Cool and damp, changing to warm and damp, and later hot and damp. Yea Houston! Swamp life rules. We did get a tiny bit of relief for a short time as the fronts moved past us in the early evening. A little cooler air mixed with our hot stagnant air… but it didn’t last.
Did my pickups yesterday. Chatted with one of my long time auctioneers. He and his wife are still plugging away at it. We were talking about changes in the reselling landscape and he thinks the big money has already started to move into the space. I thought they hadn’t moved quite yet, but he sees a couple of other auctions at a higher level than I do. One is massive and conveniently right next to an Amazon warehouse…
Cha- cha- cha- changes….
It’s like when house flipping went hedge-y.
Anyway, today I’ve got a service call at my client’s house, and then I’ll do a pickup on my way to the BOL, unless rain happens. Then I’ll just do my service call and pickup.
Money is a prep.
Stack it up if you can.
nick
Dadgumit, the WD external USB hard drives have doubled in price since the beginning of the year. 16 TB is now $654.
https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Desktop-External-external-storage/dp/B08KTRKB6S?tag=ttgnet-20
I want a new one for backups but not that bad. The 20 TB is $815. Woof!
I really do not like reformatting hard drives so I like to get really big ones. Our LAN backup is 5 TB but we have a lot of temporary files that accumulate such as daily zip files of 3 TB databases.
Saturday. Good morning!
Hot. Orange heat warning in place.
I went to the baker’s for some croissants, and picked up a rack of ribs from Nico, my rotisserie guy, who was on the market square. I carried some bottled water from the car to the house, and am now sweating like a brick. Hot.
Lynn, I was caught like you by the memory and storage price explosion. W1 wanted an external drive for her Apple lappy recently. I was fortunate that the Aldi near our BOL still had a few old stock units at the old prices. I told her to get two.
I really would like to replace my ancient ASUS desktop and some drives around the place, but I think the drives are going to have to wait, and I might just go and see what the Oxfam IT shop has in stock, computer-wise. My employer surpluses quite good equipment to them, so they ought to have something usable.
Mm mm mm. Pulled ribs, still warm, on fresh, crusty rolls for breakfast. Heavenly.
Nico is a good guy, he gave me a really meaty rack o’ribs.
Sounds nice! I made pancakes a couple of days ago, and made too many. So we had re-warmed pancakes for breakfast. Not as nice as ribs, but still yummy…
Finished welding on the fence today. As someone said, there’s no ugly weld that a grinder can’t fix. I am getting the hang of it, though…
Meanwhile, it’s been a lazy couple of days, since school finished on Wednesday. I have a couple of projects that I want to start, but…nah, I think I’ll wait a bit. I am enjoying being bored 🙂
Can’t imagine not having stuff that needs to be done…
How hot is the prediction that a heat warning is issued? Seeing a lot of youtube shorts about furners stunned by how hot Texas is, and it’s been pretty mild.
—-
I don’t think we even got more than a few drops of rain, so I guess I’ll be doing the work this weekend.
– guess I was wrong about that. The sensor at the BOL says we got over three inches last night. No mowing with the ground saturated like that.
I’ll still do my client visit and the pickup in The Woodlands.
And I’ll still do the work at home.
———
Coffee is started and the egg,sausage, biscuit frozen sandwich too. NOT as yummy as fresh bread and smoked meat, but it will do. It’s super low effort too.
n
75F.
OK, joking, but not by much. A couple of web searches confirmed what I half-remembered: level-1 heat warning in most northern European nations (British isles, Scandinavia) at 25C/77F. I can’t figure out where Germany issues the warnings. Several English-language sites (or German sites with an English page; I can read German well enough but couldn’t find a link to find the German-language pages) said that the Level-1 warning is at 32C/90F but other sites say that “extreme heat stress” starts at 31C. Didn’t feel like putting the time in to resolve the apparent contradiction.
Meanwhile, we might hit 70F here today. Might not. It wasn’t supposed to rain yesterday but it did, so I went out to put the tarp back on the chicken run. Rain went from “annoying” to “torrential” as I did it. And when the tarp was halfway anchored, the wind went from “essentially nothing” to “near gale”. Picked up the run and smashed it some more. The framework is now being held together by the chicken wire. Very annoying.
Found: A new store opening
Oh yeah, 89F sunny and damp. Joy.
n
Re: German heat wave specs:
Grok says Level-1 is 32°C perceived, and 38°C for Level-2 (extreme).
https://familie.hessen.de/gesundheit-und-pflege/hitzeaktionsplan/hessisches-hitzewarnsystem
My one-and-only trip to Germany was in August, 2016, during a heat wave.
It was unpleasant. The trip overall was good, but the lack of useful climate control in living spaces was a drag. Sleeping was hard; I have trouble sleeping when it’s too warm.
The best day was our boat trip on the Rhine, from Bacharach to Sankt Goarshausen and back, to visit the Loreley. Cool breezes off the water and miles of hoofing to the museum and the statue.
My GF is named after the statue/myth/siren, so we planned the entire trip around that day.
Heat warnings: There was a funny post, where someone found an old video of a weather forecast for Germany. Dunno from exactly when, but there were temperatures around 32C everywhere, and the weather woman was saying what a great summer day it was, go jump in the pool. And then the weather from yesterday: temperatures of 30C, 31C or 32C everywhere, the map colored blood red, and nothing but how dangerous the current heat wave is.
Why people buy this BS is beyond me.
Anyway, as to Texas: When I lived in Austin 30+ years ago, the temperatures all summer long were always 35C, and often 40C (104F). I wore shorts then entire year, except for maybe a week or two in January. I saw snow once – it drifted into a thin stripe maybe 1/2 inch wide on the side of the road, and promptly melted.
I see the current Austin weather is around 30C, expected to rise to 35C in the next few days. As you say, mild.
Baa-a-a-a-a-a! Baa-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a! Baa-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a!
I hope this answers your question.
Went over the chickens’ run, now that the weather is cooperating. It’s smashed up worse than I’d realized. Almost every bracket has at least one break and two of the pipes are broken. Stupid wind. I’d planned to look at whether it could be welded but now I’m just going to get a new one. With any luck this one will last to the end of summer. Depends on the weather, I imagine.
But it occurs to me that weather is overwhelmingly caused by the cursed daystar. If I were to smite the cursed daystar, the objectionable weather would come to an end. Bonus: pollinating plants would knock their nonsense right off. As of this writing, I cannot see any reason that I should not smite the cursed daystar.
Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what’s a heaven for?
The Gulf water is already hitting mid-80s so this may be an active hurricane year.
Finished welding on the fence today. As someone said, there’s no ugly weld that a grinder can’t fix. I am getting the hang of it, though…
I will dispute that. I put a hole in a six foot (2 meter) diameter ¾ inch thick steel plate. Bob, the professional welder, was amazed. He told me that I was a hopeless case for an engineer. Just think, I could have taught welding. Those who can’t, teach.
I spent a lot of time blowing holes in square tube when I started out. A lot of time learning to fill them too.
—–
Did my client visit. The issue was “fixed” when I got there. No troubleshooting when the error isn’t present, so I swapped the video extender with an infrequently used one and we’ll see if the problem reappears. If it does, it’s more serious than I’d like. If not, I’ll replace the video extender with new.
Went to do my pickup in The Woodlands and it started to rain. The local (to the BOL) authorities have said roads were flooded, so I maybe couldn’t even reach the BOL on my normal path… the rain was the last straw, I headed home. I’ll find stuff to do around here in between raindrops.
Currently down to 80F with light and intermittent drizzle and distant thunder.
—-
n
It is currently 114ºF on my outdoor sensor in Vegas*; 76ºF in the garage with the mini-split.
*I will move the outdoor sensor. It is by the outside units, and the wall probably concentrates the heat, even in the shade. I’ll put it on the other side of the wall by the front of the garage.
Nnnn… but if you move the sensor from it’s location where it’s reading artificially high, how will you continue to support the AGW adgenda???
n
I find your ideas intriguing, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Hot. 10pm. 26C. Bearable for supper outdoors, albeit with an icy cold beer.
Today, W1 and I visited a close friend who is not long out of hospital after a considerable stay. I thought I was mentally prepared to see an ill person, but this shocked me. I fear she is not long for the world. Sad.
W1 gave me a present of a CD of Yo-Yo Ma playing the music of Ennio Morricone. I was delighted. Alas, he plays a crass bum note about 20 seconds into the title track, which really spoiled it. The sound engineer who let that through into the published recording should have been fired and got a smiting worthy of SteveF.
I hope the Poultry Palace can soon be restored to its proper pomp. The poor pullets!
Tha’s a whole lotta ‘litteration….
n
“Sweep of the Heart (Innkeeper Chronicles #6)” by Ilona Andrews
https://www.amazon.com/Sweep-Heart-Innkeeper-Chronicles-Andrews/dp/1641972491?tag=ttgnet-20/
Book number six of a six book paranormal fantasy romance science fiction series. I reread the well printed and well bound POD (print on demand) illustrated (kinda and neat) trade paperback published in 2022 by the Nancy Yost Literary Agency that I bought new on Amazon in 2023. Note that “Ilona Andrews” is the pseudonym for a husband and wife writing team. And yes, this is science fiction, there are spaceships, teleportation devices, beam weapons, and space stations. I hope for a book #7 someday.
BTW, this series is very much like “The Princess Bride” book. A lot of magic, a lot of good old human sweat and tears, many good guys, and quite a few bad guys. Ah yeah, maces and swords. And poison, lots of poison.
Dina Demille is an innkeeper in Red Deer, Texas. Only her Victorian inn is not like a typical bed and breakfast, it is an intelligent magical haven named Gertrude Hunt for aliens coming to Earth or using Earth as a way station. Dina does have a permanent guest, a retired Galactic tyrant named Caldenia who is hiding from several bounty hunters, and who paid for permanent room and board.
There are many inns like the Gertrude Hunt on Earth, that is because Earth has been designated as Neutral Ground for the various Galactic races, many of whom don’t get along. That’s why Caldenia is safe within the confines of Gertrude Hunt, the inn has many powerful weapons to protect itself and guests. Several of the bounty hunters are still chasing Caldenia for the massive bounty and have taken on the Gertrude Hunt Inn to their dismay.
Dina’s alpha werewolf boyfriend Sean Evans is now helping her to run the inn. His mentor and creator werewolf, Wilmos, lives on the planet dedicated to trade with many portals to other planets for convenient and fast transport. But somebody has kidnapped Wilmos and left his shop as a wreck, including damaging his wolf. Dina and Sean find the planet that Wilmos is being held at but it is three stargates away, including a private stargate.
In order to get access to the private stargate, they must host the Galactic Emperor’s spousal search with twelve spousal candidates with over three hundred beings all wanting to win the contest at any cost including death, especially the carnivorous mobile trees. And the Galactic Emperor is the nephew of Caldenia, who poisoned his father to death.
The authors have a website at:
https://www.ilona-andrews.com
My rating: 6 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars (12,295 reviews)
Lynn
Could be more:
I predict the Poultry Palace can presently be put back to its proper pomp. The poor pullets!
“Breaking Down What’s in the Reports Tulsi Gabbard Dropped on Anthony Fauci”
https://thelibertydaily.com/breaking-down-whats-reports-tulsi-gabbard-dropped-anthony/
I like the AI picture of Fauci in a jail cell.
Over The Hedge: Mother Nature Vapes
https://www.gocomics.com/overthehedge/2026/06/20
Don’t mess with Mother Nature.
The temp isn’t bad here. 88f. 60% humidity. Sunny, enough for shadows, but with a hazy blue sky. Pretty nice actually. Might rain. Might not. The cats are lounging around. Not panting. I can feel the sun tanning me, I guess that’s the phrase.
Might be unpleasant pushing a lawn mower in the sun. But in the shade, it’s pretty nice. Nice breeze, plenty of crickets or whatever making noise along with various birds chirping. 3:30 in the afternoon and the a/c has run one time today.
I’ve been tinkering. Dreamhost is dropping discussion lists. So I created a new list on groups.io. I’m merging two lists together. I have a few text files of addresses. Everybody. Already A Member. Not Members. I know you can dump all this in to Lotus123 but I don’t have that. Not that I remember how to use it. Excel? Libre Office? Don’t know how to use either.
I found the text editor in Mint has an option to “sort lines”. Sorts alphabetically. Easy to cull duplicates. I have it down to “already a member” and “not members”.
I can do a mass subscription but I think sending invites to join is the better way.
Pretty exciting, huh?
Oh. Just in case….. /s
Oh, yeah, the inside temperature sensor reports 24% humidity, dry, but great for 3D printing. I keep the garage inside door open, when it is closed the humidity runs around 20%.
Unix has a standard command line utility to sort text files by line.
# sort filename.txt
I believe that DOS/Windows implemented a version, but the command line options are different.
I lika da litteration, butta da chicken boy, he do it bedda!
Nearly midnight. Distant lightning and a few rumbles. Maybe we’ll get a downpour and a short break from the oppressive heat. There is a storm winds warning in effect. Yesterday we had a precipitation warning, but saw nary a drop.
Goodnight!
I’m far far from being any kind of a Unix smart person. I just had the idea, a middle of the night roll over because my arm hurt with a thought, so today I looked.
Nothing wrong with my arm, I just had it twisted funny under the pillow and my elbow went to sleep.
I don’t remember if Notepad has the option. Too lazy to turn on one of the w11 boxes. I don’t remember ever seeing it. Notepad++, yeah, maybe it has it. I never did groove with that program.
@Paul – there are many websites that will sort your data for you. Easily found by a search.
I have not tried it, but one is https://sortmylist.com/ . I found it with this search https://duckduckgo.com/?q=free+site+that+will+sort+a+list+of+names+and+emails+and+other+data&source=chrome.ob&ia=web .
In addition, you could put the list in a Google “Sheet”, and then sort it. Lots of search results that will tell you how to do that.
You could also try your favorite AI to sort the list. A free private one is duck.ai .
Still drippy drizzle here, but it does keep the temperature down.
Heard from my buddy at the BOL. He says “STAY HOME”. The county is reporting roads blocked by floodwater.
Lake sensor says “lake is at its ‘full’ level”.
———-
Different extra kid today, I’m about to cook a sirloin steak for dinner.
n
Three-time US Olympian is ARRESTED for allegedly damaging Trump’s controversial Reflecting Pool
FFS. It’s not Trump’s Reflecting Pool and you’d have to be retarded to find anything controversial about repairing the peoples’ property.
WTF is wrong with these people.
n
Just be careful about what data you put in for sorting, or counting, or collating. If the product costs nothing, you are the product.
So if a fat person gets into the lake it will overflow? But where would you find a fat person in Texas?
“Ah, you dear children, what has brought you here? Come in and dine with me, and no harm shall befall you.”
(The witch’s first line in Hansel and Gretel. Normally I don’t explain my literary references but translations from German vary and readers might not recognize or be able to find the line.)
Let’s recap the last 10 years.
Here’s the thing. Trump. I’m jus’ sayin’.
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeek! You said that word! I’m traumatized! I need a safe space! – barely an exaggeration of what some former co”work”ers said. It was ok to say “Trump” but only if accompanied by profanity or scatology. Mentioning, back around 2019, that the economy was much better than it had been under Obottom caused a meltdown.
And they wondered why I didn’t respect them, other than about three of them for their technical skills…
Leftism is a mental illness.
The only reason I reposted is because of the downvote, BTW.
So I’ll go one further: The only good Commie is a dead Commie.
A favorite AI? No.
Websites that will sort my data? Oh, hell no. I’m not giving them my data.
I’m stubborn. Call me retarded. I used notepad for almost everything. Making and editing my web pages, pretty much everything. I did a few pages with Dreamweaver2 to get it the way I wanted and then rewrote it all in notepad. I used Write / Word-pad when I wanted fancy fonts and colored text.
Much of the reason I went to Thunderbird for mail from Outllook98 was to get out of the .pst file structure and have my mail saved as plain text and not in gibberish like a Word Document.
Yeah, I did try Ubuntu and I liked it. That worked on one PC until a near lighting strike zapped the onboard NIC.. So stuff in a 3Com card and Ubuntu had no freaking clue. Funny, Win98 had the drivers. So…
Plain text rules.
The text program in Mint is “xed”. It works nicely.
I’m really liking Mint Cinnamon . Yeah, I know, some say it’s “Linux for Dummies” and I don’t have a problem with that. I’m really impressed they made it all so easy to use.
LilbreOffice has a spreadsheet, along with word processing and slideshow and other tools.
I use it, and Google Sheets, and I used to be an Excel expert back in my working days.
LibreOffice is free software and runs on Linux and Windows, maybe that Fruit stuff too.
Simple tasks like importing CSV files and sorting is easy on most of the platforms. They all do much the same tasks, but each in their own way, with their own features and limitations.
Even when I was working I tried to use plain text as much as possible.
I would outline in text then import to word to produce reports, etc. I used notepad++ a lot but plain notepad on windows is pretty powerful. Wordpad for fancy stuff.
We did a lot of work with client computers that had various levels of security up to TS and we couldn’t install fancy graphics programs or alignment grids so we learned to make do.
The “java” background pattern in windows was very challenging to color match from projector to projector. If you could match that, everything else was easy. And a plain screen filled with text made a great detail alignment pattern.
One thing linux had that was very useful was a ruler that you could open across the desktop that would tell you how many pixels you actually had on screen. Given the difficulty setting resolutions and timings that we used to have with *nix, that ruler saved my bacon. “NO, you don’t actually have 2460 x 1024 set. Look at the ruler.”
It took me a long time to learn that simple is usually best.
n
“Simple tasks like importing CSV files and sorting is easy on most of the platforms.”
Simple to you. Me? A notepad user? No idea. I understand the words. But it’s like someone updated their video driver and then I’m talking them through, on the phone, how to edit system.ini and config.sys. I know how to do that. Well, did.
Libre Office does open almost instantly on Mint. It looks great. I just haven’t played with it yet.
Nothing that a milligram of fentanyl wouldn’t take care of.
Call me retarded…
but not late to dinner.
After discussion here several years ago I purchased a “lifetime license” for MS Office from StackSocial.
Never had a problem.
Went for early dinner at a local Thai place. They had a small dining room before Kungflu, did takeout only during the Virus Troubles, and later re-opened a tiny dining room. First time to try it out, and having the appetizers directly from the kitchen without ten minutes in the car reminded me why I loved the place twenty years ago. Already planning to go back.
You mean the dempanic. The closures had virtually nothing to do with the virus and everything to do with retards panicking and scumbag politicians and bureaucrats, overwhelmingly Democrats, grabbing power and money.
My increasingly complex financial spreadsheet, to which I’ve referred occasionally, is in LibreOffice Calc. I keep threatening myself with recasting it as a database, but I’ve managed to fend myself off for now.
Cleaning and sorting in the lab today I spent some quality time looking at lab clamps, which are usually used in conjunction with a ringstand to position lab glass during filtration and distillation operations. Clamps that are used to hold test tubes and flasks during heating are often exposed to elevated temperatures and even flames, and if the part in contact with the glass has a covering to cushion the grip the covering can get damaged.
The cushioning can be done with vinyl or fiberglass sleeves. Years ago I sourced a roll of fiberglass automotive tubing to use for that application, and I’ve used the dippable or brushable plastisols, too, because the replacements from Fisher and the other lab glass companies were too pricey. Well I checked price on vinyl replacement sleeves and they are now running ten dollars a finger, so $30 to refurbish a 3-finger clamp.
For S&G’s i checked T*mu. I can get an entire clamp for less than *8. Strip the cove, throw the clamps away, and save $23.
Quoted for truth.
Likewise.
Indeed!
Leftism is a mental illness.
The only reason I reposted is because of the downvote, BTW.
So I’ll go one further: The only good Commie is a dead Commie.
I understand U.S. Senator Joseph R. McCarthy a whole lot more now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy
There is a civil war and/or a financial apocalypse coming in the USA. Maybe soon. Probably both.
Super damp out, but only 75F which made it a bit chilly to be sitting still reading. Had my tiny little fire, no wildlife but a series of 5 gunshots not too far away. Lots of street racers a bit earlier.
Time to shower and go to bed.
n
Well, McCarthy was right, but when you pick a fight with people that buy printers ink by the barrel, and you are an unlikable person, right doesn’t matter.
n