And it’ll be a chilly Friday the 13th… although it is supposed to be sunny and clear for the next few days. That will be nice. I guess a couple more cool days before Spring really gets going are kinda nice.
It was nice and cool yesterday when I was working on the porch at the rent house. I got some of my list taken care of. I’ll be back there today to get the rest done. Oh, except for the termite treatment and replacing some damaged columns… I might just try to hire the replacement work. It’s deductible against any profit from rent, which should work out like a 33% discount.
Had a long chat with the sister while I was working. Someone is paying her for the legal work. Wonder if it’s Soros? That would be ironic since he’s the epitome of ‘the patriarchy.’
I also did some personal maintenance before I left the house yesterday, cutting my hair and shaving. Trimmed my eyebrows too. Freaking things are going wild. Getting old is weird.
Today I’ve got two pickups and the finishing up at the rent house to get done. I’ve got my hobby meeting this weekend so I’m not going to the BOL. W might go, but the kids have stuff at home.
I know my list is long and I won’t have any trouble finding stuff to do here.
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Get your stuff in one bag. Spicy time is kicking off. We have senior government officials living on military bases for security against threats to them and their families, someone stealing from army bases, and lone wolves acting out. Time to look at your own personal security and that of your home and family.
Stack what you need, keep short term stuff up to date. Avoid crowds.
nick
Here are some items to aid in your understanding:
Aaargh! Friday the 13th has struck, and struck hard.
Chicken Boy got first post. Oh noes!
Grey, rainy, blustery and wintery here, to go along with my cold.
W1 reports a sore throat, so she probably has it too. I had a bit of irritation one night last week, but I rarely have a really sore throat – whatever it is generally just goes straight for the sinuses and lungs. Joy.
Wishing you a joyful Friday, despite, or because of, the date.
Weather report this morning said Cheyenne had an 85mph wind gust. Ugh.
AOS? You mean Apple?
That is BSD Unix, with the same key features/downsides and a lot of infrastructure stolen -er- borrowed from FreeBSD because the license only requires the thieves to acknowledge the UC Regents in the copyright statements without open sourcing any modifications for analysis.
If you think the Linux community is rough, you haven’t explored Free/OpenBSD.
The NeXT engineers – who really created Apple’s current OS – took BSD Unix and made it palatable to Wall Street.
Wanna make an Apple fanboi cry?
Have them type “Steve Jobs and Ross Perot” into their favorite search engine’s image index.
Apple’s buyout of NeXT funded Ross Perot’s mischief for the rest of his life.
The same thing happened to my grandparents. There was a lady that came each day to clean and cook. She was doing a good job and my grandparents liked her. Their son and daughter (my mother) thought everything was OK.
Then my grandparents were moved to a nursing facility. When cleaning out the house it was discovered the lady was a thief.
My grandmother had crocheted for as long as I can remember. Intricate and really fine detail. My wife and I were offered $400.00 in 1980 for a tablecloth my grandmother had made. The stuff my grandmother created was quite valuable. The last time anyone looked in her storage area there were several dozens of created items of various designs and sizes.
Then the reality set in. This “lady” had been slowly stealing the crocheted items over the years and had been selling them. She pocketed 10’s of thousands of dollars selling the items it was discovered. There were also some other items missing beyond just the crocheted items.
Their son contacted the police and was basically told there was nothing that could be done because there was no proof the lady had stolen and sold the items or the items even existed. And since the items were handmade, there was no way to place a value on the items.
I was fortunate in that my grandmother had given me some items just after I had gotten married. I had mentioned to her that I wanted my name placed on some items so that when it came time to disperse the items, I would get first dibs. Instead, my grandmother just handed the items to me and said if she didn’t, they would probably get misplaced. I got an Airguide barometer with curved glass, a clock with Westminster chimes using real steel bars for the tone, and several of the crocheted items.
Thank you public school. See my post yesterday on Hegseth’s “meat” scandal. I bet most people here read at least 50 books a year.
Sunny, clear, and only 60F. Chill is in the air.
Coffee should be ready, and I’ll have an egg for breakfast, and then I can start the day.
Hands are stiff and sore today and my knee is acting up. The joy of weather forecasting thru bodily harm, although I don’t know what to expect, only change.
n
A Warrior class is developing in this country, and the people who are feeling the effects of that first are on the lower end of the economic spectrum.
Of course, rather than a public debate about that development being a good or bad thing for society, both sides will exploit civilian unease about the future for political gain.
Yes, but also No. IIRC, last year I read that reading levels have been recalibrated so that more people read at high school level, 6th grade level, etc.
I don’t think that I do. But most of what I read is quite long, difficult, or both. eg, Plutarch’s Lives took forever to read because of the length, the dated phrasing of the translation, and the need to look up hundreds of names and locations and events as I read, plus the need to read several paragraphs repeatedly just to figure out what the heck he was talking about. The problem was the mindset of Plutarch and/or the ancient Greek or Roman whose life he was narrating. Some activity which made no sense to my eyes was part of a religious ceremony, for instance, but it was just a part of life to Plutarch, so he didn’t give any explanation or context.
Another story was by an acquaintance, one of those light, web-published novels which go on and on; if it were published, it would have been greatly trimmed in editing and then been divided into three long paperbacks. I wouldn’t have read it if he didn’t want feedback. It was fast reading but probably took 50 hours, a couple months at the usual time I set aside for reading.
A beautiful cool morning here in the high desert, it will be in the mid 80s today and probably the low 90s on Sunday. They are saying 97 Fahrenheit next week, but that might be an exaggeration.
I was out with binoculars to see a Falcon launch out of Vandenberg at 7:58am, but it was a bust, a few seconds and then it disappeared into some high clouds and haze to the west.
The mowing and weed abatement here is mostly done, right now my property and the various neighbors look like something out of Kentucky with ankle high green grass – but it’s actually weeds: tumbleweeds and goats head thorns for the most part. I have a few more areas that I have to hit with a whacker, but the worst of the mowing is done.
There was a Substack or Medium article last year about college students being asked to read the first few pages of Great Expectations and explain..
They were beyond unable to comprehend it.
@EdH, that’s my back yard here, and all of my yard at the BOL. Very little grass left. It will take back over with water and regular mowing though.
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I’ve been reading tons of LitRPG genre books. They’re like popcorn, or I guess any genre novels. Not a lot of thinking, easy to read, familiar tropes and mechanics, and they are self pub, so might be 8 or 12 in a series. I try to only start finished series now, but the best ones are ongoing. I’m reading for comfort and entertainment.
I did re-read William Gibson’s cyberpunk trilogy and it held up pretty well.
That guy I was reading that had the three different (but very similar) series of “men’s action adventure” novels seems to have stopped writing them. He was churning them out, ‘ripped from the headlines’ style.
I used to have something classical or non-fiction on the bedside table, but haven’t in a while. No alternating for me, just a steady stream of entertaining slop.
n
I used to do that. Not so much any more.
I mostly read online stuff or technical articles that are hobby related.
I need to get offline more.
It all counts. Tech articles and the stuff Mr. SteveF talked about have “force multipliers” making them equivalent to multiple books.
Why so quiet today? Where is everyone? I demand entertainment! Dance, monkeys, dance! Or at least, post, monkeys, post!
@Nick – I sent the clip to a friend in Florida, and when I took a second look at the video, the neighborhood in the clip is Round Rock West, right around the corner from the administration building, probably stock footage.
Wine Mom may not live there.
Most of the houses are pretty run down around here unless they are new or in pricey neighborhoods.
If your frame of reference is the Goodwill on 620, that gated development behind the store is Fancy Lad housing, 5000-6000 sq ft or more. Griddy customers before 2021. I think Robert Rodriguez lives there … for the schools!
https://www.fox7austin.com/news/round-rock-isd-bus-route-changes
I have a song stuck in my head. Don’t know why. Jesus Jones – Right Here Right Now .
I just puttered today. Took trash to the road. Took a shower. Went to the grocery store. Opened the house when it reached 70 outside. From the low of 40. Not too windy, but a nice breeze and it sure felt nice when it reached 80. It’s cooling off pretty quick as the sun sets.. The humidity is down to 23%.
I toted the USB drive of music out to Moa. Told Windows to copy the folder it had to the USB drive. Yeah, skip duplicates. Speed? 90 to 95 Mb. Seems to be fast to just compare files. Then I copied over “set aside music” and that was a more normal 30 to 33 Mb speed. Swept the EDC while I was out there. Reconnected the drive to the Pi and it all looks good.
I re-read the directions about setting permissions. I can do this.
Hey. Anyone remember Harold? He lived in Oklahoma. Had a basement under his carport and that’s where he stored his prepping stuff. Then his wife passed and he moved to California because he has a brother or two there. I think he posted a couple of times from California. It’s been maybe a couple of years now.
Why he popped into my head, I don’t know.
I was thinking about him the other day, wondering if he’d check in and say “same old doom and gloom, and nothing ever happens…” **
I hope his change of pace made him happy. And I hope he still drops by once in a while.
n
** of course lots has happened, just not the big one.
Today was a not-quite-nothing day. I’ve been too tired to work for most of the week. Sleep interrupted every night, plus woken even earlier than I’d naturally get up most mornings. I did take care of some computer stuff, making and validating backups and such.
I’ve brought the chickens out several hours a day for the past several days. Sat with them, did chores, and tried to do paying work on my laptop a couple times when they had free run of the yard and forest. Put them in the metal run in the yard a couple times when I didn’t feel like sitting with them. They greatly enjoyed getting out of their Winter quarters. And Brown Hen laid eggs yesterday and today, after laying only one egg since mid-Summer. She’d been laying regularly, then stopped when the (loud, busy, hungry) pullets were put in with the older birds. Stressed, obviously; for the next month or two she regularly went up into the coop to get away from them.
We probably won’t get any more real snow. Dusting today, maybe a few more light snowfalls, but nothing real. However, I’m going to hold off on moving the coop and the rest of their stuff to the metal run for a few more weeks, maybe a month, because of the winds. Last Spring I needed to move the birds earlier than I really wanted to because they’d managed to damage the net enclosure enough that they escaped several times per day. Once the stuff was in the metal run in the yard, the wind picked up the run half a dozen times, blew over the water tank a couple times, blew over the food bin once, and so on. Somewhat annoying, I’ll have you know.
Hot and dry today, 85F, did yard work, wrapped up at noon.
Got a text from my sister in Tacoma … snowing there. I actually suspected she was pulling my leg so I checked the weather online, yep, frosty white stuff in the air there.
I had an errand in town so I threw some completed library books in the truck and went into town to take care of things. I had forgotten that anytime after 2 PM is hopeless, school buses and mad moms in minivans make driving nearly impossible. I did my errand but I didn’t bother to try to drop the books off at the library, it’s about a half block from a primary school and there wouldn’t be any parking on the street or the lot until after 3 PM probably.
When I briefly lived on the Issaquah Plateau east of Seattle, I had to scrape my windshield most mornings until the beginning of May.
Memorial Day on the Oregon Coast was like a North Face catalog come to life.
Harold tended an ATM network if memory serves. IIRC, the son helped.
We’ve also lost Dad Cooks since the pandemic, but I seem to remember that he was freaked out by the situation and not keen on the possibility of the virus being exaggerated.
it was a beautiful day, so I did as much outside work as possible. Did my two pickups then headed to the rent house. I caulked and painted the new floor boards on the porch. Swapped out the washer and dryer (and tested them.) Changed a security light for the driveway. Chatted with renter’s dad for a while. Nice relaxed afternoon, but future me will have to fix termite damage, and replace a door knob that is suddenly broken. I don’t think we did it with the laundry machines, but it still needs replacing.
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n
Harold I left alone, but I’ve tried to reach DadCooks without result.
n
Hah, the auction for the estate with the McIntosh audio gear “has been hidden” by the lister. Someone must have clued them in and they are making changes.
The sellers have a fiduciary duty to their customer – who is the estate – not to the buyers or themselves. They really should take that seriously, so I’m glad it looks like they might be, even if I end up not being able to win because more people understand what the lots are worth.
And the auction with the fake trijicon red dots claimed they only just found out, were refunding anyone who won one, and were very sorry, according to the woman running things there today. Unfortunately, they still have fake trijicon sights in the auction that just started and is running currently. I guess we’ll see if they pull those listings too.
And FWIW, and for those paying close attention, fuel injectors for locomotive engines are about a foot long and weigh about 20 pounds. All machined and finely finished stainless steel… and they’re in opened packaging, just like returns fraud where people put their old auto part back in the box and return it as if there was a problem with the new part… which seems bizarre for something that specialized and traceable, and not sold on amazon.
n
added – there are some on ebay though none sold in the last 6 months.
Found more evidence of termite damage in the porch columns. Not good. I’ll have to do something to replace the structure now. AND we need to treat for them.
Hey, the termite that you are disparaging is the national insect of Texas.
I also did some personal maintenance before I left the house yesterday, cutting my hair and shaving. Trimmed my eyebrows too. Freaking things are going wild. Getting old is weird.
I am scared to trim my beard. I want to cut the four inches back to just one inch. But all I know how to do is the quarter inch cut. My experience with experimentation and facial hair is not good.
Thank you public school. See my post yesterday on Hegseth’s “meat” scandal. I bet most people here read at least 50 books a year.
My son called that Surf and Turf at the Marine Corps. It helped bad news go down easier when they had seafood and steaks in their bellies on the night before the “Now Hear This”.