It was so nice yesterday that I worked outside and got a little sunburnt. Mid 80sF and fairly dry, I was able to break a sweat blowing leaves and cutting the grass. 68F when I went to bed, and I expect today to be just as nice.
I got off to a slow start, the meds make me a little groggy and leave me just a little bit ‘off’ in the morning. But I did get out and cut the grass in the back yard. Then I blew all the leaves in the back off the patio. I decided to blow all the leaves out of piles so I did parts of the driveway, under the cars, and all around the front of the house. The lawn guys don’t blow them away from the house, or clean out around the plants, so they have been building up. I decided it was time to clean all that up.
Several hours later, all the leaves were in the grass. Well, all the ones I was able to blow out of the stone, plants, and mulch. I’ll do it again today as the next layer down will have dried out a bit and they’ll move a little easier. I also cleaned leaves out of the ‘pond’ water feature, and cleaned the pump for the waterfall. That was way overdue. I need a fish or two to eat the worms and squiggly things in the pond.
Afterwards, I sat out and had a tiny little fire, a fake beer, and read for a bit. The huge stray orange cat came and looked at me for a while. There was a lot of looking. Then it vanished into thin air. A squirrel came within 5ft of me and got a long drink out of the pond too. Nice sunset. I wonder if my kids can sit quietly outside and just look around. Maybe. But I bet their peers can’t.
Today I’ll probably continue cleaning up the yard and patio and driveway. I’ve got a bunch of “environmental monitoring stations” in the back of the truck. They were originally installed around town and have some air quality sensors as well as a radiation sensor, and maybe some chemical sensors inside them. I’ve been meaning to break them down or sell them for several years. I might do that today.
If I could figure out how to talk to or listen to the rad monitor that would be cool. It’s all custom modules in metal boxes connected to a backplane though, and controlled by another box, with a radio and cell for linking back to whoever was doing the monitoring. Not much chance I’ll actually figure out anything, especially given the amount of time I have for new projects… so most of it will be scrapped.
I’ve got a lot of stuff like that, stuff that I thought might be useful or cool, that I never did anything with. I need the space and some extra money wouldn’t be a bad thing either, so I might save one, and scrap the rest. Time to look at a lot of stuff and make similar decisions.
All so I can stack stuff that IS useful… right?
nick
Sunday. Good morning from Akureyri in northern Iceland. Yesterday was a rather long travel day, with a lot of sitting around at Manchester airport for the onward flight to the north.
Manchester Terminal 2 is a major improvement over the pokey old place that I remember with distaste.
The flight to Iceland was not entirely full, so my neighbour and I had the middle seat between us free in our row of three. A bit of turbulence somewhere north of Scotland over the Atlantic, but it was not very severe and lasted only about an hour. The screaming child a couple of rows back was more irritating.
We were flying in perpetual sunset, as the plane was moving west with the terminator. The approach into Akureyri was spectacular in the last light, flying over vast snowy mountains and landing along the fjord. The runway is built right in the water, as nowhere else nearby is flat.
Downtown, what we saw of it, has pretty old corrugated metal buildings and some nice stonework. Plenty of nightlife (university town on a Saturday night). Good food, nice local beer, but nosebleed prices. Very friendly and welcoming locals, all with excellent English.
Whale watching or geothermal spa today, depending on the weather. Let’s see…
The Geico Gecko’s railroad runs the oil trains through WA State from the Bakken fields.
And if it the tank cars carrying the oil aren’t running on the Gecko’s railroad, they were manufactured by the wholly owned Union Tank, a subsidiary of Berkshire-owned Marmon.
The next time you see a train with tank cars, look for the UTLX code in the lower left corner of the tank.
It isn’t even like Buffett hides it either. Go back through the annual reports and read the Simple Homespun Wisdom Ghostwritten by Carol Loomis of Fortune (TM). He brags about what he’s done with regard to making pipelines a political issue.
As for the crazy in WA State, as I’ve written before, four years up there taught me that WA and OR are filled with Church Ladies Without Churches. Without that outlet every Sunday, the mind invents that outlet.
Temperance and, ultimately, Prohibition originated up in that part of the country. Once that failed, they moved on to something else.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/possible-meteorite-crashes-into-houston-area-house/ , among other reports.
Houston is 8 million people and thousands of named neighborhoods. Lots of crazy stuff happening here.
That said, I hope it is not space junk crashing down. I have to admit, SpaceX deorbiting and vaporizing thousands of satellites every year may not be good for the atmosphere.
Before he retired last May, the recent Gecko letters hinted that he had Buc-ee’s in his crosshairs.
While the Beaver is a ward of the various states in which he operates via shameless exploitation of available tax breaks, pay attention to the political allies behind any effort to keep one of those stations from opening in a new market.
Things that make you say “Hmmmm….”
Go into a Buc-ee’s in Texas and you will not find Coca Cola products in the fountains anymore. I’m not sure about elsewhere.
We didn’t stop in Georgia at the Buc-ee’s north of Atlanta last September. Maybe they have Coke products.
re gas prices, recall back around 2005, after Katrina plonked refineries and transshipment yards and I don’t know what else, and price at the pump skyrocketed. Oil execs were hauled in front of televised Congressional committees and told to answer for their sins. One exec held up a chart showing what went into the price at the pump: cost of crude, transportation, refining, and profit at each step. And tax. The total of all profits along the way was less than the total of all taxes. By a significant factor, IIRC.
Of course, that didn’t put an end to the whining and the demands.
65 F and very overcast this morning. Mr. Fusion should be out soon and burn it all off, popping up the temperature to almost 90 F.
I am headed over to Sam’s Club after church. I am going to buy three Charmin Blues, three Bounties, and ten or so canned chicken packs. We seem to be going through a lot of these lately.
My son can, but it’s more of a “come sit with dad and his dog on the porch for a little bit” thing.
It wasn’t until I was older that I enjoyed just sitting. I generally always had to be doing something. I’m now able to spend a day at the beach and not be bored.
I’m going next month to check on the beach in Florida where I plan to spend the Y2038 event weekend doing absolutely nothing, especially with a computer.
Maybe we will see Ted Koppel in a few weeks, who retired to the island along with other elites who chose to keep a lower profile than Palm Beach offers.
If my math is right, the event will happen sometime around 2 AM on the morning of the Federal MLK birthday holiday. I used to joke about being on a barstool sitting next to Ted at the local British pub when it happened … if anything happened … but I’ll have to settle for the hotel room unless I hit lotto.
The cable companies missed their chance to end the requirement for the sports programming mandate which pushed basic packages up above the $100 mark in every significant sized market.
Streaming is possibly the least “green”/cost effective way of distributing the same sports programming, and my 500 Mbps cable modem service is pushing $100 after starting at $40 when we moved into the house.
No one wants to talk about ending the mandate, however. That is another political issue which is off limits.
Another reason why the Pizza Box Dream dies hard.
https://cordcuttersnews.com/the-end-of-cable-tv-why-cable-tv-companies-are-abandoning-tv-at-a-record-pace/
I was using a string trimmer at the time the meteorite fell, and I heard nothing.
My girlfriend heard it, though.
I was surprised they call Ponderosa Forest “northwest Houston”. It’s practically due North from downtown Houston.
Or the ridiculous CAFE standards.
Or the EV grift.
Americans are weenies about gas prices, and firing the gas station is now part of that Pizza Box Dream that refuses to die.
My neighbor down the street punched a big, ugly hole in the side of his garage to mount the Pizza Box that “fuels” his EV Mustang abomination.
The neighobor with the EV VW microbus abomination returned the vehicle to the garage since the weather started warming up.
The influence of our new Colonial masters on CBS, Nexstar (owner of KHOU), and Wikipedia,
They all want to say that they live in Austin. US 290 is the most direct route to Austin from Houston, but I’ve seen the plans to toll I-10 and SR-71.
I’m guessing that there are a lot of new housing developments and at least one new mosque out that way.
The housing developments probably advertise heavily on what’s left of the mainstream media in Houston.
The only fever I’ve seen comparable to the Colonist obsession with Austin is the ethnic Chinese fetish about living in Palo Alto and what used to be the surrounding blue collar and farming communities south of San Francisco.
You Aint
Being able to play You Aint Got No Ice Cream with the “Hillbillies” only covers these obsessions so far.
I don’t use the term “fetish” lightly. It is sexual.
Kinda like why that first F150 Lightning Super Bowl ad sparked … imaginations.
Power your whole house while the neighbors are dark and the MILF in the tight sweater will be delighted.
Weather this week : Lot’s of ICE at the nation’s airports
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/josephchalfant/2026/03/22/its-happening-trump-to-deploy-ice-agents-to-airports-after-democrats-hold-dhs-hostage-n2673246
I remember a trip to NYC in 1995. Flew into Newark about 10PM , walked outside to catch the hotel shuttle, and the police were arresting a cab driver. Seems he had dropped someone off legally , but didn’t have the medallion to pick up a fare.
It’s going to be interesting to see what happens to fares for some airports on Monday. Does Uber let you track that online? Parking space available will be another metric.
I don’t know if the service is legal or not, but fringe rental car players like Turo were bringing the vehicles into the short term garage at the airport in Austin and allowing arriving customers to go straight into the car and out the parking exit without the hassle of the standard rental car counters.
No word on how they got keys swapped. I would imagine that some illegal labor could be involved to greet the customers with the keys.
Turo brochures are standard in the dealer F&I rooms anymore and frequently part of the creative financing which puts $75k annual take home into $60k+ vehicles.
Ah, what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day, I’ve got a beautiful feeling…
85F in the sun, 76F in the shade. A few small fluffy clouds, low in the sky, otherwise, blue as far as you can see.
@denis, one of my “take your joy where you can” memories was watching the sun rise over Reykjavik out my plane window. We didn’t land there, but it’s some stunning scenery.
@greg, I commented before on my last trip to Austin via 290. It’s a slog of red lights and two lanes for the last hour now, as all the mega apartment and condo developments have spread south along 290. It’ll only get worse. I’m not making twice a month trips to the Surplus Store anymore, but if I have to be anywhere on the south or west side of Austin, I’m taking 10 and 71.
I should be getting to work but I’m sipping my coffee and watching the internet roll by.
n
Turo brochures are standard in the dealer F&I rooms
– all those kind of money scams and shenanigans will come crashing down eventually. You don’t get something for nothing and you can’t keep the balls in the air forever.
Retail and dining are finding that out as their cheap money fueled expansion craters.
The buy now pay later crowd WILL stop paying, and they’ll be proud of it. Tricolor is just the canary in the coal mine.
n
confusing mishmash of an article with mostly percentages used to make a point. That always makes me skeptical.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/real-estate/article-15662039/austin-housing-market-prices-plummet.html
Rents are off their peaks. Which is good for just about everyone but the speculators and hedgefunds. Last week there were articles about how the rent is just too damn high…
n
stupid headline but more reason not to use a front loader.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-15660663/Youre-doing-laundry-wrong-NEVER-close-washing-machine-door.html
And by more, I mean a reiteration of what people have been saying for literal years. “High efficiency” front loaders just plain suck.
n
We had a leisurely breakfast, and decided on the spa rather than the whale watching. Good choice. We spent the afternoon drinking adult beverages (limit four per person) in 41C water and talking nonsense. The sun came out and the sky turned blue. It was like sitting inside a Bob Ross painting of snowy mountainsides. Beautiful.
Now having a cup of tea and a biscuit before dinner.
A beautiful windless morning, 60F and 40%RH, a lot of fluffy clouds, but they altered today’s forecast from 87F to 93F overnight. Since the house didn’t really cool down overnight that means the AC will be working overtime today.
Driving by on my way to shop I saw that gas at the little market was $6.30 a gallon, up about $.30 in three or four days.
There’s a big brouhaha over Trump’s tweet about Mueller’s death.
So I’ll just post my reaction to the news he died.
I was very sorry he died.
I wanted to see him charged, convicted, shamed, embarrassed, jailed, and to die in prison, broke and alone.
He got off easy.
You never know what you’ll find at the goodwill bins. Going thru the stuff from this week I have two nice kydex holsters. One matches my shield. The other isn’t marked and doesn’t match with any of my glocks, but since it’s a Sherpa style, I’ll be selling it anyway. No interest in NDing myself.
n
It was clear that Mueller was as brain-dead as plugs The Last. I believe there was a puppeteer pulling his strings.
One ounce silver eagles sold in today’s estate auction for $72 and $76, plus an 18% buyer’s premium. 70x face. Oh my.
n
“There’s a big brouhaha over Trump’s tweet about Mueller’s death.”
By the same people that conspired to put him in jail, made up hoaxes, edited his words to twist his meaning, and called him a Nazi, racist and other slurs. Cowards, thieves, and traitors.
If I found any of them burning alive in a ditch I would piss in front of them just out of their reach, and if by divine justice I happened to have flammable liquid with me, I would make sure the flames kept going.
“One ounce silver eagles sold in today’s estate auction for $72 and $76, plus an 18% buyer’s premium.”
The FTC should implement an advertising rule that requires the display in the exact same font of the total amount that will be charged alongside the bid before the bid is finalized, and again after the bid is accepted.
And if they included the sales taxes and required the overall total for each item to be displayed, it would be even better.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/josephchalfant/2026/03/22/this-new-report-shows-just-how-much-were-winning-on-immigration-n2673249
With ICE at the airports the efficient thing to do would be to set up temporary holding right at the airports and just fill a plane when they have enough.
MIGA !!! Make India Great Again!
the display in the exact same font of the total amount that will be charged alongside the bid before the bid is finalized,
– one of my auction platforms does this. I usually just assume ¼ more to cover tax and fees. No tax in Texas on money though so the coins are tax exempt.
Some sellers on hibid.com have a lower fee too, but all are between 13 and 18%.
n
Anyone want a Dymo label printer? Free although kicking in some for the postage would be appreciated but absolutely not necessary.
I have two. A 450 Turbo and a 330. Both work great. I unplug the power when not in use. I have many rolls of labels, too.
I had the 330 and when I got the Win7 box Dymo didn’t have a serial port driver. USB only. My entire knowledge of USB back then was memory sticks and an external floppy drive. I didn’t know about the USB cable with the square end.
So I bought the 450. It came with the proper cable. Then I looked at the 330 and DUH! all I needed was a cable.
Live and lear, right?
They don’t have a lot of use. I use to print 30 or so labels for Christmas cards and it’s been all of 2 labels for the last three years.
Yeah. Mint sees the 450 and folks online say you can print from Libre Office. You just have to do the page size and such. Not interested. I can hand address two Christmas cards.
Anyway.
Today I can click the shortcut on the taskbar and T-Bird opens normally. I don’t have to right click and select Contacts to open the program.
Still ain’t right. It doesn’t minimize, it closes. Same for Firefox.
Oh! Lookie! There are more updates. What the heck, why not. I did the updates the other day and well, maybe my problem has been fixed.
Mint has to me quirks. But looking in Pi-hole it’s not calling home like Win11 did 800 times a day.
For stuff I didn’t have installed.
I would like the Dyma label maker and will pay the postage. I you want to send some labels that wold be fine. Msg me at bob@sprowldotnet.
“Now that Spring has sprung”
https://thesilicongraybeard.blogspot.com/2026/03/now-that-spring-has-sprung.html
“As we went through the spring equinox, I couldn’t help but notice that there were some questions about the day and night not being the same exact length, which is the actual meaning of the word equinox, after all. It was a spring “not completely equal night“. Space.com offers some explanations of that.”
“The reason is “the usual”, if you’ll allow that short summary. The world isn’t exactly perfect, orbits can be not exactly symmetrical, and imperfections are everywhere. I should note that when you look up the date and time of the equinox, you get a specific time of day – to the minute.”
“When I was learning these things, I filed away that seasons tended to change on the 21st of month. Spring started on March 21, Summer was June 21, Fall was in September and Winter was December. In all cases, that was the first day of “new season.””
“Space.com says that’s not right. They say that during the 20th century, March 21 was the exception rather than the rule, with the equinox landing on that day only 36 times out of the 100 years in the 20th century.”
So, Earth is a wobbler. Worse things have happened.
Equinox timing, a couple of days either way is Close Enough. I’m not groking all the fuss about the date this year.
Sunday. Good morning from Akureyri in northern Iceland. Yesterday was a rather long travel day, with a lot of sitting around at Manchester airport for the onward flight to the north.
My parents spent a month in Iceland about 20 years ago. They had a great time roaming around the place. The people were super nice to them.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson was even further along the demetia highway than Biden or Mueller.
The US is not going to land on the Moon using SLS.
I’m going next month to check on the beach in Florida where I plan to spend the Y2038 event weekend doing absolutely nothing, especially with a computer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem
I really suspect that most 32 bit time sensitive software will have been recompiled with a “recent” compiler with time_t as an unsigned 32 bit integer by then. And of course, 64 bit software does not have the problem at all.
Now if the software does not use time_t, oh boy. And the last C compiler I used did not check for signed versus unsigned integers at compile time.
Except for that one Windows95 computer which is running some piece of software which no one realized was keeping the critical infrastructure running.
Like the one in the basement keeping the Building Management System running. That just controls the lights, HVAC, and a half dozen other things…
n
I’ve been thinking, sorta in the back of my head, about the differences between cultures that have a dowry system and those that have a ‘bride price’ system. One the family pays someone to take their useless female the other the groom pays to get the not so useless female.
Both are common in shirty cultures the world over.
Both are subject to abuse, and there aren’t super clear differences between the cultures that use one or the other. I thought there would be.
n
The WOPR?
Windows 95 and NT 4 will be fine, but Windows for Workgroups 3.11 will be the problem.
Nobody knows the full extent of deployment of those boxes. They were often involved in “skunk works” projects in big companies like the one my friend managed at GTE.
Like Edison’s original light bulbs some survive unappreciated in odd corners, unheralded until they finally expire…
Well, probably not if the motherboard had a battery to keep time.