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Here are three to think about:

1. Is it an assault with a deadly weapon to use a Super Soaker in -7F tempetures?
2. Should Don Lemon be charged for his participation in the invasion of the church in MN?
3. What is the thing your SO will decide they must have once the snow has started?

I’ve been having a difficult time being motivated to write. I made a promise to myself to post at least once a day when I started writing for Miggy, and I’ve kept that schedule ever since.

The number of readers seems to have dropped to a very few core readers and my guess is that I just don’t write the things people want to read.

At the same time, when I hear about something interesting, it is normally because somebody else has already chimed in.

So the question of the week:

What do you get out of this blog? What is it that gets you to click back to see what is new?

Thank you

I should title this, “I don’t know what I don’t know.”

Bitnami stopped providing free WordPress images. This means I have to create a container and docker compose control file that will plug in and replace the Bitnami version.

This isn’t horribly difficult; it just takes a bit of work. Even now, I just realized that I can make a change that will make my life a little easier, so it is something I will do.

The problem is that there is a possibility of crashing the site. Not something I want to do.

So I’ve been putting it off.

The good news is that we went from a point fix to a point release. We were on 6.8.2; 6.8.3 came out. I found out the need to redo the containers.

Before that happened, 6.9.0 was released.

I have a policy of waiting for the point fix before migrating. The point fix would be 6.9.1.

In the meantime, Google changed the way they handle reCAPTCHA, that annoying thing that asks, “Are you human?”

The robots found The Vine and proceeded to register around 450 users before I shut down user registration.

Those have been cleaned out. Unfortunately that took a bit of time, and now I have to look into the newest version of robot defenses.

Argh, why can’t this stuff be simple?

Meanwhile, on a different screen, I’m looking at a 3D model with dropdowns for “work”, “RPM”, “boiler pressure,” and a few other things that feed into the built-in spreadsheet. That spreadsheet then drives the 3D model.

This has required learning things that every backwoods machinist used to know. Now it requires reading books published in the late 1800s.

Oh, getting my AI to give me trustworthy numbers is driving me bonkers.

Simple question: What are your hopes for Second Amendment litigation in 2026?

I am hoping that the vampire rule has a stake driven through it, killing it and sensitive places altogether.

I am hoping that we get another example of temporary disarmament when the Supreme Court issues their opinion regarding weed and guns.

Finally, I’m hoping that we get a ruling that says that my Second Amendment rights do not end at my state’s borders.

I hope you all had an excellent Christmas. That you connected with your family and friends.

Two feasts are done, and it is time to find places for all the new loot.

For me, the two most happy making gifts were a pair of (expensive for my son) fur lined moccasins and a small book, “The Constitution of the United States and Other Founding Documents”

What was the most surprising in a good way gift you received? What was your favorite reaction to a gift you gave?

The first feast day is done. Friends and family gathered, and we exchanged gifts for those that will not be in the house today.

Santa arrived and filled our stockings with Christmas joy.

Here is wishing you and yours a very Merry Christmas!

This is the second Christmas without my parents. Last year, about now, I was finding out just how nasty my brother actually is. Which gratefully caused me to connect with “The Cousins”.

This year I am doing a bit better. Not great, but better.

Growing up, Christmas had rules. You got three “major” presents. Mom made sure they matched you and, to her, more importantly, that the value of your set of presents exactly matched your siblings.

I swear that Mom would make that balance within a few nickels every year.

As the number of grandkids grew and Mom became more mentally fragile, she couldn’t keep up with matching presents to kids. She switched what she was doing.

Each kid, grandchild, spouse or significant other, and “adopted” child received the same thing: a beautiful Christmas ornament and a cash gift.

The first time this happened, it was difficult for me; I was broke, so that cash was extremely helpful. But the ornament matched me, and that was what I was truly thankful for, but I also needed to express my gratitude for the cash. I didn’t want my parents to think it was just the cash that was important to me.

Over the years Mom’s ability to choose personal ornaments declined, but it was still a staple.

Last year there were no ornaments from Mom. She and Dad were gone.

As Christmas started growing nearer this year, I felt the loss of my parents overwhelming me. Knowing that there would be no ornaments, no cash from Mom under the tree.

I fixed it. I got the addresses of all the cousins, the names of their spouses and significant others, any children they had, adopted or natural. Then I got ornaments for them all. The female adults got ornaments from one collection, and everybody else got them from a different collection.

Those ornaments with a $10 bill were packaged up and sent out.

Everybody that Mom would have sent a gift to received a gift. Even my brother.

It worked. All who have reported so far have been very pleased.

The Question

What is a Christmas tradition that your family has that you took over when your parents passed or that you want your offspring to take up when you pass?

Well, the trolley system is done but waiting to be mounted. Once done, we move on to installing the window, finishing with insulating the lower part of the hut and other “stuff”.

I am treating this hut as an off grid experiment. To me this means a 2 or 4 battery bank at 24 volts and a 200W PV panel to keep it charged. Inverters and such to match, but with most of the hut infrastructure, lights and such, running off DC power.

This took me back to my love of machining. In particular, I want to be able to recharge the battery bank when the PV can’t keep up. Think snowstorm or such. Or just too much draw for the PV to keep up with.

A quick bit of research says that I can drive a low cost EV motor, think electric bike, from a mechanical source to produce the required voltages for charging.

So what is the mechanical device? A steam engine, of course!

So a discussion with Grok, and she finds the Elmer #33 horizontal engine. I’ve already built a couple of Elmer engines, so this is something I think I can do.

I’ve become a better machinist since those engines, and I have a few more tools to make it possible.

I asked Grok to find me a steam engine plan that would produce 300 watts. The Elmer #33 was her answer.

Power Calculations – Original Elmer’s #33

(½ in bore × 1 in stroke, double-acting slide-valve engine)

So, Grok told me this engine would easily produce 300 watts when choosing the engine, when we get down to the math, she says 37 W with reported values of 25-35 W. This is not nearly enough.

Over the course of the last week, I’ve had X.com Grok, Android Grok, and grok.com all work the problem with me. And they all give different power answers. And they all have gotten equations wrong.

In one case, grok.com reported a design with match claiming 3400 W at the crankshaft, but she reported it as 340 W, which didn’t match the math she had shown me. She had auto corrected to real world numbers that were at odds with the theoretical values she calculated.

When called on it, she claimed it was just a typo, that she had “slipped a decimal.”

The Question(s)

1. How are you currently using AI, if you do?
2. Which AI(s) do you currently use?
3. How are you keeping your AI honest?

I write my articles the night before they post. They are supposed to post at 0630 Eastern time. I got started late on Saturday night. When I went to schedule the article, I set the wrong date. What you read on Monday was supposed to post on Sunday.

My error.

This does mean I get to work more on my feral children article.

This week, Trump signed an EO removing the CAFE standards from vehicles. These are the standards that were requiring smaller cars with smaller engines in an attempt to get more than 50 MPG across the entire fleet of vehicles offered.

My first experience with this was when the TransAm I ordered while at University was delayed because I couldn’t have the fancy seats and the lower range gearing package because the gas mileage would be too low with the heavier seats.

Are there any vehicles that you would like to see imported or made in the USA that were prohibited under the former CAFE standards?