home on one side and make the house on the other side a subsidized rental for people with bad credit and rental history. Maybe provide some cheap transportation in the form of some vintage Fords and Chebbies. Might be a coincidence if some of the legislatures had kids in private schools that suddenly got a bunch of kids on scholarship?
How much money does Grewsum’s family have, where is it invested and what would be the effects if a group of investors willing to lose a billion or so suddenly decided to provide competitors with low-cost loans?
Newsom’s in-laws moved to Florida ahead of the 2022 election. One of the first things they did upon arrival was write a check to Governor DeSantis PAC.
Newsom’s own family fortune came from his father running the Getty Oil heirs’ trust.
California tried to tax my brother’s California, along with other retirees, that don’t live in the state, retirement pay. The mindset was that the money was coming from California and should be taxed. My brother, along with the others, had worked for the state of California in various capacities. My brother worked for the highway department. He left the state for Idaho. The affected persons sued to block the proposal and either won or the proposal was dropped. He fully expects California to try that nonsense again.
That sounds delicious!
Someone gave me some homemade Senate Bean Soup, the last of which will be tonights entrée.
It has quickly become a favorite: a fairly subdued taste but then you look down and realize it’s all gone…
I may try making it myself.
Cali tries to tax retirement income even if you don’t live there. They argued that you earned the money there, so it was fair game. I know they did it for years, and if they stopped, that is a good thing.
They’ll try an exit tax too.
BTW, The California Franchise Tax Board doesn’t play. They garnisheed my wages for $300 outstanding after I’d paid part of what I owed. No notice, no challenge, just an order to my employer. The IRS looks like pussycats compared to them.
n
My brother is not getting taxed on his California retirement so apparently California was not successful or was stopped. He does pay Idaho income tax. As I stated, my brother does expect California to try again. Apparently a lot of people on California state pensions leave the state when the person retires.
Pro sports people pay California income tax when they play in California. That is not unique to California but applies to all the states. The money is earned where they play, not where they live. The players taxes must be a nightmare.
“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
BTW, there is an extreme version of this plot in “A Long Time Until Now (1) (Temporal Displacement)” by Michael Z Williamson:
https://www.amazon.com/Long-Time-Until-Temporal-Displacement/dp/1476781729?tag=ttgnet-20/
Lynn
Monday.
Today is the first day that fireworks for New Year’s Eve go on sale, so it is time to get up and go shopping for explosives!
Turning money into noise to drive away bad luck and evil spirits. Pagan, but fun…
Talk among yourselves.
That sounds simple, but nice. I might get a couple of ham hocks from the butcher and try it.
Cold front moved in. 45F and continues to drop. Plenty of wind too.
WAY past my bedtime, so good night all.
n