It was 29 degrees, sunny, and breezy when I took Colin out at 7:45.
I spoke with Bob’s nurse and rehab therapist by phone yesterday. Al went by to him late yesterday afternoon. They are working to get his legs stronger. He still has the secretions and coughing a lot of gunk up. Otherwise not really much in the way of any changes.
I know we were all hoping for a quicker and easier recovery, but don’t despair. It will happen in its own time. And there will come a point where improvement starts to accelerate.
nick
Light rain this morning with prediction for snow in the mountains later today. Yea! Snow is the key to California’s water system.
Slim, be prepared for that mountain trip up here. Take your chains, warm wear, food and water (like I need to tell you).
Ditto Nick on Bob’s progress.
I also agree with everything Nick said.
Border collie pups video:
https://borepatch.blogspot.com/2018/01/border-collie-pups-interview-for-job.html
Some cuties there.
n
!! wolf !!
Subbing again today. Got the call at 9:30 to be in as soon as I could. School was out Monday for that politically correct holiday. Then closed the next three days due to snow and ice on the roads. Many of the back roads were not easily passable, especially for school buses. Better to err on the side of caution. People bitch about the buses not running, then go ballistic when one runs off the road, followed by hoards of money grubbing slimeball lawyers.
Damn little cretins. Seized a cell phone. The girl has been warned before, I was lenient and gave her phone back at the end of a class several weeks ago. She tried using the phone again and got caught. Once warned, twice phone is gone. She claimed she was checking the time. Nope, don’t try that on me. Phone is now going to the office for her parents to pick up. That will not be until Monday as today is Friday and the school office will be closed by the time she gets home. Next time her phone gets taken up she goes to alternative school for a week. As far as I know this may be her second time as another teacher may have confiscated the phone. Yeh, I am a rectum orifice but they will learn not to try and con me.
“Are the Fake News Awards Persuasive?”
http://blog.dilbert.com/2018/01/18/fake-news-awards-persuasive/
“By now you know President Trump announced his winners for the Fake News Awards. You can see them here. Let’s talk about what he got right in terms of persuasion.”
The Fake News award winner are listed here. Apparently none of them showed up to collect their awards, how odd.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/01/17/president-trump-reveals-winners-his-fake-news-awards.html
“…money grubbing slimeball lawyers.”
Fair bit of redundancy there Ray…
Gack. I just can’t do 10-12 hour days, day after day, without being just totally dead in the evening. Another week of this, if I’m lucky. Two, if I’m not. I am not working over the weekend, not, not, not…
Had a student in an open book exam get caught cheating. He had something on his mobile phone, hidden on the chair between his legs. Can’t imagine what it could have been, that wouldn’t have been more useful printed out openly, on the table. He can’t have been texting or anything – that would have been obvious. So…WTF?
Probably a cultural problem. I have the classes with a very high proportion of international students, who come from just about everywhere. One year I had a Russian student, who genuinely didn’t understand why instructors didn’t pass out the answers before an exam, so that our quota of passing students would be higher. African students, usually really nice people, but whose educations are…defective. Students with wonderful qualifications on paper, but…well, one student came up after my first-week introductory lecture and said that I had just covered the entire contents of his 9 month programming course back home. Students from wealthy families, who are a bit mystified (not unpleasant, just mystified) as to why that doesn’t matter here.
They are interesting classes to teach, but last year, only 40% of the students passed. I really hope it’s better this year…
He had something on his mobile phone, hidden on the chair between his legs
Yeh, I see the students doing the same thing. I am wise to that and can tell when they are using their phone. They will also place their backpack on their desk in such a way as to hide their use of the phone. I am wise to that little trick.
The first half of the year I was fairly lenient and would give the phone back at the end of class. Not anymore. There has been enough time passed so now I get tough. I have warned this girl before, even taking her phone. This time she got pissy with me so the phone went. She begged and said she would “do anything I wanted” to get her phone back. Alarm bells immediately went off in my brain and she was immediately sent out of the room. It was between classes, I was alone, but had the door open, standing in the hallway. So I just told her to get out, NOW.
Gave the phone to the vice-principal and explained to her the situation. Last I saw the student was crying to the vice-principal about something. I wonder about what? Next class I had the student again. She was not happy with me. You know what? I don’t give a rat’s posterior. I am not here to make friends and don’t care about her issues.
The vice-principal has been very supportive in all issues that I have experienced with the students. Completely has my back. Other teachers say the same thing about the vice-principal.
The rest of the year there will be zero tolerance for the use of cell phones in the class unless pre-approved by the teacher.
I remember when I was in school when there was a sub. I, along with others, would try and scam the sub, sometimes successfully. So I am aware of what goes on as nothing has changed in 50 years. Some of the subs are easily conned, not me. I am what the students call an “rectal orifice”. Good for me.
The vice-principal has been very supportive in all issues that I have experienced with the students. Completely has my back. Other teachers say the same thing about the vice-principal.
Vice-principals are the school administration enforcers. They are taught to see everything in black and white. It is the job of the principal to mitigate that.
It is the job of the principal to mitigate that.
Principal has also supported me when there are issues with students. Subs get a lot of support as we are sometimes hard to find. We don’t have to work if we don’t want to work with no consequences.
That is one of the reasons I sub. I wanted a part time job for something to do but that would require a schedule. With subbing there is no schedule.
Sometimes there is a shortage. Thus the staff supports the subs. Some teachers make it easy on subs as these teachers want them back. Teachers have their favorite subs. I am on about five teachers first choice for a sub, wife is on about the same number, but different teachers.
Vice-principals are the school administration enforcers. They are taught to see everything in black and white.
Yeah, I watch HBO too.
Amazon is raising the cost of month-to-month Amazon Prime (click for article). Annual Amazon Prime remains the same price. It’s not surprising. A bunch of people probably signed up for month-to-month Prime in December, then used the heck out of it getting free shipping for Christmas gifts, then canceled when they were done having never paid for more than a month or two. If I were Amazon I’d raise it too.
Going to my neighborhood dive bar tonight for some country music:
https://www.facebook.com/MothersTavern/
Hope we don’t have a brawl like this:
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2018/01/19/yams-day-fight/
A bunch of people probably signed up for month-to-month Prime in December, then used the heck out of it getting free shipping for Christmas gifts, then canceled when they were done having never paid for more than a month or two
That would be me. Nothing in the rules against the practice. Surprised Amazon did not understand people were going to do such. Why should I continue to pay for something that I am not going to use again for another 11 months? It is my job to get the best bargain possible and if Amazon’s policies allow me to do that, then I will.
Hah, lots of peeps do that with big tvs around superbowl time. All the big retailers change their return policy around then to keep people from ‘wearing the dress to the party,then returning it.”
n
I concur. Just surprised that so many people are perplexed and/or outraged at the price increase.
I just make it a point to complain every time my package is late (even if that means it was supposed to be delivered at 8 and came at 8:15), anytime I think their packaging sucks, etc. They always apologize and add a free month or two of Prime to my membership. So, I can stretch my 12-month Prime subscription out to 18+ months at no extra cost to me. 🙂
I just make it a point to complain every time my package is late … anytime I think their packaging sucks, etc.
Move to Austin or any other city served by the Las Vegas warehouse. You’ll never pay for Prime again. 🙂
My favorite Amazon screwup was receiving a programming book with a coffee cup ring on the title page, as if one of the stock people used the inside of the book as a coaster.
“My favorite Amazon screwup was receiving a programming book with a coffee cup ring on the title page”
Frankly, retailers are far too generous with their return policies. I can see how that happened, if the cover itself still looked new. A local online clothing retailer supposedly has a return rate over 50%. People have gotten in the habit of ordering the same article in different sizes, to keep only the one that fits. Plus, also supposedly, quite a number of women who can’t be seen wearing the same dress twice. So they aren’t – order it, wear it, return it.
They think they’re clever, and I suppose they are. But the result, really, is just higher prices for everyone, because those costs get paid somehow.
We see this from the other end: customers for my wife’s whisky business, who don’t understand (for example) why she charges an entry fee to tastings. She’s up-front about it: if she didn’t, then she would have to raise the bottle prices. So she charges enough to cover costs, and the bottle prices are honest. It’s surprising how many people are unhappy that they can’t get something for nothing. In the end, my wife figures those are exactly the customers she’s happy not to have.
hey guys, anyone got any experience with the Seagate Momentus XT 750gb? It’s the hybrid 750gb hard drive with an 8gb SSD that is supposed to speed things up.
Seems like most of the reviews like it because it speeds up boot times, but my wife’s pc rarely gets rebooted. She’s got a standard 1TB capacity 7200rpm HD about half full.
I can’t just clone and add an SSD as primary, with the HD as storage because the MB only has 2 SATA ports. If I could, that would be my first choice to increase apparent speed.
I’m thinking of upgrading the processor from i5 (4core)to i7 – 2600 (also 4 core) and or bumping the 6GB ram to 8GB and faster ram. All the options are about the same cost, $100 or less.
She uses it for general online and bill paying and likes to have 20 tabs open in chrome while the kids have 10 tabs open in FFox.
New version of the same style all-in-one isn’t THAT much higher spec and would be $800-$900USD. So I’m willing to put ~$200 in it.
What do you guys think is best bang for buck?
n
Frankly, retailers are far too generous with their return policies. I can see how that happened, if the cover itself still looked new.
Wall Street doesn’t hold Amazon and other online vendors to the same standard as established retailers.
I still believe we are seeing “Peak Amazon” right now. The cracks are growing.
https://pjmedia.com/trending/furious-shoppers-report-widespread-empty-shelves-whole-foods-markets-across-u-s/
Wall Street doesn’t hold Amazon and other online vendors to the same standard as established retailers.
Amazon is counted as a high growth stock. Walmart is not.
Amazon gets a lot of wiggle room for that. But, they have to keep increasing their sales each quarter. Not easy to do.
” my wife’s whisky business,”
There was a time in my life where that phrase would have caused my heart to beat faster!
n
hey guys, anyone got any experience with the Seagate Momentus XT 750gb? It’s the hybrid 750gb hard drive with an 8gb SSD that is supposed to speed things up.
Almost two years ago, I put a 1 TB Firecuda 2.5″ SSHD in the old MacBook Pro I use for Windows 7. It was a definite improvement over a standard spinning drive, and the difference in cost per GB vs SSD is still significant.
For paying bills and web surfing, I’m not sure changing out the CPU will make as much difference as maxxing out the RAM and using an SSHD or SSD. My school laptop was a T420 i5-2520 with 8 GB Ballistix gaming ram and a Crucial MX300 SSD, and it still compares favorably with new i5 ThinkPads.
The memory upgrade looks like the easiest to do, esp if it is 204 pin so-dimms as fry’s has exactly what I need on clearance… Every online memory finder tool says 204 pin, but the HP spec online says 200 pin. Nothing to do but pull a stick and take it with 🙁
The processor upgrade is pretty simple too. The hardest is the drive, due to the cloning, moving stuff, etc. I did copy all the docs, music, pix, and vids off today. That took a while… 42000 pictures. Wow. I remember taking pix from two different vacation trips on the SAME roll of 24.
n
“We did it! Texas shatters record for winter electricity use, without swamping the grid”
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/weather/2018/01/17/texas-brutal-cold-leads-record-electricity-use-rolling-blackouts-avoided
“Bitter cold across Texas brought a new winter record for peak electricity use, ERCOT, the state’s independent electric grid operator announced Wednesday morning.”
“At one point, Texans were using 65,731 megawatts, blowing past the previous record by nearly 5 percent. Multiple records were set overnight as temperatures plunged statewide, but the new peak arrived between 7 and 8 a.m.”
“The peak use was significantly higher than the Electric Reliability Council of Texas’ projection of 61,068 megawatts for a peak this winter. It fell short of the “extreme” peak projection by just 1,044 megawatts.”
We got the office monthly electric bill today which does not include the latest ice and snow days. It is the highest winter bill ever at $443 at 9 cents/kwh. The office is all electric and we have been using the electric heat big time.
Amazon gets a lot of wiggle room for that. But, they have to keep increasing their sales each quarter. Not easy to do.
“The Cloud” bought them some breathing room selling AWS, but the Meltdown bug almost brought down the whole cloud computing party.
Oh man, I tried to release version 15.11 of our software today but decided to throw in the coding for a couple more PMRs (program modification requests) after validating that I did not break our Inline Fortran compiler and interpreter. I’ve been monkeying around with the dereferencing in the bytecode interpreter and think that I have got it working 100% this time. Dereferencing in Fortran is difficult on a good day as one has to calculate the variable offsets manually. At least, all of our benchmarks are working and a few related hidden bugs there have been fixed. So, version 15.11 on Monday unless something blows up in the benchmark runs over the weekend.
Long term, we are still working on version 16.00 of our software. I’ve got a big project, the junior programmer completed his second project yesterday, the senior programmer is working on two projects simultaneously (UNICODE and new graphic images), and the thermodynamic programmer is working on a project for version 17.00 since I stole his big project for version 16.00. Maybe we will release version 16.00 in February.
1030 and the dog wants to go to bed. Who am I to say no?
n
@Nick,
Does the pc have a spare PCI/PCI-E slot?
An expansion card would give you extra SATA ports.
A SSD and memory boost should make a difference..
Nudge-nudge, wink-wink, say no more.
Maybe we will release version 16.00 in February.
Wine (Linux Windows runtime) hit 3.0 this week.
If you’re worried about the future of Win32 with Microsoft, see how far you get installing your software on Wine running under x86_64 CentOS 6/7.
If you’re worried about the future of Win32 with Microsoft, see how far you get installing your software on Wine running under x86_64 CentOS 6/7.
Nope. I am worried about the fact that there are 10+ mobile pc devices to each desktop pc now. And, the ratio is rapidly increasing.
hey guys, anyone got any experience with the Seagate Momentus XT 750gb? It’s the hybrid 750gb hard drive with an 8gb SSD that is supposed to speed things up.
Seems like most of the reviews like it because it speeds up boot times, but my wife’s pc rarely gets rebooted. She’s got a standard 1TB capacity 7200rpm HD about half full.
I can’t just clone and add an SSD as primary, with the HD as storage because the MB only has 2 SATA ports. If I could, that would be my first choice to increase apparent speed.
Dude, you need a new pc with an SSD as the primary drive. Or as mentioned above, you need a SATA board for your pc.
I am getting ready to install a new 500 GB $140 SSD drive as my primary drive at the house. Any month now.
https://www.amazon.com/Blue-NAND-500GB-SSD-WDS500G2B0A/dp/B073SBZ8YH/
Amazon is full of refurbished PCs in the $200-300 range. Intel i-5 8GB ram 250gb ssd and 1tb hd, Many you can get with Win 7 pro. I’ve had very good luck buying several for work.
Nope. I am worried about the fact that there are 10+ mobile pc devices to each desktop pc now. And, the ratio is rapidly increasing.
See what Apple does in the Spring with their Mac Pro desktop line. Pressure from high end users has forced the company to backtrack and contemplate re-introducing some kind of expandable tower, especially since all the laptops are now sealed and disposable.
I would hope anyone using your software would have, at a minimum, a pro quality laptop with a big 1080p screen. Think Lenovo ThinkPad T570/580 or Dell Latitude 15.
I would hope anyone using your software would have, at a minimum, a pro quality laptop with a big 1080p screen. Think Lenovo ThinkPad T570/580 or Dell Latitude 15.
I would bet that half of my users are using laptops. But they are a desktop wannabe.
Man, the world is changing. Smartphones and tablets, smartphones and tablets.
@lynn, thanks for the link, I wasn’t finding anything that big for that little money.
@Mr K, I do have a PCIe slot, it has a tv tuner that has never been used in it, so that is an option I hadn’t considered. Thanks.
n
(lots of meatspace stuff today. kids and adults. )
drizzle and overcast 🙁
During a break in the drizzle, cleaned some more storage food. Found the little grey b@stard and he looked right at me before scampering. Was eating my freeze drieds! A while back I scored a bunch of FD meals for 50c each iirc. Well, about half of them are eaten.
Rats!
n
A while back I scored a bunch of FD meals for 50c each iirc. Well, about half of them are eaten.
Are these all pouches ?
Have they eaten through any canned food ?
Only pouches and boxes and plastic bottles. Cans, well, I lost some because the rat pee caused them to rust. Can’t trust rusty cans. I’ll do a lessons learned wrap up, because someone should benefit from my misfortune…
A couple of simple things would have made a big difference.
nick
I still believe we are seeing “Peak Amazon” right now. The cracks are growing.
https://pjmedia.com/trending/furious-shoppers-report-widespread-empty-shelves-whole-foods-markets-across-u-s/
OTS was implemented before the Amazon acquisition:
https://www.fooddive.com/news/grocery–new-order-to-store-system-blamed-for-whole-foods-shortages/515104/