That fever ran hot and cold, to be sure. I'd be shivering so hard that it hurt my back, then an hour later I'd be neutral, and an hour after that I'd be running with sweat...at least until Friday night, which was ALL sweat.
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That fever ran hot and cold, to be sure. I'd be shivering so hard that it hurt my back, then an hour later I'd be neutral, and an hour after that I'd be running with sweat...at least until Friday night, which was ALL sweat.
Went for a nice long walk this morning. I saw coots. Lots and lots of coots.
We got snow, though, which was mostly melted from the path, but where there was shade, it was icy.
What was kind of funny is that, despite getting less than an inch of snow on the ground, people were trying to make something out of it. I saw a guy out using a garden rake to gather snow that his young daughter put into buckets, perhaps for a snowman. That was a lot of work. We'll likely get more snow later.
I had to look that up, we call them pouldeau here, although I never heard the “l” before and always thought they were spelled poo-doo.
I've heard of an old coot.
I hope we get snow again, my apple tree really thrived last year and I think it was because of the historic cold weather we got.
You may have heard of "crazy as a coot". They are funny little birds. They are kind of the amphibious duck, as their feet aren't webbed for swimming, but are these weird hybrid feet suited both for land, water, and mud.
I would see one dive, then pop back to the surface like a cork. It wasn't a deep pond, so they were getting down, grabbing something, then bobbing back up.
Yesterday was Tuesday....
... didn't got anything done....
Not bad for a Tuesday
You didn't say 6-7 repeatedly?
All the cool kids are saying it.
And nerdy kids.
And jocks.
And pot heads
In other words, every kid is saying it.
Please God, help me. I don't want to hear 6-7 anymore.
I think my cousin is 6-7.
I haven't said it, but then again, I'm not a kid.
Got a portion of the yard raked. Enough to fill the three trash barrels I have on hand. One more week might finish the job.
It's going to be a wet week, though. Raking wet leaves isn't bad, but if it then turns cold, the leaves freeze into the trash bin and it can be a month or two before I can get them all dumped.
Dump a heater into the bin?Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker
Ya know, for the frozen leaves to have it warm and cozy....
That sounds as if absolutely nothing could go wrong.
Yeah, let me just try that...
It may not matter. A warm, rainy, weekend might mean that trash day will also be well above freezing, which will make the leaf dumping easier.
Attachment 195587
It's been cold and wet here and doesn't seem to be letting up for a couple of days.
We would consider 60+ degree weather in December to be beautiful. lol
We've been in the low 50's and haven't seen to sun in several days. Then again, I'm sure there's some that would consider 50's toasty this time of year. We're suppose to get into the 60's this weekend.
I bought my Christmas tree from IKEA,
I hope they sent ya enough branches in the other box. :bigyello:Quote:
Originally Posted by wes4dbt
And the glue in the "miscellaneous items bag"Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter Porter
Anyone remember when I mentioned buying gold back at the end of July? "Sucker's bet. Lose your shirt. Nay, nay nay."
Attachment 195590
Gold is usually a safe bet.
It's a hedge. Still don't like it all that much, though. The problem I have with people who buy gold is that you are then focused on market timing. Do you sell now? Hold a bit longer? How will you feel if you sell now and it goes up? How will you feel if you don't sell now and it goes down?
Just seems stressful.
I wouldn't suggest it for speculation. It's probably better as a backup to cash holdings in high-yield savings, then CDs, and after that gold. Yet gold tends to be more liquid than mid-term CDs and it has outperformed them all. As far as I can tell it has done better than much of the stock market in 2025, which itself has been running high.
Nothing says the gains can't all be lost down the road though, as with anything.
Silver looks like a mess though. So much volatility there.
I vaguely remember silver doing well when I was younger. I want to say it was after I graduated high school but after I dropped out of college so maybe 2010 or 2011, somewhere around that time.
I had a friend who's uncle made a boat load of money on silver during that time, but he was also the type of guy looking for the next best thing and I think lost it all on his next investment.
I've never been a gambler. I wouldn't get stressed, but I'd blame myself for being stupid. Maybe that caps such behavior?
Isn't this true for all non fixed income investments? The problem with fixed income is they basically just pace inflation and sometimes not even that. So your not really growing your investment. The good thing is you never lose money. So, Yeah that does take the stress away.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker
I have a few friends that day trade and I like to ask them how they compare against index funds.
It's funny because they are very quick to tell you about the 500x return they got on a penny stock they dropped $10k on but conveniently leave out 50 other stocks they completely bombed on.
Actually, if you made 500x 1/50 times you would be doing really good. That's a 10x profit. lolQuote:
Originally Posted by dday9
I never thought I could predict stocks. I stuck with mutual funds. Now, at my age, it's mainly fixed income.
Silver always seems to be a mess. The one (relatively) nice thing about silver is that it is relatively easy to hold the physical metal. Getting an appreciable amount of gold comes with a real security risk, but silver is valuable...just not THAT valuable. You could keep it under your bed without being too concerned.Quote:
Originally Posted by dilettante
With gold, I assume you are buying gold shares rather than chunks of the actual metal that you have to store in a vault. The latter seems pretty messy, unless you already had the vault for other reasons....like keeping your booze away from raccoons.
When I was down in Florida, my landlady told me about somebody breaking into her house. They apparently sat on a valuable coin collection while drinking up all the wine in the house, after which they were kind of done with the robbery. They never knew the coins were there.
Bonds and some stocks give you some return (interest or dividends) while also varying in price as the markets move. Gold does the varying in price without those returns. A 5% bond will still return 5% even if the face value has dropped. It kind of provides a way to feel good about it while also having a way to feel good or bad about it.Quote:
Originally Posted by wes4dbt
And then there are funds...
I was being hyperbolic, I don't know the numbers lolQuote:
Originally Posted by wes4dbt
Gold is pretty value-compact though.
A new truck costs about a truckload of silver (ok, maybe 3 to 4 monster boxes of Eagles). That's a lot of space and a lot of weight. Like 120 to 160 pounds!
Yet a single tube of gold Eagles would be far more than enough.
Burying silver in the back yard would be nuts. Gold is almost practical though, even if you spread it out in several caches. You could buy some copper rounds cheap to make non-ferrous decoy caches too if you are paranoid about metal detectors. :p
Damn metal detectors!!! That's why I have to always remove everything metal from body before I bury it in the back yard. What a pain in the butt. :wave:
You bury your body in the backyard...frequently?
It's a whole lot easier burying somebody else's body.
Orthopedic implants can't be detected, so you are safe burying that... um... raccoon.Quote:
Originally Posted by wes4dbt
I went for a walk today, as the weather was pretty nice. In fact, it was perhaps a bit TOO nice. I was sweating more than I should have been, so I stopped to sit on a bench. Unfortunately, I was immediately inflicted with a case of COL and was unable to leave the bench for about an hour. During that time, I found out that "Stuart" was well known in the community for being unusually outgoing. Everybody in the area had encountered him. Several people in the area apparently fed him. I was both told that, and had ample evidence weighing me down.
I couldn't break your code. What every the infliction I hope it's gone and that you didn't over feed Stuart.
The COL?
I have cases of overwhelming laziness almost everyday. Well, after work.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker
So did Stuart pay you a visit by the bench you refused to leave, keeping you there a few minutes longer than you planned?
Stuart, of course, is a cat. I was sitting on the bench, he decided to sit on me. It did keep me there several minutes longer than I had planned.
He likely would have kept me there for several more hours, but eventually I had to evict him.
That and I didn't know if "Stuart" was an animal, person or something else.Quote:
The COL?
My guess was a squirrel or a homeless person.Quote:
Stuart, of course, is a cat
Might be a homeless person...would probably eat a squirrel, but Stuart is a cat, and COL is a TLA for Cat On Lap.
My AI's short-term memory tests from a day ago:
Running STM integration tests...
[test_stm_influence] OK (diff=4.98219)
[test_stm_override_ep] OK (avg=10)
STM integration tests completed.
Running STM + Semantic integration tests...
[test_stm_semantic_combined] OK (avg=10, fidelity=1)
avg_r=10 (episodic baseline=0.00999999, semantic mid=2, stm strong=10)
[test_stm_leakage_clear] OK (avg_with_stm=10, avg_after_clear=0.267355)
[test_stm_capacity_eviction] OK (oldest evicted, size=3)
[test_stm_interaction_stability] Cycle 0 OK (avg_with_stm=5, avg_after_clear=0.606708)
[test_stm_interaction_stability] Cycle 1 OK (avg_with_stm=5, avg_after_clear=0.606708)
[test_stm_interaction_stability] Cycle 2 OK (avg_with_stm=5, avg_after_clear=0.606708)
STM + Semantic integration tests completed.