Do you know about that Iranian nuclear scientist that was assassinated? Apparently, he was riding in a bullet-proof car, heard unusual sounds like bullets hitting the side of his car, got out to investigate, and... well...
Not sure if anyone needs to hear this - while my PhD is technically in nuclear physics, I don't quite know how to build a weapon (without a lot of Googling).
I'm so happy No 3 is now taller than 6 ft tall. No 1 is a little shorter than me and No 2 is about the same as me. And their heights match up to their lengths when they were born. I think No 2 was about .5 inches longer than No 1 and No 3 was maybe 1.5 inches longer than No 2.
Should be able to pick up some Florida St. & New Mexico State players at bargain prices since those schools aren't using them. I'd probably be cautious about and clearance linemen from ASU.
Finally ran out of my allotment of leftover Turkey yesterday. But it made some good sandwiches (both white and dark meat). We had Thanksgiving at my mom's house. A total of six people were there including my nephew who was coughing while wearing a mask. Even so, he was allowed to stay and put folks potentially at risk. I wore a mask and later took a walk in Tilden to pass the time until he left, then I drove back to my house. Probably a classic example of what Fauci was warning everybody of.
We are down to probably one last dinner (and had to whip up some additional stuffing already). One of the best flavored birds we have ever had. It was a real bright spot in a fall that has lacked brightness.
Had trouble getting out of bed this morning, probably due to a combination of a dreary rainy day and the end of a four-day weekend. Otherwise slight headache, some muscle soreness in my back and shoulders.
fine, I guess. Bit tired. My father's health is not exactly improving (cataracts!) so I've been thinking about that some. After four lovely days of not being at work, I'm not doing a great job of focusing today.
She got a lot of crap on the internet for her kicking style, but she kicked it just like a goal kick. And Derek Mason stuck up for her so good for him. And then he got fired, which probably should've happened earlier.
exactly. It wasn't like she just screwed up the kickoff. And supposedly she was doing alright with short FGs and XPs. But it was Vandy so I'm not sure why they were really practicing XPs anyways...
now at 7:30 eastern / 4:30 pacific, which is fine - I mean I'd have watched even if it had started at 9 eastern, but having some time before bed to vent online when the coaching staff find a way to scheme into a loss will be nice.
don't know if anyone saw the clips of Romain Grosjean's crash at the Bahrain Formula 1 grand prix - his car hit a barrier at 135 mph, already on fire, the barrier sheared (it's not supposed to) and the car split in half while sustaining 53G in impact, the full fuel load ignited... and he managed to get away (with some help) and "only" got some burns on his hands and ankles. Absolutely amazing engineering (and some luck about how quickly help arrived)
That crash was a spectacular testament to modern safety technology in f1 cars, from the halo device that prevented his head from hitting the guardrail to the designed-to-shear bolts that gave way and separated the engine from the front half of the car.
Somewhat amusingly, the burns he sustained on his hands didn't happen when he was in the car. Rather, they were from touching the guardrail as he clambered away from the wreck.
That was unreal how he managed to survive that crash/fireball. When I first learned about the protection halo and how drives have to drive with something that's right in the middle of their vision, I had some mixed feelings about that. Apparently, the halo was a big reason behind how Grosjean survived that.
I just saw the video of the crash and was shocked that he survived with such minor injuries. In fact, I can’t believe he was actually able to walk and escape from the crash without people needing to pull him out of the wreckage.
Rams beaten by Niners with 4 seconds left on a field goal. Goff had a forgettable day with 2 interceptions (one a pick-six) and a fumble when he tried to scramble.
And by the way, I am still bitter over the blocked PAT. Not as painful as the Arizona hail mary loss, but almost, especially considering it was the Big Game.
I'm particularly annoyed that they did the exact same thing on the blocked PAT as they did on the blocked FG and we didn't adjust at all. They overloaded the right side with 6 guys bunched together. If we had audibled into a run to the left for the 2-point conversion, we'd have them outnumbered 6 to 3 on that side...
I agree that the Hill Mary was worse because it was the climax of an entire 4th quarter of thinking "We're not really going to blow this lead, are we?"
The Raiders moved cities, but if they wanted to make the playoffs in 2020 maybe they should have moved conferences.
Though Vegas is 6-5 and has games remaining against the Jets, Chargers and Broncos, the Raiders’ postseason hopes have dwindled considerably following back-to-back losses to the Chiefs and Falcons. On Sunday, Jon Gruden’s team lost 43-6 to an Atlanta team that sits at only 4-7. Even if the Falcons have improved in recent weeks, there was nothing excusable or playoff-like about the Raiders’ performance.
Were they placed in the NFC East or competing for a wild card berth in the other conference, Vegas would have much more realistic playoff aspirations. In the AFC, the Raiders may have no more room for error.
There are reasons for it (something about this being an incident, not an outbreak) but some of it seems punitive. Wear your masks, you f@#$&*&$#@ idiots. Apparently Lock, Bortles & Rypien were also not cooperative with NFL contact tracers, so the NFL probably said what soooo many of us have thought over the years...F-you Denver...
Near the end of my run yesterday I saw a guy with a really nice Cal jacket on. His back was to where I was going and he was talking with someone so I couldn't muster up a Go Bears. Sad.
For those who have CBS All Access, they premiered a show called "Texas 6" about 6 man football here. The team they focus on is in Strawn, a town I've spent a lot of time in. One of my closest friends' family lived there while we were in school and so all the shots were really familiar, including their house which is prominently featured cause 2 players live there now. Also, his cousin's kid is in the show (Jett gets yelled at a lot). So take a look, a pretty cool show.
Data was sourced from their source at the U of Washington and visualized with mapchart for clean state colors and GIMP for the labels. I colored every state that was the source for two or more other states...except for Pennsylvania, it looks like.
Some interesting facts:
Technically, DC exports the most residents to Maryland, more than Pennsylvania, but I didn't include it.
There are only 1.3 native-born Nevadans for every Californian living in Nevada.
Likewise, there are only 1.7 native-born New Hampshirites for every Massachusettsan living in New Hampshire.
As expected, many states have several foreign countries whose native-born people outnumber those of the leading American state.
People have identified a typo in the legend, where pink should be MN. Additionally, it looks like I colored Ohio its own color by accident."
The only one that surprised me was West Virginia for Ohio. I just thought there would be more people from PA or MI due to the population sizes of those states.
Now that I'm not commuting, I'm not even sure if I'll swap to winter tires this year. They'd probably get fewer than 500 miles before I swap back to summers in early March. If we get any heavy snow, I can probably wait it out before driving since the car usually sits for up to two weeks at a time.
I'm planning to install some heated grips on the motorcycle in the next week or so. Anything lower than 50 degrees and my hands get chilled after about 30 minutes.
I didn't think Northern Maryland would be an area that's cold enough to require winter tires. Then again, maybe your old commute was mostly on roads that are not salted/maintained at all?
Nearly everyone is fine with all-seasons here, but my car came stock with summer tires that have great grip in 40+ temperatures but are utter trash in the snow. As a great example, we had an unusually early snow a couple years ago and I was perfectly fine on the treated/plowed roads on my way home from work. But I managed to get stuck in the 1.5" of snow on my nearly flat driveway.
No 1 went to get some winter tires for his STi. When Costco went to put them on they found out a couple of the lug nuts were on so tight that at least 1 stud broke off. He still also had to get his car inspected within like a few days so while they let him drive on 4 studs, he had to get that fixed for the inspection. So he took it to get the studs fixed and they found out at least 1 caliper had the threads stripped due to the steel bolt/aluminum caliper issue. So it ended up costing him something like $500 to get the calipers rethreaded and the bolts replaced.
Update on the Miata radiator replacement. So I changed 6 of the 9 coolant hoses. 5 are super easy, 1 required removing the air box. Two of the hoses are called the devil hoses because they run to/from the oil cooler behind the oil filter. One of those runs behind the engine and the other runs to the front. They're the worst two to replace. The 3rd hose I didn't replace was a heater hose that runs behind the engine and under the Camshaft Angle Sensor. The CAS is prone to a leaky o-ring which I had so I decided to remove it and replace it, which would give me room to replace that heater hose. I couldn't get it out from behind the engine. Usually involves removing the coil pack but that has a bolt at the bottom that really is hard to get to.
So I flushed the system about 5 times with distilled water and the coolant was actually pretty clean. I was worried the thermostat would stay closed and I wouldn't be able to get coolant into the engine to flush the heater core but I totally didn't think about the water going into the engine from lower heater hose. So when I restarted the car I was getting a small stream of smoke coming up from under the exhaust manifold shield but I couldn't think of something I did that could cause that so I removed the shield and I don't recall smelling the smoke before I started the work. Looks like it's coming either from the EGR value return tube or/and the CAT connection at the bottom of the header. I'll probably take it to a local place to look at that. Bought one of those coolant filler funnels to help bleed the system so I'll probably try to reinstall the thermostat and fill it up and bleed so I can take it to the local place to check out the leak.
TL;DR, almost done. Didn't work on it at all during this last week or just about all the previous one with just an hour or two last weekend so it's taken a couple of weeks.
I binged all 10 episodes of the new Saved by the Bell on Peacock. I thought the update makes sense and I liked it as much as I enjoyed Cobra Kai (so maybe no one else will watch this until it's on Netflix in a couple of years).
Because I got my free Peacock Premium account (due to already paying too much for Comcast), I looked through its archive and found myself watching seaQuest DSV which I only saw some episodes here and there during its run in the 90s. IIRC, production issues caused the show to jump genre between seasons 1, 2, and 3...in a somewhat similar fate to fellow 90s SciFi show Sliders (also on Peacock), which I really loved for the first two seasons on FOX before it's terrible season 3 and a better/different seasons 4 and 5 on SciFi Channel.
Yeah, and then his (Jonathan Brandis) life ended tragically as his career tapered off.
By the way, his character was wearing a Florida Marlins jersey with a "2010 World Champion" in the back. The show supposedly took place in 2018...before season 3 (seaQuest 2032) jumped 10 years to 2032 (the show jumped the shark long before then).
Downloaded and listened to the Fontaines DC second album "A Hero's Death." Not bad, definitely liked it more than Doggerel, which I thought would have been dismissed as a bit rough and shouty if it hadn't become a "critic's darling" release.
Also downloaded some more albums from a label called Analog Africa that releases albums of African soul and R&B and such mostly from the late 60s through the 70s. I'd had a couple of albums of Ghanian music, and recently enjoyed "De Bassari Togo" by Orchestre Abass and "Mogadisco." Turns out there's a lot more! https://analogafrica.com
Finished The Good Place and loved almost every second of it. Started Community because, for some reason, my son loves Ken Jeong. Pretty good. Chevy Chase cracks me up and the two younger male actors (Kevin Glover is one of them...not sure of the name of the other one) are stupidly hilarious.
The Flight Attendant. I watched the first episode of this HBO Max series. Interesting concept. Stars Kaley Cuoco, Penny from Big Bang Theory. I'll probably give the 2nd episode a chance. *SPOILER* young flight attendant that is a party animal sleeps with a first class passenger in Bangkok and wakes up to find him dead.
Haven't watched the 2nd season of The Mandalorian. I was waiting to see if Nos 2 and 3 wanted to watch but No 2 hasn't even watched season 1 and No 3 hasn't finished. So I'll probably just go through it.
Finished The Right Stuff. I enjoyed it and it was different from the movie. The season ends after the first Mercury flight when Alan Shepard goes up for something like 20 min. I don't know if there will be more seasons to work up to going to the moon.
The Right Stuff probably won't cover the moon, but should probably cover the entire Project Mercury. They can easily do a second season up to John Glenn's orbital flight.
They certainly might do it if it's really successful, but the book mostly just covered the Project Mercury guys (and other test pilots who didn't become astronauts).
Same. But the more I think of it, it's almost perfect. It gives you a prime suspect but also juuuuuust enough other info to make you shift focus to other suspects. Still, highly disappointed. It could have easily been stretched into 8-10 episodes and done more of a head fuck with the audience
Man restores his fiancée's childhood teddy bear
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q8dJsu4SyQ#t=32s
More background info:
https://abc7news.com/viral-video-youtube-childhood-teddy-bear/25836/
Do you know about that Iranian nuclear scientist that was assassinated? Apparently, he was riding in a bullet-proof car, heard unusual sounds like bullets hitting the side of his car, got out to investigate, and... well...
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/29/middleeast/iran-mohsen-fakhrizadeh-remote-control-machine-gun/index.html
Not sure if anyone needs to hear this - while my PhD is technically in nuclear physics, I don't quite know how to build a weapon (without a lot of Googling).
It was a remote control machine gun. Sort of like the movie The Jackel with Bruce Willis.
My first thought was that remote control machine gun hidden in the trunk in Breaking Bad.
Oh yeah that as well. I actually hadn't gotten that far in BB but I just remember the Mythbusters episode on it.
Other than that, how was the car Mr. Fakhrizadeh?
I was delighted to discover that in Germany, if you want to buy an armor plated car you should look for one that is "gepanzert."
https://www.autoscout24.com/offers/toyota-land-cruiser-200-gepanzert-level-9-bei-trasco-diesel-white-594b2b20-dd6a-4c3d-b1cd-5d0c62ba1455?cldtidx=2&cldtsrc=listPage
that was not smart
plainly he wasn't a rocket scientist
pqtm
Warning to single guys who are 5'11 + 1/2":
https://twitter.com/jamesromoser/status/1333423616495656963
It’s not just their vertical height that these guys lie about on tinder, if you know what I mean.
heh...this is what I was thinking.
ruh roh. Junior is 5'11 1/2 and is desperate to get to 6'
I'm so happy No 3 is now taller than 6 ft tall. No 1 is a little shorter than me and No 2 is about the same as me. And their heights match up to their lengths when they were born. I think No 2 was about .5 inches longer than No 1 and No 3 was maybe 1.5 inches longer than No 2.
What?
Black Friday/Cyber Monday
Reminder of this website with a lot of local businesses: https://keepoaklandalive.com/
I wonder if Cal can order some linemen cheap for their special teams. And will they be there in time for Friday
I hope we can find a "Buy a new special teams coordinator, get three linemen for free!" type deal.
Only if Cal splurged for Prime.
Maybe there’s a competent ST coach available somewhere.
I think it's more likely lack of practice as a group is more the cause.
but he recruits 3 star Arizona players so well!
Should be able to pick up some Florida St. & New Mexico State players at bargain prices since those schools aren't using them. I'd probably be cautious about and clearance linemen from ASU.
ASU linemen are the smallpox blankets of 2020 college football
Booooooooooooo!
https://www.dw.com/en/austrian-village-of-fucking-decides-to-change-its-name/a-55740967
How are you feeling?
I am still salty from the Big Game. Also, still literally salty because I've had Thanksgiving leftovers for every meal since Friday morning.
Finally ran out of my allotment of leftover Turkey yesterday. But it made some good sandwiches (both white and dark meat). We had Thanksgiving at my mom's house. A total of six people were there including my nephew who was coughing while wearing a mask. Even so, he was allowed to stay and put folks potentially at risk. I wore a mask and later took a walk in Tilden to pass the time until he left, then I drove back to my house. Probably a classic example of what Fauci was warning everybody of.
We are down to probably one last dinner (and had to whip up some additional stuffing already). One of the best flavored birds we have ever had. It was a real bright spot in a fall that has lacked brightness.
Yup. Similar experience...#I’mthebadguy
Had trouble getting out of bed this morning, probably due to a combination of a dreary rainy day and the end of a four-day weekend. Otherwise slight headache, some muscle soreness in my back and shoulders.
I felt similar (didn't sleep very well last night for no known reason), but had too much to do today to let it get in the way.
fine, I guess. Bit tired. My father's health is not exactly improving (cataracts!) so I've been thinking about that some. After four lovely days of not being at work, I'm not doing a great job of focusing today.
Tired.
Today in Covid
* sigh *
https://twitter.com/page88/status/1333204163250053122
could just as easily go under "our crumbling democracy:" - NJ governor still has to ask people to take calls from contact tracing teams: https://twitter.com/GovMurphy/status/1333460689231482889?s=20
Elsewhere in college
Liberty & Coastal Carolina get College Gameday before Cal.
https://twitter.com/CollegeGameDay/status/1333525325435854852
Side affect of getting really good before Cal.
Wilner: Stanfurd may relocate home games to Pacific NW.
https://twitter.com/wilnerhotline/status/1333479142642184194
2nd Wilner tweet: Also worth repeating: Stanford tests players 8-9x per week and has not had a positive since July.
@Is that because the Furd players can drop the test if they suspect they'll fail?@
Vandy's Sarah Fuller becomes first female to play in a P5 football game.
https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/30416293/sarah-fuller-winding-road-two-sport-immortality
She got a lot of crap on the internet for her kicking style, but she kicked it just like a goal kick. And Derek Mason stuck up for her so good for him. And then he got fired, which probably should've happened earlier.
it was also a squib kick play by design so...🤷♂️
exactly. It wasn't like she just screwed up the kickoff. And supposedly she was doing alright with short FGs and XPs. But it was Vandy so I'm not sure why they were really practicing XPs anyways...
Yeah I am surprised he didn’t get fired last season. I like him as a DC. I kind of wish Wilcox tries to hire him for our staff.
Pass
I thought he was a good DC while at Stanford.
Can he coach ST?
USC vs. Wazzu pushed back to Sunday
https://twitter.com/wsucougarfb/status/1333256036996694017?s=21
I'm liking these Sunday games. I doubt they stick around next year, but I wouldn't mind if they do.
NFL: https://tenor.com/54tD.gif
Actually prefer them to a weeknight game, and would even moreso once we are back in full crowd mode.
now at 7:30 eastern / 4:30 pacific, which is fine - I mean I'd have watched even if it had started at 9 eastern, but having some time before bed to vent online when the coaching staff find a way to scheme into a loss will be nice.
https://twitter.com/USC_FB/status/1333531892017221636?s=20
OUR CRUMBLING DEMOCRACY
Ajit Pai is putting some WD40 on the revolving door
https://twitter.com/TheRegister/status/1333510066440466433?s=20
PRO
Phoenix Phortyniners
https://twitter.com/957thegame/status/1333474890020581378?s=19
don't know if anyone saw the clips of Romain Grosjean's crash at the Bahrain Formula 1 grand prix - his car hit a barrier at 135 mph, already on fire, the barrier sheared (it's not supposed to) and the car split in half while sustaining 53G in impact, the full fuel load ignited... and he managed to get away (with some help) and "only" got some burns on his hands and ankles. Absolutely amazing engineering (and some luck about how quickly help arrived)
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/nov/29/romain-grosjean-f1-crash-bahrain-gp
That crash was a spectacular testament to modern safety technology in f1 cars, from the halo device that prevented his head from hitting the guardrail to the designed-to-shear bolts that gave way and separated the engine from the front half of the car.
Somewhat amusingly, the burns he sustained on his hands didn't happen when he was in the car. Rather, they were from touching the guardrail as he clambered away from the wreck.
That was unreal how he managed to survive that crash/fireball. When I first learned about the protection halo and how drives have to drive with something that's right in the middle of their vision, I had some mixed feelings about that. Apparently, the halo was a big reason behind how Grosjean survived that.
That was an insane crash. Definitely shocked he wasn't injured more than he was.
I just saw the video of the crash and was shocked that he survived with such minor injuries. In fact, I can’t believe he was actually able to walk and escape from the crash without people needing to pull him out of the wreckage.
staggering really - it's not that long ago that we'd have been reading obituaries after a crash like that.
I expected to see him fully on fire.
Rams beaten by Niners with 4 seconds left on a field goal. Goff had a forgettable day with 2 interceptions (one a pick-six) and a fumble when he tried to scramble.
https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/11/29/49ers-defeat-la-rams-field-goal/
And by the way, I am still bitter over the blocked PAT. Not as painful as the Arizona hail mary loss, but almost, especially considering it was the Big Game.
I'm particularly annoyed that they did the exact same thing on the blocked PAT as they did on the blocked FG and we didn't adjust at all. They overloaded the right side with 6 guys bunched together. If we had audibled into a run to the left for the 2-point conversion, we'd have them outnumbered 6 to 3 on that side...
I agree that the Hill Mary was worse because it was the climax of an entire 4th quarter of thinking "We're not really going to blow this lead, are we?"
Look at this, they've got 8 guys to the longsnapper's right. How do we not run a 2-point conversion here? It's the Big Game, go for the win!
https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F039c449b-cfa4-4603-9484-dbada6a830d0_1185x610.png
Yeah, I said so before the kick, surprised Wilcox pulled the trigger for one so quickly - maybe they haven't had time to practice the two-point plays.
Goff and the Rams have now lost four straight to the 49ers.
When that PAT got blocked all I could do was laugh. Of course that's how it ended.
Just flashbacks of Tuan Van Le, my first Big Game freshman year. I had gone to a few games in HS/MS with a friend and his family but never a Big Game.
Raiders falling out of playoff contention
https://www.silverandblackpride.com/2020/11/29/21725482/raiders-afc-playoffs-race-falcons-loss
The Raiders moved cities, but if they wanted to make the playoffs in 2020 maybe they should have moved conferences.
Though Vegas is 6-5 and has games remaining against the Jets, Chargers and Broncos, the Raiders’ postseason hopes have dwindled considerably following back-to-back losses to the Chiefs and Falcons. On Sunday, Jon Gruden’s team lost 43-6 to an Atlanta team that sits at only 4-7. Even if the Falcons have improved in recent weeks, there was nothing excusable or playoff-like about the Raiders’ performance.
Were they placed in the NFC East or competing for a wild card berth in the other conference, Vegas would have much more realistic playoff aspirations. In the AFC, the Raiders may have no more room for error.
I feel like this result should have been shocking, but kind of wasn't.
even with like 7 min left No 3 was saying it's still the Falcons. Raiders still have a chance. I guess he was partly /s
I still can't believe the NFL made the Broncos play when the Steelers/Ravens got pushed back.
13 possession
112 offensive yards
more punts than incomplete passes (9 Att, 1 complete, 2 INT)
https://www.espn.com/nfl/matchup?gameId=401220215
An unabashed Holmoe-nian offensive performance...
There are reasons for it (something about this being an incident, not an outbreak) but some of it seems punitive. Wear your masks, you f@#$&*&$#@ idiots. Apparently Lock, Bortles & Rypien were also not cooperative with NFL contact tracers, so the NFL probably said what soooo many of us have thought over the years...F-you Denver...
The only good donkey is a dead donkey.
Yeah I saw an article that a Bronco was thinking it was punitive.
CAL
Cal vs. Oregon game start at 4 pm PST (ESPN)
https://twitter.com/CalFootball/status/1333255843400224768
Oregon's run defense sucks, so we should get some points on the board. But I'm not optimistic about this one.
Near the end of my run yesterday I saw a guy with a really nice Cal jacket on. His back was to where I was going and he was talking with someone so I couldn't muster up a Go Bears. Sad.
Heh "with both hands"
For those who have CBS All Access, they premiered a show called "Texas 6" about 6 man football here. The team they focus on is in Strawn, a town I've spent a lot of time in. One of my closest friends' family lived there while we were in school and so all the shots were really familiar, including their house which is prominently featured cause 2 players live there now. Also, his cousin's kid is in the show (Jett gets yelled at a lot). So take a look, a pretty cool show.
https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=yfp-t&p=Texas+Six#id=1&vid=42b356f32e93e15666a90340e9a8a7df&action=click
oops https://www.npr.org/2020/11/30/938902523/irs-says-its-own-error-sent-1-200-stimulus-checks-to-non-americans-overseas
This is kind of cool: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/k3ftlw/oc_source_of_the_most_residents_born_outofstate/
"Map was inspired by this post from /u/Biohzd05.
Data was sourced from their source at the U of Washington and visualized with mapchart for clean state colors and GIMP for the labels. I colored every state that was the source for two or more other states...except for Pennsylvania, it looks like.
Some interesting facts:
Technically, DC exports the most residents to Maryland, more than Pennsylvania, but I didn't include it.
There are only 1.3 native-born Nevadans for every Californian living in Nevada.
Likewise, there are only 1.7 native-born New Hampshirites for every Massachusettsan living in New Hampshire.
As expected, many states have several foreign countries whose native-born people outnumber those of the leading American state.
People have identified a typo in the legend, where pink should be MN. Additionally, it looks like I colored Ohio its own color by accident."
That is interesting, and somewhat predictable.
The only one that surprised me was West Virginia for Ohio. I just thought there would be more people from PA or MI due to the population sizes of those states.
More about wanting to get the fuck out of West Virginia.
Go here to see a bear rehab center in New Hampshire: https://kilhambearcenter.org/ They have pictures and video!
DBD Car work
Now that I'm not commuting, I'm not even sure if I'll swap to winter tires this year. They'd probably get fewer than 500 miles before I swap back to summers in early March. If we get any heavy snow, I can probably wait it out before driving since the car usually sits for up to two weeks at a time.
I'm planning to install some heated grips on the motorcycle in the next week or so. Anything lower than 50 degrees and my hands get chilled after about 30 minutes.
I didn't think Northern Maryland would be an area that's cold enough to require winter tires. Then again, maybe your old commute was mostly on roads that are not salted/maintained at all?
Nearly everyone is fine with all-seasons here, but my car came stock with summer tires that have great grip in 40+ temperatures but are utter trash in the snow. As a great example, we had an unusually early snow a couple years ago and I was perfectly fine on the treated/plowed roads on my way home from work. But I managed to get stuck in the 1.5" of snow on my nearly flat driveway.
No 1 went to get some winter tires for his STi. When Costco went to put them on they found out a couple of the lug nuts were on so tight that at least 1 stud broke off. He still also had to get his car inspected within like a few days so while they let him drive on 4 studs, he had to get that fixed for the inspection. So he took it to get the studs fixed and they found out at least 1 caliper had the threads stripped due to the steel bolt/aluminum caliper issue. So it ended up costing him something like $500 to get the calipers rethreaded and the bolts replaced.
I always hear about studs breaking in WRXs and STis. I don't know what the deal is with those studs. I'm glad I haven't broken one so far...
No 1 sent me a video of a guy that did his own helicoil tap in his caliper. I'm always worried when places use the air gun to put them back on.
Update on the Miata radiator replacement. So I changed 6 of the 9 coolant hoses. 5 are super easy, 1 required removing the air box. Two of the hoses are called the devil hoses because they run to/from the oil cooler behind the oil filter. One of those runs behind the engine and the other runs to the front. They're the worst two to replace. The 3rd hose I didn't replace was a heater hose that runs behind the engine and under the Camshaft Angle Sensor. The CAS is prone to a leaky o-ring which I had so I decided to remove it and replace it, which would give me room to replace that heater hose. I couldn't get it out from behind the engine. Usually involves removing the coil pack but that has a bolt at the bottom that really is hard to get to.
So I flushed the system about 5 times with distilled water and the coolant was actually pretty clean. I was worried the thermostat would stay closed and I wouldn't be able to get coolant into the engine to flush the heater core but I totally didn't think about the water going into the engine from lower heater hose. So when I restarted the car I was getting a small stream of smoke coming up from under the exhaust manifold shield but I couldn't think of something I did that could cause that so I removed the shield and I don't recall smelling the smoke before I started the work. Looks like it's coming either from the EGR value return tube or/and the CAT connection at the bottom of the header. I'll probably take it to a local place to look at that. Bought one of those coolant filler funnels to help bleed the system so I'll probably try to reinstall the thermostat and fill it up and bleed so I can take it to the local place to check out the leak.
TL;DR, almost done. Didn't work on it at all during this last week or just about all the previous one with just an hour or two last weekend so it's taken a couple of weeks.
DBD AV Club
I binged all 10 episodes of the new Saved by the Bell on Peacock. I thought the update makes sense and I liked it as much as I enjoyed Cobra Kai (so maybe no one else will watch this until it's on Netflix in a couple of years).
Because I got my free Peacock Premium account (due to already paying too much for Comcast), I looked through its archive and found myself watching seaQuest DSV which I only saw some episodes here and there during its run in the 90s. IIRC, production issues caused the show to jump genre between seasons 1, 2, and 3...in a somewhat similar fate to fellow 90s SciFi show Sliders (also on Peacock), which I really loved for the first two seasons on FOX before it's terrible season 3 and a better/different seasons 4 and 5 on SciFi Channel.
seaquest DSV: I think the kid in that dated the little sister in The Fresh Prince.
Yeah, and then his (Jonathan Brandis) life ended tragically as his career tapered off.
By the way, his character was wearing a Florida Marlins jersey with a "2010 World Champion" in the back. The show supposedly took place in 2018...before season 3 (seaQuest 2032) jumped 10 years to 2032 (the show jumped the shark long before then).
Downloaded and listened to the Fontaines DC second album "A Hero's Death." Not bad, definitely liked it more than Doggerel, which I thought would have been dismissed as a bit rough and shouty if it hadn't become a "critic's darling" release.
Also downloaded some more albums from a label called Analog Africa that releases albums of African soul and R&B and such mostly from the late 60s through the 70s. I'd had a couple of albums of Ghanian music, and recently enjoyed "De Bassari Togo" by Orchestre Abass and "Mogadisco." Turns out there's a lot more! https://analogafrica.com
I think I've posted this Ghanian gem before: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQRa7H7ZLL4
Here's an Orchestre Abass tune: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4dEhBv7pmg which might slap a bit.
Finished The Good Place and loved almost every second of it. Started Community because, for some reason, my son loves Ken Jeong. Pretty good. Chevy Chase cracks me up and the two younger male actors (Kevin Glover is one of them...not sure of the name of the other one) are stupidly hilarious.
You mean Donald Glover. His and Danny Pudi's interactions are definitely the best part of the show.
Biblioteca rap is great. They do it at one of the Comicon panels. All their end scenes are really good.
The Flight Attendant. I watched the first episode of this HBO Max series. Interesting concept. Stars Kaley Cuoco, Penny from Big Bang Theory. I'll probably give the 2nd episode a chance. *SPOILER* young flight attendant that is a party animal sleeps with a first class passenger in Bangkok and wakes up to find him dead.
Haven't watched the 2nd season of The Mandalorian. I was waiting to see if Nos 2 and 3 wanted to watch but No 2 hasn't even watched season 1 and No 3 hasn't finished. So I'll probably just go through it.
Finished The Right Stuff. I enjoyed it and it was different from the movie. The season ends after the first Mercury flight when Alan Shepard goes up for something like 20 min. I don't know if there will be more seasons to work up to going to the moon.
The Right Stuff probably won't cover the moon, but should probably cover the entire Project Mercury. They can easily do a second season up to John Glenn's orbital flight.
That's what I'm hoping for. I wonder if they plan on going to the Apollo 1 tragedy.
They certainly might do it if it's really successful, but the book mostly just covered the Project Mercury guys (and other test pilots who didn't become astronauts).
Interesting. Maybe I'll go get it from the library and read it.
Finished The Undoing last night with its 6th & final episode....I want me 6 hours back.
Same. But the more I think of it, it's almost perfect. It gives you a prime suspect but also juuuuuust enough other info to make you shift focus to other suspects. Still, highly disappointed. It could have easily been stretched into 8-10 episodes and done more of a head fuck with the audience
apparently the original ending was more ambiguous