Tuesday, January 31, 2017

There is something satisfying about wheels that are worth more than the car they are on.



The car was a super beater - but the wheels..... 2600 bucks out the door. The doors were a nice touch though. He said some of those wheels can cost like 5 grand!



Monday, January 30, 2017

Breadpocalypse has finally ended.



This all started over Christmas. Mr S. had a week off and went full obsessive on trying to get his bread recipe to work. He'd been actually trying to get the "perfect" bread for like two years! I mean, he wasn't working on it every weekend, but from time to time he'd try and it just wouldn't work out the way he wanted. It tasted great, but he never got big bubbles.  And everyone knows you need big bubbles because that's where the butter goes.

Anyway. Over the holidays he doubled down and I think made bread like every day. It's all a blur now. I mean, bread is like one of my favorite things but I was at the "slow down cowboy" stage. I'm not used to eating bread pretty much every day.  I kept hoping he wasn't going to make me stop liking bread. Seriously.

You can learn a lot of things on youtube, but bread is sort of tricky. Even with all those tries in December it still wasn't coming out light enough. Then this weekend he went crazy and just decided to go on a bread marathon.



The numbers at the top are hydration levels. The loaf and the ball are from the same batch. It's weird how exactly the same bread batch can taste so different depending on what it's baked in. For the previous two years I think he'd been using hydration in the 70% level. But it turns out that 80% makes airier bread and allows the bubbles to form more easily.

He also found out that his pet (bread starter) had become ill. I call it his pet because he had to feed it all the time like a pet. He ditched it in December and just got yeast from the air. Which with his previous try seems to not be strong enough. He was at least able to get big bubbles with the yeast from the air, but the bread just wasn't light enough. Still delicious bread, but you can see the difference from the first photo. Right?

Sunday, January 29, 2017

Saturday, January 28, 2017

I don't think I have anything for you today. It's sunny and I'm trying to get some house projects done before the next set of storms arrive mid week. I'm guessing by how packed all the parking lots I drive by are - that is what everyone else is doing too.

Friday, January 27, 2017

Scott Adams agrees with Mr S.

"I’m having a fun time watching President Trump flood the news cycle with so many stories and outrages that no one can keep up. Here’s how the math of persuasion works in this situation:

1 outrage out of 3 headlines in a week: Bad Persuasion

25 outrages out of 25 headlines in a week: Excellent Persuasion

At the moment there are so many outrages, executive orders, protests, and controversies that none of them can get enough oxygen in our brains. I can’t obsess about problem X because the rest of the alphabet is coming at me at the same time."

Read more here at the article titled Outrage Dilution.

This is funny because it was exactly the impression Mr S. got and I posted about it here in More Conversations with Mr S. on Wednesday. Exerpt below.

"On a slightly different topic - last night we were watching Doomberg before going to bed when we had the following conversation because on twitter last night you could kinda see what was on schedule for today for the Trump Admin.

Me - do you think the world will melt down tomorrow?

Him - It's like an outrage a day. Maybe he is doing that on purpose.

Me - whaaaat?

Him - Maybe he is trying to overwhelm the system.

I look at him sideways.

Him - Well, you can only be so outraged. Maybe he's trying to drop all this stuff so it tires people out.

Me - Like the way they make protesters continuously walk now?

Him - Yeah."

Dear people. You can stop freaking out about Guacamole prices.

Todays hysteria includes the price of avocados going up by 20%. Which is stupid. California is out of the drought. Farmers will get water this year or there will be hell to pay.

I'm guessing farmers supported Trump by a large margin. All along HWY 5 they all have signs saying so. I'm guessing in general we will be importing less fruits and vegetables because we can grow things again. When your farmers are getting a 0 percent water allocation you start buying from Mexico. No one could have predicted we'd pick up so much water in one year, but we did.

Also, I doubt we are going to be much impacted by not being able to buy Corona as cheaply. I mean, everyone knows there is a craft beer fad going on in the US. Right?

This is why we deserve a Dow 20,000.

oh wait. The opposite of that.

"The US's gross domestic product increased by an annual rate of 1.9% in the fourth quarter of 2016, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Here.

Thursday, January 26, 2017

I guess the market only goes up. Said in the most sarcastic way.

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

Europe and Canada must be laughing at us.

A couple of months ago I was at a demo. It was taking a little while to get the whole thing together and this guy walked up to me to make small talk. At first he seemed interested in talking to me about how Americans are sort of mannerless. He didn't use those exact words (that would be rude), but that was basically the gist. It didn't bother me because he's sort of right. It was then I learned he was from Switzerland.

As the Demo was taking a long time, (you know how demos go. Right)?, we got to talk about a lot of things. He was telling how his father was ill, but had to travel to Germany to get his diabetes properly diagnosed. Which is pretty much where my brain exploded. Diabetes is a fairly standard illness these days.

In my head I'm like - aren't you from one of those amazing safety net countries? But all I could eek out was.... how long does the take? He told me that he could hop on the train and be in Germany in like 6 hours. When he had to do this for himself he tries to schedule vacation to make it more worth the cost. Which is kinda like me having to travel to Los Angeles to get diabetes treatment. WTF?!

He started to go on about medical tourism, but by then the demo was ready and the conversation was broken. Frankly it just me feel like Europe and Canada just lie to us about their healthcare. There was a reason we were the last industrial country to adopt socialized medicine.


More conversations with Mr S.

It's gonna be super crazy to live in California for a while.  I'm not sure which thing they are going to be more pissed about. The immigration thing or the arts thing.

I entered the Trump underground right before the election. Technically it was when we went to San Diego. Mr S, was pretty surprised because before then I had a no fucks given attitude. But we were talking to a (white) South African couple while we were down there and I couldn't say I was voting for Trump even though I was super curious what they thought about the whole election thing. Sure I could read twitter or the internet, but these were real people. They clearly thought the whole thing was crazy. That was the moment I entered the Trump underground.

On a slightly different topic - last night we were watching Doomberg before going to bed when we had the following conversation because on twitter last night you could kinda see what was on schedule for today for the Trump Admin.

Me - do you think the world will melt down tomorrow?

Him - It's like an outrage a day. Maybe he is doing that on purpose.

Me - whaaaat?

Him - Maybe he is trying to overwhelm the system.

I look at him sideways.

Him - Well, you can only be so outraged. Maybe he's trying to drop all this stuff so it tires people out.

Me - Like the way they make protesters continuously walk now?

Him - Yeah.


What if Robots came to take your job, but there was no one there to care.

There is an interesting thing happening in the service sector here in the Valley. Restaurants all over are closing. Not because of the minimum wage - but because they can't find good people to work.

I've been noticing businesses complaining about this for about a year. It actually takes a lot longer to hire now because it's hard to find people who want to work, or who are even suitable to work.

The owner of a San Jose burger joint which is closing sums it up this way:

“It’s a challenging time,” he said. “There aren’t any more cooks. The tech industry has taken them.”

I know people like to get worked into a lather about robots taking peoples jobs - but what if people don't want those jobs anymore? To be fair, rents are probably not helping, but when I was a kid I worked fast food for like two minutes. Then I was out! Started lying about my age so I could work in manufacturing.

Funnily enough, kids choosing to do that these days might be working on the very robots servicing people at restaurants they didn't want to work for. Just sayin'.

Tuesday, January 24, 2017

All of this hysteria about healthcare is phony.

I think my head is going to spin right off. I grew up poor and uninsured. This whole heal care thing is not actually rocket science.

So, the other day I was talking to my commie girlfriend. I'm not being mean. I'm being accurate.(Well, somewhat reformed now). But lived on a commune and the whole bit. She is a single mother with a kid. And the kid has a bunch of health problems. Allergic to air kinda kid. So she was telling me something about that. Which I thought was a good opportunity to ask her if she was taking the penalty on Obamacare. She's mentioned a while back she was going to which made me laugh and be resentful all at once. I told you - she lived on a commune! Anyway.

She said she was indeed taking the penalty. I think she said it was 700 dollars a year for her. She then went on to say she could just walk into a clinic and it's only like 40 bucks. And sometimes they give you drugs for free. Which is exactly the way it was when I was growing up. Now my girlfriend isn't poor. She is a single mother, but she's doing okay.  But do you know how many visits you need to have to rack up 700 bucks a year? She might have been a commie, but she's at least figured out math.

I have insurance, yet I don't spend what I pay into health care. The whole thing is a racket and the sooner people just start paying more in cash. The better off we will all be. The price of everything will come right down.
Who said Trump was a union candidate? This girl. Back in Dec of 2015.

Hidden Lake isn't so hidden now.



This is not a natural lake - it's a quarry lake. So the only thing that feeds it is rainfall. Before this year unless you knew it was there, you couldn't see it. Mr S. even thought I was crazy when I told him we had a lake and I had to drive him to a point he could see it.

After all the rain we've gotten though, it's a real lake now. You can see from the main highway coming into town and everything. There has really been an astonishingly large amount of rainfall this year. And now we have a cute lake. I bet the home values of the houses on that road just went up. Before it was just a crappy quarry hole. Now they have lakefront property.

Monday, January 23, 2017

Day 1 of Trump is funny. People are just freaking out because Trump fights like Democrats. Dirty. Normally Republicans cower like whipped dogs.

Morning rainbows.



I didn't know they did that. I thought the sun needed to be much higher in the sky. This was about 7:30/8ish in the morning. The sun normally sets right behind those palm trees on the right.

In those brief moments the sun pops out - California becomes achingly beautiful. I haven't seen California this pretty in a loooooong time. Especially after the last four years of 50 shades of beige.

Sunday, January 22, 2017

Our cup runneth over.



We are still holding our own right now, but you can definitely see that it won't take too much more rain before we start to have problems. The above picture is off towards Sunol. I think that route is a little scary right now considering how saturated we are. There are tons of trees through there.



All of the runoff culverts are now holding water. As you can see, when I set out this morning it was sunny, but the water in this ditch wasn't going down because there is really not many places for the water to go now.



Construction is halted. They are putting condo's  on this plot in Fremont, but now it's a swimming pool. Well, in a couple of more days you won't be able to see the bottom. It will have a shallow end and a deep end.



More vineyard flooding. It won't hurt the grape vines, but if you knew how much rain it took to cause this. We've had like two years of rain in one year. Our soil is mostly gravel, so it's really, really hard to flood it.



We are also starting to see small slips.



And one of the trees in the park when you drive into town was down when I got back in. Trees are the thing that's making me nervous now. The soil is super saturated.



This root ball was taller than I am. It's the second large tree I've seen down in a week. I didn't post about the other one.





Our Arroyo is wider than I think I've ever seen it. Normally it's so dry homeless people live down in them. They are maybe knee deep, normally.





This street basically has a river flowing down it now. You can see most of the concrete is dry. And that water isn't standing there, it's slowing like a tiny river. Some of the hills had tiny waterfalls today, but I couldn't get a shot. So yeah. Your move mother nature.



Luckily the city spent a month working on the drains in downtown proper. Normally it can flood in town too, but just not this year yet.

Saturday, January 21, 2017

This next storm could get interesting.



Things have been pretty chill here up until now. But we are starting to get water where ~I've~ never seen it before. This is normally a small trickle stream that mostly stays within that tree line.



Even the vineyards are starting to flood here. I haven't gone out to explore too, too much because the shoulder is super soft everywhere.







Was going to see how the stream going through here was flowing, but they had it completely blocked off due to an accident.



Luckily I got you this stuff because it's raining so much we basically stayed home and fixed the heater. It's been a real winter here, so it's been getting a workout and was starting to sound cranky.

You might get a bunch of rain shots for a little while though It's suppose to rain through Tuesday and we are fully saturated now. I mean, it been dry for a couple of hours now and there is still running water everywhere. That's sort of unusual for this area.

Friday, January 20, 2017

Capitalism won to fight another day.

I honesty don't know what kind a of a President Trump is going to be. I only know capitalism is our greatest hope. And to think how close our country came to the opposite of that. I wasn't sure we were going to make it honestly.

Experimenting with Lacy.



We lost our last bun to E. Cuniculi. It's a single cell protozoan that infects their brains and kidneys and can cause a host of heath problems often resulting in death. Here.

Since our last girl was so young when she died we had a necropsy and found out a lot of stuff about this protozoan.  The doctor who performed the necropsy had also run a shelter and had started testing all the rabbits that came in. It was then we found out that probably half of house rabbits probably have it and people never know until they (the rabbit) gets sick. (if then) Testing is a wee bit pricey. So most people aren't going to test.

With Lacy, we decided to have her tested as soon as we could when she was a baby. I think we tested at 8 weeks. And of course she turned out to be positive. We decided to treat her even though she absolutely has no symptoms.

The whole thing is sort of new territory for my vet. I mean, usually people don't know until it's too late and nothing can be done. If then. Most will not pray for a necropsy to find out what happened. But my last girl was only five - so I was paying to find out what took her so early. Vets aren't even sure how effective treatment is.  They don't have enough research. Anyway....

Yesterday I took her in for her third blood draw. Her titer (infection) level had still been still rising.  But the whole thing is a little weird because she is non-symptomatic positive. But she's completely healthy.

This article is mostly for other rabbit owners who may run across this one day. All of my rabbits are going to get tested when they are babies now. If I can slow it down a little bit - that's what I am going to try. Some rabbits live very long lives with this illness. One of the longest living rabbits I've owned was positive or at least exposed. But other times it can take a healthy five year old bunny within days.

Thursday, January 19, 2017

Conversations with Mr S.

He gets home tonight and says to me - I kinda stumbled into a conversation at work. The topic was things that are going away.

I'm immediately interested and say - go on.

This group was talking about how in three years all 18 wheel trucks will be autonomous. He says - that's a lot of jobs. He adds, I think that might be overly optimistic.

I say - I don't know. Those large mining companies in Australia have been using that technology for a few years now with those ground movers. I was in a conference and some guy said they pay those guys that drive them as much as a Silicon Valley engineer and they still can't find people.

We both agreed it's also in a place people don't want to work.

He then says the following. Which I admit sent a little shiver down my spine. So - if those trucks are all bots, then a lot of stuff at truck stops will go away.

My eyes grow wide and I say. Riiight. I guess I hadn't thought about the knock on effect of that yet.

Buhbye medical marijuana.

I was talking to a childhood friend who lives in Seattle last night. She said that since pot became legal - there are almost NO medical pot places anymore. They made it a super huge hassle so that market disappeared. I'm guessing this will also happen in California.

She's also dating a potrepreneur, and he has to go to the bank of Canada because the US won't deal with those people's money. Crazy.

I don't normally talk about the fact that I'm a giant pothead because people just think you aren't very smart. And I have to keep up appearances and all. But pot is legal now.  So I can talk about the whole thing now. Going to the "pot doctor" to get your card renewed was kinda a bullshit front. So even though legal pot is more expensive, it might flush out in the wash depending on how chronic you are because you don't have to pay for whatever doctors visits that are required.

Wednesday, January 18, 2017

It's times like these that I realize my twitter feed is fully overweight people I do not agree with. Sometimes I wake up and I'm like - who the elf are these people? How did they get into my feed? Then I think - oh right. Follow what your enemy is saying.

I mean I could be following terrorists. And one day I said - yeah - lets follow this crazy. I'm sure there are more than a handful of unapologetic socialists. Since I can't group my batshit crazies together it's always a bit of a mystery if I'm following them because I like them. Or I'm following them because I don't like them.
Boy, the Obama administration really wore me down to the nubs. I honestly can't believe this stupidity is ending tomorrow. It doesn't seem real to me.

Tuesday, January 17, 2017

I don't remember all this hysteria about rich people being in office when Bloomberg was Mayor. I mean, the media is circulating a story about how 8 guys have as much money as half of the world - AND HE'S ONE OF THOSE GUYS! If you hate rich people so much, stop buying their stuff!

Also, I think they are wrong but I don't care enough to do the math. Because I like rich people. I mean I don't know if I want to hang out with them - but they buy crazy cars. And other fun stuff maybe I'd never see because I don't want to have to do the shit rich people have to do.

Monday, January 16, 2017

Oh yes I'm gonna....

"For the first time ever, there will be a black Lady Liberty on a coin."

I don't really care who is on money. It spends the same no matter who's face is on it. But I do find this a little odd because... black people don't really feel "liberated" by America. Do they?

Sunday, January 15, 2017

Yak trimming day.



Bunnies don't really show their teeth that much unless they are scared or in pain. In this case Lacy is still technically a baby, and doesn't like having her toenails trimmed - so she's putting out mad lip. This doesn't hurt her at all, but she's the first girl to not like being on her back that much. She is just letting us know that she disapproves. Which we think is funny.

The end. Things will probably still be slow for about a week. But at least I'm trying to give you some content.

Saturday, January 14, 2017

Google finally gets me.

My phone is always trying to get me to turn on the Google recommendations for things they think I might like to see. I usually say no because I think I'm unalgorithmable. I get bored very easily. I change my mind about stuff. And sometimes I find I'm into stuff I didn't even know I was into.

There are tons of reasons I won't watch a video. Too long, too old, not applicable, not interested in topic, intro too long. You get the idea. But last week I relented and turned on the magic setting.

Then it sent me the following video.



It was the first time I ever thought Google really got me.

We are soggy.



Construction is going to look a little soft whenever they report it. And people will probably freak out because they don't realize the whole winter here has been pretty wet. This isn't even normal winter. It's Seattle winter. I'm over it. But it amazing the hills are green again. It's like Ireland around here.





Friday, January 13, 2017

The clitoris car.



I'm posting this again as I didn't think it got the credit it deserved. I didn't post any of my car stuff here because I'd already posted them on my twitter feed. But if there is anything I know about Dudes - it's that if your joke doesn't go over well - just tell it again only louder this time. And since I'm guessing a lot of you that read this blog are Dudes, I'm sure you understand.

I mean, you know all the engineers call this car the clitoris is car. Right? has to be.

Thursday, January 12, 2017

I wish a lot of people would just shut up.

I love listening to people who have never employed anyone fret about Trump not having a plan to replace Obamacare.  (said in the most sarcastic way) The same people who couldn't understand their mortgage documents. The same people who couldn't figure out that health care costs would only go up because now you have added a huge bureaucracy to manage health care. The same people who can't figure out that just paying CASH is actually less expensive than insurance and that if you just had catastrophic care you would be completely fine. Doctors give you a cash discount and always have! The same people who pay attention to absolutely nothing all of a sudden feel they can run the world!

When you employ thousands of people, you understand a little bit about health care costs and options.

Some companies in Silicon Valley change insurance providers every single year to get better prices for their employees. It's not because they are benevolent! It's because they pay a portion of your health care too! They also want to play less. At the same time they need to provide good benefits because they that helps them recruit the people they want. If you have crappy benefits people don't want to work for a company as much.

Wednesday, January 11, 2017

There is nothing more funny than the media waging a war with Trump when most people don't even think they need to pay to read the news. I won't even pay 99 cents to read the Mercury News or L.A. times.

It's not hard to figure out how this ends up.
I'm thinking about moving the Snarkolepsyblog this year. I tried to buy the snakolepsy domain about a year ago, and that girl is just homesteading on it. I don't get any money for this blog so I don't know what kind of money she thinks she's going to get for that domain.

Maybe someone will buy it - but obviously I was the most likely.

I know it's super hard to get people to move with you, but I didn't want ya'll to be surprised either. It's not set in stone, but I'm really considering it hard.

Super ballin' motor homes.



I have to admit, I'd never heard of this company before. Furrion. I guess they make appliances and....... robots? It was a little hard to get the whole thing into a single shot. It's 45 feet long after all. Full kitchen, bedroom, shower, and top deck with a tiny jacuzzi and helipad.

























So ridiculous.

19 of the top stories on CNBC have the word Trump in the title. That's about 90% of the stories. I guess they no longer cover business.
For shits sakes. I don't remember all these people having their panties in such a bunch about Bloomberg's assets before he became the Mayor of New York. Sure he wasn't the President, but still!

Bloomberg is reported to have assets of 43.3 BILLION.

Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Metal 3D printing has arrived.



There hasn't really been much new in 3D printing - so I haven't blogged about it in a long time. But this metal 3D printer did catch my attention. Allegedly there is no post processing.

I was a little skeptical because they had a very small sample. But they said they had partnered with Harley Davidson,  so I'm guessing it's not vapor ware. The other interesting thing was that if you look under the printer box above - that is a welder which is attached to the printer. It all comes as one unit.



OH! Did you guys hear there is going to be a First Bunny in the white house?! Well, technically it's the second bunny and won't live in the White house but with the Vice President. But still. Screw all that V card stuff. We've made the B card!

The weird thing about CES this year.

Normally you go to CES to see what is going to be on the shelves within the next six months. In previous years you knew there were going to be T.V.s, but you'd get there and see they'd made curved T'V's. For example.

This year most of the stuff they were showing is already on the shelves. It's the first year I've seen that.

Lacy's first CES.



When we first started going to CES we'd fly in to Vegas in the morning and take the last flight out. Normally the weather is always clear. Always. But you knew there would be a year that rain would make that not happen. Like this year for example. And CES got too big to do in one day anyway. So it made getting rid of that stress a lot easier. Plus, over the years hotels have gotten crazy pet friendly. Although sometimes we have to sneak her in as a dog. For some reason some hotels are only dog friendly. Which is why she has a nondescript pet bag that doesn't draw attention.

Our last bun Jasmine logged the most miles. We took her to Ohio and Illinois and back. Which is pretty much how we came up with this set up. She has her litter box in a medium sized dog carrier and then we hook a medium sized dog crate to it so she can stretch out and not have to lie in her litter box.

Lacy is a crazy good travel bunny. Usually the first day they are off their kibble. But not Lacy. She is a trooper. Maybe it's because she started out traveling. We drove down to almost L.A. to get her when she was a baby. Then we took her to San Diego and back. Now Vegas and back. And she's only six months old.

We put down a drop cloth in the hotel to make sure everything stays clean from hay and cocopuffs.(poops) For some reason the first day or two she pees in her littler box but she won't poop there.  After a couple of days she goes back to getting the routine.



This is her in the truck.