Warm and humid. I think we’re really in Spring now. It cleared up by later afternoon, what with the gusting wind from the Gulf blowing all the stuff north… and it ended up being quite nice, if a bit humid. So my guess for today is overcast, clearing later, and mid 80sF and humid.
I did my big loop of pickups. All stuff for the house and the BOL. More lappy carts to break down for batteries, food, coffee, and some small electronics and household stuff. Since I was running late, I called D1 and had her put the roast in the oven.
That worked out well. I put 3 lbs of eye round roast in for about 1 1/2 hours at 220F and by the time I got home, it was 130F internally. Slightly more towards medium than rare, but not dried up and grey. It’s so lean that it’s hard to get it cooked but also not overcooked and tough. I seasoned some canned peas and canned carrots as sides, which were better than I expected, and threw a shelf stable sourdough loaf in the oven too. Kid made ‘break and bake’ chocolate chip cookies for dessert.
When I was sitting out having my tiny little fire and a book, twice Lifeflight went overhead outbound. The first was low and very fast, the second was low and moving briskly but not “OMG that thing is booking it…” One possum went by on his rounds, and three shots sounded like they came from the end of the block. No cats though. Lifeflight came back over inbound when I was back in the house. Kinda busy night.
Today I’m definitely getting a nap as I don’t have any pickups scheduled. I won a vintage Hallicrafters ham tranceiver that I could pick up today, but tomorrow is fine too. Later today I’ll break down the laptop carts and take most of the BOL stuff to the shop, if I don’t spend the day doing web stuff for my hobby.
And I’ve got some office type stuff that needs doing too, so that could eat some time.
I will be stacking the batteries and chargers, and the spare parts I got, and some of the other things that need to go to the BOL. I do need to test some of them first, like the aerator for the septic system. It LOOKS new, but who knows, could be returns fraud. Backup for that system has been on my list for some time.
It’s been a busy day or two. Sometimes it be that way. Stack what you can.
nick
Thursday! Last day of the working week here. We celebrate May first by singing the Internationale and waving red flags on our day off. Or something.
Have a lovely day!
Don’t forget, tonight is Walpurgisnacht!
The sailors will have to re-learn celestial navigation.
Most phones also have sensors for the Earth’s magnetic and gravimetric fields, and I assume those are part of a standard GPS component now, especially milspec.
A Faraday cage cannot jam the magnetic field, and a subscription to the sensor data is easy to set up within a Cocoa Touch application. In crowd situations, my guess is that iOS supplements GPS and WiFi data with a crowdsourced real time database of magnetic field data correlated to lat/long in a narrow area.
I assume Android does something similar.
Both probably “phone home” with that data along with other telemetry.
I have a half finished app on my MacBook Pro to play with the gravimetric sensor after a screening of “The Hunt For Red October” on Christmas Day.
Thirty years ago, gravimetric sensors were classified and the movie producers got in trouble for stray references to “miligal” numbers. Now, every Communist Chinese-made iPhone has one of those sensors.
76F this morning. Kids are moving despite D2 being up later than me working on a project. She says she did most of it, and lost the work, so she had to redo it last night. Hmmm. Think she did and all-nighter. Not great.
———
Just a snack for now, I’m going back to bed as soon as these kids are out the door.
n
The UH-60 Blackhawk has an inertial navigation system. When you plan your route, you can enter up to, I think, coordinates for 10 waypoints. When you fly over a waypoint, you hit its button and the inertial system updates. The first GPS system in the Blackhawk was a little box with an LDC screen that output you lat/long. Not real handy for navigating at 100mph.
LCD?
Lucy in the sky with diamonds?
Much better than not having done the work at all; shows a sense of responsibility and the grit to get it done. The misery of an all-nighter will hopefully* teach her to plan ahead and start in good time next time.
*As a master procrastinator, I find I work best under deadline, but I don’t recommend it to others.
***
Beltane. Rejoice. The merry month of May is upon us. Time for strawberries and white asparagus.
Strawberries. Big red, juicy, fragrant ones. Local Aldi had some. Success!
I bought two punnets. One each for me and myself! Haha! Mine, all mine!
[exit Denis stage left, cackling maniacally, pursued by a dragon]
Going to my son’s graduation ceremony tomorrow. He just signed an apartment lease, and will be starting his job mid June. He can move in a week before his start date, so perfect timing. We were going over his budget last night, and he made the comment “living is expensive!” Yes it is, son. Luckily he is making enough to not only live, but to also save. I think he’ll be ok.
Regarding the issue about Sony requiring a 30-day check on licensing Playstation PS5 games, turns out it’s only a one-time license check. Sez Sony:
Link to story on Gizmundo here.
– more evidence we’re in one of the periods where everything changes.
——————-
76F this am. I was so tired I barely was able to kiss the kids on their way out the door. I cannot do 3hrs of sleep anymore.
Warmer now, and the yellow-green light has gotten a bit more normal for light overcast. Time to get moving before it decides to sprinkle.
——————-
Last night’s helo flyover was interesting. They came over so low, and yet were still super quiet. By the time I couldn’t hear them anymore they were still within rifle range. That means .mil is quieter, and since they have better guns, they can just stand off and kill your monkey butt. .gov in commercial helos can smoke you and you’ll never hear or see it coming. If the war ever goes hot, the first order of attack should be dropping all the helos. If not, the hunter/killers will get you.
If I was designing nextgen systems, a tiny missile with an anti-emission guidance package, or a sonic profile guidance package, would be top-o-my-list. Some kind of .50 sabot round that steers even a bit would work too.
The sight of them zipping by overhead also moved my desire to build an ADS-B node up the list. I picked up a dual band antenna designed for it in one of my recent auctions. Someone has a razpi image available…
———————–
coffee is half way done. Breakfast/lunch is in my belly. I need to complete my toilette and start the day.
n
If they know who you are and where you are. “The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea.” (Mao was a piece of crap but he did wage a successful guerrilla movement then insurgency then revolution.)
Law enforcement and military are exempt from ADS-B “out“ regulations. Those aircraft are allowed to turn off their transponders.
A Raspberry Pi ‘B’ has enough power to to SDR with a Realtek TV USB device. A cheap laptop running Linux will also work.
Ho Chi Minh too.
After dealing withe my father in law’s ethnic Chinese Vietnamese merchant class friends, however, I completely understood the root causes of the civil war. I sometimes wanted to shoot at those women myself.
Not that I wanted to kill or even hurt them, but put the fear of Round Eye into them? Yeah.
I wonder when the time will come in this country to deal with our own Colonial masters like the Vietnamese kicked out the Frenchies.
The Scarlet Pimpernel will ride again. Sink me!
We’ll be eating huge suspicious sausages…
n
And, like Vietnam in the 1950s and 60s, your skin will be your uniform.
Crankshaft: Sign My Kindle
https://www.gocomics.com/crankshaft/2026/04/30
You know, that just does not seem the same as signing a dead tree.
I watched the new Netflix movie “Apex” with Charlize Theron last night. She plays an outdoor enthusiast – rock climber of ice-covered mountains, kayaker – that meets a guy that will remind oldsters like me about an old movie with a dueling banjo-playing bad guys in a remote area.
Great scenery of mountain climbing and kayaking (in remote Austrailia back country), and some impressive physical work on the ice-covered mountains (somewhere in Europe) and the ‘outback’. Some CGI, according to reviews, but it looked impressive on my laptop screen. I suspect it will be quite impressive on a large screen.
An entertaining movie, with some plot holes, but I enjoyed it. The scenery and camera work is impressive.
And, like Vietnam in the 1950s and 60s, your skin will be your uniform.
Are you saying that the oncoming Civil War in the USA will be a race war ?
“Tesla Begins Mass Producing Semi Trucks. Stock Rises.”
https://finance.yahoo.com/m/d9312061-9acb-3f91-b580-da1e3f02842e/tesla-begins-mass-producing.html
325 miles or 500 miles is not a long way for a truck.
But the 1.7kwh per mile electric usage is good. I have heard that the Tesla Superchargers cost 22 cents/kwh now.
https://www.tesla.com/semi
I wonder how much they cost compared to a similar Kenworth or Peterbuilt ?
“Al Gore Shifts On Global Warming: Time To Watch Out For A New Ice Age?”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/al-gore-shifts-global-warming-time-watch-out-new-ice-age
“The rhetoric and predictions behind climate change “science” change so haphazardly, it’s a sure sign that the entire field of study is fraudulent. If the manufactured hysteria is not enough to clue people in, the failed predictions of Al Gore should do the trick.”
“Former Vice President Al Gore warned a Hollywood audience this week that a “Gulf Stream collapse” could occur within 25 years, leading to an abrupt and devastating new Ice Age.”
Whoa, Algore is still alive. Who knew ?
And, we are all going to die.
Has a single prediction of Algore actually occurred to date ?
“House Unanimously Approves Bill To End 76-Day DHS Shutdown, Sending Measure To Trump”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/house-unanimously-approves-bill-end-76-day-dhs-shutdown-sending-measure-trump
“Well that was anticlimactic… On Thursday, the House of Representatives approved by voice vote a Senate-passed bill to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security, clearing the way to end the longest partial government shutdown in U.S. history after 76 days.”
“The heaviest burden has fallen on other DHS components, including the U.S. Coast Guard, Transportation Security Administration, and Federal Emergency Management Agency.”
“In an exclusive interview with CBS News, Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Kevin Lunday said his workforce was “furious” that the impasse had dragged on so long, calling the situation “incredibly frustrating.””
True dat.
““David Allan Coe, who wrote ‘Take This Job and Shove It’ dies at 86”
https://abcnews.com/Entertainment/wireStory/david-allan-coe-wrote-job-shove-country-hits-132524045
“David Allan Coe, the country singer-songwriter who wrote the working class anthem “Take This Job and Shove It″ and had hits with “You Never Even Called Me By My Name” and “The Ride” among others, has died. He was 86.”
The dude was certifiably crazy but his songs are awesome.
I think any songwriter who ever lived, from Johnny Mercer and Irving Berlin to Billy Joel to Kurt Cobain to Franz Schubert to Hank Williams Sr., Jr., III, and maybe IV to… Well all of them… would appreciate that one line eulogy.
That’s a starting place. Then the judges who keep releasing the problems into the community.
Hey. If a bartender can be charged with a crime for over serving some drunken person who has a car crash and kills people, even though the bartender has zero control about the drunk having a bottle of whiskey or cooler of beer in his car…. Why do judges suffer nothing for letting repeat criminal offenders free?
Same same as driving the get away car from a bank robbery.
The guy that murdered the lady from Ukraine, it’s ON VIDEO showing he killed her. But they let him go because he’s too “mentally impaired” aka “stupid” to understand the charges?
Jail the judge that released him. Hang him, shoot him, whatever, kill the stupid rabid dog.
A dog bites a little kid? Dog is put down.
I read not long ago that 6% does 70%. The number vary by source. But black males are about 6% of the US population and doing 70% of the murders?
Yeah. Call it a race war if you wish. I’m going to call it “cleaning house”.
His record is still perfect; 0.0% accurate.
The perfect country song. Everyone knew the lyrics and sang along. Good good times. Happy times.
Tomorrow is the first of May. April sure seemed to go by real fast this year.
We’ve had a little rain. No rivers in the driveway or path to the feedshed. A few puddles is all. I swatted my first mosquito yesterday. Had a bite on my back that was an itchy welt for a few hours, too. Yippee.
And today, more rain. April showers bring May mosquitoes.
85F at 2pm in the shade. I was working on laying some pavers, but finally realized I was tired and making mistakes.
Tomorrow will be fine for this.
Ed’s duty cycle ~= 3 / ( AGE mod 10 )
I like to think I personally cost him the presidential election because of the letters I wrote to the local paper. True, or not, I am sticking to my belief.
My Panasonic Eneloop batteries were starting to lose some of their power. After 10 years and lots of heavy use in a couple of electronic flashes I was pleased with the product. I tossed the batteries and bought new batteries. Not Eneloop but the kind that recharge via USB-C on each cell and the charging cable is split four ways to charge four cells at once. The batteries work is about all I can say as they fall short in high current devices.
When I used the newer batteries in my electronic flash the recycle time was about 50% longer than with the Eneloop batteries. That indicates not enough current. The capacity may be the same on both sets of batteries (at least as claimed) but the actual function is decidedly not. The new batteries will be relegated to the shelf.
I bought four new Eneloop batteries with charger and four extra batteries. The flash takes four and I keep spares with me when dealing with the flash. They were newer models, supposed to have more capacity and I suspect the current capacity will be the same as the old batteries. The Eneloop batteries have an extremely good shelf life and one year of sitting on the shelf the charge is still well over 90%.
I ordered the batteries through B&H as I have the Payboo card which takes the tax off the order. Amazon had the batteries for the same price but I would have paid tax. Yeh, sometimes I am a cheap rectum orifice. B&H ships in two days whereas Amazon was five days. Amazon is not always the best choice.
Eneloop batteries, highly recommended, by me, would work very well in AA powered FLASHLIGHTS, with long shelf life.
Don Schlitz, songwriter on “The Gambler” died the other day.
Who will be #3?
We saw Schlitz at the Grand Ole Opry last Fall, and he was very healthy looking for 70-ish.
Riders in the Sky, also on the program that night, looked like death in comparison despite only being a few years older.
Get a charger with a refresh cycle to use with Eneloop batteries.
I’ll check the brand name on my charger, but it is fine Chinesium from Amazon which was highly rated.
I suppose that to smoke a brisket on Friday and then in the oven overnight so that it is hopefully perfectly cooked at about lunch time on Saturday, May 16th, ….
And my freezer is like minus 15 F and my spare fridge is about plus 36 F, I need to pull a brisket from the freezer tomorrow. Sort of like thawing a turkey.
Plans. Maybe not great plans but I have plans.
I tried to just smoke a brisket last year. Rather dry. Tasted good but not at all even to a crummy BBQ joint level for being tasty. This year is going to be a few hours on the pellet grill to smoke for flavor and then into a roasting pan, on a rack if I can find one the fits the pan, sealed with heavy aluminum foil and into a 220 F oven over night. If it comes out like pot roast, oh well.
Sides? Stuff I like to eat. Deviled eggs are always a hit. Some Rotel/Velveeta cheese dip in the little crock pot. I only need to buy flour tortillas and chips.
Bring tater salad and beans and whatever else and whatever you want to drink. Y’all figure it out. Everyone is cool.
If the weather ruins the event, no problem. Just more for me.
Plans. 🙂
The Colonists will have to be kicked out eventually, just like the Chinese merchant class installed in Vietnam by the Frenchies when the country was their colonial possession.
Sooner or later, the Colonists will gain serious politcal power, and they have zero interest in assimilation, only dominance like they have back home.
Gore lost his seat on the Apple board so he’s gonna need a whole new grift to keep paying the bills on the private jet.
No, Apple shareholders did not suddenly wise up. Apple has a mandatory retirement age of 60 for the board members.
Willie Nelson is pretty old.
I just saw Willie’s face on a billboard for his whisky brand driving through Downtown last night.
Willie will outlive us all. Willie along with Ringo and Keith Richards.
Looking at the forecast, yes, I closed all of the windows and turned the heat on. Looks like a few more days of wearing socks and sweatpants coming up.
It will be pushing 100f soon enough. Complaining is pointless.
Although I will complain about mosquitoes.
3/3.5/2 2,407 ft2 on 34.81 acres for $1,399,000
https://www.har.com/homedetail/1098-e-state-hwy-36-abilene-tx-79602/13072960
1098 State Highway 36, Abilene, TX 79602
50 x 110 foot air conditioned workshop with upstairs apartment
house and workshop are security gated and fenced
built in 2019
9.8 miles to Abilene HEB
9.0 miles to Abilene Chikfila
9.4 miles to Sam’s Club
can run cattle on the leftover property with fence and pond
I think that the man cave might be big enough for my future needs.
When God said “yehi ‘or” (“fiat lux”, “let there be light”), Willie Nelson flipped the switch.
We saw a 35th anniversary screening of “Silence of the Lambs” last night at the local Flix Brewhouse.
Our waiter, appropriately enough, was somewhere on the trans spectrum, male to female.
Deep voice, but electrolysis, significant weight loss, and, I’m guessing, facial feminization surgery.
Except for the voice, he will pass really well.
3/3.5/2 2,407 ft2 on 34.81 acres for $1,399,000
Nice.
That looks great! Your best find ever.
I’m not a fan of the walnut stained cabinets but that’s me. But it does look like oak wood. So a plus there.
Looks like a pellet stove in the corner. Nice. Might lower the wall mounted TX about 4 feet, but that’s me.
Security gated? Yeah. I got that here. Mighty Mule!
34 acres should be enough for maybe 3 steers. Get that AG exemption on the property.
Looks nice. Odd that I didn’t notice a picture of the front door. I guess it’s a go see for yourself. thing.
Still. Abilene. Crusoe Energy company town.
Crusoe’s milkshake brings all the boys to the yard.
More than Elon’s right now.
Nice. I like the apartment in the man cave. 86″ TV is gonna vanish in that space.
n
When I was traveling in the USAF the others in the group wanted to go to a specific bar. I did not drink and was the designated driver. I got food and non-alcoholic drinks for free at bars. This bar had a lot of really good looking “women”. After about 30 minutes one of the guys in the group I was with suddenly grabbed the rest of us and said to get out, quick. Turns out he snuck a hand under a dress and found balls.
Spent the afternoon, which was gorgeous by the way, cool and a bit sunny, breaking down the laptop carts. I won 6 more today so I’ll be doing more next week. Also won a 55″ digital signage monitor. Seems to work, although I haven’t run video thru it yet.
Ate leftovers for dinner and then did the kid taxi thing.
Time to start winding down for the night.
n
Looks nice. Odd that I didn’t notice a picture of the front door. I guess it’s a go see for yourself. thing.
The front door is in pictures 1, 2, 3, and some others. The front door is on the side of the house away from the man cave. The front door is on the right side of the side porch.
Nice. I like the apartment in the man cave. 86″ TV is gonna vanish in that space.
Yeah, my brother has a 200 inch projection tv in his 2,400 ft2 deer camp building. You don’t mind the coarseness in that huge of a space.
I have been trying to figure out why they built such a huge room in the man cave. They only thing that I can come up with is that they rented it out for parties but there is no parking for that.
https://www.basicinstructions.net/basic-instructions/2026/3/9/how-to-confront-the-horrors-of-the-past
Hey, Space:1999 was not horrible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6BXaGEuqxo
That looks great! Your best find ever.
I’m not a fan of the walnut stained cabinets but that’s me. But it does look like oak wood. So a plus there.
We have white painted cabinets all over our current house. Kitchen and bathrooms. I hate them.
I think I’m going to bed. I’ll read for a bit, and hopefully get some extra sleep tonight.
n
3/3.5/2 2,407 ft2 on 34.81 acres for $1,399,000
https://www.har.com/homedetail/1098-e-state-hwy-36-abilene-tx-79602/13072960
1098 State Highway 36, Abilene, TX 79602
50 x 110 foot air conditioned workshop with upstairs apartment
house and workshop are security gated and fenced
built in 2019
9.8 miles to Abilene HEB
9.0 miles to Abilene Chikfila
9.4 miles to Sam’s Club
can run cattle on the leftover property with fence and pond
I think that the man cave might be big enough for my future needs.
The Bryan house is still my favorite. It has the apartment with living area and kitchenette for our daughter built into the 7/5/3 house on 4 acres. I would love to see the floor plan.
https://www.har.com/homedetail/5792-andert-rd-bryan-tx-77808/13482555?lid=10570740
In both cases, the man cave is big enough to run my two software companies out of it.
>>Most phones also have sensors for the Earth’s magnetic and gravimetric fields, and I assume those are part of a standard GPS component now, especially milspec.
A Faraday cage cannot jam the magnetic field, and a subscription to the sensor data is easy to set up within a Cocoa Touch application. In crowd situations, my guess is that iOS supplements GPS and WiFi data with a crowdsourced real time database of magnetic field data correlated to lat/long in a narrow area.
I assume Android does something similar.
Both probably “phone home” with that data along with other telemetry.
All good until the batteries are all depleted and there’s no more fuel for the gennies.
One thing that always bothered me about “The Walking Dead” was the number of walkie-talkies that somehow always had some charge left.
>>*As a master procrastinator, I find I work best under deadline, but I don’t recommend it to others.
All depends on who sets the deadline…
Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!
Good morning. 2026.05.01, it’s not an emergency, it’s a day off! Hurray! Time to get up and do stuff. I have high hopes of finding the surface of the workbench in the BOL garage… It’s good to have a goal.
Hey Chicken Boy, I think you need to see this: Hen