10:23 – Science kit sales remain steady. Earlier this month we passed total 2013 revenue. November has been good and December is usually a pretty heavy month, so 2014 revenue should comfortably exceed 2013 revenue. I expect 2015 to be better still, especially once I have time to get some of our new kits available.
I’ve never seen anything like the prepping book phenomenon on Amazon. There are scores if not hundreds of titles available. KEbooks.com, the site I get a daily free-book email from, even has a prepping book of the day now. Almost without exception, these “books” are complete garbage. They remind me of a restaurant review I once read (or perhaps wrote): “The food was terrible and the portions were so small.”
These so-called books usually contain a few thousand words spread over 30 to 50 “pages” that are mostly white space. The text itself is often illiterate, and usually obviously stolen from various Internet sites, sometimes without even an attempt to file off the serial numbers. The advice is almost uniformly bad.
For example, I just downloaded a free copy of The Beginning Prepper’s Guide to Firearms, which is actually better than most of the garbage prepping books I’ve seen. At least it appears that the guy actually wrote it rather than just stealing stuff and pasting it into a “book”. But “better” is very much relative. This author, for example, recommends a shotgun as a home defense weapon. So far, so good. But he lost me when he recommended loading that shotgun with blanks. Seriously. He’s under the impression that blanks are as effective a load as buckshot at in-home distances. No, they’re not. It’s true that the wad in a blank shotshell can cause injury at very close range, but across the room it’ll be no more effective than a paint ball gun, if that.
Many of these garbage prepping books have mostly or all five-star reviews. Oddly, usually six of them. It’s pretty obvious that the “authors” are using one of those “five-stars-for-five-dollars” review services, and apparently $30 is their advertising/promotion limit. I can’t believe that Amazon.com hasn’t stomped all over this paid-review abuse.
Robert, have you considered looking at some older (i.e., pre-1960) printings of the Boy Scout Handbook? The Boy Scouts used to take their motto “Be Prepared” seriously.
When I was a Boy Scout we would routinely have survival weekends (summer and winter, 2 to 4 days) where we hiked into the woods with only a pocket knife and a piece of flint, sometimes we had the luxury of a fish hook and a piece of fishing line.
That sort of activity is no longer allowed. Too bad, those were some of the best times I spent in the outdoors.
The Amazon review system is mainly a joke, except for some of the gear and tool stuff, where people have obviously used it and noted pros and cons pretty accurately and honestly. Books are another matter, and authors often get relatives and friends to write glowing 5-star reviews and keep piling them on.
The basics of prepping are mainly common sense; we need heat, light, water and food, plus medical care and security. You look at your own local situation and identify where you’re falling short and beef it up accordingly. Or move fah, fah away and staht over.
Our place here is a work-in-progress across all of those categories.
43 here right now with rain showers expected tonight; continued very windy with strong gusts from the south. Beavering away at stuff inside the house today in between NFL games. Mrs. OFD down in the City of Brotherly Love and scheduled to come back up here Friday night. Next Saturday I’ll be getting certified once again in CPR/First Aid/First Responder.
“That sort of activity is no longer allowed.”
Management decided it was far more important to recruit and celebrate gay stuff while also being super PC. It’s nothing much like when DadCooks and I were in it. What a shame.
I have no liking for the BSA. I was drummed out of the cub scouts immediately after my first meeting when I refused to pray. They told my mother I wasn’t welcome there. Fuck them.
Odd; I do not recall any forced measures for us to pray, either in Cub Scouts or later on. We would have thought that strange, ’cause we were from all different denominations and to have a hosting church facility push their own stuff on us would have been verboten in my time and place of eastern Maffachufetts in the 60s.
Not in New Castle, PA. This would have been in the early 60’s. The local cub scout pack announced a meeting for new recruits. My mother took me to the local department store to buy a uniform and accessories. The first thing they did in the meeting was hold a group prayer. I didn’t say anything, but the guy running things saw that I didn’t bow my head or otherwise participate in the prayer. I told him that I was not religious. He told me that the scouts were a religious organization, that everyone had to pray, and that he was going to have to ask me to leave. So I left and walked home. Fuck the scouts.
I did Cub Scouts for a year or two. No prayers that I remember, but leader was my best friend’s father and he wasn’t religious at all, that I know of. (He was also my, and my friend’s, Chemistry professor freshman year in engineering school. Small town life; can’t get away from people.) (And one of my other friend’s dad was the sophomore year Calc III, DiffEq, and Linear Algebra prof. Small town life.)
I suspect the troop leaders had a lot of discretion, at least in the 1970s.
Didn’t look into any kind of scouting for any of my kids. They’ve become useless so far as “being prepared” for a tough life is concerned.
Lynn, do you have thoughts on this article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alexis-crow/america-fracking-saudi-oil_b_6091942.html
I suspect it’s full of crap, in that I suspect the oilmen are watching their income and expenses (or their CFOs are, or their minority shareholders are) and they wouldn’t be continuing to operate the wells, and make new ones, if they were losing money on them. I also suspect it’s full of crap because it’s at HuffPo, but that’s a different issue.
“He told me that the scouts were a religious organization, that everyone had to pray…”
He was entirely incorrect and it’s too bad you ended up with that group. This is like unto some of my fellow Catholics having once run into one bad priest or nun during their childhood and have since then cast the entire Church and its billion adherents into Outer Darkness forever, the baby with the bathwater.
But Mr. SteveF is correct about how it is nowadays; which brings up the question…how do we prepare kids and/or grandkids for the tougher life that is coming? Because the ones I know have zero clue.
I let my boys deal with problems of their own making. I’ll offer advice if asked and necessary assistance if I think the solution is beyond them. Before, during, and after I do my best to teach them useful skills and guide them toward a tough, pragmatic attitude. Best I can do.
Best I can try to do, that is. I’m actively sabotaged by their mothers, who want to keep them babies forever. That’s not their stated intent, but actions speak louder than words.
Both boys are in engineering school. That’s good, and some evidence that they’re at least minimally pragmatic. But neither is nearly as competent as I was at their age, and neither is more than a small fraction of how tough I was. I don’t know what to do about that.
“I’m actively sabotaged by their mothers…”
And their teachers, no doubt, in the de facto matriarchy that runs the publik skools in this country. Been there, done that. Also their grandmothers, I’m guessing, as was the case here. Back then I was always wrong, wrong, wrong. Now, many years later, peeps is finding out how often I was right.
“But neither is nearly as competent as I was at their age, and neither is more than a small fraction of how tough I was. I don’t know what to do about that.”
Ditto. We were competent and tough at that age, but at what cost? And what is it worth if we are unable to pass it on or convey its importance at some level now?
My dad felt the same way about me, as SteveF feels about his sons, because I refused to join the wrestling team in school, or take boxing lessons at the Y. I WANTED to take swimming lessons at the Y, but he nixed that for some reason — probably because I refused the boxing classes. (Actually, my parents refused my two main childhood desires — to learn to swim and to learn to play the piano. I never did that to either of my kids. I did learn to swim from another kid who took the Y class and taught me what they learned.)
I knew what I wanted to do in life in the 5th grade, and I let nothing get in the way of that, including any extra-curricular activities that had nothing to do with my goals.
I never did Cub Scouts, but we had the prayer thing in Boy Scouts. I was already enrolled before I found out my calling, so I stuck with it, but I came to see in retrospect that was a mistake. The pack leader was a masochist and actually had his own set of rules that left kids in state parks 50 to 100 miles from home, if they did not show up at the prescribed location at precisely the time he specified for the return trip home. He would probably be jailed for that today.
Troop was sponsored by the Methodist church in Tiny Town, and we prayed at the beginning and end of the meeting, in addition to reciting the Pledge of Allegiance after the prayer beginning the meeting. After all that, we did the Boy Scout oath or whatever it was called. Quite a ritual. Prayer was never done by the troop leader, but always by the assistants or the senior scout. Apparently, the troop leader was not religious.
At the time, religion was neither a plus or minus in my life, so I actually just paid no attention to it or the prayer requirements. In second grade, we were required by the teacher to memorize the 23rd Psalm. No public school would get away with that, these days.
Chuck, I wasn’t referring to physical toughness, above, but to mental and emotional toughness: dealing with setbacks, not getting upset when people aren’t nice to you, forcing yourself to keep going when you’re exhausted or sick, forcing yourself to do something when you really don’t want to.
Re: Blanks in shotguns
The advice to load your shotguns with “blanks” is excellent advice for when you want to scare the burglars away; you can say to the District Attorney, “I wasn’t trying to hurt anybody, that’s why I loaded it with blanks!” Good advice if you expect to be prosecuted.
In TEOTWAWKI, there won’t be many cops, and probably no DAs either, or at least, none who will prosecute you for defending yourself. “Scaring” away the hordes of looters won’t work; the only deterrent will be piles of looter corpses.
Or perhaps, heads on pikes.
OFD wrote: “He was entirely incorrect and it’s too bad you ended up with that group.”
Actually, it’s you who are incorrect. From Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts: “The Boy Scouts of America maintains that no member can grow into the best kind of citizen without recognizing an obligation to God. In the first part of the Scout Oath or Promise the member declares, ‘On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law.’ The recognition of God as the ruling and leading power in the universe and the grateful acknowledgment of His favors and blessings are necessary to the best type of citizenship and are wholesome precepts in the education of the growing members.”
I was kicked out of the Wolf Cubs for the same reason our good host was. A refusal to participate in prayers.
More about the BSA and it’s requirements about religion: http://web.archive.org/web/20080509074048/http://www.bsalegal.org/duty-to-god-cases-224.asp
Note the three cases referenced at the bottom of the webpage.
“The pack leader was a masochist…”
Sounds more like a sadist.
“…we were required by the teacher to memorize the 23rd Psalm. No public school would get away with that, these days.”
We had that, plus “The Lord’s Prayer,” and the genuine Christmas hymns at that time of year, singing “O Come All Ye Faithful” in Latin and “Silent Night” in German. We also learned a plethora of music from the standard American songbook, including folk songs and Broadway. All of this, of course, ruined us terribly, and made our lives a living hell forever, and we are filled with hate and loathing and contempt for those teachers and those evil traditions, which have caused all the misery and suffering in the world.
Things are much bettuh now.
“A refusal to participate in prayers.”
Well, all I can say, is that regardless of Lord Baden-Powell’s precepts, we were never forced to pray and I don’t remember ever doing that there at all anyway. I’m sorry you guys had crummy experiences and suspect that a lot of latitude was given to local scoutmasters and BSA administrations. As we all know, Maffachufetts has been a very liberal state in regard to religious matters and the last time it officially forced religion on its citizens was in the 17th-C.
Times were different then and it was not even considered strange or awful that there was prayer in the public schools; now of course it is Anathema writ large. But rest assured any Muslim kids will be able to do their thing here before long, as is already the case in Europe and the U.K.
A willingness to pray is not the same as being forced to. Each and every meeting was started with a prayer. You probably don’t remember it, because you weren’t singled out for your lack of belief. Things haven’t changed over the years, either. Here’s a PDF of the 2015-2016 Cub Scout Requirements:
http://www.scouting.org/filestore/program_update/pdf/Appended%20Requirements.pdf
See the first paragraph on page 4.
Tiger Adventure: My Family’s Duty to God
Complete requirement 1 and at least two from requirements 2–4.
1. With your adult partner, find out what duty to God means to your family.
2. Find out what makes each member of your family special.
3. With your family, make a project that shows your family’s beliefs about God.
4. Participate in a worship experience or activity with your family.
I also spent time in detention in elementary school for refusing to recite the Lord’s Prayer. My dislike of religion started at age 5, when my mother, who took care to have me baptized as a Protestant as was the norm in those days, enrolled me in a Catholic school kindergarten. She chose the school solely on being close to home and having an after-school daycare (single mom who worked full-time). Every day the class would line up to go to chapel, and the RCs all genuflected with a dip in the Holy Water font. When I tried to do the same, my hand was slapped by the nun and I was told “not for Protestants”. That started the thought process that if my religion was “wrong” then logic dictated that no religion was “right”, and my atheism was begun.
I, for one, would like to have all these rotten nuns and priests who did stuff like that to little kids in a room for just five minutes.
I got slapped, punched, kicked, thrown into the wall and publicly humiliated more times than I count by public school teachers, for various misdemeanors and felonies as defined by them. I also understood back then that they were in a tiny minority and did not nurse bitterness about it for decades afterward, though I will confess to a feeling of righteousness and triumphalism to this day since that morning when my fourth-grade teacher, Miss Crosby, tore up my history paper in front of the class and dumped it in the wastebasket with an evil grin on her face. That sent me off on my lifelong fascination with history; if a bitch like Miss Crosby didn’t like it, then bingo, I was all for it.
In any case, I’m sorry that anyone had crummy experiences with scoutmasters, nuns, priests, teachers, whatever; as in any occupation, there are rotten apples, and yeah, maybe the institutions themselves are rife with incompetence, stupidity and corruption, just as human beings themselves are rife with those things. They’re all human institutions, and thus, prone to stuff like this. We deal with it, try to fix it, and move on.
And quite a lot of people have chosen, as is their perogative, to bail out completely; so be it.
I was in scouts from cub scouts through being a scoutmaster, roughly 20 years, and never had anyone try to make me religious. Except one guy when I worked at Philmont tried to convert me to Mormonism. I asked him about the church investments in Coke and he went away in a huff. Anyway, the best book the scouts put out that might be called a survival book is the 1967 Fieldbook. Twenty four chapters on topics that include Woods Tools, Ropework, Cooking (with suggestions that mirror those I’ve heard here), Safety and First Aid, and Winter Camping. The only mention of religion in the entire book is when they print the scout law at the beginning of the book, the last point is “a scout is reverent”. That was generally obeyed about as much as the one that states “a scout is obedient”. The other book I would recommend would be a non-scout book, Emergency Medical Guide, third edition, by John Henderson, MD. The last edition was published in 1973 and is somewhat dated, but it’s better than anything else on the subject I’ve found.
Yes, “…thrifty, clean, brave and reverent.” The word “reverent” was the only thing in that mantra we memorized then. No one sat us down and made us pray, in either Cub Scouts or Boy Scouts, but, as always, YMMV.
CBS just pissed me off; a one-point game between Baltimore Ravens and San Diego Chargers; Chargers score and tie and then kick the point. Ravens have the ball, and there’s 24 seconds left in the game and they’re moving it up the field. CBS cuts to commercials and then directly to the Patriots/Green Bay game. It would take a bile specialist…
“The pack leader was a masochist…”
Sounds more like a sadist.
Mean, mode; masochist, sadist — I am not doing too well on words today. And that one beer I had was back on Thanksgiving. Honest!
Hey, take it from Mr. OFD; if you don’t slug ’em down regular, that one beer can kick your butt!
(OFD, who gave up beers for hahd stuff years ago, more bang for the buck was the plan…)
All that game switching used to be done by humans. There were few screw-ups after the Heidi incident. But it looks like many are now happening since automation has taken control of all that game switching:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidi_moment
Edit: Must’ve been your local station cutting away when they weren’t supposed to. None of the conversation threads I have read on that game mention anything irregular, and 2 of them say something like ‘when the clock hit zero’. So somebody saw the game end.
The Heidi fiasco happened on NBC; I worked for the CBS affiliate. But after that event, everyone in programming and engineering was assembled to hear the command: don’t EVER cut out of a sporting event that is not yet over.
The automation computers are pretty complex. There are hard times, soft times, make next, make timed. Then during sports events, signals are sent down the line by the network to trigger the breaks. Biggest problem is when a game runs long and the local station has run all of the breaks scheduled for the game, but because of the extra length, the network cues another break. In the old days we just shouted “SHIT” and filled with the live announcer plugging upcoming shows and anything else we could throw up in order to keep from playing something out of its scheduled order.
Nowadays, I imagine things like that cause cascading screw-ups.
I have no ideer how it happened but your explication of historical events makes a certain amount of sense, and is what I sorta suspected. Still, a royal PITA. As it was, the Chargers held onto their win.
Watching Patriots kinda having a tough time with the Packers so far.
I second the recommendation of the old BSA Fieldbook. It has quite a bit of practical instruction in wilderness/forested area survival techniques. The chapters on building structures from rope and logs/branches are quite good.
Robert, your experience with Cub Scouts was definitely not normal or correct.
I was an Episcopalian before they strayed from what I and many others consider the correct doctrine. I don’t mean to start a theological discussion and I understand your beliefs. Why I mention it, is that my Cub Pack and then Boy Scout Troop was sponsored by Synagog (old spelling) and I was the only non-Jew. Never was I made to feel uncomfortable and was accepted for who I was, just as two fellows who were gay (before gay became fashionable).
Later in life I became a Pack and Troop Leader, in an organization that was sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and we met in an Episcopal Church.
It is amazing that so many years ago, in many areas, there was so much less discrimination, prejudgement, and bias.
I just set up my new Amazon Fire TV Stick today. I bought mine from Amazon when they were selling them for $20 to Prime members. The list price is $40, although I have seen ads for them for about $25.
The device is an HDMI dongle about 3.5″ long and .75″ wide. It is designed to plug into an HDMI port on a TV or monitor. I hooked mine up to an HDMI to VGA adapter and it works fine. It is designed to stream Netflilx, Amazon Instant Video, Hulu Plus, You Tube and several others over Wi-Fi. It has a dual core ARM processor with 1 gb of RAM and 8 GB of flash storage. It comes with a remote and an AC adapter.
For $20 (or even the list price of $40), it is an impressive device. Because I bought it from Amazon, it had my Amazon credentials programmed when I received it. All I had to do was put batteries in the remote, plug it into the HDMI adapter and enter my Wi-Fi password and I was online. It spent about 5 minutes downloading and installing a software update and I could then view the different services. It has my Prime watchlist, so I can view and play items in the list. It also has Miracast, which allows me to display my Android phone screen on the large screen. I plan to mainly use it plugged into a video projector to watch videos on our 8′ wide projection screen. Audio will be through our surround sound. There is an Android app which allows me to use my phone as the remote. That will be useful when the remote gets misplaced. With the phone app, I can do voice searches.
The device compares favorably with the $35 (list) Google Chromecast and the $49 (list) Roku Streaming Stick. It has far more computing power, RAM and storage than the first PC I bought in about 1985 for about $1,500 (a 286 with 1 meg of RAM and a 40 megabyte hard drive). It does most of what the $100 Apple TV and similar devices do.
Rick, the gadget freak, in Portland
I was an Episcopalian before they strayed from what I and many others consider the correct doctrine. I don’t mean to start a theological discussion and I understand your beliefs. Why I mention it, is that my Cub Pack and then Boy Scout Troop was sponsored by Synagog (old spelling) and I was the only non-Jew. Never was I made to feel uncomfortable and was accepted for who I was, just as two fellows who were gay (before gay became fashionable).
When my sons (now 26 and 30) were younger, I was an assistant Cub Master and assistant Scout Master of a Jewish pack and troop. We called ours the “We’ve never run into that problem before” troop. That was the answer we got when we asked why so many council functions were on the sabbath or how could a scout keep kosher at summer camp. Our members ranged from Orthodox to secular. We had a number of members who were not Jewish. I was with the Cub Scouts at a summer camp and they had a “non denominational” (read generic Christian) service scheduled. We advised the camp leaders that we were not going to participate and our boys went off and played soccer. Somehow word got out that we were having our own service and a number of other scouts decided to see what a Jewish service was like. I think they liked the soccer game better than the official service.
We never made an issue of religion, or lack thereof. The fathers were mostly professionals, one MD, one Dentist and three lawyers – it was a Jewish troop, after all. My older son spent his junior year of High School as an exchange student in Germany and was not interested in Scouts when he returned. My younger son lost interest when he decided girls were more interesting. Still they both enjoyed it. Our older son just told my wife today not to get rid of his Scout shirt.
I think the emphasis on religion varies in Scouts, just like it does in other places.
Rick, the atheistic Jew, in Portland
“I was an Episcopalian before they strayed from what I and many others consider the correct doctrine.”
I’m one of the “many others.” Baptized as such, in the old 1928 BCP, raised as such, an acolyte and Episcopal Youth Fellowship enthusiast kid. Parents left it while I was still an acolyte. I stopped going for some years while I was in the military and the cops, for various reasons but started up again in 1980. Confirmed as an adult in ’82, and later a verger and church school teacher, but I was already by then reading a lot and seeing and hearing a lot more that disturbed me.
Hung on until 1995 when I finally converted, and not much of a stretch, either, as I was High Church. Received into the Catholic Church on Easter, 1996.
Just watched the Patriots throw away a game they coulda won; nearly zero pressure on the Packers’ QB, Aaron Rogers, and apparently unable to stop their offense much. And blew at least two shots at the end zone. They still lead the AFC but share the W-L record with three NFC teams now. Could be interesting playoffs.
And I might be the only pro football fan here…just occurred to me…LOL.
Now about to install CentOS 7 on the former Mint machine and keep hacking away at certifications for the sheer fun of it. CCENT/CCNA, BSD sys admin, RHCSA/RHCE. And take up “open source programming.” On the off chance I can pick up a gig here and there still in IT while I also work on alternatives; one way or the other by New Year’s Day.
Lynn, do you have thoughts on this article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alexis-crow/america-fracking-saudi-oil_b_6091942.html
I would tell you to consider the source. I posted a reliable article yesterday that fracked oil cost can be lowered to $40/bbl in the USA and we are a long ways away from that. I am already seeing major cost cutbacks in the industry in case that happens.
Saudi Arabia is running 83 GOSP (gas/oil separation plants) last time I heard. The plants cost them $100 million each to build and raises their production cost to $20/bbl. That $10/bbl cost is bogus. They have to process 10 barrels of salt water per barrel of oil in order to keep the reservoir pressure up in Ghawar. Shipping adds another $10/bbl to the USA so they can still undercut the USA costs and make money. But there is a larger question, can they continue to produce at their current level AND can they cut back their internal usage (three million barrels per day last I heard and rising rapidly) ? Lots of good info here about the middle east:
http://www.amazon.com/Twilight-Desert-Coming-Saudi-Economy/dp/0471790184/
Also, the USA is converting to natural gas in a major way. Many truckers are now converting their diesel rigs to LNG at cost of $65,000 since the fuel is half price on a gallon basis. Most truckers use 20,000 gallons of diesel per year. Plus GE is getting ready to release their LNG locomotive with LNG storage tender car. The usage of natural gas in the USA last year was 26 TSCF (trillion standard cubic feet) and rising at 4 to 5% per year.
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/ng_cons_sum_dcu_nus_a.htm
Miles_Teg might like “football” or, as we call it, the ball game for ungulates who haven’t evolved hands yet. You know, kickball. I gotta admit that kickball has one big advantage over real sports: at the end of every game, all the players get a juice box and a participation certificate.
I don’t actually give a rat’s nether regions about any professional sport (or, as I call it, clowns in funny costumes entertaining the mindless masses), but I’ll take any opportunity to twist Miles_Teg’s tail feathers. He thinks Hillary Bitch Clinton is a yummylicious babe, so he’s pretty well written himself out of the human race and deserves any and all abuse that comes his way.
And I might be the only pro football fan here
Hate to double team you, OFD, but I also seem to recall that you never used to talk about football here before you got cable…
(or, as I call it, clowns in funny costumes wearing their IQ numbers on their shirts entertaining the mindless masses)
There, fixed it for ya…
Hillary XXXXX Clinton
I prefer Monica Lewinsky’s boyfriend’s wife.
I forgot to mention that the reservoir engineers are arguing if the fracked wells are good for 3 years, 7 years, 20 years, 40 years, 100 years or 200 years. The 3 year guys have already lost out and we are approaching 7 years on many of the older wells. Very few of the fracked wells are producing at 100% maximum flow, most of them are running at 10% to 20% flow (choked) to extend their lives since they were so expensive to drill. The 200 year guys are making a very good argument and are starting to persuade most of the other engineers since the reservoirs are not noticeably declining. That is why the latest prediction of crude oil for Texas is ten million barrels per day in a couple of years, five years at the most unless we totally stop drilling.
The other problem is stranded natural gas. Probably 2/3rds of the natural gas being produced right now in the USA is being flared. In order to get it to market, a complete infrastructure must be built of treating plants (removal of CO2, H2s, SO2 and H2)), processing plants (removal of heavier hydrocarbons such as propane, butane, ethane, etc), pipelines, compressor stations, dehydrating facilities for pipelines exposed to cold weather). And then distribution facilities to commercial and residential customers. Billions of dollars with extreme local, state and federal governmental regulations to take into consideration.
A lot of the stranded natural gas is also looking at putting in small LNG plants. LNG-in-a-box is a popular concept right now. Also, there are a couple of projects being planned to convert to natural gas to gasoline and diesel using the old but proven Fischer–Tropsch process. There is one being built in Louisiana for 200,000 barrels of diesel per day at a cost of $24 billion. Very expensive!
http://www.hydrocarbonprocessing.com/Article/3192932/GE-unveils-LNG-In-A-Box-technology-for-transportation-fuels-market.html
I am seeing projects getting canceled right, left and sideways right now. Basically, any project that has a payback of 12 months or less is being built. All other projects are getting “re-evaluated”.
I watched the Houston Texans romp over the Tennessee Oilers today with the old quarterback coming off the bench and throwing five touchdown passes. It was nice!
I am watching “Frozen” now with my daughter. It is ok so far.
“…He thinks Hillary Bitch Clinton is a yummylicious babe…”
If memory serves, he’s backed off that in light of her recent appearances, which to me would suffice to scare a buzzard off a corpse-wagon.
He also digs Sandra Bullock, a skinny little anorexic wench. But to each his own.
“I also seem to recall that you never used to talk about football here before you got cable…”
Rarely. But now I got sumthin else to blab on about. Like bad calls by the refs, who often seem blind; the desirability of certain cheerleaders and players’ wives; the weird fashions on display among the crowds; and the occasional spectacular play. I’m pretty sizable but outta shape, so I’d hesitate before walking up to some of these guys and discussing what clowns they are and those IQ numbers. If one is so inclined, well, start with Vince Wilfork.
And I have no idea what Monica’s bf’s wife looks like and will take what Mr. Lynn sez with a grain of salt.
And I have no idea what Monica’s bf’s wife looks like and will take what Mr. Lynn sez with a grain of salt.
Just a wild guess, but I’ll bet she looks just like Hillary Bitch Clinton…
Many of these garbage prepping books have mostly or all five-star reviews. Oddly, usually six of them. It’s pretty obvious that the “authors” are using one of those “five-stars-for-five-dollars” review services, and apparently $30 is their advertising/promotion limit. I can’t believe that Amazon.com hasn’t stomped all over this paid-review abuse.
I have been suspecting this for quite a while. I saw the accusations of this come flying around for “Holding Their Own: A Story of Survival” by Joe Nobody. But good reviews still come flying in with 298 reviews to date:
http://www.amazon.com/Holding-Their-Own-Story-Survival/dp/061556965X/
And the “77 Days in September” book has 2,555 reviews.
I have not looked at very many non-fiction prepper books. One book that I ordered, currently in my SBR, “Handbook to Practical Disaster Preparedness for the Family, 3rd Edition”, has 411 reviews with an average of 4.7 stars out of 5 stars.
http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Practical-Disaster-Preparedness-Family/dp/1475136536/
How does Nick Scipio keep coming up with the chick pix day after day, year after year? I’ll take the Nordic chick front row right with the tiny tt’s. I know I won’t be in conflict with Miles for that.
Who is Nick Scipio?
I gotta have 36D at least, and preferably 38DD. Legs are important, too.
And height. Height is good.
What can I say? I’m from northwest Euro stock, mainly, and we kinda dig the Brunhilde types, within reason. They also will do in a pinch during ax and mace CQB.
Ah, you haven’t been here long enough if you don’t know Nick. Put the name together and add dot com and go to his Picture of the Day. Nick writes, um, uh, fiction, um, about babes and, uh, it’s higher quality writing than most of its kind of literature, uh, because Nick appreciates quality. Apparently, some of the old Daynotes gang have known him personally. I have had the picture of the day in my daily pages check for eons, it seems like.
Not always workplace safe, BTW.
“Several years ago on one fine spring morning I noticed that a lot of the female students at my university were wearing t-shirts with “ONE IN FOUR” on the front in giant letters.”
Murka’s finest colleges and universities…hard at work…making shit up.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/re-the-alleged-rape-culture/
I C what U mean by not always workplace safe, LOL.
For today’s pic of the day, I’ll take the one second from left.
And now back to our regularly scheduled gearhead topics…
…CentOS 7 installed OK but took some doing, not all of it intuitive. But it’s pretty slick and the install choices cover a lotta territory and possible uses for it. Mine will be a virtualization host. So that’s the next experiment here…
…followed by BSD on a refurbished 17″ laptop…
…while taking online courses in Cisco stuff, CentOS, and Linux admin in general, followed by open sauce programming…
“Not always workplace safe, BTW.”
Chuck, you mean rarely workplace safe, don’t you? Nick’s is a site I visit almost daily. Except WTF Friday. It’s often a place to avoid on Friday! Luckily his Saturday pics are often meant as a visual cleanser.
I’ll take any random sample from today’s pic!
I have no connections now, but back when I did, on a campus of 30,000+ students, there were several reported per weekend that were not consensual but forced — some were guys jumping out of the bushes, and in some cases the perpetrator was not a student. This was more than my naïve self imagined, but nowhere near 1 in 4. In my encounters with the opposite sex, my conclusion has been that — among normal people — girls want it as badly as boys, except for feminists.
As Danny Bonaduce once said, “I have a thing for lesbians, but they have nothing for me.”
Okay, seldom, if ever workplace safe.
Except for the 30th. In fact, I would like to hang that one on my office wall.
BTW, I finally solved a problem last week that have been bothering us for years. My office manager’s pc has been locking up on an increasingly frequent basis. Lately, it has been 5 to 6 times per day which is just unheard of for a Windows x64 O/S with 16 GB of ram and SSD drive. In the last month, we have replaced the power supply, ssd drive, motherboard and cpu, ram and the cabling. None of these worked but replacing the power supply cut the lockups to once per day for a while.
Finally, last Tuesday I decided that the only thing left to replace was the case or the video board. So I replaced the case since I had a spare on site. Voila! The case apparently had a ground in it somewhere in a hidden place. The PC has been up and running for several days now without any lockups. Just reboots for O/S updates since I ended up having to reformat the SSD again. I personally launched the old case into the dumpster.
Why are problems always solved by the last thing that you replace?
“Why are problems always solved by the last thing that you replace?”
Indeed. And even more frustrating knowing that you did all the other stuff for nothing and at some expense of money, time and effort.
I get these lockups to a hardware reset with Mint 17. I am not going to change OS’es on this computer, because it is just too complicated when one’s entire life and work is done on it. But the fact is that in 8 years running XP on a dual core, I had a lockup to hardware reset maybe twice. Almost always, the lockup was application only and solved by just killing it. But even the clock displaying seconds in this Mint machine stops dead at these lockups. One would not think that would happen in Linux. Just had a lockup a couple hours ago, when I plugged in a CD player and tried to play an audio disc. I normally run with about 30 open windows, and it is a real pain to get back to that.
Chuck, I suggest you choose the option to resume the session on restart as a work around to your lockups. Maybe this is KDE specific; I am away from home right now, but this works for me. I occasionally have nonresponsiveness when using Suspend to RAM, and have to do a hard reset. A restart brings all back.
You have commented that Linux is where Windows was some years ago. I will see your “some” and raise you a few more. For me, Windows (v2.1 on) has always been trouble free once I solved occasional driver issues. To be fair, I can’t rule out hardware on my current Linux problem; it occurs less than once a week on two computers, but they are identical.
I’ll take Amber Marshall.
Well, I would take Amber Marshall assuming I were only five or ten years older than she is rather than 35 years older, and assuming that neither of us were married, and assuming that she wanted to be taken.
” I normally run with about 30 open windows…”
Is it just me or does this seem excessive? I’ve never tried to run that many open windows on any computer, Windows or Linux. Especially browser windows on top of other apps, and right now my desktop machines here all have at least 16GB of RAM.
My experience with Windows has differed somewhat over the years, starting with 3.1 and NT. The latter, at 4.0 SP3, was pretty solid, whether server or workstation. XP took a while but it eventually became the fairly reliable plain-vanilla desktop beloved of corporations and gummints. 7 was pretty good, as is Server 2012R2. I’m not that impressed with 8 or 8.1 and probably less so with 10 when it comes out.
I do OK here with only one Windows machine and the rest all various Linux distros; if I was running my own business, which I hope to do fairly soon anyway, I’d probably stick with Linux as I have enough experience now to deal with the various issues. But if I needed a Windows app to run I’d probably just dedicate a machine to that rather than mess around with WINE or PlayOnLinux.
In a bigger business I’d go with CentOS on servers and run its desktop GUI versions, with office, email and net apps on the desktops and laptops.
In the past, I routinely had 30 to 50 instances of Firefox running, each with anything from one or two up to a dozen or more tabs. (Not to mention maybe half a dozen to a dozen instances of OOo/Libre Office.) As Firefox has been updated over the years, it’s become less and less capable of maintaining a large number of instances without running out of memory or crashing. At the moment, I have only 22 instances of Firefox running, each averaging probably only three tabs.
Things are bogged down at this point, and that’s with an Intel Core i7 Extreme six-core processor. Firefox is the culprit. It’s a memory hog and a CPU hog.
RE: Scouts
I think BSA is very overtly a theist organization with an obvious slant toward Christianity. They certainly do not hide that fact. That said, Scouts can earn religious emblems in, for example, Islam just like they can in one of the Christian denominations. I suppose the emphasis on religion varies greatly from troop to troop. In the 1980s when I was in BSA we never prayed (including blessings before mealtime) or mentioned God at all (other than as part of the Scout Oath or Scout Law). At large Scouting events there may have been a Scout Chaplain on hand that did some prayer before some major event, but that was the extent of it. You were not required to pray along or even bow your heard, but you were required to show respect for those that did by keeping your mouth shut until the prayer/benediction was over. So, from my experience, there was religion in Scouting but only in its laziest form. So, it’s really no different than religion in pretty much every other aspect of American life.
Now, had I belonged to a Scout Troop in the heart of the Bible Belt in the 1950s or 1960s then my experience may have been vastly different.
I would expect that if a family was considering Scouts or any other organization for the kids or otherwise, they’d do due diligence and find out whether or not some aspects or beliefs did not suit them and bugger off. We were a church-going Protestant family at the time and saw nothing that would cause us any discomfort. Today’s modern smartypants family may find all kinds of things that would make them howl in anguish, but instead of buggering off, they’ll file a lawsuit and call the media dawgs on it. No sodomy merit badge? Call Gloria Allred immediately! F. Lee Bailey and William Kunstler now unavailable. The scoutmaster is a church deacon?? Notify Dawson.
I’m a veteran and an American Legion member; but when I swing by the local posts, it’s just a dingy bar with the same guys I used to see thirty years ago nursing cheap-ass Murkan lager and watching a five-hour baseball game. Not my cup of tea. But I don’t run right down to the local paper and MADD to get them to browbeat the post management to shut the bar down.
”I normally run with about 30 open windows…”
Is it just me or does this seem excessive?
Not at all to me. However, I have found over the years, that few people integrate a computer as thoroughly into their life as me. As I told my wife in 1994: “I’m going to try and put as much of our lives as possible into the computer.” And as I told her later when she asked why I have to go to the computer to find out anything — “Because I succeeded.”
Aside from paper coming into the house (some of which gets scanned and shredded, but) which usually gets filed in folders in a drawer, there is practically nothing that is not on the computer, except for a bunch of pictures in a box here that are yet to be scanned.
Lemme just go from left to right on the taskbar.
Instant messenger buddies, instant messenger conversations (2 at the moment — one with each of my kids), Evolution email/calendar, GnuCash, important dates 2014.doc, time sheet.doc, Winamp, Nemo instance (file manager), Audacity, Firefox (FF) 21 tabs of weather for my daily forecast voice-track, weather script.doc, VLC (currently playing 95PEN stream), 5x documents.doc in various stages of completion, 3x FF with about 8 tabs open in each (I just saved and closed out about 5 other FF windows because I just finished some reading and research), 2x Nemo opened to various places on my network ready to move/copy files (Nemo is slow to scan the network, so I just leave instances open to the places I use most), Transmission getting a torrent, Gimp with half-completed redo of my calendar for 2015, calculator still open from some earlier math work, Team Viewer from transferring the weather across the Internet to the studio automation computer, Image Viewer with a couple tabs of reference PDF’s open, Gedit correcting some CD rip text info, and FF with a window opened to this site. What’s that? 29? Normally I keep a terminal window open, because if an app freezes up, it usually locks Cinnamon, and I cannot open anything new that is not already open. I can kill stuff in an already open terminal, though.
It is way too much work to keep opening and closing windows all day long as I work. I have the taskbar arranged in an order so I can quickly go to whatever I need to work on at any given moment. Everything is saved automatically with auto-save in the various apps, and I have not lost anything since moving to Linux Mint. Still trying to learn One-Tab for Firefox to keep from losing stuff. Maybe one day I will get the hang of it. This is nothing, though. For the statistics stuff my son does, he starts with 30 windows of Chromium, each with 10 tabs or more open, then he has his apps open on top of that. Chromium crashes a lot on him (in Linux), and he is the one who told me about One-Tab, which saves his butt frequently.
The great thing at succeeding as I did, is all I have to do is take this small little Asus Zen Ultrabook with me, and I have my whole life and all my work right with me. There is practically nothing I cannot do. I take my Shure SM7B microphone with me, and can do the weather voice-track from hotel rooms, if necessary. As I say, I doubt many people are as digitized as me. Now, if I could just digitize myself…
I’ll never be that digitized; I’ve got three email tabs open now in Aviator, along with an online RHEL course, a Cisco course, an article about using VPNs, this site, and lewrockwell.com. In Chrome I have a BSD documentation page open, along with an online CentOS course and the current Comcast tee-vee lineup. That’s it, 11 tabs, and that’s about the most I ever have open. Oh, and the torrent client is open, so 12 things.
We’ve got tax and household documents on here which I back up to USB sticks and ditto a bunch of photos and videos.
But I still tote around little folded-up slips of paper with to-do lists on them, phone numbers, email addresses and URL’s. And I’ve got file folders here with stuff stored in them. And bookcases all over the house filled to overflowing even though I am being RUTHLESS in winnowing them out.
And my EDC stuff does not include a laptop or netbook yet. The smartypants iPhone4 is it. Plus a Fenix light, my keys, a tactical folder knife, a Leatherman Micra, a space pen, comb, and pocket change. Oh, and either a .357 snubby and/or a S&W M&P Shield 9. Gotta remember to start carrying spare eyeglasses; I can’t wear contacts and if I break or lose my regular specs, I’m screwed. Not as blind as Mrs. OFD and I could find my way around the house and yard and recognize people but too blind to drive. 20-20 with the bifocals, though. Hearing in my right ear not so great anymore, tinnitus.
And right now I’m installing BSD on the refurbished HP laptop, so fah, so good.
To-do list is in Evolution. Supposedly, it is possible to integrate calendar with the TBD list in Evo and access both via Google Calendar, but I have not figured that out, yet. What I want to do eventually is get the TBD list and grocery list accessible from the Android. Already the Evo calendar available via Google Calendar on the Android is incredible. Has saved me from having to call back to arrange appointments several times already. I keep forgetting the grocery list. It resides on the fridge, but I often find myself shopping with the list still still magnetically tacked there on said fridge. Having it on the phone would just about eliminate paper from my life altogether.
Last couple video jobs saw lawyers actually asking questions from their iPhones and Androids. Wow, what a change society is going through.