09:59 – Barbara met her mom and sister for dinner after work yesterday. She’d talked about stopping at her mom’s apartment after dinner to do a re-scan of the TV channels, so when she called I thought maybe she needed some help getting that done. As it turned out, that wasn’t the problem.
Barbara’s sister’s husband, Al, drives tour/charter buses. He’d been having some GI problems for the last couple of weeks, and apparently things came to a head around dinner time yesterday. He was returning from a charter trip with a bunch of kids, when the GI problem really acted up. He got as far as Statesville, about 45 minutes west of Winston-Salem on I-40, when he decided it wasn’t safe to try to drive any further. So he pulled over. There was a second bus with the charter. The other driver called 911, and the EMT’s showed up. They transported Al to the Iredell County Hospital in Statesville. The other driver stayed with his own bus and Al’s to await a replacement driver. They notified Frances. Barbara didn’t want her driving to Statesville herself, so Barbara drove her there.
The doctors at Iredell consulted with Al’s doctor here in Winston-Salem, and they decided to transport him here to Forsyth Memorial Hospital to determine whether surgery was necessary. Barbara brought Frances back to Winston-Salem and they waited at the hospital until the doctors told them what was going on. Barbara then took Frances over to pick up her car. Frances went back to the hospital and Barbara arrived home about 0230. As it turns out, Al will need surgery, so Barbara just headed back to pick up their mom and go to the hospital. Poor Colin can’t figure out what’s going on.
I posted last week about possible political payback for the ObuttwadCare web site. Seems like it might be true:
http://dailycaller.com/2013/10/25/michelle-obamas-princeton-classmate-is-executive-at-company-that-built-obamacare-website/
I already saw that article about CGI. I think the author or website are making more out of it than warranted. The Wendigo has probably made a lot of friends (or acquaintances who could be called friends when expedient) and it’s not surprising if one of them works for one of the only “qualified” vendors of federal government IT services. If General Electric gets a no-compete contract for something, I’ll bet we’d find that one of Obamao’s or the Wendigo’s or Harry Reid’s “friends” is an exec there.
The real issue is the no-compete contract. Of course that was because there “wasn’t time” to go through the compete and award process, and of course that’s because Ofuckyoucare was a clusterfuck from the word
goAre you serious?, and that of course is because it was designed to fail.The Iranian-born communist witch who runs things at the WH, Valerie Jarrett, has a daughter and son-in-law who got beaucoups piastres from ObummerCARE contract shenanigans. Someone probably ought also to look into Commissar Sebelius.
This crap goes on with the Repub ass-hats when they’re in the driver’s seat, too, and I have been on record lambasting them, but these criminal thugs take it to whole new levels now. And basically there are about four or five guys who run the entire world’s banking and financial systems, too. Their decisions affect seven-billion people.
We have a 20-30-year window to try to either fix things, which I think is now impossible, or get through the coming collapse of this giant house of cards somehow with as little bloodshed and violence as possible. I suspect it will involve the breakup of North American into a loose confederacy of like-minded cultural and political regions in order to have any chance at all. Meanwhile the current regime intends to plunder as much as they can and hold onto power as long as they can, at whatever cost to the rest of us.
43 here today, and blustery rain sprinkles and wind gusts. Mrs. OFD home from Memphis for approximately thirty hours, total, and off to Floriduh again at O-Dark-Thirty in the morning. OFD himself remains outta work and on UI for the time being, which is really getting old and he is also too old to be hassling with this shit every couple of years.
I am doing a brain transplant on my wife’s computer (mobo/memory/CPU) and will have a perfectly good mobo/memory/cpu available. I was thinking of setting it up as a NAS box in a slimline case, as it has integrated graphics (which we didn’t use). What would be a good linux package for that?
We have a 20-30-year window to try to either fix things, which I think is now impossible, or get through the coming collapse of this giant house of cards somehow with as little bloodshed and violence as possible. I suspect it will involve the breakup of North American into a loose confederacy of like-minded cultural and political regions in order to have any chance at all. Meanwhile the current regime intends to plunder as much as they can and hold onto power as long as they can, at whatever cost to the rest of us.
The problem is that these things cruise along very smoothly. Until, one day, there is a financial disaster. And everyone will be totally surprised except the people in charge and the prophets of doom like Levin, Hannity and Limbaugh.
The USA has weathered many of these financial disasters because the people in charge were honorable and kept the Union together without doing crazy things. This bunch and the bunch that will follow them, may try to do crazy things like make themselves President for life xxxxx term of the disaster. That would spark a civil war. Or several civil wars as you suggested.
There is a group trying to change the USA Constitution but I doubt that it would change anything. In fact, should it meet, I suspect that Obummer would send in the troops (FBI, guard, the new brown xxxx blue shirts (TSA), etc) and arrest everyone in sight and charge them with conspiracy and/or treason:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/do-we-need-a-new-constitutional-convention/
http://www.thenewamerican.com/reviews/books/item/16578-levin-s-risky-proposal-a-constitutional-convention
I’ve never played with NAS but a pal who has made the following recommendation:
“I used computer, some hard drives, and a product called Freenas, which is unix based, woth a web front end.
http://www.freenas.org
have fun.”
Hey, I’ve got a knock on Costco. Tried to take the wife by there tonight after leaving Sams Club at 730pm. Costco closes at 6pm at Saturdays. Sams closes at 830pm on Saturdays.
Several months back, there was a snippet of a report on Costco on some NBC news show or the other, a teaser, as it turned out, for a full one hour CNBC show on the company. One of the things I found interesting was their #1 seller. Anyone know what it is?
Turns out it’s toilet paper. They showed the Costco ppl at the paper plant, going over things and then showed one of their ‘testers’ (a la Consumer Reports) trying to figure out ways to make it better.
All that is to say, we were on that side of town earlier this week and, based on what I saw on the CNBC deal and the shortened Charmin comments here earlier in the week, decided to try their TP. That’s a knock on them for me – it’s basically a two-ply version of the old Scott superthin roll with some design sculpted in. So far, I will say it’s lasting longer than I expected considering more is needed, but we’re not sold yet.
BTW, I noticed that the Charmin we replaced was apparently already shortened like someone else (Lynn I believe) said had occurred in their state.
FWIW, we have an off-the-shell NAS (brand QNAP – they have a variety of models from small to large). I preferred this to DIY mainly because I figure the hardware is likely to be more reliable than a random old computer. So far, I’ve been really happy with it, which is to say, I’ve been able to completely ignore it other than making the occasional backup.
Inside, it’s basically Linux. QNAP has a set of applications installed that you can turn on or off, others you can download, and – being Linux – you can really do anything you want. Processor power and RAM is limited – I wouldn’t try running major services or anything – but you can certainly use it for basic network services like DNS, DHCP, and so forth.
Turns out it’s toilet paper.
Technically you could call that their #2 seller – their #1 seller is their memberships.
Missed this…probably because I’m already a Prime member…
http://money.cnn.com/2013/10/22/pf/amazon-free-shipping-change/
Guess this will generate more Prime members for Jeff.
Things are tough out there. Everyone seems to be working longer and making less or the same, with most thinking things will eventually get better. We have always billed our time at half-rate for travel, but we are getting our first-ever complaints about that. Clients want us to accept 55¢/mile, which is laughable from a cost standpoint. In the end, it is their problem, however. In the type of video work we do (recordings for the legal field), there is not enough work in outlying cities to support people and their equipment. Thus we get calls that take us all over the state. They are not going to find qualified people with good equipment to do the job anywhere but in the capital city. If they go to Chicago or Cincinnati, rates are even higher than ours. We just raised our rates to new customers, and it has not seemed to hurt business so far. All of our business-to-business costs have gone up fairly steeply during the last couple years, and we have eaten those until now. Hopefully, our clients will treat our price rise the same as we have dealt with ours and just accept it. They do not have many alternatives, short of not making the video recordings. Since most all courtrooms in the state now have the equipment to show videos and PowerPoints, not doing video becomes a risk.
Technically you could call that their #2 seller – their #1 seller is their memberships.
Not really. You only buy one membership per year. I suspect that you buy quite a few TP rolls per year.
Sam’s Club says that their number one purchase is Ozarka water cases, the 1/2 liter bottle. Used to be 32 bottles per case, now it is 35 per case. Too dadgum heavy but I buy 2 to 3 cases per week.
Why do you buy so much water? Isn’t the tap water any good?
Costco
I have the same problem with Costco that I have with Sam’s Club. That is, they never seem to sell anything I want. I can be somewhat brand-loyal and the brands I prefer in certain things seem to almost never be available (or not consistently available) at warehouse clubs like Costco and Sam’s Club. When we first got our Costco membership we went there excitedly, grabbed a cart, and started walking the aisles. We got through the entire store and my wife realizes I haven’t put anything in the cart and so she asks me if I am going to get anything and I reply no. She found several things there that she thought she needed or we needed for the household. I found nothing and ended up going to a local/regional grocery store for everything on my list. So, add that to the fact that you have to bag/box your own merchandise and they won’t take credit cards (certain exceptions for debit cards) and I am mostly underwhelmed at what they’re peddling. Also, it’s worth the extra money to not have to spend too much time in the same space as the average warehouse club fanatic.
CGI/Obamacare Website
From what I read this is as much the client’s (US Government’s) fault as it is the vendor’s (CGI’s) fault. Typical idiot client that didn’t do sufficient User Acceptance Testing, didn’t afford the vendor sufficient time to complete it according to the vendor’s original time estimates, cut costs when it came to QA efforts, and pushed the deadline up. I work with idiot clients like that all of the time. There is some truth to the saying that any IT project only be TWO of these three things: On Time, On Budget, or On Scope.
I believe you may be the only person on the planet who can’t find anything to buy at Costco.
We happily buy a lot of Costco’s house-brand (Kirkland) products. In our experience, since confirmed repeatedly by Consumer Reports, with very few exceptions the Kirkland products are as good or better than national brands.
Why do you buy so much water? Isn’t the tap water any good?
We keep 10 cases just in case. Zombies, hurricane, apocalypse, the rapture, civil insurrection, etc.
I put a case in the fridge at all times. That way we can grab a cold water bottle at any time. It is HOT here in the Great State of Texas.
Kirkland products probably *are* national brands. Lots of them bulk up their production lines by selling the same stuff for relabelling as house brands.
That wouldn’t surprise me a bit, especially given Costco’s volume.
I don’t think water will be necessary if the Rapture comes. But yeah, if I lived in TX, AZ, NM, etc., I’d probably be buying cases of wottuh all the time, too. Wottuh is not an issue for us here by the sixth-largest lake in the U.S. Our potential hassles are blizzards, ice storms, bitter cold and maybe a simultaneous power outage for more than a few days. But our microclimate is about ten degrees different from just a mile or two inland; warmer in wintuh and cooler in summuh.
We’re now a lot closer to ‘that time of year, when yellow leaves, or few, or none, etc.’