Cool, crisp, sunny and clear. And warmer later. Like yesterday. Second false Spring is over, with morning temps of 53F! but we’ll soon get into real Spring, I’m sure. Until then, I’m loving this Global Cooling. NY and Canadia aren’t gonna like it much.
So yesterday started out pretty blurry. I take meds when I need to, painkillers and antibiotics are the miracles of the modern world, and there’s no shame in using them. Not that there should be. I did mostly office and internet stuff when I finally got out of bed. Felt sore, but nothing like I expected. It really makes a difference to be proactive.
In the afternoon, I did a little cleaning, a little putting away, and I took some stuff to the shop. I am still waiting on an ebay sale to move forward. It will clear up some room and I can finally get my storage unit emptied. And the money won’t hurt.
Today I’ll try to get rid of those cats again, and maybe do some more moving and scrapping. Who knows. W wants me to pick up some free stuff in the neighborhood. A nice desk chair and some other things. Hope the lady is there to meet me on time.
I feel like I’m forgetting something, but I can’t remember what…
Oh well, stack like your life depends on it. It just might.
nick
.22 short.
Wednesday. Good morning! Where did half the week go?
I lost yesterday pretty much. Something at the BOL is blooming, and my hay fever went mental. I dosed up with steroids and antihistamines, and promptly fell asleep after breakfast, waking in time to make dinner and go back to bed. Ah, well.
Paul, sorry to hear that Penny is fading. She sounds like a very good dog.
X is now privately held by xAI.
SpaceX has been a ward of its private investors so no one really knows until the IPO happens.
I’ve seen numbers for SpaceX annual earnings in the $15-20 billion range, but that doesn’t justify the > $1 Trillion valuations being projected.
And, as SteveF has already pointed out, a lot of Fed money is involved, hot off of the printing press.
They will save so much money on gas!
A lot of EVs still get sold around here because memories of the Labor Day 2017 “gas shortage” linger.
The Railroad Commission debunked the “shortage” later on, but that doesn’t matter.
Show Ya lives to be right even if it only lasts for five minutes. That’s enough.
Amiga Forever.
Colonists also view Tesla as a status symbol.
Teslas are common as hondas here. Even cybertrucks aren’t rare.
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Up. Kids have been poked, lunch has been packed. I’m groggy and tired all out of proportion. I was woken by a low blood sugar alarm. I forgot to set it to silent. That is the one alarm you can’t turn off. It’s VERY insistent. I had a Lil Debbie Nutty Buddy and went back to bed. The spike from that was a lot less than the tiny lunch sized bag of Cheetoes that triggered the low… I overshot on the down slope from the Cheetoes. Probably didn’t need the Nutty Buddy, but I like Nutty Buddys.
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59F and maybe sunny in a bit.
n
Subbing today, same teacher as last week. Her classes are fairly good and she has last class planning so I get to go home early.
We leave for Texas in 8 days, Next Thursday to Atlanta for the night, then a straight run to Bryan Texas on Friday. 12 hours driving by Google Maps, probably take 14 due to stops to tinkle. We plan to leave Atlanta about 5:00 AM in the morning to avoid Atlanta traffic which should get us to Bryan about 6:00 PM.
I have been trying both versions of maps (Google and Apple) on CarPlay. I am leaning towards Apple Maps as the descriptions for the directions are a little better. “Travel about 3 miles and turn right at the next stop light.” Apple Maps did say to stay in the right lane in the local area, but I have yet to see a display of intersections on the I-State so I am not certain how that works.
I get the map and directions on the main display in the truck, direction arrows and street names on which to turn on the Heads Up Display and also in the middle of the instrument cluster. My Apple Watch also vibrates and displays the turn information. Hard to miss the navigation information.
Google Maps does display the speed limit and current speed (in red of over the limit), Apple Maps does not display speed information. What is interesting about speed information display in the Heads Up Display (managed by the truck) is that the truck reads the signs and displays the speed limit. There is a local construction area where the speed drops to 45 MPH from 55 MPH. Google Maps displays 55 MPH whereas the truck display 45 MPH as soon as the vehicle passes the sign.
The real test for lane guidance will be the trip to Atlanta as I go through three major interchanges on the I-State, I-24 in Chattanooga, I-75 in Chattanooga, then I-285 in Atlanta. If Apple Maps does not work well I will switch to Google Maps for the journey to Bryan.
Interesting.
The optical environment modeling system in the truck reads the signs.
Several states have new laws allowing speed limiting systems to be installed in vehicles of repeat offenders. The vehicle manufacturers are planning ahead.
Ford also pioneered the tattle tale systems reporting your driving habits to the insurance companies.
The challenge driving the story in “Smokey and the Bandit” endures.
Of course the fatal flaw in the script is that Texarkana was dry at the time, requiring driving another 20 miles into Texas to buy Coors.
Looking forward to a MAGA Senator filing articles of impeachment against Mark Kelly for war crimes, and a floor speech quoting every Democrat who was making the claim that Trump would be committing such if he targeted bridges and power plants. I’m sure DOD could be persuaded to find supporting wing camera footage in the archives.
Since the majority of my driving to Texas will be on I-State highways, I will have BlueCruise available. It does not work well in crowded traffic. On I-75 to Atlanta where I have used BlueCruise before it gets scary in heavy traffic so I turn it off. Driving to Nashville on I-40 with lighter traffic it is nice to take the hands off the wheel and stretch.
BlueCruise will alert if if thinks the driver is not looking at the road. There is a camera in the door pillar that watches the face/eyes/whatever and displays an alert along with an audible warning if a person looks away too long.
The system is not quite as smooth in corners as I would like and tends to do the turn in small increments. I have had a couple of incidents where the system got downright scary on a curve that had an exit. If my hands had not been on the steering wheel it would have been a “pucker moment”.
On I-20 between Atlanta and Shreveport there should not be as much truck traffic as on I-75 and I-40 so I should be able to use BlueCruise quite often.
The dynamic cruise control is nice, except when following someone that is exiting. The system sees the brake lights and will apply the brakes quite hard whereas without the dynamic cruise control I would just keep going. It is annoying. Otherwise I like it in less than crowded traffic as the dynamic cruise control will maintain a safe following distance and slow down when necessary, back to cruise control set speed when possible.
@ ray, all of that sounds like heII to me.
n
The challenge will be staying alert. Sleeping in a strange bed is not a good restful sleep. Combine that with long driving, stretches of boring road, and it will be a challenge. Multiple stops, and frequent, just to stretch the legs, get some Dr. Pepper for the caffeine, then back on the road. It will not be a speed journey. The wife may drive for an hour or so while I take a power nap.
The seats in truckzilla have massage built in to them. I have used it a couple of times on shorter road trips, about 2.5 hours. On this long trip it should help with blood circulation and relieving tired muscles.
It is not too bad once a person gets used to the system. Straight roads work well as do slight curves. Even tighter curves the system does make the curve with continued slight corrections to the steering. I like the lane change system. Push the turn signal part way, the system checks the blind spots, then changes the lane, cancels the blinker, and continues on. The system will not change lanes if it detects another vehicle in the other lane.
Ford wants $500.00 a year to maintain the BlueCruise system. I don’t like it enough, or travel long distance often enough, to continue to pay for the system. When it expires at the one year anniversary I will let it lapse. That also cancels map updates, which is fine. The navigation on my Garmin, Apple Maps and Google Maps is superior to the Ford mapping system.
Every vehicle I’ve owned with a built-in navigation system sucks compared to a stand alone or phone.
The built-in systems are good for a backup.
How lame can the LSM go? This lame:
Heroes Pulled From Behind Enemy Lines … Meanwhile, O’Donnell Offended by Hegseth’s ‘No Man Left Behind’
If they were women pilots, the LSM would blame tRump for trying to deliberately killing them by sending them over Iranfukistan.
There is no end to these dickless wonders in the LSM.
My son’s Honda Odyssey uses Garmin for their mapping system. What I don’t know is Garmin just the underlying “where are we and maps” and the user interface is Honda, or is the entire system Garmin?
My Handheld Garmin has terrain features, altitude, trip information such as max speed, stopped time, miles traveled, time to destination, miles to destination, and a whole lot more. The truck is relative simple in terms of map information.
My handheld gets free updates, for life. Ford wants a subscription or $149.00 for a map update. Nope, not happening. I can get better for cheaper. The only advantage to the Ford system versus a handheld is the integration to the heads up display. I can now get that on Apple Maps and Google Maps. Thus Ford will not be getting any more money from me for map upgrades, or BlueCruise.
Never mind.
A möbius strip walked into a bar sobbing loudly. The bartender asked, “What’s wrong?” The möbius strip replied…
where do I even begin?
There are 200 people at my parents Estate Sale at the opening. Hopefully they will all buy something.
https://www.estatesales.net/TX/Port-Lavaca/77979/4840341
Had to leave the property for the second time in less than a week because I had to take care of a screwup by someone who isn’t me. Annoying as soon as I was informed of it. While taking care of it I found that the problem was much worse than initially believed. Like, possible criminal charges against me because one or more someones both screwed up and lied. Dealing with it but my mood is likely to be foul(er than usual) until it’s resolved.
While I was out, I noticed that the lowest price for 89 octane gasoline is $3.929, up from $3.699 last week. I don’t know what a good non-club price is because the only other gas station I went by was a high-price station.
Picked up a few pounds of decent-quality beef because The Child wants more jerky but doesn’t want to pay $24/pound for it. Considering that her purchases are funded almost entirely by my credit card, I appreciate her being a tight-wad, though I wouldn’t object to her spending a couple dollars for a snack. She is working some but I told her to save the money for next year’s schooling. I got decent-quality coffee beans while I was at it. Price is up 33-50% from a year or so ago. I normally get 5-10# of beans at a time, of a few varieties and get more when I run low, without paying much attention to just when I get them.
Teslas are common as hondas here. Even cybertrucks aren’t rare.
Teslas are more common than Hondas here. Lots of Cybertrucks, I am seeing them wrapped now.
Fort Bend County is about 40% or 50% Colonist out of our 900,000+ residents. And they all vote for dumbrocrats so they dominate our local elections now.
They will save so much money on gas!
California is trying very hard to outlaw gasoline and diesel. They deserve all of the pain they get because they voted for the Karens.
“They deserve all of the pain they get because they voted for the Karens.”
They don’t get nearly enough pain.
They deserve much more–biblical levels.
Ford also pioneered the tattle tale systems reporting your driving habits to the insurance companies.
Yes, and Ford has been sued by several States for invasion of privacy, including Texas. Paxton is the best AG Texas ever had !
“So much for “unbreakable” codes…”
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2026/04/so-much-for-unbreakable-codes.html
“Elon Musk dropped a bomb on the cryptocurrency market when he highlighted the impact of Google’s recent announcement about the impact of quantum computing.”
Nah, not gonna believe the quantum computer until I see it.
Let me know if you need bail money… I’m no good with a shovel, so I can’t help with the bodies.
Freefall: AI Motherhood
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff4400/fc04357.htm
Um, combining wolf DNA and human DNA will probably have to happen in a test tube. In fact, many test tubes.
Calling Doctor Bowman to the White Phone, Calling Doctor Bowman.
Wait, is Doctor Bowman even still alive ?
“Ford Fire”
https://areaocho.com/ford-fire/
“There is a segment of the left that hates President Trump and this nation so much, they want the US to be defeated in every way. That includes the reported fire that reportedly occurred on the USS Ford. They are screaming about how it must have been an Iranian missile, and have come out as experts on Naval warfare, firefighting, and all things military. They are all incorrect. I will discuss the basic damage control for a Navy ship at sea. In port is a different story that is beyond the scope of this post and won’t be discussed.”
“Every sailor has received some training in boot camp on damage control, but it’s a rudimentary training at best. In smaller ships, a fire will generally cause the captain to put the ship at battle stations so the crew can fight the fire. The same is true on an aircraft carrier, except aircraft carriers are large and there is always a lot going on. When an aircraft carrier goes to battle stations, nearly half of the crew is assigned to damage control, to include firefighting. The ship has too much going on at all times to do this lightly, so for small fires, there is a dedicated fire department that is there to handle smaller incidents and prevent the ship’s crew from having to go to battle stations several times per week.”
I shudder to think of an aircraft carrier on fire with around 4,000 people below the deck.
“Two Weeks to Stop the Spread of War”
https://www.schiffsovereign.com/trends/two-weeks-to-stop-the-spread-of-war-154964/
“But at this point the political realities have started surfacing in the US. The administration is worried about high gas prices and the midterms, and there’s a lot of pressure to end the conflict.”
“Now there’s an arrangement where both sides can declare victory. The US can say they accomplished their objectives — dismantled Iran’s military and defense capabilities, degraded their nuclear program, eliminated key leadership, and dismantled their ability to fund and spread terror.”
“And the Iranians can say they stood up to the ‘evil empire’ and forced the Americans to walk away.”
“Time will tell. But probably not in the next two weeks.”
Call me a pessimist but I think that this will last longer than two weeks. The crazies are still in charge in Iran.
Thanks, but shouldn’t be necessary. The manager that I talked to this morning understood that I had little to do with the situation and that it doesn’t look like anyone was attempting to perpetrate fraud. It’s mostly a series of paperwork screwups (by people who aren’t me) which need to be straightened out before an audit comes across them and flags the paperwork, the missing paperwork, and whatever else. No ill intent, I’m pretty sure, just incompetence (by people who aren’t me).
Were these same people experts on orbital mechanics last week, experts on the international petroleum market the week before that, and experts on infectious diseases five years ago?
Did a little bit of surgery to my office PC. The backup hard drive has been upgraded from a WD White 8 TB hard drive from 2017 to a WD Red 18 TB hard drive. I had 50 GB free on the 8 TB and it was way past time for an upgrade.
Our LAN backup performed nightly is growing at 20 GB a day and I do not know where 15 of those GB are coming from. So we are burning backup hard drive space.
I built this PC about three years ago and I have totally forgotten about the case latching quicks. I did get to use my vacuum cleaner big time on it.
I need to swap my main 27 inch monitor for a 32 inch monitor now but I am going home, leaving the new backup hard drive building itself to about 6 TB.
The new backup drive in my office pc is up to 1.77 TB now. Looks like it is going to take three days to populate the new backup drive across the LAN.
Directory of D:\
5 Dir(s) 16,230,264,004,608 bytes free
Almost got another 2 TB off the LAN written to the new 18,000,000,000,000 byte backup hard drive. Had to reboot one of the file servers last night and did both. The wonky file server was having trouble with releasing file handles, a known problem that robocopy can cause occasionally.
Directory of D:\
10 Dir(s) 14,443,970,805,760 bytes free
“Finally Leaving NATO May Be the Unintended American Benefit Resulting From the Iran War”
https://jdrucker.substack.com/p/finally-leaving-nato-may-be-the-unintended
“The Iran conflict has been enormously clarifying. When the United States launched military operations against Iran — alongside Israel, without consulting European allies — the reaction from NATO partners was swift and revealing. Spain closed its airspace to U.S. bombers departing from the UK and denied American forces use of Rota Naval Station and Morón Air Base for any combat, refueling, or staging missions related to the conflict. France went further: President Emmanuel Macron blocked Israeli aircraft from using French airspace to transport U.S.-made munitions intended for the war effort.”
“These aren’t the actions of allies. These are the actions of neutral parties — or worse, passive adversaries.”
“Macron’s public statement made the sentiment unmistakable. “I am not the commentator on an operation that the Americans decided on with the Israelis alone. They can later regret not being supported in an operation they decided on by themselves. This is not our operation,” he told reporters.”
“Set aside for a moment whether Europe had a point about being excluded from deliberations. The cold reality is this: when American pilots were flying combat missions, Europe was blocking their flight paths and shuttering its bases. The alliance built on the promise of collective defense revealed — in real time, under real pressure — that collective defense has significant asterisks.”
Hat tip to:
https://thelibertydaily.com/
As with the Chinese relations on the West Coast, voting for Democrats is presented in the media as the “smart person” choice, and a lot of Colonists want to be seen as smart people even though interacting with most triggers the Monty Python “Upper Class Twit of the Year” sketch to run in my head.
“He’s in the guards, and his father occasionally uses him as a waste paper basket.”
The “Thing that makes you say ‘Hmmm’” from the primary in my polling location was the use of the Dominion scanners in the building for the Democrat primary while the Republican ballots were dropped in a locked box and processed off site.
Williamson County is going Colonist in a big way. I’m thinking that maybe we should buy @paul a Costco membership so he can give an occasional first hand report on the demographics from the store that will soon open in Liberty Hill, right outside the back entrance to Santa Rita Ranch.
Cedar Park, a big Colonist area, will get Sheels in August and a Nebraska Furniture Mart next year.
You keep using that word. I do not think that it means what you think it means.
Keir Starmer would have gone full “Rolph Gruber”, maybe even literally blowing a whistle, if he had advance notice.
The F117s have special hangars built in Saudi Arabia in the 1980s just for their use.
That plane was built for one mission, and 30 were in active maintenance last year in Tonopah according to the docent at the Palm Springs Air Muesum when we stopped there last Spring
Got the catalytic converters sold. Would have done better with actual cats. Still, tripled my money, if only the investment wasn’t so small to begin with. More paperwork for selling them than to vote, or buy a car.
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We’ve got three extra kids on the couch at the moment, so pizza is on the way.
n
What’s the resale value of an extra kid? Does the number change if the kid is full of pizza? How much paperwork is involved?
Asking for a friend.
Governor Greg Abbott RINO-TX working the room at a Colonist holiday celebration at the 2:25 mark in this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paKNJBzuP3k
Depends on the marbling.
in cultures that devalue child labor, they have a negative value…
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Now these particular ones are full of pizza and on their way home.
n
So you weren’t able to directly profit but you were able to jettison the negative value, which works out to profit.
This means you’re doing better than the underpants gnomes.
What’s the resale value of an extra kid? Does the number change if the kid is full of pizza? How much paperwork is involved?
Asking for a friend.
I believe to be highly negative in the USA. “Raising a Child Now Costs About $303,000”
https://thelibertydaily.com/raising-child-now-costs-about-303000/
Whew, that was a lot of blood sugar. big steep spike, big steep decline with an alarm when it overshot, and now it bounced.
Something reset my internet connection and required me to reload every open page…
I think I’m gonna try for an early night.
n
Didn’t work. Thought I’d read for a bit while my food digested. I’m still up, and hungry again, with my sugar stable at 85. So I’m having some apple, buttered bread, and hard boiled eggs. I’m eating the last colored egg, in fact.
I mention buttered bread because it seems like if I eat enough fat with the carbs it smooths out the effect. Not a 100% correlation yet, but I’m testing it.
n
https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/raising-child-now-costs-about-303000-study
– they keep using sloppy language conflating the size of the child with the age of the child. I bet raising a LARGE child is even more expensive. Big teen boys eat a LOT more than petite teen girls.
n
I know what you mean. I had my crazy week last week, and was looking forward to this week being peaceful. Forgetting, of course, all the “normal” stuff that I had to put off. Little things, like getting a haircut, or getting summer tires on the car – but a week full of little things.
Maybe next week…
My suspicion is the SpaceX makes lots of money that gets plowed right back into development. The Falcom launches are financing Starlink, which may now be approaching break-even. So now the money hose is being turned to finance xAI. Outside of specialized fields, Grok really is very good, possibly the best general-purpose AI out there. ChatGPT is better in the rankings, but is clearly hobbled by the need to offend no one.
I worry that, once SpaceX is publicly held, the stockholders will have to be pacified with immediate dividends, instead of financing future development.
Try Open Street Maps. While the UI takes some getting used to, the maps themselves are far more readable than Google Maps. First, less cluttered with advertisements. Second, the color change that Google made a couple of years ago really ruined the visual contrast on their maps. Google is still better at navigating, though. (I admit to knowing nothing about Apple maps.)
Like fusion, it’s “just around the corner”. And has been for a long time now. Someday it may really be true, but today is not that day.
NATO is a defensive alliance. A NATO member attacking another country does not justify NATO support. The fact that the US didn’t even have the courtesy to inform NATO members of the impending attack? They are entirely justified in being pissed off.
Trump (and his military advisors) obviously went in expecting a walk-over. Didn’t happen. Now they are trying to shove blame anywhere except where it belongs.
Oh, and the end result? The extremists in Iran are still in control and likely to become even more extreme. Another “mission accomplished” just like in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya.