Cool, crisp. Warming later, and getting humid later, but still gorgeous. Like yesterday. I broke a sweat standing in the sun, but the breeze was cool. Drove around all day with the windows down.
Got a small nap in the morning, then did auction stuff before heading out. Wife had me on a mission to get free stuff from the neighborhood group. Aeron chair, genuine Herman Miller, free. Yes please. She will use it at the BOL for her desk chair. Did a pickup. Sold some scrap. Dropped off some trash. Met with my auctioneer. I need to find a new auctioneer. Home to feed some extra kids and crash from the carbs. Oh so exciting!
Today I’ve got pickups I can do, and office stuff that has to be done. Mileage. Invoicing. Insurance stuff. More indoor stuff while I just want to be outdoors in the nice weather. It was like San Diego yesterday.
I miss San Diego weather. And the food. But most of my friends have moved on too, and Texas is growth while Cali is decline. The world turns.
No regrets. Stack.
nick
Thursday. Good morning!
The weather looks like giving us another beautiful day, the penultimate workday of my Easter week off, so today I need to get up and get some stuff done, including getting myself a haircut, if possible.
I have gardening to do, shelves to hang, a garage that needs tidying out, a wardrobe ditto, plus W1 wants to go for a bicycle ride. Not sure how I will fit all that into the time available, but I will have to try…
Have a lovely day!
PS. SteveF, do please try to stay out of captivity. I don’t have many openings in my schedule for rescue missions, but needs must…
More like sloppy editing and writing with AI “assist”.
Where have you gone Perry White?
“There’s only one ‘p’ in rapist.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8QNMMrAx-I
Of course, large farm kids in flyover country can really pack away the groceries.
63F and should be clearing later.
Poked the kids. Left the wife sleeping in. I don’t have a death wish…
Snack is packed.
Morning. Overrated.
n
WRT Iran, hasn’t it been a walk in the park? Their entire leadership is dead. We own the airspace. They don’t have a navy. They are attacking their neighbors instead of us for the most part.
People talk about how expensive it’s been. The cheapest solution would have been one tactical nuke. Is that what people want?
It’s possible the extent of their buried fortifications was a surprise, and that is something that someone should have been keeping track of. Secret lairs are secret after all, but moving millions of tons of rock should be visible from space. Assuming there really are buried fortifications.
At this point we can be sure they don’t have a working nuke or we’d have seen it… see also, Israel still exists.
In a few months, or a year, we might be able to calmly judge effectiveness. I think it’s a little to early to declare defeat.
n
Great Ceaser’s Ghost!
The issues from yesterday have been resolved. As I think I noted, the manager to whom I spoke yesterday had no thought that there was an intent to commit fraud, just a lot of screwups which combined to make it look like fraud to an automated audit. I shanghaid one of the people who made the screwups (and put my name on them) and we went to the office and talked to the same manager and I said “Confess your lies on peril of your body and soul.” (Paraphrased, but my position on the matter was clear.) All is taken care of. Total of most of a day lost, but no criminal charges, no fines, etc.
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.
Iran is upsetting the middle east constantly. The middle east is the primary supplier of crude oil and other distillates to Europe. NATO is Europe plus the USA. Therefore, NATO is being attacked.
The issues from yesterday have been resolved. As I think I noted, the manager to whom I spoke yesterday had no thought that there was an intent to commit fraud, just a lot of screwups which combined to make it look like fraud to an automated audit. I shanghaid one of the people who made the screwups (and put my name on them) and we went to the office and talked to the same manager and I said “Confess your lies on peril of your body and soul.” (Paraphrased, but my position on the matter was clear.) All is taken care of. Total of most of a day lost, but no criminal charges, no fines, etc.
What, no broken bones ?
And no public shaming?
Are there no pillories left in NYS?
Yet…
At this point we can be sure they don’t have a working nuke or we’d have seen it… see also, Israel still exists.
I am not convinced that there is not a working nuke.
I am convinced that there is not a working 10 ton delivery system for a primitive nuke.
It’s possible the extent of their buried fortifications was a surprise, and that is something that someone should have been keeping track of. Secret lairs are secret after all, but moving millions of tons of rock should be visible from space. Assuming there really are buried fortifications.
Iran apparently has hundreds of mobile rocket launchers in buried lairs. The rockets are not big enough to do huge damage but they are harrassing. It is obvious that they were working on larger rocket launchers for nuclear payloads and Trump stopped that.
Hmm, discretion being the better part of valor…
n
People talk about how expensive it’s been. The cheapest solution would have been one tactical nuke. Is that what people want?
Some people, yes.
We are going to forced into enacting the scene of the legless and armless knight from Monty Python upon Iran.
If Iran has a primitive nuke then Taiwan has one as well.
BTW, I would include just a bomb with several tons of nuclear material delivered by a rocket to be extremely harrassing. Especially in downtown Tel Aviv or any other city or chemical / refining facility in the middle east.
“PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH”
https://news.polymarket.com/p/phantom-tollbooth
“Oil prices will likely show weakness for a few trading days. However, it is highly doubtful that this will lead to a permanent peace agreement.”
“Conditions such as Iran’s continued control over the Strait of Hormuz, acceptance of uranium enrichment, lifting of all major sanctions, payment of reparations to Iran, and a cessation of hostilities on all fronts including Hezbollah in Lebanon seem nearly impossible to reach a consensus on.”
“Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz directly conflicts with the vital interests of GCC countries, and the uranium enrichment issue remains difficult to resolve given the justifications for this war.”
“Lifting sanctions requires not just executive action but congressional approval. Furthermore, with both sides claiming victory, paying reparations would essentially mean admitting defeat and acknowledging acts of aggression. For the US government, this is an absolute non-starter.”
“The two-week ceasefire appears to be more of a tactical timeout rather than a fundamental resolution. While it may cap the ceiling for front-month prices, that’s about it. Oil prices will continue to stay at elevated levels.”
Really good view of the problem and why the two week timeout is untenable. The long term is not good either.
Hmm, discretion being the better part of valor…
Sorry, I am confused ?
Check your email – if you ever had an Android phone – for a notice about a lawsuit settlement that might get you some cash (although, of course, not as much as the lawyers will get). My notice showed up in the spam folder {ironically, Gmail put it there}, but it is valid – not a scam.
(link to article – lots of similar stories) Various articles have the estimated payout as under $100; I suspect under $50, but that’s ‘found money’.
I suspect it will be even lower, probably less than $5.00 to the people that were “harmed”. The lawyers will get the biggest chunk of the money, probably in excess of $50M. That is what class action lawsuit are. Just money for the lawyers.
One of my settlements from some lawsuit was a coupon for $0.50 of my next purchase of $20.00 or more. Lawyers got almost $50M of the settlement.
The most ironic settlement I have received, if you want to call it that, was a check of $0.02 in the settlement of Enron. I lost, on paper, $25K, real money was $5K but it was stock my uncle gave me so nothing really out of my pocket. I still have the check as I never bothered to cash it. Back then I would have needed to go to the credit union. Even passing by, the gas to go in the parking lot was more than the check.
The state of Colorado is deploying ‘speed trap’ cameras that figure out your average speed between two locations, and will issue a traffic ticket/fine if your speed is over the limit in that stretch. It uses License Plate Readers, and is currently deployed on I-25 north of Denver.
(Link here – several sources confirm this)
Not just one speed detector location, but two that use your elapsed time to determine your speed.
I suspect that this technique will spread to other locations.
Not just one speed detector location, but two that use your elapsed time to determine your speed.
I suspect that this technique will spread to other locations. \
– there are reasons (legal) that this won’t or at least shouldn’t spread. There were various turnpikes that time stamped you at each toll booth, and could have done it over 40 years ago, but something restrained them.
Probably the right to confront your accuser… which is the basis for challenges of the speeding cameras deployed in various places.
Doesn’t mean they won’t TRY, but it should be beatable.
——-
wonder if the license plate flippers would become common, and if temporary plates get read. How do they handle rental cars?
——-
n
My day has turned out other than planned. Surprise!
W1 slept late, which put the kibosh on my doing DIY around the house. We had a late breakfast instead, during which she mentioned that she would like pizza for dinner.
That sent me off to Aldi for some tomato passata, garlic, mushrooms and fresh basil. (The Aldi near the BOL is well stocked…). They had very fresh oyster mushrooms, so I chose those.
I also looked in the IT vitrine. They had an LED DVD/projector for a hundred bucks, down from double that, and a Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Lite for three hundred. Last year’s model, but perfectly adequate for surfing the web when my phone screen is too small, but I can’t be bothered with booting up a laptop.
That meant I spent the afternoon between cooking (making pizza dough, frying mushrooms, slicing toppings and preparing venison pizza sauce (ground wild boar, garlic, bacon, tomato puree, passata, red wine, herbs and spices) and setting up the new tablet.
First impressions of the Galaxy Tab are positive, but it took some effort to prevent Google and Samsung from installing all kinds of AI and tracking crud and from linking the new device to all kinds of accounts. I want this device to be stand-alone internet access only.
Let’s see how the Galaxy Tab gets on. I do note that W1 has coincidentally been looking at new iPads, so it must have made an impression…
That system has been in use this side of the big pond for years. The French did it first, on the “payage” toll motorways. You would insert a credit card to pay the toll and open the barrier, and a week or two later discover that the card was billed for a speeding fine in addition to the toll.
Nearly every motorway roadworks in the UK has average speed cameras these days. In fairness, that does keep down dangerous speeding in contraflows and narrowed lanes.
To my knowledge, Belgium and the Netherlands have average speed cameras too. I haven’t seen them in Germany, yet. If the Greens get back into the federal government, they will be sure to introduce them, as part of their persecution of motorists.
The cops were doing this in Oregon 60+ years ago.
My Dad was a Marine recruiter. In Roseburg, I think. But he had to go to another town frequently. From the way he told the story the road was twisty and hilly.
The car was a 1957 Chrysler Windsor.
One day some state trooper type asked dad for a ride to the other town. Dad, with a cop in the car was driving the limit and being “extra safe”. The cop said, “Sarge, we have timed you. Go!” Dad was like “no tickets?”. No tickets.
When they arrived the cop could hardly get out of the car.
See, it was a route that takes an hour or so but dad was running it in about 35 minutes. He knew his car, he knew the curves.
He never got a ticket.
A “delivery system” is as simple as a container on a cargo ship.
I made the mistake years ago of travelling as the front seat passenger with a pal who is a hobby stock car racer, in a fast car on his daily route to work, also a curvy, difficult road. I think I needed three puke pauses in about forty minutes. Never again.
I’ve been trying to log in to my Discover card account. For the last couple of weeks I get “We’re sorry. Your request cannot be completed at this time. We sincerely apologize for this inconvenience and are working to resolve this issue soon.”.
This worked after I moved to Mint, so, not the OS. Same Firefox profile I’ve used for years.
I called. Got a temp password. Same error. I deleted my saved passwords. Same error.
I just tried on my phone. Turned on Data and used Chrome or whatever it is, same error. Connected on Verizon.
It’s not Pi-hole doing something. It’s not some firewall on my PC. It’s not that my PC connecting via Starlink. It’s not my phone.
But ya gotta just LOVE being told to ask a relative or maybe a neighbor to help me. She seemed really insulted when I said “I might be almost 69 but I’m far from being retarded with dementia”. “Well, maybe they can help?” No, sorry, they can’t help, they call me with computer problems.
She tried. Asked me to be sure “my device” isn’t making the first letter upper case. My phone does that. I know that. Firefox on my PC doesn’t do that.
So, whatever. Citibank or Chase or whatever will fix their shirt(-r) someday.
Kind of annoying.
She could see my account. No signs of me trying to log in.
@paul – if the phone support person can’t see any login attempts on your account, then perhaps you are trying to log into a hacker’s ‘clone’ site. And, if so, your account login information could be compromised.
I’d carefully enter the URL manually, and not use a clickable link on any email/text that you may have received. Bogus links from a hacker/scammer can look legit. Even the phone numbers in those emails/texts could be bogus.
Always a good idea to manually type in links for critical accounts.
(You may be doing the above, and the URL you are using could be valid/correct, but the above advice is a good practice.)
Used my saved bookmark link. No joy. Typed in the address, same lack of joy. Used the link they sent via e-mail when I called them.
Nah. It’s not a problem on my end. Everything else works.
I can login just fine. From my iPad, from my desktop, from the app on the iPhone, from the app on the iPad, from my Macbook, from the wife’s iMac.
There is nothing to fix. The problem seems to be on your end. Go to another location, a library or Starbucks, connect to their WiFi and try to login. Disconnect your phone from WiFi then tether your desktop to the phone so you are using the cellular network.
It may be. Eliminate the Pi-hole entirely from your network. Make everything as simple as possible. Connect your computer directly to your modem to eliminate everything but the computer and the modem. Use a cable and not WiFi. Then add pieces back until your logon fails.
I missed a phone call this morning at around 9:25am. The phone is in the living room and I’m not deaf. I can here it here, sitting in front of my PC when I get a text message.
It didn’t ring. They left a minute and a half voice mail. I didn’t listen to it. A woman named Margaret. Some kind of “National Tax Relief Service”.
I don’t owe any taxes. The lack of the phone ringing is really sketchy.
Blocked/spam calls, or calls recognized by your phone provider as spam, may not cause a ‘ring’ on the phone. But your voicemail will take over on that unanswered call, which will cause the voice message to be stored and available.
So, my conclusion is that your phone provider is properly blocking spam phone calls.
That’s great!
Pi-hole blocking can be turned off. I tried that. I did not try tethering my phone to the PC. Why bother? The phone itself, on cell data, gives the same error.
It’s them.
No matter, I’ll just call to find what my balance is when I what to know.
Huh. I leered something today.
My current phone will use wi-fi for phone calls and browsing. Perhaps even if the phone’s Wi-Fi connection is disabled. I’m not sure if the browser on the phone might also use a Wi-Fi connection even if phone wi-fi is disabled.
Perhaps try your phone with both wi-fi disabled, and with your wi-fi router powered off. Then use the phone to browse to a manually entered URL of the bank site.
The point of @Ray’s advice is to simplify the connection as much as possible, in order to help identify the component/device of the ‘route’ through all of those physical/logical connections. Clearing browser history/cache could also be tried.
Thanks! I did have a message like that and it was in my spam folder.
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
Finished the first pass of my office PC LAN backup, was 4.54 TB. Now the daily pass will accumulate at 20+ GB every night.
10 Dir(s) 13,458,507,259,904 bytes free
I did note some areas to look at for removing from the LAN. Basically daily backups for our CRM system (daily 1.6 GB zip file) and caches for Thunderbird and Firefox that accumulate over time when taking a daily snapshot of the LAN.
A “delivery system” is as simple as a container on a cargo ship.
Most countries now have radiation detectors on their sea ports that the containers pass through.
Unless of course, that the primitive nuke blows up in the sea port.
We’ve got them in the port, and on the highway approaches to the city.
n
A lot of turnpike authorities are private interests who want to encourage use of the toll roads rather than being part of the state’s mulcting of motorists working in coordination with the insurance mafia.
Plus, photo enforcement of traffic laws is illegal in Texas and other states.
As for Colorado, I24 goes from Denver to Fort Collins, which is an old HP town and still relatively conservate compared to, say, Boulder, a legacy IBM community. I smell something more than an interest in public safety at work.
Florida has a pair of what I assume to be scanner facilities involving linear accelerators located at weigh stations north of Fort Myers near Port Charlotte on I75, the most direct route between Miami and Atlanta.
I think I’ve posted satellite pictures here before whenever the topic has come up.
I assume similar facilities exist on I95 as well as the Turnpike.
UPDATE: See the link below.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/P6Qpgzqw5ZAtGXzdA
Look at the buildings due east and west of the center of the plaza complex.
Things are changing at CBS.
Among many other ventures, Byron Allen’s AMG, then under the name Entertainment Studios, distributed the recent “Chappaquiddick” film which features two comedians in the pivotal roles of Joseph Gargan and Paul Markham, the two Kennedy family fixers who always knew the truth about the fate of Mary Jo Kopechne.
Of course, anyone who goes out to the Dike Road Bridge and peers over the edge into the abyss … or lack thereof … knows how the girl died.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/2026/04/06/byron-allen-cbs-late-night/89490128007/
Wow. That film is almost 10 years old. Time flies.
The Beard himself also makes a few statements about the incident in “Jaws”, filmed just a few years later on Martha’s Vineyard near the crash site. You must pay attention, however.
And we are back to 1 day without a reboot for my web server. Management threw in a patch for FreeBSD that required a reboot.
“Gas turbine supply crunch set to raise prices 195% by 2027: WoodMac”
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/gas-turbine-supply-crunch-set-to-raise-prices-195-by-2027-woodmac/816904/
“Restricted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz is also likely to impact the price and availability of gas turbine components, said Bobby Noble, a senior program manager at EPRI.”
“Gas turbine prices are projected to rise to $600/kW by the end of 2027, a 195% increase since 2019, with orders expected to peak this year, according to an April 1 report from Wood Mackenzie.”
GE is reputedly sold out of 48 MW gas turbines until 2030 at 300 ??? gas turbine deliveries per year. They can only grow the ceramic combustion parts so fast.
I may need one of these, “Bear’s Leg Pistol .357 Magnum/.38 Spl, .44 Magnum/.44 Spl, .30-30 Win., .45-70 Gov’t”
https://www.henryusa.com/firearm/bears-leg-pistol/
IIRC, you do not have an iPhone.
The Live Voicemail Transcription feature in recent versions of iOS caused a lot of problems for me when I had it activated on my third generation SE. The hardware does not truly have the processing capability to handle the transcription, and I often didn’t get voicemails for a couple of days after the caller left the message.
There’s a lot of talk recently about a new AI finding vulnerabilities everywhere, even in decades old stuff.
It might be a rocky few years coming up.
I will never have that shit in my house.
I dealt with enough “locked down for morons” ipad stuff at HEB that there is no way I want that crap.
The latest Claude model from Anthropic.
I’ve spent an hour or so this evening talking to Verizon tech support. See, we have a problem here, I can hear you just fine. But you can’t hear me but every other syllable.
That’s a pain. Talking to a friend, no problem, just call again to get a different circuit.
The Verizon guy in India (I think)(he would not say where he was) said one bar signal is enough. I had a great time talking to the guy while he was poking at settings and whatever. Told him if he ever gets to Texas, I have a spare bedroom.
I learned it is not pronounced like Dr. Bombay. It’s Mum bi!
Dude has good English. His cadence is off. I told him so. He was cool.
And we talked about stuff. My dogs. What’s for supper. Dunno, a couple of guys on opposite sides of the planet talking shit. Cool.
It’s not my phone. The neighbor, she has a sparkly new Samsung. She’s straight line from my house, about 2000 feet. Just guessing. Her brand new phone has the problem. At her house and at my house. Another friend, same problem at both locations.
Don’t know. But maybe I’ve pushed a button that will get a flaky cell radio replaced.
And I met a new friend today. Hey. Win.
Right?
He didn’t have a name borrowed from “Friends”?
That is the dominant demographic on the Warner Bros. studio tour.
Someone at Warner Bros. is very smart about “Friends”. The studio moved the coffee shop set to a stop on the tour so you have to pay to get the opportunity to take a photo at Central Perk and buy most of the show’s merchandise.
If you don’t pay for the studio tour, its “Gilmore Girls” sweatshirts and the same Harry Potter robes as you can buy at Universal Citywalk up the freeway.
A School Shooter Thought He Would Kill Children – This Heroic Principal Had Other Ideas
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/jeff-charles/2026/04/09/oklahoma-principle-shot-while-tackling-school-shooter-n2674166
Not today.
“Iran Partially Opens Strait of Hormuz, but Admits to Placing Naval Mines”
https://thelibertydaily.com/iran-partially-opens-strait-hormuz-admits-placing-naval/
“Khatibzadeh admitted in the interview with ITV that the Iranian regime has laid naval mines in the strait. These mines will have to be cleared after the conflict is resolved, which can be expensive and dangerous.”
“Khatibzadeh explained in the interview that the Iranian regime will have to guide vessels through the strait for the foreseeable future. Tehran told mediators that it would limit passage to only 12 ships per day, according to The Wall Street Journal.”
“Iran plans to impose a transit toll of $1/barrel payable in Chinese yuan or cryptocurrency, according to the Financial Times.”
Do you feel lucky ?
Lets just go ahead and bomb the power plants and bridges in Iran. It is obvious that they are just playing games.
“I may need one of these, “Bear’s Leg Pistol .357 Magnum/.38 Spl, .44 Magnum/.44 Spl, .30-30 Win., .45-70 Gov’t”
https://www.henryusa.com/firearm/bears-leg-pistol/“
I’d like to see muzzle velocity for +P ammo in all calibers, but with 3-4 round capacity I would have a hard time choosing this over an SBR.
“Lets just go ahead and bomb the power plants and bridges in Iran. It is obvious that they are just playing games.”
Partially opening the Strait should result in partially refraining from bombing.
One bridge/power plant per hour would be about right.
I want a truck gub. In Texas, there’s not problem. My AR pistol, or any AR rifle, or I could buy an M1 Carbine or a lever action .357 or .44 Magnum. Or any PCC.
The problem comes when I travel to other states. In some states, gubs must be unloaded, maybe even encased. Maybe even in locked cases.
There there’s Illinois, one of my frequent destinations due to family, or NY or NJ, where I’d like to see SteveF one day. Basically, any removable magazine fed rifle is illegal. Any AR is illegal. And the lever actions are slow to load under pressure.
In NJ and NY, I couldn’t even bring my unloaded pistol in a locked case. Commies.
Out of general curiosity, what’s the federal statute of limitations on ignorant violations of the GCA of 68? I might have seen a coworker sell a revolver to another coworker, years and years ago, and they lived in different states.
Of course, I may have been mistaken. Maybe it was a replica.
There’s a limitation of patience. When that runs out you get Bernie Getz and a bunch of people looking the other way. Everything becomes a capital offence.
n
Spent the evening at the kids’ old middle school watching their spring drama performances. D2 wanted to see her friends. I didn’t even have to help the sound kid this time, he had it well in hand and I never got a call or email. Good kid, he’s training the next class as he moves on to high school in the fall. He even let them run the board for the first act.
I wish him well. He’s a smart, dedicated, motivated young man.
———
dinner before the show and after (for me) was pot roast in the crockpot. So good. I used onion, turnip, beets, a couple of potatoes, a few baby carrots, and one stick of celery. I really like having a small beet or two in the mix, they add color and a richness to the liquid. It’s easy, affordable (considering it’s 3 pounds of beef) and we usually get more than one meal.
I add the Crockpot brand seasoning mix for ‘pot roast’ as well as the veg. Meat was frozen in ’23.
———
I’ve got to get to bed early tonight as I don’t have time for a nap tomorrow. Just need to get the laundry finished.
Domestic bliss, I’ve got some.
n