I know. WORK.
Another beautiful day, and I’m not at the BOL, I’m in Houston. At least it’s cool and clear, with low humidity. Like yesterday and the day before.
I had my whole plan yesterday get scrambled up. Of course. Ended up spending the morning on the computer ordering a new TV for my client instead of picking one up and installing it. Then I spent most of an hour on the phone trying to get my insurance claim from 2021 when I was rear-ended on the freeway by some diversity. Uninsured of course. It’s my fault it dragged out, but now I want it settled. They seem to have confused my original pics of the damage, dated from 2021, with evidence of pre-existing damage prior to the pics from their app in 2026. In fact, it’s pics of the same damage taken 5 years later, as it still hasn’t been fixed.
Luckily the lady on the phone understands there is a problem and I sent her pics of the UN-damaged truck from just a month prior to the accident. I suspect an AI is involved and was never trained on a dumb@ss taking 5 years to finish his claim for loss. In my defense, I did get a letter telling me there would be a delay in my claim while they investigated and tried to recover from the uninsured motorist. And a lot of stuff has been going on in my life and the world since then. They told me not to worry, and I didn’t– until a couple of years went by and I found the paperwork on my desk. Buried about 8 inches down.
So that’s fun.
Anyway, I’ll install my client’s TV after it gets delivered next week, and I’ll talk to another person at my insurance next week.
I did spend the afternoon doing my two pickups and a thrift store, then dropping stuff off at my shop.
Which is where I’ll be spending at least part of today. I need to keep working over there to make the room to get my storage unit emptied. I’m bleeding money that I could be spending on boat stuff, or tiny little fires, or to make smokey noise…
The rest of today will be eaten by other needs. House and yard stuff. Cleanup. Scrapping. So much fun.
Stack. It’s less work.
nick
6am PDT and no posts? Nick sleeping in. Another warm day coming up – already 64F
Denis is traveling. I’ve been working. Nick is probably mainlining caffeine.
It’s snowing a bit. The snow is melting on contact with the slates of our patio, which I don’t understand because the temperature is below freezing, it was freezing-ish overnight so the ground should be cold, and there’s no sun. I’m obviously missing something but am too tired to think of what it is.
I let the chickens out yesterday afternoon and sat near them and tried to work as they greatly enjoyed themselves scratching in the forest. (The problem with working was that my laptop was barely in wifi range, not the more common issue that the birds were running around so widely that I couldn’t sit still and focus.) And then the rain started. They were highly reluctant to go back to the run but a threatening broom got them moving in the right direction and a couple raisins each got them over their snit.
If you intend to do that much ripping, get an external drive even if you opt for the internal unit on the new desktop.
R.I.P. Nicholas Brendan. Xander from Buffy. He was 54. Supposedly from natural causes, but he suffered from chronic drug and alcohol addiction since Buffy. He was in a couple of series after Buffy including Criminal Minds for a short time.
Five years is an eternity in OEM part support.
I was surprised that original body panels were still available for our 2016 Jetta, but the potential costs of repair resulted in the insurance company totalling the vehicle.
Texas doesn’t have explicit salvage titles anymore, but a note gets sent to DPS from the insurance carrier noting that they wrote off the vehicle as a total loss.
I can’t sell the vehicle as anything beyond salvage at this point. We’re getting the damage repaired within reason and will drive the vehicle until the engine or transmission die.
The other issue you face is that various levels of government, the insurance carriers, and even the manufacturers want the small trucks like the 2011 and older Rangers off the road. I wouldn’t doubt that the next “Cash for Clunkers” includes any truck 20+ years old.
Giant Korans, WTC inflatables? Do tell…
– actually, it is inflatables, although something like a WTC inflatable would certainly catch on fire if displayed.
They have some sort of thing says “ramadan” and a crescent moon. https://www.amazon.com/Ramadan-Moon-Decoration-Celebration-Introspection/dp/B0FWR8QDKD?tag=ttgnet-20 is close enough.
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@greg, the parts in the quotes were for salvage from LMK the national junk yard company… I think the quotes were low anyway when I priced parts. The tailgate is $400-600 alone around here.
I’m fine with salvage parts, they will fit better than the chinese knockoffs.
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74F and sunny. Nice.
n
various levels of government, the insurance carriers, and even the manufacturers want the small trucks like the 2011 and older Rangers off the road.
– they want all the vehicles that aren’t remotely trackable, disable-able, blackboxed, surveilled, off the road.
n
An in-depth article, but the interns at DM are including marginal copy edit notes now…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/yourmoney/article-15585125/saks-fifth-avenue-neiman-marcus-bankruptcy.html
– too much debt. Couldn’t pay suppliers. Suppliers stopped sending product. No product to sell = no sales = no cash coming in to pay interest on debt…
There has to be some personal issues involved in the purchase of NM. Someone who either always wanted it, and did the deal even if it didn’t make sense (like Eisner buying ABC with Disney money), or some “I’ll show you” like the dikc measuring contest between Costco CEO and AMEX CEO that resulted in AMEX not being accepted at Costco.
Shareholders suffer.
n
And the C-Suiters get golden parachutes.
Private equity cashes in again.
No one in the C-Suites of the retailers wants to be there. Retail will have to be rebuilt and relearned. Hopefully, it doesn’t require 150 years.
Dr. Pournelle said that it isn’t a dark age until we forget we could once do certain things, but Americans got their $20 Reeboks and may not be in charge when the retail trends reverse.
At least not at first.
Eisner loved the product unlike The Weatherman, D’Amaro, or – coming soon to the CEO office after the disastrous shareholder meeting this week – Dana Walden.
After this week’s shareholder meeting, I’m glad I sold all of my shares when DeSantis and Iger started their p*ssing contest.
The Shocking Implications of Iran Missile Attack on Diego Garcia – For Europe
https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2026/03/21/the-shocking-implications-of-iran-missile-attack-on-diego-garcia-for-europe-n3813107
The psychotic weasels in Iran have just shown the world that most of Europe and Eastern Asia is within range of their missiles. The circle on the map (which looks to be a bit off-center) in the link above shows the UK, Norway, Spain and part of France is out of range (unless launched from western Iran). The rest of Europe, all the Middle Esst, the northwest quarter of Africa, half of Russia and most of China are inside the circle. Are the leaders in Russia, China, and Pakistan, who have been helping them for decades, able to sleep at night? They can’t hit the U.S., but would they hold back a few for the “friends” that left them to fend for themselves? Given the recent events that have shown just how unreliable Russian and Chinese technology is, how confident are they in their missile defense?
For forty-seven years the world has let this boil fester. The Europeans have been so busy killing their own cultures and people and insisting that Iran is not a threat that as recently as this week they had to have their heads drug out of the sand to protect their own interests in keeping the oil flowing. Par for a group of idiots that thought it was a good idea to shutter working nuclear energy plants and were deluded enough to believe that wind and solar were replacements. Will the Europeans finally wake up? It’s too much to hope that Putin will change course, but we can still hope that he just dies in his sleep.
In the meantime, just off the eastern border of that same map lurks the same kind of threat festering for more than 80 years. Kim Jong Un is busy taking notes. When his missiles can hit the west coast of the U.S. he will also have most of the capitals of Western Europe in range.
“Americans got their $20 Reeboks”
I’ve never seen a pair of Reeboks worth trying on.
A long time party apparatchik
n
You’re Gonna Love Trump’s Ultimatum to Democrats on DHS Funding
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/josephchalfant/2026/03/21/youre-gonna-love-trumps-ultimatum-to-democrats-on-dhs-funding-n2673230
Put a couple hundred ICE agents in a blue-state airport and 80-90% of the vendors will close and 80-90% of the Uber and Lyft rides will be gone.
I was living in LA during the first “day without mexicans” and it was glorious. No traffic. Commute time cut in half.
n
Read this while eating my lunch.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15658103/Tragedy-women-group-eight-climbers-set-scale-one-worlds-highest-peaks-perish-40C-blizzard-heartbreaking-final-radio-message.html
Compelling story, some english mistakes mar it though.
And they died from an excess of ideology… or you can make that case.
couldn’t bear to be rescued and try again.
n
Cross your fingers:
Trump Admin Moving Forward With Deporting ‘Maryland Man’ (Sen. Van Hollen Has Time for 1 Last Margarita)
What are the odds of another activist judge ruling the crimmigrant can stay? If he is shuffled off to Liberia, there will probably be a GoFundMe set up by PLTs so the “Maryland Man” can live the lifestyle he is accustomed to in the FUSA.
I will also crack a beer just because the crimmigrant is the poster child for the Dumbocrat “illegals get to vote” program, and it ends with him.
Maybe the Air Force needs a C130 training flight, and the gear “might” fail over Liberia. “Uh, we need to dump unnecessary cargo before landing.”
Like I said the other day…. no elevators in police stations or jails. “Oops. he got rowdy and broke his neck when he fell down the stairs”.
Yeah, I know. I don’t want the cops executing folks but some folks need to fall down the stairs.
Walden currently has a position equivalent to what Lassiter held before he was Me Too-ed out of the company.
D’Amaro is a pinhead. He’ll last about as long as CEO as Chapek.
I have so much in my head that I forget stuff. I Ducked and the results were all WTF. What reset button, like on the back of a router?
I have the PiCorePlayer running. On, duh, a Raspberry Pi. 3B+ I think. PiCore installs the newest (chose a name) SlimServer that actually does the work. And has a checkbox to mount a USB drive at boot.
Somewhere in there is a setting where you can see all of the players. Squeezebox2 shows. There is an option to “migrate to this server?” That doesn’t work. I guess the SB2 is too old, no idea.
I pulled the power and did network setup. Behold!!! The new server appears. So that works.
Moa is shutdown, unplugged from Ethernet and the power disconnected. Even thought to turn the monitor off. It’s right there if I need it.
Bite me Microsoft for screwing my network.
I’m just kinda feeling full of myself today. 🙂
“Holding Their Own XIV: Forest Mist” by Joe Nobody
https://www.amazon.com/Holding-Their-Own-XIV-Forest/dp/1983204668?tag=ttgnet-20/
The fourteenth book in a series of nineteen alternate history books about the economic collapse of the USA in 2015 and onward. I read the well printed and well bound POD (print on demand) trade paperback self published by the author in 2018 that I bought new on Amazon in 2025. I own the first sixteen books in the series and will purchase more soon.
Um, this series was published in 2011 just as the shale oil and gas boom was really getting cranked up. The book has crude oil at $350/barrel and gasoline at $6/gallon in 2015. Not gonna happen due to oil well fracking in the USA so the major driver of economic collapse in the USA is invalid for the book. That said, the book is a good story about the collapse and failure of the federal government in the USA. The book is centered in Texas which makes it very interesting to me since I am a Texas resident.
The $6 gasoline was just the start. The unemployment rises to 40% over a couple of years and then there is a terrorist chemical attack in Chicago that kills 50,000 people. The current President of the USA nukes Iran with EMP airbursts as the sponsor of the terrorist attack. And the President of the USA also declares martial law and shuts down the interstates to stop the terrorists from moving about. That shuts down food and fuel movement causing starvation and lack of energy across the nation.
The accumulations of these serious problems cause widespread panics and shutdowns of basic services like electricity and water for large cities. The electricity grids fail due to employees not showing up to work at the plants. Then the refineries shutdown due to the lack of electricity and half of the USA dies in the next several years, struggling for food and shelter.
Things are settling down in the new nation of the Texas Alliance. So much so that Bishop and Terri head to the Piney Woods on the east side of Texas to buy logs to build a new home in west Texas. But the east side of Texas is having problems with refugees from the USA side looking for food and employment. And the tensions are high with the inhabitants of east Texas concerning the refugees.
The author has a website at:
https://www.joenobodybooks.com/
My rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars (255 reviews)
Lynn
@Lynn:
Aren’t we getting close to $6/gallon gasoline in the US right now? GasBuddy shows average regular price is $4.80-$5.80 on the west coast. (link) And that is just average statewide pricing.
Yes, affected by the Iran issues, but do you think that an end to that will result in a major decrease?
“Does anybody remember Vietnam, when observing the Iran “not a war?”” by Matt Bracken
https://steelcutter.substack.com/p/does-anybody-remember-vietnam-when
“I’m getting a strong feeling of Vietnam déjà vu with Sec-War Pete Hegseth’s daily repetition of of our record-breaking Iran bombing raid sortie numbers. We’ve seen this movie before, and it does not have a happy ending.”
Crap, if Bracken is not for the Iran venture then I may have misjudged the public support for shutting down Iran.
Trump needs to get us out of Iran before the end of March. Period.
Aren’t we getting close to $6/gallon gasoline in the US right now? GasBuddy shows average regular price is $4.80-$5.80 on the west coast. (link) And that is just average statewide pricing.
The regular gasoline price here in South Texas is $3.299 per US Gallon.
Gas is $3.30 at shell in Houston. Shell is one of the higher priced stations.
High gas prices on the west coast are a combination of high state taxes, requiring a special blend that is only available from two refineries in the world, iirc, and shutting down the oil infrastructure along the west coast for “reasons”. Cali was an energy exporter. There are working wells throughout the LA basin and surrounding areas. They COULD have cheap gas if they wanted it.
So for a national average, I’d drop the west coast from the math. Their problems are self inflicted.
n
iirc Cali imports gasoline from Sweden or Norway because of the blend requirements.
Not just CA –
Prices in Tx are normally less than other areas in the US.
Look at the list of prices on the link from GasBuddy I included. Ranked lowest to highest. https://www.gasbuddy.com/usa All trending up.
And just averages. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a lot more in the $5.00 – $6.00 range by summer.
The chart here is informative for US pricing, includes info on price changes: https://fuelinsights.gasbuddy.com/
If “Maryland Man” were to be released from custody, grabbed by a mob, and crucified, the problem would be resolved before the courts pulled their thumbs out.
Just suggestin’.
He needed killin’, yer honner.
I paid over $5/gal. at this time last year to fill up our rental in Palm Springs, prior to returning the car to the airport.
$5.29 IIRC.
We flew into Anaheim, drove out to Redondo Beach, up to Hollywood and out to Palm Springs, all with various side trips. We still had a quarter of a tank when I filled up.
The rental car company price to fill the tank was $5.79/gal.
I just filled up in the Vegas area. Gas was $3.69/gl.
I filled my tank, um, two weeks ago? It’s still about 7/8 full, a consequence of my being close to a shut-in. I have no idea what the gas prices around here are. Checking the internet gave me widely varying and entirely implausible numbers.
I filled up at Costco in Hendersonville TN today and paid $3.29. Cost to fill the truck $80.00.
Thanks to Bidenflation, $6.00/gal gas in 2015 would be $8.39 today.
And that’s using the obviously fake USGov CPI numbers.
So we’re nowhere near those numbers. Yet. Not even in commie-fornia.
This stings for us, but it bleeds for China. I’m ok with that. Europe, too.
I hope to say that I was alive at the beginning of the anti-American, anti-democratic EU in 1993, and that I lived long enough to see it die a well-deserved death. It survived way too long.
20% of the world’s oil is said to pass through the Straight of Hormuz, despite There being pipeline alternatives existing and potential that could drop that by ⅓ to ½. Who benefits when the sky is falling and the price of oil goes up?
China has a disproportionate amount of oil passing through the Strait. The U.S. is not only hardly affected, but it is unlikely that we would step up and be selling oil to China in the short term. Yet the price of West Texas Intermediate seems to be designed to be subject to price spikes? Who benefits?
If 20% of our IC fleet ran on CNG it would cushion things quite a bit. The cost of one of the new USPS electrics is so high that it would buy a CNG vehicle, give it twice the range, and have enough left over to pay for ten years worth of fuel.
And let’s not forget that the Democrat Party refused to budget money to refill the oil reserve depleted by FJB to buy votes when the price was $30 a barrel.
Oil prices are worldwide – not local. So affected by world events, not local supply/demand.
Although Lynn could explain that better than me.
I well understand the claim.
The reality is that crude oil in Texas has no infrastructure in place that could make it an instantaneous replacement for oil in a tanker bound for China from the Strait. Barrels in one place have little to do with barrels in the other, and instantaneous price hikes driven by traders who couldn’t tell a distillation tower from a heat exchanger or octane from benzene are just extortion.
(For another exercise in flummery, see how “Levelized Cost of Energy” has been used to claim that solar and wind produce cheaper electricity than natural gas)
Talk to me about fungibility when it applies to things that are a lot more comparable, such as seats on airplanes flying between U.S. cities.
I remember Cheney talking out his ass on how another non-war was going to get paid for. This time we take Kharg Island and $1 for every $2 of Iranian oil that gets sold until every cent is covered, and put a security surcharge on passage both ways to compensate the forces that are keeping the Strait open.
I remember when they had to write a 1 in front of the two digit reels on the pumps when gas broke the buck…
At $3.30 it was $100 to fill the expy. I was on fumes or I wouldn’t have used Shell.
Cali could give everyone almost a dollar a gallon break just by waiving the taxes…
But that won’t happen.
Oil prices are worldwide – not local.
– but gasoline prices are local, determined by how far you are from a refinery (or terminal), and how expensive your particular blend of gasoline is.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=65184
for why Cali in particular pays more. Note that the article is a year out of date and Cali has forced the closure of at least one refinery since then, iirc. Less than half the pump price is from the crude price.
n
I guess all that is to say that I think of Cali as a separate market for gas from the rest of the US, so I consider their $/gal to be an outlier and not comparable to the rest of the US gasoline market.
n
FWIW, I also periodically do my figuring in miles per dollar, rather than miles per gallon. That captures both the energy content of the fuel (cheaper E85 gets lower mpg) and the fuel economy of the vehicle.
n
Aren’t we getting close to $6/gallon gasoline in the US right now? GasBuddy shows average regular price is $4.80-$5.80 on the west coast. (link) And that is just average statewide pricing.
Yes, affected by the Iran issues, but do you think that an end to that will result in a major decrease?
If the west coast states would pull their heads out of their posteriors then they could have gasoline under $4 per US Gallon too. Instead, they put insane requirements on refineries and closed my customer’s offshore oil and natural gas wells over a decade ago, causing my customer to go bankrupt. That cost me money too and all I got was a letter from the bankruptcy court to cover middle five figures in invoices.
And yes, I know about the crazy limousine liberals chaining themselves to the railroad tracks in Washington State when the crude oil trains come through daily because they cannot add any new pipelines in the last 50+ years. Normal people would throw the libs in jail, instead they are released and do it again the next day. Both the libs and government officials are barking mad. Do you know how much money and fuel it costs to shut down a refinery and restart it when the oil train finally shows up ?
for why Cali in particular pays more. Note that the article is a year out of date and Cali has forced the closure of at least one refinery since then, iirc. Less than half the pump price is from the crude price.
Two refineries have closed so far this year in Cali. Four are left. There was 54 refineries in Cali in 1980.
My Big River $1,400 Dell has gone away. The $1,500 Dell with 32 GB ram and 2 TB M.2 drive are left.
https://www.amazon.com/Dell-Plus-Computers-Business-DisplayPorts/dp/B0GJDT6HF1?tag=ttgnet-20/
The Dell $1,050 budget tower looks better by the day. I guess that I can buy an external DVDRW drive.
https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/desktop-computers/dell-tower-desktop/spd/dell-ect1250-desktop/useect1250pbtshmqb#product-tab
I am agonizing over this way too much. Shows that I do not want to do anything.
You’all hear this outside of Houston?
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/possible-meteorite-crashes-into-houston-area-house/ , among other reports.
@oldguy, when my wife first told me, and that it was the second one in a short time to come down in US airspace, I thought the satellite war had started…
But it looks like it really is a meteorite.
n
Just got youngest back from her school thing. She actually had two different things today, and the second one was at another school. Got her and her friends at midnight, and took them home.
Eldest is at a friend’s lakehouse for the weekend. So W and I had a nice dinner out.
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Now it’s time for bed.
n