Cold again, but warming. We’re definitely on the downward trend. A week ago I was sitting out at night in shorts, comfortably. This week I’m cold in long pants and a coat. Fall fell. Forecast has us in clear for the next few days, so it’s still too dry. Maybe we’ll get a little more rain later in the month.
I took advantage of the time change and slept late. Still having some back issues from my exertions getting everything in place for the holiday and my project, so not moving too fast. I did manage to get almost all the holiday stuff put away and back into the attic. Of course I missed a candy tray, and I’m sure I will find something else, even though we didn’t go crazy decorating this year. Put some finishing touches on the pantry project too, and enabled my wife to do her part of it.
Today I’d like to continue making progress and try to rebuild some of the momentum but we’ll see what the universe has in store. My suspicion is that I will find several things to add to the list, and will not make much progress on it.
We can only continue to try.
At least stacking is easy.
nick
It was 50F when I went to sleep, and 51F this morning. Still clear and the sun is coming up.
Since we’re tied to the school schedule, I like DST.
n
The appointment has been made at the vet for tomorrow at 10:30. It is a tough decision. Part of me says we are being selfish and should let nature take its course a little further. The other part of me says we are doing the right thing as nature is taking its course and better to end it now than when life is really tough for the dog.
We think she is in some pain, she sleeps more than before, deep sleep, misses events that would normally wake her. We have been told she has kidney disease and liver disease, tumors possible on the brain that caused the blindness. She occasionally walks into walls, gets lost in the basement and garage, all familiar places. She is also deaf in one ear and sound is what she uses to locate people.
The wife and I are mostly on the same page. We both have doubts, we both have certainty. We have an upcoming trip to Atlanta for Thanksgiving and the dog would be miserable in the unfamiliar environment, especially with two other large dogs.
With the speed of the blindness, we also think that the other ailments will progress quickly. The vet has told us that she (the dog, not the wife), will lose bladder control before long with the progression of the tumors.
The dog has had a good life of 11 years considering she was born with Parvo and survived. A big scar on her left side where the vet put in the water bladder.
It is time to say goodbye, I think? I don’t like to see animals suffer and I think the dog is suffering some with the pain and blindness and it will continue to get worse. I guess it is better to go out when things are good than when things are bad.
The Real Life Tony Stark.
Flying cars and sex robots.
Trump: I Will Not Be Extorted by ‘Kamikaze Pilot’ Schumer
https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2025/11/03/trump-i-will-not-be-extorted-chuck-n3808500
The first comment below the article is exactly what I was thinking.
@Ray Thompson
It is time to say goodbye.
That doesn’t mean it will hurt less, or that the hole ripped in your hearts will be smaller.
I was incorrect on the date. The spousal unit said Tuesday. It is Tuesday of next week.
SNAP/EBT data point. Purely anecdotal, but…
I went to the HEB grocery store in Katy yesterday afternoon. Normally a busy place, especially on weekends.
There were many, many good parking places in the lot. The aisles were not crowded, but there were still several shoppers.
My gut says it was about 75% of normal volume.
Still a bunch of jibber-jabber in foreign languages, though.
Well, the wife changed the date in the calendar for the dog back to tomorrow. Sometimes her use of the calendar is hit or miss.
Mike Rowe has a great YT episode on vaccines and shite:
You Won’t Believe What’s Really In Vaccines | Gavin de Becker #456 | The Way I Heard It
They talk about polio, Agent Orange, and tetanus. I am buying the book. The discussion about COVID, mRNA, and the societal result are things we’ve talked about for years in this joint.
The worst thing about being a conspiracy theorist in modern America is that it’s so difficult to come up with an out-there conspiracy theory that makes the normies say, “OK, time for the thorazine, dude.” Sure, a few theories will make the normies roll their eyes, but they keep coming true! It’s getting to the point that you can tell a normie your latest theory and they just nod and say that it sounds plausible. -sigh- These are challenging times we live in.
“AI” is all about sex robots.
The Oprah, Kankles, AOC, or Whoopie version?
The Oprah, Kankles, AOC, or Whoopie version?
– oww, my brain…
n
“Trump administration says SNAP will be partially funded after judges’ rulings”
https://www.chron.com/news/article/snap-trump-administration-deadline-21135483.php
“The USDA has a $5 billion contingency fund for the program, but the Trump administration reversed an earlier plan to use that money to keep SNAP running. Democratic officials argue that the administration could also use a separate fund of about $23 billion.”
“U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell in Providence, Rhode Island, said SNAP must be funded using at least contingency funds, and he asked for an update on progress by Monday.”
So judges can force the administration to spend money that Congress has not allocated. That is so unconstitutional. The House has the power of originating spending and the Senate and President must concur. As usual, these judges should be impeached by for being unconstitutional.
from yesterday:
*It takes a special kind of perfumed prince to geteleected with a party and then sell it out for “principles”.
I forgot to note that Massie is a piker–the Crown Perfumed Prince is John McCain.
@Lynn
Agriculture Sec. Rollins Exposes SNAP Corruption
I think Trump chose optics. the whole episode has dragged the corruption into the light and made it easier to talk about reform: Step 1 is get the aliens off the SNAP rolls
“Quiet”
https://areaocho.com/quiet/
“The third day was by far the worst. We had a critical incident. Let me explain. EMS brought in a woman who was in cardiac arrest. She was also 38 weeks pregnant, and had been down for about 40 minutes when she came in. I was the team leader.”
Wow, I could not do that job.
“Yet more evidence of how US taxpayers have been robbed blind by left-wing progressive policies”
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2025/11/yet-more-evidence-of-how-us-taxpayers.html
“Two reports caught my eye over the weekend. Just remind yourself as you read them that they are the fruit of four years of the Biden administration – and if President Trump is forced to back down on his policies (e.g. through losses in the mid-term elections, or court rulings) we’ll be back in the same situation in no time.”
“First: “SNAP’s Hidden Reality: 83 Million Citizens and Illegal Aliens Are Dependent on Food Aid Each Year“.”
“The most frequently cited statistic about the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, is that about 43 million Americans rely on it each month to feed themselves and their families. That number is often used to justify the program’s scale and reach. But this monthly average hides a far more disturbing truth. Because of high turnover, the real number of Americans who receive SNAP benefits at some point during a given year is much higher. Federal data show that 52% of new enrollees leave within one year, and 67% within two years. That means that across twelve months, between 63 and 83 million unique individuals participate in the program. In other words, about 22% of the entire US population uses SNAP to buy food during any calendar year. This is not a small anti-poverty program. It is a vast, parallel food economy. The only way such numbers make sense is if many more illegal immigrants are benefiting from the system than politicians admit.”
Unreal.
“This is what your AI girlfriend looks like without makeup”
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY-dZM_UtIIE6UWE-2ng_Cjmc4AiLunghxmB72w5-YSHXwDVBnFAB6p5ZRjQ6Q7maZPaWGGqBBJiAUc_eDcKlOsKUiYj3M1VrU4PksX51WKBXC7-W0LUgTBQjvmI03adxrkihUulNqz-ZdZv6eLqnFnZHnROBqaiZtoL_OJnEtvjhS6xoN3wboZAqzx8Q/s600/Meme%20-%20AI%20without%20makeup.png
From:
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2025/11/memes-that-made-me-laugh-284.html
” After Elon Tantrum, SpaceX Now Prepping ‘Simplified’ Starship-Based Lunar Lander”
https://www.pcmag.com/news/after-elon-tantrum-spacex-now-prepping-simplified-starship-based-lunar
“Amid concerns over China’s space-related progress, NASA is reviewing new lunar lander proposals from SpaceX and Blue Origin. The move initially prompted a flurry of insults from Musk on X.”
“SpaceX has come up with a more constructive response to NASA concerns about its Human Landing System (HLS) project than rage-posts by Elon Musk insulting NASA acting administrator Sean Duffy as “Sean Dummy.””
That elevator looks to be a little unstable. Especially in low gravity.
“3D Solar towers boost electricity production by around 50%”
https://newatlas.com/energy/solar-towers-electricity/
“The towers are also able to reach a capacity factor of about 32%, which bests that of flat panels, which come in around 22%. Janta says the towers deliver power more cheaply as well: as low as $0.05/kWh compared to a global average of about $0.15/kWh. They’re also built strong. The towers are rated to resist winds up to 170 mph.”
Somebody thinking outside the box there.
“Sharia’s Quiet Conquest of America: The Islamization of the NYPD and U.S. Military (Video)”
https://rairfoundation.com/sharias-quiet-conquest-america-islamization-nypd-u-s/
“America’s most sacred institutions — from the NYPD to the U.S. military — are no longer demanding assimilation but enforcing accommodation, quietly replacing constitutional loyalty with compliance to Sharia, a foreign legal system fundamentally at odds with the freedoms they swore to defend.”
There should be no exceptions to the rules. This cannot be permitted.
Hat tip to:
https://thelibertydaily.com/
>>I’ve got Lista/Stanley/vidmar and I’ve got some A/V drawers from a school auction. I’ve got Kennedy boxes. I’ve got Knack boxes. I’ve got some craftsman boxes and some that are so cheap IDK if anyone would recognize the name. I’ve got repurposed card catalog metal drawer sets. I’ve got metal horizontal file cabinets, and fireproof filing cabinets. I’ve even got some IKEA bathroom drawer units stacked up.
So… who’s got more defined storage space? @nick or Adam Savage?
Today’s movie was Click. It’s from 2006. Adam Sandler. It was in the batch of movies I bought on FB markeplace. It’s a pretty good movie.
https://www.amazon.com/CLICK-Adam-Sandler/dp/B002LHZV5E?tag=ttgnet-20
Does light change from Summer to now? Polarization or something.
A month or so ago, the light caught Buddy just right so this white dog looked grey in the face. Today his chocolate milk colored ears have a lot of silver. Maybe it’s the time of year for the Winter fur to come in.
I figure he was about five pushing six when he showed up in my back yard. It will be five years in January. He’s slowed down a bit.
How long do beagles live?
OK, hear me out: Beer drinkers invented the patriarchy. Agriculture was invented to ensure supplies of beer. Which required greater population to work the fields, and defend them from “the others”. Which meant forcing increased procreation. Which necessitated encouraging heterosexual pair bonding. Which was made possible by inventing mass religion to enforce taboos against non-reproductive sex. It all hangs together.
Can I get a custom model with pieces from each of them. AOC‘s face with Whoopie Cushion’s dreads, etc.
I went and looked Beagles live about 12 to 15 years. A dog’s life.
So Buddy the Beagle getting silver gray in his milk chocolate ears is normal.
@Ray I don’t know what to say. Give puppy lots and lots of hugs.
It’s never easy.
re: Janta solar panels
Maybe because you can stack living space with very little penalty (stairs, elevators, ducts, wire runs), but stacking solar panels means the lower ones are shaded and don’t produce electricity on the shaded surface.
Electrical production is proportional to the area projection perpendicular to the sun’s rays. For fixed panels this is maximized by an installation angle equal to the sun angle. It can be increased by using a tracking mount to turn the panels to face the sun, but the installation cost is greatly increased.
Electricity production for a given site is maximized if the site is 100% covered in solar panels mounted flat. Angled panels give higher efficiencies at lower coverage, but cannot collect more solar energy.
A tracking system increases efficiency–not a new result. Tracking increases costs, i.e. money that could have been spend on more solar panels.
Any vertical topography creates shade. The arrays shown in the photo have to be spaced so that they minimally shade each other, thus decreasing the energy absorbed per square foot of ground. Just after sunrise and just before sunset, the low sun angle casts long shadows, making mutual shading inevitable if collectors are spaced for efficient land use.
The towers in the photos appear to have two flat collectors mounted at about 120-degrees. This means that either one collector faces the sun at an optimal angle and the other is severely sub-optimal (-14% from the geometry), or the tracker splits the difference and they are both sub-optimal to a lesser degree. Note that the latter is more efficient, but it will always be less efficient that a single flat panel with an area equal to the shaded area of the Janta panel.
from the included link:
Per the discussion above, sub-optimal exposure creates lower efficiency. I’d guess that “footprint” in this case means the amount of land that it takes to put up a tower, without consideration of the shadows the tower casts outside that footprint.
3D Solar towers boost electricity production by around 50%
Hope they are escrowing for removal costs.
@paul
Lower sun angle affects color temperature and spectral distribution.
see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamerism_(color)
@paul, I just saw that I have Click on the server earlier today, when I was doing some scrolling around. I might just move it closer to the ‘some day soon’ pile.
—–
who’s got more defined storage space? @nick or Adam Savage?
– oh, definitely Adam, and he’s tried to make custom and semi-custom solutions too. Mine is far more haphazard and consists of whatever I could get cheaply over the last 30 years. I try to do just enough organization to keep track of what I might have and find it if I go looking. I used to get jealous of the Wall o Tubs that Adam and Jamie had with contents labeled so you can see it across the room.
I mostly built my shops to make money, often adding or refining some aspect for a particular project. I never, well only for a few months when I first moved to Houston, have had the opportunity to just putter in the shop, or to spend time working on my shop. (even that short time was mostly because I had to organize the truckload of stuff into a new shop space, which left me a bit of time to do some projects for the house.)
n
Chrome has stopped supporting uBlock Origin, so I’m changing browsers. I’m now using Firefox on my Chromebook, and on Windows 7 (except for FaceBook, which blows it up) and using Opera on Win 7 for FB.
ublock origin is seamless on the youtube ads. It even strips the ads from my email inbox view. I’m shocked when I have to use anything online from another browser by how much cr@p is on every page now.
n
YT has ads?
YT has ads?
— without a good adblocker, it’s non stop. Unskippable too.
And if you are listening to one of their “playlists” of music, without a blocker, it will keep stopping to ask you to click to prove you are there.
n
According to uBlock’s web site, they have a ‘lite’ version that works with Chrome “Manifest v3”, which was the problem with the older version.
I have it on my Chromebook, and it does a reasonable job with ad blocking. See their web site at https://ublockorigin.com/ , where they discuss the issue on the main page.
Snap-On vs Harbor Freight: The TRUTH Behind the Price
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qn07sChkxOA
Lipstick on a pig, or in this case, green paint.
Hmmm: Elon Says States Like CA and NY Would Go Bankrupt Without Fraudulent Illegal Alien Medicaid Slush Funds
https://hotair.com/headlines/2025/11/03/hmmm-elon-says-states-like-ca-and-ny-would-go-bankrupt-without-fraudulent-illegal-alien-medicaid-slush-funds-n3808493
Past time to stop the scams.
https://redstate.com/bobhoge/2025/11/03/smoking-gun-damning-emails-appear-to-show-comey-expected-to-work-for-president-hillary-okd-leaks-n2195822
“Well Mr. Comey, the good news is that you’re going to get a private cell.”
“What’s the bad news?”
“Everyone in the cell block will have a key.”
The negotiations to sell my 14 acre office complex are ongoing. I have dropped my asking price by 10% in response to his 77% offer. We are negotiating financing now. He wants owner financing, I asked for 50% down. He is sleeping on it and talking with his people in the morning.
I have owned this property for 14 years. A 4X return would be nice, very nice. Of course, the wife and I will be IRMAA’d fairly significantly due to our capital gains on the property.
https://www.kiplinger.com/retirement/medicare/medicare-premiums-projected-irmaa-for-parts-b-and-d-for-2026
And we will get to pay the 3.8% Medicare tax on our capital gains plus whatever interest we earn if we owner finance.
https://kahnlitwin.com/blogs/tax-blog/reducing-the-3-8-net-investment-income-tax-in-2025-4-key-strategies
Should the pharmacy owner guy fail to pay the mortgage payments, my banker brother claims that foreclosing on a owner financing can be done for $50,000 here in Texas. Even if they run to bankruptcy. He would know, he has done it many times. He even fought with the IRS for a Ferrari dealership and won (each one of the inventory Ferraris had a couple of hundred pounds of cocaine in the bodywork from the overseas shipping).
Plus we will need to find a place to move WinSim to. I may buy this expensive home in the county on one acre with no deed restrictions or HOA:
https://www.har.com/homedetail/1303-raven-ln-richmond-tx-77469/10754881
@Ray: Dogs are wonderful creatures, and it’s always hard to say goodbye. Wishing you and your wife all the best in dealing with it.
Well, no, but that will certainly be an application. Of course, they need to get the sex robots past the “uncanny valley”, including the ability to move around and take care of themselves. The robotics side is farther away than the AI side.
The latter is a lot more worrisome than the former… The same thing for police forces – if proponents of Sharia are enforcing the laws of the land, that’s going to be a serious problem.
It’s chilly. I tried a MrBuddy heater I haven’t used before but it wouldn’t stay lit. I’ll take a look at it later. I finally got so chilled I made a small fire in the Solo firepit and that was nice. I didn’t keep it going too long though as it’s time for bed and I still need to shower off the smoke.
The Solo “stove” firepit is nice. It has a double wall, vented construction so you get a bit of a venturi effect as it burns. Twigs and dried leaves were all I needed to start it, and it burns hot. Everything is reduced to ash pretty quickly. All my twigs are oak from the tree in the front yard. The stainless steel holds some warmth even after the fire ends, but the outer jacket stays cool. I like it. I like a chiminea better for heat, but it’s a nice little fire.
I’ve got the grill to use it for cooking too, but I think that would take some practice to get the fire at the right level to not just burn a meal. Maybe I’ll practice more.
n