09:56 – I just did a purchase order for bulk quantities of various bottles and caps, totaling about 13,000 pieces. Tomorrow I’ll call the vendor and go through the order line-item by line-item to make sure that all the bottles and caps I’m ordering are compatible with each other. The good news is that the order is large enough to get free shipping. The bad news is that it may also be large enough that instead of shipping UPS ground they’ll use LTL truck delivery. Oh, well. Our neighbors won’t be surprised to see a guy show up in a tractor-trailer and start unloading pallets.
Clearing out my spam, both email and here, I again wondered why we don’t have better tools to block this crap. Yes, I know botnets generate most spam, and many of their member machines are located in the US, but even so. I get tons of spam that originates in eastern Europe, South America, Asia, and so on. Why does my hosting service not make it easy to specify exactly which TLDs and IP ranges I want to block or to allow? Yes, I know all the arguments about Balkanizing the Internet. I don’t care. I don’t want traffic from the Balkans, or indeed most of the rest of the world.
Hmmph. Next thing you know, you’ll be spouting some tripe about English being better than other languages, or even how people in the rest of the world use English as a lingua franca.
For myself, I receive email from all over the world, notably including Japan and the PRC, as well as some from South Korea and nations of the former Soviet Union — all of which, except Japan, are major spam originators. And a good chunk of that mail is in Chinese or whatever. I haven’t figured out a way to identify spam which is nearly as good as Google’s, so I continue to use gmail and just trawl through the identified spam once in a while to look for false positives.
I am reminded that today is an interesting date. In North America the date is a palindrome 11-20-2011, but in Europe it repeats itself 20-11-2011.
What did you think of Remembrance Day? 11 AM 11/11/11.
That one was forced. It wasn’t the year 11 AD, but 11-11-2011. It was interesting in that it’s the same on both continents, but otherwise notable solely for being a day to remember the fallen.
Here in the land of the knaves and home of the twee, it was formerly known, in my lifetime, as Armistice Day, in memory of those guns on the Western Front finally falling silent at the end of the so-called Great War. It has long since become Veterans Day, and not for the fallen, necessarily; for that we have Memorial Day. Veterans Day is just another day on the calendar here and means nothing to most people. Memorial Day is the start of the glorious summer barbecue and party season. A few old farts and crying wives and children place flowers on graves and suchlike, and that is about it. Otherwise, Laissez les bons temps rouler, mes amis!
I am old enough to remember veterans of our Spanish-American War marching in those small town parades, and my parents could remember Grand Army of the Republic vets from our War of Northern Aggression marching. Tempus fugit, eh.
When I was running my own email server, I had a number of different anti-spam tools, and part of procmail was the ability to block email from various tlds and ip addresses. Don’t know why your host doesn’t allow it. I wouldn’t accept anything from *.cn, for example.
Prejudiced? Nope. Experienced.
–Jerry
Believe it or not, here in Tiny Town, there is no one left from the Korean War — er, Conflict — to march in the parade. Of course, there are not many left in Tiny Town, period. Several family friends are selling out and moving elsewhere — a couple with farms that date back to their great grandparents. Life moves on.
When I get up mornings, I usually listen to BBC World Service News via Internet stream, just as I did in Berlin where they maintain an FM transmitter locked into the World Service. They have been noting that the US cannot get the agreements it wants to remain in either Iraq or Afghanistan — night bombing rights in Afghanistan and freedom from prosecution for anything in Iraq.
“…the US cannot get the agreements it wants to remain in either Iraq or Afghanistan — night bombing rights in Afghanistan and freedom from prosecution for anything in Iraq.”
The question not being asked: just why does the US want either of these?
I especially like the the administration’s line “All US troops to leave Iraq in 2011”, which somehow ignores the fact that the administration wants to maintain bases there – staying under a different guise.
At this point, there is no way to make it pretty. Just leave.
Our lords temporal maintain around 700 bases in the world, including the gigantic monstrosity in Baghdad that costs hundreds of millions, if not billions. As we leave. Why are we still in Germany, Japan, Okinawa, Korea, etc.??? How come neither party of asswipes EVER talks about cutting DOD and this colossal waste of blood and treasure? Why is it sacrosanct and not one of the first items on the table? Why are our troops being turned into security guards and cops and our cops back here turned into paramilitary stormtroopers?
Oh wait—I forgot: we live in Mirror World. Or Bizarro World. Whatever.
And…how come our lords of battle are still planning to fight second-generation wars in a world of fourth-generation conflict? As the late Ezra Pound used to say…’it would take a bile specialist…’ (to figure this out or justify it).
Bob,
If your delivery indeed comes on pallets, you had better have a way to get them off the truck if you didn’t specify a lift gate on the truck…
I am strong like bull.
Smart like tractor?
So you’re going to reach into the truck and grab the pallet and set it down on the ground? I’ve got to see that.
I am strong like bull.
I have to concur with the lift gate. I have pallets of the wife’s books delivered to the house. Fedex and UPS don’t tell you, but you better request a lift gate since their other trucks back up to loading docks. I don’t even use them for pallet deliveries anymore. I coordinate with the book printer for a “non-big guy” transport. They even roll the pallet right into the garage. Fedex and UPS usually whine about liability and I have to sweet talk them for that kind of service.
Yeah, I actually could pick up a pallet of bottles. They’re plastic bottles, you understand, not glass.
OFD said:
Our lords temporal maintain around 700 bases in the world, including the gigantic monstrosity in Baghdad that costs hundreds of millions, if not billions. As we leave. Why are we still in Germany, Japan, Okinawa, Korea, etc.???
Did you hear the Presidential debates? I was quite shocked at the heavy boo’s when Ron Paul emphatically stated we should not be in any of those places. Guess it is not only the people in Congress who want to spend money and spill blood for no bloody good reason; apparently, it is also the American public.
I’d think the pallet of plastic bottles would still be a little bulky to pick up. Even if they’re not glass, I don’t think you want to push the pallet off the back of the truck.
The best email processing in the the world is Google Apps. http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/group/index.html . Free for up to 10 email accounts. All you have to do is move your domain MX record over to it.
Yeah, I actually could pick up a pallet of bottles.
Let’s see. A standard pallet weighs about 40lbs. Add 20lbs of plastic. Try lifting a 48×40 60lbs pallet level off a truck and set it on the ground. Perhaps you could set up a web cam for us to watch. Not doubting your strength, but your CoG will probably get you.
I think pallets must come in different sizes. The ones I’ve had delivered were more like 36X36″ and weighed maybe 20 pounds empty.
Pallets come in various sizes, and there are no universal sizes. ISO, of course, has standardized pallets, but they aren’t the only game in town. Some of the pallets from skid row are just awful. Get it? “Skid” row. Ah, never mind!
If you told the wholesaler you are a residence, you will most likely see a lift gate, or even a cube van show up at your door. Many communities frown on tractor-trailers clogging residential roads.
Actually, the whole discussion is now moot. I was hoping to get a discount for a large order, but the vendor doesn’t offer any discounts beyond the case-level ones I’d already used as my basis. The vendor offers free shipping for any order that totals $250 or more, so I’ll just break up the big order into many smaller orders, each of which is at least $250. That’ll actually be easier for me to handle anyway. My first order goes out tomorrow, for a case of 1,650 30 mL pharma packer bottles and a case of caps. Annoyingly, the case of caps is 1,440 units, which means I’ll have to order two one-gross bags of caps, at about 60% more per unit.
No, Chuck, I don’t pay any attention to national electoral politics here anymore other than for occasional boffo laffs, when I am not actually crying over how stupid and wasteful and phony belligerent they are.
And the audience booing at Ron Paul was probably handpicked from any available local pool of the imbeciles by the millions, apparently, who dote on Limburger and O’Reilly and the Fox Empire of media. If they read anything it is NRO or the Weekly Standard. Mention Edmund Burke, Russell Kirk or the anti-Federalists and they haven’t a fucking clue what you are talking about, and only know of Patrick Buchanan from his decades of television appearances. I note, however, that his book hit the NYT bestseller list so somebody out here is reading him.
Show too many Americans, apparently, footage of our forces blowing shit up somewhere overseas and they laugh and howl and bray like fucking jackasses, never having actually seen the carnage on the ground, much of it nowadays, and, actually, for most of the past century, that of unarmed civilians and women and children and cripples. What bravery! Is every bomb, every bullet, every drone, killing a radical murdering hadji terrorist? Somehow I doubt it. Are they all just subhuman pieces of shit?
OK, let’s stipulate that they are all subhuman pieces of shit after all, and that whatever means we use to blast and burn them out of existence is wonderful stuff and makes jobs and millions of dollars for us wonderful American patriots. Why are we involved? Why are we doing this? For oil? The buggers will SELL us the stuff! Because nineteen cretins hit NYC and DC ten years ago and fifteen of them were from Saudi Arabia? Well, why didn’t we send in Seal Team whatever to whack the fuckers in Saudi Arabia who masterminded and bankrolled this caper, and then also just roll in and fucking TAKE all their oil production? Because they’re pretty bad guys and they fuck over their own people? So we hit Iraq and Libya, but why not North Korea?
It’s all just bullshit. When you see our lords temporal and their allies in commerce and the corporatist State moving their lips you know they’re lying outright.
Cui bono? From all these bases, the swollen DOD budget, the endless, and mostly unsuccessful, foreign clusterfuck wars?
Hey, show me that Iranian paratroopers are swooping down on us here in northern Vermont, or for that matter in the Carolinas or Kalifornia, and I will be the first mofo out the door with a goddamned rifle. Otherwise, how about we mind our own biz and give all these other shit-holes a good leaving alone.
If only the rest of the nation thought like that. But I am coming to the conclusion we are a tiny minority that may be getting tinier.
Oh we are, Chuck, we are. Hey, at least you have a head start out there in TINY town. We are probably what was described by the late Russell Kirk as a ‘remnant.’ Torn, tattered and blowing in the breeze….the majority seem to be just fine and dandy with endless war and a State that controls their lives from womb to tomb. No wonder some of the Founders looked askance at the concept of Democracy.
Oh wait—O’Reilly is on the air right now telling us there’s Iranian airborne troops dropping outta the sky above Vermont….gotta split, man!
>…now where did I put that damn rifle….?<
Iranian paratroopers? Thanks for the warning. I just powered up the ZSU-23/4. Trouble is, I’m down to the 2,000 round basic load with only two re-loads.
It won’t track fast enough to take down Santa’s sleigh, but it ought to be hell on the planes carrying those paratroopers.
Not to worry. If they follow the pattern of most Middle Easterners coming to attack the United States, the Iranian paratroopers’ first stop will be the strip clubs. And they’ll have to hock their weapons to get money for cover charge, drinks, and g-string tips.
Another crisis averted by the nudie bars. Is there nothing they can’t do?
Save marriages?
If find it both odd and kind of droll that there are no strip clubs anymore that I know of in Vermont; one has to take a ferry across Lake Champlain to the maybe one den of iniquity in upstate NY, and for all I know that’s gone now, too. Or drive up to Montreal. But three hours south of here, in the lovely burg of Worcester, Maffachufetts and environs, there are at least three.
Another cultural icon lost to the internet.
That’s a good thing, because my daughter would ship you a truckload of poopy diapers if you shot down Santa’s sleigh.