Good Morning!!!! 56F @ 4:45AM. Sunny. High 71F. Winds NNE at 10 to 20 mph.
I've gotten a flu shot every year for as long as I can remember, and don't recall ever having the flu after getting one. Some pretty bad colds, yes, just not the flu. Maybe I'm lucky, but I just think that getting protection from some strains is better than not getting any protection at all. If you get a nurse or pharmacist that knows what they're doing with the syringe, it doesn't even hurt that much. Mostly, though, immunizing a large fraction of the populace prevents the disease from spreading; it prevents pandemics that in the past have killed many, many people. That's the main reason I get the shot.
My heart goes out to those caring for an older parent. All you can do is do your best and roll with the punches. Enjoy the time you have with them; the world will be emptier when they're gone.
The old 17" laptop came back yesterday, but now I'm catching my self reaching to tap something on the screen, iPad style.:confused2: Very glad to have a trackpad and decent keyboard again.
My suspicions were right about the old BMW: The exciter circuit was open and the rotor wasn't getting the current it needed to magnetize; no electricity was the result. One of the leads to the bridge resistor someone installed had broken right next to the resistor, and pulling the tape off of it made it obvious what was wrong. Put in a new one and still no juice, and tracked that down to a bad voltage regulator. That was another used part that I thought was good, but hadn't tested. I've installed a nifty volt meter/ammeter on the other older BMWs, and it uses an innovative shunt that is very small that's easy to fit to the negative lead of the battery. Went to order another one yesterday and it seems they've been discontinued. Substitutes I've seen so far are pretty bulky and the meter just displays amps, so I'm not sure what I'll do now.
The weather service issued another Red Flag Warning yesterday that lasts until Friday, and so far I've had two robo calls from PG&E warning me that they could shut off the power at any time if they think weather conditions warrant it. Better that than having their power lines spark another disaster, but I can't help but recall that a few years ago they were heavily fined for diverting millions of dollars from a fund set aside to do line maintenance, and using it to prop up shareholder returns. And recently our governor signed a new law that relieved them of any financial liability from the fires of this year and last, even if power lines are shown to be the cause. So we customers sit in the dark while the wind howls, and PG&E says there's no money to do the work they should have been doing all along.:muttering:
Hang in there, gang, Friday's comin'!
