Silicon Valley Redneck

And Sunday night noise?

'Twas early bedtime for me, being as how I was dozing off anyway.  Windows open, since outdoors was cooling down nicely.

Long about 2230, I found myself awakeish, and heard a couple of strings of gunfire.  Target shooting, like.

I suppose one of the neighbors was trying out his night-vision scope or something.  (Well, I guess the Mob tends to favor the night, so equipping the defensive armament with nocturnal aiming capability probably makes sense.)

A not at all quiet night, and a useless morning

Well, we did have a nice view of the fireworks, having made the arduous trek to out front porch.  Looked like at least a dozen families were putting on displays in the general "front of the house" direction, where we could see at least part of them; around half of those were fairly well in view, while the rest were largely obscured by trees, hills, and the like.

Things got going around 2115, as it was getting properly dark, and didn't wind down until more'n an hour later.  Then, I think, other families started setting off their fireworks, and, well, the boomage continued well past midnight.

There were also distressed sounds, for a while in the wee hours, from the cattle next door.  They'd ignored all the early fireworks, so I don't know what had them bothered later on.  Maybe one of them tripped over a skunk.  (Oh, yes: either someone upset a skunk during the evening, or one of the firework megapacks included a SuperSkunkBomb™.)

No, we didn't have our own fireworks; I'd been inclined to go check out the locally-available products (this stuff is legal here!), but what with the current Pestilence stats for Knox and Sevier Counties, we're still hunkering in place as much as practical.  Joy says next year for sure.  (I wonder what the supply will look like next year; doesn't all this stuff come from China*?)

Anyway, I didn't exactly get a proper night's sleep.  Brain not functioning this morning.  There's plenty of stuff that needs doing around here, but I don't think I want to operate the lawnmower, let alone the big miter saw, and doing paperwork is Right Out.  Maybe I'll assemble that shelving unit in the garage.

... Oh, and speaking of shelving.  When I was looking for that one, I rejected many of the types on offer as lacking the required depth, as I needed something 18~24" deep, not 12~14".  Now I realize that I need something bigger but shallower for one corner of the barn, but when I look, everything in that category comes up 18~24".  Foo.  Well... I think a wire shelving unit of the sort I have in my office closet might suffice (OK, so maybe two of them side by side); those tend to run 14" deep, and are moderately available, just not necessarily in the configuration I want.

Sure is quiet out there this morning.  Only activity visible from my office window is a neighbor catching some rays.  Oh, and the occasional passing car, and cattle grazing.  Dominant sounds are of birds, with a faint suggestion of some sort of power equipment off in the far distance.

* Update:  I remarked on Chinese fireworks in a comment elsewhere, and another commenter came along and explained that, with current restrictions on importation of such things, there's been a Great Onshoring, so our fireworks supply is now domestic.  Yay!

A less quiet afternoon

Still mostly quiet around here, but by late morning there were signs of neighbors being awake and about their business and even somewhat rowdy, so I commenced making noise in a variety of non-California-compliant ways.

… Starting with some lawn mowing, using a non-California-compliant mower.  Beyond that, I decline to elaborate.

And speaking of the mower, I was having a wacky notion of going full Subdivision Commando and turning it into a lawn technical; alas, while there is such a thing as an airsoft M249, it's kinda pricey for a joke.  Besides which, I don't currently have a machine shop wherewith to fabricate a suitable mount.

Anyway.  Almost time to fire up the smoker and smoke us some burgers!  Then, eventually, we shall see what ærial displays the village may have tonight.

(Hm.  Looks like there's rain south of here.  Parked over Pigeon Forge, if I'm reading the radar map right.  Forecast shows isolated thunderstorms around here, right during my outdoors-cooking time, but clearing well before dark.  Time will tell, I guess.)

Such a quiet morning

OK, I guess most mornings are quiet around here, at least at this hour (0715).

Last night was quite the opposite.  Loud noises from all directions.  One family across the road was putting on a heck of a display, especially for Fourth'een; I hope that was just a warmup for tonight (or, I guess, some of the other families over yonder will be doing fireworks tonight).

Guess I'll leave the lawnmower in the barn until I see signs of life in the neighborhood.  (It's too early anyway; the grass is still all covered in dew.)  A quiet morning with no wind seems like a good time for applying herbicide, currently much needed around the barn.

Update:  Around 0750, as I was quietly poisoning pokeweeds in the paddock, various loud bangy-type noises commenced from the beyond-the-back-fence zone.  Then things got quiet again, apart from birds, bugs, and traffic.

Close, but...

Spotted here:

If you say, for example, that you see nothing wrong with the picture of Uncle Ben on a box of rice, you will be accused of racism. As a result, most whites understand they can no longer speak truthfully or from the heart in the presence of a black American.

Thing is... I don't think it's so much black Americans in whose presence one must not speak truthfully.  It's the white Aristocracy, currently feigning outrage on behalf of black Americans (at other times they feign outrage on behalf of Palestinians, or Gaia, or whatever).  Draw the attention of an Aristocrat, and she'll get you fired from your job as a plumber on some utterly absurd pretext.

(This is not to detract from the overall point of the article, though I would add that the Left has been pushing cultural Apartheid for decades now; see, e.g., "Ebonics" - let's encourage the underclass to use a dialect that separates its members from the rest of society; that'll totally help promote equality.)

It's not just freezers

I also ordered a steel-framed shelving unit from Home Depot, mainly because the ones Amazon carries have all been getting some really bad reviews lately.  Ordered last week; was supposed to arrive today.

Comes an e-mail message:  Oopsie!  We ran into an unexpected delay.  It'll be there in 2-4 weeks, for sure!

Grrrrr.

Meanwhile, I've had a couple of partial shipments from Walmart apparently get rejected in transit by FedEx; the second one included a bunch of pasta sauce in glass jars, so I'm guessing it got handled a little roughly (been having issues with shipments of canned food, so I guess trying to have jars of food shipped may be a suboptimal plan).  The first one, though, was shelf-stable almond milk in those tough, flexible quart cartons, so I don't know what happened with that.

"We'll get it to you in two days, or not at all!"

And, I've been meaning to order some lumber, since going to an indoor lumberyard and picking my own seems to be Not Happening this summer.  Lowe's, for some reason, doesn't have pressure-treated 2x4s rated for ground contact, but Home Depot does carry them.  Last time I used Home Depot delivery (as opposed to FedEx shipping), there was  $9 delivery charge; not a big deal.  But for a 2x4?  Delivery charge is $79.  Yikes!  I presume I can have a whole bunch of lumber delivered for that, so maybe I need to work up a lumber list for the next few months of projects, including enough spares to allow for not picking through the inventory myself.

Hmph.  Well, I'd been thinking the one shelving unit wasn't really going to be enough; maybe I'll see what Amazon can get to me next week.  It does need to be decently sturdy, as I'll be using it to store things like welding equipment and supplies.

Update:  One hour and six minutes after the "order delayed 2-4 weeks" e-mail, I got another one, saying my shelving had shipped and (clicking on the tracking number supplied) it ought to arrive tomorrow.  Which, assuming this is accurate, is good news; while Amazon has some respectable shelving, the products that are available by sometime-next-week either are too small for my purposes are have really terrible recent reviews ("I bought this product a few years ago and it was great; when I bought another one, of the same model number, just recently, it was total crap and the tinfoil uprights just crumpled the moment I looked at them").

Update 2:  The shelving did in fact arrive Friday morning.  Haven't set it up yet.

If an activity appears pointless, perhaps there's another reason for it

Ever notice how some of your friends and relatives have gotten onto fundraiser sucker lists, and there's no way to get off those lists?  Like, even by dying?  And they'll get multiple identical mailings at the same address from the same organization on the same day?  And ceasing to make donations, or even returning their postpaid envelopes with "REMOVE FROM LIST" requests (ballast optional) doesn't discourage them?

One obvious possibility is that the operators of these fundraising scams are being paid per solicitation (mail, e-mail, or phone) and not by results.  Which kinda says bad things about how your money would be put to use, were you to donate.

Another... is that the lists are (put on your tinfoil hats now) really meant to track people who have been aligned with the Cause, or who have been bullied into supporting the Cause.  Which is to say, potentially useful (or at least exploitable) idiots.  Known crocodile-feeders, like.

Perception and phrasing

Headline:

Boston statue depicting a freed slave kneeling before Lincoln coming down

Excuuuuuse me?

The freedman in that statue bloody well isn't kneeling before Lincoln.  He's arising before Lincoln, which is pretty much the exact opposite.

But with the useless sons of the Aristocracy being in an iconoclastic frenzy, they must strive to outdo each other in the believing-impossible-things-before-breakfast challenge.

Polls

Hypothetical:

Some stranger calls you up on the phone and asks whether you support Trump.  Assume, for purposes of this hypothetical, that you do.

Given today's political climate, would you tell this stranger so?  He has your phone number; more than likely, he knows where you live.

Turning up the violence knob does not do good things for the accuracy of political polls.

Exit Top Hat, pursued by a pencil

So there I was, sitting at my desk in the wee hours of the morning....

Top Hat came along and eventually jumped up on my desk.

Finding Southmoon already there, she turned and jumped back down, dislodging a pencil, which fell to the floor.

Hearing the clatter of the fallen pencil, she fled in panic,

She really is quite a silly kitty.