She should have slapped him in the face. Hard.

 Her name escapes me, it was the chick who had a picture in the NY Post of Cuomo placing both hands on her shoulders.  My mother would have done so. What do they tell young chicks about getting along in the world now a days?

New Hampshire needs real power plants

 Real power plants will produce electric power when ever it is needed.  Fake power plants (aka "alternate energy") only produce power when they feel like it, when the sun is up or the wind is blowing.  We get plenty of cold dark calm nights up here and we need enough real power plants to carry the full load of the entire state.  We cannot depend upon fake power plants.

It would be best if the real power plants were owned by New Hampshire electric companies and located in New Hampshire.  The present deal where companies like PSNH are expected to buy electricity on the open market from out of state generation operations is dangerous.  When power becomes short the out of state operators may not sell to us up here.  If we owned the generators, and they were located in New Hampshire we could be assured of receiving the plant's full output in times of shortage.  

And  while we are at it, we ought to built a decent gas pipeline out to the Bakken.  Out there they have so much natural gas that the frackers are paying people to get rid of it all.  Private industry would be happy to build such a pipeline if we could keep the greenies off their backs. 

I like art and the arts

 On the other hand, good art sells for enough to support the artist.  Art that requires a government subsidy is bad art.  If the art was any good people would spend good money to buy it.  So, I gotta wonder about money for the endowment for the arts tucked into the Corona virus relief bill.  I think that is pork.

Paperpushers wreck Arecibo radio telescope

 On 10 August one of the cables holding up the 950 ton suspended instrument platform broke.  They spent the next three months doing paperwork (a plan for temporary repairs).  On 6 November a second support cable failed.  More paperwork was accomplished.  Then finally on 1 December the last cable failed and the 950 ton suspended instrument platform fell, busting a huge hole in the parabolic reflector and destroying all the instruments in the platform.  

What they should have done, back in August when the first cable failed, is simple. Get about six big rolls of good stout steel cable.  Run six cables out to the suspended instrument platform to hold it up even if all the original cables broke.  The should have been able to get that done in less than three months, even out in Puerto Rico, where everything has to be shipped out from the mainland.  Instead they accomplished paperwork while the Arecibo radio telescope fell into ruin.  They are going to abandon it now. 

Trump speaks at CPAC

 He was about an hour late.  He spoke for and hour and a half.  Never at a loss for words.  Got a lot of enthusiastic applause.  The room was fairly full although I could see  blocs of empty seats here and there. The room was not all that large.  It was not much larger than the theater at my old high school, a decent size room but not all that large.  Trump said he will not do a third party. Trump suggested that he MIGHT run for president in 2024 but it was just a MIGHT, no solid commitment. Which is fair, 2024 is a long way off, lots of things might happen. Trump is getting old, in four years he might not have the energy he has now.  He spoke about all the good things he has done in his one term, and it was a fair summary.  

  In summary, Trump inspires a lot of enthusiasm.  His past policies are popular, at least with the people who go to CPAC.  Of the 75 million people who voted for Trump back in November, a lot of them, maybe half, say 37 million, voted for Trump the personality not for the Republican party.  Without Trump they are gone.  That makes Trump the guy who brings a lot more votes to the table than anyone else.

Democrats pass $1.9 Trillion Covid-19 relief bill

 They passed it in the house at o'dark thirty, when every one had gone to bed.  Of the $1.9 trillion only about $o.38 trillion goes for Covid 19 relief. The bulk of it , $1.5 trillion, is pure pork.  Democrats don't care, they think any kind of spending stimulates the economy.  Republicans fear printing another $1.9 trillion greenbacks will destabilize the dollar and raise inflation. 

Rug Job

 My place is wall-to-wall carpet.  Laid down about 30 years ago.  At the door to my bedroom a worn trail was developing in the wall-to-wall.  Ugly.  On a pass thru Wallymart I spotted an area rug, just the right size, only $18.  Nice color match.  So I bought it.  Now to lay it.  The bookcase full of DVD's and VHS tapes had to be moved.  Loaded it was too heavy for me to lift and move.  I had to unload half of it.  Now the rug lay down nicely, it fit just right.  But, the door would not move.  I had to remove the door, jack ass it downstairs to the shop, and saw 3/16's off the bottom with my skill saw.  To get the door to lay flat enough to saw I had to remove the door handles.  Arrgh.  So, jack ass the trimmed door back up stairs.  And now the hinges did not want to go back together.  Much hammering, prying and cussing later I got a pry bar under the door and heaved up.  That did it, the hinges slide together and the hinge pins went back in with only slight persuasion from a ball peen hammer.  At this point it was 5 PM, I was exhausted.  Time for a drink.   Next morning I put all the DVDs back on the bookcase.

The door, loose, right for the shop.

    The door going down the basement stairs.

The area rug installed.

Why Texas lights went out

 I am reading that as the Texas system load went up and system generation dropped off line, the control center tried to keep hospitals powered up by blacking out all sorts of other consumers.  Pipeline companies had their power go away.  Which meant their pumps on the natural gas pipelines went away.  Which meant the gas fired power plants went off line for lack of gas.  Which reduced the power available on the grid to keep every ones lights on.  

   We ought to require the pipeliners to power all their stuff off the natural gas in their pipelines, no electricity required.  They will scream cause doing it yourself is more expensive than just using electricity, but doing it yourself is more reliable.  

Corona virus vaccine

 

I got my Corvid 19 vaccination today.  It was over in Haverill at the Horse Meadows senior center.  I am old enough to be in Phase 1B, eligible right now.  I had logged into the federal government’s “VAMS” system, three times before I got an appointment, for May, way up in Whitefield.  Littleton had suffered some kind of catastrophe where they cancelled all their appointments, “VAMS” refused to give me an appointment at Littleton, Best they could do was Whitefield. 

   Meantime Haverill called me an about a month ago and asked if I would be interested in an appointment if they got their clinic set up.  I said if they could do anything better than May I would be right there.  Haverill got back to me last week with an appointment today at 12:30.  They asked me to show up 10 minutes early.  So I set off for Haverill this morning at 11:45 and got there 9 minutes early.  They had a bunch of volunteers out directing traffic and checking names and dates and times.  I got a choice of right arm or left arm, we did right arm since that was the one on the car window sill.  Everyone was polite and cheerful and professional.  I got the Moderna vaccine.  They gave me in mice little wallet card that I can show to anyone who cares if I am vaccinated.  I got my shot right at 12:30 and was on the road by 12:45.  Good work by all hands

The Real Story: It's all climate change

 Thus sayeth Chuckie the Schumer.  The reason the Texas power grid failed, they did not consider climate change in the design.  Yeah right, climate change is at fault for everything.  

   The reason for the Texas blackout is a lot of power plants failed. I am still seeing conflicting stories on just which plants went down when.  Some say the windmills failed.  Others say the natural gas suppliers failed causing the natural gas plant to shut down.  The Wall St Journal blames it on the windmills.  Another writer gives an hour by hour megawatt by megawatt account which shows the windmills shut down first, but they were not providing much juice and the natural gas plants dropped off line later.  

There are some questions that no one is talking about.  Such as.  Why did the windmills shut down?  Some people have mentioned icing in the cold weather.  How does a windmill get stopped by ice?  The rotor has enough torque to turn the alternator under load, surely that is enough torque to break any amount of ice that might be obstructing the rotation.  

What caused the natural gas supplies to stop?  Again people have mentioned freezing weather.  Natural gas won't freeze at any temperature a winter cold snap can reach. What did freeze?  Or do the natural gas pipelines rely upon electric power to pump the gas thru the pipe?  

We need to get to the real causes of the Texas blackout and then make sure that New Hampshire does not have the same problems. 

The Jungle Book 1942

 I found this in the cheap DVD bin at Wallymart some time ago.  Just got around to watching it this afternoon.  It's pretty good.  It is in Technicolor, which was state of the art in 1942.  Sabu stars as Mowgli.  No other names in the cast mean anything to me.  It was shot in India.   The animals are real animals, with training that is to be admired.  Shere Khan is particularly wild and dangerous looking.  The plot does not follow any Kipling story that I remember.  Sabu is a good looking beefy teenager, which is older than most of the later Jungle Book movies which show Mowgli as a kid about 12 years old.  Mowgli has a thing going with a cute girl from the village.  Anyhow if you are looking for a new flick to show the children, this will do the trick. 

So what is the real story about Texas power failure??

 Lotsa people blame the power failure on the windmills going off line.  The greenies blame the natural gas suppliers failing to provide gas causing the gas plants to drop off line.  Me, I suspect the windmills did it, but I don't have any solid evidence.  All I know is what I see on the 'net and on TV.  And I have not seen anything convincing there.

Some questions for the intrepid newsies the answer.

What is this talk about the windmills freezing up?  Do they use water for something?  What might that be?  Do they mean ice buildup is blocking their rotation?  How can that be, the windmill blades produce enough torque to turn an alternator under load, surely that is enough torque to break any amount of ice, anywhere?  

What is this talk about natural gas wells and pipelines freezing?  Natural gas does not freeze at any temperature a hard winter freeze can reach.  Is it water freezing somewhere??  What is water needed for in a gas pipeline??  

What is this talk about failure to winterize power plants?  What does winterization do for a power plant?  

Boy, that governor Cuomo gets a lot of TV airtime, on Fox no less

 Cuomo is getting sued and worse over his grannie killing policy of putting Corona virus victims back into nursing homes where they infected the rest of the residents,  and lying about nursing home Corona virus deaths.  And they will think up more stuff to lay on him as time goes on.  

But Fox gives him a lot of airtime to give his side of it, uninterrupted by fact checkers. 

Free up 9 Gigs of disk space.

 I discovered that my desktop had a folder Windows AND a second folder Windows.old, both folders being 9 gigs.  I started out working on 5 megabyte DEC RK05 disks on PDP-11s.  I still think in terms of conserving disk space.  9 Gigs seems like a lot of disk space.  

Anyhow Windows.old pops up when the machine gets upgraded, in this case upgraded from Win 8 to Win 10.  The upgrade routine simply renames the old version of windows to windows.old and then puts the new version of windows into a new windows folder.  This allows you to go back to the previous version of windows should you want to.  In my case Win 10 has been working just fine, all my programs run properly, and I would never want to go back to Win 8, it was flaky.  So, I decided to recover 9 Gigs by zapping windows.old.  

  You cannot just delete windows.old from Explorer.  It is big enough to choke a hog, and it still carries protections against deletion that it enjoyed when it was the active Windows.  Not a problem.  Windows can fix it all.  In Explorer find the master folder C:.  Right click on the C: folder and select Properties.  In Properties select "Disk Cleanup".  In Disk Cleanup select "Clean up System Files".  This will display a number of different files you can clean.  Select the "previous versions" and let her rip.  It takes a while but I gained 9 Gig of free disk space. 

Farewell Rush Limbaugh

 Good man.  He will be missed.  Rush understood where a lot a Americans were coming from.  He spoke for them and to them.  Pax vobiscum.  My condolences to Rush's family.

Real electric plants vs fake electric plants.

 

We expect the electricity to stay on, 24-7.  We count on it in fact.  My heating plant, an oil burner, won’t heat when the juice goes off.  We depend upon electric hot water heaters, electric stoves, electric lights, electric well pumps.  If the power fails in winter my pipes will freeze in a matter of hours. 

   To keep the lights burning on a cold winter night takes conventional power plants, coal fired or natural gas fired, nuclear plants, hydro plants, the kind of generator that will put out power anytime it is needed.  We call these sorts of electric plants real electric plants.  Others call them baseload plants

  “Alternate energy”, beloved by greenies, cannot be depended upon when you need it.  Solar stops working at sundown, which happens every day.  Wind stops working when the wind stops blowing, something that happens fairly often even up here in the White Mountains.  In fact right now as I write this, it is a dead calm.  And we call undependable electric plants fake electric plants.  All the fake electric plants do is raise my electric bill as the power companies are required by law to purchase power from the fake electric plants at outrageous prices. 

    The electric companies, to keep the lights burning, need to own enough real power plants to handle full system load all the time.   The plants are expensive, several billion dollars, and the electric company has to take out a mortgage from a bank to pay for their construction.  And making the monthly mortgage payments is the electric company’s biggest expense.  Things like fuel and personnel costs are way smaller undependable wind and solar suppliers.  .  As long as they are paying the mortgage, the electric companies would just as soon operate the plants, sell the juice, and pay the mortgage with the proceeds.  They don’t need expensive and undependable "alternate energy".

We want to make sure the electric companies put in enough real power plants to keep the lights burning on a cold windless winter night.  We don't want them to fritter away money of fake electric plants.  Looks like Texas has put in a lot of fake electric plants that don't work when they need them and not enough real electric plants.  

 

Ventilation systems in schools???

The teachers and their unions are claiming the "ventilation systems" need upgrading.  The school I went to didn't have a "ventilation system".  It had big double hung sash windows all down the outside wall of the class rooms, that opened.  Open them up and we got a lotta fresh air. 

Are we at a significant turning point right now?

 Mark Levin, Fox news commentator, thinks we are, that future historians will point out January 2021 as an important turning point.  Things get a little vague when he talked about what we were turning from and to.  

I am not sure we are are a real turning point, you don't know until the turn has happened.  But, if we are, then it is a matter for turning away from Jeffersonian democracy, American exceptionalism, free market capitalism, and Christianity.  Turning toward political correctness, Critical race theory, and Marxism, and atheism.  

It is certainly time for those of us that still believe in the traditional American ideas to speak up for them.  And elect representatives who believe in them. 

They acquitted Trump after only a week

 The article of impeachment basically said Trump was responsible for the January 6 invasion of the Capitol building.  All they really presented in support of this idea was a lot of Trump speeches where he called the election rigged, and where he called for a demonstration in DC on that day.  Even so, we had seven RINOs vote in favor of impeachment.  They need to be primaried next year. 

   We have not heard much out of Trump in recent days.  He might just be taking a well earned rest after four years of open combat with the MSM.  Of the 75 million people who voted for Trump, a lot of them did it because they liked, believed in, and appreciated Trump.  And they are Trump's to lead.  Without Trump they are gone.  That makes Trump the most important Republican in the land.  I hope the rest of the party understands this. 

Spring must be coming

 Just bought a box of fresh strawberries, ONLY $3.99 for a box.  Last week they were asking $7.99 a box for fresh strawberries from who knows where.  They were all the giant berries, big as lemons, but they tasted OK.  Sweet, an improvement in strawberry breeding from a few years ago when the giant berries tasted more of straw than a sweet berry did.

Impeachment hearings. Jan 6 was terrible terrible and all Trump's fault.

 Been a lotta Democrat  speakers saying how horrible the Jan 6 riot at the Capitol building was.  Worst thing that ever happened and it's all Trump's fault.  Trump egged on the rioters, and we ought to impeach him for it.  Un spoken agreement, if we can impeach him we can forbid him from ever running for dog catcher, let along President of the US, for the rest of his life.  

I hear all this.  But after a summer where BLM and Antifa burned down Milwaukee and Seattle, and some other places, a few broken doors and windows, a few screwballs sitting in Nancy Pelosi's office, and a lot of trash dumped all over the Capitol building doesn't seem all that bad to me.  They could have set the place on fire, but they didn't.

How to open the schools.

 To get the schools open again is very simple.  Unlock the schoolhouse door in the morning.  Inform students and parents that school is open.  They will be there, no question about it.  Inform the teachers that school is open.  If they don't show up for work, their paychecks will stop.  

I know that the teachers want all sorts of stuff, remodeling, protective equipment, vaccine, ventilation, new heating plants, all sorts of stuff.  Well, we might do some of it, when we come up with the money, but, school will open NOW, and if they don't show, they don't get paid. 

Florida town's water system gets hacked

Wanna bet that water system's computer was on the public internet?  And was running Windows, world's most vulnerable operating system?  The public internet allows hackers from all over the world to try their luck on your computers.  If you just have to have remote control of something, do it over a private fiber optic link.  To hack that, they have to climb a pole, and splice an optical splitter into the fiber link.  Few people know how to splice fiber.  Few hackers climb poles.  And your system will be far more secure if it runs Linux, or Apple, or anything but Windows.

Join the National Rifle Association.

 The Democrats, currently controlling the US federal government, want to forbid private ownership of firearms and in fact take all of our guns away.  If you are a gun owner, you really need to join the NRA if you want to remain a gun owner.   It is the most effective organization defending our right to keep and bear arms.  Right now there are around 5 million NRA members, enough to give NRA leaders some clout when they negotiate with lawmakers.  They are a lot more than 5 million gun owners in the country.  If all of us joined the NRA it would give the NRA enormous clout. 

    NRA runs a big website, at which you can join up.  It’s www.NRAila.org. Or just Google for NRA, that will get you there.  Dues are modest, and they will cut special deals for needy folk.

Whither the Republican Party?

 There are some internal strains, differences, factions, and infighting inside the Grand Old Party.  Of the 75 million people who voted for Trump, a lot of them did so because of Trump.  They liked his attitude, they liked his style, they trusted his word, they liked the economy he created, and they liked the taxes he cut.  They showed up at Trump’s rallies in vast numbers.  I am guessing that about half of them, say 37 million, are there for Donald Trump, and without Trump, they are gone.   In short, the Republican Party needs Trump because he brings in the votes better than anyone else in the party.

   Then we have the RINOs.  These guys are Democrats at heart, they believe that hiking taxes let’s them spend money on pet programs, and they don’t worry about tax hikes messing up the economy.  They don’t like private enterprise very much.  For example, given a choice between contracting with SpaceX and doing it in-house in NASA, RINOs will go for giving the work to NASA civil servant people every time.  RINOs don’t like Trump.  We ought to vote out as many RINOs as we can. 

   And we have the old line upper crust of the Republican Party.  They don’t like Trump much because he is too rude and crude for them.  Trump tends to hang out with, and hire, working class and ex military folk that the old line upper crust cannot stand.  They think Trump’s habit of tweeting every day is silly. 

   And finally we have the professionals, guys who hold elective office, party officials, and community organizers, appointed officials.  These guys just want to win the next election.  I think they are smart enough to recognize that the Republican Party needs Donald Trump and the 37 million voters that he can bring into the party.                  

  I cannot tell how the various Republican factions will sort things out.  They could screw themselves up and hand the next election to the Democrats.                  

VAMS comes to life

 Being well over 65 years old, I make it into Corona virus vaccine phase 1b, eligible right now.  I visited the NH web site back on the first day it was open, 22 Jan.  I got a nice reply saying a link the the "VAMS" website would be coming in 3 to five days.  Nothing showed.  I revisited the NH website 2 more times.  Each time a link to "VAMS" was promised but never showed.  Couple of days ago governor Sununu said that "VAMS" was seriously broken and NH would junk it and create a replacement.  I saw somewhere on the web the "VAMS" had been created by the feds with a sole source contract for $16 mil, and later had a cost overrun of $28 mil.  Lesson for dumb as rocks government types, never do sole source contracts for anything.  Get three bids every time.  Anyhow,  the long promised link to "VAMS" came finally came thru yesterday.  I managed to get an appointment up in Whitefield for early May.  Littleton was not accepting appointments at all.  

   Haverill is working on starting up a vaccination site.  I told them if I could get vaccinated before early May, I would be right there.