In lake news…

Oct. 21st, 2025 09:12 pm
nosrednayduj: pink hair (Default)
[personal profile] nosrednayduj
I took last Wednesday off of work to haul and winterize the power boat, because I was going to be busy the next several weekends, and I'm tired of winterizing it in late November when it's 30° and blowing a howling gale.

I had the usual trouble with everything. Starting with not being able to find the right socket that is needed for installing the hitch. Turned out we had a same size socket from a different set. It said it was an impact wrench socket but it fit on the extra large handle from the main socket set, and so even though it didn't stay on properly, I was able to make it work. Then I couldn't find the waders that I wanted to use. I only found the ones that are too small and the ones that leak. I made do with the ones that are too small. Eventually I got the boat out of the water without any further unexpected trouble (I always expect a little trouble trying to back up the trailer).

Then the winterizing job just takes forever. You have to drain the oil out of the lower unit and the main engine, and this takes a long time, even if you warm up the engine first so the oil is less viscous; the lower unit oil is very viscous. And then you have to try hard not to spill it anywhere. I was especially concerned because this is the first time our brand-new garage floor has been threatened with oil when I was draining it out of the oil pan into containers for taking to toxic waste next spring. I managed not to stain the floor. We have a special gadget for getting oil into the lower unit which is supposed to have less drippage, and I had notes from last time that said that the old one was starting to fail and so I bought a new one, and the new one is much worse and much less useful and I'm sad about that.

I got the neighbor to agree to take the extra gas from the tank and put it in one of his cars, since we no longer have any other gasoline burning vehicles.

Finally it was done and I got help to move to the other trailers out of the way (both of them had flat tires and had to be pumped up) and towed it into its winter home and covered it. The cover is getting kind of shabby, but the previous week I had tried patching some of the larger holes with iron on patches, which surprisingly worked and did not melt the material, mostly nylon I think. Some of my iron on patches were clearly from the 70s, based on the packaging. I did use one of those, and I think it's going to peel off. It proudly said it cost 29 cents!

Then over the weekend there was some beautiful waterskiing weather, and I had no boat. I knew that would happen, though. And I was pretty busy this weekend with No Kings Saturday and a game party Sunday.

AWS outage

Oct. 20th, 2025 10:11 am
alierak: (Default)
[personal profile] alierak posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance
DW is seeing some issues due to today's Amazon outage. For right now it looks like the site is loading, but it may be slow. Some of our processes like notifications and journal search don't appear to be running and can't be started due to rate limiting or capacity issues. DW could go down later if Amazon isn't able to improve things soon, but our services should return to normal when Amazon has cleared up the outage.

Edit: all services are running as of 16:12 CDT, but there is definitely still a backlog of notifications to get through.

Edit 2: and at 18:20 CDT everything's been running normally for about the last hour.

Actions #15 and #16

Oct. 18th, 2025 03:58 pm
nosrednayduj: pink hair (Default)
[personal profile] nosrednayduj
I went to two protests, so I count them both. Ken wondered if I would get counted twice in the "5 million people across the country participated…" Of course there's not actually an accurate census of these things.

The local one was again at the shopping mall, picking up the Saturday morning shoppers starting at 9:30. This was less convenient for me, because it's further from the train station than the center of town, so I had to leave after only 20 minutes to catch the train into Boston. (I suppose if I hadn't bicycled I could have protested there for longer. But I felt like bicycling.) Unfortunately the train was inconveniently timed so I got to the Boston thing fairly early. On the other hand, then I got a good "seat" (standing location).

Lots of other people were on my train with signs, and lots more people were already on the Common when I arrived 40 minutes in advance of the start time, and tons of people were just streaming in from all directions. I will be interested to see a crowd estimate. It was enormous.

The MC had good energy. The music was some good, some mediocre, the speakers were "what you would expect at an event like this". There was a heckler who tried to interrupt Michelle Wu's speech. Michelle was very professional about it and completely ignored the guy, did not get distracted, made sure that she was right in the microphone so that her remarks were louder. She said various dramatic things that we were all supposed cheer after and so she paused at the right time and we cheered appropriately. So the heckler did not achieve his goals. The MC then talked about how "we don't all agree in this movement and that's okay, but we need to all be in the movement. We need to not be divided." Which was good and off-the-cuff and well spoken. A couple of other times he also had impromptu remarks on different topics.

I decided I was tired of standing around after 2 hours (more, including the time I was there early) and bailed to go catch the earlier train home. It's very confusing when you get walking directions and you're in the middle of the park which is full of people you have no idea what direction you're facing. So I walked for a while and saw if I was getting off the path and kind of wandered around until I found the path. Fortunately I allowed an extra 10 minutes for the walk to South Station, and I arrived early enough to be comfortable. Given the number of people on my train home holding signs, I was not the only one who thought that a three-hour rally was too long. On the walk back to South Station I did see some people coming towards the rally holding signs, so I guess we were the changing of the guard.

A crowd of people, most of them holding protest signs for 'no kings'. The crowd extends into the distance, where you can see trees and Boston skyline behind them, below a crystal-clear blue sky. Some people are wearing short sleeves, but most have some kind of light outerwear.
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[personal profile] siderea
Canonical link: https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1885137.html


Content Advisory: US government classified and controlled unclassified info leaked to news outlets, within.

[Previously: The Essequibo (Buddy-ta-na-na, We Are Somebody, Oh): Part 1]

Now, when looking at these strikes being carried out in the Caribbean, shockingly, I think there's not been a ton of coverage on this. CNN, for one, their Pentagon reporters, have been some of the only ones consistently covering what's happening in Venezuela. CNN and the New York Times right now, I would say, are the two that are kind of all over this and have been for a while. I don't know why it's getting so little coverage elsewhere, but it is. So, normally I would like to look at these, uh, these reports and source them from multiple different outlets and we just don't have that because there's so limited coverage around US military operations in SOUTHCOM right now.

— Preston Stewart [PrestonStewart on YT], 2025 Oct 15, "American Bombers Send A Message To Venezuela"


[...] I know that the people of the United States are attentive observers and the people of the United States are very aware of what is being attempted against Venezuela is armed aggression to impose regime change.

— Nicolás Maduro, 2025 Oct 3, via Times of India via AP via VTV, "Venezuela Deploys Army & Tanks After Another Deadly U.S Attack, Fighter Jet action"


I am still desperately trying to pull together Part 2 of this series, but in the meanwhile, more things keep happening. I keep checking in with my focus group, aka, Mr. Bostoniensis, about what he is seeing in the news, because my own algorithms are, uh, rather peculiarly trained at this point, and the answer seems "rock all", so I thought I'd post a news round-up of some of the developments over the last couple of weeks. (Holy crap it's been two weeks.)

October 2nd


It comes out that the Trump administration has literalized the 'War on Drugs'. [CW: 'controlled but unclassified'] )

US terminates diplomatic relations with Venezuela )

October 3rd


Fourth US strike on a boat in Venezuelan waters is announced by Trump admin )

October 6th


Venezuela announces it foiled a false-flag plot against the US Embassy in Venezuela )

October 8th


Democrats in Senate try to limit Trump's war powers but fail )

October 9th


The Venezuelan opposition leader wins the Nobel Peace prize )

Venezuela requests emergency intervention from the UN Security Council )

The US asks Grenada, 100 miles off Venezuela's coast, to allow US military installation )

October 10th


The Nobel Peace Prize winner dedicates the prize to Trump, confusing a lot of people who haven't been keeping score )

It comes out that Maduro had been trying to negotiate his way out of US demands for his outster by offering up 'a dominant stake in Venezuela's oil' )

UN Security Council has emergency meeting per Venezuela's request )

October 13th


Maduro closes Venezuela's embassies in Norway and Australia )

Venezuelan activist and political consultant in exile in Colombia were shot )

October 14th


US bombs fifth boat off Venezuela, six killed )

US announces Admiral in charge of US SOUTHCOM visiting Antigua and Barbuda and Grenada )

Which brings us to today. (Well, it was today when I started writing this.)

October 15th


Trump has authorized covert CIA operations in Venezuela [CW: 'highly classified'] )

Three US Air Force B-52 bombers buzzed Venezuela for four hours; Venezeula scrambles an F-16 in response )

It comes out that the boat of Colombians bombed in September was not bombed by mistake, but was deliberate )

Nobel Laureate Machado exhorts Trump to rescue Venezuela from Maduro )

Trump is musing aloud to the press about airstrikes on Venezuela )

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She was a jerk to the end

Oct. 10th, 2025 09:56 pm
nosrednayduj: pink hair (Default)
[personal profile] nosrednayduj
My stepsister managed to prevent me from knowing when the funeral was until it was too late. The obituary on the funeral home site (which I didn't find until too late) does not even list me as a survivor. It does list some people who are, in my opinion, more distantly related than me. Nor does it mention having been predeceased by his loving wife.

Some people are just too petty.

I did learn that he was buried rather than cremated and which cemetery he's in, so perhaps on my next trip to California I will take an extra day and go on a road trip and say goodbye.

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