09:10 – Kit sales are continuing to ramp up. This morning is the first time in a long time that I have three kits awaiting USPS pickup, including one going to the UK. We’re down to only four chemistry kits in stock. Fortunately, yesterday we got everything done we need to make up another batch of those. We’re also low-stock on our other science kits, so we’ll be working on those for the rest of the week and through the weekend.
I think we reached a milestone yesterday, when Barbara declared that she was pretty much satisfied with the state of the house, including the finished areas upstairs and downstairs, my lab area, and the garage. There’s more to be done, certainly, but I can now focus more of my time on business stuff and writing.
_Dark Coup (The Dark Grid Series) (Volume 3)_ by David C. Waldron
http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Coup-The-Grid-Series/dp/1490915265/
Book number three of a three book series. I purchased the book in POD (print on demand) in my favorite form factor, trade paperback. I do not think that there will be any more books in this series as the author stated that he intended it to be a trilogy from the beginning.
This is definitely a wrap-up book. The Solar CME event has caused great damage and great death due to starvation and violence in the world. But the survivors are rebuilding which will take time.
My rating: 3.6 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.2 out of 5 stars (94 reviews)
Never10
https://www.grc.com/never10.htm
“Easily Control Automatic and Unwanted Windows 7 & 8.1 Upgrading to Windows 10”
Amazing, Steve Gibson is still alive.
Steve Gibson… I still use his “Shields Up”, just because it’s a free public port tester that I happen to know. He did tremendous things 20 years ago (or is it 30 now?), but totally failed to keep up with the times. His security “research” got weirder and weirder until be became totally irrelevant. SpinRite has made no sense for more than a decade, even on spinning rust.
Which comment prompted me to look at his website: “SpinRite…now compatible with NTFS, FAT, Linux…and all other file systems” Gee, I didn’t know Linux was a file system?
Really, he’s kind of a sad case. Why not keep up with technology? He could have worked on modern security scans. He could have made good SSD tools. Why not stay relevant?
Wow, I would not react this calmly if she grabbed me several times, “Black campus employee assaults student for “culture appropriation” at SFSU”:
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread1111340/pg1
Speaking of irrelevant, whatever became of Peter Norton? I remember the early 80’s, when he became wealthy, and rightfully so, with his creation of Unerase. Anyone with a MS-DOS machine and any sense had QU.EXE accessible via the PATH statement, and those who didn’t often had to pay big money to people like me to come in and save them from their errors.
Peter Norton
Based solely on the Wikipedia article, it might be said that his life went downhill following his computer career.
Or Phil Zimmerman, or many others.
Steve Gibson used to do a podcast with Leo Laporte called Security Now, that was more recent than 20 years…. it got increasingly technical and I fell behind in listening, and couldn’t catch up. He used to be the king of tiny useful programs. Emphasis on TINY.
The guy/s behind sysinternals got bought out by MS, and haven’t set the world on fire since.
Given the massive increase in the number of people involved with “computers” now, it’s gotta be much more difficult to have the same sort of impact as the earlier guys.
nick
I’m not impressed with Steve Gibson. His flagship, SpinRite hasn’t been useful for about 25 years. I made the mistake of buying SpinRite v6 in about 2004. Updated doco was supposed to be comming-real-soon, but it never happened, despite my repeated nagging. After a while the promise of new doco was removed from the site.
And as a systems/assembly language programmer I object to his “small is beautiful” fetish. It isn’t beautiful when debugging is much harder and code is more difficult to understand and document. Sure, there are times when you need assembler, but it’s not an end in itself.
While Norton and Gibson have long past their prime, I contend that the PC would not be where it is today without their contribution in the beginning of saving peoples’ asses.
When PCs computers first came to the Hanford Site there was no support department for it. The IT guys only knew mainframes and would not touch the “toys”. So it was left to a few of us to, in addition to our regular jobs, to support the PCs that were starting to arrive first on the secretaries desks and then on the engineers desks. I can honestly say that in those early years (1980 to about 1986) I saved countless critical files from fumble fingers. I remember one day when the secretary for the president of company somehow managed reformat her hard drive. I got sent downtown to “fix it now!”. I put in my SpinRite disk and let it do its work as a crowd gathered in the executive office sweet to see the magic. It took a few hours, but I “saved the day”. I don’t know exactly what I saved, but a few weeks later I got called to the Big Man’s office and was handed a very nice check from Westinghouse Corporate for “service above and beyond”. Shucks boss I’m just a lowly Plant Engineer, but I’ll take it. The rest is history.
“While Norton and Gibson have long past their prime, I contend that the PC would not be where it is today without their contribution in the beginning of saving peoples’ asses.”
second that! There is probably an argument that if you are not doing it full time, and for someone where your knowledge and experience get stretched every day, you are past your prime already. Very few people can, or even have a need to, stay on the bleeding edge anymore. I know that 2 of the industries I’ve worked in have passed me by since I quit working in them. They were not high tech industries, although they used high tech equipment. And some things don’t change, but the way to get the problem solved does.
I suppose the modern equivalent is whoever can fix the results of “droptable” being accepted on a web form.
nick
@lynn, saw that yesterday.
I love the idiocy of these ‘cultural appropriation’ @ssholes. Especially the ones complaining in english, while driving cars, using computers, and wearing machine made textiles.
They need to stop appropriating MY culture– the one that uses English, math, science, and manufacturing. Go back to grubbing in the mud with sticks and grunting at each other like fcking savages. Wipe your a$$ with leaves, die from dysentery and starvation, go see the witchdoctor for your drip, and leave us alone.
nick
added, like racism, for them the appropriation only ever goes one way.
“I object to his “small is beautiful” fetish. It isn’t beautiful when debugging is much harder and code is more difficult to understand and document. ”
This is the same thought that Jerry Pournelle espouses. Programmer time and brainspace is much more costly/valuable than the hardware.
It shouldn’t excuse bloatware and bad practice, but there is truth to the idea that evolving faster and more capable hardware will mitigate the effects of your bad programming.
nick
In 1980 my then employer was developing an in-house language called PLEAT. There was one particular PLEAT statement that compiled into 3000 lines of PL/1 code. Goodness knows how much machine code that was…
I love CDC Compass, the assembly language of heaven, but only used it when I had to. Pascal and Fortran were so much better. PL/1 deserved to drive Cobol extinct, but that didn’t happen.
Yah, I’ve made that point several times in the past few months. I know a couple people who’ve been banned from several blogs/forums/whatever for saying the same. (Or at least they claim they have been. I have no particular reason to doubt them.) I haven’t, for the simple reason that I don’t go to Daily Kos or Vox. (Why would I? I could stick my head in a bucket of sewage, but I don’t do that, either.)
In person is a different matter. Sometimes people fling various -isms or appropriation at me. Not being one to meekly submit to aggression, well, it’s good that I’m big, nasty, and willing to cold-cock a woman who spits at me. (Seriously, what the hell gives women in the US the idea that they can hit or spit at men without any retribution? Men, except sometimes young men in groups, are usually savvy enough to leave me alone, but a fair number of women have physically attacked me for the crime of not agreeing with whatever they say and putting up with whatever verbal abuse they feel like dumping on me.)
Seriously, what the hell gives women in the US the idea that they can hit or spit at men without any retribution?
Speaking of which:
If Obola had sons, they would be just like these fine young kids:
The video, which was from an incident the evening of March 24, shows what police say are four boys, likely just 6-7-years old, cursing hitting and at one point even spitting at a passenger.
@lynn, saw that yesterday.
I love the idiocy of these ‘cultural appropriation’ @ssholes. Especially the ones complaining in english, while driving cars, using computers, and wearing machine made textiles.
My son and I were wondering where she was trying to drag the guy to. Our best bet was that she was going to drag him down to some big guys who would beat him up and shave his head. BTW, the dude is Jewish and his heritage includes dreadlocks going back thousands of years. Can’t say much about his choice of clothing though.
“I don’t go to Daily Kos or Vox. (Why would I? I could stick my head in a bucket of sewage, but I don’t do that, either.”
I dunno, I would like to debate a couple of points on Vox. I like some of his ideas, but the fruitcake-level of religiosity deserves comment. They have a total echo chamber, and I think the odd external comment would be fun to make.
However, I can’t. I write a comment, click “preview” or “publish”, my browser refreshes the page, and…I’m back to an empty comment form. I’ve tried different browsers, turning off my ad-blockers, nothing seems to help. I can’t be banned, because I have never successfully posted. About all I can figure is that his site doesn’t like Swiss IP addresses.
Brad, I meant vox.com, a hive of scum and villainy, not Vox Day’s blog. I’m assuming there was some misunderstanding as the latter has a pronounced religious nutcase bent.
I’m still reading yesterday’s posts but for starters…Steve Gibson is not only alive and well but has a regular net tee-vee show on TwitTV.com, covering IT security.
“They need to stop appropriating MY culture– the one that uses English, math, science, and manufacturing. Go back to grubbing in the mud with sticks and grunting at each other like fcking savages. Wipe your a$$ with leaves, die from dysentery and starvation, go see the witchdoctor for your drip, and leave us alone.”
Hater. But man, that is just beautiful. I like it!
I had to see an AF witchdoctor for my drip in SEA; the medics took a special delight in using the penicillin syringes fresh from the fridge, too. I only got it once and thereafter stayed away from all that stuff. Quite unpleasant long after the precipitating event.
“…but a fair number of women have physically attacked me for the crime of not agreeing with whatever they say and putting up with whatever verbal abuse they feel like dumping on me.)”
I’ve never been physically attacked by a woman but have certainly been viciously snarled at for my differing political and religious views, and recently, too. IDGAF. I just laugh in their faces now.
“…just like these fine young kids…”
A long session with a razor strap and daily scut chores for months.
“About all I can figure is that his site doesn’t like Swiss IP addresses.”
Try running the browser through an offshore VPN; right now I’m connected via Brisbane, down in lovely Oz. Hi, Greg!
I don’t have the time to waste throwing comments around in some lefty cocksucker’s blog somewhere and dumped my two FaceCrack accounts months ago. No point preaching to the choir and agreeing mostly with people all the time, either. Other than this one, I’m only on Western Rifle Shooters very occasionally, TheTruthAboutGuns rarely, one or two other right-wing-crackpot sites, and the IT “community” web pages.
OFD wrote:
“Try running the browser through an offshore VPN; right now I’m connected via Brisbane, down in lovely Oz. Hi, Greg!”
You mean the one the NSA set up? 🙂
@SteveF: You’re right, I thought you meant Vox Day’s blog. I’ve never heard of vox.com, and from what you say, that’s probably a good thing…