Hot and humid, although maybe a bit less than Houston. It was only 80F last night up here. I’m hoping for overcast as I’m working on a white metal roof…
Did my stuff yesterday. Meeting had some stress and strain. Everyone that said something liked the new venue. Then I went home to deal with the dead A/C. W arranged an uber to get to the airport so I could stay and wait for the repair guy. He showed up and identified the problem and we came up with a treatment plan and schedule. It was going to be three days so I decided NOT to cancel my BOL work week.
Headed up, got here, had the mower die. I’ll have to deal with that if I want to move the bricks I’m demo’ing unless I want to use the wheelbarrow, and I don’t.
Plan for the day is get set up for the demolition. See what the sun does. Do demo or work on mower or other projects if the sun is overhead. Flexibility, not indecision…
And stacking.
nick
(I’m working! / end Ralph Wiggins voice
Air filter? Fuel filter?
Yesterday I went up to the family house to meet someone that my brother had wanted one of his race cars to go to. This one was a stripped-down Integra. My sister and I had him go through the barn to see if we’d missed anything that went with it. Good thing, because there was a lot that we’d missed. Original vs racing fuel pump. All of the interior body trim and seats which we should have recognized but didn’t but he did. Etc. The guy had a crew-cab pickup with 8′ bed. Good thing. I’d packed the Integra with everything that could be crammed into it, and I’m really good at packing maximum stuff into a fixed volume, and then the pickup was packed to the gunwales. The guy also found a vintage fuel tank in the barn’s attic, possibly from one of my dad’s early motorcycles, which he said would be worth a fortune to the right buyer.
Told him to go ahead and sell the tank and give half of the money to the racing club my brother had been in. Also gave him the car trailer the car had been sitting on, since I had no use for it. Told him to give $500 to the club for that, so he got it for a very good price. I hadn’t met this guy before but my mom had. My brother used to work with his dad and my brother’s the one who got him into cars and racing (which is how he now makes his living) so my mom said he’ll be good to his word about money to the racing club. We’ve probably lived up my brother’s wishes as well as possible.
The barn sure is empty with no race cars and the dozen sets of racing tires (most on rims but half of them worn out) and several sets of trailer tires (pretty well worn out) and the rest of the stuff gone. Actually, there are still a few sets of tires, which I’ll take off of the rims as needed and then take to the dump. No big deal.
And then we got to the paperwork. In one sense taking care of the titles was easy because I wielded the mighty pen of the executor. In another sense it wasn’t because Connecticut DMV does not accept hand-written bills of sale even when the vehicle was a gift and there were some other picky requirements. With any luck everything was done properly or else the fixups can be done by phone or internet or paper mail.
Sunday. Good morning!
Good luck with your projects, Nick. Wheelbarrowing is great exercise (I was never so toned as when I was doing a lot of it), but no fun in the heat. It is getting hot again here. The thermometer at the butchers just now said 37 degrees in the sun, which is around 100F, I would guess.
I watered W1’s plants before the sun hit them, and changed out a defective hose connector. It looked like Gardena, but wasn’t. I replaced it with the real thing. Time to find something I can do in the shade.
Have a good day!
Update to the above: My sister says the guy put a message on the racing club’s Facebook page asking how to make a donation in my brother’s name. (I couldn’t see that myself because I have Facebook and many other sites blocked in my hosts file, and it wouldn’t have occurred to me to look anyway.) It’s always gratifying to see that some people carry out promises and that not everyone on the face of the planet is a scumbag.
While I was out yesterday I swung by the feed store to get more corn and pellets for the voracious poop-butts. They had a new-to-me bag of mixed seed, corn, crumble, and dried fruit – supposed to be a full-nutrition feed, more tempting for birds who need more variety, or some such. My birds are anything but picky eaters and anything but deprived of treats but I picked up a 35# bag on a whim. Just set out a handful and it met with the birds’ full approval.
My birds are probably not the most spoiled chickens on the face of the planet but they have to be in the running.
Well, as you say, not everyone on the face of the planet is a scumbag! No doubt the chickens appreciate your care in their own featherbrained way.
Roland Emmerich is usually entertaining even if the movie bombs.
On balance, his movies have made a lot of money, but most happened when Hollywood still had the cable and home video revenue streams which allowed them to bury the losses.
Containers are lighter weight than VMs, with each instance sharing a single OS kernel and pooled resources. Individual applications bundle their code and requisite libraries into instance images rather than standalone binaries, but the images can be layered to share library modules.
On Linux, the Kernel has process isolation features and a strict development policy about backwards compatibility at the application level which makes implementation of virtualization environments simple.
On Windows, the virtualization environment manages instances running under HyperV or WSL, Windows Subsystem for Linux.
My guess is that Windows 12 will install a Docker-compatible virtualization manager by default, similar to what Red Hat does on RHEL and Fedora. Embrace and extend.
The virtualization manager will also solve the problem of HyperV and WSL virtualization instances running simultaneously, allowing Linux application images as well as Windows to share resources and communicate with each other.
Virtualization will preserve the WHQL competitive advantage while allowing users to run Linux application images on Windows.
Mr. Fusion is trying to rise but is obscured by many low clouds. It is 79 F and feels like 100 % humidity at 7 am. I went to bed at 1 am and have been awake since 5 am. This sucks.
Some guy in Brazil has been messing with my software all night. He has been trying to get the cracked versions to work but the hidden security keeps on nailing him. Now he is trying to get a free password from my website but the dozen passwords that he has gotten before are stopping him as he is only allowed two freebies. He refuses to pay for a license.
Rot in hell, Lindsey Graham.
https://abcnews.com/Politics/sen-lindsey-graham-south-carolina-dies-71/story?id=134688641
Send lat/long to Hegseth to upload to the Death Star.
Speaking of low-lifes, has there been any news on Mitch McConnell? I hope it is good news and he has also expired.
McConnell is probably legally dead, but the Republicans don’t want the Dem KY Governor calling a special election overlapping with the midterms or filing a lawsuit over the law which requires him to call the election in the hope of getting it overturned before November.
Beshear wants to make the case that he should be in the Presidential calculus, at least at the VP level.
Something is up with KY as of late.
Machine shop pron with your covfefe: Clough42 demos new tapping arm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P435X-DOSqA
The first power bill for my house with the number above $500 arrived yesterday.
$117 in Oncor delivery charges.
Someone has to pay for the transmission line supplying Crusoe Energy’s new “Stargate” data center in Abilene from the generators in the oil patch.
You thought they were going to build the data centers in the oil patch?
Sweet Summer Child.
My power bill with a full month including the mini-split was just over $300.
The mini-split is great. Having the garage work area is a dream come true.
It has hit 110ºF+ for the last 10 days in Vegas. Soon, we’ll be in the 100ºF+ 24/7 cycle for 2-4 weeks.
Up and feeding myself. Moka pot for coffee. Egg and english muffin with bacon. I’ve got some cherry preserves for the other half of the muffin.
Even though it’s a work day for me and I’m gonna be short days because of the A/C fix, I needed to sleep. Short nights twice in a row and then too little last night would have made me a stumble bum, which isn’t good on a roof.
82F with bright overcast and rising.
W and the girls arrived safely at the in-laws.
TIme to do some stretching and get a move on.
n
Warm, dry, overcast. So it might hit 100F again, but the cirrus might keep it under that.
The 200ac ‘Juno’ fire nearest me is semi-contained, the 2600ac ‘Summit’ fire further away (35mi) is only 15% contained with evacuation orders.
Ouch! How many kWh? Do you semi-track kWh usage?
The EDC has a window unit a/c built into a hole in the wall. It seemed the right way to do this 30 years ago. The elec bill seemed to be getting pretty high. I washed the a/c coils and that helped a bit. But it finally got to where it was never cycling. Simply worn out after ten or so years. I forget the drop in kWh used but the elec bill dropped $25 a month when I replaced the unit.
So maybe you have an a/c problem. Or the fridge is constantly running. Might have a leaking air duct, too.
The house used 504 kWh on the bill for June. $84. All electric, including the water well.
Just before 7am it was 76f outside and 95% humidity. You could almost see the humidity. Felt like walking into a steamy bath room but without the steam. Sticky.
Inside it’s 80f and 52% humidity. Feels good. Pits are not sweating. My feet could almost use a pair of socks. The dogs seem very comfortable.
Currently 92f and 55% humidity. In the shade it’s really not bad.
I have the power bills going back to when we moved into the house. When I looked quickly, usage was consistent with last June/July.
Last Summer was hotter in June, but we had the flooding rains during the week of the 4th of July.
“The first power bill for my house with the number above $500 arrived yesterday.”
Did that include a packet of lube?
We had a power outage a couple of days ago. Maybe because it went down, and up, and down, and up, and… Anyway the UPS was empty, and various devices very confused, when it finally came back up.
Where we lived before, power was very reliable. Here, not so much. I’ll be glad when we get our battery installed later this year.
Ah. The latest rate increase got you. Me too. This June was 504 kWh. Last June, which by the bill looks an average degree warmer, was 608. But just using 104 kWh less only dropped the bill $8.
The EDC used 394 kWh vs 413 last year. Yeah, I did turn Moa off but not much of a savings, the UPS said it’s load for everything, Starlink, router, switch, NanoBeam, Squeezebox, and Moa, was 35 to 40 watts. Anyway, the bill this year is down a whopping 29 cents.
Too soon to figure the payback time on the floor insulation. It’s not going to be six years like the windows. That’s fine.
Whew. Sun came out and baked my brain. Started the increased heartbeat thing so I came in and cooled down. No more chimbly work until later in the afternoon, or until the overcast comes back.
I can pick up the brick, or work on the mower. I think I’ll do the mower work, I can do that in deep shade.
It’s taking an average of three hits from the mini sledge for each brick. 5ftx3ft box, 20ft tall. That’s a lot of bricks. That’s a lot of hits. I’m gonna space this out a lot.
———–
I am wearing my fall protection.
———–
The metal roof isn’t steep, but it’s like ice when it’s wet, or has grains of mortar and brick on it. Fortunately I’m uphill of the chimney and can’t fall thru it. When I get it lower to the roof, I’ll set up scaffold and work from the deck side.
Oh, and the metal roof is white, the brick is white, and the sun makes it a 360deg rotisserie of suck.
n
BTW, 96F in the shade.
n
@SteveF: belatedly, I’m sorry for your loss.
Faith in humanity
restoredsomewhat improved. Which is needful these days.Thanks. We all knew it was coming. The end was more sudden than expected but that was the only surprise.
I’ve been saying for a couple weeks that he got a death sentence a year and a half ago when the cancer moved from esophagus to ??? and then to lung and the chemo only slowed it down. My mom was mildly offended when I first said it but after a while realized I was right.
I let the hens out while I mowed, as I almost always do. A little while after I started, I got a scoop (a cup or so) of the new “treat” feed and scattered it in the mulch around a couple of the fruit trees. The birds trotted right over when I said Who wants a treat? then gobbled it very enthusiastically. Enthusiastically enough that they didn’t run away when the mower came within six or eight feet of them. They were keeping an eye out for Scary Loud Thing just in case, but they were determined to scratch and peck until the last moment.
When I finished mowing, they were all sunning themselves under the front – south-facing – bushes. Why dark-feathered birds would want to do that on a sunny day with the shade temperature just under 90F is beyond me, but trying to figure out the reasoning of a chicken’s peanut-sized brain is an exercise in futility. They did trot right to the run after I shook the bushes a couple times and told them Go Home. The water tank has enough cups and buttons for all to drink at the same time, which they made use of, then went to perch in the shade.
For some reason the buttheads have repeatedly kicked the straw out of the coop. Too warm in the hot summer days? They’re just buttheads? The next time I clean the coop I’ll put wood chips down and see if that’s any better.
BTW, 96F in the shade.
Pouring down rain in Richmond.
Dr.Max in Belgrade, buddy of the breaker in Brazil from last night, is trying to break my software security now. I wish him luck, it took me a long time to design and write it, it will take him a long time to break it. I have a secret which I believe is nigh unto unbreakable.
Sunday. Going on midnight. I have been waiting on input to Megaproject from colleagues since 15:30. This might be clocking up lots of overtime, but it is pretty intolerable. Not happy. I think I will just go to bed and let the chips fall where they may until office hours tomorrow.
Goodnight!
@denis, it’s work. Not life. The desire to be the hero who saves the day needs to be fought.
—
I figured out the issue with the mower. The seal between the carb and the fuel bowl finally eroded enough that it’s letting air in and fuel out.
“Fortunately” I had a replacement carb. Didn’t even have to rob the spare parts mower. It’s not the exact same, but for another engine in the line, I think… but it is a bolt on replacement as far as I can tell. Did some test mowing then the rain came.
We got very light drizzle for very short periods for the next couple of hours and while it was overcast and cooler I got back on the roof and took down another couple of feet. I’m down to the 6″ curb for the flashing on the roof side. That’s about 5ft of chimney removed.
Next task is to get the garden trailer and load all the pieces from the deck to move them somewhere else. I’ll make a pile. Most of them were fire damaged and brittle, so they broke easily. I’ll be more careful when I’m working from the deck to save a bunch if I decide to re-brick under the new window.
I needed the mower running to pull the trailer…
Fractal.
n
Today’s movie was Monster’s Ball. Never heard of it. Don’t understand the title. Don’t know where it came from. 2001 copyright, I think. MMI.
Billy Bob Thornton, Heath Ledger, and Halle Berry. Not a horrible movie. Good actors I suppose. Pretty fake plot. Most of the characters are shallow.
It’s going on the trash/goodwill stack. I’ve watched it once. That’s all I need.
Before Heath Ledger destroyed his career and sanity with “Brokeback Mountain”.
Suppose so. I have Brokeback Mountain and managed to make it in 15 minutes before ejecting the disc.
It seemed “pretentious”, like Last Picture Show which is suppose to be a great movie. I heard of it in high school. That I managed all of 15 minutes of.
I’ll try both again someday.
Yeah. Way too “Woody Allen” and “Andy Warhol” crap. “It’s ART!!! Peon!”.
Heath Ledger was on a roll after “The Patriot” and “A Knights Tale”.
The latter movie has aged well and has been playing art houses for the 25th anniversary this year.
https://redstate.com/streiff/2026/07/12/you-can-run-but-you-just-die-tired-secretive-israeli-unit-kills-over-2500-october-7-hamas-terrorists-n2204258
tick-tock
So dark out that I have had lights on inside the house since 3pm. Not humid, just some occasional giant warm drops.
Swamp cooler is working almost too well In a mere 90F.
The chihuahuas get picked up tomorrow, I’ll put them in at five tonight when I go over to have dinner at the neighbors. Then let them out for a pee when I get back.
The neighbor’s kid is off to do things with killer drones for General Atomics in a week or two. I think we’re up to 30 or 40 MQ9’s lost? But that is chump change money compared to what we’ve been spending on this Iran thing overall. Money well spent.
And politicians hate body bags because the voters hate them…
https://redstate.com/streiff/2026/07/12/you-can-run-but-you-just-die-tired-secretive-israeli-unit-kills-over-2500-october-7-hamas-terrorists-n2204258
tick-tock
What is the old saying?
Oh yeah, when planning revenge first dig two graves.
“Oh yeah, when planning revenge first dig two graves.”
The Muslim Arabs and Persians do not seem to have any ability to anticipate the consequences of their actions. Whether this is a failure of planning on their part is irrelevant. The only thing that has kept large swaths of them around is the stubborn forbearance of Western civilization. The time is coming when that will no longer be so.
Tribalism and low trust. Short time preference. Anger issues and no self control.
Sooner or later the yap dog gets kicked across the room.
n
Also, absorbing 50 years of US and foreign media portraying the country as weak and largely ignorant doesn’t help dissuade them from signing up for their one way mission and virgins.
One wrong move, and they’re at Gitmo, with the female half of my former Colonel Bat Guano neighbor household tying the burlap bag containing the corn snake around their heads and wondering how she’ll kill the time waiting for the screaming to stop.
@Lynn,
You were the one who introduced me to the Taylor Varga series. A new chapter was (at long last) posted on the Sufficient Velocity site last Friday. Short, not much happens, but it is nice to see that the author is working on it again.
@Lynn,
You were the one who introduced me to the Taylor Varga series. A new chapter was (at long last) posted on the Sufficient Velocity site last Friday. Short, not much happens, but it is nice to see that the author is working on it again.
Cool!
https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/taylor-varga-worm-luna-varga.32119/page-1930#post-38650588