09:43 – Barbara has been gone for 48 hours. It sure is boring when she’s away, for both Colin and me. I didn’t want to bother her yesterday while she was in class, so I sent her a text to check in. That was the first text message I’d ever initiated. She called back at dinner time to say everything was going well and that she was having a good time. Colin and I both really miss her, but she needs to get away from the daily routine around here and going to one of these craft classes with her friend Bonnie Richardson is a good way to do it.
I’m about at the point of dropping Firefox entirely. Every new release is worse than the last, less stable and eating more resources. It’s a bad application, and it keeps getting worse. A year or so ago, I played around with Chromium for Linux and found that I couldn’t live with the gaping holes in its functionality. So now I’m playing around with Opera, which I last looked at probably a decade ago. So far, it’s looking okay, so I may shift all my stuff over to it.
“That was the first text message I’d ever initiated.”
Don’t feel bad; I only started that text thing on the phone in the past year or so, and very sparingly at that. Mainly to communicate with Mrs. OFD, too. I do NOT like trying to type stuff on a tiny keyboard and also don’t bother watching videos or movies or listening to music on the smartypants phone. It’s for calls, a few prepper apps, and occasionally looking stuff up if I’m too lazy to climb the stairs.
“I’m about at the point of dropping Firefox entirely. Every new release is worse than the last, less stable and eating more resources. It’s a bad application, and it keeps getting worse. A year or so ago, I played around with Chromium for Linux and found that I couldn’t live with the gaping holes in its functionality. So now I’m playing around with Opera, which I last looked at probably a decade ago. So far, it’s looking okay, so I may shift all my stuff over to it.”
Ditto. It takes forever to load now and half the time still doesn’t load pages correctly; this, after running the whole gamut of cleanup and anti-malware stuff and throwing in the SSD. I’ve been using a FF variant, though; SeaMonkey, which works pretty well 95% of the time, and moved my bookmarks to it some months ago. I didn’t like the way Opera looked and operated but I’m trying a new spinoff browser now for laughs, if nothing else: Vivaldi. But it’s also kinda annoying as it comes with a list of bookmarked sites already and the whole ethos is that of millennials and hipsters, which as one might imagine, does not especially appeal to this crotchety old fossil up here.
A little while ago we had some brief discussion about your digital spoor, and how the sudden lack of same was equally bad. Here is a nice article, even if it is 3 years behind the times:
https://thelizardfarmer.wordpress.com/2013/08/16/how-they-hunt/
Or, how they wrapped up the local insurgency…..
nick
I thought I was late to the texting thing. I got a smart phone before my friends started texting, so I was like why should I text when I can email from anywhere. My friends are all texters, so I finally decided to give in and text. I finally switched service plans to one that includes unlimited texting.
WRT slow Firefox:
On a regular basis you should clear at least the cache and cookies.
• click “History”
• click “Clear Recent History”
• select the time range you want
• click “Details” and select what you want to clear, clear at least Cache and Cookies
• click “Clear Now”
Should be better. Also if not using an SSD be sure to defrag regularly.
“… how they wrapped up the local insurgency…..”
Several points:
1.) The “system” is such that our fellow Murkans are the people doing all this analysis and who apparently do not trouble themselves overmuch concerning the kidnapping of a man’s children, the terrorizing of his wife, or locking him away for a life sentence based on associations with other suspects. Thus also the “quickie warrants” from cooperative judges.
2.) Most of the “system” runs on juice, and is sitting on physical servers and “cloud” databases and can thus be compromised/hacked. Or simply shut down. And if the Grid goes down, that’s the end of that system, anyway.
3.) Meatspace is where it’s at. And intel collection works both ways. As someone pointed out in the comments, the IRA (under the very late Michael Collins) ran pretty slick intel and counter-intel ops a CENTURY ago, and their techniques and methodologies are well worth the study. To that end: who are your local political figures, judges, prosecutors, et. al.? Who’s the local police chief or sheriff, the chamber of commerce nabobs, the various local/regional powers-that-be? Where do they live and what about building “starfish” profiles on them in the meantime???
4.) The fictional “Bob” in the story left a rich trove of material for them to pick up and analyze; why not do the same, but have your ghost persona living and working a whole other life? With zero “evidence” for nosy mofos to find….
5.) But of course with the odds stacked so heavily against us in this regard, it’s much, much easier to just go with the flow, keep a low profile, keep one’s nose clean and one’s mouth shut. Like the article shows, they don’t need to come to your house and beat your ass or waterboard you; they’ll just shut off all your accounts (Mr. and Mrs. OFD got a taste of this twice from the IRS), grab your kids and put them into some nasty foster care situation, or simply plant false evidence against you somewhere and then haul you in based on that. This regime has shown, since at LEAST 1963, that it is perfectly willing to murder its OWN people, let alone us average low-level schmucks out here, and has demonstrated since 1861 and the 1780s/1790s that it will RUTHLESSLY stomp out any supposed or actual insurrections.
Another point to note is that by the time somebody like “Bob” is attacking mil-spec and LE convoys and vehicles and personnel, whether or not there is martial law in effect, things have gotten really bad. Removing one’s fingerprints and using a ghost rifle to do so would indicate we would then be living in a real de facto totalitarian regime. We’re there already in some respects, as the article indicates, but not in terms of civil insurrection and subsequent Union Army-style repression, as was visited upon the Confederacy and the First Nations tribes and bands out West.
But stay tuned, sportsfans….stay tuned…
I guess that’s why the authorities fear lone wolf attacks over all else. It’s like trying to track down a serial killer whose victims have no connection to him.
Headline on Drudge: “Ryan secures deal to bail out Puerto Rico.”
We can’t even meet national debt without printing more money, but WTF, let’s bail out some more mismanagement. I wonder if Trump would have let them default.
Still no texts from me, and no ‘smartphone’ either. My family / friends look at me with fascination &/or horror when I say that I refuse to use all the wonderful technology in my cell phone in order to emulate a telegraph system.
Barbara and I don’t have smartphones, either, nor any desire for them. We both have little flip-phones, which are all we need.
Ditto on the flip phones. I don’t even keep the batteries in them unless I’m about to use the phone (or I need to charge the battery). It’s not paranoia. The US federal government and the telecom companies really are out to get me. (And every other pleb on the planet, of course.)
This won’t apply to any luddites with flip phones, but smart phone users might consider MightyText. It’s a cloud-based service that duplicates your texting activities so that you can send & receive your texts in your browser. I find it convenient while knowing that all of my activities are being monitored. (Really, that’s happening already.)
If that’s too much hassle, a Google Voice number can be used for texting (only, if you want) s.t. you can still do all your texting from your browser.
I just _hate_ typing on my phone. My wife, on the other hand, won’t type on anything but her phone. Even over a real keyboard.
I’ve accomplish a lot of work on my iPhone. I’m always out doing something for somebody and then a crisis comes. Pay this invoice! I need your input on this briefing! Call xxx and order some more books, NOW!
The Kindle app on the iPhone 6S+ is beautiful. The rez and contrast make for easier reading for me than on a Kindle (when out of glare). I’d even go for an iPhone heading for true phablet.
“Technology is moving forward and should move forward. The death of scarcity is to be welcomed. Our problem is that we’re chained to an archaic hierarchy of dominance with a deeply entrenched skimming class. Either we get past it or we go back to serfdom… or worse.”
http://www.freemansperspective.com/system-wont-survive-robots/
Yes, and those 100-million “impoverished” souls in “flyover country” may just get pissed off enough to do something drastic. I daresay there are some among them, and some back here among the Empire’s coastal elite sympathizers, who have the tech chops to bring down the Grid. Then we’ll see some interesting times.
Oh, it doesn’t take any tech chops to bring down the grid. I’m just re-reading Franklin Horton’s Borrowed World series, which I recommend. He has a small number of musloid terrorists wreaking havoc by taking out a small number of critical transformers to take down the grid and taking out petroleum/gas production and distribution with mortar attacks on refineries. Not to mention mortar attacks on dams, of which there are many crucial ones that could be destroyed with minimal armaments.
The only thing he didn’t mention that I would have is taking out the Colonial Pipeline and tank farm near Greensboro, NC, which is the largest tank farm in the world and supplies the whole northeastern US.
We’re a lot more vulnerable to terrorism than most people seem to think. It wouldn’t take freighters with nuclear-tipped SCUDs to take down the grid and ultimately everything else. Just a surprisingly few musloid terrorists with mortars or RPGs. Hell, in a pinch they could probably do it with ordinary rifles. Transformers and refineries are not hardened targets.
That’s why the more one learns about this, the scarier it gets.
Hell, in a pinch they could probably do it with ordinary rifles. Transformers and refineries are not hardened targets.
Been done already to PG&E. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack
This is turning out to be a depressing day. Keep it coming. I may “Fife” myself at this rate.
I’m pretty sure I could take Albany and environs off the grid all by myself, through driving stolen trucks into the major substations. I’d need to pre-steal and preposition them, along with ordinary cars or motorcycles to get from one wrecked station to the next prepositioned truck, but I think I could do it by myself in a couple hours.
I’ve also penciled up how to bring down the PRC by myself. It probably couldn’t be done, but a capable and focused lone wolf could do a lot of damage. In one way it would be easier to bring down the PRC than the US, in that they’re more rickety. In another way, it would be more difficult because they are a low-trust society with massive corruption and incompetence. The revelation that the municipal water supply is contaminated with sewage would have Americans screaming bloody murder and running to their therapists, while Chinese would simply shrug and say “Must be Tuesday”.
A former coworker competed in cowboy action shooting events. She only shot herself in the leg twice. And wasn’t dissuaded from continuing to compete.
Yes, it was Metcalfe I was thinking about. In Lights Out, Koppel mentioned the shockingly low number of major transformers that would have to be taken out to take down the grid. It was, IIRC, about a dozen. None of those are hardened targets.
And replacing those large transformers would be non-trivial. IIRC, there are only two companies in the world that make them and neither of those are in North America. The transformers have to be custom-made to order, and the lead time even in a critical emergency would be at least several months. And that’s not all. Many critical very large transformers were installed decades ago. Moving them into place required rail transport because they’re too large and heavy to move by truck. Bridges had to be torn down and rebuilt to move them originally, and tracks often had to be reinforced. And many of the rail lines used originally no longer exist. It’s not that they’re not used any more; it’s that they’ve been physically torn up and removed.
I don’t doubt what SteveF claims, except I don’t think he’d have to take down “major substations”. More like “major substation”.
Just missed my connecting flight in SLC because TSA called my plane back to the gate in HOU for a checked bag mismatch. Had to refuel before we left HOU since we were revved up on runway and were heavy. I’m glad plane did not blow up in midair but it sure is a pain.
“That’s why the more one learns about this, the scarier it gets.”
Indeed. Wide open, legs spread, inviting smile and all.
“Been done already to PG&E.”
I remember that caper; if you ask me, and nobody is, that was a training run, a beta version, of what a semi-pro team could do. Hard to be-bop around the landscape with RPGs and suchlike, but rifles and stolen vehicles like Mr. SteveF describes would be easy-peasy. Lone wolf style easiest of all and probably the most opsec-oriented.
“… the Colonial Pipeline and tank farm near Greensboro, NC, which is the largest tank farm in the world and supplies the whole northeastern US.”
Hit that and Quebec Hydroelectric and there goes the Northeast grid. Frankly I’m sort of astounded that something like this hasn’t been carried off already by the usual suspects, and if I was them, I’d have simultaneous capers occurring, too. Knock off the Northeast grid in the weeks between T-Day and Xmas while also lighting up suicide vest bombers in the shopping malls, for instance.
Is it that our security forces have just been deuced lucky so far or that they’re really super-professionals who’ve continually stymied multiple attempts? Or that none of the usual suspects has really given it the old college try?
Likely enough. All the stations around here were running well over rated capacity when I last saw their numbers, and that was close to 20 years ago. They were running on a knife-edge back then, and one failure would lead to a cascade. (Counterpoint: control systems which are orders of magnitude faster and more capable than existed a couple decades ago. They might be able to prevent the cascade failure.)
However, I was talking about trashing all of the major substations around Albany. Power would go down and not be brought back up. Most everyone would leave the city when the power had been out for a few days and wouldn’t be able to be brought fully back up for a couple months.
“She only shot herself in the leg twice. And wasn’t dissuaded from continuing to compete.”
How is that even possible??? Jesus wept. And last I knew, CA events use/d rather heavier caliber firearms; I’d figure ONE shot in one’s leg would put one in the ER.
“Most everyone would leave the city when the power had been out for a few days…”
Well don’t send the buggers up here! Send ’em downstate, to Manhattan.
I think it’s a combination of things. I suspect that our security forces are very, very good, particularly NSA.
Not the clown-car Homeland Security and TSA, which is by far the most incompetent and disliked of any major federal agency, even (or particularly) among other federal employees. Nor the clown-car ATF, which I suspect is where really incompetent TSA employees are sent to get rid of them.
Also, musloid leaders value religious orthodoxy over competence. And that goes at all levels, from their grunts in the street to their tech guys and planners. I remember commenting that there were several first-world universities, each of which put out more hard-science papers than all musloid countries combined. Vicious psychopaths who are willing to slaughter innocents and eager to be killed themselves may make fearsome enemies one-on-one, but the only destruction they’ve wreaked is retail. It’s the few smart ones concentrating on wholesale destruction that worry me.
I was unclear. She shot herself on different occasions.
Last Thursday a major highway was closed for four hours to move a 400,000 pound transformer 13 miles from a rail yard to a staging point for installation. The following day a shorter stretch of the same highway was closed to move the transformer to the point where it was to be installed.
So big transformers can be trucked, just not very far or very fast. I was thinking it would be fun to take the day off and watch the move, but I figured I’d get in trouble with homeland insecurity or other authorities. Photographing infrastructure is not a hobby for those that don’t want to attract the wrong kind of attention.
That’s a medium transformer, not a large one, let alone a VLT.
IIRC none other than G Gordon Liddy did an article in GQ way back in the day about taking out the NG pipelines with a few shots from a rifle.
WRT not having a major event, whatever the reason I’m glad.
Here’s my take, specifically on Y2K, but applicable in general…
We know they are trying. We stopped several at the border with canadia and they had plans and supplies. We got lucky there that the right agent was on staff, and was a protected group, so could act on a hunch.
We know they are capable, as there is plenty of evidence worldwide and a couple of notable events here at home.
So why wouldn’t we have an event on New Year’s Eve, Y2K, when the whole world was watching?
1. we did. the cnn scroller had a mention of a high voltage transmission tower falling over. No further mention was ever made.
2. a bunch of ‘rough men’ spent the entire run up to Y2K very busy doing violence in the night. we know where the camps are. we track them to and from. is it far fetched to think that before Y2K someone made the call to just kill them all and F the intelligence value of watching?
There was a long pause world wide until 9-11, that suggests to me that they had to recover. And no immediate follow up suggests a very shallow bench….
And while some believe that “God protects children, drunkards, and the United States” I think it’s more likely that the really serious stuff gets snuffed out before it happens.
nick
“Vicious psychopaths who are willing to slaughter innocents and eager to be killed themselves may make fearsome enemies one-on-one…”
Just wait another couple of generations, when they’ve long since raped or otherwise taken German and other Euro women, including the SJWs, progs, strident fembats, and dykes, and we’ll have young musloid Huns. Be just like medieval/Byzantine times again.
“It’s the few smart ones concentrating on wholesale destruction that worry me.”
Indeed. Perhaps the few who’ve been to Western engineering and STEM degree programs and have that knowledge plus the fanatic murderous hate going on.
“She shot herself on different occasions.”
And how is THAT even possible? Yikes. I’ve been around firearms since I was 17, more or less continuously, and never had the slightest mishap with any of them. Nearly half a century.
“Photographing infrastructure is not a hobby for those that don’t want to attract the wrong kind of attention.”
You’re writing a book on it. Taking notes. Like these books:
“Outside Lies Magic: Regaining History and Awareness in Everyday Places,” by John R. Stilgoe
“A Field Guide to Roadside Technology,” by Ed Sobey
“Infrastructure: A Guide to the Industrial Landscape,” by Brian Hayes
“American Ruins,” by Camilo Jose Vergara
If one wishes to really know one’s immediate ‘hood and the surrounding AO, these are highly recommended, by little old me, who is trying to get out much more often and move around and be mobile outside the damn cah.
I’m combining this stuff with two other areas of research and learning endeavor: map reading and land navigation beyond whatever I got in the Boy Scouts and the military, and the various radio scenarios, whether FRS/GMRS (for which I have a Fed license already), amateur, scanner, shortwave and QRP.
Add to this ‘open source intel’ techniques and methodologies and maybe ol’ fossil OFD can make himself useful outside of humping a ruck and a chit-ton of ammo across a hostile landscape.
“And while some believe that “God protects children, drunkards, and the United States” I think it’s more likely that the really serious stuff gets snuffed out before it happens.”
I tend to think both you and RBT are correct on this, but also that we have been DAMNED lucky and that none of the usual suspects have come up yet who have the requisite diabolical knowedge/skillz. But the motivation is damn sure there. And I figure also that the serious events that have been squelched have obviously been kept out of the media; the bastards thrive on graphic footage and horror and terror so those incidents are best kept under wraps and I have no problem with that.
Photographing infrastructure is not a hobby for those that don’t want to attract the wrong kind of attention.
I wonder what would have happened if I filmed it with one of my drones? Probably not even arrested, vaporized by a Reaper. Send my ashes back to MrsAtoz with a big “fuck you” note attached.
“I wonder what would have happened if I filmed it with one of my drones?”
An interesting and burgeoning gray area in legal circles, apparently. Who owns the air space around or above the site? What was/is your intention? Is it filming onboard for later retrieval or is it sending the pics/vids somewhere?
I have no idea. But I do know that if I was taking potentially controversial pics/vids with my cell or tablet or whatever, I’d be sending them live immediately to a secure machine somewhere.
WRT large transformers: our Public Utility District has a number of ready spares. There is a “parts” yard that has a number of the truckable size transformers and most of the large substation have pre-positioned in them the super-gigundo ones. They are already on a pad and the emergency plan calls for rerouting the lines (actually big buss bars) rather than moving them. Because this area was, and still is, heavy ex-Navy the emergency planning in most areas is way beyond.
Am sitting at gate in SLC. The pilot just called maintenance and told us it will be a few minutes. I could hear “pull up” in a machine voice over the pa. The instruments are having problems.
The pilot is now rebooting the entire plsne.
“Because this area was, and still is, heavy ex-Navy…”
As this area once was, long, long ago…
The Battle of Valcour Island, starring General Benedict Arnold, our War of Independence.
The Battle of Plattsburgh, War of 1812, and at least three U.S. Navy ships named after Lake Champlain.
For boffo laffs, take a walk around any lakeshore town up here and ask residents at random about any of this.
“The pilot is now rebooting the entire plane.”
Let’s hope it’s not a Windows 10 system up there in the cockpit; the instruments are probably being interrupted by update notices and apps that don’t work anymore.
Re FireFox issues, I was having extreme problems also. So I,
1. Turned Flash off
2. Installed Ublock and turned on.
My FireFox experience is much better now.
The pilot mentioned that the plane and instruments are both rather old. And we lost the fresh air system in the reboot.
I suspect that we are running DOS 2.0.
We have at least one nuke carrier that uses Windows for its mission-critical systems, right?
I could hear “pull up” in a machine voice over the pa.
I’ve heard this plenty of times. Especially on small commuters with the cockpit door open for runup. Standard.
I’ve been running AdBlock Plus, Flashblock, and NoScript forever.
Special transgender, transmasculine, genderqueer flower, Leo Soell gets $60,000 for WHAT!?
A fifth-grade teacher at an Oregon elementary school said ‘they’ was harassed at work and that ‘they’ was referred to by the wrong pronoun. The school district paid ‘them’ $60,000 to compensate for any harassment ‘they’ may have received.
This is just beyond stupid! How long before schools need transgender liability insurance. At the taxpayer’s expense.
“I suspect that we are running DOS 2.0.”
No, it’s DOS 6.22, remember that one? New and improved.
“We have at least one nuke carrier that uses Windows for its mission-critical systems, right?”
I sincerely hope you’re joking.
“…Especially on small commuters…”
Last summer was my last time on a commercial aircraft; prior to that was 1994. I’m still waiting for my Apache door gunner mission over Mordor….
“I’ve been running AdBlock Plus, Flashblock, and NoScript forever.”
Ditto. And FF is slower than molasses in January. Thirty seconds even to load up. Chrome is the same way now. I just use SeaMonkey and the Tor bundle; hell, if it’s gonna be THAT slow, may as well use Tor and be that much more “secure.”
“How long before schools need transgender liability insurance. At the taxpayer’s expense.”
Quit yer bitchin’. Let’s you and me start looking for ways to carve a slice off this racket….
I’m totally serious.
This is a CRJ900 plane. We got the generator and a/c running at least.
The cruiser running windows NT4 network was the USS Yorktown.
“We got the generator and a/c running at least.”
Never mind that stuff; have ya got wireless and Netflix???
“The cruiser running windows NT4 network was the USS Yorktown.”
Hey, no problem. NT4.0, SP3, rock-solid, based on VAX/VMS, thanks to the great Dave Cutler. No doubt they had RBT’s book on hand as a reference, for both NT and the network.
We have deplaned. And the pilot told me dos. They are going to replace the instrument panel so this bird is now a hanger queen. And we are on Delta.
The pilot is looking for a new plane that can hold 100 people.
Yes on wireless and netflix. My nephew is sitting next to me watching breaking bad.
No, IIRC it was a nuke carrier that was being laid down several years ago at a Virginia shipyard that Microsoft had significant ownership interest in. And the CIC and other critical systems were to run Windows.
Despite one of the highest income tax rates in the country, 85% of which by law must go to education, Oregon schools in the major urban areas are dismal, pursuing every agenda *except* education.
During our sentence -er- stay in the Portland metro area, we lived on the less fashionable “Vantucky” side of the river (Washington State), not far from PDX. After a leadership change at our local school, I noted an suspicious number of Oregon license plates entering and leaving the parking lot every morning.
The pilot fixed the plane. Maybe a good old swift kick. We are replaning.
“And the pilot told me dos.”
Funny pilot. Good ol’ DOS. I remember Jerry Pournelle’s columns on that back in the day with Byte magazine, plus me buying the white box with DOS 6.22 in it and thinking what a swell thing it was. And that was around the time of Winblows 3.1 and running it on a Gateway 2000 PC, not that long after seeing it run on an IBM AT. Wow, four colors. And less RAM than we have now in our hearing aids.
“My nephew is sitting next to me watching breaking bad.”
What’s he watching it on? Mrs. OFD watches stuff now on her new large-sized iPhone 6. Do they make ya turn all that stuff off at some point?
“No, IIRC it was a nuke carrier that was being laid down several years ago at a Virginia shipyard that Microsoft had significant ownership interest in. And the CIC and other critical systems were to run Windows.”
Wow. If it was that recent, they must have been planning to run Windows 2008 or 2012 Server on it. OK…googling….looks like it was supposed to be a heavily modified version of Winblows 2000 back around that year…
…and then we have this…from three years ago… the U.S.S. Zumwalt running RHEL:
http://www.geek.com/chips/us-navys-most-advanced-warship-is-powered-by-linux-and-intel-1574434/
“We are replaning.”
Safe trip, hombre!
“…Oregon schools in the major urban areas are dismal, pursuing every agenda *except* education.”
The key phrase being “major urban areas.” That is where the commies are concentrated, where they can do the most damage, and have done so for several generations now. It’s basically just Soviet- or Chicom-style indoctrination nowadays and any actual education takes place in spite of it. When Mrs. OFD and I were little kids in the publik skool gulag, they at least were still teaching the three R’s and we also had music and art and ORDER in the classrooms. But by the time our own kids were in that system it was fully engaged in Young Pioneers bullshit and their own version of Mao’s Great Cultural Revolution.
What’s funny, but not so much, is that the more money the State robs from us at virtual gunpoint to pay for this travesty, the worse the system is in any given location. Frankly, once I got past the elementary skool three R’s, I mostly learned on my own hook, taking out the maximum number of books from the public libraries each week in whatever towns we lived in back then, and even spilling over onto my mom’s library card.
Do they make ya turn all that stuff off at some point
Not the complete device, just the transmitters on phone. You basically just put your device on airplane mode which shuts down the WIFI, Bluetooth, and Cellular. You can continue to use the device to watch movies, play games, whatever, as long as the radios remain off.
But I would wager that probably 25% or more of the passengers don’t use airplane mode and just use the device with the transmitters still transmitting.
Before the rule change they used to make me turn off my noise cancelling headphones below 10,000 feet and while taxiing. Now that is not an issue.
I noted an suspicious number of Oregon license plates entering and leaving the parking lot every morning
Would the parents have to have an address in Washington to send their children to a school in Washington?
I used to see a lot cars with Washington plates at the stores (Fred Myers) shopping for groceries and the malls shopping for whatever. Avoid the Washington sales of which Oregon has none. I know that if I lived close to the Oregon border I would be purchasing what I could in Oregon.
A smaller version of the tax evasion happens in Chattanooga where people living on the TN side will shop in the Georgia side because the sales tax is less.
Strangest was at Carowinds amusement park which has a state line running through the middle of the park. Food costs more on one part of the park than the other. Sunday you could not sell an item on one side of the park but could on the other side.
Reminds ol’ OFD of those golden days of yesteryear in Maffachufetts, when they had the so-called Blue Laws in effect and no booze available anywhere on Sundays (allegedly). So derps would drive to NH and load up on tons of stuff and bring it back, while trying to dodge the MA state troopers who were gonna nail them for it at the behest of the Boston asswipe bureaucrats.
Then they tinkered around in the 1980s and decided to allow package stores (packies) located with ten miles of the NH line to sell on Sundays, so we’d drive to Leominster (pronounced “Leh-men-stuh”) from Woostuh and buy our booze there. Lehmenstuh was the Plastics Capital of the World; Woostuh is the Haht of the Commonwealth; Southbridge used to be the “Eye of the Commonwealth” until American Optical checked out. And Boston is, of course, the Hub of the Universe and the Athens of America. Masshole Calvinists aren’t too high on ourselves, are we??
Back in the early 70’s when the FLQ was running around blowing up mail boxes there was a magazine article that tried to calculate how few FLQ terrorists would be required to tie up the Canadian military and law enforcement. The conclusion was depressing. No more than a few hundred and remember that the FLQ were for the most part incompetent amateurs.
Hydro Quebec has hundreds of miles of 750Kv DC transmission lines that run through absolute wilderness. There is no way that the lines themselves can be secured. The only way to defend them is to have sufficiently good intelligence to stop the bad guys before they can get to the lines. The lines from Churchill Falls probably have the same issues. Churchill Falls is a large hydroelectric installation in Labrador and is the second largest hydroelectric installation in Canada.
“Hydro Quebec has hundreds of miles of 750Kv DC transmission lines that run through absolute wilderness. There is no way that the lines themselves can be secured. The only way to defend them is to have sufficiently good intelligence to stop the bad guys before they can get to the lines.”
One would hope that the RCMP (with Hydro Quebec) would have the requisite tech gear available nowadays in the form of sensors along those routes and drones overhead like our own Border Patrol has here on the VT/Quebec border. They’d also have to have quick-reaction teams ready to go via chopper to any potential breach or attack on the lines. I have no idea if this is the case. Ditto Churchill Falls, where at least more of the lines/routes are visible from the air than they are in Quebec, which is heavily forested plus taiga.
Would the parents have to have an address in Washington to send their children to a school in Washington?
According to WA State law, if you register your children in WA schools, your car must have WA plates within 30 days. When we first moved there, the police would strictly enforce the law during the first week of October, but, by the time we left, with 37% *real* unemployment on the WA side of the river, local law enforcement barely had enough budget for a receptionist at the precinct office covering our neighborhood.
As for dodging sales taxes, Portland’s economy is wholly dependent on that activity, especially Canadians stocking up at high end shops like the Apple Store — the largest in terms of sales volume in the US when we left. Outside of mudslide season, Amtrak works pretty well from Vancouver, BC down to Portland, and 22% VAT provides quite an incentive.
The new tax dodge bonanza in OR is thanks to the new WA State liquor deregulation written by, litterally, Costco lobbyists and attorneys. Booze taxes are crazy in WA State right now.
The common thread among all this anecdotal and hard evidence being, of course, the interference of GOVERNMENT. Whatever they touch turns to chit, eventually. And you look at most of the derps who work in and for government and you can see why.
Remember this the next time you have to stay in a hotel/motel.
Arizona police have released bodycam video of the night an unarmed father was shot dead by cops after begging for his life.
However, the shaky footage published publicly on Tuesday omits the crucial moment Daniel Shaver, 26, was gunned down by Officer Philip Brailsford in Mesa on January 18.
Shaver, a married father-of-two from Texas, was in the city for business relating to his work in pest control.
One evening, police were called to his hotel after reports that someone was pointing a gun from a window on a high-up floor in La Quinta Inn & Suites on East Superstition Springs Boulevard.
Though Shaver carries two pellet guns with him for work, he was unarmed at the time.
Mostly good nooz, with a kicker at the end:
http://bastionofliberty.blogspot.com/2016/05/action-reaction.html
And more entertainment with your morning java…
http://www.woodpilereport.com/html/index-427.htm
This guy rocks. LOTSA interesting info every time. But of course, he’s a cis-hetero rayciss troglodyte and nutty old veteran, so beware.
Abandoning Firefox: Yup. I use Chrome for a lot of things, and PaleMoon (a fork of FireFox from about 2 years ago, which hasn’t gone into the weeds the way Mozilla has). And another brand-new browser called Vivaldi from the guys who designed Opera. If you’re serious about getting away from Firefox, one of these three may be the way to go.
He was watching Breaking Bad on his iPad. Now i am not sure where it was coming from.
Dave wrote:
“Photographing infrastructure is not a hobby for those that don’t want to attract the wrong kind of attention.”
Heh, just before I left Canberra I drove around the city taking snaps of a few places I lived and worked. One was a building that housed our (and other) computer centres in the Eighties. I hadn’t been there for years, there were no signs saying what the building was, to keep out (I only went into the car park), not to photograph, etc, no fences.
While I was photographing some security goon emerged and asked what I was doing and wanted to see some id. I should have told him to FROAD.
OFD wrote:
“I’m still waiting for my Apache door gunner mission over Mordor….”
What? Not bombadier on a nuclear armed B-52?
there are some nice museums and good looking statues……
n
“…there are some nice museums and good looking statues……”
Exactly. With the fat peeps, old peeps, etc.? I won’t lead ’em as much.