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San Diego had "red light" cameras. They would fine tune the green and yellow times to optimize catching a car crossing against a red light. The cameras did not improve safety. Instead, it taught drivers to do a panic stop to avoid the camera and cause a rear end collision. Much litigation over the tuned green/yellow times cost the city more than they collected in fines.

Some states share violation information with other states. The scofflaw may think everything is fine until they try to renew a driver's license or registration or car insurance.

There is no way a juror who has had his whole family killed by a drunk driver can serve on a DUI case. There is no restitution possible with that carnage. Any DUI has the potential to inflict that level of damage on another family.

Dude, I just looked that up. That’s a serious “kitchen remodeling.” You going to be ok afterwards?

I hope to be released to go home around July 1st. That assumes no complications. The ampullary tumor is just big enough to obstruct flow of bile/pancreatic enzymes. Just enough obstruction to inflate the common bile duct to resemble a sock all the way to the liver. Just enough to raise my alkaline phosphatase and bilirubin to levels that resulted in denial of life insurance. The surgeon who did the ERCP placed a plastic stent to hold the "ampulla" open so bile and pancreatic enzymes can flow freely. My bilirubin and ALP lab results look normal now.

I'm expecting to be back to work the first week of July. I'll have to see if that is realistic once the "remodeling" is complete.

My 2013 colonoscopy was scheduled as a "his and hers". My wife had one too. I had a complication a week later. One of the polyps removed was over a blood vessel. The scab ripped the blood vessel open. Instant tequila sunrise in the toilet bowl. A long night in the ER gulping "GoLytely" and pooping blood in preparation for an emergency colonoscopy. Suffice to say, I didn't want replay of that disaster.

I got the replay anyway. After lots of blood work and imaging, I have a diagnosis from a biopsy of adenocarcinoma of the ampulla of Vater in the presence of high grade dysplasia. The prescribed fix is a Whipple procedure. Lots of Youtube videos describing it. My surgeon calls it a "kitchen remodel". I appreciate her attempt at humor. She is an exceptionally experienced surgeon in performing Whipple procedures.

I had to take Eliquis for two months in 2020 for a 6in clot in my left leg. Then I had a quad bypass.........

The surgeon was very interested in discerning "old" clot vs "new". It's old, but pretty long. A quad bypass is a significant bit of surgery. My oldest son had 4 open heart surgeries. Two for subaortic stenosis. Two placing artificial valves (aortic/mitral), adding a band around the tricuspid and a "pig patch". I can appreciate the recovery time that goes with that.

I was rejected for a DUI jury. The defendant's attorney tried to make the case that the gas chromatography equipment for measuring blood alcohol was wildly inaccurate. I pointed out that my grades in quantitative chemistry labs were premised on accuracy to 5 points past the decimal. The claims being made about the equipment are simply wrong. It also helped that I had two classmates killed by drunk drivers during my senior year in high school. I was quite familiar with alcoholic beverages having been the house bartender from age 4 (just martinis and bourbon&water). Dad would drink 3 martinis and a bottle of wine after work. Suffice to say, I had adequate experience and little tolerance for lies from defense counsel.

The defendant had a blood alcohol of .24% and was observed bouncing his car off the left and right guardrails on southbound I-5 after 2 AM in the morning. Convicted of DUI.

My lower left leg has been showing pitting edema for a couple years. At my Whipple procedure pre-op consult, I asked my surgeon if that was a concern. I was sent ASAP for an ultrasound evaluation. The result was an old clot that runs from above my left knee to my ankle. Immediate prescription for Eliquis to start dissolving it. Recommendation for a compression stocking as the clot keeps all the vein valves open from my left knee to foot. The stocking does drive the fluid back up and it is a real pain to put on and must come off every morning before my shower. It is medically valuable, but time consuming.

I suspect the clot was generated as a side effect of contracting COVID-19 in Jan 2022 and Jan 2023. I had no problem prior to that time. I did not ever take the mRNA injection. Clotting was one of the possible consequences of COVID-19.

My wife as a T1DB with an insulin pump/CGM has fits with Ozempic. Lots of digestive distress the day of injection. Indigestion. Delayed gastric emptying. Diarrhea. It is especially disconcerting to be experiencing a glucose low warning from your pump/CGM and consuming glucose doesn't fix it for longer than you would expect. We've had to resort to shooting the glucagon powder in her nose on one occasion to prevent a dangerous low glucose (46) from getting worse. It does help lower A1C. That was the justification for the prescription. It does help lose weight by promoting a full feeling (leaving half of her expensive entree uneaten).

The downside is that much of the weight loss is muscle mass. Much of the rebound weight gain returns as fat.

Perhaps this will be the end of employer sponsored healthcare as an employee benefit. When I hired on to my current company, my monthly premium for Kaiser Permanente HMO for my family of 5 was a whopping $25/month. Prices skyrocketed when the courts ruled that civil unions and same sex marriages had to be covered. Obamacare further ratcheted up costs. Throwing "gender reassignment surgery" into the mix will just jack up rates beyond affordable. I've been paying $13,000 in premiums with $6900 deductibles for many years. Most years I never set foot in a medical facility for any reason. This year I have cancer. I've coughed up the full deductible just for imaging...CT, MRI, colonoscopy, transoral endoscopy, ERCP and gallbladder removal. On June 25th I get my kitchen remodeled (Whipple procedure). Hopefully all of this is resolved in the 2024 benefits time frame.

The Pocatello area has a vibrant charter/private school environment. The old Sears buildings in Pocatello and Idaho Falls host charter schools now. There is sufficient interest for 3 charter schools to be built in the area. Academic performance is far above what the public schools have been doing. The public school board just tried to float a $40 million bond to renovate parts of two high schools. The voters rejected it with 63% NO. That is the 3rd time the board has tried to float the bond and has been soundly rejected each time. No performance, no money. The public prefers the charter/private schools to the union debased public offering.

Once again, in war the real winners are arms developers.

It's even that way fishing for tuna. I had to install voice scramblers to cover conversations between boat, base station and other boats. The conversation was obscured, so the next step was homing in on the RF. Many boats had radio direction finders. Many had scanners. The problem was identifying what frequency to set the RDF to point at the origin of the VHF transmission. I resolved that by integrating a Taiyo RDF with a Regency scanner. I tapped the goniometer output and routed into the Regency scanner front end. I tapped the 10.7 MHz IF of the scanner and routed it back inside of the RDF ahead of the detector circuits. Voila! The scanner stopped on an active frequency and the RDF pointed at the origin. My employer sold the conversion to every boat in the harbor. $10 in parts and 30 minutes of labor.

It was a perpetual technical counter measure effort even when just fishing for tuna. The stakes are much higher on the battlefield and it pays better.

I lived in San Diego when it was released. The radio stations often played the full version. I never knew they were a local band. I was in 7th grade at the time.

Last time I saw Bill Walton, he was waiting for his luggage at the San Diego airport. The return area was across the street from the terminal. Bill left the baggage return area and pulled his car up into a no parking zone just outside the door of the luggage return. He left his car unattended long enough to fetch his bags. He wasn't faster than the cops who promptly wrote him a parking ticket. C'est la vie! Sad to see cancer take him out at 71.

When I was working with Lee Stein at First Virtual Holdings, he shared some advice he had for my employer. The question posed was how to improve the cash flow on the geothermal plant near Imperial, CA. His answer: raze the plant and replace with a hotel/resort/casino.

He can't pardon before a conviction has occurred. If Biden loses and the conviction occurs after Jan 20, 2025, he won't be able to pardon. A few strategic delays of the trial could seal Hunter's fate.

Yeah, I remember the Versys. Many decades ago I did pumper carb conversions (and back again). In fact, I believe one was the 441 Victor. Good luck with the procedure!

I always admired the BSA 500. I owned one for a year before I got married. It was an MX model. Not street legal, but wonderful in the dirt. When I got married, my condo had a single, open carport. Nowhere to store it. No means to transport it. Away it went. I've seen some offered for $5000 in recent years. I paid $500 in 1977. My Yamaha SR400 is as close as I can get now. Fuel injected, kick start only. The same song and dance with the compression release to kick it over. Nice for putting around town.

I have confidence in my surgeon. The wildcard is all the insanity going on between the US and Russia. Hoping that doesn't derail the plans.

Sounds like a nice project. Still the stock 35 BHP?

Yes. I haven't felt the need to twiddle with pumper carbs, bored out airboxes or custom exhaust. I had a 2009 model that wasn't working for me on San Diego freeways. I lost my shirt trading it for a 2009 Kawasaki Versys that was perfect for those same freeways. I purchased a used 2015 DR650 with 11,000 miles. Upgraded with a Warp 9 supermoto kit. Blue anodized rims and hubs. About 2 hours of my labor to swap it out. I can now get my feet on the ground (30 in inseam) without hacking the suspension. Good enough for my objectives. I probably won't ride this Summer since I'm on Eliquis for the clot in my left leg and have a Whipple procedure slated for June 25th. I won't be in good shape this year. Too bad. I don't even have the mold lube worn off the new tires yet.

The German connection became apparent when I was sent to work in Frankfurt. Lots of street vendors with "Doner kebabs". Good food. Similar to Greek gyros. I was surprised at the McDonald's in Frankfurt. The McD's serves beer and it costs less than iced tea.

I enjoyed my trip to Turkey in 1991. Izmir was pleasant. Lots of shops on the streets. Depending on the shop I would have to choose English, German or Turkish as the preferred language. The food was excellent. I purchased a nice leather coat for myself and one for my wife. I was reminded by headlines in Stars and Stripes that the legal system is very different. On arrival, 5 members of the "parliament" had made statements offensive to the other members. Overnight, their words were legislated into a capital offense. Before I departed, all 5 were executed. Given that level of legal volatility, most Turks are VERY reserved about stepping out of bounds for any reason.