Running Bear's March 2026 Coffee Shop

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Well, howdy there internet peeps and those wondering if Big Brother is watching you...

It's Troy (Waves at Big Brother - they're always watching) again

Speaking of Big Brother, i was on the fence on keeping ChatGPT going since they are tying their company more and more into Big Brother. While I know I can't escape without cutting every cord to me, I do want to use the LLMs as tools in both my writing profession, and my hobbies.

So I bit in big time after digging around. I was on Chat's $8/mo plan. But I started looking at the Claude Pro plan at $17/mo (paid annually). That give access to an "agent" type of environment. Is my inbox too cluttered? Let the agent move a bunch of old emails into various folders for me to review and delete or keep. Is my vacation photo folder overloaded and not organized, let Claude rename and move them into subfolders.

Or, Let Claude read a chapter, and analyze it for plot structure and character stuff. I don't need an agent for that, but Claude is known in the author space as one of the best for fiction author help - from writing to editing. They key is to be clear, and give it concise instructions. And, when rewriting, feed it shorter chunks, not full chapters.

Overall, I was impressed, and I've barely had any conversations with it. So far, it's mostly "Can claude do X, Y, or Zed if I connect you to this software?"

It even remembered something from my initial "This is me" discussion that remains in memory. I fed it my top 10 strengths from the Clifton Strengths personality assessment. It remembered I was a #1 Adaptability and love to chase shiny squirrels rather than follow projects to completion before moving on.

Claude explained without prompting, that I should set up my "projects" in Claude separately early, so I can easily bounce and keep Claude on task for THAT project, not THAT OTHER project I was asking about yesterday.
 


Good Morning All. Partly cloudy and a warmish 66°, ahead of the cold front tonight. Supposed to get near freezing. Red flag warning day today due to the winds ahead of the shift from the north around suppertime. One cooler day tomorrow and then back to normal, albeit with temperatures in the low-90's by Friday.

Beware the Ides of March today. It also marks the beginning of St Patrick's Week for us devout Irishmen! Yes! A week.

Trip to Dallas last night was fun. Daughter's birthday party was at a "hole in the wall" Mexican restaurant that we've been to before. The candle on the birthday cake was a tortilla chip that they lit! Never thought that they burned. Of course Grandpa picked up the check; not bad for 11 people, $300 before tip. That included at least 12 Margaritas and a 24 oz draft beer for me! I had an interesting combo platter of grilled fajita beef, chicken, sausage and shrimp. Noticed that the price of gas everywhere has skyrocketed, running around $3.59/gal; a full $1 more than two weeks ago.
Didn't mow yesterday as originally planned, I did laundry and the dishwasher instead. Repaired Rosie, the Shark vacuum cleaner, who hasn't been as reliable as Hazel, the old Roomba one. Washed the car and cleaned out the inside.

Still haven't heard a decision regarding which winery they intend to go to today, but it will be within a 10 mile radius of our house. Daughter is bringing one of the granddogs with her to leave for Spring Break week while she and family go somewhere. She has to take their other dog to the boarder's since I won't allow her in my home again. She howls, gets on the furniture and both craps and pees inside. She is a rescue dog that hasn't worked out well. I'm going to skip the winery and mow instead.

I only spent a short time out in the train shed yesterday. Decided to run trains and do a minor repair job on a vehicle. Two annoying things happened. First, and this has happened before; I was holding two parts together after using Super Glue and had to sneeze! Time for a redo.:mad:
Secondly, I discovered a stray part on the terrain next to a staging track.
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It looks like it fell off a well car, but there wasn't any in the vicinity and I don't remember when the last time that I had an intermodal train parked on this staging track. I ran out of time out there after examining all of the cars in one of the intermodal unit trains. It looks like it came from a TTX car I think, but it may also be from some other kind of car. I'll look around again today, but I'm afraid that it will end up in the unidentified pile with all of the brake air tanks that I haven't located the source of yet!

David (Marlin) - Just as good as the bait stations at our manufacturing plant, were feral cats who snuck in through open doors and stayed; and reproduced as well. Not only did they keep the rodents under control, but they also unfortunately found employee lunch leftovers that were inadvertently left at work stations. Didn't need litter boxes since there was a lot of oil absorbent around the place.
Michael - What are "Iranian numbers stations"? I saw that in a news article also, but without explanation.
Karl - Must be on your end, because I haven't had any forum outage issues since Monday.
Troy - Further proof of my ignorance, but what are LLM's?

Everyone have a great day.
 
Good morning all!

A wet stormy morning. Just had the first thunderstorm round of the day roll thru. First of several predicted. Looks like most of the
snow that was due to fall will now fall in the form of rain. Strong winds will develop later and drop the temps and we could see a
changeover to snow. Currently 50F with an expected high of 58F.

Not much planned for the day, everything household wise was done yesterday. Its probably going to be one of those lazy Sundays.
That fine with me!

Have a safe day everyone!
 
santafewillie said:
Michael - What are "Iranian numbers stations"? I saw that in a news article also, but without explanation.

Everyone have a great day.
Click to expand...

Numbers stations transmit a code to field personnel. It is either voice, or increasingly, transmitted digitally. This was much more prevalent during the Cold War, but there are several countries still using this method to get messages to operatives in the field. We might even be one of them.

If transmitted by voice, it is usually a numeric code given in five or six digits of numbers in a block. There can be as many blocks as necessary to get their message across. These are different for each message and are unbreakable by anyone intercepting them that doesn't have the pad required to decipher it. The message is often repeated three times, and is sometimes on a schedule, sometimes not.

The Iranian transmission was at 0200 and 1800 UTC each day. The days of transmission is unknown to me and I haven't yet seen a daily schedule if there is one. There is a jammer that knows about this station and jams the signal every time he's found. He's called the 'bubble jammer'. I don't know why unless his jamming signal sounds like a bubble machine, or bubbles popping or some such sound. Since I can't find this guy transmitting, I've never heard the jammer either.

If he is using a rotatable beam type antenna and has this pointed in a specific direction, there is a good chance that with my antenna, I will never hear him. Others with high towers and antennas mounted up very high have heard him numerous times in the States.
 
What a difference a day makes. 11:15am and it’s 38F. Partly sunny. Blue with streaky white clouds.
Yesterday at this time it was probably in the 60s and a little more overcast.

Wind did come in strong last night.

We need the snow that Montana is getting in our mountains so we’ll have summer water.

Michael: The numbers stations are similar to the WW2 ones that would repeat random phrases continuously? In terms of effect?

“The mouse is in the corner”. “The mouse is in the corner”

“The snow is falling gently”. “The snow is falling gently”

“Cats make good pets”. “Cats make good pets”.

Sending coded messages?
 
Greetings all,

About 12 inches of snow and still falling. Did the driveway as I only have a single stage blower, and the snow was a bit too deep and wet for that. Hard work but got it done.

Thanks for the advice on adhesives. I usually use wine bottles for weights, but I think they might be too heavy for this use. It looks like barge cement may be availble at the local hardware store, but I might call first and not go out if I don't have to. I assume y'all are talking about the stuff in the blue tube? Amazon has it too,

We canceled church today, so slept in. Now about to head to the train room. Cheers all!

Steve J
 


Overcast and low 40s again today. Down to about a foot of white left on the lawn in most spots.

Haven't had a chance to work in the basement for the last week or so due to work commitments. And, the wife decided on a new car. Should be picking it up on Tuesday.
 
The show is just getting under way here:

ww0052_radar_big.gif


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Mesoscale Discussion 0243
NWS Storm Prediction Center Norman OK
1223 PM CDT Sun Mar 15 2026

Areas affected...central and eastern Missouri into southwest
Illinois.

Concerning...Severe potential...Tornado Watch likely

Valid 151723Z - 151930Z

Probability of Watch Issuance...80 percent

SUMMARY...Severe weather potential will increase over the next 1 to
2 hours as storms develop along the cold front this afternoon.

DISCUSSION...A 992mb surface low was analyzed across northeast
Missouri at 17Z with a strong cold front extending southwestward
across Missouri and into northeast Oklahoma. Ahead of this front,
low-level moisture advection has brought low to mid 50s dewpoints
across much of Missouri with some low 60s dewpoints across eastern
Oklahoma and western Arkansas. This has resulted in around 500 J/kg
MLCAPE across southern Missouri into parts of central Missouri.
Strong inhibition from 12Z RAOB at KSGF has eroded substantially on
the 17Z sounding with the warm nose being lifted 5000 feet in 5
hours. The combination of this continued ascent and
warming/moistening low-levels should completely erode inhibition and
permit strong storm development along the front within the next 1 to
2 hours. Shortly after initiation, the 500mb jet streak, the nose of
which can be seen on water vapor imagery across Oklahoma, will
emerge across the Midwest with strengthening mass response, wind
fields, and forcing. This will result in a favorable environment for
strong winds along the front this afternoon and into the early
evening.

In addition to the severe wind gust threat, a QLCS tornado threat is
also anticipated, especially later this afternoon into this evening
near the Mississippi River. Low-level moisture will likely be the
primary factor which will impact the tornado threat. Based on
forecast soundings, upper 50s to near 60 dewpoints will likely
result in a mostly damaging wind threat, but 62-63F dewpoints would
likely support a more substantial QLCS tornado threat. This seems
most likely after 22Z across southeast Missouri and perhaps into far
southern Illinois per the 15Z HRRR.

Multiple tornado watches will likely be needed this afternoon to
address the evolving threat.

..Bentley/Gleason.. 03/15/2026
 
Good day to all..............

Willie....the stair fiasco story, like "Whos on First".

Wind gusts here today up to 60 mph.....not fit for man nor beast. Sky is full of dust from other towns I'm sure.

I received an E-bay package today in the mail.
Today and one Sunday a year ago or so is the only time I remember ever getting mail on a Sunday.

There will be a train show at Market Hall in Dallas on March 28 & 29. Great American Train Show only comes to Dallas about every 3 or 4 years.
Admission is a bit pricey but I might go. A good reason to "get out of Dodge".

Take care....John
 
Good afternoon folks, temp has dropped 10 degrees in the last hour and the strong storms predicted started about 15 minutes ago. Supposed to hit 25F here tonight, it was 72 here at lunchtime, with tomorrow in the 30s. Then it will be pushing 80 by Friday. Wow.
Great day at Church today, my Great Nephew preached this afternoon, he will turn 14 next month and is growing like crazy. Eating like a starving elephant too. He's my shooting buddy, maybe we can hit the range later this week.
Gonna get off of here and put some paint on the railcar I have been working on, it is nearing completion.
You guys be safe.
 


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