It’s cold. Pipes are bursting. I am staggered at the cost to repair damage from burst pipes, leaky roofs and the mold.
I have one recent water break house costing repairs in the millions.
Our houses are full of water pipes. They serve boilers, AC units, heating units, toilets, sinks, underfloor heating.
After we had a $35,000 under-floor heating eak in our country house, we installed this $700 water shutoff device on our house’s incoming water line — the one coming in from our well.
It monitors water flowing into our house. If it thinks something is wrong — like heavy (or dripping) usage at 2:00 AM, it shuts our water off and calls my cell phone and wakes me up with the bad news. I then beetle around the house looking for the leak, the running toilet, the overflowing sink, whatever.
If I’m traveling I can also shut the water off. And for those who don’t have this gadget, it’s a good idea to turn your water off when you leave town. It can report the tiniest drips.
Water problems are not always easy to diagnose. Here’s a house in Columbia County, NY.
The icicles are pretty. But they should not be there. The house has a poorly insulated roof. Heat from inside the house is warming the roof and melting the snow. As the water leaves the house, it freezes and makes these pretty icicles. The water is probably leaking inside also.
It’s not always easy to figure where the water is coming from. I have one story of warm water pouring in from the attic. How it got warm and what it’s doing in the attic, no one seems to know. Maybe there’s a hot water heating unit up there? The house was destroyed.
Now to my new empowerment
I love AI. I use it several times a day as my research assistant, figuring out water leaks, to which stocks to buy (or sell), to how to fix my cranky calf muscle to figuring which computer and networking equipment I need. I pay Perplexity, ChatGPT and Gemini money. Real cash every month.
I get my money’s worth, though they’re occasionally wrong — called “hallucination” in AI language.
Remember, Mr Bean? Here he sums it up:
In recent days, we’ve had them both in spades.
One billion people regularly use the AI engines. That’s the fastest takeup of any new technology anytime. That’s old news.
Perplexity reports that “about 46.6% of U.S. businesses in the RAMP dataset paid for AI services in December 2025, with especially strong spend growth for OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google.”
Investors think that companies with big capital spending on data centers (AI factories) will never make a decent return on their billions of capex, and hence stocks like the egregious spenders — META and MSFT — are worth less. But stocks less crazy — AAPL and GOOGL — are worth more. And companies that provide the innards — NVDA, GLW, MU, SNDK, etc. are worth more.
Nice piece on Corning (GLW)
This is the headline of a wonderful Wall Street Journal article on GLW. Click here.
My Blue Screen of Death (aka BSOD)
Suddenly everything stops on your Window laptop/PC and you see this:
You won’t have enough time to write down the error code before your Windows computer shuts down and loses everything you were working on. When your computer re-emerges from restarting, you should know nothing got fixed. And you will get another BSOD soon, at an equally inconvenient time. With lots of loss work.
You now have two choices:
+ Junk the machine. Get another one. Reinstall all your stuff.
+ Try and fix it. First, back all your working files to a SanDisk flash drive or two. Then upate Windows and update your drivers from your computer maker — Lenovo or Dell, etc.
Second, ask Perplexity to show you how to fix it. There are tools you didn’t know about. But they will check the integrity of your machine in minute detail. Caution: It takes time and patience. I did it on my BSOD (Blue Screeen of Death) laptop. So far so good. Perplexity is worth $20 a month.
From my brilliant son, Michael
Based on my recent Gemini account history, here are 10 ways I use AI:
– Drafting and editing emails
– Summarizing long message
– Translating documentation
– Creating structured outlines for reports
– Automating data entry in spreadsheets
– Enhancing photo quality and editing
– Using voice assistants for scheduling
– Refining search queries for research
– Brainstorming creative ideas and concepts
Tomrrow I will write much more about using AI. Meantime, here’s a tip I found on Instagram:
Instead of an “Instruction Prompt:, viz
“Write a value proposition for my AI analytics tool.”
Try this “Socratic Prompt”
“What makes a value proposition compelling to B2B buyers?”
Wonderful cartoons
Our portfolios
I’m out of MSFT. Too many bad articles about Windows 11 and CoPilot etc, in the trade press.
I’m more into GLW, TSM, MRVL and SAN.
Life can be exciting when it drops below zero. There’s curling on TV.
My injured calf is keeping me out of tennis, for now. Drat.
My rich banker friend is buying a new Mercedes hybrid E450 wagon for $100,000 or so. He opted not to get the new S class which has heated seat belts and a camera for making Zoom calls from your car!
Imagine what God could do if he only had the money!
See you soon. — Harry Newton
