09:05 – I just closed out the books for May, which was up about 25% over May of last year. Year-to-date, we’re down about 11% in science kit revenues from last year, all attributable to a much slower January this year. I don’t worry too much about small percentage ups and downs, particularly during the slow first half of the year. They tend to level out over the course of a year, and it’s the July through October numbers that really matter.
More work today on science kits. Over the weekend, we got one of the Costco LED shop lights installed in the unfinished area downstairs. It draws only 42W, but puts out about as much light as 250W of incandescent bulbs. The lights come two to a pack, but I decided not to install the other one. I’ll keep it for use elsewhere. With the existing 400W of incandescent lights already in the unfinished area, one of the LED shop lights provides plenty of light over our work area.
Slavery is not everybody’s story — it must remain exclusively a story for the United States and its people. Only we are required to bear the indelible stain of this country’s original sin — and it appears those who entered or will enter here assume this mantle of guilt themselves a century-and-a-half after the institution of slavery was ended.
No, no, no; only the United States and its evil white male patriarchy is guilty of slavery and we must pay reparations forever. On TOP of the trillions already spent…for nothing, thank you very much. In return we are vilified and spat upon and otherwise criminally attacked out of all proportion to numbers and averages. Even mentioning any of that is guaranteed to piss people off and cause a riot.
I’m at about the point where I’m reasonably well-prepared for large-scale riots to break out in big cities, although I’d first like to get the sale closed on our Winston house and accumulate some more bulk staples, solar gear, firewood, and so on.
As I’ve said, I’m not really expecting anything really bad to happen in the next few years, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it did.
It will be interesting to see how the gummint responds again to large riots in the big cities this coming summer and fall; they walk a fine line between standing by and basically ignoring stuff, or rolling in with armor and machine guns like they did back in the Glorious Sixties. I haven’t been very impressed by the LE and mil-spec responses to the musloid invasions of Europe so far, and wonder how it will go down here when we have large masses of people engaging in mass violence and property destruction.
I note also that we are seeing professional commie agitators fomenting this stuff at various locations around the country, so this could be a major factor.
and
For a fee, I’m sure I could push a couple mobs into riots. Shouldn’t be too difficult: the previously-mentioned flying drones shooting from above, dumping buckets of sewage from upper windows, prepositioned speakers shouting racially inflammatory remarks. That’s just off the top of my head, things I could do by myself with a minimal chance of being caught. Professional agitators or terrorists, of which this nation has many, including mentors of the current White House infestation, could no doubt come up with a hundred times as many.
No kidding. Look at the professionally printed placards in the pix. There are always .URLs at the bottom. If you go to the sites, it’s all socialist this, workers that, immigration the other. They all seem to be powered by the same design and web group too. “Created by cStreet with NationBuilder” is at the bottom of every url I checked.
http://www . cstreet . ca/
http:// nationbuilder . com/
This is the enemy folks, well funded, well supported, working behind the curtain.
nick
Anyone got experience with the LED bulbs that fit in fluorescent fixtures? Our garage light is nearing burnout and the LEDs draw a lot less power for the same light. Cost more, but the power savings would add up.
On TOP of the trillions already spent…for nothing, thank you very much.
Don’t forget Affirmative Action! Down with WHITEY! Up with not WHITEY!
“Professional Community Strategist” = nefarious commie agitator
Yo, ain’t this what Obola’s original job in Chicago was?? We see his fruits thereof today, as they just went through another holiday weekend with increasing record levels of “gun violence” for which their solution is to take my guns away. And it becomes increasingly a “failed city,” like that “failed state” to our south.
I just downloaded a six-part series by Grenada Television a while back on the Spanish Civil War. Take that, add to it the mess in the Balkans, plus the Irish “Troubles” and then kick it up a few notches with regard to a country with 330 million and countless firearms and piles of ammo. And the instant commo via “social media” and the net, so they can whip up “flash mobs” as illustrated by Matt Bracken’s various scenarios.
Re: LEDs in flourescent fixtures.
Our Maint dept. has been doing some replacement work. Rick tells me he has to replace the ballasts for it to work. It’s only worthwhile because of the size of the fixtures. Other units are getting replaced wholesale because new units are cheaper than retrofits.
As always, YMMV.
From the State of Fruit and Nuts:
http://politistick.com/college-students-marry-ocean-ecosexual-sextravaganza/#
Usually college guys go to these things to score with some good looking chicks, pretty slim pickins unless you are in to blubber. Oh wait, how appropriate the “teachers” are “whales”.
WRT LED replacement tubes: Costco sells a pair of direct replacement tubes for about $35.00, ballast removal is not required. I put a pair in the kitchen about 6-months ago, really bright natural light and no noticeable RF noise.
“From the State of Fruit and Nuts:”
These derps won’t last long in a SHTF country. Can you imagine the scene there when suddenly about a hundred howling musloid scumbags show up? They’ll rape not only the blubber grrls but also the metrosexual hipster guys and any pets too dumb to flee. The musloids are not so deranged that they’ll then rape the ocean, however. For that level of derangement we have our college arts, humanities and social “science” departments and various media “collectives.”
The only LED tubes I found on Costco were these:
http://www.costco.com/Feit-LED-4%E2%80%99-Direct-Replacement-Tube-.product.100235288.html?catalogId=10701&keyword=led+tubes&langId=-1&storeId=10301&refine=
Four of them for $59.99, which is the same price as the set of two dual-tube fixtures we bought. The Feit tubes use 17W each (versus 42W for one of the dual-tube units we got) and put out 1700 lumens each (versus 3700 lumens for the two-tube units we bought). All things considered, I’d scrap the existing fixtures and just install the new ones. That two-pack ought to be enough to light a typical two-car garage pretty well.
I did the LED replacement in a fixture at my rental house. The fixture was spackled into the ceiling and would have been a PITA to replace. I put in a kit with Cree LEDs, 2 strips and a ballast that replaced 4 @ 40w flouros.
They are bright, the conversion was easy. The directions were complete.
I don’t care about RF there, so I didn’t check.
IIRC, about $40 and 30 min total work.
nick
BTW in my experience, anything by FEIT will work but will die much earlier than the rated life. By then you’ll probably want the new, brighter version anyway.
n
“Climate Change and Trump” by Scott Adams
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/145160928141/climate-change-and-trump
“Imagine a Democratic President trying to persuade Republicans that they need to do something expensive to deal with climate change. That’s nearly impossible.”
“Now imagine a President Trump trying to deal with climate change. The Democrats are pre-sold. He doesn’t need to convince them of anything. But to change the minds of Republicans, you need to so something hypnotists call pacing and leading.”
“Trump is already pacing. That means acting like the people you plan to later persuade. In one-on-one situations, pacing might include matching the subject’s breathing, posture, and choice of words. In the public context it means saying what people are already thinking. Many Republicans believe climate change is not real. Trump said it. He paced them. Now they trust him, because he thinks the same way they do.”
I am not going to be persuaded. Climate Change is real, it happens every day. But, it is not man-made.
I’ve got some massive climate change going on about 1,000 feet away from my office property and my home. The Brazos River has just set a new all time peak crest by over four ft and is still going up. Luckily, my office property is on the high side of the river and is still eight feet above the river. My home is eight feet lower but it has a fourteen foot levee between me and the river.
http://water.weather.gov/ahps2/hydrograph.php?wfo=HGX&gage=RMOT2
BTW, NOAA is losing credibility with me. They cannot figure out how high the river is going. The river is now 1.5 ft higher than their first prediction.
And, FEMA is gaining credibility with me. They forced all of the home subdivisions and levee owners in Fort Bend County to raise our levees by four feet just five years ago. Turns out that they knew what they are doing about flood protection.
FEMA has a financial incentive to get flooding right.
I found the 100yr and 500yr flood maps for houston to be correct almost to the foot for flooding, if not for frequency.
nick
I figure that if anyone’s LED bulbs will last, it’ll be Cree’s. They make the raw semiconductors, and the bulbs are their first foray into consumer products (as far as I’m aware), so they’re probably overbuilt by normal consumer standards.
Why would Trump wanna go with the warmist bull-chit? Eventual windfall payoffs for his big biz buddies? That’s what the Dems have done with it, mainly. And publik skools are now yanking any dissenting views from their science textbooks; a beta version of when they start airbrushing various historical personages from the history textbooks and ‘shopping others into them. Soon, no Robert E. Lee or Paul Revere; but we’ll get Harriet Tubman and Cesar Chavez, whole chapters.
Reminds me of my grad skool years in English literature somewhat; the faculties for the most part and the other grad students absolutely HATED it that the best and greatest writers in our language have all been WHITE MEN. So they started weeding all those dead white males out and setting up phony courses covering the approved PC grievance whore brigades and what Harold Bloom has called the “School of Resentment.” Gotta include womyn and minority writers, and they had to really, really reach for most of their idols. Outside of Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, and Emily Dickinson I’d bet that most people have never heard of them. Phillis Wheatley? Charlotte Gilman? Christine de Pizan? Aphra Behn? Hello? Anyone?
Yet those womyn writers were REQUIRED in courses that I was forced to take for “distribution.” And that was a quarter-century ago; now they just make up chit as they go along, like the warmists. Lie, obfuscate, and dissemble, just like the musloid good book sez to do, too, for the infidels.
Just in case anyone at all is interested, probably lurking here: Wheatley was a very minor War of Independence era poet, educated by her rich white libturd Boston family. All you need to know about Charlotte Gilman is “The Yellow Wallpaper;” read that and you’re done. It is like unto Holy Writ. Aphra Behn, another minor and hitherto unknown writer of the Restoration, who hung around with libertine derelicts like the Earl of Rochester, who himself died of VD in his early thirties. de Pizan was actually a little more impressive, as were other medieval-era women writers like Julian of Norwich, Anna Comnena and Margaret Paston.
But what the School of Resentment fembats have done is to utilize these women writers as their literary vanguard of the Revolution in modern and contemporary times. They’re seen as proto-fembats, of course, and given the higher status you might imagine over such literary white male drudges as Arthur Golding, Pope, Dryden, or Spenser. Whereas the guy known as Shakspear was of course also a proto-fembat and holy warrior for the Revolution and high priest for the Goddess Diversity.
But don’t get me started…
Don’t forget Saint Maya Angelou. RIP dear departed Poet Laureate of the Obola Regime+. sniff.
Ah yes, that must be why all the flags were at half-mast the other day; we drop to half-mast now for everyone who dies now and has been mentioned in the PC nooz media at one time or another. She who had her office in a janitor’s closet at whatever useless college back in the day, at least that’s where her listed phone number was. “I Know Why the Caged Phone Rings.”
When I went to school, we had a choice: 12 credits of “diversity enhanced” classes, or 3 credits of “diversity focused” classes. I took the “Diversity Focused” course , and I chose a lit class that made my hair stand on end. “12 years a slave” was the one really good book I read. The rest challenged my world-view to the point that it still turns my stomach. Some things are simply not normal.
In any event, that left me 9 credits to do with as I chose, so I chose math electives. I can write an equation that draws snoopy. I can also understand assembly, though I’ve never needed the skill. But it sure was fun.
An example of why Johnny can’t read, but he sure can screw:
http://www.click2houston.com/news/middle-school-teacher-had-sexual-relationship-with-student-authorities-say
IMHO, that teacher looks like jail-bait herself.
I wonder if her boobs are real…
My daughter who is in her last leg to get an accounting degree/CPA has a class this quarter called Diversity in Business. Total BS for her degree.
Doesn’t say how old the teacher is, and:
“Police have not been able to find her to serve an arrest warrant.”
Ain’t them parents cool, though? Junior’s hot for teacher so laissez les bon temps rouler, baby! Voulez vous coucher avec moi?
Gee, my 8th-grade English teacher didn’t look like that; she was a middle-aged Italian-Murkan spinster whose face would stop a clock. But…she showed us ZEFFIRELLI’S “Romeo and Juliet” and then took us in to see it done at the Schubert Theater in Boston, with Jane Asher (brother of Peter Asher, of Peter and Gordon, and gf of Paul McCartney at the time (insert girlish squeals here)). After that she took us to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and between all of that, gave me, if no one else, a lifelong appreciation and love for Shakey, and Renaissance and medieval art, music and literature. She died just a couple of years ago down there in MA and in another of my regrets, of which there are LEGION, I never wrote her and thanked her for that. What an asshole I am.
Gordon of that English pop duo also died about seven years ago, bummer. But Peter Asher is still around and so is Jane:
https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/06/Jane_Asher.jpg
“Diversity in Business. Total BS for her degree.”
No, no, no! The Goddess Diversity smiles upon globalist cosmopolite youth in the wunnerful world of business and accounting as they struggle to right wrongs and the terrible evil perpetrated by the white cis-hetero male patriarchy.
Twenty years ago, when the term “diversity” was new but the concept was just as soiled as it was to begin with, I attended a large, mandatory diversity training seminar. In front of the approx 500 employees and consultants I asked about this all-virtuous diversity, and why all of the examples were of getting women and black men into engineering and management positions. If diversity was so important, wouldn’t it make sense to get the most qualified people of different backgrounds, rather than focusing on race and sex regardless of actual background or qualifications.
Wow, did that cause an uproar.
“Wow, did that cause an uproar.”
The NERVE of you! Amazing that you’re still alive! You shoulda been lynched on the spot, you nasty WHITEY cis-hetero troglodyte!
These people don’t give a blind rat’s ass about qualifications, competence, merit, experience, intelligence or any of that crappy old patriarchal stuff. If you got a vagina or your skin is other than a nice healthy pink, lol, you is in like Flynn, you got the world by the ass now. You is the bee’s knees, etc., etc. Get in at middle or higher rank and scoot right to the top in a matter of months, if that. Or skip that, too, and START at the top. We gots to make up for centuries of rayciss stuff and slavery and bossing womyn around, ya know. Why not take it out on the current generation who had nuttin’ to do with any of it? Make us PAY! For the sins and alleged sins of the fathers and grandfathers back to, I dunno, Imhotep? Pericles? Romulus and Remus? Abraham?
This same bit of commie-type hustle and scam chit worked the same way in the wunnerful world of “law enforcement” back in the early ’80s, too; with scores over 100 and previous mil-spec LE experience, I didn’t stand a chance, plus points added on in MA for the Purple Hahts (used to open beer bottles by one of my bitter ex-jarhead buddies). Nope, meant jackchit. So when I was working as a street cop, I kept running into minions selected according to worship of the Goddess Diversity, with scores typically in the 40s and 50s and lower. Plus the copchicks, a third my size and of zero use in street fights and biker bar brawls. But there they all are, to this day.
Of course up here we have nasty WHITEY cops, with the usual shaved heads, wrap-around mirror shades, often roided-up gym rats, too, with nasty cases of hostility and arrogance, drop your uppity ass in a New York second, while emptying their 9s and 40s and slapping new mags in and emptying those, also. Sooner or later a round might hit a targeted perp, while the rest hit bystanders, buildings, and fly God-knows-elsewhere.
What an asshole I am.
Well, somebody has to be the asshole of this online body.
Wow, did that cause an uproar.
Ditto.
No, that diversity course did nothing for me.
Let me punch that little snot in the nose.
aggressive enough?
Anyone got experience with the LED bulbs that fit in fluorescent fixtures? Our garage light is nearing burnout and the LEDs draw a lot less power for the same light. Cost more, but the power savings would add up.
I just bought some of these 17W LED bulbs for the office. I have yet to install them though (turning into a lazy old man). I just noticed that I may have to remove the ballasts from the existing fixtures which messes them up for me.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01ATV3VDM/
“Wow, did that cause an uproar.”
SteveF caused an uproar? Who would believe it?
Total BS for her degree.
Indeed. But gets more money for the school in terms of what your daughter has to pay (class and staying in school longer), money from the feds for
havingforced attendance, and money from the state because it may be a state school.ManyAll state schools exist to employ the unemployable. I mean, did you really think that psychology degree was worth anything except to teach classes to people who are forced to attend?Mr. Ray, so many microaggressions, so little time.
Mr. Ray, so many microaggressions, so little time
I will check my privilege shortly after I hang my head in shame. Being a white male it is apparently in my nature according to the psychopath psychologists who are teaching the leaders of tomorrow in our liberal (hate whitey, unless he has lots of money) institutions.
Oops I did it again.
My tenant landscaper just called me and said that he lost his 3/4 ton 4×4 truck while trying to get his son out. His son’s house went from six inches of water to 3 ft deep while they were packing this morning. A National Guard truck came by and picked them up. They left the doors open as the river is flowing through the house. He does have flood insurance.
We might get another 2 to 6 inches of rain tomorrow. There are 11 dams north of here that are all full and have their spillways wide open. So the Brazos river may rise another foot or so if that happens. Wow! That would be 6 ft over the previous crest. We are at 54.7 ft now, 4.4 ft over the previous high.
http://water.weather.gov/ahps2/hydrograph.php?wfo=HGX&gage=RMOT2
Drone over my neighborhood yesterday:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4XB0rlP0dk
Mr. Lynn, that youtube link says it is from a year ago.
Geeze!
My two month old Wells Fargo Visa chip card was compromised. Four small charges were made at “Lancer Insurance” so the fraud department froze it. Never heard of Lancer so a new card is on the way. I do use it online as an Amazon payment method and as a Paypal method. I’ve only used it at the store via the chip.
Geeze!
Shit! First my Visa card, now Taylor Swift and Calvin Harris break up. What a day!
Mr. Lynn, that youtube link says it is from a year ago.
Argh! Incompetent! Here is the 2016 drone video but the river has risen 3 ft since it was taken. The other video was better since it was from the back pumping station about 1/4 mile from my house, but, it was from last year’s flood.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdzYxZ_egeY
The, ah, young lady in question in the Aldine school district is 24.
Almost twice the age of the young “man.”
And yeah, she is a hottie.
jeez
nick
How the eff come when I was in 8th grade no 24-year-old hottie teacher came on to me? WTF?
“Oops I did it again.”
You and RBT are cruising for permanent slots at a re-education camp lately. Noted.
And oh boy, OFD has med appointments for next Tuesday (continued back pain and leg numbness, what a loser), the 17th for another physical (for disability claim), July 1 (for hearing aids, what a loser), and the sad disintegration continues…
But Mrs. OFD’s medical today came out well; no haht trouble, meds for BP, and advice on continuing outdoor hoss activities and reducing stress. Also fah less costly than I had anticipated.
And a guy called from Manchester, NH who found my previous iPhone, lost by wife off the hood of the car on her last gig down there, in some parking lot. He has it and wife will get it from him when she’s back down there on the 30th. Nice guy, too; he apparently pulled out all the stops trying to find out who it belonged to. So wife will keep that one, give her large iPhone to her mom and I’ll stick with the little iPhone 5 as I’ve found I prefer the smaller units. They all watch movies, videos, use FaceCrack, all that chit; I only use it for calls and sometimes looking up chit. And I have prepper apps on it, too.
I also have a Libertas tablet, running on Android, ultra-secure six ways from Sunday and now I just gotta get the wireless working on it:
Anyone run into their laptop, phone or tablet SEEING the immediately local wireless nets, having a STRONG connection, but when you connect, it only lasts a second and then it’s “disabled.” ?? I’ve tried several things and come up short so fah and also sent an email to the guys who put it together.
Not exactly that, but I’ve seen the list of available networks showing a host with a strong signal, then when I try to connect it’s weak, sometimes too weak to connect. This is on both laptops and Kindle Fires. I’ve seen a number of explanations, from caching to the initial “who’s there” ping being by chance strong-looking. Haven’t looked into it beyond a cursory glance at explanation sites; I don’t know enough to identify the problem for real and don’t care enough to bone up on it.
My two month old Wells Fargo Visa chip card was compromised.
My VISA and debit card were both compromised this year. Fraud department calls and asks me about some charges, all denied. They ask if the card is in my possession, and it is. So new cards are ordered. Debit card never left my sight and gas stations and such are carefully examined for skimmers. Best guess is they use random numbers until they get a hit. Or some vendor that I use got compromised.
The fraud detection is pretty good. I think a lot has to do with geographic separation between one transaction and the failed attempt. Many miles in a few minutes and card is blocked. A few hundred miles within an hour and card gets blocked. A few thousand miles and anything with 12 hours will get blocked outside the normal location. Obviously the detection is more sophisticated than such but I think it is based on distance between terminals.
When I travel overseas I have to tell the card companies the dates and countries I will be visiting. Otherwise all foreign attempts to use the card are blocked. Last set of failed attempts where in California, about two hours after I last used the card in my local area. Thus the terminal distance hypothesis.
Usually takes 10 days to get a new card. Most impressive was Discover when my wife’s purse was stolen from my car after the cretins broke a window. Happened on a Friday night. Called Discover at 10:30 PM and informed them the card was stolen. Immediate block and new card ordered. Arrived Saturday at 10:00 via FedEx overnight Saturday deliver. Less than 12 hours and I had a new card. Impressive. Visa, nope, 10 days.
“I don’t know enough to identify the problem for real and don’t care enough to bone up on it.”
I’m not sure I do, either, despite being in IT since roughly the mid-80s, and no answer yet from the guys who put the tablet together, i.e. “support.” So maybe they’re “boning up” on it, lol. I tried some obvious chit but feel I’m overlooking something basic somewhere. All other devices here connect and stay connected; this one has a chit-ton of security stuff enabled on it, and wireless gets disabled, which kinda defeats the purpose of the encrypted email and web surfing, etc. (there is no ethernet port)
From the American History Department, Revised:
http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2016/05/was-cornwallis-a-coward.html
And both John Adams and G. Washington could be total dicks. While cousin Sam Adams was an uber-dick.
From the same Department:
http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2016/06/three-mistakes-founders-made.html
Abolish the Senate. Dump it. Restore the balance between the three branches.
But it’s too late for all that, anyway. No one cares, let alone has the faintest glimmer of understanding.
[snip] found my previous iPhone, lost by wife off the hood of the car on her last gig down there, [snip]
Back when I was helping run my sister’s 24 hour diner, lost cell phones were a regularly scheduled happening. Usually, the owners returned within a day or two (almost always lost / found during graveyard shift, while the owners were inebriated). But once, it sat in the desk for several days, so I got ambitious and tried to call the cell phone company; I don’t remember which one. The phone was password protected, but opening it up got me the serial #, and I assumed that would be good enough for them to look up the owner. But the phone company absolutely refused to do anything w/o the actual phone number, even when I explained that it was locked up and I couldn’t get the number. Bozos.
[snip] Called Discover at 10:30 PM and informed them the card was stolen. Immediate block and new card ordered. Arrived Saturday at 10:00 via FedEx overnight Saturday deliver. [snip]
When AT&T first started their credit card business, my brother in law worked for them in customer service, answering calls etc. He once mentioned that he had a check box on his computer screen for ‘next flight out’. If you were a good enough customer, they had a few couriers on staff who would get a fresh card, drive to the Jacksonville airport, and hand deliver it to you. I never asked him just how much money you had to charge on your Master Card to rate that treatment.
“But the phone company absolutely refused to do anything w/o the actual phone number, even when I explained that it was locked up and I couldn’t get the number. Bozos.”
As it turns out, the guy who found the phone in the parking lot has a brother who works at Verizon and they found my current number as being “associated” with wife’s somehow and managed to call me at it; wife then called him and bingo. Incidentally, wife has already managed to crack her nice new big iPhone’s faceplate and will give that one to her mom, and keep what was formerly my phone. I’ll stick with the new one she got me and somehow miraculously manage NOT to damage or lose it, EVER. Like all the phones I’ve had before. While the grrls up here have lost or broken COUNTLESS phones, chargers, etc. One was even lost over the side of a canoe.
They also beat the living chit outta laptops and netbooks; I get them these machines and within a month or two they look like they’ve been through the Battle of Stalingrad. And also end up broken somehow. My machines look like they just rolled off the assembly line in Shanghai or Manchuria or wherever, despite being several years old, a couple of them.
I just can’t picture either of them doing the CCW thing at all, ever.
If you were a good enough customer
Maybe I am a good customer. Paying them almost a grand each month, sometimes several grand. I use the card to pay anything I can and then pay it off each month. Never been late, never paid a dime in interest. Been doing that for 30 years. Allows me to get the cash back bonus. I would think that would qualify me as a horrible customer. Maybe the vendor fees are enough to make me profitable.
manage NOT to damage or lose it, EVER
I have only damaged one cell phone. I accidentally left it on a food tray in the hospital cafeteria when my wife was in surgery. Dumped it into the trash. Of course it went to the bottom where all the goo was located. I was busy fishing through the trash trying to find the phone, moving trash from one bin to another. Someone comes up to me and gives me $5.00. I guess they thought I was scavenging for food. They got away before I could explain to them what I was doing.
Phone quit working a couple of hours later. Beyond that, having owned four cell phones since then, I have never damaged any. When I traded in my iPhone 5 it was pristine after three years of use, looked brand new.
Teenagers are particularly rough on cell phones. I guess because they have never paid for their own cell phone. No respect for the property. And some of them intentionally break their one year old phone to get the latest model on mommy and daddy’s dime. That I know for certain as they have told me.
WRT credit/debit card theft and “chipped” cards:
First, chipped cards: Less than 25% of merchants are using the “chip” feature because (1) it slows down the line and (2) the merchant has to pay extra in “service” fees. Now for the real dirty secret, back in 1980 I was part of a gooberment and banking working group developing the specifications for the “smart chip” as it was being called then. Well the physical chip, security, and programs being used today are exactly what was developed in 1980. The security of the chip and the transmission and handling of the data are abysmally bad. The reality is the chipped cards are no more secure than the magnetic strip and the chip can be easily cloned or created with an easily available chip reader/writer.
Now to credit/debit card theft, those that have mentioned essentially brute force account number generation are correct. It is extremely simple because half of the numbers on your debit/credit card are the same for every type of card a card issuer issues. So, it is a simple matter to brute force generate the last 6 to 8 numbers and “Bob’s your Uncle” you have a “valid” card.
In fact, the remaining numbers (after the issuer numbers) are usually not random but generated by algorithm. There is software available to generate numbers that ‘could’ be good if they were issued without generating numbers that are impossible to be good. Some websites used to just check if a number was ‘possibly good’ instead of validating that the number had been issued.
I had my amex number stolen enough times that I figured out the algorithm and could predict what my new card number would be.
nick
The chipped cards are so fucking annoying. We’ve gone from a quick swipe to inserting your card and standing there for a solid minute while it does its thing. Meanwhile, if you pay online or pay over the phone the chip is useless. The chip doesn’t do crap if someone is in physical possession of your card and you don’t know it yet. What does the chip accomplish? An increase in equipment costs for criminals embossing bogus cards? Like many security measures it only makes life more difficult for honest businesses and consumers.
DadCooks is correct. All cards issued by the same bank will typically have the same first 8 digits. So, generate the last 8 digits and make sure when combined with the known first 8 digits they pass a Mod 10 check and you’re bound to come up with all sorts of valid credit card numbers.
So, in other words, things have become even worse and more inconvenient and costly for more people.
yes, and the change came about at the same time the banks shifted the responsibility for fraud to the merchants.
Nice way to combat the upstarts who only have swipe readers, like Square….
nick
Also, blame is shifted to the merchant for fraud if a card is swiped and not “inserted.”
Walmart won’t let a chipped card be swiped unless the cashier presses a button on their screen. When my chip was declined twice, the cashier reset the register and we tried a swipe with the same results.
They should have went with PIN instead of signature. Three tries and the card is locked.
“So, in other words, things have become even worse and more inconvenient and costly for more people.”
With the gooberment and banks the SOP is SNAFU and damn the costs, the public has to pay it.
Yes, SNAFU moving quickly to FUBAR!
Rick tells me he has to replace the ballasts for it to work.
There are 3 situations for using LED bulbs in fluorescent fixtures:
– if the ballast is an old style one it won’t work with any LED bulb
– if the ballast is newer, it will work with some LED bulbs (more expensive bulb)
– some LED bulbs have you bypass the ballast and direct wire to the fixture (cheapest bulb, somewhat higher install costs
In our case, I may have an old ballast in the fixture, so a direct wire version may be the best solution. Those bulbs seem to be about $10 or so each at Lowe’s. Need to do a recon mission once the rain stops.
Haters.
They should have went with PIN instead of signature.
Yep. That’s how they do it in Europe. Also, the card never leaves your sight. the chip and PIN system vastly reduces fraud at merchants when the card is presented.
It’s possible to clone a chip and PIN card, but it requires having physical control of a terminal where the card is used and putting in custom firmware. There is a crypto flaw in some terminals that can be exploited. It’s not easy to do, and doesn’t seem very common.
Less than 25% of merchants are using the “chip” feature because (1) it slows down the line and (2) the merchant has to pay extra in “service” fees.
From what I have read, use of a chipped card has the advantage to the merchant that they get dinged at a much lower rate for fraudulent transactions. Also, if people got used to putting their card in as soon as it can be, it will be about as fast as a swipe.
Yep. That’s how they do it in Europe.
You would think. However, when I was in Norway I bought train tickets at an unattended terminal. About $250.00 worth of tickets. Inserted my chipped card, requested the tickets, got the tickets. The system never asked for a pin of any kind. I don’t know if it was Norway, the card, or the authorizing bank.
When I got back I asked the bank why no pin. They did not know. Said regardless I would not be responsible for fraudulent charges. Makes me wonder who would be responsible.