More warm afternoons with cool mornings coming our way. MIGHT get some rain in there, at least for part of town. We had some pretty dark clouds during the day and I was sure we’d get sprinkles in the late afternoon.
I did small stuff yesterday. Dug out a UPS and ordered replacement batteries. The cheapest place to get them was Home Depot, store pickup. They are fairly common 12v 9AH AGM batteries, joined with tape and a proprietary mounting plate. That is true for most UPS batteries. They are proprietary modules built up from commodity batteries. If you do a little work, you can replace the individual batteries and save a ton of money.
I also did some cleaning in my office, which lead to me throwing out the big color laserprinter in the corner. I did some cleaning at the shop too, replacing a ceiling tile, moving some stuff around, and making room for the stuff in my last storage unit. I managed one trip from the unit and just dumped the stuff at the shop. I’ll do that again today.
I also hit a pickup for 4 invoices, mostly stuff for the house, but a few things for the BOL. I’m sure I did some other stuff too, but I can’t remember it.
Today I’ll head out to my client’s house to pickup my pay for the year. I always say I’ll invoice more frequently, and this is the third year I kept finding reasons to push it back (to include one more visit) until a year had gone by. There is also an open issue he wants me to look at so I’m going there, not just waiting for the mail.
After that, I’ve got some pickups on the southwest side of town, and then home.
Dinner will probably be some steaks from 2023. Or maybe ham slices with mac n cheese. Depends on my mood and how many people are going to be home.
Take some time to go through your preps and “shop your closet”. I’m betting there is some stuff you forgot you had… once you know, you can stack the stuff you still need.
nick
A subconscious desire to get a Christmas bonus?
A “13th salary” before Christmas is traditional in some jobs here. I never had one, but I suppose it must feel nice to get a financial boost before the holidays.
Don’t make any assumptions about who is better armed. Outside of the Puget Sound area, a serious gun and hunting culture exists among lefties, particularly along the I-5 corridor between Portland and Seattle.
The jobs went away decades ago, and choices the population has left for employment is Government jerbs, Indian casinos (essentially Government jerbs), and cooking meth.
The largest gun section I ever saw in a Cabelas was at the Lacey, WA store, not far from the Joint Base Lewis-McChord.
BTW, except for the location, Neal Stephenson describes the store incorrectly in “Reamde”. They sell lots of clothing that isn’t camouflage gear.
None of the Colonist employees I work with are superstar developers. One is completely hopeless despite a CS Masters from a university in the homeland.
Most are H1B visas except the hopeless case who has a spouse visa. I catch hints she works for really awful money.
H1B, however, isn’t about money as the C-suites wanting a pliant worforce.
A Christmas bonus hasn’t been traditional in the US for decades.
Out of guilt, my wife used to give a Christmas bonus to the office staff in Florida. This came directly out of our household’s bottom line since it was mostly her leftover continuing education compensation, deducted from her check pre-tax and paid in the last quarter of the calendar year.
The last bonus was all of the education money which the group refused to release to her since she quit before the distribution date.
$5000 split … 4 or 5 ways.
Merry F*cking Christmas. My kids came very close to not having Christmas that year.
The pinheads never got the bonus again after we left Florida.
I always ended up despising the staff in private practice, and the feeling was mutual.\
66F and damp this morning.
Lunch is packed and coffee should be ready soon.
During the Obammma years, sibling’s Christmas Bonus was a pink slip. I can’t recall ever getting a ‘Holiday’ bonus, although there were year end bonuses at Bigcorp. Some years anyway. It had to do with a profit sharing arrangement, iirc.
n
My current employer’s stock is below the point where the execs received their stock grants for the year in March. I wouldn’t be surprised if layoffs happened during the holidays even if the Monkey Trick continues on through the end of the year.
The stock price tanked extra hard yesterday.
I’m on record that I don’t do severance. I don’t think management quite believes me, but the few Americans in our work group understand what that means for their situations if they are retained.
@lynn
remember, fwiw, I am in Argentina….
I have that. I suppose it used to be a kind of bonus, but now it’s just normal. The salary you’re offered is your total annual compensation, but it gets divided into 13 pieces, and you get two at the beginning of December.
I guess it’s nice, in a sense, because you feel flush for the holidays. On the other hand, any annual bills you have also come due around the end of the year, so that “extra” is gone pretty fast.
@nick
“I’m filling up the shop. :-{(“
I presume that you are checking FB Marketplace for the tallest shelves that will fit?
After clicking on a couple such, I am getting frequent emails for shelving, and some of it it reasonable.
There are also two machine shop auctions this week. Combined with the large amount of pallet racking that is available, the economic implications are not good.
My dad had a nice comp package as an engineer in a steel mill. 6 weeks paid vacation, plus one week in pay. So he got paid for 53 weeks every year, and worked only 46 (less normal holidays).
==========
hmmmm, can’t connect to a site because cloudflare in Dallas has a problem.
n
The sleazy auction site that I’ve mentioned is now owned by subcontinent, and is going broke slowly, had some of their remaining pallet rack repossessed or they sold it off. They had the majority repossessed shortly after their last ownership change, this time it was another 100ft…
They are circling the drain. At one point they had 70 employees and so many people buying it would take 2 hours to get your stuff, and I’d spend half an hour or more counting it into the truck. Now there is ONE employee who has most of the day free, doing fulfillment. And this week I saw that they have her doing listings too.
Sh!tty people doing sh!tty business deserve to go broke but it does have impacts on the employees too.
n
guess I’m not the only one.
n
No I received more than one Cloudflare error page. I first thought it was because of VPN. Some sites simply refuse to respond.
https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2025/11/18/dems-first-scalp-in-epstein-files-clintons-treasury-secretary-n3809003
Politico:
Larry Summers is a Putz and We Hope You Won’t Notice He’s a Democrat
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/amy-curtis/2025/11/18/ceo-of-marketing-pres-of-insurance-firm-convicted-in-aca-fraud-scheme-n2666604
Sentencing Feb 4.
I didn’t add it up, but it looks like both are facing hundreds of years. Good. Give them the maximum, and make the sentences consecutive. Set a horrible example. And let the Somali Scam II-IV defendants know they can expect the same.
Speaking of Somali scammers, why are these “temporary” refugees still here?
Summers is another Clinton crony who isn’t always on the Dem reservation.
IIRC, Summers gave us the “Lean In” bimbo, who was one of his “mentees” at Treasury as an intern in the 90s.
WStD: What Should tRump Do?
Mexico president issues ferocious warning to Trump after US strikes threat
If I were the President of Mexico, I would meet with tRump:
tRump: How can I help?
Mexican President: Kill all the Cartellians. Kill all of them.
But what if she is one of them, as the protestors contend?
… complain that mirrors always break when I look in them.
… demand higher bribes from the cartels.
… eat my own poop and then threaten people with six years in prison for making memes saying that I eat my own poop.
@lynn
remember, fwiw, I am in Argentina….
We are all Argentina these days.
What is Mexico going to do? Throw coyote turds at the Troops? Mexico is not known for a mighty military power.
“Federal court blocks Texas from using new congressional gerrymander in 2026 midterms”
https://www.texastribune.org/2025/11/18/texas-redistricting-ruling-lawsuit-el-paso-court-2026-midterms/
“The decision is a major blow for Republicans, including President Donald Trump, who had pushed Texas’ GOP leaders to draw new lines to help protect the party’s narrow U.S. House majority.”
“Brown ordered that the 2026 congressional election “shall proceed under the map that the Texas Legislature enacted in 2021.” The case will likely be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but time is short: Candidates only have until Dec. 8 to file for the upcoming election.”
That sucks. The judges are clearly wrong, SCOTUS said that gerrymandering is ok.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/amy-curtis/2025/11/18/stacey-plaskett-epstein-n2666615
Someone needs to pull the video of the congressional hearing and do a split screen: her texts with Epstein on one side, and her asking the questions he fed her on the other.
“Lock them all up? Can we afford that?”
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2025/11/lock-them-all-up-can-we-afford-that.html
“Over the past few months I’ve been noting the number of calls from both sides of the political spectrum to lock up – i.e. imprison – those they don’t like, or whom they think deserve it. If all those calls were heeded, our prison population would be at least ten times higher than it is today – and, let’s not forget, the USA imprisons a higher proportion of its population than any other First World nation. When it comes to locking up people, we’re the winners and still champions, by a very long way.”
“What people forget is the backstory to prisons. They’re a relatively modern phenomenon, in the sense of long-term incarceration. Short-term detention (say, between arrest and trial, or trial and sentencing) has been with us for centuries, but long-term imprisonment as a punishment is only two to three centuries old. The reason is simple: it’s expensive! If the State imprisons a man for a period of months or years, it is responsible for his upkeep during that period. It can’t be any other way, because he has no means of supporting himself while incarcerated, and it’s unlikely his family and/or friends will be able to do so.”
“I entirely agree with deporting illegal aliens, but we have to face reality too. That’s why illegals who self-deport are being offered free flights to their home countries plus $1,000 apiece to go voluntarily. It saves us a lot of money compared to doing it the hard way.”
It is tough to fix any problem and the illegals problems has been huge my entire lifetime. First, get rid of all the freebies, we cannot afford them anyway.
Exactly. When the FUSA became a welfare state, it was the beginning of the end. The moronic “anyone” can go to a public ER is ridiculous. It simply became the crimmigrant’s healthcare. US Citizens get the shit end of the stick. Anyone can go: with ID or proof you are here legally. You are charged, but don’t have to pay on the spot, but your name will be known and you will be refused care if you don’t pay.
The only other answer is Medicare/Medicaid For All. US Citizens only with a carve out for legal travelers. Legal travelers will have to get US certified health insurance to get a Visa.
We also need tort reform. Loser pays, go ahead, make your case. I would add anyone suing someone else needs to put $10,000 in escrow to pay for losses up front.
Dr. Bob had a brilliant idea back in the day. Free clinic that anyone can go to. You get what you pay for and can’t sue for any reason. These clinics are for sick call, not inpatient care.
The house voted to release the Epstein files. I wonder if Cankles (or is it Kankles?) along with Billy are going to start sweating? Maybe even Billy Gates. I suspect the full release, which is pending senate approval as Trump says he will sign the legislation, will have a lot of distasteful information about many legislative, and perhaps judicial, people.
I really hope, with complete satisfaction, that many of those legislative people get burned exposing what lowlifes they really are.
The only other answer is Medicare/Medicaid For All. US Citizens only with a carve out for legal travelers. Legal travelers will have to get US certified health insurance to get a Visa.
Dr. Bob had a brilliant idea back in the day. Free clinic that anyone can go to. You get what you pay for and can’t sue for any reason. These clinics are for sick call, not inpatient care.
The free clinics cannot take care of broken bones, heart attacks, cancer, etc. Anything serious that drugs cannot take of. These serious problems will still bankrupt the ERs. Been there, seen that.
Making people buy health insurance to visit the USA is a good start to solving the issue. Of course, who are they going to buy health insurance from, Obamacare destroyed that entire marketplace.
There are a lot of US citizens that are doing the same thing. I know of several in my area that have been abusing the healthcare system. One lady I know goes the ER half a dozen times a month. Her kid gets the sniffles, off she trots to the ER. She gets a sliver, off she trots to the ER. Then complains she has to wait.
We already have something similar to what Bob proposed.
The VA provides healthcare for 1 out of every 11 people in the US. Suing is nearly impossible.
Only one? I know several (or knew; I deliberately cut off contact with them once I learn they do this) and I don’t get out hardly at all and don’t deal with many people other than superficially.
One was a former coworker. Legal immigrant, or maybe naturalized citizen; I never asked. Two kids, zero fathers in the picture. Missed on average almost a day a week for child issues, using the ER as primary care. Very annoying because we worked a “modern” open-plan office, which meant that I couldn’t get away from listening to her complaining about how America doesn’t do enough to support people in need.
Nope, there is actually several. I used her as an example. Her two daughters got pregnant, never married with the live-in father. The pre-natal care was at no cost to them, the birth was at no cost to them, the post-natal care was at no cost to them. They now get WIC, SNAP and multiple forms of welfare. Tax refund even though they paid nothing in taxes. They have made working (abusing) the system a career. The entire family. Then complain what they get is not enough.
This is sedition:
WATCH as Democrat Congresscritters Call for the Military to Disobey Orders
Throw the whole lot in a wood chipper. Congress-jerks openly trying to usurp the Commander In Chief because he is kicking their soup bowl. GET HIM! GET tRUMP! They have him now. Kelly is an utter disgrace to the uniform.
Alito would take the phone call for Texas but the case would have to go through the appeals process.
And The Texas Tribune is not a real newspaper. Take any editorializing with a grain of salt.
The solution, then, is to go back to SHORT term imprisonment, and keep the prisons empty by hanging the people who cannot be reformed.
Brand illegal aliens on the forehead and then boot them out. Let them find their own way back home, or die.
If they’re found again on American soil, execute them on the spot.
Ooh, here’s an idea! I’d been thinking that they should be branded with “illegal alien” on the forehead, but a target would be better.
Kelly is in that seat until the Chair of Hensley & Co. decides that he’s outlived his usefulness and finances a viable opponent.
A lot of the brass sold out to the Dems a long time ago.
My wife’s nephew is just a Captain and his salary combined with off-base housing allowance — greatly expanded under Biden — is more money than I make. I can only imagine what a General takes home.
Today’s Tyler Durden cowardice protecting a mainstream source about Larry Summers chasing his very own Bang Bang.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/larry-summers-goes-hiding-messages-sought-epsteins-advice-cheating-daughter-ccp-official
I just ran off a fiber contractor off my main road at the office. They are moving the fiber cable across the road and I asked them how they are going to do that. They refused to answer me, no habla, and got me the lead guy on the phone. He refused to tell me what they are doing to my road so I told him that I was going to call the sheriff and have the crew arrested for trespassing. When I got back from my errand the crew was gone.
I own the road and I have a private road / no trespassing sign on the road. Google has the road marked as a public road but it is not. They are installing their fiber in the electric company easement, not a public easement.
I suspect that the entire crew is illegals. They just do whatever they want to and leave the mess for the property owner, me, to fix.
How poorly run does a shipyard need to be to blow a government contract for 25 ships after just building one (poorly and late)?
https://gcaptain.com/eastern-shipbuilding-suspends-work-on-coast-guards-offshore-patrol-cutter-program/
“BREAKING: Texas Governor Designates Largest Muslim Activist Group a Foreign Terrorist Organization”
https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/11/18/breaking-texas-governor-designates-largest-muslim-activist-group-foreign-terrorist-organization/
“Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, designated the largest Muslim advocacy group in the country, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a foreign terrorist organization, authorizing a host of state actions against the group. CAIR condemned his attack as “defamatory” and “lawless,” threatening to sue in response.”
““The Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR have long made their goals clear: to forcibly impose Sharia law and establish Islam’s ‘mastership of the world,’” Abbott said in a press release on the designation.”
““The actions taken by the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR to support terrorism across the globe and subvert our laws through violence, intimidation, and harassment are unacceptable,” he added. “Today, I designated the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR as foreign terrorist organizations and transnational criminal organizations. These radical extremists are not welcome in our state and are now prohibited from acquiring any real property interest in Texas.””
Hopefully Trump will do this also.
Hat tip to:
https://thelibertydaily.com/
It’s not only sketchy companies staffed by invaders which do that.
Texas sold its regulatory soul for fiber optic Internet pr0n.
Why do we need a bill to release the Epstein documents?
n
Because there were two Bill’s, Bill.C & Bill.G, opposing it?
Misleading headline of the day…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/lifestyle/article-15302587/disney-park-charles-white-altadena-california-2026.html
Disney unveils plans for a $5 million new park set to open in California next year
it’s a city park in the burnt area. NOT a new Disney park.
n
I’m so glad we closed those horrible insane asylums.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15303011/chicago-train-passenger-fire-woman.html
– civilization was nice while it lasted.
n
Civilization will return when civilians who want it start eliminating the barbarians. Right now, the “civil authorities” are tying the civilian population in knots and preventing any recovery.
How many Democrats had their sticky fingers out for Epstein’s money?
https://redstate.com/sister-toldjah/2025/11/18/james-comer-drops-a-surprise-on-hakeem-jeffries-during-house-debate-on-epstein-legislation-n2196334
For reference
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/pennsylvania-school-district-using-ai-enabled-wi-fi-search-students-firearms
The AI uses changes in the wifi signal to identify guns. The potential is VERY broad.
n
Note that in the article the developing company describes seeing people as ‘big sacks of salt water.’ With enough processing power, I bet you can track people and movement through a space, eventually merging any ID emitter they might be carrying, or gait analysis, and it will be like pointing a camera at the space. Resolution will improve.
n
Civilization will return when civilians who want it start eliminating the barbarians. Right now, the “civil authorities” are tying the civilian population in knots and preventing any recovery.
Civilization never returned for the Romans after the 4th century. We seem to be paralleling that somewhat.
I detect a lie. Most likely one of definition but quite possibly just a plain ol’ flat lie.
Walking through a metal detector doesn’t have a 95% success rate, by which I mean no false positives and no false negatives. I have trouble believing that analysis of wifi reflections, “AI-enabled” or not, can beat that.
Regardless, the students should jam the system, both the “AI-enabled” system and the overall security system, by carrying metal on their persons and in their backpacks.