Thoughts July 17, 2026

Apparently, the last administration was not only hiding information of foreign election meddling, their hiding made them complicit. In a perfect society, those involved will face harsh punishments, including the death penalty for treason. Will this happen? Probably not. Too many in Congress were involved, and they won't prosecute those in their club. 

I Need to Rant

My printer, which is a few years old (HP...which stands for "Here you Putz) needed some ink cartridges. Being a frugal type of person, I ordered some from Amazon, and failed to read the 1 star reviews. Long story short, the discount non-HP cartridges are problematic. My printer warned me they were not genuine, and allowed me to print a few pages. I was satisfied. A few weeks later, I decided to print a document, and the printer stopped due to "damaged" print cartridges. This inspired me to look up some of the shenanigans of the printer industry. 

HP doesn't want you to save money on ink. They want to damn near just give you a printer, and then bend you over every time you need some ink. They do this by installing proprietary chips that tell the printer to stop, laugh at your discomfort, and point you to the line where they take your money at gunpoint. To make things worse, the other printer companies are following suit, and doing the same. Now, the big questions are whether HP downloaded software to defeat the cartridges, they're really not good, or maybe the printer has gone south. My options are either to buy a new printer, pay the exorbitant amount HP charges for cartridges, or pull out a Big Chief notepad and just scribble out documents like a demented old man in the 1800's.

*spit*

Badly Corroded Steel

A New York high rise under remodeling is collapsing. From one of the photos, the corrosion is apparent, and too much of the steel is gone to hold the weight of the stories above. If the rest of the building is in such bad shape, demolition is probably the only solution, and I don't have any idea on how that can be done without damaging the surrounding buildings. In my opinion, it's too dangerous to attempt any work inside, and I wouldn't want to deal with the lawsuits soon to appear. I know I wouldn't even want to expose some of the steel at ground level to see its condition.

This article give some more information. The contractor has multiple violations, and the work involved adding additional stories to the building. 

What gets my attention is the engineering involved. How can additional floors be added without careful examination of the existing structure? Regardless of engineering calculations for structural adequacy, if the original plans were used, they're basically useless. Structural steel design calculation are dependent on the sectional amount of steel, and the tensile strength. Corroded steel can't be calculated without a clear understanding of how much steel is gone, and whether the original shape used for calculations still applies. Considering what some of the pictures reveal, I can't imagine a competent engineer being willing to stamp the plans when a little examination would have revealed the degradation of the original structure. If I had to guess, some money was passed under the table, and a city employee is now in a world of shit.

Hyping the Weather

Weather forecasters (mostly TV personalities) are hyping the weather. It's hot, and the humidity is high, but I've seen much worse, worked in it, and the hype is making my patience wear thin. It's the weather, any changes in climate are gradual - if any - and the constant drivel about anthropogenic climate change is becoming something that makes me want to throw a shoe at the television. Enough already. All the predictions have been wrong, and the hype is ridiculous.  

Wear and Tear

I spent the other day mowing, some weed-whacking, and nothing much else. None of it was strenuous, but I was getting some sharp occasional pains around my belt-line. I've had a small hernia for a few years, and it never bothered me, until then. Since it was Thursday, and my doctor is off on Friday, I called for an appointment. They fit me in, and  gave me one at 10:30 am with a nurse practitioner, so off I went. 

I'll be scheduled for a CT scan, and a visit to a surgeon. While the hernia isn't bothering me today, if it should become worse, I'm on the path to what is now just a day surgery. I'm pushing 70 years old, and the longer I wait, the chances of complications increase. It will put me semi-out of condition for about 6 weeks, but after that, I should be running on 8 cylinders again. 

I'm guessing my years of hard labor work, such as lifting heavy concrete forms, bags of cement products, concrete finishing, and other things that lead to hernias has finally caught up with me. It's wear, and tear, and time to get it fixed.