Should be mid 40sF this morning and stay cold for a while. It might be clear and warmer later. There were parts of yesterday that were nice, if chilly. Then it got cold after sunset. Today will probably be similar.
Did my non-prepping hobby [horse] meeting in the morning. That ran a bit late for several reasons, and little was resolved. When I got home the tree guys were still here, but after their lunch they finished up. I’m happy with the job and the price but the old guy running things (a real old school character) keep trying to upsell and kept crying poor. Dude, if you are really that bad at giving estimates, I doubt you’d still be in business…
Today I’ll sleep in, then work the list. Maybe I’ll just do more office and network stuff. Depends on the weather and my motivation. I did get the carburetor for the pressure washer, so if it was nice out I could mess with that. Or the generators. Or the lawn. Or the patio cleanup. Or the driveway cleanup.
It’s a big list.
But hey, someone’s gotta do it and this stuff isn’t going to stack itself. Get busy.
nick
1st.
It’s the little things in life.
You want to see my stock certificate from Enron? At one time it was worth $25K. I did not lose any money as the stock was gifted to me by my uncle when it was worth about $5K. I did get a settlement check for $0.02. I did not bother to cash the check and still have it in my files.
38 F and dadgum cold outside. Gonna eat breakfast, drink some coffee, and head to church. The wife is still coughing from bronchitis for the second time since Thanksgiving so she is skipping. The chemo from the breast cancer 21 years ago scarred her lungs so winter is tough on her now.
You know, if Trump wants to invade Greenland then he can just use the troops at our big Air Force base there. My buddy in 1982 – 1986 at TESCO / TXU who taught me real thermo, landed his brand new B-17 there in 1943 to refuel, get some food, sleep for a few hours, and head out to Scotland.
I think it took him and the copilot a week to go from Fort Worth, Texas to south of London where they got their guns, crew, and bombs and flew to Germany. They got shot down on their second trip over Germany and he spent 18 months in a POW camp.
“U-Haul Growth Index: Texas Back on Top as No. 1 Growth State of 2025”
https://www.uhaul.com/Articles/About/U-Haul-Growth-Index-Texas-Back-ON-Top-As-No-1-Growth-State-Of-2025-36556/
“Florida ranks 2nd for net gain of one-way customers; California last for sixth year in a row”
Hopefully they all vote conservative.
Hat tip to:
https://texasscorecard.com/
It isn’t my wish, but simple economics.
A house is a place to live, not a “tenbagger” investment.
The original Kenny Boy.
Shrub. Hopefully, P. Diddly’s career is damaged sufficiently that he won’t be able to run for statewide office again here in Texas, and Jeb! will be the last family member to run for the White House.
Fortunately, Jeb! didn’t really want it. The girlfriend came first.
At least Jeb! has his priorities straight … well, kinda.
No. Williamson County went Trump but was one of the handful of counties that Colin Zachary actually won, a significant change in the political situation on I-35 which got lost in the shuffle two years ago.
When the state surplus starts to wane, I see an income tax being sold in Texas as a way to keep the property tax “reform” plates spinning and the real estate market from crashing.
Economic migrants, not true believers in freedom, just like the illegals without the illegality. If they moved for jobs, they’ll move for jobs. If they moved to avoid high tax, they’ll vote against high tax to avoid moving again. The big money big bois who moved here for tax reasons will lobby hard against an income tax.
Lots of people will be surprised we don’t have one, as about half the people don’t pay Federal income tax anyway.
Who knows, freedom spirit and rebellion might break out. Could happen. It’s always a few that matter that make the difference in any situation.
————–
52F in the shade, sunny and clear. Looks nice and chilly out there.
Time for coffee and the last of D1s CRUMBL bribery attempt….
n
People get weird about schools. As a result, the bond ghouls feast in Texas while the state has picked up part of the resulting property tax tab for the last two years.
Austin declined a big bond issue in November, but that was for city boondoggles. The ghouls learned the voters limits for now.
Momentary panic when my waffle was ready but I couldn’t find maple syrup. I should have several bottles on the shelf where I have NONE. I don’t remember moving them, or getting the last one for the kitchen.
I did have one in the garage on the shelf so breakfast proceeded without too much drama. When did I lose track of such a vital supply? I thought I had too much so I stopped buying it.
I suspect I moved it, or someone threw it out, rather than using it all. I really need to go thru all the stacks I just threw around and half-assed over the last couple of years.
n
My ISD passed the totally sketchy bonds this time around. I was chatting with one of my hobby buddies and he mentioned that he was looking to buy some bonds, and my “good” district bonds were selling for the same price as Houston ISD (shitty schools, shitty bonds). The market doesn’t think there is any premium value in my district vs the ghetto.
F#ck me.
n
“I was at Barnes and Noble earlier and I asked if they had Donald Trump’s new book on how to deport illegal immigrants…”
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/dxXLWK4GOD8?feature=share
Bob Weir dies aged 78: Grateful Dead founding member and guitarist passes after cancer battle
I’m not a huge fan, but the greats of my musical youth continue moving to their next phase…
n
More retail apocalypse.
Macy’s apocalypse: 14 stores in 12 states will close as part of ‘bold new chapter’
14 out of 600 some isn’t much, but it’s a trend. They seem to be in dying or dead malls for the most part, and old city areas too. I was going to say “rust belt” but it’s not really accurate.
n
Oak Ridge had a mall when we moved her. All outside entrances so nothing was really enclosed like a true mall. Apparently that was not good enough and some big wig looking for a tax loss, convinced the local city council, using a fancy power point presentation and some shiny baubles and beads, that a fully enclosed mall was a good idea.
The stores closed, the buildings torn down, the mall was built. It worked OK for a few years then the owners raised the rent, substantially. Stores started leaving. One of the anchor stores, Sears, closed. The mall was doomed. The mall closed. A few years later the mall was torn down as it had rotted inside. A new shopping area, a vision of the city, was built almost exactly like the original outdoor mall, the one that was torn down.
Now the stores in the replaced outdoor mall are starting to leave. Rent is too high, taxes are too high. Shiny baubles and beads all over again with the Oak Ridge city council. The vision of the city, for which many companies got tax breaks, and a lot of grants were granted, is now little more than a parking lot with a few stores that hang on. Such stores will not last.
At one time Target wanted to come to the city. Had permission to grade some land. But some powerful person, who again presented the city with a nice power point presentation and shiny baubles and beads, convinced the city to deny Target. A couple of years later that same person got permits to build a bunch of apartments and town homes on the spot Target wanted. Graft and corruption? Probably not too much. Mostly ignorant people on the city council.
At one time the city spent a lot of money to get all the council members iPads to use during meetings and other functions. That lasted about six months as the people on the council could not figure out how to use the iPads. It may be a combination of technology challenged board members and an incompetent city IT department.
To be fair, iPads are only useful if you are into them.
I bought 2 of them for FaceTime, and my brother couldn’t figure out how to use it for that. I worked 45 years in IT and have 2 degrees in computer science, and I only use my iPad for the Kindle app. Which is crippled compared to my old Kindle Fire.
I’m going to give the iPad one more try, this time for ham radio, but I’ll be surprised if I find it to be the killer app.
I think I’d find an Android tablet to be slightly more useful. But only slightly.
The new iOS 26.2 is for them then.
The new look … it is like Apple decided to turn my expensive tablet into a giant Jitterbug. Bizarre.
Of course they’ve added more features … so maybe not.
At least they tore down the indoor mall. The Dixie Square Mall outside Chicago stood for 30 years after the interior was trashed filming a chase scene for “The Blues Brothers”.
The mall was finally torn down after the site began attracting interest from “urbex” channels on YouTube.
The big Sears store at the local mall still sits empty, and I imagine that the story is similar in a lot of cities, making ideal locations for Amazon if they decided to expand the concept to other markets.
“Sears” will have to be rebuilt as the US relearns the last century of retailing, but that will require rewriting the Bankruptcy statutes to allow the old credit terms.
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/09/amazon-plans-first-big-box-retail-store-in-chicago-suburb.html
The vaunted Amazon bookstore didn’t last long in Austin, but the location was in The Domain, a very high end shopping area.
The store was only supposed to stock bestsellers, but the doors opened with Mayor Pete’s husband’s book on display in a very prominent location, and I didn’t see that book leave that shelf space during the entire time the store remained open. Anytime we visited Apple and we stopped at Amazon, the book was there.
I have a third generation iPhone SE so the new OS is not a huge change on that hardware.
My biggest complaint so far is that the latest version of Xcode supporting OS 26.1 development does not make adding the iPhone SE 3 emulator intuitively obvious. Apple doesn’t want the old hardware supported much longer.
Fortunately, I am only experimenting with the accelerometer, and the GUI doesn’t have to look perfect.
Enjoy!
I was up early this morning, but I had no time to play on the intertubes, because I had to get two cars out from under about two feet of global warming, so that W1 could leave the BOL, and so that I could get to the range, where I was on barkeeping duty.
Barkeeping was less than successful. The previous user(s) had forgotten to unplug the beer chiller, with the result that the pipes froze, so we had nothing on draught. The bottled stuff available as backup turned out to be 0 alcohol shandy. OK for breakfast, I suppose…
Nick. No maple syrup? Disasterville. Tell Mr Trump he must annex Canadia immediately! It is right on the way to Greenland anyway.
I am stiff and sore from shovelling snow. Comes from being a desk jockey, I suppose.
I am in the process of doing a new project. I decided to write about my experiences in the USAF. From my registering for the draft, induction, basic training, duty assignments, and other adventures. I feel the need to get all this down on paper for reasons I don’t even know. I started thinking about it one night and decided it was time.
I did a document called “The Oregon Chronicles” that details the mental, physical and sexual abuse by my aunt and uncle. About 52 pages. It was done as a healing instrument. That time in my life was difficult to talk about and doing that document, while opening old wounds, made me come to grips with what happened and that I can survive and prosper in spite of the events.
Starting the USAF document is nothing like that. I had a lot of experiences, learning, growing up, during that time. If I don’t document it, it will all disappear. Maybe disappearing is a better option. Regardless, I am going to do this over the next couple of months. Three or four pages a week.
It will be called “The Air Force Chronicles”. If anyone is interested, I can post a PDF on my website. But I think most of you have a life, even SteveF.
https://www.pcmag.com/explainers/going-to-a-protest-dont-bring-your-phone-without-doing-this-first
I only visit pcmag.com about once a month to see if there is anything interesting. I’m officially done now.
I do sometimes miss the old days when the only thing from pcmag that was online was their bbs. I’m off to yell at clouds now.
Trump handed Wee Pierre his walking papers in a clandestine meeting at Mar A Lago shortly after the election victory in 2024, but actual annexation of Canada is a long way off.