Hot and humid, but starting a little cooler since a storm blew through last night. It’s been Houston weather otherwise, with 90sF in the afternoons, and humidity almost as high. I just don’t want rain during our load in today.
I did my errands yesterday. Got the trailer. Loaded it up. Even did one small pickup. Had a good chat with the seller, he says everyone is having trouble getting good stuff to sell. His wholesalers are blaming tariffs for causing less stuff to be imported, and then less stuff to end up in the reseller markets. He says even buying imported stuff directly from bulk wholesalers has gotten too expensive. In any case, there is a lot less good stuff in the resale auctions lately.
Today is the setup and load in day for my non-prepping hobby Fall show. Swapmeet/convention/tradeshow, it’s a chance to see some people I only see during the show. And a chance to talk with people from all over the country, which usually gives me a better handle on what is really going on out there.
I’ll be getting the kids out the door to school, then taking off myself. No posting until we’re done in the evening. Talk among yourselves…
And prep. That stuff ain’t gonna stack itself.
nick
First post. And really too darn early.
I woke up at 2:30, tossed until 3:30, and finally gave up. I got on the computer and processed some pictures from a middle school football game that were taken on Thursday.
Tonight is the first regular high school football game of the season. I will unfortunately miss the next three games while in Germany.
Now that I am done with the pictures, I think I will try to get some sleep.
🙂 Generally, yes. That’s why it has the “e”, for “excellence”.
For this purpose, it’s not. Which is odd, because those whiskey cream liqueurs (Baileys and the knock-offs thereof) go really well in cocoa.
First-world problems…
Who knows with Colonists. They lie as easily as they breathe.
What the media glosses over for sympathy is that the family has a lot of money and she doesn’t really need to work. An out-of state student at Purdue will pay $30k just for the tuition.
You will never meet “jus’ plain folk” among Colonists in this country.
79F and still raining. Some lightness on the horizon so I’m hoping the rain stops.
One pit stop, and I’m off.
n
No one is above the law…
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2025/08/22/john-bolton-n2662195
And we’re really glad to see the wheels of justice gring the hypocrites.
Getting illegal truckers off the road
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/08/getting_illegal_truckers_off_the_road.html
Haul Newsome into federal court in Florida and charge him with conspiracy to violate federal law, murder, and a few dozen more charges. Repeat with every California official involved down to the clerk that issued the CDL.
I was out a couple of nights ago with an old Canon T4 i that I picked up cheap on Cloudy Nights classified while back. April as a matter of fact.
It has the Astro mods so that it gets more of the unfiltered red and near-IR light. Back in April the weather was so bad that I gave up trying to use it.
Prodded by my brother I went out a couple of nights ago and … it worked. Just on a camera tripod for exposures of a few seconds … but it worked. M4, the Lagoon, Orion, the Moon.
I am stunned, AP has always been a bad luck endeavour for me, but YouTube and the internet made it simple. Plus the articulating touch screen meant no fumbling for buttons in the dark.
I haven’t got the pics off to look at because I had to recover the old win10 laptop from storage, charge it, let MS have its way with it, but maybe today.
I am sure they are mediocre, but better than nothing!
“I haven’t got the pics off to look at because I had to recover the old win10 laptop”
It doesn’t have some form of looking like “mass storage” or an external HD or a USB stick or a network drive share?
Just guessing. My Win11 box sees my phone but I don’t recall installing a driver. Shrug.
Looks like a nice camera.
I watched Mission
ImpossibleImprobable:FinalDud Reckoning last night. Way too long and boring and real long action sequences that were ridiculous. Lots of weepy flashbacks of “who cares”, this is the last movie. The AI trope didn’t work for me, especially when you know AI needs a processor to run on. It can’t just put itself in storage and still work. Dumb. Plus, who would have thunk some wanna be AI terrorist plants, checks notes, three nuclear bombs. Where did he get all the plutonium?One star for the popcorn aspect of an action flick, but that’s it.
You need the Canon EOS Utility as I recall for USB. though there are apparently multiple versions now for different era’sof camera. I went to the site, the language lawyers were out in force there.
The corporate Japanese seem to be big on attemped lock-in. I had a Sony E reader years ago, long before the Kindle came out, a very nice device but it was basically impossible to get content for it.
But the laptop has a SD reader built in, so once MS in done abusing my HD (still running as of this am) I can download from that.
I think I’ve heard of her. I don’t recall much about this.
https://eko.substack.com/p/the-crucifixion-of-tina-peters
State Department Pausing Visas for Commercial Truck Drivers
F*ck these people with a large spiny cactus. Increase the wages 20% and get more people, or not.
One of the things that has not come up is who owned the truck, the trailer, and who employed this murderer to ram it down the highway. Every one of them has liability, and at least some of it should be criminal.
I have a battery for my phone set to arrive today. UPS said 12:30 to 3 pm. Now they say 5:15 to 7:15.
Weather forecast says it might rain. Looks and feels like it, too.
Yeah. Whatever. I’ll look for it tomorrow morning when I walk the dogs.
“We want ugly, fat b*****s wearing pink wigs and long-ass fake nails being loud and twerking on top of a cop car at a Waffle House because they didn’t get extra ketchup, you know? Just because we’re the party of ugly people doesn’t mean we can’t be featured in ads, okay? And I know most of us are too fat to wear jeans or too ugly to go outside, but we want representation.”
Amy K., shrill U.S. Senator best known for trading on the family name to get elected and eating salad with a plastic comb
https://redstate.com/streiff/2025/08/22/will-a-parody-response-to-sydney-sweeneys-ad-help-amy-klobuchar-impose-online-censorship-n2193125
“Don’t (reads script) Laugh! (reads script, stamps foot, falls off of flats)”
The top-tier of Minnesota elected officials is ably represented by a door: Amy K. the doorknob on one side, Tina S. [I didn’t lie when I said I’d take the temporary appointment but not run for the office, I’m a lesbian], doorknob on the other, and in between Timmy–Swings More Ways Than You Know–WallZ
P.S. Did you hear the Minnesota Joke-Of-The-Day?
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2025/08/a-fetid-process.php
Democrat Party wants to run Somali-commie for mayor of Minneapolis, then changes mind. Turns out they can’t even count the votes at their own caucus.
No one is above the law…
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2025/08/22/john-bolton-n2662195
And we’re really glad to see the wheels of justice gring the hypocrites.
Now do James Comey.
xkcd: Coastline Similarity
https://www.xkcd.com/3132/
Yes, that is Continental Drift. Sigh.
Explained at:
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/3132:_Coastline_Similarity
Monty: Heat Wave
https://www.gocomics.com/monty/2025/08/22
The failure of machinery is directly proportional to the need. Better have a backup.
William Barr over Hunter’s laptop.
Lots of legacy GTE investors, customers, and employees would like to see that one happen.
After working for Poppy Bush, Barr became General Counsel for GTE and put together the “merger of equals” with Bell Atlantic to form Verizon.
“Ford Makes $5 Billion Dollar Bet On Electric Vehicles”
https://www.carpro.com/blog/ford-makes-5-billion-dollar-bet-on-electric-vehicles
“Ford says its new Ford Universal EV Platform will enable it to build affordable electric vehicles at scale. Its first product, the as-of-yet unnamed midsize four-door pickup with an expected starting price of around $30,000. Ford also says it will create or secure 4,000 jobs at its Louisville Assembly Plant and BlueOval Battery Park Michigan. The automaker says it’ll be as fast as the Mustang EcoBoost with more downforce.”
I need to sell my Ford stock.
It is a nice idea to save money, and a couple other manufacturers have tried it I believe, but even if you use the same battery/motor/drive train/computer system: if you want a different shape (small-med-big car/wagon/suv/pickup) you have to re-engineer everything because the unibody sheet metal is the crush structure.
I may have lost a few IQ points today.
I just watched Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Big River suggested it.
Actually, it’s a fun movie.
Most excellent and party on dude!
I tell young’n’s to find “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” if they want to know what a mid-80s mall in a Sunbelt suburb was really like. Forget John Hughes’ twisted perverted ad man fantasies.
Most of the movie filmed in the Phoenix suburbs *except* the water park which was actually located not far from San Dimas.
Plus, peak 80s George Carlin, after the heart attacks.
I got to get to work with the brush cutter. Too damn hot though.
We had some rain and stuff explosively grew. Enough that my my Nanobeams are doing 4×4 constellation instead of 16×16 speeds. AKA, not running 350 plus and now running at about 50mb.
Starlink is smoking fast on Moa. So, time to clear some brush.
I’ll get to it real soon.
Well, I did a trouble ticket like 12 days ago with the wISP. The response yesterday was “reboot the radio and let me know”.
I dunno. Still no connection. My router shows traffic on wan3. Uh, like 250kb a day. But to me it looks like the radios are just talking to each other and the problem is past the radios.
Make it work. I’ve paid for it. End of discussion.
Meanwhile, Starlink is working quite well.
“State Dept to review 55 million visa holders for deportable violations”
https://thepostmillennial.com/state-dept-to-review-55-million-visa-holders-for-deportable-violations
““All U.S. visa holders are subject to continuous vetting,” the department said in a written response.”
There are 55 MILLION visa holders in the USA ??? Are you kidding me ?
Hat tip to:
https://thelibertydaily.com/
Look over there…COWS!
https://www.barrons.com/articles/tesla-stock-cybertrucks-luxe-price-8f362aa3
Made it thru our first day. Did good business. Grossed more in one day than I usually do in 2 ½ days. Well attended, lots of interesting and out of the usual stuff on sale. I hope the stuff sells well for everyone because it’s nice to see something other than the same old same old.
Early start tomorrow, so I’m going to get to bed early. Need to let my dinner settle first, but I’m beat. Plus I’ve been “on” all day, and that is wearying.
We had clear weather for most of load in, and only light rain for a bit. Then it hammered down, but most people were setting up or went to lunch during that. It was nice after too.
I’m hoping for another nice day.
n
Our HOA election is tomorrow for two of our five directors and things are getting heated, especially on Nextdoor.
It has just come out that our former head of the HOA board is the lead moderator on Nextdoor for our neighborhood. He is going around deleting comments by people that he does not like. People are getting very upset at him.
And now it has come out that he had a dairy cow in his backyard sometime in the recent past. While he had the dairy cow, the board sued my neighbor down the street for her dairy cow on her three acres. She spent $75,000 defending herself and finally gave up.
@Lynn – you might consider creating a separate Nextdoor group for HOA members.
@Lynn – you might consider creating a separate Nextdoor group for HOA members.
One of my neighbors did that. The former HOA guy was able to get into it and delete all comments.
Several of my neighbors have a Whatsapp group with two of the current HOA board members. I have yet to join but I have been invited.
Of course, this makes me radical, a doxer, and several other names that the other three current members of the board are calling us. We call them the Old Guard. They call us the New Guard. It is all quite schoolyard bullying.
Whatsapp is very Colonist.
The last time I installed that app on a phone, I had to access the root recovery shell functionality and wipe the memory down to the bare metal to get rid of it completely.
Fortunately, I had rooted the phone, but I don’t know how easy that is to do anymore.
I’ve avoided Whatsapp ever since, even when I went to iPhone with the first SE.
Apple has a walled garden which, in theory, blocks Facebook’s mischief, but I don’t want to take any chances.
NextDoor is a piece of carp run by Karen’s to make them feel important.
Try recent military retirees from the freak show commands at Mac Dill armed with FS720 trying to protect the potential “tenbagger” score from their last taste of off-base housing allowance.
Even in retirement, many of them don’t have an “off” switch.
One of my Colonel Bat Guano neighbors, supposedly a leading light at the Pentagon on Korea.
https://mugshots.com/US-States/Florida/Hillsborough-County-FL/Brandon/Glen-Alan-Nagy.4695502.html
Aggravated Stalking. The Pentagon had the arrest and court records sealed, but, on the Interwebz, some things live forever.
The worst HOA bully, however, was the lapsed Rabbi. “Man of God”.
He’s my case study for why I will never get on estrogen for prostate cancer. I’d rather let the cancer eat me up than turn into Gladys Kravitz.
“Z Rabbi” as he called himself online had a semi famous case in the Florida Supreme Court where he sued a big temple in Fort Lauderdale for firing him. Included in the testimony was direct examination of a PI over “Z Rabbi’s” tendency towards physical violence, including starting a fistfight with another clergy member at a Bat Mitzvah in Chicago, which probably led to him moving to Florida.
And that was *before* the estrogen.