09:35 – We’re officially out of chemistry kits, in the sense that the last assembled kit in inventory is spoken for, although not yet actually shipped. Fortunately, we have 30 more chemistry kits sitting partially-assembled, so I can put together kits on-the-fly as needed. We’ve also started on new batches of 60 chemistry kits and 30 forensics kits, which we’ll work on over the holiday. Meanwhile, UPS is supposed to deliver several thousand bottles and caps today. And Barbara’s new system is still sitting partially-assembled on the kitchen table.
16:48 – UPS showed up a couple hours ago with eight cartons of bottles and lids–several thousand of them. That’s fortunate, because I just finished printing about 4,000 labels.
I’ve only been married five years, but I already know not to leave half assembled computers on the kitchen table. Especially not my wife’s computer. Actually, that’s not true. I have a bunch of stuff piled on the dining room table. We just moved it to the basement when we got a new dining room table.
Dave B.—-Welcome to Hell.
Actually I have had a disassembled Winchester 1200 riot shotgun sitting in degreased pieces on the kitchen counter for a week now and nothing was said. Of course she may have worried that it was booby-trapped or something, although where she would get a crazy idea like that I haven’t the foggiest….
Reminds me of how I taught my dad not to ask questions he didn’t want to hear the answer to. We were cleaning out the garage one day and he picked up an olive-green plastic tube and read the label. He asked what was in the tube, which was labeled something like:
Mortar, 81mm
M821
HE
I told him it was a high-explosive 81mm mortar round. I think he thought I was kidding, so he unscrewed the lid. When he looked into the tube, he immediately screwed the lid back on, and never said another word about it.
Now THAT’S some funny shit there, Bob. What in tarnation would a mortar be doing in your garage? Oh wait—never mind. I don’t wanna know, either.
Those little buggers were part of the USAF Air/Security Police arsenal back in my day, along with the wonderful M-79; the ten-round drum semi-auto grenade launcher that I forget the numerical designation for and we didn’t see them in SEA anyway; (and the grenade launchers fired either the 40mm LE or HE rounds), the 90mm recoilless rifle; another grenade launcher that attached to the M-16 barrel and I forget that number, too, as we didn’t see them much Over There; and an assortment of M-16s, shotguns, M-60s, and stuff mounted on jeeps and armored vehicles. I got stuck with the M-60 most of the time because I was tall and because I stupidly qualified Expert with it, as I had with everything else. But my preferred patrol carry, then and now, was the shotgun and a .45.
I saw previous posts about AF Ready Reserve or something here; I got off active duty and was in some kind of reserve status for two more years but nothing ever came of it. I also did two years active reserve with the Army after that and then finally said buh-bye to Uncle. Eleven years after I left the Army unit, it was sent over to the Sandbox to escort Iraqi POWs from the front lines to the rear while the air was still buzzing with ordnance. Gee, sorry I missed the fun.
Is your current garage all nice and squared away now, Robert? Oh wait–never mind; don’t wanna know the answer to that, either.
Here is my USMC son dropping 81 mm rounds:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKndW86etjQ
Warning, these are US Marines, bad language and hand gestures are guaranteed!
The gunner, my son, had to go without hearing protection in his right ear so that he could hear the aiming commands between dropping the mortar rounds. Some day when he is way older, he will be going to the VA for a hearing aid.
He will not go see the fireworks tomorrow night. He got mortared in Iraq and does not like fireworks anymore. He dropped thousands of illumination rounds in Iraq but only one HE round. That HE round landed in the middle of a sheep flock. It did miss the sheep herder. The Marines bought the man a new sheep flock and that Captain did not direct fire anymore.
My son’s favorite weapon is a MK 19 grenade launcher.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mk_19_grenade_launcher
He likes the 40 round clip where you can lead mobile targets.
I was very upset and dismayed by that awful language and those hand gestures. Don’t often see that sort of thing in the military or the cops. Those lads should be ashamed of themselves!
Your son may well be visiting the VA for hearing tests, etc. They do a real good job with that now, very thorough. Surprisingly, after only two year-long tours in SEA and zillions of rounds fired there and back in The World for training, plus years of cop training and qualifications, plus target shooting for fun over forty years, I amazingly have some hearing damage. Oh, almost forgot; the years prior to working for Uncle, at deafening rock concerts in the late 60s, sometimes only a few feet from the stacks of Marshall amps.
The semi-auto grenade launcher we had closely resembles that picture of the MK-19 and we ran it off a tripod but our magazine was a ten-round drum, not a box. You could shoot off all ten rounds in a couple of seconds, it was awesome. Ten rounds of HE downrange put a damper on Charles’s little strolls around the perimeters. Also good for bracketing departing sappers as they scuttled through the concertina wire.
I still dig fireworks but don’t go outta my way to see them; looks like the town here has some kind of thing going on tonight but I will give it a pass; don’t care for crowds and hate people in general anyway.
Have your son make an appointment for a VA hearing test ASAP anyway and get it documented, although I laugh when I say that, because of all the fucking fires the VA has every year that involve our fucking records, pardon mon Francais, mes amis….
OFD wrote:
“Actually I have had a disassembled Winchester 1200 riot shotgun sitting in degreased pieces on the kitchen counter for a week now…”
What’s the point of having a riot shotgun if it’s disassembled? What happens if a bunch of people from NY, or worse still, Princess, starts rioting? You won’t be able to stop them… 🙂
Not to worry, Mr. Cat-Hater Oz; I have other stuff here, including a Remington 870. What’s funny is that it sez right on the barrel that it’s a riot shotgun; I had riot control training in the AF Air/Security Police and again with cops back here, and we were taught to aim at the buggers’ feet or actually a bit in front of their feet, so as to bounce gravel and other assorted shrapnel into their feet, ankles, lower legs and incapacitate them without killing them. I was also a counter-sniper and my extremely fleeting brush with fame was when the Zodiac Killer was loose in SF and we were alerted we might have to take him out that way, and in the same period there rumors that the Symbionese Liberation Army was gonna attack a NORAD radar site north of SF. None of that panned out, but I would have gladly then, and gladly now, taken out any of those buggers.
Some day when he is way older, he will be going to the VA for a hearing aid.
Have him get a hearing test when he leaves the service and get copies of the records. Later when he applies to the VA for disability he will need those records. Don’t wait years after leaving the service, apply within one year of leaving the service. Be prepared to appeal. Use the local VA services from the state to help with the paperwork. The benefits are tax free. Once the disability is established the VA will then provide hearing aids.
[snip] The gunner, my son, had to go without hearing protection in his right ear so that he could hear the aiming commands between dropping the mortar rounds. Some day when he is way older, he will be going to the VA for a hearing aid. [snip]
As a result of 18 months in Korea, using a recoilless rifle against the Chinese, my dad’s right ear was mostly just to give his eyeglasses a place to rest. He never bothered making a claim to the VA, he was just happy to come home and get on with his life.
Yeah, it’s my right ear that has the most loss. Mrs. OFD gets frustrated with me when I don’t immediately hear her whispered talk as she faces away from ten feet away (hyperbole, but not much). And everyone suspects I only hear what I wanna hear and don’t hear what I don’t wanna hear; can’t imagine where people dream this stuff up, honestly.
So when your son, Lynn, gets to the VA, or has it done now before he gets out; if the hearing test folks are any good they will also advise him as to how to deal with stuff like I just mentioned. There is more to it than just not being able to hear. Mrs. OFD should face me, speak clearly and loudly enough without shouting, and first make sure that I am paying attention to her. I need to get better at helping her understand this. And I have to stop mumbling myself and talking out of the side of my face as I am looking or moving away, stupid stuff like that but it will make a difference if someone has substantial hearing loss.
In other matters, let me recommend the now-years-old HBO series about John Adams and his contemporaries this Independence Day; the guy playing Jefferson does a swell job, and that is what this day is about, not all the wonderful and glorious wars we fought over two-hundred years for our wonderful freedom and liberty and justice for all, and fought by all our millions of hero and heroine soldiers, etc., etc., etc. Every one a hero, natch, who fought for our freedom, liberty, etc., etc.
The day is about Thomas Jefferson writing that Declaration and us getting out from under our British cousins and their royal menagerie of Germans, the only former colony to successfully do so by force of arms.
My mum insists that I’m going deaf because I simply don’t hear what she says a lot of the time. It might be that I don’t want to hear, or selectively filter stuff out. I can’t blame guns either, I haven’t picked one up for over 40 years.
Hmmm, has someone turned on a site option to put everything in italics?
OFD wrote:
“Not to worry, Mr. Cat-Hater Oz…”
I DO NOT hate cats. Well, not all of them.
I’m actually very fond of *flat* cats.
Well, it’s already the Fourth here, so I’ll get in early and say
“Happy Rebellion Day, y’all.”
Long Live Her Majesty!
Greg; something happened a while ago to this Win7 box that I haven’t been able to figure out (don’t really care that much but it is kind of annoying) where text at this site and in my gmail is automatically in italics. But only those places, I think, and not in any text files that I type.
When last I checked into it, it was supposedly a missing font, but I hadn’t done anything with any fonts.
If my home theater stuff wasn’t on here and I felt like noodling around for months trying to figure out the Linux setup that would make it happen, I’d dump M$ off this machine and put Linux on it. Of course I haven’t looked into any Linux solutions in quite a while so am open to suggestions; all I wanna do is stream video from this box to the WD set-top box connected to the internet-enabled TV. It mainly works OK with Windows but I note that some stuff does not show up at the TV for some reason, maybe wrong formats or whatever.
It is Independence Day, and as we had the right to dissolve those surly Anglo-German bonds, so did the American Confederacy from the Yankee Puritan Roundhead aristocracy.
Oh, and long live Betty Windsor and Phil the Greek.
Yeah, I agree. If I’d been Lincoln I’d have let the rebels go instantly. That way only 3-4 Deep South states would have seceded, and after a month of independence they would have been pondering how stupid they were and be begging for re-admission. I would have let them back in but given each returning state one at-large congressperson each and one senator between them.
Yeah, I agree that Phil is an embarrassment. I’m not sure who’s dopier: Phil or Chuck. (Not our Chuck, of course. he’s just a bit misguided.)
OFD wrote:
“…something happened a while ago to this Win7 box that I haven’t been able to figure out…”
For a number of years I’ve been meaning to get on top of some brand or other of Linux, I even had a PC built just for Linux so I could play without having to dual boot. But as you’re well aware “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” I just never seem to get around to it. I quite like Win 7, after some of the previous versions it’s really good.
Lincoln the Vampire. Period. Sucking lifeblood from the South and sacrificing Northern boys to do it. If it woulda been OK for the New England states to secede like they wanted to years before, it certainly should been so for the southern states.
Prince Charles is actually pretty smart and has been given a bad rap in the media over the decades, I would not underestimate him at all. Phil on the other hand, is not the sharpest knife in the royal drawer but has come up with some side-splitting gaffes over the years, always good for a laugh until very recently.
As for Linux I support RH at work every day and one RH box here. I started with RH 6.2 desktop a long time ago (and kind of ironically will have RH Enterprise Linux 6.2 on my work laptop very soon with IBM Open Client, etc.) and have used Fedora, Ubuntu, Mint, Suse, etc., etc. off and on for twelve years now. I used to like Ubuntu but not so much since their changes. Always dug Mint and would recommend that for someone wanting to try Linux and have most stuff just work right away. Fedora, Debian, Slackware, etc. are for geeks who wanna dig around and mess with stuff. I’ve also done the dual- and triple-boot stuff but it’s more trouble than it’s worth; a dedicated Linux box is what the doctor ordered.
http://linuxmint.com/
But also check this site:
distrowatch.com
And I really can’t complain about my one and a half years so far with Win7 Ultimate on this box.
Weird. Everything from Ray’s 22:00 entry on is in italics. I’ll start mine with an italics stop code.
Well, that didn’t do any good.
Ubuntu is by far the easiest Linux to start with. It installs a whole bunch of stuff as standard, so you don’t have to go searching for why things went wrong—as mostly nothing goes wrong. In the radio automation forum, I read the pain of other distros (even Debian Squeeze) when various packages are missing for some application to work right, and contrary to what people will tell you, the package installers do NOT always tell you what dependencies are missing. This is especially true for hardware devices, which will not tell you at all when some dependency it needs is missing—or when you have to compile a driver yourself, and some development package is missing, and all it says is ‘won’t compile’.
But Ubuntu installs about 99% of what you need. Unless there is a real reason to go with something else (like if some software application recommends a specific distro—Rivendell recommends CentOS 6), don’t do it. Ubuntu is the most painless. Then, when you know your way around, you can experiment. The biggest pain in differing distros is where they put things, including various configuration declarations and resource folders.
As far as the Ubuntu changes in the desktop, there is a massive industry push by everyone from Apple, M$, to Linux and device manufacturers, to move to the icon management of the desktop, so there will be uniformity across all devices from desktop to tablet, to Android/iPhone. And inherent in that change is a move away from tiled windows to forced fullscreen viewing. Don’t know how that will pan out, but we are going to have to endure it for a while, at least. I have decided not to fight Unity for the present, and see if I can get along with it.
Also inherent in this change is abandonment of file management for ordinary users. You will store your camera images in ‘camera images’ but will have no idea where that resides.
I have always liked Phil. Phil and Diana were the sane ones in the family. No excuse for how Lizzy treated Diana—even if Prince Chuck did want to dump her. Which is perfect representation of what a moron he is. We need Chuck’s abdication, followed by Lizzy’s. Now.
@Chuck: I’ll be interested to hear how you get along with Unity. I’m avoiding it for the present, along with Windows 8 and anything else similar. For Ubuntu I just use Xubuntu, which works fine.
The only thing I dislike about Xubuntu is that you apparently must use an extra program (gigolo) to access data across the network. However, for frequently-used stuff, autofs works find – not beginners stuff, but not hard either.
It was actually a de-mil’d 81mm mortar HE round, but my dad didn’t have to know about the de-mil’d part.
So what’s up with the italics?
I have no clue. Apparently, something got corrupted. I decided to use a blockquote on my previous comment, hoping it would clear things up. Instead, it appeared in Roman and the rest of the stuff continued in Italics. At least today’s entry isn’t doing that.
My son has been out of the USMC for 3 years now. He did get a hearing test on the way out and may have actually gotten a copy of the results. The VA is getting totally computerized which means that they either really know you good or not at all. After all, a computer can really get things screwed up well.
His hearing has actually gotten better since he is not firing heavy weapons monthly anymore. That right ear somewhat works now except in places like restaurants where there are lots of conversations going on.
He still misses sleeping with his M4.
Yeah, I remember when all the libraries rushed to get computerized and got rid of their card catalogs and the Dewey Decimal System and went to computers. A LOT of stuff just disappeared into thin air.
I feel similarly confident about the VA, a gigantic State entity, being careful with our military records.
Be ye aware of this, the VA has been charged with putting all of our health records online using their system as prototype as a part of Obamacare. I think that GE is the contractor. Can you see that disk farm ?
Regarding deafness, Pournelle’s told me that he suffered severe hearing loss in the Korean War. Of course, he was was in charge of a battery of division artillery, so I’m guessing 155mm would be the smallest thing he was around. And without even muffs. Apparently, they just shouted and stuck their fingers in their ears, and they didn’t always have fingers free for both ears.
I have some fairly recent experience with how GE handles healthcare IT and this nooz does not lift my confidence one iota; if anything it is now destroyed completely. You may be interested to know that they are tightly entwined between the sheets with Microsoft on this gigantic project.
http://www3.gehealthcare.com/en/Products/Categories/Healthcare_IT/Joint_Venture
They are heavy into aging Windows server and virtualization architecture at last witness and jettisoning any remaining OpenVMS or Linux infrastructure at their various HQ’s. Just the opposite of what they should be doing.
I’d forgotten that Jerry was in Korea; of course they call it the forgotten war. Yet another place we didn’t need to be and ought to get out of now nearly sixty years later, along with our bases and troops left in WWII-era places. Why the eff are we still in Germany, Japan, Okinawa, South Korea, etc? But don’t get me started….
I have some fairly recent experience with how GE handles healthcare IT and this nooz does not lift my confidence one iota; if anything it is now destroyed completely. You may be interested to know that they are tightly entwined between the sheets with Microsoft on this gigantic project.
http://www3.gehealthcare.com/en/Products/Categories/Healthcare_IT/Joint_Venture
Oh my, I did not know that MS was involved. I think that MS makes great desktops. The server, not so great. Unix just seems so much more … secure by nature.
I’ve consulted at various GE companies about four times now. The one which actually made things (GE Power Systems) wasn’t too bad. The other three, GE Global Research (formerly Corporate Research and Development) and two consulting companies, were bad. The people above grunt software developer level at the consulting companies displayed no evidence of any particular technical or managerial expertise. Some of the grunts were ok, some not, and overall not worth the $150/hr or whatever GE was charging.
I have no confidence of GE putting together an effective and cost-effective “solution”, though I have no doubt that success will be declared and that their government contracts will continue to bring them buckets of taxpayer dollars regardless. I’d thought they were already involved in one of the high-profile systems-upgrade flops for one of the federal agencies, but can’t find a reference.
I love GE Power Systems equipment. When I used to work at TXU, GE steam turbines and gas turbines were rock solid. They would start and run forever, only suffering gradual equipment damage over reasonable time (years !).
Westinghouse steam turbines and gas turbines, watch out. We kept spare generator stators and spare steam turbines for all our equipment running more than 50% of the time, because we needed it. We used to call Westinghouse, “Circle-Bar-W”, since they were such cowboys. One of our co-generators had to keep their gas turbine compressor startup surge lines open all the time (from 8th stage to 2nd stage) to keep from getting compressor surge waves and corncobbing the compressor section. That only cost them about 8% of their power and efficiency.
I have been peripherally involved in a couple of health-care systems, and hence have read up on several of the big government-oriented projects. None of the big projects I’ve read about have worked. All of them could be summarized perfectly by this picture.
The problem is typical of government software procurement: the whole bloody system is supposed to be specified in advance – classic “waterfall model” that has never worked on big projects. Subcontracts have to be handed out to the “right” companies, particularly consulting companies. Years are spent, nothing much happens, estimates are revised, nothing much happens. Government weenies keep changing the requirements for no good reason. By the time it is impossible to hide that nothing has been achieved for millions of dollars, the initiators have safely escaped and their successors are blamed.
We’ll be reading the headline about this project failing in around 4 years…
I am just in the wrong line of work; I need to wear a suit, get in a time machine and become thirty years younger, and hang out at the meetings where these capers are hammered out. It would be the year 1982 and I could have initiated a whole slew of failed gummint boondoggles by now and be sitting on a Mount Everest of cash, gold and silver bullion, and offshore accounts and properties. I’d have my own private jet, private yacht, private rail car, and an army of servants to cater to my every whim and demand. Naturally Microsoft would have had complete control of all IT infrastructures along with Oracle and I would have even allowed the creative types to use Apple stuff.
Of course I would have sold my soul…
So now all I am is an old vet soldier, cop and IT drone, pretending that the work I do with racked clusters day in and day out is worth a piss-hole in the snow and will still be around in the same buildings three to five years from now. And that anyone will care or remember that I did any of this at all.
But I can look in the mirror OK and sleep good at night. No one has died or been foreclosed on or lost their jobs and retirements because of my shenanigans on Wall Street or down in Mordor.
Not to worry. One of my friends created 2 of the most famous shows that are still fabulously popular on NPR stations. He is semi-retired now, but ask the people who work on those shows today, who it was that started the show—and none of them can tell you. How’s that for doing something prominent and never being remembered for the accomplishment?
Never realised you once lived in Mordor, Dave. What sort of evil stuff did you do there?
re Chuck’s latest comment: http://www.motifake.com/tetris-tetris-error-pile-accomplish-disappear-demotivational-posters-153023.html
And a poster I used to have along these same lines:
http://www.despair.com/ambition.html
Hmmm, has someone turned on a site option to put everything in italics?
Weird. Everything from Ray’s 22:00 entry on is in italics.
I fucked up and did not properly encase my response in HTML code and caused the board software to show it’s stupidity. The board software needs to resolve this and not let information in one post affect information in the next post.
Seems odd that, if we can break it, we can’t fix it.
Clearly not, though. I’m somewhat impressed by the whimsical result of Ray’s lapse.
To err is human. To really screw things up takes Ray Thompson.
To err is human. To really screw things up takes Ray Thompson.
OK, buster! You are off my Christmas list. Now let me get back to my new Lego kit http://technic.lego.com/en-us/Products/default.aspx#8110 that I am in the process of enjoying.