Posted By RichC on January 12, 2016
College fooball doesn’t get any better than Monday night’s National Championship game between Alabama and unbeaten Clemson. The game came down to the 4th quarter where both team gave it their all. The playing was almost unbelievable on both sides of the ball. The game eventually turned on an Alabama score and surprise short on-sides kickoff and recovered by Alabama. This momentum change allowed Alabama to look as if it would be a controlled win. Clemson came back and again demonstrated why they were in this game.
It came down to the wire as it was hard to tell who might break away and score. I may just be me, but during the final 2 minutes … Clemson’s defense held play after play allowing Alabama’s offense to eat the clock and then score rather than scoring and giving Clemson’s offense a little more time and their timeouts. Who knows … the “slow score” may have been Alabama’s blessing in disguise?
Both teams were outstanding … too bad Clemson had to lose, but my hats off to Alabama on becoming the National Champs for 2016.
Category: Sports |
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Tags: alabama, Clemson, college, football, national champions
Posted By RichC on January 11, 2016
Have you ever considering visiting Israel? Here’s a great opportunity to go with my friend Pastor Keith Thomas for a “Best of Israel” tour. 
He has been taking groups for years and combined with his handpicked guides and economical group rate accommodations and airfare, a trip this spring may be your best opportunity.
Touring Israel and the Holy Land is probably something most Christians “would like to do” in their lifetime, but due to cost and our busy lives, we (me included) put it off until our retirement years. This year, Keith has a few more slots to fill and has extended the invite for a few more days (weeks?). Leaving from Cincinnati is not necessary, you just need to be able to connect with him in New York for the flight overseas.
Send him an email … or take a look at the brochure on the Group Bible Study website – The Best of Israel – Spring 2016
Category: Faith, Travel |
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Tags: groupbiblestudy, holyland, israel, keith thomas, tours
Posted By RichC on January 10, 2016
The U.S. Department of Justice lawyers on behalf of the EPA are probably sleeping and dreaming dollar signs … a still unknown number but calculations mentioned in the WSJ top $45 Billion. They have an opportunity to capitalize on Volkswagen’s willful disregard and purposeful installation of “defeat devices” on Volkswagen, Audi and Porche TDI diesel vehicles for most of the past decade. The number of affected vehicles initially were 482,000 with a recent addition of another 100,000. Who knows what the lawsuit number will eventually request? I’m sure the number will be mind bogglingly large.
Interestingly Harvard and MIT researchers attempted to put a price on the “human health toll.” They concluded “excess pollution emitted from the cars will cause 59 premature deaths, 31 cases of chronic bronchitis, 34 hospital admissions, 120,000 days of restricted activity including lost work days — 210,000 days with lower respiratory problems and 33,000 days with increased use of asthma inhalers. The cost, they said, will be $450 million.” They also admitted that those calculations could be interpreted higher or lower based on additional outside costs … it could be has high as $1.2 billion or as low as $72 million.
It is an interesting read in this past weekend’s WSJ. Source: How to Calculate the Costs to Society of the VW Scandal
Category: Automotive, Diesel, Volkswagen |
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Tags: diesel, epa, lawsuit, tdi, volkswagen, vw, wsj
Posted By RichC on January 10, 2016
As a long time Cincinnati Bengals fan, I officially am no long going to declare them “my team.” Marvin Lewis needs to go as he has permitting poor sportsmanship and penalties all season long … and the stupidity continued Saturday night in self-destructive fashion.
The costly misbehavior and penalties in the final seconds of the game gave away the wild card playoff game. No self control … or “coached” control. Final score: 18 – 16 with a “gimme” field goal in the final seconds thanks to a couple of misbehaving Bengal players. I can’t say I’m proud of my fellow fans either. It was both frustrating and embarrassing.
Going to bed ANGRY. Not a way to enjoy football.
Category: Sports |
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Tags: bengals, cincinnati, nfl, playoffs
Posted By RichC on January 9, 2016
Thankfully the weather held and the construction was able to continue on the chimney repairs. 
They completed the final soldering of seams on the stainless steel custom top this morning and were quick to show up and collect the check too.
Although this was an expensive surprise after replacing the roof, I’m glad to have it done right and looking nice too. The stone veneer thankfully comes pretty close to matching our “real” stone backporch fireplace and stone trimwork and having new structural framing fastened to our trusses this time (it was not originally) makes for a repair that should outlast me. We are pleased.
Side note: Used the VNC Viewer app on the iPad to log in remotely and emulate the desktop environment on the Raspberry Pi to post his update. It a little cumbersome, but do-able … although really miss the mouse or trackpad when logging in this way.
Category: Archive, Personal, Photos, Raspberry Pi |
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Tags: chimney, home, house, repair, roof
Posted By RichC on January 8, 2016
The financial markets took another slide this Friday afternoon even after “impressive” job numbers were released this morning. Growth was well above expectations showing 292,00 jobs were created in December 2015. This came as a mixed message for investors as they needed something to stimulate their interest in buying stocks … unfortunately many came away with an expectation the Fed would continue it’s tightening policies and raise interest rates again in March. Losses are starting to look real for all but those who have been warning we may continue to see even slower sales numbers as the year moves ahead. It is perplexing when all asset classes are being affected.
Category: Financial |
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Tags: dow, jobs, markets, nasdaq, wall street
Posted By RichC on January 8, 2016
January 2016 has not given investors an optimistic start as stocks sold off for another day on Thursday. The slide gives the Dow its worst start to begin a year since the 30-stock index was created in 1928. Fingers are pointing to economic woes and government financial manipulation in China as well as world oil prices hitting 12-year lows due to slowing demand and excess supply.
China allowed the biggest fall in the yuan currency in five months, adding to investor fears about the health of its economy, while Shanghai stocks .SSEC were halted for the second time this week after another steep selloff.
Oil prices fell to 12-year lows and copper prices touched their lowest since 2009, weighing on energy and materials shares. Shares of Freeport McMoran (FCX.N) dropped 9.1 percent to $5.61. All 10 S&P 500 sectors ended in the red, though, and the Nasdaq Biotech index .NBI fell 4.1 percent.
“People see the weakness in China and in the overall equity market and think there’s going to be an impact on corporations here in the United States,” said Robert Pavlik, chief market strategist at Boston Private Wealth in New York.
“When you have a market that begins a year with weakness, people are sort of suspect anyway. The economy isn’t moving all that well, the outlook is modest at best, and they don’t want to wait for the long term. China creates more uncertainty.”
The Dow Jones industrial average .DJI closed down 392.41 points, or 2.32 percent, to 16,514.1, the S&P 500 .SPX had lost 47.17 points, or 2.37 percent, to 1,943.09 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC had dropped 146.34 points, or 3.03 percent, to 4,689.43.
Reuters
Category: Financial |
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Tags: djia, dow, investing, trading, wall street
Posted By RichC on January 7, 2016
Pressure-treated wood is a delightful product. It’s chemically protected to ward off insects and fungal decay. This protection increases the lifespan of the wood and makes it ideal for outdoor projects like decks. But here’s an important thing to keep in mind when picking pressure-treated 4x4s.
The chemical treatment process in question isn’t as effective on wood that is closer to the core of the tree. This is important because 4×4 posts are made as a by-product of plywood production and are often the center of a log, which is called the peeler core. This section of wood does not accept chemical treatment as well as the outer areas of the log and therefore is more susceptible to termites and other damage. You want to avoid pressure-treated posts that were in peeler core, and thankfully, you can do so by learning to read the wood.
When selecting 4×4 posts, check the end grain for wood that has been cut away from the peeler core. The growth rings will help identify these pieces. In the photo above, the post on the left is more desirable than the peeler core on the right, as the rings indicate that the post on the right was in the middle of the tree.
Check both 8-foot and 10-foot lengths of wood and choose accordingly. A few years down the line, you’ll be glad you did.
Source: Family Handyman and Popular Mechanics
Category: Tidbits, Woodworking |
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Tags: lumber, mechanics, popular, pressure, treated, trees, wood
Posted By RichC on January 6, 2016
This past December, after hearing in July that one of my favorite applications would be givng new life as open source software, Open Live Writer was released. The parent application was retired by Microsoft a few year ago but has remained available. Unfortunately after my move to Windows 10 and issues with sFTP support, it first required a work-around and then unfortunately stopped working — most likely due to it being part of the “report back to Mom” Live Essentials?
Thankfully the committed group of programmers, users and Microsoft people continued to push to have the source code opened under MIT licensing and it is now being supported voluntarily. After losing LiveWriter, I installed Open Live Writer on my iMac Win10 Parallels install and am giving it a try (keeping the old Microsoft LiveWriter on my 2007 Gateway notebook and still have it on my even older Gateway that still runs in a pinch).
This is the first post with it, so we’ll see how it goes?
PS. I’m already missing the spelling check module but a big thanks Microsoft and to the volunteers working on this project.
Authors and Contributors
Below are some of the people who have helped to bring you Open Live Writer.
Category: Blogs, Computer |
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Tags: blogging, livewriter, microsoft, mydesultoryblog, open source
