Dunno if it will be raining today or not. National forecast has less severe weather possible for us today than yesterday. It wasn’t too bad most of Saturday but it did eventually rain a bunch. The nearest creek had a debris line about 2ft higher than normal when I took the dog for a walk last night. So we must have gotten a lot during the gully washer…
Despite my desire to sleep in, I was up at 930 and moving around. I didn’t do much productive work though. Read during the day, which is always a time sink. Did some cleanup and outdoor stuff before the rain started. Did some minor car maintenance.
I’ll do more today. I’ve got lots of pc and network stuff I can do if it’s too wet. And stuff always needs cleaning, sorting, and putting away. The list is long and growing. I’m knocking off little tasks if I can when I happen to walk by them. It’s not super efficient to watch, but it does get them done, and it feels like progress.
Baby steps.
Stack something.
nick
Good morning!
Time to get up, washed and fed. No time-change here yet (it’s on the last Sunday of the month), but W1 is still snoozing. Time to steal a march on the day.
Have a lovely Sunday!
We don’t need to tell you to save that footage, right?
And check with the other neighbors. If they have cameras, get a copy of any footage showing suspicious activity, especially if it shows a resident’s face. If they don’t have cameras, maybe you can sell and install some of your extras. And put up your own camera, whether or not you can be inconspicuous about it.
And have someone consult a lawyer and maybe chat with a cop who’s a brother-in-law or something. Removing halfway house residents who are breaking the law will be good not only for the neighborhood but for the residents who are trying to go straight.
That is, unfortunately, the usual case. If people want real, long-term weight loss, they’re just going to have to work for it, and Ozempic is the wrong way to go. My wife lost a lot of weight after retiring: get a new dog, go for long walks twice a day, and eat low-carb. It took 2-3 years, but that way your body can adjust to the new normal.
– – – – –
EgoPower batteries – I just looked on Amazon, and you can get a no-brand knockoff for 1/5 of the price. For that price, it’s probably worth the risk…
That’s something I don’t understand about name brands. They probably get their stuff at that kind of a discount. Heck, it probably comes from the same factory. Why do they keep their prices so high? On our robotic vacuum cleaners, I always buy knockoff filters, brushes, etc – paying the manufacturer’s crazy prices would just be stupid.
It is 7am and very dark and very wet. It rained all night on and off. We need the rain very much as I turned the water sprinkler system on two weeks ago.
Eating a breakfast of turkey sausage chunks and a corn fritter with blackerry jam on it.
I just suddenly realized that I have not had a blood test with A1C, choresterol, and PSA in 18 months. I am overdue.
EgoPower batteries – I just looked on Amazon, and you can get a no-brand knockoff for 1/5 of the price. For that price, it’s probably worth the risk…
I bought some knock off batteries for my 21 ? Volt Makita drill a couple of years ago. They work fine and charge fine on my Makita charger. I think that I paid $40 for 2 new batteries. The brand name batteries were over $100.
Sigh. Feel like crap. Changed the clocks and went to bed at the new 145 am. Woke up at 615 am to pee. The alarm went off at 645 am and was still awake from the 615 am adventure. Cycled the alarm three times until 7 am. I am getting old.
I wonder how many people will be at church. Lots of the 830 am church service people get up at 5 am anyway so the time change does not bother them.
In the specific case of EGo, Chevron owns the company, and the Geico Gecko owns a sizeable chunk of Chevron, roughly 6% of CVX as of this morning. EGo has a “moat”, and the Gecko wants to see return on his capital.
Anecdotally, we are in the NFM store in Dallas about once every six months, and I’ve noticed the EGo section of the store has grown significantly over our last two visits.
@Ray – If you own BRK-B, you may want to check the shareholder cost on EGo batteries on the store’s web site when the May event weekend sale prices go live. We got a substantial discount on an HP printer and Kindle last year, and, in the case of the Kindle, free shipping.
The shareholder price on the Kindle even beat Amazon!
If you own BRK-A, why are you even bothering with comparison shopping. Let the servants handle those kind of details. 🙂
As for the general case, my generation in the US has grown into peak earning/buying years with a couple of bad obsessions, one of which is what I call The $20 Reeboks. This is one of several factors which has allowed Amazon to become the dominant online retailer and, arguably, the biggest retailer in the US at least in terms of influence.
I don’t think anyone is truly unaware of the risks involved in buying off brand from Amazon, but the danger from a bad pair of sneakers is pretty minimal while the risks from a bad battery storing enough energy to run a riding lawn mower is a lot more signficant.
Yes, let the consumer make their choice and live with the consequences, but we all end up living with the consequences through higher insurance costs in this country if even a handful of houses go en fuego from a bad mower battery.
Amazon is playing a dangerous game. They’ve become the dominant retail playing risks that Sears wouldn’t have come close to considering. Even NFM has a reputation, their motto being “Sell it cheap and tell the truth.”
And Chevron execs right now would be dragged into the public square and set on fire, possibly literally, if EGo let even a handful of shoddy batteries go out the door.
Look what happened to Volkswagen for “cheating”, and no one died or even suffered minor injuries from the fudged emissions testing.
I don’t directly. I may have some in one of my mutual funds. I am not savvy enough to play the market game.
Indeed. There is a lot of energy in the EGO batteries. The chargers have fans to keep the batteries cool during charing and that requires proper vents. The charger will also slowly self-discharge the battery to 20% if the battery is not used in 30 days, then hold that 20%. I learned that lesson when I went to use the battery for the first time after the winter storage. I now remove, and insert, each battery into the charger at the start of the spring season.
I may save on a cheap USB-C cable over Apple, but I am not cheaping out on what is essentially a small bomb. Some chinaman has no skin in the game and probably doesn’t care about quality.
I keep all those batteries in the mower shed which has power to run the chargers. I also keep all my gas and oil in the mower shed which has significant separation from the house. That was one of the questions on my homeowners insurance application, the storage of gasoline.
They don’t ask about the production of gas? Or don’t they care because that’s only a hazard to health and sanity, not to the structure of the house?
I’ve noticed that my neighbor’s Garage Queen VW ID Buzz is no longer kept in the garage but sits right up against the garage door with the vehicle turned sideways, as close as they can get to the charger without putting the vehicle inside.
I wonder if that is because of a known safety issue documented in a bulletin from VW.
I believe the master bedroom of that house is right above the garage if the floor plan is consistent with the rest of the neighborhood.
We are the odd house in the neighborhood, with a master on the ground floor and only attic space above.
I speak from experience when I say that Chinese vendors always start out great at a price that is hard to beat but then start to fudge things when they think that Hillbilly isn’t paying attention.
Unfortunately, Wall Street does not allow a company to ignore the possibility of Chinese prices for the supply chain, and consumers of my generation have chased $20 Reeboks to the point that Sears and Penney’s are effectively gone and running a national sporting goods chain is a sure fire path to insolvency, no matter how storied/experienced the retailer.
Just ask FW Woolworth about that last one.
@nick
“@lynn, you’ve probably got a better working knowledge of the processes and chemistry than a phd anyway. “
No doubt about it
A lot of good cutting edge science gets done at universities But consider that corporations typically spend 3-8% on research and development. They seldom publish papers, unless associated with government contracts or new products; if they don’t see a way to profit from knowledge, it sits in notebooks and waits for something else to make it worthwhile.
In my years with corporate I got a look at a lot of things. There was one area where a flurry of patents were issued when new work met up with older work that had been suspended years earlier. There was another that is just manifesting in new products almost fifty years later—premature disclosure would have destroyed an entire division worth of products.
@Lynn has the disadvantage of having a software product that can be stolen by other countries and there is not much recourse. It’s easier to steal than do the work. As a consequence it is unlikely that anyone else has the holistic knowledge that it would take to honestly compete
The upside of the lightning phone connector was that Apple licensed the logo and tested the products.
Of course, the EU saw the licensed design as unfair and mandated USB-C for all phones, forcing Apple’s hand.
The only USB-C cables I have that regularly carry fairly high current are name brand from Anker. Both cables are used to charge/dock my MacBook Pro M1.
There is an Adam Savage video where he hosts a gentleman that used cutting edge imaging to look inside cables.
All my USB cables are from Apple. I have an excess because of new products purchased. I have two MagSafe cables, only need one. When trading in a device Apple does not want the charger or cable.
I have half a dozen Apple chargers just sitting on the shelf. Generally not powerful enough for my needs or only a single port.
The chargers that I use are all Anker. When I travel I use one charger to charge my MacBook, and iPad as the charger only has two USB-C ports. The watch and iPhone are charged with a cable from the MacBook USB-C ports.
Within the last couple of months, Savage also had someone in who took X-ray images of Hecho en China batteries. Some of the results were surprising.
That batch ok. Hillbilly not pay attention beyond stock price anyway.
With tariffs, the new hot option for the supply chain is Vietnam.
My new Hecho en Vietnam ThinkPad leaves a lot to be desired in terms of build quality.
I have several Apple TB cables after the Adam Savage reviews.
All my other cables, chargers, power banks, and “solar” generators are Anker. I also use SoundCore 3 sleep buds and just got a pair of new SoundCore Pro regular buds. They are made by Anker and work well. The regular buds aren’t as good as Air Pods Pro, but for $100 they are competitive. They also fit my ears better.
I don’t know which episode Jonathan Frakes directed of Starfleet Academy, but they have all been trashed.
Now Frakes is joining the ridiculous EMH Picardo in trashing the fans for the failure of SA. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. I guess the podcast he does with Data makes up for it. Frakes may just get uninvited to some cons in the future.
Paramount should shelf S02 instead of taking another drudging.
Paramount has to air Season Two and practice due dilligence in terms of promotion under the terms of the contract with Alex Kurtzman. Only then, after the ratings are beyond tanked, can they fire the creative team currently in charge.
Something similar covered Rick Berman and the leftover Roddenberry people from the Stage 8/9 era when Paramount pulled the plug in 2004 in favor of Jar Jar Abrams/Bad Robot movies, but any given episode of “Enterprise” is high art compared to what is currently airing on “Starfleet Academy”.
The only episode of “Starfleet Academy” that Frakes directed went out on Thursday.
The last decent Frakes-directed “Star Trek” episode is “Those Old Scientists” in Season Two of “Discovery”.
He followed up with an awful episode in Season Three. The name escapes me, but we turned it off after the opening minutes.
Small comfort, but the last episode of “Lower Decks” decared all of the Kurtzman/Secret Hideout production of the last decade as non-canon with the possible exception of the animated series and “Those Old Scientists”.
The Soul-Less Minions of Orthodoxy are in charge of “Star Trek” right now.
That episode of DS9 was genius. A lot of people of my generation are of that thought process.
Wah. We don’t get/like “Star Trek” so why should anyone else enjoy it as it was until the mid-2000s.
Put a Klingon in it and make him gay.
Maybe Picardo will get lucky and someone will remake “Total Recall”.
Highly unlikely given that “The Running Man” tanked, but it is possible.
Frakes is a wet blanket in person. I had him sign my “First Contact” three years ago at a con, and he didn’t even recognize his own dialogue from the last season of “Picard” when we briefly conversed about ad-libbling being prohibited most of the time. He seemed bored, even when he “leaked” Holly Hunter’s casting on “Academy” at a panel a few hours later.
Heck, it probably comes from the same factory.
– yep, third shift. First and second for the contract, third for the factory. Nike had that problem because they were counterfeiting shoes that were indistinguishable from authorized. Most people are not Nike though, and the off brand products where they just steal the trade dress (colors and design) are generally deficient, sometimes dangerously so.
Some things I’ve seen in person or on youtube.
Cheaper plastic. The clone is far less durable, and may not be fire retardant.
Undersized wire. Fire hazard.
Used, rejected, or counterfeit batteries. They die sooner, hold less charge, have defects, and are fire hazards.
Substitute cheaper materials. Some Wonhunglo (Tindoo) stick vacuums looked like Dyson, but had a cheap plastic tube with a finish that looked like anodized aluminum, shite batteries, and high initial failure rate (infant death.) Pot metal, mystery alloys, crap steel.
Less reliable methods of manufacture. Hand soldering, point to point wiring, glue instead of screws, 3d printed instead of injection molded, thinner materials.
Lower quality finishing. Mold lines still on, no texture in the mold, hand painted, rough castings, no filler, poor coating application, stickers that don’t stick… sizes that aren’t quite right so parts don’t fit together or the item doesn’t work with it’s intended brand.
Sometimes it’s just saving the cost of the license, but it always ends with cut corners.
There’s a million ways to cheat. Remember that they put poison in baby formula to make more money, and flavored ground up cardboard in buns.
n
68F and dreary. Not actually raining though.
I slept in. Woke at 830 and went back to sleep. Good sleep. No waking up hot and soaked in sweat. Lots of dreaming and REM this morning.
Broke my fast with a bacon waffle. W put fruit on hers. Gak.
No kids in the house. It’s q u i e t…
I should dress and do some work.
Or I could sit around reading.
n
White Rabbit milk candy isn’t the same without the melamine.
The flavor used to have a lot more “snap” for lack of a better word.
FIFY. I don’t know who would be worse waking up to, the Jem’Hadar female or Tig Notaro. Or, oof, both. At least that won’t happen for a thousand years.
Suggestion: don’t get dressed but do some work. Like, put up more outdoor cameras. Maybe your nudity will drive away the halfway house residents and staff.
MrAtoz is set to be the meat in a horror sandwich.
Just puttering today. I connected from Mint to Pi/Slim with FileZilla.
Then I was looking at settings in Files. Pi has a Trash icon on the desktop. Mint doesn’t but does have a Trash folder when you open Home, aka Nemo. I guess Pi has a Trash folder somewhere.
So, well, can I have a Trash Can on the desktop? I didn’t see a way. But I saw in the File menu “Connect to Server”. That connected to the Pi just fine. There is a Bookmark option.
Nemo has a lot of settings. So did Explorer but some you had to go to Control Panel or mess around in the Registry. Nemo has it all right there to make it easy for you to break your system…. I like that.
I think I’ll go mess with the music server software.
That’s a waffle with bacon crumbles in the batter? Fruit on that instead of syrup would be good. Watcha want? Tomato Preserves? Peach Preserves? I have both, homemade, Strawberry preserves sounds good, too.
Heck. Some right out of the can apricots, undrained, sounds good.
Yup, I make the batter, pour, then sprinkle on the Kirkland bacon crumbles before I close the lid on the waffle maker. It’s really good and it adds protein to the meal which should be better for blood sugar levels. And it’s way less messy than making the bacon strips.
– looking at my blood sugar chart, it’s a fairly steep rise to a sharp peak, and a steep decline. Isosceles triangle instead of equilateral. And about 2-2 ½ hours wide. Some meals with lower slopes are 3 or 3 ½ hours wide.
I don’t allow the kids to sprinkle their chocolate chips on the batter because it messes up the iron. I have to run a “cleaning” waffle in between. Bacon doesn’t stick to the iron, so it’s ok.
BTW the secret to longevity and happiness with an electric waffle maker is put your oil in the batter, not on the iron. A modern non-stick iron doesn’t need ANY additional oil as long as there is oil in your batter, like the recipe calls for. And never leave your iron open, the heat will run away and scorch the non-stick. Keep it closed so the thermistor can regulate the temp in the heating elements.
n
The trash can might be under Desktop Settings. I don’t have a Mint partition booted to check.
xkcd: Bazookasaurus
https://www.xkcd.com/3216/
I am fairly sure that is not a real dinosaur.
Explained at:
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/3216:_Bazookasaurus
Yep. Preferences / Desktop. Now I know. 🙂
Pearls Before Swine: No More Bad News
https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2026/03/08
Rules Are Rules.
“Trump says he won’t sign any other bills until SAVE Act passes the Senate”
https://justthenews.com/government/white-house/trump-says-he-wont-sign-any-other-bills-until-save-act-passes-senate
“”Great Job by hard working Scott Pressler on Fox & Friends talking about using the Filibuster, or Talking Filibuster, in order to pass THE SAVE AMERICA ACT, an 88% issue with ALL VOTERS,” he wrote on social media.”
“It must be done immediately. It supersedes everything else. MUST GO TO THE FRONT OF THE LINE. I, as President, will not sign other Bills until this is passed, AND NOT THE WATERED DOWN VERSION – GO FOR THE GOLD,” he added.”
I am good with this.
Hat tip to:
https://thelibertydaily.com/
“God Bless the Stupid.”
https://miguelgg.substack.com/p/god-bless-the-stupid
“Because they are the providers of internet fun.”
“Seems there was a bit of outrage about the US sub taking down the Iranian ship.”
“For some reason I don’t understand, these people have come up with their idea that a war ship, an object, can be noncombatant and then that it is free from attack because it is in international waters. If your country is engaged in hostilities and you are a warship of such country, you are a nautical bomb magnet wherever the heck you might be located in the world.”
There are a lot of crazy people who want to redefine war as a pocket combat. Pray that they fail.
“I Tested Starlink’s Low-Cost $80-Per-Month Plan: It’s Not the Downgrade I Expected”
https://www.pcmag.com/news/starlink-residential-lite-200mbps-plan-speed-tests
“I put Starlink’s Residential 200 Mbps ‘Lite’ plan through its paces to see if deprioritized data means a second-class experience. What I found? You might not even notice the difference.”
“A lot of people want Starlink satellite internet, but not everyone wants to pay $120 a month for it—the going rate for the standard service. To expand Starlink access to a wider population, satellite internet provider SpaceX introduced lower-tier residential service plans, starting with what it called, at launch, Residential Lite. In recent months, this single budget-friendly option was actually split into two plans, the Residential 100 Mbps and Residential 200 Mbps plans. They cost $50 and $80 per month, respectively.”
Looks like a bargain to me.
“Amazon Urges FCC to Deny SpaceX Plan to Launch 1 Million Satellites”
https://www.pcmag.com/news/amazon-urges-fcc-to-deny-spacex-plan-to-launch-1-million-satellites
“Amazon says ‘deploying the proposed million-satellite constellation would take centuries’ as astronomers and others also call on the FCC to deny SpaceX’s orbital data center plan.”
There are a lot of jealous people out there.
Why the down vote?
You have to show ID to cash a check and lots of other stuff. So show your fucking ID when you vote.
It’s not a big deal.
You don’t want anyone to know what party primary you voted in? Don’t vote. Simple.
Click bait. PCMag, enough said.
I’m paying $120 a month. Last I looked it was $80 out in the BF Egypt areas of New Mexico and far west Texas.
“There are a lot of crazy people who want to redefine war as a pocket combat.”
The same crazy bags of shit that insist that you stand there and do nothing if you are robbed and beaten, but want to prosecute you if you open up a can of whupass and kill the stupid modo assaulting you.
The same crazy bags of shit that think that using a handgun in self defense is
bang, check the damage, re-evaluate, band, check the damage, re-evaluate, bang, check the damage, re-evaluate
and not
bang, bang, bang, repeat if anything is still moving
The same crazy bags of shit that get elected and have their own security paid for by the taxpayers as they second-guess every police action and lube the revolving door to keep the predators on the street.
There are a few almost PLT commies that hang around here.
Oh. Not sure what a PLT is. Pretty sure it’s not Prince(ess) Lightingbolt Thrower. But I could be wrong.
Anyway. The PLT commies are hanging around here are cool… because we get a view of “the other side”. Right?
Could be either Progressive Liberal Turd or just Prog LibTard.
It’s flexible.
Use it either way and we will ask if we have questions.
“Anyway. The PLT commies are hanging around here are cool… because we get a view of “the other side”. Right?”
Naw. We get to keep track of the state of the PLT psychotic break in progress as Trumps plan for the New Orange Man Order proceed.
I’m having a tard event. T-Bird sends, looks fine when when writing but what I receive is like 6 point font.
Something is messed up.
I looked around a bit. Seems the font display problem is perhaps a corrupt json file. So the cure is to create a new T-Bird profile.
I have to think about this. I have mail going back to 1996. I have shitloads of history there. But I know if I dropped dead tomorrow that no one is going to look at any of it. Why would they???
So maybe wipe Thunderbird and start from new.
When you receive replies from people, your message appears in 6 point font?
Check Settings → Composition → HTML Style and see if the “Use Paragraph format instead of Body Text by default” box is checked.
I always turn it off. Unfortunately, the developers keep moving the setting.
Dems made changes to the fillibuster to benefit themselves when they were in control, iirc. Using their tool against them is kinda fitting.
——
Things that make you go hmmm.
Prison guard manning Epstein’s cell made strange bank deposits and Googled his name just minutes before he was found dead, DOJ reveals
of course we knew some of this when it happened but it was just a conspiracy theory. Which is a term originally made up to conceal the truth.
———–
Dinner was homemade Cottage Pie. Took me down like a gallon of JD. Sugar didn’t get that high in absolute terms but it did peak, with a rounded top, and took a long time to pass. 2hrs up, 2 hours down, much lower slopes. Apparently this may not be the profile I’m looking for to avoid sleeping.
Data. I need more.
n
I just bought about 100 cans of various items at HEB. I am thinking about going to Sam’s Club this week to buy 20 or 30 six packs of canned chicken.
I thought this war was going to be over in a week. I am now thinking a year, especially if we put troops on the ground.
I am really hoping that China stays out of the war. And the other islamic countries.
I just configured one of my new cams. It has “AI” on camera with alerts for stuff like–
line crossing
queue length
presence of people, or vehicles, or a static object
loitering
# in vs # out
crowd size
—
It’s a bullet style, and I prefer mini domes, but I think it’s the one I’ll hang on the halfway house side of the house. The logging should be helpful. It was $36 on closeout? I bought my limit (2).
I need a microSD card for it. I need to run the cat cable for it.
n
Time for bed. It’s early, but I’m sleepy so why not?
n
>>I just suddenly realized that I have not had a blood test with A1C, choresterol, and PSA in 18 months. I am overdue.
Don’t forget the…umm…in-office part of the prostate exam.
Just a friendly reminder :O
Turns out I was not as sleepy as I thought. And I am hungry. So I’m eating a sliced pork roast sandwich and eating chips, which should drop me like horse tranqs.
n
Hey, don’t be threatening Lynn with a good time!
Monday. Good morning!
Almost time to get up. The sun is shining, which is good, as I need to get the first cut done on MiL’s lawn so I can turn on her little robot mower to fend for itself thereafter.
I also need to repair a couple of cuts in the mower’s guide wire that someone careless made with a spade. Scotchlok 314 waterproof connectors from 3M will take care of that.
I will let the sun dry the grass for a couple of hours, but the mowing must be done before the “quiet” lunch hours kick in.
The in-laws have a corded electric mower, so I will try not to run over the cord!