Ugh

I got it working and I wish I hadn't.

It's like watching the decline at Little Green Footballs.  Remember them?

Misha's gone.

From Hel's Heart

One of the county commissioners is running unopposed.

She was responsible for the irresponsible wave of construction without supporting infrastructure; like enough road to get all those people to and from their new residences.

So I wrote in Bill Gerber.

Yes, I know he's dead, but he's still more qualified for the position than Kathryn Starkey.

Yes, I know he was never a resident of Pasco County.  That's not always a problem for our commissioners...  Yeah, I know.

So, Gerber for Pasco County Commission!

Fake Steel

They're very expensive, but I love the idea.

Fake Steel.

I stole the video from their site, I hope they don't mind.

Lots of choices there, check it out.

Did My Civic Duty

 

Most crowded I've ever seen here in Florida.

I Think It's Official Updated

I do believe I outlasted Emperor Misha at The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler.

The main site is dead and an alt site stopped updating in February.  It appears that Misha himself just quit caring and the people keeping it going for him couldn't get him to stir to get the access to make critical updates to the site.

Bummer.

It used to be a daily read.

UPDATE:

Because others can reach the site, and I was getting a solid ping return...

I tried to open it in a private window.  Viola!  It works again.

Odd that it don't in normal mode.

Good!

Donald Trump "targeted and minimized" Kolin Kaepernick.

I'm not even going to check to see if he did.  He probably didn't because there's lots of things disconnected from reality in Kaepernick's mind.

If Trump didn't, he should have!

If there was ever a dancing sportsball monkey that deserves it more, I cannot think of one.

It Is Deliberate

Did you know that Nazi is, period, derogatory, slang for NASDP?

Did you know that NASDP stands for Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei.  That is German for National Socialist German Worker's Party.

Because if you didn't know those three facts, you can be convinced that the Nazis are right wing.

That lets a parallel be drawn between any right wing idea and the evils of Nazi Germany.

That is on purpose.

Something else that gets blurred is the parallels between fascism and communism.  The break really is as simple as nationalism.  Fascists are nationalists.  Communists believe that the nation-state should be abolished and abandoned for international communism.

There are also strong parallels between labor unions and socialism.

History can be eye opening and terrifying.

One reason this ruse can be pulled is socialism is treated as a single political idea when it's really a family of them.

Communism and fascism are both socialist.  The Nazis were socialists.

Those three branches of socialism have murdered how many people to date?

That alone should disqualify their teachings and ideas.

The idea that we should all look out for each other gives of warm fuzzy feelings.

The problem is the implementation always leads to starvation and murder.

Socialism is a utopian scheme; as such it's impossible to achieve.

If it was possible, it would have happened and been a shining beacon to the rest of the world to emulate.

Hint: Shining beacons don't need walls to keep people in.  They need walls to keep people out.

Motivation

Years ago I started converting the GURPS: Traveller character templates from 3e to 4e.

I stopped somewhere in the middle of First In and never got back to it.

Tonight I summoned enough motivation to open the file and see where I'd left off, but not enough motivation to remember where I was at in the last template I was working on.

Maybe tomorrow.

I Get This Joke

For near $40 a shirt, I am thinking the joke might be a bit too obscure.

Eight Years To Go

Florida to drown, women and minorities most affected.

I remember them talking about this back then.

FuzzyGeff and I debated it extensively, usually sparked by discussing the grain blight of the Car Wars universe.

I remember that they were saying that, if nothing was done immediately, then in 50 years Tallahassee would be ocean-front property and the entire Florida peninsula would be submerged.

Well, they didn't do anything immediately, and have hardly done anything since...

To get the effect they were talking about 42 years ago, we'd need some dramatic heating in the next couple of years and even the poles would be uninhabitable.

But that's not going to happen.  I think that serious scientists are aware of it too.

But it's not a question of science.  It's a matter of politics and rational thought has no place with politicians as long as irrational panic can get them votes and power.

PS: Notice it's Dan Rather?  I rather think his credibility is shot these days.

PPS: Maybe Dan hadn't gotten the word from his predecessor, Uncle Walt:

Everything Is Bad

I've often wondered why we target a certain percentage of inflation and think of it as normal and good.

The official goal is 2%, in case you're wondering.

The reason they are doing this is to prevent deflation.

Why is that?  If you ask most people they'd be happy with lower prices on goods.

The answer is historical.  The great depression had massive deflation as prices dropped to get any return on investment at all.  Because prices were falling, people deferred purchases, lowering demand in the face of sufficient supply and caused prices to fall further...  Until prices were well below costs and the company closed.

It's a vicious thing.

I am willing to bet that, if we looked into it, we'd find that people stopped buying goods they didn't NEED because they'd lost jobs and had reduced incomes from the recession that became the great depression.  Deflation USED to be how the economy righted itself in the face of recession.  For some reason (cough cough cough FDR) it failed that time.  One reason was how easy it was to obtain credit (credit is another word for debt in case you're not up to speed here) and deflation kills you if you owe.

Inflation causes people to defer a purchase when their wages stubbornly refuse to keep up with inflation.

You might notice a lack of LS3 cam in The Beast?  That's because we're buying groceries.  The cam purchase is deferred.

Explain again why deflation is bad?

Worse, we can tell that they're lying about it because of how selective they get when calculating inflation.  They don't count "volatile" goods like energy and food.

You know, the stuff that everyone HAS to buy and cannot readily be deferred.

Those goods are crushing us.

My, long held, theory is that inflation is good for people in debt.  Economists LOVE debt.

If we take the official inflation rate against my house payment...

The $458.61 I've been paying on my mortgage every month was $458.61 when I started.  You need $765.49 today to match the buying power of $458.61 then.  Put the other way, our payment has fallen to the equivalent of $274.76 over the past 20 years.

Inflation is GREAT if you're in debt.  My loan is getting cheaper the longer inflation goes on.

What entity is in the most debt in America today?

Personally I'm good with 0% inflation.  I can afford what I have and knowing that it won't be getting more expensive to keep it on an unpredictable schedule would be GOOD for me, even with my meager debts.

Some deflation would also be good for me.  Especially if wages hold firm.

I think I know who benefits from the Fed's scheme, and it's not The People.

Dare I Say Superior?

How do I know that I am better than others?

Because when someone slings an insult at me because of my race, religion, sexual preference or gender I am expected to bear it.

I am held to a higher standard and I meet it.

I am better than they are by an objective standard that they established to show they were as good as I am... and they failed!

It's insane.

Milestones

Mist makes progress in the form of us noticing she's doing something normal and us realizing that she hadn't been doing it before.

That's how close to death's door she might have been.

Like holding her head up.

Like having the energy to clean herself.

Like being able to balance well enough to do a good job cleaning herself.

Like a good, full-body, stretch.

Like moving from the last place we set her down.

The day by day improvement is remarkable and I'm remarking on it!

She's still too skinny for my tastes, but she's eating.  She's also getting full and stopping.  I think she's starting to realize that she's not living meal to meal anymore.

I Have The Chain

Who has four horses to do the quartering?

Fucking scumbag.

People who torture animals should be likewise treated.

Cat Distribution System

 

Mist and Shadow are getting to know each other.

It's going smoothly.

What Was That Pop?

The Lovely Harvey had her knee fixed today.

After her shoulder replacement a couple years ago all I can think is:

They can build her better than she was. They have the technology. They have the capability. Better than she was before. Better... stronger... faster.

The procedure was textbook and she's home with it propped up.

Again With Feeling

17 year old suspect in custody after another mass shooting in Orlando.

Gee, Rick Scott's gun control law keeping people under 21 from buying guns is sure working! 

Never mind that you're not allowed to conceal carry until you're 21.

Never mind Orlando is most gun unfriendly locale in the whole state.

And, the suspect is exactly the demographic we've come to expect to be doing such things.

OK NOW

 NOW you can decorate for Thanksgiving.

You may not decorate for Christmas yet.

Precision

One item of precision that I'm not seeing much mention of is the alignment of the lugs on the Starship booster when the chopsticks grab it.

They are 180° apart and there's just two of them.

That means they have to be sticking out perpendicular to the chopstick arms when they move in to grab the booster.

Just a couple of degrees of roll on the part of the booster and it falls instead of getting grabbed.

Happy Halloween!

Halloween is our Christmas!

Diesel Mode

Crank up the speakers to hear her motor.

Here she is showing her first happy moment since we got her that didn't involve food!

 

Reminiscent

This image of Mist:

Reminds me of this award winning picture from National Geographic:

It probably shouldn't, but...

Mist In Our Midst

 

Little Mist alarmed us greatly today.  We have a planter table that she was collapsed in this morning and we were worried she was going to the Rainbow Bridge.

I already talked about capturing her to clean her eye out.  That did a lot of good, but she was shivering constantly.  Her ears were like ice.

So I snagged her again after we'd given her evening ration.  I put her on a scale and she's just 1 lb. 6.2 oz.  That's on the low end for a kitten her apparent age.  Her eyes have changed color, her ears are up and she's got her canines and incisors.  That's about 7 weeks!  She's 0.2 lb. underweight, that's a big deal at this age.

I think she wasn't getting enough food and shelter to regulate her body temperature.

We held her in our laps and she stopped shivering!  Lots of defensive purring, and eventually she started kneading.

While watching The Lightning TROUNCE the Avalanch I covered her up in a towel and she melted to sleep.

She's in a nice warm garage in a cat carrier at this moment.  We're keeping her isolated until we can get a vet to verify she's not carrying anything that will take out the other three.

The Lifers Done Fucked Up

The VA sent me a whole year's supply of my shoe inserts!

I'm supposed to get a new pair every four months, but it's been on me to remember and drive down to get them.

Last time I mentioned to the nice receptionist that it would be nice if they just mailed me a pair every four months instead of making me remember...

I wonder if my ponderings had effect.

Spicy Diesel

I captured Stripey the FEMA Kitty so we could clean up her eye a little bit.

She hissed and popped as I picked her (confirmed) up and purred like an idling Kenworth while we cleaned her face and paws.

She seemed contented to be held, but once I sat down and let her be on my belly, she sauntered back to the cover of the rims.

Hissing and popping resumed, but she was letting me pet her in her safe space.

Under Pressure

It turns out that Harvey's Equinox uses the exact same high-pressure port as The Beast.

This is good because her AC appeared to be leaking at the HP port as well and I'd ordered both the GM part and the Dorman.

The Dorman has a good old fashioned Schrader valve in it!  That one went into The Beast.  Genuine GM into her car.

Marv brought over his gauges and vacuum pump to facilitate the refilling with refrigerant.

Both cars got the pressures we were looking for and the temperatures desired.

Well, not desired.  I froze poor Marv's nipples off on the Equinox test drive and getting 43° air blasting on your chest is not pleasant.

The Beast can get to 43° too, but I also tested to make sure it'd hold the intended temperature using the 'auto' mode.

Our Milton Refugee

We have an outdoor kitten.

Meet "Stripey the FEMA Kitty."

She(?) is very spicy and doesn't tolerate being petted.  Yet.

We've got dry food out for her and do an evening ritual of feeding her some wet food.

Sometime today something happened and she spent a while with her left eye closed up.  She was fine in the morning and doing a pirate imitation at noon.  She's still squinting a bit with it.

Shadow is VERY interested in the interloper.

For reference, Shadow was the same size as Stripey when we brought her in, literally, last year...  On national Cat Day.

We Only SAY We Hate Each Other

If the ball had gone up when I was stationed in Germany, my tank platoon was assigned to a company of infantry in the 1ID(F).

We trained with them a lot and understood how we needed one another, especially in the urbanized environs of Germany.

We even loved the 113 with the big blade antenna and the Air Force dude sentenced to slum with us ground crawlers.

Taco Bell In Moscow

Russian Taco Bell is a much more frightening thing than Taco Bell here...

 

Got some altitude there!

Fat Amy Works

I would like to point out that the F-35I worked as advertised over Iran.

I had been, repeatedly, told that it was an expensive boondoggle that was no better (and likely worse) than an F-16C Block 50.

I can think of a couple nation's sphincters that should be clamping about now.

Related:  The F-35C is useless because using it from carriers in a marine environment is too harsh on the stealth coatings and they can't be maintained.

What about all those F-35B flying from short-deck carriers?

Not mentioned.

That's odd.