Maybe we’ll start to see some cold coming in… or maybe not. They pushed our forecast back a bit. School district cancelled sports and extracurricular events this weekend, so there won’t be any busloads of students trying to move around on Saturday night. It’s still reasonably warm during the day though. It was grey and misty all day yesterday, and I think today will probably be similar.
I did some stuff around the house in the morning, including working on finding a new meeting place for my non-prepping hobby. Community rooms are kinda pricey and most won’t book recurring events. I might have found something though.
In the afternoon I did a pickup, then took a load from the house to the shop. I really need to spend some time there, and get stuff sorted. With uncertainty over any rain it’s hard to move stuff in my pickup truck. Even yesterday with only threatening skies and heavy mist, stuff was wet by the time I got to the shop.
Today I’ll continue working the list. I’ve got a couple of pickups and I need to go by my secondary. I’ll pick up the natgas heater I have there and bring it home just in case things do get chilly this weekend.
Preps, I’ve got ’em. Stacks too.
Build some resilience and some choices. Stack.
nick
Friday. Finally. Good morning!
Busy bee this morning. I have the afternoon off, so I have to cram a day’s work into the morning, on top of catching up on all the stuff that came in while I had yesterday afternoon off. TPTB have no sympathy for the idea that when one is on leave, one should receive less work overall. Ah well.
I have something to which to look forward, at least. Tickets to hear Schubert’s “Great” symphony in C-Major and a cello concerto by a 20th-Century French composer, Henri Dutilleux. I know nothing about the cello work, but one of my grandmothers was a cellist, so perhaps it will speak to my genes. The promoters are clever, they always put the lesser-known work before the interval, so that people will attend the whole concert. If they put the modern stuff after the interval, people will leave during the break and not return. If anybody is curious, the concert is being livestreamed at https://www.hr-sinfonieorchester.de/videos at 20:00 German time, which I suppose is 14:00 EDT for the colonial types among you. The conductor is the famous Kent Nagano, whom I have not seen live before, so I’m looking forward to that.
No more time for chatting. There’s work to be knocked out before I can go play. Happy days!
Back in early December (or late November, not sure), my very-not-technical brother-in-law asked me to install Linux on their computer. I hope that no news is good news, because I didn’t hear anything from him until last week. Anyhow, we’re going to try some remote support today, because he says he has a few questions. I’ll be curious to see what the questions are…
We have a strange Superintendent situation here in Round Rock ISD.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/texas-school-board-reinstates-scandal-ridden-superintendent
I think it comes down to who the bond ghouls support in those jobs.
Plus, no one wants to be rayyyyyysssist.
Round Rock ISD just successfully floated a $1 billion bond issue.
I wonder if Des Moines schools go for spending on as much nonsense as Texas ISDs.
Winters like this are not when I miss my 1969 T-Bird with the 390 and carburetor.
61F. MOIST.
Coffee is ready. Kids are not. They are moving though.
————
– one of the signs of upcoming conflict. People/nations are taking sides, forming new alliances.
n
THEY MUST GO BACK
https://stateoftheday.us/p/state-of-wednesday-they-must-go-back
Dots. Connected.
Killed the same day. “Caretaker burnout.”
Because this always happens.
n
–literally Hilter .
n
Opposite of ‘grey man.’ American by birth only.
n
Can’t give an AF.
-6℉ (ambient) in my northern flyover state this morning. I still opted for shorts. 😎
63F and solidly overcast.
Might be time to get moving.
n
The Linux “community” is slowly becoming a reeking cesspool of wokeness.
The Slippery Slope. Oh, Canada. Soon, suicide booths, ala Futurama, will pop up on corners. You can just wheel in your spouse when you get “tired”. Soylent Green comes out of the bottom.
I first came across “Ethical Suicide Booths” in Vonnegut’s “Welcome to the Monkey House”.
I don’t understand how someone as unreadable as Vonnegut managed to come up with two of the very best classic stories ever. “Welcome to the Monkey House” and “Harrison Bergeron”.
This is why they’re called REDUMBLICANS:
Fifty-Seven Republicans Betray Freedom: Vote to Keep Government ‘Kill Switch’ in Your Car
The Dumbocrat Whip should get double pay for almost always getting Dumbo’s to vote in lockstep. The Redumblican Party is an embarrassment.
Based on today’s LSM headlines, not only are we all going to die from the cold, we are going to die3. It doesn’t matter if you stack and prep, you will still die3 in your house it is so cold.
Or so they say. “They” are never wrong if a buck is involved.
51ºF in Vegas. I’m fattening up the wiener dogs in case the Polar Vortex hits.
Depends. First read Breakfast of Champions (don’t we all know what this is *). Then Player Piano and Slaughterhouse 5. Most all the rest. All many years ago. Some were great (Dead Eye Dick), others not so much. But then I got into Tom Robbins.
T’wasn’t me!
https://steelcutter.substack.com/p/dont-blame-boomers
Garden fertilizer. WA State and several others approved human remains composting within the last decade.
The earliest mention of suicide booths I can remember reading is in “A Canticle for Leibowitz”, near the end. The monastery folk did not approve.
—–
I have started re-reading the Hugo’s, that book should come up in the reading order soon.
I have read most of them at least once, but I think there’s a Spinrad and maybe a Silverberg in there that I didn’t read. The later woke stuff (post 2012-ish) I don’t actually consider legitimate, so I haven’t bothered with.
Does that include politicians?
Or in the halls of congress.
That’s a true statement of fact. We are ALL going to die. Of SOMETHING. Someday. Hopefully, in the somewhat distant future. “Memento Mori.”
Then I got into Tim Powers… but I don’t know enough history to be sure what’s fiction and what’s fact. Haven’t read any lately, but his books bend your sense of reality.
n
District just cancelled school on Monday for weather. That’s in addition to cancelling all extra activities this weekend.
———-
Kid’s school was in lockdown this morning for an unknown issue. They were told “an accident”. IDK what that means.
n
Ah, accidental activation. Second time this year.
n
Suicide facilities are mentioned in “The Repairer of Reputations”, `the first story in Robert W. Chambers’ short story collection “The King in Yellow” published in 1895.
Oops. Got banned from a subreddit. They were outraged at a video of an ICE agent grabbing a kid. I said, well, if his family is illegal, of course they grab him. Apparently that’s “hateful”.
Do you use LastPass password manager? Danger, Wil Robinson !
More details here:
I followed the link that Nightraker posted here: https://www.ttgnet.com/journal/2026/01/15/thur-jan-15-2026-sooner-or-later-it-comes-down-to-fate-i-might-as-well-be-the-one/#comment-316169
and received my LexisNexis report today. I will file it with my credit reports.
Some items of interest on it:
1) They don’t have my mailing addresses prior to 1997.
2) They show one email address that has never been mine, at farmland.com. I wonder who “BGThurston” is.
3) They show one old hotmail address, long defunct.
4) They don’t show any of my current email addresses (other than the one I submitted for the report request).
5) They have my pilot certificate incorrect, and the aircraft category incorrect. I’ll have to dig out my certificate and check whether they got the number correct or not. Low priority — I haven’t been current since 1995.
6) “Discover Personal Loans” is recorded as doing an “Account Review” every single month. I do have a Discover credit card. I do not have any “personal loans” beyond conventional credit cards. I maintain zero monthly balances.
None of those issues bother me enough to do anything about them.
I did at one time. But the change to developers in Russia compelled me to change to Bitwarden. Which turned out to be cheaper.
I did get the email even though I no longer use the product. I checked the from address and knew immediately it was bogus.
Write a letter demanding the LexisNexis correct the issues. I despise that organization and what they once did to me. They showed me as $500K in debt which caused insurance rating issues. They totaled all my loans for the last 20 years even though all but one were paid off. Cretins. Make them do as much work as possible, overload them with demands to correct information.
Folks, the AG of Arizona:
Backlash After Arizona AG Says Stand-Your-Ground Laws Could Justify Killing ICE Agents
An absolutely irresponsible thing to say. And she starts out crapping on the law. TDS so bad she left the Redumblicans. It’s OK when the Dumbo’s do it, though. The blood will be on her hands.
I wonder what undercover cops/plain clothes anywhere in AZ think of her TDS whining/
The Chair of Hensley Beverage could end the mess in Arizona with a few phone calls but she won’t do it until January 2029.
“Inflation didn’t eat your steak. A cartel did”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/4428550/inflation-didnt-eat-your-steak-a-cartel-did/
“Beef prices aren’t set on the ranch. They’re set in the slaughterhouse — the place where cattle are turned into the burgers and steaks you buy at the store. Control that step, and you control the price. Period.”
“And right now, America’s slaughterhouses are controlled by a foreign-dominated cartel tied to Brazil.”
“The United States has over half a million cattle ranches. But almost all of their cattle must pass through a tiny number of meatpacking plants before reaching your plate. Just four companies control about 85% of U.S. beef processing — and two of them, JBS and National Beef, are effectively controlled from Brazil.”
Well, that sucks.
Hat tip to:
https://thelibertydaily.com/
I have something to which to look forward, at least. Tickets to hear Schubert’s “Great” symphony in C-Major and a cello concerto by a 20th-Century French composer, Henri Dutilleux. I know nothing about the cello work, but one of my grandmothers was a cellist, so perhaps it will speak to my genes. The promoters are clever, they always put the lesser-known work before the interval, so that people will attend the whole concert. If they put the modern stuff after the interval, people will leave during the break and not return. If anybody is curious, the concert is being livestreamed at https://www.hr-sinfonieorchester.de/videos at 20:00 German time, which I suppose is 14:00 EDT for the colonial types among you. The conductor is the famous Kent Nagano, whom I have not seen live before, so I’m looking forward to that.
Nirvana used a female cellist in their last year of performing. Here is one of their songs at MTV Unplugged in 1993.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWmkuH1k7uA
The full show is at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_24pJQUj7zg&list=PLyUVnCw_kLV0J2OjvADXZL-NrSghlEgDg
BTW, Cobains’s Martin guitar that he plays left handed upside down in that concert is for sale for $3.2 million.
The Linux “community” is slowly becoming a reeking cesspool of wokeness.
The Linux community threw Linus overboard years ago because he was not woke. There is nothing new here.
Folks, the AG of Arizona:
Backlash After Arizona AG Says Stand-Your-Ground Laws Could Justify Killing ICE Agents
An absolutely irresponsible thing to say. And she starts out crapping on the law. TDS so bad she left the Redumblicans. It’s OK when the Dumbo’s do it, though. The blood will be on her hands.
We are getting closer and closer to peak Civil War closeness.
“Elon Musk kills Tesla Autopilot to push Full Self-Driving subscriptions”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-kills-tesla-autopilot-to-push-full-self-driving-subscriptions-164159266.html
“Tesla (TSLA) removed its Autopilot basic self-driving software as a standard feature in the US on new Model Y and Model 3 purchases as the company pushes its more advanced FSD (full self-driving) subscriptions.”
“Per Tesla’s website, new orders for Tesla’s entry-level models no longer offer Autopilot as a standard option, now only offering a Traffic-Aware Cruise Control, essentially an adaptive cruise control that allows the vehicle to change speeds when following another car on the highway.”
“Previously, Autopilot offered Traffic-Aware Cruise Control and auto-steer, which allowed the car to stay centered in its lane and change lanes using the turn signals.”
“The change comes as Tesla CEO Elon Musk said last week the company would stop charging a one-time $8,000 fee for FSD, pushing instead to a monthly subscription offering of $99 per month, which was already an option.”
You will own nothing and be happy.
USCG Polar Star Marks 50 Years by Freeing Cruise Ship Caught in Pack Ice
https://maritime-executive.com/article/uscg-polar-star-marks-50-years-by-freeing-cruise-ship-caught-in-pack-ice
I have said it before: these polar cruise ships are a mass death scenario in the making.
I have said it before: these polar cruise ships are a mass death scenario in the making.
I have said it before: these
polarcruise ships are a mass death scenario in the making.Fixed that for ya.
Friday bedtime.
Enjoyed the concert, the Schubert part at least. The French cello work was just organised noise. Very demanding for the soloist and the orchestra alike, but no fun for the audience. There was polite applause for the hard work, but no more than that. The soloist played a beautiful Bach Sarabande as a solo encore, which went some way towards making amends for the prior noise.
Schubert’s “Great” symphony was indeed great.
Watching Kent Nagano was interesting. Very clear and direct conducting style, not at all overplayed. The orchestra clearly enjoyed his direction, to the point that they remained seated and gave him an ovation of their own at the end. I will look out for the Schubert on YouTube, as I would like to watch the camera footage of Nagano seen from the players’ perspective.
Our travel went well, to the point that W1 even had time to go shopping while I took a shower, and we had time for a succulent Chinese meal together before the concert.
Goodnight!
“Tesla stock pops as Elon Musk posts video claiming no safety monitor in Austin robotaxi”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-stock-pops-as-elon-musk-posts-video-claiming-no-safety-monitor-in-austin-robotaxi-191059641.html
“Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk said the company started robotaxi rides with no safety monitor present in the cars in Austin, a long-awaited move. This comes after Waymo announced another expansion of its robotaxi service in the US, hammering home its lead in the autonomous space — for now.”
“Musk also claimed on Thursday that he expects the company’s self-driving service to get EU and China approval soon.”
I wonder if that no safety monitor works outside of Austin, TX ?
See also: most 20th century and later “serious” music. I once heard the St. Louis Symphony do an American premiere of an Australian piece. I’ve heard better traffic noise.
See also: most Jazz since the invention of bop. I know a Jazz guitarist who switched to Blues. He didn’t like the Blues, but he was tired of playing to empty rooms.
See also: most rap/hip-hop post Beastie Boys. Only in this case, for some reason, the audience likes it. I don’t get it; most of it sounds like a malfunctioning machine powered by an off-balance motor.
On the other hand, I have wept in concert halls to Brahms, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and Verdi.
Anecdote:; The founder of the St. Louis Symphony Chorus, Thomas Peck, died. In the lobby of Powell Hall, they had a pot luck gathering in remembrance. Anyone who had ever been a member of the chorus was invited to come, so I tagged along with my then-wife, who had been a member for several years. Leonard Slatkin said some kind words on the landing of the central staircase, where they had installed a Steinway. Then he left.
They handed out scores to Brahms’s Ein Deutches Requiem, and the assistant conductor led them all into “Wie lieblich sind Deine Wohnungen”.
I have attended scores of concerts in my life, but I had never been located in the middle of 400 trained, talented singers doing a musical encomium to a beloved leader.
The assistant conductor got them started, and then intentionally put the baton down on the lectern, and walked away.
I haven’t been to a concert in some time, since my friends children left home I suppose, and we all stopped.
I did, however, find myself humming “Victory” from Thomas Bergeron the other day, when pulling on gauntlets to go out and pull tumbleweeds.
It’s simple. “Jungle Drums”. It’s all pushed by the
finefolks that make TV shows etc with a black man and amudsharkerwife with mulatto spawn.When did you last hear anything new on the radio that wasn’t ghetto?
Oh, excuse me. “Urban”.
Okay, Thomas Bergersen and Nick Phoenix, I should at least get the composers names right.
Tonight’s movie was Taken. Liam Neeson. You may have come across the meme saying “I will find you and kill you”.
Good movie. A keeper. Rated PG13 which seemed low to me. Not as much killing as a John Wick movie. I sort of liked the part where he had a bad guy tied to a chair and stabbed his thighs with welding rods or something and then car jumper cables to a light switch. Shocking, I know.
An hour and 33 minutes but the last five minutes are credits.
One of my favorites. The sequels, not so much.
New 20-volt yellow tool “drop”:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/sA_W3Myjcuc
This is why they’re called REDUMBLICANS:
Fifty-Seven Republicans Betray Freedom: Vote to Keep Government ‘Kill Switch’ in Your Car
The Dumbocrat Whip should get double pay for almost always getting Dumbo’s to vote in lockstep. The Redumblican Party is an embarrassment.
Or repuglicans.
And that is almost as bad as the gun red flags laws that our asswipe Senator Cornyn wrote.
I’ll bet that car killer boxes will be for sale soon.
“The United States has over half a million cattle ranches. But almost all of their cattle must pass through a tiny number of meatpacking plants before reaching your plate. Just four companies control about 85% of U.S. beef processing — and two of them, JBS and National Beef, are effectively controlled from Brazil.”
Ask where your friends buy their beef, and if anyone has a ranch in the family. Check the local paper and Craigslist. Find a local rancher that raises his beef right and has it processed at a local locker that also has some of that beef available at retail. Look for award plaques on the wall. Buy some beef and try it–don’t forget the hamburger, as there’s a lot more of it than the premium cuts.
If you like your beef grass-fed, fall or spring slaughter will work. If you like your beef grass-fed and finished on grain, it will probably be spring. Local practices vary.
The locker will ask how to process your beef. Your cut order will specify cuts, thickness of steaks, size of roasts, how everything is packaged, etc. Ask questions so you understand. If you don’t like round steak you may specify that it goes in the burger; if you like it, you may want it tenderized.
I get a half evey year. It comes from the same herd and is consistently excellent. Every piece of beef in that half comes from the same animal, no making burger from trimmings that come from 100-200 sides.
If you get a half you get half a tongue, heart, liver, etc. If the person buying the other half doesn’t want any, or wants some but not other, you can negotiate, if you or family wants it. Otherwise let the locker know you pass and they will find a home for it.
Today’s weather has been interesting. The first front came through about 6am. The rain woke me. I made a cup of coffee, washed face, brushed teeth and I took the trash to the street. The dogs were still snoring. The van and the truck were both wet. To the hood. Under cover. The high today was 65f. No wind, no sun, but not bad.
Second front arrived about 4pm. More rain and the temp is down to 51.
I have faucets wrapped. I’ll trickle faucets starting tomorrow. I have five bags of pellets for the stove. I’m pretty much ready.
What’s chapping my ass is the curtains. We never bothered with much more than decorative gauze and very half assed sun control. Out in the middle of 25 acres who’s peeping? I got some curtains for light control. So I could see the TV at 4pm or so. Huh. That seems to block a lot of heat, too. Huh. Let’s get some more curtains.
I have the central heat set to 70. 67 at night
With the new curtains, the two spare bedrooms now run almost 4 degrees warmer. 68.x vs 64.x is noticeable. This room is hanging around 72 vs 69. The bathroom hangs around 73 vs withdrawn testicles. I’ve have no need to run the space heater in this room this year.
The difference between the old windows and the new double pane low-e windows was quite noticeable. Adding curtains is also very noticeable for keeping the house warm.
Yeah. I feel like I’m at my Grandma’s house with all the curtains closed. Like why does she have windows? But I can open curtains for light.
———–
When I was a kid, dad would get a half cow. We got sick of eating beef, and a lot of cuts were not stuff we really ate normally.
I wouldn’t mind, but unless they vac seal, I’d have to repack most of it.
n
“Social Security Beneficiaries Receive Less Than Somalis on Welfare”
https://rumble.com/v74q3eq-social-security-beneficiaries-receive-less-than-somalis-on-welfare.html?e9s=src_v1_upp_a
The average social security recipient gets $2,071 per month. 70% of the Somalis are on welfare getting $,2500 per month.
This is just wrong.
“I’ll bet that car killer boxes will be for sale soon.”
Thieves have the lock technology before the dealers.
Let’s hope the first time someone gets “kill switched” it’s the wife or daughter of one of the asholes that voted for this bill.
“a lot of cuts were not stuff we really ate normally.”
My round steak and half the chuck roasts go into the burger.
Lockers generally wrap in plastic then plastic-backed butcher paper. No need to vac seal unless you’re going to keep it over five years.
One of the main things affecting the quality of your frozen food is the freezer. Get one that does not have an auto defrost. A chest freezer retains the cold air when it’s opened. When you open an upright the cold dry air flows out and pulls warm moist air in at the top. Use your freezer compartment in the refrigerator for vegetables and other non-meat items. Pull a week’s worth of beef from the big freezer and put some in the refrigerator to thaw and the excess in the freezer compartment to take out later in the week.
“NexDock is building a new Windows phone that you can buy in 2026 — Meet the NexPhone with Windows 11”
https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/nexdock-is-building-a-new-windows-phone-that-you-can-buy-in-2026-meet-the-nexphone-with-windows-11
“NexPhone is NexDock’s first smartphone that runs Android, Linux, and Windows 11. The device is expected to go on sale later this year for $549.”
Huh. Why would I want to do this ?
Let’s see: It will need 4GB of RAM to run Win11, so maybe you think they aren’t making enough money on “the monkey trick”?
Let’s see: It will need 4GB of RAM to run Win11, so maybe you think they aren’t making enough money on “the monkey trick”?
Windows 11 only runs in 64 bit mode so the phone will need 8 GB to run Windows 11. Maybe 16 GB as 4 GB has not been enough since Windows 2000. Wait, the phone only has 12 GB.
HSN is selling HP laptops with 4 GB of memory and 128 GB SSD running Window 11 in “S” mode for about $300.00. To hear the hosts the machine is a beast.
HSN is selling HP laptops with 4 GB of memory and 128 GB SSD running Window 11 in “S” mode for about $300.00. To hear the hosts the machine is a beast.
HSN lies.
“To hear the hosts the machine is a beast.”
Get them talking about 12 inches.
“Internationalis(z)ing Code – Computerphile”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j74jcxSunY
“Catering for a global audience is difficult, Tom takes us through a ‘timezones’ style explanation of the things you need to keep in mind when internationalising your code.”
I knew it was bad, but not that bad.
Yup, I just write and sell my software in American English. I’ve got enough problems without having to deal with localization.
One of my programmers has been working on converting our Windows user interface, written in 450,000 lines of C++, from Ascii to Unicode for two years now. It was a one year project to start and his latest estimate is another year to complete.
Say a prayer for all travelers this weekend.
When the weather map shows temps -10 or below, I always think about Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” (1908).
“As he turned to go on, he spat speculatively. There was a sharp, explosive crackle that startled him. He spat again. And again, in the air, before it could fall to the snow, the spittle crackled. He knew that at fifty below spittle crackled on the snow, but this spittle had crackled in the air. Undoubtedly it was colder than fifty below—how much colder he did not know. But the temperature did not matter.”
Cold kills. People. And technology.
Stay home and stay warm.
There’s a peculiar form of abbreviation where you take an initial letter, and a trailing letter, and stuff a number in the middle. Usually, the number represents the number of letters you dropped and replaced with the number.
The first time I ever saw that was at Digital Equipment Corporation, and it was I18N, which was way easier to type than Internationalization. This was in the early 90’s.
We really did sell operating systems, application, and software development tools worldwide. New products were required to implement the standardized tools for all output messages from all products. IIRC, this meant integrating an I/O package to handle messages by number, with parameters for variable parts of messages. The default language package was English, but you could change that at either install time or run time, I forget which. You might think this is no big deal, but recall that some languages are right-to-left, and there may even be some top-to-bottom. Testing was a bi… I mean, very difficult.
The product I was developing should have followed those rules, but it was a custom product for a single customer (USAF) and English was not only allowable, but required. I considered myself lucky.
As programmers do, we riffed on that abbreviation technique. Abbreviating common-use words you could produce clearly readable messages full of profanity and blasphemy, and maintain some level of plausible deniability. Like above, I could have said “Testing was a b3h!”
@ lpdbw, that is a pretty cool abbreviation technique I’ve never encountered before. Thanks.
I’m just waking from my post carb crash, but won’t be headed to bed until both chicks are back in the nest. One went to a party, the other to a movie with friends.
Still relatively warm out.
n
Texas Children’s built … something … not far from my house. I’ve always suspected the building was for pediatric “confirmation” surgeries.
At first my wife thought I was nuts, but then the stories started to appear.
I run Fedora in 4 GB on my “road” laptop, but $300 is too much money.
HSN has always been a dumping ground for underpowered but over priced computers. Packard Bell, back in the day.
Still 62F. D2 is home, now just waiting for D1.
Eating some spicy snacks. They are in the shape of chicken legs made from woven something… costco had them on sale, but they aren’t on the website. yum
https://www.reddit.com/r/Costco/comments/1d4kv8l/korean_fried_chicken_seasoning_puff_chips_are/
REALLY good. Sweet heat.
n
Laptop alternative if you have a USB-C dock arrangement at work and home.
My M1 MacBook Pro doesn’t have enough screen real estate on the buit-in screen to do proper iOS development in Xcode, but I can make it work with a USB-C dock I have in my home office.
D1 home on time… bedtime for me now.
n
Dang dog had a possum treed and wouldn’t leave it. IDK why it falls to me to sort it out.
————-
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/yourmoney/article-15481569/joes-crab-shack-restaurant-closures-florida.html
There’s a lot of capital destruction in just Joe’s, Red Lobster, and McCormick & Schmick…
n
Oh crap, they just changed the Tuesday morning forecast to 15 F. That means single digits in north Texas.
https://www.wunderground.com/forecast/us/tx/richmond?cm_ven=localwx_10day
Wow, it is already 16 F in Abilene, TX at 1 am Friday night.
https://www.wunderground.com/forecast/us/tx/abilene
So, the question is not the electric grid, that will have rotating blackouts before this is done. The question is will the natural gas grid stay up ?
Dang dog had a possum treed and wouldn’t leave it. IDK why it falls to me to sort it out.
I am feeding a juvenile possum and three feral cats on the front porch of the office. I am giving them the cheapest cat food that I can buy at HEB, a 13 lb bag of “stuff” for $9.64.
https://www.heb.com/product-detail/hill-country-fare-original-formula-dry-cat-food-13-lb/1953787
One of the cats is old and really beat up, missing an ear. All three of them constantly fish in the back pond but there are few fish. Maybe just minnows.
Not my Granny!
“Unplugged” was back when MTv still promoted music*. The sessions with Eric Clapton and the Corrs were absolute classics. Nirvana was never to my taste, but that was also a good performance.
*… and before the then-sublime Kristiane Backer went off the rails on Islam and vanished from the screen.
lpdbw, thanks for the Thomas Peck story; I unfortunately have only one upvote to give for “encomium”.
Your story about the jazz musician not wanting to play to empty venues reminds me of the immortal line from soul musician Joey “the Lips” Fagan in Roddy Doyle’s Commitments: “Jazz is musical wanking”. OPSec prevents me from detailing my connection to that movie, but I have one, albeit tenuous.
Saturday. Getting bright outside. Time to get up; places to go and things to do…
Well, the wind turbines are making quite bit of power, 14,641 MW with that north wind coming in. All four nukes are up and probably ready to go to over power levels. Looks like several of coal units have not made it on line yet, they are all supercriticals and require a week to startup if cold.
https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards
ERCOT is forecasting that the peak power for winter storm Fern will be 84,316 MW on Tuesday morning. I don’t think that Texas has enough fuel to get there, hopefully I am wrong.
Hopefully the governor has shutdown all of the LNG Liquefaction plants, they use about 24 BCF (billion cubic feet) of natural gas per day. I think that Texas can flow about 90 BCF per day (SWAG) but am not sure at all. The homes come first, the businesses next, and the power plants last for the natural gas.
“Unplugged” was back when MTv still promoted music*. The sessions with Eric Clapton and the Corrs were absolute classics. Nirvana was never to my taste, but that was also a good performance.
Actually, 21 Pilots was on MTV Unplugged just a couple of years ago back in 2022.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMoCYxyRUEU
I just figured out why I have been having trouble seeing all evening. I had my +2.00 glasses on that I use for reading. When I get on any computer I switch to my +1.25 glasses so I can see multiple monitors and the keyboard, etc. Sigh.