Happy Birthday Ellerie. Wishing you were here with us!
Posted By RichC on February 21, 2026
This content is restricted.
Woodworking: Admiring Japanese Joinery Techniques [video]
Posted By RichC on February 21, 2026
Several of these video clips pass my way on social media. I’ve always admired the intricate joinery by the skilled Japanese woodworkers who can make simple woodworking techniques look so easy and precise. It is not.
Two big retailers competing to be #1: Amazon vs Walmart
Posted By RichC on February 20, 2026
Amazon ($AMZN) surpassed Walmart ($WMT) as king of “sales.”
It is amazing to me that the 1990s online bookseller had the staying power to over come years of no profit to become such a retail powerhouse 30 years later … not to mention so many other technology areas from streaming to a dominate cloud services provider. Visionary!
Amazon has surpassed Walmart as the world’s largest company, measured by sales, breaking Walmart’s 13-year streak at the top of the list.
Amazon posted $717 billion in sales in 2025. Walmart, the largest company in the world for more than a decade, recorded $713 billion in sales in 2025, the retailer announced Thursday.
The U.S. national debt is set to surge +$2.4 TRILLION per year over the next 10 years, according to new CBO estimates.
Posted By RichC on February 19, 2026
The U.S. needs to keep investing in printing presses … or more likely continue to add numbers to the electronic ledgers our incompetent bureaucrats in Washington DC are running up! 
There are so few politicians willing to cut the spending … even after DOGE … that they won’t address this until everything collapses. Very frustrating.
The US national debt is set to surge +$2.4 trillion PER YEAR over the next 10 years, according to new CBO estimates.
As a result, US debt will likely reach a record $64 TRILLION in 2036, doubling from 2023 levels.
That would be TRIPLE the debt recorded in 2018, before the pandemic.
All while the annual interest costs on federal debt are expected to more than double, to $2.1 trillion, over the next 10 years.
This also assumes the economy will not fall into a recession over the entire period.
$64 trillion in debt is now the base case.
How did we end up here?
BREAKING: pic.twitter.com/cYnyht45ec
— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) February 16, 2026
Railings and a plumbing issues is leading to a bigger condo repair
Posted By RichC on February 18, 2026
Ignore this “for the record” post that I want to include in the Condo1718 archive. We found out that the shower pan in our condo’s guest bathroom is dripping underneath … AND leaking into the shower ceiling of 
the condominium below ours. Grr!
So after back and forth with a couple of different plumbers and bathroom contractors, we’ve decided that the only reasonable solution is to replace the pan and connected plumbing parts underneath before patching the neighbor’s ceiling. Unfortunately this means tearing out more of the existing walls, tile and new-ish glass door.
We’ve settled on a contractor who has some high end leftover material from a large project that matches up nicely with our existing floor tiles and bathroom colors. The material cost is lower because it is extra material … but the labor to tear out and replace is still expensive.
It needs to get done (for the sake of the neighbor living below us) and we don’t want a patch up plumbing leak to appear again … so an entirely new shower and new hardware it will be. We’re crossing our fingers that all will go well after an excellent demolition start.
The Daytona 500 winner in 2026 was Tyler Reddick
Posted By RichC on February 17, 2026
As Brenda and I have watched the Daytona 500 on television for years every February, often with her parents as it was often the weekend we would visit them in Florida. I drifted away from watching NASCAR after Taylor outgrew 
rooting for Jeff Gordon and pushing his Matchbox cars around on the floor. But now I find myself enjoying it again.
That said, this year’s race wasn’t the most exciting … or as someone in my social media car circles commented, “the longer speedway races haven’t been exciting for years.” Too much of the round and round three wide happening at less than maximum speeds just to save fuel and position themselves for a shootout in the end — which was exciting.
The 2026 Daytona 500 winner was the well deserved Tyler Reddick. He was a very excited winner … as was the 23XI Racing team owner Michael Jordan!
The Top Ten after the Daytona 500 and 2026 NASCAR Week One (click)
Music Monday: Fire On The Mountain (video)
Posted By RichC on February 15, 2026
A unique song for this week’s Music Monday after seeing the video below on social media. It is an old time fiddle song that has roots dating back to at least the early 19th century, appearing in print as early as 1814 in Riley’s Flute Melodies under the title “Free on the Mountains.” Fire on the Mountain might be remembered from the Grateful Dead’s song or a popular version from The Marshall Tucker Band.
This version below is widely played across the Southern and Midwestern United States and is known for being performed at breakneck speed, giving rise to the popular folklore that the fiddler plays so fast the fiddle catches fire and ignites the mountain.
Desultory - des-uhl-tawr-ee, -tohr-ee
- lacking in consistency, constancy, or visible order, disconnected; fitful: desultory conversation.
- digressing from or unconnected with the main subject; random: a desultory remark.