before our neighborhood was built, there was a stream that ran right under my neighbor's house and down the street adjacent to mine.

now it's totally under the street and you can hear it running through the manholes.

I've found other things in our manholes too.


https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...b6349e2634.png

re above:
#diabetesbreakroom much?

The problem with Nuke power in the USA is that it exists in the construct of a for-profit business. This creates a conflict of interest between safety and profit.

For an example of this in action, review the history of Vermont Yankee. After it exceeded it's design life, it was sold to a company called Entergy. Entergy was in the business of buying plants and squeezing end-of-life value from them.
Entergy quickly filed for a permit extension beyond the end of the plants designed life (which is fine).
Then it filed to run the plant at 126% of design maximum (this caused a 26% increase in radiation at the adjacent school, which they said was anticipated, so OK).
Then it asked to distribute the money it was required to hold for disposal of radioactive waste as a special stock distribution to share holders.
Then it asked to distribute the money it was accumulate for decommissioning the plant after it's end of life as a dividend.
Then they were told they had to inspect their cooling towers, as other GE designs were seeing failures. They claimed they had inspected the towers, and they were fine. They had not done the inspection.
Then radioactive levels in the CT River were found to be rising and the plant was asked if they had any underground pipes that could be leaking. They said there was no underground piping and no leaks. They were lying. The plant blue prints showed many underground pipes that carried radioactive material, and they were leaking.

In summary, people do bad things for money. If we want to use nuke as an energy source, we should have it run by a not for profit, or perhaps a government agency that is not tempted to make poor safety decisions for profit.

If you want a nuclear meltdown, then you'd put a gov't agency in charge.

.
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...714_131328.jpg

^ A tranny bathroom

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...427197b8e1.jpg

Ping pong table, weight room, and shower are on the next floor up. No video games that I've seen so far, though apparently a couple weeks before I started they had a game day -- people brought in VR stuff, arcade cabinets, board games, etc. Not really my thing but I like the sentiment behind it.

The only ongoing games in my department are the daily Nerf dart gun attacks and ambushes.

NICE! We are already seeing a nice addition to our facilities since Oracle spent $10 billion for us last year. I'm hoping within a year or two we will have the rest of the top floor. But it's only 5 floors, but I sit next to a big row of windows looking back over downtown. Don't have a glorious downtown like a big city, but the "tall" tower has a great restaurant on the 49th and 50th floors.

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...d5e050eedd.jpg

https://thesatanictemplearizona.com/...o-663x1024.jpg

I love my state

https://scontent-lax3-1.xx.fbcdn.net...e7&oe=5A0BB3CC

Hail Satan*!

In all seriousness, of all of the people I know personally who adhere to a specific, mainstream religion, Bobby and Jessica the Satanists are by far the most tolerant, open-minded, non-judgmental, coolest people you could imagine.





And now, a few observations from a recent transplant to the 'burbs.

1: Laundry.

This is seriously fucking amazing. I have a washer and dryer. They are mine. I share them with no-one, and they are physically located in my unit, not 50 floors down. I am in complete control of them. If I am not using them, then I know they are not in use. If I feel like just casually doing a load of laundry, I can! No planning, no scheduling, I can even toss some shirts into the washer and then LEAVE THE HOUSE, knowing that they will still be there when I get back.

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...1b16c6bb55.png

This is schweet.



2: The Thermostat.

This thing rocks. You just tell it what temperature you want the interior of the house to be, and it happens. No fiddly valves, no steam manifolds, just a button. I mean, I knew that the Starship Enterprise had this technology, but I'd kinda forgotten that some residential homes do, too.

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...68f8a437ce.png




3: The Trash.

This one is kind of a bummer. They pick it up once a week, and you have to haul it out in a plastic bin and set it in a specific location on a specific day and time. It's like you're using the Staff of Ra to unlock secret to the Well of Souls, except it's just trash rather than the Ark of the Covenant. If you forget, you have to hold onto it for another week. I much preferred just having the hole in the wall near the elevators that you can dump the trash into whenever you feel like it, but I'll accept this tradeoff for the laundry thing.



4: Groceries, and Parking.

This is the best part. Going to the store? Buy all you want. No need to worry about being able to carry it all up into the elevator in a single trip. Just stash the car in the garage and it's mere steps away from the kitchen. Make as many trips as you want. And best of all, it's free! At my last place, I paid $250 a month for a parking space which took 5-10 minutes per round-trip to get to from my apartment (depending on elevator traffic.) If I'd have wanted to BUY that parking space, it'd have set me back $30k. Here, it was just included with the house, like it was totally normal. The realtor didn't even make a big deal out of it. It was like "Well, yeah, of course there's a garage. Why wouldn't there be?"


5: The Drainage.

It just works.



6: The Volume.

Turn it up as high as you want. There are no upstairs / downstairs neighbors to complain. It's taking me some time to adjust to the fact that I don't have to quickly turn down the volume when we get to the explodey part of the movie. And while setting up the receiver, I noticed that I had the subwoofer level set to -12, and all other speakers at 0. Been so long since I made that adjustment I'd forgotten about it. Needless to say, we're back up to 0.



7: The Hardware Store.

They have hardware. Lots of it. SAE, Metric, stainless, brass, Grade 8, Class 11, bearings, pins, rollers, it's all there.

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...2ea0bc3ff8.png

They also sell really good local honey.


https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...e8cd587c40.png




8:WalMart, the grocery store, etc.

Man, these are just blowing my mind. They are so friggin' HUGE, everything is on a single level (no escalators), and they're not even all that busy. No 15 minute checkout lines at the grocery store. And they ALL HAVE PARKING!




9: The Lizards.

I don't know why, I just find them amusing.

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...a9aba19f84.png

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...9c47da24d1.png





10: The Cuban Food.

Ok, to be fair, I wasn't expecting much. And it's not like there's actually a Cuban restaurant here. But the local Mexican joint had "la Cubana" on the menu board, so I tried it.


https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...4fa32f52cd.png

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...9406a2c1a0.png

Sorry, but no. Tampons* do not put chorizo their sandwiches. And where are the pickles? And the mustard? And the roast pork? And what's with the lettuce and tomato? And this bread is just indescribably awful.

You don't know that yet. :giggle:


https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon....0,1200_AL_.jpg

I would highly recommend upgrading to this; https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HHE60CE/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1


If I'm working and its 98 degs out, I open my app and lower the temp so when I get home its ice cold. By far one of my favorite things I've upgraded in the home.

Your link is brokey, but I assume it's a wi-fi thermostat?

I'll look into it. The one I have now is programmable for multiple dayparts and weekend / weekday, which is what I've always upgraded to in the past. Frankly, I'm lazy and I'd rather have the thermostat automatically turn itself down before I get home, rather than me having to remember to log in and do it manually.

I have programmable thermostats, but don't use them. My house is set at 75 degrees Summer and Winter, A/C and heat. I always seemed to use more energy when programming it off and on.

Joe is the person to do an accurate study, and hopefully he will before he meets the cute redhead in the area.

The problem with internet-connected thermostats is that the security on them sucks and is never updated, so they quickly get converted into botnet participants.

--Ian

See, now a cat wouldn't do this:



Come to think of it, none of our members would put themselves into such a situation.

A most beautiful picture from TonyMontana's build thread, in case you missed it.

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...a708b4b988.jpg

And I'm off to give him cats for that picture, that's beautiful.

Suitable for framing :likecat:

Very nice photo there, Six.


Unrelated, my new work laptop:


https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...1ec046c2fb.png


I am distressed and ashamed. I hate the structure of this OS, I hate the way it abstracts the filesystem from the user, I hate the lack of a start menu, I hate the fact that it only has two USB-C ports, one of which is used for charging, and literally nothing else, meaning that I have to carry around a slew of dongles to do anything, I hate how sluggish the GUI is, I hate the fact that the keyboard does not have PgUp and PgDn, I hate the fact that I have to fire up VMWare to run the applications that my own company writes to talk to our hardware, and so on...

I did not choose this voluntarily.

If you figure out where the "Pictures" "folder" is, let me know. I've accidentally scanned things to that "folder" using image capture ever since we got our iMac, and I have yet to figure out how to access that "folder" so that I can delete all of the old scans.

The file structures on the new Apple products are so fucked up that my wife and I usually just put everything on the desktop. The desktop is super cluttered, but at least the 27" screen can fit a lot of shit! lol

Can you not do a file/folder search in ios?

Apple lost it's way around Maverick's (which I still run incidentally, and I believe was one of the last OSs that jobs probably had a say in) every since then both their hardware and software have gone significantly downhill in terms of power user things. I really don't know what I'll do when this current computer bites the dust. Maybe keep buying refurbished ones?

I have the 2nd to last gen MacBook air, and have not seen a single apple computer that I want since. The new MacBook was ruined with the usb c ports. And the software blows.

:shrug: Buy a useful laptop and charge it on your expense report.

Unrelated video I took yesterday:

Excavator being used to attach spreader bars to a trench box.

I love this song...good cover:

Hey look Dave Knudson is still in a band.

^ LOL

So, follow-up.

Bought the blue one, Kobalt-branded. Came with 2x 80v, 2Ah batteries. 21" deck width.


https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...b468616bcd.png


It does a very good job. I let the lawn get a little shaggy for two weeks, and then cut it this morning, in a single-pass, at the second-shortest setting. Never even came close to bogging down, which was more than I could say for my B&D plug-in mower 13 years ago. Some reviewers commented on the auto-throttle being "weird," and yeah, you can obviously hear the power ramp down after about 1 second if you stop in place or lift it. It's unusual, but has no negative impact- she spins right back up again automatically as soon as needed.

The first battery did about 2/3 of the yard, and the second one finished it up with about 50% remaining. The charger is fast enough that you could keep the mower operating continuously if you needed to. The electrons go in faster than they come out.

Also picked up the matching string trimmer, so I have a total of three batteries and two chargers. Bit'o'redundancy there.

trying to picture Joe going about his yard work in burbs. :giggle:

http://data.whicdn.com/images/54294821/large.gif

Coincidence?


https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...7b6c83ffa8.jpg

It is the pure, proper 'burbs.


https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...c795c50276.png


Woke up yesterday thinking I was having a heart attack. Chewed some aspirin, realized I wasn't dying, and so I went out and mowed the lawn. Had to stop four times to come inside and catch my breath. Definitely something fucked up happening to mu chest right now, (pain, shortness of breath, can't inhale fully without triggering a coughing fit...

Ah, well. I abused the hell out of my body Friday night, hoping this is just the consequences.

Joe?

It's ok to go to the urgent care clinic or emergency room for a quick once-over. I've done it when I felt weird.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...720_115803.jpg

MOW BITCH! (first response)
https://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net...0121102040812?


No you should get that checked out cause carebears, Have you figured out how to make your t-shirt into a ninja mask ? Soak it with water and that'll keep some heat off. Obviously, do activities in the morning if possible or very late in the afternoon. Sounds like a bit of allergens to be honest. :dunno:

http://fashionablygeek.com/wp-conten...e-a-ninja.jpg?


That grass is soooo green....



And this sadly applies to my life with both vehicles....
https://scontent-ort2-2.xx.fbcdn.net...dd&oe=5A06E9BC
:cry: :cry:

Did Joe's symptoms sound like asthma to anybody who's got asthma? Sounds like there might be an environmental trigger. At a minimum you might want antihistamines or to get an inhaler prescribed.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...716_183837.jpg

Like I said, I'm in-between health insurances at the moment, trying not to do anything expensive.

I feel pretty good at this point. Still a little bit of a cough if I inhale fully, but the pain with breathing / lying on my side is pretty much gone.

I'm assuming that, since I don't smoke regularly, my body rioted about my wolfing down 3 or 4 cheap cigars on Friday night with the gang.

No good images to put here, sorry. Here's a guy flying a plane:

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...ef332a4714.png

So you just moved in and you already have a gang to smoke cheap cigars with?

https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/cool...r-19259419.jpg

Joe is in a gang now? Wondering if Crips or Bloods or MS-13 or biker leather? Probably biker leather.

3 or 4 cigars is a lot. You could easily have spasms or an asthma attack.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...614304ea82.jpg

making a fucking awesome salad is metal.

No joke; I thought this was a picture of Concealer404

Latin Kings, gringo chapter.

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...9e1c1df740.jpg


And yeah, 4 cigars in 5 hours is a bit much. Like I said, I'm hoping that's what it was. Saturday was constant, unending pain, felt like Hustler's mom was sitting on my chest. Sunday was pain only when moving around or inhaling deeply. Today, the pain is mostly gone, but I still have some discomfort and a cough when I take a very deep breath.

Never experienced anything like this before. I've had severe respiratory distress associated with allergic reactions when I was a kid, but this was different. No itching, no runny nose or red eyes, nothing at all other than a feeing of "holy shit, I think I may literally be having a heart attack." I'm still a little freaked out that this has gone on for three days, but at least I do not appear to be dying.

^^ Hmm, kinda reminds me of the symptoms of paraquat poisoning back in the 'ol rag weed days (mid 1970's).

Paraquat Poisoning - Symptoms, Diagnosis, Treatment of Paraquat Poisoning - NY Times Health Information

Maybe not that exactly, but it's possible there was something on the tobacco (in a cheap cigar) that wasn't supposed to be there.