Wednesday, February 27, 2019

My newest technology crush.



There is a lot of activity in the Vertical Take Off and Landing (VTOL) segment right now. There are tons of new proto's being tested. And I've even heard it said that they are considering Vertiports.

Everything is super early, but that is where the exciting stuff is. I think this will be a real thing. Not like those stupid flying cars.

It's



Tuesday, February 26, 2019

Housing is already affecting the economy. People just don't know it yet.

Source. Click image above for full image.

When I start to see numbers like this - all I can see is the trickle down part. When people feel less wealthy - even if it's paper wealth - they retrench and stop spending. Home improvement is going to get hit. And everything down the line. It really creates an ugly feedback loop. Hopefully it will moderate before job loss comes.

Since this has really been snowballing since April of last year, I think there is ZERO percent chance that this isn't already affecting spending at all levels. This is why housing recessions almost always filter out to the greater economy.

Sunday, February 24, 2019

Electricity - you so quirky.



This morning we got the light re-mounted. Which was a biiiiiiiitch. Mr S turns to me and says - did you read the reviews on that light? I was like no - what did they say?

He says... a couple of people complained about it buzzing. The rest complained about how difficult it was to install. One guy was like - I'm an installer and this thing was ridiculous.

Which made me feel like a baller and less stupid. Because us weekend warriors aren't professionals, and you are constantly thinking professionals would get it up in a couple of hours. You also sort of learn at the last minute that you need an LED approved dimmer. Which you didn't know existed.

Our light buzzes like an angry bee, so we went out and bought the new dimmer. But that didn't fix it, so now Mr S. needs to talk to the manufacturer. I'm not sure if I won't have to take this thing down again.

So-  no actual check marks for this project.

Saturday, February 23, 2019

This is all I've got.



It was contractor Saturday, where this light promptly kicked my ass. We got it attached once to get all of the mounting areas marked. That's why there is green tape in this shot. And then it decided it didn't want to cooperate. So this is going to be a two day install I guess.  Ceiling lights are a huge pain to install. It does give you great upper body workout though.

Thursday, February 21, 2019

Uh-oh. Night time twitter knows everything.

Tesla customers describe maddening problems with returns and refunds.

I've been seeing these reports for a while. Just this past week someone got their refund and it bounced. I have only seen that report once though. Take that for what you will. Possibly there is a reasonable answer.

How can everything be fine?

I guess I start to feel like I want to jump out of my skin when everyone is saying one thing, but my stupid eyes see the opposite.

Last night my local news said that California homes sales fell to their lowest level since 2008.

I'm starting to wonder if we ever really recovered, or we just became frogs. Because there is an astounding amount of financial data that is "the worst since 2008". We NEVER seem to escape 2008. And really... the tech world doesn't look anything like I remember it.

It used to be robust and amazing! For Christ sakes Moble World Congress used to be a HUGE thing. Now no one even cares.

Then we have bad news like retail sales. Read: Retail Sales Were So Bad It's either Suspect Or a Recession Warning.

Car sales everywhere are off the cliff. Yesterday there was an article saying they had seven months inventory of Corvettes.

China car sales - China's car sales in January fell 16 percent, marking seven months of decline. How the hell is China not affecting Teslas sales? China is in a technical recession.

Auto sales in Canada were down 16%.

UK car sales down fall most since finacial crisis. There is that pesky 2008 reference gain. I read a rumor that people had all but stopped buying cars in the UK. I don't know if it's true or not.

Philliphine auto sales fall 15%.

Houses in my city are sitting for 5 months easy. Cars, retail, and housing are the three pillars fo the economy. Right?

Monday, February 18, 2019

I'm a bit thirsty.



The wildflowers are barely even popping up. But these lots are getting snapped up pretty quickly these days. You have got to get them while you can.

Pictures I should have posted.



How often do you see a Chrysler with chunky camo? I could only get one clear shot of him. Chasing cars kinda sucks these days with the roads and the traffic.

Sunday, February 17, 2019

Almost snow.



We had a pretty decent hail storm today. All the while it was spitting out the most intense rainbow I'd ever seen. And you other States don't make fun of me! This is as good as California gets. We barely even get WATER to fall from the sky.





California is so beautiful right now. I must have thought about moving 75 times since I went to Monterey. I was even looking at land in GILROY! Everything is green. Which is not real, because it's only green for like two months out of the year these days. But man.... its so pretty.

Saturday, February 16, 2019

Autorama 2019.



Bare metal continues to be my favorite car trend. I think it's beautiful. But not DeLoreans. They suck.



Ratrods also hold a special place in my heart.



I think this is bowling ball paint. It's the first time I've seen it in real life and I'm not sure how I feel about it.





I would absolutely die if this showed up as my UBER.



And I wonder how traffic stops go since... ya know... this is his stick shift.









Look at this crazy station wagon.



More of a golf cart than a ratrod.















Sacramento really bummed me out.

I know I'm suppose to be being an adult this weekend, but the only car show where you can hear big booming stereos is this weekend. You can't find it any other place. I guess I normally go on Sundays, and the cars where not competing today. So that sucked. Autorama is a pretty mediocre car show otherwise.

But the thing I really wanted to talk about was the homeless. Sacramento has a REALLY intense homeless problem right now. I was super affected by it.

We decided to find a burger place a few miles from the convention center. This caused us to drive by Discovery Park which is completely flooded right now. And you could just see tent after tent sitting half up in the water with all their garbage floating in the floodwater. And I just don't effing understand that. There were not giant tents. Some of them were two sleeper tents. Which I think would take less than 10 minutes to pull up. But there they were sitting in the flood water.

Mr S. speculated that maybe once you get a good "bumspot" you don't want to move. I wondered if they just thought they could easily get a new tent so no fucks given? I really don't understand what is happening with the world right now. That is San Fransisco crazy bum shit right there.

The other thing that bummed me out was I ran into a guy I'd met before. He has a really unusual car. We were chatting about stuff and I said it seemed like we were in a car recession right now. He was like yeah - I think so too. And it just made me feel so crummy. You know how sometimes you see stuff and you hope you are just imagining it? Well when someone confirms your suspicions, it just kinda freaks you out in a deep way. I'm starting to wonder if we aren't already in recession and no one wants to admit it yet. I know we haven't reached "technical" recession, but Sacramento definitely made me feel awful Which is unusual. It's a great burger area. A good burger can wipe away a lot of suckage.

Friday, February 15, 2019

I don't know what you are going to get from me this weekend. I need to be an adult. Between Mr S.'s new phone and the snow, my todo backlog has grown.

Thursday, February 14, 2019

You know it's a real California winter when houses in Sausalito are sliding down the hill.

Economists. As useless as ever.

The thing about economists is - they know numbers, but they never buy anything. So they never see these things coming. When all you had to do was go to a mall like I did this Christmas and look in the effing windows. Where you would be greeted with markdown signs. I wasn't sure how bad it was going to be, but to say this was sudden or "unexpected" or "out of left field" is just stupid. Just pay attention and look around!

Read : This is our life now. Or: I guess it's not trendy to talk about the mallpocolypse right now.

"The sudden and unexpected plunge in December's retail sales data raised new concerns about a recession, but economists also say the biggest drop in nine years clashes with other data and may be suspect.

But nonetheless, Wall Street still took the data seriously and economists slashed fourth quarter GDP forecasts. JP Morgan cut its growth estimate to 2 percent from 2.6 percent.

"This literally came from out of left field… I thought January would have been bad," said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at MUFG Union Bank. "All our reports earlier were that holiday sales were sparkling." Source.

Tuesday, February 12, 2019

There was so much snow on that mountain that my truck is in the shop today because my 4WD started acting funny up there. The snow broke my truck. Snow!

Monday, February 11, 2019

How do you tell someone you see all the time, that you don't want to give them your email address? Without sounding like a dick?  I've been sidestepping it for a while, but that might not work anymore.
Every day now I pray that no one I know talks to me about socialism. You can fly under the radar for most stuff in California - but that isn't going to be one of them. I am genuinely concerned about what relationship is going to get torched. I am not even sure how I am going to react to that.

When Bernie was running it still seemed cute that people were into him. Fairly fringe. I went to the rallies. They were nice enough people, but super financially illiterate.  But it's the most depressing thing to see how much absorbed financial knowledge the recession wiped out.

There are an uncomfortable amount of people who aren't outright rejecting this fad.

I guess Trumps plan is working.

NJ Voters Furious As Governor Murphy Prepares To Sign 'Rain Tax' Into Law.

When I saw this headline I laughed. Because California has had a "runoff" tax that gets applied to your property tax bill for a LONG time now.

This is why Trump lowered the tax deduction! You don't get mad when you can just write it off. You get some ridiculous murmuring and then you get on with your life. But if you ACTUALLY have to pay it.....maybe you stop your dumb politicians from letting that happen. Maybe. We'll see.

Maybe glassesless 3D is having a moment in the sun.



Mr S. got to "borrow" an interesting little device over the weekend. If the pictures look a little odd it's because we didn't want to take the protective plastic coating off the front. That is for the owner to enjoy.

People have been working on glassesless 3D for longer than I can remember. I wasn't really sure this would ever gain traction. I've seen it a hundred times and you always had to stand in a certain spot to actually see the 3D. They were very sweet spot dependent. 

It seems suddenly like they've made a breakthrough because the sweet spot is getting wider and wider. I'm not saying it's completely there yet, but we are at the stage that they need to get these into developers hands to get content to take them further. Which is kind of a big deal.

If Mr S. wouldn't have brought this home I would have never believed how much better they have gotten. Not that I don't believe him, I just see them more often, and my surprise factor is higher. I see them a few times a year and am always surprised they are still plugging away on it. That's sort of how crummy they were.

This is not an NDA product it is a fully shipping kickstarter called Looking Glass., and I have to say while 3D is not completely there - it's not bad. The images are from stock demos's. So it will be interesting to see what developers come up with.

And everyone here knows I think 3D derived from glasses will never gain much traction because I don't think people like wearing glasses. So it's kinda nice to see that they are starting to gain some movement in this area. I thought it was completely lost.





Sunday, February 10, 2019

Saw it on the mountain.



It snowed on the mountains again last night. So Mr. S. and I decided to drive up to Lick Observatory. I was surprised they let us all the way up. But we did get a late start. We didn't start driving up until about 2:00 and the plows were keeping the street clear.





I temporarily adopted a dog on the mountain. I was trying to take pictures of him, but then he just sat between my legs. Pets are so difficult to photograph. But I got to get my dog on.











Saturday, February 09, 2019

Because Seattle has just been funny.

You might have read that Seattle had a bit of a meltdown about some snow. So, I texted my childhood friend who lives there now.

Me - Are you having a snowpocolypse? We are getting crazy reports that your store shelves are empty.

A couple of hours later I get the following - "You should see the pot stores."

Me - Uh-oh, things must be serious up there.

I wait couple of hours to call her and she didn't pick up. But I decided to give her shit on voicemail anyway. Just in case she didn't make it out alive. Said in the most sarcastic way. She texted me she would talk to me later.  Meanwhile, the internet was being super hilarious about it.

Today she calls me and says - the only reason those stores are empty is because these pot heads can't figure out what they want to eat when they are snowed in! Which is saying a lot because well.....that pot craziness is even above our threshold.

The stuff under the sea.



We are still playing with Mr S.'s 3D phone. So we decided to go out the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I was hoping this would be a really good time to go because it's winter. I'm pretty sure when I was there last time I almost melted down. The ratio of screaming kids to adults was pretty savage. And that sound bounces around in my head for  a little while afterwards. Thankfully it did turn out to be relaxing rather than annoying.

Last time I went there was a line down the block to get in. This time we practically went right up to get tickets. So much better!
















Mr S was pretty happy because the octopi are never active when you go to these places. They are always hiding in the back behind a rock. This was a MONSTER octopus. It could have choked out a man easily and eaten a baby! Sadly it was poorly lit, and there was no flash photography which I never use anyway. But I might have in this case.