I just hope this cool spell continues. It was a light misty drizzle for part of the day, and it stayed cool with a cool breeze throughout the overcast day. The drizzle stopped early too. Just enough to get the grass too wet to mow. I want a couple more days like this.
I got a bunch of brick removed. I’m down to the last couple of feet of chimney, and the firebox. All the indoor brick is still up. It’s progress.
Today I’ll keep at it, weather permitting. I’m trying to drink more electrolyte drink but keep forgetting. The sun is still there as I have a little pink even through the t shirt. And it’s filthy work. Fortunately there’s a lake right here and the water is bath water warm.
Work on something every day. And stack.
nick
Wednesday. Good morning!
If I am lucky, megaproject will be put to bed today. Cross your fingers, I could use a sleep.
Nick’s project sounds like it is coming along nicely. Nobody fell off a roof!
It is a lovely summer day here. Almost time for the roe rut. Very much looking forward to a few days in the woods and away from work.
Jenny, Paul, Lynn, best wishes to you for your respective family situations. Read and heed what lpdbw said yesterday about conserving your own resources.
The sausage most likely originated in a gift basket in 2006.
Was your father-in-law in banking or real estate?
When I worked for Clapper, the company sent out Harry & David baskets at Christmas. Even fresh, most of the contents were vile, especially the sparkling juice flavor.
Apple and … pomegranate?
Just plain Martinelli’s sparkling cider and Hickory Farms would have been well received at our house for a lot less money.
December 2020. The left thought they were going to be kings forever at that point.
In less than six months, Clapper would be thrown under the wheels of the bus by the NY Times, and the company set adrift.
I did throw away six year old Hickory Farms summer sausage at our house earlier this year, which had been lurking at the bottom of the produce crisper all this time.
I believe that the compulsion is at least partially genetic.
I would argue we lost the Republic a long time ago. Dr. Pournelle stated that if we can’t be a Republic anymore, then we should at least strive to be a competent Empire. If we actually are an Empire, we sure aren’t competent.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2026/07/15/why-this-leftist-canadians-trip-to-the-jersey-shore-landed-her-in-ice-custody-n2679457
Violent Canadian leftist about to find out.
@ITGuy1998
Under Biden we were skipping right to totalitarian police state.
Withe the commie nazi Democrat Party we are only a half notch off.
Internet seems to have problems this morning. Several sites I visit regularly are down including gmail, Instapundit and my site fordfe.info which is hosted by godaddy.
Bob, I’ve seen no internet problems this morning. In particular, gmail has been fine. I just checked fordfe.info and it came right up.
Bob: I have had zero problems hitting any of my usual web sites this morning. Like SteveF, I checked the fordfe.info site and it came right up.
That one device limitation is a deal breaker for me. When I go camping in the RV I use tethering on my phone to access websites and email, using my laptop and iPad.
@Jenny:
Been there, done that. My aunt’s place in Mexico had a refrigerator which door would not close properly. All the food had thawed, spoiled, oozed and all manner of disgust. My aunt saw no problems with it and was still eating some of the food. Not quite as bad as what you described.
Old people do strange things. Losing control of a life in which a person has been in control for 60+ years, is not easy.
I know I will face of the same things. I accept it currently as I am rational (leave it alone SteveF). Ten years from now that may all change and truth be told, it most certainly will as dementia runs strong in my family tree. I may become one of those people that resents help, stuff being sold or given away.
Old age eventually affects us all.
In regards to family dynamics, my family is not close at all. I have seen my brothers a total of maybe a dozen times since leaving high school. Only two times were we all together and that was funerals. Other times were business trips when I was in the area. There was no special effort to travel just to visit, except one.
I visited my older brother in Idaho, mostly because the wife and I were helping a friend travel to Washington State to take care of her daughter after the daughter’s surgery. We just made it a small vacation.
I did visit my younger brother in Texas, located in Valley Mills, close to Waco, just because it was on the way to visit the wife’s family in Texas.
The last time I saw my dad was in 1973, never saw him again although I did attend his funeral. He never met my wife or his grandson. It was his doing as when I visited traveling to Colorado from Hawaii I stopped for a three day visit. He instead chose to spend the time with his friends. I told his wife I don’t need this and left.
I visited my mother in Victorville CA when I went to CA for conferences in Anaheim. I did fly my mother to TN a couple of times but after her last little stunt when she found out I got VA compensation, and her comment “you’re the one with all the money”, those trips ceased. The last 10 years of her life I never saw my mother.
I will see one of my brothers at the other brother’s funeral. Or maybe not if I die first in which case neither one of them would attend my funeral.
I don’t have much to do with my wife’s family either. We do make our yearly trip to Texas and visit her brother, niece and nephews. We also visit the friend who lives in San Antonio of my wife. And to be honest, I could do without those trips.
They are working fine now. I’ll not worry about it, but the problem lasted at least 10 minutes.
Up and moving albeit slowly. 80F with light overcast. Someone is using a track hoe in the park so I need to see what that’s about.
Moka pot is loaded and on the stove.
I think I’ll have a big ham slice with my egg today.
n
Bob, the problem was that the gods hate you.
(Not me. I’m not the internet god. I’m the god of good parking.)
—–
A picture of Nick after working in the Texas sun?
https://bustednuckles.blogspot.com/2026/07/that-time-of-year.html
Or maybe I should; I still can’t reach instapundit or my site or a couple of others. gmail is Ok.
I’ve got to so some other things now hope it all ok later.
Well about those trashcans…
https://redstate.com/rusty-weiss/2026/07/15/sacramento-deploys-climate-cops-to-rifle-through-your-garbage-cans-like-common-thieves-n2204336
We’re going to have to educate you and if you can’t learn you’ll pay. Shirt, I pay now with taxes.
Makes you want to meet your neighbors at the curb at 10pm night before trash pickup and trade bags of garbage around.
“That bag you searched in the public right-of-way that the city claims? Prove it’s mine, otherwise go right to FO. “
Or shoot the garbage rummagers with #7 shot. “I thought it was trash pandas.”
@stevef:
You’re not Shub-Internet? Who knew?
G.
If Google Fiber comes to your neighborhood, sign up for it. Faster speeds at half the cost than any cable I’ve had. I pay twice to Cox in Vegas for the GF plan I have in San Antonio.
Hang in there, Ms. Jenny. Most of us here have dealt with these family problems. I turned 71 in June and still have to deal with relatives that are on the verge of bankruptcy, health decline, etc. None of them invested in their future. Now they expect me to take care of them and their problems.
They’ll get my elbow grease as long as I can give it, but not one dime.
I’ve been 3D printing some cylindrical screw top containers to see how secure they are. A guy designed one for carrying olive oil that included printing a gasket in a different, pliable, filament. (Not sure if I want to put food in a 3D print, but there are food grade filaments) I don’t have that filament, so I deleted that part of the model. The container is top notch and the top screws on very tight. I’ve also found free prints where you can change the diameter and height of the container to customize a fit for, say, a FLASHLIGHT, for water tight storage.
Some very useful things are going to be printed in the near future.
I’m in the process of setting up my new resin printer. There are a variety of resins available. I’m interested in printing molds casting in clear resins and concrete.
And really. If you are peeing with any color you need to drink more water.
If you consistently have no color in your pee then your kidneys have failed and you have to get on thrice weekly kidney dialysis. The color in your pee is mostly urea, nitrogen in your body that is absorbed from your breathing air. This must be peed from your body or you will die in a matter of weeks.
Btw, want to make a few billion dollars? Invent a body replacement kidney that is less than a pound and your body will not reject. The human body is a marvel of chemical and mechanical engineering, the kidney uses electrochemical and electromechanical processes to separate the bad stuff from your blood. We have to use a 100 lb refrigerator to achieve the same effect.
Man, really creaky this morning.
I didn’t work all that hard yesterday, no laying down 1000# of rock or anything (it abides, waiting…), but it was non-stop, maybe that was it.
Yeh, ain’t happening. The franchise agreement Xfinity has with the city, for which Xfinity pays the city a lot of money, specifically forbids any competing service. The idiot at the city that signed the agreement should be flailed with left over coax. The agreement was signed way back in 1990 when Oak Ridge Cable wired the city. Oak Ridge Cable was purchase by Xfinity and the agreements carried over.
My son has fiber to his house, actually inside his house to the modem. Provided by the utility company. Symmetrical 1GIG service, for half the price he was paying to Xfinity. One of the happiest days he had was calling Xfinity and telling them to
shove itdisconnect his service. During the call Xfinity tried to convince him that Xfinity was better, at twice the price, for half the speed. Xfinity must hire idiots.@MrAtoZ
“A guy designed one for carrying olive oil that included printing a gasket in a different, pliable, filament“
Use an o-ring instead.
@drwilliams:
Whan all you have is a
hammer3d printer,…G.
Unless you want to send the container into orbit.
“The Demise of Nuclear Power Was Greatly Exaggerated” by John Stossel
https://rumble.com/v7cr7sm-the-demise-of-nuclear-power-was-greatly-exaggerated.html?mref=1htl22&mc=e16nv
Cool.
Hat tip to:
https://thelibertydaily.com/
Originally at:
https://x.com/JohnStossel/status/2077155175890841894
“Gal Triggered by “Trump” and “ICE” Clothing Slaps Teen Girl’s Face at Beach . . . Now Finds Out”
https://thelibertydaily.com/gal-triggered-trump-ice-clothing-slaps-teen-girls/
“(WND)—A Canadian narcissist who insisted that others, strangers, adopt her ideology, and allegedly slapped a teen girl for wearing MAGA logo that she did not endorse, has ended up in a New Jersey jail.”
You are a guest in the USA. Don’t cause trouble and beat up on anyone, especially children.
That, and growing up with hoarders (regardless of motivation) normalizes it for you. I found out after my father’s funeral (Mum had passed years earlier) that during one of our moves, my parents had left behind a small room full of boxes deliberately, because otherwise they would have continued to carry them around forever. One sister has a classic hoarder house, unfortunately enabled by her husband. I have great difficulty parting with things if I have a potential use in my head for them, which is unfortunate because I’m extremely inventive with finding unexpected uses for things. Whether I ever get around to using them is irrelevant. My other sisters have similar, albeit much less extreme, traits. I’m hoping to downsize to an apartment-sized hoard over the next couple of years, as I transition to retirement.
“The Princess and the Pea”
https://www.xkcd.com/3271/
I was thinking about this just the other day as I am contemplating buying the wife and I a pair of those electric beds where you can control the elevation and the firmness.
Explained at:
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/3271:_The_Princess_and_the_Pea
The food thing I get. I won’t keep rotten or iffy food but I do eat long past the best by.
The people get old, and they can’t remember recent stuff but they remember old stuff, and what they remember is not having enough food. So they hoard food. Because they remember being hungry.
The old newspapers and piss in jars? Yeah that I don’t get. If I get to that point I’ll be a hoarder.
Mom’s mom wasn’t a hoarder but she kept everything. She had it stored and organized and she used a lot of it. She was always crafting and making stuff. I still have Christmas ornaments she made for mom and for us kids from paper milk bottle lids.
We’re one or possibly two generations away from grinding poverty. The dust bowl. Great Depression. Even just emigrating put you in very humble circumstances.
How many of you have some sort of free gift from a purchase? Plate sets, glasses, kitchen doodads… the marketers knew that people lacked even basics. Who drank from a jelly jar? Who still has jelly jar glasses for juice?
People are shaped by their childhoods.
Couple more generations and if things go well, no one will have even second hand knowledge of those times.
n
That is what I have in San Antonio. Even with a VPN running, I get over 800 Mbps up/down, so it runs on the server there all the time.
Monty: Soaking Up The Rays
https://www.gocomics.com/monty/2026/07/15
Yup, there is the future as we will have billions of minions running around the place.
I really liked the McDonald’s drinking glasses with the cartoon character printed on the glasses. Sometime in the middle ‘70’s I think. The wife and I collected about a dozen of those glasses over time. I have no idea what happened to those glasses.
@Lynn; We have a “SleepNumber” air bed which is supremely comfortable. Alas, SleepNumber has filed for bankruptcy, so I don’t know if they are still available. Steel coils and cotton batting can wear out, but air never does!
You’ve never been around Ray on taco night.
“Summer’s End” by John Van Stry
https://www.amazon.com/Summers-End-John-Van-Stry/dp/1982192291?tag=ttgnet-20
Book number one of a two book science fiction space opera series. I read the well printed and well bound trade paperback published by Baen in 2022 that I purchased from Amazon in 2022. I have ordered the second book in the series from Amazon, “Sometimes in the Fall”.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1668072475?tag=ttgnet-20
In the far distant future, Earth is a nasty crowded place with twenty billion inhabitants. The people are split up into three classes: the doles (the poor on welfare), the proles (todays middle class), and the elites. Billions more of humanity have spread widely across the Solar System to just about any place that people can figure out how to live.
Dave Walker, the son of a prole father and a elite mother, is a recent graduate of a spaceship engineer school and looking for a job leaving Earth. He gets a job on a old spaceship freighter visiting Earth, the Iowa Hill, as the second engineer. But his mother’s new elite husband is running for a political office high up in the government and does not want him around at all.
I love Space Opera and this an excellent book of it. I look forward to the second book and will read it soon. The author has plans for a third book in the series which sounds great.
The author has a website at:
https://jvanstry.blogspot.com/
and
http://johnvanstry.com/
My rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars (834 reviews)
Lynn
“U.S. Military Unleashes Suicide Drone-Boat Swarm on Iranian Submarine Facility”
https://thelibertydaily.com/us-military-unleashes-suicide-drone-boat-swarm-iranian/
“(Zero Hedge)—Three U.S. Navy-backed Saronic Corsair one-way attack sea drones struck Iran’s Bandar Abbas Naval Base on Sunday, according to U.S. Central Command.”
“The operation marks the clearest sign yet that the U.S. military has taken a page directly from Ukraine’s maritime warfare playbook, using expendable, autonomous, suicide stealth drone boats to penetrate a heavily defended naval facility – much cheaper than a million-dollar missile.”
Nice.
@Lynn; We have a “SleepNumber” air bed which is supremely comfortable. Alas, SleepNumber has filed for bankruptcy, so I don’t know if they are still available. Steel coils and cotton batting can wear out, but air never does!
Does it have an air compressor and is it noisy?
This is the comic basis for a musical “Once Upon a Mattress”, originally written for Carol Burnett. We did it in high school in 1972. It’s a fun little play.
Not exactly the same story, though.