Cool and warming later. Probably getting all the way to hot and sticky. It’s cooler at night and in the morning, but still getting well into “Summer” by most peoples’ standards.
I got a very early start yesterday getting D1 to her activity. I eventually picked her up a little after midnight. Long day for the kid but they took 3rd place out of 23 schools. Pretty good considering their size and lack of resources.
I spent the morning at my non-prepping hobby, which was nice. Good turn out and a fun day. I napped and read for the rest of the day. I was wiped out. I’m not as good at going without sleep as I used to be. Even just 15 years ago I could still push through an all nighter and be functional the next day. Not ‘normal’, but functional. I don’t think I could do that now, even though I seem to need less sleep overall.
Today I’ll let the kid sleep in as she didn’t get much more than me, and then later we’ll head to the BOL. We won’t be taking her friend with us, but there is already one extra kid there.
I’m debating taking the new 12v cooler and leaving it there as backup. I can make the case for using it here as backup or using it to transport food from here to there. I’ve got a couple of smaller 12v thermoelectric coolers there, but this would increase capacity. I’ve already got one bigger cooler here, and several of the smaller ones.
If you have something that needs to be kept cold to keep you alive, like meds, I think you should absolutely have a small 12v cooler as a minimum prep. On the other hand, a solar panel and inexpensive inverter, with a car battery, will keep most 3 and 7 cubic foot freezers running and you get to keep the freezer full of food…
Whatever your solution and the scale of it, having a way to keep stuff cold is a critical prep.
Stack what you need.
nick
0628 already and no comments? This is a travesty of justice!
Farce post11!!!
The Copy II PC Option Board was a favorite of that company whose name rhymes with Funnywell.
The Clearwater, FL facility got caught by one of the major software companies back when I worked for the Egghead Ponzi.
I know Lotus deliberatey created a weak point on a floppy to protect their software, and the advanced Copy II PC Board would drive specially modified hardware to position a diskette precisely for a laser to burn the media at the beginning of the appropriate sector.
Ironically, I think the Funnywell company got caught copying a failed Lotus product in bulk. Jazz, maybe?
If you have a DVD that MakeMKV won’t touch, mplayer/mencoder on Linux may be able to help if you know the exact track on the DVD which plays as the main movie.
Go back about 20 years and some of the studios would produce DVDs which did not meet the DVD standard in an attempt to confuse the ripping software into ripping the incorrect track or ripping until the capacity of the archival storage was filled. JJ Abrams “Star Trek” is the poster child for this technique.
If you do not see the DVD Video logo on the disc or package crica late 200x, chances are the rights holder attempted the technique.
All bets are off if the physical DVD is damaged. Look for light shining through the holes if you hold the disc up to the light.
Copy protection effectiveness for BluRay depends on how much money a company wants to spend with Sony to prevent MakeMKV from working. Unlike DVD, studio lawyers did not design the encryption.
Relax, SteveF. It’s Sunday. Slow start…
… also a stinking head cold. Yuck. The crud. W1 insists on being around humans, then she brings me their germs. Joy.
This just in from the Canada bureau – Wee Pierre … or Castro Junior if you insist … seems to be doing all right following his resignation after Trump handed him his walking papers in the Mar A Lago meeting last year.
https://archive.is/xWP9B
Ew. Do you really need that kind of negativity in your life?
Newscum is mad Joe won’t be his friend…
https://althouse.blogspot.com/2025/10/gavin-newsom-miffed-that-right-wing.html#more
What’s in it for Rogan to have Newsom on his show at this point?
Newsom is a failed Governor of California who may or may not run for President in three years.
Newsom is in the job for the exact same reason that Kamala had her position in life. Lung power.
Even Newsom’s own in-laws abandoned California for Florida. One of the first things they did after arriving in Naples was to write a large donation check to Governor DeSantis PAC.
73F in the shade on the north side of the house, 84F in the sun on the south…
Looks like a beautiful day.
D2 has not emerged from her den.
I think I’ll get moving. Coffee and egg and bacon are mostly in ma belly…
n
Story from yesterday. Just documenting the decline.
More black on black crime.
More decline of civilization.
n
Jackson. Hinds County.
Yankees may ponder the mystery, but nothing else needs to be said for anyone who is familiar with the area.
This weekend’s Daily Mail Schadenfreude.
LOL. Another “Conservative”:
Marjorie Taylor Greene sparks seismic split with Trump as she rebels on the policy that got him elected
She thinks tRump’s immigration policy has gone too far. Really? She’s for illegal rights now? Basic Human rights, that’s it. Get out of our country, crimmigrants. Is her election coming up and she’s worried about her crimmigrant voting base?
$4000/ounce gold?
Try $4800.
https://www.usmint.gov/american-eagle-2025-one-ounce-gold-uncirculated-coin-25EH.html
$4000/ounce gold?
Try $4800.
https://www.usmint.gov/american-eagle-2025-one-ounce-gold-uncirculated-coin-25EH.html
Those are 90% gold coins.
And no free shipping.
Arthur Sido is ….. probably not “racist”, but has a justifiably low opinion of the the majority of black people. His Substack today is on the 98% black “homecoming massacre”.
https://arthursido.substack.com/p/homicidal-homecoming
I know Lotus deliberatey created a weak point on a floppy to protect their software, and the advanced Copy II PC Board would drive specially modified hardware to position a diskette precisely for a laser to burn the media at the beginning of the appropriate sector.
There was a hole in the floppy diskette at a very certain location. The personal version of Lotus 123 looked for it every time it started.
We had the large business version of Lotus 123 at TXU. No special floppy required. And we had the IBM mainframe verion for our three 3090s.
I also had a special version of Lotus 123 on MSDOS that allowed me to create spreadsheets up to 2 MB in size with a special memory board on my IBM 3270 AT with an 80286 and a 80287. But I could only share the large spreadsheets with the mainframe users.
Uncirculated 2025 Gold Eagles at JM Bullion dot com highest price: $4,402.75
Similarly: Silver Eagles $58.52
Silver Maple Leafs: $58.94
God forbid the people in the nice suburbs of Chattanooga on the Georgia side scrub their toilets themselves.
The machine code was easy to hack in those days. Reading a specific sector on a disk had a distinct signature.
Eagles are alloy coins and very difficult to fake. Establishing provenance is extremely easy if you have the purchase paperwork.
The downside is that the coins are a manufactured product, not “money”, and subject to tariffs crossing borders
The PLTs/Dumbos have poo-poo’d away Amish on Amish violence. It is a serious problem. Even Amish who bring it up are scorned by the LSM. AoA violence isn’t going away no matter how much money and EO you throw at it. The cycle may never be broken.
Instead of Amish, call them DOPEs: Descendants of Obsolete Plantation Equipment.
I think those are now ghetto dwellers or public housing occupants.
Officials in TN have now decided that there are no survivors from the large blast at an explosive manufacturing facility. Sixteen people rapidly disassembled. I cannot imagine the difficulty in finding the pieces and trying to put them together in a bucket that contains the remains of an individual. Fragments that will have to be DNA tested to make certain it is the correct piece of the person. After all, I suspect the families would not want pieces of someone else buried with the remains of their relative.
Just spent a couple of hours trying to find and order a cabinet from IKEA.
Ended up ordering two, that will fill one space.
Tedious and frustrating only begins to describe it. In the end, I had to buy each cabinet by individually ordering the part numbers because the “pre configured” cabinets were not available at my store. All the parts were though.
So, cabinet, doors, hinges, drawers, drawer fronts, legs, and special inserts. Freaking over $1K for a pantry cabinet but the wife was tired of waiting.
And that’s with plain doors.
It does move the project along.
BTW, decided to stay home and work on stuff here, notably the cabinet project.
n
Trying to assemble a splatpack.
RIP John Lodge (July 20, 1943 – October 10, 2025)
Leaving Justin Hayward as the only remaining member of the post-1966 reorganization. (No, not forgetting the forgettable Patrick Moraz)
“Burn for Me (Hidden Legacy, 1)” by Ilona Andrews
https://www.amazon.com/Burn-Hidden-Legacy-Ilona-Andrews/dp/0062289233?tag=ttgnet-20/
Book number one of a seven book paranormal romance fantasy series. I reread the well printed and well bound MMPB published by Avon in 2014 that I bought new from Amazon in 2024 when I first read it. I already own the other six books in the series.
Totally cool start to a new series for me. This makes the fourth series that I have read from Ilona Andrews, a husband and wife writing team.
The Hidden Legacy Universe is a complex place. The Osiris serum that induced magical powers in humans was released to the general public in 1863 and the world was never the same. The serum was banned after a while but the world was irreparably changed. Families starting breeding children for strength in magical powers with breathtaking results. Magic users are segregated into five ranks: Minor, Average, Notable, Significant, and Prime. There are not many Primes and they are all dangerous, very dangerous.
The most feared mage is the pyrotechnic (fire). Adam Pierce is a Prime and a fire mage. And he is certifiably crazy but his mother loves him anyway. Even when he kills a security guard while robbing a bank.
Nevada Baylor runs a very small detective agency in Houston, Texas ( ! ) that works on scammers and divorce cases. She is a 25 year old hidden truthseeker, she can unerringly tell lies from truths and can sometimes force people to emit truths. Her mother and father started the detective agency but there is a huge mortgage to a Prime Family that funded the effort to try to save her father from cancer. Now the Prime Family wants them to find Adam Pierce and deliver him to his family, undamaged.
Connor “Mad” Rogan is a Prime telekinetic and a noted combat veteran, famous for destroying a village in the Mexican war by himself using his powers. Mad Rogan is the most feared Prime in the world. And Mad Rogan wants Adam Pierce too, undamaged is not a priority.
The authors have a very active website at:
https://ilona-andrews.com/
My rating: 6 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars (17,153 reviews)
Lynn
RIP John Lodge (July 20, 1943 – October 10, 2025)
Leaving Justin Hayward as the only remaining member of the post-1966 reorganization. (No, not forgetting the forgettable Patrick Moraz)
Oh, The Moody Blues.
“Knights In White Satin” is an awesome song. And Denny Laine was an awesome member of Wings.
Lynn’s six star list (or top ten list) in October 2025:
1. “Mutineer’s Moon” by David Weber
2. “Citizen Of The Galaxy” by Robert Heinlein
3. “The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress” by Robert Heinlein
4. “The Star Beast” by Robert Heinlein
5. “Shards Of Honor” and “Barrayar” by Lois McMaster Bujold
6. “Jumper”, “Reflex”, “Impulse”, and “Exo” by Steven Gould
7. “Dies The Fire” by S. M. Stirling
8. “Emergence” by David Palmer
9. “The Tar-Aiym Krang” by Alan Dean Foster
10. “Under A Graveyard Sky” by John Ringo
11. “Live Free Or Die” by John Ringo
12. “Footfall” by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
13. “Lucifer’s Hammer” by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
14. “The Zero Stone” by Andre Norton
15. “Going Home” by A. American
16. “Ender’s Game” by Orson Scott Card
17. “Ready Player One” by Ernest Cline
18. “The Martian” by Andy Weir
19. “The Postman” by David Brin
20. “We Are Legion” by Dennis E. Taylor
21. “Bitten” by Kelley Armstrong
22. “Moon Called” by Patrica Briggs
23. “Red Thunder” by John Varley
24. “Lightning” by Dean Koontz
25. “The Murderbot Diaries” by Martha Wells
26. “Friday” by Robert Heinlein
27. “Agent Of Change” by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller
28. “Monster Hunter International” by Larry Correia
29. “Among Others” by Jo Walton
30. “Skinwalker” and “Blood Of The Earth” By Faith Hunter
31. “Time Enough For Love” by Robert Heinlein
32. “Methuselah’s Children” by Robert Heinlein
33. “When the Wind Blows”, “The Lake House” by James Patterson
34. “A Soldier’s Duty (Theirs Not to Reason Why)” by Jean Johnson
35. “Human by Choice” by Travis S. Taylor and Darrell Bain
36. “Project Hail Mary” by Andy Weir
37. “Agent To The Stars” by John Scazi
38. “Starter Villain” by John Scalzi
39. “The Inheritance (Breach Wars)” by Ilona Andrews
40. “Burn for Me (Hidden Legacy, 1)” by Ilona Andrews
41. “White Hot (Hidden Legacy, 2)” by Ilona Andrews
Somebody told me that these are a bunch of young men’s adventure stories. Being an old man, I liked that.
Lynn
I liked the Burn for Me series. The map details of the area around the agency are a tiny bit off but Jersey Village as a magical toxic waste site is awesome… Most of the story is in my part of town…
n
Good morning! No SteveF being first today. 🙂
Friday the 13th falls on a Monday this month. Be careful out there.
As Denis starts his day, I’m wrapping mine up. Time to shower off the smoke and get to bed.
n
“Vance: Troops to Be Paid With Tariff Revenue During Schumer’s Shutdown”
https://thelibertydaily.com/vance-troops-be-paid-tariff-revenue-during-schumers/
“Vice President JD Vance laid out a clear path forward for ensuring American service members receive their paychecks amid the ongoing government shutdown engineered by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. During an appearance on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures, Vance explained that the administration would tap into tariff revenues collected by the Treasury to cover military salaries, bypassing the gridlock in Congress.”