08:01 – Barbara is headed back to work this morning, after being off for a week. That means Colin is likely to be a bit demonic today, expecting more attention than I’ll be able to give him. I’ll be working on filling the backlog of labeled bottles, starting with ones for biology kits. Costco shipped the second identical Core i3 laptop to me this morning. I’ll be a lot happier when it’s here and set up to produce shipping labels.
I guess I’m just not as interesting as I used to be. Over the weekend, I happened across some archived web site stats, so I compared them to my current ones. Nowadays, 1,000 page reads per day is a pretty good day, and I seldom have more than 1,200 per day. Ten years ago, a good day was 10,000 to 15,000 page reads, and my heaviest days were routinely over 20,000 page reads. Making matters worse, now each day is its own page, while back then I had an entire week’s entries on one page. I conclude that my audience now is maybe 5% of what it was back then. Oh, well. As I’ve said before, I write my journal for me. If anyone else chooses to read it, fine. But I really don’t care how many people read it.
10:45 – Yuck. I just realized that among the biology kit chemical bottles I need to fill are 90 each of glyercol and 1.5% methylcellulose, two of my least-favorite chemicals to fill. The problem is that they’re both extremely viscous. That means they’re difficult to fill bottles with. Using my automated dispensers is difficult because it’s a struggle both to fill the dispensing chamber on the upstroke and to dispense into the bottles on the downstroke. At times, I’ve tried filling manually, but the problem with that is that I’m using narrow-mouth 15 mL bottles and the glycerol or methylcellulose tends to blurp over the mouth and run down the sides.
With glycerol, I can at least heat it before filling the bottles. The viscosity of glycerol at 50C is about one tenth what it is at 20C, albeit still about 200 times the viscosity of water. Methylcellulose, conversely, actually becomes more viscous as the temperature increases. There’s no point to cooling it, because the viscosity is essentially level from room temperature down to the freezing point.
Every time I have to fill glycerol and methylcellulose bottles, I swear that next time I’ll use 30 mL bottles instead of 15 mL bottles. The mouth of a 30 mL bottle is enough wider than that of a 15 mL that it’s much easier to fill manually. But I always forget, so this time I’ve gone out and noted that in the procedures list while I’m thinking about it.
Well, it’s often a blast to read and usually informative and intelligent, which is way more than is the case out there for lesser sites. I see it as kind of a safe port in a storm some weeks.
Sunny with blue skies today so fah; we’re in the period where it’s low 60s during the days and high 30s at night, which is normal for late March rather than late April. Expecting rain, “heavy at times,” Wednesday night, which we do not need.
I expect test scores to drop with Common Core. As I understand it, multiple choice will no longer be used. What I have seen is that many complete the test with random scratch-ins of many of the test questions. With removal, the 25% probability of a correct, randomly penciled in answer will no longer be possible.
“I conclude that my audience now is maybe 5% of what it was back then.”
I found this site through the HardwareGuys site, so now that’s almost defunct and you’re not writing PC books anymore you’re not getting that feed.
Yeah, many/most of my regular readers arrived via my networking and PC hardware books. I’ve lost many of those now that I’m not doing computer stuff, although I’ve picked up a lot of homeschool readers. Interestingly, they tend not to post comments, but instead email me if they contact me at all.
Interesting, I get the whole week on one page here via Firefox. Although part of the hardware guys and PC book crowd at the time I actually got to this page first via a link from Jerry Pournelle.
Sorry, I wasn’t clear. Yes, you get multiple days’ entries on the home page, but looking at my stats, I see that of the page reads so far today about 65% are for the home page, maybe 20% for the April 27th page, 10% for the April 28th page, and the remainder for other pages, mostly in the last week or so but a few from weeks or months earlier.
I arrived here via Mr. Bob’s ‘puter expertise. I stayed because where else can you read about Mr. Chuck getting poked in the crotch by the neighbor dog. 🙂 Or Mr. OFD’s life experiences.
I get to travel to Hartford, CT, with the wife this Wed. She’s keynoting for the CT National Society of MBA’s. They pay well. And buy our book for the local schools. Then we drive to Philly to visit daughter #2 as the Army labels her. Back to Vegas on Sat.
Bienvenue le East Coast, MrAtoz!
Hartford is tied with Wooster and Providence, RI as the second-largest city in New England; I have cousins and an uncle there.
And Mrs. OFD has cousins in Philadelphia.
My life experiences, LOL. What a long, strange trip it’s been, to be sure.
Off now to get meds, etc, for violently ill Mrs. OFD taking care of similarly ill MIL, with the former having to leave for Maryland either later tonight or tomorrow. They caught one of those virus attacks that hit you before you know what’s what; immediate vomiting and out the other end as well. I hope not to pick it up.
I read about some of the police force’s finest earlier. At least they have now fired this prick. I wonder if they will prosecute. Oh, yeah, yawn on the prosecuting:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2614386/Tennessee-police-photographed-choking-unresisting-college-student-passes-out.html
I read about some of the police force’s finest earlier.
This is in my area of the country as I work in downtown Knoxville on the UT campus. A lot of pissed off people over this incident.
They have also suspended, with pay, the other two officers that were involved in the arrest. The arrest report reads like the accused was trying to resist yet witness statements indicate that he was not trying to resist. The report states the officer was using pressure points to subdue the subject and told the subject to go to his knees and he complied. That is supposedly what the witnesses observed.
In my opinion the officers knew they had been had and the reports were written to protect themselves. Which is fairly typical when they have been caught. In the case multiple witnesses and photographs contradict their reports.
The sheriff, JJ Jones, is up for re-election soon and his swift action in firing the officer is for political gain. The officer was quickly terminated which is surprising as in most cases it takes an internal affairs investigation.
A friend of mine who works for THP is not so sure the termination was proper action based on just this single event. There were probably prior incidents and accusations against the officer that could not be proven. Enough that in concert with this event were enough for termination.
The officer’s career in law enforcement is over. He could not even get a job working mall security. Better learn how to drive a truck.
The former officer looks like a thug. If the situation is really as the news reports have it, firing the guy is grossly insufficient. He should be arrested and face numerous felony charges, not least of which is assault under the color of authority.
Usually the union prevents that as their contract stipulates some long drawn-out process for terminating an officer.
He should be arrested and face numerous felony charges
The stories here are that further charges are being considered against the officer.
Usually the union prevents that as their contract stipulates some long drawn-out process for terminating an officer.
That is what I thought. Terminating an officer required a long review during which time the officer is confined to non-patrol duties in the main or branch office, something having no contact with the public. In this case the officer was gone in less than 48 hours which indicates to me, and my friend in the THP, that there were other incidents with the same officer.
Most of the officers are good people doing their job. Some let the job go to their head and they overstep their bounds. This officer had 22 years with the department, flushed down the drain perhaps. If the officer gets charged, and convicted, of a crime his pension is gone.
The people partying in the streets were students and the police overreacted by showing much force. Weapons drawn, shotguns out, dozens of officers and police vehicles. It would appear to be an overreaction on the part of the sheriff, police and campus police. There will be more about this incident.
Of course, our local TV stations are never ones to let such an event go quietly. We will have team reporting, interviews, etc. with reporters that have visions of CNN dancing in their puny little heads.
Two major problems continue within “law enforcement”:
1.) Training sucks. Badly. They’re trained now to do whatever it takes to not get hurt, even if they only barely suspect there is any kind of threat. And the default reaction is to beat, tase or shoot now.
2.) When an officer or agent goes berserk on someone, there is first the Blue Line of Silence and tacit support from fellow officers, who will write and re-write reports until what is needed has been gotten, and lie in court under oath. Meanwhile the brass and the local political ass-hats will back up their officers no matter what, in general. They’re scared to death of mass civil disorder and any possible uprising, so even a college frat party gone wild will get those kinds of reactions, i.e., break out the shotguns, crew-served weapons, SWAT, dogs, etc. Insane. I broke up that shit *alone* with a PR-24 back in the day. Assuming I couldn’t nab the ringleaders and talk them into cooling it. Which was more often the case.
In other nooz, related to UT, is this intel on the current state of science fiction, by UT law professor Glenn Reynolds:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/04/28/hugo-awards-science-fiction-reading-politics-larry-correia-column/8282843/
Steve Jobs speaks from the grave?
http://www.cringely.com/2014/04/28/avram-miller-says-steve-jobs-one-apple-intro/
Based on this post by Avram Miller:
http://twothirdsdone.com/2014/04/28/how-apple-crushed-google-in-the-fall-of-2015-from-my-book-the-future-history-of-technology/
In other nooz, related to UT, is this intel on the current state of science fiction, by UT law professor Glenn Reynolds:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/04/28/hugo-awards-science-fiction-reading-politics-larry-correia-column/8282843/
The people involved in Speculative Fiction, the current meaning of the letters SF (that is supposedly more inclusive than SFF: Science Fiction and Fantasy), other than the actual writers, are very liberal. There was a huge blowup recently in SFWA where they threw out all the white male authors over 50. I wish I was kidding.
Robert Heinlein is undeniably the great SF writer ever. He would not win a single award nowadays due to his extreme libertarianism. He was actually a member of the communist party before WWII and totally changed during the war.
The hard Left’s long march through just about everything in Western civ/culture won a lot of its battles by the way they changed the language (opposite of what the late Eric Blair recommended) and the names of stuff; this is a typical case: Science Fiction then becomes “Speculative Fiction,” and thus subsumes a whole boat-load of other categories that they can then populate with their own shit. Which generally is a long way from science; they only support science when it’s in their interests, such as the warmist plague, all the “green” wackiness, and their herculean efforts to disprove the existence of God.
Naturally Caucasian males over fifty are Beyond the Pale now, not only there but in lots of other places; we are loathed and hated, and the sooner we die off of our own accord the better they’ll like it, but they won’t rule out killing us off outright. What’s funny are two things: it’s older white males who’ve brought us to this point over the decades; and, it is older white males who will continue to rule the world with money and firepower. While us little old white male people, or as the Aussie art critic Robert Hughes calls us, the ‘pale grey penis people,’ can be crapped on and shoved around as de facto sacrificial goats.
Heinlein is probably right up there with Hitler in the diseased minds of these scumbags; and IIRC, there are other SF writers who would also be outside the Pale now. They did the same thing over the past half-century to the Western canon of writers; in grad school they made every possible attempt to force us to study and celebrate a host of non-entity women and minorities who just did/do not make the cut. There’s just no other way to put it; my specialty was poetry; OK, we have exactly one woman poet here in Murka who can be profitably read and admired at a high level: Emily Dickinson, the Belle of Amherst. Second-place runners-up, maybe Anne Bradstreet (one of my ancestors) and Marianne Moore. And all three are pretty uneven and it ain’t the whole corpus you wanna get into, believe me. African-American writers? Frederick Douglass, not much loved by the Left, and Langston Hughes, neither in the category of Hawthorne, Melville or Twain. Leaving Murka entirely and going back to Perfidious Albion, they tried to valorize (they love words like that) Aphra Behn (famous, eh?) and Christine de Pisan over Marlowe and Shakespeare. If they’re discussing Shakey, it’s always in terms of race, class and gender, and so they’ll focus on evil Shylock, the “monster” Caliban (transgressive, you see), Othello played by white guys and Lear by a black guy (they love that kinda stuff, too), and how Shakey perpetrated the fascist Tudor power structure through his works. Plus he was gay, of course.
But don’t get me started. As the late Ezra Pound used to say, “…it would take a bile specialist…” They hate Pound, too; you know why; those broadcasts over Mussolini’s radio network, mainly. They also hate T.S. Eliot (“Cats!”) due to his anti-Semitism of course, and his affinity for the Anglican religion and monarchy.
Shit, here I go again…OK, stopping now…
My daughter is a HUGE fan of Monster Hunter International and Correia. As a gift to my daughter, I backed Correia’s Kickstarter MHI coin project. Got them in Feb and they are gorgeous. I’ve got MHI cued up on my iPad mini. New MHI in Jun/Jul.
re Colin bouncing around like a wild thing, you should have “diagnosed” him with ADHD and just dosed him to the gills on Ritalin. If it’s good enough for 9.7% of our nation’s boys, it’s good enough for him.
Another reason Mr. Correia may not be to the liking of the usual libtard ass-hats:
http://monsterhunternation.com/2012/12/20/an-opinion-on-gun-control/
I gave Larry Correia’s first book, “Monster Hunter International”, a rating of five out of five stars back in 2011 for being so original:
http://www.amazon.com/review/R1UERKRLRU56WW
“Anita Blake meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer and turns into a guy named Owen. Even somewhat reminds me of the Deathstalker. If you like Urban Fantasy, you will love this hardcore story. If not, oh well.”
“The story is sound, the concept is good, the good guys are imperfect and the bad guys are real bad.”
He was actually a member of the communist party before WWII and totally changed during the war.
No, Heinlein was never a communist. He was a member of the EPIC wing of the Democratic party in California in the 30s, a sort-of socialist group that was started by Upton Sinclair. This is all laid out in the excellent biography of Heinlein, of which the first volume is out. It covers his life up to 1948 when he married his third wife, Virginia. It’s pretty apparent that Virginia is responsible in large part for his turn to libertarianism.
I just checked on the second volume – it is slated for June 3rd publication. And unfortunately, the author died suddenly last week.
Has anyone seen the dash cam video of this shooting. I mean, the picture shows four shots through the windshield. Hard to believe the cop couldn’t just step out of the way and arrest her or chase her down in his car. Why jump on the hood and start blasting:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2614637/That-unnecessary-force-Loved-ones-rally-support-teen-girl-shot-dead-police-claim-tried-run-over.html
Cop killings — out-of-control pigs killing “civilians” without justification — are going to continue until cop killings — killing of stupid pigs — begin in earnest.
That means Colin is likely to be a bit demonic today, expecting more attention than I’ll be able to give him.
When my dog starts acting crazy (usually before bedtime if we did not take a 2 mile walk), I give her a beef boney. That will calm her down for 30 minutes or so:
http://www.walmart.com/ip/Ol-Roy-Beef-Basted-Biscuits-Dog-Treats-4-lb-Dogs/20606835
Yes, she is spoiled.
I always enjoy reading the comments by readers after stories like that; currently running about 50-50, one half saying she’s a dumbass broad who got what she deserved and the other half saying it’s a brutal outrage, etc., etc.
From the windshield holes and the testimony it certainly looks like this asshole was standing on the hood and firing down through it at her. No excuse for that, none. No matter how you look at it.
And here is the straight scoop on the Second Amendment and related matters:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/04/laurence-m-vance/10-thoughts-on-the-2nd-amendment/
OFD, it warms the cockles of my heart to hear you mention Marianne Moore. I’m fond of Amy Lowell, too.
Hi Bob,
I just had a thought about dispensing the viscous solutions; turkey baster?
This is all laid out in the excellent biography of Heinlein, of which the first volume is out.
I have ordered both volumes for my Dad’s birthday:
http://www.amazon.com/Robert-A-Heinlein-Dialogue-1907-1948/dp/B0068EOIC8/
http://www.amazon.com/Robert-A-Heinlein-Vol-Dialogue/dp/0765319616/
Hopefully he will read and pass back along the way.
As it turns out, I had no problem filling methylcellulose with the automatic dispenser, event though the stuff is really gloppy (to use the technical term). I have 90 bottles to fill with glycerol, so we’ll see how that goes.