And it will be hot while I do it. And humid, although it’s been a little bit less humid than last week. Still freaking hot though. Over 100F again yesterday and probably later today. Should make moving all the bins into a trailer a swamp-ish hell.
Did some prep for my non-prepping hobby event, and some recovery from my weekend. Getting older has some limits and downsides, but it does beat not getting older.
Today I’ll be doing a little shopping, some final computer work, and then getting and loading a uHaul trailer. I expect it to take all day, and probably most of the evening. I might need a break to cool down… or two. We’ll see. I can still grind if I have to.
This show and my hamfest are my two big chances to be part of the world. It’s easy to retreat and mentally and physically withdraw from people and society. It takes me effort to engage, but it is worth it.
While we prep, it’s still important to live in the world. Mainly because the EOTW rarely comes, but our lives are what we do while living. Don’t miss out.
But still stack, in case.
nick
Two months past the Summer solstice and I’ve already been able to push my morning alarm back almost an hour. I creep it back five or ten minutes at a time. Sometimes I’m able to sleep the extra time but several times per week I’m already awake because Grandma was yelling or because of other noise.
It was dark when I went out to open the chicken cage this morning but several of the birds were already down and waiting for me to open the door because the neighbors left their over-the-garage light on all night and it was shining at the coop. Overall they’re not bad neighbors but it’s reason #105 why I’d rather have no neighbors at all.
Thursday. Good morning!
Some good news from my forester friends. The wildfires are not under control, but they have managed to get around the fires to fight them from all sides, and hopeful they might be able to keep further progression contained. There was heavy rain yesterday – thanks for the prayers!
Lunchtime, so breakfast on the balcony. Yesterday was too hot and sunny, so of course we spent the day as outdoor tourists. I am proud of myself for using public transport for the day, but I also remembered why I usually prefer my own car – including individual air conditioning!
Today, I am going to be lazy!
But first, a nap…
Up and moving. Kid’s snack, packed. Coffee started. Breakfast soon.
n
5 square miles? Geez, that’s huge!
For dieting, I like the German acronym “FDH” (Friss die Hälfte). Literally (but rudely): “Eat half”. Don’t change your diet, just shrink all portions. If you eat more slowly, you’ll barely even notice the difference after a day or two.
Exercise? Obviously, but everyone needs to be exercising anyway for their general health. Some cardio, even if it’s just long walks. Some strength exercises; everyone can find a corner for a small mat and maybe a few weights.
Women are weird about weight lifting equipment. I bought a “Kettler Multigym” many years ago. Used it regularly for years. Then I went through a year or two where I didn’t. My wife started pestering me to get rid of it, even though it wasn’t in her way – she rarely even went into that part of the basement.
Anyway, I have three programs put together with the help of AI. Each program is about 30 minutes, and I do each one once a week, so that’s 3×30 minutes. It’s just maintenance – I’m not trying to make any progress, just keep what I have.
3000 acre campus
– campus not building, right? How many ftsq is the actual building? People complain about data center noise, so put it in the middle of a lot of space and no one can hear it.
n
Campus, not actual building square footage.
The cooling and operating envrionment needs of the servers require a lot more sophisticated building than previously built. I doubt a single bulldozer has rolled.
Newer generations of the servers have liquid cooling options which are an order of magnitude more difficult to operate for most of the providers. Liquids want to be free, and a big chunk of Texas is in the Gulf Marine environment which is brutal on anything metal or plastic.
I’m sure hilarity will ensue, but, for now, the plates must be kept spinning.
The US added a Trillion dollars to the national debt in 90 days. The capital markets are not going to be able to provide the paper to pay for the deficits and AI spending.
Something will happen. Soon.
I’m curious to know why the centers have to be built here and not in places like Canada or Scandinavia which have lots of empty space and more amenable environments.
I know. It is all about the jerbs, son, but the construction jerbs only last a couple of years. Four on something sophisticated like what Switch.com built on my employer’s campus.
When people have jobs-
– you can tax them
– they start families and buy houses which you can tax
– they buy cars which you can tax
– they got out to eat which you can tax
– they are too tired and busy to pay attention to the schools
– they are too tired and busy to pay attention to local government
– they are too tired and busy to protest in the streets
– they are too tired and busy to rebel and just start shooting mofos
When people don’t have jobs, they can do the opposite.
———–
Data centers need water and power and big fat connections to the internet. 90% of Canada’s population lives within 10 miles of the US border. There isn’t any infrastructure in most of Canada.
With the islamic jihad going almost full force in europe, would you make a long term bet building there? Plus, tiny little countries, very small labor pools, and EU regulation.
————
I haven’t looked at a map, but would the new campus be anywhere near some pipelines? How about some railroad right of ways with lots of dark fiber? And some nearby transmission lines? Or far enough away from people that it’s windy and sunny most of the time?
n
@Gavin
”roof felt”
Suggest using one of the newer synthetic materials. Requires special nails but is easier to work with and a better secondary layer of protection if you lose a shingle.
And storm mail—6 per shingle.
The saga on the new Highlander registration continues. The company that does out-of-state registration overnighted the paperwork to the clerk for my county. About 15 miles from where I live. Was I called? Nope. Instead, the county sent the license new license plate and registration back to the dealership in Georgia. That dealership called me on Tuesday and asked if my address was correct. Yes, it is. The dealership has now overnighted the license and registration to me and it should arrive today.
Then I have to take the old plates, and the new plates, back to the country office, 15 miles away, and get different DV plates which will cost me another $35.00 as I have to pay for the new plates, and a new yearly registration. No pro-rating in my county. And to make it more annoying, I also had to pay the Georgia fee to register the vehicle although all I got were temporary tags. Another $80.00 added to the cost.
The title will arrive days later, from the state, probably via the same method of routing.
All because Toyota struck a deal with the states that all sales, including out-of-state, must pay the sales tax for the home state and county at the time of purchase. That is too complicated for dealerships, and they use a third party. Of course, that third party has to charge, which in this case was $150.00 I had to pay. Apparently, too many vehicles were being purchased “out-of-state”, no taxes paid, and the vehicles shipped out of the country. The states were losing revenue on the sales.
When I bought my 2000 F-150 in Georgia I walked out the dealership with the sales papers, drove home, and the next day went to the county office, paid the taxes, and got the registration papers and plates. Easy process. But not anymore.
Since when does roofing get “mail”? Snicker!
Ford still built the Taurus in Atlanta back in 2000, and before large dealership groups emerged, the big three manufacturers had significant leverage over the franchisee to keep the buying experience smooth.
I would suggest roasting the dealership alive in the survey. If you get a survey. Something tells me this situation isn’t due to Toyota.
Not to be rayssssist, but how many African American individuals did you communicate with at the dealership, Whitey?
Dealer insiders are generally thieves anymore, and I can only imagine what the staff at a dealer in Fulton are like.
Well, frequently ‘hailed’, so messages?
Nope, it is indeed a Toyota, and others, thing with the states. The dealership originally sold me the vehicle without the TN state tax and had to back peddle. The company that is doing the cross-state registration told me the same thing, an agreement with most of the vehicle manufacturers and the states. That is why the company doing the registration was able to be created.
Zero. But I can’t speak for the chaps that moved the car around the lot after unloading it from the truck.
Maybe. I don’t think so in this case, anymore than normal. The buying experience is probably the same across most dealerships. I think Toyota controls their dealerships and the buying experience based on past purchases, two new Avalons and a new Highlander from a local dealer.
I despise buying cars. I refuse to deal with a non-manufacturer car lot, Carvana and CarMax included. Although those two are better than a lot of the car dealers. Yeh, I pay a little more but the risk of getting scammed, or finding a GPS tracker in the vehicle, or other problems is reduced. I know, because I traded my Highlander to a dealer, which wholesaled it to a used car lot. That Highlander had three problems. An A/C condenser leak, a phantom current draw that would drain the battery in three days, and a crack behind the front bumper. I doubt “Bubba’s Used Cars” exposed those details.
My cousin has a son that is a car broker. I thought of going through him but he is in California and his charges, along with shipping, made such a deal not in my favor. That process was abandoned months ago and then I started searching on my own.
Well heeled, well healed, well hailed, or hale and hearty??
Gotta love english.
n
I don’t mind the buying, but the legal paperwork is not my thing. I don’t want to have to know all that mess, and it is a mess. Far more complicated than it should be, and far from the Founding Fathers’ intent.
The taxing and the registering and the transfers of this and that are annoying as heII.
n
I slept very well … the overnight low was 63F, not the usual 75F, and the swamp cooler dropped the house to 60F.
That’s ridiculous, and a mistake, but we are projected to have another day of 104 Fahrenheit, so cold soaking the house isn’t all that bad an idea.
—
I just came back from my walk (under 85F!) and noticed that somebody drove a heavy vehicle diagonally across my property at the north west corner, sometime in the last week. Clearly a dually. I wonder I’m going to have to fence things just to keep the morons off?
Heeled and well heeled. I love English.
Does well heeled mean rich, or does it mean you’re carrying your BBQ gub?
Do you mean store the file on the actual device?
Once subtitles are added, the file has to be imported into the Apple TV app. Subler can’t do that. It can save a processed file to the “automatically add to TV” folder, but the folder action starts as soon as a file starts saving and corrupts it. Dragging and dropping a metadata’d file works.
I went down the rabbit hole of using ffmeg from the CLI. AI helped write a zsh script to convert all MKV files to MP4 in a folder with no re-encoding or remuxing, but convert the subtitle file to a standard MP4 format. That works, but almost all MKV file names I torrent contain the [] characters. FFmpeg doesn’t like that and throws a “file not found” error. It took a while to figure that out. Another script now deletes [] characters from all file names in a folder.
I should be able to set up a “watch folder” action so that when a new MKV file shows up, the remove [] and FFmpeg scripts run.
Getting the metadata added automatically is the problem. AI indicates there are CLI tools that can do it, but I’ll have to learn how “Atoms” are used to store the metadata. How to “scrape” the “Atoms” from the TVDB with a “token”, etc. I don’t think it can be done without some “coding”.
I’m probably stuck at this point.
I have the documents I signed on a thumb drive. There are 12 documents. POA to sell the old vehicle as the dealership does not want the title signed over to them. POA to get the new registration. Mileage certification, and some other stuff. Wife and I signed those on this big flat screen device that covered the desk. Add in the actual paper we had to sign and there must have been 20 signatures, each. I don‘t remember signing that many times when I bought the house 38 years ago. I understand it is more complicated now.
Overturning National Bellas Hess opened the sales tax can of worms.
The Conservatives gave us that one with the help of the Payola seat.
Ginsberg had opposed overturning National Bellas Hess the previous time it came up in 2010. I was wrong that she voted against the final decision which came in 2018.
I made a small score at the grocery store this morning. 25% mark down on meat. I snagged a 5.25 pound tray of ground beef for $22.36 down from $29.82. Nice.
It’s divided and vac sealed into five packages. In the freezer. I tried something new today. Instead of flattening the packages with my hands, I used the small cutting board. Much quicker.
Sometimes it’s the little things.
You know, that size, on that kind of acreage, on the California coast – it would probably start at 3 or 4 million, minimum.
https://www.har.com/homedetail/1700-s-virginia-st-port-lavaca-tx-77979/8997990?lid=11032091
Yeah, if the house and acreage was in Galveston, it would be $2 million. Or Rockport, it would be $1.5 million. But Port Lavaca is the armpit of Texas.
“Is Paramount zeroing in on Texas amid California legal battle?”
https://www.chron.com/culture/article/paramount-eyeing-austin-for-new-headquarters-22396420.php
“A historic Hollywood studio may be zeroing in on Austin as its new base of operations amid its prolonged legal battle with California.”
“Previously, Texas had been named alongside states like Tennessee and Georgia as potential landing spots for Paramount after the board approved a plan to relocate the Hollywood studio from California. The conditions for the relocation are that if Rob Bonta, California’s attorney general, refuses to engage in settlement negotiations over the antitrust lawsuit regarding the studio’s $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. by Oct. 1, then the company will leave the state.”
“Our politicians will never agree, but we can dream…”
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2026/08/our-politicians-will-never-agree-but-we.html
“My hat’s off to President Milei of Argentina for his “Grillete Fiscal” proposal – literally, the “Fiscal Shackles”. He wants to make sure that no future Argentinian government commits the same economic errors that have doomed the nation to half a century or more of economic fluctuations, fiscal irresponsibility, and near-bankruptcy.”
“The mechanism is equally straightforward. Should the federal budget remain in deficit for several consecutive months, Congress would be given a deadline to restore fiscal balance. Failure to do so would automatically trigger a U.S.-style government shutdown. Non-essential government activities would be suspended automatically—without further parliamentary debate or political horse-trading. The President, Vice President, cabinet ministers, state secretaries, and every member of both houses of Congress would receive not a single peso in salary until the budget is balanced once again.”
“Furthermore, all new spending would be frozen. No new contracts could be awarded, and no additional public employees could be hired. Even more striking, discretionary transfers from the federal government to Argentina’s provinces would also be suspended.”
This would be perfect for the USA, about 100 years ago.
Debt clock turned over $40 trillion today.
https://www.usdebtclock.org/
We are so screwed. The financial apocalypse of the USA is going to really suck.
The pool adds to the Mid-century Modern look.
The house reminds me of the house of the Firstenburg family, founders on one of the local banks in Vantucky. It is one of the first houses you see driving north on 205 from Portland into WA State, and, in the Winter, the swimming pool is always prominently visible … and steaming.
Maintenance would add up in that environment. “Brutal” doesn’t begin to adequately describe the Gulf air.
That is why I do not want to fill in the pool, it really makes the house pop out.
Yup, the constant salt air is very brutal. And the constant mosquitoes.
Mom has spent about $30,000 on fixing things in the house or mowing, etc since dad passed away. And she has not even lived there since last October since I kidnapped her (Mom’s words) and put her in a very nice assisted living place just four miles away from my house.
““Heteroflexible”: Shocking Survey Finds That Only 35 Percent of Women Under 25 Have a Positive View of Men”
https://thelibertydaily.com/heteroflexible-shocking-survey-finds-that-only-35-percent/
“Gallup finds 9.0% of U.S. adults identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or something other than straight or heterosexual in 2025. The percentage has more than doubled since Gallup first measured LGBTQ+ identification in 2012.”
“Only 11.4 percent of men under the age of 30 identify as LGBTQ+, but a whopping 31.4 percent of women under the age of 30 do…”
I am hearing this from young men who are looking for wives and cannot find any interest. And these are young men with good jobs and college degrees. But they are not millionaires and they do not have six pack abs.
“Taiwan Unveils Record Defense Budget as China Threat Grows”
https://thelibertydaily.com/taiwan-unveils-record-defense-budget-as-china-threat/
“Taiwan’s government proposed spending 1.12 trillion Taiwan dollars, roughly $35 billion, on defense next year, pushing military spending above 3% of gross domestic product (GDP), according to the country’s Presidential Office. The spending plan would mark the first time Taiwan’s annual defense budget has exceeded 1 trillion Taiwan dollars and comes as Beijing continues sending military aircraft and vessels near the island while periodically conducting large-scale exercises in the region.”
Taiwan is sunk if China decides to invade them. Only a few nuclear battlefield weapons could save them if so.
The ”Big Beautiful Bill” raised the debt ceiling to $41.1 Trillion, and the presses have been rolling in the basement of the Eccles Building ever since.
We had to pass the bill to find out what was in it.
Campus, not actual building square footage.
The cooling and operating envrionment needs of the servers require a lot more sophisticated building than previously built. I doubt a single bulldozer has rolled.
Newer generations of the servers have liquid cooling options which are an order of magnitude more difficult to operate for most of the providers. Liquids want to be free, and a big chunk of Texas is in the Gulf Marine environment which is brutal on anything metal or plastic.
I’m sure hilarity will ensue, but, for now, the plates must be kept spinning.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/article/amazon-aws-data-center-houston-wharton-boling-22391947.php
“The entrance to the construction site of a proposed Amazon data center is photographed in Boling on Friday, July 31, 2026.” – Picture of the site entrance with construction equipment working
“When will Amazon’s Wharton County data center be operational?
Construction of the initial buildings could be completed as early as January 2027, with additional buildings completing in September 2027, according to state filings. Amazon has said that it would have full-time employees on site by mid-2027.”
The construction started quite a while back. They are pouring concrete by the acre now.
Amazon does not screw around. They start projects and get them going quickly.
Decades of demonization of men in our culture Is coming home to roost.
I saw an essay a while back that asked why women in would support Islam? Short answer: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. The enemy they know is the normal white guy who might call them “honey” at the autoshop and mansplains – that is what they have been tols is enemy of all women kind since they were five.
That Islam considers them *cattle* is something they might intellectually know but haven’t internally normalized.
Oppression innumeracy as it were.
To be honest, Texas must have a dozen arms as I know of a dozen arm pits in Texas.
Why does the studio need a reason? The entire climate in California is not favorable to any company. Paramount should leave California regardless, as should most companies. Dump all that studio property into the lap of California and let the governor figure out what to do with the property. The loss of tax on the property, loss of income tax on the workers and actors, loss of work for local companies, would really sting.
Highlander is now properly registered in TN. Had to turn in the plates I never used, what a waste. Of course it cost me to get new plates. Those registration fees I paid Georgia were another colossal waste. Had I known about the hassle, and extra cost, I might I have rethought my person decision of using Atlanta. It most certainly is not the way it used to be when I purchased my F-150 way back when.
LMAOOOOOOO!
Time to Clutch the Pearls: Jake Tapper Is BIG MAD at Pete Hegseth for Alleged ‘Slur’ in Iowa
Troons to the left of me, troons to the right, stuck in the middle again
Regarding the National Debt at $40 Trillion – I’ve thought that it would be interesting to have a tool that one could use to adjust spending/etc and see it’s effect on the national debt.
I found an interactive tool here https://www.crfb.org/debtfixer . It provides alternatives to spending/taxes/etc and shows the effect of your choices on the national debt. Each choice shows the increased/decreased cost of that choice on the national debt. Information about each choice is available via a little ‘i’ icon.
I think that you might find the tool interesting. I have no opinion on the sites political positions, but it seems to be somewhat balanced. There might be other similar tools, but it does provide many different options on the effect of spending/taxing decisions on the total national debt.
Before I gave up on the idea of a BOL of my own, I did a lot of searching in the 90 minute range of Katy, TX, mostly to the North and West. North of I-10, West of 45.
There are lots of little Texas towns that would qualify as armpits. Even some that have decent PR, like Conroe. Best were paces like La Grange and Belleville, worst were places like Bedias and Iola.
Just driving through some of them can be depressing. Closed storefronts, decrepit buildings, falling-down houses, fallow fields. Similar to Corning, Arkansas, except in Corning their crops actually grow.
I also used Wikipedia to look up the cities and counties for demographic info. I was surprised to see how underrepresented whites are in some of these towns.
LUGs.
Lesbians Until Graduation.
Amazon’s future sex robot factory near my house went up really quickly.
What took the most time were the road improvements around the facility which were necessary to get semi trucks in and out of the property.
The farmhouse from the original “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” used to sit not far from the site.
Believe it or not, the house is a significant piece of architectural history and was carefully moved as development started in that part of Round Rock.
Today’s Tyler Durden cowardice protecting a mainstream source for the latest on the Bang Bang! scandal.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/fbi-seizes-eric-swalwells-electronic-devices-san-francisco-airport-amid-sexual-misconduct
Clinton operatives, Tim Penny, and Mitch Daniels. Ok. Balanced.
Plexaderm: Preparation-H in a smaller and more expensive tube. I tried it and now I look like a banjo player in Deliverance.
I installed a new firmware update for my LG refrigerator. Supposed to improve the ice-making process. Seemed to work fine before the update so I don’t know what changed.
The US added a Trillion dollars to the national debt in 90 days. The capital markets are not going to be able to provide the paper to pay for the deficits and AI spending.
Something will happen. Soon.
It is already happening. The Fed had to buy $4 billion of the tbills this week.
https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/article/one-day-after-doubling-treasury-buybacks-bessent-says-hes-ready-to-boost-them-further-to-push-down-long-term-yields-181218236.html
I saw 105 F in my truck at 5 pm. I suspect that August and September will go out with a bang this year.
We had 113 F on Labor Day in 1999 in Sugar Land. ERCOT was bent over backwards and blacking out entire towns all over the state for an hour at a time. Every power plant in Texas that would make power including the emergency diesels was online. Since it was a holiday, most people were home. It got up to 84 F in my house IIRC.
Up and moving. Kid’s snack, packed. Coffee started. Breakfast soon.
n
Wait, is the strike over? There are no snacks for the bourgeoisie when the proles are on strike.
I have not looked. I get my $2200 a month from SS and another $800 from my 401k. I pay for Medicare. About $190 a month. I have not used it at all. Haven’t needed it. Not exactly sure where to even go for the annual free check-up.
I suppose my choice of having no debt somehow has an effect on the deficit. I suppose having a bit over 30k in Savings and another 120k in t-bills makes a difference. Although I can’t see how that matters compared to 40 Trillion. Not even a drop, maybe enough to steam your eyeglasses and I doubt that.
I’m tired of the lying. “Vote for me and I’ll lower taxes” “Vote for me and I’ll deport the wetbacks” “Vote for me and support gun rights”. ALL LIES. They get elected and then get rich. AND THEN don’t do shit for “reasons”.
I have the impression the strike is against D1 and a bit towards W1. D2 is cool,
The cooling and operating envrionment needs of the servers require a lot more sophisticated building than previously built. I doubt a single bulldozer has rolled.
Newer generations of the servers have liquid cooling options which are an order of magnitude more difficult to operate for most of the providers. Liquids want to be free, and a big chunk of Texas is in the Gulf Marine environment which is brutal on anything metal or plastic.
The crypto calculation servers at the old coal power plant in Rockdale, Texas are immersed in oil for cooling.
I haven’t looked at a map, but would the new campus be anywhere near some pipelines?
Yes. Two 20 inch and a 24 inch natural gas pipelines.
How about some railroad right of ways with lots of dark fiber?
Yes. The railroad that supplies the Nuclear Power Plant is less than ten miles away.
The South Texas railroad that parallels I-69 is fifteen miles away.
And some nearby transmission lines? Or far enough away from people that it’s windy and sunny most of the time?
Yes. The transmission power lines that the STP Nuclear Power Plant and Phillips Refinery use are less than ten miles away.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Texas_Nuclear_Generating_Station
https://www.phillips66.com/refining/sweeny-refinery/
The AI servers start at 10 kW each at load, and that was state of the art four years ago.
For size reference, if you go look at the server clusters in the pictures on X of Tony’s “AI factory”, each one of those racks hold eight servers, 80 kW per rack.
I stuck my arm in the blood pressure machine at the HEB today. Can you just get a reading? Nope.
Enter your e-mail. nooo.
Enter your birth date. No option to opt out. I’m going to lie next time and be all of 30.
What is your sex on your birth certificate? Say what?
Why does any of this matter? So this annoying crap annoyed. And the stupid machine never shut up. Some woman ylabbering and music playing.
Anyway. 130/72. Sure. I’m in the red zone now. Seems like 160 /xx was bad not that long ago.
I’ve been hanging around 120 to 130 over 60 to 75 for 20 years or so.
I use the machine at HEB several times a week and just get the BP reading. It is possible.
Ok. I get that. Now look at another thing. Phone company central offices. Use to be FULL of the relay switches. Awesome stuff to watch.
I’ve seen a couple of offices about the size of my house and when they were changed to 5ESS switches, it would all fit in my hall bathroom. Where the bathtub is. A couple of 2 feet wide and 7 feet tall cabinets. Roughly, all the wiring that was connected to the step switches just moved to a new box.
The AI hardware will do the same thing. Of course it will. Look at your current PC. Recall the size of your old 286 or 386 or 486/DX2 machines.
My current PC is a little fanless 5″ by 5″ by 2 inch box. A quad core Intel whatever. It’s really snappy. And it’s snappier after I went to Mint from Win11… runs cooler, says my hand, also.
The AI computers will do the same. I’ve read a few things saying you can do AI on your PC.
The giant data centers are a scam. A financial bubble.
Yep. But the new BP machine wants all the stuff. No option to insert arm and push the start button.
Oh. And that’s when the machine is working.
The tolling company had its Austin office in the old SW Bell central office on 7th Avenue in Austin.
The Bell System AT&T built a lot of those using the same blueprints. Seattle has an almost identical building downtown.
I stuck my arm in the blood pressure machine at the HEB today. Can you just get a reading? Nope.
Please buy your own Omron arm cuff bp machine for some semi accurate results. I have seen two kids at a time hanging off the BP machine at HEB, using it for a jungle gym. “OMRON Silver Blood Pressure Monitor & Upper Arm Blood Pressure Cuff”
https://www.amazon.com/Pressure-Clinically-Validated-Unlimited-Measurements/dp/B0DDZP9R7T?tag=ttgnet-20
My blood pressure at my VA physical on Wednesday was 116/51. No one seemed concerned. A1C was 7.1. Again, no one concerned.
I don’t know a lot about a lot of things.
5ESS phone switches and cooling…… Ericsson sold similar to places like Saudi Arabia where a/c isn’t a thing. The switches cooled with convection. Along with a few fans to help. But in a 90f plus building, no problem.
I never saw one in person but I bet the heat sinks were spectacular.
I knew Fredericksburg was legacy GTE when I saw the small central office there.
The design is almost identical to what the company built around Tampa in the 60s.
“Death & Honey, Book 3 of Oberon’s Meaty Mysteries” by Kevin Hearne, Delilah S Dawson, Chuck Wendig
https://www.amazon.com/Death-Honey-Kevin-Hearne/dp/1998390039?tag=ttgnet-20
A third book of three novellas added to the ten book Iron Druid fantasy series. There are several other novellas for the series also. I read the well printed and well bound POD (print on demand) trade paperback published by Horned Lark Press in 2024 that I bought in 2026. I own several of the other novellas and plan to read them soon.
The Iron Druid Series starts with “Hounded” released in 2011:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0051XU2PE?tag=ttgnet-20
Atticus O’Sullivan is a 2,000+ year old Druid living peacefully in Arizona, USA in modern times. His Irish Wolfhound Oberon is also many decades old due to Atticus’s special teas. Atticus also has another dog, Starbuck, who is learning how to speak telepathically to Atticus and Oberon.
Atticus and the two dogs head to Tasmania via his special pathways for Atticus to heal several Tasmania Devils from a cancer that is spreading amongst them. And of course the dogs find a dead body in the park under a bee’s nest.
The other two novellas in the book are weird and weirder but good reading. I would classify them as horror (dark fantasy). All bee related.
The author has a website at:
https://kevinhearne.com/
My rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.2 out of 5 stars (88 reviews)
Lynn
Uh. Never heard of that at all. Everything was at 9th and Colorado. Uphill from the river.
Yeah. Something to do with the last time Austin was flooded before Mansfield Dam was built. Pretty much everything 5th street down was trashed. You can see it in the buildings. Well, I could, on my bicycle getting around town. Parts of west 6th Street were sketchy.
I remember the Labor Day flood. 1984 o so. Stroud’s, a fine furniture place, I think, way out of my price range, on Lamar and ‘tween 6th and 7th street had pianos floating out of the building and washing into Shoal Creek.
And yeah, I have no idea how the flooding worked for folks south of Town Lake. Or whatever they call it now.
“Tesla plans $10 billion solar cell factory for Houston suburb”
https://houston.culturemap.com/news/innovation/tesla-solar-factory-fort-bend/
“Electric vehicle and clean energy company Tesla is considering building a new $10.1 billion solar cell manufacturing facility in Fort Bend County, according to documents filed with the Texas Comptroller’s Office.”
“If approved, the plant, called Project Sun City, would be located on a 3,050-acre site off FM 762 and FM 1994 in Richmond, Texas. Tesla aims to finish construction in 2028, with the plant being operational by early 2029.”
This is just six miles south of my house.
Man, all of a sudden these huge projects are coming loose and getting started.
The Russian Blue showed up with three older (adolescent) kittens this evening.
I wondered how she could eat so much.
Almost time for the bedtime walk. Buddy the Beagle is curled up in the hallway on the laminate floor. Snoring like circular saw.
He makes me laugh.
Penny is, last I looked, on the carpet in the bedroom. Just exactly where I would step on her if getting out of bed. It’s cool. She will be 15 in October. It’s interesting to watch her. She doesn’t do stuff she did even a couple of months ago.
But I’m just gonna keep telling myself “it’s really hot outside” and that’s why she doesn’t go lay on the front porch under the dining room window in the morning anymore. To survey her domain with her radar ears. Never mind checking on the cat’s food and galloping and barking at them while she goes for a snack.
Yeah. It’s just hot outside.
Seen this show before.
7th and Brazos, right across from the Driskill.
The bathroom capacity screamed central office.
Since the floor beneath us was Verizon CLEC switches and the HQ for the Republican Party of Texas, I would go downstairs and defile the facilities on that floor.
Nothing but old women worked in the Republican Party offices so they weren’t using the mens room.
You can run AI models on your PC but Corporate America wants to replace their white collar workforce with AI which requires a lot more accuracy in the number crunching.
Why does the studio need a reason?
– the studios have MASSIVE properties and huge specialized buildings with crazy A/C and power available. They even have high voltage DC in the older studio buildings.
Add in the craft guilds, the specialized lawyers and banks, insurance companies, rental houses, catering companies, agents, casting directors, and all the post production ecosystem too… and you have an enormous inertia.
They have been going outside LA to shoot, but the production infrastructure is in LA.
n
Spent the last two and a half hours trying to get some dinner. W decided we should go out to a local place. I was soaked to the skin from loading my trailer and just wanted food so a deli sounded great.
Yeah.
It’s a booster night for the kid’s school activity. Place is mobbed. Service is glacial. After waiting to order for 35 minutes, the owner comes out of the kitchen and says they’re out of food. By the time the whole family gets back together and we get home with chinese takeout, I’ve lost 2 hours of time I really really needed to get ready for tomorrow.
So it’s gonna be a while before I get to bed.
n
“Woman Dropping Her Son Off for College at UC-Berkeley Stunned by Tons of Homeless Tents and Garbage Around Dorms (VIDEO)”
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/08/woman-dropping-her-son-college-uc-berkeley-stunned/
“Imagine you are dropping your child off for the first day of college, and when you get to his dorm it is surrounded by mountains of garbage and homeless people living in sidewalk tents.”
Watch the video, it is unreal. I could never drop my kid off there.
“Taiwan Unveils Record Defense Budget as China Threat Grows”
https://thelibertydaily.com/taiwan-unveils-record-defense-budget-as-china-threat/
“Taiwan’s government proposed spending 1.12 trillion Taiwan dollars, roughly $35 billion, on defense next year, pushing military spending above 3% of gross domestic product (GDP), according to the country’s Presidential Office. The spending plan would mark the first time Taiwan’s annual defense budget has exceeded 1 trillion Taiwan dollars and comes as Beijing continues sending military aircraft and vessels near the island while periodically conducting large-scale exercises in the region.”
Taiwan is sunk if China decides to invade them. Only a few nuclear battlefield weapons could save them if so.
BTW, do you know what the most expensive military is?
The loser.
It’s not “Berkeley”; it should be named “Berserkely”. The place is insane, and everybody there is equally insane. We used to live near Sacramento, and one of my wife’s friends and co-workers persuaded her to go with her to a bookstore in Berkeley/Berserkely. This was in the mid-1990s, and she described to bookstore as VERY liberal and somewhat weird. Friend was fairly lefty then, and she went a lot further left in the following few years, and broke contact completely.
So I can’t say I’m surprised about anything that happened there. Cacafornia in general was heading downhill fast when we left in 2020, and on X we can see that the decline has accelerated. Substantially.
As a kid, we drove to visit family, and passed through metropolis like Dalhart TX and Tucumcari NM. When they built the bypasses around those towns, they pretty much died. Looking on Zillow, you can get a 3 bedroom, 2 bath house for not much over 100k.
With Starlink and WFH, maybe not a bad idea…
I’ve read a variation on that theme: The most expensive luxury a government can pay for is a military that won’t fight and couldn’t win if it did.
Ok, ready for a shower and bed.
Sorted my stuff. Finished my display. It’s bare bones, but does the job, I think.
I was soaked to the skin loading the trailer this afternoon. I was able to wring out my shirt and ounces hit the floor.
Now to have a good show.
Tomorrow is another busy day.
n
Related to military philosophy: Switzerland is, famously or infamously, supposedly a neutral country. Nonetheless, we have gone along with all of the Western sanctions against Russia, and we are pretty entwined with both the EU and with NATO, even though we are (obviously) not a member of either.
There is an initiative coming up next month, which – if approved – would require stricter neutrality There are generally two reasons to support it: First, only a genuinely neutral country can be effective in promoting negotiations between warring countries (e.g., Russia/Ukraine). Second, the EU politicians have been pounding the war drums really hard the past year or two: Russia is about to attack, Russia is the great enemy, etc, etc.. Cynically, this is obviously the classic ploy of needing an external enemy to distract from domestic problems. But if the EU pushes hard enough, they may really find themselves a nice little war, and Switzerland wants no part of that stupidity.
Of course, if you are going to be neutral, you still need a military. The Swiss military, with its militia system, could be effective. But it isn’t. In fact, it reminds me of everything I have read about the Western militaries in the 1930s: moribund and inefficient. All ready to fight the previous war, or maybe the one before that. Add in the problem of liberal politics, which means that soldiers are treated with kid gloves, because you don’t want them to be uncomfortable or faced with the reality that they might have to shoot someone.
Meanwhile, we also have a vote coming up on the new contracts with the EU. These run to many thousands of pages, and would integrate us much more closely. For example, in many areas we would automatically take on any new laws or regulations passed by the EU. While those could then be voted down by an initiative, doing so would lead to penalties by the EU. Not the kind of thing that any sovereign country should even consider. Our politicians are fighting tooth and nail to push these through, including some nasty legal trickery, and there are enough EU-fans that there is a serious chance they will be accepted.
Romania yesterday used an F-16 to destroy a marine drone “drifting” near an offshore gas platform. There is good footage available on the interwebs.
https://english.mapn.ro/cpresa/6845_press-information
Did the Russians lose a drone, or were they sending a not very subtle message?
Or was it a test, to see what tactics the defenders would use and how close the pilot would approach on his strafing run? It would be trivial to equip the boat with SAMs, and it looked to my non-expert view like the aircraft was much to close to evade a rocket or three coming up from the boat…
Russians playing 3-D chess with Romanians.
Not super surprising. CH managed to reject the firearms emasculation referendum of 2011, but passed the 2019 re-do. That looked a lot like the beginning of the end of serious armed neutrality.
The Swiss Army chocolate is still delicious, though.