Still cool to start and warming later. Although the general trend in temperature is down… Yesterday was a nice day, the part I spent outside anyway. Sunny, but some clouds, and not brutally hot.
I ended up having a good day, even without making much progress on the list. Getting out of the house, and out of my routine activities helps to sort of reset my brain. Clearly when I spent 3 1/2 hours talking to an auction seller, I had a built up deficit and need for some human interaction.
Having lunch out, and punching some holes in paper was a nice change of pace. And shooting 22LR was very cheap compared to 40 S&W.
Of course, we must pay for our transgressions, so today I’ve got a bunch of stuff to get done. I may even leave the house before noon. I’ve got pickups, stuff to move, and maybe I can meet with a buyer for one of the things I’m selling. I’m also figuring I’ll head to the BOL on Saturday, so if I have time, and the forecast is clear, I have a ton of stuff to load into the truck.
Property needs upkeep and the BOL is no exception. That is something to consider when looking for a place, how much effort will it take to get there, how much time and effort will you need to spend on basic maintenance, and how often will you be able to MAKE that time? Unless you just have a secure bunker or shipping container in the woods, plan to spend more time than you think you will.
And don’t forget the need to top up the stacks at your BOL. You have all the considerations there that you have at home.
You are topping up the stacks at home, right??
nick
Hmmm, that’s the second time the post didn’t go live when it was supposed to, even though the time was set correctly and had past.
73F. I’m up. Everyone else is fighting it today.
n
n
Bad Orange Man?
Of course it’s the fault of the ad agency. It’s not like the CEO, and probably all upper leadership, approved the campaign.
As far as Cracker Barrel, I never cared about the uproar about the logo or redesign. My problem has been the decline of quality and service, which has been happening for years. CB used to be a good place to stop on a road trip for a meal. Consistent quality, decent service, and decent pricing. Now? We have been to several, in different states, during lunchtime and the restaurant is only half-full. It takes almost an hour to get food after sitting down.
Unless I’m desperate, I’m done with CB. Luckily there are other good options on our consistent driving routes.
@greg, I think those issues may be universal for food service now. The BBQ place I went to yesterday was mostly empty. It’s a multi store mini chain. I was there slightly later than normal lunch but I thought the place was going to be busy.
n
Uh huh.
That’s quite a name.
Various online profiles say her education was at CIA, as in Culinary Institute of America.
Fancy Lass.
Prophet seems to have quite a few Vanguard/Blackrock/State Street subsidiaries as clients.
Cracker Barrel has always been fake and corporate but the food was consistently decent and the experience a step up from McDonalds.
BBQ is expensive. An $18 sandwich is not even remotely affordable except as an occasional splurge.
My guess is that Cracker Barrel is going private, and the chain will be strip mined for the equity in the real estate by the buyer(s).
Vanguard et al can’t squeeze any more blood out of the turnip (greens).
Fire shuts down Chevron refinery that supplies 40% of the gasoline to Southern California
https://hotair.com/tree-hugging-sister/2025/10/03/ho-boy-massive-fire-erupts-at-chevrons-el-segundo-ca-refinery-last-night-n3807439
That’s a bummer.
I’m sure the EPA will be standing by to immediately begin a careful review if any emergency measures proposed by the state governmen…
Darn, the fedgov is shut down. Bummer.
Isn’t that the refinery that was beginning to shut down and mothball?
n
>>. Does it often have popups appear
– yes, always. It’s usually a kind of easter egg that extends the joke.
GoogleReddit is your friend…https://www.reddit.com/r/xkcd/comments/76m2v/xkcd_easter_eggs_rollover_the_comic_and_see/
I think it was the Valero refinery up in Benicia that really set the cat among the
pigeonspoliticians here (the “We will hold off on attacking you until the election over is over ” strategy didn’t work as well as they hoped) .I did however have occasion to speak briefly to my neighbor this morning about something else, he runs Barnes Aviation out here in the Antelope Valley and said that the Los Angeles refinery produces about half the Avgas in the state. And a lot of the Jet-A for LAX.
Re the ‘tooltip’ that appears when hovering over images (example: the ‘xkcd’ discussion):
The ‘alt’ tag provides a description of an image for accessibility and SEO purposes, helping screen readers convey the image’s meaning to visually impaired users. The ‘title’ tag, on the other hand, offers additional information about the image and appears as a tooltip when hovering over it, but it does not impact search rankings.
So, xkcd is using the ‘title’ tag as a way to display an ‘easter egg’ on some of the cartoons. The ‘alt’ tag might be used to describe the image; with that description used on screen readers. The browser (any one) will only use the ‘title’ tag as a tooltip displayed on a ‘hover’ over an image.
A web page/site that is optimized for visually impaired users will use the ‘alt’ tag to help those people ‘see’ the various elements on a page. If the image is blocked for any reason, the browser will display the text from the ‘alt’ tag where the image would be. And the ‘alt’ tag value will be seen by search engines, which is why it is recommended to be used to help with SEO.
The image at the top of this page only has the ‘alt’ tag (of ‘Daynotes Journal’) which you would see if you disabled the display of graphic images. There is no ‘title’ tag, which is why you don’t see a ‘tooltip’ when you hover over the image.
…and note that if you are designing a site to be HTML5 compliant (required for many sites), the use of the ‘alt’ tag is required to be fully HTML5 compliant. The ‘tltle’ tag use is optional.
Isn’t that the refinery that was beginning to shut down and mothball?
Yes. There are two refineries shutting down on Jan 1, 2026 in Kakafornia.
Actions have consequences.
It’s nice, if that’s the word, to see that reflexive downvoters target commenters other than those of us who discuss enslaving illegal aliens.
On second thought, “nice” isn’t at all the word I want but Nick et al want to keep this a family-friendly site so I can’t use the appropriate word. Instead, I’ll simply suggest that, rather than giving a thumb-down on a comment on HTML5 compliance simply because of who wrote it, they instead suck on their thumb. Or shove it up their nether regions. Or both.
Alternating at appropriate intervals.
“Buc-ee’s Founder’s $60 Million Gift Creates Campus ‘Game Changer’”
https://www.txamfoundation.com/news/buc-ees-founders-gift-creates-campus-game-changer.aspx
“Arch “Beaver” Aplin III ’80 is transforming hospitality, retail and marketing education with milestone gifts for Texas A&M University.”
“Arch “Beaver” Aplin III ’80, founder and CEO of Buc-ee’s, is bringing the spirit of the beloved travel center to Texas A&M University through a $60 million commitment that will establish the Aplin Center, an immersive learning laboratory for hospitality-related fields in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and for marketing majors at Mays Business School.”
“Housed on the Texas A&M campus at the intersection of Wellborn Road and John Kimbrough Boulevard, the 211,724-square-foot building will also provide an inviting space for Aggies to gather, relax, eat and shop—and serve as a primary gateway to campus for all visitors.”
So there is a Buc-ees on the TAMU campus now.
I think it was the Valero refinery up in Benicia that really set the cat among the
pigeonspoliticians here (the “We will hold off on attacking you until the election over is over ” strategy didn’t work as well as they hoped) .I did however have occasion to speak briefly to my neighbor this morning about something else, he runs Barnes Aviation out here in the Antelope Valley and said that the Los Angeles refinery produces about half the Avgas in the state. And a lot of the Jet-A for LAX.
I think that there will less than five operating refineries left in Kakafornia after the first of the year. There was fifteen a couple of decades ago. I suspect that those will be closed and turned into tank farms also. Since it is illegal for a refinery to make a profit in Kakafornai, why run the huge investment eating monstrosities that are all future Superfund sites ?
Property needs upkeep and the BOL is no exception. That is something to consider when looking for a place, how much effort will it take to get there, how much time and effort will you need to spend on basic maintenance, and how often will you be able to MAKE that time? Unless you just have a secure bunker or shipping container in the woods, plan to spend more time than you think you will.
And don’t forget the need to top up the stacks at your BOL. You have all the considerations there that you have at home.
My BOL is costing Mom around $5,000 per month in maintenance, taxes, insurance, etc. And we are emptying it as fast as we can. I am heading there in a little while.
We will put it up for sale as soon as we get it emptied and I get the lot and deed nonsense legalized. I still cannot believe that Dad never fixed the deed problems in 40 years. He started but never finished.
“Friday Funny: Net Zero is DOOMED”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/10/03/friday-funny-net-zero-is-doomed/
“We have entered the Grand Solar Minimum, the poles are way off beam, and the Magnetosphere is weakening. We are in trouble.”
“Not only that, but the longwave collimator tube’s lens deconfliction oscillations have ended up amplifying the hemispherical kinetic variance! She’s gonna blow, captain!”
Winter is coming.
My site is “HTML 4.0 Transitional” and I use the alt tag. Every page, as far I recall, passes. I’m still sure the alt tag use to show a caption balloon.
The title tag is new to me. Do I care enough to re-write the site? Not sure it’s worth the time.
“Holding Their Own XII: Copperheads (Holding Their Own)” by Joe Nobody
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1717543820?tag=ttgnet-20
The twelfth book in a series of nineteen alternate history books about the economic collapse of the USA in 2015 and onward. I read the well printed and well bound POD (print on demand) trade paperback self published by the author in 2016 that I bought new on Amazon in 2025. I own the first thirteen books in the series and will purchase more soon.
Um, this series was published in 2011 just as the shale oil and gas boom was really getting cranked up. The book has crude oil at $350/barrel and gasoline at $6/gallon in 2015. Not gonna happen due to oil well fracking in the USA so the major driver of economic collapse in the USA is invalid for the book. That said, the book is a good story about the collapse and failure of the federal government in the USA. The book is centered in Texas which makes it very interesting to me since I am a Texas resident.
The $6 gasoline was just the start. The unemployment rises to 40% over a couple of years and then there is a terrorist chemical attack in Chicago that kills 50,000 people. The current President of the USA nukes Iran with EMP airbursts as the sponsor of the terrorist attack. And the President of the USA also declares martial law and shuts down the interstates to stop the terrorists from moving about. That shuts down food and fuel movement causing starvation and lack of energy across the nation.
The accumulations of these serious problems cause widespread panics and shutdowns of basic services like electricity and water for large cities. The electricity grids fail due to employees not showing up to work at the plants. Then the refineries shutdown due to the lack of electricity.
“A massacre along the Rio Grande draws Bishop and his SAINT team to the border with Mexico. Their investigation soon reveals a local conflict that challenges the Texan’s moral compass while testing the Alliance’s commitment to individual freedoms. Butter finds himself at the center of the dilemma, torn between a woman who desperately needs his help and the loyalty he feels toward Bishop and the team. Lured by a girl who has captured his heart, Butter becomes a pawn in a high stakes political game in which he is accused of murder and sentenced to death. Bishop and Terri must find a way to save their friend without pulling the Alliance into a conflict it cannot win.”
The author has a website at:
https://www.joenobodybooks.com/
My rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars (383 reviews)
Lynn
It isn’t me downvoting, but the posts about HTML 5 compliance read like an AI generated them.
Will the store stock Gatorade?
“Phillips 66 progresses California refinery shuttering plan, Chevron El Segundo fire adds to state’s refining uncertainty”
https://www.ogj.com/refining-processing/refining/operations/news/55321189/phillips-66-progresses-california-refinery-shuttering-plan-chevron-el-segundo-fire-adds-to-states-refining-uncertainty
“Phillips 66 is phasing out crude processing at its Los Angeles refinery, with operations expected to cease by late 2025.
The company said it remains committed to maintaining fuel supply in California despite refinery closures and capacity reductions.
California has lost about 20% of its refining capacity since 2020, with further declines anticipated due to ongoing shutdown plans.
Valero plans to close its Benicia refinery by mid-2026, adding to the state’s shrinking refining infrastructure.”
I thought that the Chevron refinery was being closed but I was wrong, it is the Phillips and Valero refineries.
Will the store stock Gatorade?
I don’t get the question / joke ?
“Windows 7 usage seemingly skyrockets as users refuse to upgrade to Windows 11 in wake of Windows 10 end of support”
https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/windows-7-usage-skyrockets-as-users-refuse-to-upgrade-to-windows-11-in-wake-of-windows-10-end-of-support
“StatCounter reports that Windows 7 has gained almost 10% market share in the last month, just as Windows 10 support is coming to an end. But it’s probably just an anomaly.”
Huh.
I’ve never been accused of having any significant ‘I”. Thanks.
My site is “HTML 4.0 Transitional” and I use the alt tag. Every page, as far I recall, passes. I’m still sure the alt tag use to show a caption balloon.
The title tag is new to me. Do I care enough to re-write the site? Not sure it’s worth the time.
My main website too. I have no idea what that means and don’t really care. The site may look dated but it works. I have way bigger irons in the fire to fix and update.
https://winsim.com/
I’ve never been accused of having any significant ‘I”. Thanks.
Cool, something we can agree on ! I post my SF book reviews on reddit and get accused of being an AI all the time. In fact, somebody just posted this in response to the accuser:
“This is an AI comment. I’ve seen all of these words constructed into grammatically correct sentences to convey similar sentiments before.”
https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/comments/1nsykmw/record_of_a_spaceborn_few_wayfarers_3_by_becky/
Gatorade is a product of research at the University of Florida.
Gator Aid
University of Florida football may be done for a long time after tomorrow afternoon, even if the home team wins.
Explosion at Major CA Refinery Will Likely Lead to Surge in Gas Prices in CA – and 2 Other States
https://redstate.com/jenvanlaar/2025/10/03/explosion-at-major-ca-refinery-will-likely-lead-to-surge-in-gas-prices-in-ca-and-three-more-states-n2194696
I count 3 other states.
The Chevron El Segundo fire takes 16% of the state’s capacity off-line. Length of shutdown unknown. Three months is a good SWAG, but Chevron bean-counters will be looking at expense vs. return, and Grewsum had better have a BOL if Chevron decides it’s not worth it.
Philipps 66’s Wilmington refinery will close by year-end, taking 8% of the state’s capacity with it.
Two other refineries in California are set to close in 2025.
Note that any gasoline imports to CA either come by sea or from two states away, and have to meet the byzantine formulation requirements. The military and the airlines will do what they have to do, but the family Chebby is going to get limited use at $20 an hour. The ripple effect is going to drive up costs, spike inflation, and motivate a lot of illegal workers to self-deport.
The CA Democrats have been intent on their civilization destroying agenda for decades, and want to protect the CO2 Endangerment Finding:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/10/01/an-open-letter-to-governor-newsom-and-the-california-air-resources-board/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/10/01/california-carbon-free-by-2045/
I’ve previously advocated that one of the blue shiitehole cities be selected for the net-zero/green experiment behind a hard fence, but this is the perfect opportunity to enlarge to a whole state full of Democrate science-deniers and illegals. Any refinery repairs are going to require EPA sign-offs, and that’s the perfect time for a conversation about being Twinkies and eating them, too.
@Lynn
Those commnents are posted by jealous AI’s.
Our Universe could be trapped inside a black hole with no way out
https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/black-hole-universe
In other news, Sam’s Club Liquor has the 28-bottle case of Octoberfest in stock.
Ranked poorly here:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/foodanddrink/foodnews/popular-oktoberfest-2025-beers-ranked-worst-to-best/ar-AA1MQoLO
But the author seems to be under the impression that the Lenenkugel family are more than mouthpieces for Molson Coors.
#1 on this list is Hacker-Pschorr Oktoberfest, which has been a solid 8/10 rated on my lists since about 1980 (the tap version is superior and worth seeking out).
Forbes continues their tradition of making lists of mostly unfindable beers:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikofgang/2025/09/16/must-try-oktoberfest-beers-in-2025/
although Sierra Nevada’s 2025 collaboration Oktoberfest – Störtebeker Braumanufaktur (2025) may not be unobtanium.
I made a trip to Northern California yesterday to help a friend move a boat.
Coming back down the I5 from Sacramento to Gorman at night was astounding. It was like the holiday weekend crushes I remember from 15 years ago, but it was just an ordinary weeknight.
Incompetent law breaking truckers, insane automobile drivers…
Wow.
Everything rolls out of the legacy Miller Plank Road brewery in Milwaukee now.
We took the tour at Plank Road the week of the announcement that Leinenkugel’s original brewery would close by the beginning of 2025.
I never got the hype on Lienencookoo or Coors for that matter.
Making lists of stuff the list readers can’t actually buy is just cool kid posturing.
———-
no insight into what dark matter is.
— It’s what cosmologists call the variable labeled “fudge factor” in a normal spreadsheet. It’s the special sauce that makes the math work. Therefore it MUST exist, because there’s no way the math is wrong, right? Scientists have never been wrong before, so how ever tortured and filled with unlikely, unknown, and unobserved magic the theory is, it MUST BE right. Just keep adding incomprehensible stuff when needed. And instead of calling it magic pixie dust, call it dark matter.
I hope I live long enough to see a simple and unified theory that doesn’t rely on magic.
———-
Lots of traffic on the highways today. And one dark ugly cell on the south side of town. The way the wind is whipping the flags around, I think that cell might be headed my way.
n
Everything MillerCoors originates out of the same vats at Plank Road and their other facilities around the country. Every beer has a slightly different recipe, but the processing is identical.
Coors is no longer “Rocky Mountain spring water”.
The big merchandise seller when we went on the tour was Hamm’s.
While it isn’t MillerCoors, I know that the vaunted Tampa Yuengling facility produced Pabst Blue Ribbon when I was a
undergrad at the nearby university.
Grr. Timeout.
The EPA used to have a politically motivated fudge factor for estimated MPG ratings on vehicles. Unicorn farts and pixie dust were often involved.
A K Car never really got 47 MPG on the highway, but the government had a large amount of loan money invested with Iacocca pulling off a recovery at Chrysler.
I’d be inclined to think that “dark matter” is nothing other than “pixie dust”, except that we already know about one kind of matter that fits the criteria: nutrinos. (Hat tip to Sabine Hossenfelder, who pointed this out in one of her videos.)
Now, I’m not fully on-board with the cosmological models which rely on dark matter and dark energy to make the numbers come out right, but I’m not totally dismissing them, either.
And anyway, it doesn’t really matter. All models are wrong. If the “70% dark energy, 20% dark matter, 10% stuff we know about” model lets us make useful, testable, and correct predictions, then it’s good enough.
A channel I also watch, although for some time I ignored her as I thought it was an AI talking head/bot, until I found out she was German, with the classic Teutonic stoicism.
Lieinenkugel was a decent regional beer before the acquisition. After Jacob Leinenkugel played with foo-foo fruity beers. Most of the brand success has been the shandies. Why someone would pay for a 50:50 mix of beer and lemonade that is only a decent beverage on a hot summer day is a mystery.
Skiers spread the myth of Coors beyond it’s limited regional refrigerated distribution and made it worthwhile to build more refrigeration. Lawn-mowing beer or beer for non-beer-drinkers. Coors Winterfest Ale is decent, but not widely available.
JEP used to claim that epicycles did a fine job of describing planetary motion.
The consumption of public money granted to theoretical physicists to do darn little actual science (i.e., lack of teastable hypotheses) is more than adequately modeled by pissing that same money into a black hole.
Plus “Smokey and the Bandit”.
The fundamental plot hole of the movie is that Texarkana was dry in the 70s.
Been playing with a 12 inch rattlesnake in the breezeway. Then he ran off in the side yard grass when I chased him out from under Moms car.
Lots of Texas cities were dry in the 1970s and 1980s. Abilene for one.
Not just in the 80s. Last time I was working on tour in the Texas Motor Speedway area (somewhere near Dallas) the actual place we were staying was in a dry county. We had to join a ‘members only’ club to buy drinks at the hotel. IIRC there were other places nearby where that fiction didn’t hold up.
That would be late 2000s? maybe as late as 2010?
Lots of places still have ‘blue laws’ about Sunday alcohol sales, as far as I know.
n
Did most of my pickups today. Missed one as their hours have changed. I’ll get that one next week.
Won some more solar panels. Might pick them up Saturday on my way to the BOL. I am pretty sure I’m going but not necessarily first thing in the morning.
There is just too much to do to not go up this weekend.
n
Of course it’s the fault of the ad agency. It’s not like the CEO, and probably all upper leadership, approved the campaign.
What happened to applying common sense? Oh, right, the consulting companies don’t get to bill as much.