Posting Will Be Erratic

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

Er… posting will be more erratic than normal through the 15th. We’re packing/driving between houses and trying to get floors done (though we hired painters. At husband’s insistence. Something about not letting me work myself into the ground.)

One disastrous side effect of this is that Dan and I will rarely be in the same house at the same time, and I can’t sleep without him, which means my ADD is through the roof. I’m continuously losing and forgetting things. Yesterday for instance, I plain FORGOT to post.

But more distracting is that internet access in Colorado is bizarre and nettus interruptus, which might or might not (but feels like) be enemy action.

So during the periods in CO I might not post at all, and while traveling it’s not likely.

I will try to post two or three times a week at a minimum, but bear with me please.

By the 15th I should be on full time except for unpacking and setting up rooms in the house, and redoing the room that will be my office. (it has plastic paneling on the walls, a popcorn ceiling, and a weird light fixture.)

But I’ll have a makeshift office in our bedroom, or at least a chair to sit on, as opposed to right now, when I’m working from my bed, either end of this, because it’s the bed or the floor.

I might be too old for this nonsense.

98 thoughts on “Posting Will Be Erratic”

  4. I might be too old for this nonsense.

    But but You’re just a youngster!!!!! 😉

    Take care Sarah. 😀

  5. Do what you must. We can wait, and I, for one, would rather have you healthy and not posting than working yourself into a crisis by trying to do too much.

    1. Simple rule for life: Relax and do only what you are supposed to do. The two hardest parts: the relax and only. Never do something out of guilt. This gets easier the older you get, your body reminds you quickly if you try to do too much.

      Then practice Joy and Gratitude, the two secrets of life. I tell people, Joy follows me wherever I go.

      2. Some body needs to handle the painting and general cleanup, while others have to deal with the concrete and rebar. IIRC, Fred is the only one qualified to handle nuclear waste if Fluffy isn’t busy doing BBQ.

  7. Maybe have some of the better guest hosts post some insightful prose.

    Or we could just put on some late 70’s – early 80’s rock and have a party to cheer everyone up. Got Boston and AC/DC queued up to help chores less dreadful. Still trying to find the perfect album side for washing the dog.

      1. Yup. Our Hostess could have a stack of guest posts waiting to go, but if she forgets that one of them needs to go up…

      2. Somebody could do a pseudo guest post — i.e. just post something longer than the usual comment to kick things off…

        2. Sarah’s Helpers could also put up another Vignettes post, with or without a book promotion.

        4. I’d like to try one. China limiting video games to 3 hours per week is a sign of China’s demographic collapse. Discuss. The corollary is that, bad as it is, the US will be the last one standing.

          Most people’s eyes glaze over when finance is mentioned, but what’s going on in China seems more generally interesting. I’ve realized that my views have fossilized. I’m sure, absolutely sure, what the outcome will be and that’s not a good thing to be.

          I’ve been writing here, contra the China doomers, that China has real problems of its own. This move by China looks to be desperation, as have all the recent moves against the China tech sector and the recent banning of bad financial news from Chinese media, including the US. Techs available in China. China doesn’t have enough workers flowing into the market, they have a huge debt burden, the tech companies were soaking up investment — and why not, they’re the only thing in China making money — the generals and politicians get their funding from the state owned sector that’s hemorrhaging money. The traditional Chinese horsemen, flood and famine, are abroad again. Western companies have been moving their manufacturing out of China as the factor cost benefit from being in China erodes whilst the quality factor remains poor. All this is leading to a banking crisis and, thus, a political crisis.

          I’d be interested in any perspectives.

          Alternatively. The likely outcomes in Afghanistan are either war with Pakistan flowing into India or civil war between the factions. Could be both. Pakistan now has a well equipped army to their north that is ethnically identical to the tribes in Pakistan’s north with a tradition of invading the plains. Pakistan, though, has the bomb as does India.

          1. Banning video games *does* sound like a “Don’t understand the problem, can’t three women have a baby every three months” type solution.

          2. Does the limiting of video games to 3 hours per week imply that young men are playing games instead of pursuing women and reproducing? That sounds like of like what has been happening in Japan for a while. And also here, to some degree.

            1. That’s the logic.

              I can tell you from inside groups with gamers, it’s not even a “wet streets cause rain” story, it’s more like “All our powerful outlets spend 20 hours a day hammering on HOW VERY BAD IT IS to have kids, and setting insanely high standards to even consider taking such a step– it is clearly the fault of a relatively powerless group that our birth rates are falling!”

              I’d lay money that once you adjust for demographic differences, regular gamers are more likely to have children. (Comparing a group that includes half of those who are too young to be legally married to the general population is going to bias in favor of “no kids.” 😀 )

              And I mean gamers-gamers, the kind that they’re always ATTACKING in these things, not someone doing farmville on their phone.

              1. Indeed that is the (Il)logic. I was watching a video about the Tupolev TU22 bomber where the presenter, and I think he was Russian, listed off a a long list of known pilot killing problems with the airplane and then “the Soviet Union being the Soviet Union” they ignored them and moved forward to the next set of pilot killing problems.

                China being China, seeing a demographic catastrophe because of actions they took, answers by saying stop playing video games and, well, you know … this is a family site.

                FWIW, I think the games are a symptom not the disease in Japan, Korea, and in China. There is a shortage of women so finding one is difficult and marrying one very expensive. q.v., the why behind building empty apartment buildings in China.

                1. “Symptom, not the disease” is a much, much better way of putting it. 😀

                  In Japan, there’s, at least in some strata, the cultural expectation that a woman will be *both* the typical insane commitment office worker– *and* the insane commitment wife, at the same time. Heard about the family members of the gals who dated some of my Marines. The Marines didn’t care if you weren’t one of the most dedicated people in the office, if you sometimes looked frazzled, if you sometimes failed– so they were “just so incredibly nice,” per the girls. Uh, I’m biased towards the guys, but I was also frequently biting my tongue because I *am not* actually their mother, and “nice” isn’t exactly how I’d phrase it…. if THEY were less demanding than the average dating guy, I would’ve stayed single instead, too!

                  I do remember hearing about one rural town that managed to average something like three kids per family, and they were YOUNG kids, by the community being built around the idea of supporting families. So the “message” to the mothers was that they wouldn’t be judged for, oh, looking at the toddler when they were “supposed” to be focusing on the first grader playing in the play-area, because The Whole Point of the city was that they have support.

                  I don’t know if the turn-around LASTED, and since it was “people are literally moving to this town because they want to have more kids” it’s not really something that can expand across the country, but it might help edge cases…..

          3. At this point, can we be sure that Biden hasn’t given the bomb to the Taliban?

            Okay, there’s an argument that some of these laptops with fancy capabilities will have a low useful service life if the new owners spill tea on them, or surf porn, etc. So, without parts and maintainers, can you even practice enough to actually use the stuff? OTOH, that logic would say that hillbillies can’t blacksmith AKs.

            There are allegations that the fancy hardware is simply going to be sold to the Russians, Chinese, etc.

            I think I’ve been talking for a while about certain things being unforeseeable, or about circumstances being difficult to predict. Or about simply personally having no clue what is going on.

            Afghanistan is a special case. Even given the mistakes we know I’ve made in recent years, etc., I do not know what has happened there, how things could have occurred differently, or what will happen.

            I mean, some analysts are saying ‘this had to be deliberate, SOP is X’, implicitly claiming that an item can’t be sheer incompetence. My issue is that all my information about US military is hearsay from years ago, in fact I do not know that it can’t simply be a matter of incompetence. Possibly other people have enough information to really know that it can’t be incompetence.

            When I try to really figure out if I actually know anything, I come up with some insane theories.

            1. So I’d be pretty comfortable saying the US military left no weapons of mass destruction (Atomic/Biological/Chemical) in Afghanistan. Mostly because the Biological we haven’t made since the late 60’s, the last of our Chemical are at Dugway proving ground being destroyed (the darn things were supposed to be gone as of 2012 at the latest, but last I heard 2023 was the end date). Tactical nukes were essentially sent to Pantex in the 90’s due to various treaty agreements. That leaves free fall weapons, missiles and subs. Afghanistan is land locked so subs are out :-). The Minuteman missiles are all up in the Dakotas and nearby. There are (or were?) several free fall weapons deployed to Nato allies (with US folks holding the keys) but they are a long way from Afghanistan. If we’d still had things like Daviy Crockett recoiless rifle or the SADM (Special Atomic Demolition Munition) I might not be so comfortable.

              as for maintaining hardware AK’s you can probably blacksmith to some degree (their manufacturing tolerances are huge and their very tough). M-16 and SAW less so, but there have to be some decent gunsmiths in Afghanistan. UH-60 and fixed wing stuff are another matter. They’ll run for a while but pretty quick they’ll need repairs. My understanding was that was part of the ANA’s (Afghan National Army) issue. They had gotten dependent on that kind of hardware for logistics as well as jets (which they didn’t have) as they had learned the technology intensive US way of making war. If they’re bright they’ll sell it to the highest bidder and go buy ex soviet stuff which although crude probably needs way less man hours/ flight hour. I suspect most of what they got was ex ANA stuff, although as soon as we saw the ANA collapse those weapon caches should have caught some arc-light level missions.

              1. you mean the tactical nuke agreements that we found out the Russians have been violating left and right?

                1. That would be them, but once the hardware went to Pantex and the cores are down to their component pieces its a little late 😦 . And everyone had conniptions when Bush the Younger broke out of the ABM treaty following the process in the treaty to do so. And of course the Soviets and Russians TOTALLY ignored the Bio Weapons treaty. They were still chugging along on that well into the mid 90’s (Look for Ken Alibek’s book, Biohazard), and had the Sverdlovsk Anthrax accident (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_leak) in 1979, 4 years after the treaty went into effect. Pretty much you can’t trust Russia as far as you can throw it.

              2. Lots of very skilled gunsmiths in Afghanistan. It’s what the Pathans are traditionally good at. Until uncle and Ivan dumped huge piles of materiel there, they made their guns from scratch and kept old SMLE’s in service for decades.

                Maintaining the electronics, not so much but I’m sure China will provide until the civil war between Taliban and Isis anyway. It’s much like Africa could maintain steam engines but not diesels.

                1. BGE I suspect maintaining the electronics is the least of the problems. The turbine engines are notoriously delicate, the gearboxes that drive the rotors and the various parts that the collective controls are no less so. Looking around I see a cost of ~$2200/h for a uh60. That’s not just fuel (I’m not even sure that’s with fuel) call a helicopter mechanic $200/hr and that’s 8-10 hrs of maintenance/flight hour. They’ll probably run for a while, but sooner or later they’ll break and when things break in a helicopter in flight its a bad day… The fixed wing stuff they got will probably last longer and the various vehicles MUCH longer. As Obumbles said of his VP don’t underestimate how badly Joey can REALLY F up.

                  1. Indeed. At the end of the day, You can be a machinist with little more than a file and some scrap. If you can make it spin, you can build many, many things. Hence my comment on Africa. Steam engine parts can be made up by a skilled machinist, and there are many such there. Diesels not so much. Similarly, they can keep old cars running almost indefinitely. New ones, again not so much. You need a logistics tail. This actually ties in with Smith’s Pallas novel.

                    On the other hand, were I the Taliban and I had the materiel of an advanced army, at least for a while, I’d do what my ancestors did and invade the plains. At this point, the Taliban are better armed than Pakistan in everything but tanks and the bomb and the Khyber Pass area is not good tank country. Once through the mountains you’re in the Punjab with India and all those Hindus just the other side, and again the bomb. China would love that since it would pull India’s attention away from their north. Won’t matter how much blubbing the Chinese troops do if they’re unopposed.

                    I suspect we’re just beginning to find out just how bad sleepy Joe and the generals have screwed the pooch. What a disgrace they are.

                    1. BGE said
                      At this point, the Taliban are better armed than Pakistan in everything but tanks and the bomb

                      UGGH do you think they could take Pakistan perhaps with the aid of the ISI ? That gives the Taliban access to Nukes, I’m not sure what Pakistan has but deliverable tactical nuclear weapons are tricky and it might be that the nukes are not flexible enough to deploy against a fast moving opponent. However, getting truck deliverable weapons could mean Nukes anywhere in Asia/Europe/Africa. That’s a nightmare scenario, I think Joe’s F up is potentially FAR worse that just making the USA look like idiots.

                    2. Yep. It might actually be worse since Pakistan could fold as quickly, and for the same reasons, as Afghanistan did and then you have the Taliban with the bomb, and tanks, and airplanes, and the logistical train to support them with India sitting on the other side of the plain.

                      I think India would make short work of them but it’s not a good situation.

                      Aren’t you glad our generals and politicians are top experts? Biden told us everything was going according to plan and they’d anticipated all of this so this must be want they want.

                      F-cking idiots doesn’t begin to describe just how bad they are.

    2. I’ve got some Bob Segar on vinyl around here somewhere. Some Beach Boys too. Younger expressed an interest in the vinyl the other day; I might could get ‘em digitized. I wonder what Rumble’s like.

      1. Sib was shocked to discover that our parents have the Beatles White Album (first run at that so they got it close to the release date) in the LP collection, Odetta, Judy Collins, Joan Baez, the Kingston Trio, the Limelighters, Ian and Sylvia, Neil Diamond’s _Taproot_ album, among others. Sib gasped, “I can’t believe that our parents were once COOL!” in tones of semi-horror and dismay. I don’t remember if I bit my tongue or said something.

        1. Amusing. I told my youngest brother a while back to go watch the pilot episode of the Dukes of Hazzard.

          I explained that back when this show was on TV, our father owned a muscle car, had a chick who would look good in a two piece swimsuit (mom), naturally curly hair back when perms on men were in fashion, even tanned big biceps… Dad used to be cool. That had never previously crossed his mind.

          1. Also amusing is that while getting an attractive wife and a fun musclecar were somewhat intentional, being cool had never really been a goal. I hope it was fun for him while it lasted.

      2. Digitized? I am rebuilding my vinyl collection after twenty years in boxes and having to throw about half of them away cause they were warped. Started out with the goal of just having a few of the best albums around but, like anything I do, that quickly changed to having anything I thought I might listen to a lot around.

        Beach Boys: Pet Sounds and 20/20 from the later period, Pick em or get a Greatest Hits from the early period.

        Beatles: Well, everything, but if money or space is limited get … never mind. Just get them all. George Martin’s kid has been remastering everything brilliantly. Personally I’d start with Rubber Soul, Revolver, and Abbey Road. But then I’d go back and pick up Sgt Pepper, Magical Mystery Tour, and the White Album. I also just picked up a copy of Let It Be…Naked which is the Paul and George going back to the original master tapes and releasing the album without all of Spectre’s overdubs and extravaganza. (If you are on a budget don’t even consider it. I dropped almost $US200 on my copy but then I’m single so I can be irresponsible.)

        1. If it’s not too bad, and if you leave ’em lay flat somewhere warm for a while (it might take weeks) very often vinyl will unwarp. I’ve saved a number of ’em that way.

          1. Unfortunately, if the records are pressed, you might lose some of the fidelity of sound from heating and reshaping. One of the reasons I like buying the actually cut albums. Expensive though.

            1. If they’ve gone rippled, it won’t help. But if they’re just bowed, it works pretty well. Yeah, anything that stretches the material will affect fidelity, but sometimes you can’t replace it, so…

            3. Back when a) I had money to spare, b) decent hearing, and c) time & room for LPs, I got a fair number of the Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab half-speed masters. I see they’re still around, with various LPs going for about $25 each. Don’t want to think about the cost to replace the Beatles collection. (The 13 British albums.) The LPs are in shelves in the living room, maybe 500 of them. $SPOUSE has a more modest collection, largely because she wasn’t as stupid about money as I was back them…

              Now, if I get the spare time, I’d like to transfer some of the LPs (only some of them Mobile Fidelity) to MP3. All the CDs got that treatment, and I have them on thumb drive in the vehicles that can take USB music sources.

        2. I picked up a half-speed mater (which almost explain) of Carol King’s “Tapestry” several years (two decades?) ago.

            1. That was the big selling point for Mobile Fidelity. I have a couple of LPs in both the OEM and the Mobile Fidelity versions. My hearing isn’t good enough any more to do a good job at pointing out the differences. Only one round of replacement stapes in the right ear, but it took 3 tries to get the left ear with a reliable connection–probably should have switched ENT surgeons after the first failure… Then there was the nerve damage. Combination of shooting and Pink Floyd on headphones gets the credit for that.

              I notice on the MFSL website, that 45 rpm versions of various albums are a thing. I think one of the two turntables in the household can handle 45, but see the previous paragraph for my reluctance to check them out.

  8. We got your back. And I hid the time machine, so no one can find it.
    (Now, where did I stash the keys for it?)

    1. They’d better not be in the grinder on the espresso machine again. Jeff was . . . irked . . . at the work it took to fix the burs and reset things after the last time that happened.

  9. “I might be to old for this”? Come now. One of my favorite birthday gifts (30 years ago) is a coffee mug that says “Old enough to know better. Young enough to do it anyway.” With that in mind, I got my competition license and drove my first road race at age 60. Did pretty well. You can do this! Just look after yourself.

  10. Life is erratic. Do what you can with what you have or have been given. That’s all anyone can ask of anyone else. 🙂

  11. Be careful. Sending you good vibes. Hope things settle by the 15th. Get out of Colorado. Sometimes a place will tell you it is time to go and will push it. I’ve had this happen a few times. The place will try to eject you if you aren’t fast enough.

      1. I was around 12 when that came out. I won the 45 version in a radio call-in contest.

  17. You are still a youngster (says she who is about to be force onto Medicare). If you work yourself into getting sick, you won’t be posting anything. Pace, and take care of yourself. Please.

    I hear you about not sleeping well without Dan. I’m the same way with hubby gone. It was a long 17 months when he was working in Randle, commuting home for the weekends. Now it is just the Golf Trips.

  18. Another round of good luck from me and the kitties, and hope you enjoyed C in particular cheering you on in this!

  21. Take care of yourself and your family (and more importantly cats!). We can survive through the post desert. Somehow.

    (actually an open thread post every other day or so would work and have near-zero time requirement from your end)

  23. Oh no you may be doing what you warned us about, a month ago or so.
    OK if you are really feeling guilty, then once you are all moved and settled in, then work off that guilt by writing some more really good books and stories.
    Is that punishment enough for you?
    BTW I’ll buy/read them.

      1. Yeah, the pink is too strong for my taste– but what the heck is wrong with folks that they had to be negative about that? It LOOKS like someone went “I want to make a movie set of the apartment of a famous, retired, Russian, Ballerina. Make it DRAMATIC! No, MORE dramamtic!”

        That blue room looks like someplace you’d have tea on a cloud, and I kinda like the kitchen.

  27. What Pam said. You can never have too many (((hugs))) from people who wish you the very best. 🙂

  28. Sympathizing with the move effort! For a new job I needed to document where I’d lived. Turns out I’ve moved 31 times in my adult life. No, it didn’t keep the accumulation of junk down.

    Judy Collins still did the best “House of the Raising Sun.” Record from late 50s maybe.

    1. Now I have this vision of a gaggle of robed priests hauling mightily on the ropes, and thus the sun is slowly hoisted into the sky…. my goodness, who knew morning was so much work??!

    2. “Document where you’ve lived?”

      Locations? Or addresses? If the latter, I’d be in trouble. Couldn’t do it. I’ve only got 14 places to list from adulthood … the difficult ones are the 10 between ’74 and ’79 in college. Locations, that would be okay. But addresses? Not a chance. Legally those 10 moves, never changed my home base, so if that is all they care about, I’d be fine (mom still lives there). But dang.

      “Moved 31 times” – You are going to give them a long list …

  29. Yeah, as you get older there is more temptation to pay someone else to do some of the heavy lifting. If you can afford it.
    At times like this you can feel like you’re swimming upstream, but you’re also making memories you can be proud of when it’s behind you.
    We’ll keep posting for you.
    Enjoy your new home!

  30. Three times now, I have seen the Lame Stream Media calling Ivermectin a ‘horse deworming drug’.

    It can be used for that purpose. However, calling it a ‘horse deworming drug’ is like calling steak ‘dog food’ because it can be fed to dogs. Ivermectin is used all over the world to cure people infected with viruses and parasites.

    Ivermectin has proven highly effective in treating people affected by the communist Chinese corona virus bioweapon. Why are the government and the media going to idiotically extreme lengths to prevent people from using it? Why are they trying to make vitamin D a controlled substance, available only by prescription?
    ———————————
    The founders of this nation were extremely bright and highly educated, but their true genius was to recognize the limits of their brilliance. Today’s politicians can’t even recognize the limits of their stupidity.

    1. Dunning-Kruger. They’re too stupid/ignorant to perceive their own deficits. Or it could just be evil/malice. Or both. If you just can’t tell whether it’s one or the other, it’s probably both.

    2. I kind of accidentally (with regards to covid) have a tube of Ivermectin upstairs that I got from Amazon about 5 months ago because my husband caught scabies (probably from a doctor’s office) and was having a hard time getting the doctors to treat it. I bought a bunch of stuff online, including the ivermectin, but had killed the scabies before it arrived (first order was abruptly canceled — I didn’t realize people were buying it for covid). Though it did take months for the residual itching to go away and he still complains about itching occasionally (from paranoia and old skin, I expect).

      I guess my point is that Ivermectin is also good for scabies…

    3. Michael Yon posted recently a video clip of the Japanese Minister of Health announcing they’ve approved ivermectin fortreating Wu-Flu. Or so the caption claimed, I’m taking their word for it as I don’t speak Japanese. Still Yon has been reliable.

      I’ve noticed an extreme lack of coverage about it in the local USofA media.

    4. Over on https://www.samizdata.net/, Paul Marks regularly rants about how the smearing of Ivermectin, HCQ, and early treatment of Covid in general was and is responsible for the lion’s share of Covid deaths. Because using Covid as a pretext for a big power-grab required painting it as a dread unstoppable plague for which There Is No Early Treatment.

        1. What struck me personally when HCQ treatment was first touted was how the proponents presented it as a realistic treatment with realistic limitations rather than as a miracle-cure panacea. “You need to give the multiple drug cocktail, if you wait until the patient is a death’s door it likely won’t work, and yes there are (known, manageable) issues with toxicity if too high a dose is given.”

          And the debunkers invested in the “dread unstoppable plague” narrative immediately seized on the admitted limits to scream “SCIENCE has PROVEN that HCQ is TOXIC and DOES NOT WORK!!!!”

          Bah.

          2. The ‘debunkers’ rushed out a ‘scientific’ study that ‘proved’ Chloroquine was not effective.

            1. They did wait until the patients were At Death’s Door.
            2. Patients were given 1/10 of the effective dose, or less.
            3. Treatment was stopped after a day or two instead of the necessary 10 days.
            4. Vitamin D and zinc were not given in addition.

            Since Chloroquine did not act as a Miracle Cure after they did everything wrong, It Must Be Banned!!!

            Oh, and Orange Man Bad!! by the way.
            ———————————
            When police shoot violent criminals to protect innocent people, they are jackbooted fascist stormtroopers.

            When police shoot innocent people to protect corrupt politicians, they are National Heroes.

  33. I sympathize. I’m going to be 3/4 moved for a long time. Talked to some kitchen remodeling folks and it appears expecting new cabinetry by February is optimistic. The hot tub guy was not much more optimistic about me getting a deck built before the snow flies.

    But, I’m out of Denver – and I don’t have popcorn ceilings!

    BTW: I tried dealing with gravatar; let’s see if this comment gets my logo…

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