09:02 – It was 60.9F (16C) and still dark when I took Colin out at 0645. He just trotted off down the road, which is becoming a usual thing. I’m going to have start taking him out on leash, particularly when it’s still dark out.
Barbara is off to the gym, after which she’ll be building kit sub-assemblies. I’m not sure if she has any outside stuff to do today. The only thing in the garden is turnips, which are starting to come up nicely. A lot of turnips, which will need to be thinned. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten a turnip, so I’m looking forward to trying them.
Work on the house next door continues to progress. Yesterday, Billings Heating and Air was installing a heat pump. They left the oil furnace in place, and will use the heat pump only for air conditioning. The deck looks to be complete, all the new windows are installed, and the outside looks good. Barbara mentioned that they’re spending as much on renovations as they did to buy the house. I’m sure Grace is champing at the bit to get in there.
I have a bunch of stuff coming from Amazon today, including six rolls of packing tape. Since we started the business, I’ve been buying U-Line packing tape by the case of 36 rolls. We’re down to eight rolls or so, so it was time to re-order.
But before I order another case of U-Line tape, I decided to try a different brand. The U-Line tape works, but it can be very aggravating. It often doesn’t stick to the tape dispenser cutter bar, and the end flops loose and sticks itself to the plate below the cutting bar, which is a pain to free up.
The U-Line tape is 2.0 mil. Amazon has another brand that’s 3.2 mil, and I thought maybe the thicker tape would work better. The U-Line stuff by the case costs $1.60 per 110-yard roll, plus shipping, or about $0.015/yard. The new stuff is just over $2.00 for a 60-yard roll if I buy a six-pack, or about $0.036/yard. But we don’t use THAT much packing tape, so if the new stuff works better it’ll be worth paying twice as much for it, just to avoid the aggravation. Of course, it may turn out to be even worse. We’ll see.
The morning paper reports another cluster of shootings down in Winston. Six people shot in 24 hours, in four separate incidents. There was a similar cluster there a couple weeks ago. I remember when shootings in Winston were extremely rare. They’re starting to become commonplace. Winston isn’t Chicongo, yet, but like most cities it’s heading in that direction.
“I don’t think I’ve ever eaten a turnip, so I’m looking forward to trying them.”
Pasties contain (or should contain) turnip. You don’t know what you’re missing.
That’s not what pasties should contain. Pasties are worn by strippers in states that don’t allow full nudity. You don’t know what you’re missing.
You know what would help? More gun control. Because that always works.
I’m not a fan of turnips, but I like them plenty when diced up in turnip greens.
Pasties should contain tassels.
“I don’t think I’ve ever eaten a turnip, so I’m looking forward to trying them.”
I never had a turnip until a couple of years ago.
They are very nice, with a light flavor. There are lots of Blackadder jokes, but they are easy to grow, store for a long time, and can be eaten in lots of ways.
I like them julienned raw, with salt they taste like Jícama (which is as trendy as kale.)
We also eat them cubed in 1/2 in pieces and boiled until tender, served with butter and salt, or cubed boiled and then mashed, with butter and salt.
I also chunk them and add to stew.
When peeling, there is a second layer under the first. You can see it if you look carefully. I peel thru both layers and find they are much more tender with lighter flavor if you do. Basically, I just use a potato peeler, and do an extra heavy peel, watching for the layer edge to be taken. Easier to do than describe. Tennis ball size is best compromise between having too little left after peeling, and being old and ‘woody’.
n
edit- basically I treat them as boiled white potatoes. Yes, I will eat potatoes raw with salt.
WRT packing tape, I use a lot and decided long ago it was worth the extra money for thicker, stickier tape, 3m by preference.
I buy it in the 8 packs when it is on sale at costco. I buy enough to last until the next sale. Haven’t done the math, the convenience is worth it.
n
Work on the house next door continues to progress. Yesterday, Billings Heating and Air was installing a heat pump. They left the oil furnace in place, and will use the heat pump only for air conditioning.
Hopefully, they didn’t install a WiFi “smart” thermostat. I regret letting the AC contractor put one into our house with the recent system replacement. The WiFi around the homestead hasn’t been the same since, even with the network access set to “off” in the thermostat’s settings.
Grace will probably call you about WiFi problems if the installer did get fancy with the thermostat.
WRT packing tape, I use a lot and decided long ago it was worth the extra money for thicker, stickier tape, 3m by preference.
Most of my shipping is “reshipping” boxes of books. The books come on pallets with a single strip of tape on each side. I thought I could ship a 30# box like that. Nope, UPS is rough on boxes, so I only use reinforced paper tape with a manual wetting machine. No failures after that. Paper tape also is great for repairing damage boxes.
I’d like paper tape for some things, but I often use my tape as ‘waterproofing’ over a label…
And I don’t want the dispenser mess.
n
UPS is rough on boxes
At times, I think UPS has the gorilla from the old American Tourister commercials on the payroll.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5sEIWlQO7A
In addition to turnips, I also enjoy rutabaga.
SteveF the sheep shagger wrote:
“Pasties are worn by strippers in states that don’t allow full nudity.”
Those pasties are made of turnip, so we’re both correct.
SteveF the sheep shagger wrote:
Baaa baaa baaa.
We use turnips mashed with carrots as a regular cold-weather dish, especially for the Holiday meals. Season liberally with salt and pepper. Also in stews and soups.
WRT urban sportiness; Winston-Salem evidently has nearly a quarter-million people; outside of Boston, the only New England cities in that ballpark, all of them around 180,000, are Woostah, Hahtfud and Providence, all several hundred miles to our south. To be avoided, if possible, but nowhere near the sportiness of Chicongo or Detroit. Boston is more problematic, at 600,000, and lots of people will be trapped there if SHTF; those highways leading out will be jammed and then locked up. Ditto the main bridges. The place was originally built on a near-island, connected to the mainland by only a narrow neck.
Montreal, about 75 miles to our north, is a giant question mark; 2 million in the city itself and another 2 million in the metro stat area around it. But it truly is on an island, connected to the mainland by bridges. We figure that during SHTF, the population will tend to flee southwest, north of the Saint Lawrence, toward Ottawa and Toronto. Not across the river and down here, which would really suck for them, esp. in the winter.
Another hot humid day in Retroville, but the temps are rumored to drop quickly later today and at least there’s a breeze.
I am on house and yard stuff as best I can manage it, which isn’t much. Everything takes three times as long and the wrong move can drop me to the floor or ground like yesterday’s newspapers, all 240 pounds of them. Exciting.
Hopefully, they didn’t install a WiFi “smart” thermostat. I regret letting the AC contractor put one into our house with the recent system replacement. The WiFi around the homestead hasn’t been the same since, even with the network access set to “off” in the thermostat’s settings.
I have one of those Honeywell Wifi thermostats for the front part of the house. I never setup the wifi and just ignore it. I wanted the self lit led display though.
“Worrying Scientist Interviews”
https://xkcd.com/1895/
Heh.
One of my clients has 3 nest thermostats. They seem to work fine, although there is a bit of weirdness in that they look like access points on wifi…. didn’t care enough to figure it out once I got the rest of the 4 APs in the house config’d and working.
Did kill the AP in the HP printer as they never print wirelessly. That reduced the RF in the house somewhat.
I think they use their app to bring the temps up and down when traveling. That’s the only thing I could even consider as a reason to have something like that, and I don’t travel much anymore.
n
I have one of those Honeywell Wifi thermostats for the front part of the house. I never setup the wifi and just ignore it. I wanted the self lit led display though.
The problematic smart thermostat is from the AC manufacturer. The installation company didn’t want to mess with running extra wires to cover both dual stage cooling and dual stage heating so they cheated with a proprietary relay board and controls.
I have a non-WiFi programmable Honeywell on our other system that works flawlessly. I bought it from Home Depot and installed it myself.
One of my clients has 3 nest thermostats. They seem to work fine, although there is a bit of weirdness in that they look like access points on wifi…. didn’t care enough to figure it out once I got the rest of the 4 APs in the house config’d and working.
Alphabet has a deal with Unium WiFi for mesh networking technology. That might explain why the thermostats look like access points.
I worked for Unium in their previous “spin” when they were trying to land a contract to apply their mesh networking technology to military drones. I don’t think that place has ever released a successful product, but someone keeps giving them money in the hopes that their mesh patents become profitable … or the “greater fool” principle kicks in and someone larger buys them out.
Are you sure they aren’t a renewable energy company?
WRT catalytic converters:
My daughter’s Grand Cherokee had the check engine light activate. Could be computer update required or converter replacement. Converter covered by 8 yr, 80,000 mile warranty. It is 2011 model with 75,000 miles. We may not be in too much trouble.
Are you sure they aren’t a renewable energy company?
Maybe that is the next “spin”.
CoCo/Unium was the first (and, hopefully, only) professional job I ever walked away from without notice.
“The Coming Software Apocalypse”
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/09/saving-the-world-from-code/540393/
Huh. I have been wondering about this for a while.
Of interest to preppers, except OFD.
Huh. I have been wondering about this for a while.
Beware of French companies selling magic development tools. Isn’t that how DoD got stuck with Ada?
Beware of French companies selling magic development tools. Isn’t that how DoD got stuck with Ada?
I had a friend working on a flight simulator project for the Air Force. They coded the entire simulation in C++ and then were forced to convert it to Ada. He came out with some respect for Ada but all the shortcomings were problematic. And it ran way slower also so they had to upgrade the hardware.
I had a friend working on a flight simulator project for the Air Force. They coded the entire simulation in C++ and then were forced to convert it to Ada. He came out with some respect for Ada but all the shortcomings were problematic. And it ran way slower also so they had to upgrade the hardware.
Sounds like a compiler issue.
Open source tools are not a magic bullet but they have been a decent incremental improvement IMHO. The good/bad of Oracle putting the knife to Sun is that the God-awful Solaris C/C++ was the last proprietary compiler pushed on programmers thanks to “hookers and steaks” marketing.
The combination of Linux, Valgrind, and Clang saved me a lot of trouble in both the C++ certificate program I took at UW and Compilers last semester.
“Of interest to preppers, except OFD.”
Absolutely correct.
Real life and real history are more than enuff for little ol’ me.
“…the first (and, hopefully, only) professional job I ever walked away from without notice.”
Welcome to the club. I walked off my state gummint job in 2002 with whatever notice would be considered notice via email after 5 PM when everyone else had left. (yeah, you didn’t wanna be in front of the exit doors at 4:30!) So basically, no notice.
Had I not left, I very seriously might have killed somebody that week.
Uh, no? Not unless there’s some backstory I don’t know about.
Ada was an interesting language. More accurately, it incorporated some interesting ideas, useful in the large, multi-team projects that DOD was concerned with. If the language had been used correctly by the contractors, rather than them writing FORTRAN with different syntax, it might have been effective.
Well, yah, almost by definition.
In theory, even the original version of Ada collected enough extra information about the intent of a block of code that it could generate a runtime smaller and more efficient than the FORTRAN equivalent. (I keep mentioning FORTRAN because that and assembly language were the main implementation languages for DOD projects at the time.) In practice, Ada was bulkier and slower by a factor of about 4.
“Isn’t that how DoD got stuck with Ada?”
Uh, no? Not unless there’s some backstory I don’t know about.
Jean Ichabiah at CII-Honeywell-Bull developed Ada in France.
Ada is an interesting language. I migrated our real-time Air Pollution monitoring system from FORTRAN running under RDOS on a Data General minicomputer to Ada on UNIX running an Oracle DB on a PC in the late ’80s. It provided the real-time kernel that I needed for multi-threading, which was a big advantage over the less sophisticated FORTRAN using operating system calls.
It took quite a while to adapt my thinking to using a strongly typed object oriented language (Ada) compared to FORTRAN. Some developers faked it and tried to just do a 1:1 translation, which resulted in horrendous looking (and performing) code.
I had become interested in Ada in the early ’80s with the advent of the Intel iAPX 432 chip, which was optimized for running Ada programs. The chip went nowhere and was no longer produced by the late-1980s. IIRC, the Intel 960 was based on some of the better iAPX 432 ideas. I never did use either processor.
Now I am mostly Java and C++, when I get to do actual development work.
What was interesting was that as late as 2006, I was still called on to consult on FORTRAN 90 systems that needed to do low-level bit twiddling. I never found any good Ada opportunities. Anyway, still doing IT work since I wrote my first commercial FORTRAN program in 1970.
It took quite a while to adapt my thinking to using a strongly typed object oriented language (Ada) compared to FORTRAN. Some developers faked it and tried to just do a 1:1 translation, which resulted in horrendous looking (and performing) code.
Yup, real programmers can write Fortran in any language.
From the Atlantic article: The serious problems that have happened with software have to do with requirements, not coding errors.
Yep. One of my jobs was doing software for systems that did REDACTED. One of their keys to getting large systems to work was to spend a lot of time on requirements up front. They had a strong systems engineering staff and all program managers came out of systems engineering.
Yup, real programmers can write Fortran in any language.
Yup, real programmers can write COBOL in any language.
Fixed it for you.
Yup, real programmers can write COBOL in any language.
You misspelled Kobol.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobol
Let’s see…what programming “languages” does OFD know….
…yeah, thought so. None. Zero.
In my former IT daze, I did shell scripting in bash and vim and that was it. Now forgotten, mostly, as I don’t use it anymore. Like the medieval languages I once studied.
Learning new code now, though, from the wunnerful world of social “science,” primarily psychology, from Fraud through whatever the latest craze is. But as they point out themselves, the instructors tell us it’s just background noise, maybe a few techniques, but the biggest thing is to be in a room with somebody and LISTEN to them. That I can do, and have been so doing for quite a while now. I have to be prompted to speak up, usually, at the Planning Commission, Selectboard, vets groups, and school. I believe strongly in STFU and LISTEN.
I learned Snobol in Uni. I can’t even remember if it was/is a Cobol offshoot.
Dibol
Futbol.
Woolbol
Hi Mr. Miles_Teg 🙂
@Mr. DadCooks and any other swabbies or deck apes:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/27/us/politics/navy-orders-safety-operational-standards.html
My uncles Ricky and Bruce and my Grandpa Eric must be spinning in their graves, all deceased war vet swabbies. RIP.
And the FEMA Director talks sense:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-27/fema-director-urges-americans-develop-true-culture-preparedness-no-one-listening
Canned goods would still be viable in PR, amirite?
Let’s just let in another 30-40 million Dreamers, shall we? Our pockets are infinite.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/record-135-billion-a-year-for-illegal-immigration-average-8075-each-25000-in-ny/article/2635757
In other good, if not exactly new, news:
Seeing stars, again: Naval Academy reinstates celestial navigation
I loved languages – some I have used since 1970:
IBM 360 / 370 assembly / COBOL 68 & 74
Intel 8080 / Zialog Z80 / 6502 / 6800 assembly & machine
APL / Basic / C & C++ / MTCS / CICS
Datapoint Dataflex / Datatrieve
Lisp / Pl/1 / Forth / RPG / Java / JavaScript / Pascal / Pearl / Visual Basic
A variety of Unix & Linux shells
I haven’t written code in almost a decade now and miss it
Basic, pascal, and the binary code of vaporators.
n
maybe not that last one……
…but the biggest thing is to be in a room with somebody and LISTEN to them.
MrAtoz wrote:
“I learned Snobol in Uni. I can’t even remember if it was/is a Cobol offshoot.”
It wasn’t. I learned Cobol in 1978 and loathed it. I learned Snobol in 1979 and hated it. It was a text manipulation language. Never used it again after the last class.
@medium wave; yes, the ideal is not a bunch of psych mumbo-jumbo but comfort and safety and LISTENING. Most of the time. At various points we can jump in with something but whatever problem solving/healing is gonna be mostly on the
patientclient.It’s why I keep my trap shut as much as possible and thereby learn stuff I can’t learn by running my pie-hole.
Dump run tomorrow with some more cleanup; the tasks earlier today did me in for a while and probably the same tomorrow. Friday I might end up meeting w/brother down in NH, and possibly my niece, maybe even my SIL, and doing a bit of a trade. If not then, maybe next week sometime. Then Friday night I drive down and pick up my Significant Other at the airport and with any luck may see/hear F16s blasting overhead, flown by the Green Mountain Boys, a fighter-interceptor group.
The weekend will undoubtedly shape up as mostly chores, errands and Theory homework, with a possible visit to a downtown Saint Albans City pub, as one of my classmates will be there with his band, playing the bass guitar. He’s around my age and seems pretty intelligent, a music teacher. Wifey will probably have a glass or two of vino and I’ll stick with ginger ale on the rocks.
As our glorious dear leaders are doing their darndest to get a war going somewhere, or multiple wars, Pax vobiscum, fratres, et semper paratus; tempus fugit irreparabile…
I learned Snobol in 1979 and hated it.
It was said of Snobol that almost any random string of characters could constitute a program …
… or was that APL and line noise? 🙂
I like turnips. Well, actually, I like swedes (you call those rutabagas, I think) which, with potatoes, are the proper accompaniment to haggis, as in “haggis, tatties and neeps”. True turnips can be rather tasteless and watery – I think the trick is to harvest and eat them before they get too large and woody, and not to store them a long time. Fresh from the ground, they are nice sliced really thinly on a “mandolin” and sprinkled with salt, or cut in sticks for dipping. Another really nice brassica is Kohlrabi which, like swedes, is sort of in-between a turnip and cabbage.
I used Ada back in its infancy, when the compilers were still incomplete and buggy. Even so, I found it to be a good, solid language. A bit of a “kitchen sink”, i.e., designed by committee, but certainly a usable tool.
I actually doubt that the speed problems are compiler problems. While I haven’t used Ada in 30+ years, I would assume that the compilers are mature by now. Speed problems are more likely due to programming errors: You can’t just translate line-by-line from one language to another – you have to actually take advantage of the features of the new language, and remove reliance on features of the old one. Compilers can optimize, but they cannot fix bad programming decisions.
Currently, I work mostly with Java. It never was a particularly enjoyable language to use, due to some lousy design decisions; feature-creep with each version makes it steadily uglier. However, the platform-independence is still better than anything else out there, therefore it’s in wide use, and therefore it’s what our school wants to teach.
“It was said of Snobol that almost any random string of characters could constitute a program …
… or was that APL and line noise?”
It was definitely APL. I never programmed in APL, but did see some code (around 1972). APL also required a special keyboard. At the time, I much preferred assembly language, FORTRAN, or ALGOL.
And I see where Hugh Hefner died. I also wonder if anyone on this place gives a rat’s rear end.
Pascal – first on a mainframe (1985), then PC in 1991. First in school, then wrote some useful apps.
C/C++ – 1992-1997 (just in school, no dev work)
VB – 1995
Business BASIC (BBx) – 1997-2011
VB again in 2007 to 2011
Java in 2009 – never went anywhere, and I’m glad.
SQL – 2008 and on
Shell scripting – Linux, Windows (powershell & .cmd)
SQL is the only thing I use regularly anymore. Well, throw in PowerShell for Exchange management once in a while.
The hardest part is wrapping my mind around the idea. After that, it’s writing out the solution and converting that to code.
or was that APL and line noise?
APL. APL was known as a write-only language, because reading and understanding someone else’s code or your own after a while away from it was very difficult. I did some APL coding in college.
Hefner… didn’t like or dislike him.
Bob Guccione was vile.
The folks at Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler all contributed substantially the Libertarian National Committee during the 1980 presidential campaign. I have no problem with any of their products.
In the main it wasn’t the mag, it was the arsehole who ran it.
IIRC Guccione also owned Omni magazine which was a lot of fun and published a LOT of SciFi. I’m reminded because I found some old Omnis in a file cabinet yesterday. I’m pretty sure I only kept the ones with short story SciFi from authors I recognized. Might even have Johnny Mnemonic by W. Gibson in the original print appearance.
n
“NATO Splinters: Germany Completes Withdrawal From Turkey’s Incirlik Airbase”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-28/nato-splinters-germany-completes-withdrawal-turkeys-incirlik-airbase
Big changes in the world’ss geopolitical alignments are coming. Looks like the wheels are coming off, and that means (to me) the likelihood of major conflict instead of proxy wars is increased. After all, whole generation that never knew war has reached the levers of power…. and that’s all it usually takes.
n
@OFD, regarding “Navy Returns to Compasses and Pencils to Help Avoid Collisions at Sea”:
I have been aware for some time that competency in the Navy (and really all our armed forces) had sunk to all time lows, but this article confirms that the situation is far far worse. If this is what has been released you can be sure it is far far worse.
This problem of not knowing the basics is accepted everywhere today, everyone just uses their smartphone and Garble (Google’s real name). Schools are too worried about gender identity, white privilege, and affirmative action rather than teaching the basics of learning how to learn. I recently saw a statistic that 80% of high school graduates are actually functionally illiterate.
The last thing any government wants is an educated citizenry.
“Bob Guccione was vile.”
Maybe Larry Flint? never heard anything about Guccione….
In any case, what they used to print would not even raise an eyebrow now, and porn is essentially free. People are self generating porn and sharing. I can’t imagine how the commercial producers can continue.
n
As I mentioned late last night/early this morning, our own dear leaders are evidently champing at the bit to get us into another war, or multiple wars. When we’re clearly not up to par with our armed forces and their personnel. This is likely to bite us real hard.
One eye open, one hand tied behind our back, and lobotomized. Against other regimes who don’t give a fuck how many of their people they lose and are also champing at the bit to start flinging jets, tanks and rockets around.
Yes, I’m aware we have the ability to blow up the solar system and also to obliterate any other country on the planet but that presupposes TOTAL SHTF and I’d just hang it up at that point. What we don’t have is the ability to run 4G warfare tactics and strategy or the troops capable of doing it. Hell, we’re still barely hanging on in Afghanistan after, what, fifteen or sixteen years, and the musloid shitbags are still there ready to take over again. Iraq is a mess; ditto Syria and Libya. Anyone here think we’ve had any successes since World War II? What, Panama? Grenada?
I seem to recall that Turkey threatened US forces at Incirlik about a year ago, right after the coup attempt. Since the US stored (No, I can’t confirm nor deny) nuclear weapons on that base, it seemed a big deal but the story faded quickly.
And it is sad that I wonder if we still have those weapons there. I HOPE not, but I am not at all sure that we removed them.
None. Nope. Nada. Zilch.
We’re not good at building empires and running them. We should stop.
We should be ready to defend ourselves at a moment’s notice…
But that begs the question: How are we to be prepared to defend ourselves if we have nobody trained (and experienced) at breaking things and killing people? Because that is a skill that is greatly in favor when one needs to break things and kill people.
Bingo. That’s why I’m not in principle opposed to small-scale military ongoing adventures. A military which never sees combat becomes a bureaucracy and a jobs program or a police force. Ref practically every military in the world.
Heck, even the US military has problems with those three ills, and we’ve had more actual recent military action (as contrasted with military forces being used as police or bodyguards) than anyone else in the world. The problem might be that there is nothing approaching an existential risk to the nation, so there’s no need to break down the bureaucracies or toss out the incompetent.