08:08 – Barbara spent all day yesterday volunteering: 0800 through lunch helping with the move to their new quarters, a quick stop at home to shower, and all afternoon at the Friends of the Library bookstore. She’d intended to head home late-morning to meet the mattress delivery people, but she didn’t need to. About 1000, she called to tell me that Al was heading up from Winston and was about ten minutes out. He pulled in the drive about 90 seconds after her call. I hadn’t even had time to start a pot of coffee for him.
The mattress delivery truck pulled in our drive about 1130. The two guys made short work of hauling off the old one and hauling in the new one. It’s now in place, the bed is made, and everything is ready for Frances and Al’s next visit.
After Al headed home to Winston and Barbara to the FoL bookstore, I called the county ag extension office and spoke to a delightful young woman named Amy Lucas about volunteering for 4H. She told me I’d need to fill out an application, which I could find on the state site. It’s five pages long, but I understand they have to be very careful about allowing random adults to work with teens.
Amy said they would need to do a background check on me. It used to be required initially and then every five years, but now they’ve dropped that to every two years. Amy was born and raised here, and said it was embarrassing for her to have to explain to people she’s known all her life that by state law they had to undergo a detailed background check before they were allowed to volunteer.
I shouldn’t have any problem passing the background check. My most recent encounter with LE was about 30 years ago, when I got a ticket in Winston for going 40 in a 35 zone. I’ve never been arrested for, let alone convicted of, even a misdemeanor.
I had her on the phone, so I also asked Amy if they did pressure tests on pressure canners. She said they sure did, that anyone in the office was able to do those tests, and that it took about five minutes. All I need to do is bring in the lid. As it turns out, she’s a home canning enthusiast, as is her mother. She said the the county ag department had regular canning classes at the library and elsewhere and that they were also happy to do one-on-one lessons.
She asked what kind of pressure canner I had, and I told her a Presto 23-quart. She said Presto was good, as were Mirro and All-American. She said the only real difference between a $70 Presto and an All-American that sells for five times as much was that the Presto required replacing the gasket periodically while the AA didn’t use a gasket. I said that for one fifth the cost I could buy a lot of spare gaskets.
When Amy mentioned the library, I told her that Barbara had spent the morning helping move the books to the new library building and was spending the afternoon at the FoL bookstore. She said she’d stop in one day soon to meet Barbara. I mentioned that Barbara wasn’t yet sold on doing our own canning, but I wanted to can dark meat chicken and ground beef for LTS. Amy said she bet she could make Barbara a convert in short order.
“I understand they have to be very careful about allowing random adults to work with teens…”
Well let’s hope they don’t find the ///Mad///Home Scientist videos showing kids how to make napalm and do other interesting stuff…!
Which reminds me, anybody who loves explosions needs to look up Andrew (Zbigniew) Szydło on YT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcfCNW9gy2U
“…anybody who loves explosions needs to look up Andrew (Zbigniew) Szydło on YT.”
That guy’s pretty funny. I note that the last skit he did with the balloons used glycerin, and your humble northern correspondent was playing with that and swimming pool chlorine in his much younger years. It produced explosions with a distinctive green flash.
Then I joined the military and I was introduced to much larger explosions.
And from the Economic Disaster Conjecturing Department:
http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/54412.html
I believe that whatever the gummint does will be wrong or not enough, because that is what they do best.
So we can eventually look forward, perhaps in 3-5 years, maybe ten years out, to being Greece, as they say, without the climate and the generous benefactor/s (Germany, mainly).
We should probably be studying Cyprus, Greece, Venezuela, etc., so that we can clue in our kids and grandkids as we prepare ourselves to slough off this mortal coil, but I doubt they’ll be in any mood to listen to us by then.
Well our incompetent Tri-Cities and WA State sure screwed up the Winter Weather Warning issued on Tuesday, 12-13-16 for Wednesday afternoon 12-14-16. Snow started late afternoon on Wednesday, all the big employers sent employees home early (between 1:30pm and 3:30pm). We got 6+ inches of new very slick snow, temperature has been holding steady at about 23°F. This morning the roads have had nothing done to them. All schools are now closed and the Hanford Site is shut down accept for essential personnel. My kids’ have been out shoveling for the past 2-hours. Too bad not one snowplow has passed by the main road only a block away.
I know many of you don’t care, but I do (for all animals BTW). Sad day yesterday, Wednesday, 12-14-16.
I came home from running some errands and found a feral kitten slumped over our heated ground birdbath. She was unresponsive but still alive. I scooped her up, got her inside and dried off. Wrapped in warm towels and kept up with stimulating rubs and CPR. She finally looked up at me, gave me a very quiet mew, her pupils exploded (went wide), and she passed in my arms. She may have only known human contact for an hour, but she lived a life.
Her name was Dottie, she has crossed the Rainbow Bridge. I’ll see her again.
We are also animal lovers up here in frigid and very windy northern Vermont. We’ve lost two cats to vehicle hit-and-runs over the last six years and it was painful for us. It also sucked a few years ago when we had to put down our previous golden retriever because he was old, had cancer and just couldn’t function anymore.
Plus we keep an eye out on all the local livestock and our bird life here in the village by the lake.
As for weather, sun and blue sky right now, but it is steadily getting worse starting later this afternoon, with snow showers, wind gusts to 40 MPH, and wind chill down to 25-30 below zero. Our cats are sticking close to me inside the house.
Well our incompetent Tri-Cities and WA State sure screwed up the Winter Weather Warning issued on Tuesday, 12-13-16 for Wednesday afternoon 12-14-16.
Watching news reports on the web this morning, I saw that people left work late yesterday and the Portland/Vantucky metro gridlocked so severely that people abandoned their cars.
Isn’t the Subaru Forrester the state car of OR? The Subaru dealer where the hipsters buy their vehicles in Gresham is enormous.
Here’s hoping the roads clear up around Portland/Vancouver today. There’s folks I know travelling from WA to Utah via I-5 then I-84 tomorrow (Friday). Latest weather dweebs along the route say the storm is heading east (watch out, you easterners!), so the roads should be passable.
The travellers have tire chains, some backup food/water/first aid in the back of the car, which is a Highlander with 4WD. And lots of patience.
We should probably be studying Cyprus, Greece, Venezuela, etc., so that we can clue in our kids and grandkids as we prepare ourselves to slough off this mortal coil, but I doubt they’ll be in any mood to listen to us by then.
Lots of food, energy, guns, and ammo are needed. And we are just in the beginning of the slow apocalypse. Just wait until the federal government starts flailing around. Probably the sign of irreversibility is when they seize IRAs, 401Ks, and large bank accounts. That will be a bad day.
Isn’t the Subaru Forrester the state car of OR?
IMHO it is. Second most popular here in the Tri-Cities WA. First is big-tired 4×4 trucks, Toyota Tundra current leader. Our Subaru Dealer recently opened a new place, about 5 times the size of his old one (from 2 to now 10 service bays and a football field sized lot of new Subarus).
Kids finally got to work. My son travels all city streets from Kennewick to Pasco, no evidence of plowing, all packed snow (he drives a big old 1993 Volvo 850, a tank). My daughter has to drive an interstate like highway to Richland, road snow packed and slick with many many cars and big-ass 4x4s in the ditch. Her little VW Rabbit just keeps hopping along ;-).
Yesterday, Wednesday, a house burned down close to us (was looking out the kitchen window when I saw the tower of heavy black smoke start to rise at 8:10am, 2 blocks away as the crow flies). Before last night the previous snow was last Friday. The streets leading to the house were nearly impassable for the fire trucks. This morning the local bird cage liner (I get mine digitally now since I don’t have birds) had a story from the Fire Chief that they could have saved the house if the main streets into the subdivision had been plowed. BTW, our area has 3 full time staffed fire stations within a radius of less than 2 miles.
When I was growing up in Morton Grove IL the cities had what were known as “fire routes”. These were always kept plowed. We lived on one which was a PITA because several times a day the plows would come by and push a huge berm of compact frozen snow across everyones’ driveway. The price we paid for rapid fire protection.
“The travellers have tire chains…”
Excellent, and Godspeed to them. I would not hazard any less than emergency road trips in the face of severe weather.
“That will be a bad day.”
I bet that’s coming sooner than we think or anticipate. They’ve already demonstrated to our complete satisfaction that they can do this to US for the most trivial or mistaken reasons and no one is accountable or apologizing for it.
Just went out to move downed tree branches and twigs and start the Saab and Matrix, both of which fired right up.
It’s that type of cold that immediately pinches your nostrils shut and makes your eyes water and then turn to frozen tears, plus frozen facial hair. I love it!
It’s dark outside here. -3C (27F). Light snow is covering the streets.
I’ve put my winter tires to my bicycle today. They have spikes that prevent sliding on icy ground. If that is frozen (including water, dirt), and snow is not too thick and heavy, I’ll take the bike on my errands, especially when I’ll have to cross the nearby park. Unfortunately, there are way too many cars on our streets, and there is not much infrastructure for bicycles. And that’s a pitty, as Sibiu is a small old town suitable for bicycles..
which is a Highlander with 4WD
How does that vehicle do in the snow? I ask because I have one.
Not that I actively pursued the 4WD living in the south. But I found a used one that was three years old and was close to what I wanted. Used Highlanders three years (or less) old are hard to find. Dealer looked for two months, checked Atlanta, Nashville and Knoxville inventories. Nada. Found one in Virginia but it was $500 to have it brought in with CarMax and if you don’t like the vehicle you still pay the delivery charge.
Mine is a 4WD limited edition V6 with third row seating. A little more than what I wanted but when you are getting a used vehicle your options are sometimes slim for scarce vehicles. I paid $30K for it with 60K miles. New Highlanders in that configuration were running a shade over 50K new, more than I wanted to pay.
Speaking of Highlanders, I have a Brother color laser printer. Picked it up new from Staples November 2014 for $134. Duplexing, networked, etc. A really good deal. That was until about two weeks ago. In the fusing assembly there are two rollers, a heated roller that is orange colored, and a black upper roller. The covering on the upper roller split and tore. I only had 1,100 pages on the printer. I was not happy.
Contacted Brother and they finally called me back. They had me read some serial numbers from the toner cartridges. Who knew the color assembly separated from the actual imaging drum. They wanted the serial numbers to make certain they were genuine Brother cartridges. With that there are at least nine, probably more, serial numbers on the machine.
After going through all of that Brother is overnighting the fuser roller assembly. They are also dispatching a technician to install the new fuser assembly. Not difficult as there are only two screws and one electrical connection. I told Brother I could replace it myself. They said no, it had to be done by a tech to keep the warranty intact. OK, just trying to save some money and time.
Do you know Bruce Schneier, the cryptographer and security guru?
He thinks that Trump administration will be much worse than would Clinton’s, with “devastating effects” to Internet security and privacy.
“There will be more government surveillance and more corporate surveillance.”
“And if there’s a major terrorist attack under Trump’s watch, it’ll be open season on our liberties.”
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/12/my_priorities_f.html
It continues to amaze me, how normal, smart people can have so much different, apocalyptic views, on either Trump or Clinton. Basically, we are screwed no matter what.
“Speaking of Highlanders, I have a Brother color laser printer.”
OK, I give up. What’s the connection?
I have been pleased by our Brother inkjet so fah, and got it to work with just a little tweaking with Linux Mint. They were very good about providing what help they could via email contacts, no complaints from me.
“Basically, we are screwed no matter what.”
Correct. We are getting more State surveillance anyway, REGARDLESS of which psychopath is serving in the National Administrator role. So all those folks breathing a huge sigh of relief now that he is tentatively the new National Administrator need to have their heads examined. The only relief I’m feeling is that he is less likely to get us into a nukular war and less likely to send goons around to take my guns. Other than, we’re going over the cliff anyway, just a matter of when.
Yes, and then later in his newsletter he admits his concerns would be basically the same if Hillary won. So why the hysteria about Trump?
His ‘comfort’ with a Hillary administration being ‘business as usual’ doesn’t make much sense to me from a privacy and security standpoint. I think ‘business as usual’ is pretty bad when it comes to those things, and I think H would be way more of an authoritarian than T.
n
Even the cashier at Goodwill thrift shop, a young black man, was glad H didn’t win, and thinks we would do better without antagonizing Russia. He volunteered that a great depression was coming, and war was on the way. Keeps his money in cash, wants to buy silver. Gets his news from “alternative” sources. 20 something year old. So why can’t the rest see?
n
I’ve got the air conditioning running in the house now …
Schneier maybe ought to spend less time on the political angles and more back on the IT security and cryptography stuff. I respect his views and his background but like Mr. Nick says, this latest wishy-washy chatter doesn’t make a whole lotta sense.
“So why can’t the rest see?”
Indeed, whatever race or ethnicity. I still overhear people chatting at various venues around town and most of them in this AO in regular crap-wage jobs or retired seem to be relieved that tRump is the tentative Prez. Only they obviously don’t think “tentative” like I do, considering the continued attempts at sabotage in the EC and other places. They’re mainly concerned about the economy, jobs and crime, and I get the impression more of them are also looking to ‘alternative’ sources for their news.
You know things are strange when guys like Michael Moore stump for tRump and the MSM and others are trying to push Russian hackers as throwing the election to him instead of their Anointed and Entitled One.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBOQdkIu6fM
And with Eva Marie Saint, who is now around 92 or so and still looks great.
http://www.lamag.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2014/08/eva-marie-saint-north-by-northwest.jpg
“I’ve got the air conditioning running in the house now …”
Hahaha!
I’ve got some nice AC to send down your way, hombre:
…WIND CHILL ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 11 AM EST FRIDAY…
* LOCATIONS…THE NORTHERN SAINT LAWRENCE VALLEY IN NORTHERN NEW YORK, THE CHAMPLAIN VALLEY IN NEW YORK AND VERMONT, AND SOUTH CENTRAL VERMONT.
* HAZARD TYPES…VERY COLD WIND CHILL TEMPERATURES.
* WIND CHILL READINGS…AS LOW AS 20 TO 30 BELOW DUE TO TEMPERATURES 8 BELOW TO 12 ABOVE ZERO…AND WINDS NORTHWEST 10 TO 20 MPH WITH GUSTS UP TO 35 MPH.
* TIMING…THE COLDEST WIND CHILL VALUES WILL OCCUR BETWEEN 10 PM THURSDAY AND 8 AM FRIDAY.
* IMPACTS…FROSTBITE AND HYPOTHERMIA CAN OCCUR WITHIN 15 MINUTES IF PRECAUTIONS ARE NOT TAKEN.
From the latest gummint weather site up here. Just saw another big V-flight of geese heading south. They must know something.
OK, I give up. What’s the connection?
None. Just being snarky today.
And I thought ours was bad.
Event: Wind Chill Advisory
Alert:
…DANGEROUSLY COLD WIND CHILL THROUGH TONIGHT.
.A LARGE AREA OF HIGH PRESSURE WILL BUILD OVER THE REGION
ACCOMPANIED BY VERY COLD AIR AND GUSTY WINDS. WHILE WINDS WILL BE
DIMINISHING…THE COMBINATION OF WIND AND LOW TEMPERATURES WILL
CREATE DANGEROUSLY LOW WIND CHILL VALUES ESPECIALLY AT THE HIGHER
ELEVATIONS.
…WIND CHILL ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 6 AM EST FRIDAY…
* LOCATIONS…SOUTHEAST WEST VIRGINIA…THE NORTHWEST MOUNTAINS
OF NORTH CAROLINA…AND PORTIONS OF VIRGINIA FROM THE BLUE
RIDGE WESTWARD
* HAZARD TYPES…DANGEROUSLY COLD WIND CHILLS.
* WIND CHILL…5 TO 10 BELOW ZERO.
* TIMING…LOWEST WIND CHILLS THIS EVENING THROUGH EARLY TONIGHT.
* IMPACTS…DANGEROUSLY COLD CONDITIONS FOR EXPOSED SKIN.
* WINDS…NORTHWEST 15 TO 25 MPH WITH GUSTS UP TO 35 MPH EARLY…
DIMINISHING OVERNIGHT.
* TEMPERATURES…RANGING FROM AROUND ZERO TO THE LOWER TEENS LATE
TONIGHT.
Instructions: A WIND CHILL ADVISORY IS ISSUED WHEN STRONG WINDS WILL COMBINE WITH COLD TEMPERATURES FOR SEVERAL HOURS TO CREATE DANGEROUSLY COLD CONDITIONS FOR EXPOSED SKIN. THOSE PLANNING TO VENTURE OUTDOORS SHOULD USE COMMON SENSE AND DRESS WARMLY…MAKING SURE THAT ALL EXPOSED SKIN IS COVERED.
Target Area:
Alleghany
Ashe
Watauga
Schneier maybe ought to spend less time on the political angles and more back on the IT security and cryptography stuff. I respect his views and his background but like Mr. Nick says, this latest wishy-washy chatter doesn’t make a whole lotta sense.
I chalk it up as part of the propoganda heading into the Electoral College vote on Monday. Everyone who lives in or around the big liberal enclaves seem to have temporarily lost their minds, and I doubt sanity will prevail until Jan. 20.
Schneier’s book is still worth picking up if you are interested in the details of Cryptography, but, in general, I don’t recommend DIY when it comes to implementing encryption algorithms. Use only well-reviewed open source libraries and programs.
I’ve got the air conditioning running in the house now …
We’re in Austin, and the forecast high is in the 50s today. We haven’t run the AC in a couple of weeks.
Optimist.
He’s got a pile of books, of generally declining quality. Applied Cryptography is excellent as a math-heavy introduction to cryptographic algorithms and protocols. After that, the books got deeper and deeper into social and political issues. They’re important from a computer or corporate security perspective, but squishy, and Schneier’s insights are not notable.
Caveat or disclaimer: I have a personal grievance with Schneier over a bit of sleeziness. I don’t think that affects my judgment of his books, but can’t rule it out.
I’ve got the air conditioning running in the house now …
We’re in Austin, and the forecast high is in the 50s today. We haven’t run the AC in a couple of weeks.
Oh, our high was 59 F today. But the game room, AKA the sun room, the man cave, the woman cave, gets warm with all of those windows. I could have also opened a window for the breeze but I wanted to dry out the rest of the master suite.
EDIT: We are supposed to be 74 F Friday, 76 F Saturday, and 43 F on Sunday. The cold and flu doctors stay busy around here. And I have already had my flu shot. Now I am working on my courage to get a shingles shot.
He’s got a pile of books, of generally declining quality. Applied Cryptography is excellent as a math-heavy introduction to cryptographic algorithms and protocols. After that, the books got deeper and deeper into social and political issues. They’re important from a computer or corporate security perspective, but squishy, and Schneier’s insights are not notable.
My software got hacked when we were using his TwoFish algorithm. We swapped to public key / private key encryption and that problem went away.
Watching news reports on the web this morning, I saw that people left work late yesterday and the Portland/Vantucky metro gridlocked so severely that people abandoned their cars.
Isn’t the Subaru Forrester the state car of OR? The Subaru dealer where the hipsters buy their vehicles in Gresham is enormous.
Our snow car is a 1999 Impreza wagon. We put 4 studless traction tires on it and, for the most part, stay put. We had to pick up our daughter from the Portland Airport last night at about 9:30. We live about 6 miles from the terminal and it took us about 10 minutes longer than usual in each direction. We didn’t drive yesterday other than that. Google says traffic is slow in places today but not grid locked.
People in Portland don’t know how to drive in snow or ice. The worst idiots are the ones who drive large 4WD pickup trucks and assume that they can stop quickly because they have 4WD. There is little removal equipment and they do not salt the roads. They sand them. Cars don’t rust here, but they might be dented.
Rick in Portland
“The traveller” had the Highlander (2008 V6 lots of options, 3rd row seats, roof rack, back heater, backup camera, trailer package) in Utah for a couple of years. Driving on snow-packed roads was good, no traction problems, as long as you kept a reasonable speed. Has a ‘snow’ setting for more traction. Took it out on some snow-packed residential roads to check out the handling; very hard to make it slide (but that wasn’t at freeway speeds)..
Has heated seats (nice!) but not heated steering wheel (gloves work). Bought it used from National Car Rental; looked at the service records, which were all clean. Replaced the brake pads (disc) all around this summer. Jiffy Lube oil changes often. Set of tires last year from America’s Tires (I like their free flat repair and free rotation/air pressure check; had a screw in the tire that had a slow leak, fixed free).
So, pleased with the vehicle (the ‘traveller’ sez). We’ve bought our last 5 cars from National Car Rental (all Toyota; Camrys and Celicas) and all have lasted about 250K or more. Just required regular maintenance. Averages around 19-24mph, even with a power scooter on the back.
“The Traveller” sez that it was a good choice.
“”People in Portland don’t know how to drive in snow or ice. The worst idiots are the ones who drive large 4WD pickup trucks and assume that they can stop quickly because they have 4WD.””
Feel free to try to name a place where this is not the case, including rain and dry.
“Just being snarky today.”
Only today?
“And I thought ours was bad.”
Must be the whole eastern half of the country, then. The wind has picked up drastically here; I can hear it howling outside like it’s Siberia. Plus we got the expected snow covering, not much, though.
“…Everyone who lives in or around the big liberal enclaves seem to have temporarily lost their mind…”
“temporarily”??? They lost their minds a long time ago and live in a different reality than the rest of us.
“…I don’t recommend DIY when it comes to implementing encryption algorithms. Use only well-reviewed open source libraries and programs.”
Not me. Understood. I do what I can with my “recovering English major” skillz.
“…of generally declining quality.”
Yup, because he strayed from his area of expertise. Like Hollyweird actors pontificating on politics, too. Stick to what ya know well before going public with stuff.
” Now I am working on my courage to get a shingles shot.”
Go do. It’s nothing. Just another shot like the flu shot. I got both of those at the VA. Piece of cake.
“Isn’t the Subaru Forrester the state car of OR?”
It’s the “unofficial state car of Vermont,” too.
“People in Portland don’t know how to drive in snow or ice.”
People around here do, but our problem is all the outta-state vehicles that come blasting through on the interstate and Route 7, the main north-south routes between Quebec and NH/MA/NY. Yes, the 4x idiots think that means they can breeze on through anything at even higher speeds and laugh at us local yokels plodding along in the slow lane. And every time I go back and forth to the Burlap metropolis, I see all the skid marks going down into the media or into the ditches on the other side, different every day. When we have black ice on those roads, the toll mounts, with lots of rollovers.
More fun ensues when the lakes and ponds freeze up and the snowmobile cretins and pickup truck morons drive on out on it with the usual predictable results. A snowmobile weighs 700 pounds or so, and then you have Fatty Arbuckle on it dressed up in multiple layers of expensive winter gear, strapped in good, and through that early or late ice they go, straight to the bottom. Fatty can’t get out of that situation and probably instantly feels like I felt going under at age 14 at Walden Pond. It. Really. Sucks.
All the air goes out of you immediately and all your clothes become instantly waterlogged and it is FUCKING COLD, straight to the marrow. Assuming you weren’t strapped onto a snowmobile or you can somehow bust loose from it, now try to crawl back up on the ice. Have fun.
2008 V6 lots of options, 3rd row seats, roof rack, back heater, backup camera, trailer package
Mine is a 2013 with lots of options. Dual zone climate and rear climate controls. Vents in the roof which make a big difference in the cooling. Old Highlander (2002) only had front A/C and the rear passengers were never comfortable unless the front passengers required mittens and a coat.
Has a ‘snow’ setting for more traction
Actually does nothing for traction. The snow setting only changes the throttle response so that the tires don’t spin by application of normal throttle. The anti-wheel spin controlled by the computer is noisy as all get out as the computer attempts to apply brakes on the spinning wheel. This was on a 2WD drive, don’t know how it will work on the newer 4WD.
My basic premise is that when it snows if I don’t have to be on the road I am not.
The worst idiots are the ones who drive large 4WD pickup trucks
Yep, we have them here. Snows and they are all out driving around, many involved in crashes. Not being able to go in snow will generally not cause a crash. Not being able to stop will probably cause a crash. 4WD have the same number of brakes as 2WD. And pickups are notorious for poor traction in the back unless you can pile in about 1,000 pounds of dead weight.
When I had my ’91 Camry I had to go to work in downtown Knoxville in snow and ice conditions. Came to a spot on the interstate, big left hand curve, sloped of course. I was going along fine, slow but moving. Then traffic came to a stop on the curve. I stopped. But then started sliding sideways after coming to a complete stop. So I applied a little throttle and drove around the stopped vehicles in the right lane. That ’91 Camry actually did quite well in snow the few times I had to drive in the snow.
Partially true. Some fraction of humanity has a “gasp in” reflex, another has a “gasp out” reflex, and the remainder don’t seem to have either. The in-depth research I just did (a DuckDuckGo search) shows competing ratios for the three groups, so I don’t know what the numbers are, just that different people have different reflexes.
Dave has a couple of wallyhogs nearby, who seem not to be gainfully employed.
“…another has a “gasp out” reflex…”
Gee, that sounds like ME!
“Dave has a couple of wallyhogs nearby, who seem not to be gainfully employed.”
Hard to say lately; one supposedly has a p.t. gig at the local Wall-Mutt superstore and maybe something else going; the second one was taken away in an ambulance a couple of months ago but I’ve seen her lately coming and going in her late grandma’s car, so maybe she’s working somewhere, too. But yeah, they’d certainly add some weight to the back of a pickup, as would a couple of the female denizens across the street.
Lynn wrote:
” I could have also opened a window for the breeze…”
Do you have insect proof screens on the windows there? Up north (hi OFD, SteveF)? In 1990, during my first visit to the UK and Europe I was amazed that houses and hotels didn’t have screens. (And soft drink was served at room temperature – not refrigerated.)
“Dystopias are fantastic in fiction. But do you really want to live in one?” by John Scalzi
http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-scalzi-dystopia-20161104-story.html
No.
Too bad, because the USA is heading that way on roller skates.
Do you have insect proof screens on the windows there?
Yes, most of them. I need one on the fireplace, wasps keep on flying in and down to the house. The wife has become adept at vacuuming them up. We will have a long fire this year (we have gas logs) in case there is a nest up there.
These tossers just don’t get it…
You lost guys, get over it!
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-15/celebrities-urge-electoral-college-to-dump-trump/8124722
Wasps? Ugh!
My house in Canberra had European Wasps (Yellowjackets?) twice. Not fun.
“You lost guys, get over it!”
Tossers and wankers and rumpswabs. No, Greg; they will never stop, never stop trying, until they are stopped. That’s what we have to look forward to, since they won’t leave us the fuck alone. We will end up rousting them out from the fifty or so counties in the U.S. they control and doing whatever has to be done. We certainly have the firepower and the will is growing daily here, if not hourly. I hope they realize that at least half of their troops and police will stop working for them when the time comes.
“Too bad, because the USA is heading that way on roller skates.”
Jet-skates. It’s apparently what the ruling regime wants. Thinking themselves safe, I guess. They need to review pictures and videos of other rulers who’ve lost their empires.
They are incapable of accepting the result because they have so much invested in the idea that they are right. They LITERALLY can’t believe the results, because they can’t believe anyone would vote that way on their own, so it MUST be outside interference.
Except no pollster ever asked ME. And no one is asking now either. Vast swaths of America just never get asked so they can never be counted.
Re: schneeeiiirrs’s newsletter, he mentions that in some precincts, with a particular type of machine, there MIGHT be shenanigans, because in other precincts, with paper ballots, Hillarity did 8% better. He never stands the assumption on its head– in paper ballot precincts, it’s easier for the Democrats to cheat, and the machines represent the true state of affairs. Never even considers that.
n
300,000 in Corpus Christi with contaminated water that can’t be treated.
But supposedly a rather small quantity of the pollutant.
“They LITERALLY can’t believe the results…”
Like I said earlier, they live in a different reality than the rest of us. Literally. There is no way out of this, hermanos y hermanas. It’s like trying to reason with alien life forms from another freaking galaxy or dimension.
How did Captain Kirk handle this stuff? Or Spock?
“Never even considers that.”
Bruce, Bruce, Bruce; we love ya for your IT security and crypto work; stick to that, please. You don’t see me writing about crypto and math stuff; I’m a REM; I’ll feel authorized to discuss literature all day and all night but not that stuff.
“300,000 in Corpus Christi with contaminated water that can’t be treated.”
I checked Drudge quickly but saw no mention of this. ???
He does have a pic in upper left of the Seattle football team’s uniforms, though; I’m watching their game with the Rams right now. Who designed those things??? Fluorescent green pajamas; they all look like that gecko lizard for the Geico commercials. Yikes.
“”I checked Drudge quickly but saw no mention of this. “”
Yeah, I don’t think I’d pay any attention to my municipality acknowledging a drinking water problem and saying don’t drink it or use it, even with all reasonable sorts of home treatment… until confirmed by the British tabloids and a few days later by Drudge…
It does sound like a very tiny amount of a proprietary asphalt emusifier, but spills or backflows have a way of being several orders of magnitude worse than the culprit admits on the front end.
He’s got a pile of books, of generally declining quality. Applied Cryptography is excellent as a math-heavy introduction to cryptographic algorithms and protocols. After that, the books got deeper and deeper into social and political issues. They’re important from a computer or corporate security perspective, but squishy, and Schneier’s insights are not notable.
I was referring to “Applied Cryptography”.
My software got hacked when we were using his TwoFish algorithm. We swapped to public key / private key encryption and that problem went away.
Wow. TwoFish was an AES finalist.
Just make sure that you used a quality random number generator to create the public/private key. The last time I checked, Visual Studio srand()/rand() still utilized a formula which I’m guessing that Billy Gates found in one of Knuth’s books. MAX_RAND=0x37FF. Seriously?
The Seahawks basically blew away the Rams, 24-3, mainly because Rams receivers can’t hang onto the balls that are delivered right to their chest numbers and they couldn’t stop Russell Wilson’s deliveries to his guys.
At the bottom of our Comcast-delivered broadcast were the scrolling lists of two-hour delays for all the skools in northern Vermont tomorrow morning. Gee, it’s gonna warm right up between 7 AM and 9AM from minus 27 wind chill to minus 24. It is dropping to 4 below in the next few hours and wind gusts of 40 MPH. Cats and dawg went out, did their biz and came right back in immediately. They’re not stupid like us human beans.
Wife has been tooling around the island of Hawaii and visited Kaloko-Honokōhau National Historical Park Hawaii and got an iPhone vid of a local sea turtle, which evidently few peeps get to see. She went up a ways on one of the volcanoes but decided to cease and desist when she saw live lava fields and smoke. Temps in the 80s but they can have it and I told her so. She figures I’d prefer to visit the northwest of Ireland with all her frequent flier miles and she’s right.
OFD is all done with tropical climates and jungle habitats. Northern New England and the Maritimes suit me right down to the ground. Regardless of wind gusts and ice storms. Keeps the riff-raff away and decent people at home at night.
Greg Norton wrote:
“Just make sure that you used a quality random number generator to create the public/private key.”
According to John von Neumann, “Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin.”
I visited Ireland in 1993. Very disapointing. Crummy roads, expensive drinks, some hotels very poor service. I really don’t know why the Brits held on to it for so long.
“I really don’t know why the Brits held on to it for so long.”
Originally so they could plunder the shit out of it and give large chunks of it to their freebooting mercenaries and genocidal maniacs and then it just became a tar baby they couldn’t extricate themselves from. Stupid, for many centuries. Now it’s a permanent political mess but thankfully pretty quiet these days. OFD is 25% Irish by way of my maternal grandma. (full disclosure, lol). And got jammed up with my managers when I worked at DEC in the late 1980s when I posted controversial stuff on their internal “blog”, EasyNet.
Wife and Princess were there this past year for a week or two and traveled around the northwest coast and liked it a lot; wife has a knack for picking out nice cheap places to stay, too. They did a bit of horseback riding on the beaches; I’m mainly interested in historical landscape stuff and ruins. She did mention how narrow the roads were, though, and what a nerve-wracking deal it is sharing them with trucks. Said their roads are the width of our highway lanes. And I don’t drink anymore so that’s not an issue, otherwise, yeah, it WOULD be expensive, if I put it away like I used to do. I hope they have juice or cola or something as I don’t drink coffee or tea, either.
Back to a regular bed now, I guess, after months in the recliner. I managed OK last night, even without sleeping pills. Hooray. Still got the chronic pain in the lower back, though, just not as bad, after two shots. And I can’t stay on my feet indefinitely all day. I suppose I should try hard to get another 15 or 20 pounds off, if I can get it off my gut, and exercise more again.
Oíche mhaith gach reprobates agat agus deplorables.
I’m 1/4 Cornish, 1/2 English, 1/4 Irish. In that order. I was very ashamed of my Irish ancestry during “The Troubles”.
By “drinks” I meant fruit juice. At one cafe I was given a 2/3 full very small class of apple juice – for the price I would have expected about four times the volume.
Our coach went the “correct” way around the Ring of Kerry, and encountered a bus going the wrong way. It took ages for us to pass them.
I was very unimpressed by the hotel the tour used in Sligo. Right next to a railway shunting yard that made a hell of a lot of noise. And the staff were very off hand with us – their customers.
I’m gonna be light commenting, haven’t dropped off the planet, just traveling.
n
According to John von Neumann, “Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin.”
Visual Studio’s srand()/rand() are particularly heinous. I’ve had a long simmering paper idea on exploring the limitations of using the pair to generate RSA keys, but I’m guessing I would open up a can of (insecure) worms.
Wow. TwoFish was an AES finalist.
Just make sure that you used a quality random number generator to create the public/private key. The last time I checked, Visual Studio srand()/rand() still utilized a formula which I’m guessing that Billy Gates found in one of Knuth’s books. MAX_RAND=0x37FF. Seriously?
The Russians debugged our software using a reverse debugger and found both of the TwoFish keys. We then changed to public key / private key cryptography and the private key is only in our password generator. Which, of course, is not in our software deliverable.
I cannot tell you what we use for our random number generator but it is pretty good. Definitely open source is the way to go here.
BTW, in Visual Studio 2015 (which we use), from stdlib.h,
// Maximum value that can be returned by the rand function:
#define RAND_MAX 0x7fff
“Definitely open source is the way to go here.”
Here, there and everywhere.
And even the M$ Borg has been invaded, via Azure. And bash, believe it or not. Which is older than the hills.
Interestingly, the main spearhead dev guy for Azure has been none other than Dave Cutler, who started with the PDP line at DEC and VAX/VMS and then went over to the Dark Side in Richmond where they built Windows NT. Last known to be working with the XBox team. All so long ago. We were briefly contemporaries at DEC just as he was leaving and I was slaving like a navvy all hours of the day and night in Marlborough, MA. 1987-89. That site is now just empty parking lots overgrown with weeds, and I remember running across them during the infamous summer t-storms that crashed the heads on a bunch of the VAX machines, which had to be immediately swapped out. Started there with maybe 25 systems and three buildings and left when it had gone to 75 machines and clusters and seven buildings and doubled the size of our night-drone team. All gone.
Now I’m just waiting for the wizards down in MA to port OpenVMS to x86.
That was a mistake, but you’re in good company, for a certain value of “good”.
I did the same to IBM software, including a small business accounting package. In the latter, they had the admin password — the same for every installation everywhere — to the encrypted accounting database in (at least) one of the executables, and after I found it I owned the database. As it happens, I used this access only for repairing a client’s database and saving them tens of thousands in IBM specialist fees, transferring the client data over to a different accounting package because they were tired of IBM’s crap, and the like.