I wish my water was as cheap as $1,300 a year. My water bills added to $3,678.97 in 2025. In part, that was to pay for the replacement of a 50-year-old above ground water tank with an underground tank. Also, that paid for the ever-rising cost of electricity to pump the water from northern California to southern California. My water bill exceeded the sum of my electricity, natural gas, and phone bills. Note, however, that our water is among the best in the U.S.

Also in 2025, my sewer fees totaled $1,381.32. The sewage plant thourghly processes its input and then releases the result into a nearby natural creek. The area is an undeveloped watershed that is home to wild animals. Lawsuits against the sewage plant now require that the flow in the stream below the plant must be cleaner than the flow above it despite the fact that excrement from the animals washes into the stream. I am paying for the extra processing of the sewage.

I was already over 80 when I bought my Nissan Leaf EV.

The only time I needed roadside repair was when I misjudged a driveway and hit a curb at speed; that destroyed a tire. The Leaf does not come with a spare tire or even with space for one. So I needed a tow.

I recently had a minor collision. The paint was scraped on the left front. That part of the body shifted about 1/2 inch or less, causing a "click" when I opened the driver's door. All that was repaired in less than a week.

My wife (also over 80) regularly goes to a clinic for treatment. As we are now a one-car family, she uses door-to-door transportation provided by our local city. While waiting for a ride home, she has seen EVs towed from the clinic's parking lot. In every case, the owners of those EVs failed to charge their main batteries. Stupidity and negligence by owners are not reasons to denigrate the reliability of EVs. As I write this, my Leaf is plugged into a charger in my home's garage.

CVS drug stores sell two CVS-branded ointments that fight fungus. One is for athlete's foot, and the other is for jock itch. A tube of the jock itch ointment costs $2 more than a tube of the athlete's foot ointment. A close examination of the tubes reveals that they contain the same amounts of the same strength of the same product. They both have instructions for both kinds of fungus. Other than the names and the prices, they are the same.

After a 41-year career in computer software -- first as a programmer but 30+ years as a software test engineer -- I am very glad I retired 22 years ago. News items like this destroy any thoughts I might have about going back to work.

How do I block Southern California Edison (SoCalEd) from draining our backup battery? I had the battery installed because of health reasons.

My wife has COPD and Parkinson's. She needs electricity 24/7 to run an oxygen concentrator. She needs electricity to run the stair-lift in our two-story house. I have sleep apnea. I need electricity at night to run the CPAP machine that keeps me breathing.

During a public safety power shutoff (PSPS) earlier this year, we were without electricity from SoCalEd for more than a day. In the daytime, we had electricity from our solar system; in the night, we had electricity from our battery. The PSPS did not impair our health.

Actually, a PSPS is not my only concern. SoCalEd fails in my area without warning, without regard for the weather, at any time of the year. Sometimes, it is only for a few minutes; sometimes it is for many hours. If it happens while we are sleeping, we might not realize that we must report the outage. With our battery, we are protected.

Rather than relying on the "official" version published by a government where people are fire for telling the truth, I rely on [http://www.findlaw.com/casecode/constitution/].

I too use Thunderbird for RSS feeds. My list of 10 feeds, however, does not include news sources. My list includes a Web site hosting stories by amateur authors (some quite good), blogs, podcasts, and announcements of software updates,

Spectrum's fiber optic cables in southern California were recently cut, knocking out Internet and phone service across several very populous counties. It took several hours to repair. It appears the vandalism was caused by thieves thinking the cables contained copper. Copper theft has become a major problem across the U.S., affecting residential plumbing, public street lighting, and electrical service.

I am glad I have an over-sized solar electric system on my roof and a 12 hour backup battery.

According to the 17 June Los Angeles Times, the outage extended from western Ventura County (including Ojai and the city of Ventura) to central Orange County (including Anaheim),

The service disruption was not localized to Van Nuys. I live in eastern Ventura County about 22 miles from Van Nuys and have Internet service through Spectrum. During the disruption, I kept losing my Internet connection.

When I called Spectrum about the problem, I was told that, not only Internet service, but also cable TV and VOIP phone service was affected. I was also told that the problem would be corrected by 5:30pm Pacific time. It was actually corrected sooner. Also, we never lost cable TV. We do not have VOIP phone service.

Other users should not have to pay for Amazon's insatiable diet for electricity. If Amazon want more, they should pay for it. That is also true elsewhere, especially in the U.S., where state utility regulators keep raising the cost of electricity on everyone to meet the demand from growing data centers.

I graduated from high school in 1959. It was a very high-performing school. There were no computers.

After high school, I attended UCLA. In my junior year, I was living in an on-campus dormitory. Two engineering students on the same dorm floot dragged me to a meeting of the Computer Club. I saw SWAC ([National Bureau of] Standards Western Automatic Computer) a custom-built computer and one of the very first stored-program computers in the world. In the Computer Club, I learned how to program an IBM 7090 in FORTRAN. I am a gadget freak. To me that was the ultimate gadget, superseded when it was upgraded to an IBM 7094. Majoring in math, I changed my planned curriculum to emphasize logic and numerical analysis. At that time, no university in the U.S. offered a degree in computer science. By the time I received my BA in math, only three universities (not yet UCLA) offered degrees in computer science.

Now retired 21+ years, my whole 41-year career involved computer software. For over thirty years, I dealt with the software used by the U.S. military to operate its earth-orbiting space satellites.. I wrote specifications for new features and even for a total replacement of a major system. I taught military personnel how to use the software. I reviewed developers' specifications and test plans. I headed a team that performed system-level of software testing. Details of my career are at [http://www.rossde.com/retired.html#career].

Several fires are burning at the same time in Los Angeles County. Not all deaths were in the Palisades fire.

An arsonist was arrested for starting the Kenneth fire along the border between Los Angeles and Ventura Counties. That fire also killed someone. The arsonist might be facing manslaughter or murder charges.

The Alta Dena fire has caused about the same amount of destruction as the Palisades fire.

I believe there is at least one other major fire in the area. All of these are burning at the same time.

Trump is wrong about water. The California reservoirs currently contain above average amounts of water. We are not wasting water by sending it into the ocean.

The delta smelt are actually important. They are the food for the fish we eat. No smelt = no tuna or salmon.

There is no way for a ship leaving a Russian port on the Baltic to reach the Atlantic without going through the national waters of Sweden or Denmark. That is, they would definitely be within 12 nautical miles of either nation. Smaller ships can traverse the Keil Canal, but that lies entirely within Germany. All three nations are part of NATO.