08:41 – Barbara’s mom is at home and seems to be doing as well as could be expected. Frances stayed with her last night and Barbara will stay with her tonight, but after that they may leave her on her own. Dutch is pretty much just maintaining. I suspect the most anyone will be able to do is slow his rate of decline. I’d be very surprised if he’s ever well enough to leave the nursing home, even to move to assisted living. That’s still the goal, of course, but I suspect it’s more ambitious than achievable.
I finally switched back over from air conditioning to heat this morning. Our forecast overnight low was 38F, which would tie our record low for 14 May. Our recording thermometer says it got down to 41.9F, but our actual highs and lows often vary by several degrees from the official numbers. Our indoor thermometer says it’s 66.3F right now. I’m chilly at 70F and cold at 68F, so I set the heat to warm things up a bit in here. This is our last chilly day for a while. The rest of the week we’re expected to have highs in the mid-80’s and lows of 61F, so it’ll be back to using the air conditioning.
I copied all my data from the current system to my new system yesterday. That took a long time. The networking on the old system is failing, so rather than install a new network adapter I just connected a big external USB drive to it, copied all my data and configuration files up to it, and then reconnected it to my new system. Copying the 800 GB of data down to the new system took hours, but it’s all there now.
I managed to get all my old mail transfered over to Kontact/Kmail/Korganizer on the new system, but I haven’t yet tried to import my contacts. I’m pretty optimistic that I’ll be able to do that, but the big problem remaining is that I can’t get the new Kmail installation to send mail. I remember this happening the last time I was migrating systems. I got it worked out then, and I’m sure I’ll manage somehow to get it worked out this time. Meanwhile, I can still send mail from the old system, assuming it’s willing to connect to the Internet. Nothing is ever easy.
Dutch is pretty much just maintaining.
Excellent! Just getting stable at 90 years of age is A Good Thing. And he is where qualified people (strong young men and ladies) can help him immediately.
And in the news of preventative medicine, “Angelina Jolie says she had double mastectomy”:
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20130514/DA690BH02.html
I cannot blame her for doing this with her genetic history. My wife is watching her remaining breast like a hawk. You really do not want to go through chemo, there are many lifetime side effects that they do not tell you about adequately. Short term memory loss, hair damage, skin damage, etc.
That said, the prosthetic technology available to women with mastectomies are just not the same as the real thing. It is a double edged sword.
BTW, I do have a gripe about gmail. If you send a reply to an email in your trash folder using gmail, gmail does not put your reply in the sent folder. You have to temporarily move the trash email back to your inbox and then gmail will place your reply in your sent folder. I’m sure that google has a reason for this but I have no clue why.
I know this because I have winsim.com’s MX record sitting over on google apps, the most excellent email engine in the world.
Ping Dave B!
I’m getting sick of hearing “Inventory is full.”
I hear that buying large bags is very expensive. Is it a tailor who can make their own?
I also have a lot of stuff in my bags that I don’t want to sell, just store somewhere, like recipes for example. Should I put them in e-mail or is there somewhere safe I can put them?
‘And in the news of preventative medicine, “Angelina Jolie says she had double mastectomy”’
A family member (not blood relation) is/has gone down this path. Her mother died young of breast cancer, when my relative was about eight. At least one of the mother’s sisters also died of it. The relative has had some tests and is a carrier of at least one defective gene, so she’s been going through the counseling required. Last I heard she was scheduled for surgery last March, but no one’s said anything.
“I’m getting sick of hearing “Inventory is full.”
You should be able to get Netherweave Bags (16 slots) for not a lot of gold, say 15ish each. Tailors do make the universal bags. There are some specialized bags that only hold profession specific items that are made by leatherworkers or the like. You can put them in your bank slots as well as on your character. (You are using the bank, right?)
Some strategies for having more bag space:
– create a bank/auction alt. Create a character, run them to the capitol city and leave them by the bank and AH. Get them bags for their bank vault and inventory. Then, when you are out leveling, you mail them the stuff you want to store or sell on the AH.
– an advanced strategy, though it takes 10k gold or so, is to have your bank alt create a private guild, then buy bank slots for the guild. What you need to do is to buy the guild charter and ask people in trade chat in the capitol city to sign the charter. You usually need to offer to pay them 10-30 gold. When you get enough signatures, you file the charter with yourself as guild master, then kick everyone else out of the guild.
– if you have an alt, you can mail them stuff and never take it out of mail. After 30 days, it will come back to you. Rinse and repeat as needed. You will probably want to have a bag management addon like Ark Inventory or Bagnon running so that you can search your bags and mail for items. You do have to open the mail, but not take out the items, when it gets to the alt in order for the inventory search to see the items.
I’m getting sick of hearing “Inventory is full.”
Yes, tailors can make their own bags. They can also sell them. 16 slot bags should be fairly cheap in the auction house.
Do you know about the bank that is in each capital city? You can store 28 items there, and buy places to store 7 bags. Also if you can still create another character, it is common to create one toon to serve as a banker. If nothing else, you can send items to your banker through in game mail and not open them. They’ll bounce back to the sender if you don’t open them.
Also when it comes to bags, there are profession specific bags. For example if you have a skinner/leatherworker you could buy him or her a leatherworking bag. That bag will hold the supplies you need for leatherworking. It may even hold leatherworking recipes, I don’t recall. You probably can’t afford the largest leatherworking bag, but you may find a good deal on a smaller one in the auction house.
Remember a couple days ago when we were bitching about various worthless bitches* pushing for a DUI level of .06? Looks like we gave them too much credit for not being stupid, worthless bitches: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/15/us/legal-limit-drunken-driving-safety-board.html?_r=0 . Money quote: “Alcohol concentration levels as low as .01 have been associated with driving-related performance impairment”. You can easily register more than that from eating bread.
* Not a sexist comment. Men can be, and often are, worthless bitches.
Just looked at a very sweet charter arms .44 special bulldog over at Academy.
http://www.charterfirearms.com/products/Charter_Bulldog_74420.asp
It may be mine tonight!
I had a Charter Arms. .44 Special Bulldog thirty years ago but I traded it in with cash for a Ruger Security-Six stainless 6″ barrel .357. That’s long gone now, too. Wish I’d kept the Bulldog. I’d pair that with a Ruger Super Blackhawk or Redhawk, or a Taurus Raging Bull, all .44 Mag. Max barrel length, pref. the Blackhawk in SA.
Have fun with it, Tex.
Yo, this what I mean right here:
http://www.ruger.com/products/newModelSuperBlackhawkHunter/models.html
Intruder shot in gunfire with Houston resident:
http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Intruder-shot-in-gunfire-with-Houston-resident-4515546.php
Note to self: put a gun in all closets.
How is the recoil on that 2.5″ charter arms bulldog? Seems like something that would just about rip your arm off.
I dunno about putting guns in all the closets; I am carrying or nearly so 7×24 and have stuff in reach otherwise but would be concerned about others latching onto ordnance and using it against me.
The recoil from .44 Special for someone like me or Bob or Chad is probably not too much to experience with the correct stance and grip; a petite female or little guy might flinch a bit. Also depends on the ammo; and from pics I’ve seen of you, you ought to be A-OK with it. You can also port the barrel if it’s an issue; Magna-Port does a good job of it and have been around for decades.
re guns in every room: John Milius, the script writer for Dirty Harry, said in an interview that true paranoia isn’t having a gun in every room. It’s having a gun that you take even into the bathroom.
re bitty carry guns and recoil: (a) A bitty gun with hellacious recoil that you actually carry is better than a wondergun which is too big to carry. (It’s probably also better than a bitty gun which shoots a bitty bullet, but that’s not part of the maxim.)
(b) I don’t know how common this is, but I’ve from time to time felt the need to point my carry piece at someone. I’ve never needed to shoot; simply pointing it at their dumb heads or announcing that I was armed, either verbally or by drawing the hammer back, de-escalated the situation.
Agreed on (a).
On (b): I’ve had my firearm of whatever type out and visible a goodly number of times since rotating back to CONUS, i.e., The World, but never actually pointed it at anyone; all potentially lethal situations stopped at that point without me aiming directly at them. If someone can see the hole at the end of my barrel facing them they’re about to find out about life after death.
re guns in every room: John Milius, the script writer for Dirty Harry, said in an interview that true paranoia isn’t having a gun in every room. It’s having a gun that you take even into the bathroom.
There is nothing like running into the bathroom in a hurry, running into a stall, dropping your pants and hearing the sound of your gun hitting the floor. Really echos off the walls. Just saying because I would never ever do that.
The times that I can remember deliberately aiming at someone (outside of the military, this is), I think every time the other person was armed or I had good reason to think he was. One time I was bodyguarding and one time I was assisting in an arrest of a bail jumper. In the bodyguarding incident, the distance was very close, like arm-grabbing range. Screwing around with aiming kinda somewhere near would have been very foolish, though I didn’t reason it out that way at the time. (In the bountyhunting incident, my carry piece was a Spas-12, a 12 gauge with a folding stock. I’ve been told that it’s very intimidating to see me holding that big, heavy, mean-looking black gun like a pistol.) There may have been others, but I don’t think so. As you say, drawing and announcing “Hi there!” normally suffices.
That said, I still want to get a trigger-activated laser sight. Nothing says Hi there! like a red dot on the chest. (That is, if I still owned any firearms, which I don’t. They all seem to have fallen into the swamp sometime in the past couple years.)
Worse than that is having it slide across the floor and end up in someone else’s occupied stall. And worse even than THAT is having it go off upon impact with the floor while one or more other stalls are occupied, a hazard with some semi-autos carrying one in the chamber in certain cocked conditions.
Lynn: Heh.
I’d never have that problem because I don’t like waistband carry. Doesn’t work with my choice of attire, either. I’ve been called seventeen kinds of dumbass, but I prefer to carry under my armpit if I’m expecting problems, or simply keep it in my backpack if I’m carrying on general principles. Most crises will give me enough time to get it from the backpack, or get any of the other weapons, or get the tools or the first aid kit or the flashlight or the other stuff I always carry.
On the KDE front, a correspondent to one of the broadcast forums notes that 4.x is a “disaster” and ‘upgrading’ to 3.5 is the answer. Apparently, IMAP does not work in 4.x Kmail, and there are a lot of problems with touchpads. He says: “Fortunately, upgrading from 4.x to 3.5 is a fairly common thing, so easily found on the net.”
Worse than that is having it slide across the floor and end up in someone else’s occupied stall.
Our senior range instructor in handgun training talked about fishing for a loaded semi-auto in the blue lagoon (porta potty) with a coat hanger. He stated that he would be happy to stand outside and hold your weapon for you.
“…he would be happy to stand outside and hold your weapon for you.”
There is something potentially wrong with that sentence.
OFD wrote:
“I am carrying or nearly so 7×24…”
One of Bob’s pals from many years ago emerged from the shower carrying his piece in a waterproof holster… 🙂
(No, not that piece.)
OFD wrote:
‘“…he would be happy to stand outside and hold your weapon for you.”
There is something potentially wrong with that sentence.’
I don’t get it.
‘Yo, this what I mean right here:
http://www.ruger.com/products/newModelSuperBlackhawkHunter/models.html‘
That’s a very phallic looking gun you’ve got there Dave… 🙂
Yeah, that was Fred Shields. He had a nylon shoulder holster with a stainless-steel pistol in it.
I can say with certainty that if Norman Bates had ever surprised Fred in the shower, it would have been Norman who got the surprise. Fred also had a sauna in the basement, and wore it in there, too.
Miles_Teg says on 14 May 2013 at 21:50
One of Bob’s pals from many years ago emerged from the shower carrying his piece in a waterproof holster… 🙂
(No, not that piece.)
No, not that shower.
Apropos of nothing, I found this story amusing: A New Hampshire town is really upset at a group of people who go around putting coins in parking meters, to keep people from getting tickets. The town is upset…
Brad, one of the cities near Albany, NY, did the same thing some years ago. (I think it was Schenectady while I lived there, but memory fades.) Same response by the city: sue the people putting coins in the meters. If I recall correctly, and I probably don’t, they also looked at giving tickets for disturbing the peace or some nonsense like that. I don’t remember the exact result, but it all kind of died away so I figure the city’s efforts came to nothing.
Ya know what? Names need to be taken and recorded of the town and city officials who do this sort of thing; these people need to be identified and publicized for their chicanery and attempted draconian attitudes and power misused. Get their names and pictures out on the net for public ridicule; if they persist, later tarring and feathering ought to be in the cards.
Funny, I was just reading up on tarring and feathering. Very disappointing, at least what I find in Wikipedia. I had envisioned *hot* tar, but apparently the traditional thing was to use pine pitch at room temperature.
Much too good for overly zealous bureaucrats – not really much of a punishment at all…
Ever get pine pitch on yerself? Picture it all over yerself, with feathers added. While also being pretty roughly handled and shoved around, in public. Not pleasant.
For a sliding scale of punishment, throw in a flogging. Some time in the stocks, the pillory, all time-tested methods of public humiliation and punishment. Then maybe a few months or years of hard labor, working to repair our crumbling national infrastructure, bridges, roads, dams, and the like.
Brad wrote:
“Apropos of nothing, I found this story amusing: A New Hampshire town is really upset at a group of people who go around putting coins in parking meters, to keep people from getting tickets. The town is upset…”
On the Gold Coast in Australia we have Meter Maids, who top up expired meters:
http://www.metermaids.com
The local government has fought back though:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parking_enforcement_officer#Australia
And worse even than THAT is having it go off upon impact with the floor while one or more other stalls are occupied, a hazard with some semi-autos carrying one in the chamber in certain cocked conditions.
(Lynn may remember this case, it was local.) A friend of my mom was shot while eating dinner in a restaurant by an idiot with a CCWP. He was putting on his jacket and a derringer he “forgot” was in the coat fell to the floor and discharged. There was some amusement in the initial stories, because the woman was struck in the buttocks, but the bullet went into the abdominal cavity. In addition to needing major colon surgery, there was nerve damage and she has difficulty walking. Don’t know the outcome, but a lawyer was retained and I expect the idiot’s insurance company will be writing a check for the full policy value, and he’ll be coughing up everything he has except his “homestead, horse, and tools of his trade” which are protected from creditors in Texas. (The courts have ruled that a car or truck is a “horse” in the meaning of the law.
Yes, I remember that story. Never carry with one in the chamber if you are a fumble fingers. That is me. A carry gun should have a enclosed hammer like a Ruger LCR or an LCP. Or a S&W Bodyguard.
I think a transfer bar is sufficient. Obviously, that derringer didn’t have one or it wouldn’t have gone off.
My Taurus .357 snubby had a shrouded hammer but it’s unfortunately rusting now at the bottom of the Lake.
Boy, I really need to get over there and trawl that lake (and the Brazos). I’ll bet I could find enough weaponry to equip a medium sized African warlord’s army.
Most of mine fell into an active volcano.
And, alas, my memory is shockingly bad. Worse than a squirrel’s. More than thirty years ago, I buried stuff at different sites up in Pennsylvania. I don’t even remember how many or where. The one I really do wish I could remember was a G3 with a Zeiss scope, 5,000 rounds, and 50 magazines.
I was in Penn in 2003, and remember seeing part of a scope protruding from the ground. Of course I dug everything up, the scope was a Zeiss and there were other goodies too. Cleaned it up and sold it all at a gun show. Damn it, I lost the receipts, but I know it payed for my trip. Thanks bud.
Must’ve been some other poor guy’s stuff. If it’d been mine, you’d have been splattered all over the landscape.