A bit cooler, and clear today. It got chilly last night. I still expect it to be high 80sF or even into the 90sF like yesterday by late afternoon though.
I was less productive than I’d hoped on Tuesday. I did get the grocery shopping done. That’s a good thing.
Today should be more small tasks and cooking pies, as well as getting prepped for tomorrow’s feast. We are cutting back on sides for Thanksgiving dinner, but there will still be some french meat pie, and several dessert pies. And a 12 pound bird.
And while I feel like a slacker that we didn’t go to the BOL, this is a much more relaxing plan.
I feel the need to adjust to the kids’ plans and to encourage the desire to work that D1 seems to have found. Building good kids is sort of the ultimate prep, so I’m trying to be flexible. We have much to be thankful for, and where we celebrate that thankfulness isn’t as important as taking the time to do so. Besides, if you are smart, you take your joy where you find it.
Build. Improve. Stack. Live.
nick
And here I thought that a disability was something like being blind, not self-inflicted things like being a druggie. Silly me.
They may be “good people”, but owners can’t afford the house either way.
In this market, a smart buyer is going to read the mortgage before making a bid and know exactly how deep the hole is that the owners dug for themselves.
I’m willing to bet that the mortgage company and property insurance carrier have no idea about the group home.
ADA or not, they had a choice about signing the lease.
ADA covers druggies and a lot of other issues you wouldn’t think are in there.
Poppy Bush. Compassionate Conservatism.
Back in the day at GTE, the new hire training was modeled after what EDS did under Ross Perot and deliberately screwed with the trainees until they reached a breaking point.
In one class, the breaking point was a student throwing an chair at the instructor.
Yes, he was immediately terminated, but the student sued under ADA and won a slot in another training class the following year as settlement.
Zoning? In Texas?
I say, boy, what are you? A communist? Who are you to tell me what I can do with my property?
Even if zoning was sane, the City of Houston is technically insolvent. The taxes come first.
We have a very strong HOA, but the rules are 60 years old and mostly very reasonable. They don’t insist on occupying the house, or limit leasing.
We’ll see how it goes. It’s not supposed to be problem people and their stay there is supposed to be temporary.
——————–
61F up from 60F when I fell asleep at 4am.
Sunny blue sky with a light breeze. Nice in other words. Very nice.
n
Articles like this, from the Cardiac imaging program enewsletter are why I ignore just about anything published regarding nutrition and food.
“This is good for that, and the opposite is also good for these things” arguments are pointless. Eat the bird. Whole food, minimally processed. Eat less sugar as it’s completely unnatural in most areas.
I note the evolved and now weasel worded warning about dietary fat – “less protective and, when eaten in excess, may increase a person’s risk of heart disease over time”
The completely ridiculous idea that calories IN AND OF THEMSELVES are bad is deeply ingrained… “White meat has its perks, too, <snip> and contains slightly fewer calories”.
Shredded wood contains fewer calories. Not looking to eat it for that reason.
We’ve got a society where everyone is convinced that eating, a process that is vital to life, is bad for you and will kill you if not managed and controlled properly. No wonder so many have neurosis.
n
How far away is the neighbor’s house from yours? What direction does the wind normally blow? Would things like, say, flames, be carried from their house to yours? How responsive is the local fire department? If they were distracted by, say, a fire in an abandoned corner shopping plaza, would they have trouble responding to a residential fire? I’m just, you know, idly curious.
@stevef, all good questions. I think response time would be less than 3 minutes, although when the apartment complex burned the majority of the response took much longer than that. It was a BIG fire though. Takes them a while to arrive, but then they usually knock down the fire very quickly.
————
People from elsewhere find it hard to believe that City of Houston has no zoning. It doesn’t though. There are deed restrictions and they usually have teeth, but you can build a multistory commercial building in the middle of a mostly residential block if you want to and the geology will support it. There are many ‘stealth’ businesses running out of metal buildings in the middle of residential blocks. For years, our rental house had a large business across the street with heavy manufacturing going on. It was a cross between a junk yard and a shipping company.
You can run an ‘icehouse’ out of your living room or garage if you pay the beer and wine license fee, and your deed restrictions don’t prohibit it. I’ve been in a couple that were converted homes. Near my secondary location some guys opened a club in a commercial office/warehouse space for their friends and acquaintances. I don’t think they kept it open long. There are a couple of biker bars in the neighborhood that are essentially just garages that serve alcohol.
Mostly it’s not a problem. Social and legal enforcement pressure along with increasing property values drive out the low end places. If all your customers get a field sobriety test and a drug search every time they leave, it’s hard to stay in business.
n
North American Rescue has CAT tourniquets on sale.
https://www.narescue.com/combat-application-tourniquet-c-a-t.html
They are a reputable source and don’t sell chinese fakes that will break when used. They also sell IFAKs and team med kits as well as the supplies. Their prices are in line with the quality.
n
Wow, the Airpods v.4 active noise cancellation really works.
I had a pair of over the ear active noise cancellation earmuffs (years ago) that worked very well but never liked the feel.
These are as good I think, and much less intrusive.
Given SteveF’s list of questions, I thought I would repost these that I had put up elsewhere… in response to someone blaming hidden puppetmasters for our troubles. Blame is not a prep.
Did you map the political signs in your neighbors’ yards? Have you TALKED with the neighbors to the left, right, and behind you? Do you have cams pointed in those directions to see what’s coming? Do you know where the critical infrastructure for your town and neighborhood is? How about how the power comes in?
Have you mapped the local distribution warehouses for CVS, Target, Home Depot, Walgreens, Kroger, etc?
Does your city have an online portal with mapping and GIS tools so you can download where all the sewers, lift stations, treatment plants, etc are? Have you used any other tools to see where the crimes are mostly committed, and then made decisions about those areas? Does your BOL route pass thru them?
Are you aware of gang activity in your area? Do you know what the tags look like? What colors they wear? Have you considered them in your planning?
Can you move around your area on foot or by bike? Do you know the pipeline right of ways, cleared paths for powerlines, railroad lines, canals, creeks, or other ways to move without using streets?
Do you know where the SCADA radios and monitoring stations are for your infrastructure? Flood level and water level sensors have radios and other useful stuff attached to them. So do school crossing warning lights for that matter. Cameras, solar panels, and batteries are everywhere, if you know where to look.
Do you know where your cable tv head ends are? They have batteries, natgas generators there, and they are widely distributed thru neighborhoods.
Did you map where the big lever switches are on the electrical distribution network that feeds your neighborhood or others? One padlock. That is all the protects that thing and hundreds if not thousands of people could lose power if it was messed with.
Only you can prevent forest fires… that never made sense to me. Catchy, blame someone, but nonsensical. Heck, just by eating campers the bear could prevent SOME fires…
n
Seems like the bear has discovered The Wisdom of Steve: Kill everyone.
Are the staff members for the monitoring station “working” from home via TeamViewer?
Are the staff members for the monitoring station “working” from home via TeamViewer?
– irrelevant if your interest is in stealing the radios, UPS systems, and solar panels for your own use.
n
I was surfing along today. There was an article on ZeroHedge that was lacking in details. About the “required minimum distributions” you have to start taking from your 401k and the ilk starting at 72 or 73.
I did the DDG thing and the IRS site was useless. This gave an answer, Hopefully correct: https://www.schwab.com/ira/ira-calculators/rmd
Pretty slick webpage.
Anyway. I think I’m good. It says I need to draw a minimum of $3635 a year starting at 73. That’s a few years away for me. I’m already drawing $12,000 a year, a grand a month so I probably will not in 2030 have their projected account balance of $98,000.
Who knows? I started the year with a 401k balance of $73,000, pulling a grand a month, and eleven months later I have $72,000. Wacky.
Heck. I put the money in pre-tax. Once I get about 40 grand out of it, slowly enough to not owe income tax, all the rest is gravy on a biscuit. Or cherries on a banana split. 🙂
https://quotulatiousness.ca/blog/2025/11/25/so-what/
Or read the original at https://abysspostcard.substack.com/p/the-two-most-powerful-words-in-the
An annual return of 12-15% isn’t unusual right now thanks to the Monkey Trick.
If your 401(k) fund doesn’t have Nvidia as the top holding, it is near the top.
The problem is that a bailout of the Monkey Trick companies will be necessary if the Republicans want to keep the House.
Unless the sex robots go on sale before the midterms, which I doubt.
Wednesday bedtime. Glad this day is over, it was not a good one.
An early start tomorrow, to go out in the woods with friends and rifles. Almost a holiday.
I believe it is also some kind of holiday tomorrow for you overseas colonial folks. I wish you a happy day, with your loved ones, if that can be arranged. Perhaps there will be pie.
Remember to do that calculation for every tax deferred account. Then add those amounts together to get the RMD for the year. Don’t do the calculation on the total of all the tax deferred accounts. The amount is the money in the account on January 1 of the tax year, not the ending balance.
With some rare exceptions, the RMD can come from a single account. If the RMD is $5K from account A, and $3K from account B, taking $8K from account A will satisfy the IRS.
The company that manages the tax deferred accounts should be able to display the RMD on their website for the accounts.
By all means, do not under withdraw the RMD amount. The IRS can, and will, take 50% of the RMD amount, not what was withdrawn, as a penalty. Yeh, this is some serious financial hit for not withdrawing (and paying taxes) on RMD amount.
Yes, we celebrate conning the native Americans and the stealing of their land by becoming gluttons at the dinner table.
I just bought my kid’s Christmas present. He wanted two new monitors, 27″, 1440, 120HZ or better. I found the item at Microcenter for $159.00 each. Monitors, good ones, have gotten cheaper over the years. These are MSI monitors which generally have good ratings.
https://www.microcenter.com/product/680430/msi-g272qpf-e2-27-2k-qhd-(2560-x-1440)-180hz-gaming-monitor
The store had them in the aisle for $189.00. I got the price advertised on the web.
What’s the good of being an uncle if one can’t be appalling? I make a point of it.
I didn’t quite give any of the little nieces or nephews a drum kit, but I could have 🙂 I certainly taught them some inappropriate poetry.
I should have stated, the missing RMD amount. I reread that and it did not read correctly. If a person needed to do a RMD of $10K, but only did $6K, the IRS would take 50% of the missing $4K, or about $2K. Ouch.
My 401k is with HEB. I have a bit over 8% in the “H-E-B General Fund”. The rest is in the U.S. Large-Cap Stock Fund.
It pays better than t-bills. But I think, not smart here, it can all vanish if the stock market pukes. Unlike t-bills. But like I’ve said, once I get my ~40 grand back, it’s all gravy.
If I’d thought of it, I’d have bought recorders or at least a few kazoos.
Nvidia is the biggest of the “large cap” stocks, but a decent fund manager will cap any single share at 10% of holdings.
HEB is big enough that they will have decent management in charge of the 401(k) funds.
>>”My .380 is basically a Taurus version of the LCP. I carry in a DeSantis pocket holster in my front jeans pocket.”
I have my LCR in a clip holster. Too much other RDC ‘stuff’ to allocate one front pants pocket for a sticky holster.
We have a very strong HOA, but the rules are 60 years old and mostly very reasonable. They don’t insist on occupying the house, or limit leasing.
We’ll see how it goes. It’s not supposed to be problem people and their stay there is supposed to be temporary.
My HOA has an discrimination lawsuit against it right now by one of my fellow homeowners. Things are not looking good. The $5,000,000 directors insurance has taken over the lawsuit and probably going to settle. Apparently our old HOA President should not have called people the N word in an email to them.
It does not matter how old your HOA is, the federal ADA and Discrimination laws are very powerful. And the federal housing act.
BTW, I would sit your wife and D1 / D2 down and explain to them to not trust anyone from next door. No telling what is going on over there since they are not required to disclose ANYTHING.
I wonder if you are required to disclose the group home next door if you put up your house for sale. I’ll bet that is a big NO.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/scott-mcclallen/2025/11/26/national-guardsmen-shot-in-targeted-attack-n2667101
Perhaps there will be pie.
The pecan pie was sitting on the kitchen island. I had to hide it from myself or else it was going to be mutilated.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/scott-mcclallen/2025/11/26/national-guardsmen-shot-in-targeted-attack-n2667101
I blame the dumbrocrats. Especially the six idiots who just told the military to ignore Trump.
Stay away from dumbrocrats, they are very dangerous.
I am hearing all kinds of people say that they are dropping their liberal relatives off their invite list.
>>”My .380 is basically a Taurus version of the LCP. I carry in a DeSantis pocket holster in my front jeans pocket.”
I have my LCR in a clip holster. Too much other RDC ‘stuff’ to allocate one front pants pocket for a sticky holster.
The LCR is bigger than a LCP due to the cylinder. The LCP is truly tiny with a seven shot single stack magazine.
https://ruger.com/products/lcr/models.html
Editors Confront New Problem: AI Slop “Written” by Scam “Journalists”
https://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=417462
How about we do an experiment? Take a bunch of top AI’s, put them in a giant data center that has no connection to the internet, and see what happens?
After a few months, will it look like Genesis? The Inferno? Or just some shooting gallery on the lower East Side?
We have a large Costco size apple pie at our friends house in Atlanta, where we spend Thanksgiving each year for the last 30 years. That pie will be gone by 08:30 PM on Friday. What the others eat is their problem.
I don’t know who can use this career suggestion, but it may be able to help someone reach fame and fortune.
Wife and D2 plan to make a fresh apple pie, a cherry pie (from canned filling) and a pumpkin pie (from canned mix.) Notice there isn’t a pecan pie in there. I bought myself a pecan pie yesterday. If I have to eat it all myself, I will.
Wife will also make a french meat pie.
————
I got the rest of the bird spikes installed on the fence. The top rail is now very spiky. Hopefully that will reduce the number of animals using it as an elevated highway. The possum can walk the top edge of the pickets, but IDK if the tomcat can. Tomcat was killing a baby squirrel in the back yard this afternoon when the dog noticed and chased it off. Dog tried to kill the cat, but the cat outweighs him. Squirrel did not survive its injuries. Cat escaped.
Trimmed some branches around the fence too, and cleaned up some stuff in the driveway. That let me move the ‘overflow’ freezer next to the house, in the shade and shelter of the overhanging soffit. It’s been in the middle of the driveway for a year or more.
I’m sitting here drinking a Heineken 0.0 which isn’t bad. Not as good as Becks NA, but better than almost every other NA beer.
I just noticed I’ve got a dead camera on the front of the house. Maybe the lightning got it. Time to do some troubleshooting.
n
Invading Venezuela will mean the end of the Orange Man’s second term.
“Blue Origin’s New Glenn success was a bigger deal than anyone’s saying!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyi1V4oMDHc
“Nov 14, 2025 Yesterday, a huge event in Spaceflight History took place? But now is this not just a replay of what SpaceX has been doing, hundreds of times, for years. In this analysis, that’s what we’re going to find out.”
I had no idea. And the New Glenn can hold a way bigger cargo than the SpaceX Raptor.
My RMD when I hit ~73 is slightly less than what I plan on withdrawing from my annuity. It is more than what most people make in the FUSA. It goes to show what you can do by putting away money and having a trusted financial professional invest it for you. The annuity should fund that until I’m dead, then go to the wife, then to the kids.
Sigh, another day, another wacko judge:
Judge Rules ICE in Colorado Can’t Arrest Illegals Without Evidence They’re a Flight Risk
This will not stand. It is lawfare. The Redumbo’s need to get off their collective duffs and punish these turd-brain judges somehow. Even if only to make their lives miserable. SCOTUS will do nothing.
Yep, dead camera. I’ll have to get up on the roof tomorrow and pull it. Maybe I can bring it back to life with a reset, or change a cable… It’s the one that gives me an overview of the new neighbors’ front yard and the south end of the street, so I want it back up soon.
We have some home automation dimmers in the house and I think one of them was killed by lightning too.
n
“The eternal conundrum: individual rights versus community needs”
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2025/11/the-eternal-conundrum-individual-rights.html
“In a recent column, Janet Daley tried to put the great clash of modern politics into perspective. She addresses it in the context of American versus European politics, but points out – correctly – that the socialized European model is preached in America too by the Democratic Party, particularly its left-wing progressive movement. This “muddies the waters”.”
It does not matter what people think. The financial apocalypse of the USA is very close. The people in charge will have to decide what is important and what is not important. Very tough choices will have to be made. A possible look at this coming disaster is in “The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047” by Lionel Shriver:
https://www.amazon.com/Mandibles-Family-2029-2047-Lionel-Shriver/dp/0062328247?tag=ttgnet-20
The control unit/monitoring/recording hub for our outdoor cameras stopped working a while ago. I took a quick look, then moved on to more pressing tasks, then forgot about it. I didn’t think much about it because it’s Chinesium and can be expected to fail hard at any time.
Last night my wife brought it to me to look at, so I started out by sticking a voltmeter on the power supply. Dead. Then I pulled out a universal power supply and got it hooked in and the monitor came right up. Well. Did I not even think to check that back whenever? Did I manage to pull out and test the power supply to the wrong electronic device? Am I just a dumbhead? While it’s entirely possible that I didn’t check everything properly because I had too much going on, I can’t escape the creeping suspicion that I’m just a dumbhead.
I seem not to be able to lay my hands on a caliper (siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh – it was probably used for scraping mildew around a bathroom sink, judging by the creative uses my tools are put to) so I can’t order a replacement power supply with any confidence, but there’s a computer repair/salvage shop nearby which has an infinite variety of different chargers and cables and such. I’ll swing by soonish.
The Child is down from college for the weekend and is staying with a friend a quarter mile away. This is partly to have time with her friend and partly so she doesn’t have to be under the same roof as her mother. (That makes three out of three kids who don’t hate her but don’t want to spend any time around her. Too bad, but she brought it on herself.) She comes here for most meals, on account of I’m a much better cook than the friend’s parents and I do little things like wash dishes with soap, not just rub them with my unwashed hands under hot water. (Yes, the friend’s parents are mainland Chinese.) The Child ate a good supper. The friend said “Are those cookies I smell?” and just had a handful of chocolate chip cookies instead of real food. Her parents don’t allow any kind of junk food in the house because that might distract from focusing on schoolwork and other lessons. (I mentioned that they’re Chinese, right?)
I am hearing all kinds of people say that they are dropping their liberal relatives off their invite list.
– That’s one of the steps toward civil war, separating by beliefs.
I’m happy not to have the strife and aggravation of dealing with them.
n
Timely reminder: How to talk to that one liberal relative at Thanksgiving
@SteveF
“Am I just a dumbhead?”
Everyone is, intermittently.
There are reasons:
https://de.pinterest.com/pin/543880092495797345/
My father-in-law’s ethnic Chinese Vietnamese (ya foller me?) friends would wash towels without detergent, believing that the chlorine in the Orlando city water was sufficient to get the towels clean.
The ethnic Chinese Vietnamese merchant class exploiting the poor were one of the catalysts for the Vietnam civil war. After spending time around my father-in-laws friends, I understood why the indigenous population took up arms and kicked the Chinese, French, and, finally, Americans out of their country.
Trump signed an EO this week providing a financial backstop for the Monkey Trick, the “Genesis Mission”.
Sex robots come first.
Timely reminder: How to talk to that one liberal relative at Thanksgiving
What if that relative is not a liberal but an actual idiot brother. Like my idiot brother who got invited to our house tomorrow over my wife’s dead body. He is not a liberal but, the man is out to get him. My son did not get the no other relatives message from my wife so he invited my brother and his family.
Trump signed an EO this week providing a financial backstop for the Monkey Trick, the “Genesis Mission”.
Sex robots come first.
I saw that sexbot movie. Don’t have sex with a machine that can reach into your chest and pull your heart out.
That advice seems good but is oddly specific…
You can follow the same general approach, just modify the needles to fit the individual.
“Victorious (The Lost Fleet, Book 6)” by Jack Campbell
https://www.amazon.com/Victorious-Jack-Campbell/dp/0441018696?tag=ttgnet-20/
Book number six of a six book military science fiction series. Plus several sequel series consisting of fourteen books total. I read the well printed and well bound MMPB published by Ace in 2010 that I bought new on Amazon. I have purchased the first book in the five book sequel series and plan to read it soon.
I did not know John G. Hemry was the real name for Jack Campbell as I purchased the Stark series quite a while back and enjoyed it also.
The Alliance sent a war fleet into the Syndic home star system via the new FTL network to defeat the Syndics once and for all. However, the Syndics knew that they were coming and destroyed many of the Alliance space warships. Now the Alliance warships need to leave or be destroyed one by one.
The Alliance admiral left Captain John “Black Jack” Geary in charge of the Alliance fleet before he and his staff were murdered by the Syndics in the negotiations. Captain John “Black Jack” Geary was found by the Alliance fleet on their way to Syndic space, in stasis in an old emergency pod. A hundred year old emergency pod. Captain John “Black Jack” Geary may be a hundred years out of date but some things like tactics of war spaceship fleets never go away.
Captain Geary and the Lost Alliance Fleet have reached Alliance space. But the Alliance council promotes him to Fleet Admiral, resupplies and fixes his fleet, and sends him back to the Syndic’s home star system to either come to a peace agreement or defeat their home fleet. But the Syndics have one more trick in their pocket.
The author has a website at:
https://jack-campbell.com/
My rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars (3,852 reviews)
Lynn
That advice seems good but is oddly specific…
It is a movie on Netflix that I happened to catch one day. The robot replaced mom, cannot remember how and why. “Subservience”.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt24871974/
Number One Nephew did not leave town but he didn’t make contact either.
I assume that he has plans and isn’t waiting for a phone call tonight.
It could go either way. Meanwhile, my mother-in-law is flipping out and leaving voice mails for my wife to call Number One Grandson.
“MINNESOTA MADNESS: Radical Democrat Judge Sarah West OVERTURNS Jury’s Guilty Verdict — Frees Somali Immigrant Who Stole $7.2 MILLION in Medicaid Fraud Scheme”
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/11/minnesota-madness-radical-democrat-judge-sarah-west-overturns/
“Radical Democrat judge Sarah West, appointed by former Democrat Governor Mark Dayton, has tossed out a jury’s unanimous guilty verdict, setting free Abdifatah Yusuf, a Somali immigrant convicted of masterminding a massive Medicaid fraud ring that siphoned off $7.2 million from taxpayers.”
“A jury had found Yusuf guilty in August on six counts of aiding and abetting theft by swindle, following evidence that his home-healthcare company billed Medicaid for hundreds of thousands dollars in “phantom” care, padding bills for services never delivered.”
Just the judges favoring the liberals and illegals is enough to start a Civil War in the USA in my opinion.
Or a ‘restorative justice’ killing spree.
n
I called my IRA adviser and said “How much to I need to withdraw to meet the RMD?” He asked me if I wanted to automatically withdraw that much every year, and I said “Yes”. So every month I get 1/12th of my RMD for the year, and every year they recalculate that amount. Easy-peasy.
I bow to the superior appallingness of SteveF!
Thursday. O-dark-and-cold-thirty. Time to get up. Happy Thanksgiving to the US-Americans.
Huh, I just looked at today’s title, and we did very little cooking. D2 had other plans, so today will be pretty busy.
Time for a shower and bed.
n
“How Much Asbestos Do Wind Turbines Contain?”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/11/25/how-much-asbestos-do-wind-turbines-contain/
“Following discovery of asbestos lift brake pads in Chinese manufactured Aussie turbines, turbine operators are conducting a frantic audit.”
Are you kidding me ?
“China receives two more LNG cargoes from sanctioned Arctic LNG 2 project”
https://www.gasprocessingnews.com/news/2025/11/china-receives-two-more-lng-cargoes-from-sanctioned-arctic-lng-2-project/
“China has received two more cargoes of liquefied natural gas from Russia’s Arctic LNG 2, LSEG and Kpler data showed, taking to 16 the total number of shipments, despite U.S. and EU sanctions imposed on the project over Moscow’s war in Ukraine.”
You know, this is absolutely crazy trying to stop China from doing what it wants to do. Especially when it is getting 20 to 25% off the world prices.