Hot and humid. Still dry too. Crunchy grass. It got well above 100F yesterday and was still 84F at midnight. There was a breeze which helped. I mostly worked indoors, but going out to cut stuff was like an oven. Probably the same today too.
Did my interior trimout for the window. I have two “soldier course” bricks to mortar back into place and the project will be finished. I might try to do that today, depending on my back mostly. Had some drama with the A/C in yesterday’s comments, so I didn’t get home last night.
My plan for today is to sleep, get up, maybe do the brick work, and then head home. I’ve got a ton of stuff to do to get ready for my event, and I feel a little behind. A lot of it is “winging it” and just doing what I did last year, but I do have some new stuff to sell too. That should at least get a quick checkout.
We’ll see what actually happens. It’s always something…
So stack and prep, then the big things turn out to be smaller things, and the drama goes away.
nick
Tired today. The dog had some problem last night, coughing, licking, etc.. For comfort, my wife let him out of the crate where he usually sleeps. So he decided to herd the cat for the rest of the night. The cat was not amused. Neither were we…
Teaching today (functional programming). Tiny class – weird – last year I had 20, this year only 7. Make for a nice, personal experience. I suppose fewer are choosing a programming career, because of the worry about AI.
Programmers will still be needed. We fossils remember when the math teachers thought the calculator would be the death of math in school. Sure, we all use calculators, but knowing how to add and multiply remains an essential skill.
I think AI and programming will be much the same. Programmers will increasingly become requirements engineers, but knowing how to program will remain an essential background skill.
Ing’s Pulling Through practicalized Kearny’s Nuclear War Skills illustrating MacGyver methods for air filters, Geiger counter, etc. There was a bit about growing sprouts for a quick salad. Our hero had a well buried tunnel ‘tween house and barn for the bones of a fallout shelter and a collection of early 1900’s antique tools and machines to facilitate a mostly electricity free existence.
Close quarters existence with family and others drove the plot. I enjoyed it, but haven’t seen my copy in a long while as paperbacks remain boxed up in storage.
Tuesday. Good morning.
The wildfires near the BOL are still not under control, but are said not to have spread much overnight due to some light rainfall yesterday.
A forester buddy sent me video taken from a helicopter. Awesome and terrifying, especially as the fire seems to have progressed from the fens into the spruce forests.
Some firefighters in hospital suffering from smoke inhalation, and one other seems to have suffered a heart attack while working. No fatalities, and no homes destroyed, but many still evacuated.
Keep up those prayers for rain and calm winds, please!
For all of his faults, Jimmy Carter briefly attended Georgia Tech, graduated in the top 10% of his class from the Naval Academy, and was involved with Hyman Rickover’s nuclear submarine program when his father died, cutting short his Navy career.
His nuclear engineer skills were for real.
The Federal Student Loan program has Borrower Defense as the mechanism intended to keep the schools honest, but widespread application of that device would devastate many “good” schools so the institutions support the Dems pushing mass loan forgiveness even if many know it couldn’t happen without a very complicated bill passing Congress.
Wikipedia has Carter taking one of the 90 second trips into the reactor at Chalk River as part of the team resolving that incident.
At this point, I doubt many alumni of “good” schools who don’t view their educations as worthless, regardless of reality, would accept their alma matters’ reputations being torn to shreds in a mass application of Borrower Defense.
Carter trained to be a nuclear sub commander, but did not complete the course due to family obligations.
His claim to be a nuclear engineer was firmly rebutted at the time by real nuclear engineers. When he walked it back to “equivalent to”, that in turn was firmly rebutted by people who had been in the same program and completed it.
So, no, he was not a nuclear engineer, although some of his uncompleted training for nuclear sub commander and related practical experience doubtless overlapped.
And, yes, add to his many faults claiming to be something he was not.
It may be fraud to outsiders, but to most colleges and universities it is a business plan. Money. Universities (and colleges) in the U.S. top three priorities.
Learning in the hard sciences is relegated to providing tenure to professors who use the university research facilities to get themselves patents while using student labor to do the actual research and the manual tasks involved. Along the way print a new multi-hundred-dollar textbook every year to rape as much money from the students (See #1 above).
There are exceptions of course and there are much good information and research coming from universities. The amount of data that arrives, based on the number of people involved, is largely imbalanced and not a good return on the investment in people and money.
University administrators being paid millions of dollars each year in compensation. The upper levels of management being paid close to seven figures each year. Layers of management that are 10 levels deep.
Don’t even get me started on student organizations that believe they should have a say in university operations. Students are customers, and demanding more cross-gender, gay-oriented, alternate sexual universe studies is just asinine.
Hydro power is maxed out. There are no more rivers that can be damned to generate more power.
The only viable option for the future is nuclear. I would like to see a small nuclear reactor design, basically no, or few, moving parts. Small, about the size of a couple of medium sized homes. Enough power for 2,000 homes. A standard design. Safe design. Largely automated. The first reactor would be expensive. Each subsequent build would be cheaper than the prior build.
What is even a bigger fraud is VA loan forgiveness. Any veteran at 100% can have their student loans forgiven, with no tax consequences. I could, if I wanted, go back to school, take out a loan for $100K, or more. At the completion of school have that loan forgiven, written off, dumped on the taxpayers. It is perfectly legal. The schooling could be in a degree that I would never use. The school gets the money and the taxpayers get scammed. (See #1 above).
How about if we start a school and sign up Mr Ray and a few thousands of his brothers in arms?
We could take turns being president.
Ray should get a doctorate in education. He can take out a big loan and just pay for the degree without bothering with coursework or dissertation. It’s not like he’d lose out on anything important by not doing coursework and research. I’m sure he can find a college whose president
is a whore in a pantsuithas a sufficiently flexible morality so long as money is provided.Once properly credentialed, Ray can open his own school, teach worthwhile subjects, set standards of discipline, and get paid with taxpayer funds.
I’ve always wanted a degree in mophead realignment. It would nicely complement my MS in Maths. I’d have to pay for the degree since I’m only “retired”.
I’ve been kept busy lately, mostly with one stupid thing after another. eg, the exhaust pipe of my van was dragging on the ground. It had been kind of rumbly for a while but not too bad, but after driving a short stretch which was not as smooth and level and pothole-free as one might hope, I guess the bouncing did it in. OK, annoying but not a huge problem. Except that the parts were hard to come by. Sure, the van is 16 years old, but it’s a Toyota Sienna and there are a lot of them on the road, even that old. Anyway, got it dealt with. Except that one of the ring gaskets was the wrong one. Checked around, can’t find one in any auto parts stores. Toyota dealership can get one in a day or two but we’ll have to see whether it’s the right one this time.
Most of the past week or two has been like that. No huge problems, just endless friction in trying to get anything done. Friction including fuzzy-headedness caused by being woken at least every other night.
The only real question is, how is this all Trump’s fault????
Another high desert summer day. I woke up feeling tired and creaky, even though I didn’t perform any heroic exertions yesterday.
I have to take the younger cat in for his FELK booster, then I’m done for today with mandatory chores.
I’m sure I’ll find something else to do though.
—
It is interesting to see that so many people here have read Dean Ing. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone in real life that has read him. Just another midlist author from the last century…. Maybe John del Arroz will do a YT episode, like he did for Poul Anderson and John D. Ford recently? RIP.
I have all of Dean Ing’s books. Good reads.
The Vegas vacation from heat is over. It is back to 110ºF+ days and 90ºF+ nights. Soon we will enter the 100ºF+ 24/7 period. I’m running aux A/C.
I continue to research solutions to fix my automated TV show download system. It looks like Apple Automator will play a part. It can run terminal commands, so I’ll have to learn the terminal version of Handbrake.
I’ve been 3D printing some hose connector parts for the EcoFlow Wave 2 portable heat pump. They require “supports” since there are a lot of threads and tabs which require a support structure since they float. I’m not used to that. The Orca slicer can auto add supports and I got a good print, but getting the supports cut out is a challenge. I’m learning.
Up and moving. Very sore. Will just pack up and head out. I can play bricklayer another day.
90F sunny and the temperature is rising. Coffee infusion started, food infusion finished.
Time for some more stretching.
n
Another system I’m looking at are various muxing and metadata programs that can “watch” a folder and output to another folder. If those work, I can just output the final video to the Apple TV “automatically add” folder and I’m done.
@SteveF
For want of a coat hanger…
Linux has inotify-tools and inotifywait but that utility package is based on a kernel API.
Looking quickly, it appears that Mac OS X has FSEvents. Writing a command line C program similar to inotifywait should be trivial. Someone has probably done that and made the source available.
Oh, I took care of it in the parking lot, with a bungee cord. Normally I have several lengths of several kinds of wire in the box in my van but I couldn’t find them. The van was quite full with stuff I was transporting and probably I just missed it, or maybe I gave it to someone on the side of the road for some repair of their own and forgot to replace it. However, even with the pipe suspended from the rear axle, the car is still kind of loud, what with the muffler no longer being part of the exhaust system.
Too complicated, and I can’t find anything like that. Automator should be able to do that and is high level enough I can script it. I found an old Automator script that sort of does what I want. I would have to update it.
California continues making things more costly for little gain
https://redstate.com/bobhoge/2026/08/18/californias-war-on-drivers-speeds-up-now-theyre-coming-for-your-tires-n2205755
@MrAtoZ: Do you like it? Does it run off of house mains?
I am interested in auxiliary heat for the colder rooms, but I can’t find an SEER number anywhere, although it appears to be a heat pump with a outside minimum air temperature of 5C (41F), which is kind of standard in these small units.
They v2’s seem to be going for $279 at Ecowave.
Yes, I like the W2, and it runs off of mains or a sufficiently large “solar generator,” like one of the Ankers I have. Before I had the mini-split installed in the garage, I used the W2 and vented it through the garage wall vent (made a plug out of insulation board with a hole for the hose). I plugged it into the Anker, with two 200watt solar panels attached to the Anker (I ran the solar cables under the garage door in one of the slab creases). It kept the garage workable while the mini-split was installed.
The heat function worked when I tested the W2, but I have little need for that function in Vegas.
The best thing is its size, portability, and ability to run off a moderately sized Anker. I have some window vents and set it up in my Subie with an Anker battery (which takes 12V to keep it charged when the car is running*).
*I used my Bouge RV cooler set to freeze, running off the Anker (and mains when in hotels), driving around the country for a week a couple of years ago. It had no problem keeping everything frozen.
Brought the chickens out. They’d been lounging in the run, mostly sitting on the grass, presumably to cool down a little even though the run is shaded in the afternoon; deliberate placement. But as soon as I brought them to the bushes in front, they started rolling in the dirt, mostly in the sun though there were shaded spots.
Deep Chicken Thoughts: Wisdom
Deep Chicken Thoughts: Healthy Eating
“Drummer Frank Beard of ZZ Top dies after facing health issues”
https://www.chron.com/culture/article/frank-beard-zz-top-death-22393491.php
“His signature backbeat was key to keeping ZZ on top.”
Bummer. I only saw them live once back in 1978 or so.
Here’s 55 memes that will make you feel old….
https://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/old-lady-nostlagia-meme
Link
An EdD requires coursework and a dissertation?
One Degree of Herr Doktor Death
https://redstate.com/kyle-becker/2026/08/18/faucis-wingman-just-pled-guilty-now-its-time-to-hold-him-accountable-n2205772
Mexico haz sadz their army iz being dispersed
https://redstate.com/terichristoph/2026/08/18/trump-quietly-sends-mexican-illegal-aliens-somewhere-they-never-expected-n2205758
I still want the invaders to be warehoused in Greenland. I had hoped that was why Trump had been talking about grabbing it.
I’m surprised they were still around.
Columbia House begat The Pizza Box Dream and taught my generation a lot of bad habits about compensating artists fairly for their work, especially musicians.
Somali man who won Minnesota Outstanding Immigrant Award arrested for Medicaid fraud and sec trafficking
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/minnesota-man-arrested-for-medicaid-fraud-scheme-previously-won-states-outstanding-refugee-award/
It’s almost as if you can’t trust them…
We got the cream of the crop from Somalia…
if the crop was toxic black mold growing on a pile of rotten manure.
@Ray – Didn’t Comcast send you a “free” router to test?
https://www.theverge.com/news/981381/comcast-xfinity-shield-wifi-motion-sensing
Raycissssst.
I’m starting to see comments in Libertarian/Conservative message groups about Nick Shirley not being totally trustworthy, hinting that he may be in league with Da Jooz.
I had no idea Columbia House still existed. There was another record club, RCA? I forget. Both were a pain the backside what with 10 or 12 days to return the “I don’t want the monthly selections” routine.
And the LPs didn’t sound as good as what you could buy at the record shop.
When the law is on your side, focus on the law.
When the facts are on your side, focus on the facts.
When neither is on your side, focus on discrediting the witnesses.
“Starlink’s New Gigabit Gateways Face Interference Complaint From Iridium”
https://www.pcmag.com/news/starlinks-new-gigabit-gateways-face-interference-complaint-from-iridium
“’A fair number of SpaceX’s gateways would cause unacceptable interference,’ Iridium tells the FCC, citing the company’s ongoing tests.”
““SpaceX’s proposed earth station site in Bastrop, TX, is over 1,400 kilometers away from Iridium’s closest feeder link stations in Chandler and Tempe, Arizona. At this distance, geographical separation and atmospheric attenuation preclude any potential risk of unacceptable interference,” SpaceX’s satellite policy associate Matthew Turk told the Commission in June. “Commission rules do not require SpaceX to complete coordination with Iridium prior to applying, receiving a license, or operating feeder links from Bastrop, TX, so long as SpaceX demonstrates its ability to protect incumbent feeder links from unacceptable interference.””
If you are getting interference from 1,400 kilometers away then something is wrong with your setup and it needs to be fixed.
For all of his faults, Jimmy Carter briefly attended Georgia Tech, graduated in the top 10% of his class from the Naval Academy, and was involved with Hyman Rickover’s nuclear submarine program when his father died, cutting short his Navy career.
His nuclear engineer skills were for real.
Jimmy Carter refused the command of one of the first of the nuclear submarines and went home to be a peanut farmer after his father passed away. Carter was the captain of one of the last diesel electric submarines in the 1950s where the exploits are detailed here:
https://www.amazon.com/Blind-Mans-Bluff-Submarine-Espionage/dp/1610393589?tag=ttgnet-20
I have all of Dean Ing’s books. Good reads.
I currently have two of his books, “Wild Country” and “Single Combat”. I had more but lost them during The Great Flood of 1989.
The wISP I have, that doesn’t work anymore and all I can get from them is “it’s good from here, reboot you router” which, well, I rebooted the router and no change. Rebooted the radio and my almost 4mb connection that use to run 90mb simply stopped. The router lights blink. The radio is talking to the tower but not to me.
Anyway.
I have a pair of NanoBeams. In bridge mode. There was a way to unlock more frequencies so I did that. I have my pair one notch down from max frequency…. a couple of channels higher than standard.
Funny thing. My phone can see the 5g the Nanos use. But when I put them into bridge they vanished. Kind of the point, to me, of bridge mode.
So I’m getting a crappy connection and of course my Nano bridge is the problem causing interference. Ok man, let me turn them off. Ain’t my Nanos causing the problem.
All fixed now. I have Starlink.
All of the above to say, Iridium is talking wet plops of bull processed grass.
Brought the chickens out. They’d been lounging in the run, mostly sitting on the grass, presumably to cool down a little even though the run is shaded in the afternoon; deliberate placement. But as soon as I brought them to the bushes in front, they started rolling in the dirt, mostly in the sun though there were shaded spots.
Deep Chicken Thoughts: Wisdom
Deep Chicken Thoughts: Healthy Eating
“ How to Speak Chicken: Why Your Chickens Do What They Do & Say What They Say” by Melissa Caughey
https://www.amazon.com/How-Speak-Chicken-Your-Chickens/dp/1612129110?tag=ttgnet-20
I still want the invaders to be warehoused in Greenland. I had hoped that was why Trump had been talking about grabbing it.
New York City. The “Escape from New York” documentary was a preview of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_from_New_York
@Greg: I have my own modem, Netgear, and Router (mesh), Asus. The company that sent me a modem to test was not Comcast. I would never test Comcast stuff as I don’t trust them to have my interests as a company goal. I keep refusing Comcast’s offer of a free modem as Comcast locks it down and will not allow bridge mode and I want my own router that I can trust. Besides, the modem is not really free as there is a monthly charge and if I don’t return the modem, I get charged. Comcast’s version of “free” is really “renting”.
A vinyl mold used to press a physical record has a limited life. Columbia House’s LPs were always pressed from molds just before they were pulled off the line.
Likewise the VHS tapes were cut rate. I didn’t know that the company survived to stock DVDs and BluRays.
I figured that Napster and torrents would have put Columbia House out of commission first.
“Beltway Confidential: Democrats are simply incapable of building things”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/beltway-confidential/4690144/democrats-incapable-building-things/
“The inability of Democrat-run states to build much of anything remains a damning indictment of Democratic governance, especially when Republican-run states have shown how much easier construction and rebuilding can be.”
“Maryland has moved ahead in the rebuilding process for the Francis Scott Key Bridge, opening the bidding process for the rebuild until Aug. 19. You may recall that the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed after a cargo ship crashed into it in March 2024, a whole 29 months ago. The rebuilding project was set back earlier this year after the state canceled the chief construction contract. Democrat Gov. Wes Moore promised the bridge would be rebuilt by 2028.”
I predict that bridge will be rebuilt by 2040 at a cost of $100 billion, right before the California High Speed Rail is abandoned in place.
A ham radio/tech/3d printing guy I follow on YouTube, Kevin Loughin, has a video on converting a Chromebook to Lubuntu Linux. It involves overriding the “read-only” protection on the firmware. He didn’t develop the process, and he credits the people who did.
The light Linux distribution he demoed had a lot of ham radio utilities and LibreOffice, and while it wasn’t exactly zippy, it did everything you need, and a bit quicker than my $60 Evolve student Windows 10 machine. With less memory.
He showed ebay listings for suitable Chromebooks in the $40 to $50 range. I’m sure scavengers like Nick could find a stash cheaper than that.
4 GB RAM is the realistic minimum for modern Linux with a GUI.
A Substack thing…
Truth.
Tried to jailbreak and upgrade D1’s chromebook, and even using official tools and images managed to get it locked into a bootloop. Never did get it back to a usable state. In fairness, she started the process and it went wrong before I got involved, so I didn’t have high hopes for success.
And yes, there are a SHITETON of un-upgradable chromebooks being sold for scrap value, instead of recovering at least part of the cost by selling off out of date dell and HP windows lappys. Schools got suckered again.
————
compensating artists fairly for their work, especially musicians.
– the system’s been ripping off artists since the beginning. Very few made money off record sales, and that was part of the moral justification for stealing. Current models make it possible to make money without every engaging the studios or their parasites. And most people are now paying for streaming, so it turned out to be a temporary issue.
Pioneers get arrows in the back while the smart money waits to see…
———-
Made it home ok. Really surprising how many car parts there were on the shoulder this trip. Mostly bumper covers, but other random bits and pieces too. And a surprising amount of strait up garbage, like bags were getting tossed out on the roadway.
It’s still 95F at 730pm.
Got home and took a nap. Now I’ve had dinner and realize how little time I have this week to get ready for my show.
Hope I can get a uHaul trailer.
n
Much like Sturgeon’s Law; “ninety percent of everything is crud”. Notably, he did not exclude his own works from that.
Right now, most people pay for Spotify which is the music equivalent of $20 Reeboks.
Piracy is making a big comeback for video because the streaming service fees keep climbing despite addition of ads, and the studio catalogs are fragmented across various services.
Bang Bang back in the news.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/eric-swalwell-hooked-up-with-suspected-chinese-spy-fang-fang-while-on-ambien-documents-reveal/ar-AA2aiVjz
Well, at least I have my trailer rental sorted.
That’s a big deal because without it, I’m not bringing all my stuff, and I l want to sell ALL THE THINGS.
n
Important legal note: If one is including annoying female family members in “all the things” and one is interested in selling “all the things”, one should be aware that selling living human beings is generally not legal in the United States. One might wish to consider traveling to a jurisdiction where the selling of living human beings is legal before undertaking such an endeavor.
Fun fact: I may or may not have seen a slave auction when I may or may not have been in a place where slavery is allegedly illegal but is actually still practiced. I know someone who is less weaselly about having seen an auction when he was in a place which was geographically and culturally near a place where I may or may not have been. (I’m routinely baffled by the openness of a number of Green Berets and other irregular forces in talking about where they were and what they did. When I went overseas, the operations were classified very very highly, with about a 75 year declassification window. The simple fact that I may or may not have been in some location was classified.)
Oh, yeah. Ambien. While he was serving on the Intelligence Committee.
Bang Bang!
Swalwell was going to win the CA Governor’s mansion if the harassment charges hadn’t surfaced. That would have put him in the calculus for VP in 2028 at a minimum.
Made it home ok. Really surprising how many car parts there were on the shoulder this trip. Mostly bumper covers, but other random bits and pieces too. And a surprising amount of strait up garbage, like bags were getting tossed out on the roadway.
All of our new neighbors are fairly trashy people. And throwing away trash is fairly expensive. I pay $400+ a month for my 6 yd3 dumpster to get dumped twice a week at 3 am in the morning.
I’m tempted to pick up a chromebook if I see a good price.
The form factor is way better than the Raspberry Pi 5 I’m using as my portable outdoor unit, with it’s separate power supply, monitor, keyboard, mouse, and cpu. The parts are small and pack well, but setup time is a lot more than just opening the lid.
“one should be aware that selling living human beings is generally not legal in the United States.”
Your Somali or Uzbek neighbor may be able to advise.
Hah, I used the wrong ‘strait’. I must be thinking of the Straits of Refuse.
I’m going to bed.
n
Fun fact: I may or may not have seen a slave auction when I may or may not have been in a place where slavery is allegedly illegal but is actually still practiced. I know someone who is less weaselly about having seen an auction when he was in a place which was geographically and culturally near a place where I may or may not have been. (I’m routinely baffled by the openness of a number of Green Berets and other irregular forces in talking about where they were and what they did. When I went overseas, the operations were classified very very highly, with about a 75 year declassification window. The simple fact that I may or may not have been in some location was classified.)
Robert Heinlein starts his awesome “Citizen Of The Galaxy” book with an incredibly detailed slave auction. With his extensive travels on tramp freighters going anywhere, I suspect he got to see a slave auction or ten somewhere up and close.
And then he describes slavers space ships capturing family based trader ships for the cargo and slaves in the same book. Also very detailed. Way too detailed.
Oh, yeah. Ambien. While he was serving on the Intelligence Committee.
Apparently Fang Fang went Bang Bang on his apartment door in DC.
Hah, I used the wrong ‘strait’. I must be thinking of the Straits of Refuse.
I’m going to bed.
I talked about the Bering Straits yesterday.
they killed the Whopper:
https://hotair.com/headlines/2026/08/18/it-takes-two-hands-to-handle-a-whopper-n3818089
Not sure I’ve had one this century, but the tiny bit of security knowing that I could order a Whopper and get that flame-broiled taste is gone. I suppose they rolled it out all over the country already. Why wasn’t this in the news? There should have been “Last Whopper on the Titanic” parties, or some such thing.
And while we’re talking food, I have a pet peeve that I’ve never mentioned here: If we have donuts and donut holes, why don’t we have Cheerio holes? Do they punch out the holes and immediately recycle them back? Or do they go into a special recycler that makes 100% recycled Cheerios? Wouldn’t that be green as heck and GM could get extra for them? What is the holes from all the flavors went into the same recycler? Could we get FrankenCheerios?
Can I direct my dreams into Cheerios and not have another night of organic catalyst dreams?
“‘Spider-Man’ Windfall: Tom Holland to Make Over $100 Million for ‘Brand New Day’”
https://www.thewrap.com/creative-content/movies/tom-holland-spider-man-brand-new-day-salary-box-office-bonus/
“According to three individuals with knowledge of Holland’s deal, the actor scored a base salary of at least $20 million up front — an increase of $10 million from his last Spider-Man gig — with the potential to earn upwards of $100 million when backend bonuses are factored in as “Brand New Day” zooms towards a final global box office haul of over $2 billion.”
“Even more remarkable: Holland’s backend bonus is not capped, so there’s no ceiling to how much he may ultimately make, one individual added. “Spider-Man” crossed $2 billion at the global box office this weekend, and is only in its third week of release.”
Good for him. He made the movie amazing.
Dire straits, indeed.