January 2026 – Page 2 – Musings from Brian J. Noggle

Engineering I Remembered

January 4, 2026January 3, 2026 Brian J. Noggle

While I was researching yesterday’s post (that is, reading the Wikipedia entry on the Surfside condominium collapse), it (the Wikipedia entry) mentioned that the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse was the most deadly (non-aviation) engineering failure in history (so far). In that disaster, a walkway loaded with party attendees gave way and collapsed onto a ballroom floor with other partygoers under it.

Ah, gentle reader; I remember the engineering failure that caused it.

I read something about it in a magazine, or perhaps in the hotel itself–might we have stayed there on one of our trips to Kansas City over the years? But I think it was a magazine because I remember seeing a diagram like this:

It has stuck in my head over the years. I’d also say it has informed me of my twee little two-by-four engineering projects around Nogglestead, but probably not much.

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Not Depicted

January 3, 2026 Brian J. Noggle

Coffee and Covid today comments on a story that condo sales are down, and the examples are from the southeast:

“Prices for U.S. condominiums,” the Journal reported, “posted their biggest annual decline since 2012.” Condos are the canaries in the housing mine, but the Journal noted that increases in “single-family home prices have also slowed.” This referred to Florida–one of the hottest real estate markets in the country. But it wasn’t just Florida. The story also reported sagging condo prices in Austin and San Antonio due, get this, to “a glut of supply.”

It’s supply-side economics again!

The story rounded up some heart-rending personal anecdotes. For instance, in Flagler Beach, Florida, Sandra Phillips and Dennis Green have struggled since early last year to sell their townhouse. They delisted it in July, and plan to relist it soon at around $200,000–roughly the same amount they paid in 2020. “Flagler Beach is saturated with places for sale,” Sandra mourned.

I would expect many Florida condos are unsaleable now as new Florida laws have kicked in:

Florida condo and townhouse sales dropped 10.5% in 2024, the lowest in 15 years, according to trade association Florida Realtors, after a hike in special assessments and monthly fees due to new statewide condo safety legislation.

New data from real estate company Redfin suggests condo sales are moving inland and prices there are going up.

The median sale price for condos — meaning 50% of the condos cost less and 50% cost more — rose 5.4% year over year on average in January, Redfin said in a release Monday, while condos on Florida’s Gulf Coast saw a drop of 4.8% and condos on the Atlantic Coast dropped 3%.

Because of the condo building that collapsed in 2021:

Legislation passed in 2022 after the deadly June 2021 collapse of a 12-story condo in Surfside that killed 98 people led to a series of reforms in safety standards and requirements for milestone inspections for condo developments over 30 years old (about two-thirds of all condos in Florida), structural integrity inspections for condos three stories high and higher, and mandatory monetary reserves for large maintenance repairs and any needed structural upkeep or replacements, among other changes.

To get the money, condo associations imposed special assessments and significant hikes in monthly fees, which may have led to more condo owners selling but fewer people interested in buying.

As I mentioned, I was just in Florida, and even inland in Orlando, signs for condo remediation engineering were in all the roadway medians and on many billboards.

You would think people learned nothing from John D. MacDonald’s 1977 novel Condominium. I read it before the blog, but I heeded its lesson to never move to Florida.

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Brian J., Again Ahead of the Curve and Unable To Capitalize

January 3, 2026January 2, 2026 Brian J. Noggle

Ted Gioia posts Why Secondhand Is Now Better Than New, Or how the thrift store suddenly became cool:

Something unusual is happening in the world of gifting. I saw it during the recent holiday season—and you may have too.

The Wall Street Journal noticed it a few weeks ago. People are now buying secondhand gifts. The sheer numbers are staggering—in a recent survey, 82% of consumers said they’re more likely to purchase pre-owned items for holiday presents.

Ah, gentle reader. As you know, I’ve been doing that for a long time–and I’ve mentioned it from time to time especially since I started doing “Good Album Hunting” posts where my Christmas shopping has resulted in more for me than gift recipients (like this post from 2016).

I have found some delightful things for gifts. And because I have often relied on the Gift Schtick, I’ve found it easier to find Duck Dynasty, Dallas, duck, chicken, flamingo, owl, or eagle-themed gifts at second hand stores. Even now, or at least this year, I noticed an awful lot of owls available, which is what I would have bought for my sainted mother.

In my case, it’s not so much quality but other things that have led me to secondhand stores for gifts. But as they grow popular, the prices will go up, and they’ll have less appeal for me.

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Brian J.’s Life Recycles

January 2, 2026 Brian J. Noggle

I posted earlier today about us seeing the policy activity after a local shooting.

Turns out, on this very date 14 years ago, something similar happened.

Man, right about that time, I was assuredly questioning the safety of my new home. In addition to passing that crime scene, right about the same time we had serial killers at church (who came to Nogglestead for dinner after the unfortunate instance of one of their victim’s dying); the coach of the little league team I also coached and my boys played on shot his wife and killed himself; and someone rang our bell at 4am because the stolen car they were driving broke down or something–he abandoned it and fled from the helpful deputy we summoned to try to help while I waited inside the house cradling a shotgun just in case.

Even worse, on this day eight years ago….

My beautiful wife and I are doing the Whole 30 again this year, which will be our third time through it. You know, it won’t really affect my intake much. I won’t cook bacon or breakfast sausage. I haven’t really eaten as many doughnuts as in the recent past. I won’t have the opportunity to throw in a frozen pizza or something else from the freezer for a quick lunch. I won’t be able to cook a can of beans as a handy side. I’ll not have my nightly portion of wine. I won’t be able to snack on tortilla chips in the evening, which is something I do, what, once a week? No melted cheese tortillas or ham and cheese on rye.

I’ll have to be mindful, and that’s what is difficult, especially at lunch time. I can eat all the raw vegetables I want, and all the nuts I want, and meat and eggs. I’ll have to make sure there’s plenty of things in the refrigerator, so I’ll hard-bake a dozen eggs or two and cook extra cheap steak or chicken for snacking. But I’ll make it through, especially since I get to concentrate on the Winter Reading Challenge, which also starts today.

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Meanwhile, In My New Safer Neighborhood….

January 2, 2026 Brian J. Noggle

1 hospitalized after shooting in Battlefield, Mo.

Police say a person was taken to the hospital after a possible robbery led to shots being fired in Battlefield Thursday afternoon.

According to the Battlefield Police Department, officers got the call to a reported shooting in the 3900 block of W. Gardenia Dr. at around 4 p.m.

The television presenter adds the words “near Battlefield City Park.” Which they prefer to call Trail of Tears Park because, well, guilt, I guess.

I was sitting on my front porch reading when I heard the sirens in the distance; that location is across the large field across the farm road and on the other side of a growing subdivision in Battlefield proper.

My beautiful wife and I planned a walk around that time at the city park, and as we crossed the state highway, we say a large police presence. I thought it might be an accident.

As we started looping around the park, I told my wife about the time a trio of teenagers drove across the park, just up the little ramp, across the field, and across the vacant lot on the other side, taking a short cut as a lark.

As we were walking, I saw a sheriff’s deputy going down the road along the side of the park, on the other side of a row of houses. I then saw a Battlefield police car going down the same road, and he came around into the park and drove up that ramp and to the center of the park, wherein he sat of a moment, turned around, and came back down the ramp.

“Oh, they’re looking for someone on foot,” I said to my wife. And so my head was more on a swivel than normal. But no danger to us.

Isolated incidents are likely to become less isolated as time goes by, ainna?

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Book Report: Unlucky by Ben Wolf (2020)

January 1, 2026January 1, 2026 Brian J. Noggle

Book cover I’m counting this book, which I picked up in Davenport, Iowa, in 2024, as my first book read for 2026 even though I finished it on December 30, 2025. As I mentioned, I flip that particular calendar sometime the week after Christmas, and these days, finishing a book right before the turning of the year puts me in a bit of a spot because the library’s Winter Reading Challenge starts on January 2, so I can’t use books I started before January 2 for it. So what do I read for the next two days? I’m leery of picking something up that I cannot finish within the two days, so I guess I’ll nibble at some of the books on the chairside table which I won’t be finishing any time soon.

At any rate, this is a one-off Western from an author whose other works are fantasy, science fiction, or a blend of the two, so it is a departure. Dalton Phillips comes to Spider Rock, Arizona, in 1848, and he’s a bit of a Perry Sue in that he’s formally educated, a great piano player, the fastest gun in town, and a very good gambler. He has come to live with his uncle, the local preacher, but they conflict because of the aforementioned talents the man has. But he has a couple of fatal flaws or drawbacks, including consumption (one of the reasons he came to Arizona, the other being he’s a hellraiser), and he likes to drink and to carouse with the ladies of the saloons in which he likes to play piano, to drink, and to gamble. So he guns down a couple of people, develops a reputation, and then….

Well, he is unlucky in getting caught with the daughter of the Big Boss Man in town, and he is unlucky in trying to defend one of the ladies of the saloons to whom he feels a special connection. The latter leads him to being bested by a number of banditos and taken into the desert, shot, and left for dead, but brought in by a tribe of Apaches, including one he’d humiliated in town–and who remembers and resents. But Perry Sue, I mean, Dalton, is adopted by the chief, woos and weds the chief’s daughter, only to see them slaughtered by US Calvary led by a particularly odious colonel….

Well, afterwards, Dalton returns to town and sinks even lower, drinking with his last coins, and….

Well, I thought that part of the point of the book was to build a “protagonist” or merely main character whose fatal flaws led from promise to an ultimate wasted demise (a la Vienna Days and the kid from Running Scared, almost), but….

The self-destructive and “Unlucky” things that happen to the protagonist put him in a position to ultimately help (save) the people of town from an impending assault, and he redeems himself a bit, but the story finishes tragically (unluckily, and because the character grew and showed mercy).

The twist certainly makes the book a little more interesting, but the characterization is a little flat. I still look for the influences from popular culture which informed or inspired the writer–but whatever thoughts I had when reading the book are lost to me as I type this. So I continue to rate Ben Wolf above most self-published authors and some of the house pulp writers, but lacking a bit in the umami that makes someone like Don Pendleton pop.

So I have one more book of his to read before October (Winterspell) when I return to Davenport (perhaps) and buy one or more of his other books (probably, if perhaps comes true). So far, it’s the next in the Santa books that I’ll pick up and maybe what he’s written since unless Winterspell is really good.

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