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San Diego has a large homeless population. (In some ways one wonders why more homeless people don't head to the places with the nicest weather.) There are of course as many reasons/types/explanations for the homeless people as there are homeless people, but a two very general categories are the people who live somewhere and the people who are vagrant. The former stake out a spot. Sometimes it's a tent on a sidewalk somewhere, sometimes it's a 1970's RV or trailer parked along a street, sometimes it's in a car. I see them all the time when I ride. The cops periodically roust them (usually because camping and/or long term parking where they are is illegal) but they always come back. Lately I've been noticing that the RV and tent homeless people are using more and more solar. They are almost always those foldable portable panels, but some use older (i.e. smaller) residential PV panels and some use the marine grade flexible panels (which are almost indestructible.) The trailer people will generally have them propped up outside against something or on the roof (identifiable by the two conductor 12-18ga zip cord coming down from the roof.) The tent people generally just prop them against their tent. I have little doubt that these are a mix of discarded, stolen and flea-market systems; none of them look new, and many have yellowed EVA and/or cracks. And I have no idea whether they are charging a trailer battery or some other battery or just being used directly to run something. But a small amount of energy - enough to run a light at night, or run a radio, or charge a cheapo cellphone - can make a lot of difference to some of these people. While waiting for a light down in Mission Bay I overheard two of them talking near one such setup. I didn't catch the whole conversation, but I did hear one of them say "if he's gonna charge his f*ing vape here, he's gonna pay me for it!" Which would imply that such energy might even get someone some $$. It's taken decades for that technology to trickle down that far, but now it's started. And for someone who can't get any sort of utility service it might represent the only sort of energy available to them.

Term limits help to officially retire judges before they turn senile.

Hi feuergnom, I worked in US federal gov't. contracting for 30 yrs. A 'special bond' IMO has nothing to do with it. The only thing we ever looked at was Capability & Capacity. Capability - Can they actually perform on the contract; do they have the know-how Capacity - Do they have the capacity ( facilities, personnel, equipment, etc ) to complete the contract on time. Jerry Baumchen PS) If the contract is for R & D, then forget all of the above. That is an entire different animal. One example of this would be the 'jump' where Ted Strong was killed; 4 guys in a quad out of the rear hatch on a cargo plane.

Trump is fooling no one. He is just giving some people what they want. That’s why we call them “deplorables”.

Ouch!

Wasn’t BH a DZO? I may have to call BS on the whole ‘deepest thinkers’ claim if so.

I've never had much luck understanding what was going on in most DZOs' minds

My condolences to friends and family members who are suffering due to his death. Robert Chromy is a Herman Cain Award winner. https://www.reddit.com/r/HermanCainAward/comments/pgszii/this_guy_must_have_posted_every_piece_of/ Robert was anti-vax and extremely proud of it. That didn’t work out well for him. We hope that his death will get people to re-evaluate their life choices and get vaccinated.

No, I’m not, but a mate of mine recently did AFF and got his first 4 jumps done in a day including briefs and debriefs (excluding the actual ground course) so I still maintain some DZs are more efficient than others in getting through loads.