Protesters using energy as a weapon:
Sonic energy: Screaming in your ear with a bullhorn, blowing a loud whistle inches from your ear, using canned air horns, etc.,
Laser energy: Shining lasers into people’s eyes
Should be treated like any other weapon, and it will be if it is done to me. Pepper spray at first, then more aggressive as they escalate. I am over this kind of crap.
Summer is defined as the warmest season of the year, occurring between spring and autumn. It features the longest daylight hours and the year’s highest temperatures. I also know that summer begins on the summer solstice (around June 21 in the Northern Hemisphere and December 21 in the Southern Hemisphere) and ends on the autumnal equinox. However, I don’t think most of us look at it that way.
It’s the warmth that makes a summer, and in Florida our summers are long, hot, and feature afternoon thunderstorms. For those reasons, I have my own definition of the beginning of summer. Here is Sector Ocho, summer is the first day of the year where the temperature doesn’t go below 75 degrees Fahrenheit (that’s 24c to those of you in countries using the metric system).
I have a personal weather station in my backyard that I use as my official measuring station because I don’t believe Florida’s numbers. My weather station is one of these. It’s located in my backyard in the middle of a clearing with the nearest block to wind (a tree) being at least 50 feet away.
Anyway, the first day of summer has arrived, and it was yesterday, May 25. Our low temperature for the day was 75.6 degF. Summer started this year a full 12 days later than it did last year. Our dewpoint right now is 75.8 degF.
The reason for this, is that the low temperature can’t go any lower than the dew point. At that point, any further energy lost from the atmosphere is spent condensing water vapor, not reducing the temperature. When the dewpoint is at that point, the air starts becoming thick and the afternoon rains begin. If you have ever been in Central Florida during the summer, you know that it rains virtually every afternoon. That’s where we are now. Summer is here.
The dew point temperature is the temperature at which the air can no longer hold all of its water vapor, and some of the water vapor must condense into liquid water. At 100% relative humidity, the dew point temperature and the air temperature are the same, and clouds or fog can begin to form. While relative humidity is a relative measure of how humid it is, the dew point temperature is an absolute measure of how much water vapor is in the air (how humid it is). In very warm, humid conditions, the dew point temperature can reach 75 to 77 degrees F, but rarely exceeds 80 degrees.
Dew point is the best indicator of comfort in a hot climate. Once the dew point of the air exceeds 66 degrees Fahrenheit or so, the air begins to feel hot and uncomfortably stuffy. The reason for this is that your perspiration cannot evaporate to cool you off.
The dewpoint here will remain high from now until summer breaks in late September.
Here in Florida, there are 4 seasons:
Hot: March through May
F’ing Hot (Also known as Hurricane season, and in Orlando, tourist season): June through mid September
Still Hot: Mid September through Mid November
Snow Bird: Mid November through February
The people who live here know that anything needing to be done outside between May and September is best done before 11 am, when the thermometer typically breaks 90 degF. That’s why Floridians usually mow the grass starting at 8am. The combination of heat and the inability to shed heat through evaporation is a deadly combination. Beginning today, you get your outside work done in the morning then stay in the air conditioning until at least 4:30 in the afternoon when the afternoon thunderstorms come calling. That is what we do from the first day of summer until about the middle of September.
That’s why having a pool is such a great idea. My pool is a nice 84 degF throughout the summer, and it’s the only way to be outside while the “feels like” temperature is more than 90 or even 100 degrees.
Propublica is a leftist rag spending a lot of it’s binary ink bitching about guns. The issue I have is in how they deliberately frame and distort facts in order to advance their agenda. Case in point is this headline:
This Gun Shop Stayed Open Despite Repeated Violations. Then A Chicago Cop Was Killed With One Of Its Guns
So how did the gun wind up in the hands of a criminal? Olivia Burgos bought the 10mm Glock handgun from Range USA, in Merrillville, Indiana, on May 27, 2024, by lying on an ATF form about why she bought the gun, where she lived, and about her addiction to illegal drugs. She admitted to buying the gun for her boyfriend, who gave her the money for the gun and was a convicted felon who was not allowed to buy or possess firearms. It’s unknown how the gun made it from the boyfriend to the cop murdering criminal.
The story spins this into an indictment of the gun store itself, claiming that this one gun store had been cited for “serious compliance failures on multiple occasions” by the ATF. One thing that’s important to remember is the chain of stores in question have 50 locations in 14 different states. In other words, this isn’t a gun store, it’s 50 gun stores. There is no mention of just how many citations were issued, nor the severity of most of those issues. The ones that were mentioned are:
The cop killed that supposedly spawned this article? Yeah, the gun used in the April 26, 2026 murder was in fact sold by Range, USA. In 2024.
Authorities said Bartholomew and another officer transported robbery suspect Alphanso Talley to the hospital April 25 after he claimed to have swallowed narcotics. Prosecutors said Talley pulled a hidden handgun from beneath a blanket while preparing for a CT scan and opened fire on the officers before briefly escaping custody.
So how can you lay this at the feet of the gun store? How is a gun store to know that the woman buying a gun is not going to give it to her drug dealing boyfriend who will soon sell the gun on the black market before two years later, it eventually winds up in the hands of a murderer that kills a cop?
Everyone knows there is no way for the gun store to know this. That isn’t the point. This is being used as some sort of ‘gotya’ to a large firearms retailer. This retailer has 50 store locations- actually, they are each required to have their own FFL, so we are really talking about 50 separate gun stores. What is that? 100,000 guns per year in those 50 stores?
The insinuation of this article is that Range USA is somehow deliberately selling guns to criminals. They don’t come right out and say that, because it isn’t true and they would likely get sued for it. So instead they frame the facts in such a way as to encourage the reader to make that connection themselves. It’s one of the three ways to tell a lie, according to Robert Heinlein:
In leaving out the important details, they are misrepresenting the facts, and this is a form of lying. If you have to lie in order to make your point, perhaps your point isn’t worth making.
One of the things I am drawn to, and quite skilled at, is processing data. It’s why I enjoyed operating a fire truck, and it’s also why I like my job in medicine and enjoy the technical end of SCUBA. I would probably been pretty good at engineering. I love processing data and doing math in my head. I also enjoy having a good tool that will make that job easier.
Enter dive computers. These machines take all of the guesswork out of diving. Traditionally, divers would use a table where the maximum depth and total dive time were looked up on a table that would tell you the maximum time you could be underwater. This is called “square profile” diving. The table assumes you descend from the surface to a set depth, remain at that depth the entire dive, then return directly back to the surface. In reality, no one dives like that.
A dive computer uses a mathematical model to calculate how much Oxygen (and other gases) are in your tissues, then uses that to tell you what you need to do in order not to get the bends. It resamples the factors of the dive every 30 seconds.
That’s one of the things that I can’t understand about this diving accident. The diving computer would have warned them:
In short, there is no way that dive was an accident, and that is not even considering the stupidity of swimming that far into a cave. It always astounds me that someone will pay a thousand dollars for an expensive piece of gear that’s designed to save your life, then will ignore that device. The cheapest dive computer can be bought for less than $100 (although I wouldn’t bet my life on cheapest.)
My dive computer cost me well over $600, but it is obsolete and no longer for sale. If I were to buy one today, I would want a gas integrated console computer that can handle multiple gas mixes on one dive. The small wrist ones aren’t readable by this old man’s eyes- the numbers are too small on the display and I don’t want to wear a prescription dive mask.
So with that being said, I would want:
With that, I my research settles on these:
I’m sure there are others, but those are the ones I would consider.
The disclaimer: I don’t advertise, and receive nothing for my reviews or articles. I don’t think that I ever will. I have no relationship with any products, companies, or vendors that I review here, other than being a customer. If I ever *DO* have a financial interest, I will disclose it. Otherwise, I pay what you would pay. No discounts or other incentives here. I only post these things because I think that my readers would be interested.
Here are the lists of assassination attempts against prominent Republican figures:
I think there is no doubt that the left is engaged in hostilities. I also think, but of course can’t prove, that a significant portion of the Federal government itself has picked sides and is part of the festivities. Note that I have only included actual attacks in this list, not mere threats or talk.
Yet another attempt was made on Trump’s life today. This idiot tranny tried shooting his way into the White House before the Secret Service conducted an impromptu ballistics test.
in a hearing for the “Chud the Builder” case, DA Robert Nash said: “Dalton’s abuse of First Amendment privileges is what got us into this mess in the first place.”
Let’s paraphrase:
Sure, you have a 1st Amendment right to Free Speech, guaranteed by the US Constitution, but if someone attacks you because they don’t like your speech, that’s your fault, and if you defend yourself with the 2nd Amendment you belong in prison.
That’s the position being taken by the state of Tennessee. As more information comes to light, it appears as though Fox was the aggressor. He recognized Dalton (Chud) and decided to attack him because he previously used the words “nigger” and “chimp out”
As a result, the court lowered his bond from $1.25 million to “only” $1 million, but then ruled he is not permitted to use the money from a give, send, go campaign because those funds are the result of a criminal enterprise, since he wouldnt have gotten that money if he hadnt tried to murder Fox. Even if he DOES manage to find a donor, he cant be bailed out unless he can prove at a hearing that he didn’t receive the money as a result of his crime.
Uh, he hasn’t been convicted of a crime yet, meaning he is innocent. That being the case, how can these funds be the result of a crime the state hasn’t even proven yet?
What we have here is an attack on the First, Fifth, and Eighth Amendments by the State of Tennessee, and proving Dalton’s point- we have a rwo tiered justice system.
Under this theory, if a person ever says something which offends someone, that person is permitted to physically attack them at any place or time in the future, and if the person who is being attacked defends themselves, they can be denied any Constitutional rights a court sees fit to strip from them.
Or perhaps its only blacks you aren’t permitted to offend.
Remember, the left believes speech is violence if it offends someone.
I now work for a free standing Emergency Room. The regional manager had mentioned during my interview that they were opening a new location this summer, and asked if I would consider taking over as the manager, or was I wedded to just being PRN. I told her that would depend on the terms of the offer. I’m guessing the current managers consider me to be a threat, at least judging by what has happened since.
I had worked a total of 7 days at my new job since completing onboarding: one or two days per week, not counting the three weeks of the Europe trip. I got called into the office by the site manager. On her computer screen, the ED manager from the other site where I did my onboarding was there via TEAMS. The manager looks at me and says “How do you think you are doing?”
I said, “Well, I would have said fine, but since we are having this meeting, I’m guessing that’s not right.”
Both laugh. Then the manager continues, telling me that she has had “people” come to her and tell her that I am taking too long to triage my patients. I tell her that this is concerning to me, and I am more than willing to increase my speed, if they can tell me where I am lagging. No one wants to be “that guy” who no one wants to work with.
They tell me they have no idea. The manager attending by TEAMS says, if only there was some way we could get data from EPIC (our medical charting software) we would be able to tell you. I wish EPIC had a report for that.
“It does- there are reports for everything a nurse does- triage time, treatment efficiency, average time to complete medication orders, all of it. Let me show you how,” I offered.
The manager replied: “Well, we aren’t sure that those reports are accurate. There are ways to game that data.”
So then I asked them where I am slow, and what I can do to show improvement. They tell me that they don’t know. Then they instruct me to go see nurses Amy and John, who are working with me that day. They can watch me work and tell me. They tell me that the standard is for the patient to wait 2 minutes or less in the waiting room, and 10 minutes or less for triage. The expectation is that I comply with those numbers. Then they thanked me for not being difficult and accepting the counseling like a professional.
So I took their advice and went to see Amy and John. That’s helpful, because Amy has worked with me for 4 of the 7 shifts I’ve had so far. They were both surprised, and told me I wasn’t slow, and couldn’t see anything I was doing wrong.
So I turned to EPIC- you know, the ones the manager at first said didn’t exist, and then told me weren’t accurate. According to EPIC, there are 18 nurses in my department. I ran a nurse efficiency report. The report showed the nurses have average triage times ranging from 2 minutes to 9 minutes, with an average of all of them being 4 minutes and 32 seconds. My average time? 4 minutes and 3 seconds. Not one of my patients has been longer than 8 minutes. In addition, I see more patients than my coworkers on the days that I am working, which indicates that I am faster than they are. Not more than any one of my coworkers- more than they are combined. On the days I work, I see 55% of all patients who walk through the door. The other two nurses on shift with me see the remaining 45% combined. I’m fast enough that coworkers tell me to sit down and let them catch a couple of patients.
So I sent an email to the manager informing her that Amy and John had no suggestions, and EPIC showed my average times to be far below the required ten minutes. I then asked if they could be more specific, because I cannot correct a deficient behavior if my leadership can’t even tell me what behavior it is that I need to correct. I attached a copy of the report.
This is some piss-poor management. They complain that my work isn’t sufficient. They can’t tell me what exactly I’m doing that is deficient, nor can they tell me how to correct that deficiency. Instead they send me to talk to a pair of coworkers for advice, who also can’t see where I am doing anything wrong.
What management school is that?
In this case, the email I sent was for documentation purposes. I only work there one or two days a week. They had talked to me about joining the management team, but I don’t want to go full time again, no matter what the pay. I’m going to keep my head down and do three to five more years working part time, then collect social security. I am no longer fighting the workplace wars that are so stressful and aren’t that important.
It’s been over a month since all of that took place. No one has said a word, and I received no answer to my email. I suspect that my MBA, the fact that I am more certified than my managers, I am more knowledgeable on the EPIC software as evidenced by her not even knowing how to run the nurse efficiency report, and let’s face it, because I am a man, all make me a target.
I’ve been watching my coworkers. One of the ones who has a 2 minute triage average? Yeah, when a patient walks in, he moves them in the computer from lobby to a room, then charts his entire assessment and triage. All without getting up from his desk. Then he goes to the lobby to actually put the patient in a room, enters vital signs, and collects any needed labs. In other words, he isn’t fast, he is lying. He isn’t doing his job, he is just reporting that he is doing his job. That is something I refuse to do. This is what happens when management cares more about metrics than outcomes. Too many administrators are like that, but I just won’t do it. Reports are supposed to reflect reality, but too many nurses bend reality to fit what the reports show.
So my plan here is now: No write-ups, no escalations, no drama, not being the fastest, best, or most efficient nurse. Keep my head down, collect my $50 an hour, and go home at the end of the day. If someone says something to correct or counsel me, the answer will be “Got it—I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you for your input.”
Things are winding down as I glide into retirement. In January, I sold the rental properties and paid off my house. I need to earn enough this year to cover my capital gains from that on next year’s taxes. Next year, I pay off my Jeep Gladiator. Then I keep putting money away to fund my future travels. I don’t need to be right, or be the best, I just need to be paid. Keep my eye on the prize. Let them all keep fighting over who is the best and playing office political games. I’m not playing those any longer.
I only have three years before I can retire. After that, I only work until I get tired of the bullshit.
The FBI has put out an RFP, looking for a company that can give them real time, constant access to license plate readers nationwide.