Intro
This is another of the W.O.O.D. series of semi-regular
Weekly Occasional Open Discussions.
(i.e. if I forget and skip one, no big)
Immediate prior one here:
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2022/07/20/w-o-o-d-20-july-2022/
and remains open for threads running there (at least until the ‘several month’ auto-close of comments on stale threads).
Canonical list of old ones here:
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/category/w-o-o-d/
“Me” News
All my “Florida Stuff” is in the new house. I have all but 2 of my cars here (the 2 in California at the mechanic’s). I’ve started the garden (really “Edible Landscaping” where it looks decorative but is really edibles).
We’ve bought some new beds, though the guest room is still an air bed. I’ve got a rudimentary office set up (still needs a desk… I’m using a folding tray table at present…) We’ve got a “card table” in both the dining room and the breakfast nook (pending arrival of our real tables / chairs) and I’ve got a set of 2 folding card chairs and 6 “lawn chairs” made of plastic to finish out the temporary furniture…
We have a new couch and love seat (with recliner sections ;-) on order, but delivery will likely stretch out to about Christmas… Oh, and we have one recliner in the house and one TBD later, after I’m done with the Road Warrior stuff.
Also we’ve bought a selection of cheap dishes (like really cheap… 50 ¢ plastic bowls kind of cheap) to expand on the 4 person Disney Decorative Set so we can actually get through the day without running the dishwasher. The rest of our dishes will be part of the first run to the California storage.
In short, the house is now “livable”, though not yet completely comfortable and a long way from Goal State. But we can see that end point from here.
In about a week I fly to California, rent a big truck, load it, and drive it back. Florida Friend flies with me, loads with me, then drives my Subaru back. That will leave just a Mercedes 240D that’s getting some restoration done for “someday” bringing out too.
After that first load, I think I’ll have over 1/2 of the “goods” moved. While loading, a bit more assessing and perhaps triage will be done on the rest. In any case, the most important “stuff” will be moved into the house.
The downside of this is that I’ll be “on the road” for about 1.5 weeks, and with most of the time spent sitting behind the wheel of a big truck, unable to do much on the computer…
The ML 320 got back from the Dealer. They want about $10,000 to fix it. Not going to happen. They think maybe, possibly that the EGR valve is sticking causing the hiccup in the turbo, so want to replace the EGR Valve AND the whole turbo for $6k. That’s nuts as the turbo isn’t the problem, it is being administratively turned off after the engine hiccups enough times.
The other $4k is to replace the “hind brain” and fuse box. This car has something like 4 fuse boxes, and one is in the rear quarter panel along with one of 3 or 4 “SAM” (Signal Acquisition Modules). The minor computer that actually turns on / off various things like gas gauges and turn signals after the front computer relays your requests from the switches via the car area network…
Seems that particular critical box “can get water in it” and mine did, so is a bit of a rust bucket…
Think about that. A $70,000 (new price, I paid far less used) car that dies if the little box leaks, and it tends to leak… but “only” $4,000 to fix it after it does.
I’ll be looking into independent mechanics (or a DIY) to fix it instead…
I can only say that this level of design stupidity is epic. I’ll never buy any Mercedes newer than 2002 or so again.
WatchMaga
This will continue to be DIY for a while still. I did do a Binge Watch catch up session and there’s a bunch of good ones, so well worth going there:
https://rumble.com/user/WatchMaga
News
It looks like the CDC has decided that Chinese Wuhan Covid is over now and everyone can just forget about it all. If flopped and failed to deliver a slave race, so they are moving on to Monkey Pox. (AKA “buggery pox” or “schlong pox” as it seems to have a preference for Buggery Indulgers. Oh, and I’m not interested in calling it “gay” anymore. The abuse of language has to stop somewhere. What it is, is buggery and lesbians.) I predict that nobody much is going to get excited about Buggery Pox when they don’t “do” buggery.
THE big news seems to be that the FBI went fishing at Trump’s House and came up with nothing. The Left Media demanded that IF Trump were innocent, he’d release the search warrant and inventory sheet… which he did… and now they are livid as he did NOT redact them. Yup, agent’s names and all. Hey, they didn’t demand he release it redacted, now did they.
It looks for all the world like Yet Another Nothingburger Investigation.
On the plus side:
It is now absolutely clear that:
1) The FBI is the Political Goon Squad of D.C. Federal Bureau of Intimidation at best. I will give no help to any FBI agent no matter the circumstances; after all, they mostly seem to do entrapments and instigation of crimes, so best not to be proximate to that kind of thing.
2) The DOJ is a Political Persecution Tool. Nothing more. When only Conservatives are prosecuted, and clear dramatically obvious crimes by Democrats get not even a finger waggle, well, ANY good Tyranny is like that.
3) We know Trump is incredibly Squeaky Clean! since after 6 years of trying they got nothing. Even this raid is turning up nothing.
4) Perhaps most important, we know that the USA is now a Banana Republic Tyranny, nothing more. Tyranny Rules apply. Offer nothing. Do not feed the animals. Keep your head down and figure the best way to escape or hide from The Machine.
After all, with an added 87,000 ARMED Tax Goons looking for someone to rob and shake down for the king POTUSino, they have to bother somebody. So me? I’m 100% on the Government Dole now (Social Security / Medicare ) with ZERO employment income. That’s the safe place to be, I hope… Maybe I can convince them to take my newest car… a nice little 2008 Mercedes ML…
Oh, and the Ukraine War seems to have drifted off to Background Noise in the news. America has a new Squirrel! to look at. Despite Yet Another $BILLION in arms being sent over for destruction. I can only think Putin is loving it. NATO delivering all their toys and ammo for him to destroy in a war of artillery where his side is unmatched.
I suspect the world will be a bit more dull for the next month or two. About the middle of October, things ought to get exciting again. Ukraine will be running out of soldiers to operate those $Billions of weapons and Putin will be happy to bomb them into fragments, then shut off the flow of oil & gas to the EU and watch it implode.
Only wild card likely to be when China invades Taiwan. IIRC, there’s only one month where the weather for that is favorable. March? Something like that I think… I ought to look it up, but it’s late…
Oh, and sometime in the next day or two Liz Cheney gets the official count and notice that she is retiring from politics to go write a book and work at pMSNBC or CNN as a RINO TDS Presenter… I think that will leave just 2 of the RINOs who voted to impeach Trump still in office. So a little more work to do…
Global News about things like Farmer Protests and such seems to have dried up (along with their rivers…). One wonders if folks are taking a break or if it is just that August is vacation time in Europe?
For more recent events, see:
Bongino Report:
Or Whatfinger:
https://generaldispatch.whatfinger.com/
I’ve also gotten addicted to the Top Ten Memes of the week from WatchMAGA here:
They have interesting “bite” to them, along with a tendency to highlight the news of the week in memes, so good as a social attitude pointer too. Plus they are “way fun” ;-)