Edmund Schweppe

Yesterday, USS Massachusetts (SSN-798) was officially commissioned into the United States Navy:
( Read more... )

(The Boston Globe story has better pictures, but is possibly paywalled.)

She's bigger and more advanced than my old boat, USS Omaha, which has long since been decommissioned.

The National Weather Service just upgraded our earlier Winter Storm Warning to a Blizzard Warning:
( now predicting 12 to 22 inches! )
Fortunately, there's no place I need to be on Monday, besides right here. And the power lines in this complex are all underground and thus immune to having tree branches dropped on them; the same cannot be said for much of the rest of the town, so I suspect there will be a whole bunch of outages over the next day and change.

Last weekend's snowpocalypse ... wasn't horrible, for me at least. I ended up with around sixteen or so inches of relatively fluffy snow; more than enough to need a lot of shoveling, but not too terribly bad.

This week is just going to be really, really cold. Never getting above freezing during the day, and down in the single digits at night. (The National Weather Service is currently predicting subzero lows Friday night. Yikes.)

And we may have a serious nor'easter for the weekend. Apparently the models are in fairly good agreement that there will be a big storm somewhere on the Atlantic coast, but the possible storm tracks are anywhere from way the hell south of here to right on top of me. Unsurprising, six days out ...

The snowpocalypse, that is. Anywhere from twelve to twenty inches expected, according to the National Weather Service.

At least my water is back.

Official NWS Winter Storm Warning now posted for the upcoming snowpocalypse:
( 12 to 17 inches )
Fortunately, this stuff should be on the light and fluffy side, so it won't be quite as bad to shovel.

Rabbit, rabbit.

(In memory of Daphne Worth, aka trollcatz, whose habit it was to post thusly to open the New Year. Pay no attention to the fact that she was a fictional character.)

I found out today that James Hetley, formerly of alt.callahans, later of LiveJournal and Dreamwidth (as jhetley), author and ham radio operator, passed away in early October. From the Bangor Daily News obituary:

James Hetley, 78, passed away on October 8, 2025, as a result of a bike crash.

Born in Illinois, Jim moved to Bangor 50 years ago, after discharge from the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. Having a degree in architecture from the University of Michigan, he worked in offices in Bangor, Holden and Ellsworth before opening his own architectural office. He wrote several urban fantasy novels, was a member of the Pine State Amateur Radio Club, and was the home handyman.

The ranks of the old alt.callahans crowd continue to diminish.

WTF happened earlier today in Washington?

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for being "disrespectful" Friday in an extraordinary Oval Office meeting, then abruptly called off the signing of a minerals deal that Trump said would have moved Ukraine closer to ending its war with Russia.

The astonishing turn of events could scramble affairs in Europe and around the globe. During his visit with Trump, Zelenskyy was expected to sign the deal allowing the U.S. greater access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals and hold a joint news conference, but that plan was scrapped after the heated engagement between the leaders in front of the news media.

https://apnews.com/article/zelenskyy-security-guarantees-trump-meeting-washington-eebdf97b663c2cdc9e51fa346b09591d

I have no goddamn idea what Trump thinks he's doing. But it sure sounds like it's Vladimir Putin's bidding.

I've successfully registered for this summer's edition of the All Star 2 conference on Star Island.

In a minor annoyance, Star has joined the universe of non-profits asking people to kick in an extra three percent to cover the credit card processing fees. But that's a minor annoyance.

Like I said this time twelve years ago, I was not expecting Donald Trump to win the election.

Last time, Trump lost the popular vote and won the Electoral College.
This time, he's winning both of them; the Associated Press is currently showing Trump with 71.6 million votes to Kamala Harris' 66.7 million.

Not looking forward to the next few years.

This is a new one: the folks at Verizon sent me an email today saying they were issuing a credit to my account "due to a service outage" (presumably this one).

I'll believe it when/if I see it. But I'm cynical, sometimes.

Today is both Massachusetts' state primary election, and the first day I was able to schedule this year's COVID vaccine at my local CVS.

I'd already voted early, so that wasn't an issue. And, unlike last year, there wasn't any insurance company confusion about which version of the vaccine was covered this time.

This year was quick and easy; in, jab, and out. As a bonus, the sweet young thing who gave me the shot was both gloved and masked.

Once again, Team Moderna for the win.

I had a fun time, even though Star has given up on being COVID-free. There were no announced cases on-island last week, and apparently most (if not all) conferees tested themselves prior to arrival. I did stay masked up indoors in public areas (and ate my meals outdoors). I also carried my little Aranet CO2 monitor around. Even indoors, most of the time, CO2 levels were down in the 450-600 range. There was a *lot* of wind most days, with not very much rain, so the windows were kept open almost all the time.

I'm still not pleased that the island management decided to give up on being COVID-free. I wasn't the only person on island masking up for some or all of the time; there were a few other conferees, and even a few staff members, masked up most of the time.

The mainland weather was hot and humid all week; that meant that the island weather was cool and humid. (Advantage of being surrounded by sixty-plus-degree Atlantic Ocean water.) There were a couple of quick downpours, but overall the week was dry.

Of course, this week is also going to be hot and humid on the mainland; alas, this time *I'm* in the middle of it. Sigh.

Joyeuse fête du Canada [1] à mes amis au nord de la frontière, qui continuent de démontrer délicieusement bon goût en célébrant leur fête nationale sur ce, mon jour natal.

[1] For Canada Day salutations in English, please press 2.

Last March, former President Donald J. Trump was indicted in a New York city court on thirty-four counts of falsifying business records.

Today, the jury in that trial returned thirty-four guilty verdicts, after deliberating for only two days.

To paraphrase Gary Trudeeau from the May 29, 1973 Doonesbury comic strip:

That's guilty!
Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty,
guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty,
guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty,
guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty,
guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty,
guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty,
guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty!