09:06 – I’m getting emails from a lot of people who’ve received their copies of the biology book. Kit orders are also coming in, and I’m getting a bit concerned. It’s only 9:00 a.m. and I’ve already received two kit orders so far this morning, with the book barely available. We built and boxed 30 biology kits as our initial stock, and have the components on-hand to build 30 more. Once those run out, it’ll take at least two weeks to get the components in and make up and bottle the chemicals needed to build a new batch. Meanwhile, stock on the chemistry kits is getting dangerously low. And I have a 31 May deadline on the re-write of the forensics book. Things are going to be busy around here.
Friday, 27 April 2012
19 Comments and discussion on "Friday, 27 April 2012"
Comments are closed.
Just had my fangs cleaned with the dentist using that annoying ultrasonic jackhammer. It is certainly better than the old pick and shovel. I really need to go more often than once every four years. I just really dislike it so much.
I have 4gb of installed memory, but with Microsoft XP, only 3gb is addressable.
Chuck would you like an installation key for Windows 7? Fully legal, veted by Microsoft. I have 22 activation keys (fully legal from Microsoft) and have only used about 8 of them. I can also get you a link to an ISO that is for all versions, you just pick what you want when you install. I have 32 and 64 bit but to get past the 3 gig barrier you need 64 bit. Don’t know how well that would work with your music software projects.
Ray wrote:
“Just had my fangs cleaned with the dentist using that annoying ultrasonic jackhammer. It is certainly better than the old pick and shovel. I really need to go more often than once every four years. I just really dislike it so much.”
I go every six months, although I’ve been sentenced to once every three months recently for bad behaviour. Yeah, I hate it too. The thing that gets me is that I never had this done ’till I was about 30, and even then it was an afterthought, a time filler after a visit for a filling. Not sure what the ultrasonic method is but it can’t be worse than the scraping method.
Ray wrote:
“Chuck would you like an installation key for Windows 7? Fully legal, veted by Microsoft. I have 22 activation keys (fully legal from Microsoft) and have only used about 8 of them.”
Hmm, would they work/be allowed outside the US? I have a W2K machine and a WXP machine that {potentially incriminating details removed}.
Chuck from yesterday…
Two things.
First, ran FF in safe mode and try to figure if you have any addons that are causing this.
Second, all the disk thrashing sounds like a lot of use of the page file. Use the performance tab under the task manager to see the usage. Don’t let Windows set it. Defrag your disk then go to system properties and set the page file to a solid 4096 MB. Then even is FF is using lots of the page file it stops being as troublesome if the file is one large continuous file.
http://www.techtalkplus.net/optimize_page_file.htm
I’ve done this on a lot of clients systems and it almost always helps.
Hmm, would they work/be allowed outside the US? I have a W2K machine and a WXP machine that {potentially incriminating details removed}.
Yes, they should as far as I know. Gave one key to a former exchange student in Germany. However, he installed the English language version so I really don’t know if they keys will work on other languages.
Not sure what the ultrasonic method is but it can’t be worse than the scraping method.
The probe is vibrating hundreds of times a second and busts off the plague much easier than scraping. You also don’t get the occassional snags of the gum tissue with the ultrasonic that you get with the manual picks. Only downside is if you have a sensitive tooth the vibration will get your attention. I prefer the ultrasonic if for nothing else that it is quicker.
BTW, FireFox 12 screams on a Windows 7 x64 pc with 16 GB ram, i7-2600 cpu and a 160 GB Intel SSD drive. 8 threads and no waiting !
I first used the AMD 6790 HD video board and horizontal lines and triangles all over the screen. I swapped to a AMD 6850 video board and all is well.
I also used the new Antec Sonata IV case with 620 watt power supply:
http://www.amazon.com/Antec-Sonata-IV-Tower-Case/dp/B004G60AHM/
I am not happy that Antec went back to the old thumbscrews to hold both sides of the cases on. I may go back to the Sonata III case.
Chrome screams faster, about twice to three times as fast, on this Win 7 Ultimate 64 box with 8GB RAM, AMD Phenom II at 2.70 Ghz, two 1TB drives and a 3TB drive. With a veritable plethora of add-ons, themes, plug-ins, etc., etc. And nary a complaint in all the time I’ve been using it, with both Windows and Linux, since it came out.
31 here now and dropping; earlier we had howling wind and sideways snow flurries, with snow up in the hills from about 600 feet up. Down to the 20s tonight with wind chill approaching ZERO.
And next week it’ll probably hit 85.
Algore, phone your office.
Yes, Ray, I would appreciate the upgrade to 64-bit. This machine runs 64-bit Linux flawlessly. Do you still have my email address? I have 2 for you, one @[the cable company] and another at a 3-letter “.org” address.
Spent the day at the Social Security office. It seems that ever since Jeri died, I have been eligible to take her benefits without any penalty to mine. There is no way I could live on mine into the retired future if I took it early (66 is my age bracket’s full benefit retirement age, not 65 as with older folks), and I am not yet at that full benefit age. Now I have been in contact with Social Security twice since Jeri died, and at no time did they explain this possibility to me. In fact, in this instance, I actually had to phrase it myself: “You mean, I can take her retirement benefits now as a ‘death benefit’; mine remain untouched, as if I were taking nothing and continue to increase in amount every year I do not take them; and I can later switch to mine when it has climbed to the full amount?”
“Yes,” was the response. “I guess I did not explain it well.” Which I suspect is intentional, so no one will know to apply for the benefit.
So, all the while since I returned from Germany, I could have had this benefit (a little over 2 years), instead of living with income at the abject poverty level ($3,500 my first year back) and drawing down savings to live on. My income last year from working was well above the poverty level of ~$14,000, but still is only half what I made as an immigrant teaching English part-time in a foreign country. I have experienced some strange ironies in life, and that is one of them. A foreign guest country provided a much better living for me than my own native land has.
People who are already receiving SS benefits and experience a death of their spouse are already somewhat familiar with my situation, but if you are not receiving SS benefits, you are basically in the dark, because SS has a policy that they do not contact you about anything in that event (again, my guess is they do that so you will have to do all legwork discovering what benefits you are eligible for, by yourself). Because of that, I will not receive Medicare benefits until 4 months later than I was actually eligible, because I was supposed to somehow magically intuit that I must contact them 6 months before I was eligible, so everything would be on-track. Unfortunately, my 2 closest friends that I have discussed this with, took early retirement at 62, and anyone who is receiving benefits (so I just found out from the SS people) automatically receives a Medicare card along with explanations of all the requirements and ramifications. “Be patient,” my friends said. “It’s the government you are dealing with; they will send the card. It’s automatic.” Little did they know it is NOT automatic for anyone who has yet to apply for any retirement benefits. When it got to be a month before I should receive the benefit, I called, and found out that I never would have received the card ‘automatically’, and furthermore, I was then too late to start my Medicare benefit on-time.
Another thing I learned is that Social Security is paid in an arrears basis. If your benefits are to start in May, for instance, your first check will not come until June (I should say deposit, because there are no checks anymore, except for some very unusual circumstances). Now, I was involved in both my father and mother’s financial affairs at their death. Both lived into the next month, but after they died, they received NOTHING further. From my viewpoint, since benefits are paid in arrears, their estate should have received the amount for the days into the next month that they lived. But that did not happen. Neither received anything at all after their death. End, c’est fini, es ist komplet, done. Bye.
Medicare, on the other hand, is paid on an advance basis: you pay for a month, but your eligibility does not start until the next month after you pay. Very tricky how the government works. So I still have to wait for the death benefit to begin, and wait even further for another month after that before I am covered by Medicare.
What a country!
Do you still have my email address? I have 2 for you, one @[the cable company] and another at a 3-letter “.org” address.
No, I don’t have your address. Either of those addresses will work for me. Send me an email and I will get you an activation key. Unless you have to connect to a domain or need bitlocker I would recommend W7 Home Premium. Besides I have lots of keys for that version. Also will you be needing an ISO? If so I can put one on my website and provide you with the link.
People who are already receiving SS benefits and experience a death of their spouse are already somewhat familiar with my situation,
Even then it is still tricky dealing with the SS people. I get no death benefit for my aunt because I am not related closely enough. My mother may be entitled to something but I am not going to expend that effort.
My health insurance company, United Healthcare, is pawning my wife off to Medicare because of the hip surgery. They don’t want to possibly pay for another surgery. So they contract with a company that does all the paperwork to get my wife on disability SS, which is different than regular SS. Once they get her on SS disability then she can go on Medicare with the ultimate goal of having the government pay for the next surgery.
I did not even know about such a thing until we were contacted by the company that UHC uses. I think it is unethical of the insurance company. However, I would be an idiot to not take advantage of the ~$750.00 a month and the reduction in my insurance premiums. I personally think it is a scam but it is legal and only a fool leaves money on the table.
This also solves my delima of retiring in 4 years. My wife is 4 years behind me in age and getting her health insurance may have required me to work an additional 4 years. If she goes on Medicare that problem is solved.
As you said “What a country!”. No wonder they are going broke.
Wow, Chuck, nobody told you about your right to Jeri’s SS payments as death benefits? In my case the nurse that befriended Anne told me, her doctor told me, I was provided a hand out that informed me, the counselor at the funeral home/crematorium told me, and one of the services they provided was all the paperwork for such stuff. For me, it was “automatic”, though there was much signing of signatures. I certainly didn’t have to deal with the intricacies of attempting to get back my (our) money from the gov’t.
Not that it’s “roll around naked in all the money”, but it helps. It helps the kids even more.
“Very tricky how the government works.”
There it is. And rarely, if ever, in our favor. Like the banksters.
” I certainly didn’t have to deal with the intricacies of attempting to get back my (our) money from the gov’t.”
In Kanada. There it is again. Some things just work better across our northern border. But some things are really bad there, too; Leviathan writ large in so many ways. They tell me that you will never hear Canadians say “They can’t DO that to me!”
Down here a lot of it is just luck of the draw, who you actually are in contact with when dealing with these kinds of things. One thing that continues to puzzle me, to an extent, is how it is that ordinary schmucks who work for the State, or in banks, or for insurance companies, for example, can routinely screw people over like this, either by deliberately not volunteering important information that will help their fellow citizens and human beings, or worse, deliberately screw them over. I understand that there are job pressures and management to answer to, but I don’t think I could do that sort of gig. It smacks too much of “just following orders” and it means actively turning away from people who otherwise deserve better and have a right to better.
My Dad passed away when I was 18. I had already graduated HS and was taking classes at the local community college. My Mom had already begun receiving Dad’s SS benefits. The SS office neglected to mention I was eligible for college benefits. I was ready to enlist in the Navy like my brother and get into the nuke field. My Calc 1 prof sat down with me after I was back in classes for lunch. He explained I was eligible for SS money, getting A’s in all my classes, why not transfer to uni ASAP. A great guy, looking out for people in a small town of 10,000. I believe the SSA will screw you in a heart beat just like insurance companies.
Call me naive, but I’m always surprised by how reliably Pournelle’s law works. Even when past experience should have taught me better.
Since Jeri passed on in Germany, no one around me knew anything about US Social Security regulations. Geez, the State Department took the information, required me to send her passport, which they punched holes in and stamped cancelled (understandable, but visually disconcerting at the time), and reported her death to several agencies via internal means, including the Social Security Administration. No contact from SSA. Jeri passed on less than a month from her 62 birthday–a key milestone with SSA.
None of my family or close friends had ever dealt with such a situation, so they knew nothing. I assumed that since Jeri was not receiving any SS benefits at her death, none were available to me, and–contemptibly, as I found out–SSA does not voluntarily inform survivors of the possibilities, unless you know to contact them AND ask the right questions.
I did not even know about such a thing until we were contacted by the company that UHC uses. I think it is unethical of the insurance company. However, I would be an idiot to not take advantage of the ~$750.00 a month and the reduction in my insurance premiums. I personally think it is a scam but it is legal and only a fool leaves money on the table.
Yeah, and you know, it is teaching a whole generation–a whole country, actually– to take the attitude ‘screw or be screwed’. If the law provides for a benefit, every effort should be made to inform those eligible, that it exists; and the SSA KNOWS who is eligible.
Furthermore, these insurance companies that fight payouts really anger me. I see it all the time. It does not take long to learn whether there is fault or not, but these non-mutual insurance companies are just like the bankers: they consider any money in their possession to be THEIR money, and not yours.
We had quite a few friends and students in Germany from the former USSR. There, the State held a little more power, because there was no rule of law, and bureaucrats could make any decision they wanted, without oversight or legal recourse for the subject to appeal. But all that crap we learned in school about Communism somehow being the devil incarnate was just that–fictitious American crap (most of it derived from religious zealots and politicians with a motive). Yeah, people died wrongly in Russia, but so did Sacco and Vanzetti in this country. And the people administering court systems in the former Confederate states ought to be lynched themselves for refusing to revisit death penalties where DNA evidence and technology has become available since trial and sentencing. I have now heard stories about life in the USSR direct from people my age who lived through it, and I can tell you I am living that life here and now!
If you and I were living the Soviet life right now Chuck, as much as we mouth off about stuff, we’d be in the gulag in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. So there is *that* difference. Maybe we are coming to that, anyway.
And not only did people die wrongly in Russia (and the other political entities of the U.S.S.R. and its satellite totalitarian regimes in eastern Europe, North Korea, Cuba and Vietnam) but *dozens of millions* died wrongly in those places, not just a couple of crackpot Italian anarchists in Maffachufetts. (I give you that one of them was probably technically innocent, but the other was definitely guilty. I also give you that their trial and the accompanying media coverage at the time was an abomination.)
And I realize the calumny that is still taught as normal American history in the publik skool systems and universities in this country about the War Between the States routinely condemns the southern states of the Confederacy as having done such evil that their sins are to be visited in perpetuity upon them, their children, and their childrens’ children. But it ain’t just in them thar states that there are such wretched miscarriages of justice and the criminal court system. Believe it or not, it has happened, and still happens, in the blissfully enlightened states of the former Union.
That said, what happened to you and your family was/is inexcusable but far too routine now in the way people are treated by State organs, banks and insurance companies here. They are literally begging to be carried through the streets in tumbrils now and chopped.